anywhere but here

Hello? Yes, I'd like to inquire about an application for employment...

Oh, hi. Actually, we're really overstaffed at the moment, but we'll keep your application on file until we're hiring again. Good luck!

Hello. No we're not hiring at the moment. You could try our store on Broadway.

What's your name? Oh, yes, I remember seeing your application. No, we're not hiring, but if we were, you would certainly not be a candidate. No, I can tell just from your voice that you are cut from a cloth of inferior moral and intellectual fibre. No, you're not eligible. Good luck. Oh, no, I wasn't serious, I was being sarcastic. Goodbye.

******

There has never been a place as cold as where I am right now. Never in the history of the universe. I am absolutely certain of this. Any comments to the contrary will be flagged and commentator will be hunted down by the blog-police (a lesser-known branch of the Culturally Hip-ish/Almost Cutely Nerdy Policing branch of the United Colonies of the Internet, also the organization trying to change the structure of the haiku from 5-7-5 to 6-7-8. Something about logical crescendos and whatnot). This is what they will do to you.

I'm so glad to be back in my new home. It's great. I have no more bottom due to the fact that it has been frozen off, but that's not much of a change- just ask anyone. It would be like if my ability to spell correctly was frozen off, i.e. I would not be able to spell. Still. Also, I had a phenomenal dream in which all of my teeth started falling out. One of the two beaver ones up top, and about every other on on the bottom right side. And then they just kept falling out, or breaking off in shards. I kept having to spit out the chalky paste of saliva mixed with tooth bits. It was wretched.*

But I awoke, teeth in tact, and proceeded to go through my list of things to consider:
Employment
Unemployment
Hypothermia self-rescue tactics
Dead babies
New babies
Flu and head colds
Unemployment
Rent
Grey market tactics for making money that wouldn't technically be legal
Morals and where the outer limits of mine might lie
Dead babies
Unemployment

I am so cold. And was so looking forward to being back. And, truthfully, found my trip back to be quite enjoyable. Walking through the San Francisco airport with time to spare, I stopped to look at an art project consisting of seals designed for each of San Francisco's sister cities, projected onto the floor of the airport. Kind of cool, heartening that there still is some money going into the arts in California. Though I suppose it's telling that it is being displayed in the airport, to make sure that visitors know that we support our artists; the rest of us, well, we know better.

I read the description of the project: "Each crest is designed with a background of the topographical map of the city's airport.." and my eyes welled up.

Wait, what? What is happening? Maps? Topography? Cities in Asia with which I have very little connection? Which of these was the element which was causing me to take this unexpected detour into the land of the deeply-unbalanced, leaving me teary-eyed and dangerously close to tear-stained, staring at some artist's representation of Manila and Shanghai? This is inappropriate madness for which I will not stand. Dazed, I walked away from the informational board. Maybe time for a snack or some tastefully designed San Francisco merchandise. Yes, I think so.



*I suppose I'd be in good company though, that of other phenomenally-excellent twenty-somethings endowed somewhat meagerly in the tooth-department.