Sublime in Mundane Surroundings

Major infrastructure changes going on at Hobos, Inc. This was partly the reason I have been remiss in posting accounts of my little life here. I've often wondered, well, hell, why keep writing? Does anyone actually care? Do I need to spread my bitterness and venom so widely and freely?

Well, yes. For through the dreck of daily, near-hopeless living, what occasionally passes through is that oft-invoked ray of light, a sign that living is possible, is grand, and should be done with both eyes open.

Eyes open, indeed.

Hobos Inc. shares the building with other companies. Depending on the floors, the elevators open and admit and spit out jocks, crone-ish old ladies who look like they're three asthmatic breaths away from breaking away to Florida, where they can chain-smoke blissfully and uninterrupted in their bland little timeshares, people who carry fake LVs (and you KNOW they're fake come on, and totally not your thing, you'd get the Lanvin or Marc Jacobs instead, if only you could), the old fat has-been jocks who talk really loud and finger their PDAs. Then you have the Hobos, who finger through endless pages of PDFs that always need one last edit. We work with people who are about as sour and charmless as your average third grade schoolmarm, who got her graduate degree in education and likes scrapbooking, the kind of person who wears Ann Taylor Loft suit separates and fake Gucci loafers and rubs her cell phone down before and after touching it, the kind of person who stares at you with beady eyes and calls meetings in order to go over what had transpired from the previous meeting. Then you have Cass. Then you've got me. A couple other exceptional people who are protected because they are dear to me, and then you have the men, who are sadly lacking. They are short, mean, one's a buggy misogynist who dreams of scaling great heights, great rivers and valleys and mountains, and has set his sights on something far, far above what he is ever capable of attaining. Sorry I grossed you out there with this description, Cass. This is the one time I'm really glad I didn't run an entry by Cass before posting. Sorry. He's gross, and he wants to climb you.

Anyway. So if Hobos Inc. relocates or becomes a telecommuting operation, which Cass and I have discussed in great detail, we're not losing much in terms of eye candy.

However. Witness this afternoon, lunch hour. Cass and I get on the elevator. It stops and opens for one of the middle floors. We're hungry and impatient and resent a crowded elevator. A man gets on with mad equipment. A guitar and something else, suitcase-like. Amps? Another instrument? There's a crowd behind him, but they don't get on.

The guy settles back and shrugs. So the rest of his boys aren't on this car; they'll get on the other one. He has scruffy hair, has on jeans, a light jacket. I'm staring at his guitar, longingly. My own guitar is at my mother's home, probably in the spinster attic gathering dust. But hark! Wait! the door opens again. The others pile on.

They bring their own sweet scent of unwashed hair, musty clothes from dark, damp old closets, cigarettes, and dreams of glory, the kind you can only have when you're young or incredibly stupid, or on a lot of speed. They look poor. They're totally hot. I want their guitars. I want their job. I want them.

I mutter to Cass, "Man, I'd like to work on that floor." But I think I was more than audible. I think they heard me.

When we arrive at our floor, we have to ask them to move aside to let us out. Never do we feel less inclined to leave what is a claustrophobic's absolute nightmare. They're practically deaf too, as we have to say "Excuse me" a few times and Cass has to elbow them aside. One of them finally gets the message and nudges a bandmate, saying, "Move it, Irish."

If you, Dear Reader, have not grasped the significance of this event, well, I'll try to put it in plainspeak.

They were cute. Adorable. And there were a bunch of them. They looked like they played music together. They smoked cigarettes. They had cute accents (Irish!). They were probably deaf from living rock and roll and jamming all night. They probably did crazy shit together.

For a moment, I actually behaved and thought like a girl. This doesn't happen often.

We don't even think we got a good look at their faces. Who cares? They were hot. We spent a fruitless hour searching on Google to see if we could discover who they were. We wondered if they were playing somewhere tonight or tomorrow. If they were in some bar in Williamsburg. If they were at Webster or Town Hall.

Wherever they are, they're having a great time. They're probably not sitting in a room writing about illusory gods who walked the earth among the mortals while desperately willing the heat to kick on and half-heartedly watching Gray's Anatomy. Where are they? They're playing guitars. Smoking. Scribbling down chord progressions. Writing lyrics about soulless women who work in nameless cookie-cutter corporations, who look dour and hopeless and lost. Scratching those out and writing lyrics about fear and propaganda and collapsing governments and love in the ruins and metaphors that involve streaks of color and sound and lemon trees at twilight.

I am so bitter.

Buffalo Storm

So I, Cass, have sashayed and pirouetted around anonymity, but the reality is this: I, Cass, disbelieved prophetess of a place like Troy, was born and raised in Buffalo. You may have guessed this already, given the innumerable references to my hockey team, the Sabres.

Being from Buffalo, I have learned that when people ask you where you're from and you tell them the truth, they respond in one of two ways. They either remind you that the Buffalo Bills lost four straight Super Bowls (as if you actually might have missed that), or they make a comment about the weather: "lot of snow up there" (no shit jackass). A few total pricks offer their condolences; ironic, seeing as they always seem to be the ones who originate from places like Philly or Arkansas.

Anyway, my stomach remains in knots as many in my fair city face day six without power or heat. In case you missed it, an October snowstorm (the National Weather Service is calling it the 150 Year Storm) the likes of which even Buffalo has never seen, dumped three feet of snow on the city and suburbs on Thursday night. The city and its trees were not prepared. The weight of the snow toppled trees all over the region; someone told me it looks like a helicopter flew down his street and took off all the tree tops, leaving stumps behind. My brother told me I won't recognize Delaware Park (designed by Olmsted and home to some 100-year-old trees). Power lines and fallen trees blocked roads. There was a driving ban for a while. And close to a half a million people were without heat and power since the storm. Some regained power only to lose it again. Some have yet to regain power at all and have been living by candlelight, eating perishables, and going across town to take a shower at a friend's. Refrigerators smell like the dead. My aunt currently has a tree laying in her living room. Friends and family say they've never seen anything like it. In pictures, the place looks like a war zone.

Last time I noticed, FEMA pledged $5 million in aid to the area. And so my question is this: where is the national media freaking out in op-ed pieces? Where is Kanye West screaming about Bush not caring about people in Buffalo? They're nowhere to be found because Buffalonians accept a basic principle: it's a storm; they happen; and storms don't discriminate. They just dump 3 feet of snow and leave. People in Buffalo aren't whining or moaning, and hell they every reason to be: the novelty has worn off and they're probably cold, hungry, and dirty. And that's why I love them...they're tough. And they keep things in perspective...see photo. So, yeah, I Cass, am from Buffalo.

How You Know You're BFFs

1. Sharing music via one set of earbuds.

2. Calling the person four times a day before lunch, even if the person sits less than thirty feet away.

3. IM'ing the person at least that many times (again, before lunch), carrying on one IM conversation for fifty-three minutes (and 3,646 misspelled and egregiously ungrammatic sentence constructions).

4. Going to the bathroom together.

5. You've shared your really embarrassing story, you know, the one about having explosive diarrhea or the time you sneezed your tampon out.

6. You make songlists titled: "Girls Night Out Cabin Fever Fall 2006!" and "WWJD?" (As In, What Would Jem Do? As in, Jem of the cartoon Jem and the Holograms and Misfits fame, punk rocker dolls from the 1980s) and "Easy Listenin' for Hangovers" and leave them as gifts at the start of each new work week.

7. You send attachments with the subject heading "Omg you have to read this!!!" and instead of the YouTube video that you've been waiting to see from The Colbert Report, and one in a format that will actually play at work (as YouTube has recently been banned from work), you will get some chain thing having to do with women and chocolate, or it's something gross, like a graphic description of the Smurfs having an orgy.

8. You'll get a manicure together.

9. And go to the Steve Madden sale together.

10. People will start to confuse you for the other person, at which point you will realize your SWF plan to become that other person is working, and you are that much closer to having carte blanche with her savings account, credit cards, wardrobe, her intelligence, sense of humor, collection of all the seasons of Jeeves and Wooster and The Black Adder and Monty Python's Flying Circus, and most importantly of all, her boyfriend, because we all know (hello!) that everyone's in love with you, everyone's obsessed with you.

Tiresias has swallowed a bitter pill. She is going to bed now.