Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floofiday (floofinition) – a day to honor and celebrate housepets where no work is done, except to serve and help housepets.
In use: “As was befitting for Prince’s fifth birthday, a household floofiday was declared, and all activities focused on feeding, brushing, and playing with Prince. It was a day well spent.”
Today’s theme music is Live’s “Lightning Crashes” (1993).
I have several Live albums, but I find I must be in just the right mood to play them. It’s a very narrow space.
“Lightning Crashes”, though, came to me this week because one of my nieces gave birth to her third child. All this was shared on Facebook. Everyone is doting on the sweet newborn, including my mother, and there’s rich photographic evidence. The newborn is Mom’s seventh great-grandchild. That juxtaposition of Mom holding this young new life invited “Lightning Crashes” into my stream and the circle of transference of life and existing. One dies, and one is born, and so it goes. There’s a lot of overlap as it happens.
Deadly cold sucked the heat from my bones’ marrow as I surveyed my surroundings.
“Here,” she said.
Here? Here was a sloping field of snow glistening like icing in moonlight. Here was a field edged by elderly pines draped in snow. Here was a starry black night and the pond of a moon staring down on us. Here was a wind slicing through my gloves, shearing off my ears, and paring down my cheeks.
“Here?” I said.
I looked at the traveler. Smiling like she knew Mona Lisa’s secret, she pointed past me into the sky. As she did but before I turned, I caught sleigh bells’ tinny ringing.
Distracted by the famous sound, I turned so quickly, I slipped on the snowy field and would have fallen, had the traveler not caught my arm and kept me upright. After thanking her, I gazed through my breath toward the sound and spotted the immortal silhouette of reindeer pulling a sled commanded by a pudgy elf.
I gasped. “Santa.”
“Yes,” the traveler said.
“He was real.”
“Of course. It was on this day that he was last seen, long before his existence trickled into your dimension’s awareness.”
I nodded. Then this was was where my story begins. “I shall find him,” I whispered into the silent night as the sleigh bells faded and the wind nuzzled me. “I shall find him and bring him back.”
Driving through the snow,
one hand on the wheel,
while reading a text on the phone
in my other hand.
I never saw the truck,
nor the other car,
I never even saw the sign,
or tried to stop my car.
Oh, jing —
I haven’t worked outside of my writing efforts since leaving IBM a few years ago.
The work with big blue had some pleasantries outside of the obvious of paychecks and health benefits. Some of it was challenging and rewarding, and helped validate my sense of my abilities. Some impressive technologies were being developed, and I had some very talented and capable co-workers.
I disliked huge chunks of it, though. The bureaucratic nature was stifling. Worse, though, not just with IBM, but with the other companies that employed me, were the exhortations that we were family or a team. My wife used to tell people, whenever your boss said you were part of a family, watch out.
Amen.
The family comparison was always a huge reach, unless you were talking about dysfunctional families. I knew little about co-workers, and they knew little about me. That became truer as many of us worked remotely from our homes, doing telecommutes. As that happened, IBM also cut down on celebrations. No more buying birthday cakes, having team lunches, or Friday donuts, even if people worked on a campus. Few pauses were provided to celebrate and reflect on how well things were going. We no longer visited the offices for a face-to-face connection in order to reduce costs.
That was my experience. Others probably have different experiences, depending upon their division, campus, work center, manager, and middle and upper management. I had thirteen bosses at one point in that organization. I heard the top bosses, the vice-presidents and SVPs once a quarter during a one-hour “town hall” meeting where we were told the financial results. Note, they didn’t call it a family reunion or team meeting. I heard from mid-level execs more often, like whenever something went wrong. They were very heavy-handed and hands-on then. I didn’t hear from them when things were going right. It was silent as a prairie, then.
They’re right in that we were a family, because, like a family, there’s no end in sight, not unless you left. People often left without the rest of us being told. Typically, you dialed into a meeting, and gosh, folks were gone. How is that for family?
As far as being a team, if we were a team, it was a team with an infinite season. It was a team for which we played a sport for which there was no championship, no victory parades, no champions’ laurels. It was just, “Let’s go, team,” every few weeks on the phone, or every few days on an email.
So, yeah, I don’t miss either of those false labels, team and family. They were a business, out to improve revenues, cut costs, and improve profit margins. Remote and focused on the bottom line, I don’t miss that family or team.
I’m sure they don’t miss me, either.
I was sitting and chatting with a friend the other day when my body said, “Pee.”
“Excuse me,” I told my body, “but that was very ru — ”
“Pee!”
“I was talki — ”
“PEEEE!”
“What are you saying? It sounds li — ”
“PEEEE!”
“In a minute. Let me finish this conver — ”
“PEEEEEE!!!”
Sighing, I stood. “Excuse me a minute,” I told my friend, and went off to the restroom.
Honestly, sometimes my body is like a spoiled, willful child, and it gets worse as I get older.
They encountered each other every day, and every day, the ginger-bearded young man said, “Hey, man, do you have any weed?”
Every day, Mitchell said, “No, sorry.”
After the first three days of this, Mitchell wondered, why is this man asking him for weed? Mitchell wondered, does he look like a man who might have weed? What makes a person look like he might have weed? He had his own conceptions of this. To his mind, he didn’t look like one who might be carrying weed.
The other thought Mitchell had was, perhaps the man greeted everyone like this. Mitchell laughed at the idea of this man saying to everyone met in town, “Hey, man, do you have any weed?”
After five days of this, Mitchell encountered the man while crossing the street, and said, by way of greeting, “Sorry, I don’t have any weed.”
The weed man looked at him like he was crazy.
Which made Mitchell laugh.
Michael Seidel, writer 