from Lamuella, with love

Hi everybody!

I've been working nights in the deli this week (2-9), so I'm still getting myself adjusted to the new schedule. Mostly I've been doing my writing on my hour-plus CTA commute where none of y'all can see it, so nyah for now. Next week, because I seem to be working out well and have full availability, I'll be getting the full 40 hours! The week after that I'll be switched over to the café side of the counter, where I get to (anticipatory cringe) learn to fry chickens, in addition to learning how to create sandwiches and pizzas. The accompanying happy sandwich-making and pizza-making songs, however, I will not need to learn how to create. So either I'll learn how to make shorter evening-time posts, or I'll get used to getting up a little earlier and making my long, long posts in the morning.

Either way I'm hoping to stay at this job at least long enough to qualify for union health insurance, explore setting up my 401(k) with at least partially company stock, get caught up on rent, start untangling my various debt service obligations, develop a sufficiently strong and healthy musculature to not be in constant pain from all the lifting and slicing, and get forged in the crucible of the holiday deli/café counter rush. It is an ambitious plan, but a refreshingly unambiguous one.

I like having a nice predictable work routine. I am an exceedingly non-territorial person--to an extent pathologically so. Most of my territorial instincts are, were, or have been sublimated into various things which are carried with me wherever I go. So for me temporal feng shui is, I think, even more important than spatial feng shui, in terms of its ability to promote calm and ordered processes of emotion and thought. And I think I'm getting better about physical space habitation as well. These sorts of things are all connected: time management, learning to be comfortable and belong wherever you are, taking ownership of space and self, developing the confidence to make decisions, etc.

Blog is a secondary consideration in all this. Though I do regret that my new schedule has planted my work hours squarely on top of those hours when I would normally be talking to people on the phone. Perhaps I should add a cell phone to my list of things to get back or fix up, so I can at least have brief convos on the train around 10pm at night. We shall see!

In the meantime, here's a sonnet I've been working over the last couple train rides. I'm not wholly satisfied with it--it's only the first full revision, and poems are rarely polished until the third. But hopefully it's a nice read anyway. :)

[building materials]

To build a soul, a solid cornerstone
can give straight lines, square edges to its walls.
Each brick and board is one true thing you've known
forever. Mine get tangled where they fall,
just like my hair when I've walked in the rain,
wet, hatless, wrestled by the wild, cold wind.
If I can tame this snarled and dripping mane,
I'll know what's in it, and how to begin.
What's good will anchor firmly where it's set;
what's wicked snaps the moment it is tugged.
I'll plumb, with the best measures I can get,
each stone, and fill these trenches I have dug.
Up from its edges, planted right, below,
a true home for my waking soul will grow.