Pink, pink, brown, pink, black, brown, pink, pink, pink, brown.
The gathering was international.
There was even a blue man.
Imagine someone with blue skin: that’s what he looked like.
Pesticides will turn your skin blue. Always wash your grapes.

Woman, Roughly My Age: SO WHAT DID THE JOB COACH SAY?
Woman, Younger: WHAT IS THE RIGHT JOB FOR YOU?
Me: Eh, it was just the first session, guys. She had to find out what I was there for, exactly, and what I…
W,RMA: WHAT KIND OF JOB COACH IS THAT?
W,Y: SHE CALLS HERSELF A JOB COACH? FOR

Yelled at, sad, hungry, sandwich, two bananas, rained on, money from the cash machine, no cellphone, in roughly that order.

I’ve been without a cellphone for some time now. Maybe I give good emergency, because I am regularly told I should have one so I can be called in an emergency. Have an emergency? Just call me. I’ll say, Oh that’s too bad. And, What sort of an emergency are you having, and You, of all people.

I’d have gotten a replacement long ago but the very idea makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to go into an electronics store and weigh my options. I want someone to go, Here is your cellphone.

The money is for a job coach. I have made an appointment to meet with a job coach, recommended by a friend. That is, this particular job coach was recommended; the idea to see one was my own. It has to do with my idea that if one knows exactly what one wants, one is unstoppable to the extent of one’s abilities, resources and luck. And the fact that I don’t know exactly what I want.

I don’t even know approximately what I want. Do I want to punch my irritating co-worker in the face or push her down a short flight of stairs into a dark cellar? Or just let her step into an open manhole? The possibilities branch endlessly in life in even the simplest things; when applied to a person of my looks and talents the options are daunting.

Actually, that was a bad example, the open manhole is it, 100% sure. But you know what I mean. I was eating bananas today as I walked around in the rain; it was all I could do not to drop them onto the sidewalk and stand across the street waiting for furniture movers to carry a piano past. But like I said, it was raining, who wants to stand around in that?

I have been taking the train more lately, until my newish car is delivered. I didn’t feel like sitting with strangers so I stood by the door and stared morosely out the window at the grey morning sky and the near-autumnal landscape whizzing by. I tried to think of a word for what trains do when they go past besides “thunder” or “rumble”. A dam went by and some freeway bridges and I saw the old painting of Bob Marley someone had done there – some self-taught artist – was still in place, it must be fifteen years old now. Someone else had more recently tagged a small prefab concrete office building with “ASSHOLE” in black and white letters taller than a man.

My mechanic has a big barrel in his office he has you lean over when he tells you what’s wrong with your Dobl

What was I doing last night?
I walked to the train after work because the Dobl

Nice place, Venice. We took the night train down, arrived 8 in the morning. A few minutes later Alpha was showing me around the market there, crabs and octopi and fruit and all that good stuff. We sat by a canal and drank

The mechanic says it’s the head gasket and not the thermostat, a big difference in his favor. It’s sort of at the point where I have to decide whether to have the repair made or just junk the car, but it is just slightly cheaper to have the repair made. Thank you, Fiat corporation.

Yesterday I got a pay cut. Anyone out there with money-making schemes, ex-members of flakey governments for example, I’m all ears.

This morning, the Hans Christian Andersen story of the nail-clipper and the dead earwig played itself out in my downstairs bathroom.

You remember that one, don’t you. How the nail-clipper in the drawer and the dead earwig in the shower drain are in love but can’t figure out how to get together? And this guy taking a crap and cutting his toenails at the same time drops the nail-clipper guess where?

Kerplunk. Only, unlike the little tin soldier who ends up going down a drain, getting swallowed by a carp, found in the carp’s stomach by the cook and reunited with his beloved ballerina figurine, this guy reaches into this filthy toilet and digs out the nail clipper and washes it off, because being a home-owner he knows how narrow the diameter of the plumbing is and cannot afford a plumber on top of everything else just now; he had no choice. Plus, he’s fairly inured to disgust at this point in his life, having pets and children and a passing interest in politics. He washes off the nail clipper and finishes clipping his nails with the goddamned thing. And then he takes a shower, but first he gets a piece of tissue and removes hair and the dead earwig from the drain, that drain basket thing. Throws that into the trash.
Typical Hans Christian Andersen, unhappy ending.

The cool thing about an experience like that first thing in the morning, though: your day can only get better.

I figure I got some money coming to me in tomorrow’s lottery.