Juxtapose

But barely. Many new, exciting things to consider:

_I got a raise for my office job, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, even though it's basically a last ditch effort for them to get me to stick it out there. Whatever. I'm happy.

_I don't have to work tomorrow. I'm going to spend the whole day partying with my homefries/friendburgers.

_There are now two more Drewey shirts in existence than there were a week ago.

_I am finished with TB medications so I have decided to introduce into my left arm a large-bore intravenous line, in order that I might consistently be recharged with the invigorating powers of non-decaf coffee.

_I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and have thus decided to dye my hair blue in memorandum of my new Second Favorite Movie Of All Time.

_Handzel is still more wonderful than most any other. She was so worth the trial of braving Maine for half a week.

That's all for now. Don't expect much for a few, either. Monday I start my summer session classes and I'm going at it crazy-like until 7/1 when I have my final at (hopefully) 8AM, after which I will speed over to the airport to pick up one Mark Van Der Hyde so that we can cause trouble for a week and a half. Midway through the week and a half, we'll be picking up one Heidi B to, in turn, help us cause trouble as well. Then we will all go camping, drink lots of hot cocoa, and play lots of fireside guitars up in the White Mountains. Until then, though, I will be in class Monday through Thursday, as well as working on Thursdays and Fridays and maybe possibly Saturdays, so that's about how that one goes.

I also found out that instead of the all-purpose mental health unit I was supposed to be working on, it turns out that I'm at the "youth treatment" center in town. To be frank (or lucy, or kate..), I'm not particularly excited about working with youth. I'm not a particularly imposing figure and the thought of working with kids nearly my own age in a psych facility scares me. I was pumped to be working with medical-psych issues, but not so much with the behavioral/emotional/environmental psych issues that pervade youth wards. We'll see, anyhow. Anyhow. Not digging it, really, but what can ya do?

Speaking about psych... Yesterday, while at Mrs. A's apartment complex, I was bringing out the trash when this woman and her two little kids got out of her car and were walking/being dragged to the apartments. The children were obviously unruly to the point of insanity, screaming and kicking and making a giant scene in what was an otherwise empty parking lot, save for my presence, but, as far as I can figure, when your kid is two or four years old and they're out of control, that's not the kid's problem. Walking slightly behind them, I got to the door of the apartments just as it had closed behind her, and as I opened the door, I heard the most inhuman, flying-off-the-handle screaming I think I ever have. Now, I've been yelled at before. Loudly. I think my parents have lost their voices at me once or twice. But this is bound to happen once and a while. Anger happens, hormones happen, fights ensue, etcetera, etcetera. But this mother's voice had that crackling, teetering edge to it that betrayed the fact that her screaming kids had little to do with the fact that she was living on the brink of breakdown. She just screamed herself hoarse, how she could sleep with all this crying and how would you like it if you kept her up and she didn't sleep for thirty-six hours of hell and GO TO YOUR F-ING ROOM. I don't know if she was screaming at the five year old, her husband, her teenager, or herself, but it felt like worms in my belly to listen to it. Why did I have to hear that so it haunts me now? Within me, there is a secret desire to never hear of these things and to live within my own world where the tragedies of my existence are things like elderly dying grandmothers and complicated interpersonal relationships. As for those other things, and for that lady, whoever she may be - What could I do? Nothing. I felt like I had experienced just what the Fall in Eden was all about. It wasn't just this story of how badness came into the world and how the color and vibrancy of Eden's lushness was washed to a dull grey tinge, it was the personification of that moment that I stood in the hallway in Massachusetts, one of many in the city, and of cities, one of many within the state, and of states, one of many within the country, and so on and so forth. For a moment there, I could see the angel with a flaming sword in the parking lot, standing next to the gutterpipe and brick, his back to the apartment community pool, stretched over with a safety hazard of a blue tarp and weighted down with cinderblocks. Standing there in white, the angel was there like it was any other day, any grassy paradise of Biblical proportions, though it was only a dingy, tar-patched parking lot. He was the crushing reminder that I could not return through the gate.