enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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trust the search

I had a really fantastic entry to write when I came home from a nice evening out at my favourite pub BY MYSELF last night, if you can believe it. I should have written it then. Now, I'm almost tempted to cater to my current mood of irritation and write about my annoy-o-riffic workplace again, but I'm going to try to keep the mind on. last. lovely. evening. Be the mountain, EB. Be the mountain.

SO last night...

Me coming HOME by myself is not unusual, I realize. The unusual part is that I actually WENT by myself. C. was working and I didn't really feel like calling anyone or being with anyone who might have any weird expectations.

Actually, I simply didn't feel like being with anyone, but I wanted to be around people.

I didn't feel like having coffee, but I had the brilliant idea that there is nothing wrong with going to the pub by myself. At least for now. Provided that I don't become a regular sad sack single at the pub, with a chair named after me or something like that. That would not be good. :)

I've written about my favourite pub before. It's the coolest drinking establishment in this town, in my view, other than the press club.

Not that I would know what the press club is like, and in any event I think it is about to close. It was storied in its day, anyhow.

I've had a drink at the Chat3au, and even sat down the bar once from the leader of one of the non-governing parties in Parl!ament, a certain mistachioed, buff dude who doesn't "know his ass from page four," as my dad used to say, but for whose party I voted anyhow, if that means anything, and I still prefer the pub of which I speak. :)

So I arrived at the pub at about 7 p.m. last night. One of the things that I like about this pub is that it doesn't have traditional pub food. Witness the tofu rice burger with gigantic organic mesclun salad that I had for dinner. It's a small place, too, and if you can get a table you're as likely to be seated beside an elderly couple or a couple of journalists or a couple of professors as you are by a group of hipster 20-somethings.

Last night I experienced three of the four.

When I arrived there was only one table available. It looked to be pretty cramped for me to slide into the velvet bench past the elderly couple sitting at the next table, and that's saying something as I'm pretty small.

The waitress nudged me over there, however, so I obligingly squeezed in and took out my book.

The elderly people were having a determinedly boring conversation so I avoided listening to them. ("I was talking to Carl today. He said that he's having problems with his digestion. He was having problems with his digestion last week. Do you remember when I was having problems with my digestion?") To my right, however, there were two young granola-looking women whose conversation was difficult to avoid overhearing and who turned out to be fairly interesting.

It seemed that woman one is a law professor at one of the local universities. As near as I could tell, the friend who was seated with her friend is about her age (~32) and probably a friend from law school.

At first I found their conversation to be fairly pretentious. I wasn't sure whether they were trying to be overheard by those around.

The amusing thing though - and I realize that I fall into this category too in the expressions that I use in my writing - is that they were doing that weird thing that young hipsters do by simultaneously using incredibly sloppy language ("oh my god," "like," "totally," "man," "dude"), whilst talking quite credibly about issues such as Quebec separatism, the Si3rra Club and bijurism. I had to control myself from smiling at the juxtaposition. (I'm very good at reading whilst also listening to conversations, so that people have no idea that I'm listening to them. Honestly! :))

The conversation that the women were having eventually became quite funny and interesting: "You need another bi in there (speaking about a course) - bijural, bilingual...how about bisexual?" Other woman: "I've got two of the three covered. I'm not bijural." (cue laughter :))

But here's where the conversation got REALLY REALLY surreal and funny. And I'm not making this up.

Woman 1: I'm going to pay as, if you'll remember, I forgot my money last time we went out.

Woman 2: OK. You should have forgotten your money when we did something more expensive.

Woman 1: Sure. Next time I'll forget my money when we go to IKEA.

Woman 2: And you know that I SO want to buy you a sofa.

Woman 1: Yeah. But I've been thinking that I'm not emotionally ready for a sofa. (!!!!!)

Woman 2: Yeah. Maybe.

Woman 1: You know, IKEA has a sale on sofas right now. It's not really a sale, in that you don't get money off, but you get a bunch of coupons.

Woman 2: Uh huh...

Woman 1: I really want to get a red velvet one!

Woman 2: I have a red sofa!

Woman 1: That's right. I won't get the same one. I want one that's a deeper red.

Woman 2: Uh huh...

I'm not sure where the conversation went next.

But seriously...funny, non?

Very, very peculiar.

Anyhow. They left. The place kind of cleared out and then a group of young hipster people - I can't think of anything else to call them - came in and sat down beside me.

By this point I had finished my tofu burger and was starting my second pint of Guinness. I had also switched over from reading Canadian T@x Policy Working paper n. 103 to A Hist0ry of R3ading. As one does. Guinness requires it.:)

So does sanity.

Gosh I love that book, in spite of the fact that I disagree with him on a variety of points. I almost want to quote a heap of it, and perhaps I will later, but there are such wonderful images in it. I was in dreamland.

This, I particularly like. It's just as I used to do when I was in school:

One afternoon, Jorge Luis Borg3s came to the bookstore accompanied by his 88 year-old mother. He was famous, but I had read only a few of his poems and stories and I did not feel overwhelmed by his literature. He was almost completely blind and yet he refused to carry a cane, and he would pass a hand over the shelves as if his fingers could see the titles.

Of course, I'm not blind. :)

The author, Alb3rto Mangu3l, became a reader to Borges. I like this bit.

Another time (I can't remember what it was I had been asked to read), he began to compile an impromptu anthology of bad lines by famous authors, which included Keats's "The owl, for all his feathers was a-cold,"..."We are merely the stars' tennis balls" from The Duchess of M@lfi and Milton's last lines in Paradise R3gained - "he unobserv'd /Home to his Mother's house private return'd" - which made Christ out to be (Borges thought) an English gentleman in a bowler hat coming home to his mum for tea.

So that's about it. I'm enjoying the book muchly.

The evening progressed beautifully. I finished my second pint of Guinness and was about to leave, but then a young man started playing and singing with his guitar. It was so lovely and pleasant and the atmosphere at the pub so embracing that I lingered. The young hipsters next to me were actually rather interesting, and their conversation reminded me of things that I was sorely confused about when I was in my 20s. In a good way.

I came home happy.

Today - and you knew this was coming - however, I came home cross.

I hate my job. I can't help it. Near the end of day I was asked to do something and fulfilled the task in a rush and without all of the background information given to me. I was then talked to in an incredibly patronizing manner by the guy who wanted the work done, because I couldn't answer some of his questions (my boss had had to leave at 6 and he was the mastermind behind the effort).

I really hate the way that some of these men talk to me. It's so demoralizing. It's as if - and if you'll pleeeeeeaaaaase pardon my, ahem, *French* here- they get their old, nasty rocks off by staring me in the face and speaking to me slowly and pedantically as though I'm a dimwit...

And this after I'd had such a good afternoon. I'd been in the bathroom at one point and was looking at myself in the mirror and saying, "Screw it! I'm just going to be a man in this job. I'm going to talk like a man, walk like a man...be a man."

(I apologize but I need to blow my own horn in what is to follow.) Immediately following that I went to a meeting in which my senior economist spent 40 minutes with three pages of equations to explain his proposed solution to a thorny problem that we have been facing. After he was done I said, "I have a simpler view of the problem." I proceeded to present the three line proof that I had prepared in the morning, and explain the intuition behind the solution in two sentences. :)

Whilst his solution takes twenty iterations of the model to be solved, mine takes two if I can parameterize it properly; three if not.

I didn't gloat, don't worry.

I didn't even really feel like gloating. Mostly I was annoyed that that guy had wasted the forty previous minutes of my life prancing about the room with his grand ideas. I had told him that I had a simpler solution when I saw his pages of crazy notation. I explained it to him before the meeting. He thought his was the one to present, even though mine actually focused on the question of interest. Sigh.

That's about it.

From good to bad. I need out of this job in a few months. It just makes me miserable. If one more guy there calls me "dear"...

OK. I've had a cookie and a baguette for dinner. I always do that when I'm sad. I got home late, of course, and it's already 8:30. I'm going to go and eat a proper dinner.

Incidentally, I feel super-love for the title of this entry. I was listening to an organization guru on the radio this weekend and she made a VERY GOOD POINT. The point was that when you go to go0gle you usually type your search anew when looking for something you've sought before. You don't typically "save the search." You "trust the search." In terms of organization she was of course referring to the fact that one can cut oneself some slack with respect to obsessively organizing one's computer files and so on.

My feeling is that this is the perfect mantra for my life. I don't need to obsess over finding a guy, say - besides, I continue to get NO, ZERO, NADA hits on my poetry profile - and likewise re. finding my perfect set of activities or perfect job. I'm being true to myself, following my own path - at my own snail's pace - and on this I must rest my trust. :)

OK. I'll shut up now.

7:52 p.m. - 2008-01-07

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