A Pessimist's View

the third eye

I have gift some may say but I feel its more of a curse. Ever since I was little I always thought I was shadows in my bed as I grew older I knew that they weren't shadows at all but stuck souls between our world and the after life. This is the beginning of journey. My name is trax and this my story of seeing too much

A Midnight shifter

The freezing metal bar froze my palms to the cart.  It was the last of them, it was nearing the last hour of the day and the store was emptying its few last customers.  I look over to the overnight stocking guys and they don't have a chance to even gather a gander at me.  Too busy to be chit chatting too bus to even acknowledge a fellow coworker.  Deadlines they have to fill, I have to fulfill too. 

Usually there are customers waiting in line with an alcohol beverage in hand.  Usually there are undisciplined customers who wait in line with their hands freezing from a bucket of napolean icecream.  Usually there are customers experimenting their sexual urges but have to wait because they have to practice safe sex.  Usually the lines form under one cashier, usually but not tonight because its the end of the Halloween weekend.  Everyone is either broke or have a hangover or worse they're in jail for something very embarrassing to even mention.  Halloween is over and if people are thinking ten steps ahead, they have their muskets out ready to kill a turkey.  They already bought mittens for baking gingerbread men.  Already bringing out their lights in the freezing weather.  They're all doing this but they are not thinking about going to a grocery store at this time. 

I pass one of the overnight stockers.  "Hey,"  he says waiting for my response.  Waiting to see if I was concern of meeting a deadling like the other midnight shifters. 

"Wussup,"  I awaken from my day to day routine.

"Man, I'm beat, I'm tired of this shit.  No one is here.  I gotta finish this pack for what.  Some other fucker out there ready to mess up my work.  Its never ending huh?"

I agree and being responsive I say, "time moves fast, its already November."

"Yah, time sure does go fast.  Which reminds me I gotta leave my wife."  He thinks to himself, trying to calculate if he has all his basis filled, if he has the right choice to even leave her.  "Yah, I'm tired of her man.  Same old shit.  Everything, my job, my wife, my family.  I don't feel right."

I just listen.  I don't know why he tells me this.  Its just what happens to people who work at night, they just have to be heard.  I wish I could articulate thoughts into a monologue like he does.  I can't though, I just write it in a journal four years later not even remembering if the dialogue is correct or not.  Trying to get the words and content in order.  I just listen.

"I'm still young.  I had these two dykes with me last night.  Halloween Night, these girls dressed up in skimpy outfits.  Thats what Halloween is just a reason to be as slutty as you want.  Thats what these girls did.  They came in here buying beer.  Like a pimp I am.  I go ask them to come back after my shift."  He gets full of himself.

"And?"  Thats the only word that passes me.  Atleast it shows I'm somewhat interested.

"Well I fuck 'em in the back of my car.  Those dykes man, they are something else.  That girl was eating her pussy and shit while I was hitting it from the back.  It was awesome man." 

I think about the pornography on the internet and just paste his face over those guys that do those things.  I think and just imagine, I thought those things only happen in films.  I wasn't doubting him or anything, I just took his words for it.

"Doode, that shit happens."  He says as if to reassure me he was telling me the truth.  "I'm totally leaving my wife.  She's always nagging and shit.  I got no friends man.  All I got is work and well..."  He thinks and thinks about something else.  "Thats all I got.  Anyways whatcha do for Halloween?"

I try to figure out what happen and see a sad lonely guy playing a video game without any sexual urge whatsoever.  "Nothing."

"It would have been better if I had a wing man."  He was being honest.  "Honestly the two girls were too much for me.  I could have hooked you up."

"That would have been fun."  But honestly I think to myself.  I wouldn't know what to do having some experience with another person there doing the same thing.  Then I think about how even though I would get a chance like that.  I would find a way of messing it up anyways.

"When something like that happens again, I'll let you know." 

I smile and I collect the rest of the "go-backs"  and return to the routine of a midnight shifter.

Sick

I on the other hand feel sad, I feel different, I feel confused, I feel just completely mixed up.

I went to see my aunt who has cancer and I just found out that I don't really know how to act in this type of environment.  The emotion that I feel is a crash of all emotions like a wave of sea water slammed into a bunch of jagged rocks causing mayhem.  I try to contain it, thats what I do so I could conceal what I truely feel inside.  

On the surface, I feel a set of discomfort but in a way where people know I'm obviously not feeling well.  But inside I feel a total whirlwind of shittiness.

I could go on and on.  How I don't act normal around the people in the room.  I don't act normal period because I don't know exactly how to act in those type of conditions.  

I play it out in my head, I play it how much would be appropriate and how much I get from films and books. 

I either could let the raging waves overflow through my tears.  I ball it all in and contain it but the awkwardness I feel tears me apart.  I should use my anger and start punching walls in the hospital so I could just show how pissed off I am.    But violence is something that I just try to avoid. 

Not only do I have a clueless way to react to this situation, but I don't know what to say.

 

kafka on the shore

So I finished, now what comes to mind from what I could comprehend is the theme of King Edipus.

Then the thought process and how the plot thickens in this novel somewhat reminds me of an epic anime.  I don't know, something very fantasy and very unique in Haruki Murakami's style.  I love it, it keeps the reader thinking and self absorbing at not only the characters but at one's self.  Also I can't say this to be true to all readers, but to me, it was effortless that I was automatically evaluating my own self and reflecting on my actions.  Just from the quotes presented in the book, the characters's path, questions, and personality.

 

Some books entertain and teach, but this specific one entertains, teaches, and speaks to the reader.  Most book do teach a lot of things, but not books speak to you.  I believe thats why this author is so raved and recommended to other readers. 

 

I have to say that with my slow thought process and inability to think no higher than a first grader, I find it difficult to find some of the themes and ideas in this book.  I'm not bagging it in any way.  I'm acknowledging defeat from it, the ideas and most of them presented in this book go over my head, so far sometimes I wish I was smarter to get the ideas. 

 

I have to try to find links, find sites that explain these ideas in lamen's terms.  How can I read something and rarely grasp the idea and still enjoy it?   I don't know, I relate to the character Nakata, a person who like me don't understand things that well but try to find ways to over come that. 

 

One way I do overcome this idea of being an ignorant in reading books of this nature is to have a google search on it and read other people's thoughts on the novel.  From there I piece together what I wanted to say or connect with someone's ideas and compare it to my own soft structured ideas.  But to me they are no more than an idea but a hunch, for example, did I really just think this up?  Or let me clarify did I just read this correctly?  Most of the time my research on these websites are ways to validate my so called thinking.  Have I been correct most of the time?  I would like to say yes, but then people might hate on me because I'm being too confident in my thoughts, but rest assure.  The ideas that I do come up with rarely match and sometimes, the ideas and thoughts that I come up with have no significance to anything in the story at all, but I want it to connect to something, but the truth of the matter is there is no connection with the story or the plot at all.  It was as if just a small detail in the book that was put there to use as a transition of some sort and I have misinterpreted it and and overblew it out of proportion.

But I love the book.  It gets me thinking.

onTheRead_KafkaOnTheShore

Besides the pessimistic rants I have on a daily basis, I also love to read.  Here's my take on the book, Kafka on the Shore.

 

Basically besides the fact of oddities falling from the sky, say like the movie "magnolia" there are things in this book that just reveal a lot   of Haruki Murakami's style.  In notation, there are the parallel stories of two characters; the great allusions of american literature used in great timing; and the often use self reflection on self existence.   I haven't finished the book yet, but will do hopefully later today.

 

reading

I am reading books that have no significance in my life right now but I feel like I need to read something during the moments where all I feel like doing is twirling my thumbs. 

I'm suddenly addicted to Haruki Murakami novels and short stories.  His writing style is different but at the same time, I want to discover more in it.  But with my small brain and short circuited brain patterns, I cannot piece certain things together.  I need to find what other people have thought up from their own personal analysis of his work. 

I feel his work to be a metaphor, a poetic but yet mysterious piece of writing.  Something that needs to be decoded, and I'm missing a key. 

I've read several books, but this year, I'm trying to read as fast as I can.  Compensating recall and comprehension for speed.  Hence my ability to understand certain themes and motifs and ideas.  Whether obvious or totally implied I skim through it for the sake of increasing page number over time ratio.

 

my day tomorrow

My day off:  consists of waking up and getting ready to bring the kid to school.  He's in first grade and thinks the world revolves around him. 

After the drop off, I gotta get my clothes ready to be washed.  This will easily be a three hour ordeal.  Hopefully in the meantime I will be able to read a book.  Thats if all the batterys function just fine.  Otherwise I would have to watch what ever they put up on the flat screen.

I think I have time to bring my kid brother to school also.  Then I have to bring the clothes back then I have to pick up the kid from school. 

After this, hopefully I have time to just relax.   But in an our, I would have to go and pick up my mom at her work.  Once I bring my mom back to home, I will either eat at her place or I just go straight back home. 

Once home, I'm too tired to do anything and I will have to just go to bed.  A full circle to bed. 

 

sales01

Know your audience.  Selling to me doesn't take that much to learn, but the experience is half of it.  I was never great at giving recommendations. 

 

Still I'm at work trying year by year to get to know the art of the sale.  How do I convert a person who dislikes everything I show him,  I'm showing him suits.  I'm showing him shirts.  I'm showing him the tuxedo he should wear.  But sometimes, most of the time, its the not the men that I should show it to. 

 

Its their other half, their friend, their son, their daughter not them typically.  Instead I come off telling the wrong person the right information.  And mistakenly convincing the wrong person to buy the suit. 

 

The situations that occur are of many, the many factors that inhibit my sale.  I put the guy in the right side and tell him that its his fit.   I look at the other people involved in the sale and confirm my suggestion.  Its a tough dance that I could never get used to.  Its never as simple as this and that.  I have to think in my feet.

 

A guy comes in with his wife and another guy, maybe his brother or cousin.  I show them the suit that fits the guy.  He looks at the suit in the mirror and he speaks with his wife, in a different language.  Something I don't understand.  They're probably talking shit.  I look at the suit and the jacket is too tight for him, his shoulders are popping out of the suit.  I tell them to try a size larger.  The guy puts it on and he doesn't care too much of it.  Its too boxy he says.  It's too big she says.  I look at them, confirm the sale andexplain  how the larger size is his size.

They look at the suits in the smaller size and start looking at prices.  I figure I could show them slightly cheaper suits, but its too late they already found the cheapest suit of the house.  At that moment,  he asks if he could try the pants.

Price is an issue.

I have them try it on, the pants, they don't like.  They are concerned about the fit, but who isn't.  The woman, his wife, talks about how the pants are baggy in his seat.  They want something to fit him much better.  They look at me and ask if there are other suits that have more of a fit.  I tell them that we do, but its higher on the price range. 

They look at each other and to assure me of something they want to get straight, they don't care about price.

Suddenly price is not the problem.

I go for the most expensive suit that we have, for two reasons.  One is the fit is going to be better than the lowered price suit is.  Second is the material is lighter so it hugs the body making it more of a trimmer fit.

 

my keyboard works

Its been a while since I started writing. 

I've been online without the ability to write any good stories lately.  I've been stuck at the block, the writer's block.  Some people say just to type anything that comes to the mind.  But mind you, I've been on this block for months now.  I've tried my best to get out of it but there are things that just keep me away from breaking away from the block.  Like Laziness, its my biggest problem.

 

The other night, I couldn't sleep.  Some chores at home were not done yet.  I made up my mind to go up and man up to do it.   Clothes were not placed in its proper place.  Dishes were unwashed.  I was unwashed.  I've been sticky from the sunny day.  My girlfriend and her are fast asleep.  Its late, I usually fall asleep when they do.  This time, I'm wide eyed and awake.  I pick up the dishes and start cleaning.  Once I was done with that I attacked the clothes.  Then the I took a shower.  I rarely sleep at two in the morning.  I did that night.  It was easy to be fully energized, I needed to read something to make me sleep.  A good book always takes me to the sand man.   I wasn't lazy that night. I could have done more but I did enough.

 

Designated

I sat there thinking why me.  Its been a consistent way of my night life.  Overlooking the people who go here to relax, to unwind, to get drunk.  Its fine, I thought, there is a reason for this. 

More so its more of an excuse not to get ticketed with a d.u.i., and charged a ten grand penalty.  Thats the true reason. I've not really wanted to go into the details but I felt maybe its just right.  All this time, reading medical books, wondering, dreaming of one day putting all these forced information into action. 

Thats why I'm here, I'm sober, I'm the chauffeur, guardian, designated driver.

I'm the night-time yard-duty.  Overlooking and anticipating things that I don't want to happen.  But I have to imagine every scenerio in my head and somehow find a solution before it ever happens.  To them I'm paranoid, but I'm just being logical.

There's a girl dancing with another girl.  There's one of them, talking with a lady who doesn't really want to talk with anyone.  There's a woman who keeps looking at a guy but he doesn't want to do anything with her, no one in the club does. 

Sad, we're all in a place where no one is being pleasant to each other.  Well not yet.

Time flies, not for me though, if I was in one of their states.  Instead boredom accompanies me and time is sluggish.   The only thing that filled in my cup is a natural element.  Everyone else, well, a mixed drink of potency;  which alters their state, there mental and verbal homeostasis.  In only a few minutes, the pleasantries that weren't there suddenly appears. 

The girl dancing with another girl, is now giving each other cpr.  The lady who doesn't really want to talk to one of those guys, is dancing with that guy.  The woman who everyone doesn't want to be around is suddenly surrounded by everyone.  Like what I said, this is why I'm designated. 

Decisions are made not in reality, but just in a way of fantasy. 

No one wants that behind the wheel.