channonyarrow

I just got laid off.

I am...actually not sure how I feel about this. Probably good, all in all.

HOMG I SHOULD HAVE POWER IN THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES.

I'll believe it when I see it, but it would be NICE.

Also, totally need to get the mail and water the plants ANYWAY.

So we should have power restored on Monday, the 16th, also known as "21 days after the fire".

My leg is not so broken that I need to have ZOMG EMERGENCY SURGERY NOW, but I probably have a cartilage tear. Only the MRI will say for sure!

And because icarusancalion reminded me of this earlier and I had to go look it up:

These streets begin where the cobbles
surface through tar like the heads
of children buried badly in thier textures.

What myth is this?
we ask, but
the children who play stickball and
Johnny Jump-My-Pony around here just laugh.

No myth they tell us no myth,
just they say hey motherfucker aint
nothing but Leighton Street here,
aint nothing but all small houses
and only but back porches where our mothers
wash there and they're and their.

Where days grow hot
and on Leighton Street they listen to the radio
while pterodactyls flow between the TV aerials
on the roof and they say hey motherfucker they say
Hey motherfucker!

No myth they tell us no myth,
just they say hey motherfucker aint
nothing but Leighton Street round here

This they say is how you be silent in your silence
of days. Motherfucker.


So. What poems, in whole or in part, do you know by heart? I knew part of this (used it for a paper on myth in college) but I forgot a lot of it. The more I think about what poems I know, though, the more surprised I am - I posted that I know For S.A. and Howl and Little Peggy Ann McKay, but I'm being reminded, all day long, of how many more I know, long poems (I don't count Emily Dickinson, since so much of her stuff is four lines long, but you might.). I keep remembering poems, and not things like The Wasteland, either. Odd little things that stuck in my head somewhere and I grew around and now they're just...there, waiting for me to even think to look again.


Karhu-Bjorn-Braun-Bear

[lightning rainbow great cloud tree
dialogs of birds]

Europa. 'The West.'
the bears are gone
except Brunhilde

or elder wilder goddesses reborn-will race
the streets of France and Spain
with automatic guns-
in Spain,

Bears and Bison,
Red Hands with missing fingers,
Red mushroom labyrinths;
lightning-bolt mazes,
Painted in caves,

Underground.


ETA: Much like Rimmer, I never learn, do I?

But I don't want to live in this century.

Hence, I bought these.



My mother thinks they are cute. I think this means that I am doing something wrong, but then again, this is the woman who practically had a stroke when I dyed my hair blue, and then bitched me out the other day for dying over the blue-green-purple. As I pointed out, I hated maintaining it right now and the roots were all so light they almost looked blonde. This did not deter her.

I don't understand sometimes.

And now I have to get ready for work so I can go back home and get the thing I forgot to bring here, which would be "clothes". Don't ask me how I forgot this when I remembered everything else, but I did. I was a very tired bunny yesterday.

I wish I'd had a camera to take pictures of the electrical room - other than the stench, it was actually pretty cool. Of course, I say this because I didn't have one of the storage areas inside, and I didn't lose anything except sleep and power. But about the only things left intact in there are a) the framing and b) not much else. The washer and dryer and sink and (non working) stove are still there but anyone who'd like to try to use them after exposure to that much heat is a fool.

I really liked all the contractors; they seem to know what they're doing. They don't have a timeline for when we'll have power back, but they're going to start taking the building to the studs (which are in fine shape, but the sheetrock/drywall is shot) asap, and they'll do that, I think, as soon as they know what they can replace all the electrical stuff with - maybe sooner. The company that made all the stuff that burned went out of business years ago, so the (likely) scenario is that ultimately they'll have to replace all the wiring out to the boxes in the apartments themselves and probably the boxes, but I don't think they need to rewire the apartments proper other than that, and they're only doing that because of compatibility issues and bringing everything up to 2007 code. 1965's code was fine, but 1965 is also gone.

Also, they said that if the walls of the building weren't made of marblecrete, the whole building would have gone up, and apartments would have been lost. And as mine would probably have been no more than fifth on the list...yeah. I'm a little further away than the body of the closest apartments, but not that much.

So of course nobody's building with marblecrete anymore. Because nobody ever will have a fire in their building.

The landlord arranged for the Red Cross to come and provide dinner for everyone until we've got power back; let me tell you, I have this whole set of assumptions of "things I will not need" that are somewhat like the dark side of my mother's belief that inability to afford paper towels means she is poor (this dates from the days of her first marriage, and, later, her divorce), and one of those things is that "I will not need the Red Cross's help." Techically, I still don't need their help, because I have resources here, but...it's sort of strange to realise that yeah, I was in a situation where they were called, and it's a bit more direct than the generalised notion "the Red Cross is out and running shelters in Seattle" after last winter's power outage. They didn't have a feeding unit (about the size of a mid-size RV, and it really does say Red Cross Feeding Unit on it, which is one of the worst examples of corporate-speak I've run into; it makes me feel like a lab rat) in the parking lot of the building next door.

I hope we'll have some kind of power back in the next week, but I am not crossing my fingers. I don't know if this will go through the holiday weekend, and I don't know how the roof work will hold that up - no one knows what needs to be done to the roof yet, and they won't know till they open it up and take a look, but it looks burned right by the masts, and the masts themselves are charred at the base. Nothing anyone knows about other than surface damage right now, but no one's assuming that'll be what they find when they actually open up the roof.

In the end, it's been really pretty cool hanging out with all my neighbours and talking about the whole thing and trying to solve problems and getting to know them better. I feel like a bunch of formless energy has been redirected into a shape. And I also know which of my neighbours are willing to be part of this; it doesn't surprise me at all that the ones I already knew to say hello to and to chat with for a minute are the ones who wanted to talk to the contractors and everyone.

We call the woman who coordinates ServiceMaster and the electrician and the construction guys the wedding coordinator, and it seems to fit. She marshalls everyone except the insurance people, and everyone seems to really want to get this fixed, and to be happy with their jobs and all. Nothing sullen, and a lot of laughter and joking and talking to the residents as well as the landlady (who's in a wheelchair, so I'm sure she's used to getting people assuming she's mentally incapable as well, and no one acted like that at all).

If it weren't for, you know, having the shit scared out of me and losing power, this would be fun. And even with that, it pretty much is, now that we know nothing's going to be lost.

I have power.

New LJ update page still sucks. Is there a turnoff option for this?

I swear to god, I might as well go back to banging the rocks together.

Also, it turns out that actually, Nickelback does suck. I was willing to put up with their amusing antics for a while, even if Photograph comes off to me as "I did a fuck of a lot of blow and now I'm writing a song!" because there are others that, essentially, amuse the crap out of me. But that never again domestic violence song? It has got to go.

Seriously. Guys, don't sing about that - you come off as morons. Women, don't sing about it, you come off as strident one-noters.

Granted, this leads to total silence on an issue that, like many others in the US, needs to be discussed more, but I don't think I've heard a song about domestic violence that didn't make me want to yak on some level.

Usually, you know, it was that outermost level, where I actually yak.