It’s become pretty obvious that my magical fantasy had begun to wither and that my life was in need of some drastic changes. It became time for me to return home. Maybe to tell this story I’m always failing to tell. Probably to get a job, though.
I did. Two days after moving to a suburb of Detroit. Not quite home, per se. My home is deeper in the brambles of this offensively bleak state and like many people from Michigan, the word home is a pastiche of various trailers and the lots that they occupied. One plot will always stand out in my mind. I digress.
The first good job I ever hard, back before the war, was Tim’s Pizza in Olivet. I learned that small businesses were rewarding work places for a number of reasons, but most importantly because I could see how my work effected the community around me. It feels good to give somebody a pizza. And extra good to receive a cash reward for doing so.
What I’m trying to say is that I did enjoy working once. Really.
But like I said, that was before the war and Combat Paper. I wanted so much more then. Greatness. A way out.
I could give a damn about greatness now. All I want is a warm bed and some money for hording.
So like I said I got a job. I now work at a hip diner bussing tables. The owners of the restaurant work almost every day. The food is amazing. The staff is incredible. I am blessed to work with a handful of motherly waitresses who are all hardened professionals, seared in to the trade by years of turning and burning. They are molding a perfect bussing machine of me and I have given myself willingly.
I like to bus tables. I approach them as a ninja would. Graceful and swift, professionally. I linger in the small beauties. The lights flowing through the flowing water. The perfect pastiche of colors. The myriad stories happening around me every day. Always vanishing, leaving behind clean tables and full coffees. Maintaining a constantly changing list of priorities, always impossible but never letting on to a feeling of defeat. It is just me and nobody will help me. The day whirls by and I watch all the money change hands and while I’m there I almost forget what it is that I came for and then the day is done and the ninja gets tipped out.
It makes me ashamed to think that now I am ecstatic to be in life where I was four years ago, bussing tables. But there are all the things that happened in those four years.
Nobody knows that side of the story here. I like that. Here I can be whoever I want to be and for once I’m not interested in making a name for myself. I feel like I have a chance now to live a humble life dedicated to art the way that I really want to and with the means to afford that and a schedule to build a routine around.
There is a big part of me that worries and waits for the dropping shoe. What if I fuck this job up, too? I’ve had other jobs but I either quit or was fired in a pretty short period of time. Granted I saw working as an impediment to the life I would rather be living and now I don’t prefer that lifestyle. This has greatly changed my work ethic.
So maybe this is the end of the travellers blog. Lets all hope so.
The Paper Trail 