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The Longest Night of the Year
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1851
It's the longest night of the year.
Obviously. It's not light outside until past 8:30, then dark again before 5:00. The sun's just rising when you leave for work, and long set when you return.
And it's long because it's work, work, work, every dollar earned applied towards bills and debts, the institutions, the people, a tiny bit grafted from the top for cigarettes and liquor, the fuel of these 16 hour work days....
But knowing, somehow, that it's the longest night of the year, that the nights will grow shorter and the the days will lengthen, that the Christmas rush is almost over and the workdays will shorten, that money may someday in the distant future be used freely to ones own ends, it gives you hope...
Tributes and Accolades
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1966
I've never worked in a restaurant where the owner got gifts from his customers.
But here, every day, there are tributes. Christmas cards. Boxes of fine chocolates; hedgehogs, truffles, trays of Baklava and sweets from the Indian Sweet shop. Elaborate floral displays with rare orchids and exotic flowers. The chocolates and food he leaves on the line so the waiters and staff can help themselves. It's a new feast every day and my trousers grow tight around my waist.
I've never seen this before, not on this scale; somehow he manages a personal relationship with all of his customers, it's impressive. And even more impressive, he doesn't hoard it or lay it aside as his own spoils, it's for everyone that works here. That is rare.
Waiting Tables in London
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1319
2 naps in 1 day. I am exhausted.
This time I'm in a pub in London, not the London I used to live in but another London, similar but in a parallel universe, waiting tables, it's my first night on the job and I'm completely lost, someone, a waiter in a pub - restaurant. A waiter I used to work with there a long time ago hands me a beer and a cup of coffee and tells me to take it to "the Reverend" who's in the far end of restaurant...table 95 he says, I ask where it is and he tells me to cut through the barn and I'll find it...
I'm cutting through the barn and the little paddocks and this calf takes a shine to me, like an over eager dog, keeps leaping up on me and licking my face, I can't find my way, can't lose the calf, finally I take this shortcut through an open storefront where I tie the calf to a nail on the office desk....
"Well I never..." say the proprietors of the store, they're talking about the calf that's still wanting to play with me...
I ask where table 95 is, they give me directions, I'm off and searching again, the hotel/restaurant, it's at the far end, and I'm lost because the blocks are all crooked, they don't run parallel with the streets, and time is running, has run out....
Finally I find it, a small pub, there are a bunch of legless dwarfs in it, dressed in odd clothes, playing cards but not regular playing cards, other, odd cards, one plays a hand, the other says something, I'm looking for the Reverend, I think I see him, the dwarfs are making calls as they lay down their cards, one of them makes a call in an unusually deep voice with a heavy North American Accent, I look at him for a second and I recognize Tom Korte, whom I haven't seen since elementary school..."Tom Korte I presume" I say, stepping forward to shake his hand, glad at the familiar face in a strange land...."I didn't recognize you, you look.....well... different", he takes this the wrong way, he looks odd, a coconut shaped head, long features like a monkey carved into a coconut; he seems to realize my awkwardness and takes offense; "I'm doing very well, thank you...my investments have worked out nicely...."
And I'm running again, I've given up, lost in this London-not-London, trying to find my way on foot between distant remembered tube stops, to find Fleet street or Piccadilly Circus or someplace, anyplace that I can remember, there's someone I have to meet, I feel bad about leaving my job but I'd have never found my way anyways, was too lost, I wonder about the person, a friend (I don't know who) who had gotten work with me at the pub, but they'll be all right.....
The eye of the storm
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1531
We're downstairs in the basement, the owner and I, it's a dug-out basement, unfinished cement floors and walls, sitting and having coffee. Light streams in from a walk out patio; for a moment - just a moment - the light crosses his face, it's beautiful - jet black hair, vivid, startling blue eyes, he's very handsome and I say that I want a camera, he doesn't understand but someone runs to get me a camera....
They bring it to me, it's an old Minolta or some such, film camera, and I'm a little amazed but it has all these little cardboard key cards on a thread hanging from it, and as I begin to take pictures I understand, he's had it adapted to digital, each photo I snap cycles the key-cards through it, I'm making him stand and move forward, trying to recapture the slash of light across his face as it was there for just a minute before, it's no use.....
We end up outside, the light, it was that of the setting sun, we're around the house now, still taking photos, there are clouds in the sky and the patches of light disappear quicker than we can find them, the moment's been lost....
Now, through his yard on this farm, there comes a wind, then a slender tornado...and I realize why the light was so eerie; we dodge it, then run through some trees to look, from the east there comes a storm, multiple tornadoes touch narrow fingers to the ground and we turn to run for shelter but it's too late, it's upon us -
And for a moment it's quiet...all to the east, we're in the very eye of the storm, within the cut swathe of destruction, strange shapes clutter the grounds, it takes but a second to recognize stegosauruses, giant dragons, winged fairies, simulacra and demons all cavorting in the strange, unquiet peace that permeates this place....beside me the owner asks me what it is he's seeing, he doesn't trust his eyes, I snap a picture and the flash alerts them to our presence, the storm reawakens and we're running for shelter again, the house with it's concrete basement has imploded...
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