A Mind Like That

I need to get my hands on yesterday's Sunday Globe, to see for myself the banner headline "Kim Jong-Il: Crazy or Crazy Like A Fox?"

Yesterday was my first night as Copy Editor for the Varsity. Basically, it was awesome. The work was fun, everyone there was into -- hell, obsessed with -- honest-to-god print culture, peripheral at best in the rest of the places I spend my time. And I like that obsession. The work was fun, I'll be on the masthead, and I can point to any page of The Varsity and say I helped do that. Also, there was pizza. For those who are counting, that's three points out of a possible four.

The fourth point is for psychic powers, lightsabers, miracles, achieving enlightenment, or robots. So three is still very good.

The catch is that work started late afternoon and went on for 9 hours. So I got home at 2 a.m., and now I'm tired and seething with the deadly rage, always so closely underlying my cool millionaire-playboy facade, that takes over when my carefully cultivated restraint starts to waver. Tired, angry I am, and a little insulted over a religious matter involving a Brahmin, an endangered tiger, 47 lbs of cinnamon and a potato blight. I may respond with passive resistance. I may just go my own way. He assumed too much. I just knew too much.

Does that make me crazy? Like a fox.

Actual writing to follow when I can, you know, string words together to make sentences that develop and convey ideas . . . since you're all so into that sort of thing.

All Day and All Night

Walking home: If my life were a day, what time is it? Let's say I'll live to be exactly 80 years old. Average, I hear. Not too long, but not too short. I eat alright, I exercise, we'll see. Say the day begins at first light, at 4 a.m. 'cause it's that time of year. It goes till 4 a.m. the next day -- infer what you will.

So when I turned twenty, a quarter of the day was done, or six hours. Two more years is a tenth of that again, or 36 minutes, and six months is a quarter of that, or 9 more minutes, for a total elapsed time of 6 h, 45 m. It's 10:45 am, and time for a shot of coffee and a run. Shit, there's stuff I was supposed to have done by now.

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Zivy flopped, sweating and stunned, onto the cement block in front of her apartment, blinking the stars out of her eyes. Detroit was gray-tinged and huddled into mutually invisible neighborhoods, colder and smaller than she'd imagined, though the former was presently a welcome surprise. She'd have to get around more. She clenched and unfolded her fists to squeeze blood back through her white fingers. That was from carrying her piano upstairs. Seventy solid kilos in a hard, clunky box. Then she'd sprinted downstairs to make sure her other stuff was still there.

Would've loved to know somebody local, she thought. Or waited till christmas break and dragged a friend down to help. Oh well. Two suitcases left. She tried them both at once, grunted, and started the climb.

Later, leaning against the shut door with baggage at her feet, she surveyed the apartment. All at once, it was hers, instead of some speculative space she may or may not decide to pay for. Possessions secured and survival probable, she began to think about familiarizing the place to her.

Items to obtain: an aquarium with some species of fish that won't die. The thought broke from nowhere -- she'd never had a fish, didn't know how to keep one. She wanted one, though. Maybe start with a goldfish and see how that goes.