23 February 2004

Moving Daze

Normally I get up with great discipline to read and write in an iterative manner manner, consulting with the Overseas radio and the New York Times. to you. I stayed up too late, as you know, but arose right on time at 0442. I ground the coffee and turned on the switch, thinking I might listen for a while in the Murphy bed.

I may as well have folded it up with me inside it. I was gone, out like a light the instant my head hit the pillow. I stirred again shortly after six, cranky that the day was starting out like this, that I had missed the BBC (I wore my BBC hat all day yesterday) and was still puzzling over the remarks of a colleague I saw last night that were both supportive and cautioning.

"You are kind of hanging it out there," he said. "Some of your friends thought you were signing your own death warrant with that piece you wrote about the Office. The people you send this to are not idiots, you know. They can put the names to the faces you write about."

"I know what I am doing," I said. "And as soon as everyone else is 46% ahead of their billing goals, I'll take it seriously."

Screw it, I thought., I'm just trying to do what Samuel Pepys did a few hundred years ago. Note the scenes around me. After all, the only thing certain about all this is Time's winged chariot and the tomb. So screw it, full speed ahead, I need you and want you and the urge to smell you and taste you is so powerful that it is almost overwhelming.

So I logged onto the computer after burning my first cigarette and worrying about the briefing I have not written yet for management. I have to be in Crystal City by nine o'clock. I don't know how to do both, except I feel in my bones that this is more important. Imagine my surprise to see that the first incoming message was from the BBC, apologizing for not broadcasting my little story about Burma. Apparently an engineer had lost the digital copy and the host was going to have to bring it from home. It is the last of nine that I have written for them. My adrenaline started to kick in with the coffee. I started to pound out my response, not wanting to confess my weakness at sleeping through the show.....

"Dear World Update, I appreciate the trailer- it only builds suspense!

The move between apartments has crushed me, robbed me of spare time to hone the next batch of stories. Creating them is my biggest priority this week, now that the books and clothes have all been moved, the new bookcases are in and filled and the Murphy bed, bless it, goes up and down with remarkable regularity.

I'll be listening tomorrow and will have a new portfolio to you this week.

I think you would have liked the evolving solution to the logistics problem involved in the Big PInk Move. I have a sturdy little hand cart borrowed from the nice man down the hall. It converts from a two-wheeler into a four-wheel device, a little more awkward to maneuver, but capable of carrying more boxes on its strong red back.

My lovely fiancée and I had selected a giant plastic storage tub to go in the storage cage down in the basement. It looked like a reasonable way to keep things organized and out of prying eyes. She asked on the phone why I wasn't using it, since It has tiny plastic wheels on the bottom. Since she cannot be here to help, she cares a lot. I told her it was too hard to drag the little wheels across the raised thresholds, across the coarse common carpet, into the elevator, outside to the sidewalk, since there are marble steps in the lobby, then to fumble with keys and drag it inside once more, happily united with the proper floor, and then down the corridor to the beige door that guards my sanctum.

But my love was quite right. I need to listen more carefully. After moving several loads of precious cargo packed haphazardly into an assortment of ill-matching cardboard boxes I was gazing disconsolately as I smoked a Camel on the patio. I realized that the plastic tub might fit precisely on the frame of the cart, and instead of filling individual cardboard boxes, I could dump whole shelves of books into a gigantic load. A tub o' books, if you will. The summation of a lifetime of learning. Books on the civil war, on the craft of Intelligence, Alan Dulles dumped in, willy nilly, with the Chinese who should have discovered America, the history of the Raj and my Father's ancient copy of Fun With a Pencil.

And so passed the afternoon, which saw much more progress than the equivalent time on Saturday. Fewer trips, albeit, but heavier ones.

Still remaining are an armchair and a mattress foundation rendered redundant by the establishment of the Murphy franchise in the new unit. A neutered WW I aerial bomb. And the cleaning, of course. But it was enough for a Sunday. I got done with the heavy lifting in order to climb in the shower late in the afternoon to bask my aching joints in the scalding water of Big Pink's venerable boiler.

At which time I discovered he little button on the end of the spigot that redirects the water from the tub to the showerhead has failed. So, on my knees like a worshiper of Poseidon, I performed my ablutions, wondering in a thoroughly existential manner, when the man from the phone company would come on Monday to connect the land-line that has not worked since they shut off the one upstairs. The chipper lady from AT&T said with a hopeful note, that he would arrive sometime between one and five.

I have arranged with my Customer to take an afternoon's leave of absence. Like waiting for Godot, except now I have to schedule a plumber. In these parts the skilled workmen come at an expensive rate and their jeans ride low across broad behinds. When they lean forward to engage the pipes they often expose more than one bargains for. I would call that story The Crack of Doom, but that is for another day at Big Pink.

I would note that it is Samuel Pepys's Birthday today. He published only two works in his life, but his diary accounts of the Plague and the Great Fire are the monuments to his age. Sam was a bureaucrat, like me, and I have hopes that if I stay disciplined, I might be an overnight sensation like he was. The first complete edition of his diary was published in 1970, so that gives me only 350 years to get my act together.

Have a great day!

Cheers,

Vic"

I mashed the button and sent it off. Then something occurred to me. Sam Pepys had a sharp eye for his times. But he didn't try to do it in real time. Shoot, no one has time to do that. Ever try to actually watch one of those home videotapes?

There isn't world enough, or time.