Pick and Choose

It's been an interesting couple of days for me.

Rainy, groggy, and nasty outside...

On days like today, interesting conversations have been buzzing through the air. Outside the hotel, the cherry blossoms fall to where they almost look like rain or snow. An optical illusion brought to you by mother nature, and at a second glance you realize - it actually isn't just the blossoms at all, but it is raining as well. The rain comes and goes as if almost being controlled by a light switch of some sort.

Working the front desk on a sold out night, can be as busy as it is dead. There have been times when I swear to you, I start seeing tumbleweeds dancing across the lobby floor. Working with the people behind the front desk - being the youngest has its perks. I have become the entertainer of the front desk. When I am not happy, no one is happy. I have that weird effect on people. I am like a human sun, changing peoples moods based on my own "sunlight." It's a gift equal to a curse - but I can't pick and choose what I am made of.

Cannot pick and choose.

The Rock

When it comes to my dreams - like many, they tend to jump around from scenario to scenario. I do not know why my dreams do not stay on a constant path throughout my REM sleep, but I have learned to not interrupt or try to alter the path it runs on...but rather watch and listen to whats happening in my head.

Last night, I woke up without the end of a scenario. It ended like those crappy movies that just cut off and do not tell you the outcome of a characters decision. I only say this because I recently saw Swing Vote - and I do not recommend it for people who dislike endings like that. (Sorry English for beating you up over it - it was such a shitty movie ending though!)

There was this rock on the side of a cliff. There were trees around the rock, and areas to sit and watch the festivities. There were people jumping off this rock, and into water underneath. The water underneath looked something like a Dam, with a little mini waterfall and what rested awfully close to the side of the cliff - which you could easily snag or cut yourself on the reaching out roots, branches and rocks on your way down. The trip down looked like it was a million feet beneath us. Most of the people I did not know, some of their faces resembled people who I have seen, but have not the opportunity to meet. They all seemed to be jumping off this rock, unaware of where they might land, and each time - pop their heads out of the water with a smile on their faces.

And so, it was my turn. The adrenaline was shooting through my body like a bullet through a gun barrel - what a wonderfully terrifying drug. I step up to the rock, wiggling my toes in the puddle of water beneath my feet, the wind blowing in my hair and around my body, eyes closed with a smirk on my face. My arms slightly raised next to my sides ------------------- and I wake up.

I feel like I will never know the ended to this dream, as disappointing as that sounds - it got me thinking...

This dream has opened my eyes to what is going on around me. The main question is - Did I jump? Before I fell asleep, I was talking about relationships - has some moral been braided into my dream scenario?

I'll never know - but I feel like its meant to be that way. For good measure.

"Be Humble and Live, Not Just Exist" - A stranger from my dream.

The Nightmare

I slept like I was dead last night. I wont lie, it was a scary feeling waking up and realizing that I actually slept a full night. I wish I could say it was a pleasant sleep, but it was not. I was trapped in my dreams...

I have this reoccurring nightmare...I remember the first time I ever had it - I was young, and we visited family up in Canada. We stayed in a log cabin filled with moose heads, deer antlers, and other stuffed critters you'd see prancing around on an episode of Mister Rogers. Scattered throughout the entire cabin, on the walls, mantles and yes - even on the floor. It was the first time that I ever remembered falling asleep and having the exterior effect the interior.

In my dream, It started out with me sitting on the couch of the log cabin, everything was laid out exactly as it was when I saw it awake. The only difference is that every face on the mantle, floor and walls were perfectly circular faces, with a grayish "dead body" shine to their complexions - and beady black eyes, with perfectly evil grinning teeth, from corner to corner the smile never lessened - and they never spoke, they just stared and smiled. At first, I thought nothing of it - until I "woke up" ...in my dream. I thought I was awake, it felt so real...waking up in my dream turned everything back to normal - that was until I rolled over to see my twin sister laying next to me, with the same smiling face. I screamed (in my dream of course) as everyone and everything with a face has turned into these mind-twisting faces. I was afraid to look at a watch, because I feared its face has turned as well. I would be running down the streets, and everywhere I looked, everywhere I turned...these faces. It has been a face that has been burned into my head - and so it stays and haunts me.

I wouldn't wake up when I wanted too - last night I struggled underneath my sheets, a splitting migraine so bad that made it feel like my brain was melting down the back of my throat in a steady uncomfortable drip and I am unable to open my eyes and catch my breathe. The faces that have haunted me for 20 years, which I thought I would have forgotten and left them in my past, have found its way back to my dreams. What do they mean - what are they trying to tell me? These faces have pain and agony writ ting across their over-stretched uncomfortable looking grins, and their eyes swallow you up like a garbage disposal chopping and dicing the remaining scraps of a hearty dinner.

Am I this dinner? Is this is what supposed to become of me? Or are they telling me to stay away from these "faces" these people who have changed, all the same...they're all the same.

30 thousand combinations

It happened last night - boy did it start the weirdest roulette for me.

I figured out a 3-combo lock...without trying. It has been sitting in the back of the office in the Operator box, in a little porcelain coffee cup under paperclips, pen caps, rubber bands and staples. But on a night like tonight - it was dug out of the pit of office do-dads and it sat to the far right behind the front desk. Leave it to me to be the one to notice that it was out of its natural habitat and away from its coffee cup home it resided in...and something told me to play with it - so I did.

There really isn't much you can do with a 3-combo lock - twist the numbers to various combinations and pretend that you know the right sequence of numbers to unlock the strange lock. There is a key hole on the bottom for a key to unlock it in case of emergencies - but no key to be found. So there I was, just spinning the numbers, unaware of the combinations that I am creating but more the feel of the wheels and metal in between my fingertips. It worked as a stress reliever, quite helpful...last thing I would have ever thought a lock would do for me - besides keep something safe and lock something away.

Spinning the three wheels I heard a little click and the next thing I knew, the lock was dangling from the tip of my pointer finger, unlocked. I stared at it - and my boss who was next to me, was staring at me...for the lock who has been sitting the back coffee cup for years, has been figured out by a person who had no intention of breaking the lock combo. My stress reliever has been unmasked. I still play with it - as I am currently doing. I have made a connection with this lock, in which I never thought I ever could make a connection with an inanimate object. Strange. The numbers of the combination lock...have no relation to me whatsoever...they're just numbers...

The combo to the lock: 8-3-1

It just took a...

...stuffy nose and an asshole to open my eyes to what's real.

Things at home have been a little rough around the edges - and I am sure everyone has times like these where they butt heads like rams in a battle with family members. But this has been a World War III for me. I have received my battle wounds and I am weary of battle...yet I can not give up because the fight is not yet over. I constantly have to defend myself from low blows and stabs in the back...is this fight even worth it? Every successful night behind the wheel of my car to get me from point A to home...was I not reckless enough? I value my life outside the walls of my home...but inside, I am a caged animal hungry for vengeance.

It is tough figuring out who you are when you get so much shit thrown at you. When you are 20 years old, and you feel like you are 50...that is when you know you have bitten off too much to chew. Guess it is a good thing I have a big enough mouth to hold it all, but swallowing it all is a challenge.

I stand at work, behind the front desk in my neatly pressed suit. It's a repetitive motion, checking people in, going threw the routine "Welcome to the Estate.......how may I assist you?"
Well, honestly - Fuck you...How can you assist me? I spend day in and day out "assisting" people who some of them, I will never see again...corporate fuckers whose lives revolve around their work and everyone else's lives revolve around them. How is the world even functioning when the world revolves around 150thousand corporate pricks? Picky mother fuckers too - nothing is good enough for them.

Hate to break it to you, you corporate slugs - but perfection doesn't exist. I found that out the hard way.

"Thank you for staying with us...and have a wonderful day"