Let's suppose there's a Ministry of Complaints where people can go to declare what they aren't happy with and would like redressed. I've been drinking a lot of coffee and I took tomorrow off work to make a four day weekend, so actually I'm feeling pretty good right now, but generally if I was called to the Ministry (perhaps by a telepathigram sent directly to my consciousness, "Dear Mr. Green, please report to the Ministry of Complaints to unload your grievances"), I would come in and sit down in their fancy padded wooden chair, look into the eyes of the universal entity who was serving in the Ministry that day, and say, "I don't feel like this is the right life for me."

The entity would clear its throat and say, "How do you mean? You wish to be another person, or to live in another time period?"

"No, not like that. This existence, it isn't pleasing to me. Why am I trapped in a forward-moving timeline on a three-dimensional physical plane, bound by gravity, forced to breath air, pump blood, eat and sleep in order to live? Why do I have a body? Why is it loosing its hair? I don't like that. Why do I not know what to do with my time, and why is it that when I think I know what I want to do, I don't do it?"

"That is quite a complaint, sir," the entity would say. "Are you sure you wouldn't be satisfied if we simply issued you another human identity? You could have another body made to your specifications, and we could place you in any situation you wanted. You could have whatever kind of family you wished, live wherever and whenever you wished, possess whatever talents and abilities you choose. We could provide you with a written profile of this new person, which you could edit to your specifications, and then we could form this new life for you to inhabit. Would that suffice?"

"I think I could come around to that, but couldn't you do anything about the universe? Couldn't I, say, not exist for a certain period of time, and then pick it back up again later? Or, how about I can pick a nighttime dream that I'm having and make that my actual life?"

"These requests are outside the boundaries of our power. We control existence, but it is still this existence. However, there are many variations available to you within the world that you already know. Would you be able to content yourself with this sort of change?"

If I decided that I would like a new life, I would then be sent to the Ministry of Redress where, if I had done enough good to earn a replacement life, I could work with the Redress entity assigned to me and design my new self. I could choose to live in a big city and have enough money to use it as my playground. I could choose to be able to play saxophone as well as John Coltrane. I could even choose to be John Coltrane, and maybe not die so young.

I'm pretty sure, though, that I could use the life I already have in better ways. This is my current (and perennial) dream.

I'm still surprised when I remember I'm a secretary. I must have had a powerful subconsious horror at this fact, because I knew it in October when I first got the job, and then I pretty much forgot it until Spring came and my mind woke up like it does every year. It really feels like my self-reflection was looking the other way for about five months, overwhelmed with disgust when it saw that I was a secretary. I imagine it in a dark chamber, with a nice easy chair, a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers (my self-reflection is chill), sitting in front of a stone fireplace all day reading ewspapers about Greg. It reads the newspaper about Greg's relationship with his friends, The Bantering Tribune. "Hmm, Greg seems to be kind of an asshole to the few friends he manages to keep in touch with . . . I'll let him know about this sometime in April." It flips through the Housing Journal, which disusses Greg's sense of his environment, and shakes it's head. "Tsk, tsk, still bumbling around; will that Greg ever learn?" Then it turns to the Occupational Times, about Greg's working life; a few paragraphs in to the first article, it goes white. "My God, Greg's a . . . no, this is too horrible. I can't look any more! Why is he doing this to himself?" It doesn't read that one for several months, until it has steeled itself, and has a warm cup of chai and some painkillers ready. And here's what it sees:

It's my duty to prepare the outgoing mail every week (to the Board of Directors, the Regional Chairs, and our staff in regional offices), to answer the main office phone and direct the calls to the right people, to track dues payments in the Northeast Region locals, and to do general office work--stuffing envelopes, proofreading or writing letters, preparing agendas for the professional staff's meetings, that sort of thing. I sit at the desk where I'm writing this for about seven hours a day, with breaks for the drive to the post office and my lunch hour (actually hour and fifteen minutes, because my office has its own union and we have really cozy benefits). I use most of my energy thinking about my latest obsession. Anthropology? No, that was this time last year. World history? Sort of ended before it began, but maybe some other time. Writing? No such luck. No, my current obsession is comic books. For two months I've been doing almost nothing else with my time than reading comic books, comic books reviews, comic books histories, and so on. Why? Fucked if I know. It's fun.

So my self-reflection is starting to send me some memos every so often now, in re: employment and interests. They're very respectful memos, and the language can be a little dense and obscure at times (my self-reflection is in a phase where it writes in the language of the eighteenth century), but the message is clear enough: I'm going to die at some point, and I might want to do something with my time first.

I've come in to work today after celebrating the twenty-first birthday of one of Scott's friends from Trader Joe's. We had an absinthe, car bomb and girl drink bout at the Tin Star, while the bartender played concerts by the Pixies, Prince and the Revolution, and Roy Orbison on their gorgeous, large digital television. When I see images like a purple guitar being swung rhythmically to "When You Were Mine," I can understand a little better why people like digital televisions so well.

There were two TJ's friends, and the older of the two is a crazy man named Zeke. He's a fount of energy, waving in place and narrating odd tales even when he's not drunk. The bar stools were perhaps to restrictive for him, because he nearly fell off his several times, expressing only a moment's amazement that he didn't crack his head before jumping into another engagement with whoever's next to him. The bartender's jeep now knows the feel of Zeke's vomit--and to be clear, that's not something I give the check-plus to or anything, but there are some people who can somehow pull that off as fun, and Zeke's one of them. When the bartender came out for a smoke and saw the tire, Zeke burst at him and playfully threatened to do worse, whcih again could go either way (leaning toward shamefulness), but from the bartender's reaction, Zeke obviously has built up enough good will to pull it off as boisterousness. His body and mind leaps from one thing to the next, and though he doesn't quite shout at phantoms, he comes close.

The younger guy, Milljen, is a more laid-back affair, although without Zeke showing him up he'd hold his own. He's a slim, curly haired metal/prog guitar player and recording student at College of Santa Fe, planning to leave before he gets his degree to go full-time with a recording studio in town. His nose is a solid block of bone protruding from the middle of his eyes in a chunk, like a beak, and he can also launch into excited and jumbled stories, but unlike Zeke those stories are a little more predictable; when listening to them, you don't suddenly run into Amelia Stickney, or a gun barrel in Zeke's mouth, or an attempted discussion about Kierkegaard with a pompous Annapolis Johnny.

Eventually, after a quick stop at the Matador (which last year was pitched quite accurately as "Santa Fe's newest dive bar") we made our way to the Atomic Grill for nachos. The Atomic is the only restaurant downtown that's open past, I don't know, nine o'clock. Indeed, they're usually open past two, probably to make sure they get the entire after-bar rush, because somebody has to. There's this one waiter who's almost always there, and even though no one knows otherwise, no one thinks he's the owner. It's a tiny Brit in his thirties or forties, with constantly changing hair color and an endless string of post-punk t-shirts. He's polite, efficient, and hopelessly broken. I wish I knew what happened to him, and why he's always either working at the Atomic or wondering the liquor aisles in grocery stores. (Anne and I have both seen him in a couple of liquor aisles.) He'll listen when customers speak, and smile his broken, reserved smile, but very rarely will he reveal anything about himself. Whether it's busy or not, he mostly stays behind the counter, or quickly circling the tables (always there just when you need more water), breaking down the outdoor set-up, or pacing with a cigarette.

But I've come in to work, and now it's not last night any more. Now it's the cemented sinus, droopy eyed morning after, and I've come in to work even though I could have easily called out sick. Is that sunlight really the gray of a dusty old raincoat, or is it just me?