I am home on a lunch break, and for some reason I am experiencing a sense of lucidity and reawakening that I have somewhat rarely, a feeling of awareness and mental energy. It's hard to explain what it feels like, why it is that my thoughts seem to have a different tone from what I'm used to. I was just thinking about a call I made yesterday to the office of a dentist Anne and I went to early this year. I was calling to make a new appointment, and the receptionist told me that we had missed back-to-back appointments for September which I didn't know we had. He sounded pretty mad at me, and said, "You can't just not show up for an appointment. I called both of your phone numbers, and sent a postcard." I explained that we had moved and gotten new phones, and that I received none of his messages, and also didn't know we had made appointments.

I was left unsatisfied, because the receptionist didn't acknowledge anything I was saying. Just now I wanted to reach out to him somehow, with an email or a visit, and explain again that I was sorry but that I didn't think I had done anything wrong. Then somehow I got to thinking about how strange it was that I had a dentist, a person whose income depended on patients, people coming in for the service of having their teeth cleaned and examined. I am in a relationship with this woman, the dentist, that seems somehow unnatural, a result of the complicated social structure of modernity. Like pretty much everyone alive today, I have indistinct professional relationships with people who have received abstract credentials allowing them to perform well-defined services isolated from all other areas of life. I don't know the dentist as anything other than a dentist, nor her receptionist as anything other than a person who is employed by the dentist to answer a phone in her office, make appointments, and receive payments from patients.

I then thought about how strange it is that the tree in my back yard has a trunk that split early in its growth, so that it has branches and leaves growing out of two separate, equally thick parts; and sometimes the owner of my house hires people to come and cut off some of the branches on this living plant, because they happen to be growing in areas that threaten the house's roof.

What might I call thoughts like these? They seem strangely analytical, putting words to patterns of life that I usually act on without consciousness because I too am a part of the systems I'm examining.

Usually I just think about consuming, with unvocalized thoughts like "what can I eat now, because I'm hungry?" or "it's cold in here" or "maybe I can read Watchmen later today, when I get home." I've noticed in the last few days that my thoughts are usually very boring and relate only to myself, Anne, or Scott, and our immediate needs. I wonder why sometimes I seem to think in other ways, and why it's so rare.

D. H. Lawrence wrote back in 1915 about why I dread going to work: it requires that I "put on the vulgar, shallow death of an outward existence." Every morning my "soul [grinds] in uneasiness and fear" as I see that my time as a hidden being has once again passed. It doesn't seem to matter that I don't have any difficult work, and it's only slightly improved by the light amount of interaction with the public. I felt nearly as much dread going into switchboard just for the call I knew I'd get from Lois and the interaction with security. At least now I don't have to hate the fact that I can't stay home at midnight and sleep in a bed. My current job is the best I've had as far as compensation, but somehow almost the worst for this feeling of soul grinding.

It's been four years since I had to work in a service position at a store, so maybe I've forgotten feeling this way then. My memory, anyway, is that at Safeway I felt like the day was lost if I had to work for part of it, but I don't remember dread. At the Moon Café I didn't really care, but then I barely got customers, and was also mildly insane. I can't remember how I felt about going to work at Barnes and Noble, even though it was the most recent of my service jobs. I know that I feared the supervisors and book floor workers, and mostly disliked the customers rather than shrank from them in my soul. I think I enjoyed working there, but this was tied to the fact that I was young enough to feel at home in a service position, had made friends, and never had to face customers alone.

Certainly my current job isn't the worst I've had. That would be Promissor. It made me feel so awful that I would eventually have swerved my car into one of the numerous trucks on I-95 during the forty-five minute commute if I had to keep working there for just a few more months. I felt the same soul grinding that I now feel once a day, only I felt it every five minutes, between calls. Even that wasn't so bad, because I drove to and from work with Anne, and the waves of calls mostly dissipated by 9:30 p.m.

At my current job, soul nausea comes from the presence of foreign entities in the communicating offices, and to a lesser extent because of the phone. I sit at an exposed desk by the (rarely used) front door, from which I can see the finance manager sitting at his computer, and I'm only paces away from the office manager. I can hear our accountant coughing or shifting in her cubicle, one wall of which is right in front of me. The others walk by frequently to get coffee or visit each other. None of these people are antagonistic, annoying, or stupid; my problem is that we are strangers to each other, even if I come to know their personalities, hear about or even meet their families, talk with them on breaks or at meetings. I could only feel more out of place if I went to sleep here and woke up in Russia.

Moreover, the work will be cyclical, boring, sometimes uncomfortable (if I am asked to help with training sessions), and completely unconnected to my personality. Still better than switchboard, but nowhere near where I want to be. A person could only like this job if they had no desire ever to work outside of offices, even though for an office job, I'm sure it's really quite good. I was scared rather than excited when the finance manager told me that there were a lot of opportunities with this company. I just wish I could make enough money to live without working for other people. I suppose eventually I may have to write just to survive my fear that I'll never do anything with my life.

Yesterday I started a new job at the National Education Association, at their New Mexico headquarters in Santa Fe. The position is titled "Program Assistant/Receptionist"; so far I've only been trained in the receptionist duties. Oddly, it is the receptionist who makes the mail and bank run every day, and also restocks office supplies--I believe because the woman who vacated the receptionist position volunteered for those duties. She seems a lot like my mother, who feels the need to do as much work as there is to do, whether they give her more pay and respect or not, whether she likes the company or not. The former receptionist told me yesterday that she has trouble remembering to take her afternoon break, because she gets so busy, a problem which I presume I won't have no matter how busy it gets. So far the receptionist part has been boring and a little anxiety inducing, as I'll explain later.

I'm hoping I'll like the assistant position more. I'll be helping the "UniServ" who covers the northeastern and central New Mexico school districts. UniServs are the people who handle contract negotiation and conflict mediation, find (or offer, not sure yet) representation for union members who have legal trouble, lobby local governments, and other things I'm not clear on yet. My UniServ doesn't come into the office more than a few times a week, because he mainly does meetings all over the state. He hasn't come in since I started working. Eventually I'll be composing letters, proofreading, designing signs, and whatever else he needs. I'll also be maintaining a database detailing union dues by member. So far I've gotten no work on that end, because the people who are going to give it to me are, I guess, too busy.

This means that I have yet another job which, at least for now, consists of waiting for a phone to ring, and dealing with callers when it does. I wish I could have a job that didn't involve phones. Even though I've had nothing much to do so far, I already dread going to work; there's something awful about being attached to a desk with nothing to do. It's not that I hate dealing with phone calls, exactly. If they were for me, I'd feel a lot better. But the uncertainty of calls--not knowing when anyone will call, who they are, what I'm supposed to do with them--instills in me a baseline of anxiety the whole time I'm at work. When I applied for this position, the office manager seemed concerned primarily that I be able to work with frequent interruptions, which I feel okay about. I'm not upset by the interruptions as much as the anxiety. If I have nothing to do, the phone only serves as a constant reminder that I might, at any time, be required to speak professionally with strangers. I can't retreat into privacy, which is what I tend toward naturally. If I'm busy in the future, as everyone keeps telling me I will be, the phone's presence would mean that I couldn't ever get completely lost in details.

So far, I'm pretty much stuck with surfing the internet or writing emails and blogs; things which I enjoy doing, but usually for less than an hour a day. I have now had nearly every iteration of things I can do while waiting for the phone to ring (or, in the case of QAI, having babies and small children playing in the corner of my eye): first I could read and listen to music, with breaks; then I couldn't do either of those things, but could play lots of Spider Solitaire (Promissor . . . rawr!); next I was able to do just about anything, even sleep, but had to stay at the switchboard the whole time; and now I can surf the internet, but not listen to music, presumably not read a book, and certainly not sleep, but I get two breaks and an hour and fifteen minute lunch (it's a union, what do you expect?).

I miss the library, and it would be nice if I could start graduate school. This new job, at least, pays very well (by my standards, at any rate), provides excellent benefits, and has opportunities for advancement. All told, any problems I have with the job pale in comparison with that lineup. Someday, though, I will have a room without a hideous oversized phone at my elbow, and maybe even the ability to feel like myself all the time.

Last night I was sitting at my kitchen table with a plate of spaghetti that had grown cold an hour before as I'd forgotten to attend to it, and instead was watching the shadows shift as the light spread across the room. When it was cut off by the curtain, I got up and went to the window, and there was the moon looking in on me from across the yard. I greeted her, and she waved. "Do you want to come in?"

"Well, maybe for a few minutes. Why not?"

I pushed the panes open and she floated inside, coming to rest on a chair across from my spaghetti. The room became dark.

"Do you have anything for me to reflect?"

"I'm afraid I don't have anything to compare to what you're used to. My means are limited. How about this, will this do?" I took a table lamp from the living room and plugged it in on the kitchen counter.

"Maybe you could remove the shade? That's better."

"Would you like anything to eat? I have some leftover Chinese if you're interested."

"No, I'm fine, thanks. Unless you've got a pumpkin somewhere."

"Is that what you eat?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I'm mostly pumpkin."

"Just a second. I'll be right back." I went to the porch and chose a pumpkin I'd set aside for carving, short and with a broad face. The stars shone impassively in the space vaceted by the moon. I brought the pumpkin back and asked if it would do.

"It looks delicious. Turn away if you don't mind." When I turned back, the pumpkin was gone and the moon had taken on an orange tint in the light from the lamp bulb. It suited her features. "If you don't mind my asking," she said, "why do you keep referring to me as 'she'?"

"Aren't you? A woman, I mean? Luna, you know. I thought it meant . . . "

"It's a common misconception. I'm not really gendered, though. That kind of thing is just myth."

"Still, it seems appropriate."

"I'll admit that it's more poetic, but really I'm just mineral."

"I thought you said you were mostly pumpkin."

"Sure, but do pumpkins have genders?"

I sat pondering that, and the moon started to look a bit restless. I said that I'd understand if it was time to get going.

"Nice seeing you," it said.

"Come back anytime." Then it rose to the window and slipped through the trees to join the watchful stars.

It is that most evil hour, between four a.m. and five; the light looks yellow and uriney, and objects only come into focus when I look directly at them. Even then they look like they're being projected onto some disgusting surface by the illusion-casting lamps of the universe. There's a tingling in my scalp as though worms were crawling around in there. My eyes feel like marbles someone has thrust into a jello mould. This happens even tonight, when I woke up at 9 p.m. I suppose circadian rhythems exist.

Time at the Switchboard is refractory. It's starting to feel, when I turn off all the lights I can and lie down on the rough carpet, like I'm being observed remotely. The dim light is charged with the tension of after-hours; it feels like no one is supposed to be here, ever; it feels like I am taking refuge from a war.

This morning I woke twice: first at 3:45 a.m. from a dream in which Jeff and his friend Rob, and George Wendt, brought pizza to the switchboard, and then to a phone call. I did not get back to sleep. I heard someone unlock one of the doors, and two people talking back and forth for at least twenty minutes, a chatty woman and an inquisitive man, the noise floating above me on the floor preventing me from drifting and sinking into the carpet and through the floor into sleep. I find that when I try to get to sleep and am interrupted, I float down; when there is nothing interrupting me but I still can't lose consciousness, I float up; and when I fall to sleep I am not there to float.

Eric made a website: highqualitytime.blogspot.com. It will not take long to view.

I quite like Santa Fe in fall, although I can't describe it too well because I don't get out much. It hasn't got the elaborate changing colors of Maryland, but leaves still fall, and brown seed pods, and the wind still blows them around, making a delightful whispering swish. The sunlight becomes more noticably slanted, as though it were filtered through water, casting an ambient glow rather than the shocking search-light quality it has in springtime, or the beating waves of light and heat in the summer. I could do without the chamisa, though; it's mostly done blooming now, I guess, because my eyes no longer feel like they're being squeezed with a hot lead vise, but I've still got a useless cough and raspy lungs. The rainy season is mostly over now, but the air often feels like a storm has just passed through and cleared things up. There is a lingering summer heat wave, noticable but thankfullly not overwhelming. At night I wish the mountains would cease their vigil so they could step down into the flat southern part of town, maybe huddle around a campfire and roast the remaining tourists, sparks simmering and flickering in the black around them, and tell me stories that would explain everything I always wanted to know.

I've been reading Iliads, comparing them with the Greek often, wondering why I care so much but trying still, uselessly, to catch a bit of meaning with some tweezers, draw it through the air and snap it out of the book like stubborn sinew clinging to bone, and maybe pin it to my wall like a trophy. I'd make a little plaque commemorating myself: Greg finally got it. Anne's starting school in just two days now, because there was a last minute opening in the Fall Freshman class. I think I'll go through the seminar with her, at least, and perhaps that way finally get away from the lingering feeling that I missed everything, maybe understood broadly some of the philosophy and learned to read Greek passably along with a translation, and French reasonably well, understood most of the math and some of the science, and fell down like a bitch in the ring with religion and literature. Why am I afraid that I didn't understand the Greek plays? Why do I still think that attempting to understand is the right approach?

The mousepad at Switchboard has a blown-up picture of the tower section of Weigel Hall. It was probably created to appeal to nostalgic ex-students, but I wonder if the person who created it was a disillusioned Johnny who wanted to take out his wrath like Godzilla. My mouse crushes.

I can see very starkly now, pretty much for the first time, the difference between "modern novels" and earlier fiction. I don't know why something like this should have taken so long, and it's realizations of that sort which make me question my own intelligence. Why didn't I understand this before now? It doesn't seem difficult or uncommon. It seems like many people are interested in and understand things like this in high school, and here I am at 24 still stuck on things that really aren't very interesting. Am I wrong?

I'm trying to figure out what I meant by "things like this" above. The most simple interpretation is that I mean developments in art. The understanding that there is a qualitative difference between, say, sixties pop songs and punk rock, or between European fashion and American. On another level, I think I mean a level of cognition that would also comprehend the second meanings of politicians, or the fake world of advertising. Behold my inferiority complex: I actually often think that my capacity to understand is lower than aware high school students.

Polewach has (jokingly?) declared the pointlessness of reading 19th century novels (his language is that it's irrelevant, with the joke perhaps being that he doesn't think any literature is relevant). Much reading of old fiction juxtaposed with new is leading me toward the same conclusion that novels, even when they're interesting, are pointless. I probably arrive at this conclusion from a very different angle because, well, I never really know what John's saying or why.

I used to think that I read fiction for reasons beyond entertainment. I'm not really sure what I thought those reasons were, because I've never been a deep thinker. Really I usually read (I'm thinking of high school and into college here) because I was solitary and impressionable, I liked stories, and I believed that reading "important books" was necessary for someone who wanted to be "intelligent". I found reading enjoyable even when I didn't even follow the story, let alone any other meaning of the text, because I responded to the different rhythems and and dictions, and it gave me a vague but often stirring feeling of being somewhere else, as another person, much like in dreams. When I think about why fiction might be worthwhile, I fall back on the following very common postulates: 1. Fiction might help me understand life, or appreciate it better (recognize patterns, experience people and events more critically, appreciate the weight of decisions before making them). 2. Through stories, writers are able to examine and communicate ideas, even complex ones, in a way more immediate and accessible than standard argument.

I look at these postulates now and recognize them as belonging very much to the 19th century. I don't really know how thought about literature has developed since then, if it has. I see also that these postulates are very rarely true, at least for me. I mostly read for entertainment, historical curiosity, and the excitement I get from seeing a writer's abilities. Additionally, I recognize that the better writers tend to consciously examine social conditions and human psychology; but honestly I don't know that I get much out of it when they do. So why do I read fiction instead of quilt, or bet on horses? Dunno. Moreover, why do I stubbornly still think I ought to read, say, Fielding or even, as I did early this year, everything by Flaubert? Dunno.

This is the new face of St. John's College: stone-faced, chill, perhaps taken aback by what he's looking at but trying not to show it. And what is he looking at? I believe it to be a male strip-tease. Notice the excited interest of the dude in the plaid shirt, and the big smile on the girl's face. I believe the strip-tease artist is Mr. Grenke.

I have a new desktop computer. The monitor is huge and black-bordered, the tower is futuristic grey, the mouse is bulbous, the speakers are small and powerful-looking, and the keyboard is soft and fluffy. Now I can finally download music again, and . . . play World of Warcraft, and . . . yes, I said it. And also . . . that's about it, really.

I have been trying to structure my time better, since I get depressed when I don't plan. Pants get tossed all over my sentences, food grime builds up on my words, and I have to pay more per letter. If I could only manage to sleep at work, my collar would slide off. My tea is cooling before I can drink it, and my stomach is probably too floppy anyway, but later I have Lyly and Pullman. Too bad my dry wall is bleeding.

I dreamt that I decided to go home in the middle of a shift, so I took the switchboard radio, the sleeping bag and the pillow, went home and made a sandwich. Jeff was playing computer, and Anne chatted with me while I ate. We were watching a movie when the radio crackled, "226 to base." I walked over resentfully, pressed the transmit button and said, "go ahead," expecting something non-essential like a radio check.

I waited a few seconds, and then heard the voice again, sounding breathy and pained. "Lack of life signs."

I was astounded, and certain that I should never have left the switchboard. They would see that I wasn't there, and whatever happened might be blamed on me. I pressed the button again, feeling chill. "For who? A student, or what?"

"No." A long pause. "Anaya." Anaya is another security guard who, in the dream, was this guard's partner.

"My God, do you need me to call an ambulance?"

"No . . . I'll take care of it . . . Arnand . . . Arnand, noooooooooooooooooo!"

I ran to my car and sped to campus. When I arrived, I saw a huge crowd gathering, hushed and unsure how to act. I overheard a few groups saying things like "did you know him?" "are we supposed to be standing, or is this okay?" and "I guess classes are ccancelled." Meanwhile, I was dodging through the seated groups trying to get back into the building before anyone realized that I hadn't been there. I had forgetten the radio, the sleeping bag and the pillow at home; I thought I would have to call Jeff and ask him to bring them to me. I heard the voice of Chris Nelson, the college president in Annapolis, saying "As you know, we're here for a solemn event."

Then I woke up on the floor at Switchboard.

Geschichte des Altertums is so long that it has an introductory volume of 250 pages, entitled "Introduction. Elements of Anthropology." For the most part, I've read only this volume, and dipped occasionally into the first book proper, which relates the history and culture of ancient Egypt and Babylon. Meyer wrote at the end of the 19th century, at which point it seemed that Anthropology had barely gone beyond comparing ancient summary works, like Herodotus and Strabo, with each other and with what was found in the same areas in the modern age.

Meyer sure hates shamans. He abruptly concludes his chapter on the primitive belief in magic by saying that traditional conceptions, on which the shamans' power is based, hold back and suppress everything from the formation of self-reflection to the development of medical science, and in general the achievements which raise the human condition from barbarism to culture.

I'm at switchboard now, haltingly reading German, then switching to Manuscript Found in Saragossa, then drinking some coffee and playing some Alchemy. I've brought my stuffed owl, Zaditor, to keep me company. For the most part I've been listening to Schubert and Chopin. I've been unable to sleep while at work. Anneis probably right to think that I complain about this job too much. If I manage to use my time well, this job will be a blessing.

I only work at the library for two more hours. I start at the switchboard tonight at midnight, and stay until 8 a.m. I don't know what to do with the two hours here. I just finished work on my last project, and wrote an explanation of it for whoever takes it up. I could look at the shelf for books to weed from the collection, or read College & Research Libraries News.

I don't want to leave.

I've been reading one of the first universal histories through interlibrary loan, Geschicte des Altertums by Eduard Meyer. It's in German, so I've been stumbling through it; and with all five volumes, it's several thousand pages, so maybe even the hundred I've scanned aren't representative; but so far, it seems like nothing more than a gigantic review of all the historical writings before him. It's like an endless special edition of the Times Literary Supplement discussing only history books, perhaps designed to teach scholars how to waste their time. But who knows, maybe he throws in a little synthesis every hundred pages.

New beds comin' in soon. Ayup. Heard about it from that nice man down the mattress store. Why, he even gave me a free sheep. Don't know what I'll do with that'un. Maybe make a sweater. What I hear, though, I hear thurze a queen-sized bed a-comin' round the house next week. Even got a working shower now, not just a bathtub anymore, nope. Working wireless internet connection too. It's like a real residence now. Don't know how we'll pay for it though. Might have to take two jobs; switchboard looks like a real stinker, so it may be that I keep the library job 'swell. Ayup. Lot of hours, that.

I've just checked out about 10 albums of music by Chopin, after browsing the introduction to a collection of Chopin waltzes in score. Here I go again.