A collection of my wintery thoughts in search for employment

These were all written sometime between mid-January and earlyMarch whilst I was in search of a job:

"I've found myself recently searching the snowy streets of Boston for places where one is allowed to sit and read or sit and write or sit and rest without purchasing anything and I think I've gotten pretty good at locating such places to keep myself warm whilst killing time before an interview as I rely solely on the train times to get into the city when necessary. I'm currently in the center of Quincy Market at one of the low wooden tables with small wooden stools on the North Side of the market surrounded by the interesting crowd filling the overly touristy market at 11am on a cold friday in late January. A few small families, not small in stature, but small in number. Mother, father, son. A single eccentric looking older woman whose cerulean blue scarf matches the sweater she is wearing under her black coat with only the end of the left sleeve exposed. She has a black winter hat with two gold pins on the front brim. One I can't quite make out, but if I let my imagination run free, it looks like ET slinking around on his back legs. The other is simply of a left hand. The woman is wearing big framed glasses that fall just to where her cheek lines begin. Her coral colored lipstick has been ever so slightly smeared with the spoonfuls of chowder she's shoveling into her mouth from paper cup via plastic spoon. There is a group of Hispanic teenage boys sharing plates of fish and chips, chattering away far too quickly for me to ever follow with my less than basic understanding of the Spanish language. I still have an hour to kill before my interview and unless another interesting character comes along, I'll just be entertaining myself with Ken Kesey and his Demon Box of delights."

"I hate myself anytime I find myself sitting in a Starbucks somewhere but significantly more when I'm dressed for an interview in a suit and heels somewhere downtown, with my pretentious Grande something or other, which in reality is really only black tea but veiled behind it's 60% post-consumer fiber cardboard sleeve and it's green and white 10% post-consumer fiber cup, onlookers could mistake it for a Grande Skinny Soy Vanilla Latte with an extra shot, no foam. My only hope is that my copy of Demon Box sitting next to my notebook deters people from thinking I'm as pretentious as I feel I'm faking to be.

It's dark in this part of town, seemingly all the time. It's the sort of place the sun can't find and nobody seems to notice. Too many too tall buildings with too many too important business people too busy to care about the noteable vitamin D deficiency downtown.

Fifteen more minutes until I'm thirty minutes early."

"The charcoal grey clouds are stampeding through the dolphin grey sky at an alarming rate. The flags, struggling against their teather to the pole, the bare branches on the February elm trees, writhing eastward all makes me feel like I should be heading that way faster than I am. Stagnant at the train station patiently awaiting the arrival of the 5:38 local into Boston, more patiently than a handful of people standing almost on the tracks themselves with the asinine thought that perhaps if they stare hard enough the train will come. It's late. There is nothing you can do to make it arrive faster. Train approaching, please remain behind yellow line. The words echo in my ears. There is something about simple instructions that make adolescent boys, waiting in their Kevin Garnett jersey's to go to the Celtics game with their oblivious, cigar smoking fathers, completely ignore the warning of an approaching locomotive. One boy heads towards the track to see the train approaching. It's coming much faster than the local train. Another Acela barreling through the Mansfield station. He doesn't realize as he leans his head out over the track. His father laughs and slaps his buddy on the shoulder paying no attention to his child about to be torn to pieces. "Look out!" I start yelling but nobody hears me over the screaming of the train horn. The boy, finally noting that the 150 mph train was about to tear his tiny pinhead off his green jerseyed body, dives away from the track as the cars of the train are so fast passing that they're out of sight by the time he makes it back to his feet. "Whoa!" He says to his friends. He looks up, dad didn't notice. I'm crying."

"Yet another homeless, jobless wandering sort of day for me. I had an interview at 9am at Fanieul Hall for an Assistant General Manager position at Zuma Tex Mex, which looks to be a sub-par tourist haven with stale chips and watery, overly salted margaritas. We'll see. I got an interview for a position at The Red House in Harvard Square and I had time to kill before I could head over there as I was given a 2-4pm window so I thought the best way to spend the few hours I had to kill was to fin a table in the rotunda of Quincy Market, on the south side, near the wall. I drifted between sleep and Salinger while the sun slowly rose through the high window, warming my face and back with it's weather blocked rays. With those panes of glass between me and the outside world, I nearly forgot about the frigid temperature and the reminder that the spring winds have yet to begin blowing despite the turning of calendar pages.

While I know I'm currently destitute and beyond any point of peculiarity, I'm not sure that Cafeteria Boston is the place for me to work. Once you get past the typically upity, judgemental, obonxious air of superiority carried by most survice purveyors on Newbury St., you sitll end up in some low-ceilinged basement restaurant that despite it's self-proclaimed "American Bistro with Mediterranean Influence"-dness, it smells oddly like curry and I couldn't decipher if it was the Indian restaurant a block a way, or just perhaps the staff themselves. Off to the Red House which I know lacks both the obnoxious pretention and the smell of Tandori Chicken. Also, a homeless man said he'd call me later.

I stood in the Park St. station, subterranean, awaiting the always efficient red line to carry me and everyone (minus the bald man strumming his guitar and singing Oasis slower and sadder than I ever imagined possible into his microphone, booming out from his lone, battered amplifier) to their cross river destinations. The tracks, I happened to notice - as I don't often look at them - resembled city blocks in a well planned midwestern city, evenly spaced and perfectly straight. Amid one of the "blocks" was a dead rat, stiff back legs fully extended, front legs seemingly absent without further inspection. A block and a half up the tracks was a whole bagel. One can only wonder which came first, the rat or the bagel.

I waited for the train to arrive, expecting but knowing the impossible odds, that upon impact between train and rat there would be a bloody explosion covering our panhandling crooner in rat innards. Relief? Disappointment? Neither really as I held my breath as the train passed with no incident. We all piled on and after two soft dings of the bell, the music abruptly and mid-lyric disappeared."