Stereotypes, archetypes

I came through this poem of mine from a few years ago, and though it brought back some memories of why I felt like writing it, the details are not so clear anymore. Nevertheless it stood the test of time, and means just as much to me. Even though back then I wasn't working in call centers or service desks, but obviously felt the same way about my job. The only thing that's changed is that in those days I talked of myself as useless, but also did that with some irony. Now it's more than apparent to me that it's these kind of jobs which unfortunately seem to be the only ones available for some while, that make people feel totally brain-washed and so useless, not deserving any creativity, instead making them abandon even what they have. Well, hopefully we don't feel that way of our lives, as that's something else, even if we have to spend so much time of what we have at work.

The other reason why I found this poem interesting was that at this place I work now, where some people have just brought their friends as colleagues, I found them looking, but more than that, behaving in this or that way very similarly to some of the folks I made friends with at an earlier point of my life. Of course, that in itself doesn't make them be really like my own friends, however it made it easier for me to socialize with them, feeling - and that was the tricky part - that I knew them to some extension. Later on this sort of illusion also made me feel like stepping back when I learned their other faces.
Anyhow, this is the poem.


Stereotypes, archetypes

(do we have to close the circle yet tighter, when we aren't given much choice at all)

i'm nonfunctioning highly
not up to the standards of this society
i'm not an intellectual
don't know much of your morals

i won't be the one you expect me to be
don't play television quizes
don't look like your commercial models
 
i am a simple human being

and if you ask me how i'm doing not
i'll answer how i am doing
coz i'm sick of being sick
only wanna be myself

and yet i can be with you
can be someone else, too
and you can be me, if you want to
 
i don't regret, i don't refuse

i'm not really from this world
rather speak with my words
stay in the books i read
when i was a child, so sad

in the horror stories of ghosts
where i learned to face my fears
there i went to meet my hosts
was not ashamed of my tears

and if my friends meet my other friends first
and they say it felt like they met before
i don't think of reasons, don't feel that thirst
as i gave up on searching, not anymore

now i'm sinking back into myself
all the powerful twirlpools have left
and i'm regaining something again
that's obviously part of the game

The sound of silence

I was told several times since I started to take calls in my new job, a telephony service desk, that I should speak up. Funnily not by the customers they understood perfectly what I told them. It was a colleague who rejected to help me with the learning, but fortunately there were many others who did help, and still don't feel it is a burden for them. This colleague however is always eager to find something wrong in what I'm doing, and emphasize it. I had to write this down for myself more than anyone else. Most of all because I like his kind of humor and first I mistaken it for a sign of an easy-to-get-on-with personality. In truth it's a whimsical one, but this is not the story.
I was about to tell what I found interesting with speaking up and listening. It's like relationships, those involved always depend on each other, and everything goes both ways or nothing goes, and there's no relationship. So no matter how loud I talk if the one I'm talking to wouldn't listen, and instead is focusing on what they're telling me. Thus even if I want to help with my answer, with no attention my words won't reach them. On the contrary if they're really interested, then they give it an ear, and by listening can easily understand what's said.
So to catch more attention or any at all we might raise our voices, but even doing so, could only make the other half do the same which then result in an argument about nothing. Both parties might talk about the very same thing, but feeling more important than the other, could think that whatever they say can only be true or make sense, thus don't even think it might easily match their talking partner's opinion.
In the end it all comes to communication again, like many things I write about here, in my blog. Maybe this goes on a different level, somewhat deeper than talking with words, and finds the frame of it, the so called metacommunication. That is to find out whether we really listen when we talk to someone and ask them, or prefer to hear ourselves, and so can only miss the very meaning of a conversation.

There's a bridge in my mouth

It doesn't lead to another side, save another side of me I haven't known myself
It could be the Bridge of Sighs 'cause it caused me some trouble though no-one crossed it
But there's a tooth living underneath it, and it seems like it's got stuck down there
Like a poet who left everything just to find the meaning of the very life he's living

Life's A Gas

Why does it still make me feel uncomfortable to fart while using public transportation? It doesn't have any bad effects on human health like smoking that they had to legally stop even in the stops. Is it then because I don't like to play around with it, instead just let it go, and then it comes out loud. But then they talk so much and also quite loud on the trams, trains, buses and it usually doesn't make more sense than that sound coming from another hole.
Also they push a button recently on the tram I have to take to tell us stories of events from half a century ago which some folks decided a few years ago were revolutionary. I don't agree with them as those back then doing these 'revolutionary' things wanted to kill my Grandfather and his whole family, because he literally believed in communism so he helped everyone in that goddamn little village, even when his eleven kids needed food and clothes just the same. And then those people he helped the best he could turned him on the hands of these 'revolutionary' men. But the 'evil' Sowiet soldiers appeared just in time, so amongst others my Mom didn't have to die because of human greed, lies and so on.
But then again, why on sweet fucking earth do I have to listen to such revolting lies and also pay for taking the public transport. I didn't ask for being treated with lies there, I can listen to them on the news if I please.
Finally the noise made by most of these trains going under- and over ground would cover any noise I can make. Most of all their noise, in best case scenario, would mean we're making progress, and getting to our destination, unlike in some cases as it happened lately when the noise meant fire or other unplanned events along the line. Should they pay me for the chance of such events at all?
Back to why I'm not just taking it easy, and do whatever I feel like doing. Now it might be up to having been brought up in a way that in times passed seemed and worked as the right one, but now it's all useless and make people suffer only. Exactly like when they try to hold it back.

...and tell you of my dreaming

What Brussels really wants from us? Gipsies don't have to sit in the back of the trams, actually even the police here is trained how talk to them not to hurt their minority feelings, whereas they can provoke anyone with their behavior with no consequences at all. At the same time the word Jew is used as an insult more than ever before. And I can't hear Jews saying Gipsy or Goy in the same way ever. But then again it's like self-made machos and strong gals or whoever then can refer to cocksucking faggots as a disgusting group of people. On the other hand you never hear gay folks say 'Oh those pussy-licking squareheads! They've got such big mouths and yet no-one use them even as public toilets... I wonder why' At least I don't hear anyone say such stuff, but I do wish I could finally see some changes in a world where people are so deeply pushed into fears created for them from everything which actually someone else doesn't want them to try and find out for themselves if they like it or not. However everything else that makes money for those who already have a lot of it, like drugs, cigs, booze and all the rest goes for all from a very young age, and nobody can (or maybe want??) to do anything against that... and many other things.
These are some of my daydreams while using public transport, socializing again with people at work, and also some of my nightmares... It's the things I'm much more worried about than some new end of the world prophecies. It would be big time for the beginning of something new finally.

For if we don't find the next little dollar I tell you we must die

For some reason I was selected for the job I traveled to be interviewed for on that morning I mentioned in my last log. It doesn't pay as much as the multinational companies, however people don't seem to act so stressed either. Also they seem to pay more attention to how well the newbies learn their job, for instance help me a lot, and make me feel like I'm an idiot if I'm not able to understand something from official descriptions, and don't refuse answering me. All in all they seem to behave much more like human beings than those back in the big chaotic corporate systems. I believe I can consider myself lucky to get this job now.
Well, there's a certain range of jobs available for me with my background, like for all of us, which reflects quite truly how this country got slowly (or maybe rather fast?) destroyed, and thrown to the global chains. And while people here like everywhere else are still chasing dreams of luxury (affordable each to their own status) instead of considering realistic values and chances, and still jumping to politicians' and puppet governments' slogans, we're getting deeper and more inevitably into a situation that thus becomes the harder to get reversed. That's how democracy caught us unprepared.

This is the trip, and this is the business we take

I color my eyes with evil night thoughts
and bad doubts to which I can't say no
They slowly wash away my common sense
like waves would swallow the grainy sand

All those what if's and the way it could've been
I beg them to leave, but they won't set me free
Please, do me a favor, save me from myself
if it's really me, and not someone else

'And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart...'

My father who is Jewish could only escape from the death camp in the last minute because the Nazi retreated when the Soviet army got closer. My mother's father along with his family was saved from the execution by extreme right wings because on that morning when it was due, the Soviet troops have arrived to his little village. His only sin was taking the idea of communism literally and trying to help everyone when he didn't have enough to give to his own family. Some people thanked him by turning him in for the dictatorship's slaves.

So I never believed in any of that crap stuff about the change of the system, as it only served the better of a few who were already rich as hell, no matter what country they were from, or whatever they called themselves. I believe in honesty, and I can see with bitterness that most people prefer to live their lives lying to themselves and everyone else around them. It might be a consequence of being brought up by folks who behave the same way, I don't know about that, fortunately.

What I don't see why it's always better to torture each other, and cause pain directly or indirectly. Sometimes it gets en gros, and then malevolence knows no limits, and needs no reasons. I wonder what's behind that uncontrolled hatred that makes mankind turn into their very own slaughterer. And it's not only a phenomenon of this past century, but has been there all throughout history.

for my late cat

small head big head grim face ranger

after many years you were a stranger

striking cologne you didn't wear

nor a handful of grease for your hair

you washed it all clean and shiny

and when you ran it was blown by the air

you were a free spirit between the walls

and left behind someone who recalls

the shockusanimohl

I'll die during a job interview with a rather convincing smile on my face, and then for eternity will read refusive emails saying "While we were impressed by your skills and experience we did not feel that your application was best suited to the role currently on offer."

Future Legend?

'like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts'
London

'this is genocide'
Oslo

faraway horizons

standing on the highest mountain top
from where you can see the distant ridges clear
and only staring hypnotized at them
while thinking without a real thought about the thereabouts

on media

those horrible news
they reach you everywhere 
while you're waiting for the muse
they don't teach you, they don't amuse

burning high, burning down

I said 'Look'
you asked 'What'
I saw the fires
you meant the sunset

you stared at the rays
I gazed at the flares
you and I, amazed by the fiery colors
of the very same day