Glucose Intolerant ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Latin Chrous Quarter It's been a while. While I haven't been under the umbrella of Chorus for years, I again found myself working tangentially, nursing from milk spilled by another freelancer who had dropped off a project without warning and had not been heard from in weeks. I opted, however, to avoid the office and work around the corner -- a latin town square setting. A central tree, circled with benches, pedestrian paths, roads, and a all encompassed with retail shops and cafes. I would work during lunch hours only I assured myself, to further segregate myself from the idea of having the semblance of a job. Across the way I saw Marshall Jr. also working "offsite" and who was obviously emulating my work sensibilities. He acknowledged as much, looking up from his laptop with a half-smile and nod. And then I noticed more Chorus staff congregating in the square, all from sales, and all working outside of accepted protocol. Some worked independently with desperate expressions -- a quota review was set for the following day, there would be cuts. Another group of three, senior staff, huddled tightly together around a small round french cafe table, plotting plans to secede. I had lost focus on my own work, just glancing around looking to see who else I knew in the square as the numbers and density of staff grew around me. From an adjoining road a slender man, with thinning long blond hair walked up the sidewalk. He brushed past and I recognized the profile of his nose. "Tom Petty" i said aloud to get his attention. "I'm not a fan, really, but I also never turn you off when you come on." He stopped, turned, and returned. He began to speak, as if continuing with a train of thought, "You know, sometimes I ... you really need to ... know what I mean?" I simply could not focus on the more important bits of his address to me. But I thanked him for taking the moment to pause with me. And then, as if a bell had rung that I was deaf to, the Chorus pack, and everyone else in the square, began to rush eastward, talking shelter in the doorway of a Starbucks. I looked west -- thick, low hanging, and impossibly dense storm clouds were clawing towards us. A salad of storms -- tornadoes whisking hurricanes. Man made debris foaming to the top, intensifying the black denseness of the mass moving towards us. The glass windows of the Starbucks doorway seemed like a bad bet; surely they would shatter and splinter into blades. Instead, I briskly walked toward another storefront; An abandoned retail space, with a narrow stairwell leading to a windowless room. This was a better bet, and without peripheral distractions, I returned to my work. The rhythm of work was well paced, and i typed with a smooth and steady cadence. The temperature in the room was quite pleasant for a concrete block-walled basement. Maybe it was double walled with a vapour barrier set between. Though, without the ability to monitor the events outside, my curiosity guided me to the surface -- outside the storm had consumed the square, and far beyond, in blackness, save for the view of debris whirling about. Focusing more on on the elements closer to me, I would see it was not a storm of black gusts that carried the debris, but hazy worm-like accumulations of black mist. They had eyes and spears, invisible, but that were noticeable in how they parted the blackness. Walking out and into the square of dark cyclones, I found they did not have the force or density to move me, instead they merely parted around and between my limbs. 10:58 a.m. - Wednesday, Dec. 02, 2015 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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