Sticks and Bones

The first part of a chronicle of a crush-turned-obsession. I'm sorry, Julie.


To experience this in natural reading order go to A Bright, Ironic Hell: The Straight Read .


Also, try Satellite Dance and Crystal Delusions--Parts 2 and 3, respectively--complete.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

House of the Rising Gorge (2/26/09 Thursday)

Book Monkey will not make it to the blog roll. Tammy approached me as I was discarding an unrepairable paperback. "You and I need to talk with Ahmed in his office," she said. I looked at her. "Is this about the blog?" She said, "Yes." "Jeez-us Christ!" I exclaimed. "Don't kill the messenger, " she said. I tore off the back cover of the book, tossed it in the wastebasket, took a deep, huffing breath, and with undue deliberation did the same to the front cover and title page. Finally, I stood and followed Tammy to Ahmed's office, throwing the book with angry force into the discard box under the sink.

Anger still clouds my memory, so blow-by-blow account this will not be. To start with, let me just say that that paranoia that was beginning to tighten it's grip with each day my blog didn't appear on the roll was entirely justified. Ahmed told me my blog was "too personal." My iteration that it was fiction did not fly with him. "You have to admit," he said, "that it is a lot like what happened here not long ago." Oh, you mean that thing that was none of your business in the first place? How personal would this be if your nose had been kept clean of it? I looked at him. He said, "You know what I'm talking about, don't you?" Seeing his discomfort at having to bring it up, I let him squirm a moment more. "Yes," I said. He went on to explain how, in light of the way some people have used this exercise to forward non-library agendas, the 2.0 committee has had to narrow its previously stated focus and re-evaluate the blogs. "There are many less relevant blogs than mine," I told Ahmed. He said, "And they are being talked to by their supervisors." Too many times, he said, "Don't take this personally," and I was pissed that I couldn't, really. He also said too often that there was "absolutely nothing offensive" about my blog--it was simply "too personal."

I left his office impatient to get to my break, of which this meeting had stolen ten minutes. I snatched up my food and water and marched into the woods at the back of the parking lot with hard, long strides, staring at the pavement. I didn't eat my lunch but pounded the path through a loop and came back with the same gait. I tossed my lunch aside, gathered my writing and made for Planet Teen's computers. I promptly published each of the posts queued up for Book Monkey Says, then went back to the empty breakroom and choked down my sandwich.

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