Hiatus & House of G

The Mischief and Mayhem of the Moneyless authors are going on hiatus. However, GB will continue to blog on her own at House of G, or http://gb-houseofg.blogspot.com/. Please follow her over to her new house for new musings on music, and not on music.

May the force be with you.

My Diversified Portfolio Ain't Made Of Cash

Sometimes there are times when we bear witness to moments of such acute beauty, and feel such a subsequent rapture (maybe it's quiet, maybe it's in technicolor) -- if only for a few potent seconds. These are unplanned moments that send us heaven-bound, briefly breaking the gravitational pull that keeps us vertical, feet firmly planted on Earth. When a rapturous moment really gets my attention it's like an imprisonment to just seal it up for myself. I want to share . . .

. . . The way it felt to float in water, just off a Greek beach, shocked by how it felt to be in a body with no tension; the nightly thunder+lightning storms in Puerto Vallarta, more thrilling than a prohibited motorcycle ride -- more intoxicating than a glass and another glass of inky red Malbec.

Lately, I've had a string of these rapturous moments. I'm still not sure what to call these episodes. Some last a few seconds, and some stretch on a bit longer. Are they teeny-tiny epiphanies? Little bursts of illumination? Are they the result of a brain chemistry lapsing from a lack of electrolytes, or an armada of neurons firing without cause?

On the surface, on paper, I might appear to be a down-on-her-luck victim of a world gone stupid broke -- a world that highly educated MBA graduates can no longer count on conquering with a mere flick of a resume, and a breezy, self-assured interview performance. But, I don’t feel like a pauper. Not in my mind and not in my heart.

The truth is that these days my distractions are few. I am free to fall down a well of introspection at will -- without the pounding of a 9 to 5 job, and the creeping fatigue of a workweek. The result: I’ve experienced a calm that had eluded me for some time. I’ve let it take me by the hand. It has shown me that the world around me is constantly offering up little lustrous pearls, little time-shaped anomalies, in cracked open shells – to anyone interested in looking.

These moments, these pearls, are what make up my diversified portfolio.

. . . The 24-second guitar riff that stops me cold, and then heats up the tops of my ears . . . and the auditory luster of it is so strong I don’t know if I should move, or cease breathing for stillness’ sake just to capture it and house part of it inside of me.

. . . The way little kids, unmarked by artifice, can speak remarkably candid truths, revealing their perspectives: unwarped, all love, all hope-filled.

How about this: On a walk, in my hometown, cars passing by, people walking their dogs, teens in Emo gear walking home from school, all on an ordinary afternoon, on what's been an ordinary day, when a mere glance westward reveals a motley blanket of clouds, and a fiercely orange orb languidly dispersing its diminishing rays through the gathered condensation. It casts an array of celestial pinks wide, wide across the sky. How does that not speak to you if you really stop to look at it? How does that not lift you outside of yourself – no pharmacology required?

This is when one finds the rules of physics grow momentarily cold, and Earth's grasp on you is momentarily less than it was . . .

. . . And every time I have a transfixion, even in my beat down Converse, and tangled hair, I am humbled. A resonant gratitude swells large in my heart . . . and it beams out to my fingertips, alighting the corners that surround me.

Open Letter To My Future Job

Are you there Job? It's Me, Gabi.

I looked for you today.

I tried to find you on LinkedIn, and I thought I might have found you at Google, but I think it was a false alarm. I thought I was close to finding you on the UNICEF website, but if you were there you didn't make it very easy for me to find you. Then, I really thought I found you at d.light, but you can't be there because even though the job description fit me like a tight sweater making the most of what I have to offer, I don't speak Mandarin. Like, not even close. But you know, I would really go to Shenzhen, even though I don't like Chinese food. My friend Matt works in Shenzhen, and hates Chinese food, too. But, the fact that the local WalMart there carries "fine" red wines at reasonable prices more than makes up for his dislike of the local cuisine. I digress.

Just wanted to remind you that I am still looking for you.

For reasons I have yet to discover, I haven't found you yet. We have been like star-crossed lovers (I'm Juliet). Perhaps, if I meditated daily I would find some answers. Perhaps, if I dabbled elbow-deep in the black arts I would find some answers (but, to be clear, the idea of participating in a ritual involving the bloodletting of an animal, especially a cute one, is not something I can get behind).

If you could be so kind, please provide me a few clues as to your whereabouts. I don't know your name, company, or industry, but I know you are out there. And, I'm sure you are looking for me, too. Maybe you haven't broken up with your current employee? Maybe you don't exist yet due to delayed budget negotiations?

Well, I'm here. I'm writing you at the local Starbucks. I just saw a chick wearing a dark blazer, white shorts, and four-inch stilettos. It's about 47 degrees outside. WTF? As a sidenote, dear Job, I will dress appropriately for you. I will iron my shirts, and dry clean all wool items dutifully. And, wear pants. Regularly.

OK, well, have a great week, and if possible, could you appear to me in a dream tonight so I might receive some cryptic clues about how to narrow my search for you? All the best!

Affectionately,
Gabi

Why, hello 2009!

It has been awhile since I’ve written for this blog. I’ve been too busy with Facebook [insert cutesy emoticon]. Not much has changed since the last posting. However, due to a few minor updates, I feel compelled to enlighten my readership (all five of you) of the latest haps. Let’s proceed.

• If you subscribe to Vedic astrology then you can appreciate that Jupiter – a benefic planet of good luck and fortune – is now on my side. Suck it, Saturn.

• I chucked my 11 a.m. wake up time for 8:30 a.m. I figure if I am to be receptive to golden job opportunities – even in the grim climate that is our economy on this February 5, 2009 – I need to be awake for more hours to maximize the time in which I can breathe my receptivity in and out. Thoughts are things and vibes travel. My vibes can travel further if I am *awake* longer to generate energy for them. I realize this sounds batshit crazy. But, if this works, I will only confirm that I’m not crazy, and I’ll have a job that doesn’t involve sweatshop editing (see below) or constantly granting permission to kids who want to sharpen their pencils (see below). [What is it with kids and sharpening their pencils?]

• I am now a part-time editor. Let’s not discuss the specifics, as they are not exciting and I almost quit today. I will offer up that it is tedious work. My friend Stephen, upon hearing the description of what I do, remarked: “Gabi, it’s a sweatshop!”. My description of what I do – in my head – includes some F-bombs, but “sweatshop”, in a word, is really the proper term. Anyhow, so I work for an editing sweatshop that employs MBAs and other highly educated people looking to make a few bones in this shitatious economy and [willing to take it up the ass] willing to put up with – and I’m going to use the most erudite word possible here – “sketchy” expectations, and a "sketchy" pay rate. At least I can work from home and mutter without stares.

I’m a meticulous editor; there are parts of the sweatshop experience I like. (Maybe this is like finding out that Pepsi ONE is available in the soda machine in the cockroach-infested employee kitchen.) The major drawback: I am slow. The company expects its editors to turn around error-free transcripts in three hours or less. It once took me almost nine hours to edit a shitatious raw transcript, in which the main speaker was a CEO from Taiwan. Her ability to speak English well on a scale of one to ten was a resounding three (and I’m being generous).

An editor who is capable of turning around an error-free product in three hours or less is one of three things:

a) A superhero worthy of a celebrated graphic novel.
b) A talented, quick-as-lightening master of editing who is a fucking dumbass for allowing such skillz to be exploited by a low-paying, spirit-sucking, sweatshop-promoting transcript company.

OR,
c) The very definition of a masochist – with a fetish for editing quarterly earnings call transcripts.

Moving on…

• I became a substitute teacher. I prefer only to speak on this subject when I’m either holding a drink, or drunk. That is not the case at this time, but I will say that there is no way that teachers get paid what they deserve.

I bow down to Kindergarten teachers. I’m not wired to deal with people that little. I find them challenging, but cute. Sometimes. I wonder if this is similar to training baby elephants for a circus show?

I have found that Kindergarten and 7th grade are equally challenging. 7th graders are a pain in the ass. BUT, they are at a point in their formation as human beings where they haven’t totally left childhood in the dust, and they also haven’t yet taken on a wearying cynicism that high school sometimes engenders in full-blown teenagers. It is a fact that 7th graders are slaves to the nuclear explosion of hormones in their bodies. They can’t help it. They are frighteningly awkward, but can also be very, very funny (some have been very curious about me, and have asked if I have kids; I kept a poker face, but on the inside laughed uproariously). It is also weird to be on a campus with both kids who look like they just passed 4th grade, and almost full-grown-looking dudes who *must be* shaving every day.

The times I’ve subbed for junior high I’ve had flashbacks to the war zone of my own hell-on-Earth adolescence. I am guessing this is much like how war vets fall prey to their damaged psyches and involuntarily flashback to those blood-letting battalion days (for me the catty fights at recess), the smell of napalm (for me the smell of Aqua Net), the images of mangled body parts (for me the confusion and betrayal of a body I didn’t want to be in, and which seemed to operate without my consent), and the brutality of an innocence lost and scared shitless (for me the emerging consciousness of the end of childhood…and the tantalizing and appalling beginning of adulthood).

Where was I? Right. I’m a certified substitute teacher. Not my idea of a good time, but in a bad economy it's a gig that is easy to get and pays decently for the psychological torture involved. This is my update.

Coming soon…an open letter to Kanye West, my top 10 on Rod [Crazy] Blagojevich, and a personalized analysis of the Madonna/Whore paradigm.