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asserting my three dimensions
Friday, September 24 1999
I was at work today feeling kind of directionless in the absence of my colleagues, most of whom are still off in Hawaii. Even the beleaguered Data Analyst is gone; she'd finally got to some sort of comfortable stopping point and caught a plane to Maui, though she ended up being on the speakerphone for hours instructing a new hire on the arcane details of the things that needed to be done in her absence.
At around noon I decided I needed to get out of the office. My destination, for which I set off on foot, was the Friar-Frazee food court. By walking to some nearby place which I've only ever been to by car, I was hoping to pump some much-needed three dimensionality into my life. I was feeling flattened by too much caffeine and the numbing worker bee spirit of the corporate hive. In nearly all respects, this company is working tactically against every goal I hold personally dear: creativity, unconventionality and environmental rationalism, in order to accomplish simplistic strategic goals whose benefits I fear I'll probably be screwed out of. In the grand scheme of things, I'm just another SCSI hard drive. (Lucky for me, we don't replace hard drives until several days after it's too late!)
Just the act of walking a quarter mile felt supremely subversive, a monkey wrench in the gears of corporate superficiality. It stood in stark contrast to errands undertaken by my overlords, who routinely climb into $70,000 convertibles to drive across the street (since doing anything less flashy, even if it's logistically easier, might reflect badly on their professionalism). As I leisurely admired for the first time the unfamiliar native California weeds that grow in the concrete-defined triangles of San Diego cloverleaves, I felt as though I might actually be back on the road, surviving on foot in a world designed for cars.
I didn't even buy anything at the Food Court. Alone and on foot, I was too out of character for such capitalism, even if I was hungry. I was Gus the vagabond, Gus the starving sociopath. The fact that I actually had money on my check card didn't change the frame with which I viewed the spotless white shirts of the businessmen at their power lunches, surrounded by acres of their immaculately shiny cars.
As I walked back to the office building, I thought about how the corporate environment had stunted the personal growth of B______, a girl who has worked in business development at our company since she put down her pom-poms and graduated from high school. All the engineering guys are puddy in her hands, since they consider her conventional irony-free mini-skirted femininity a thing of rare beauty. Evidently (and this is just a further indictment of corporate culture) most of the corporate world is equally vulnerable to her flattened, un-scintillating charm, right down the nasal way she says "Um..." when her mental gears are turning. Consequently, every deal she closes is an immediate gold mine. But she's a one dimensional girl, and that dimension is measured in money. Indeed, no one has ever observed a scintilla of romantic energy between B______ and her boyfriend, the Director of Corporate Development. I'll venture to add that she probably scratches her head at the Simpsons while finding the Family Circus hysterical.
I wondered what condescending things she'd think if she saw me coming down the steep triangle of grass separating Friars from Mission Center Road. It's a patch of ground that was never meant to be crossed on foot, and I was sure she'd be absolutely horrified by the wanton disregard I was showing for corporate appearances. She'd downgrade her last assessment of my sanity and be that much more intimidated the next time she wanted me to add a link to a contest rules page for another one of her annoying (if extremely lucrative) microsites.
I'd made it about halfway across the office complex parkinglot when I saw B______ in her expensive convertible. I was far enough away from the building for my pedestrian status to reflect badly on my capitalist zeal, and I'm sure condescending thoughts were going through her head as she waved hello.
I didn't stay at work past 1:00pm. I figured that since my company had saved hundreds of dollars by not shipping my carcass to Hawaii, I could at least take the afternoon off. Besides, I wanted to be home in time to pick up a package I'd been obsessively tracking on the UPS web site.
But when I got home, I discovered I was a little too late.
In the evening, Kim and I were still smoothing out ruffles from a fight we'd had via telephone earlier in the day. But we kept to schedule, going up to La Jolla to see an exhibit of "book art."
The setting was "the Atheneum" in downtown La Jolla. The Atheneum is an art school and library, and since Kim signed us up on the family plan, we're actually full-blown members with actual wine-sipping rights (in other words, we don't have to pretend like we belong; we actually do!). We were probably the youngest people there, though the other people (many of whom had British accents) were in excellent shape (for the most part). They were thin, 90s stylish, physically fit, and many of them had what looked to be surgically-tightened skin. I jokingly asked Kim what she'd do if one of the ladies asked her who had done her face lift.
We had some Chardonay and bri and walked around, pinkies extended, looking at the show. It wasn't anything remarkable, but some of the names were big.
I was most disappointed to see how little Jackson Pollack had doodled on the cover of a sketchbook being displayed in plastic cube.
Next stop was Sushi on the Rock, of course. The whole art opening adventure was just a ruse to take me out for sushi. But I wasn't complaining. As we waited for a place at the bar, I had Kim doodling on my Psion. It's awfully convenient having the power and functionality of a 1990-vintage Macintosh IIfx stuffed unobtrusively in my pants pocket.
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