Jungle Boogie

At big bank we have a process by which we consolidate loan documents of purchased bank, digitally. It's a twenty step process, repeated 13 to 34 times each loan, approximately, requiring very little conscious effort. If one is sleep deprived or hung-over, it can be very soporific, causing one to nod off and forget one's place, often. It can also feel chilly in big bank, the longer one sits. I surmise, because the process is rote, dancing might facilitate it.

So Thursday, in the afternoon, I plugged into the Ipod, spun the Wacky Jacket Jenkins and Green Man playlists, which have been present for me lately, present as I have been for Autumn this year, in a way I haven't been the last two autumns managing a Halloween store. The women in my nook made me blush ( I am surrounded by seven women, young and older.) When they asked me what I was dancing to, I said absently, focused on the computer, consolidating loans and dancing: "Jungle Love." When they asked who sang it I couldn't remember. LOL. I kept dancing in my chair, throughout the afternoon.

By the end of the day, I had maintained my digital pace, while breaking something of a sweat. I was very happy. And some of my coworkers were looking at me in a new way. LOL.

The bus to and fro my home is an electric, the engine in back. The back seats are elevated, the seats as a cup or chalice, backs to the windows facing in. The back row is a bench.

Seated on either side of the otherwise empty bench, were the two most beautiful women I have seen at big bank.

One is of East African origin. When I asked her one morning, off the bus, what she had been reading (a small, tattered 3x4in, thin papered book falling out of the spine, in a Middle Eastern language, heavily underlined, which she reads every morning), she replied, "the Bible." I said, "it looks like a book that has been read alot," and she laughed. Speaking lyrically, she asked me what I had been reading. I said, "The Return of the Goddess." What's that about? she asked. I told her, five thousand years ago, many cultures believed in the Goddess, but the culture of the one male God, OMOG, overcame, devastating and destroying it. "Are you a Christian?" she asked.

I told her I was raised evangelical Christian, but now I say I am in service to the Goddess. She looked confused, so I said, smiling, "everybody and their mother believes in God, I'm just trying to balance things out." She laughed, but she did not tell me her name when I introduced myself. Looking at her looking up at me from the hood of her coat, was like looking into the face of a true princess, as any I have ever encountered. More like an avatar of the Goddess, I think.

I stayed off the platform.

Today, Friday, much that could go wrong with every process did, and I accomplished little, but gorging on organic instant coffee, high fructose corn syrup and aspartame. Except to realize, probably half the loans I have processed in this most recent process, and probably at least half the loans of the 50 people (approximately) working on this process the last week, will have to be reassessed. Because, inexplicably, purchased bank tech engineers obscured the process of opening half of their documents, in a perfectly inane, obscure and arbitrary way. And I was too focused on momentum and increased speed, to notice that 1-8 documents of every loan were opening up as the opening page only. Missing documents, incomplete transfer, do over. Newby contractor.

I was pretty wrecked about it, as I have always wondered about a circle of hell for engineers, and having myself cost big bank 2-3 days of my labor, (about $172-256, after taxes), and wondering about future employment. Exaggerating a little bit, on the way home, on a Friday, on the bus, off the bus. When I reached my bike, I'm pretty sure, the dusqe hue jungle woman from the other side of the back of the bus, was watching me with a stance of exaggerated concern, from a hundred meters away, at the train stop.  

This week too, RE, head admin over at the Doomstead Diner, proclaimed me admin. A greater honor, personally, than DREAM JOB. As I think the Diner is the go-to place for the comprehension of ideas that are of immediate importance, across the spectrum. The leading edge of consciousness, as it were. LOL. RE mentioned a greater honor too, of which I am in awe.

Any way, I bought a pinkish leather coat like the color of the swamp milkweeds that grow throughout my garden, at The Pink Closet consignment shop, for $6.75, after I got off the bus. Very bad ass. LOL.