Stream of Consciousness (whilst at work on a hot monday afternoon with toss all to do)

Robert Mitchum as a Japansese sits before me, explaining to a student's parents what a little turd their son is, in the politest way he can. The grey is starting to touch the sides of his temples, but he still carries respect and fear with his elongated shoe horn. The sister, I presume, is a walking fashion bomb of the negative-connotations kind. Her feathery grandmother whore hair is twirly on her head, and she has just enough make up to make herself truly grotesque. Tonight she will clickclack down the train station steps and hold her branded bag at arms length, ushering in a far off old age of arthritis and sake...

Trainees are around me, assertive and suited, desperate to please, rising at every word in case there are bows to be bun... the paper before me threatens to fly with every sniff of a breeze, but it won't. Clock-watching, I feel the clamminess of my shirt, the damp trousers and curse the fore-summer. A baseball practice is in full force outside, and players holler and bellow for the coach, each thinking of the next haircut.

My hands.. are they tanned? Certainly more fawn than when I left England in the first tenter-sips of 2004. The mouse and keyboard were designed for another. The keys are awkward, the space bar too small, the language keys too big and easily pressed. The coffee is making my body purr like a car that is almost out of petrol. I am tense, and need to move, to stroke hair, to run fingers slowly through running water.

We are a world of rectangles. Unnatural shapes, man made and not of our nature. We are unable to escape, and were we to, it would be in a craft dependant on rectangles. I must count those around me now... there are at least 100 on my desk, and that is somehow sad...

Are you a leader or a follower? A futurer or a pastist? The latter for me, and the added stone of being an observer, not an actioner... will this be something to look back on and rue, when the grey hair and wrinkles come? Or will there be warmth and fond memories of this time, as i now look back but 5 years and ache with poignance with what has been and what is not...