'Imprimere'

'She said "I'll throw myself away, they're just photos after all"
I can't make you hang around. I can't wash you off my skin.
Outside the frame, is what we're leaving out
You won't remember anyway,
I can go with the flow
Don't say it doesn't matter (with the flow) matter anymore
I can go with the flow (I can go)
Do you believe it in your head?..'

~ 'Go with the Flow' by Queens Of The Stone Age ~

I sat there, in a place deemed 'the slum of a third world country' by some newspaper article in which the details were spared from my memory - looking out into the asphalt lot where the battered remnants of secondhand vehicles were selfishly parked in the most obscene of manners. The light reflected from the surface of one cars shone so bright - an imprint of it was left in the line of my sight; and for a while of staring elsewhere - the shine followed over, like a mischievous being, hindering the distinctness of all which I saw.

I sat there, thinking about my manager, the one who interviewed me and who worked there for more than four years. She came back to office on Friday (after about a month of absence) to clear up her things and settle whatever loose ends there were (those that could be: she did, in the span of that afternoon; those that couldn't: well, that's our crap now, ain't it?). She left without a word to us, the department where she first handled matters as a manager.

"Always treat the workplace as your home. Be comfortable here, and you can never do wrong. Explore your environment: Learn. Always be willing to do more, 'cause you get more out of there too. Work together, never be selfish. Make clever mistakes (*shrugs*)."

I seem to have a bad run with managers; to me they always seem to be (well, slightly) ruthless opportunists - pardon me if I'm overstating the obvious (of which I should apologize always), if that's the way things really are (if they aren't - well, then that's just me, being on a roll). They try to squeeze all the work you can dish out (for a more affordable price; with less headcount, etc etc) - after all, they are expected to enable efficiency, if not to promote or make it an even greater trait of the work groups / teams.

I do not know if I am ending up like the documents which I handle every day (well maybe, I do). I do not know if the things which I go through would be a case of momentary light-blindness / imprint; carried along for the while - and then, when unknown factors decide to concur: cease to be an obstruction; lose itself in a reluctant dissipation. In this fashion, I am like the documents which I handle (they are marked; sealed with certain stamps - tainted with ink and writing - before they can be allowed to progress):-

I am marked. I am scarred. But then I grow.

Within ten minutes, I was out of that place. I caught my bus home and headshot myself with a good injection of decibels, which could keep anyone else awake for the entire trip. Since my eyes felt too raw for reading, I did nothing but immerse myself in the songs - eyes closed. And then, I drifted away.

( _")