Entering a Cucoon-Like State

The hallways are always long, do you realize that? With the same tiles in the same pattern. They are always extremely long when you're nervous, though not so long when you're not--just long. Never short though. The room that holds the rest of your life is always the last room on your right.

"Why do you think I should give you this job?" the recruiter asked with a smile. He liked me, I could tell. He was a rather jovial person, this Tim, I had decided. Genuine charm, which is something more felt than learned. Sparked interest in people was his bread and butter, that was for certain.

Yet despite all this he has asked the inevitable question that always comes, like the last room on the right, at the end of job interview. This question is the gateway to the long hallway with your future being held captive in the last room on the right. The last pit of fire before reaching King Kupa, if you will.

Why do you think I want this job? I wanted to ask. A job is a job.

But instead I had smiled and shrugged. He waited, wanting to hear why it was I wanted this job. He knew what I thought. Some people actually say the first thing that comes to mind. But I thought about it. Was there more than just the want of an income and a way to spend my days that had brought me into Arlington's recruitment office?

Then I realized that wasn't the question. Why should he give me the job?

"Because I work" I said out loud, both to him and myself. His smile widened to a grin and he jotted down the answer, the grin tapping into laughter.

"That is the best answer I've ever heard" he admitted, offering his hand. "You're hired."

The beginning was really the fingerprinting though. I shed my life on those papers, documenting every apartment I had lived in, every job I had held in the last ten years. Apparently I move more than most people because I ran out of space and they had to add extra papers onto my background information packet for some contracted agency to go and check. Everything I had done.

"Here," the girl said as she traded me packet of paper for packet of paper. "You understand that having a conflicting job will subject you to possible termination?"

"Yes" I answered, stepping into the realization that I was signing my life into something new. From student, from office worker, from writer, into ramper.

I let everything happen around me as I sat and waited to clear. Every morning I got up, and every night I fell asleep, waiting. Memorizing city codes, and waiting. Doing push ups, and waiting. Watching the world pass me by, and waiting.

I stood in the mirror, watching as my mother trimmed my hair.

"How much should I cut?" she asked.

"Just chop it all off" I sighed.

"No, I wont. Rampers are rough people. It's a man's job. It's hard work that means having muscles, constantly moving. They don't sit around and think. They work. And the only thing feminine about you will be your hair."

I frowned but didn't answer, letting her cut six inches, leaving the other ten or so to hang just past my shoulders.

"I'm not going to be able to recognize you" John protested over the phone.

"It was only a trim" I reminded.

"But you had such long beautiful hair" he lamented.

"It's nothing; my hair is still relatively long" I shrugged.

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" he asked hesitantly. "I mean, it's a good job and all, and the benefits are really good, but do you really want to be a ramper?"

Minor editor's note

So because I think this story is absolutely hilarious, I'm posting it in the words of Miriam. I was thinking, as I write this, that this would make a hilarious comic strip. Maybe that's how I'll earn some extra cash...


One day, me and Missy caught a ride home with the whole McDonald family. Camden, age 7, was filling out an application to the LA Film School. He became quite puzzled when it asked him if he had been charged or convicted of violating any federal or state law, and aloud, asked what it meant. Missy's response: "It's asking if you've ever been to jail. Have you? Say no, or else they won't let you in." Heather (Camden's mom) then said: "Missy knows from personal experience." My input: "She believes in trial and error." End of the story is... Camden continued with his application until he reached the final essay portion. "What do I put in this box?" Jarom (Camden's dad) responds: "You write and tell them why they should pick you." Camden, disappointed, shocked, appalled, and completely blown says: "What?! I was just gonna draw a picture!"

From left: Camden, Easton, Heather, Jarom, and Brighton

A Glance at Home

There is a woman in black over there, where she is every morning. Low lights flash at her feet to signal the arrival of the train, like they do. She carries a newspaper under her arm, bought on her way into the station. It's cold, and her breath colors the air in steady streams, in and out, in and out. It's cold but bright. It'll be a frigid morning, and even though everything is dead in the winter air, it's alive. Sleeping.

Hibernation happens when the body cools down. The higher temperature becomes, the more the particles move around. But when they stop, there is no heat. There is no energy given off. And things sleep.

Hibernating, that's what this is. Potential energy seeps out of everything, because even though you can't see it, you can feel it, the slow, relaxed breathing induced by sleep.

"This is the Red Line to Glenmont station; train boarding on your right" says the faceless man to the woman in black. She doesn't hear him; she simply steps through the open door, as if she were walking from room to room.

The comatose lifts, as if woken by the whistle of the slow breathing against the moving train. She opens her paper, eyes lighting from subject to subject. Men, women, police men, children, dead or alive in black print. They dance and talk ethics, they dance and talk politics, they dance and talk religion, to the sound of rumbling train wheels, bump bump bump, whiiiiiiiir.

"Now approaching Metro Center, this is a transfer stop for the Orange and Blue Lines. Doors open on your right, thank you for riding Metro Rail, have a nice day." The nameless man says, his voice crackling in the old speakers.

The woman stands, shaken into alertness, her eyes seeing nothing but light in the dark tunnels, deep underground.

"Excuse me" she says as she bumps into a man, who is hurrying the other way, feeding the crowd flowing in and out, like blood in vessels to the brain. He flashes a smile to say no harm is done and hurries, already gone in presence and thought.

She walks, they walk, we walk into buildings, down the streets, laughing, waiting, crying, alive, alive in the sleeping city, alive for the paradox of cities and nature.

Tomorrow she will stand in the cold, not seeing her breath, newspaper tucked in her armpit, maybe with a cup of coffee. "This is the Red Line to Glenmont Station. Doors opening on the right."