I’m not sure how to engage in conversation with one of my co-workers. I must first say that not once in my 3 years of working there has anyone asked me anything about myself or anything about my non-work life (not a complaint, just an observation)…. so it’s always interesting or amusing or refreshing when someone opens up to me, as he did when he told me that he was going to the ZZ Top concert tonight, and he likes Rush and, I think, Journey, too. And he is speaking in the present tense because apparently they still exist and he is an avid follower, going to concerts whenever possible.

As he tells me these things, I just kind of smile and nod… sort of waiting for him to ask about my music tastes, to engage with me, but that doesn’t seem to happen. I want to tell him about all 10 of the Dylan concerts I’ve attended… or the Mekons in Seattle or the acidic Halloween night of the Grateful Dead at a hockey rink in Massachusetts, or the time I saw Patti Smith at the House of Blues in New Orleans and discovered that I was in spitting distance of the stage because I did not realize she is constantly spitting, or the  moment Cecil Taylor abruptly left the stage when a photographer took a flash photo in the midst of a harrowing solo at the Jazz Showcase. But I’m not sure what he would think of me. And then I wonder why nobody seems to know very much about me. Why must I always wait to be asked?   Anyway, this co-worker went to Paris last month and returned with gifts for us part-timers… a little trinket of the Eiffel Tower that I think is supposed to connect to a key chain. So I know he means well. I’m just not quite sure what to do with it, not being a trinket person.

I don’t really like the direction this blog is going. I’m finding that I am trying to find little significant incidents in my daily life and report on them… since most of the time, I live in the mundane. But it still comes across to me like someone trying to write in a clever way. I’m trying to speak from the heart, but maybe I can only speak with a voice or a leaky pen. It makes me sad that I cannot write this way. Or  that I can’t find the language or the courage to express the real things that are going on. There are so many things I could tell you but something is holding me back. I’ve got to figure this out.

This will not stop me from writing.