The Bob Corrigan
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how i became a proficient speaker of the lao language
from now on: i am only going to learn new languages by mysetf if (and only if) i can get...
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The Manly Tradition of the Pocket Notebook via The Art of Manliness (submitted by mnmal)
The idea of carrying around a pocket notebook has...
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LACO x WUS Baumuster B LE via Biggie_Robs
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Yup, this is pretty much what I imagine Australia is really like.
I think my Australian...
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TINY BABY PUG! Some #morningcuteness for those with the Tuesday blues.
He locked the door, fed wood to the stove, switched the batteries from the TV remote back into the smoke detector and brushed his teeth in the trailer’s closet-sized bathroom. It took him about the same amount of time to layer himself into bed under his collection of blankets.
The darkness inside the trailer was broken by moving bars of headlights shadowing through the paper shades covering the porthole window next to him, the same window that leaked cold air and road noise, mostly cars, but then a truck, a big one, he guessed, based on how hard the trailer rocked in its wake.
Another day. One phone interview and two inquiry letters cost one phone card and two stamps. Three hours on a computer at the library reading message boards and postings. At least that was free. Six emails. Also free. One coffee, not free, but the Mini Moos and sugar packs made up for it. A baloney sandwich from the Lutheran kitchen, free but only after a 30-minute pep talk.
He was no closer to work than he was when he woke up that morning.
Tomorrow he’d walk the town beach and gather jingles and sea glass in the morning - weather permitting - and scout the recycling station in the afternoon because on Saturday he had to be ready for the flea market, and it took him a day to assemble, label and package his creations. Early Saturday he’d shower at the police station, shave, dress in the one pair of khakis he owned and the blue shirt with the button-down collar. Joe Faelan would give him a ride back to the trailer - his trailer, actually - so he could pick up his folding table and his crate. Then it was back to the municipal parking lot before dawn to set up next to the kitchens and if he was lucky, the Portugese girl would sneak him some breakfast sausages on a potato roll.
At 7:30am the gate will open and for a while he will be Oliver Levant again, purveyor of unique objects of unusual provenance and remarkable quality, joking and smiling and selling and taking numbers and emails and discussing trends and making plans until the whistle blows at noon and he becomes anonymous and invisible again, a man of early-middle years living alone in a borrowed trailer, teetering on the edge of oblivion and redemption.
