got the letter from unemployment today. :-( quoting from the claim adjuster's comments: "you left your work because of stress. you failed without adequate reason to request a leave and thus your seperation became final. leaving work under these conditions is voluntary and without good cause attributable to the employing unit. therefore, you are disqualified..."
well, what'd i expect? hell, based on that version, i'd have denied me. i called the director of human resources at adcare hospital (where i worked) today, a very nice guy named paul. he started-out working in the admitting department, and i was on occasion his supervisor during that time. anyway, i called because i need to liquidate my retirement funds, i would not have called if i could have avoided it. paul was cordial, even friendly, explaining the retirement fund's procedures for wresting money away from them. it takes two weeks.
then, paul felt it necessary to address the denial of my unemployment claim. hmm. i had hoped to bypass that awkward issue and his complicity in it entirely. but he had a need to talk about it. (awww). without coaching from me, he said of his brief tenure in the admitting dept., "i know firsthand that job is the hardest in the hospital. it was the hardest work for the least money i ever made." he went on. "just this week we had a woman walk out of there after only three days." i found out later they had another walk-out after fifteen minutes. awww...
not.
plausible deniability. if i were in their position, i would use it. the employee has no written proof of his expressions of distress, of gasping, choking and drowning. no taped recordings, or even transcripts, of his conversations with administrators about abusive conditions and about incidents of specific abuse.
but i knew all that when i went there. it is pretty obvious right up front (aparently within three days), how not up-front they are about things, about their responsibilities and your responsibilities, and how policies are tolerated in a loose-leaf binder, somewhere apart from actual practice, and how a wink and a nod or a glare and a scowl is how things are really done. it comes across the first time you see that face, the face of a smiling glassy-eyed refusal to care. 'it's all very nice, you bringing this to my attention, thank you very much.' period. it is the face of a pledged allegiance to a particular set of corporate self-interests, a narrow inflexible and dehumanizing framework that denies any reality outside of itself, inviolable no matter how compassionate the impetus to reach beyond its limits (or rather, its limitations). and they call themselves a hospital.
there should be rage, but there is not, from one who came perilously close to reaching there and fitting in, but didn't. fortunately.
.
it's midnight, and i'm just getting started. (maybe i should move to new york.) i unplugged the phone today, about an hour after i plugged it back in from being unplugged since yesterday. <sigh>
where is this tedious place? what strands touch it from afar, anchor it within the (in)firmament, at once toying and discarding? and why do we stay... we, who can do anything, be anything, even reinvent reality; is this life perhaps a fun-house we chose, during some past enlightenment, to visit -- a dark and startling place intended for amusement only -- and have we perhaps forgotten this? taking life seriously leads to suicide. it really is all a joke -- and i don't mean that derogatorily. i'm serious. it's a comedy, a light farce, heavy with camp and desperately believable, and tempting, so very tempting to believe...
and where is faith? belief? the concreteness of knowing? should we just make it all up as we go along, like so many do? how much should we allow ourselves to lie? and we really only lie within ourselves; everything else is costume and pretense, even when we try our best, still then, the expression of our truth is incomplete. any representation of the other -- of what they think, say, or do, of who and what they appear to be -- is never as significant to us as who and what we are ourselves. besides, one could argue that no truth survives intact the transit across the interval between persons. we are only naked inside. the best we can hope is to discover our own nakedness, and perhaps to approach the nakedness of another. but we can never get all the way there.
.
along that vein, it occurs that i would like a chance to approach the nakedness of my abercrombie-attired neighbor, matt. he is young, short of stature, innocent of eye, fresh of face, italian of descent, and loose of boyfriend; my neighbor is gay (i hope?) like me. of course i am almost 20 years his senior, and somewhat reclusive (interpreted, i hope, as enchantingly mysterious). i am probably viewed by him as somewhat strange. he and i seem to be up all night, every night lately. he comes and goes til about 5 am which is when he sleeps, i think. on those rare occasions when our paths do cross, he gives me a look that might be saying, "gawd! you're so fucking desperate! will you get a life!" but i like to think his shy, expressionless glance is saying in breathy, whispering needfulness, "did he notice me? doesn't he want me? isn't he ever going to grab me and press me against the wall and hold me as i faint? well, isn't he!?!".
well, it is possible. remotely.
.
in the end it is all intellectual dishonesty, a game that i am drawn to no less nor more than anyone else, a game i would gladly play with matt, because we humans are a species that does very much love to lie. come matt, come lie with me.