Zone of Alienation

—You can tell the Americans by how fats they are. And the baseball hats.
He laughed through his teeth and spat.
—How can you live in this cold and grey?
—Russian people is very tough.
—Do you get a lot of Americans travelling here?
—Yes. Strange.
—Why?
—I don’t know. Maybe…they want to have six fingers?
He laughed again. And spat again. His phlegm came down in a green, coagulated mass and landed on a rock. The substance trickled down slowly like a mass of larvae.
—You can take now pictures if you have something…
—It’s all right.
—You don’t want?
—No. I usually remember where I’ve been.
He shook his head and lit a cigarette against the cold gust, protecting the flame within his cracked palm.
—Look at this. I have sausage fingers.
He coughed.
—Are you ready?
—Yes.
—Okay. You want drink?
—Sure.
—Okaaay.
—Okay.
He pulled in more phlegm through his throat and expectorated it onto the frozen gravel. Bits of his saliva sprayed me and I felt ill. I could smell the insides of his stomach on my cheek.
—MmmDa. This is the consequences of our errors. There is nothing left for us to do except wait a few centuries before to farm again. This bloody reactor will be here twenty-five thousand years from now.
—If we’re even around to see it.
—MmmDa. Let’s go drink.
—Okay.

re-assignment

i know i’m supposed to like eric dolphy.
i know i’m supposed to like thelonious monk.
marc chagall.
shakespeare.
mahler.
deodorant.
what works for the apocrine and ecrine: aluminum chloride, aluminum zirconium tricholorohydrex glycine, aluminum chlorohydrate, aluminum hydroxybromide.
how i feel is: drowning in hyperhydrosis. i need 15-25% of the active ingredient.
i need a recommendation from the FDA. nobody writes strong scripts anymore. they just give you watered-down opiates and placebos.
i need coltrane to unleash a kind of fury that i adore.
my desk job has been moved to another desk in another location off a seldom-travelled road, behind a VFW and a post office with antiquated delivery trucks displaying outdated logos. here i am supposed to gently pack long lighting bulbs into narrow cardboard boxes making sure the ballast is not disturbed.
quota: unknown.
how it works is: the gas-discharge lamp uses electricity to excite mercury vapor. the excited mercury atoms produce short-wave ultraviolet light that then causes a phosphor to fluoresce, producing visible light.
also see: michael faraday. james clerk maxwell. heinrich geissler.
also see: mercury vacuum pump. geissler tube. julius plucker.
also see: evacuated tube. luminescence. nikola tesla.
quota: unknown.
at four and a half hour intervals we get a two-minute smoke break/washroom break.
also see: urine backup into the kidneys.
also see: pyelonephritis.
all workers must stand at their stations just before start of shift with sleeves down and work shirts creased. the electronic high pitch indicates commencement.
at the machine it smells like old people with acrid armpits.