Internet Breadcrumbs, Psychic Presentiments and Teaching Reproduction to Teenagers

[mallorys_camera]

I applied for two AmeriCorps positions yesterday. One is with a community health clinic in the Bronx doing health education – nutritional counseling, lactation consulting, teaching reproductive health education to high school students (!!) and the like; the other is with a community garden organization in Brooklyn, setting up a Farmers Market.

I'd enjoy doing either.

I'm searching through the listings looking for other gigs.

AmeriCorps pays a small stipend, and I can continue the copywriting on the side.

Yesterday the copywriting consisted of doing enormous numbers of short Halloween costume spam promos – presumably to be sprinkled hither and yon across the vast Internet where they lead Hansel and Gretel cookie crumb-style back to the seller.

Less boring than it sounds. There's actually an art to writing this kind of promotional copy. It's like writing haiku.

Still, a considerable brain drain since I do the total immersion composition thang. Hole myself up and just pound them out. Tiptoe out of my room occasionally for a glass of water. Pet the cat. Conduct multiple parallel conversations by text. Try to remember the critical plot points in the E.M. Forster short story, The Machine Stops.

More of the same today, but I have a coffee date with another Online Dating Site denizen.

Sad conversation with B. "I loathe the notion of one day at a time," he said. "But I feel like I have been stuck in that loop for nine months. I am delighted that I don't need a liver transplant. But I'm holding my breath until June and the definitive You don't have liver cancer diagnosis. Maybe then I can start to think in terms of weeks and months again instead of One day at a time. Till then my life is on hold."

I am remembering now that moment – two years ago? Three? – when I ran into B walking toward me outside me the State Street Diner, and I didn't see him, I saw Mark. I mean, I saw Mark right down to Mark's shambling walk and braying laugh, and when Mark, dead Mark, resolved himself into Ben, I had the hardest time accepting it. I was genuinely freaked.

Now I wonder whether that wasn't some kind of psychic presentiment of B's illness before it was diagnosed.

Comments

[fuzzilla.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting. I always thought AmeriCorps was for very young folks (like, cutoff age of 25). Maybe I'll Google around what they do in my area.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

The upper age limit is 99. :-)

Here's the link to look for what's in your area:

https://my.americorps.gov/mp/listing/requestSearch.do

[chezsci.livejournal.com]

I hate one day at a time also - was in that with Eileen for fucking years. I appreciate the medical profession but most people don't realize just how little any of them really knows and how ineffective and at a loss they can be. It's better not knowing anything and being helpless rather than having 15 years of med school under your belt and still being helpless.
Odd...I had the same sort of experience thinking I saw Eileen and having it transform into an old friend of mine with similar aspects. Gotta be some sort of subconscious doppelganger mindscrew. Oh and it's Springtime so I always get visitations from E in my dreams - two nights ago I was dream golfing and I encountered Eileen in the clubhouse rolling on the floor of the bar raving drunk. Woke up in a sweat.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I can't wrap my mind around how difficult it must be to have someone that close to you die. I mean, I suppose it could be argued that B is dead to me in all essential ways -- but he texts and makes the occasional call from the afterlife. I imagine Eileen's not doing that.

Love! It's... complicated. It morphs, but it doesn'tgo away.