So Long, Diane: Soliloquy For A Coworker

Here’s a little something i wrote many years ago for a co-worker who left for a new job:

Please mark your calendars for a celebration/mourning of sorts, as Diane is leaving our humble enclave for pastures at least as green (although she’ll still be outstanding in her field ? . ‘Twil be a mourning for her passing, yet a celebration of her new (ad)venture. More like the morning after the dawn of a new day; or maybe a new era; a Dianeless era. Or a morning fraught with emptiness and strife, full of memories twisted and bent by the jaws of time, a morning of days stretched into weeks stretched into months stretched into years stretched into millenniums stretched into (well, you get the picture), a morning sweet, yet sour; joyful yet bitter, a pantomimed salute to the confusion and fortitude that is the human soul.

A morning of singing birds and also skunks ran over by big, churning trucks; a morning of hatred for the fickle hands of fate that left us here, spitting up blood and chewing on our own entrails, yet of joy for the gentle wind of providence, that through change has shown us the way to grow and prosper amidst the turmoil and futility of life, even when everything sucks and all you own is a shopping cart with four broken wheels and half a roll of wet toilet paper.

A morning to grieve, to weep and gnash teeth, to smile stupidly and then spew the stale chunks of the last remnants of wine and song that were yours to savour the night before. A morning to consider the lily, and while you’re doing that I’ll be over here, looking through your stuff (-Jack Handey). A morning that starts out cloudy and dank, but ends up with a blazing sun and a cool breeze, like God saying, “It’s OK, get over it already.” But then you get sunburnt and the wind blows off your hat.

A morning where all men and women love each other like brothers and sisters (well, kind of like that). A morning where the mongoose says to the snake and the spider to the fly, “Let’s forget about our differences for awhile, then I’ll eat you later.” A morning when time drips like molasses and then coagulates into a moldy pile of mucous on the bottom of the refrigerator. A morning where all races get along and no-one beats anyone else to death with a big stick, guts anyone or blows anyone away with a shrapnel-spewing bomb; a morning when nobody kills anyone else’s dog; a morning when there is no crime at all but there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed policemen draining our resources because they’re now on unemployment and living in the streets with their families, scavenging for food and living on discarded mattresses, hanging out in front of banks, begging for money and saying they’ll work for food, except they can’t, because there’s no crime.

A morning where nothing is as it seems and yet everything seems like nothing. A morning for glory, for disgrace, for ecstasy, for anguish, for apathy, for atheism, and for ahumanism, where God doesn’t believe in people; or agnosticism, where he/she/it doesn’t know if there are people or not. A morning for joyfully skipping stones and accidentally bonking someone on the head as they pop unexpectedly out of the water, killing them. A morning for spending several luxurious hours in a fragrant, steaming hot bath with mounds of sparkling suds and then dropping the blowdryer into the tub. A morning for jumping out of airplanes then realizing you forgot to put your parachute on. You left it in the car. A morning when you are angry because you can’t find your keys and then you realize it doesn’t matter because someone stole your car.

A morning of bingeing, purging, overdosing, gambling away fortunes, shopping for things you don’t need, beating your spouse, smoking crack, and then blaming it all on your parents. A morning for sawing your legs off so you won’t have to put on your shoes. A morning for flushing all the toilets in the house at once to scald your lover in the shower. A morning to pump your own stomach just for kicks, or so you can remember what you ate. A morning for putting your cat in the microwave, and turning it on “bake.” A morning that’s like a day, except it’s not because it’s night. A morning to rudely and cruelly insult everyone you know, but then later realize that you were right every time.

A morning where the sun is going down instead of coming up; oh, I guess that’s “evening.” A morning for a putrid, foul-smelling, pus-filled lesion to develop on your face and then you realize it’s only some sort of larvae. A morning for counting your chickens before they hatch and then making scrambled eggs. A morning for giving someone the Heimlich maneuver even though they can’t breathe or speak, but they can choke. A morning for telling someone they have something stuck between their teeth, but they don’t. A morning to go relieve yourself in the woods and then wipe yourself with poison ivy. A morning that never ends, until noon comes along. A morning for snips, snails, puppydog tails, sugar, spice and everything nice all cooked up into one big casserole and eaten by maggots.

A morning for telling your kids you hate them, then telling them that you were only joking. A morning for smoking pot, except you can’t remember where it is. A morning for rambling on like a stupid idiot, just because you don’t feel like working. A morning for banging on the drum all day. (More like a mourning for us, since now we’ll have all that extra work to do!) Come join us on Thursday, August 15 from 4:00-5:00 p.m. in conference room 6D, where Diane will attempt to have her cake and eat it, too. More details to follow re: other details.

See you then,
/tm