The Monday 7:59AM People

Driving down to Bridgewater again
in the lampshade orange dawn.
There's frost on the putt-putt golf course
and the bear-shaped hedge of some suburban
ranch-style retreat.
Monday morning and my wristwatch,
the self-same Employee-Of-The-Month
circa May 2006 model,
has not re-set for Daylight Savings.
The dial does not twist,
the band does not fall back.
I am regimentally ahead of the curve.

It's always this time in my head--
the very begining.
40 or 400 hours of work only imagined.
No time to relax.
Only envision the racetrack & steel carrot.
It could be Saturday afternoon,
it could be a holiday in the French Riveria...
but this now is affixed in my DNA.

I remember the moment that "AERO" became real,
waiting in the student's lounge at Boston University...
an hour early
and waiting for my temp gig to gestate.
What would be three month's under the lazy eye gaze
of a very middle-aged woman...
part church maven
part odd duck
plump and untouched by man.
Slightly tight on her position in the Finance Office
(or was it the Business Office? so many interchangeable
temp gigs in too many offices).
There was no comfort-level there,
just typing student loan balances into obsolete Filemaker Pro.

This 1st morning circa March 2002,
I had time to kill.
As the early bird theatre students flitted in two-by-twos,
Starbucks in hand...
catching up on weekend gossip & scene study.
The walls were festooned w/ oil painted self-portraits,
life-like & self-obsessed.
I took out my notebook & began the manifesto,
the promise to myself to shoot & FINISH
this silly sci-fi short
which had dragged across the decade
since its origination as a troubling dream in
troubling Chicago
just a year out of my own Alma Mata.

It hit me then
a high-concept straight out of Morrison's run on Doom Patrol--
The Monday 7:59AM People.
A group of Type A personalities
eternally pin-stuck on the one minute of time...
before the work week begins.
Never able to actually start--
just forever dwell on feats of immaculate daring-do.
Lodged in a dimension
small as a soup-can
just feeding off that To Do List.
And never ever doing.
No 2nd job interview w/ the Staffing Manager.
No departmental meeting w/ Finance
to prep for the auditors.
No pop quizzes or casual dates.
No drudgery...just the expectation of it.
A lodged potter's wheel w/ drying clay.

The People would naturally be insane & deadly.
And as the adage goes: Misery Loves Company...
thus The Monday 7:59AM People
would constantly be de-frocking vacation plans
& promotions & office parties.
They would remind the happy-go-lucky majorities
that
nothing
gets
done
without
eternal
deliberation...