I had a dream last night that I was back at a horrible restaurant that was trying to test me
See how much cruelty I could take
I quit towards the end of the episode but then for some reason, my computer went missing along with my favorite shirts
I was looking for them all frantically when I woke up
My co-worker is watching a reel on Tik Tok about
Something that happened in the Jim Crow days
Workers bodies were found behind a sugar factory in Texas
She said
They worked them to death and buried them where they collapsed
I can’t help but feel like my dreams are connected
To her Tik Tok
This world we live in feels like things are in extremes
Either you work
Or you don’t
And you really work
Or you really don’t
And I’ve been drinking lately
Just a glass of wine
A shift drink a day
But it adds up
I’m gonna stop that
But why was I even doing that in the first place
Was it to cope
With my 12 hour days
I work a number of them every week
I’m on the clock right now while I’m writing this
Kitchen nightmares is the name of Anthony Bourdain’s first book of essays but also
It’s the title of this chapter of my life
Waking or Sleeping
I’m not alone in this
My partner’s here too
With the debt and the time gone
Gone
Hours of life
Sold
to someone else for pay
That’s what that is
That said
Before me is my sparkling water and my James Baldwin anthology
And I can pick it up and read it until a guest walks in
That is a luxury
It’s moment’s like this where I can read and write freely that remind me of how much better this is than being a Film Professor
I can read and write for my own sake
Not my students’
My mind matters again
Not just how effective I am at my job
My value isn’t caught up in The Capitalist Industrial complex anymore
I just gifted free coffees to the jazz musicians who play The Court of Two Sisters next door
I can hear the caffeine fuel their focus and rhythm
And how they’re responding to one another
The tarot card reader down the street is scared
She senses danger but she doesn’t know from where
She’s been coming to us for a safe haven
At the front desk
It’s wild how everybody here on this block has their own kitchen nightmares
The kind of stuff other people read in their leisure on their kindle
Really happens to them on the daily
I started dozing off just then
When will I get some rest and no longer have to be
Playing this character who is always on alert
For some stranger’s imminent problem?