The midweek shuffle bored. It is Wednesday, June 17. Slept well. Part of my sleep routine is a tincture of thc. Previously, I had purchased the Soothe tincture, which was not as effective as I had hoped. I did not do what was expected and left me hanging in nocturnal limbo too often. Now I have the Rest tincture, which does the job and enables a good night’s sleep.
Of course, writing that and tempting the fates leaves me wide open. Once I hit 7 hours, my body clock alarm goes off and I open an eye to check the time. This morning I had an hour to go, then about 20 minutes. Once again, I am up just a few minutes before the clock radio makes its presence known.
I knew I would need to get in earlier than usual since it’s been a fortnight since Yancy was last here and this morning Yancy was expected at the fruit stand once again. My job starts at 8:00 AM and I was in at about 7:35 AM. I would not be surprised if Yancy was actually in before that but he was not so that was good.
I was able to butter my bagel and enjoy it before he made his appearance. The desk phone is still kaput, so Yancy and Connell did what they could to fix it, but nothing could be done without perhaps some major deconstruction, like taking apart my desk and following the wires into the cloth covered wall.
It took them a few minutes to figure that out. And a visiting tech guy from the big fruit stand came to the same conclusion, that nothing could be immediately done. There has been no word from the people on the other side of the world since 9:35 AM and it is now 2:06 PM.
It’s not a pressing matter and the phone maybe rings 2 or 3 times a week. I was using the desk phone to contact Bill or Mike before I was told not to by Marcus. And Marcus was just here telling me he had about 3 or 4 cups of coffee this morning which is odd since he usually has 1 or 2. He’s trying to live a good life despite his woman problems, also from the other side of the planet.
I guess I should be honored that he occasionally spills his guts to me, perhaps there is no one else at this fruit stand that could or would listen to him, or at the very least provide some sort of objectivity.
It is a beautiful spring day and I had some halal food for lunch. It had been a few weeks and it was good, just a little bit boring but that’s on me, not the halal food vendors. They do treat me right and always remember me when I show them I have the same plastic bag from my last visit.
It is nice to be remembered by fellows who see hundreds of people a week. I’m sure they don’t smoke weed.
Google Gemini rewrite as a James Joyce essay
## The Midweek Shuffling of the Middleman Men
The midway point, the meridian of the week’s dull march. Wednesday, the seventeenth of June, unrolls its pale canvas. Sleep had been a kindly master, courted not by nature alone but by the green alchemy of the vial. Time was when the bottle labeled *Soothe* proved a false comforter, a fickle potion leaving the weary traveler stranded in the dim, unmapped limbo of the small hours, suspended between the shores of waking and wit’s end. But now comes *Rest*, the truer draft, pouring its dark, heavy syrup over the restless mind, ensuring the full, deep plunge into oblivion.
Yet, to set the quill to paper and boast of such peace is to fling wide the gates to the mocking gods of irony. The internal chronometer, that stubborn sentinel of the flesh, strikes its alarm at the seventh hour. An eyelid twitches upward, scouting the dawn. A full hour remained of the stolen darkness; then, a mere score of minutes. At the last, the eyes unclosed to the morning light just a heartbeat before the brassy throat of the clock-radio could raise its mechanical clamor.
The morning demanded an early sort of haste. A fortnight had slipped into the ether since Yancy’s boots last trod these boards, and today the great fruit stand expected his return. The official ledger demands attendance at the eighth hour, but by five-and-thirty minutes before the chime, the threshold was crossed. A small victory, for the dread of finding Yancy already ensconced in the morning stillness proved a phantom.
Thus, the bagel was buttered in a holy, unhurried peace, the creamy fat spread smooth over the toasted crumb, consumed before his shadow darkened the doorway. Then arose the great comedy of the dead instrument—the desk telephone, silent as a tomb. Yancy and Connell, those earnest mechanics of the mundane, bent their heads over the plastic corpse. They poked and they pondered, but the oracle remained mute. Nothing short of a grand demolition, a tearing asunder of the heavy mahogany desk and a blind, subterranean hunt through the cloth-bound labyrinth of the wall’s dark interior could revive it.
They wrestled with the mystery for some minutes before yielding to the inevitable. Even an itinerant scribe of technology, a wandering clerk from the grander, metropolitan fruit stand, arrived to pronounce the same solemn epitaph: *nothing can be done.* And so, from the mysterious overseers on the far side of the terrestrial globe, no word has breathed since five-and-thirty minutes past nine. The hands of the clock now crawl toward six minutes past the second afternoon hour.
A matter of small import, truth be told. The black instrument shrills its summons but twice or thrice in a week’s span. There was a time when its keys were struck to summon Bill or Mike, until the decree fell from Marcus, commanding silence. And Marcus himself but a moment ago stood by the desk, a vessel overflowing with unexpected energy, confessing to the consumption of three, nay, perhaps four cups of the black bean this morn—an extravagance, given his usual temperance of a solitary cup or two. He seeks the path of the righteous life, a noble striving, though sorely beset by the tempestuous climate of his domestic affairs, tied to a woman residing on that selfsame opposite side of the planet.
Perhaps there is a rare dignity in it, a silent accolade, that he should choose this corner to unpack his heart. In the vast, bustling hive of the fruit stand, there is perhaps no other ear so finely tuned to receive the burden of his confessions, or at least none so equipped to offer the cool, untroubled waters of objectivity.
Outside, the spring day blooms in immaculate splendor. At the midday hour, a pilgrimage was made for the spiced meats of the halal vendors. Weeks had passed since the last communion, and if the palate found it a shade mundane, the fault lay not with the keepers of the cart but within the dull modern appetite. They are good fellows, traders in righteousness, whose eyes kindle with the spark of recognition at the sight of the selfsame plastic vestment—the wrinkled bag preserved from the previous feast.
An agreeable sensation, surely, to be pulled from the anonymous sea of humanity by men who witness the passing of hundreds of faces in a single turn of the sun. They are sober men, no doubt. They do not court the green smoke.