Self-Flagellation

I've not written in a while because I've fallen into a comfortable but none-too-exciting routine of walking to the library, fiddling around on the internet, walking back, getting ready and going to work, and then reading and writing before bed. I worked out a deal with the hostel where they dropped my daily rate to $5 in exchange for cleaning for a couple of hours in the morning.

I am going backwards. I used to be a professional, in charge of dozens of men and millions of dollars in equipment; now I'm a waiter and a janitor. The girl who runs the front desk in the mornings asked me, after I came in from picking up cigarette butts outside, "Aren't you too intelligent to be doing that?"

I am smart, in my way; I'm also a complete dunce in my way too. This is particularly true of well-known landmarks. When I was first in the Army, I flew up to Chicago to visit my best friend, Dewey, who was there for company training. I insisted we go up to the observation deck of the Sears Tower. Id' been to Chicaog a few years before, so I determined myself the local expert and led the way. Over to the Sears Tower we went and in no time we were looking out at the city from what, for a number of years, had been the tallest building in the world.

"André," asked Dewey, "if this is the Sears tower, then why is this placard saying that TALLER building over there is the Sears Tower?"

"Because I'm an idiot."

I'd taken us to the Hancock Building.

When I first wrote from here I mentioned the snow-covered mountains surrounding the city and Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain on the continent, rising majestically from across Cook Inlet. Mt. McKinley is indeed visible from across Cook Inlet, but only barely, on extraordinarily clear days, since it's nearly 200 miles away. I'd confused it with Sleeping Lady Mountain (Mt. Susitna).

When I was a child, we had foreign guests come visit us in Charleston. Each day they'd go out sight-seeing. On their last evening in town, they got their pictures processed and showed us everything they'd seen (this was back in the days when airport x-rays would ruin film). Prominent in many of the photos, was California Dreaming, on the bank of the Ashley, which they thought was Fort Sumter. We were too embarrassed for them to tell them the truth. Now I'm glad to see that my particular flaw is cross-cultural and not genetic.

At any rate, I'm not necessarily too intelligent to be a janitor; I may be too intelligent to be a waiter though. The general manager of the restaurant already gave me a raise and offered to make me a manager if I'd stay. Somehow I made the bad decision not to take him up on that particular proposition, so maybe I'm not so smart after all.