I've been included in a Minnesota anthology "Under Purple Skies", now available on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

I’m Thinking of Changing my Name to Gollum


Meanwhile, on the nosebleed floor of a skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis, life has changed for Little Miss I’ve-Got-A-Desk-by-a-Window.

With the purchase of our company by a much larger company, there has been much movement.  Those that had offices – some are now in cubes.  Those that had cubes are sharing cubes.

And those of us who once shared cubes?

Welcome.  Come in, won’t you?  It’s ever so lovely in here.  Welcome to the room at the center of the building.  Don’t worry – your eyes will adjust to the darkness.

What?  What’s that?  The roaring fan overhead?  Oh, you’ll get used to that.  Comforting, actually, listening to the white noise.  If you let your mind go all soft and fuzzy, you can hear words. 

Shh.  Did you catch that? 

It’s not too late to take up subsistence farming…  It’s not too late to take up subsistence farming…

Dang fan.

It’s been two days since being assigned a corner in The Cave. 

New names for this particular room, this experiment in communal living, by the way, are still being taken.  The Cave, The Sarcophagus (a favorite of mine), and The Vault are being considered.

My suggestions of “The Heart of Darkness”, “The Dance Floor”, and “The Second Reason Pearl Drinks”, however, have gotten me nothing but suspicious looks.

Not all is lost, of course.  Why, the woman who sits next to me, a lovely person who has been at this very location for almost three years and whom I shall refer to as She Who Has Been Infringed Upon, or, perhaps, “Marsha”, seems to be practically normal, despite the fan’s whispered suggestions.

We'll probably become best friends, her and I.  We’ll probably rent a cabin together later this summer, share bottles of expensive wines while we work up our manifesto, the one in which demand natural light and a fan with a more positive outlook on life.

I shall be happy here.

I believe that.

I shall be happy here.


Come back tomorrow to hear my plans for how The Cave plans to celebrate Naked America!, ie, The Day Minneapolis Hits 50 Degrees.  

38 comments:

Watson said...

Sounds horrible - the Tombs. But glad you like Marsha.

Your writing is so dynamic Pearl, that I'm not sure if you actually work in a company like this, or not. I also now believe that cats smoke and drink, altho I've suspected that for some time.

savannah said...

i don't know, sugar. that marsha sounds a bit dangerous ;) xoxoxox

Bodacious Boomer said...

Good luck the adjustment. I had a 9-5, in office job twice in my life. Both times, when I was denied access to natural light during the day I started clawing at windows whenever I happened walk by one. It was in everyone's best interest that I found other employment.

Shelly said...

Our distant ancestors whiled away their times in caves with painting on the walls. Perhaps you and Marsha could decorate the walls of your cave with cryptic paintings of paleo-modern office dwellers.

So sorry about the windowless part. That would nutsify me.

white rabbit said...

Peggy Pearl Gollum?

Nah.

Camille said...

I love Shelly's suggestion of decorating the walls with cryptic paleo cave paintings. Of course, it could also land you a one way walk down the hall for a brief discussion with the head of security before being led out of the building by your elbows, but what the heck. Live it up.

Pearl said...

All of this sounds good to me. It's been a long time since I painted on walls or was frog-marched out of a building...

And yes. I really am in an interior room, a room without pity. Please send chocolate and liquor.

Pearl

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari OM
In OZ we have a name for small dark rooms. THE DUNNY. Usually they are outside and require fighting one's way through bindii (nasty foot-seeking thorny things), constant swatting whilst squatting (of mozzies and like pests) and a double checking of the rim to ensure no red-backed spiders are lurking ready to bite ya in the bumb.

Now there is nothing to say that all this couldn't happen on the INSIDE too... As long as Marsha has no red spot at the back of her neck, you're quids in!

Happy cocooning. YAM xoxoxo

Anonymous said...

So you've been entombed in the catacombs. Well look at it this way..no nasty windows to take your attention away from your work, no sounds from outside penetrating your thought processes. You know the ones I mean..."Let me out of here". Those. Yes. Do you at least have an electrical outlet to plug in your fan and lamp? You are going to have to create your own environment and it is NOT going to include live plants.

Leenie said...

Office windows are PRECIOUS! So sorry. Maybe your eyes will grow big and bulgy and you'll acquire a creepy little voice which you can use to argue with yourself in amusing ways.

(SHUT-UP!)

This will help you get a mega-paying job in one of those Hobbit sequels. Just don't go for LOTR parts. They don't end well for Gollums.

jenny_o said...

Why am I suddenly thinking about sweatshops ...

Good luck, sweetie. At least Marsha is a nice gal. Maybe it could be worse. She might be the sort of person who has never used soap.

I suggest compensating with extra-bright clothing and hair colour. Maybe not the hair colour. Maybe nail polish. Experiment.

joeh said...

Do you at least get a 10 minute gruel break?

Geo. said...

I didn't know anybody else heard voices in white noise! Thanks for including that. It makes me feel almost...what's the word? I'll go ask the refrigerator. Ah, normal!

Kana said...

The fan may have personality problems, possibly a chemical imbalance that leads it to dark thoughts - get the PH filter checked, worked for my mom's hot tub - but at least it's vocabulary is well-developed!

Mandy_Fish said...

There's talk of us moving to an open floor plan next year in our new building. I'm terrified. I need my walls and my window, dammit. I'm not a zoo exhibit.

jenny_o said...

Just coming back to ask (because of that last line) - is there no air conditioning??

Susan Kane said...

It could be worse; it could be The Catacombs.

Pearl said...

Catacombs. I like that.

And who knows about airconditioning? Apparently we're on a never-ending winter over here (shades of Game of Thrones), having by-passed spring and headed straight into another winter.

I need banana bread. And SLABS of butter. Oooh, and wine. STAT.

Unknown said...

I can hardly wait to hear your plans!!

drollgirl said...

the cave. the tomb. the morgue. lol. i would spend way too much time trying to come up with the best/worst name!

i work at a space that is approximately 5 feet away from my boss' office. there is a window in his office that faces my desk area. so my boss gets to stare at me like a mental patient whenever he feels like it. i hate it. i want to put curtains over the window so that it looks like we are about to have a puppet show. lol. oh well. whaddya gonna do.

Joanne Noragon said...

My daughter just installed a system in her attic that is a right angled skylight. Any chance you can siphon light that way. Any chance for a promotion to a window.

Silliyak said...

Everyone seems to have missed the problem. You did not do a proper sacrifice to Dog with the last intern. Let her off scot free if I recall. So now you pay the price.

Lorna said...

Somehow I cannot imagine you working in a place like that. Your writing is so sunny and light that I don't see it having anything to do with a cave.

Gigi said...

You know "they" say that change is good....but somehow it seems that change usually isn't made with "us" in mind.

sage said...

An inside room, you'll be sage in tornado season and somewhat safer durning North Korea missile season...

HermanTurnip said...

Your predicament sounds suspiciously like a bad episode of MTV's The Real World. But hey, as long as you're not playing the part of Puck your job is safe.

vanilla said...

50 degrees, or 50 inches of new snow?

jenny_o said...

Head slap here - vanilla's comment made me realize you meant 50 degrees Fahrenheit, not Centigrade. I was picturing your cave in the high heat of summer. I know it doesn't get to 59 degrees F outside. But inside? without air con? and all that body heat?

Wait, I don't think this is making you feel better ...

jenny_o said...

50 degrees, dammit, not 59!

Signing off, now.

Elephant's Child said...

And what would Gollum do, my precious?

Jackie said...

Poor girl....sounds dreadful to me. Glad you have a workmate that seems nice.

Symdaddy said...

Dear Gollum,
I was saddened to hear that you have prematurely been consigned to the ossuary.

No doubt escape plans are being drawn up even as I type.

Use the 'precious' carefully!

Your friend

Bolbo Biggins

Linda O'Connell said...

It could be theor way of weeding you all out. They're betting on who will go over the edge first from being in the dungeon with lack of natural light. Don;t let 'em get to you.

Anonymous said...

In that case, can I come up there and call you my precious???

River said...

I think "The Cave" is an excellent name. You can be cave women and when the boss asks why the work isn't completed, you can tell him as cave women you are waiting for someone to invent the typewriter.

George said...

I work in a room called the "Fishbowl" because three of the walls are almost entirely glass. We think it was done this way so that the owner of the company could keep an eye on the rabble rousers known to exist in the design group.

Connie said...

Hmm. Do you have to wear one of those miner's hats with the light on it to get your work done? I have my own office, but there are no windows in it, so it is somewhat cave-like. The only advice I can give you is watch out for the bats!

Indigo Roth said...

You should go with "The Crypt". Then, someone of a scatological bent could be said to have "crept into the crypt, crapped and crept out again."