I'm going out of town for the next few days -- will resume posting when I get back.

One thing about doing a task with great intensity over several hours and days is that it begins to affect the way you see the world -- or at least this happens to me. As I mentioned earlier, I've been busy doing accession descriptions and condition reports for the local historical society. As a result, my "eye" for scratches, dings, corrosion and the like has been considerably sharpened. This is good as far as the work goes, but it can be a bit disconcerting when I leave the dim archival caverns and step back out into the outer world.

I find myself looking at the steering wheel of my car and think, "Shows slight wear along outer wheel surfaces. Plastic covering begrimed, with heavier accretions along areas of greater use." Or I look down at my shoes and "Leather surface worn, particularly around the edges and front of shoe. Nicks and gouges along front of toe box. Leather shows distortion along top edge of toe box, probably due to internal pressure by toes. Slight staining at edges of sole." And so on. It's somewhat strange seeing the world in terms of the effects of time and wear upon it.

Does this awareness make me more of an historian? Or a better yogini? Both perspectives are deeply concerned with the passage of time and the ephemeral quality of human creations. It is, however, mildly unsettling seeing these forces at work on objects in use as well as those that have fallen into disuse.



A side question which has long bothered me: why the heck am I "an" historian? I mean, we're not Cockneys or such. Can I get away with calling myself "a" historian or will the grammar police chase after me?

Which Dr. Seuss character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

(This is not a bad match, but as a kid I tended to find Horton rather pathetic.)

I'm crunching sandal-clad through dry leaves, live oak leaves, their sharp spines prickly through my socks. Scattered on top of them are acorns. Some oaks in southern California produce acorns that are short and fat, with a little point on the end that makes them perfect for spinning as ersatz tops. These acorns are long and thin, most straight but a few curving like the talon of a bird. They are bright green and smooth when they first hit the ground; later they weather to a soft brown and then to black. This is if the insects and birds do not get to them first. Some have been pecked and chewed before they even land; others sport a tiny hole or two that says a worm is quietly devouring the meat from the inside out. Peel the stiff skin from an acorn and the meat is revealed -- crumbly and brown if old, streaked with lines of black if infested and smooth and yellow if fresh. A thin fuzzy layer, like the inner skin of a hard-boiled egg, can be removed in turn. The meat then gleams, golden with promise and calories.

The native peoples of this region -- Cahuilla and Kumeyaay and Sycuan and others -- migrated seasonally to harvest the acorns when they ripened. Each tribal group gravitated to its favored trees and each family within in the group to theirs. Acorns were pounded and dried into meal, baked into mush, boiled into porridge after the bitter tanins were leached out with boiling water. Some elders today speak wistfully of the sweet blandness of these foods, comforting in the way a favorite childhood dessert or meal would be.

Food aside, it is easy to see why these people gathered acorns. There is something deeply satisfying and compelling -- perhaps even primal -- about collecting a hatful, a jarful, a basketful of these smooth green promises that lie scattered so abundantly among the leaves. I feel it as I move among the sunlight and shadows, bent at the waist, acorn-laden hat swinging. My friends feel it as they drop them into jars to take home and plant or marvel at the smooth beauty of the meat inside. Their small daughter feels it too, though she thinks it only a game to gather up acorns in a frisbee. As she tips them back and forth in the shallow container, it is easy to envision another child, with a shallow woven basket, doing the same.

It's been confirmed -- I'm even more of an archive rat than I'd thought. I've been spending part of my unemployed time volunteering at one of the local museums, partly to have something to fill my time, partly because I want to gain some experience in this area, and increasingly because it is just fun. (Yay. Or -- at last!)

Now, I should explain what I think is fun, because only then will the title of this post make sense. I have been spending my days with a collection of interesting little objects that were recently taken off exhibit. (I'm going to be coy and not tell you exactly what the objects are -- I don't want to make the game of "find the Rana" too easy.) These things are of all ages and of varying degrees of physical complexity. They're made of combinations of materials and by many different manufacturers. So what I am doing with these objects is filling out a sheet for each one in which I describe both the object and its condition, inside and out, in as much detail as I can manage. I also include a sketch of each object, noting key features and problem areas.

I am _loving_ this. It's like a bunch of puzzles and art curios and nitpicking detail work and descriptive writing all in one.

Too bad the market for curators is even worse than that for historians; this has the feeling of a true vocation in a way teaching never was and archival research on its best days was and is.

Recently, several people have privately expressed concern to me that they'd been "too cheerful" in their comments or email to me and that this was making me feel bad.

I want to reassure you all that this is not the case, or at least not in a way that means everyone should stop telling me things will get better.

When I'm in one of my black moods, I'll read everything through that murky filter of angry hopeless depression -- BUT expressions of positive optimism will not provoke such a mood in and of themselves. Moreover, although while I'm brooding I'll think they're irrelevant to me, I WILL appreciate them when I mellow back out. In other words -- your comments don't make me feel bad; I make myself feel bad. Sometimes I use others' words to beat myself up with, but, believe me, I have an abundance of handmade weapons lying about in my very own brain that are much easier to use.

My snarkiness and bile are reserved for those who refuse to accept that anyone could be depressed in the first place and should just snap out of it. This doesn't describe anyone who's written directly to me.

Besides, even in my foulest mood it's good for me to remember that the world doesn't revolve around me -- just because I'm being a bitter pill doesn't mean that all happy activities in the world have to stop.

(This is another reason I was considering stopping the blog -- I myself hate reading my bitter angry words afterwards, yet during my bitchiness my own optimistic posts nauseate me.)

There have been many things contributing to my bleak, bitter outlook on life and blogging this week. My apartment is an utter chaotic mess and I can't find the energy (or space) to fix it. I was working that tedious, dull job and getting little to no sleep as a result of the early morning schedule. I wasn't even eating very well. I also received several emails from more together folks (none of the regular readers here, as best I can tell) claiming that if I was Truly Called and Willing to Sacrifice to the Cause I could indeed research and publish on little time, scarcer money and scant sleep. No, I can't. So I guess I'm not Truly Called -- go lump it.

But the worst part was (and to a degree remains) that my whole value system is being upended and tossed into the recycle bin. One of the central tenets of my life before this has been that money is useful, but it isn't everything. It is not the sin qua non, it is not the reason to live, it is not the measure of trees and squirrels and human beings, it is not a yardstick for the worth of music and art and simple human feelings.

I was wrong.

When you are poor, it is. I was ready to accept that tedious job simply because it would ensure steady income; I'm only not doing it because they had no more need for the additional help. So already I begin to sacrifice principle for money. I look at my apartment, and I do not think of it unreservedly as "home" because it looks like a money pit. I think about doing something fun with friends and think "How much is this going to cost this time?" A yoga class looks like $13 I don't have. My bike is not something fun or even easy transportation but something requiring $15 I don't have for brakes. My phone is a money maker and a money sink. My food is not nourishment or pleasure but an oft-begrudged demand on my dwindling savings. The mail is not a source of diversion and entertainment but the source of more demands for money I don't have. Even doing things like hiking or knitting or volunteering at the historical society -- supposedly free -- come with thoughts like "Why aren't I doing something that could earn me money?" or "Other people get paid for this; why aren't I?"

Everything is weighed and measured and found wanting. The idea of doing something good simply because it is good is struggling to stay alive, but it is a struggle, ground down by the daily and nightly anxiety of having no resources left. I'm cashing out retirement accounts just to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach and there is no end of this in sight. The academic job search seems distant and unreal though deadlines are looming. No alternatives are available anywhere that I can see from where I sit.

I used to call myself a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist -- a person who sees a dismal present but has hopes for the future. I'm becoming a full-time pessimist, unable to believe any promises of lights at the ends of tunnels. Either that or there will be lights, but they will be on-coming trains.

There are small sources of joy in my life, like D. and my family and my friends and my volunteer work -- but with these cold eyes veiled with money signs, it's hard not to think that these might be frail reeds on which to hang my hopes. The good side of me knows this is overly cynical, but cynics thrive at three in the morning when all outside is black.

I'm back. Thanks for the support, folks -- it's much appreciated, even though most of the time I read your descriptions of my site and have to wonder, "Who is this paragon?" I must do a better job faking it than I'd thought. But, anyway, I'm back, for now. The next post will help explain some of the cause of my black mood; my slide into bitter cynicism has only been arrested, not reversed, I'm afraid.

After a weekend of not blogging, I'm not sure if I want to continue this blog any more. It takes up time I don't have and these days it's more depressing than comforting. I don't know what I should expect to get out of, say, telling the world that I just spent the equivalent of four week's tedious labor in the space of 20 minutes, between rent and loan and credit card bill and other random necessary expenses -- which doesn't even include things like health insurance and groceries. I mean, what's the point?

Nor does grumping about my employment situation seem beneficial. I'm tired of the whole thing, both the jobs and the looking for jobs that don't exist. I'm not even sure if I'm going to bother with the academic job search this fall. I look at the prospects and weigh my chances and it doesn't even seem like it's worth the effort of visiting web sites, writing letters, rounding up references, etc. -- there are only 12 jobs available this year for which I might stand a chance of making the first cut, and I am more and more convinced that I'd be extraordinarily lucky to make the second cut, let alone the third or be made an offer. Even the out-of-academia job market stinks. I found two -- yes, two -- entry-level positions I could do cheerfully, and neither came to anything. Why should I expect more?

I did enjoy working in the historical society this weekend -- I even dreamed about it all the following night -- but there's no career potential there, either. If anything, the museum market is even tighter than the academic one -- maybe 30 jobs nationwide, total.

So this blog is feeling like a waste of time -- I grump about my miserable future, lament my lost potential and nothing changes, except in banal or meaningless ways. Why continue?

I don't know if I'm going to post much over the weekend -- I'm tired and I have a lot to catch up on. If I feel like I can spare the time, some possibilities might be the dangers of chameleon tendencies and my thoughts on re-entering the academic job search.

Otherwise I'll be busy with exciting things like laundry and catching up on a week's worth of newspapers. Until the next post...

Everyone was punchy at work today. I am not alone in wanting the weekend to come!

My co-workers in processing are a pretty nice bunch; they are hard-working and everyone in our section seems to have a sense of humor. It also doesn't hurt that we have a common adversary -- the sales agents responsible for creating the packets we put together and process. Nine times out of ten any problem we encounter with a file can be traced back to agent error -- and they get very cranky when we ask them to correct it. Plus most of them have that aggressive bulldog personality that makes an effective telephone salesperson and little tolerance for occasional sarcasm from the repeatedly aggrieved processing staff. (Many of them also can't spell worth spit. A "banine" tumor, for pity's sake!) It makes for an interesting and often entertaining dynamic, to be sure.

(Ooh, look, I'm using "we" not "they"!)

In between bouts of shared snarkiness, I've been devising ways to keep me entertained:

I try to find the best way to use the staple remover, or test out new ways of writing quickly yet neatly, or strive to master the art of precision wite-out application, or learn new keyboard shortcuts, or try to figure out the best way to line up a new signature stamp on the line -- you get the idea.

When these skills-based amusements pale, I turn to the sociological. How many people, I wonder, file as couples rather than individuals? What is the point of including a child on a life insurance policy? Is the client population really skewed toward people in the South or is that just a misperception? Are there really that many people with speeding tickets out there? If I started sorting people by birth date, would any patterns emerge?

Another option is to think about the people who are applying and try to figure out what is going on that would prompt them to seek life insurance. What's the story about the couple from the Caribbean? Or the young father with a 2-month-old child? Why did this mother of four only list two of her children as beneficiaries? Are the two women filing together relatives or a couple? When did this guy take up sky diving, and what keeps him doing it, despite the risks?

Obviously, more questions are raised than answered, which makes idle speculation an amusement in its own right.

The good news is that I processed 7 more applications than I did yesterday. Unfortunately, that's also the bad news.

It's only day two and I'm already feeling tired by this job. Probably a large part of it is the result of being genuinely tired; I am wonderful at getting up at the crack of dawn if I have enough sleep, but getting up when it's dark -- fugeddabout it. Too, I find myself trying to make up for the tedium of the day by cramming all sorts of little activities into the night (like catching up on the blogs) and, because I'm tired, I have poor judgement about the best use of my time or the will needed to go to bed by 9pm. How people manage to do jobs like this and have social lives and kids I have no idea. (Although I suppose that children, tending to be early risers, would be good alarm clocks.)

Coupled with an increasing disinterest in the job itself and its larger context, this is not good. I'm not bored, exactly -- I'm too busy for that -- but I don't feel inspired, either. Nothing about the job speaks to my interests, or my goals, or even really my skills. All one needs is a good eye and memory for detail to do a good job here.

Now, I know that some of this is par for the course with any entry-level job. Yet I look around me and have to ask -- just what am I entering here? Do I want to supervise other people doing this very same tedious job? Do I want to brainstorm ways to bring in more clients? Would -- shudder -- sales be a way to move laterally? There's no job in the place that I'd rather do than this one, and I don't really want to do this one! Sure, I could probably find a way to rise in the company, but what an empty life. (I will admit that this is my own prejudiced perspective; if others find it rewarding and fascinating, more power to them.)

I've heard that one way to deal with such a scenario is to treat the job as a way to make money that allows me to then do more rewarding things. This is fine in theory, but in practice? In the evening I'm too tired and brain-dead to manage much more than a brief bit of web surfing and maybe some tv plus make dinner and call D..

Even if I were lively and perky, what would I do? All the archives and libraries I've used before close by 5pm (most of them are government organizations) and most don't open on the weekends (which are in any case reserved for grocery shopping, laundry, bill-paying and squeezing in a visit with D.). Hiking and drawing don't work so well after sundown. In fact, most of the places I like to go are closed after hours; I'm not a hang out in a bar kind of person. Evening yoga class is the only thing that I might be able to enjoy -- and so far I've been too exhausted to consider it.

So, not only is this job a dead-end in a career sense, it is deadening me in a larger sense. Not good. Yet, even so, I worry that my stint will end soon, because I need the money and can't afford to "indulge" my desire for a more fulfilling existence.

*sigh*


{Edit} When I woke up (well, was woken up) this morning I realized how self-indulgent much of the above is. I mean, really, in some ways I'm only frustrated because I've lived a privileged enough life that I can reasonably hope for more. Were I a third-world farmer or an inner-city single mom, a job like I've described would be a godsend -- clean, reasonable hours, no heavy labor, benefits, etc.

Maybe thinking on this will help at work today?

Here's a phrase that someone used to find my blog: "yellowing frogs." How bizarre.

Here's a nice poem on the subject by Kevin. It says a lot in a small space.

Today began at a ghastly hour -- dark and misty and far too early -- followed by an eye-opening commute through heavy traffic.

The rest of the day was not bad, though I would never say that it offered a desirable model for the rest of my life. I was paired with a trainer -- the first such any of my temp client companies has provided -- and we spent the day going through client applications together. Lots of highlighter pen and yanking out unnecessary copies of unneeded forms and stamping lots of stamps. It was tricky, and certainly gave my memory a work-out (not a bad thing) but, again, it was one of those "check your brain at the door" kind of exercises.

As I think about it, I didn't have one thought about anything beyond which button to push and which line to highlight and how to sort the papers properly except during lunch and for two brief moments during my break.

I don't think that this is going to be the break-through job that sends me winging upward toward intellectual bliss. It will, though, cover my student loan payments for this month and maybe some insurance. Yay...

In the mood for some feisty academic snarkiness? Here you go.

Shortly after posting the previous bit, several things happened in quick succession: I got a call from the volunteer folks at the historical society; my agent called to offer me the insurance job on a temporary basis; my colleague rang me up to see if I wanted to come by to chat and see his new house. So things are a-poppin'!

In particular, the meeting with the archivists at the historical society went really well. We all got excited by the idea of me coming in to work on several of the larger projects -- the tasks sound really interesting to me -- but now I'm going to have to call them back and say that I can't do it, at least not until this current temping stint runs its course. I did warn them that my schedule is erratic in the extreme, but I am disappointed that I didn't have even one day to play with the old stuff first.

Well, maybe, given that I'm to report in at a hideously early hour tomorrow, I'll get off in the afternoon with some time to spare. Probably not, but I can always hope!


Also, the new cell phone proved important today in all of this. Nice to know that it's earning its keep!

One unfortunate side effect of my current employment situation is that it is hard to think about much beyond the need for money, or the desire for something more stable. Even simple hobbies like knitting or yoga have fallen by the wayside, as they either themselves require money or I feel too antsy just sitting about the house when there are Jobs to Be Found. I suspect that this is typical -- a weird mix of apathy and anxiety seems appropriate for the un- and under-employed.

What is more annoying, however, is the effects this is having on my scholarly persona. You'd think that having all of this unscheduled time would be a boon to the never-a-free-moment academic who's behind on her research, wouldn't you? Yet this is not the case. I haven't cracked a non-fiction book since I left the Midwest, unless you count handspinning bibles and the like. I haven't written a lick beyond the blog. I haven't revised my permanently in-progress article-to-be-submitted-to-a-respectable-journal. I haven't gone anywhere near an academic library or archive or museum.

Lately, I've been trying to figure out what has happened. I think part of it is that the whole exercise is seeming increasingly pointless. I did agree to write a book review, for example, but one of my thoughts on reading the offer was "Why can't I be paid for this?" I've been trying to contact the local historical society to offer my services as a volunteer -- repeatedly -- and have heard nothing back from them. Until this week I've been reluctant to hole up in an archive away from my phone (I finally broke down and obtained a cell phone) . And the idea of academic job searching is not appealing -- it's become lumped into a larger search for jobs that won't make me puke or move to rural Alabama rather than a quest for a home in the ivory tower.

In short, I feel stripped of purpose beyond finding a tolerable job that will keep the roof over my head. It's difficult to think about contributing to the greater knowledge of humanity when this small bit of it feels ignored and irrelevant.

I also feel isolated. Perhaps if I had colleagues in similar situations to chat with regularly things would be better. Unfortunately, there's only one in the area and he is busy, busy, busy himself trying to scrounge enough part-time work to support himself and his family. D. and my grad school friends are good for emotional support, but their experience of research and writing at this point is so different from my own, even without the job complications. The people I encounter in the course of temping are no solution, either; I often feel like I'm checking my head at the door when I walk in with my timesheet -- it's the only way to stay sane.

So I ask the question posed in the title again, but in a slightly different way: can one be a scholar without financial support and in isolation?

I'm afraid that the answer has come to look like "no."

I'm beginning to experience mild feelings of dread every time my temp agent contacts me about a new lead for a permanent job. So far the positions she's come up with are not at all appealing, though they certainly seem within my range of abilities -- such as fact-checker for a medical insurance company.

Why the dread? Well, none of these positions have been anything I'd want to do except on a temporary basis. It's one thing to do something boring or in a field that doesn't interest one if it's only for a few weeks. It's another to make it been your permanent Job. (Yes, I know -- there's nothing keeping me from continuing the search while so employed -- I feel uncomfortable doing this if I don't have to, though.) So I am quite reluctant to say yes, and then I feel both guilty and ungrateful; my agent is working for me to find something she thinks I'd like, and I keep saying no. Guilt would be a lousy reason to take a job, of course, but the promise of financial stability such jobs offer makes me wonder sometimes if I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face. I DON'T want to be a clerical drone in an uninteresting company -- but how long can I afford to be choosy about this?

I don't even know if I am being unduly picky, or not. I have no standards by which to judge such things -- is this PhD-induced arrogance, or simple awareness of my interests and skills? Not having a cohort of friends in a similar situation (beyond you, dear readers) adds to my confusion and hesitation.

It's hard to let go of one's dreams -- even when they are second choice dreams.

If you haven't done so already, you might want to sign up for the no-call anti-telemarketing service by calling 1-888-382-1222 from your home phone, or by going to http://www.donotcall.gov. (Note: the site did not seem to work properly with Netscape 6, although Netscape 4.7 worked just fine. Go figure.) The block will take place 3 months after you register.

I think I've finally figured out the essence of Chronicle first person articles. To the casual observer, they look like representations of real life. For the person actually experiencing the sort of events narrated, they bear as much resemblance to true life as Disneyland's Main Street does to small town America.

This article today offers a case in point. In it, the author shares her thoughts and (initially) mixed feelings about leaving a tenure-track job for an uncertain career path outside the ivory tower. As someone who was tossed out, and not from even a tenure-track job (well, at least I didn't have far to fall), reading this felt like encountering a sick parody of my own life.

She worries about what to say to her colleagues, fearing that they will find her frivolous. I, meanwhile, feared their pity.

She frets briefly about finding work, then decides to take the advice of her husband and just enjoy being "free" from the demands of academia. I am still fretting about work, and would love to be free from worries about where my next paycheck will come from, whether I can afford rent and health insurance and food, etc.

And this just made me laugh: I spent time with friends and neighbors, and talked freely about my job situation and desires. Then, somewhere along the line, I made a thrilling discovery: I was networking.

I thought I had made useful connections as an academic, but the speed with which contacts are made beyond the ivory tower simply blew me away. Forget six degrees of separation: It seemed that everyone I knew either knew someone who did what I was contemplating, or knew someone who knew someone who did.

Mention to a neighbor that you're interested in a certain kind of freelance work, and suddenly there's an e-mail message in your in box with contact information for three other people in town who do just that and can help hook you up. Express interest in writing careers to one of the parents in your child's play group and a week later find yourself invited to dinner with their friend, the technical writer. Joke casually at a neighborhood potluck about the fantasy careers that sustained you in grad school and discover not only someone who has done the first (mail carrier), but also someone who secretly harbors the second (opening a coffee house) and happens to know the owner of an up-and-coming fair-trade coffee roasting venture that just moved into town.

This has very much NOT been my experience. None of my friends, old and young, have any connections or suggestions to offer beyond periodically emailing me yet another URL for an online job search engine. The only thing resembling spontaneous networking has been repeatedly encountering someone doing customer service or similar who says, "Yeah, I was a temp once too. Isn't the flexibility great?" (Not really.)

She's living in Chronicle-land, yessiree...

I had work today! Combined with another day of work tomorrow, I'll be able to pay for my groceries for this month -- a good thing.

It was soothing work, too. Mostly filing, plus some faxing and sorting and stapling and mailing. I spent the day in a quiet back room with one other person and nothing was difficult or frustrating. Yet I was not bored, just calm. I don't know that I'd want to do this for the rest of my life -- or even for more than a week if there's nothing new to learn -- but for today it was rather nice.

The image I've always had of the ivory tower has been a lighthouse -- a tall pinnacle made of ivory, fluted like a narwhal's horn, with ivy twining around its base. A poetic image, yes?

One aspect of the ivory tower as lighthouse is that it serves as a mediator between the learning (light) of those within and the needs of those trying to sail past the rough shoals and high waves of an often stormy sea. The importance of this role means that those who man the tower can often find it easy to assume that they are the only source of light in the world, and that the rest of humanity would crash into briny darkness without them.

In some limited ways, this is true. The lighthouse is necessary, and offers insight along an often rough passage. Yet what the denizens of the ivory lighthouse sometimes forget is that not all travel in the world is done within sight of its beacon, and that the lighthouse itself is not immune from the storms that assail the ships it guides.

In this context, you might want to take a look at this thread on the Chronicle's jobs forum; here's a pretty clear example of how the folks housed in the lower stories of the ivory lighthouse are good -- but often ignored -- sentinels when the waves from the outside world begin tearing at the base of the structure.

Today this site told me, "Your soul is worth �54814. For your peace of mind, 11% of people have a purer soul than you."*

Not bad. At least I can now count myself among the virtuous poor.

I wonder, though, if splurging money on a haircut today will reduce my asking price?


* That's US$87,024.80, according to this currency converter.

Here's an interesting approach to sorting one's books -- my topic/author/size/aesthetics approach seems woefully prosaic by comparison.

Starring Rana Unemployed, Job Seeker and Accidental Thespian.

Opening montage of Rana eating breakfast, cruising job sites on the web, writing and revising and editing again a cover letter, struggling to convince the computer to print, to send a fax, to check email.

Rana carefully dresses as if she is going to work. She puts on pantyhose, nice skirt, blouse and jacket. Discovers rip in skirt, repairs, and finishes getting dressed. She pulls on her low flat pumps, picks up a neatly labeled envelope containing a cover letter and resume, swings her purse over her shoulder, and leaves the house. She unlocks her car, places envelope and purse on the seat, and removes jacket. She then gets in the car and drives away.

Scene of urban traffic, viewed as if through a car windshield, at double or triple time.

Rana parks her car outside the company that advertised for the position she wants. She gets out and carefully puts on her jacket and checks her appearance in the car mirror. She walks over to the parking meter and inserts two dimes. She pauses, then inserts two more. She then strides up to the front door, takes off her sunglasses and walks up to the receptionist's desk.

Receptionist: Can I help you?

Rana (holding out envelope): Yes. I have this packet for Human Resources. Will you see that they get it?

Receptionist (taking envelope): Yes. I'll see that it gets to them. Thank you.

Rana: Thank you. Good-bye.

Receptionist: Good-bye.

Rana leaves the building, puts on her sunglasses and walks back to her car. She puts the purse on the seat and takes off her jacket again. She sees a woman pulling into a parking space across the street.

Rana (loudly): There's still time on this meter!

Woman in Car: Thanks!

Rana gets into her car and pulls away while the woman in the car pulls in behind her.

Reprise of high-speed trip through city, in reverse.

Rana arrives back at her apartment, picks up the purse, puts on the jacket again, and returns to her apartment. She then takes off her professional clothes and puts on a tank top and comfy shorts.

Fade out as she logs on again...

Fin.

Delivery trucks
Cars and vans
A big yellow schoolbus
Planes flying overhead
City buses
A bright red trolley
Bicycles flying by
People walking

All of them seen
Without turning my head
In three city blocks.

Morning newspaper
Farmer's market and fresh milk
A walk in the park.