~ awash with meaninglessness

I’m really sorry I haven’t been able to post as often as usual.

Ebay is the culprit. In desperate times, as you may already know, Ebay is where I turn to breathe life back into the cadaver that is our household budget. It’s an activity of last resort, and I don’t know what I’d do if it didn’t exist.

But my god, the drudgery it demands…

At first it’s not so bad. Listing the books can even be fun. I like to provide all the pertinent information a potential buyer may need. I paste reviews from Amazon into my item descriptions. I take care to paint a good verbal picture of the book’s condition …

But then the auctions end. The money starts trickling in. I must keep a log of this money. I must list again. I must check my messages … ‘Just letting you know I’ve transferred the money for Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’…. Cheers. I knew that already. I could have addressed your parcel in the time it took me to read your blasted email….

The addressing … the bubble-wrapping … the weighing … the swabbing … the double-checking … the constant search for non-putrid packing materials in bins and skips … the gluing of fifty cent stamps … all the many and various stages in the process …

By the time I’m fully Ebay-engaged, they pile upon each other inexorably. When I have sick days, which I invariably do, they pile even higher. There is no pity for the faceless seller. And there is always at least one irritable buyer who wants emails replied to within the hour.

And there’s no way to streamline it. I’ve tried. People are just too variable… [Though I admit I’ve successfully integrated Polly into sections of the production line.]

[If you’re wondering about the fifty cent stamps, don’t. I buy them in bulk from my next door neighbour, who is in the local stamp club. I believe they come from ‘stamp collections’. Problem is, when the postage is, say, thirteen dollars, you have to patiently glue twenty-six stamps to the package.]

Is my life reduced to this?

No. I can still write in the mornings and visit the pool and discharge my fatherly responsibilities. But my blogging suffers and I guess this post is by way of an excuse, and an apology.

Otherwise, life lollops on. On Saturday I’m recording a voice track for White Noise Carousel. The piece is named ‘The Organ of Oertel’. It tells the story of a secret society, the members of which were born with an anomalous, whiskered organ resembling a sea cucumber in the region of the lower intestine. This ‘Organ of Oertel’ imparts wild talents - and drives its possessor to madness and excess as if it has a will and a sentience of its own.

*

Yesterday my wife withdrew all her money from an ATM [$600] then forgot to remove it from the slot. She was around the corner at the supermarket when she realised, freaked out, raced back and found it gone. She landed home in tears, despising herself, deciding she was useless and a fool, a rotten mother and a burden on her family. I tried to convince her otherwise, tried to comfort her, directed her to ring the cops, the bank etc …

And wound up in such a flurry myself that stupidly, while pasting a fifty cent stamp, I bit on the nozzle of the glue bottle and broke a veneer off one of my front teeth.

The next day, praise the heavens, we learnt that the ATM had sucked the money back in before it was pilfered. Meanwhile it cost two hundred and thirty dollars to fix my tooth.

But there is light on the horizon, and soon you will hear a lot more of me, I swear.