Community Service

Yesterday, I did a twelve hour day at the Greater Boston Food Bank. I have 100 hours of cour mandated communtity service to complete. I am not going to tell you what I did, but I didn't kill anyone, probably. My first day at the food bank was a long one but it went by pretty effortlessly. Here is what happened:

I woke up at 6:45 AM. I got about six hours of sleep, so I felt pretty rested and it wasn't too difficult to get up. I took a shower, got changed, and went down to breakfast at the dining hall. I don't usually get to have breakfast because most days I wake up late for something. But I knew thatI was going to be working for a long time doing god know what, so I figured I was going to need the energy. After some eggs and bacon, and a bagel with cream cheese me and Mark caught the T. Overall, it took us about an hour to get there. Not so bad.

The area around The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) seemed a little rough. A lot of people with hardened faces stared at us as we passed, but it was a quarter of 9 and it was too early for mugging. I made sure to wear my shittiest clothing. Muggers like rich kids that go to good schools, or so I hear. Unlike the neighborhood around it the GBFB was a pretty nice joint. Through the front doors was a nice office like area and I approached the Secretary. I think her name was Sarah.

"Hi, we're here to volunteer this morning."

"Ok, just sign this sheet and take one of these." She gave me a paper of stickers that said 'Volunteer: Wednesday'. I took one and put it my sweatshirt. Then from a seperate room, a woman came out and approched us. Her name is Amy Jones and I had talked to her on the phone a couple of days back. She's the volunteer coordinator and hotter than I expected. She said 'Hi it's nice to meet you' and handed us off to her assistant, Tamara.

Tamara lead us out of the front office through a door to the warehouse. It looked like a giant storage locker filled with thousands of boxes of things. Almost every cardboard box had the logo of a Banana company on the front of it. They probably recycled those banana boxes, but I made me wonder what it would be like to jump into a pool of bananas. Probably sticky. For the rest of the day I was hungry for bananas.

We walked the path of a white line through the warehouse and Tamara told us that if we ever get lost we can follow the white line back to the front of the building. She said it was like following bread crumbs. I faked laughed and I could se she was pleased with her wit. She showed us the volunteer room where there were snacks and fridge full of bottle water. If we ever got thirsty or hungry we could come get a drink or a snack. We resumed our trip along the white line until we came to the main sorting area. When groups come in, this is where they go to volunteer. It was also where Mark and I were going to be working.

I thought the giant room was empty, but a man came out from behind a row of boxes. His name was Willy, he was black and wore a GBFB T-shirt and a blue beanie. He looked about 40. Before I could introduce myself, he said:

"I don't know you. You haven't volunteered here before, because you don't look familiar and I always remember faces. I'm Willy, It's nice to meetcha."

We said 'Hi' and told him our names and Tamara left us with him. For a while, we stood around like idiots while Willy scratched his head through his beanie and looked around.

"You want us to do anything." I said in an effort to relieve the awkwardness of standing around in a giant room while a guy you just met scratches his head and doesn't say anything.

"Not just yet." he said and left into another giant room.

End of Part 1 (so as to not overwhelm anyone with too much reading)

The Beginning

To start off here is a poem, it's called Connected by Dreams:

Had we but? Had we but!
We do have time
the world enough, we do!
delight in your delirium,
__dream about death,
___desire despair,
____destroy destiny
_____feel
our brief lives composed of fragile things
dancing behind smoke and mirrors
_____connected by dreams.
If one god did not exist,
a thousand others could flourish and
leave their dead end jobs and
be allowed to die in mediocrity,
alone in their stingy apartments
that smell of leftovers and vomit
_____and old coins.
those foolish geniuses (such is myself)
trying to construct our worlds
_____and define its laws
_____came to close to the truth
_____but always would stray
_____at the very last moment.

let us be connected as we were
by the stories and the dreams
treading in a basin of lost hopes
believing in everything