BEYOND ETERNITY                                  ISSN 1203-5416
                 Episode 08 <-->  Julyish 1996
Sanjay Singh                            eternity@cyberspace.org
_______________________________________________________________

     "So take that look out of here, it doesn't fit you
      Because it's happened doesn't mean you've been discarded
      Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming
      Right up for everything you ever might have fought in."
     [Big Country]


     For few past two years, in September before we head off to
school again, I normally have an end-of-summer dinner with a friend
of mine.  We head over to a local restaurant.  The food is good,
the milk shakes are huge, and the conversations just keep on
getting louder and louder.

     At last years dinner, I was called 'unrealistic' and asked
'what world did I live in' because I had a different work
philosophy than my friend's.   But I'm getting a little ahead of
myself here.

     The topic was this:  if the owner of the place you worked at
came in one day and told you to do something that you were
incapable or unqualified to do, would you do it?  Of course, we
managed to get some specifics in, things like your boss has a habit
of firing people for little or no reason at all (his addition) and
there was no one else around that day (mine).

     His take on this was that the owner told you to do it and,
since you could be fired if you didn't, you might as well do it. 
The reasoning was simple, if the boss tells you to do it, then it's
his responsibility.  (He didn't say this, but I'll give him the
benefit of the doubt and assume that he'd pick the best reason to
support himself.)

     My view (this is the one that caused the name calling) was
this:  you're not qualified to do the job, so we're going to assume
that you wouldn't be able to do ... whatever ... properly and the
chances of screwing up are strong.  So, naturally, you don't do it. 
Of course, I'm not an idiot, so I'd explain all of this quite
nicely to the boss.

     My friend shook his head.  "And then he'd tell you that you
were fired."  What could I say?  I was beaten.  He's right, I
probably would, it was one of the rules in our game.  Fortunately,
I managed to comfort myself with the idea that any company being
run by someone that irrational wouldn't last too long.  After all,
how long can you stay in the red when you accept incompetence and
second rate work?

     Let's try to figure out who was right.

     The next episode (#09, or August) will be out at the end of
August.  So for the year, we'll be an issue behind, but we will be
back on a regular publishing schedule.  Remember that I'll be going
away for a bit in August, so more than ever outside contributions
are invited.  You should all know the rules (if you don't, just
ask), and if you do want to say something, I'll listen.  There is
at least one article that I've been waiting to release, and I think
next month will be when it will finally find its home.  If you want
to give it a neighbour... well, it's been said.

     So, turn down the lights, turn up the music, and get ready to
dance, it's show time.


Contents
========
   - Introduction (you just read it)
   - Work Related
      - Thursday - Part I
      - Thursday - Part II
      - Thursday - Part III
      - Friday
      - Monday
      - Wednesday
      - Thursday
   - Epilogue
   - Etched In Ice [by Jaymi Wiley]
   - Committed To Paper [by Karla Jameson]
   - Eternity Q & A
   - Administrivia
   - Rules Of The Game


Work Related
============
     "Verily, thou are not paid for thy methods, but for thy
     results..."  [Richard Marcinko]

     Here we go.  Six days of me at work.  They are actually
several straight work days (I had the weekend off), and as usual,
I danced around revealing any names, except for those who wanted to
be mentioned.  For obvious reasons, I only bothered asking a few
people if they wanted their names in here.

     A couple of final details.  The first Thursday was an extended
shift for me.  (Don't ask me how I managed to get out Episode 07 of
Eternity that night, I'm not sure if I know myself.)  That should
explain the length of the Thursday trilogy.  Also, I left out the
Tuesday story since both Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty
uneventful.  I didn't want to bore you, so what I did was pick one
day and worked with it.  Wednesday won for a couple of reasons.


THURSDAY -- Part I

     At 8:15 in the morning, I got a phone call waking me up.  "The
secretary's sick today, could you come in early?"  What can I say? 
It was too early for my brain to realize what was happening.  I
told them I'd be there at 9:30, and then Vince, who called, said
"come in at 10, that's their problem."  No argument from me.  Just
before 10, I punched in and walked up to the front office to face
the brand new day.

     The plant that I work at generally opens at 7 in the morning,
every morning, so the entire office staff (five accountants) had
been there for three hours.  The first person that talks to me when
I walk in is the accounts payable woman.  We've actually worked
together at a different company before (it should be a coincidence,
but I don't like accepting things like that) so we get along pretty
well.  Anyway, she tells me that the CFO wants me to track down
some paint purchases, and then she gives me a stack of invoices to
'get started with.'  I went to the kitchen and poured a cup of
coffee for myself, the day had officially begun.

     I walked back to the office with my cup and sat down in the
receptionist's chair.  I shuffled around for a bit, finally getting
comfortable once I had gotten rid of the pillow that she uses as a
backrest, and was getting ready to start my invoicing when another
accountant came up to me with a pile of paper.  These are the
morning faxes (remember what time I said it was), you're going to
need to make copies of these and deliver them.

     Fine.  I sorted the faxes, and made the copies.  This took a
bit of time (there were a lot of them which I hope, for the
receptionist's sake, is not a common thing).  So about half an hour
later, I'm ready to head out into the plant and deliver faxes.  All
the while, this annoying voice that sometimes appears in my head is
asking me, "are we having fun yet?"

     So I go to accountant #2, this is the guy that brought the
faxes to me, and ask him to cover the phones for ten minutes while
I deliver the faxes.  He was standing over another accountant (they
all kind of blend into one here, don't they?), I think they were
having a conversation of some sort.  I was probably expecting his
response, which is what I really believe saved me from saying
something I may have regretted later.  He told me that he was
really busy (remember what he was doing), and that I should just
put the phones on night line so I could hear them ring while I was
walking though the plant.

     Let's think about this for a second.  The plant, like most
others, is big.  And since there are big machines, forklifts, and
lots of people yelling over the noise, it's pretty pointless to
install a phone into every support beam.  A dead sprint from the
middle of the plant to the closest phone would probably take about
one or two rings, but we need to keep in mind that there are big
machines, forklifts, and lots of people.  This makes it very hard
to answer the phone before the third ring.  And I don't care what
anyone tells you, lift drivers don't really give a damn if they hit
you or not, which is why you need to wave frantically before you
walk in front of them.  It's pretty scary stuff.

     Anyway, accountant #2, told me that he was busy and suggested
that I put the phones on night line.  Like I said, I was half
expecting this, so what I did was this (normally if I'm asking for
a favour from someone I don't like that much, I get close to them
so I can use my height to an advantage by looking slightly down on
them) I swallowed very slowly, never breaking eye contact, and said
"fine," then I did a quick pivot on one foot, and walked out of the
office and into the plant.  (I'll explain the theatrics in bit.)

     End of round one.  Ding.


THURSDAY -- Part II

     It was bound to happen eventually.  The big crash.  I finished
delivering the faxes in about half an hour (I had to keep on
running back to answer the phone, take messages, give messages,
blah blah blah).  And since then, I was chained to a desk juggling
paint invoices in one hand and the phone in the other.  Every time
the phones stopped ringing, I got up and got another cup of coffee
from the kitchen.  By 12:30, I was fully percolated, I was also
starting to get the shakes.

     Everyone in the office went to lunch between noon and 12:30. 
The general rule is that the secretary goes at 12, and when she
gets back, then the accountants go.  That way, there will be
someone in the office to answer the phone.  Today went a little
differently, not that I have a problem with that, at 12 I was
thoroughly juiced on caffeine, and lunch was the farthest thing
from my mind.  Anyway, the accountants all happily went out for
their lunches at noon.  I was left to guard the fortress.  Hooray
for me.

     That's when it hit.  The crash.  And just think, earlier in
the morning I was telling Vince that Issac Newton was an idiot,
because I was up and I didn't plan on coming down anytime soon. 
Well, who's laughing now?  It doesn't take too much in the line of
observational skills to realize that if someone's not in a very
happy mood when they're getting high on coffee, then you're not
going to want to be around them when they come down.  And true to
form, after the crash got even uglier than before.

     Maybe this is a good time to point out that normally, I'm a
good natured person.  This day was just a bad exception.  I was
tired, strung out, and I can't really say that my mood when I went
into work was all that typical for me (meaning that I was in a bad
state).  Being greeted on the plant (before I made it to the
office) by "we're in trouble today" and "the owner is in and he's
screaming at everyone" doesn't help any.

     I do try to keep my work life, my personal life, my family
life, and my Eternity life all separate.  Well, maybe not the
Eternity life.  The problem is that they're all mine, and because
of that, I can't really keep them from overlapping.  It just
happened that family and Eternity were frustrating me that week,
and that ended up getting in the way of personal.  Whether work was
an innocent bystander that got dragged in or if work was part of
the problem was still to be decided.  What I know is this, on
Thursday the realm of Sanjay was a dark place.

     Back with the story...  I'm already frustrated, I'm starting
to get hungry, but I haven't had a break in my work to get up and
tell (I decided that asking wasn't the way to go anymore) someone
to cover me.  The phone bleated.  I picked it up, found out who
they wanted to talk to, and while I was doing that, it bleated
again... and again.

     Three calls, and I didn't feel like gambling on anyone else
bothering to grab one of the lines.  Ok, I'll just deal with the
people really quickly and page whoever when I'm done.  I page the
owner with the call I was still dealing with.  Then I grab the next
two calls, and pretty deftly (if I do say so myself) figure out
what they want, and page whoever needs to be paged.

     What's this?  A reprieve?  The phone gods are happy and have
decided to reward me with a moment of silence.  I'm beginning to
think that I could handle this.  The phone bleats again.  It's the
owner.  Shit.  He wants to know who wanted to talk to him?  I told
him that I didn't ask, and then I asked him if he got the call or
not?  He didn't.  Shit.

     He stepped out of the side office (where he was working) and
I figured that I'd do the smart thing and get up and meet him half
way.  I knew I was going to get hit hard with this one (I tend to
get a little paranoid when I'm crashing) and I don't like looking
up at anyone that's yelling at me (another trick of the height).

     "Sanjay, you have to find out who's calling in case something
goes wrong."

     "The phones were ringing off the hook.  I was juggling three
calls, and I didn't want a customer to get a ring through, so I
couldn't take the time to get that person's name.  I had to get to
the phone."

     "I'd rather make sure that if someone gets through they get to
talk to me, than if no one takes a call."

     "Alright, if that's how you want it done."  He was, after all,
the owner of the company, and if that's how he wants the phones
answered, that's fine with me.

     It was 2:15, I told accountant #2 to watch the phones, and I
went out to lunch.  I was back behind the desk by 2:30.  My mood
was better, and I was starting to see the light at the end of the
tunnel.

     End of round two.  Ding.


THURSDAY -- Part III

     By now my mood was really starting to lighten up.  It was
almost four o'clock.  That's when the receptionist normally goes
home for the day.  That means, that I can head back to the shipping
office (the exact opposite end of the building) and do what I'm
supposed to do for the next five hours.  (Normally, I work the one
to nine shift.)  Fatigue has really set in at this point.  I'm
basically not as aware of my surroundings as I like to be, my
senses are a little duller, and patience is a completely foreign
concept to me.  Did I mention that I was feeling better?

     How can I even explain how the phone sounds here?  To
continuously refer to it as a bleat tends to get tiresome, and I'm
sure that there are some sheep (employees not included) out there
that would take offence to being associated with this company in
any way.  But, the only way I'll manage to finish this part is to
just settle for a little less accuracy and call it a bleat.  Know
this, it is truly a blood curdling sound.  (Mind you, the night
line ring sounds exactly like a truck backing up... not necessarily
the best choice for a loading dock, but c'est la vie.)

     Whatever the sound is... it happened again.  And once again,
it was another call for the owner.  Mind you this time I was ready. 
He was in a meeting, he was on the phone.  He was on the phone and
in a meeting.  I did what any other lackey would have done.  I took
a message.

     "What's this?"  Is what he asked when I handed the message to
him.  I just quietly knocked on his office door after taking the
message and handed it to him while he was on the phone.

     "They called for you, I told them that you were in a meeting,
and took a message."  Ta dah!  Not a difficult question.  Mind you,
I just wanted to get out of his office, and I honestly couldn't
think of a reason for me to still be in there.  The meeting was
still on, and he was still on the phone.  I was about to turn
around and walk back into the main office when...

     "Sanjay, it's very important that I'm told when someone calls
me."  Well, duh.  That's why I took the message.  Fatigue was
winning, but my mind had enough energy to stop that thought before
it got to my mouth, and instead came up with...

     "You were on the phone and in a meeting.  I didn't think you
wanted to be disturbed."  That's where I lost him.  I said the T-
word.  Thinking implies judgement, and judgement implies non-
compliance.  Oh no!  I was becoming an anarchist in my boss's eyes. 
Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.  (Again, this was all internal... I really
wanted a cup of coffee and a pack of gum.)

     "No.  I must be paged when someone calls for me."

     Bam!  The image flashed in my mind.  An incredibly quick burst
of light (and I kid you not).  A single scene played out by the
same cast that was in the office.  Me reaching back and throwing my
entire body weight against my fist as it bounced off his skull.  Or
less dramatically, my mind punched my boss.  The first violent
image in my mind since the nightmares stopped last year, and this
is it.  I was just disappointed in myself.  No control at all. 
Again, my mind saw that there was a problem and helped out...

     "That's fine.  I'll make sure you get paged from now on."  And
after saying that, I quickly turned and walked out of the office
before anything bad happened.  I started shaking a bit, and I
quickly packed up all of my work, and went back to the shipping
office.  Fortunately, no one was there, and I took about five
minutes of quiet time to straighten out my head.  I was still very,
very angry, and very, very close to losing what control I had in
me, but the meditation helped.  The silent scream helped more.  The
piece of gum that was unfortunate enough to be in the drawer, was
my salvation.

     After a couple of hours I was fine.  Mind you I vented a lot
during that time too.  The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. 
I did my job to the letter, meaning that I did nothing that I
wasn't told to do, and I tried to shut down whatever emotional core
I have.

     Lesson of the day, whoever says that I'm cold and uncaring (I
still get that on occasion, not from readers, more from family than
anyone else) is an idiot.  When someone needs to go out of their
way to stop caring just to save themselves, and you think that they
don't care, it's time to take a look at why they don't care about
you.

     Change in my life... well, I suppose that history does repeat
itself.  In one day with one bad trip I've decided to kill my
coffee addiction.  I'll still drink it (I'm not as extreme as I
used to be), but it's no longer the juice-of-life... now it's just
a warm beverage.

     Ding.  Round three.  End of the fight.  I lost by decision. 
No knockdown, at least not yet.


FRIDAY

     I think the only thing that I really want out of life is some
consistency and in most of the aspects of my life, I've managed to
find it.  My closest friends know exactly where they stand with me,
and I generally know where I stand with them.  My private life is
pretty tightly controlled by me, so it has no choice but to be
consistent.  For some reason, I can't get work to follow that plan.

     This is the first job that I've ever held where I didn't know
what was going on inside everyone else's heads.  Sure, at other
jobs we had office politics, and the infamous 'cover your ass and
then do your job' philosophy, but something about this place goes
beyond that.

     I wasn't looking forward to Friday.  After everything that
happened on Thursday, I just wasn't in the mood for it.  I wasn't
feeling playful.  No games.

     A friend once told me that if I expect a day to go badly, then
it probably would.  Her solution was for me to approach each day
with a bit of optimism.  If the day before was really bad, then the
next day had to be better... even if it was only a marginal
difference, right?

     She was right, well, half right.  On Friday I was expecting a
bad, bad day.  For the first time this summer, I didn't even want
to get out of bed in the morning.  But then my mind kicked in, and
ordered me to get on with my day.

     I got up, I had a shower, ate breakfast, and waited until the
time came when I should be going to work.  An entire morning spent
in silence.  To be honest, I don't think I wanted to be happy that
day.  I just wanted to work through my frustrations, and be done
with them... happiness would be a distraction.

     Things changed when I got to work.  For the first couple of
hours I did my job.  Then I had to go up to the front office to fax
some paperwork over to a customer.  That's when I ran into
Accountant #2 (the one that wouldn't answer the phone).

     "About yesterday..."

     Woah.  My mind had just been shocked into waking up.  No cup
of coffee could ever have brought me to the state of alertness that
those two words did.  It did sound like an apology of some sort,
didn't it?

     Ok, so if he's going to apologize, what do you do?  What if he
doesn't?  Best thing to do... come on... think... no emotion.  Just
stare at him.  So I level my gaze at him, and raise my eyebrows
questioningly.  I didn't say a word.

     I think he realized what was going on and I think he realized
that I wasn't going to go out of my way to make this any easier for
him.  (Is a situation still ironic if you create it to be that
way?)  He shifted his weight, and I still stared at him.  Not
menacingly, just curiously.

     "I'm sorry that I couldn't help you yesterday morning.  I was
busy."

     I was expecting the words to actually lift my spirits a lot
more, but something was missing.

     I shrugged, "don't worry about it."  By then, the fax had been
sent, so again, I walked away.

     Lesson of the day:  there is a difference between what you
think you want and what you actually do.

     Change in my life... I realized that this job won't really be
able to give much back to me emotionally.  I'll just need another
source.


MONDAY

     I resent paper work.  I don't like paper trails.  I really see
no reason for me to prove that I'm doing my job on paper, when I
could be proving it in person.

     Monday was going alright.  I had used the weekend to bounce
back.  Everything was back to normal.  I should have known better.

     A couple of hours into my shift Frank was back.  He had spent
a while with the owner and some of the upper management.  He looked
completely exhausted.

     "We need to talk."  Et tu Frank?  I know that my life is
normally spent on an emotional roller coaster, but every time I
stepped into work, I went on an eight hour downhill plunge.  It's
not really something that you want to do to yourself on a daily
basis... but I was here.  "Everyone wants to know what it is that
you do here."

     Everyone?  Haven't I worked for every single department except
for quality control?  Haven't I done some kind of job / favour for
almost everyone in management?  Haven't I proven that I'm doing
something?  Hell, I normally take three five minute breaks a day
(one is my dinner break), instead of the two fifteen minute ones
that I'm allowed?  What more do they want from me?

     By the time I had sorted through all these questions in my
head, Frank had been called away.  More meetings.  I was left to
figure out what I could have possibly done to get this knife lodged
in my back, and why anyone would want to put it there.

     So that night, and every night since then, after I come home
from work, I write down everything I've done that day in a little
notebook.  I just didn't have a choice.  If they didn't believe
what I was doing when I was in front of them, at least I'll have a
record on paper.

     I always thought that doing my job well enough that I didn't
have to worry about politics was a much better way to work than
making sure my ass was covered.  Oh well, I guess at one time in my
life I believed in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy too.

     They managed to knock me down.

     Lesson of the day:  the only way I can really sum this up is
by just quoting the scene from Homicide that was running through my
head that night.  I clipped out one bit, just because I am not a
kid on my way to jail, but the advice is still sound.

     "Son, I don't usually find myself giving advice, but
     please listen to me just this one time.  Keep your ass to
     the wall.  Don't trust anybody.  Don't believe anybody. 
     Don't help anybody.  And don't ask anybody for anything."

     Change in my life...  I lost a step and gained a bit of
cynicism.  It took me until the end of the week before I managed to
revoke the trade.


WEDNESDAY

     Wednesday's crisis started off early and this time it had
nothing to do with work.

     I woke up early (well, at a normal time for me, which the rest
of the world seems to think is early) and after my morning routine,
I went downstairs to check my email.  Again, this is nothing
special.

     What was special was that a friend of mine had sent me a
message.  Already I was off to a great day, but then I read the
message.  Trouble in paradise.

     I have this habit of overreacting when someone I care about is
in trouble.  Part of it is just me being overprotective, and I'd
have to admit that part of it is that I'm just trying to get that
much more involved in someone else's life.  This was the one thing
I couldn't allow to be an exception, even though I knew that she
was in good hands.

     I took a quick look at my watch.  Damn, it was too early to
call.  No problem, I set my mind on calling as soon as I got home
from work that night.  I could manage waiting for half a day.

     This is where the line between my work life and my personal
life got blurred...  And I'm sure a lot of you know how much I like
the lines in my life.  I was getting kicked at work, and now I had
decided that a friend needed me.  No matter how much I knew that
she would be able to work it all out on her own... I still had to
do something!  Didn't I?

     Understandably (was it really?), I had problems focussing at
work that day.  I was still reeling from the blows that I took on
Monday, and I could feel myself getting pulled into the void again. 
(Are we having fun yet?)  The weight of my world was beginning to
collapse in on itself again.  (Are we having fun yet?)  I was
exhausted -- emotionally drained.  (Are we having fun yet?)  I was
about to be pulled under the waves again.  No!  We are not having
fun yet!

     Somehow, I managed to pull myself together enough to make it
through the first half of my shift without any problems.  Fatigue
was setting in, but I still had enough control to do my job.  This
was, after all, company time.  I might as well make the most of it.

     That's when the phone call came.  I wasn't answering phones
anymore, this was just the shipping office's phone.  And since I
was being a shipper that day, I answered it.  Simply enough it was
a customer that wanted to know if we had any of their parts that
would be ready to ship the next morning.  I got the list, went to
the production line and made sure they were there.  Well, one of
them was there, the rest I made sure that the line manager knew
about.  I told the customer which parts we had and that was that. 
The rest of the shift was uneventful.  What can I say?  Excitement
can't always follow where I step.

     At least when my shift ended I knew that I could get home and
make the phone call that I had been waiting to make all day.  I
could help out a friend and set my mind at ease at the same time. 
The only problem was that I forgot that I still lived with my
family.

     I came home and asked if anyone would need to use the phone
that night.  My sister said she needed it, and I told her to let me
know when she was done.  She told me she'd be using it for a long
time.  I took a deep breath and said I'd just use it now.  That
didn't work either because she was also expecting a call.

     I just didn't have enough in me to argue.  That was it.  Even
a slow day at this job manages to drain me emotionally.  I just
walked down to the basement, turned the lights down and the music
up.

     I woke up a couple of hours later, and headed up to my
bedroom.  This was my day.

     Lesson of the day:  Choosing to follow a principle instead of
satisfying an immediate need can still be a gut-wrenching decision. 
Living in a house that stopped being a home a long time ago with a
family that were never really friends is not as rent free as you
might think.

     Change in my life...  I was too tired.  I was too confused. 
I was too torn.  Sometimes it's better to let the day end than it
is to dwell on it.


THURSDAY

     Mea culpa.  My fault.  For the first time in my life, my
immediate career plans were uncertain.  For the first time in my
life I had a chance to be fired from my job.

     I spent an entire day replying the events in my mind...

     A customer calls asking for their parts.  I check and tell her
what we have.  I tell whoever I think I'm supposed to tell and
that's it.  No point in dwelling on it, is there?

     The next morning, the truck comes and goes and in the end the
same parts that I confirmed that we had coming off the line were
still sitting somewhere in the production area.  No one told the
shipper.

     That's it.  The customer, tired of our mistakes (I learned
that we miss orders for them on an semi-regular basis), starts
thinking about pulling their contract.  The situation is critical
and the tension is nearly suffocating.  This is when I walked in. 
I had the morning off, but I was in time to see the aftermath.

     The owner of our plant was en route from the states, our sales
manager and vice-president were on their way to visit the customer
in person.  Vince was trying to run every part that we had for the
customer in stock.  Frank was running damage control over the
phone.

     Management was reeling.  What went wrong?  I'm not sure if
they wanted to know why the customer would get so angry this time
instead of accepting the mistake all of the other times, or if they
were looking for a scapegoat.  I held the answer to at least one of
those questions.  Frank knew the answer too, the person that I had
talked to the previous day knew my name.

     Frank's take on everything was this.  I passed the message
along.  I should have told him that the parts were ready because he
is the shipping manager, but a lot of people were supposed to tell
him.  Even Vince, who was one of the people that I told, was
supposed to mention something.

     In his words, "what I did would have been fine at any other
company, here you need to tell everyone everything."  He was right,
this was not any other company, but it was still where I was, so I
was supposed to play by their rules.

     I had assumed that since production knew that I wanted the
parts, the would tell someone in shipping once they were ready to
go out.  They assumed that since I was looking, I'd take care of
it.  I assumed that telling Vince that the parts would be ready
soon would mean that he'd make sure that they got to where they
needed to go.  He assumed that since everything was almost ready, 
there was nothing to worry about...  Does anyone know the line
about assumptions?

     I, being the blame-hound that I usually deny being, took (and
still think I deserved) a lot more responsibility for the mistake
than anyone else seems willing to admit to.  There was an upside to
that though.  I figured out who was on my side at the company that 
day, and who was just waiting for me to stumble.  Two cliches of
encouragement.  That was all that was offered, and that was all I
needed to figure out who my 'friends' were.

     Here's what was supposed to cheer me up.  Looking back, they 
did try to keep things in perspective for me.

     Frank: "Look, you were just the last straw.  There was an
entire pile underneath you."

     Vince: "It's like a boxing match.  You just got the last punch
in.  That's all"

     True to form, I followed the B-movie script that is my life
and came back with "but I still broke their backs" and "then how
come I'm getting knocked out?"

     But I wasn't knocked out.  The contract was saved and no one
outside of my department has mentioned a word to me about what
happened.  I know that it's more like them to shuffle the blame
around behind closed doors and behind my back, but I'll delude
myself into thinking that it's been forgotten.  Besides, there's
only five weeks left.

     Lesson of the day: I am not as alone as I sometimes think I
am.  People that I didn't give enough credit to at the beginning
came to bat for me.

     Change in my life... I'm losing my objectivity.  I should be
able to just step back and say 'this is what happened, this is what
I did wrong, this is how much of it was purely my fault, this is
how I can make sure that it never happens again,' but I can't. 
Maybe I am really am addicted to guilt.


Epilogue
========
     "I bit my tongue and stood in line
      With not much to believe in
      I bought into what I was sold
      And ended up with nothing.
      This is not my idea of a good time..."
     [Garbage]

     So here I sit.  Two weeks after that mess took place.  A week
after it was committed to paper (or screen as the case may be). 
What's happened?

     I still have my job, and I'm holding on to it pretty well now. 
I've learned how to work within the company.

     In the end I did end up revising a principle, but I'm hoping
to keep the change temporary.  In April, my basic work philosophy
(which does carry though to my life philosophy too) was this:

     1.   Make sure the company is stronger when you leave than
          what it was when you started.

     2.   They don't need to notice you when you're there, but they
          have to notice when you're gone.

     I've managed to keep number two going.  (Actually, I promised
Frank that I would keep that one this afternoon.)  Sadly, number
one was rewritten.  Now it's just:

     Do everything you're given and do it perfectly.  Turn
     yourself on when you walk through the front door, and
     shut yourself off when you walk out.  What happens when
     you're not there is NOT YOUR PROBLEM.

     Not my problem?  That was another one of those catchy phrases
that I never really liked to use.  Everything should be your
problem when you're one with the company.  I guess I just don't
want to join any clubs that I haven't been invited to.

     For what it's worth, you won Mike.  I won't let this place
define the standard for what a workplace should be, but it's
grossly changed my perceptions about what's out there.  I still
stand behind my choice from the introduction, but now I understand
his all too well.  I knew that ant any job every person is
replaceable, but no company has ever gone out of its way to make me
feel expendable before.  I don't like that feeling.

     One parting thought.  There's a bit of graffiti on the
shipping office wall.  It's tucked away in a corner and it was
written by someone who's probably long forgotten.  The message is
this:  "[The company] has poisoned my soul."  I noticed it in my
first week.  I used to think of it as a joke.  Now it's become the
first thought on my mind when I walk into the plant.

     My future is probably as uncertain as any of yours, but I do
know this.  When I walk out of those doors at the end of summer. 
I'm not walking back in.

     It took me a while but I've learned my lesson... but you'll
have to wait until the next issue before you hear what it was.


Etched In Ice
=============
by Jaymi Wiley [wiley@vancouver.wsu.edu]

     Those words are forever etched in my mind.  The pain and the
hurt are unequalled to that which I normally  experience from
second to second and day to day.  Mentally I'm a wreak... but this
I've learned to deal with.
 
     Financially... well let's just say that I'm scared.  I'm
scared that one day I won't be able to find a way to make ends meet
each month.  I'm scared that one day I won't graduate from college
and that all the effort and struggles I've been through the past
four years will have been for nothing.

     So I write.  Fiction and landscapes from the mind.  This is
what I do best.  In addition to being the student, library
assistant (part-time), and HTML web designer at the lab (once again
part-time).  But even this doesn't cover the necessities of having
a studio apartment, phone, electricity, and a big junkie's appetite
for music and books.  Oh, and not too mention the car... gas,
repairs.  What a nightmare.

     Sometimes I dream of a world without money, a perfect utopia 
where people get along with one another and do what they love to do
and what they are best at.  In my world there are no people telling
me what I can or can't do, squashing my dreams.  And in this world
there will be no regrets, no words that bring tears to my eyes when
I think of them.  Those words are what put the icing on the cake.

     Those words.  You can be so stupid.  You could have played by
my rules and had a rent free place to live in but instead you
choose to screw it all up.  Etched in ice upon my mind.


Committed To Paper
==================
by Karla Jameson [karlaj@swbi.net]

     "Hello, I'm Karla from The Kincardine News, I was wondering if
I could ask you a few questions regarding..."

     I love my job.  I hate my job.  I love knowing that I'm good
at what I do.  I hate knowing that I'll be doing it for the rest of
my life.  I'm too young to be sure of my future, but I am sure. 
It's scary being certain.  Scary to the point that I question my
certainty.  I ask myself, "are you sure this is what you want to
do?  Are you sure this is what you want your life to be?"  The only
answer I can think of is, it's the best idea I've come up with so
far.

     I'm a junior reporter at a local small town weekly newspaper. 
I started as a co-op student last October, and have since been
hired to work weekends, and will soon be starting to work weekdays
in the summer. I'm a good photographer, and an okay reporter.  I
always enjoy learning new things, and I always do my best to make
our paper a good paper.  This is what I want to do.  This *is* what
I want to do, right?

     I have this fear... in one year I will be going to Ryerson
University for 4 years, to study journalism, spending upwards of
$40,000 of my parents money, and learning all kinds of neat useless
stuff.  Then, I'll move back to Kincardine, get a job at The News,
and do the exact same job I'm doing now.  The only difference being
I'll be paid normal wage, instead of student wage. Yippie! My
future looks bright.

     I love my job, I truly do, I love having a future, I love
having a goal to work towards... who knows?  Maybe I'll be the next
Rosie DiManno! 

     I suppose one has to be optimistic rather than realistic when
thinking of the future.  No one would get out of bed in the morning
on the sole assurance that the floor is going to be there, you have
to think that maybe today the floor wont be ice-cold. 

     Wish me luck!  Look for my name in the Toronto Star in 5 or 10
years!


Eternity Q & A
==============
     Ok, the is probably just a carry through from the last issue. 
I've been doing this (Eternity) for just over a year and a half,
and during that time, I've fielded some questions from a lot of
you.  Here are some answers to some of the more common questions.


Q.   Who are you?
A.   (this was my original answer...)
     Hi, I'm Sanjay, pleased to meetcha.  I'm hiding somewhere in
     my early twenties, and yes for all of you who asked, yes I am
     a guy.  You could call me testosterone-boy, but I prefer
     Sanjay.

     (this is what I came up with when I was asked the question
     last week...)
     Who am I?  I'm me.  I'm little pieces of a lot of people. 
     Part dreamer, part philosopher, part voyeur.  I believed my
     mother when she said that honesty was the best policy, even
     though she didn't believe it herself.

     I've let my life fall apart twice in the past six years, and
     after  putting it back together last year, I vowed never to
     let it happen  again.  The first time it fell apart is my
     deepest, darkest secret, which  is now inching its way towards
     the light.  The second time, well, that was just the last
     promise that I broke.  Broke a promise, killed a friendship. 
     Two strikes against me, and I'm not going to go down on a
     third.

     You can find me (or I found myself) in Atlas Shrugged (Ayn
     Rand),  Illusions (Richard Bach), Everything I Needed to Know
     I Learned in  Kindergarten (Robert Fulghum), Ender's Game and
     Speaker for the Dead (Orson Scott Card, both).

     The only television show I watch is Homicide (I'm not a tv
     snob, I just thought it was killing too much of my time which
     I wanted to use for myself), and if a scene from any movie
     ever flashes through my head it's probably from Talk Radio
     (the only good Oliver Stone movie).

     How's that?  Nothing more than stream of consciousness, but
     nothing less than myself.


Q.   What's with all of the quotations?
A.   Honestly (this just goes to show how backwards my priorities
     were back then), I was hoping to use Eternity to promote my
     quote list.  That's why I started each article off with a
     quotation.  Then I realized that Eternity was far more
     important to me than the list which it started from, so I
     didn't need them anymore, but I liked the way they looked.  It
     was also a good way for me to summarize what I was trying to
     say each time, which came in handy for a few of my ...
     stranger works.


Q.   Why bother with Eternity (or why do you do this)?
A.   I think the best way to say this is with someone else's words. 
     When Dahven White (of Cultural Debris fame) said:

          I always think the same thing when I read about
          someone committing suicide.  I think, 'There, but
          for the grace of God, go I.'  I think, 'There's
          only a twist of Fate between me and them.'  I
          think, 'It could have been me.'  I think, 'I  hope
          that I can give someone else a reason to live
          through today so that he or she will give me a
          reason to live through tomorrow.'

     it stuck with me.  Granted, Eternity had already begun at that
     point, but it had an incredibly profound effect on me.

     Eternity is partly a support group.  But there's a difference. 
I'd like to think that Eternity offered less of the "look at what
I survived" support and more of the "look at what I managed to do
since" type.  If I had never known that the demons had been beaten
before, I would have never found the courage to expunge them. 
Maybe that's the message.


(A week after writing that last one and going over some old issues,
I reread that last part, and asked myself this question.)

Q.   Why don't you just call Eternity the "Dahven White Fanzine"?
A.   So many answers are running through my head for this one. 
     First and foremost, she probably wouldn't want that (sorry if
     I'm assuming too much D).  Then there's also the problem that
     a couple of other people would feel left out if I did that (I
     don't have the time to write a Professor Zen Fanzine, to name
     but one).

     In short, I think a subtle and silent homage works a lot
     better than just slavering over her all the time.  Besides, I
     gotta be me.  Talk to you in a month and a half.


Administrivia...
================
     Beyond Eternity (ISSN 1203-5416) is a monthly serial that is
written (for the most part) and compiled by Sanjay Singh, and then
edited by Paul Sheen and Sanjay Singh.  You can find older (or even
current) issues from any of these places...

mail:     eternity@cyberspace.org
 web:     http://www.interlog.com/~vash
ftp:      ftp.etext.org:  /pub/Zines/Eternity/
gopher:   gopher.etext.org  (follow the prompts)
usenet:   alt.zines

subscriptions: Just send me mail, I'll add you to the list.  All I
               ask is that you let me know what you think about
               "Beyond Eternity...", and you can even mention how
               you found out about it.  It's a small price to pay,
               but that's all I ask for.

     As always, if you have a question, comment, statement, rant,
or anything, feel free to let me know.  (Who knows, you might even
feel better that you did it.)  There's always going to be room for
me to improve, and I'll always make space for outside
contributions.  When I say that one person can make a difference,
that includes you.


Rules Of The Game
=================
     I take full responsibility of the overall content here.  There
might be other writers but what goes into this is my choice. 
Copyright is held by whoever wrote the article, and if it doesn't
say who they were, then it was me.  I'd strongly suggest asking
them for permission before you reprint anything that was written in
here (this includes my stuff).  Chances are that I won't object,
but I'd still like to know.

     In past issues of The Eternity Articles, I was asked if what
I had written was true.  I'll state this for the record now,
"everything I write is true to me".  As for the other writers,
well, you'd have to ask them.  As a general rule I'm not going to
print pure fiction anymore, unless I think that it has a message
that's worth relaying.

     I think that's all that needs to be said.  Talk to you next
month.

Sanjay Singh (7/13/96)