Gulags

I have been meaning to write something about this for a while now.
I am currently reading Solzhenitsyn’s (and yes I had to pull out the book again to figure out how to spell it) “The Gulag Archipelago” about the horrid and appalling conditions of prisoners during Stalin’s rule. Russians lived in absolute and utter assurance that they would get arrested and thrown in prison for even THINKING about the concept of dissention, or thinking about knowing someone who was thinking about the concept of dissention. I exaggerate not at all.

The prisons were horrific and the prisoners starved, tormented, tortured, kept without sleep, and away from any bathrooms for years before being sent to prison camps in the vast snowy wasteland of god-knows-where.

I read this on the metro in the mornings, and when I sit waiting when the train cars break down and they have to unload us, hundreds on a platform, before squishing us all back in to the car for it only to be stopped a few minutes later. I read this before I put it down to exit onto the platform in lines and wait on the escalator in lines to go wait at a stoplight in bunches to go into one of a million buildings with a million other people and sit down at my desk for eight hours and change.

This, is a blessing, I think to myself as I read the utter oppression from this author’s pages, I am warm and fed and capable and free. And then I stop for a minute at this thought of “free”. Because, truly, I can sit and type this out at work and I can read this book and I can disagree and choose NOT to watch the State of the Union Address because the clapping hurts my ears.

And some days, I just feel like I’m waiting for to be let free.

This comes to mind right now because I am ready to cry. I am being called constantly by a company we work with regarding a registration for another company we both manage. Except we don't manage this company - the other company does. We DO NOT MANAGE THIS COMPANY that is having problems. Yet, I am being demanded to solve the problem, as if the problem was my fault. I am getting disdainfully-voiced phone calls, and one step after another is coming back to me as if I had forgotten it like a child. But really... it is not my responsibility. Solving this problem just is not a part of my job. But I must solve it like it is no problem at all. And that is what I will do.

I have another problem at the same time. This too is not my fault. It is the bank's fault. And the bank is the only one that can solve it. But if our transaction does not go through it is my fault.

I hate this.
I just want a sofa and a cuddle and a martini. Fortunately, I am in naptown tonight visiting a dear friend at the old HB's. Only to drive back again tonight because my usual lodging is closed for service until next monday. Actually, i could still go use the room I guess. But that's just a little creepy.