The Job Interview

INAC called. They want an interview. They have a job studying the far, far north and its indigineous people named Inuit. I need time. Time to hone my harpoon skills so like a Captain Ahab I can chuck a long distance spear into a great Moby Dick, tearing deep into its blubbery shell and hooking it and losing it like an elusive primordial prize in a free floating novel of a ship and death and megalomania on the high seas. I can sit and dream of another place. I can watch wandering ice floes floating far, far south into tropical sea currents where dolphins get packed together with tuna in small tin cans. I can know the north, its wildlife. I can chum around with bitter polar bears drinking cheap rotgut out of chipped porcelain coated cups in an oil lamp lit shed on a dank tundra, listening to 'em bitch about evolution and how they ended up in the upper shelf freezer of the world. I'll invite 'em south. I'll tell 'em to visit me in my capital city. We can drink porter ale and eat porter house steaks and poached salmon in an electric heated, climate control bar in a tony part of town. I can promise 'em women to stroke their thick white fur and squeeze tight their hard, naily paws. But what if this ain't the truth? What if this ain't the true north? What is my bad dream: a confluence of crazy caribous, bad-assed belugas, checkered past Inuit who tie me up at the point of a double barreled poisoned tip antler, calling in kamikaze killer black flies like a squadron of ace Captain Ahabs taking deadly swatches of my skin. Maybe my crazy mind is floating in and out. Maybe I can fake the interview with charm and wit and a stable and steady-as-she-goes lets not-rock-the-boat attitude . I'll be okay, for awhile. But the first time somebody drops a noisy paper clip on my desk I'll cry crazily stress leave and hop on a slow moving R and R ice floe to a Central American country with turquoise inlets and long shiny beaches. I'll lay in the soft sand under a canopy of palm trees, sipping golden rum, the rhythm of gentle Latin music playing harmoniously in my ears. I'll invite ebony hair women, bronzed toned with brilliant figures, to stroke me back to health, to squeeze my wanting paws. I'll praise the sun god and send 'wish you were here' postcards to my polar bear buddies and hope life can go on and on and on....an eternity of the mind.