"and the impending squint of
first light, that lurked behind
a weeping marquee in downtown Putnam
and would be pullin' up any minute now
just like a bastard amber
Velveeta yellow cab on a rainy corner
and be blowin' its horn, in every window
in town."
-Tom Waits "Putnam County"
"And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamond
Across a cash crop car lot
filled with twilight Coupe Devilles,
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of Saturday night..."
-Tom Waits "Ghost of Saturday Night"
"Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers"
-Leonard Cohen "Suzanne"
"Who loves the sun
Who cares that it makes plants grow
Who cares what it does
Since you broke my heart"
-Velvet Underground "Who Loves The Sun"
Friday, February 26, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Snow, Our Adversary and Invitation
I find myself loathing snow. I used to love it as a kid like I'm sure most kids do but I passionately detest it now. I used to admire how it calmed the world. It is a blanket to dampen the harsh sounds and resolve the dead colors of modern life in all its hideous hustle and bustle. It was a reflection of my temperament. It was my inner longings thrown upon the world as if my imagination was aligned with the creator. It was both universal and personal when it snowed, a truly magical event.
Now I'm the one who has to hustle and bustle my way through errands full of harsh sounds and dead color. The tedium and boredom and necessity of getting by. And although I once hated doing this more than snow I have come to realize that the world most of us live in does not break for nature's hand. Rain or shine what has to be done, still has to be done. I can't change my seemingly endless need to schedule, work, drive, and purchase so snow has become my worse adversary.
Yet, it still reflects my temperament, as I'm sure it reflects everyone else when we need that calm, that cozy couch and blanket, that cup of coffee, that lazy day. It is both personal and universal. It is a Rothko imposing it's will not on the canvas but miles of the earths topography, allowing endless spaces for quiet meditation and harmony, re-rooting us in our humanity. To be put simply, it is good for the soul. But the world does not break for the soul. These moments can't be quantified. You can't buy anything with them. However meaningful they may be to us in our inner lives, they are meaningless in the construction of our lifestyles, which few of us have adequate control over.
I fear for myself when it snows, an inexperienced Virginian rolling around in my otherwise superb but currently inadequate car, but I fear for my friends, particularly my girlfriend Meghan driving to work in the morning. Lets us move to warmer climates, or never work where poor people are. Where there is no money there is no maintenance, and therefore no safe transportation. For those of you who live in Hartford or any poor place bordering a wealthy place, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Snow emphasizes the difference between the haves and have nots. It illustrates, as bright as day, the lack of accommodation for those who need it most, and the advantages and disadvantages we get away from thinking about when the weather is mild.
I now understand the romantic use of weather in stories to convey the inner state of characters. I once thought it was a contrived literary device but now I see the truth, the meaning of it in bloom. We are an organism always evolving through engagements with the environment. There is a sense of us and the world, me and the snow, but there really is no inside, and no outside. There are no hard edges, only endless relationships growing and changing in accord with one another. Strike another note on that piano, add another brush stroke to that painting, change that line in that poem, walk a little further up the road, throw a dash of spice into that recipe, watch the way the snow rest on your lawn and your neighbors roof. Watch the contents of your experience change. This is not addition. This is not 1 + 2 = 3. Summer is more than the addition of heat, winter is more than its absence because with every variable that comes and goes all else are affected. What has come has changed what was before; endless boundless relationships.
And relationships are so important. My friend and photographer Greg Russel spoke to me about how one doesn't always have to have human company to communicate. You can communicate with the trees, with the sky, with birds. It struck me as being a little too new age and if taken the wrong way I suppose it is. But if you think of communication as an act of relating oneself to something else, an emphasis on that relationship and others which are shared, than communication exists between everything and sometimes the Snow which is external to our will is just the thing we need to talk to.
Snow is like Socrates, a friend coming to irritate us, frustrate us, confuse us, and engage us in a dialogue which brings us to a greater self awareness. It is our adversary and our invitation. It is a mirror in which our longings stare us right in the eye. Maybe, with the aid of each other, we can build a world in which nature's voice is heard because it is also our voice, muzzled by the hustle and bustle of just getting by.
Now I'm the one who has to hustle and bustle my way through errands full of harsh sounds and dead color. The tedium and boredom and necessity of getting by. And although I once hated doing this more than snow I have come to realize that the world most of us live in does not break for nature's hand. Rain or shine what has to be done, still has to be done. I can't change my seemingly endless need to schedule, work, drive, and purchase so snow has become my worse adversary.
Yet, it still reflects my temperament, as I'm sure it reflects everyone else when we need that calm, that cozy couch and blanket, that cup of coffee, that lazy day. It is both personal and universal. It is a Rothko imposing it's will not on the canvas but miles of the earths topography, allowing endless spaces for quiet meditation and harmony, re-rooting us in our humanity. To be put simply, it is good for the soul. But the world does not break for the soul. These moments can't be quantified. You can't buy anything with them. However meaningful they may be to us in our inner lives, they are meaningless in the construction of our lifestyles, which few of us have adequate control over.
I fear for myself when it snows, an inexperienced Virginian rolling around in my otherwise superb but currently inadequate car, but I fear for my friends, particularly my girlfriend Meghan driving to work in the morning. Lets us move to warmer climates, or never work where poor people are. Where there is no money there is no maintenance, and therefore no safe transportation. For those of you who live in Hartford or any poor place bordering a wealthy place, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Snow emphasizes the difference between the haves and have nots. It illustrates, as bright as day, the lack of accommodation for those who need it most, and the advantages and disadvantages we get away from thinking about when the weather is mild.
I now understand the romantic use of weather in stories to convey the inner state of characters. I once thought it was a contrived literary device but now I see the truth, the meaning of it in bloom. We are an organism always evolving through engagements with the environment. There is a sense of us and the world, me and the snow, but there really is no inside, and no outside. There are no hard edges, only endless relationships growing and changing in accord with one another. Strike another note on that piano, add another brush stroke to that painting, change that line in that poem, walk a little further up the road, throw a dash of spice into that recipe, watch the way the snow rest on your lawn and your neighbors roof. Watch the contents of your experience change. This is not addition. This is not 1 + 2 = 3. Summer is more than the addition of heat, winter is more than its absence because with every variable that comes and goes all else are affected. What has come has changed what was before; endless boundless relationships.
And relationships are so important. My friend and photographer Greg Russel spoke to me about how one doesn't always have to have human company to communicate. You can communicate with the trees, with the sky, with birds. It struck me as being a little too new age and if taken the wrong way I suppose it is. But if you think of communication as an act of relating oneself to something else, an emphasis on that relationship and others which are shared, than communication exists between everything and sometimes the Snow which is external to our will is just the thing we need to talk to.
Snow is like Socrates, a friend coming to irritate us, frustrate us, confuse us, and engage us in a dialogue which brings us to a greater self awareness. It is our adversary and our invitation. It is a mirror in which our longings stare us right in the eye. Maybe, with the aid of each other, we can build a world in which nature's voice is heard because it is also our voice, muzzled by the hustle and bustle of just getting by.
Monday, February 22, 2010
JOB
So I figure it's time for a new post. I thought about writing a list of things I want to say at work but can't but that is too angering a topic for me to dwell on. I suppose I could write about work in general. My job is okay. There are far worst, and far better jobs. I fold clothes, organize them, check changing rooms, fold more clothes, curse under my breath at how sloppy customers are, and engage customers in half way genuine friendly greetings intended to mask my true motives which are 1. to get you to spend as much money as possible, 2. to persuade you to open up a credit card with an extremely high interest rate, and 3. not really my motives at all. They are the motives I must adopt in order to perform my job well. My managers push me to do this but I don't believe it is really their motive either. I don't even know if it's my managers' manager's motives. They are all good people. I really like them. It's just a chain of anxiety passed down the hierarchy to the sales associate.
But don't get me wrong. I really enjoy helping people. I always approach customers hoping for an all the way genuine friendly engagement (but they have to meet me half way which they usually don't) and I am getting better at it. I like it when people are so happy I found their size, or in the case of today when I crossed the store with a man in a wheel chair to help him with the elevator. That was more rewarding than making 100% of my sales goal.
I mentioned earlier that i was getting better with customers and It's true. Little by little I speak more comfortably to strangers. I'm at a disadvantage being prone to distrust and projections of hostility (sometimes in my head and sometimes correct). One of my managers takes me aside regularly to coach me on my approach to customers. I have almost satisfied him. One thing though that I speculate is left vague intentionally is how coworkers, all of who work hard to make as many sales as possible, are expected to get along with one another. I help out this customer but she rudely goes to that register. I am helping people on the floor but can't make any sales because so and so is crowding the register and blocking me out. It happens, sometimes out of carelessness or unnecessary aggression, but always out of disregard towards other workers. But can you really blame them. Everyone wants to do their job well. Everyone needs the benefits. There has been no effort to address these conflicts or how we should conduct ourselves in regards to one another, and why should there be? All our values are composed to produce us into efficient salesmen of products. We must compete! Let social Darwinism reign! Down with compassion! I have what I have and won't share! God loves me more! That is why I am successful! Now my coworkers are good people like I said. We try to help each other but that help is done out of favor and only formally directed when it is to the benefit of the company. Marx said it well in the following passage:
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.
-Marx. "Estranged Labor" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm)
I suggest reading the whole essay. This is one of a many passages which ring true to me the more and more time I spend reflecting on the state of those who work just to get by. It's sad how many people don't have the time or money to enjoy life. We work to survive and as the captain in Wall-E says, "I DON'T WANT TO SURVIVE. I WANT TO LIVE!"
But don't get me wrong. I really enjoy helping people. I always approach customers hoping for an all the way genuine friendly engagement (but they have to meet me half way which they usually don't) and I am getting better at it. I like it when people are so happy I found their size, or in the case of today when I crossed the store with a man in a wheel chair to help him with the elevator. That was more rewarding than making 100% of my sales goal.
I mentioned earlier that i was getting better with customers and It's true. Little by little I speak more comfortably to strangers. I'm at a disadvantage being prone to distrust and projections of hostility (sometimes in my head and sometimes correct). One of my managers takes me aside regularly to coach me on my approach to customers. I have almost satisfied him. One thing though that I speculate is left vague intentionally is how coworkers, all of who work hard to make as many sales as possible, are expected to get along with one another. I help out this customer but she rudely goes to that register. I am helping people on the floor but can't make any sales because so and so is crowding the register and blocking me out. It happens, sometimes out of carelessness or unnecessary aggression, but always out of disregard towards other workers. But can you really blame them. Everyone wants to do their job well. Everyone needs the benefits. There has been no effort to address these conflicts or how we should conduct ourselves in regards to one another, and why should there be? All our values are composed to produce us into efficient salesmen of products. We must compete! Let social Darwinism reign! Down with compassion! I have what I have and won't share! God loves me more! That is why I am successful! Now my coworkers are good people like I said. We try to help each other but that help is done out of favor and only formally directed when it is to the benefit of the company. Marx said it well in the following passage:
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.
-Marx. "Estranged Labor" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm)
I suggest reading the whole essay. This is one of a many passages which ring true to me the more and more time I spend reflecting on the state of those who work just to get by. It's sad how many people don't have the time or money to enjoy life. We work to survive and as the captain in Wall-E says, "I DON'T WANT TO SURVIVE. I WANT TO LIVE!"
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