Is this thing going to become about the petty depredations I am subjecting myself to trying to keep the wheels on the wagon, clinging to our place among the ranks of the not yet foreclosed? I've been thinking contingencies so long I don't even know where it all really stands any more, which is a ridiculous thing to say considering the number of exhaustive spreadsheets I'm running on a regular basis. The dogs are in no wise at the door but the overhead is high and there are no reserves to speak of. So it is all speculative but at the end of the day money is money.
Well if I am so what. Who is it for besides me. It isn't read by my brother or my wife or my best friend (whoever that would be, I haven't a clue anymore, don't really have one). It isn't read by anyone, or if it is, well, you don't complain much, do you, Jack? You don't say anything.
The work, this extra work, this paperwork in the purest sense of the term, the thing is that there is enough of it it seems, for now, to fill any amount of time I should care to turn over to it, and I'm scared about the future, so I give it all that I can bear. The thing is that it leaves an awful lot of headspace open, once I get it rolling and the minimal allotment of grey matter necessary to the task has dug into its groove. I can do math in my head, calculate what the last 20 minutes of drudgery will net me and compare this truly paltry sum to, oh, any stupid thing I've wasted my money on, I won't dig to the bottom of that set any time soon.
Or I can just drift and listen to John Darnielle raise every hair on me singing Matthew 25:21 and try to figure out for the nth time - God knows how many - why he is so god damned much better than I am.
and I'm an 18-wheeler headed down the interstate - and my brakes are gonna give and I won't know till it's too late... tires screaming when I lose control - try not to hurt too many people when I roll...
He is four and a half years older than I am which doesn't really cut it at this point. I think of seeing him play at, what? Twenty four? Twenty five? How much older than me that seemed then. But I am not getting better that much faster, lately I don't feel like I am making any sort of progress at all, except perhaps in the reliability with which I slog along. Lately I find myself wondering if I am not regressing, or if the pendulum is winding down, coming to rest at some dismal steady state. On the other hand I know from experience that I can never judge what I'm going to end up liking while I'm writing it, I always think it's all awful and I always find a few gems after a few years have passed. On the other hand I've already got like five careers worth of material, it's not as if lack of material is my issue.
Well there is always writing, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
All work and no play, kids.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
pulling
Nobody is reading this, correct?
Correct?
I take extra work on the side, pulling staples out of human resources documents for $13 an hour, among other things. The "why" of this isn't relevant... suffice to say that in a particular context staples represent entropy, and I am eliminating this entropic potential.
On one hand I imagine there is a specific, significantly non-zero number of individuals in the world of now who would leap after this opportunity, as indeed I did. Hard times make this easy, from a variety of perspectives, money.
And then on the other hand there is the real of it... Fifteen minutes concentrated effort represent a kind of eternity of staples, page after page and folder after folder. The mind is already colonized by staples and the mechanics of their removal, and I look at the clock, at last, and think: three dollars, 25 cents. Not much, and the only way to make anything of it is to keep after it, and the hours add up to a whole other head space of specific but terribly similar events repeated, and repeated, and repeated.
With an iPod shuffle loaded with a curious assortment of odds and ends, mostly the product of a longish and recently terminated association with eMusic. New Orleans rap and Sufjan Stevens and what selections of compilations of chill-out music the random spits out. Backed by VHS tapes of Neon Genesis Evangelion on mute, mostly unwatched, flash of images, something to keep the eyes focused as fingers feel for elusive sneakers, hidden teeth, entropy's tiny army I am armed to fight with a set of metallic snake jaws. Not what I was looking for, I try to avoid thinking on it too much, not what I signed up for. But it is work, and it is work I'm wanting. And so it goes.
Correct?
I take extra work on the side, pulling staples out of human resources documents for $13 an hour, among other things. The "why" of this isn't relevant... suffice to say that in a particular context staples represent entropy, and I am eliminating this entropic potential.
On one hand I imagine there is a specific, significantly non-zero number of individuals in the world of now who would leap after this opportunity, as indeed I did. Hard times make this easy, from a variety of perspectives, money.
And then on the other hand there is the real of it... Fifteen minutes concentrated effort represent a kind of eternity of staples, page after page and folder after folder. The mind is already colonized by staples and the mechanics of their removal, and I look at the clock, at last, and think: three dollars, 25 cents. Not much, and the only way to make anything of it is to keep after it, and the hours add up to a whole other head space of specific but terribly similar events repeated, and repeated, and repeated.
With an iPod shuffle loaded with a curious assortment of odds and ends, mostly the product of a longish and recently terminated association with eMusic. New Orleans rap and Sufjan Stevens and what selections of compilations of chill-out music the random spits out. Backed by VHS tapes of Neon Genesis Evangelion on mute, mostly unwatched, flash of images, something to keep the eyes focused as fingers feel for elusive sneakers, hidden teeth, entropy's tiny army I am armed to fight with a set of metallic snake jaws. Not what I was looking for, I try to avoid thinking on it too much, not what I signed up for. But it is work, and it is work I'm wanting. And so it goes.
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