My Own Private Dover Beach
Feb. 17th, 2005 06:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraIt took me four weeks into the scut job to realize: nobody actually works here. People sit at their desks writing emails, playing computer games, or they wander the halls flagging coworkers for long, inconsequential conversations about what they watched on television last night or what they're going to buy in the cafeteria for lunch. The more brazen among them actually leave the building and drive to the far outreaches of Salinas on errands.
This revelation was both freeing and horribly depressing. On the one hand if I were disciplined enough, I could actually spend four hours a day there writing my novel and nobody would ever know the difference. On the other hand, it is chilling to think that this is what life is all about, the slaves' endless subterfuges against Massa's cashbox, repeated endlessly throughout history and across national boundaries. This is what happens when you divorce livelihood from actual labor.
I was in a melancholy mood all day yesterday, separate and distinct from the low-level panic about the business that is my constant waking companion. I've been feeling very isolated and trying to come to terms with that. "You have a lot of friends," says Ben. "But they don't call you because they figure you're too busy to talk to them. Why don't you call them?"
"Because they don't call me, " I say sullenly.
Ben laughs. "NASA researchers say they've found evidence of life on Mars!"
"Really? Fossilized remains of little green men?"
"No, silly. Methane signatures. Chemical bioreactors. I'm thrilled. This should drive a nail right into those stupid creationists' coffin. If there's life on Mars, there is no God."
"And why would that be?"
"Well. No Adam and Eve at any rate."
Trust Ben to find solace in the sky while the house is falling down around him.
Being a kitsch retailer in a tourism market is a little like being a farmer, I guess. The weather is always a preoccupation. It's supposed to rain this weekend – the big holiday weekend – and that is bad. It didn't rain yesterday, and that was good. By the latter part of the afternoon, frustrated clouds were looming three-dimensionally in the heavens (rare for this particular locale where clouds tend to be a blanket cover of fog) and when I looked skyward I could see phantasmagoric continents, a whole faery geography, and the most spectacular double rainbow. Covenant, I thought. But there are many more commandments in the Old Testament than the ten we're most familiar with, and most of them involve slaughtering & ritualistically dismembering small animals, burning their carcasses. It's an antiquated contract, this binding agreement we have with the non-existent God.
The dogs frolicked on the beach. Xena found a dead crab and ate half of it before I could make her stop. Milo found a whale vertebra – it was huge, I considered adding it to my sand dollar collection before I threw it back into the ocean. He fetched it back four times before I could convince him: this is not a game. A curious otter watched from just before the wave break.
When I got back, there was a big package from Annie in the mail. No note, just four copies of the National Enquirer. I don't forgive you, I thought and alarmed myself with the venomousness of the thought. Is it genetic? My Sicilian blood? Or astrologic? My Scorpio moon? I hold grudges forever. It's the part of my personality I dislike the most, and yet I don't seem to have very much control over it, it's impossible to let go.
This revelation was both freeing and horribly depressing. On the one hand if I were disciplined enough, I could actually spend four hours a day there writing my novel and nobody would ever know the difference. On the other hand, it is chilling to think that this is what life is all about, the slaves' endless subterfuges against Massa's cashbox, repeated endlessly throughout history and across national boundaries. This is what happens when you divorce livelihood from actual labor.
I was in a melancholy mood all day yesterday, separate and distinct from the low-level panic about the business that is my constant waking companion. I've been feeling very isolated and trying to come to terms with that. "You have a lot of friends," says Ben. "But they don't call you because they figure you're too busy to talk to them. Why don't you call them?"
"Because they don't call me, " I say sullenly.
Ben laughs. "NASA researchers say they've found evidence of life on Mars!"
"Really? Fossilized remains of little green men?"
"No, silly. Methane signatures. Chemical bioreactors. I'm thrilled. This should drive a nail right into those stupid creationists' coffin. If there's life on Mars, there is no God."
"And why would that be?"
"Well. No Adam and Eve at any rate."
Trust Ben to find solace in the sky while the house is falling down around him.
Being a kitsch retailer in a tourism market is a little like being a farmer, I guess. The weather is always a preoccupation. It's supposed to rain this weekend – the big holiday weekend – and that is bad. It didn't rain yesterday, and that was good. By the latter part of the afternoon, frustrated clouds were looming three-dimensionally in the heavens (rare for this particular locale where clouds tend to be a blanket cover of fog) and when I looked skyward I could see phantasmagoric continents, a whole faery geography, and the most spectacular double rainbow. Covenant, I thought. But there are many more commandments in the Old Testament than the ten we're most familiar with, and most of them involve slaughtering & ritualistically dismembering small animals, burning their carcasses. It's an antiquated contract, this binding agreement we have with the non-existent God.
The dogs frolicked on the beach. Xena found a dead crab and ate half of it before I could make her stop. Milo found a whale vertebra – it was huge, I considered adding it to my sand dollar collection before I threw it back into the ocean. He fetched it back four times before I could convince him: this is not a game. A curious otter watched from just before the wave break.
When I got back, there was a big package from Annie in the mail. No note, just four copies of the National Enquirer. I don't forgive you, I thought and alarmed myself with the venomousness of the thought. Is it genetic? My Sicilian blood? Or astrologic? My Scorpio moon? I hold grudges forever. It's the part of my personality I dislike the most, and yet I don't seem to have very much control over it, it's impossible to let go.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 03:58 pm (UTC)Things are gonna be okay.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 05:33 pm (UTC)Although I did find myself thinking this morning that the scut job would make a great horror story -- the facility is actually a decrepid, remodeled hospital and the maintenance staff are all developmentally disabled folk from a local Project Hope. One of the janitors is particularly disturbing -- he walks around going, "Whooo-ooop! Whooo-ooop!" and yesterday he vacuumed me into a corner, and he would not let me out!
no subject
Date: 2005-02-19 05:23 pm (UTC)