Babe the Pig Does Existential Angst
Aug. 21st, 2005 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraTalked to Ernesto for the first time in a billion years day before last. Gone forever the cocky swagger & arrogant banter of last summer. It was very sad. He looked disoriented, a wee bit lost as he unloaded electric guitar and amps from his ancient beige Impala.
Then he came by the store to borrow my broom. "The tourists have left me many presents," he told me. "I'm going to donate them to the less fortunate." He nodded towards one of the tasteful cement garbage urns where drunks were rummaging for breakfast.
"Hard times all over," said I.
Ernesto swiped a hand across his forehead. "I am working in a warehouse now, five days a week. Unloading boxes."
"That's tough."
"I'm a musician. That's all I know how to do. But I'm not making any money at it now, and a man has to eat."
I stifled the impulse to hum a few bars of Leonard Cohen Has Taken a Day Job. Instead I told him, "You're a musician and a good one. Honestly, it's not you. It's Monterey. It's been hit very hard by the price of gas. People just aren't coming here anymore. And when they do come, they don't spend money."
Ernesto did the sour mouth thing. "Business bad for you too?"
"We're tracking to last year. Barely. Mostly on the strength of our Internet sales. But we're not showing growth and in a new business, that's bad. We can't leave – we have another year on our lease. But I'll tell you, as soon as that year is up..."
But Ernesto wasn't listening. "I don't know what happened," he complained. "One minute I was young. The next minute, I'm an old man."
I might have been more sympathetic except that earlier that morning I'd had to stave off my own mini-meltdown. I'm almost embarrassed to write about it here since it was kind of like a Lifetime, Television For Women version of Babe the Pig happening at – of all places – the Monterey County Fair where once again this year we have a little concession booth.
Last year, we did very well at the Monterey County Fair. This year we are doing no sales whatsoever which is partly due to the weather – unrelentingly gray & miserable – and partly due to the idiots who planned the event for the same weekend the classic Ferraris and Austin Martins make their annual pilgrimmage to Pebble Beach. A backbreaking amount of work and we will be lucky to break even on booth rental and insurance. So it goes. I've been waking up at 4am to get all the circus work out of the way before scuttling down to the store at 10 so that Ben can man the Fair booth. Robin is officially a Lost Boy this week and anybody reading this should feel free to report us to Child Protective Services.
"It's the bunny championships this morning," Ben told me. "You should go."
"I don't want to see the bunny championships," I said. "I have to much stuff to do –"
"You should go anyway," said Ben and literally wrestled the van keys into my hand and pushed me out the door.
Rabbits are my totem animals. You might say I'm obsessed. My first husband was actually named Hare and although I don't think that's the reason I married him, we all know the subconscious moves in mysterious ways.
Maybe it was because I went through the wrong gate to get into the fair and thus found myself on the empty midway in swirling gray mists straight out of a John Carpenter movie. There's no buzz kill quite like seeing the tacky daylight face of a place where people go to have fun in the dark. Anyway, the bunnies were not quite as adorable as I remembered them, and so I started wandering through the bunkhouse, looking at the other animals. Shorn, nervous looking sheep. Oblivious goats. Heifers and steers, lying dazed in their stalls beneath anatomical charts eschewing the more conventional nomenclature of muscle and bone for roast, steak and tri-tip.
And then there were the pigs.
Even as I watched, one of the pigs managed to nudge open its gate and escape on to the path, leading its apple-cheeked 4-H guardians on a merry chase. I watched in fascination. Where did it think it could go? It squealed and dodged; the 4-H'ers beat it with their crooks, trying to steer it. What was going on in the piggy's mind? Did it have some dim presentiment that however many times its keepers filled its trough to overflowing with feed, love was not a part of their calculations, that the final answer was always bacon? Did the pig have something resembling consciousness? And if it did, what was the point of its consciousness? For that matter, what was the point of my consciousness, what was the point of any consciousness, wasn't consciousness always a trap? Maybe those crazy people walking down the street, bargaining with invisible overlords and scratching themselves had it exactly right. Maybe schizophrenia isn't a biochemical dysfunction at all but a reasoned response to the true Cthulu-like nature of a universe where there's no true freedom, only varying degrees of license –
Danger, Will Robinson.
I pulled myself back from that edge. But it left me in a strange, distracted state.
Then he came by the store to borrow my broom. "The tourists have left me many presents," he told me. "I'm going to donate them to the less fortunate." He nodded towards one of the tasteful cement garbage urns where drunks were rummaging for breakfast.
"Hard times all over," said I.
Ernesto swiped a hand across his forehead. "I am working in a warehouse now, five days a week. Unloading boxes."
"That's tough."
"I'm a musician. That's all I know how to do. But I'm not making any money at it now, and a man has to eat."
I stifled the impulse to hum a few bars of Leonard Cohen Has Taken a Day Job. Instead I told him, "You're a musician and a good one. Honestly, it's not you. It's Monterey. It's been hit very hard by the price of gas. People just aren't coming here anymore. And when they do come, they don't spend money."
Ernesto did the sour mouth thing. "Business bad for you too?"
"We're tracking to last year. Barely. Mostly on the strength of our Internet sales. But we're not showing growth and in a new business, that's bad. We can't leave – we have another year on our lease. But I'll tell you, as soon as that year is up..."
But Ernesto wasn't listening. "I don't know what happened," he complained. "One minute I was young. The next minute, I'm an old man."
I might have been more sympathetic except that earlier that morning I'd had to stave off my own mini-meltdown. I'm almost embarrassed to write about it here since it was kind of like a Lifetime, Television For Women version of Babe the Pig happening at – of all places – the Monterey County Fair where once again this year we have a little concession booth.
Last year, we did very well at the Monterey County Fair. This year we are doing no sales whatsoever which is partly due to the weather – unrelentingly gray & miserable – and partly due to the idiots who planned the event for the same weekend the classic Ferraris and Austin Martins make their annual pilgrimmage to Pebble Beach. A backbreaking amount of work and we will be lucky to break even on booth rental and insurance. So it goes. I've been waking up at 4am to get all the circus work out of the way before scuttling down to the store at 10 so that Ben can man the Fair booth. Robin is officially a Lost Boy this week and anybody reading this should feel free to report us to Child Protective Services.
"It's the bunny championships this morning," Ben told me. "You should go."
"I don't want to see the bunny championships," I said. "I have to much stuff to do –"
"You should go anyway," said Ben and literally wrestled the van keys into my hand and pushed me out the door.
Rabbits are my totem animals. You might say I'm obsessed. My first husband was actually named Hare and although I don't think that's the reason I married him, we all know the subconscious moves in mysterious ways.
Maybe it was because I went through the wrong gate to get into the fair and thus found myself on the empty midway in swirling gray mists straight out of a John Carpenter movie. There's no buzz kill quite like seeing the tacky daylight face of a place where people go to have fun in the dark. Anyway, the bunnies were not quite as adorable as I remembered them, and so I started wandering through the bunkhouse, looking at the other animals. Shorn, nervous looking sheep. Oblivious goats. Heifers and steers, lying dazed in their stalls beneath anatomical charts eschewing the more conventional nomenclature of muscle and bone for roast, steak and tri-tip.
And then there were the pigs.
Even as I watched, one of the pigs managed to nudge open its gate and escape on to the path, leading its apple-cheeked 4-H guardians on a merry chase. I watched in fascination. Where did it think it could go? It squealed and dodged; the 4-H'ers beat it with their crooks, trying to steer it. What was going on in the piggy's mind? Did it have some dim presentiment that however many times its keepers filled its trough to overflowing with feed, love was not a part of their calculations, that the final answer was always bacon? Did the pig have something resembling consciousness? And if it did, what was the point of its consciousness? For that matter, what was the point of my consciousness, what was the point of any consciousness, wasn't consciousness always a trap? Maybe those crazy people walking down the street, bargaining with invisible overlords and scratching themselves had it exactly right. Maybe schizophrenia isn't a biochemical dysfunction at all but a reasoned response to the true Cthulu-like nature of a universe where there's no true freedom, only varying degrees of license –
Danger, Will Robinson.
I pulled myself back from that edge. But it left me in a strange, distracted state.
