It's Thursday afternoon, and I've just had a pretty stellar job interview. If not wholly successful, then at least enough to remind me that I can occasionally rise to the occasion. Bought a large sauteed veggie sub, and feeling good. On the bus, before I start reading, I see an attractive young woman wearing a tight green tank top, and am struck with the sorts of thoughts that inspired the advent of the confession in the Catholic Church (these things don't change). Have to savor this vitality, before my night job sucks it out of me. Uhrrrga-blech. Even thinking about it drains a few drops out of me.
Later, at the bus stop by the Walnut Creek Library, I'm eating trail mix and drinking Coke. Sitting near a few raspy-voiced and lively guys, who don't seem to be waiting for any buses, and thinking that if I had rum or whiskey in this here Coke, I could hang out with them all day. I take out a notepad to write down these very thoughts, and one of them asks me what I'm writing. Just some thoughts I had on the bus. He asks me if I'm a writer. I like to write....
He sits down next to me, says that he's a writer, and asks me if I'd like to hear a poem. He explains a bit of his ethnic background, though I can't quite make out what he's saying, and begins to recite a "black poem." It's brutal and touching, affecting me at a level I never expected to reach this afternoon. One of my favorite lines is, "How many more gold medals must we win for this country?" Fist bump. What's more, he augments the recital with gestures, like a noose around the neck, or a pistol fired in the air during "...my 40 acres and a mule." When he's done, I compliment him very sincerely, especially for the "performance aspect." "It's not a performance," says he, "it just comes out naturally." His name is Billy, and he waited tables for 20 years before deciding to become a poet. Waiting tables gave him bad hips and knees. Now he's got less money, but more freedom. Fist bump. He asks me if I want to hear another poem (yes), this one a "gay poem." "Don't worry, that doesn't mean I want to have sex with you." This one is more tender and reflective, but just as affecting. At this point my bus comes. Another fist bump, and Billy has given me even more fortitude with which to enter the factory.
At the factory, like everywhere else, the malady comes as a result of the prioritization of quantity over quality. Through and through, it's the way the system runs. It's the water we drink, and it doesn't matter where it comes from or how it tastes, as long as it keeps on flowing. We could be eating the delicious donuts that Grammy used to make, but they wouldn't be able to sell as many, and that's the bottom line. That's why the donuts are dry when they reach our mouths.
Several days into the job, I make up my mind to increase my output just enough to get the boss off my back. Just enough so that I don't have to hear about making my "numbers," so that I can blend in to my keyboard, become inanimate, at one with the machine. But of course it doesn't work that way.
By day six, I've gotten pretty quick. It's enough not to get hassled about my numbers, but now I'm told how I rank with other workers' numbers. The fostering of competition is the next stage of management, and it's lethal, because it works. The boss puts the top three numbers up on the dry-erase board, and we all get sucked in. Numbers, numbers, numbers, they chant. In my mind, I really don't care about this competition, but somehow, I work like I do. The result, thus, is the reality of the situation - that I do care about the competition. Competition, especially when encouraged towards a devious end, has a devastating psychological impact.
You know what might even be worse? For security and productivity reasons, we can't have cell phones in the factory, nor are pens and paper easily accessible. I'm writing this in quick and furious scratches on a piece of cardboard I tore off one of the boxes, whenever I think they're not looking. Just steps away from Sade, forced to write in his own blood when they took his parchment away in prison. Billy may spend his afternoon at the bus stop, but at least he's got freedom.
Ah, but this is only eight hours of my daily life. I have sixteen more to... sleep... and commute... and look for a better job. Jello Biafra may have posed the most pertinent question when he asked, "When will you crack?"
Friday, October 30, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
White Collar Factory
The same high ceilings and concrete floors. Same dead-eyed vacant stares on the workers' faces, as vacant as the lodgings in recession-era Disneyland. Same idea too, but instead of assembling and producing, they type and scan. Paper and folders everywhere. Here, instead of keeping you on your feet, they keep you in your chair. The manager gives instructions to the supervisors to keep feeding the workers paper and folders: "Your goal is to keep them from leaving their chairs."
The length of breaks, the lack of vending machines, the bathrooms located in the parking lot... ostensibly designed for "security," but the program functions also to provide just enough nourishment and relief - and receive in return a maximum of complacency. Faux friendliness and sanitized humor mask a much deeper inequality. As well, there's no obvious hierarchy of leadership: the managers and supervisors wear the same uniforms, and who knows what power is commanded by the polo shirted-ones, spying quietly from the perimeter?
Because the stakes are lower - the workers don't absolutely depend on this job for their survival, and the manager knows it - the game is more psychological. The manager appeals to the worker's pride, ingrained sense of duty, and desire to be obedient. Sure, it's sad to see the educated young worker move papers and type faster to please his boss; but it becomes disgusting when one considers he's really typing faster to please himself, to feed his own ego.
Two nights in a row I see an ad on TV for Heavy Metal Ballads that almost brings tears to my eyes. Not the music itself, but the nostalgia. Reminds me of county fairs, the acid-washed jeans and leather jackets that my role models wore, and shoot-till-you-win games at amusement parks. The combination of a bittersweet nostalgia for childhood with an awareness of the futility of the eight-hour-days of adulthood makes it difficult to create new memories, to live in the present.
And on the third day, with the rain pouring down, I miss another bus, and almost another meal. Water on the outside of the rain-jacket, sweat on the inside. But then the sun breaks through, shining with a heavenly radiance on Panda Express. And another bus comes. On it, I read about Fourier's utopian future vision of the domestication of the zebra and beaver, and the seas turning to lemonade, and begin to feel an optimistic contentment that will develop throughout the day. Vaneigem says, "The desire for an other life is that life already." The desire and the struggle trump all. If I miss another bus, the factory will not close down. If I run out of time for lunch, Panda Express will not close down. And if it does, I'll find food somewhere. The point is to use the desire and the struggle to turn the seas to lemonade. Everything else will be just fine and dandy.
The length of breaks, the lack of vending machines, the bathrooms located in the parking lot... ostensibly designed for "security," but the program functions also to provide just enough nourishment and relief - and receive in return a maximum of complacency. Faux friendliness and sanitized humor mask a much deeper inequality. As well, there's no obvious hierarchy of leadership: the managers and supervisors wear the same uniforms, and who knows what power is commanded by the polo shirted-ones, spying quietly from the perimeter?
Because the stakes are lower - the workers don't absolutely depend on this job for their survival, and the manager knows it - the game is more psychological. The manager appeals to the worker's pride, ingrained sense of duty, and desire to be obedient. Sure, it's sad to see the educated young worker move papers and type faster to please his boss; but it becomes disgusting when one considers he's really typing faster to please himself, to feed his own ego.
Two nights in a row I see an ad on TV for Heavy Metal Ballads that almost brings tears to my eyes. Not the music itself, but the nostalgia. Reminds me of county fairs, the acid-washed jeans and leather jackets that my role models wore, and shoot-till-you-win games at amusement parks. The combination of a bittersweet nostalgia for childhood with an awareness of the futility of the eight-hour-days of adulthood makes it difficult to create new memories, to live in the present.
And on the third day, with the rain pouring down, I miss another bus, and almost another meal. Water on the outside of the rain-jacket, sweat on the inside. But then the sun breaks through, shining with a heavenly radiance on Panda Express. And another bus comes. On it, I read about Fourier's utopian future vision of the domestication of the zebra and beaver, and the seas turning to lemonade, and begin to feel an optimistic contentment that will develop throughout the day. Vaneigem says, "The desire for an other life is that life already." The desire and the struggle trump all. If I miss another bus, the factory will not close down. If I run out of time for lunch, Panda Express will not close down. And if it does, I'll find food somewhere. The point is to use the desire and the struggle to turn the seas to lemonade. Everything else will be just fine and dandy.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Earthen Revelation
Earthen, like the soil, the land we inhabit. But perhaps revelation is too strong of a word; what would be a degree less? Comprehension? Moment of awareness? I don't know... I found myself in a creek between South 7th and the railroad tracks, listening to some damn fine folk music, augmented by running water and bullfrogs. How did I get here?
Tania and I took the short scooter ride to Sunrise Market - my new favorite place to buy beer - for a sixer of Victory Prima Pils and an Almond Joy. At S 7th, we climbed over a guard rail and made our way south on the creek. We were followed by cops: "Come back here!" They wanted to know where we were going, and I explained it to them in the most pacifying way I could: we're going to see some friends play some accoustic music. "Oh, is that why all these candles are lit on the creek?" Yeah, to light the way. I don't know what to say... when my friend Phil gets a jaywalking ticket because he looks homeless, and has to pay a $100 "court fee" (as opposed to a $500 fine), what the hell am I supposed to say? We get to where the music is playing, and it takes a while to settle in, because every second we expect the cops to show up and ruin the festive atmosphere.
When they don't, we begin to have a genuinely wonderful time. Music in a creek, with an assembled group of enjoyers, surrounded by lit candles under moonlit sky... but of course! We can hardly believe the cops stay back, and Tania says, "They were actually really cool about it." I realize what this implies: they were cool, for cops. But compared to real people, they were assholes. They yelled at us to turn around and then intimidated us with the idea that we shouldn't be out here. Why shouldn't we be out here? This is public property - let we the public make use of it! I think of this assessment, spoken in 1842, found in "The Coming Insurrection:"
“The life of the police agent is painful; his position in society is as humiliating and despised as crime itself… Shame and infamy encircle him from all sides, society expels him, isolates him as a pariah, society spits out its disdain for the police agent along with his pay, without remorse, without regrets, without pity… The police badge that he carries in his pocket documents his shame.”
1842 becomes 2009. They now have power, a power consolidated by the State and Capital - Phil got a ticket because the area businesses complained of property vandalism and the like. When power consolidates, and resistance hesitates, there is no check and there is no balance.
And yet, we made it to the music. I'm tempted to out and out say, "Fuck the police," but in a way they play the same game we all play. They make a big deal out of this event because someone complains, we tuck tails between legs and sheepishly nod our heads, and everyone moves on. We pass go, collect $200, and spend it on electricity bills. And still... I'm sitting down in a creek and listening to some damn fine folk music. The Prima Pils has a distinctly American taste, but when I burp, I feel I might as well be drinking pilsener in Eastern Europe. I might as well be sitting in a creek in Karlovy Vary and listening to Uz Jsme Doma unplugged. Here as there, creek water runs and bullfrogs croak. The last song ends and then the rain comes down. Dobrou noc and good luck.
And it's merely a convention. The difference between languages, between cultures, is impotent compared to the delivery itself. Not just a language, but how a culture carries itself. So it's no surprise that my night ends, not simply with gumdrops and jellyfish, but with Gummi Lifesavers at 7-11 on South Congress Avenue in Austin, TX. This is where I'm at, where I belong at this moment. And in the parking lot of the all-night diner, three cop cars, perhaps asking for the bravado of a rock thrown deftly through the window.... Everyone belongs somewhere, right now, whether it's crossing an empty street or listening to music in a creek, and why must you tell me where I don't belong?
Tania and I took the short scooter ride to Sunrise Market - my new favorite place to buy beer - for a sixer of Victory Prima Pils and an Almond Joy. At S 7th, we climbed over a guard rail and made our way south on the creek. We were followed by cops: "Come back here!" They wanted to know where we were going, and I explained it to them in the most pacifying way I could: we're going to see some friends play some accoustic music. "Oh, is that why all these candles are lit on the creek?" Yeah, to light the way. I don't know what to say... when my friend Phil gets a jaywalking ticket because he looks homeless, and has to pay a $100 "court fee" (as opposed to a $500 fine), what the hell am I supposed to say? We get to where the music is playing, and it takes a while to settle in, because every second we expect the cops to show up and ruin the festive atmosphere.
When they don't, we begin to have a genuinely wonderful time. Music in a creek, with an assembled group of enjoyers, surrounded by lit candles under moonlit sky... but of course! We can hardly believe the cops stay back, and Tania says, "They were actually really cool about it." I realize what this implies: they were cool, for cops. But compared to real people, they were assholes. They yelled at us to turn around and then intimidated us with the idea that we shouldn't be out here. Why shouldn't we be out here? This is public property - let we the public make use of it! I think of this assessment, spoken in 1842, found in "The Coming Insurrection:"
“The life of the police agent is painful; his position in society is as humiliating and despised as crime itself… Shame and infamy encircle him from all sides, society expels him, isolates him as a pariah, society spits out its disdain for the police agent along with his pay, without remorse, without regrets, without pity… The police badge that he carries in his pocket documents his shame.”
1842 becomes 2009. They now have power, a power consolidated by the State and Capital - Phil got a ticket because the area businesses complained of property vandalism and the like. When power consolidates, and resistance hesitates, there is no check and there is no balance.
And yet, we made it to the music. I'm tempted to out and out say, "Fuck the police," but in a way they play the same game we all play. They make a big deal out of this event because someone complains, we tuck tails between legs and sheepishly nod our heads, and everyone moves on. We pass go, collect $200, and spend it on electricity bills. And still... I'm sitting down in a creek and listening to some damn fine folk music. The Prima Pils has a distinctly American taste, but when I burp, I feel I might as well be drinking pilsener in Eastern Europe. I might as well be sitting in a creek in Karlovy Vary and listening to Uz Jsme Doma unplugged. Here as there, creek water runs and bullfrogs croak. The last song ends and then the rain comes down. Dobrou noc and good luck.
And it's merely a convention. The difference between languages, between cultures, is impotent compared to the delivery itself. Not just a language, but how a culture carries itself. So it's no surprise that my night ends, not simply with gumdrops and jellyfish, but with Gummi Lifesavers at 7-11 on South Congress Avenue in Austin, TX. This is where I'm at, where I belong at this moment. And in the parking lot of the all-night diner, three cop cars, perhaps asking for the bravado of a rock thrown deftly through the window.... Everyone belongs somewhere, right now, whether it's crossing an empty street or listening to music in a creek, and why must you tell me where I don't belong?
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