work - the essay / play - a sonnet

Today is writing day, and i had errands to run. The journey ended up with a blockade by the teacher’s union which i support, however the diversion took my ride far from my destination. I have been struggling with pain while walking and it is beginning to resolve itself, i hope. The remedy has involved diet, exercise and continuous work, over years. What makes me believe that it is resolving itself, is simply because the pain is different, so whatever i am doing is having an effect. Still, today’s unexpected walking mileage was work; as is starting this writing later in the day; as is sifting through existential detritus for useful analog to share in a digital wasteland. I like to work, mostly because some of the most fun i’ve ever found flowed directly from a work site. Picture a huge warehouse with stacked 4’ high pallets of 20 gallon plastic buckets; each wall of the warehouse is lined with pallets stacked 4 high and 3 deep with just enough space for a single person to pass. Then imagine a thousand lids for those 20 gallon buckets used as flying discs; now picture 100 young working men equally divided between those two rows of pallets on opposing walls of this warehouse - paint ball will never be as much fun as that war was. Life cooking soup in a factory is dirty, hot, and dangerous - but one learns not all adages are true; for example a watched pot will actually boil. I use to equate work with gainful employment, but found most employed people do the least to gain the most - a logical strategy when the owners of most jobs seek the same. Early in my aerospace career, i had accomplished a change order that was very involved. The owner of the company - a friend who magnanimously provided me a career path - was taking a walking tour with the customer (air force); wanting to impress on my friend how hard i was working. i proudly displayed my dense change order. I could not have imagined at the time, i was essentially telling the customer we have a flawed product that needed much work to make it right.  One of the greatest difficulties we face surviving the next 100 years as a species is we are not working toward a common goal - the single greatest flaw, fatal flaw of capitalism.

We do not enjoy the luxury of leisure time to discover adjustments to capitalism such that the naked lust at the core of its success could be attenuated down to simple sperm donor. I’ve seen rooms containing less than a dozen people discussing simple engineering choices deteriorate into screaming matches of a nearly violent nature; watched community meetings devolve into tribal posturing of check and checkmate and families steal from each other for material gain. I am at a complete loss as to what common denominator would inspire a species to care about each other. The logic is all in place that the most enlightened have basically shared the same wisdom with varying degrees of success. Nor do i believe any lack of success on humanity’s part is simply from laziness. I’ve seen women empty dump trucks of sand using nothing more than wicker baskets held tight by their bowed heads; i’ve seen men pour asphalt roads in 100º F. Sadly in either instance the purpose for such effort is most likely pay, remuneration, scratch, share, cut - all still wage slavery. I wouldn’t be so bold as to equate this effort now with what it took from the women in Bali carrying bricks on their heads for the two-story homestay built next door, but it’s not far off. They at least were compensated. I write because my father wrote, and i admired those principles he found from a life in words. My writing has taken me through many topics, from flight manuals to city plans to prospectuses for commercial real estate. These experiences have given me a profound regard for the capacity of statements and assertions to affect the thinking of different people. It has also given me great caution for the abuse that comes from subterfuge and chicanery when unprincipled people are given a voice. When you are talking eye to eye, after enough times, bullshit basically just up and says to you point blank, “i am bullshit.” Written words are more difficult to decipher without the scent that comes with a spoken lie. Take “Cool Hand Luke” for example; if you read the book, you know there is a scene where the prisoners are faced with shoveling sand on poured tar for what seems like forever, but because Luke wanted to have fun, he turned the chore into a game and in so doing gained 4 hours of rest for the entire crew - no one expected they could complete the task in half the time.

I’m not suggesting Donn Pearce, the author of “Cool Hand Luke,” is a liar and a cheat by convincing you with the written word that tossing sand on hot tar in sweltering heat could be transformed into a noble act by virtue of defiance, but the net effect is no different than the influence a dead dictator has had on the current ‘merican administration in the guise of ‘ole mr. m.t. suit. By many accounts Mien Kampf was bedtime reading for m.t. suit for decades. It is an irony that a personality so inimical to worker’s welfare could apply such a work ethic so assiduously and continuously as to bring a nation to the brink - but there ya’ have it. What is missing from this entire discussion, is purpose as it pertains to issues of work. My purpose in writing is to lift others, to encourage personal achievement by sharing examples of my own discoveries and humor about my legendary failures. I’m pretty sure the main reason i am able to pursue my purpose as it relates to work is because money is not the reason is not the reason i write. Nor do i have any other formula for anyone wanting to pick and choose what they turn their hand to, work like hell and buy your time back. For decades, i worked weekends carving stone, and i’d be lying if i wrote that much of that activity didn’t include the fiction of “discovery and acclaim.” My luck is holding and i remain obscure and more than able to meet any demand for my labor intensive product. The discipline i have acquired while shoehorning carving time into my employment schedule informs my choices about time. “Time is a created thing; to say I don’t have time, is like saying I don’t want to.” - Lao Tzu. I approach my mortality with more appreciation than when young and possessed by delusions of grandeur, it is no longer issues of legacy or fame, but the quality of each exertion and why. Part of the confusion about art and my devotion to it developed when i began to understand the market never wanted the best that i could do, but that which would would generate the most income for its owners - indistinguishable from any paid employment to which i’ve ever subjected myself.

The mythological greatness that capitalism holds up as its enduring legacy is no more than a paragraph in the book of human history. The reason is a basic function of logic, for any market activity based on “buy cheap, sell dear” can only result in lower quality and higher prices. Once i wakened from my dream of fame and fortune, it became clear i would have to ask myself difficult questions about my own creative conceits - could i accept anonymity as the end product of my life’s work? This line of questioning cut to the core of my motivation - do i labor for recognition, from who, for why¿ Do i work for the pleasure it gives me to accomplish what only i and my cumulative experiences can yield. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. I take great pleasure when i am understood through the lens of my work, but it gives me much greater joy when i learn from a subject that they feel understood in my work. I had a therapist who used to laugh at me for carving stone, he equated it to grandiosity, mostly i’m sure because he had never carved stone - itself a happiness no one should leave the planet without having tried, but i digress. This therapist was soothing his anxiety about fucking with people’s thinking by believing his guidance could help me be more practical in earning a living - a perfectly rational strategy as i’m sure some employees being paid with tax dollars to warehouse kidnapped children rationalize their occupations. Until our civilization is capable and determined to develop the capacities of every human being on the planet to his or her utmost, we are a doomed species. I don’t say this with hatred or contempt or even all that much angst, but because it is a logical truth. To believe that a handful of human beings can be worthy of more wealth than 3.5 billion human beings combined is not simply injustice, it is a distortion of the truth which is we could be 3.5 billion times more powerful as a species if our focus was on developing each other rather than overcoming each other.

The notion of overcoming the other guy in this dog-eat-dog environment serves not the dogs, but the dog owners - less dog food and less dog shit. To think because you have a job, home, car and family you are successful, does you disservice only because you’ve never given yourself permission to do what you want - to start with a blank state and create whatever life you choose with the those skills you acquired with love and affection. If you are like me, it is not a simple path to have questions which only you can answer, and mostly after enough others have given you wrong the directions with the best of intentions, but wrong directions nonetheless. My telling you to do this or that does nothing for the personal journey you are on before death, but my saying there are questions to be found may help you in a world full of answers all of which are usually designed to separate you from your money, or seize your time for service in somebody else’s empire. Profit for me is ability to lay my head down and die knowing i did my best to learn something about myself and what i was capable of while harming as few as possible on the way - and that has been work enough. I have learned that for some things there is no amount of intention or willfulness that will accomplish a successful end - love for one, death for another. Some will never love you, regardless of how hard you work, and death is going to get you, no matter how hard you work. So i’m very specific about what i do and why - i work at what makes me happy, for it is more likely i will enjoy some happiness doing what i enjoy. As a wage slave, especially in the days before computers were roboticized to accomplished mundane tasks the exhortation of the managers was work smarter, not harder. In retrospect they were telegraphing their next punch when we humans are put out of work the final out come of “buy cheap, sell dear” manifest. So again my luck has held out and i am content to continue working, only now i only work at what i want to work at, but at the end of patiently saving enough to buy back the only thing i have worth owning - my own life.

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play - the sonnet

Mezcal and poetry - what could go wrong,

besides everything - enough to stop?

It would be if i wanted to live long,

i’m no turtle - my stock’s a dumber crop.

We live to die, ignored by those who’d cry

and instead scream all the while - look at me.

We’re taught to ignore who we love - to lie

to ourselves, so we may become more free.

One problem is we learned most as children,

whose lessons aren’t forgotten or lied to.

Kids can’t lie, and know who’s kith and who’s kin

inspiring stories like “Winnie the Pooh.”

- into a world that’s mostly concerned with

“fuck any cost, we want another myth.”

jts 06/29/2018

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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