To Work or Not to Work?
27 September 2007
(As I am again without work, this is an ode to work etched out some years ago.)
Everything happening as waves. I am mid-way between the rising and the falling. There’s no telling if this is a nether region or the celestial sky, angel’s wings or devil’s tail. All good things are contradictory or so they say. Here I have barnacles up to my shoulders and feathers coming out of my lymph nodes. Should I scrape? Should I pluck? Should I let them be? I am seeking satisfaction in unsatisfactory ways. I am seeking content and still but perhaps now is not the time. Neither time nor place nor Space nor Time. Only infinity on my side and that’s a heavy load to juggle. Every night before sleeping I get down on my knees to pray. I pray to forget, I pray for the cleansing of my iniquities, I pray for all things to burgeon ripely so that I may take of them as I take of his body. The edifice that denies me has been fortressed inside me. I write so that the walls may crumble.
Via Farini again demanded I get a job. Oh! What a loathsome operation. Why leave my cozy womb that I had a tendency to stay in until three or four in the afternoon, to go out into the cold and harsh, to have someone equally cold and harsh tell me a big whopping no? Every no pounding me further and further down. How could I possibly rise from these depths? Admittedly, I never tried too hard, declaring it hopeless from the onset, which ideally it all is anyway. Being illegal with no ‘Bella figura’ immediately ruled me out of any possible possibilities. Lacking a measly piece of paper I was not fit to wash dishes, to sweep sidewalks, empty trash bins, serve a beer, fold clothes, nothing until I was declared sanitary. And what a laugh that whole process was: First to the post office to get a blank document, though the gate closes as you finally reach the counter, post master is out for a capuccino, back in five minutes to become two hours upon which the whole place shuts down for the rest of the day. That was the wrong post office anyway. Best to try again tomorrow. Second, with the document securely in hand and the sanitary office located on the map, arriving at the door to find it is a fruit stand with an old man inside picking his nose. Try again tomorrow. Third, with the proper office found and all the proper documents in place, the High Priestess of Sanitation looks at your hand and tells you to come back tomorrow with your nails cut! That night you cut and file, cut and file the arc from pinkie to pinkie until there is absolutely no white showing. To go back the following morrow, proudly displaying your decapitated mandibles, upon which the High Priestess asks you if you have washed your hair today. Nodding your head, “Si Senora,” she stamps your paper. Glory! Glory! The heavens fill with clarions, they ring in golden song! Now all is pre- and post-sanitary. Everything that has gone before is just a pile of filth. Hallelujah! From this point on there will only come to pass complete and perfect cleanliness. Glory to God in the Highest! (Perhaps the whole procedure was implemented in the days of the Bubonic plague and as of now no one has brought to attention the lugubriousness of the whole charade. Perhaps I am only bitter for I will always be condemned to a state of pre-sanitary.)
Everyone screaming no before I had a chance to ask. So I stayed in bed where I could remain cradled in my insidiousness, which lulled and rocked me and where my harvest was always plentiful. Only from the bed was I able to reap the excuses needed to allow me to stay in bed, to find no necessity to search for work, to see it as the pile of bullshit that it really is. Bullshit topped with bullshit and to think it was I who was unsanitary! I did manage to conjure some effort, once or twice. Getting out of bed too early in the morning to go to the American School, which proved a gallant journey indeed. A CV in my bag and a depraved smile on my face, expecting nothing in return, their masquerade of a response goes without saying. Four hours of public transport for ten minutes of false smiles. The odds were not on my side.
Give up! I repeated to myself. Give up every ghost, every phantom, every big idea, every past self, every future self, all wants, all needs, all inexorable pieces, every strength, every weakness, in short everything I ever thought myself to be, which in itself was a want, a weakness, a big fucking idea. To lay oneself bare is no meager task, especially when lying in wait was just another major contradiction. Circular cycles. Always in pursuit of the evasive tail. What fun was there only in the linear anyway?
Seville, Spain
Fall 2004-Winter 2005