Thursday, March 27, 2003
The Loon's Dance
I danced at work today. Suddenly, spontaneously and involuntarily, through the aisles of the maze of cubicles, my arms flapping in circles and my feet pitter-pattering like Fred Astaire doing the two-step. I made whoopdee-whoop noises as well, like a bird’s song of happiness (or maybe the mating call of the loon).
This felt so absolutely natural and gave me such a sense of relief and release that I am completely unconcerned about the odd turn in my workplace behavior, despite its implication that I am well past the turning-point on the booby-hatch road. Still, some nagging vestige of logic left in the tatters of my conscious mind is telling me I must find at least a hint of an explanation, so here goes:
Life in the modern world drives a person bananas. Maybe not textbook-bananas, but definitely Hamlet-bananas: The subconscious knows that something is rotten in Denmark, and the mind rebels in quirky ways.
Time was, a person knew exactly why (s)he did his (her) daily work. Hunting or planting the crops was responsible, in the most direct and understandable way, for putting food on the table. Chopping up a tree to make a lean-to or finding his own cave (when it was time to move out of the parents’ cave) kept the rain off his head. Gathering kindling and starting a fire kept him warm. Making a hammer or an axe got the work done more quickly and easily, and making a spear kept the sabre-toothed tigers at bay.
But now . . ? I have no clue how my work relates to my survival or the survival of the species. I sit at a desk putting numbers into a computer that generates other numbers that tell someone else what numbers they should generate . . . and I have no idea what this all means.
Yet somehow, every two weeks, I am rewarded with a piece of paper with more numbers on it. I give this piece of paper to a bank (that somehow generates more numbers for itself), and they tell me I can use my plastic card for another two weeks to retrieve food from the store and to keep the bank (the same bank?) from taking the roof from over my head.
It’s Modern Human Logic, and Modern Human Logic makes no sense.
I could go to the office, jump through hoops and tap-dance for quarters thrown in a hat, and it would make more sense to me than what I do. Homeless people busking on the street have at least that much going for them.
There is no longer any relationship between the daily routine and the biological nature of life. My basic animal mind tells me I should be outside in the fresh air planting seeds, yet here I sit typing arcane symbols on a phosphor-dot screen in some form of civilized magic that eludes the workings of the primal mind.
And my subconscious is also aware that someone somewhere is enjoying a good easy life because of my labor, but that someone is not me.
What’s it all about, Alfie?
During the workday I rarely even see the sun. I’m cut off from Nature like a rat in a cage. I wake up before dawn, climb into a metal box that transports me to work, then I sit in another box listening to the sound of the fluorescent lights humming overhead until evening. Occasionally I take a break to buy packaged-processed-food-substances from the metal box in the break-room. Then it's back into the first metal box for the drive home, where I collapse in the box of my bedroom and sleep until dawn and do it all again the next day.
People in prison cells at least get to lift weights and read books.
I live every day inside the Great Box of Modern Human Logic Which Makes No Sense. And my subconscious mind wants to break out of the box’s rigid logical confines, or at least tell me how ridiculous my way of life is.
So I find myself dancing. And making faces at my reflection in the monitor screen. And talking to myself in a strange language (“Flegorble pop” is a favorite phrase when the computer system is slow, while I suspect that “Mooooot moot” means I am hungry).
It’s Existential Tourette’s Syndrome.
My co-workers are beginning to notice, but I can’t seem to care. Much like me, they don’t really know what I do here, but they suspect the company can’t function without me. So they tolerate me like a semi-intelligent pet. When they see me skipping back to my cubicle happily singing to myself (“Flooooorgh!”) they simply look at me with pity. Or they ask me “How’s it going?” in a concerned tone that seems to say “What’s the matter, Lassie? Has little Jimmy fallen down a well again?”
Sometimes, though, a strange calmness comes over me. I stop dancing, hush my mumblings, and halt my tic-like antics. I sneak out of the cubicles to stare at the woods behind the Office Box. And I find my favorite tree and gaze up at it as it does all that it needs to do, its roots in the soil, its limbs reaching up to the sky, and its body living in the space between, dancing motionless to the music of Nature and of Life.
~
3/27/2003 01:26:00 PM
Sunday, March 23, 2003
~
3/23/2003 01:22:00 PM
Saturday, March 15, 2003
Flor(gghx) has taken a wee break and will probably return in a week after some travels.
Until then, good Flor(gghx) to you!
-Argy
3/15/2003 11:42:00 AM
Friday, March 14, 2003
Uh, Green Beer is an American Thing...
St Paddy's Day is upon us, the day that makes Americans think of wearing green clothes and drinking green beer and eventually wearing green beer, the day that makes people in Ireland think of Irish-Americans making asses of themselves. So, in the spirit of all of the idiotic stereotypes the poor Irish are subjected to, here is just one more:
...with apologies to Ireland and my Irish friends : )
~
3/14/2003 07:37:00 PM
Saturday, March 08, 2003
Nearly Spring (Draft)
A very young rough draft of Nearly Spring was here, but it grew up and flew the coop. It is now making the rounds and was last spotted here.
~
3/08/2003 04:35:00 PM
Sunday, March 02, 2003
~
(We will return you to your regularly scheduled prose programming ASAP. Cold temperatures have frozen the brain pipes, clogging communication from head to hands, leaving me no choice but to hibernate the weekend away. Cat-napping (napping with my cats, that is) will eventually restore me and I shall rise, functional albeit covered in feline hair, and face the day again. Such is the plan, anyhoo. See you soon.)
3/02/2003 07:59:00 PM
