Friday, September 19, 2008

Working Class Stiff.....

I am what you would call a typical working class stiff - I am not really sure what that means, or how you would describe it, but I sit in front of the soft glare of a flat screen monitor pumping out numbers, return to a hotel room to have some sort of middle American cuisine that generally consists of carbs, wine, and carbs, followed up with a healthy dose of simple sugars to be followed by five or six hours of restless sleep - then I get back up and do it again -

The reality is, I love it! I love my life and the things and toys and treats and music and people and spreadsheets and challenges and the boring minutia that cranks my heart and my head into a sloppy and tired mush. Oh what a life to live - I have been to all four corners of this country, and to just about every small town in between, have had dinner with their people, have watched their young ones grow, and the old ones leave, and have very rarely, if ever made an enemy, maybe a few combatants, but never an enemy -

Tonight I am restless, I find it harder and harder to sleep at home without the assistance of heavy doses of benzodiazaprene (or something like that) because I long to be back on the road and thinking in a quiet space and unfamiliar things - familiar is a funny concept - some are comfortable in familiar normal surroundings, I think my wife craves consistency, in everything, sort of an IKEA mentality. Me, I have a flea market furniture store mentality - it is damn near the same stuff, but it is piled up in dirty boxes, and there is no perky breasted, bleached white teeth college student selling it to you like she just found god in the IKEA 12 step program. I am afraid my kids are more like my wife - my son especially, he likes things in order, my daughter, she is more like me - if she is thirsty, she drinks, if she is hungry, she eats, if she is tired, she sleeps. I learn lessons from both of them, and hopefully have passed on a few before they start to keep a distinct microsoft outlook calendar that lists everything that they need to do before they die...

Unloading trucks in college, working in a gay bar, and mergers and acquisitions - I guess all of them have a familiar tune - they are extreme and intense sectors of society - they are energetic and exciting, they are muscle and sweat and work and emotion and they possess you - whether physical or mental, they possess that space that always never feels full -

Very rarely do I invoke "The Digger" - that is more of an emotional state to me. You dig rows of emotions, and there are seasons every year, some things die, some things you plant, some things you nurture, and then you do it again. My working class stiff mind rolls around in that emotion way too much - maybe that is why the distraction of full tilt work has always appealed to me.

I miss things too. Maybe that is why I work hard and play hard and think too much - have you ever gone the monkey exhibit and seen those monkeys just stare up - not at the gaggle of brightly colored tourists and the ill-behaved children pointing at them, they are staring at a tree that used to shade the blue sky, or looking for a bird that never flies near them anymore, or maybe just listening really hard for a familiar sound that they don't hear anymore - but they remember. Maybe they sit there and ponder all day about that time when...

I love being a working class stiff, a ham and egger, a Joe Nobody. I love the keys on my laptop that are worn shiny from typing, I love the work.

There is a little song that was written in the late sixties - "God Bless Mommy I know that's right, and wasnt it fun in the bath tonight? The cold so cold, and the hot so hot...

God Bless Daddy, I almost forgot..."

The thing is that you just don't forget - so you work - Arbeit Macht Frei.

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