The Wrong Brochure
Another dull day of drudgery. I don't know how guys between 25 and 55 do it; it's a job for kids and old men. People on their way up or on their way out. This is no place for a lifetime. I suppose there's some small honor and dignity in labor, but the meniality has gotta cancel it out. Perhaps there was such a thing in the toil of their forebearers. I mean, I can see a certain nobility in mining coal -- those men were building a nation; what kinda honor and dignity though can come from manufacturing products that fill in the cracks and paint over the surface of the nation your forebearers built?I wonder.
So I spent the first half of the day loading the constantly firing gatlin gun, the second half catching the bullets. What wrath did Ford wrought. Being on the receiving end of an assembly line has gotta be the closest thing to torture the industiral age ever devised. It is, simply, enough to make a man mad. Bend, lift, repeat. Over and over again and again. You can't daydream, 'cause if you wander you lose your place and the line drags. And you can't think, 'cause then the line stops.
No, definitely not a thinkin' man's job. Even a thoughtless thinker like me. But since I never let thought get in the way before, I most certainly wasn't gonna start now. Regardless. So I thought, and I thought, and I thought some more, about all the times I thought about my release. I thought about how I'd be released to fanfare, about the suit I'd be wearing when I got there, the hat I was gonna tip when I entered. I thought about the sorely missed, and the way I'd smile wide and hug each and every one of 'em, and about the way a smile and a hug would feel after all the hard time of neither. I thought about the swagger, I thought about the sway, I thought about the streets. And then I remembered the intersection of the factory where I stood thinking: New York and Jefferson. Manhattan and Miami Beach. Then I thought about how far away I was from both. Some great distance. This was not like I pictured it from the pen, not how I promised myself all those nights after count, nowhere near what I believed. Guess I got the wrong brochure.
posted by John Hood. @ 10:11 PM
1 Comments:
doesn't sound good but at least you're on your way out of it all. i guess? loading the gattling gun or back under, what's preferable?
keep on writing man, it's great to hear views from a life so distant to mine (presently). your comment about the tenuous nature of freedom actually means something coming from someone that has learnt it the hard way. i linked here from craig clevenger's site, always interested in someone with something interesting to say.
i hope things keep moving ahead for you. best of luck!
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