Stray Thoughts on Work

How we grumble at work seems to suggest at some fundamental level our regret for childhood’s inevitable end. I myself would love to live at the bottom of a tea cup, to have food lowered down to me on a spoon and accept the lore sprinkled in increments upon my head. I would love to have no other responsibility than the cup of tea I hold in my hand.

Work is not appreciated, we realize, even when mother asks, “how was work today?” The answer would repeat itself endlessly. I wrote down the data. I applied the labels and peeled the others off. I pressed the buttons for the numbers 11, 13, 5 and then 7. I grumbled. Office people gave me a candy.

I attempt to enjoy work because I do not enjoy the aftertaste of grumbling. To grumble is to scratch well beyond the point when it still feels good. When it happens, I try to follow each grumble back the the cave where it hibernates. Why does it sleep here? What will it do if I rouse it?

I grumble mostly to myself and feel foolish for biting my own palms. And when I grumble aloud I immediately feel as though I have tagged my own face with graffiti: I RULES, U SUCKS! That sort of impression never washes clean.

Notice, I never admonish myself for my own failures so quickly as I do others. What makes me so special? Occasionally I point out a mistake (mistakenly) and then feel it necessary to admit my own mistake. I would rather not own up to imperfection. Let others inventory their particular problems. I’ll keep mine well secreted.

Grumbling is seismic. The natives will attribute it to the displeasure of gods, but we all know it is something loose in the bowels of the earth rising up through natural vents. Morality has no part in this haphazard timepiece.

Just something I wrought

A cat falls through void. The cat knows only motion, constant and yet without direction in the sense that this cat cannot understand where it belongs.

As the cat tumbles over and around, centrifugal forces tug the cat’s ear, tweak whiskers and stretch the cat’s tail in a pose of openness. The relative trajectory exerts an internal influence, like a string pulled through the bore of a bead. But the cat cannot even tell if it falls backward along the path it lays or forward into an unfolding emptiness. The illusion, in fact, this inverted sense of upwardness and ascent, is the most invigorating aspect of the cat’s experience of unending now.

Being in void, the cat is without time as well. The cat cannot die, never tires or sleeps. Without air, the cat does not breath, but mimics the motion of filling the lungs, endlessly inspiring. Never exhaling. The cat’s heart forever compresses, forming a single unbroken beat. The eyelids never blink, but are caught on the edge of that surge of impetuses which precede a blink.

In that existential mode of thought through which fainter impressions may swim, the cat thinks, “I am falling.” Nothing else, nothing less. “I am falling.” Each portion in turn and together, without emphasis, hums on the surface of things, where echoes break upon themselves.

But the falling cat cannot fear emptiness and decline as one might after one of those nightmares which suddenly end all dreaming. To fear is to turn away from present investigation into graver tidings, and to turn away again in ignorance for the comfort of past convictions — like a fetus drowned in a vat of dark, tepid water, no longer shocked by its momentary exposure to weight and open air.

There can be no end to this cat’s descent just as there never was a beginning. The cat cannot conceive of an end to falling, and in truth, an end would be illusory. There is only this cat in void, falling, but content to fall.

Four Things from Across the Ocean

Nothing much happening outside of work, so I’m offering up four of my favorite purchases this fall.

• Tier auf Tier, Haba’s cool stacking game, called Animal Upon Animal in English. I think of it as my executive desk toy. One wooden crocodile upon which I try to stack 28 other animals. Get your sheep out early and hold your penguins to the end.

• Umeboshi, the Japanese pickled plum. So bitter and salty not even bacteria will eat them. Forced myself to eat the first one and found myself craving more the rest of the day. Like heroine, my sister-in-law asked.

• Zojirushi Thermal Cooking Pot. “Set it, and forget it,” is the catch phrase I like to use describing this device. Burn your BTUs getting your food to a boil and after a few more minutes, transfer the pot to a vacuum-sealed chamber. A few hours later you’re eating. Good for us bachelors who work all day and come home hungry.

• Super Hit, the incense of champions. A friend brought some over and a few minutes after he left I had ordered a year’s supply. Like all Nag Champa incense sticks, burn it good if you don’t want it to fizzle out halfway through.

A Lesson in Letting Go

Somehow I survived the recent heat wave and my life has been following the standard pattern. Work in the warehouse had become unbearable as temperatures outside climbed near 100. Now I worry what extreme weather winter will bring this year. This being my first year of winter driving, I’m hoping for the mildest winter on record. But it will likely be the other way around.

The past weeks I’ve struggled to claim the parking spot in front of my apartment. I occasionally have trouble since I’m located next to a gas station, and my particular curb is close to the store entrance. I can’t relax until my truck is in its place, because I know when someone parks in a place they’ll want to park there again. I don’t want to encourage parking spot interlopers.

So Friday I flipped open my window shades to keep an eye on the curb as I washed dishes, ready at any time to move my truck from behind the gas station. In the hour I waited I managed to clean the apartment quite thoroughly, and never managed to sustain any lasting anger. The grumbles would surface for a moment, but they just didn’t have any legs.

Finally, with my truck secured, I could settle in for the day. It seemed a good opportunity to listen to a dharma talk about equanimity which I had downloaded from a podcast. Ah yes, I was thinking, I was being equanimous today with the parking situation.

Then I went to update my podcasts, and the program deleted the very file I was listening to… as I was listening to it. No, Hey, I’m going to delete these files, are you sure you want me to do that? Just, whisk.

I started yelling at the computer.

The computer looked back upon me with equanimity.

A Review in the Honeymoon Hours

Last week a batch of figurines from the TV show, Lost, arrived. Who would buy these little collectibles of TV show characters? They are not even posable action figures, you know. Just, detailed display pieces that rattle off unimpressive quotes taken out of dramatic context. Lost must have a following, but I have never heard of the show.

So I consulted Wikipedia, and the premise enticed me. The first few episodes of the first season have me hooked. I may become a devoted fan. Figurines, no. DVDs I can actually watch, possibly.

The characters are interesting enough. I find myself wanting to land on their island for a chat. Has that archetypical “survival in the wild” story arc with strange mysteries to be solved, few of which can be explained by the laws of a conventional universe. And each episode encapsulates a mini-story focused on a character’s history before the doomed flight, told in flashback, with only the most essential scenes shown.

And the show has a definite ending coming up in 2010. Good. I am in favor of definite lifespans for TV dramas. Nothing can kill a show quite like the promise of immortality.