2001-05-19 - 8:08 a.m.

This entry began here.

The Project

Episode 1

(in which our young hero talks on the phone, looks for and gets a job, and goes for a walk)

I�m definitely not dying. My doctor tells me that. We�ll never figure out what that headache was. Now it�s just a matter of figuring out what to do with myself. I�m not making any hasty decisions on that front. All I know is I could do anything. But I must choose wisely. I must not fall into the same old traps, slip into the complacent slumber that I�m always trying to snap myself out of. I will try everything, all kinds of jobs. I want a job that will just be a job, that doesn�t take too much time, that I don�t I have to commit myself to. I want an interesting job that will take me to unusual places and see things I would never have seen before. I don�t know what I want.

I want to be happy. I want to convince myself that I have reason to be happy, so I try to work myself into a frenzy. So what if I have no job, if I�ve just abandoned the career that I�ve been following for three years, that I haven�t had a girlfriend in all that time, that I don�t know what I want, that I�ve never known what I want.

I will laugh, because isn�t life crazy. I will be careless, carefree. I will make a little money, spend a little money. I will stop the clock of life. Say, �I don�t know.� And let it go at that. I will not starve. I will not lose all my potential.

I go looking for jobs. I apply to be a substitute teacher � they only require a bachelor�s degree, a $50 check and a criminal background check. I drop off my resume at a few temp agencies. I leaf through the classifieds, but it all looks unappealing � how could anyone want to do any of these jobs? To call any of them would be to submit to a life of servitude, to allow my life to be sucked out of it for ten years at a time. Isn�t there some other way for us all to live than to become accountants, salesmen, specialists? I don�t want to be part of this race, to build, to acquire, to get as much money as possible and buy as much as possible, to turn my world into one big product. I just want to live my life.

This seems so unnatural. Almost no other species has a job � they just have lives. They all have the same job, to live their lives, to find food and other animals and have babies and die. We got away from that when we stopped being hunters and gatherers and invented agriculture. We realized that if you specialize in one thing, then you are more efficient as a group and then you have more free time. You can form a society, which is really a little machine, and then you can start making nice homes, and art, and civilizations, and rules, and militaries. We decided that if we just specialize a little more, and get things a little more efficient, we could liberate ourselves from nature, not be as susceptible to its storms and droughts, have more time to do other things, if we could ever figure out what to do with ourselves.

We no longer have the simple fears and joys of life, where you had to fight to survive, where just being alive and having some kids was all you could ever hope for, where you were just glad if you could get enough berries to feed your families. We�ve replaced the joy nad pain with numbness, where you�re comfortable but vaguely dissatisfied. So many people spend their days doing something they don�t really want to do. They keep doing it because maybe if they worked a little harder and a little longer, they could have enough comforts that life would be worth living, and eventually they�ll have the time to figure out what they really want from life, as their lives dribble away like sand between their hands.

And of course I, I who have never known true fear, who have never been unclothed or unsheltered or even uncomfortable, imagine that the uncertainty of the �old days� is somehow preferable to this life where we have art and entertainment and free time and everything I would never be willing to part with.

A friend calls � Vinod, an old college friend and roommate. He�s been doing one of these jobs for years, but now he�s sick of it all. He�s going to India. He can�t believe people do this all their lives. He�s been working in New York as a programmer for a few years. This is a good job, people tell him. He works from 10 to 7, takes the train home, goes to bed. The work is �interesting.� The hours are average. He feels dead.

He�s going to India. People move slower there. They don�t realize how good they have it over there. They live their simple lives, smile, suffer and die. He will live for the simple things.

�Come with me,� he says. �We�ll get a little rooster, raise it from a chick. We�ll train it to eat out of our hands.�

I think about it. I like the idea, but I don�t. It isn�t the simple life I want. I can�t keep on running away from things. I need to find my own rooster to raise right here.

But this is America, where you can�t even find a spot to sit down without paying for it, let alone raise a rooster.

�We�ll open a bookstore,� he says. �You can sit in your comfortable chair and stare suspiciously at the customers.�

A knock comes at the back door. A man is there with something to sell.

�Did you get a chance to look at the flyer your manager left here? We�re here to install the Internet, cable and telephone. Do you need an Internet connection? Cable? Telephone?�

No, no and no. I just want to live my life. I want to live it here, in America, without paying for it with my life.

�If you come to India, you�ll have a great time,� Vinod tells me as I wave the man in the door away. Then a beep comes up, indicating a caller on the other line.

�I�ll think about it,� I say. I tell Vinod goodbye.

I take the other call. The man on the other line, obviously a telemarketer, asks for my roommate. I ask to take a message.

�My name is Billy. Can you tell me when I can reach him?� This is the part when I�m supposed to assume, since �Billy� has told me his name, that it�s a friend and not a telemarketer, and hand him over to my roommate.

Geez, I think as I get him off the phone. This is the price we pay for living the high life here in America. We have to keep paying and keep paying, with our spirits, with our time. The money machine is getting desperate, knocking on our doors and disguising itself as our friends.

Maybe I do want to go to India. Anything to avoid being part of this machine that grows and grows, ruining everything in its path. It has grown so big that it seems impossible to avoid. This machine is civilization, it is everywhere. And I, who am just one man, born in the machine, molded to fit, who doesn�t even know if there is anything outside the machine � how can I do anything but join?

***

About two weeks into my new life, I get a call from a temp agency. I showed up there one day, handed a woman a resume, and told her I was available for anything. I really meant anything � I wanted her to get me a job as a clown one week and a coal miner the next, throw me into a Fortune 500 company or a farmer�s market. But she looked at my resume, and that told her all she needed to know � that I was suited for an office job, something involving computer work, maybe editing or proofreading. I had no credentials for a clowning or coal mining gig. So she got me an office job.

I am to report to work the next day at a local publishing company. There, I and three other temps will spend two weeks typing out reams of numbers and letters for the latest set of California elementary school textbooks.

The work, once I get the hang of it, is dull. Beautifully dull. I am given a computer, handed a stack of papers, and left alone to type in obscurity until there is no more typing to do. I listen to CDs in my walkman and let my mind drift as the hours lazily passed.

I am reminded of the time when I was ten and I told my brother I wanted to work on an assembly line. I couldn�t quite articulate why. I had imagined standing before a conveyor belt with next to a row of other workers, as toy after toy came rolling by � probably an image I had picked up from Mr. Rogers when he toured the local factory. It would be my job to paint the smiles on the dolls, or screw the wheels onto the toy trucks. I would love a job like that, I thought.

My brother thought the idea was strange � why would I want such a boring job? I don�t know, I said, and never brought it up again. I went back to saying I wanted to be a scientist, the kind that sends colored liquid through a winding glass apparatus and makes things explode.

But I was not dissuaded from my assembly-line ambitions. I thought of the love I would have for that one task, painting that smile or screwing in those toy wheels, performed over and over again. Mostly, I think, I loved the idea of the peace that the assembly line would bring. From my frightened child�s view of the uncertain world where I couldn�t seem to do anything right, the best job seemed to be the simplest, most repetitive task, with the least responsibility and the most security. I loved the idea of having a job as long as I could perform that one simple task; to have a specific, tangible job, an insignificant but discrete place on the assembly line of life. To not have to worry about people, responsibility, high expectations. To just do, without thinking. To become a machine.

Like any true cog in the machine, I see the absurdity of my task. The goal of the project is to take a set of California elementary school textbooks and, for every lesson on every page, type in what skill is being learned. The good people of California, like many states around the country, have attempted to turn schoolwork into one big list of quantifiable items. Skill R1.3 is �Reads aloud fluently.� Skill W2.2 is �Uses compound sentences.� The education system has been co-opted by the machine, the intangibles of learning and inspiration replaced by the mechanistic production of quantifiable outcomes, where the goal is not understanding or enlightenment, but scoring a number on a test. Everybody must learn the same things, be churned out in the same way, to fit perfectly into the system. I am a cog that creates other cogs.

I am enjoying it. I am rediscovering that solitude in becoming a machine, knowing that for the next eight hours, I have no expectations, no responsibility, but to type some numbers into a computer. Nobody wonders if I will create a great work of art, nobody hopes I will go the extra mile for the team. I�m not even really expected to care.

For the first time in a long time, my job is only a job and nothing more. It is not me, nor does it reflect my abilities. I feel honest � I have agreed to do a job in exchange for some money. I don�t have to keep in mind all the reasons that this job is worth keeping. It�s not an investment in the future, a step along the ladder, an attempt to enlighten the world.

I am making the same simple bargain that millions of people make. I give eight hours of my life, a certain amount of my energy, in exchange for the money that will give me the chance, the time, to enjoy myself.

We all plug ourselves into this machine. It seems that now there is nothing else. We give it our time � close to half of our waking hours � and it gives us money for food, clothing, shelter and gadgets. It is up to us decide what is worth the price of our time. For now, I decide that this is worth it.

***

It is worth it to stay down in that dingy office for eight hours at a stretch, because in my spare hours I am elated. I have time to myself, to worry about nothing in particular and enjoy life, enjoy it along with the rest of the world, which is waking from its winter slumber in these first cautious moments of spring.

We sit out on the deck, Nate and I, feeling the cool breeze, listening to the elevated trains rumble past us and the airplanes fly overhead, the stray cats roaming the back parking lot. To our left in the distance is a tall building, an apartment building of sorts, and this evening, Nate and I are watching the windows to try and catch the lights going out. We are making a game of it � I take the right half, he takes the left, and whoever sees more lights turn out in the given time is the winner. Only there�s no given time, and no winner � we�re just passing time on a leisurely evening on the porch.

It occurs to me that this building, which I have seen from up here on my fourth-floor deck each day for months, must be nearby. It must be on my block, yet I cannot place it. And suddenly it occurs to me that I have an obligation to find out what that building is, what all these buildings are around me, not just gaze down upon the world from my ivory tower, but really be in a place for once and belong to it.

I tell Nate I am going for a walk to figure out just what that building is. �I feel energetic,� I say. �Enjoy your walk,� he says.

So I go tromping down the stairs and out the jangling gate, wondering whether it�s my investigative spirit, my desire to go for a walk or the enjoyment of this one cigarette that�s sending me out; this cigarette I�ve absconded from the apartment so Nate won�t see me smoke. I don�t really smoke, but when you�re walking around Uptown they come in handy. They are a badge, a weapon, a symbol that you are tough and self-destructive, they make you part of the cigarette-smoking team which includes all these scary people whose team it doesn�t hurt to be on.

The wind is really blowing as I take out my cigarette and matches, and I see I only have five or six matches left. The first two blow out before they reach the cigarette. I huddle up to the Aragon Ballroom, the ornate ballroom with the monstrous sign that clogs up this street on Saturday nights, step into a nook in its fa�ade and light my cigarette. The wind, the cigarettes, the ballroom � I imagine myself the hero in some movie, struggling to get by, a poor soul in this crazy world.

I walk on with the cigarette in hand, letting it turn me into some mythic figure for a moment, a rebel who isn�t afraid of anything. I feel powerful. This neighborhood is mine. I will walk around the block.

To my right is a straggly old community garden and a dark figure leaning over in the distance. Someone gardening on a Saturday night. To my left is the building I see from my deck, and now I see that it is a cooperative. I don�t know quite what that means, but is sounds like people working together, helping each other in their day-to-day living, perhaps staking out a claim in the community garden.

Beyond the garden, a small bulldozer rests in the dark. Behind it, the elementary school with its cardboard projects barely distinguishable behind its foggy windows. The school and the bulldozer reminds me of the story of Mike Mulligan and the steam shovel I read as a child and suddenly, all I want to do is read stories to kids. And I think of the textbooks I�m typing out in the suburbs, and I wonder if the kids will figure out the love through those cold numbers, and I think about how maybe I could just love to teach, rather than produce something great, like I can learn to love a walk around the block more than any travel around the world.

I turn the corner onto Sheridan Road and I think about how I�ve been spending my time, how I�ve just been working a bit here and going for a walk there, and how will I explain myself to my parents? I�ll just tell them that I will cobble a little life together, cobble a living together, and have my little pleasures and my little sufferings and just live my life. I think how I�ll take my little sister on a walk around the block in her Massachusetts neighborhood, and tell her how I�m coming to see the world now, how it doesn�t matter if you do something great or if you�re remembered. It doesn�t matter if you have the best job. It only matters if you�re happy. If you�re happy number one, and if you�re good number two. That can be my going theory for the world � my mission statement if you will, stated clearly to my sister on our walk around the block.

I pass an empty lot to my right and wonder if someone will come to fill this void. Somebody will come by and will perhaps cobble a living from this spot. Or perhaps it will be a true capitalist, who can make this spot part of an empire and make a bundle off it and lose sight of why he�s alive. He should be trying to be good and happy, but too many people wind up as neither.

I come up to the corner convenience store and I think how I should take a walk to the park to make sure the cigarette smoke is off me, but the wind�s blowing onto me from across this parking lot and I�m getting cold and it�s just a short walk home from the store. So I pick up a Coke for Nate and I come walking down the final walk and a man from the street corner barks out to the kids down the road and the cars down the street, and I�m wondering if I�m intimidated by him. I tell myself I�m confident. I belong here. I can walk around my block. This is my home. What am I afraid of?

I smile at the barking man, and he smiles at me and says, �Hi. I�m Dennis the Menace.� And I just say, �Hi,� and smile, while I�m thinking as I reach my apartment gate, there�s a guy who�s just doing his thing. So what if it includes standing in street corners barking at cars; he�s doing his thing. He is my neighbor and fellow man, and I must be bold and say hello to the barking man.

previous - next