Update

I'm back. The Fox God has chosen now for my resurrection. Kitsune up, people.

Down With the Sickness

Sure, no one likes being sick.  Especially as sick as I was earlier this week.  But one thing that I tried to keep focusing on as my face rested on the cool bathroom tile floor was AfterSickness(TM).

In my experience, the days after I recover from an illness are among the most productive I ever have.  There's nothing like three days of bed rest to stoke the fires that lie smoldering inside you, doused by the grinding suffocation of monotony and the nightly lullaby of procrastination.

I'm up and around again, with all sorts of ideas bouncing around off of each other in my head, and with renewed vigor I'm determined to get them all down on paper...right after I change my profile pic on Facebook.


Listening To: Oh My Lover - PJ Harvey
Reading: The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan 

Two poems

Poetry...meh, I'm not much for poetry, but every once in a while something jumps into my head and I go ahead and write it down.  Here are a couple of examples.

BLOOD MOON

The moon

fat and august

red like Mars

fat face of an angry god

lumbering over the dark horizon

Bouyant

lifted maybe by Sisyphus

up towards the wide

stretched out stars

of Orion

Drifting imperceptibly higher

less pronounced

so bright now I feel

the shadow's imprint

leaking running

behind me

I want that monstrous globe

to come down now

to roll across

this vacant landscape

nothing but dreams of ghosts

to mow me down where

I stand legs

sorrow-swollen

like tree trunks stuck there

And now a small white

circle almost perfect

hangs in the sky

to light now for gravity

looks like it would fit

in my mouth

ER PARKING LOT

Ancient blacktop, crumbling

due to age,

oil stains, debris, I'd imagine blood

and tears and salt

and among these

glinting sunlight, sharp reflecting

clouds big in the windy sky

shards of urn, a broken serous neck,

the open mouth of a green glass vase

the flowers, though, are gone


Listening to: Munich - Editors

I can haz a Tumblr

Quill Studios has a Tumblr! This is, of course, very exciting news, and should lead to amazing new e-opportunites (or as our marketing guy calls them: "eepportunities". The extra 'e' is for 'extreme'. Our marketing guy is kind of lame*.).

So why a Tumblr? That is one hell of a good question!  Tumblr seems like a bit of a cross between a full-on blog and a Twitter account...sort of like a blog for people without much to say.  I guess my reason can be best articulated by reading the following sentence aloud with your shoulders shrugged:  You've got to get yourself out there in as many media as you can, I suppose.

 *Not Michelle Malkin. I would never do something like that to you guys.

This guy explains Tumblr more thoroughly and diplomatically that I could ever hope to:



So what's next? I don't know...Pinterest maybe?

There, I saved you a trip to my Tumblr.

*Full Disclosure: I am our marketing guy


Listening to:  Rowboat - Beck

OMG! RLHS? WTF?!?

OMG...do you guys like superheroes? Like in real life?

How about the movie Kick-Ass? Did you leave the theater, striding up the carpeted incline to the uplifting music thinking, "Yeah, I am so going to have to finally do that!" And if not, what the fsck is wrong with you?!?

Did you wear a cape as a child? (I did - I think it was a beach towel fastened with a safety pin) Well, why not pull it out of the back of the closet and come out as a Real Life Super Hero?

This site is awesome! You could spend hours, or at least halves-of-hours, just repeatedly hitting the 'Random Page' button.



These guys just dress up and go out and foil crimes. Yeah, that's all. How do you spend your Thursday nights? Watching Community? OK, I can see that; it's an excellent show. But are you still on the couch when Trump's ugly mug is on? Not these guys.

One of them says he goes around spray painting over graffiti:

“I use a cell phone, flashlight and a can of gray spray paint all the time. The spray paint is to paint a neutral color over gang graffiti, thus reclaiming the neighborhood for the people and not the gangs. It's supposed to be a lethal insult to the gang (meaning they have the ‘right’ to kill you for doing it.).”

Myself, I hold my keyring in my fist when walking after dark, making sure that the individual keys stick out between my clenched fingers. Kick ass!

You know what else is a good movie? Undercover Brother.





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Listening to: Best Friends Forever - BFF Theme Song
via FoxyTunes

Dying is easy...

...writing is hard.

Well, not the actual writing. It's the editing - the keeping of consistency, the tying up of loose ends, the ensuring congruity of symbols and motifs...ugh. That's probably why I decided to just have a couple of beers and watch hockey when I got home form work tonight. And then I wasted time on the internet. Some highlights of my travels:

Failbooking

xkcd

slashdot

and of course, facebook, blogger and youtube.



Back at it tomorrow. Bleah.



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Listening to: Camera Obscura - French Navy
via FoxyTunes

Zenstant Film!

First, a bit of business. Almighty Google has shown no results for the usage of the phrase "Zenstant Film", so I hereby lay claim to it (patent pending!). Refer to this blog's Creative Commons license with any questions.

OK, now that that's out of the way, here's the first in what will (hopefully) be a series of short, short films - simple moments captured for posterity, kind of like the plastic bag footage in American Beauty, but hopefully not quite as pretentious. Allow me to present "Crunchy Ice":





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Listening to: Phantogram - "When I'm Small"
via FoxyTunes

FAWM Update I

Not much progress so far on FAWM; just a couple of tracks begun and nowhere near finished. Still lots to do, hours and hours of mixing and editing.

Anything that makes my life, vis-a-vis music production, easier is, by definition, awesome. I'd like to share a couple of resources that I've found very helpful:

Freesound is a huge online interactive community where people and/or possibly cyborgs come together to share and find sound samples. Whether it's a mellow atmospheric pad to back your composition, or just a really cool sound, such as an old school ringing phone, you can find it at freesound.org.

Digifish is an Australian site with sound samples so shockingly good I'm surprised that the Australian government hasn't shut it down yet. Just make sure to get permission before using their sounds in your compositions (it's super easy, even I could do it - just shoot them an email).

Best of luck to everyone in their endeavors this month!


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Listening to: Mogwai - Like Herod
via FoxyTunes

FAMW! RAWR!!!

February Album Writing Month is in the offing!

14 songs in 28 days - sounds hard, right? Due to time constraints associated with the ongoing edit of my entry for the last NaNoWriMo, I've decided to do an instrumental album; sort of a concept deal.

The rough concept I have in mind right now is that it will be a soundtrack that follows an alien spaceship marooned on a strange planet. Sounds weird and/or stupid, I know, but I think I can make it work - I've already got three or four songs outlined in my head.

I'll be (trying) to upload them to the player in my sidebar on a (semi-) regular basis. Wish me luck!



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Listening to: Beach House - Norway
via FoxyTunes

Flash Fiction Friday - How To Walk A Plank

How To Walk A Plank

This morning, first thing, I got a paper cut - a deep one at a weird angle. It left a little flap of skin, one that I could peel open and close, starting and stemming the blood flow as I wished. I was pissed at the time, but now am so grateful for it.

Once I had put a bandaid over the cut, I inspected the itinerary (which was the paper I had cut myself on) that was slipped under our cabin door overnight. It was rather light compared to the previous ones on the cruise, only one item - a gathering on the top deck. I turned the paper over to check if there was anything on the other side, but it was blank. I absentmindedly tossed it on the dresser and went over to the bed, kneeling down and giving Karen a soft kiss on her forehead. Her moaning reply made it clear she would not be up for joining me this morning. "Feel better," I whispered in her ear, and then I left. I am so very grateful for this little, seemingly meaningless interaction. You have no idea.

Between the paper cut and the fact that my wife was seasick, I was sure it was going to be a bad day. The seas had been very active the day before, though they calmed significantly over night. Checking myself in the mirror, I combed my hair and left for the top deck, where I arrived into this nightmare.

I was sure I hadn't heard the man right; he did have a very thick accent. A flash of knife blade and a nod toward the railing aided in my comprehension. "Walk the plank," he had said.

I goggled incredulously. Do they even do that anymore? I refused to believe they did, even as they were shoving and threatening me toward the starboard railing. As we got closer, I saw a length of board sticking out over the edge. The other passengers were screaming and yelling, but it sounded very far off, as if I were hearing them from a nearby island rather than from the same boat.

A makeshift staircase had been cobbled together to help me up to the plank. It felt almost like I was floating up them due to all of the pirate hands that were helping me along. Once on the board, all the hands disappeared, and I knew for the first time in my life the feeling of being truly alone.

The wind had picked up again. I was worried for a bizarre moment about being blown off the board before I had walked off the end. The absurdity brought a laugh up from somewhere in the depths of me, but it erupted instead as a wailing sob. I felt so pathetic, so embarrassed. I wished I didn't have to do this in front of everyone.

Now that tears were flowing, a procession of images that had been clawing at the back of my mind burst forth: my wife...what would happen to her? They didn't know she was still in the cabin. Would she be killed? Raped? I scanned the horizon for any sign of rescue. It was an extremely stressful proposition to look out past the end of the plank, but for my wife I did it. There was only ocean.

I was shaken from my thoughts as my hands were pulled behind my back and tied. One of the men asked me if I wanted a cigarette. I thought long and hard about it. It was an unbelievably difficult decision for me; the toughest one I can remember in my life. I don't smoke. Eventually I said yes, but spit it out into the sea almost immediately. The pirates laughed. I had a tiny cruel hope that maybe they would decide that I was OK, that they'd take me down, maybe even welcome me into their ranks. Would I be OK with that, with stealing and killing? I wondered.

My hands were, as I mentioned, tied behind my back, but they were positioned such that I could feel the paper cut I 'd received this morning. My bandaid had fallen off, probably due to all the sweat. I stood there on the plank, unbelieving, rubbing my thumb across the flap of skin. I was very happy to have something to focus on, to distract me.

O hai! Ur storiez iz rejektid.

I received the nicest rejection letter the other day from the folks at Storyglossia. Rejection letters are nothing new to me, and they don't carry the potent sting they once did, but still, frankly, mostly they suck. Not this one, though.

I won't reprint the email verbatim here, as I don't have, nor have I sought, their permission; however, this email was much more than your standard "Sorry...pass!" rejection letter. No, the editor actually took the time to commend me on several elements of my story, including its' subtlety (one of my most sought-after compliments!).

I almost want to print it out at post it at my desk, it's so unique in the juxtaposition of rejection and praise.

Has anyone else had a similar rejection letter? Or a rejection letter than was just dripping with meanness? Or maybe even some funny Lolcats? I'd appreciate any of that.


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Listening to: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mozart: Symphony #40 In G Minor, K 550 - 1. Molto Allegro
via FoxyTunes

Write why now?

I am not a great writer. So why do I write? This thought haunts me sometimes; usually when I'm having trouble figuring things out, connecting the dots, or even just committing anything to paper. These doubts tend to mount for a while, smothering my thought process until I just feel like walking away and giving up. (Ok, actually I feel like slamming my laptop to the floor, but I've managed to resist the temptation so far.)

Then it happens. A flash of insight, usually when I have finally stopped thinking about all my frustrations with the writing process. This happened to me just this last Friday night, as I was lying in bed.

One of the most encouraging feelings a writer can experience is the sudden realization of growth and maturation as a writer. If you've been writing for any length of time, you have likely experienced this. So awesome. Jump around squealing like a girl awesome.

Where was I? Ah yes, this past Friday. A story I had been working on had hit a dead end about a week previous and stayed stuck there. I began to obsess about it. I tried to go directly at it, to kind of force my way through it and hope that it would all work out in the end (which sometimes does happen, and is another thrilling moment in writing). Nothing worked out this time though, and I ended up just writing and deleting, writing and deleting. That and watching a lot of US Open tennis.

I then decided to try to go at it from the periphery, which sometimes works out very well. I usually try to write a short story or two, maybe the back story of a character, or maybe a random scene from the big story. In the middle of one of these short stories, I was running into the same wall that I had hit in the larger story. Double frustration. At a loss for what else to do, I went to bed. Drifting off, I began imagining how one of my characters might have arrived at the location of my story, something that wasn't in my original outline. And that's where it hit me.

I needed a character to be duplicitous (or to seem to be duplicitous, to be more precise), but I hadn't really worked through what her motivation might have been. That's the answer that came to be as I drifted off to sleep on Friday. I was so excited I got up, re-did my entire outline (as well as spent more time on my character's back stories), and wrote for nearly 3 hours straight. I got a fresh burst of inspiration, confidence, and a better developed, more three-dimensional character to boot.

I think I'm going to get all my notes together on this one and use it for NaNoWriMo!


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Listening to: Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks
via FoxyTunes

Flash Fiction Friday - Hint Fiction

Seeing as how I'm prepping for another (most like demoralizing) contest entry, I thought I'd shoot two barrels of fish with one shotgun and post some of the compositions I'm considering for submission.

The contest? Hint Fiction.
The deadline: August 31 (this coming Monday, I believe).
The skinny: Compose a story in 25 words or less - perfect for a twitter post. Come to think of it, I should post mine on my much neglected Twitter account. I'll try to due that right after I send in the entries for consideration.

Well, here they are:


The Funeral of an Enigma

The programs were referred to often - compulsively, it seemed - as the structure they provided was some sort of relief from the awkwardness and boredom.



Baggage

From the pedestrian bridge, she emptied the purse into the river, laughing through the tears. She kept the purse, though, for the memories it held.



The Humanity

"There is a indifferent, yawning chasm in between compassion and resentment," Drake drawled as he withdrew the blade. Footsteps echoed down the alley.



He Was Supposed To Have Made His Mark By Now

From the opposite sidewalk, surreptitious sideways glances at the girls walking by in tight, skimpy clothes. The sight was suddenly, for the first time, depressing.


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Listening to: Miles Davis - So What
via FoxyTunes

Flash Fiction Friday - The Old Man and the Mailbox

The Old Man And The Mailbox

"It's hot already," John muttered to himself as he wiped his dampening forehead with a white handkerchief. He thought about just unfolding it completely and draping it over his head, like he had seen the Arabs do back in the war, then thought better of it and folded back up and slipped it in his shirt pocket. He slowly traversed the blinding white concrete of his driveway, like a firewalker, towards his mailbox at the end. Today was the day he got his Social Security check - they arrived like clockwork on the 5th of the month, or the 6th if the 5th was on a Sunday. And the postman was always there by 10 AM; it was 10:30 now.

His shuffling feet had made their way halfway down the driveway before he had to pause for a break. He had a walker but refused to use it most of the time. He was still man enough to walk out to get the mail, for Chrissakes. Again the handkerchief came out and wiped away the sweat, on his face now as well as his brow. He remembered marching through the deserts of Africa during the war, in the somewhat romantic way that time can tint such things. He started toward the mailbox again, letting his memories distract him from the pain in his joints until, like a blessed oasis, he was at the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

It was impossible to see inside the dark cavern when he first opened it; his eyes needed a few seconds to adjust. His eyes still worked pretty well, he thought. He took comfort in thee small blessings whenever he noticed them.

To his surprise, the box appeared empty. He reached his shaking hand inside and felt around. Nothing. An odd sad sensation flooded into his veins, and he closed the mailbox. He retrieved his handkerchief yet again and wiped himself down. It's too hot to think, he thought. The handkerchief finally went on top of his head, awkward appearances be damned, in an effort to cool down.

John checked the watch on his well-tanned wrist, a beautiful gold Rolex he got when he retired from the car factory. The watch said 10:40. John opened the mailbox again. Still nothing.


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Listening to: Sybris - On Man!
via FoxyTunes

In Vino Veritas contest entry

Just a quick update:

While cruising through the bloggosphere recently, I stumbled upon a flash fiction contest at The Clarity of Night. I had this idea knocking around in my head since last winter while I was lounging on the couch in a Nyquil daze. And at only 250 words, I figured I could knock it out quickly. The result is below; I intend to submit it sometime this weekend. Enjoy! Comment! Enjoy!

Fetch


Two figures approached from the southern horizon - they seemed to have been brought along with the storm. As the lightning flashed violently through the downpour, Eva traced their progress towards the isolated shack. She tried to wake her father and mother, but they were too drunk to rouse. In a panic, Eva grabbed some bread from the table and ran out the back door. She checked over her shoulder as she fled, making sure that the shack was keeping her blocked from view.

Upon arriving, the two men strode right in, simultaneously drawing their hoods back as they entered the one room hut. They were nearly identical, and were often mistaken for brothers. Eva's parents woke abruptly, and sat up straight on their old cots as the two men sat down at the modest dinner table. The man on the right pulled a decanter out of his satchel and set it on the table, and the man on the left, the one who did all the talking, spoke.

"Glasses," he rasped, motioning to the decanter. Lightning silhouetted him intermittently. Eva's mother stumbled out of bed in a drunken hurry to collect two glasses for the men.

"Come, sit," he said as he poured. Eva's parents, terrified, obeyed. He pushed the glasses towards them.

"Drink," he urged, and they hesitatingly did.

"There," the stranger said as they silently set their empty glasses down.

"Now," he whispered, leaning in towards them, "where is the child?"

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Listening to: The Pogues - Bottle Of Smoke
via FoxyTunes

Fire Works

Fireworks haven't been a big deal for me since I was, well, I'll say around 12 or so. And back then blowing shit up was as exciting as, well, saying "shit" out loud so that it might be heard by God and everyone. The charms of both of these things have faded over time, as one might reasonably hope they might. Hell, I actually drop my voice when I swear now.

So I was a little reluctant when a friend asked me to go to the Fourth of July fireworks in his boyhood hometown. He was excited because it was the tiny town's centennial, and this was supposed to be an especially spectacular display.

"Really? Fireworks?" I asked incredulously. "Really?"

"Dude, just c'mon," Ryan insisted. "What else are you going to be doing this weekend? Come up with me; we'll hike, we'll get drunk, and we'll watch the fireworks. It'll be fine."

I actually had been looking forward to doing something this weekend, but video games and masturbation hardly seemed to be a slam dunk counter-argument. So I relented. I went up north with him, and the trails were breathtaking, the beer was free, and the evening air was deliciously cool. I couldn't believe I was wearing a sweatshirt in July.

We stayed at his cabin, which was a cabin only in the sense that it was out in the woods and wasn't his primary residence. Every modern luxury was at my disposal, which was really the only thing I had to rag on Ryan about the entire weekend. I was hoping for something a bit more primitive. But the walks in the woods were nice, so who am I to complain?

We left his cabin at around dusk and walked the half-mile to the high school baseball fields where they were holding the fireworks display. There was almost nowhere to go; every inch of grass was covered with a blanket or tarp on which sat a family or group of howling drunkards, sometimes both. We ended up finding a spot just off the paved path. There were cars parked on either side of the path, butting up right against it, so we had to stand. We were situated right in front of a new Lexus SUV that looked like it just rolled right off the lot. It didn't even have a metal license plate yet. It had backed in off of the path, so we were facing it's hood. About thirty or so feet behind us was a large pole building used, I would suppose, for storing all the field equipment and such. The moon was fat and yellow and low in the sky, and would be the backdrop for the fireworks display.

The show was supposed to start at 10 PM. We had arrived at around a quarter to, and Ryan and I stood there in the dark listening to people walk by us talking into their cell phones.

Now, in this small town, the air raid siren, which is also used to summon the local fire brigade, goes off at 10 o'clock - for curfew or something, I'm not exactly sure why. But the thing, which was only a couple of blocks, went off as scheduled at 10, and was ear-piercingly loud. Before the sound had faded from my skull, the first firework had burst in the night sky - a big shower of golden sparkles that sort of resembled a palm tree, I thought.

Of course, writing about fireworks is, to paraphrase David Byrne, like dancing about architecture, so I won't describe all of the amazing display, except to say that it was indeed amazing, and when my neck got tired from craning upward I looked at the dark, shiny hood of the Lexus SUV and could see the brilliant lights reflected there, and also the bangs reverberated off of the metal pole building with a cool 'pew-pew-pew' sound. There were spectacular fountains of light; the night was lit up by multicolored bursts, illuminating smoke trails that hung in the air like huge spiders. Ryan was right, the display was incredible, and I was glad I had come. The whole crowd cheered and yelled appreciatively after every large volley of explosions, and there were several.

Then, about 15 minutes in, the air raid siren goes off, this time repeatedly. A fire call. The alarm bellowed out into the darkness, and kept going. I would guess that most of the fire department was here at the ball field for the display: they were the ones who set them off, and they, of course, were also here because this was the most likely place for a dangerous fire to erupt.

I'm not going to lie - the mood was somewhat subdued after the siren started going off. It just kept going, a completely counter-intuitive soundtrack to the light show. They started setting off the fireworks more rapidly, trying to blow everything up as quickly as they could so they could finish up and get going. The resulting barrage was something I will remember the rest of my life, and I doubt this display could ever be topped and still be legal. It was so amazingly beautiful, and bright, and loud; and yet how difficult, how empty and even callous it felt to be celebrating our independence, to be enjoying ourselves, as someone's entire world went up in flames before them. The more dazzling it was, the more I hated myself.


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Listening to: Pearl Jam - Dissident
via FoxyTunes

For posterity's sake

I have recently discovered, to my dismay but certainly not my surprise, that I have done a horrible job keeping track of my creative endeavors. I had one short story published in a now-defunct magazine called (I believe) The Heron. I can find no record of this anywhere - I can't even find the paper copy of it that I received. Hopefully it is still somewhere in my house.

Another short story of mine was published in an e-zine, although I never actually saw it because the link they gave me didn't work. Their check did not bounce, though, so I wasn't too upset.

The one piece of mine that I know for sure was up on the Net has now been taken down, unfortunately. I would have no record of it at all had my local congresswoman not sent me a news clipping:

And to think I didn't even vote for her...and won't next time she runs, either. Oh well.

I've noticed that I know exactly where most, if not all, of my rejection letters are...I wonder what that says about me?

Below is a copy of the short story referenced in the above news clipping:

THANK GOD FOR TORNADOES

“That’s not tornadic”, Matt opined. “Now if the sky was green, then that would be tornadic”. He recited to anyone willing to listen a list, obviously complied over a dull lifetime and endlessly rehearsed, of the times when he had witnessed a green sky; but I was much more interested in looking out at the actual sky through the one small window in the room. Matt’s voice droned on behind me about the tornado he saw when he used to work at a fast food joint, while my eyes searched outside, wondering what the big deal was. The sky was not particularly dark, the wind was gentle, and the rain was merely a moderate downpour, nothing to really get concerned about. I turned to notice Shannon walking up towards us.

“There were no customers there, so we all went out in the parking lot, and it had been blowing a blue streak, but then it got all still and quiet, and that’s when we went out.”

I glanced over at Shannon, thinking he might find the humor in all the Hardee’s employees standing in the parking lot facing an imminent tornado strike, but his eyes were focused far away, out the window. He tried to keep as uninvolved as possible with the people and politics here at work; probably a good idea, but it makes him pretty boring to talk to, which is too bad because he’s one of the few people here with half a brain in his head. I turned my gaze back through the window as well.

“What the hell is the siren for?” Shannon demanded, roughly stroking the scraggly red whiskers on his jaw, “It’s fine out there.”

I mentioned, while maintaining my focus out the window, that I had seen the weather report this morning, and that a cold front was coming in, bringing with it some possibly severe storms, and hopefully some cooler weather for the next couple days – a welcome break from the devastating humidity of the past two weeks. The severe stuff, I told him, was supposed to be passing to the south of us. Shannon grunted his agreement with my remarks.

“Yeah, it’s fine out there,” Matt added. “Now, if the sky was dark green, that’s a sign for tornadic.”

I looked to hopefully to Shannon again – still no reaction on his characteristic grim and serious face. Disheartened, I turned and looked out the window with him. A guy was sitting out in his car, waiting for the rain to ease up, I surmised. Finally he gave up waiting and got out of the car, holding his briefcase over his head as he rushed to the entrance. The headlights of his Buick were still on. I think we were all hoping that they weren’t the type that turned off automatically. That’s cold, I realize, but factory work will instill that type of mentality in you.

Matt was suddenly right over my shoulder and into my personal space, standing on his toes and trying to get a look outside. I cringed and shrunk from his touch when he put his hand on my shoulder to boost himself up slightly higher. He lost his balance and nearly fell into Shannon and me.

“Nah...that’s definitely not tornadic,” Matt insisted once he had stabilized himself. As he spoke, the excessively large wad of chew he kept between his lips and teeth threatened to spill over. Little bits of it were interspersed in his prominent braces. It was always uncomfortable conversing with him, as the possibility of being showered with tobacco juice was always there, and he had a habit of standing uncomfortably close when speaking.

I turned away from Matt without a word or even a visual cue that I was ending whatever conversation he might have imagined we’d been having, scanning the room for likely escape route. The room was a stark white abortion, a purely utilitarian cinder-block construction. Like the rest of the factory, there was no clock in here. The company did not want clock-watchers. Instead, they alerted us to our break times with bells over a loudspeaker, like we were caged rats or prisoners or something like that. More than anything, more than being an inconvenience, or an assault on our dignity, it was just sad – just sad that I, a grown man, viewed the simple act of putting on my watch every morning as a way to “Stick It To The Man”.

The siren ceased it’s warning, and I turned back towards the window. The sky was continuing to lighten, still raining, but any possible threatening weather was obviously well past us now. The white-collars stood up and went hastily back to their offices upstairs. Everyone else stayed put. It was hot and muggy out on the floor, and there was little work to do besides. Orders had been dropping off, probably the result of the sub-par product we had been turning out lately. Everyone had been talking about it for weeks.

“If they need us out on the floor,” Frank said, “they can come get us. That’s the supervisor’s job...give the ‘all clear’.” Frank had been with the company since the ‘50s, a fixture at the factory. He was not well respected by anyone here, especially the newer people. His reputation for laziness was not helped by his sloppy speech or his habit of napping after lunch, and his obsolescence put into sharp focus by the increasingly simple “busy work” assigned to him. It would be difficult, though, I would imagine, staying motivated while living through the golden age of labor and into the rise of the corporations.

Around the room, everyone mumbled and nodded their vague agreement with Frank. Someone else, I’m not sure who, not that it really makes a difference, floated a semi-articulated thought that we ought to stay in here all day no matter what management has to say about it. More muttered agreement. I couldn’t really tell who these splintered ideas of rebellion were coming from, or how a conformity was reached, but in the end almost everyone seemed to be of the opinion that we needed to make a stand, to air our grievances, to scream defiantly against the roaring tempest of corporate decision.

“It’s always been that way,” Frank repeated. “Stay and wait for the ‘all clear’.”

My legs were exhausted from standing all day, so I turned away from the window and went to grab one of the seats that had opened up at the long conference table when the office people left. I sat next to Laura, who had an injury and was temporarily working on assembling benefits folders to be distributed to all the workers at the factory. I glanced casually at the contents of one of the folders, and commented on the fact that over half of the material seemed to be out of date.

“Yeah, I know, “ Laura sighed impatiently. “Anita brought that up, and I told her: if you got a problem with it, go see management. It’s not my job to correct their mistakes. Talk to management about it.” Anita is the union steward. She’ll get all worked up about this or that, talk big about taking the company to task over infractions large and small, real or imagined, but in the end she’s all bluster, and everybody knows it.

“If they think I’m redoing these damn things they’ve got another think coming.” She slapped another assembled folder down on the stack to punctuate the end of her sentence. I think we both knew she’d spend weeks tearing these books apart and then reconstructing them, until she was well enough to work.

Sensing the air of hostility and anger she had enveloped herself in, I decided to get up and walk back to the window. Matt and Shannon had wandered off, so I stood alone, watching sheets of rain dance across the street. As I stared absently at the rain, I thought about how much of what we manufacture is done in the spirit of anger and hostility, how many parts just don’t quite fit right and so are forced into place with a wild hammer and fuming curses. I also noticed the Buick’s headlights were now off. I didn’t know if they turned off by themselves or if the battery had died, and really didn’t care too much about it either way. This whole damn factory could blow away, for all I cared.

Why the factory had gone to hell was fairly obvious – we switched to a new material supplier, who gave us our metal as a substantially lower price, but also a substantially lower quality. As we struggled working with the inferior new material, we fell behind because it was so time consuming and because so much of the product had to be scrapped. As we fell further behind, angry customers called, demanding their purchases be delivered immediately, and so quality control standards were relaxed, which meant that stuff that should have been rejected was instead shipped out. Our reputation after all this was obviously not good, and so we lost customers. And now here we were in what should have been the busiest time of the year for a industrial refrigerator manufacturer, with next to nothing to do.

The sirens had gone silent over ten minutes ago – if I hadn’t had my watch, I would’ve sworn it’d been about an hour – and still no one had come to get us. I held out a sliver of hope that we could while away the day in the comfort of the air conditioned bunker/conference room, but tried not to dwell on it. Instead, I eavesdropped on the several conversations going on around the room. They were all remarkably similar – they were all about tornadoes.

“Once I was in a mobile home during a tornado,” Cindy said. She rocked back and forth in her chair, simulating the motion of the trailer, I suppose.

“It was so scary and loud – all the trailers around us got damaged, but ours was untouched.” Her voice lilted up as she ended her sentence, bubbly with the good news that everything worked out all right for her.

She was holding court, most of the guys were around her, rapping off clumsily worded double-entendres which fell around her like so many errant arrows. She was by far the prettiest woman in the factory, in a way not too far different from her trailer in the story...of course, even though she made out OK, there she was, still in the trailer park.

“Untouched!” she emphasized.

“Speaking of touching...” one of her sweaty admirers began.

“Yeah, I tell ya, one hit my home once, sounded like a freight train coming through.” The attention of the room slipped momentarily from Cindy, but never quite fully, and the moment’s wavered attention drifted toward, but never really focused on, Frank.

“Like a freight train,” he repeated, far-off stare, searching for but finding nothing to add. He deflated in his chair, relinquishing any meager hold he might have had on the room. Cindy continued her story, which never really went anywhere or shed any new details, for the next several minutes to her rapt, albeit captive, audience. I thought seriously about leaving the window and moving out of earshot of her inane ramblings. Instead, I stood there propped against the window frame and waited, and waited, letting her voice lull me into a not unpleasant semi-catatonic state, and decided that maybe this was the safest place for me to be right now.

An annoying scraping noise distracted me eventually. Over in the corner, I saw the boys from Material Inspection. They were the Dead-enders – any newly hired person who was sent to work with them lasted all of two weeks, tops. Like most of the problems in the company, they were left unaddressed. They were ensconced in a bitter shell, numbly punching in every day and collecting a check every week, doing just enough to not get fired, waiting out the ravages of time and circumstance, holding on until retirement or death. They were scratching marks on the table using regular putty knives – probably the most used tools in the factory – shaped and sharpened using a grinding wheel into instruments resembling jailhouse shivs, sculpted with more care and attention to detail than they exhibited toward any actual product of the factory.

I turned away from them, suddenly more disheartened than usual. The morning had started wonderfully, a compassionate break from the routine drudgery and anguish; but now I saw that it had simply been moved to another room. The same inane conversations held over and over again - the lines of a dark and too obvious comedy. The same lack of concern...the same defeated mentality.

There was not so long ago a time of craftsmen, when pride was taken in one’s work; when a guy could get a blue-collar job and support his family. My grandfather worked hard every day, dirt forever on his hands, scraped knuckles, a couple of beers after a hard day, a gold watch and a fat pension when he retired. It was an honest, romantic way to make a living. I’m nearing the age of my grandfather when he was half way to retirement, but they keep raising the retirement age, leaving me to trudge onward like Sisyphus...the same defeated mentality.

Finally, the moment we had all been hoping wouldn’t come, had come. Ray came into the room – he must’ve drawn the short straw among the supervisors. None of them liked dealing with us. Most of the workers made a point to make sure any interaction was difficult and emotionally draining. New conversations began as if previous ones had never taken place, everyone played dumb – a supervisor would just have to start all over again, building from the ground up.

He stood there for a few moments. The conversations continued, but in a noticeably hushed tone. Eerily, no one moved. Hands on his hips, he surveyed the room with a scowl before speaking.

“OK, people, let’s get back out there. The siren stopped a while ago.”

“We’re supposed to stay put until we get the ‘all clear’ from the supervisor,” Frank challenged. “That’s the rules.”

“OK, OK...here’s your ‘all clear’. Now let’s get back out there. C’mon, people! Let's go!”

He rambled across the room, barking and flailing, dislodging people form their comfortable cliques and seats and conversations, upsetting everyone with his ruthless attitude.

Reluctantly, and with much groaning, everyone painstakingly got up from their seats and staggered slowly out onto the floor. As we left the room, the hot, sticky, dishearteningly overwhelming air of the factory weighed us down, slowing us even more.



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Listening to: Atmosphere - Smart Went Crazy
via FoxyTunes

The Materialists v. The Sensualists

I had an interesting debate the other day - one I've had in the past several times, and one that I find I'm constantly changing sides on. I know artists, a couple of them, who are quite talented, but simply unable to make a living at it because of how they view the media they are gifted in.

Their problem, if it is indeed a "problem", is this: they hold art - the process and result of their creativity and patience - in such sacred regard that once a piece is done, so much of their personality, so much of their soul, so much of their "selves" went into its creation that to simply sell it seems to them like a sort of prostitution, some sort of profanity. I suppose that in a way they view their pieces the way someone might view their children, and I guess the comparison between patiently raising a child and carefully making a clay teapot is more than superficial.

The counter-argument I have used myself goes something like this: it is really all how the artist views him- or herself, and the general attitude that many artists seem to share about money, which is negative, for he most part. Many artists will divide the world in twain, partisianizing humanity into materialists and sensualists. They view the majority of humanity as being interested in chasing profits and financial advantage, and they view the dollars that these people are endlessly chasing as dirty by association.

Gone are the days of patrons who will lavish artists with the means to spend all their days creating art without having to worry where their next meal is coming from. Some artists I have spoken with get a dreamy look in their eyes when referring to the Renaissance era, conveniently ignoring the fact that often the artists from this period they admire so much often had little choice as to what they would be painting or sculpting. Other artists take an opposite tack, romanticizing the lives of the starving artists who eschewed worldly comfort for the sake of remaining true to their artistic vision. I think both of these viewpoints are mistaken, both in the way they unquestioningly accept the fact that money is bad, and in the way they view the nature of the transaction.

First, money is neither good nor bad. It is an inanimate object (one it took a certain amount of artistic talent to design and mint, I might add); it is what money is used for, as well as what one does to obtain it, that is either good or bad - which leads to my second point: I would suggest that instead of looking at the selling of a painting or sculpture or whatever as a mere financial exchange, take the viewpoint that you are exchanging your work that will bring happiness to other people for a small donation to enable you the security to continue the work of making the world a better place.

Of course, and underlying (and fastidiously ignored) secondary argument of the artist who will not sell their work is the artist's fear of rejection or failure, with which I can certainly sympathize. It takes a very real bravery to put your soul into a work and then to place it out in the world for all to see. And judge. And criticize. I think all artists, hell, anyone, can relate to this. Artists will usually form communities to offer support to each other is the face of this legitimate insecurity, but all too often these groups will devolve into dens of bitterness that legitimize the fear rather than combat it.

Well, these are my half-formed thoughts on the subject. I just kind of wanted to get them down to help me figure out all sides concerned. Thanks for everything.