Tag Archives: Work

Old Flames

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One of the strangest things happened to me back at the beginning of September.  I was at work in that big, massive place full of cogs like myself, when, walking through the main lobby (which I do, but not really), I thought I saw my high school sweetheart amongst a group of other suits, possibly on a tour of the cog establishment.

Obviously, he was very busy, and I did not interrupt.  I am not sure that he saw me, as I only had the quickest glimpse.  I spent the rest of the day, enamored and focused on thinking about this past fling.

That evening, back at home, I started to Google his name, as I knew it.  (Just to reveal the embarrassing… I have Googled myself, in an attempt to see if I could access everything about me from the Google.)  In any case, I found very little.  There was a long list of people who had the same name, and just glancing at the photo or the title and the location, I easily ignored more than half the list.  What I did find out from my snooping, is that he has become quite successful.  A nice title, a nice suit and haircut, and probably earning more than one hundred thousand a year.

I had feelings that I did not feel since then, suddenly come to memory.  The sight I remembered that he looked like.  It is strange to me that I did not develop a distaste for the situation.  I guess that the both of us have not moved very far from where we started.  We still live in the same city–in a good neighborhood–and we both have families we are raising.  (I cheated and read a few posts on the Facebook page.)

We both have done well, in my estimation.  We were part of a tight-knit group at school, and we are now all with degrees from the Professional Schools.  And the funny thing, all of us have lost tough with each other. Is high school a big place?  Have we moved ourselves into smaller existences?  Is this how life always happens?

If I hadn’t seen him in such a dislocated place, a place so different than what we knew of each other to be like, I would’ve just dismissed it, disregarded it.  I would’ve left it till the next day at school, between classes, to talk to him, or drop him a note.  Now, all the  thoughts that came flying through my mind was, “Could I afford to carry on a relationship based on a past, fleeting, fling?”  Unfortunately, I was left in the place where I had no answer.

I do feel uneasy, now, at work.  Thinking that I will meet him again.  Depending on the circumstances, I have thought to myself, that I may just ignore him.  The situation?  So, that we don’t have to do that “Dance with the Devil by the moonlight.”  It is funny, with old boyfriends and even just quickie flings, that there is much more ill ease than falling in love.  Even, now, at least ten years later.

So, I now wander the halls of our “Cog Establishment” with apprehension, for the next little while at least, as what I gues to be the project that might employ someone like him.  I have run the gamut from ignoring him completely, to being best friends at work.  Apparently, we both have exceeded each other’s appraisal of the other, otherwise we’d be married with children.  Sometimes, in daydreams, I imagine that we could celebrate fifty and seventy-five year marriage anniversaries, if we did, in fact, marry each other as high school sweethearts.

Just once, since September, I contemplated in a real way, about including him in my list of friends and family that I send Christmas Cards to.  But, in a real way, as well, I thought it would just look like a political move.  Meaning that I could not see any redemptive, non-calculating reason for this action.  So, just as quickly, I crossed that thought out of my mind as well.

Now, I am thinking we a have a situation, without presence.  There is a life born out of this “encounter” that goes beyond the present… we do not have contact, and yet we have existence inside our new aquarium.  I am wondering if everything is the same with him.

I have thought…. more, again…  That if we truly do not make contact with each other, that my one new year’s resolution will be to cross out his name and think no more about it at all.  We all seem to have those problems…  Problems of dangling friends.  Those “holder’s-on” that are politically useful, but, really, just suck life and time out of everyone.  I am hoping not to enter into a second “dangle-on” situation.

The useful thing that has come out of seeing something old in a new place, is that I have gone through my memory box (Year Book included) and relived, and then purged, those ideas, thoughts, sights, and smells, from encroaching on the useful and livable parts of my life.  I have strengthened the ties that I have withe the things that I have now, and I have said, “Goodbye,” after the time I should have said it.  I am probably quite complacent with myself now, but it is justified.

And so, I wish everyone that I will not see in December, a “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!”

Beauty Is Real

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Is something real, beautiful, or is something put into words beautiful?  I keep looking at the building construction outside my office window, and I keep seeing beauty in the materials, the strength in the colors of the cement and the wood and the steel.  Sometimes the rhythm of nail drivers, sometimes hammers, and even shouts of men’s voices and the crash of the things thrown, have a beauty that is heard.  The saw and the hum of the crane and the bull dozers is constant, like the many voices in unison can be heard, but not the words.

This scene is most welcoming, and almost soothing, in the morning after an hour commute.  Something human is constructive.  With a long day ahead, it is reassuring to believe it will work, that the frustration common in work is always happening, but things will be greater than this–especially the sounds continuing towards the establishment of something new–or even just a new building.

So, is the world filled with useless work?  Is some of this work needless, and wasteful?  Is the only goal to do something every day that you can do?  Or should your job verge, always, on the pleasurable?  Is it important that you be loved, or loved for your role, your position, your job?  If you have no money to spend on your home, do you still have a home?

In utopia, there is no money.  Only endless jobs to do, and therefore continually, and endlessly, make the universe work.  There is no demotions and promotions, related to money, but just achievement, the goal, since this is what makes people happy and proud.  At this point I think of my mother’s home.  For decades now, she has kept a special list, titled, “A Happy Home Recipe.”  It mentions things like love, loyalty, forgiveness and friendship, plus another four that deal with others helping you out, hope, tenderness, faith, and laughter.  For the longest time, I felt this was the most perfect, more beautiful thing of all.  The way I felt as if I were  being hugged, and loved.  I have no memory of being with my mother on a shopping trip to particularly buy this plaque, and I think, this is why I don’t associate its message with money.  I still think of it when I visit my mother.

Now, back to beauty.  Are beautiful things the only things that are real?  To take a thought experiment to the extreme end, the foible of human beings is to assume that beautiful things are naturally rich, and better, and easier.  Take all the glam and money in Las Vegas….  The stores there only have things that can be bought with a mortgage, and it is assumed that if you go to Vegas, you have some money to spend, or invest.  I have been there, and I do admit that my thoughts tend to run on and I see fountains running and spraying with coins rather than water.  It is like money can make the impossible happen.  Is it beautiful?  Is it even real?

Sometimes, I wish for more privacy than the hordes in Las Vegas can give me when I am on a trip or vacation.  The idea, I think, is that crowds there, fill the void common in any city or town.  It is along “the strip” that I am thinking.  In any other city, at a place of beauty, there is no sense of abandon.  That people are carefree and laughing, and not thinking of the priorities that need to be done by next week.  The “strip” is teeming with hordes of people, especially the young and rich, who exude this energy.  There is no rush, no hurry.  Only pleasure and enjoyment.  And, yes, lots and lots of money.  For most people any other trip or vacation cannot rival the wealth and riches of Las Vegas.  The non-stop flow of money in and out.  Taking a cruise to somewhere comes close, though.

So, in my thoughts, I am guessing that beauty is not limited to “real” things.  Every day, I draw breath, at the small things that happen.  The brown hare in our backyard.  The call of the infrequent owl at night when I have opened my window.  The construction sit that builds and moves slowly, by increments, like watching a stop-action camera become conscious and produce a film over months.  I love the first snowfall.  So delicate, and light, as if the snow is the real color of transparency.  I love the beauty of the old parts of town, where artisans have set up shop, creating and selling wares, of beauty and imagination.

I am looking forward to surprising my children to a two week vacation in December, for the Christmas Holidays.  Filling their days with some warm sunshine, and, hopefully, a sense of carefree joy.  To suddenly, one year have a Christmas away from snow, and attending too many get-togethers and parties.  I am sure where we are going, there will be a “Midnight Christmas Party.”

Thoughts I Have At 8:02PM and On

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Tree branches crawl through the air, climbing higher and higher and during a spring day, the leaves appear.

Next:

The best thing about today are the shadows left by the sun.  In the dusk, things are warm and cool, holding on, and offering an end.

At 8:12pm, my mind goes and wanders:

I fly backwards, trying hard to hold on to my hands, and they flail, grasping nothing.

Because it is dinner:

Corn bread and mashed potatoes, both baked in the open fire oven, are smokey, and can take some wine with the gravy.

 

Since it is Friday, the way work is, we are all a little short.  The last five minutes are a count down, with our minds wandering to things that don’t happen at work.  We try to occupy so that what we are doing does not put us out of time.  In any case, nothing important is ever done during the last five minutes…  At least it is me, and I leave it all at the office, and go home with no unfinished business.

I am allowed to use words on the weekend that I don’t use doing the cubicle work in the tall office building.  I can see across many shorter constructions as well as the wall that is created by the taller ones.  Surprisingly, the sun is able to find its way into my window and shine on the desk and the plant that has stayed alive because of it.  A little green in the tan-beige of the three walls that surround me, camouflage with the carpet, and walking around the floor, I am lost unless I memorize the turns and count the cubicles.

I am glad that it is so uncomfortable.  It gives me the chance to leave without guilt.  So, I am a slave of exceptional quality, and am paid a slave’s wages, which makes any weighting unnecessary, as the company and I are completely Even Steven.

But, to be fair, I am in a decent position.  I have not been cheated out of anything….  Quite contrary, I feel as if I am being overpaid for what is expected of me.  This, unfortunately, as you may have guessed, is not the perfect situation.  It leaves me under-stimulated, and I find I must find other ways to do the things I am good at.

So, now, as I type and think about now and the past, that happened and led to this moment of revelation, I think that I will have many things to explore and write about.  I will finish today’s short piece of writing with a thought:  Why do donuts and bagels have nothing in the middle?  Even now, I can’t even justify myself for eating them (They are soooo delicious!)  as a second helping!  Just because there is a hole in the middle does not make them less fattening.  I am often in trouble, as, now, in middle age, I find myself gaining everything that I eat in a wide way.

So, until the next moment….  Till next time!

Startled By The Startling

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It has happened several times already, to me, and twice just in the beginning of this year till now.  When I ride the subway, I am enclosed in a tube that travels fast in a darkened tunnel.  The noise is a din, and sometimes, the subway car will shake and rattle….  And thankfully, it has not yet rolled.

During the ride, I will sometimes turn my head to look out the window.  And, on occasion, I have seen full-grown, rotund in girth, men….  Standing inside the tunnel, inches from being brushed hard and forcefully by the subway car.  They are often in helmets and reflective vests, as well as their construction pants.  It is a startle each and every single time.

I have been reflecting on this phenomenon, and it leads me to ponder the ideas that men have about “Design.”

There is a museum in Toronto, the Museum of Contemporary Design, called the Design Exchange, that I visited around the time I first happened to spot one of the many men of the TTC standing in the tunnels….  Almost  as if I was only going to get my questions about the oddity of men’s behavior answered.

Just thinking about fifty-year-old engineers gleefully measuring out the inches in a tunnel is a funny thought.  It makes me chuckle a little, but also, to turn my “fun hat” around and think more seriously about “design.”  Building buildings and tunnels and bridges takes a lot of money.  The type of money that governments of the world hold and spend.  So, would there actually be a fifty-year-old engineer, gleefully mapping out the construction of a subway and the tunnels, just thinking in passing, of creating enough space for utility and safety…  Or…., would this engineer be without care, spending enormous amounts of money just to have some fun?

So, being unable to justify spending millions on a few extra inches, I went to the only place that was open to the public that dealt with the study of design–The Design Exchange.

The day I decided to go to the museum, was a hot, sunny, August day.  I decided to wak there from the office I work in.  It was around time to leave the office and go home for dinner, and, surprisingly, since I did not do this very often, I noted that a lot of people choose to walk a few blocks rather than stand in the heat and eventually sweat in the sauna of a transit streetcar.  It took me twenty minutes to get there.  I got reprieve from the many tall office buildings.  It was almost as if tall and large buildings are built in the new world of summer heat just to be enough shade that interior city streets can be kept cool by the buildings’ enormous shadows.  The Design Exchange is just in the south end of the Business District, and is, itself, housed in a very tall building.  It is on Toronto’s Stock Exchange street, Bay Street, which is equivalent to New York’s Wall Street.

Inside the front lobby, which was spacious with a two storey ceiling, the materials for a display on printmaking, bookbinding, and eReaders was placed near the entranceway.  It felt welcoming as the objects looked familiar and this made me think that I wouldn’t have to read all the written material and feel completely lost to the meaning.

There were many examples of print, and a history of print font, starting from the Bible to Newspapers and Magazines, and even into the digital print font that we are all now surrounded by, more than anything that is printed on paper.  The display only dealt with the international language, English, rather than any other print font of another language.  But I am sure I understand the idea of the change in font throughout history.

Inside an alcove just behind the main display was a somewhat smaller, more artistic, display of books on shelves of different heights.  It was a mini-review of the design of the book cover over the decades as the printed word became more and more accessible and saleable.  Finally, the last part I looked at was a written piece about the utility of the eReader in comparison to the longevity of the printed book.  This essay, by a prominent editor, might be floating around the internet right now in one incarnation or another.

After this gold-mine, I still had the “Store” to visit.  It was another display of objects and art that involve design.  Practically everything was in it….  If not in object form, then in the form of a picture.  No mention of money was ever made in this mini-museum display, but my understanding is that advanced civilizations are very minutely designed in everything.  This is an area of work that is rewarding, probably both monetarily and socially.  Designing things that are useful, fun, surprising, pleasing, accommodating, and, that others can find and want, is a true career.  There is no end to the work that needs to be done, and therefore no end to the job.  There will always be money in Art and Desgin.  I am thinking back to the men in the tunnel.  I am sure they find the “neatness” of being able to continue their work even when trains keep running through, and past, them, one of the reprieves of their job.  It would probably take more than double the time to do what it is they do, if they could only work when there were no trains running by.

In life, making money and having lots of friends while doing it, is truly rewarding.  It is almost a requirement in the job description to make it happen successfully.  I think I am truly envious AND jealous of all designers.  In my next life, I will become what is becoming….  A practitioner of that which rules the world.