Going Out Alone

When I go out alone, I’m at my best. I’ve got the window down and I go far. There are no deadlines, but there is purpose. Though they won’t every time, storms can clear as quickly as they form. It’s important not to forget that. Their release brings joy, like going out alone under bright skies to hang a show at a gallery on a Sunday afternoon with Jane’s Addiction blaring over the stereo.

Life In a Box

Another day, another incremental reduction of pride. This is what your life will be. The real advantage is gained once you’ve shed all of it. Things will become much easier. It won’t feel right at first but it will get progressively less difficult, until it’s nearly effortless. There’s no shame in it. We all do it. There will be good days and bad days. Distractions are helpful. Anything to help you look away is advantageous, anything to make the humiliation feel more worthwhile and rewarding. The trivial, perhaps even illusory, amount of power and control that you’ll acquire will help you rationalize your complacency and submission. Buy a bigger car. Take on an intern. Decorate your office or cubicle with artifacts that point to your success. Drink expensive coffee. Wear designer clothes in seasonally appropriate colors. Master the lingo. Exude satisfaction and professionalism. Get a stylish haircut and maintain it meticulously – extra points if you pick it out of a magazine. Find an “A-List” celebrity and try to emulate his appearance as closely as possible. You may even want to try to identify with him. Go to church. Invest in an afterlife. Watch football on Sunday afternoons. Drink lite beer. Develop poorly informed, overly simplified, but strongly expressed popular opinions about complex political, social, and moral issues, but don’t feel compelled to hold yourself up to the implications of those opinions. Have a spouse and a child. Have a few of each. These things are all important. “A little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Frankly, the more sugar, the better. Anything to get it down is fine. Anything to keep you docile and malleable is worth its price. That’s one of the great mysteries which you’ll unravel at your places of work. Your success was never based upon your brilliant intellect or your performance. It’s based upon your temperament and commitment. These things are what make you valuable to your employer. Too much spine or intelligence is undesirable. You must be accommodating and convincing. You have to want the yoke.

Exhaust

It's not so bad, and that's really the best that I can hope for. Happiness only comes in short, lucid bursts. I move as life dictates. I react. I evade. Whatever kills the immediate discomfort is always the right answer. It might be a shortsighted mode of problem-solving, but long-term planning is not typically an option. When it is, I employ it, and work with what I have. I'm not proud. Right now, I'm enjoying one of those bursts of joy. It's relaxing. The window is down. I'm stuck in traffic and a cocktail of different types of exhaust are making love to my lungs. The fumes lick my head and face like a giant tongue and creep down my airways into my lungs. It's a wet, obscene orgy of toxic smells and mucus. The sun is on its way up. I'm stuck in traffic in a bad neighborhood, not fully awake yet, and in no hurry to get there. Neil Young is playing loudly. I've got roughly 15 minutes of commute and five of unpacking and preparation before I've got to "work." My sense of time has become so shortsighted and desperate that a 20 minute buffer of downtime feels pretty good. It's something that I'll try to enjoy and savor. The solitude is really what this moment is all about. Right now I've got early morning sun, the familiar scent of exhaust, and "Down By the River." Alone is priceless. It's worth more than everything which I endure to earn it. Solitude is a bargain at any price.

Apartment Bathroom

The toilet in our apartment was backed up. We only had one bathroom, and the toilet in it was clogged beyond plunging. We notified the landlord that evening, and he said that he’d be by with a snake the next day around 8am. He would let himself in. Fair enough. The only problem is that I’m out the door for work by 7:30am. Generally, I need to shit before I leave for work. It’s one of the first things I do when I wake up. This immediately concerned me and I tried planning for this fast-approaching eventuality. I suppose I could have used a neighbor’s toilet, but I didn’t know any of them well. So I went to bed without a plan, simply hoping that all would be well in the morning. It wasn’t. I was able to hold it until my wife made it out the door for work, but it was clear that I’d need to shit before leaving. The toilet was still out of commission. So I grabbed a bunch of newspapers that we were about to pitch and spread them out on the linoleum bathroom floor. I removed my pants and braced myself with my hands on the side of the bathtub. I squatted and took a big shit. Two massive turds fell from my ass to the newspapers on the bathroom floor. I wiped, folded up the newspapers around the offending items, and dropped them into a plastic grocery bag. I tied it in a knot, put my pants back on, washed my hands, walked the bag out to the garbage cans beside our place, and drove off to work.

Elevators

The right elevators inspire confidence, security, and a clear sense of purpose. They also enrich the space in which they sit. The elevators at my office are of this sort. You are led up to the doors on a platform of ceramic tile. This platform sits in the middle of a massive atrium. Everything that surrounds you is white or beige, with the exception of the fake plastic plants. The environment is completely soulless. There are six elevators, two banks of three sitting opposite each other. Whereas most elevators travel within a shaft, these ones are fully exposed. They move on rails, and do so exquisitely. The movement is exceptionally smooth, so much so that it appears and feels seamless.

The backs of the elevators are glass. These elevators are very elegant, and serve to open up the architecture, unifying the space. Once inside, one is overwhelmed by the refinement and attention to detail. Everything exists in right angles. Wood-paneled walls with brushed steel trim sit adjacent to the glass back. The glass back faces brushed steel doors. Below your feet is lush green carpeting. Above your head you will find small, dim, recessed can lights - eight of them.

The floors are represented by small brushed-steel panels with raised, painted numbers. Just below them, you will find Braille labels conveying the same information. Unfortunately, the buttons themselves are circular and plastic. They each sit right beside their corresponding rectilinear steel panels. Not only is this redundancy wasteful and confusing, it is insulting to the rest of the décor and crippling to the overall effect. Even worse than this, you might occasionally find that a custodian has thoughtlessly left the phone box ajar. On these rare occasions, the elevator is like a man with his balls hanging out through the zipper of his pants.

There are seven floors in my building. I work on the fifth. While riding the elevator, the floor numbers are displayed digitally, red on black, as you ascend or descend. On each floor, the elevators empty onto an S-shaped catwalk. The doors all open in the middle of the “S.” Both ends of the catwalk deliver you to an entrance to the walkway that circumscribes the void at the center of each floor, the void through which the elevators travel. This entrance is formed by large glass doors which stand between the railings. All of the office space sits beyond the glass doors. From the walkway you can see all of the other floors. You can triangulate your position very easily. It is both reassuring and discouraging to know exactly where you stand in relation to the larger structure around you. The skylights mingle with the ventilation ducts at a suicidal, vertiginous height, far beyond anyone’s reach. Such is the nature of ideals.