The irony of being a contemporary worker is infinite. Food service is what I am best at, employment-wise, but alas the discombobulated industry revolves ever around the profit margin, the "green"ing of restaurants refers to the invisible filling of bank accounts. Money is literally a made-up concept, yet we have set ourselves up with it as the central theme of everything: the goal of living, the meaning of life, something we work every day to have and yet are not happy with. We must wear hideous hats, aprons, uniforms (the ideal worker is nothing if not uniform), and to distract ourselves we take this invisible idea made of little sheets of green paper and exchange them for better things, substances, also green or liquid or paperback. Exchanging paper for paper? you might ask. It baffles me too.
But I know that in my moments of down-and-out overworked and underpaid anomie, when friends don't return calls and a day off seems to be more of a day lost to sleeping and not running errands, the solution is for me to go grocery shopping. This is a hobby, a joy of mine, and happily also a necessity of my modern life. I am drowning in my own ocean of the modern condition for the working class: awaken, eat, work, shit, work, eat, work, rest, work, eat, shit, sleep. Sometimes we read, mostly we watch. But in the emptiness around me when i miss and i miss, if i surround myself with raspberry-lime seltzer water, raw flax crackers and homemade pesto while drinking wine and smoking a pall mall or two inside, I may one day again be whole and not just on payday.
In other distractionary news, I am going to see Joanna Newsom at the Orange Peel on Friday. I cannot wait.
