Monkey on a String

Originally Posted Thursday, January 9, 2013

The difference between going to work and not going to work is monumental.  There is nothing subtle about it.  You are required by time and other forces to become the person you are not at home.  I have done it all my life, and it is even less comfortable now than it was before.  There is no getting used to it.  The effects simply accumulate.  It is a sacrifice of body and mind, a giving over to somebody else.  The Bible tells us without doubt that it is a curse.  There is no uncertainty there.  It is a punishment, not a privilege. 

Oh, yea. . . and a redemption, of sorts.  That's the only way they could get you to do it, I expect, to dangle that carrot.  Only crackers, cowboys, and rednecks are really good at doing it, I find.  I admire their stoicism about work.  If something needs to be done, they just do it. 

"We gotta move Cowboy Bob's house back about a foot," one of them will say.  Maybe nobody even  asks why.  Maybe somebody says, "Well, shit."  And then they all just go do it.  You want cowboys around, I promise you.  They are quiet and scary as hell, the good ones.  The bad ones are loud drunkards, but the only ones who can take care of that problem are the good cowboys.  The world needs good cowboys. 

If there is a heaven, I think all the good cowboys will be there. 

I'll be in some purgatory, I assume, thinking about things.  If there is something that needs doing, I'll start reading about it, then I'll make another pot of coffee and think about it.  Then it is time for a walk or maybe a trip to the gym, and then I'm hungry, and then. . . . There is always tomorrow. 

Going to work is not the same as working, but it is a huge step closer.  Some days I go to work.  It is awful.  On those days, I know I am supposed to be in certain places at appointed times.  My body physically obeys these strictures.  I do not get to sit and contemplate, do not get to go out for that long walk, cannot decide to go to the gym.  Those days are miseries.  And after all the misery, I go to the gym and try to squeeze in something that I might have done if I had not gone to work.  Then I am completely exhausted. 

Some days I actually work.  I set about completing tasks and assignments that have come due.  It is much the way I did assignments in college, always waiting until the last possible minute, then working like a frigging genius and getting it done.  Brilliantly.  Afterwards, I am simply glad that it is done and take little succor from the genius of the thing as it was for someone else by decree and had nothing, really, to do with me. 

When I do not go to work, I am a genius of another kind.  The wasted kind.  The things I think are fantastic.  Truly, they are.  And I'm an emotional genius then as well.  My feelings are strong and true and profound.  I feel things profoundly. 

Work is like Kryptonite to genius, both emotional and intellectual.  And it is absolutely Kryptonite to the body.  It will, I am certain, eventually kill the organism.  That, too, is in the Bible (at least I think that is what it means, the oncoming of mortality). 

You notice, I hope, that I have never mentioned the soul.  Work is not supposed to kill the soul, but to save it.  It is through good work and faith that you shall transcend mortality--according to the myth.  Yes. . . work is both a punishment and good for the soul. 

So tell me. . . do you seek solace and redemption?  I am about to go to the daily tragedy now, myself. I will forego all those daily pleasures that await me if I play hooky.  I will go and be that monkey on a string.  It is all I have now or know.  Survival.