Dear David,
Last night I was caught in a familiar dream pattern -
finally landing a job, and it's always in a warehouse (even though I
have not worked in one since 1990). Maybe it's because it was in
numerous warehouses where I learned survival skills and shaped the
outlines of my preferred personality. Everything you see in a warehouse
is what you get - hard physicality and an even harder obstacle course
for the mind, and of course it is because of the people one sees, the
four or five souls slogging it out, grinding day after day, like a
dysfunctional abusive family who can't figure out what it wants other
than the most basic needs - drunkenness, filthy jokes, bad music, theft,
and each peon continually being tested and probed for weaknesses. I
wouldn't be surprised if Sartre had warehouse workers in mind when he
wrote "hell is people," because what I am really dreaming about is not a
warehouse job, but getting stuck inside a dark hell, an indentured
servant to the devil with a contract which lasts far too long. During my
first warehouse job at Sears I ran into a high school acquaintance and
he asked me what I was doing working in a warehouse. It was a fair
question, and for whatever reason it felt right for my karma, the work
itself being just what I needed - time to think while wandering and
walking about, and although I would have preferred walking about and
thinking in a quiet woods, that doesn't pay cash, so the warehouse was
the next best thing I could find. I'd show up to work a couple hours
early and sit in the car reading and then spend the next 8 hours
thinking about what I had read. Having to speak and work with the same
three or four individuals 40 hours a week I knew I had to create a
persona that could not only survive a sometimes brutal environment, but
which also had to be authentic and true. This was not an easy task
because I could sense that what I valued did not match and mesh with the
personalities I was meeting. I did not want to take drugs or drink
alcohol, did not want to hang out in bars, did not want to tell jokes or
laugh at unfunny ones, and most important, I did not want external
circumstances dictating what I could and could not do. Thinking of it
now, I guess you could say that I decided to think and act like a
warehouse monk - focusing on the tasks at hand, living moment to moment,
trying to remain silent unless the need to speak was necessary, not
knowing if I could survive the end of the day. I was unsure if such a
personality could pass muster with the men I was working with, could
someone who did not speak to judge, insult, and dominate, survive? I
didn't know, but I was willing to find out. While I imagine warehouse
work is not as bad as living within a prison population, it may be just
one step removed. In such an environment the way I was acting could be
considered weak, but that reminds me of something I read in the novel
Shantaram, about the character Modena, whom Linbaba describes as a weak
man due not only to his small stature and unremarkable looks, but also
because of the nature of his relationship with the tall and handsome
Maurizio. Modena was so unassuming that when life took a wrong turn for
him and he was considered dead, Linbaba told his friend Abdullah that he
could not even remember what Modena's voice sounded like. Abdullah,
however, had a different perception of Modena, and believed that he
would have made a good soldier, and this surprised Linbaba (who was an
escaped convict). When he asked how such a man as Modena could be a good
soldier, Abdullah explained that it was because he believed Modena had
the power of endurance. And this was what I was going to rely upon, my
endurance. While I do not believe the qualities of silence,
reliability, honesty, and kindness to be signs of weakness, I knew I had
to put this belief to the proof, to be tested by men who did not share
my beliefs by transforming my ideas into the day to day actions of the
warehouse. If I faltered on any particular day, or for a moment, all I
had to do was keep going, showing up day after day, and in this
endurance of difficult conditions my chosen personality would be shaped
and solidified in the fires of hell. All that was required was to keep
the ideas fresh in my mind and to keep showing up. For five years I
endured and kept moving forward, the tests were numerous, some more
difficult than others. I persevered and my monk-like personality
survived. It was in a warehouse that I experienced both bliss and
torment. The final days of working in a warehouse were peculiar and
interesting, filled with memorable quotes by co-workers. During my final
days at the fire equipment warehouse the person who hired me said "we
will never see Jim again." I did not reply but the silent intuitive
thought was "one of the truest things I've heard you say." At the
computer warehouse the office manager came back one day and I noticed a
look of insight flash across his face as he watched me pulling my parts
cart and then he said, astonishingly, "he doesn't belong here," in a
tone which was not at all negative. As this was to be my final warehouse
job, having had much time to ponder this question in the prior years, I
considered him to be wrong, a warehouse was exactly where I belonged,
it had formed and shaped who I was, there was nowhere else to be,
nothing better to do with my time, if the universe wanted me somewhere
else, it would put me there. In numerous dreams over the years I would
find myself in new warehouses, starting fresh, the first day, my soul
and personality once again being put into the fire of hard experience,
having to endure. And last night as I dreamt I was once again in a new
warehouse, with the added twist of thinking, while pulling my cart
around for the first order to be picked, "ahhh, I have been dreaming so
many years about this place, and now, it has come true, I am really
back," the feelings bittersweet, the long grind ahead, and how at my
advanced age I was still having to endure. When I woke I smiled, how
real it all seemed, how easily my consciousness had been duped. I'd be
lying if I said I did not feel great relief to have been spared the
trials of the warehouse.
Yesterday
morning's run my legs were still achy so I decided to cut down to 1.25
miles, which is pretty much a non-run, and the decision paid off because
today I wore shorts for the first time and a single long sleeved
running shirt and with somewhat fresh legs ran 6 loops around the sunken
field, for a 5.35 mile run, the longest so far. I then walked to
Lincoln Park and back for a 3 hour workout. Right now I am feeling the
wonderful post-run glow which is a blessing.