Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Baby, looking is all I do....

Maybe the idea of a career just isn't meant for some people. I started off finishing college in a whirl of design and desire. I worked for a month bricklaying and saved up enough to move 3500 miles away from Buffalo which smacked me in central London. I spent my college graduation money and the (really) hard earned bricklaying funds in the first two weeks. I drank and walked the streets, found myself heading up unfamiliar alleys trailing tumbling newspapers and sidestepping steamvents. I got a job selling stolen speakers out of a van. Only the speakers weren't stolen- it was a pitch to crane some poor gits head to fish into his wallet for a few hundred quid. I lasted four days at that one. Then I got a career emptying ash trays and beer bottles in a converted church called the Limelight- I'd work until 4 and jump a bus that dropped me two miles shy of my apartment, with the sun behind me like super string theory all the long walk home. Sometimes i'd sing songs I made up to keep myself occupied. I hated the people i worked with, but sidelined my feelings because I had no money for food, and trust me, when you miss a few meals in a row, you forgive a lot for a bit of cash to buy you one. I moved from London to Coventry and took up a job with the last of my legal work visa selling rental TV's at a place called Granada rentals... a college graduate english degree at it's finest.
To sound bitter wouldn't make any sense to me, life has been a long frustration. I'm now in another job I can't stand, selling a product I don't believe in and yet I think things will be different. It's been 9 years since those days in England. I'm now in Philadelphia. Abrupt and caught somehow by my own frustration with myself. To forgive the past? I carry it with me as I can't get rid of myself.
I've read about the now. The now that forgets the past and just is. The useless psychobabble of someone else who's forced to use a learned language, a house of cards that we ply, but never really dissasemble, the house caves, but the cards still remain. Experiencing the same sun and alternating stars over and over. Same sun: same differentiating, forgetful and overly moody heart.

1 comment:

Brooks said...

Jack...
The gravity you suffer under is your own, but you knew that. The promise of grand life butting heads with expectations of grandeur...it's all so heavy.
Why do we feel entitled to lives of purpose, of meaning? What if it's all bullshit, and true meaning is nothing more than a variant of celebrity. Maybe Ghandi did it for the fame, the gross recognition, to compensate for a lack of paternal affection.
Jack. What do you want?