tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57112883184830779002024-03-13T13:05:07.492-07:00CodologyAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-45641745787102318412013-08-12T13:22:00.000-07:002013-08-12T14:59:34.463-07:008 April 2013 - 10 April 2013<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">8 April 2013</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the morning meeting Nicky, the oldest foreman, calls my name.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Right here." I raise my hand. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Want to run the scarifier?” Nicky says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marlon is in Jamaica for his uncle's funeral and I'm next in line. If I run the scarifier that means no plate machine. A short reprieve for my back and legs, a little less money in my chiropractor’s bank account. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still, I hesitate. I have never run the scarifier. On the other hand, I’ll be paid as an A-rate machine operator. Another three bucks an hour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sure,” I say, and then, when a couple of the guys give me a knowing smile after they detect the nerves in my voice, I shrug. “What the fuck, right?”</span><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of driving out of the yard with the rest of the track dogs and parking closer to where the day’s work will begin, I trudge down the short hill of sapling stumps and wood chips to the siding track where the machines are parked. The scarifier is close to the front. I can't unlock the door to get inside the cab it because I don't have the right key. Craig is running the the cherry-picker on one side of me and he has a key. He gets me in.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After I find the battery box and turn the switch to on, feeding electricity to the machine, I climb inside and look for an ignition key to turn and start the machine. Except there is no key. I am already nervous. I hate learning new things in front of other people--and this only makes it worse, though I can’t let anyone know that, I can’t project weakness of any kind. Ignorance, annoyance, and ambivalence are fine. I don’t know. What the fuck. I don’t give a shit. But never, This has me really scared. Never that. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I flag down Gary, one of the foremen, as he’s passing by on his way to something more important. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“How do you start this thing?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You not run dis before now?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Nope.” I shrug. “That a problem?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“No, no.” Gary chuckles. He climbs up and pushes his big frame inside the cab. Gary has a couple kids my age, plus another five that are younger, but he’s still ripped in the arms and chest and shoulders. He’s originally from St. Kitts and has the thick island accent to prove it. Most have a hard time understanding him. I worked with enough Jamaican guys when I was in the Laborers’ union that I don’t find him indecipherable. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Let see I can remember. It been a while...Ah, yes. De button.” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He points out the “start” button on a console under my right elbow. He presses it a couple times but the engine does not turn over. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What de fuck is dis now. You press it?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You had to point it out to me, Gary.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Right You use this on Wednesday?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“No, Gary.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gary tightens the white bandanna wrapped around his head and scratches his chin. He speaks into his radio. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Tie job mechanic?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mechanic responds and says he’ll be right over once Gary describes the problem. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You wait for him, hear?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He climbs down from the cab and walks off to the beginning of the line. I jump down and wait. The machines at my back move far away while this one sits quiet and dead, holding up the rest. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mechanic pulls up in his truck on the roadbed running adjacent to the tracks. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You forget to turn off the lights Wednesday?” he says. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This is my first fucking day in it.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Oh. Sorry.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After some investigation, it turns out the battery is dead. The mechanic pulls a starter kit from his truck. He jolts the engine to life, tells me not to shut it off until the end of the day, and heads back to his truck. I get in the cab, release the brake, and I'm rolling, slowly. I stop and fill up at the fuel truck. The guy who runs it gives me a wave when he's done so I know his hose is off the tracks. I move on, still very slowly. The first ten minutes of the ride, the scarifier is crawling. Justin, the kid in the cherry-picker on the other side of me, calls me on the radio.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That as fast as it goes, Scarifier?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Fast as it’ll go for me,” I say. “I got the pedal to the floor.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now everyone in earshot of a radio knows I’m having trouble. I tell myself not to care, fuck them all, but I hate being perceived as incompetent. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hold on,” Justin says.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I probably create this in my head, but Justin sounds annoyed. Fuck you, I think. He calls the mechanics through the radio but my machine runs so loud I don’t catch what they say. Justin waves at me to stop. I pump the brake. He hops down from the cherry-picker. I open the door for him. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Right here,” he says.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is lever to the left of the accelerator. Justin shifts it back toward me. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That shifts it into second gear.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“OK,” I say.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I shut the door on him. In second gear the scarifier moves much faster. I gun the pedal to the floor to catch up to Craig.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later, during a pause in production, I’ll walk up to Justin’s machine and knock on the door.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Thank you for your help earlier,” I’ll say.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Justin will be caught off guard by this. He won’t be wearing the dark safety glasses we all wear and I will see this in his eyes. He is young, twenty-two or twenty-three, and he has not learned how to guard such reactions from other people. Or, he does not feel the need to. Then he’ll shake his head.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Fucked up no one told you how to run that thing. How you supposed to know?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I shrug and nod and head back to the scarifier. Insecurity turns me into an asshole. But I don’t say this out loud. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J8XIb_p8yMc/UglCrwLIxrI/AAAAAAAAFZE/yukTVS8pPOc/s1600/20130408_075119.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J8XIb_p8yMc/UglCrwLIxrI/AAAAAAAAFZE/yukTVS8pPOc/s320/20130408_075119.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The scarifier has a long barrel on an axle on its front, and the barrel is studded with metal teeth the size of a large man’s hand. By manipulating a set of three levers--Gary shows me how to use these when we get out on the tracks and are about to begin work--I dip the barrel into the space left when the old tie was pulled, then I spin the barrel and its teeth forward then backwards. If I do it right, and on the first day this rarely happens, it is a little easier for the cherry-picker behind me to place the new ties halfway and the Inserter to push them the rest of the way. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Kh7IZ4dXp3I/UglDAKVKoCI/AAAAAAAAFZM/26x1otOwufo/s1600/20130408_075113.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Kh7IZ4dXp3I/UglDAKVKoCI/AAAAAAAAFZM/26x1otOwufo/s320/20130408_075113.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few hours into the day and the nerves can not maintain their strength. They wither and fade. I am too busy learning brake and barrel and spacing. Can’t be too close to Justin, can’t let the teeth bite into the remaining ties, can’t skip spaces. All of this happens. But when we stop and steps down from the cabs of my machine and I talk with the other operators, all I get is sympathy.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That machine sucks, man.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You’ll get the hang of it.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“They stick you in there without training you, so fuck ‘em. It’s your first day. Go slow if you need to.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I nod even though no one, not Nicky and Gary, not Owen the new super, has complained about my work. I get back in the machine and keep going.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It has not rained in a while. The sun is shining and it warms the air. Someone has left the decomposing ribcage of some poor creature long dead is left between the tracks, a morbid joke that makes me smile. I tap the gas and the break. I lower the barrel and spin the teeth. Scoured debris tings against the guards around it. The stone packed tight between the ties is very dry. I eat dust, all day. It floods the cab whenever I disturb the ballast. Gary brought me a few dust masks earlier, but I waved him away. I’d rather choke on the fine particulates than breathe my own hot breath all day. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This beats the plate machine. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9 April 2013</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After I borrow Craig’s key and get in the cab to start the machine, I notice a hole in the ceiling, behind the little fan mounted on the wall. Someone tried to weld it shut at a point in the distant past and failed. The collected rain water is dripping in. Given enough time and the certainty of human error, the rain always finds a way in.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Big Pat walks by, wood-tipped stogie hanging from his mouth, carrying a new fire extinguisher in his hand. I wave. He stops and walks toward me, digging through his pocket. He produces a key and hands it to me. I mentioned at the end of the day yesterday I didn’t have one. Pat was busy collecting the tools, one of his duties as the job driver, and he told me he’d grab me one. I didn’t expect him to remember.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Thanks, Pat,” I say.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Pain in the ass, always got to ask someone else.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The second day in the scarifier and already the brake and the levers and pacing is becoming second nature. Already the body is lost in the repetitive functions. The work of a track dog is harder, no two ways about it, but there is a certain appeal to the solitude of being alone in the cab of a machine, earmuffs blocking the harder decibels, focusing on the immediate task. What I miss is being around the others, the jokes and shit-talk and stories, the friends and the enemies. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cnWXMXMv_4I/UglDWRuVqII/AAAAAAAAFZU/r083IlmZ7mg/s1600/20130407_090755.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cnWXMXMv_4I/UglDWRuVqII/AAAAAAAAFZU/r083IlmZ7mg/s320/20130407_090755.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because of the solitude, when I catch up to the operator in front of me there’s nothing to do but lower the throttle, sit back and take in what is going on around me.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Men are working around a cranberry bog, but not in it. They are using chainsaws to cut the trees around the bog. A backhoe digs the smaller stumps out of the ground. The guy running the backhoe has a greasy face and wide mustache. We begin to move again, skipping a long stretch of ties we did yesterday. He plucks the burning cigarette out of his mouth and waves at us as we pass. The severed branches and butchered trunks are tossed into a large burning pile on a flat stretch of sand next to the bog. The woodsmoke cuts through the stink of diesel exhaust and industrial-strength grease that permeates the cab of the scarifier. I keep both doors open for just this reason. The dust be damned. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We reach more cranberry bogs, two side by side, these unattended. I get out, take a piss in the bushes beside the track. There aren't many berries visible in the thick red bushes growing above the water. They are there, but hidden beneath the thick snarl of branches and leaves. Not ready, not yet.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another smell to find its way inside the cab of the scarifier is the scent of water, carried on the breeze from the long pond nearby. There is so much water here. We are beset on all sides by it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further along there is the odor of manure and feed from the wire pen we pass after the pond disappears behind a thick wall of young maples. In the pen there is a girl of eleven or twelve wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the name of her school printed in large, white block letters on the front. Her long, curly blonde hair glows in the sun. The girl leads her goats this way and that, skipping at one point because she does not know I'm watching, or because she does. I consider for a second taking a picture of her, the goats following their girl the pen, the coop of chickens pecking the dirt for bugs, the large, well-kept house in the background. I want to capture that moment so I can prove later when I describe it to my wife or my father that it was really there. But I imagine my reaction to seeing a guy in dark glasses operating a loud machine snapping shots of my pubescent daughter. Since I don’t feel like getting a baseball bat upside the head or a shotgun shell to the chest, the phone stays where it is. The words will be enough, I hope. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10 April 2013</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At six twenty-five I pull into the parking lot and the rain falls in sheets. I can feel the thunder rumbling through the seat of my car. Lightning colors the dark sky bright electric blue. A glimmer of hope sparks: they'll call it. Rain rule. We get to go home.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The spark is extinguished at six twenty-nine when the downpour abates. The thunder carries north. Pale gray clouds are made bright and orange by the rising sun. We assemble for the morning meeting in a foul mood, the aftermath of dashed expectations resting sourly on the back of the tongue. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We stand in a wide semicircle, hats on and hoods up against errant drops of rain and cool morning breezes that kiss the neck. The lot is mostly flat and made of leveled stone. Spots around the edges are uneven, pine needles and dirt, the occasional thin stump. Sections of the grounds behind this large warehouse where Mass Coastal repairs their trains were cleared to accommodate our presence. Most of us are wearing dark safety glasses and the orange and yellow safety vests MBCR passes out at orientation. A few wear gloves. The super, Owen, stands between the two foremen, and there is a little space on either side of them. Sometimes Gary and walks around a little but he never gets far. Steve, the assistant foreman, head shaved and arms covered in tats, reads the rule of the day. Owen tries to make a joke that falls flat. He is young and new to the company. There is a scab over his upper lip. It looks like a cold-sore or a really bad cut from shaving. He repeats himself by telling us our deadline is a hard one, May fifteenth we must be off the property, so we will be aiming for eight-hundred and fifty ties a day to make up for the short days of the first week when everyone was learning their jobs and machines.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What about overtime?” someone asks.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’m trying to set it up for Thursday,” Owen says.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Trying?” a different voice says.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More grumbles, less optimistic, a few hiccups of sardonic laughter. There is an aggressive tone to the questioning, bordering on accusatory. There have already been disagreements between us and the decision-makers over lunch breaks and quitting time and the lack of OT and rumors of the foreman getting paid late into the night every day in return for his allegiance. The relationship has become openly antagonistic. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Overtime is almost definite for Thursday,” Owen says. “Plan on working that day.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Someone raises a hand. He doesn’t wait for acknowledgement before asking his question.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What about the differential?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the collective bargaining contract, it states that if the work week begins on a Sunday those union members that are part of the crew will be paid an additional sixty-three cents an hour for every hour they work for as long as that schedule is kept. The company that owns MBCR has decided not to pay us that sixty-three cents. Imagine for a second if this behavior became portable to regular life: the terms of your cell phone contract all of sudden seem unfair? Fuck them, cut the bill by twenty-five bucks each month. If individuals acted as private corporations, capitalism would grind to a halt. Owen, at least, takes a chance to ingratiate himself. His nasal whine of a voice acquires, for a moment, a stronger thread of character.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“About the differential,” he says. “I don’t know what the issue is. I’ve talked to your union rep. I’ve seen the provision in your contract. It’s clear as day. They owe you guys the money. There’s no way around it and frankly I have no idea why the hell they’re fighting it. I know it’s a pain in the ass, but it’ll get settled and you’ll have a nice check in your around Christmastime.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3625710227272727; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We absorb this and accept it for whatever it is worth. It is too bad for Owen that whatever trust or respect he earned in that small moment of solidarity this Monday morning will evaporate completely Wednesday afternoon when he cancels overtime five minutes before quitting time because the company won’t deliver more ties to the job in time. He was that close. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The meeting ends, the semicircle breaks apart and we begin to float away in different directions. I fix the strap of my lunch bag over one shoulder and across my chest. I pass between the trailer where all the hand tools are kept and the mechanic’s truck and down the small hill covered in brown pine needles. At the bottom is the siding tracks where the machines are parked in the afternoon when the work day is done. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the scarifier I unlock and open the doors on either side of the cab and put my lunch bag inside. I switch the battery on and press the ignition button. The engine turns over immediately and loudly. I go a few machines up the tracks and ask John, he runs the saw, to borrow his grease gun, like I did the day before. He follows me and talks as I fix the end of the small hose onto the little nodes at various points on the machine and squeeze the handle until I see grease overflow. I thank him and hand the gun back when I am done. I get in the machine and pretend to fuck around with the levers until he leaves. John isn’t a bad guy, but he never stops talking if you don’t cut him off. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marlon will return from his uncle’s in a few days and because he is senior to me by a couple spots I will relinquish the machine to him. I will then bump Brian out of the anchor-spreader, because Brian is covering that machine while the usual operator is on vacation in Myrtle Beach and he is younger than me by four or five spots. The learning process, and the crackling nerves, will begin anew. I am a little relieved. The shine is wearing off the scarifier. The work and tasks of upkeep are becoming familiar, automatic, and my conscious mind is engaged less and less. This is starting to become boring. I work the throttle down. It is such a loud machine.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the winter I met a buddy from college at a trendy bar in Southie for some drinks. He brought a friend, a pretty blonde girl he once worked with. She had a couple beers with us before she left to meet her boyfriend for dinner. Learning what I do for a living, she made the observation I’ve heard most often from people who work in offices, who have never had a job where physical pain or threat of bodily harm or death is part of the day to day. Something about manual labor being noble work, even if that isn’t the word she used. It is that type of work a father or grandfather did at some point in the distant past of family history. I sipped my beer and cut a glance at my buddy and kept my opinion to myself. The subject shifted to hometowns and moving from the city to the burbs and before we could object she had paid the tab and left to meet her man. We left to stomp from bar to bar through winter rain until our vision blurred. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I appreciate her sentiment. I always appreciate that particular sentiment when it is given, even if the person is just feeding me a line of shit in order to be polite. What else are they supposed to do? How are they supposed to know? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leo the mechanic knocks on my window. He shakes a can and points at the front of the machine. I spin the barrel and teeth so he can spray lubricant on the chain. Specks of grease spot the pitted windshield. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is the secret I wanted to pass along to the pretty blonde in the bar that night so many months ago: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No act is noble if you are being paid to do it. A job is a job.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-49192373208466373372013-07-29T15:22:00.001-07:002013-07-29T15:26:07.397-07:0031 July 2012 - 1 August 2012<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">31 July 2012</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-0e979272-27d1-8ab2-2ef6-3073cf064bca" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is a very hot afternoon. When I get home, I unlace and</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"> remove my boots on the porch, and leave them there for the night. I give Kieran a quick hug and kiss in the living room then it’s into the back hallway, the laundry room, where I peel off clothes damp and filthy and dump them in a soggy heap onto the top of the dryer. I drop them there instead of the hamper because I don’t want those clothes, soaked in kerosene fumes and diesel exhaust and who knows what the fuck else, to contaminate everything that is washed, the normal t-shirts and and shorts and bras and onesies. In my underwear, I walk through the kitchen to the bathroom. Sarah is holding the baby. I kiss him on the forehead. He scrunches his face, annoyed. Sarah giggles and makes a joke about my extreme farmer’s tan. She does this more days than not. Her favorite joke. She is pale, chained inside because of the heat and the new baby. She's already twenty-five pounds lighter because she’s breastfeeding and bounces a little with each step, this despite being cut open less than four weeks ago. I shoot back with a crabby, self-pitying comment. This is what I get for having this job. This is what I deserve. Sarah titters, tells me to relax. I step into the shower and I let the cool water pour over my head. I’m too tired to jerk off. I leave the bathroom in nothing but my underwear and shuffle into the bedroom where the air-conditioner is running. I fall onto the bed and stay there for ten minutes. I don’t want to leave. Prefer to not get off the bed. I get up and get dressed and I help Sarah wrangle Kieran and I hold the baby so she can make dinner. She scoffs as though I’m joking or being lazy when I call to her from the couch and tell her that Declan is not happy that I am holding him, that he is looking at my face and screaming out of fear. Declan is never thrilled if someone besides Sarah holds him, but this time is different. I rock him and use a soothing voice to no avail. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sarah comes from the kitchen, apron tied around her waist. She peeks at our red-faced screeching baby.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What’s wrong with him?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You're not holding him.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“No way.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“He sound like he’s kidding?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The screeching dulls into whimpers the second she takes the baby from my arms. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What am I supposed to do?” she says.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I fall back onto the couch. Kieran is pleading with me to play super-heroes with him. I am having trouble keeping my eyes open.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Let him cry,” I say.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’m almost done.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Whatever.” I lift my arms. The screaming fills the room. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mind drifts, clouds on a day of stiff winds, racing through the atmosphere, changing shape. If I stay at this job, I”ll need to get a house on the beach. Or very close to the beach. Close enough for the cool ocean winds to pour in through the windows. View of whitecaps, boats tied to their moorings, listing up and down with the outgoing tide. I need a new job. Teaching. Something indoors. A climate-controlled space. Maybe I can finish a novel, sell it to a publisher, hustle writing jobs. With what time? What are you doing to yourself? Cut it out.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After an indeterminate stretch of time, Sarah enter the room carrying a plate of food. She trades the plate for the baby, who quits his screaming instantly. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It isn’t long before I’m back in the bedroom, the air-conditioned wonder, darkness closing in around me, the frenetic shuffle of my brain going dead for a few hours, finally, thank fucking god.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1 August 2012</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My eyes snap open in the dark. According to the glowing numbers on the alarm clock it is a few minutes past one in the morning. I lay and alternate between dozing and staring at the ceiling until Declan cries for his mother at two, an hour earlier than usual. The crying, weak to begin with, ends as I lift him out of the bedside crib. The boy is in full observation mode, eyes wide and staring at everything as I carry him to the changing table. He does not fuss as I switch the soiled diaper for a clean one. He starts up again when I hand him to his mother. That newborn anxiety of being so close to food (mom’s boob) and being unable to get it himself. I’m not sure we ever entirely outgrow that one. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mothers, take comfort.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Slate-gray skies, threatening. The Weather Channel reports a storm system traveled up the Ohio River Valley, pummeled New York. A tornado may have struck Elmira, NY. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outside it rains furiously for five minutes, a blinding downpour, and then stops as fast as it appeared. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I kick off the sheet and get up. Sarah leaves the clean work clothes on the dryer where last night I left the dirty heap. The boots I retrieve from the porch. I lace them sitting on the couch. The house is quiet and dark and cool. it will not stay like this. I don’t want to leave. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We’re losing light in the morning,” Warren says. “Lost forty-six minutes last month.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last month being July, today being the first of August. Warren’s lower lip is packed tight with chew. He spits a long brown trail before sharing a rumor with me.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Don’t pay no mind to all the gossip floating about: there’ll be work this weekend for those that want it.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Warren’s old-time northern New England country accent is a welcome change to the city accent most around here use, including myself, a clipped thing of little elegance. He speaks simply and rarely spikes his story with curses. The conversation can be wry and eccentric and a little folksy but the man knows of what he speaks, otherwise he remains silent on the subject. If he says there’s work Saturday and Sunday, I believe him. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The news is welcome. Money is tight. Sarah’s unemployment claim is being contested.Sixteen or twenty hours of overtime will help a little. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“How much longer this going to last?” I say.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Lets see,” Warren says. “Fourteen thousand left to install...we’ll lose a few days at the interlocking and the stations...if we do the stations...the beginning of September, my math is right.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According my silent calculations, Warren’s answer doesn’t jive. We average about three-hundred and fifty ties a day. Divide fourteen thousand by three-hundred and fifty and you are left with forty. Forty divided by five is eight. Eight weeks from now is the end of September, and that’s if no unforeseen obstacles arise, if our daily average remains the same.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Warren spits again and runs down the weekend forecast for me. Temperatures in the low nineties with high humidity and the possibility of isolated thunderstorms. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any of those conditions by themselves are tolerable. The combination represents the worst weather I can imagine. But the wife, the kids, the money. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Welcome to August,” Warren says.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yeah, but it’s almost over.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“August is a hot month.” Warren is a bit taken aback with my comment.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“But it’s the last one,” I say. “Soon the weather’ll change and it’ll start to get cool.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The days, I mean. The temperature will drop around the time hurricanes are being born in southern waters and christened with names. The decline is incremental. First, the mercury quits striking ninety. The humidity dries. Before long it is September and the mornings are cool enough that we pull on a long-sleeved shirts before we leave our houses. It won’t be long before we are sitting on the couch watching football and happen to glance out the window and it will hit you: Shit, when did the leaves start to change? The absence of heat distracts us from the cold air creeping closer and closer. And by then it is too late. Another summer, gone. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Warren smiles and takes leave of my company when Joe pulls into the yard. I watch the two old men who have worked together for close to thirty years smiles as they bitch about dentists and dental work and missing teeth. Both pack more chew into their bottom lips. Both spit strings of brown into the dirt at their feet. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of these guys die a few years after they retire. Some blame boredom or a lack of purpose, and that’s part of it, sure, but not the whole story. The hours and days and months and years they spend around each other factors into it. They are separated from their true family when the working life is done and they go home to brood among their wives and children and grandkids.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is the distance from their loved ones that kills them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-72572706378781647612013-07-22T04:36:00.000-07:002013-07-22T04:36:09.481-07:0029 April 2013<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 2; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am following behind the spiker on foot, a maul slung over my shoulder. I pulled quality control duty this morning. It is my job to use the claw-bar to pull any spikes the two operators in the machine fuck up and leave bent or twisted to one side, or miss completely, and replace with a good spike by hand. Meaning I wail the new spike into the drilled hole with the maul. It is an easy job, and as head trackman for the day, within my rights to take. The kids running the spiker don’t fuck up all that much, and after a long winter of freezing nights in barren train stations pushing shovels and blowers over platforms buried beneath white mountains and cold days of spreading salt to ensure passengers don’t slip and fall and become plaintiffs, it feels good to flex my muscles under the spring sun and really hit something, drive it deep into wood with strong, practiced swings. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-331f2be8-0607-c53a-f586-85d0c5ab5c8d" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The spiker starts producing some weird sounds, then the brake lights flare and it comes to a stop. I perch on the trailer hauled behind the spiker with the kegs of spikes, good and bad, the orange cooler of water and all the tools I might need and never use. The pause lasts longer than usual. I walk around to the “A” side of the machine, where the kid with most seniority runs the thing. The door is open. He is smoking a cigarette. The word “kid” is not one I am using ironically. This boy is barely old enough shoulder up to a bar and order a drink legally. He wears a hat with a straight brim, baggy jeans and a camo hoodie. I’m wearing work-pants that don’t bunch up around my ankles and a hat with a curved brim. A mark of my age, besides being married with kids, the bald spot on the top of my head, the gray at my temples, the swelling gut. At the beginning of the job my cousin and I had to yell at him; he was calling our mistakes over the radio instead of telling us in person. The assistant foreman told us we can’t hit him, he's the type of kid who will run to the super instead of taking his beating like a man and learning his lesson. So we just ripped the door of his machine open, called him a punk, called him a fucking rat, told him if he had a problem to come tell us face to face, no more bullshit over the radio, be a fucking man. I was told he got out of the machine and laughed when as we walked away, but he never turned rat again, as far as I know. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that was weeks ago. Another mark of age: I can’t carry a grudge for very long. I don’t have the necessary energy. On that day I wanted to wrap my hands around his throat. Today, I just want to know what’s wrong with the spiker. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The hydraulic is fucked up, again,” he says when he sees me. “Same shit as yesterday.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The mechanic coming out?” I say.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’m bringing this back to the last crossing, meet him there. You want to come? Or you want to chill here?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I throw the maul on my shoulder to the ground and sit on a pile of pulled ties behind me. I put my hands behind my head and pretend to lean back like I’m on a chair at Nantasket beach. “This is good for now.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The kid laughs. The nervous laugh of someone not quite sure of who he is yet. Now I feel bad about yelling at him the way we did. I should have calmed down, waited, took him aside and explained to him why what he did was wrong. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We’ll be back,” he says. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The kid closes the door and the spiker begins the roll in reverse. It travels underneath an overpass and disappears around a curve. </span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Ph7p9lEK4s/Ue0UV8GgOKI/AAAAAAAAFFU/4p_AF8n-28U/s1600/overpass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Ph7p9lEK4s/Ue0UV8GgOKI/AAAAAAAAFFU/4p_AF8n-28U/s400/overpass.jpg" width="298" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I sit. From my phone I text my wife about dinner that night, I check Twitter and Facebook, a couple news sites. Nothing catches my attention. The houses on the small hill across the tracks are dark and quiet. One is abandoned, the windows broken or shuttered. From far away comes the drone of a lawn mower. I lift my face to the sun to absorb some of warmth into my pores. The mornings are chilly, I am still wearing long sleeves, but the sun is gaining power. The light, as it breaks over my brow, my cheeks and chin, it is substantial. Summer is close.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I realize I left my water on the trailer behind the spiker. The crossing where they are to meet the mechanic is just around the curve. I consider waiting for a second, but the boredom is enough to get my off my ass and walking. Birds are chirping. Traffic whooshes by on the road to my right, mostly obscured by some trees. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After a few steps, I stumble. The stone is always moving beneath our feet, but sometimes it is the only place to walk. I don’t get frustrated by it the way I did when I started. I have learned how to manage the terrain.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the gauge, between the tracks, is no good. The surface is pitted and piled on where the old ties being pulled and the new ties shoved into place. Even if we wanted to go that way, the machines are usually occupying the space. It’s a pain in the ass to constantly steer around them. Loose as the stone may be, littered with faded beer cans and crumpled packs of cigarettes and chewed-up remnants of decomposing ties as it is, the ballast on either side of the track is the best bet, the shortest distance between two points.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Walking is hard at first, hell on the ankles no matter how tightly we knot the laces of our boots. Some guys fall a lot, but everyone learns the how in the end. We all reach the same conclusions, and it comes by admitting an identical defeat: we will never find a way to make the stone act as though it is packed firm enough. We will all find the soles of our boots worn on one side after a while, and we’ll only notice when strolling across solid ground and someone asks us about the limp. It is what it is. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The trick is to accept the imbalance. We learn to let go of our center of gravity and leave our arms loose and keep our heads bobbing up and down, from ballast to tracks and back, and back. The trick is to wait until each slide comes to an end before lifting the other foot. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In order to move on from one point to the next, I become accustomed to a state of constant falling.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-83594925964371596792013-07-06T07:08:00.000-07:002013-07-06T07:08:01.190-07:002 July 2013<span style="line-height: 19.984375px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The rain isn't heavy enough to warrant calling off the day, but the bosses are afraid to exceed their allotted time on the tracks two days in a row and draw the wrath of the dispatchers. Once the rail is pulled there is no turning back. Nobody knows what to do.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.984375px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, inside our cars we sip coffee and watch the skies for dark clouds gathering and the brown water puddles for the frequency of raindrops pocking the surface.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.984375px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our boots and gloves and vests are still soaked and dripping from yesterday's afternoon rain storms. Guys wear plastic bags over their socks to keep them dry. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.984375px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We all just want to go home.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.984375px;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0Haverhill, MA, USA42.7762015 -71.077279642.682970499999996 -71.2386411 42.8694325 -70.9159181tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-67701677984793272752012-10-06T13:01:00.002-07:002012-10-06T13:02:23.858-07:00Breaking Up Is Hard To Do<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the end of a morning safety briefing
the acting supervisor told us. “As far as I know, the job will be abolished
October eleventh.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The meeting breaks up and the crowd murmurs.
The big question has just been answered and with an actual measure of authority.
None of the usual “I heard from my cousin in the office…,” or “My step-dad
working in Rosemont told me…” This is a concrete answer from someone in know.
No bullshit. The end is nigh. Questions take flight and flutter about our heads:
What you gonna do? Where you going to go?
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Most of the ground guys haven’t made the
Driver and RMO rosters. We are low on the lists of seniority. The options for
us are limited. We ask anyway, we repeat the above fact of our helplessness to
each other, in frustration, for comfort. We join the din. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Much as this sucks and I can’t wait to
get out of here, I kinda don’t want this to end,” someone says. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He isn’t wrong: I hate the repetitive
nature of the work and I’m sick of seeing the same faces every day and this has
lasted way too long and I want a break. But not that the horizon is in view, I panic
when I realize there’s more to it than I care to admit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If this ends, what am I going to do
without you guys? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because this production job has lasted
so long, (now in the seventh month of its life, four months longer than usual)
the ground guys have spent a extraordinary amount of time together. I really
hate to describe the relationship as familial but how else to define a group
that a) did not chose to become a group in the first place, and b) accepts and
includes all regardless of fault, flaw or conflict? The definition of a family
member: one second you’re calling them an asshole, the next you’re punching
someone in the face for calling them an asshole. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’ve established several systems of
identification to bond us in the work and, more importantly, against infidels. First names and surnames are altered and, in
certain instances, changed completely. James becomes Jimmy; J. Crawford is
twisted into Crawfish; Tommy D. is transformed into Rogue. Not everyone
given a nickname. The christening is not an obligation. (My new moniker? “The Professor.”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And like any isolated tribe a common
tongue has developed between us, cobbled together from ripped slang, favored
curses and inside jokes, our own language which solidifies our connections
while acting as a shield, a distinct level of separation from the outside world.
This is our code: It’s about to get real/I’m goin deep/Oyster crackers and
Coloring Books/Gettin it/Little 307 dick stain/Stand up some bottles,
bitches/Daywalkers comin/Signal head!/There’s a monster in my pants!/Sucka!/Mmm-Hmm/One
rock, one rock/You just got blasted/He’s going blackout.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Nobody but those
involved will get these references, so I don’t mind sharing. And that’s the
point, isn’t it? It’s about us, not you.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-51865019121836942092012-10-03T13:19:00.002-07:002012-10-06T12:24:35.641-07:00Oct. 1<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iARThS8TgxQ/UGydvQEdMUI/AAAAAAAAAyw/12KmAw700ls/s1600/20121001_063411.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iARThS8TgxQ/UGydvQEdMUI/AAAAAAAAAyw/12KmAw700ls/s320/20121001_063411.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
check for ice on the windshield this morning. I touch the glass and realize how
much colder it has to get for ice to form. Today it’s the first of October. The
harvest is almost done. Winter creeps closer and closer. We’re all a little
scared. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Guys
talk shit about football bets out of truck windows. My wife is stowing money
away for Christmas. Some leaves change color, others remain green. Still, decay
is in the air. I pull up the hood of my sweatshirt to trap some heat around my
scalp and ears as I step out of the car and watch for my breath to be visible.
At quarter to six the moon and stars are bright overhead, burning through the
city glare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Inside
GE an alarm sounds. A plume of smoke is released from a stack. The sky bleeds
red enough to scare sailors but no one is expecting rain. Sometimes it comes
anyway. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-69364839090735666932012-08-28T09:53:00.002-07:002012-08-28T09:53:26.256-07:00small tidbit of incomplete fiction for a rainy Tuesday<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mom
holds the handle of the mop far away from her body. It is the only way she can
clean the floor without hitting her belly. Ania, Mom’s best friend, leans
against the small counter in the kitchen. She flicks her cigarette over the
sink and smirks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Will you stop,” she says. “It’s not
your problem anymore.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Mom sticks out her tongue and dips
the mop into the bucket of soapy water. She rings it out and slaps it onto the
floor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Suit yourself.”Ania blows smoke
through her nostrils and picks up a sponge from out of the sink. “Just think:
when this is done, you’ll have a whole house to clean.” She goes to work,
scrubbing the fridge door.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I watch the exchange from what was once
the living room. That morning boxes filled the apartment, hills and mountains
of boxes with words scrawled onto the sides in thick magic-marker text:
kitchen, living room, pictures, clothes, toys. Now they are gone, Dad and Uncle
Tommy and Uncle Kevin carried them away, along with the couch and the old chair
that belonged to Dad’s dad, a man who died a long time before I was born. They
moved everything that was ours down the stairs and into the car waiting at the
curb. All that is left is the TV and the stand it rests on. Sean sits in front
of it eating Cheerios from a bowl on the floor. He is in nothing but his
diaper. He’s watching Bugs Bunny.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I am panting, sweat rolls down my
forehead, the curve of my back. It’s hot and it isn’t even noon yet. I catch a
slap on the back of the head, five points of sting. I whirl around, my hand
reaching into space, a slapback. Nate, Ania’s son, my best friend, jumps out of
the way. “Too slow,” he wipes feathery blonde hair out of his eyes, and is off.
I chase after him. This is why the heavy breathing, the perspiration. As Mom
and Ania dust and mop, sweep and scrub, Nate and I hunt each other through the
empty rooms. It is the only game in which we are, or ever will be, equals. He
can already throw, kick and catch all variety of balls better. He is able to
jump higher, he can lift more. But I am just as fast as he is. Eventually, I
will become faster, and faster, I will attain escape velocity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I tag him back near the bathroom, a dull
thud on the shoulder, and I am fleeing retribution, hauling ass past the
kitchen when an arm loops around my chest. For a second I am lifted off my
feet. Still airborne, Ania’s lips brush against my ear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“That’s enough now, moje zabko.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I laugh. The Polish words of endearment,
the way her lips touch the skin of my ear just barely, tickles. The side of my
head meets my shoulder to protect against a repeat attack, though I hope one is
coming. She gives a dry kiss on the cheek, a sharp pinch on the same spot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I notice what is different. The mop
rests against the counter, where Ania stood. The bucket is in the sink. On the
kitchen floor a trash bag sits with its top tied. Sean is standing, letting Mom
wiggle a pair of short over his diaper. She picks up the bowl and shuts off the
TV by turning a knob on the front of it. Sean says, “Bugs!” He points at the
dark screen and starts to cry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“You can watch Bugs at the new house,”
Mom tells him, only a little impatiently. She puts the bowl in a small box and
folds the flaps over themselves to close it. “I think that’s it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nate is now standing in front of Ania,
her hands on his shoulders. He too is breathing heavy. His t-shirt is stained
around the collar with sweat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Let get out of here.” She squeezes the
tops of Nate’s arms. “Give the Rowans a chance to say goodbye.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When the Wapenskis reach the door, it
dawns on me. “Are you and Nate moving too?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Holding the door open with her foot,
Ania smiles at me. “No, sweetie,” she says, “we aren’t going anywhere.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The door slams shut behind them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Come here, Jimmy.” Mom is in the middle
of what was the living room. She holds out her hand to me. Sean is holding the
other one. When I take it, Mom turns her head from side to side, taking in the
empty apartment. Sean and I do the same. “Take a good look,” she says, “so you
will remember.” Her grip becomes a little tighter as she begins to shuffle her
feet and spin in a circle, taking us with her.
After the third revolution she stops. Mom bends down and tells Sean, “Say:
‘Bye, apartment.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sean does a little jump and says, “Bye partment!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mom tries to stand, but the belly makes
this hard. She lets go of my hand and puts hers on my shoulder. “Can I use you,
Jimmy?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I nod. I almost fall from the weight she
needs to rest on me to stand. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On her feet, Mom sighs and wipes a few
loose strands of hair out of her face. She kisses the tips of her fingers and
touches them to my forehead. “Thanks, bud.” She lifts Sean and rests him on her
hip. “Ready?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Out the door we go, down the three
flights of stairs. At the bottom I am about to push open the heavy front door
of the building when Mom says, “Wait.” She has stopped in front of the
mailboxes. She puts Sean down next to her. He wraps an arm around her bare
calf. Above each of the inset mailboxes is a piece of tape with a last name
written on it. This is building 6, so the last names are Lyons, Kelly, White,
Ahern, Fitzgerald, Barry, and ours, Rowan. Mom stares at our name for a long
second before she attacks one of the corners of the tape with her fingernail.
The sound of her nail scratching against the metal makes my teeth hurt. The
tape is stubborn. Mom scratches harder. Her eyes narrow, her mouth turns down.
Finally there is enough for her to pinch between her thumb and forefinger. She
rips the tape from the metal and says, “Fuck you,” under the tearing sound. Mom
balls up the tape and drops it to the cement floor. “OK.” She flicks her chin
at the door. “Out.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-90048159194035432552012-06-28T18:36:00.002-07:002013-06-25T14:09:39.067-07:00Along the Lines<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yKgzoTgWMvY/T-zx6hCcoaI/AAAAAAAAAqE/HuKyYrLBcH4/s1600/Bass+River,+Beverly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yKgzoTgWMvY/T-zx6hCcoaI/AAAAAAAAAqE/HuKyYrLBcH4/s400/Bass+River,+Beverly.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">The tie job switched locations again last week, moving south from Beverly to Everett. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Beverly, though a city, is suburban in affect. Most houses are single-family, spaced apart from each other by healthy patches of grass. The houses along the coast are large and well-maintained. The estates along the shore in the section of the city known as Beverly Farms (John Updike lived there) are even more impressive. The old shoe factory has been converted into offices, shops and class space for North Shore Community College.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Everett sits on the banks of the Mystic River, urban to its core. From the streets of West Everett, where our new yard is located, the Boston Skyline is visible even on a cloudy day. The houses in this neighborhood are multi-family, built shoulder to shoulder dense, patches of worn earth as common as grass. The faces on the sidewalks, waiting at the bus stops and in line at the convenience store for butts and scratch tickets run the gamut of fleshy hues, milky to olive to umber to ebony.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">The two cities share an industrial legacy, as do many cities in Massachusetts, from Haverhill to Fall River. They also share in the legacy of industrial decline. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7RCIujkJQ-g/T-zuS2sKf7I/AAAAAAAAAp4/Hl1zzEICxRM/s1600/factory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7RCIujkJQ-g/T-zuS2sKf7I/AAAAAAAAAp4/Hl1zzEICxRM/s320/factory.jpg" width="179" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Pictured above is the old Charleston Chew factory in Everett, empty more than a decade now. There have been a fair amount of these abandoned, boarded-up structures on the other side of the fence from the tracks these past two and a half months. To keep with the confectionery theme, for a few weeks in Lynn we passed the long brick building left to rot topped with a weather sign barely reading "Home of Fluff!" Also in Lynn, we passed a large empty lot across from the GE property. I assumed this was a defunct parking lot until my brother-in-law informed me the lot I was looking at every day had been until five years ago the site of GE's gearbox factory. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
Manufacturing in the northeast was replaced by the rise of the tech and financial sectors and growth in health care and higher education. Massachusetts lucked out, to put it cynically, or the state put itself in a position to be lucky, with the power of positive thinking. Either way, many Bay State citizen's woke up one day to discover their brainpower had become more important than the skill and strength in their hands. The railroad was able to adapt by switching priorities: moving people over transporting materials.<br />
<br />
Still, the skeletons of the former age putrefy above ground, in plain sight. Because of the previous connection between the economic model of generations past and my present employment, I am afforded a first hand view of the open-air graveyard.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-4349725038626659172012-06-04T08:41:00.001-07:002012-06-04T08:41:30.089-07:00Rain Rule<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yqgZlI9SNf4/T8zRodShzkI/AAAAAAAAApo/-p1ZxMhiFmo/s1600/rain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yqgZlI9SNf4/T8zRodShzkI/AAAAAAAAApo/-p1ZxMhiFmo/s400/rain.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Work was called today because of the rain.
Bobby, the senior foremen on our job, an older gentleman with thick white hair who is missing half his right
ear, made the announcement during the morning safety briefing. A sigh of relief went up from the crowd. Sardonic smiles exchanged all around. After working through monsoon conditions Saturday and misty Irish-countryside-wetness yesterday, no one was in the mood. Rain sucks the energy right from your bones and leaves not but a chill in its wake. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The men lifted up their lunchboxes and walked back to their trucks and cars where they peeled off rain gear before climbing behind various wheels to suffer rush hour traffic on the way home. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The official name for what happened is "The Rain Rule." If the day is called short due to precipitation we’re paid as if we worked four hours. It’s one of those union perks that
makes me stop and wonder: who died for this, and how? When I was with the laborers we always worked through the rain, so what violence made the railroad unions decide this was a benefit worth negotiating for inclusion in the contract? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Did lightning
strike one of the machines and fry an operator inside? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Did the wheels of a machine slip on wet rails and plow into some unsuspecting trackman <i>blam</i>, <i>splat</i>, <i>squish</i>?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s not
as though a company would offer such a perk out of simple generosity and, with rare exceptions, are not considerate of worker safety as a rule. Though comprised of people with the capacity for empathy, a corporation is not living being capable of envisioning itself existing as something other than what it is. It does not, as a rule, care about the people under its employ. Not until the blood on the factory floor, or in today’s terms, hospital or disability bills sent from
our insurance overlords, begin eating into the profit margin. Then, and only then, does it respond. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">So then: how much blood was spilled? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How many limbs lost? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How severe the burn? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What made the four hours pay worth it? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And most importantly: am I still at risk? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The only answer I have is to the last question, and it's one I don't care to dwell on very long. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-14072061917143374292012-04-18T16:31:00.000-07:002012-04-18T16:35:48.060-07:00All the livelong day<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It’s hard for me to write without my
sneakers on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hBAlBgnXPRE/T49KY-HIN9I/AAAAAAAAAlg/Js_JoH3jLnk/s1600/Saugus+water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="355" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hBAlBgnXPRE/T49KY-HIN9I/AAAAAAAAAlg/Js_JoH3jLnk/s640/Saugus+water.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(The view from work at about 830am, Saugus, MA)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">This was the first full week of the tie
job. We’re headquartered at an old lot behind the GE factory in Lynn. The yard
is split in half by a set of tracks where a water train is parked. The
water-train is used in the fall; dead leaves crushed on the rails by passing
trains create a gummy residue that can weaken or block the low-level electrical
signals that travel through the rails. Come October or November, the
water-train is rolled out at night, blasting a highly pressurized spray over
the tops of rails, clearing the mashed up foliage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is amazing how many function-specific
pieces of equipment are used</span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">. My guess is
that with 150 years of experience, the railroad as an entity has learned the
best tricks to keep itself functioning. I had the same thought when I learned
during orientation that we don’t pay into social security, but something called
the railroad retirement fund. I wondered, how can any industry avoid paying
into social security? Then it hit me: compared to the railroad, Social Security
is a relatively new invention. The first railroad workers to unionize were the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, and they did so in Detroit in 1863, <b>before the Civil War was over</b>. A long time to get all your ducks in a row. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We share this yard with some division of
the T. They have a trailer near the entrance (a ten foot high fence topped with
barbed wire with one side of a gate open) and a dumpster that we can’t seem to
stop parking in front of. All these spots where we go to work are so hidden
from the rest of the world. Maybe this can be attributed to age, too. The railroad
has been around so long, pretty much since the start of the Industrial Age,
perhaps the rest of the man-made environment of businesses and homes have
morphed around and away from the tracks. No one told me this, but you can only
work next to so many shut-down factories and mills to realize that most of the
freight in this country was once transported by train, not truck. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The tie job is just a mobile
assembly line. Each machine has a very specific function. I haven’t figured out
the exact order or role of all of them yet, but I do know that one pulls the
spikes, one drags the old ties out, a machine pushes the new ties in, but not
all the way, because there’s another machine for that. There is a machine that
scarifies the stone on either side of the tie; the next one tamps that stone
down. Two guys operate a rolling jack that lifts the rails so they can then
slide the plates on top of the new ties, and they are followed by a spiking
machine. I am missing some, screwing up the order. The whole production is
analogous to a modern factory in that the machines do the hardest, most
important work. Unlike a present day factory automation is almost nonexistent. Every
machine is manipulated by an operator, some have two or three. There are
“ground guys” sprinkled here and there, performing tasks the machines cannot.
If you subtract all the ground guys, the operation shuts down. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Io85O9JdwKQ/T49KtIuLmzI/AAAAAAAAAlo/llLFLs6qaXU/s1600/machines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Io85O9JdwKQ/T49KtIuLmzI/AAAAAAAAAlo/llLFLs6qaXU/s400/machines.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(Out of focus shot of the machines lined up and waiting to go) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">On Monday I was a watchman, all day. Translation:
I was one of three guys standing along the stretch of the work zone—one at
either end, one in the middle—whose duty it is to, upon seeing a train
approaching from either direction, blow an air horn three times to alert the
guys working of “hot iron” on the adjacent track, and to hold up the “lollipop,”
a circular orange sign with a reflective “W” on it to alert the engineer
operating the approaching train that he or she will be passing through an area where
work is taking place. When there’s hot iron, federal regulation mandates that
all work stop and all workers leave the track on the field side (not in the
space between the tracks) and observe the passing train. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> If
trains were coming and going regurlarly all day this wouldn’t be a bad job.
Since they don’t it’s the most boring assignment you can draw. You’re alone all
day. Your mind can’t wander too far. The trains roar by at 70 mph and you don’t
want to be the guy that was daydreaming and let another worker get smashed to
pieces. After a couple hours, though, you can’t help it. You recall the
weekend, or try to remember what your wife asked you picked up at the grocery
store on the way home. And since it’s such a shitty job, and most of the other
ground guys don’t seem to have much familiarity with union social custom, only
one guy volunteered to give one of us a break. I was stuck out there all day.
This pissed me off to no end. When I went home I wrote a long speech in my head
about what it means to be in a union brotherhood and how you ask to help out
your brother instead of waiting to be asked. I was ready to step up and take
the lead…except by the next morning, a bunch of guys volunteered to be watchmen
without being asked. It’s OK to be proven wrong sometimes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Tuesday
I worked banging on clips. These clips fit into a slot in the plates that are
spiked onto the ties, and once on they hold the tie to the rail. There’s a
machine that uses a hydraulic press to squeeze them in tight; the ground guys
tap them in with sledgehammers for the machine. It was a warm day, especially
when we got moving. We trailed behind the “spiker</span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">.” The assistant
foreman placed the clips on either side of the tie, then the two guys with
hammers set the clips in the grooves, one on each side of the tie, and tapped
them in for the “squeezer.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The ground guys only go as fast as the
machine they work behind, which can vary depending on the ability of the
operator or the condition of the machine or their own experience at the task.
You either drag or you race. I am lacking
in expertise. I was racing on Tuesday. It wasn’t a hot day, in the low 60s. I
realized later I was sweating from marching from tie to tie swinging the ten pound
hammer. I wasn’t aware of this at the time because there was a marsh on both sides
of us and a strong wind cutting across it. The gusts dried my sweat before I
could notice it. I didn’t drink enough water. Thinking about it later, when trying to
figure out why I had such a nasty headache, I do some math. I hadn’t taken a
piss between 630am and 5pm. </span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">When I did,
after picking up Kieran and bringing him back to our apartment, my piss was
brown, which I’m told is bad, bad news health-wise. The headache lasted into
the next day but I guzzled enough water the rest of the week to keep it away. I was less successful at protecting myself from the sun. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vYn7S6e6F5A/T49MRPiNeEI/AAAAAAAAAlw/54vc3ptEO8M/s1600/first+sunburn+of+2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vYn7S6e6F5A/T49MRPiNeEI/AAAAAAAAAlw/54vc3ptEO8M/s400/first+sunburn+of+2012.jpg" width="297" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (First sunburn of 2012) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> All I’ve done so far is watchman,
clips, and place plates in front of the track jack, but I can feel myself
becoming bored. Each task is repetitious. I’ve been told that all the trackmen
will have an opportunity to get qualified on the machines. This is a step up in
pay and quality of life. You are not a ground guy, wielding a fork or a hammer,
trudging after machines through the heat and elements. But once learned,
operating the machines is another series of repeated actions. There are 44,000
ties to be replaced and the process for each one is exactly the same. I
already want to move on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> There’s a guy on the crew who’s around
the same age as me and went to school for teaching. I found this out as we were
shooting the shit when the scarifier</span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">broke down on
Friday. I told him I’d done some teaching while I was in grad school. He asked
me if I’d like to go back to it. I told him the story I use for these
kinds of conversations: if I found a full-time job teaching writing or literature at a community college I would take it. I’d rather teach students who come from
a similar economic background as me. What surprised me was the sincerity behind the answer. I’d rather be helping kids learn to decode a text and manipulate a
paragraph than swing a sledgehammer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> But this is where I am. This is what I'm doing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> It’s Sunday at 6:42pm when I write
the first draft of this. The light outside is softer and more welcoming than
those bright evenings in the winter that give me headaches. Autumn and spring are
where I’d always like to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div>
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-14956196138881018612012-03-12T18:52:00.002-07:002012-03-12T18:52:54.285-07:00Goes Without Saying, Too Much<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5fxK79Nx20/T16h4GcBj2I/AAAAAAAAAiQ/8QkE7a_YW3k/s1600/Wife+and+Boy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5fxK79Nx20/T16h4GcBj2I/AAAAAAAAAiQ/8QkE7a_YW3k/s320/Wife+and+Boy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Here is Wife, holding Boy at a cookout this past summer. Not much has change since then, except her hair is shorter and she's about 5 months pregnant with Tormey #2.<br />
<br />
Being in the doldrums lately because of the job and a lack of time to write and a lack of money and blah blah blah, I bought a book today to lift my spirits: <a href="http://www.austinkleon.com/steal/">Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon. </a> It's doing an OK job of scattering the dark cloud from over my head, so I recommend giving it a read, but I just crossed a passage I would like to quote. The heading of the section is "Marry Well."<br />
<br />
"Who you marry is the most important decision you ever make...Relationships are hard enough, but it takes a real champion of a person to be married to someone who's obsessed with a creative pursuit. Lots of times you have to be a maid, a cook, a motivational speaker, a mother and an editor--all at once...Good partners keep you grounded."<br />
<br />
Do they ever. As mentioned above, I've been in a dark funk lately, but even if that wasn't the case, I'm no picnic. And the lovely lady in the picture above actually signed up, in front of a state official no less, to deal with that for as long as we both shall live...if I don't screw it up in the meantime.<br />
<br />
It's a busy life we all lead. It is way too easy to forget to appreciate the people who give more than they take. These are the only kind of people worth knowing.<br />
<br />
When Osama Bin Laden was killed, I scoffed at the "we should at least recognize that a fellow human being was killed" arguments offered amid the celebrations. Not that I was fond of the celebrations (too tacky) or that I'm a fan of state sanctioned murder (that's what it was). For me it boiled down to simple arithmetic. Bin Laden only took from life--and I mean "life" in the collective sense of the time we living humans are all sharing on this planet at this very moment--and for someone who took so much to have so much taken from him was only fair. It was not a moment of tragedy or a cause to rejoice. It was a brief opportunity to be satisfied that, for an instant, the debt to the house was paid.<br />
<br />
What is tragic is those people who give, and give, are not rejoiced, are not noticed or recognized for what they do. So I am taking this chance to share in this public forum that Wife does more for me that I could ever do for her, not that she would ever believe it. She's the kind of person who actually enjoys giving presents at Christmas more than getting them. Need I say more? Yes, yes, yes, but this is already embarrassing her, so I'll cut short and say what it is I do not often enough:<br />
<br />
Thank you.<br />
<br />
I owe that to many more, countless, but to her before all of them.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-51320885690825092082012-02-27T19:21:00.000-08:002012-02-27T19:21:11.124-08:00Finding the Dragon's EyeThe other day I was folding some laundry in the bedroom when K stomped in and asked me:<br />
<br />
"Daddy, you help Kieran find the dragon's eye?"<br />
<br />
How epic of a sentence is that? It's something a dying holy man would ask Indiana Jones. So of course, rugged swashbuckling adventurer that I am, this was my response,<br />
<br />
"Help Kieran find <i>what</i>?"<br />
<br />
Having a first-row seat to a person learning how to navigate a language is more entertaining than I ever imagined.
<br />
<br />
Actually, that's a lie. There was no frame of reference, so I never really imagined what it would be like.<br />
<br />
So I don't know what my conception of a kid learning how to talk entailed. All I knew the first two nephew's and niece was that they'd know some words, a stretch of time would pass where I wouldn't see them, and when I got to hang around with them again they'd picked up some more vocabulary.<br />
<br />
(Now that I'm looking back, my godson Joey was pretty advanced for his age. "Hey John! Hey Sarah! Come see my Nemo bed!" And he was, what, under two? My boy is wicked smart, dude.)<br />
<br />
From casual observation, language comes in fits and starts. It is not a gradual process. The kid will enter a phase, remain there for a while, then jump to the next without warning.<br />
<br />
The kid ingests a word or phrase so many times, when there's no more for it inside his head, he starts spitting it out.<br />
<br />
Is this process is kid-specific? Were I dropped in the middle of Tokyo, Santiago or Paris and made to learn through immersion (as children do), would my path to fluency mirror a child's by beginning with a word or two before moving on to simple phrases, then after a while primitive sentences, and so on until at some undetermined moment I realize the native language of my brain has been replaced. If experienced as an adult, are you aware of the moment you become fluent? How do you know when it happens? Is fluency determined by the language of your dreams? Allow me to digress a bit:<br />
<br />
How much of learning a language is a process that occurs in the unconscious? Dreams, and the wider notion of the subconscious, have occupied my thought a lot lately. Reading a few articles and watching a few documentaries, an image has taken shape, a vision as a tool of understanding the nature of how we learn: the conscious mind is like the continents, what we can see and feel, the plane on which we assume the gears of life turn. But like the continents are dwarfed by the oceans and atmosphere, as the conscious is by the subconscious, where the true work of existence takes place. As life crept to shore from the ocean, so does our awareness crawl, slowly, from the dream state into which we are born. To what extent does personality, aptitude, attraction, language, mathematics, and art actually form in the murky tidal waves always crashing beneath the surface our waking selves? How much of me is the product of my unconscious? How much of you?<br />
<br />
Anyway, after donning my imaginary snap brim fedora and bull-whip, I found the dragon's eye under a couch. When I showed him, K shouted:<br />
<br />
"You did it! You found the dragon's eye!"<br />
<br />
Which is quite possibly the coolest thing anyone has ever said to me.<br />
<br />
And so, the dragon's eye was returned, and the great beast was whole again, free to wander the water and the sky, to become as small as a silkworm or as large as the universe, to dream into reality the world of mortals. Behold:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hDTicGCMdLk/T0xFK9QvBSI/AAAAAAAAAiI/c2TIWJoULZQ/s1600/Dragon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hDTicGCMdLk/T0xFK9QvBSI/AAAAAAAAAiI/c2TIWJoULZQ/s320/Dragon.jpg" width="191" /></a></div>
<br />
(Yeah, he got this when uncle Adam took him to visit Kristen while she was photographing the Asian Festival at North Quincy High School. The tongue fell off, but still fearsome and mighty, huh? At least it has both eyes.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-1658340588473459522012-01-01T23:10:00.000-08:002012-01-01T23:10:27.124-08:00Last Call<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
thumping overhead is keeping me awake. Well, the thumping is preventing me from
finding sleep, is more accurate. The thumping is footsteps, most of what I
heard as I was reading in bed and now as I am typing at 126 am are footsteps.
Now that my wife and son are asleep I heard a few muffled voices, something
rolling around on the floor. I am not a detective. I cannot decipher the
actions taking place upstairs. And that has left me awake, in a protective,
aware state of mind. Which is probably silly. My wet-brain co-landlord is
drying out in a facility until the 20<sup>th</sup> of January, some 18 days
from now. This according to said landlord’s former roommate, who I heard
talking as he climbed the stairs to the second floor apartment. Each time there
was mayhem, his voice was the sober one. When I went upstairs to hand over a
check to the co-landlord to repair the two ceiling leaks (one is each bedroom)
it was this roommate, wearing nothing but a bath towel around his waist, who
let me in on the score about the guy who I was supposed to be handing over
$1400 of our hard earned cash to. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“He
went away.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Away…like,
to jail, away?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Nah.
Like he’ll be back in 11 days.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Oh.
Like my landlord is in detox, away. Then, the bottom line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“He’s
a good kid, but he’s trying to get someone to put him out of his misery, and I
told him it ain’t gonna be me…I’m getting out of here. I’m not trying to tell
you what to do, bud, but I suggest you do the same.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
the middle of all that he mentioned that the leaks had been there three years
ago when he lived in the apartment we now occupy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Great.
Appreciate the honesty. Really. The roommate was gone when all hell broke loose
a couple weeks ago and water was pouring in through the ceiling in the laundry
room on a clear-skied day, when I was forced to call the cops and fire
department who found the co-landlord and some junkie cohort on the tail end of
a bender, living with shit, actual human fecal matter, on their beds and the
floor of the bathroom where the source of the deluge into my apartment was
discovered, the toilet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So
why is he back? Who is with him upstairs? I have no reason to suspect the loud
footfalls moving back and forth across my ceiling are anything but innocent.
But I’m not comfortable losing consciousness until the noise quits. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It’s
disturbing how not disturbed I am by the thoughts a night such as this inspire.
If plans of malicious intent are being hatched, and if parties were to act on
them and tried to gain entry into the dwelling I share with my wife and son,
what then? The dog will let me know if someone tries to get in, right? Why isn’t
there a gun in the house? (to answer the question of using the theoretical gun
if that’s what the situation called for: technical knowhow aside, yes, I could
aim the barrel and squeeze the trigger and feel little to no remorse. That is
as honest a statement as I can make, not some masculine chest beating. I would
be sacrificing the life of someone else in preservation of my own as much as I
would be fulfilling some sort of protector role.) But since I don’t have a gun,
what I am I actually capable of? Are my bare hands enough to stop, one, two
grown men? Is escape the better option? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Why
am I even entertaining these possibilities outside the abstract in the first
place? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
change in temperament and security from our last apartment to the present one
features a gap wider than the talent level on display at the local CYO basketball
game and a contest at the Garden between the Celtics and the Bulls. Monumental,
in case basketball isn’t your thing. Too expansive a chasm to be believed, yet
it exists, and all that negative space and the degree of uncertainty it brings
is wearing on the two adult members of our little trio. The youngest affiliate,
he who is most vulnerable, remains unaware. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
co-landlord that lives in the tony Floridian zip code, brother to he who was
upstairs, the one who receives the rent check, last week opened the letter from
the department of health worker who inspected the place after the Great Flood
and deemed our lease fit to break. He asked what was going on. After detailing
the multiple visits by the police, fire and emergency medical officials, the
unfixed leaks, the torrent from above and subsequent impressment and
confinement, I had to break it to this guy that his brother was huffing paint
in the basement. That was news I was made to run.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Besides
bodily harm, the worst crime anyone can commit is including you in their familial
conflicts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It
is now 207 am. The creatures on the upper level have ceased their stirrings. Is
it safe to go back to bed?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hello,
2012. Nice to meet you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-8092509784443436012011-12-04T12:20:00.001-08:002011-12-04T19:21:29.418-08:00Is Anyone Listening?(picture me peering into the fridge, or making the bed, or watching football...then hear the patter of little feet come closer, then see the two-year-old size frame round the corner or the edge of the door, and imagine those round brown eyes ((they twinkle a little, like his mom's do)) stare up at me)<br />
<br />
K: Daddy?<br />
<br />
D: Yeah, buddy?<br />
<br />
K: Deet deet deet deet, Sesame Street?<br />
<br />
I wish someone could explain to me exactly what function this plays in K's continuing adventure in learning the English language. I, of course, have my own theory: the (hilarious) string of "deets" is the imitation of the portion of a normal adult-adult conversation that precedes the subject of the exchange.<br />
<br />
"So I went to the store to grab some milk and who did I see buying cucumbers but Bill Smith?"<br />
<br />
K probably doesn't have anything important to say about Sesame Street, or George (Curious) or Mazzy. It's just important that he says something that will force me to give him a response. Even if that response has little or nothing to do with what he said, which makes his "Deet deet deet [subject]" pretty much the same as 99% of the adult conversations we conduct on a day to day basis.<br />
<br />
No one really cares if there is an answer to their (our) question about cooking pork chops, and they (we) are well aware that their (our) account of a recent trip to Target isn't all that interesting. It doesn't matter if it is. They (we) run around in open desperation vying for snippets of attention from those they (we) are closest to because, statistically, there is precious little chance at finding a receptive ear. So we fill the air with verbal arrows, hoping to hear the <i>thwack!</i> of a target struck. When a true listener is discovered (these people are usually called <i>parents</i>, <i>lovers</i>, <i>best friends</i>, if we are lucky) they (we) fill those rare empty spaces with whatever is at hand, within our ability.<br />
<br />
(The people best at this are called <i>stand-up comedians</i>.)<br />
<br />
It is perhaps the most basic of existential human acts: creating the right kind of racket so that people will notice, respond and reaffirm that we(we!) in fact do exist, that this is the real world and not a dream, or (the more terrifying possibility) that we ourselves are not dreams conjured by a larger, somnolent consciousness, cursed to journey through the plane of concrete existence unheeded, a shimmering phantom unable to frighten, a ghost incapable of causing a spook, unrecognized and ignored until the consciousness that created us wakes, and we are blinked away.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Watching your kid grow up is some strange business.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-67960585047684928172011-11-22T03:50:00.001-08:002011-11-22T05:01:58.278-08:00Baby It's Cold Outside...Watching my breath stream from my mouth and nose as I held out the flag for the first train of the morning, I realized it's been quite a while since I've had to work in the cold. Even the construction job before graduate school was inside a building. There was no heating system, but the walls kept the worst of the winter where it belonged.<br />
<br />
The last time I worked outside the New England area experienced a very snowy, very cold winter. How cold, you ask? My father (he was the union steward) filled a cup with water inside the company trailer, stepped outside and tossed the water into the air. It became snow before it hit the ground. None of the diesel-engine trucks worked. For a few days Boston Harbor steamed, then it froze.<br />
<br />
To survive those days with all my extremities intact I mummified myself in layers of clothes. Thermal everything, one on top of another. As long as I dressed for protection and kept moving the cold was manageable. So slow days were the worst, and because the difficulties that weather brings, work ground down to a slow crawl. There is one that sticks out: I was tending two carpenters who worked inside an unfinished wall on top of a footing. A road would rest on wall a year or two later, but at that time the top was exposed. The carpenters didn't need many tools after what I brought them in the morning, so I spent a lot of that day on top of the wall, shivering, the wind searing what skin wasn't covered by my mask. Once I was home, it took a hot shower and an hour under all the blankets to exorcise the chill.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the body adapts. After weeks of sub-zero temperatures, 20 and 30 degree days became tolerable, if not easy. When the cold snapped in late February, early March and the first 40 degree day since November blessed us with its presence, I was walking around in jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt. Though I've always hated the hot days of summer, that year I didn't notice as much. Because I was outside most of the day every day (I worked a lot of overtime that year so when I say every day, I mean just that) my body acclimated to the gradual warming from one season into the next just as it did when the cool air first came in the autumn.<br />
<br />
Faced with working outside more days than not again, I'm not worried. In fact, sick as it sounds, I'm almost looking forward to it. It is cold out this morning, sure, my breath leaves me in great bursts of vapor, but my jacket has already been shed. My hooded sweatshirt and the thermal shirt underneath are enough.<br />
<br />
It's not that living through the cold toughens you. It's that you learn to like it a little bit, so you can stand it.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-63446309311571290402011-10-25T10:24:00.000-07:002011-11-06T20:11:00.362-08:00Empathy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1PBdjXbhGxc/Tqi801jbLLI/AAAAAAAAAUI/EVWkFHsR2b0/s1600/Smack%2521.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1PBdjXbhGxc/Tqi801jbLLI/AAAAAAAAAUI/EVWkFHsR2b0/s320/Smack%2521.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Before K was born, whenever I heard or read the phrase "growing up" my mind instantly associated with puberty, that drastic and in some ways violent transformation from a creature who cannot sexually reproduce into one who can. Those years represent the greatest time of change in our lives, right? We view parents, siblings, teachers and the boys and girls we've known all our lives differently. Our bodies sprout hair, stretch, fill, do actions independent of what we ask of them.<br />
<br />
Two years into being a dad, the associations are becoming muddled. Yes, morphing into larger, hairier, sexual beings is a big deal. But bigger than learning how to eat, walk and talk? I read somewhere that a human baby will absorb more information in the first two years of its life than in all subsequent years. It is an amazing feat in the abstract, and no less amazing in reality, but being able to observe it in real time, it's crazy how much <i>work</i> is involved. Kids never stop working. Those spongy little brains are constantly consuming and digesting every minuscule scrap of information that floats by. They even learn at play. Sometimes, while they sleep.<br />
<br />
This is why nights like Monday, I try to keep them in perspective. We brought K into bed with us expecting him to cuddle up and fall asleep. Two hours after we shut off the lights he was still awake; singing, talking, playing with the cat and dog. Finally, after ordering him to go to sleep multiple times to zero effect, when he decided it was time to climb off the bed and run around, I had to haul him, kicking and screaming, into his own room and put him in his crib. I went back to bed and let his mother deal with shrieking. I had to get up early for work this morning. I was pissed. (he only lasted about 4 minutes before he passed out anyway.)<br />
<br />
K has been difficult lately. His two favorite words are "no" and "mine." If he doesn't get what he wants immediately, he melts into a wailing puddle of rage. He's even started lashing out on two of his babysitters/favorite people, Wife's dad and my youngest brother. He's also been sleeping a lot, which had us worried at first, until we discovered that clothes which fit two weeks ago are now too small for him. At the same time, his ability to navigate the language has taken a jump. No, a <i>leap</i>. He is forming full sentences. Questions pertinent to a particular situation are being asked. When I stubbed my toe the other day and cursed, he looked at me and said, "What's the matter?" When Wife crashed on the couch and pulled the blanket over herself, K said, "You tired?" Obviously, the boy is growing, on multiple fronts, simultaneously, and it's tough going.<br />
<br />
I find myself more and more reflecting on puberty whenever he's being a pill. I try see the world as he does. I get his frustration with the contradictory rules; his lack of control over what he eats, what he wears, where he goes, what he can touch; the inability of those around him to comprehend when he tries to explain what is bothering him, what he needs. The analogy between life as a teenager in puberty and a two year old isn't exact, but close enough when boiled down to the bones. Those not existing in a state of physical and mental flux cannot relate to those who are, no matter how hard they try. And that sucks. It's frustrating when no one gets it and you're doing your best but still fall <i>just </i>short, again and again.<br />
<br />
I can empathize with that. So I tell myself to chill. Don't be pissed. This is harder for him than it is for you.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-60574998864597259572011-10-19T19:51:00.000-07:002011-10-19T19:51:59.668-07:00A Monday NightI was playing catch with my son when I heard the thumps and bangs through the ceiling that was my landlord and his roommate fighting. The clamor travelled from one end of the house to the other and all I could think was: this is my fault. <br />
<br />
My wife met me in the hallway. What was that? Now screams became audible over the sound of struggle, the tumble of bodies knocking furniture across the floor. My son followed me out of the bedroom, a red plastic ball in one hand and a purple plastic ball in the other. Daddy, c’mere. More screaming, no words decipherable, my wife’s wide eyes. I went back into the bedroom, to the far side of the bed, my side. Where I left my sneakers on the floor. I sat down on the end of the bed and put them on, tied the laces. What are you doing? My wife put her hands on her hips. <br />
<br />
I’m going up there.<br />
<br />
Daddy?<br />
<br />
I made it through the hall and into the kitchen, I was opening the back door when she caught up, slid her body between me and the screen door. <br />
<br />
You’re not going up there. <br />
<br />
Yes I am.<br />
<br />
To do what?<br />
<br />
To tell them to cut the shit.<br />
<br />
No. Wait.<br />
<br />
My wife opened the screen door and peaked her head out. She was wearing a tank top and pajama pants. She was not wearing a bra or sneakers. Outside it was wet and windy. Her hair was blown against her face. The windows upstairs were open. We heard the gravelly voice of the landlord’s roommate. I’m walking through and you fuckin sucker me? The landlord responded, but his words came out slurred and garbled. We leaned back inside. More muffled yells through the ceiling. My wife rolled her eyes. He’s shitfaced. I agreed. She leaned out. We heard the roommate again. You’re not sorry now, but what about tomorrow? She shook her head and closed the door. We stand facing each other in the kitchen. He’s sober. Meaning the roommate. My wife agreed. She left to check on our son. This time, a piece of what is said upstairs made down clear enough to understand. It was the landlord. None of you are fast enough to catch me! More rumbles across the floor. My wife came into the kitchen from the hall holding our son. I told her what I heard. She figured it out. The roommate won’t let him leave cause he’s drunk. The screen door upstairs slammed. I step outside. Leaning against the railing of the wooden stairs that leads to the deck and side door of the second floor apartment, was my landlord. He looked down and saw me. While I searched for the right thing to say, a phrase or sentence that would convey both how angry at am at the noise and a threat that whatever was happening up there would not be allowed to spill over down here, where my wife and son are, the landlord started to cry. All the false bravado I was mustering dissipated and was replaced by equal parts empathy and disgust. Inside, my wife was holding my son, waiting for details. I told her Go, get him ready for bed, but it wasn’t a masculine order of protection, it is code: the situation isn’t dangerous, just sad. She understood. She disappeared around the corner, down the hall. I checked on the landlord. He was sobbing, his forehead pressed against the railing. I shut the door.<br />
<br />
We put our son to bed together. The change into pajamas, the brushing of teeth, the laying down in the crib and saying goodnight to everyone he knows. This is my fault because the last apartment was supposed to be just that, the last apartment. The plan was when we moved from there it would be into our own house. Even with the recession, decisions I made kept us from achieving this goal more than any external factors. When we moved, it was into the first place that let us keep our dog and cat. The first time we toured the place, the landlord was drunk, but he seemed harmless. It is a nice neighborhood. The ocean is a block away. There is a park across the street. But I had taken too long to find a job after school, and we had not saved any money, so we were not moving into a house of our own. The landlord and his roommate live above us. This is my fault. We kissed our son goodnight and left his room. <br />
<br />
My wife sat down on the couch. I went outside, curious if anything had changed. The landlord was not crying with his forehead resting on the railing. He stood with back to his door, out of my line of vision, and spoke with two cops across from him. One of them was speaking to someone on a cell phone. Your brother’s roommate called us and said your brother was making suicidal comments. Another cop came up the stairs. He saw me. I lifted my hands. The cop didn’t get it.<br />
<br />
What? <br />
<br />
What the fuck is going on?<br />
<br />
I just got here, man.<br />
<br />
Inside, my wife was watching TV. I told her about the cops. We decided the roommate called the police to keep the landlord from leaving, driving drunk. I think there’s a chick up there. My wife sighed. Probably. She watched her show. Lights are flashing through the windows in our son’s play room. Those windows look out on the other side of the house. With my fingers I created a space in the drawn shades so I could see what I believed then to be a fire engine, based on the noise of the idling engine. I was wrong. It was an ambulance, and my landlord was lying on a stretcher inside it, propped up with an elbow, talking with an EMT. I let the shades fall shut. I explain the scene to my wife. We laughed nervous, what-the-fuck laughs The commotion died.<br />
<br />
Later, I brought our dog into the small backyard to pee. It isn’t very cold. I’m wearing a t-shirt. It was still raining. I began to worry. There are leaks in the ceiling over my son’s crib and my side of the bed the landlord promised to fix a week ago. I hear the roommate talking on the phone through an open window. Then he tries all this I’m sorry shit, tries hugging up on me and I’m like get the fuck away from me. <br />
<br />
We could have been in a house. It might have been too small or too expensive, something, but it would be ours. All according to plan. <br />
<br />
My dog peed. She looked up at me, her tail wagging. In the kitchen, I removed the leash from around her neck and I gave her a treat. I wondered about tenants’ rights, how to get out of a lease. I walked down the hall. It was time for bed.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-45185275937509497732011-08-03T13:26:00.000-07:002011-08-03T13:26:47.868-07:00Some Truthful Lying<div>Connemara, Ireland, November 2007</div><div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">As the sun was rising, the old man woke short of breath. His lungs froze as he sat up. He grabbed at his chest, bared his teeth and it passed. Beside him, his wife pulled the covers tighter around her body and rolled away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Marcus,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Can’t sleep.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Again?” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“I’m up now.” He swung his feet off the bed and gasped when they touched the floor. It was cold. “Want a tea from the shop?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">He was answered with snores; Edna was already asleep. Marcus had a shower, shaved and dressed. He took his wallet and keys from the dresser and was careful to be quiet closing the door. He locked it behind him, a habit from his years living in America. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The chill air bit at his face. A few steps along the front walk, Marcus pressed tongue to teeth and blew two short whistles. It wasn’t a moment before he heard paws scraping along the gravel drive that curved around the house and Russell appeared in full run. The dog came to a stop inches his master’s loafers, sat on his haunches and cocked an ear, awaiting his orders.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“With me,” Marcus said. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">He closed the gate behind him. Russell bounded over the wall and was by his master’s side, trotting. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Marcus kept a quick pace, hoping to fight off the cold. He let his hand caress the placed stones of the wall, set long ago, well before his grandfather purchased the plot. The two homes they passed were still dark and, being Sunday, would remain so a while longer. The houses sat on what had been the family land when Marcus first left it, decades before. That was in January; a cold rain fell as he gazed upon the rocky hills for what he thought was the last time. He’d asked Declan what would happen to the farm in their absence. His older brother claimed to have enough money saved in America to buy it. Not knowing any better, Marcus doubted this, but it was mostly true. They’d managed to keep more than half, and that was enough.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The sun breached the horizon, but Marcus only felt colder by the time he reached the intersection. The left-hand <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>road led into the village. Marcus headed that way a few steps and stopped. He turned, Russell a pace or two off his heel, and went right, the beach road.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">It was not long to the shore. He heard the tiny waves lapping the beach before he topped the small rise and had a view of it. There was a car lot and a sign with directions for visitors regarding beach behavior, courtesy of the government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once, this had been the western border of the Mannion’s pastures. Now the grazing land was pitted with stakes topped in orange paint, arranged in rectangles to demarcate the number of houses that could be built..</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Marcus passed the sign and came to a low stone wall. He almost didn’t cross it. On the other side, the beach disappeared as the land rose and fell off as a cliff into the water. So far the walk had not accomplished what he hoped; he didn’t know yet why he wasn’t sleeping. He stepped over the wall, whistled to Russell and trekked north. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The grade of the hill leveled off after a time. Gulls wheeled and called to each other over the water. Marcus scanned the knolls for sheep and found none, so he released Russell with a short whistle. The dog tore across the green. Marcus blew three short blasts and the dog turned right. Three more, he turned left. One sustained note and Russell returned to his side, tongue lolling from his mouth, chest heaving. Marcus bent down and gave the dog’s head a few rough pats. Before he could remove his hand, Russell’s ears perked, his tail dropped and his legs planted into the sod. Low growls came from his throat. Marcus looked out at the fields. A quarter of a mile on, he saw a horse galloping across the pasture. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Is that all?” Marcus said, but as he followed the horse’s progress, he saw that he’d been mistaken. There were two horses, one behind the other, and they were having a race. The closer one, white with black spots, obscured the second, who was red with a deep brown mane. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The horses were keeping pace, nose to nose. They ran beyond the hill and vanished from sight but it wasn’t a few moments and they came back into view, still pushing hard. A few hundred feet before they came even with Marcus and Russell, the horses slowed to a trot and sauntered into a stop. They wandered a few paces apart and bent their heads to munch at the dead grass, but never strayed beyond the smell and sound of the other. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Marcus was still staring at them when the voice called. An old man about the same age as he, a Mannion descendent perhaps, was waving and pointing back toward the beach.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Off with ya!” he said. “This is private property!”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Marcus glanced at the horses one more time. He raised his hand to the old man and started back the way he’d come, Russell at his heels, growling.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Edna was dressed for the day, frying eggs and buttering toast at the stove when Marcus returned, a cup of tea in each hand.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Almost started lunch,” she said over her shoulder. “You lose your way home?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Marcus set a cup on the counter next to her and took a seat at the table. Edna plated the eggs and toast. She set one in front of her husband and the other at her place. She caught Marcus wiping his forehead as she sat down. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Too warm in here, is it?” She buttered her toast. “Here we are, what? A few days on in November, with the heat already on.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Marcus used his fork to scoop an egg onto his bread. “We should do Christmas in the States.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“If only.” Edna pulled the cover off her tea and held it close to her face, watching the steam rise.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“I mean it.” Marcus wiped his hands on his napkin. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“You wouldn’t be serious?” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“I am.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“If you’re just taking the piss out of me-“</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“It’s wrong, us not being with the kids.” Marcus tossed the napkin onto his empty plate. He leaned back in his chair. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“They have their father,” Edna said, “and that aunt, down stairs.” She lit a cigarette and passed it to him, then lit her own. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“The children,” Marcus said. “They need us.” He flicked ash into the tray between them and stared down at his plate.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Alright, alright. You’ve made your case.” Edna sipped her tea. “I’ll call Daniel after lunch.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Marcus gave a quick nod. That was it then. The family was in need. They’d go back to Boston. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">(From my other novel-in-progress, <i>Semont Rd.</i> I read this last November at the second annual Global Fellowship Reading. I spent a month in Connemara, Ireland doing research for parts of this book.)</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-16419894730596906312011-08-03T13:16:00.001-07:002011-08-03T13:16:59.025-07:00Process<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had no idea it was so hard to write a novel. Not a clue. I knew it wasn’t easy. That it was not a project most people could undertake and finish with moderately successful results. But I thought I could do so. And maybe I am. I don’t know yet.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What I expected was a process of building momentum. A trickle that became a flood. I would start out slow and unsure, but as time wore on I would understand my characters and the narrative that propelled them. It would be slow going at first but after a certain point I would be turning out the pages more and more quickly. By the time I was close to reaching the end, I would be on fire, burning through pages. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The reality couldn’t be more different. I exist in a world of random fits and starts. I will be in a period of utter desolation. I know where to go but seem unable to get there, unable, even, to force my way through the block. This will go on for some time, until one day I will sit down, expecting frustration, and the flood will recede, the road will be clear, and I’ll make great progress. I will believe that, finally, I have hit my stride. This is how it’s going to be, right through to the end. Except then the flood will come back. The waters will rise to my chest and progress will slow to the pace of a man walking through water, toes skimming the sand under his feet as the current tries to bear him away. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I wonder: is this experience specific to this book? Is it because I have written it so completely out of order, changed it so many times only to change it back? Does the fact that parts of the story, and the narrator, resemble parts of me so closely that the resulting anxiety serves to stifle? Do I allow too many distractions: books and internet and family? Will the next project go more smoothly, or is this just how I work?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To know. What I would give to know.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To be done. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I would give more to be done than to know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-16753595064509756412011-08-02T03:35:00.000-07:002011-08-02T03:35:17.021-07:00Train Dreams<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">My job is to watch the trains pass by. Well, that is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">literally</i> what I do. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actual</i> description of my duties state that I am to ensure that no vehicles or persons become disabled and unable to be removed from the tracks when a train is about to pass through the crossing. If this ever happens (and it hasn’t) I’m to say into the radio “Emergency, Emergency, Emergency, Clear,” and relate that the track has been fouled and the train needs to stop. What comes after that, I don’t know. It has never come up. No, what I always do is, once the bells start ringing and the gates come down halting traffic, I step out of my little shack with my flag in my hand and the radio clipped to the back pocket of my jeans and I hold the flag out until I am reasonably sure that the engineer piloting the train has seen the signal, which tells him that the track of the crossing is clear. Then I drop it, wave to the engineer I do not know, and return to my shack.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sometimes when I’m watching the wheels of the train car passing over the rails, I think of putting my hand there, on the rail, so that the wheels would run it over. This is not a serious or remotely possible consideration. It has zero chance of taking place. I enjoy my two working hands. I do not wish to lose one. Really, when I’m watching the wheels ride so smoothly over the rails and I ponder laying my hand down on the metal I don’t visualize the true result of my hand being cut off and pints of blood spurting from the wound. I understand that this would be the only possible consequence, but for some reason my brain doesn’t dwell on it most of the time. When I picture it, my hand is returned to me unscathed, or, upon contact with my hand, the train derails, which I learned in orientation is the outcome to be avoided at all costs. The train is to stay on the tracks because for it to do otherwise would cause a staggering amount of delays, and delays are enemy number one when in the business of moving commuters from point A to point B. So if placing my hand on the steel and keeping it there as the train approached would end up in a calamity for those on board and everyone else who expected to be picked up and dropped off in a timely fashion, it’s best that I refrain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-87494195752389959132011-03-21T16:05:00.000-07:002011-03-21T16:05:14.214-07:00That's Me in the Corner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.wildravens.net/images/designs/celtic_cross.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.wildravens.net/images/designs/celtic_cross.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
1. <br />
<br />
More often than I'd like to admit, I miss the church.<br />
<br />
There was no single moment when my faith--in Jesus, the Trinity, the resurrection of souls--died. It was more like a receding tide. The water slowly crawled away from the land, and when it was time for it to make the gradual march back toward the shore, the moon fell out of the sky, and the water became stuck in place.<br />
<br />
In some ways I'm still a Catholic, even if I've stopped attending mass and receiving sacraments. Even if I stopped believing in any kind of God.When the tide goes out, shells and seaweed are left stranded on the sand, where they dry and bleach in the sun. There are remains.<br />
<br />
There is that sense of justice, that power should be redistributed from the powerful to the meek.<br />
<br />
There is that notion that redemption, be is supernatural or secular, is earned through good works; action trumping proclamation.<br />
<br />
There is guilt. Always guilt. If something bad happens, chances are, we brought it on ourselves. <br />
<br />
And there is a kind of certainty in our smallness. Doubts, questions, the fracturing of faith; these sins were forgivable because of the tininess of our human scale. God and heaven eclipsed time and space. Of course our human minds found theistic existence impossible to comprehend. We lack the proper frame of reference. Our world is confined to the phenomena our senses perceive; what our eyes see, ears hear, tongues taste, fingers touch. By the capacity for our hearts to hold love. God the Father is big and we his children are small. That's why the multiple incarnations of the Trinity: in order to understand his wishes, God needs to step down to our level, He must inhabit a burning bush, a gust of wind, or a boy carpenter. <br />
<br />
This is the flotsam left in the wake of my receding faith. They are the bones of my belief, but during hard times they begin to glow with life, and beckon me back. It's a brutal fight I have to wage against them, and there is always a little less of me whenever it ends, even though I've won each time, if the outcome of such a struggle can ever be considered a victory.<br />
<br />
The first true test was my uncle's funeral, five years ago. He requested that I act as a pallbearer, along with my brothers and male cousins. At his funeral mass, our place was in the first pew, nothing but red carpet between us and the altar, my uncle's widow and his two daughters behind us. When the time came to receive the host, I stayed behind while my brothers and cousins left. I'd always liked my uncle, my mother's oldest brother. He'd been kind and funny and generous. He'd married a good woman and raised two awesome daughters. He suffered through a lot of pain because he didn't want to leave them behind. He wanted a Catholic burial because that was what he believed in. And because I didn't, I wasn't about to insult him by pretending, putting on a show of a ritual. It wasn't an act of defiance that kept me seated in the pew, and that's how I knew. And that's how it has been.<br />
<br />
2.<br />
<br />
I had another test this past Sunday, a week from yesterday. Wife miscarried for the second time in four months. She bled so bad I drove her to the emergency room at Quincy Medical. They didn't have the facilities to help her, so doctors had her transferred to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in an ambulance.That was where she delivered our son. In the emergency room at Brigham's, a resident did an exam. We hoped that with all the blood she'd lost at home, QM and in route, the D and C procedure that had been necessary the first time could be avoided. Judging from what the resident told us and the look on the face of the nurse, "the material" was very close to coming out. Wife was moved out of the ER, up five floors to labor and delivery triage unit, five rooms down from the first room she was checked in while in labor with Boy. An OB doctor did another check, hoping he could remove everything right there. He couldn't. At least for this D and C, Wife was drugged so well she doesn't remember anything and I was spared being present in the room while it happened. We got home at 430 Monday morning. Wife is in fine health. In two weeks we visit her OB and try to figure out what happened.<br />
<br />
Men don't pay the physical or emotional price women do in reproduction. But there is a cost for us. Mine is this:<br />
<br />
As I was waiting in triage room 5 on the 5th floor, alone, Wife was in the operating room, all I could picture was this tiny, twelve week old baby, curled into itself and soaked in blood, be taken from her body, with an expression of pain etched into the tiny features of its face. And all I could wonder is how everything could be so <i>wrong</i>.<br />
<br />
Because of the first miscarriage, we had an ultrasound done at 8 weeks. We saw a heartbeat. The midwife told us that if you see the heartbeat this early the chance of miscarriage is reduced by about 97%. But forget that: when Wife started spotting on Friday night, and after a midwife couldn't hear the heartbeat on Saturday morning, I had a feeling that the baby was going to be OK. Right up until Wife doubled over with cramps for an hour before the bleeding came, I <i>knew</i> the baby was going to be fine. This was going to be a special kid, and after he was born (I was also sure it was another boy) we'd look back at all this and say, "See? We should have known he was going to be special, surviving what he did before he was even out!" I'd told my mother and sister about this feeling. In my heart, I'd been 100% certain of it. So what the fuck went so wrong this time? Why did this baby, who I was <i><b>sure</b></i> was going to make it, not survive?<br />
<br />
3.<br />
<br />
Of course, I know that there will be a scientific reason for this miscarriage. After we learned about the first one, the OB informed us that 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Often it is the woman's body protecting itself from a biological hazard. Difficult pregnancies are hard to survive. The species can't propagate if the most important half of the reproductive duo is lost. Nature is frugal in her calculations, if cold. <br />
<br />
Or it could be something else. Maybe each of us have a recessive gene. Maybe Wife's thyroid is blame. Maybe, maybe, maybe times a thousand. There are reasons I don't even know about, I'm sure. That "feeling" I had? Probably wishful thinking, or denial, or whatever else we like to call the mechanisms the merciful subconsciousness employs to keep us stable in times of stress. It doesn't mean I'm no longer tethered to reality or have come unhinged. Just the opposite. My mind can adapt explanations and emotions to keep me going through stressful situations. My brain can create for me a path to survival. Again, the gears and levers of nature going about their functions.<br />
<br />
The only problem are those petrified remains on the beach of my soul. As rational as I want to be, they push me toward an explanation that defies reproductive biology and neuroscience and the power of adaptation and self-preservation. There is a whisper of the smallness, that everything happens for a reason. Or, as the ER nurse so kindly put it just before Wife was wheeled to the elevator, "There's not a leaf that falls from a tree if isn't God's Will."<br />
<br />
Before Catholics receive communion, we say this prayer, together, as the priest stands at the altar and holds the transubstantiated bread above his head. "Lord," goes the refrain, "I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." At every opportunity the faithful are proclaiming their insignificance before God, and it is a comfort to them, that they are but small motes in the face of a higher form of consciousness.<br />
<br />
Lately, that is what I miss. Holocausts, earthquakes, breast cancer, wars, miscarriages, poverty, calamity of every kind; I want to renounce the rational reasons for them all--resource scarcity, group-psychology, plate tectonics, cellular science--and embrace the expansive largeness of God and admit my own feeble grasp of His plans. <br />
<br />
I wish I could go back to time when I could just sit in a pew, inhale the fragrance of burning incense, chant in time with brother and sister parishioners, close my eyes, open my heart and watch my questions and doubts float with the sweet-smelling churls of smoke into the air above the apse, toward God, who should know what to do with them.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-28676653222041429762011-01-25T18:56:00.000-08:002011-01-25T18:56:16.882-08:00State this Union, buddyI'm not watching the president's State of Union speech. I usually do, even when I don't like the president very much. And I still kinda like this one. Not sure what it is this time around. Possible reasons:<br />
<br />
-I've stopped taking my ADD meds because I haven't had any time to write--so why bother?--and so I could go to sleep at a decent hour and feel semi-human again. So maybe I'm a little more detached than usual. I'm definitely more tired than usual. <br />
<br />
-I'm still depressed over the Patriots loss, even though I understand that the Jets played the best possible game they could, the Pats are still very, very young, and the offensive coordinator is a fucking moron who can't adjust in-game and for some reason thinks Ben-Jarvis Green-Ellis can't punish an opposing defense the way tiny Danny Woodhead can. I also understand that I'm too old to really care this much, and that the Celtics are going to ruin in the playoffs. But this could have been Tom Brady's shot at a fourth ring, which would put him in Montana territory, and they're going to be even better next year, which would have been a shot at an unprecedented fifth ring, which is just nuts...so yeah, I'm still bummed.<br />
<br />
-We might have to move in a month, I have no job, and even if I do get one in the immediate future, I don't want to leave the kid with a babysitter, even one I trust and like. What's the point of having kids if you pass them off to someone else during the only 5 years when they really belong to you, before school and friends and all that crap? The only consolation would be if I got a job where I made enough money so Wife could stay home. But that will never happen because my skills don't match what the market wants and I can't get an interview to save my....do I even need to explain this?<br />
<br />
-Wife got me a Nook Color for Christmas, and it has rocked my reading world. She's smooth like that. Really. Best present ever. I've read four or five books already, and I only started using it for real during the first week of January.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.weakstream.us/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/brooklyn-decker.jpg">-Brooklyn Decker </a>has been on TV a lot--she's in that awful-looking Adam Sandler movie we've all seen a thousand times--and thus, frying my brain. Did she really date Andy Roddick? A tennis player? Have some self-respect, sweetheart. If you're going to settle, make it a hockey player. At least they're rich <b>and</b> tough. And maybe even a dirty <a href="http://moranmustangs.org/colinb/files/2010/01/alexander-ovechkin.jpg">Russian</a>, which I guess is kind of cool. Well, cooler than a mustachioed <a href="http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/images/photos/001/083/394/107209261_crop_340x234.jpg">Canadian</a>, anyway.<br />
<br />
-I keep wondering why I can't get a story published. This starts with me silently accusing all the editors of being elitist losers who don't understand my genius, slowly morphs into me recriminating myself for being unrealistic about my own lack of actual talent, detours into a bout of TV watching and alcohol consumption, and comes full circle back to where it all started. It actually takes up way more time than you'd think.<br />
<br />
-Maybe it's that there are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone, in fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing. (totally stole 99% of this from American Psycho) <br />
<br />
-You can find anything on the internet! Anything! The possibility for distraction is endless. Observe: the greatest opening to any show, ever, in the history of television.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: black; width: 368px;"><div style="padding: 4px;"><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" base="." flashvars="" height="293" src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:southparkstudios.com:255330" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="360"></embed><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 4px; padding: 4px; text-align: left;"><b><a href="http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s13e13-dances-with-smurfs">Dances With Smurfs</a></b><br />
Tags: <a href="http://www.southparkstudios.com/" style="color: #ffcc00; display: block; float: right; font-weight: bold; position: relative; text-decoration: none; top: -1.33em;">SOUTH<br />
PARK</a><a href="http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/episodes/s13e13-dances-with-smurfs">more...</a></div></div></div><br />
<br />
Whine whine whine.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-90261957140823122962011-01-07T21:35:00.000-08:002011-01-07T21:35:56.451-08:00What We Lose<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_usyr_o6DP4U/TQPZIvLPJqI/AAAAAAAAAFs/Ft4GL240nM8/s1600/IMG_7388.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_usyr_o6DP4U/TQPZIvLPJqI/AAAAAAAAAFs/Ft4GL240nM8/s320/IMG_7388.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
That title sounds more depressing than it's meant to.<br />
<br />
The wife and I were just discussing the idea that when we think of what it will be like to have a second kid, we envision a different version of the guy in the picture above and not a completely new person with his or her own appearance, personality and quirks. I imagine that this happens to everyone, it's not that strange, and what else do we do but project unto the future what we've experienced in the past?<br />
<br />
It's the past that's on my mind right now. I usually don't like saying how everything changes when you have a kid, even though it's true. It just sounds so pompous the way some people say it, as if people without kids don't go through their own set of changes over time. If I had to clarify the statement, it's not that life changes more or less when you have a kid, it's that you have a constant reminder of how much it's happening. Before kids, our lives did alter in important ways from year to year, month to month, and in really extreme cases, week to week and day to day. But we only became aware of it after some significant event (a death, birth, wedding, graduation, ect.) that caused us to take a moment, look back, and realize that who we were back at point A was not who we are here at point B.<br />
<br />
What having a baby does is insert a point of constant point of contrast. Think about it. In the first two years of life we go from taking our meals at mom's boobs to eating bread, potatoes, broccoli, chicken, whatever adults eat. We go from being a spasming, screeching blob to someone who can walk, run and climb. We learn a language. We get teeth. We learn how to use one of the two features that distinguish humanity from the rest of animal kingdom, our hands. We think of our brains as being so developed but really, we probably never learn as much after the age of two than before it.<br />
<br />
Like all parents, we've taken a lot of pictures and a bunch of videos over the last nineteen months. Talking about the next baby led us to go back over our documentation of the current one. What struck me so hard wasn't just how far K has come since he was born, but how much I've forgotten about it. My mother thinks K might have been colicky those first few months and the wife tells me that yeah, he did cry a lot at first, but try as I might, I can't remember if he did or not. I walk around thinking I remember everything about his life to this point, except the pics and video prove otherwise. We used to really, really worry about when he would walk. Other kids his age, and some a little younger, started way before him. We questioned each other all the time. Is it normal? Did we do something wrong? Now he runs around like a maniac and that is what is normal. Until I saw a video the wife took while I was in Ireland of K crawling around the apartment, I'd completely forgotten all those fears and doubts, and, more disconcerting, I'd forgotten <i>how</i> he used to crawl. The way he'd come across a toy or a shoe, pick it up, inspect it, toss it behind his back and move on. For a certain amount of time that was the defining feature of how he moved, and now it's just gone.<br />
<br />
It makes me wonder just how much we'd lose if we didn't have the ability to record some moments. A year from now, if I never returned to this post and didn't have access to a certain video, will I remember the way he first said the letters of the alphabet, specifically, his way of saying Y, "Yahiiiii...," and W, "Double-Oo!" Will I forget how he'll find the dog laying on the floor, sit down and scoot backwards on his butt until he's sitting with his back leaning against her stomach? Would all this just be gone, or are cranks correct when they say that modern technology has made our brains lazy and without all the gadgets I'd be forced to remember more?<br />
<br />
I suppose it's inevitable that some things will stick and some won't. There are faces of guys I worked with or people I hung out with in college that I could not for the life of me attach a name to, and these people I saw every day for months and months. But I thought it would be different with my own kid, you know? Sometimes I wonder why I've retained what memories I have from when I was kid. It isn't like they form a coherent vision of what my life was like during those times. Mostly it's a jumble of random moments I have a hard time setting in the correct order. I used to think, Well, you were a kid, not fully formed, a lot going on, unaware at that point that at some point in the future I will want to think back and remember the smell of a room or the sound of someones voice or what it felt like the first time I really rode a bike without training wheels. Now I think it has less to do with being a kid and more to do with the nature of our memories. The conscious portion of our brain is a shadow of our unconscious in terms of size and capacity. The unconscious is the one doing most of the work and it chooses what to retain and what to jettison independent of what I may want at the time. And the amount of what it chooses to lose dwarfs what it deems necessary to keep. <br />
<br />
I said this post would less depressing than the title, and despite all that stuff up there, I meant it. Having consciousness is great and all, but I think we forget sometimes that the more basic functions of the neural network encased by our skulls are what's really important when it comes to kids, love, family, and the memory of all the interactions we experience that constitute our relationship to the world outside our minds. The information that is lost vs. what is kept is crucial to our existence, don't get me wrong, but where they are impermanent and fleeting, the true muscles of the subconscious--instinct and emotion--usually last as long as we do. I may not remember the details of every last milestone K reaches, or those of babies that have yet come to pass, but that feeling I get from watching them happen will always be there, and I'll recognize it for what it is every time. That's all I really need. The rest is just details.<br />
<br />
And anyway, we have a camera.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-38908955862533174732010-12-20T22:19:00.000-08:002013-06-25T14:04:13.361-07:00Network Writing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
There are certain stories my parents have been telling me since I was a kid, repeated over and over, and they have been embedded in my head as a sort of family mythology. It's a very personal collection, I'm sure. There may be some overlap, but my guess is that my sister and brothers place different importance on different stories. Each inherited history is our own, based on individual interests, character traits, and order of birth. Here are two from my catalog, the first that came time while writing this.<br />
<br />
-My dad was about sixteen when he did some volunteer work for one of the nuns that had been his teacher at Scared Heart. He and a friend would pull up to the house where the nuns lived, a kid a few years older than them would get in the car, and they would drive a few hours north where they would meet another car. The passenger would get into the new car and continue his journey to Canada, hoping to avoid a trip to Vietnam. <br />
<br />
-One Sunday, my mother and her friend accompanied my grandfather to Sunday Mass at St. Mary's. During the homily, the priest, critiquing the youth culture of the late 60's/early 70's, declared that all sixteen year old boys were criminals and all sixteen year old girls were whores. When the mass was over, my grandfather told my mother and her friend to go wait in the car. When the priest had finished saying good bye to the rest of the parishioners at the doors of the church, my grandfather grabbed him with both hands by the frock, informed him that his sixteen year old daughter and her friend of the same age had been in the pews during his homily, that they were fine, upstanding young ladies, and that if the priest ever insulted them in such a rude manner again, the Father could expect to get his teeth knocked out. My mother heard her devoutly Catholic father have this conversation with the priest from across the parking lot.<br />
<br />
I didn't choose these stories, from the hundreds I carry with me, with any purpose in mind--although I do find it interesting that they both involved very dramatic examples of churchly functions--other than to illustrate my point: parents pass down stories.<br />
<br />
At 18 months old, Kieran isn't getting any family history from me. Numbers, the alphabet, the names of things he can see (Elmo! Truck! Ceiling! Joe!) constitute the majority of our conversations. But someday, way, way in the future, he's going to get the story of the year I spent in grad school a few months after he was born. I don't know what form it will take because I don't know what that year will mean in the larger context of our lives ten, twelve or eighteen years from now. What I do know is that he's going to wonder what I was doing there, and why. If my current success rate with friends, relatives, and people I meet are any indication, I'm going to need a better explanation if I have any hope of him ever understanding exactly what that year, and whatever happens after it, was all about.<br />
<br />
The technical answer: I received a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree from Boston University. Kieran's first question will probably go like this: "What the hell is that?" He wouldn't be alone. "Well," I'll say, "in my case it was a graduate degree in fiction writing, but you could get an MFA in writing poetry, playwriting, painting, opera, sculpture...all kinds of artistic stuff. That make sense?"<br />
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He'll nod a couple times, then after he's thought about how to make his next comment without offending me (he'll be a good kid like that) Kieran will say, "Yeah Dad, it makes sense, but, like, do you really need to go to school to be an artist? Aren't you just born that? You can't teach talent, right?"<br />
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Here, I'll falter. "No, no, you can't teach talent, but it still helps to, you know, go to school, because talent...you go to learn tricks, you know? Craft. Not that you couldn't learn that on your own, because lots of people do, or they think they do but really they had people teaching them since they were kids and...and...shit. Go get me a beer, please."<br />
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Clever imagined dialogue aside, it really is hard to explain why you would need to go to school to be writer, and there have been a thousand articles written about MFA writing and most of them say the same thing. MFAs quash individual creativity. All MFA writing sounds the same. It's a scam by established writers to get a paycheck and by the school earn more tuition. The writers of old didn't need MFAs.<br />
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It's hard to argue with a lot of this criticism, but I could do a good job of it. Creativity only gets quashed if you let it; lots of writing sounds the same because it's mediocre, not because of where the writers went to school; show me all those theoretical math and poli-sci professors who aren't just collecting an easy paycheck. In fact, show me all those investment bankers, politicians, marketing execs, whoever, that aren't doing the same thing. Generalities are the last resort of the stupid.<br />
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I could go on. Better than that though, in the interest of being able to explain it to my son at some distant date, I'll offer a theory as why aspiring writers, myself included, can benefit from getting an MFA. <br />
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In his op-ed for the New York Times last week, David Brooks compared Obama-style liberalism with the more dogmatic brand. Cluster liberals vs. Network liberals. What does this have to do with writing programs? Here's the money quote:<br />
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<i>Cluster liberals (like cluster conservatives) view politics as a battle between implacable opponents. As a result, they believe victory is achieved through maximum unity. Psychologically, they tend to value loyalty and solidarity. They tend to angle toward situations in which philosophical lines are clearly drawn and partisan might can be bluntly applied. </i></div>
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<i>Network liberals share the same goals and emerge from the same movement. But they tend to believe — the nation being as diverse as it is and the Constitution saying what it does — that politics is a complex jockeying of ideas and interests. They believe progress is achieved by leaders savvy enough to build coalitions. Psychologically, network liberals are comfortable with weak ties; they are comfortable building relationships with people they disagree with.</i></div>
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If you've never read anything about network science, stop reading and look it up. Find out when "The Power of Six Degrees" is next playing on the Science Channel and watch it. Buy Steven Johnson's book <u>Where Good Ideas Come From</u> and read it. Once you do, you'll understand that the whole basis of the field is "connectivity." Connections, be they social, govermental, artistic, technological or neural, make the world hum and throb. The internet is a great example of this. Every time you click a link on an article you're reading, that is using the connective power of the web (an apt image now, huh?) to expand the range of knowledge being injested. Mr. Brooks is suggesting that Obama's Network-style liberalism works because the adherents aren't afraid to reach out and make connections to accomplishing a goal. Network liberals "are comfortable building relationships with people they disagree with." They maximize the potential for success by reaching out to every potential connection in the given field. Without Networks there would have been no Enlightenment, no Calculus, no atom bomb, no Google. More and more we're discovering that as much as no man is an island unto himself, the same goes for ideas. The image of the lone genius/inventor/artists toiling away in isolation is a false one, by and large. Big ideas come from groups. But you don't have to believe me. Watch for yourself:<br />
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So what, you may want to ask me, does this have to do with explaining an MFA program to Kieran? <br />
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Here is how my MFA program worked, and most, if not all, follow the same model: each student submits a story to the class for critique. In my case it was ten classmates and the teacher running the workshop. Each story is read, a specific amount of time is devoted to a discussing the merits of the piece, during which the author cannot comment. He or she can't defend themselves or explain their motives. They can only sit back, listen to what is said, and take notes. At the end of the discussion, the author receives all the copies of their story from the class with comments and suggestions made directly on the text or in the margins. <br />
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Before I got into BU, I was writing a in a vacuum; I had no access to a group of people separate from my family and friends who could approach my writing from an objective point of view and offer new ideas. I would find a few hours to write after work and whatever I finished I would file away, never to be seen by eyes not my own. I didn't have writer friends, I don't live in Brooklyn where there are a phalanx of writers hacking away on laptops in every corner coffee house. It just wasn't my world. The same was true for most of my classmates.<br />
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What an MFA program does is create a network where one did not previously exist. You are instantly connected to individuals who share your goals. You become part of a collaborative effort, and exchange of ideas concerning character, structure and plot. There is no guarantee that this will bear fruit. Not every MFA graduate goes on to win a Pulitzer or even publish a book. Risk is involved, but that's true of anything, isn't it? What mitigates that risk is the promise of making lasting connections, forming bonds with a few members of your class that last beyond the duration of that year, or two, in school. For me this meant that returning to normal life wouldn't mean returning to the vacuum. In spite of what I had always thought, it wasn't rebelling against a system that helped foster and support my creativity, but joining one.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5711288318483077900.post-1798237880413993382010-12-11T12:46:00.000-08:002010-12-11T13:49:17.864-08:00K-MittsHere is what now passes for a good time at our house: smearing ketchup on ones face, followed by jauntily chasing the cat while wearing a pair a mittens.<br />
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I would say that this is a radical departure from my former life, but then I think back to the days before we got married and had the K-Man: various cookouts, parties, weddings, post-wedding parties, holiday parties, Red Sox games, that trip to Vegas, weeks on the Cape, UFC nights at the apartment...really, this isn't that much different. Slightly less alcohol (among other things) involved now, but the spirit is the same.<br />
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This got me thinking about getting older and how much we really change over the years. K-Man, Muck and me visited my grandmother on her 85th birthday the other day. While sitting around and shooting the breeze, my grandfather and I somehow ended up on the subject of our last name.<br />
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"You know where it comes from, don't you?"<br />
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"Sure," I said, "I found that website." The website I refer to is one dedicated to Tormey Family genealogy--I think I posted about it here before--in which they explain that our last name is derived from something that roughly translates to "Thor's People," a relic of our Nordic Ancestry. Anyway, the discussion veered off into familiar territory, if you've ever spoken with my grandfather: his theory that our family is really descended from a tribe of nomadic Jews from Lebanon who fled their homeland on the instruction of a prophecy that they find a land with no snakes. Or something.<br />
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Now, I'm not saying my grandfather is wrong about his theory. He's read more about it than almost anyone I know. Instead, the point of the story is this: it would be easy to chalk this outlandish explanation of my family history to my grandfather's age (he's almost 90) but the truth of the matter is, as far back as I can remember, he's always been talking about crazy-sounding shit like this. It isn't that his brain is breaking down or what ever predictable result of living through the depression and fighting through the War and surviving disco, the '86 World Series and George Bush Jr. My grandfather is just a weird dude, much in the same way that most male Tormeys are just weird dudes. I am no exception.<br />
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For about 8 months of a year when I was two or three, I wouldn't leave the house without a towel pinned to my shirt or tied around my neck. This is one of my mother's favorite stories about me, one that no girl I brought home ever managed to escape. The towel was my cape, as I had seen the Superman movie and become obsessed. This is a cute story if told in a vacuum, that is, if you never hear another thing about my life after I started wearing the cape and pretending that I was The Last Son of Krypton. But to anyone who knows anything at all about what happened after that, that story always serves as the "Aha!" moment, the key to understanding that yes, I have always been this way, obsessed with super-heroes and stories, since before my fourth birthday. It wasn't the result of clever marketing campaign. There was no childhood trauma that left me starved for a savior figure (my rejection of the Catholic Church, and religion in general, prove this). No, as it turns out, I AM JUST BUILT THIS WAY.<br />
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So what's really been on mind since snapping that picture of K-Mitts and talking about family history is this idea that people change as they get older. I used to think this was true, but now that I'm getting to watch someone become a person from scratch, I'm not so sure. Once K's personality began to manifest, around 6 months or so, if I remember right, he's been nothing but pure K since. He's grown a lot, got some teeth, stopped depending on his mother's milk to live, crawled, walked, run. One constant has been his obsession with letters. He can't get enough of them, especially "W." He loves books and Elmo/Ernie/Cookie Monster/Sesame Street/his cousin Charlie, too, and has for as long as I can remember.<br />
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I'm sure every parent can think back about their children from the early days to present and do something similar. If she were still around, I bet my great-grandmother Nana-Banana Tormey could do the same with my grandfather. So, what's the point? I'm not sure. I haven't thought about this enough yet. But what I'm starting to believe is this about nature vs. nurture: we are all born with specific traits--physical, emotional, psychological--that are embedded within our DNA and cannot be altered by anything but a bottle of Jameson, and even then, the change is only temporary. These traits are neither good or bad, they just are. For years I was told my ADD was a learning disability, but you know what? I learn fine. Your school just sucks for people like me. That's not anyone's fault, it just is. So while our personality and predilections are shaped from those first moments of enjoining DNA and cell division, whether we become good or bad people, whatever that means, relies mostly on how our parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, whoever, react to who we are. If we're made to feel comfortable with it, we probably do fine. If not, wires short out and get crossed, and trouble comes. You can still end up OK, it's just harder.<br />
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So does all this mean that when I see sixteen year old Kieran mowing the lawn in July with a pair of mitten on, I'll leave it alone? My guess is that if it means I don't have to mow the lawn, the kid could wear a dress for all I care.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04055617659370230399noreply@blogger.com9