I didn't think I'd be quoting Shakespeare but I also didn't think the official mascot of 2020 would be a little man from the village called Mr. Death. Hand yourself some points if you got the Monty Python reference. It's been a weird year, that's for sure. Weird is the word I chose because of all the myriad adjectives I can come up with, it's the cleanest of the bunch. I'm a New Yorker by birth so my alphabet often starts with the letter F.
Besides trying my hand at recipes and teaching myself some visual and audio tricks to feel somewhat productive, I've also taken to doing some reflection, as have many of you often while engaging in some mundane task.
Have to you cleaned out a closet yet? I bet if you have, you've been likely stopped in your tracks by some new discovery. It's like those spring cleaning days when you're making good progress until you run into a box of photos (yep, they still exist). Decision time: do you go through it or not? You opt for the latter because procrastination feels so good when you're doing something you don't really want to. Game over. It's time for a voyage back to yesterday and with computer at hand and an interconnected world, you decide to start scanning pics and looking up people, places and things you remember in every single one of those photos. "Gee, where did the time go?"will be the next words you utter.
I did something similar recently, but for me it wasn't photos. It was an encounter with things I wrote decades ago. Decades. Ugh. I kept a journal many years ago, some deep thoughts, many strange and shallow ones too. It was at the behest of a high school teacher who was walking us through the world of creative writing and who wanted to encourage us to explore our 'everything' ... and then share it with him. Ooh boy. It was awkward, sharing your inner thoughts and then having someone else comment on them. I mean, imagine doing something like that today? /<snark>.
Well, little did I know then that it would allow me to be expressive in so many different ways later in life, especially given my introversive tendencies. The journal is long gone and that's a regret I have to this day. I got rid of it because I was scared someone would chance upon it and discover more about me than I wanted to let on. I was the frantic politico shredding documents deep into the night. I was my own reputation.com.
I hate that I did that. I'd love to revisit my late-teen, early-20s self and f-bomb him into giving up the worst idea in the history of me. Where was Cher when I needed her? But it wasn't shreds of the journal I stumbled upon. It was a series of essays and poems I had written when I felt most alone; most in tune with what mattered to me in life at the time. It was also the birth of my contempt for the worship of corporate order and protocol.
I spent a great deal of my "party" years doing anything but, working weekend overnight shifts as a proofreader for a Wall Street law firm. I got that job as a recommendation from a co-worker at the multiplex theater where I was an usher. I can't believe I'm saying that. Hearing my laments over the minimum wage job and my need for extra cash, my colleague Mary planted a seed. She was a small-statured firebrand with a voice ten times her height which she used to great effect at the Bronx movie theater. She said "hey, they hire school-age proofreaders at this law firm on Wall Street." It was a pretty sweet gig if you didn't mind burning your weekends along with that midnight oil during some of the most formative years of your social development. In addition to overtime hours from the start of your night, if you worked at least six hours, you got a limo ride back home on their dime the following morning.
It worked like this: You were paired off with a partner, not a law partner but a proofreading partner. In a small room, one would read reams of paperwork full of legalese to the other who would then mark the sheets with corrections. Once done, it would go back to the word processors which in the 1980s was done by a team of very nice ladies who would then make the corrections to the documents, print them, and resubmit them for further proofreading. It could take hours, and some documents revisited you days and weeks later, revision after revision after revision. I grew to fear the inbox.
Fun fact: Everyone there was at least 15-30+ years my senior. Smoking was allowed inside the building so imagine my joy at spending most of my hours sitting next to a chain-smoking hot head whose protruding skull veins pulsed every time he'd miss something in the document. His "g*@dammits" were comically rhythmic, keeping pace with the aggressive taps of a new unfiltered Camel cigarette against the box of his quickly dwindling supply. I couldn't relate to the environment at all. People seemed spent, dull, robotic. There was no one like me. But it was extra cash. It was also deathly boring.
So, during down times (there were long hours of it), I would wander throughout the accessible floors of the law firm to the extent my access card allowed. Late at night, the views of the World Trade Center on one side of the building and the bridges spanning the East River seen from the other side were astounding. You couldn't ask for a more classic downtown scene. I worked overnight weekend hours, Friday through Sunday from 9pm to 6am with an hour for lunch. Lunch. In the middle of the night. I think I just figured out why I sometimes wake up hungry at 3am.
The cafeteria was always closed and the parts that had food on display were caged off during off hours. All that was accessible at those hours were a couple of vending machines and a few booths pressed against massive windows with views that went for miles. That sight of the city at night, its vehicular blood flow pulsing through every lighted artery, that was solace. I spent a little more than my share of "lunch" hours just gazing. And thinking.
That's where I got the inspiration to pen my thoughts. Only I didn't use a pen. I snuck in some time at an empty word processing station and learned where all the printers and copiers were so that I could send my work there before anyone could intercept it. I also became fascinated by the brand new golf cart-sized copy machines capable of enlarging anything ... and probably ingesting anything too.
My document of choice? The Far Side cartoons in the newspaper. I recently came across copies I made of those along with my writings. Here's a color sample of one I printed out from '86 during my waning days at the firm.
Sounds important, doesn't it? The Firm. I still can't believe I was "working in corporate" so soon in life while everyone at school, in between beer chugs, was talking about all the high paying jobs they were going to get when they finished their studies. Then again, many weren't in need of second or third jobs so they were just following the familiar paths others in their families probably took. I was just looking for the meaning of life and my place in the world. I didn't want to burst their bubbles, but I got a peek into the future and wanted to yell to everyone: "run away!" But they'd have to find that out for themselves, I guess.
Oh yea, the point of this blogpost: the writings I came across. I wrote poems and essays that shed light on what I thought of life, love, media, politics, religion and family. The one that I share with you below is simple, but that's why I like it. It was based on an individual I came across during the rare occasions I would be at the law firm during daylight hours to pick up extra income. She was a sweet, friendly woman whose life seemed so Manhattan to this Bronx boy. People from NYC will get that. She shared a conversation with a co-worker that I could barely make out between the "g*@dammits" from the man who always seemed to be in that office no matter what hour it was. All I heard was something something "doctor", something something "cancer" and other whispers. On days the sun could be seen dancing between the Twin Towers before setting somewhere over New Jersey, she would comment. "Oh what a beautiful sunset. Everyone, you need to see this." Few in the office listened. I was locked in a room with a human volcano who would simply belch out a "who cares" under his breath. I should have said "I do" and walked away. I didn't.
But during my many quiet hours, I thought about her joy. I didn't know what she was facing in life and I don't know what became of her. I can't even remember her name. But her interest in that particular sunset gave me an appreciation for things so much larger than we are – things we don't always understand. Wherever you are, thank you.
Which brings me to the title of this blog. If you want to understand who you are today, pay attention to your past, particularly the little events in life that didn't mean much at the time. I encountered another poem I'll share some other time. It's a bit darker, but so fitting for our times – shockingly so. Who knows what else we have tucked away somewhere we can reuse today. Happy cleaning everyone!
A SUNSET
With disdain toward the routine
I sit and stare at walls of white
The color of the office scene
The dread I have to fight
Every day the same "hellos"
Followed by the old laments
And looking out of closed windows
How sad, the day is spent
Late afternoon the Sun would fall
Slowly, yet for us unseen
Except one woman who would call
For us to see it so serene
Indifference is all we would show
Have we not seen such before?
Her eyes would share the orange glow
And we, our faces toward our chores
Why is this to her so dear?
A different sun she will not see
But, while looking at her smile of cheer
The realization came to me
This portrait -- one that man has hidden
With colors fading much too fast
Is one admired in time forbidden
For said warm sight could be one's last.
-- MAC
January, 1987
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