Daybreak
A gradual head-slide of oily dirt making its grand rounds, my hair keeps people at a comfortable distance, except for the other grease heads: downtrodden musicians dedicated to the grind, autistic gamers who excel in AP Calculus and Pokémon battles, the 3rd shift FedEx loader who stacks boxes like Tetris. My people, perhaps. For the most part though, I participate without belonging. Kaleidoscope consumerism.
German Sausage, Biscuits, and Cake
Breakfast is ruined by my shirt tag scraping against my bare skin. My Ph.D. in Romantic philosophy is of no help to me against such irritation. The lachsschinken sausage is cold, as are the biscuits, but I decide to air fry the chocolate cake for austerity. Perhaps it will burn off the excess cadmium. Let them eat contaminated cake.
The Age of Work
The commute to work is easy—down the wallpapered hall, turn left past the bathroom. (Don’t step on the cat.) I sit down in a high-back executive chair. (Don’t sit on the cat.) The traffic whirring past my home office window reminds me of leaves blowing around in autumn. I have a cousin named Autumn, though I rarely see her, especially since I stopped attending funerals: “Let the dead bury their dead,” Jesus cogently instructed.
Management watches my mouse closely from a distance, so I keep my mouse jiggler well-powered so I can spend time daydreaming as a young person in their 20s should. Slack messages arrive: hurry, send this, send that, did you double check the slides, hurry. The age of work is an age of hurry; “fast-paced work environment” is boilerplate language for most job postings in the US. Today, distance is closeness.
Little Morals
I throw out personalized return address labels that 501(c) organizations send me.
I always place the lane divider bar behind my groceries on the supermarket’s conveyer belt.
I don’t throw milk jugs filled with urine out my passenger window on the highway.
I visit my mother for 20 minutes every Mother’s Day.
I don’t spend any time on Biblical exegesis.
I steal corporate company time, but I pay local businesses with cash or check so they don’t incur credit card processing fees.
I visit Haulover Beach each year for Christmas with my girlfriend and her lover.
I use an EdgeGuard broadcast spreader for my organic lawn fertilizer to create a stark, straight line of color contrast between my neighbor’s grass and my own.
I refuse to use catsup sweetened with stevia, nor will I call it ketchup.
The Cat Pisses on the Floor
The old cat pisses on the floor for two apparent reasons: because she’s old and to spite me for not cleaning the litter box. I thought about putting the cat down but decided to keep her alive to have another heartbeat around the house.
Origins
Before I started data entry work from home, I worked as an adjunct professor of philosophy teaching courses in bioethics and the philosophy of love. Before that, I sold card stock paper and digital scales to teenagers at Staples. Before that, I ran a Taco Bell kitchen with drive-thru line times of 20 minutes or more on busy nights. Before that, I was a child taught to believe in a personal God with white beard outside time who loves me dearly:
“I am nothing. I have nothing. I can do nothing,” was the hallowed mantra I was taught growing up, an ostensible tonic for all of life’s uncertainty and misery. “Turn it over to the Lord, brother.”
My Doorbell
My doorbell is also a camera, though I use it more for entertainment than security: watching neighborhood cats, food delivery people, package delivery people, large butterflies and moths, fire trucks flying past, and the occasional scout selling cookies or picnic tables. I usually only watch, but when the Jehovah’s Witnesses arrive today, I invite them in for stale cookies and a robust Argentinian malbec.
They decline both my gifts, so I quickly invite them to leave.
Clocking Out
With a full inbox and Slack feed of unanswered messages (all urgent, always urgent!), I watch the clock and wait for my shift to be over. I think about how clocking out each day is a kind of practicing for the big Clocking Out. What happens to the spirit when one dies? What happens to the cat if I die? What happens to that old pair of corduroy pants in the closet that I can’t fit into but have plans to take to a tailor?
Getting the Mail
I only get the mail once a week on Mondays, since Mondays are usually dreadful anyway. Overdue bill notices. A political advertisement from a religious extremist. A utility line insurance solicitation. A violent letter from the local tax agency. A birthday card from my daughter I never see who now lives in the Czech Republic. More unsolicited return address labels. A package containing a book on the phenomenology of BDSM practitioners, which I start reading immediately.
Dinner
I always skip lunch, but I never miss dinner. Lemon risotto with fresh lemons from a neglected but thriving tree in the backyard with a side of opium. Nietzsche would be pleased.
Digestif
I practice my knot ties on a silicone doll with hemp rope: wrist cuffs, chest harness, spreader bar, alien baby. I send photos to my girlfriend who is spending the month with her lover after saying I was too distant. A foreplay for things to come—perhaps.
Flossing
I never floss my teeth due to an acute fear of blood, which I’ve always found to be too light a hue of red. I brush my teeth at night carefully, slowly. Negative dialectic.
Sleep
My silk pillowcase is stained several shades darker from my head, sleep connecting me with past and future lives, technicolor dreams rewriting all the greyscale narratives life brings me each day. Alone, here and now, I rest. I skip through deathly lily of the valley shadows, and I dream of pet-safe lilies.