I finally got the raise I've been waiting for. My next paycheck will have an extra dollar and seventy-five cents over the Massachusetts minimum for every hour I work. That's another whole dollar above what I was getting before. Rejoice! A raise in the middle of the Great Recession! Certainly I must be doing something right - right? If working ten times harder than I did in the stores for an extra thirty-five dollars a week before taxes counts. That dollar was eleven percent of my pay. When I say I got an eleven percent raise, it almost sounds like a decent wage increase. Then I remember that I have to pay rent, utilities, and loans, eat, and I would like to be able to acquire some nicer clothes, and invest in that thing I earned a degree in, but have ignored for the past four months.
Financial revelations have led me to take a second job calling from school and asking people to help fund scholarships and technology upgrades (and pay the bills). I was paid Twenty-eight dollars to solicit Four-hundred and thirty dollars worth of donations the other night. I barely earned my keep during our first two weeks calling young alumni who had never given before (some of whom graduated with me), but I justified the school's investment in me with a single night of calling. Hooray for me. All I wanted was a paycheck.
One of my teachers from my last semester would tell me that I should be amply compensated for my work. The service I provide of employer is a valuable commodity, and I should demand a fair wage and demonstrate my value to the company by working just hard enough to earn what I'm getting paid now. Unfortunately, this country is a nation of employees run by employers. We are supposed to be of the people, for the people, by the people, and in a sense that is still the case. Our bosses have just convinced us that it is in our best interest to make it as easy as possible for them to make truckloads of money. Theoretically they would re-invest that in us, but big surprise, they would rather invest in their bank accounts than ours.
Our relatively high unemployment rates work out pretty well for them too. It can't be that hard to find workers when five (let alone today's ten to twenty) percent of the workforce is under or unemployed.
I find myself in a struggle, not only for work and a living wage, but for meaningful work. You could probably call me an idealist. I want to be useful - not to a CEO or board of directors as a money making machine, but to everyone. And I want to see the effects of my actions first hand. I guess that is kind of a steep price to ask in a global economy.
I'm sick of hearing about the bottom line. "Just the facts ma'am" doesn't work when your decisions affect people.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Adventures in the dream world
REM cycles rarely grant me the privilege of dreams. Usually I lay in bed and feel myself drifting into oblivion, and next think I know, it's morning (be it three, or seven-thirty). I may dream, but nothing rises past consciousness. Creativity doesn't always come to me during the sunlit hours, but my sleeping brain can sure whip up a doozy or two when conditions are right.
Sometime this morning I was back at my parents' house, down in the living room, looking out the bay windows at a tumultuous grey sky. A storm was brewing, and there was news of a tornado warning in the air. My father and I watched a funnel form and snake down from the sky, reaching for land. Next thing we knew, the vortex was sucking at the house. Somehow the timber and plaster kept their hold on the foundation while the dream fell silent. Actually, this is where the silence made itself known. I can't remember a single sound before the ceiling began to rearrange itself. That's the only way I can explain how I watched the tornado move over our home. Its almost like the ceiling refused to be devoured by the sky. The plaster knew it had to hold, or else the entire structure would sail up into oblivion, falling a few hundred yards, or a few miles away, impaling steel and skin. Mist poured in through the fluxing hole, coating the ceiling. The tornado tried to slip in through the temporary cracks and yank the top of the house up like an arm. We worried about my mother asleep upstairs. Was the struggle with the ceiling a sign that it had succeeded in decapitating out home?
It was one of those minutes that lasted for hours. The house (at least the first floor's ceiling) beat back the vortex, and it subsided. The mist dissipated. We went to check on my mother. My dreams never have an ending.
------------
Second Dream was longer, more involved, and thus I am left with more holes. If the first was a vignette or a sketch, this was an hour long episode. Only an hour on a network though. It would probably need some ads to bring it up to length. It was a good short story.
I remember coming down metal stairs, situated in the middle of a stone platform, from somewhere, maybe nowhere. It seems now like something from a video game. I cleared the last couple of flights in a daring fashion, and a kid asked if I should really be doing that. There were people all around. Something important was happening. Maybe the president was going to be there, wherever it was. I walked to the edge, leaned on the railing, and was immediately greeted by a drooling dog lunging and barking at me. I jumped away. People stared. I waited to be taken in for questioning. Co-operating was better than yelling about my innocence.
In a barracks, a commander questioned me. I'm sure he could see I was no threat to whatever was happening. I think I took off my blazer to show him I was hiding nothing. I think I told him the story of the tornado. He took pity on me and let me go.
Flashback (I think) to the only incident was was worried about the commander discovering. I was walking down a wide, tree-line dirt lane, the one where Forrest Gump broke his leg braces and learned to run (RUN!), with some friends. We scored some pot. We made our way to town on the side of the road. We were just carrying our little baggies around like jackasses when a plainclothes cop (in rural Alabama?) came and busted us. He managed to grab my friends, but I booked it. Not nearly as fast or noble as my retarded predecessor (and by now it wasn't even his town anymore just any old ruralburb would do), but enough to elude my captor and toss my bag for someone else to find and smoke. I kept running, then walking, until the road turned into a grass lane lined with small houses. I had no idea where I was headed, and I felt like everyone in those homes was watching my walk of shame. Eventually I could see the dead looking end, and a girl came and struck up some banal conversation. She showed me the highway, a beautiful black lined with soft green about twenty yards away from the end of the lane. She offered me a ride.
Sometime this morning I was back at my parents' house, down in the living room, looking out the bay windows at a tumultuous grey sky. A storm was brewing, and there was news of a tornado warning in the air. My father and I watched a funnel form and snake down from the sky, reaching for land. Next thing we knew, the vortex was sucking at the house. Somehow the timber and plaster kept their hold on the foundation while the dream fell silent. Actually, this is where the silence made itself known. I can't remember a single sound before the ceiling began to rearrange itself. That's the only way I can explain how I watched the tornado move over our home. Its almost like the ceiling refused to be devoured by the sky. The plaster knew it had to hold, or else the entire structure would sail up into oblivion, falling a few hundred yards, or a few miles away, impaling steel and skin. Mist poured in through the fluxing hole, coating the ceiling. The tornado tried to slip in through the temporary cracks and yank the top of the house up like an arm. We worried about my mother asleep upstairs. Was the struggle with the ceiling a sign that it had succeeded in decapitating out home?
It was one of those minutes that lasted for hours. The house (at least the first floor's ceiling) beat back the vortex, and it subsided. The mist dissipated. We went to check on my mother. My dreams never have an ending.
------------
Second Dream was longer, more involved, and thus I am left with more holes. If the first was a vignette or a sketch, this was an hour long episode. Only an hour on a network though. It would probably need some ads to bring it up to length. It was a good short story.
I remember coming down metal stairs, situated in the middle of a stone platform, from somewhere, maybe nowhere. It seems now like something from a video game. I cleared the last couple of flights in a daring fashion, and a kid asked if I should really be doing that. There were people all around. Something important was happening. Maybe the president was going to be there, wherever it was. I walked to the edge, leaned on the railing, and was immediately greeted by a drooling dog lunging and barking at me. I jumped away. People stared. I waited to be taken in for questioning. Co-operating was better than yelling about my innocence.
In a barracks, a commander questioned me. I'm sure he could see I was no threat to whatever was happening. I think I took off my blazer to show him I was hiding nothing. I think I told him the story of the tornado. He took pity on me and let me go.
Flashback (I think) to the only incident was was worried about the commander discovering. I was walking down a wide, tree-line dirt lane, the one where Forrest Gump broke his leg braces and learned to run (RUN!), with some friends. We scored some pot. We made our way to town on the side of the road. We were just carrying our little baggies around like jackasses when a plainclothes cop (in rural Alabama?) came and busted us. He managed to grab my friends, but I booked it. Not nearly as fast or noble as my retarded predecessor (and by now it wasn't even his town anymore just any old ruralburb would do), but enough to elude my captor and toss my bag for someone else to find and smoke. I kept running, then walking, until the road turned into a grass lane lined with small houses. I had no idea where I was headed, and I felt like everyone in those homes was watching my walk of shame. Eventually I could see the dead looking end, and a girl came and struck up some banal conversation. She showed me the highway, a beautiful black lined with soft green about twenty yards away from the end of the lane. She offered me a ride.
Monday, September 14, 2009
There was another video like this circulating around a couple years ago and my only reaction was a well earned, "Wow!" Now I see another person's hands dashing across the screen, leaving behind a trail of fleeing Polish women, and I realize that intuition alone could not have guided her through her story. Those movements were gained through practice. Talent like that doesn't happen accidentally. People earn it by forcing themselves to keep endlessly improving.
This is the reason I have consistently found myself achieving nothing but mediocrity. If something didn't come easily, I dismissed it as an act of futility and gave up. I've known this is a problem for a while now, and I have been trying to correct my past transgressions of laziness through my photographic efforts, which have tapered off after graduation. However, the new Kodak film grant calls my name (well, I pine for it at least).
Home Alone
I have lived in a new apartment with the woman I love and a very good friend of ours for two weeks now, and tonight is the first time I have come home to an empty apartment. Home, for once, is being treated like an actual home, not just a place to sleep and relax while accomplishing (or ignoring) other things. For the past two years I have lived an increasingly transient lifestyle, spending more and more time away from my bed, and engrossed in either work or companionship, never quite feeling at home where all my things lived. Although it is slightly uncomfortable to be alone and witness a neutered tomcat grab a maladjusted, malnourished feminine feline still in possession of her reproductive system by the scruff of her neck and have his way with her. The Nature Channel plays right in my hallway. The only other thing I would change about having cats are the fur tumbleweeds.
Now they prowl around like nothing ever happened. The one in the tuxedo watches the traffic while the little girl - easily frightened- disappears for a few hours.
Now they prowl around like nothing ever happened. The one in the tuxedo watches the traffic while the little girl - easily frightened- disappears for a few hours.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Alec Soth, or how I wish I could take pictures,
I was going to write about "Passing by the Abercrombie and Fitch store the other day, I found a gathering of non-ironic plaid shirts," and how "this disturbed me for a moment until my neurons made the right connections... then it just disappointed me," but I'm sitting in the living room of my new apartment and can't sleep. Our shy cat Tsuki keeps jumping up onto the table by the window to watch the orange street, and I am excited about a new show of photography that opened at MassArt today.
Alec Soth's "Dog Days Bogota" has been one of my favorite photo books ever since I first laid eyes on it. He pictures are always wonderful documents made with elegant composition and full of soft colors. Wikipedia says, "His photography has a cinematic feel with elements of folklore that hint at a story behind the image." In a way, I suppose this is correct. Soth weaves between people presenting something strange and unique to the camera, and the environment they find themselves in, with all its ridiculous beauty. His photos exude compassion and respect. The change from large to medium formats for this book leaves less room for his usual rigid (yet natural) compositions, but only a little, leaving room for more heart in the photos, and a little less brain.
I envy the way he succeeds in treating both people and landscape in different and similar ways, letting circumstances dictate what happens. Mostly I envy the courage it takes to undertake photographic projects in such a manner.
Alec Soth's "Dog Days Bogota" has been one of my favorite photo books ever since I first laid eyes on it. He pictures are always wonderful documents made with elegant composition and full of soft colors. Wikipedia says, "His photography has a cinematic feel with elements of folklore that hint at a story behind the image." In a way, I suppose this is correct. Soth weaves between people presenting something strange and unique to the camera, and the environment they find themselves in, with all its ridiculous beauty. His photos exude compassion and respect. The change from large to medium formats for this book leaves less room for his usual rigid (yet natural) compositions, but only a little, leaving room for more heart in the photos, and a little less brain.
I envy the way he succeeds in treating both people and landscape in different and similar ways, letting circumstances dictate what happens. Mostly I envy the courage it takes to undertake photographic projects in such a manner.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The diploma arrives at my parents' house...
I hate moving. I hated moving my sister around two or three times a year when she went to college on the other side of the state. Driving west and up was my favorite part. I've always been a sucker for watching the world pass by in parallax. Moving meant lots of yelling and heavy lifting. Hard work with nothing to show. A big waste of time. But this isn't really anything new, no one likes moving.
Sifting through the rubble of a year (thank god that's all) is an imposing task, but I'm glad I can't pay someone else to do it for me. So much can fall by the wayside in the small space of a year. While filling up a bag with everything I thought would be important and other detritus that just seems to have missed earlier sacks I found an envelope bearing a few footprints from my desk chair. Inside was a card from my Grandmother, recently spirited away to the great unknown on the pirate ship Cancer, bestowed upon me on the advent of my graduation from Art School. Inside it reads in a shaky hand, still retaining some elegance,
In homage to the new
graduate
PETER
Much Love,
Janice
Sifting through the rubble of a year (thank god that's all) is an imposing task, but I'm glad I can't pay someone else to do it for me. So much can fall by the wayside in the small space of a year. While filling up a bag with everything I thought would be important and other detritus that just seems to have missed earlier sacks I found an envelope bearing a few footprints from my desk chair. Inside was a card from my Grandmother, recently spirited away to the great unknown on the pirate ship Cancer, bestowed upon me on the advent of my graduation from Art School. Inside it reads in a shaky hand, still retaining some elegance,
In homage to the new
graduate
PETER
Much Love,
Janice
The front of the card bears the image of a painting from 15th century Turkey, a miniature entitled "Offering gifts to the Sultan Selim II." Twenty-three men with identical faces and scraggly bears in multicolored robes and ridiculous tall hats are paying their homage to a thoroughly bored Sultan. I was never close to Janice. Old people have always made me uncomfortable. Even before my first experience with death, I associated the wrinkled and grey with the end of life, with senility, incontinence, and crabbiness. Maybe I just found their wealth of experience too imposing. Whatever the case may be, I regret not learning more about my forbears. It has taken me far too long to taste just a little bit of the richness of their experience. The tastes I can still manage now can't compare to what I could have found out if I had been curious from the beginning.
Apparently my family dynamic is a strange one. I love my family, but I just can't make myself take much of an interest in them. Caring and intimacy are separate. We are a humanistic bunch, I suppose. Respect is in good supply, respect for differing feelings and points of view, and a respect for privacy. I think that is partly Janice's fault. I only use blaming words because I am coming to terms with my own problems with interpersonal relations. I lack curiosity. Personalities attract me, but I always fail to make a connection on much more than a cordial level. It takes a lot for me to actually become involved in another person's life. Of course this is also a product of bullying and alienation in primary school. Those times are a long story of disappointment.
Something killed my curiosity. I've felt like my brain was missing something for a while now, and maybe that's it. Without desire, there is less room for disappointment, and a need to know - to experience - is a big catalyst. It's almost like my intellect has been neutered. There's a project. Grow a new curiosity gland, maybe near the hypothalamus. I think a part of that needs to be keeping this blog updated at least once a week.
Here goes...
Apparently my family dynamic is a strange one. I love my family, but I just can't make myself take much of an interest in them. Caring and intimacy are separate. We are a humanistic bunch, I suppose. Respect is in good supply, respect for differing feelings and points of view, and a respect for privacy. I think that is partly Janice's fault. I only use blaming words because I am coming to terms with my own problems with interpersonal relations. I lack curiosity. Personalities attract me, but I always fail to make a connection on much more than a cordial level. It takes a lot for me to actually become involved in another person's life. Of course this is also a product of bullying and alienation in primary school. Those times are a long story of disappointment.
Something killed my curiosity. I've felt like my brain was missing something for a while now, and maybe that's it. Without desire, there is less room for disappointment, and a need to know - to experience - is a big catalyst. It's almost like my intellect has been neutered. There's a project. Grow a new curiosity gland, maybe near the hypothalamus. I think a part of that needs to be keeping this blog updated at least once a week.
Here goes...
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Introit
My name is Peter. I graduated from art school this past May with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography. I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to apply exclusively to those institutions of higher learning that specialized in creative education. High school was too easy. Straight A's came naturally, and I didn't have the wherewithal to take the few classes that may have actually given me a challenge. I stuck with the things that helped me feel as remarkable as I wanted to be.
Skip through all the tedious decision making, experimenting, stagnation, discovery, disappointment, your standardized collegiate experience, and you find me sitting in the air-conditioning in my boxers killing time before going out for sushi with the girl I love. The same girl I thought I had failed to woo in one of my earliest experiments with impulse, and made the incredibly easy decision to move on to a more intellectually stimulating environment. I'm not wallowing in post-baccalaureate, unemployed depression, nor am I recovering from another nocturnal bohemian ritual. What I am recovering from is a day of lifting, stickering, trashing, and delivering in ninety degree heat. I confess to spending most of this time in the air-conditioned basement of a small museum, but I do make jaunts outside through crowds of tourists with over a hundred pounds on a dolly. This wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't inherited my father's slightly overactive sweat glands.
So if you still find this interesting, this salinic position is actually a promotion. I used to spend all my time stagnating in the stores I now provide with wares. I am, essentially, a stock boy with extra duties sprinkled here and there, being bred to do everything my boss/manager/supervisor does now. Again sparing the mundanities that got me into this position, I find myself faced with the prospect of a meeting with my boss' boss in the next day or two. After a month of working twice as hard for the same peas and carrots I got in the stores, I get to have my position created, and my raise (hopefully) instated (retroactively please!). The only trick here is considering my future with the company. Where do I see myself? Of what use can I be? In short, am I worth the company's investment.
I want to cry out, "NO! I want to stay out of this basement forever and create a body of work that will be remembered for centuries, perhaps millennia! You suck all my time and energy out of me like a tired metaphorical vampire who needs to survive just a little while longer to keep itself relevant! I will flee at the first chance I see, so get rid of me while you still have the chance to do it on your own terms!" but I like the idea of having a steady job. A place where I know my function. America is a strange enough place to live. Why would I want to wander for years trying to create my own relevance when It is being handed to me on a pewter platter? Give me a salary and health insurance. Give me a reason to buy nice shirts and keep my stubble at bay. Give me a chance to have as many as three people working under me, and I will be sated. Give me a means to support this creative habit of mine. Something to react against or draw upon. Give me adulthood, and maybe someday I'll give you a work of art.
Skip through all the tedious decision making, experimenting, stagnation, discovery, disappointment, your standardized collegiate experience, and you find me sitting in the air-conditioning in my boxers killing time before going out for sushi with the girl I love. The same girl I thought I had failed to woo in one of my earliest experiments with impulse, and made the incredibly easy decision to move on to a more intellectually stimulating environment. I'm not wallowing in post-baccalaureate, unemployed depression, nor am I recovering from another nocturnal bohemian ritual. What I am recovering from is a day of lifting, stickering, trashing, and delivering in ninety degree heat. I confess to spending most of this time in the air-conditioned basement of a small museum, but I do make jaunts outside through crowds of tourists with over a hundred pounds on a dolly. This wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't inherited my father's slightly overactive sweat glands.
So if you still find this interesting, this salinic position is actually a promotion. I used to spend all my time stagnating in the stores I now provide with wares. I am, essentially, a stock boy with extra duties sprinkled here and there, being bred to do everything my boss/manager/supervisor does now. Again sparing the mundanities that got me into this position, I find myself faced with the prospect of a meeting with my boss' boss in the next day or two. After a month of working twice as hard for the same peas and carrots I got in the stores, I get to have my position created, and my raise (hopefully) instated (retroactively please!). The only trick here is considering my future with the company. Where do I see myself? Of what use can I be? In short, am I worth the company's investment.
I want to cry out, "NO! I want to stay out of this basement forever and create a body of work that will be remembered for centuries, perhaps millennia! You suck all my time and energy out of me like a tired metaphorical vampire who needs to survive just a little while longer to keep itself relevant! I will flee at the first chance I see, so get rid of me while you still have the chance to do it on your own terms!" but I like the idea of having a steady job. A place where I know my function. America is a strange enough place to live. Why would I want to wander for years trying to create my own relevance when It is being handed to me on a pewter platter? Give me a salary and health insurance. Give me a reason to buy nice shirts and keep my stubble at bay. Give me a chance to have as many as three people working under me, and I will be sated. Give me a means to support this creative habit of mine. Something to react against or draw upon. Give me adulthood, and maybe someday I'll give you a work of art.
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