Logorrhea

Spitting into the Void

When my family lived in Germany I remember my brother Greg and I would spit off of every bridge we crossed while sight-seeing. This activity was certainly adolescent but also primeval (and dare I say quintessentially masculine). If you asked us then why we did it I would have said that we liked watching our spit fall through the void to the bottom. But I also think that we were in some way “marking our territory;” this void in this foreign land would forever be marked by our spit (part of ourselves would remain even as we pass and continue our journey.) Each time we spat was a different experience. Each place was unique. As we watched the small white dot glide down we would mark how the wind or the void's shear distance would affect it. What effects that we can’t see found within the void, alter our expectations of how we think our spit would fall? We were experimenting, trying to learn about the power of the void. But not only that, we were at the same time transforming the void and in defiance spitting at it; mocking its power. The void could swirl our spit about as much as it liked in a violent plunge to the ground, but we were still safe on the bridge. We could affect the void but the void could not affect us.

I started thinking about all this because a friend of mine told me his parents were traveling around the Alps and were going to visit Neuschwanstein and I clearly remember spitting off that bridge across the valley to the castle. And within that stream of consciousness I remembered an article I read in college of a lecture Derrida gave at Cornell University. On the campus there is a bridge over one of the gorges. (Eventually the university had to put up fencing surround the bridge to keep students from jumping off.) Derrida associated the void of the gorge with education or the process of learning. The void (the unknown) is scary but it must be overcome; as in Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith.”

So, stand back; I’m working up some spit.

Hanging by a Thread

I quit my job. I'm no longer a high-rise window washer. I'm nothing. (of course, i don't think i'm nothing, i'm just unemployed.... but being an American male my self-worth is defined by what i do to make money, so.....)

My boss was a crook. You see we were paid piece work (pay depends on how much you do) this is perfectly legal, in fact it was what first attracted me to the business; I liked the idea of a meritocracy, seems to me to be the only fair option. (However, in a Capitalist society, it seems the less you do the more you get paid...) The thing which wasn’t legal is not telling us what each building (or row of windows) pays before we do it. So, by the end of the week I never knew what I was going to get. This made budgeting nearly impossible. However, my boss would always give me about the same money no matter how much I did or how good the contract with the building was. So, in reality my rate of pay was decidedly arbitrary. I stayed for so long (2 years) because I actually enjoyed the work. It was hard work, but great exercise. It was rough working outside in extreme weather, but the views were great and I liked working by myself. The means of production were my hands and the results of my labor were clearly seen; which was fulfilling. I quit after I busted my ass on a building that I knew paid well and yet still got the same b.s. amount at the end of the week

The high-rise industry as a whole is corrupt. They take the most vulnerable and needy men to do dangerous work for a pittance. (B-more’s not-unionized like New York.) I was the only employee who had never been to jail and the only one who had gone to college. I was the only white guy, (besides the supervisor). And most of the Latino workers were illegal. These are guys who, because of their records, really can’t find work anywhere else (or at least not as easily) and get fleeced for working hard.

And this was supposed to be the fulfillment my dream of honest work for honest pay. …keep dreaming paly.