civilization

“We’re all mystics. That’s no observation.
It’s a demand placed on life.
No human being ought merely to spend the day...
For everyone, there ought to be places of free intentionality
where vision can happen...
The sentence, ‘we’re all mystics,’ contains in itself
the right of every human being to have beauty and vision.”

~ Dorothee Sölle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance.

Unless you’ve been living an extremely uncommon worklife, you’ve surely come to know the perfunctory dysfunction that wafts through typical company meetings. Stiff and rarely efficiently or engagingly led, such experiences bring back indelible memories of school lunchrooms during adolescence. In some foundational ways, the sights, sounds, smells, and basic dynamics of the cavernous cafeteria in New York City’s Intermediate School Number 61 introduced me to what I’ve frequently encountered throughout professional life so far. Obviously, the cast of characters changes, but the patterns and archetypes became identifiable among cliques, rival gangs, bullies ringleaders, quiet followers, fighters, quitters, smirkers, comedians, caring personalities, rebels, competitors, self-destructives, arbiters of cool, and dreamers. Where I grew up, within the city, my friends and I would band together for safety- both physical and psychological. And we all either graduated or somehow transitioned out of these institutions. I saw all these types in summer camp, too, and surely thereafter in workplaces. Having been viciously bullied (always the youngest and easiest target), I’ve mused over the years about what those relentlessly malicious kids became in their adult lives. Age doesn’t automatically cure bullying. I know this. Did they wind up criminals? Politicians? Corporate executives? Maybe some repented of their cruelties? I guess it’s not for me to know. Inevitably, we all have to live with ourselves.

For the bulk of his career, my father worked as a principal in a major accounting firm with offices around the world. He was very well-liked and respected. As a kid, I couldn’t distinguish between his colleagues and his staff, seeing how collegial he was with everyone. I was deeply impressed by his egalitarianism, and I try to apply that as I’m able. Another trait I’ve inherited is Dad’s distaste for purposeless and protracted meetings. He used to tell me that “meetings are the most unproductive thing you can inflict on others.” I remember he had a wide ballpoint pen that had a digital clock built into the barrel- kind of a novelty. He called it his “meeting pen.” When he absolutely had to call a meeting, he kept them short, and would begin by apologizing to all present, while pointing to that pen-clock he’d perch on the conference table with, “Don’t worry; I’m watching the time.” He told me all of this, when I was about 16. Everyone, including me, found him inspiring and inevitably a leader worth following.

But that’s an exception to the usual. I’m among the too-many that know the ritual all too well: obsolete, aimless, self-congratulatory (reminiscent of the plights of Reginald Perrin of BBC fame), and anything memorable would be due to its egregiousness. In my supervisory roles, I copied something I’d picked up from a manager I had in a fast-paced photo lab. With a thick Boston accent, he’d say, “Keep talking with each othah, and do good work.” My version of that has been, “If we keep lines of communication open, we won’t need meetings.” This really works. I refer to how we innately wish to accomplish. And paths of least annoyance comprise brevity, purpose, the absence of jargon, and not forcing others to provide their “fun facts.” In my teaching capacity, I’ve developed the expression, “invited, but not obliged.” If there must be guiding attributes, let them be mutuality and informativeness. We do, after all, have work to do.

Workplaces that are also places of public service have to balance two general spheres: one is insular among staff, and the other is outward-facing toward recipients (customers). Distinct communities, with their respective, complex dynamics. Then there’s an off-duty life that occasionally sees the social circles converge. Admittedly, I’m hardly an exemplar, neither do I have any formulae, yet I attempt at consistency in all efforts. Among proving-grounds is the small city of the majority of my adult life, which includes a number of denizens that studied a variety of subjects with me, along with receiving research help from me, attended religious services I’ve led, and dined on pastries I’ve baked. And all have heard me cite “do unto others,” and the rest of the Golden Rule.

This G.E. Superadio has been with me since I was 19, pulling in broadcasts through concrete walls and steel structures.

In this world that encompasses the brutish culture through which many of us must navigate, I think a lot about civility and the disappearance of decorum. In my public-facing department at work, my portable radio is tuned to the region’s classical music station- at a subtly low volume. It keeps me company, and patrons tell me they like what they hear. There are even comments about the object itself: “Is that a real radio?” Collectors acknowledge that it’s a G.E. Superadio. I’ve mentioned how I’ve owned the radio since college, that it’s been with me, as accompaniment, in numerous art studios, archives, and apartments. Among my several, smaller radios is one that regularly travels with me. Even the nice hotels have ceased adorning rooms with anything other than large shrill flatscreen advertisement-players. And thus I bring my own version of civilization along with me. There are always public radio affiliates and soothing music for my listening. And I always bring my own coffee mug.

Productivity for the ages; careful and fast.
Radio in background; coffee thermos at lower right corner.

Maybe you have your own practices, determining your acceptable and portable civility, as you move through this world. As well, you might also carry various elements of your civilization with you. There are, indeed, the essentials of a workday, a schoolday, or an excursion: keys, phone (within which there may be some of your digital civilization), wallet, journal, laptop, et cetera. Don’t forget that elusive charging cable. It gets more complex with longer sojourns. In my example, the ubiquitous satchel includes extra writing materials, hand wipes, camera, granola bar, peppermints, rosary, and something to read on buses and trains. If a suitcase is involved, there’s a radio in it. And what about those aforementioned meetings? A memo pad and a pencil; ideas are hatching all the time, and I need to hold those thoughts for later elaboration. Time, precious as it is, needs to accommodate productive musing.

labor days

“You run and you run and you run
And you never stop
And you work and you work
Until you drop
You're in over your head and the pressure just don't quit
But you can't escape the reach of love.”

~ Michael Been, You Run.

As the general and historic commemoration of Labor Day is a recognition of workers and organized labor, the occasion can certainly have its personal connotations. For practical purposes, and in my personal history, Labor Day has been something of a new year’s day for me. The holiday coincides with the start of the academic year, the closing days of summer, and both have combined in heralding new ventures. I began my self-supporting life at 17 years old, moving to Portland, Maine from New York City- enrolling at Maine College of Art. I came to refer to Labor Day Weekend as Arrival Weekend. As a member of the labor force, that began at age 14 for me. Through high school, I worked in inner-city New York grocery stores, stocking shelves and delivering purchases. I continued working a variety of jobs in Portland, various other parts of Maine and Boston, in an odyssey continuing to this day. The venues have included factories, offices, stores, warehouses, commercial darkrooms, studios, colleges, museums, and libraries. Indeed, Shakespeare was quite right: all the world really is a stage, populated with characters that make their exits and entrances. There have been many places, people, and dramas for my memory and journal-writing. Plenty of recurring types through these different scenarios, as well as some remarkable originals.

Through this summer, I’ve been digitizing whole portfolios of my photographic prints- working all the way back through the work I’d done in art college. Many, many, many images. This project has to be done systematically and in measures, otherwise it’s as daunting as the large archival collections I’ve organized over the years for my various employers. Apparently, as artists choose to preserve and document their output, we wind up becoming our own curators. Being a professional archivist, I automatically want to know what I have, where it is, when it was made, and how it’s stored and retrieved. There’s actually some interior humor in this.

During the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college, I transitioned from part-time to full-time work, at a local hardware company job that went from bad to worse. There was nothing good about that job, but I needed the paycheck. During my breaks, I used a parking lot pay phone to cold-call potential leads. Answering an ad from the local Goodwill, I was interviewed and was offered the job. My new supervisors were sympathetically apologetic about the minimum wage, but there was something I liked about them, and I gladly took the pay cut- and the chance to get away from the bullying hardware people.

My work assignment at Goodwill of Maine was to work in what they called textile processing. This meant working in an unclimatized, antiquated, repurposed warehouse- sorting piles and piles of donations on conveyor belts, moving massive amounts of material to their designated locations, operating an industrial rag-baler, and assisting where needed. At that time, I was 20 and fascinated by the whole operation, the extent of what people were donating to Goodwill, and the colorful cast of characters around me. Some of the workers were called staff, and others were known as clients. That meant I worked shoulder-to-shoulder with co-workers with various developmental disabilities. We all worked together, chatted together, and learned from each other. Very occasionally, when there were behavioral problems, I was deeply impressed by the supervisors’ patience, their calm tones, and abilities to coordinate all of us.

As the summer concluded, I needed to reduce my hours to correspond with my school schedule. Goodwill was so happy with me, they gave me a part-time assignment as the bookkeeper at the attached Goodwill store, on Cumberland Avenue. Even after classes began, I’d stop into the warehouse to visit my many friends. Co-laborers are not quite like schoolmates, though in both situations we are brought together by necessity. Those we work with at our jobs are much more diverse, and with time we cultivate our own shared “battle stories,” which are distinct from isolated school memories. An assignment from my photography class was to create a reportage of a place that would be easy to return to, so that images could be revisited and refined. Classmates chose topics such as landscapes and architecture. I chose the Goodwill of Maine processing warehouse. My co-workers were very comfortable around me by then, even with my camera. They knew I was an art student, and that I was a friend. Recently, while scanning the photos- made in the 1980s- all the names, sounds, and procedures came back to me. Preserved photographs rekindle impressions, outlasting physical locations which change or disappear. Goodwill is long out of that location, and the building was divided and renovated. My photographs now serve as a documentation of a society of workers accomplishing their tasks, in the midst of a small city.

______________________________

Truckloads from collection points were dropped off on the Portland Street side, to the loading dock and The Pit (at right and below):





From The Pit, and down a chute, clothing (separated from hard goods) were sorted on conveyor belts. Material in good condition was sorted into various bins. Rejects were left on the conveyor and baled for recycling.





Below: Baling.




Above: Packing boxes for routing to Goodwill retail stores.

Below: Desk with location codes.



______________________________

Some of my co-workers:



















Below: My co-workers enjoying the photos I took of them. I gave them my proof-prints, thanking them for being such good sports.






Above: Clocking out.

Below: Goodwill, on Cumberland Avenue, along with the loading dock on Portland Street.

The author and photographer, at age 19.




My supervisor's desk, decorated with salvage.

ora et labora

“It is simply impossible that people should remain
unaffected by what they pass through.
Joys and sorrows, failures and successes,
pains and pleasures, disappointments and gratifications,
meetings and partings, experiences great and small,
insensibly do their part in making us interiorly what we are.”

~ Octavius Frothingham, The Hidden Life

collected wisdom of work life

A memory remaining with me from a teaching job past came to mind today. I had spent many hours of my own time helping the college chaplain complete his doctoral dissertation. He was a great friend, and that particular experience was intensely pressured, yet I was glad to have been able to give of my expertise. I had opened the library during a holiday just for us to print out his final four hundred page document. The chaplain looked exhausted and uncharacteristically unsure of himself. In the midst of those final editorial steps, I looked up and asked, “John, what makes us work so hard?” Without stopping to think, he bluntly replied, “Fear.” His response was entirely comprehensible to me, as it made sense to much of my own general experience. Admitting to being motivated by fear of failure exposes a side of life beneath standard office veneers.

Our lives at our various jobs reveal personal histories replete with scenarios, casts of characters, and moments of discovery. And stories. One of the factory jobs I’ve had was in a poultry processing plant. On the conveyor line, I heard the ex-cons’ adventures, the crazy guy that clucked like a chicken, and the lifers who had spent years and years slicing and packaging ad infinitum. I found the latter unimaginable. I once had a graveyard shift job, from 8pm to 8am, in a newspaper pressroom. My benchmates and I called 3am “the hour of delirium,” indicating the point at which our fatigue would take us through a dizziness before the human afterburners could take hold. During those times, we would laugh at our absurd hilarity. I had a bench-mate who would growl: “You know why I work here? I come here to burn off all my meanness!” His daytime hobby was to hike along railroad tracks and birdwatch.

During my years in commercial photography and industrial darkrooms, I worked with some eccentric and compelling souls, but unanimously and unfortunately under crude and exploitive management. Among the former were many artists, a hard-travelled rock band photographer, a dachshund breeder, an antiquarian auctioneer, and an Irish singer. The latter was a scourging succession comprising a relentlessly boorish ex-drill sergeant, a pilferer, and a rotation of aloof and abusive hard-drinkers. Adult schoolyard bullies. The one notable compliment, following years of consistent face-saving and time-defying achievement, was when I was referred to as “a vital cog in this machine.” Simply by proximity and some common goals, we learn about our co-workers’ lives, and care about them, too. Life is a very strange business that puts us shoulder to shoulder with individuals and settings we could not have imagined.

arenas and stages


I worked for more than 12 high-pressured years
in and around this tiny underground space.
The walls and ceilings were painted black,
to prevent any stray light reflections.

Work environments can be as enigmatic and fascinating as the cast of characters. Recalling the odors of loading docks, truck-fumed warehouses, store cellars, damp film-developing chambers, library attics, a cement storage area called “the dungeon,” a textile processing area called “the pit,” and the dry cold of a subterranean archive vault, my thoughts return to glimpse the words, pictures, and persistent forlorn aspirations of a songbird in a thornbush. Surely, from countless narrow hotplated coffeebreak rooms and cinderblocked crevasses, there dwell souls athirst for worlds of vast skies and lifegiving music. No less a personality than Saint Augustine, in the early 5th century, articulated creation’s basic desire to thrive. In his brilliant City of God, he observed how the simplest creatures such as worms and plants “show in every movement that they can make that they long to live and escape destruction.” Indeed, the hunger for more of life transcends temporal hardships:

“Merely to exist is, by the very nature of things, so pleasant that in itself it is enough to make even the wretched unwilling to die; for, even when they are conscious of the their misery, what they want to put an end to is not themselves but the misery.”

Remembering the family saying, le travail est de l’or (“work is as precious as gold”), I consciously cherish employment. Though a many-edged sword, I’m especially grateful for work as I dispatch my recurrent bills. But work is truly a treasured life element. Somehow, it is oddly natural and normal for all of us to grouse and grumble about our obligations. In the peculiar scheme of creation, humans are the ones that complain, satirize, and then set about to build the better mousetrap. Through history there are centuries of work songs, such as sea chanties, cloth-making chants, railroad and mine workers’ blues. As our days are spent at our jobs, under pressure to solve and produce, we are generally in our most lucid moments while at work. Alas, there are enough reminders to inform us to take those hours on duty with enhanced seriousness. The postmodern job demands gravitas, candor, and multitasking prowess with precision. All the while, as I’ve learned, all the workplace is a stage- and a thinking writer’s trove.

aspirations and perfectionism

The employment context is an arena through which we must make sense of our own times and the ways our work is valued. Though we develop marketable skills directed at leverage into sustaining income, there abides soul and conscience. Creative drive parallels paths of personal growth. While satisfying employers and fulfilling required tasks, the source of life from within hungers to transcend repetitive duties. Doing a good job is to excel in the present. Aspiring beyond cellars and conveyors is to aim at the future. Inherent in the progress of the soul is to aspire for better while living an ambition in the present. As the Holy Spirit’s action within effects the practice of faith, the hidden life of understated work is at the foundation of outward interaction with the whole of life.

An individual’s voyage through places of work navigates corporations, small businesses, varied definitions of profit, training sessions, and high-wire acts to prevent from being unemployed. Altruism is always hard to find, and it is for each of us to decide whether to make that an expectation. “Good business,” so we’re told, is when the worker’s productive worth exceeds how much they are paid. Yet, we take notice when there are news stories about “the best places to work,” marveling at morale-building perks and overtly informal atmospheres. Should work environments match life hopes, or is it sufficient to leave the job at work when signing out for the day?

My lengthening pilgrimage as a laborer began at 14, working in a grocery store in New York City. The store owner wore sunglasses all the time, and made me pay for an egg I had accidentally dropped. From there, I went on to a much larger store, delivering groceries to neighborhood customers. Since those high school years, surviving layoffs twice, each transition has been a reach for something better- and in Maine these have been very small steps. Embedded within the hidden life of an individual in a workplace are the often inexplicable dynamics of endurance and transition. My father always tells me that “you have to job-hunt throughout your career.” He reminds me to never expect sympathetic sentiments from an employer, while he always speaks of his own working experience with much sentimentality. “You will find,” he says, “that the higher up you advance, the less hard you’ll have to work.” I’m not so sure this is true for a postmodern. Or perhaps I’m not far “up” enough from hauling eggs and produce out of sidewalk bulkheads, or hauling cibachrome prints out of clenched darkrooms, and so on.

Considering the life pursuits of work and betterment causes me to revisit an old obstacle known as perfectionism. With a personal history tied to exclusion, and without privilege, a learned habit of trying to fit into situations by virtue of excelling had long ago ground a groove of perfectionism. Getting the job done rarely suffices, neither does getting more of the job done. Requirements broaden to increasing coverage, and getting it done continues to be insufficient. Such comprehension takes some getting used-to, as does some self-preserving degree of desensitizing. Yet simultaneously, the Spirit within prevents the soul afire from resorting to cynicism. Divine consolation and humility surely help to supply what is missing from thankless environs.

The old adage that “the pursuit of better is the enemy of good” meets its match in workplaces. Perfection in the fulfillment of all details, either outlined or assumed, leads to survival. Perfection, especially in a market replete with the unemployed and the underemployed, is requisite in order to be offered a position. Certainly, I am merely one among a great many of all of us, perplexed into the night hours by denials of opportunities for which experience squarely meets the need. Not perfect enough, evidently; or too young, too old, too local, too ethnic, too eclectic, too unknown, or just plain too plain. Whatever the reasons may be that keep each hopeful Moses out of the Canaans of their wishes, the ways of a surreal side of real life remind us of our coexistence with irony. Living in the minus side of perfect finds tremendous challenge amidst the ethos of unconditional love, justification by faith, and Christ’s acceptance of every embrace-returning soul into present and eternal belonging.

The first page of my first journal, writing about the instant the light is removed from the workspace,
and how I often worked with closed eyes.

During a lunch break, I decided to walk a wide circle around my general vicinity. From my musings, my attention turned to notice delivery, transportation, construction, and retail workers. Many of these dutiful souls struggle, too. Many of them also determine how to reckon with their days, and each of them have hopes- all with lives far too grand for the confining pages of curricula vitae.

redeeming the trials

In the fluidity of our times, we must by necessity maintain clear visibility. It is indeed as a lesson in spirituality to practice scrupulous diligence in the present, while preparing to ascend awaiting prospects. Arguably, there may not be a greater challenge than to bloom where one is planted. Even further, to thrive ungrudgingly. In such situations, history may assist. Remember how peace can be found in hostile circumstances, and how each of us have accomplished that in the past. When the Divine hand of providence cannot be felt, think of times of deliverance past from what seemed helplessly unendurable. When anxiously wondering when the road will turn, I must recall when it actually has done so before. At the same time, my memories invoke the names and words of admirable individuals from jobs past, lives witnessed that continue strengthening mine.

Inevitably, there remains a reckoning with the temporal aspects of our journeying. This is not to say there isn’t profound meaning in the strata of our hidden lives in the service of our work. Meaning is enhanced by learning, and more writing needs to be done from the context of work trenches; it can’t all be about corporate management. Consider how our words often come from our work, as do our existential conflicts. Our patchworked experiences are treasure-troves of situations and interactions from which to glean stories and perspectives. Enduring truths are surely found between clock punches. Anxiousness, alas, does not hasten prospects; each day has cares of its own, and that causes me to maintain the moment of the day. There’s work to be done; look at the time. From this hidden life come unifying and far reaching tests of faith and trust. In all settings and ages, patience must be continually learned, and forgiveness must be continually applied. Living is not confined to the marginal edges that trim the work day; the soul is alive throughout, wherever we have our being. As well, our efforts permit for us to live in solidarity with those around us: those we work for, work with, or work to serve. It is the hidden life of a grain of leaven, a mustard seed, a latent silver halide.

la voie vivante

"...walk, in a newness of life."

~ Saint Paul, Epistle to the Romans (ch. 6)

The road turns, and yet we cannot quite see how, or why, or what specific thing we may have done to cause the change. And even in our bewilderment and wonder, there is a danger in losing consciousness of the very moments in time that simply show us our own transformation. Our culture and society craves root causes and pushes us to seek out weaknesses to be exploited. Those learned habits can infiltrate and limit our comprehension of the eternal, in our lives and those introduced to us. Indeed, we may actually piece together assorted causes to rationally explain our present, but such grasping exerts significantly more effort than to accept and move directly from this moment. Do moments all have the same duration? Seconds, hours, or days? Perhaps there is no universal scale when we examine our unique lives and their transitions, whether through evolving seasons or in the twinkling of an eye. When a new way of seeing comes to me in an instant, old perspectives pass away and are effectively replaced by what becomes new. Some years back, a major new bridge was built here in town- right next to a very old one; and as soon as the modern bridge was in operation the outdated structure was completely torn down. For a very short period of time, the two bridges stood contrastingly side-by-side. Two ways of crossing may run parallel, but for a fleeting parcel of time. We can traverse bridges of our own, and definable transformations can manifest at the instant we recognize the crossing. Leaving the shore that was left behind gives way to a transfigured vision, and thus a view that transfigures the road ahead.


Renewed perspective allows us to see possibilities, even in what appear to be painfully static situations. For about three years, I had to work for an abusive supervisor; it was an extremely trying adventure of running up against anger personified. In retrospect, it’s difficult to pinpoint how I got through that time, but I did- and even saw that manager get fired as a consequence of his cruelty to the employees. During the worst of it, I kept a journal and that helped me maintain some kind of dynamism of vision while the stress seemed to have no end. It was an incorrigible episode of endurance with the sole recourse being that of conscience. The day of that man’s dismissal was something unforgettable, as the corporate body of my colleagues partook in the same powerful unburdening experience. In an amazing instant, darkness was replaced by lightness. In a broader sense, fear in our lives is replaced by hopefulness. They cannot exist side-by-side for long. And, indeed, pretentiousness must be replaced by humility.


Without a genuine sense of constructive humility, how can one be open to others and to what this life unfolds before us? Letting go of built up layers of self-proclaimed credentials and outmoded structures permits us to advance from one renewing beginning to another, and then to yet another beginning. This type of humility has a vitality that balances self-respect with openness, and thus desires for each day to be built anew upon a refreshed foundation throughout a life that is a pilgrimage of trust. It is essential to trust, as moving forward implies knowing without necessarily seeing in order to set forth. Reaching forward with all our heart is a tangible act attesting to a certitude of the Invisible. Thomas Merton, in Seeds of Contemplation, referred to a "certitude without any shred of discursive evidence." Our assurance is connected to our trust. Now, my challenge is to be continually renewed. Reaching the new land has been the part of the journey which has brought me to travel new roads with new vision and new observations. Known and unknowing, alike. The ocean-tinged air of home, and conversations, are nuanced anew and afresh. As Merton pointed out, "The first taste of contemplation strikes us at once as utterly new and yet strangely familiar."