Oh. Right. The job interview. I think it worked well. My big deficit is that I don't know how to do precise cost estimates of construction jobs. And they're in no big hurry to hire. So if, in the next few weeks, someone walks through the door who's been working for a construction company and is interested in making $50,000 less a year working for a non-profit community development organization, then I'm sunk.
I came back a little deflated. I guess I imagined I'd come back with a new job, or not. But, of course, that's not the way the hiring works. This was the screening interview. If I 'passed,' then I'll be called back for one or two or more interviews. it's like a process. And it will probably go on for weeks.
Onward and upwards.
Anyway...
Escape Artist
The happiest moments in my life have been when I'm making my escape.
- Getting away from my troubled teenage home, however briefly. To work. To meet up with friends. To head off alone.
- Going to college, leaving it all behind.
- Leaving my first NYC boyfriend. Heh heh. When I moved out of the apartment we shared, I couldn't afford a mover, or even to rent a truck. But, since I didn't own much, I figured that borrowing a dolly would get the job done. The apartment was at 7th Street and Avenue B, overlooking scenic Tompkins Square Park. My new apartment was on First Avenue between 5th and 6th Streets. And the day I moved was the day of riots in Tompkins Square Park. So while East Village anarchists squared off against the NYPD, I trundled through the middle of this conflagration with all my worldly belongings stacked atop a dolly. Grinning.
- Taking off on a plane--alone--going anywhere. This was before September 11th made air travel a miserable experience.
- Leaving behind the Awful Ex and the Seven-And-A-Half-Year-Relationship. Few better days of my life.
- Getting off work on any given Friday afternoon. My favorite moment of the week. The weekend stretches ahead, filled with nothing but possibilty.
But, of course, for every friday afternoon, there comes a monday morning. When once again, I've obligated myself. Tied myself down.
Erich Fromm (I think) called this "escape from freedom," the experience of our own freedom and independence is so terrifying to us that we are forever breaking into prison, walling ourselves away, where at least we know we'll get three square a day and a bed without lice.
What would it take for me to face freedom--if that door opens to me again anytime ever again--unafraid?
- A roof over my head.
- The metaphorical room of my own.
- A society of sorts. I am, after all, a social animal.
- Trust in myself.
- Being at ease with myself.
That last one. Dang. Obtainable? Not looking for anything outside of myself. Banishing the Hungry Ghosts.
To be alive is to want. But it's what you want that's key. Not wanting what you can't acquire yourself? And the discipline to obtain it?
Greasers
That's what we called them in high school. Work boots. Flannel shirts. Jeans. Always being sent down to the disciplinarian's office. Smoking in the boys' room.
We were Reagan's children. it was morning in America. Implicitly, there was some kind of promise made to us. But like, for instance, the experience of being seated in a restaurant and handed a three foot tall leatherbound menu with gold tassels emblazoned in Gothic script with the words "Ye Olde Bill of Faire"... well, some of us figured out early that we were about to get rooked.
And those farsighted folks were the greasers.
More than anything, they're a socio-economic group. They're poor kids. And they know it. It's a bad start. Dad's gone. Mom the waitress is barely holding it together.
I was in awe of them back in high school. And now, sitting with this new generation of greasers on the porch of Starbucks every afternoon, I feel a certain frisson still. There's guts there I never had. Try this drug. Break this law. Fight this outsider. Fix your car yourself. Quit school. Get wasted.
Possibly it's the result of the deracination. Starting off with the deck stacked against you. Freedom, as the old song says, is just another word for nothing left to lose.
For the greasers, there were no ambiguities. They knew that fortune wasn't going to smile on them.
I, on the other hand, was sure that fortune would do just that. My smarts, my easy smile, my quick wit, my winning ways... Something would see me through.
But this brought its own fear. A subtle obsessive compulsive disorder. Say the right prayers at the right altar, carry the right talisman, observe all the taboos. Or else.
And every reversal, no matter how small and seemingly inconsequential, is to be dreaded. Leaves you knotting your sheets at night, because it might be the first sign that you did something wrong. That it's all downhill from here. So not only the persisting fear, but the ongoing examen de conscience, like a medieval monk.
It's impossible to be good.
And the trap is circular. And the circle grows smaller and smaller. More and more you sense you're living on borrowed time. Surely the ax is soon to fall, if it hasn't already.
Better, by far, to be a greaser. Knowing from the git go that it all pretty much sucks. People like you don't win the lottery or get to be on television. So payday is as good an excuse as any other to go out and get wasted.
I, for one, see a certain nobility in that.
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