listening to: "please please please" - fiona apple
i don't think that i could ever have one of those jobs where you sit in a cube all day. i used to think i could do it-- in fact, i really hated having to use my body while i was working. i was not a slothful child-- i played outside all the time, played soccer for a few years, ran around. but in junior high, when we were forced to run in circles for an hour twice a week, and then return, sweaty, to the classroom, i developed a sort of distaste for activity. it was hard to be an adolescent girl-- we wanted so badly to ignore our physical bodies but couldn't because they were smelly and awkward and changing. yes, i think that is where the distaste began. but i realized recently that now, i would be extremely unhappy in any position in which i could not use my body and exert myself. i really like working with my hands-- i like making things and fixing things and getting dirty. i'm not afraid of getting dirty or hurt. i run around for seventy hours a week and sometimes i hate it. but i sleep well now-- my body is ready for rest when i lay down at night. i had the day off on friday and went with my dad to go haul firewood for the winter. it was the highlight of my week: the smell and the scratch and the splinters and the cold air, the visible breath. i'm curious about where the change came-- when did i begin to appreciate the things i could do with my body? in oregon? backpacking in the mountains? through essays or books i read? through the knowledge that i am skilled at using my hands? i know now that there is no separation between the mind and the hands-- or at least there ought not be. to say that people who work with their hands don't know how to use their minds is ignorant and ironic-- aren't the people who sit in their offices all day in their ergonomic chairs the ones who use their minds exclusively, while their bodies fester? wendell berry says, "The great question that hovers over this issue, one that we have dealt with mainly by indifference, is the question of what people are for. Is their greatest dignity in unemployment? Is the obsolescence of human beings now our social goal? One would conclude so from our attitude toward work, especially the manual work necessary to the long-term preservation of the land, and from our rush toward mechanization, automation, and computerization. In a country that puts an absolute premium on labor-saving measures, short workdays, and retirement, why should there be any surprise at permanence of unemployment and welfare dependency? Those are only different names for our national ambitions." (
What are People For?, p. 125) berry also says, “We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsibly within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone.” (
The Body and the Earth, p. 140) the point, i suppose, is that i want to get my hands dirty. i'd like to move in the direction of doing something good for other people, but perhaps gradually. i'm ok with slinging coffee and beer for now. at least i can sleep at night.
