I've hung the sky with stars.
Now I leap through -
What shattering!
Dogen
Looking through a box of old prints, I found this :
Melinda's Alley
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To fritter away a whole Saturday with meaningless activity meant 1 day of recovery, then, back to the prison yard for 5 days. I could not stand the idea of it, so I did not attend the picnic.
When I showed up to work on Monday I was made to feel as if I had murdered a fellow employee, or stole money from the office safe. Jorey, the warehouse supervisor, walked over to me and my green pull cart and asked why I had not come to the picnic. I told her I was unable to make it, and left it at that. About 30 minutes later, Fred, the owner, approached me. Fred rarely came back to the warehouse, so I knew I was in for it.
"Jim, where were you on Saturday, everybody missed you."
I told him the same thing I told Jorey.
"Come on, you have to tell me something better than that."
Fred looked angry. Like he wanted to shove me against the wall and pummel me. But I was not going to give in, I was just as angry as he was. Who was he to take away one of my 2 days. He already had 5. "Fuck you, Fred", I thought.
The whole place was against me, yet I knew I was in the right. The only reason I was there was because I had no money, not because I wanted to be their friend and hang out at bar-b-q's.
I knew that had I not been a good worker I would have been fired. But how do you fire someone who is never late and is 99% correct on all orders shipped? It would look strange on the incident report - "did not show up to company picnic".
The tension and hatred which surrounded me that day was very real. Yet by this time my meditation studies were beginning to pay off. My inner strength was becoming stronger, and I started to sense that wherever I stood, even if it was in a warehouse, with hatred and scorn directed at me from all sides, that was the place to be. It was truly the center of the universe.
Soon after, one of the sales guys, Ray, quit. He was going to start his own carpet business. He was a middle aged man, with a paunch, balding, and a cynical sense of humor.
The first time I met Ray, which was my first day at the warehouse, did not go very well. I was standing at the packing table with Michael, the manager of shipping. He was showing me how to use the packing peanuts when Ray came back for a smoke.
Michael was in his mid 20's, black hair, good looking. He enjoyed needling people, so he and Ray got into it while I stuffed white foam peanuts into a box filled with sprinkler heads.
Michael liked to listen to Jonathan Brandmeir's morning FM radio show. One of the hardest things about working in a warehouse is having to listen to crappy radio 8 hours everyday.
I was packing my shipping box with peanuts, Mike and Ray were arguing, and I started to laugh because Brandmeir said something funny on the radio. In an instant Ray's wrath turned from Michael to me - "what are you laughing at, curly!?" he said with meanness and anger (I had thick, curly hair at that time, yeah, I guess it was like a fro). There was a pause in the conversation, and I looked up to see Ray scowling at me. I was taken aback with surprise, because I had not been paying attention to what Mike and Ray were saying. Before I could tell Ray that I was laughing at something said on the radio, he turned on his heels and walked back to the front office.
After a few weeks Ray became friendly with me. I never did get a chance to explain to him that I was laughing at the radio, but I guess things worked out ok between him and me.
One cold winter evening at work day's end my car would not start. I gave up and walked back into the warehouse to warm up. Ray was walking out and asked me what was up. I told him, and he seemed confident that he would be able to start my car. I gave him the keys as we walked across the lot. After getting into my car I watched him pump the pedal like a maniac, as if he was trying to crush the head of his worst enemy underfoot. When the car started, Ray's killer instinct became angelic, a beatific smile awash on his face, and that cemented our friendliness toward each other.
On Ray's last day he came back into the warehouse to seek me out. I was sitting on my green cart, counting small iron elbows. He smiled at me, friendly and warm.
The one thing I had noticed about working in warehouses was that the people, upon first meeting, seemed mean, brutal, and without a trace of compassion. Yet after accumulated experience, the facade of brutality faded and was replaced with a bit of friendship, made closer through the shared bond of enduring 8 difficult hours day by day.
We shook hands, and I bid him good luck and farewell.
Later in the day, John, the new warehouse manager, walked over to me and asked if I was going to the local bar after work to celebrate Ray's last day.
I rarely went to bars. The first time I was in one, when I was 12, made an unforgettable impression upon me. It was a bright, warm, sunny summer day, and yet inside the dark, stale smelling bar, sat hordes of men bent over their drinks, or sitting at a round table playing pinochle in a thick haze of cigarette smoke. I could not fathom why they did not stand up, walk to the door, and step out into the light.
I believed that once I gave in to the request of going to a bar after work with my coworkers, the requests would then never stop, and I would thus be spending the majority of my waking hours standing and sitting in ugly, dark places.
"No, I'm not going", I said.
"It's Ray's last day, you should come."
"Well, look at my clothes, I'm filthy and stinking. I don't want to go into a public place looking like this."
John walked away.
I thought about going, because it seemed like a decent thing to do, to send someone off with a showing of love. But the smile on Ray's face, the handshake, that seemed to me the best way to part. And what I had told John was true. My clothing was covered in grease and oil, and I felt beat to hell. The one thing to make me feel better was to get into clean clothes and take an evening stroll at a nearby woods.
The next morning I stood at one of the packing tables counting out sprinkler valves. John walked up to me.
"Your an asshole."
I stopped counting the valves. I thought about what he had said. It was the first time I had been called that. I remained aware of my breath. No anger surfaced inside of me. I was calm.
"I realize not everyone is going to like me", I said, looking into his face.
A malicious grin of satisfaction appeared on his face, as if he had been thinking about calling me an asshole for a long time, and now had finally done it.
"I just wanted to let you know that", he said, the grin turning into a smile. He turned and walked away.
I looked back down to the the greasy table. For a few moments, when I was thinking about how I was going to reply, I felt a bit shaky, but as John walked away, I felt my calmness return. I smiled, aware of my breath.
to be continued
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