concrete

An extra blog to make up for my lost week....

I took a walk briefly, today with the intention of taking these photos. All of the sidewalks in Portland are marked and etched with the names and numbers of the streets. They are also marked with the year and the name of the company that laid and formed the sidewalks of our city. All of the sidewalks across Portland from downtown to the more residential areas are like this. The names vary but the years are usually sometime between 1900 to about 1924.

I recently wrote an entry about the strange, fervor and pride I have of being working class. Or at least, I look upon my working class with a sort of respect and am happy with how it has influenced me as a person.
However, a strange thought occurred to me the other day while walking to work. As always, I notice the names and dates of the sidewalks I pass and I realized how lasting the work of these men is. These concrete sidewalks influence how we move and travel throughout our neighborhood and the city. Furthermore, with the exception of the random repair, these sidewalks have held up for over a hundred years. Surely, the men who helped have all passed on. Many, if not all of them, are probably mostly forgotten, nameless individuals who existence is probably no longer even in the memories of the living. However, these men were able to produce something extremely important and lasting that has carried on well beyond their own lives. Blue collar, hard laborers but were still able to contribute to something lasting.

Of course, these concrete sidewalks will probably not always exist. As everything does they will corrode and eventually fall apart and disappear. Nevertheless, as I was walking to my job of making pizzas, I couldn’t help but compare these men to my work. What is lasting about making pizzas? If anything, it’s contributing to obesity, high blood pressure and an eventual heart attack to hundreds of people a day. What am I contributing or helping? To appease hungry individuals? In realty, there is nothing lasting nor all that redeemable about making pizzas.
However, it is not a necessity to live a life dedicated to the production or contribution to something lasting and important. There is something to be said about the individual who comes and passes this life like a shadow. What they did may not help guide cars and pedestrians, house families for generations, educate, etc. However, surely they had friends, maybe a family, brought momentary satisfaction, happiness, pleasure, advice or ease to others. Maybe they lived a completely isolated life but one day pitched a coin to a man in need on their way home. Maybe they were not even what we term as “good people”. Surely, we are complicated beings. Nevertheless, there is something fascinating and worthy of note about a life lived that left very little that will last beyond the next generation. A life like this is acceptable as well. However, after 9 hours of making pizzas, cleaning floors and chopping vegetables, it is sometimes hard to find anything of worth in the work I do.

I can’t help but go back to Mr.Ramsay reflecting upon his work in To the Lighthouse. Father of nine, famed thinker and professor, and still a intense desire to leave the world with so much that is lasting. He reflects…

“The liftmen in the Tube is an eternal necessity.”

It makes him feel ill but he comes to terms with this thought. It is okay, the men are a necessity.

I reflect…

Is the boy in the kitchen making pizza an eternal necessity?

No, he is not. The most tragic thing I can think of is of someone flipping burgers for 9 hours and then on their way home meeting a sudden death. Their last nine hours were spent over a stove. It is a rather pessimistic thought and doesn’t help me get out of bed in the morning. Nevertheless, while the boy is not an eternal necessity, while he is leaving nothing lasting in his work, there are reasons in his life that he must do this right now. To eat, to have coffee with a friend and sit in a park, to travel and see a bit of the world, to provide, etc. It must be done for himself.

All discussions of anarchy, communism and the world developing into a certain utopia where we work for free to provide for everyone are always fun. But I wash them down the drain every morning with the excess juice from the sausage I just cooked in a 600 degree oven.

For now I have to learn to be okay with this. And hell…it is a tired, old saying but doesn’t hurt to think of sometimes…There is always somebody who has it worst.

How can I not be true to myself? How can I not seek out that which I want and is best for my well-being? So much in my life prevents me from doing this. How can I not try and spend my few, daily hours away from work how I want? It would be a crime unto myself to not.

Two poems by carl sandburg that I once wrote across a bedroom wall that I now can’t help but reference as a conclusion:

Under the harvest moon,
when the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the shimmering roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And ask you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

---

Happiness

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me
what is happiness.

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thou-
sands of men.

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I
was trying to fool with them.

And then one Sunday I wandered out along the
Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their
women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Some of his poetry should be written across the walls of restaurant kitchens, garbage trucks, the handles of hammers and the sidewalks of every city.