Time is a funny commodity. When you’re young, you think it is unlimited. As you age, it fluctuates between an eternity (falling asleep Christmas Eve) and an instant (the time it takes your daughter to graduate from high school). It also has a funny way of repeating itself. It isn’t deja vu or like a movie that you see twice. It is more like overlapping loops of experience that occasionally converge. When they do, you get that “deer in the headlights” look on your face because you can’t believe you did something so stupid, again. Sometimes these occur in clusters which is usually the sign that disaster can’t be too far up ahead.
I recently had a visit from a friend who I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Someone who I had worked with when I lived in Los Angeles. While reminiscing, I realized how those time loops were starting to close in. The job stories were the same frustrations over achievement, disenchantment with authority, and malaise. All pretty much the same. Loop, loop, loop.
What I remember from that work experience was being treated like a child where any suggestions was rejected just because I hadn’t been with the company for 20 years. It was a huge company with corporate culture that was glorified at the cost of individual contribution. The never-ending line of obsequious drones filled vacancy after vacancy. The only good memories were of the friendships that had endured. It’s really funny because I had escaped to Los Angeles in search of a corporate world that valued hard work and creative thinking. I left that world disillusioned and returned to Hawaii to find pretty much the exact same thing.
Whenever things seem like they’re spinning out of control for me, I comfort my self with the story of the Gallo Sherry Man (GSM) from when I used to work at Times supermarket. We had this older, 5′, leather-tanned, perpetually unshaved Asian man who came in nearly every day to buy a 1/2 liter bottle of Gallo sherry. He would take it and sit in the bushes outside the store and drink himself silly but he was harmless. I was working there when the Safeway workers went on strike back in the mid 80’s. It was crazy-busy every day with cars waiting around the corner to get into the parking lot and every checkout line open from 4:00 through 7:00 every day. I was working as a cashier on one of these typical days and I didn’t think anything of seeing the GSM standing in line. I wasn’t paying any particular attention to him but all of a sudden, the waiting got to be too much. He really needed that drink. He took the bottle that he had and (with the base in one palm and the top in the other) held the bottle up to his forehead. Then he let out a wail of despair that dispersed the crowd like Raid sprayed into an ant farm. The poor man now stood alone, shuffling a semicircle with that bottle pressed to his head. One of the managers rushed up and took him by the arm to the register at the front of the store and the crisis passed.
On days like today, I feel like the Gallo Sherry Man. I’m not bothering anyone but everything around me is a whirl and I just can’t wait for a calmness to set in. I don’t want a drink but I do want the tide to roll in and level the terrain like an alcoholic stupor. My wail takes the form of this blog but I haven’t seen the crowd scatter yet. Do I need to yell louder?
All my posts are song-themed and I’m old enough to remember albums and 45’s. Some of my favorite songs are on the second side of those singles. Maybe what is required here is a paradigm shift. Maybe it’s time to turn the record over and start playing those
b-sides.
So That's Life?
Time to Play B-Sides
04/27/2012Time is a funny commodity. When you’re young, you think it is unlimited. As you age, it fluctuates between an eternity (falling asleep Christmas Eve) and an instant (the time it takes your daughter to graduate from high school). It also has a funny way of repeating itself. It isn’t deja vu or like a movie that you see twice. It is more like overlapping loops of experience that occasionally converge. When they do, you get that “deer in the headlights” look on your face because you can’t believe you did something so stupid, again. Sometimes these occur in clusters which is usually the sign that disaster can’t be too far up ahead.
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