What is a job? If you mean full time employment in a singular vocation that generates enough income to support a family somewhere in the middle class I am not sure jobs exist anymore. Professions exist. Exclusive positions exist. Careers exist. Government service exists. However, this notion of “jobs” in the sense that a politician uses the word, is almost certainly a convenient fiction, like the personhood of a corporation. I suppose, since this is a profile, that my profession/career can be described as “teacher.” My education would suggest I was an assistant professor, but my W2 would suggest I am a substitute teacher. I’ve been thirty for two years. I plan to remain so for another 6 to 8. I imagine what once was an insult will eventually be taken as a compliment.
Impending death is re-definition
When you decide to take your own life
You cease to be what you thought you were
And become someone who is about to die
And so it was for another poor soul
http://abovethelaw.com/2010/07/reed-smith-partner-commits-suicide-in-chicago/#more-27662
So tragic and sad.
Please Take What is Left of Me
Though I Must Admit
It’s Not Much
I Cannot Take Care of You
In the manner you deserve
I owe so much
The tragedy of a Legend Passing is the idea of Legend Itself. We are cynical creatures surrounded by darkness. We cannot describe light, only experience it. When the light leaves us those who saw it can only describe clenching our eyes shut and holding our hands in front of our faces.
The Wizard of Westwood, John Wooden, coached college basketball. The amazing thing about college sports, and I think particularly basketball, is that it has the ability to unleash the potential of spirit energy in those who watch it and believe in the team on the court. It does not require an in-depth knowledge of the sport. It is something that can be felt – I might go as far as to say an overly technical understanding of the game is to the detriment of the viewer, and that would explain why experts, who can with great reliability predict the outcome of professional sports, can never nail down the victor of a college contest. There are other factors at play. There are no contracts, no series, no second chances. Only love.
Once I met a man whose fortune was my opposite
My every victory was his defeat
His every triumph foreshadowed my own misfortune
We were on opposite sides of a Pendulum not restrained by impartial Gravity
I called this man my friend
I tried to be joyous as a friend should
As he conquered the world in his own way
Masking my own pain
As my own world fell apart
I called this task my burden
My ex-girlfriend is an associate professor at a prominent university in Virginia. She has the same degree from the same school that I do. We were both young professors there once. They opted not to renew my contract. My buddy is the youngest principal in the school district. He’s the one who hooked me up with my current substitute teaching gig. He started teaching at 20 with an associate’s degree when I still had eight years of school to go.
My ex-girlfriend loves me. She’s not seeing anyone else. She still calls sometimes but she doesn’t say anything. I know its her even if my cell phone doesn’t.
My buddy loves me. I can remember when his younger siblings were born. I can remember failed science projects and staying up all night to finish super mario brothers. I attended the weddings in his family. He attended the funerals in mine.
Dr. King spent the days before he died working on behalf of striking sanitation workers. Their picket signs read simply “I am a man.” Dr. King said that a man without a job feels like he has no right to exist. I know for a fact that is true. If Dr. King had lived I wonder if he would have explained how to make that feeling go away.
We’re all in solitary confinement here in debtor’s prison. Shame is the wall that separates us from our fellow similarly afflicted brethren. Our reward for suffering in silence is to hear our own stories reiterated to us like we didn’t live through it.
We get the news on a Tuesday afternoon with meetings on our calendars put their by people who knew we were out the door. We hold our heads as high as possible while security escorts us out. We go back to our apartments. After a sleepless night we rise and dress as if we are going to work, lest our roommates suspect.
Eventually we muster the courage to tell our friends and family. Cliches fall on deaf ears. Our roommates shrug, continue their gambling and drinking and remind us in no uncertain terms that rent is due on the first employed or otherwise. Our confidence is not kept. Everyone knows. We move out in the middle of the night. A roommate offers an insulting price for a priceless possession, reminding us of a disputed $50 debt. We fade away. Time passes.
This is a reflection on the events that transpired on a sunny day in April on the campus of Virginia Tech
Candles at night on the Quad. A bonfire would indicate a sports victory. A sunny day perhaps a graduation. Perhaps it is Christmas-but students go home at Christmas time and the remnants of dusk are long gone by 7 pm near the Winter Solstice. No. This is unmistakably mourning.
What is mourning? In the secular sense it is the process of returning to normal. We are programed for this. How else can we survive a month where the dubious anniversaries of Oklahoma City and Columbine collide with the fresh tragedy of the West Virginia coal mines? Let’s not forget the tragedy in our own lines known but to us and a few others and let’s not forget the tragedy of our invisible neighbors who we pass on the other side of the road. In a secular sense to move on, not as if didn’t happen, but as if such things DO happen, is the goal. And if that is the goal not only have we succeeded but we have triumphed.
I walked through Rittenhouse Square looking through lenses blackened with coal searching for a man with an umbrella
All around me people were oblivious to the lack of light that permeated my irises. To them it was just a sunny day. If all you know is light you cannot imagine darkness, just as the infant born knows only life. But where is the man with the umbrella?
If Clear Eyes
And Full Hearts
Couldn’t Lose Games
You would always be Undefeated
But Clear Eyes
And Full Hearts
Can’t Lose
So what does that mean?
Woa to the wine sipping, bacon gorging hipster immune to the suffering around them but secure in their own spirituality- believing they are among the select few that “get it.” You call yourselves Buddhists because you sporadically attend yoga classes and meditate instead of going to church and believe life is cyclical- even literally. Whatever gets you through an unexpected death, one that you couldn’t plan ahead for such that the arrangements interfered with your work or vacation schedule.
Fool. There are no cycles. And the Buddhist mantra is all of life is suffering. As you pursue your pointless pleasures know that they will only increase that feeling of emptiness inside and the thoughts that you are a fraud, have earned nothing, and soon will be exposed for the empty shell that you are.
