This blog may come down to being little more than an excuse to complain, but I really dislike my job. Actually, let me rephrase that; I really dislike aspects of my job. I work in retail and a particularly odd kind of retail. On any given day I will find myself selling cigars, brewing coffee, making lattes, baking bread, stocking books/magazines, making sandwiches... you get the point. It's not any of the specific work that gets me down. All lines of work have the tedious aspect that is required to keep said business/employer/whatever going. It's also (most of the time) not the customers that bother me. Rather, it's the realization (or continuous realization) that retail doesn't care about you. As an employee, you are easily replaceable. This element of capitalism is necessary to it's survival; money has no feelings and values so should we expect those invested in the pursuit of such to have any? This is not a diatribe against gaining comfortable living means or buying fun stuff, it is simply a reality of the situation.
I was looking at some customers in line while I was working on something the other day and this thought came into my head; I grew up hearing that everyone was special and, especially coming from a Christian upbringing, that there was something significant and special I can and am meant to do. God had a plan for me, and my gifts and talents could allow me to become anything I wanted. Looking at the people standing in line, I realized how fleeting that sort of thinking is. I imagined all the customers waiting for me working jobs fairly similar to mine. Low pay, long hours, lots of physically demanding work (in one capacity or another) and I imagined them hearing the same things I heard growing up. Then I imagined them feeling beaten down in some fashion because they realized that only 1 out of a couple million ever get a book published. Only a select few see the art, music, karate, whatever classes they take as children turn into something when they get older. We all have to "settle" at some point. This is what I imagined the people in line feeling, because this is what I feel.
With all this said, I don't want to leave on a hopeless note. While the reality of our society and economic model encourages complacency and settling, there is one thing that we have not had taken from us yet. I may make coffee for a living instead of being a famous writer or missionary or something to look up to, but I do have my thoughts. I have my freedom to express my views and this is not limited to a constitutional model. It is inherit in my being as a reasoning human. I can look at a line of people who only want me to make a sandwich for them so they can get back to their lame, shitty job in half an hour and realize how much it says about society. How much it says about myself. Realize that I can express those thoughts via blog on the internet and if that right were taken from me I can still express it on paper, to a loved one, to any one who will listen. So, as I stare another day in face, another day filled with sandwiches, espresso, books and impatient employers and customers, I know that I'm not defeated if I have "settled" for a pedestrian job, because I can think and speak freely and am actively aware of that. It might make all the difference.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
A poem.
I have finally decided on the direction I want to take this blog. The things I am presently interested in, and have been for sometime, are literature, society and spirituality. Therefore, that is the direction I am now going to take this blog. I will be posting a few times a week until I can get myself back up to speed on posting. To start things off, I would like to post a poem I wrote for your Sunday afternoon enjoyment. :)
A Steelworker Finds St. Louis Not So Pleasant
Thirteen, the day I began
To belt steel into steel to the tune
Of a Southern Man. My wages stoked
The fire of my mother’s stew
And the threads of the stitches on my
Sibling’s garments.
Nineteen, the day I began
To coat garish wooden boxes
With latex, and oil and stain.
With hues of green, purple, grey
And clothed my siblings the same.
Twenty-five, the day I began
To see the world through hops
Stained lenses, from the planks of floors
To the cool black of pavement, on streets.
My siblings repeated, every line of my
Coarse, brown breath, verbatim.
Forty-two, the day I began
To accept my mother’s words,
“Shades of your father, all of you,”
Echoed from the bottom of our shared
Cocktail glass. My siblings did the same.
Sixty-seven, the day I began
My career as a brown beard,
Much to the chagrin of my siblings,
Our mother needed the company.
Or so I told the smoking pepper-box.
-Daniel J. Adkins; 2008
A Steelworker Finds St. Louis Not So Pleasant
Thirteen, the day I began
To belt steel into steel to the tune
Of a Southern Man. My wages stoked
The fire of my mother’s stew
And the threads of the stitches on my
Sibling’s garments.
Nineteen, the day I began
To coat garish wooden boxes
With latex, and oil and stain.
With hues of green, purple, grey
And clothed my siblings the same.
Twenty-five, the day I began
To see the world through hops
Stained lenses, from the planks of floors
To the cool black of pavement, on streets.
My siblings repeated, every line of my
Coarse, brown breath, verbatim.
Forty-two, the day I began
To accept my mother’s words,
“Shades of your father, all of you,”
Echoed from the bottom of our shared
Cocktail glass. My siblings did the same.
Sixty-seven, the day I began
My career as a brown beard,
Much to the chagrin of my siblings,
Our mother needed the company.
Or so I told the smoking pepper-box.
-Daniel J. Adkins; 2008
Monday, February 01, 2010
It's time to post again.
And that's the size of it. I want to post again and I'm not sure if it will be on here or somewhere else. It most likely will be on a blogger server, but I don't know if I will continue this "Proto Merkaba blog." Which reminds me, I never, in the three years I consistently posted on here, explained the meaning of that name. I think that's a good place to start.
There are two different explanations for the name. The main one is probably the most damaging to any sort of "cool" image I may project. However, I am not going to say that first. Fooled ya, didn't I? No, first I am going dissect the two words themselves and give you a "better" explanation. "Proto" is a prefix denoting "first" or "foremost," used commonly in chemical terminology. So to attach "proto" to something is to say that the following word is the "original" or "foremost" of that something. "Merkaba" is a bastardized spelling of the name for the "spirit vessel" or "Chariot of God" referred to in Ezekiel 1:4-26. It should follow then that a logical interpretation of the two words in succession of each other would read as such; "proto merkaba" can be read as the "first spirit vessel." This is the way in which I have interpreted it for the most part. I like the way it sounds, and it gets me thinking. At the start of this blog I ascribed some arbitrary meaning to the phrase "first spirit vessel" that related to Jesus Christ. Yes, that is very "mystic" and some might say "emergent" of me to call Christ the "first spirit vessel" but it makes some sense. If Christ is the first and the last, being one with the Holy Spirit, but also housing it as the human, earthly "vessel" He was for 33 years, then it isn't too hard of a stretch. On a more recent reflection for the title of the blog, it seems very arbitrary in a literal sense. I'm not sure if I totally like it, but it seems to get people thinking and that is a reason that I started this blog that I hope to continue.
Now, the main reason why this name appears as it does. I would like to say the lengthy paragraph I just typed out is the main reason the title exists, but it is only a secondary one. Truthfully, this is where I got the name from. Nerd city, bitches.
-Dan
There are two different explanations for the name. The main one is probably the most damaging to any sort of "cool" image I may project. However, I am not going to say that first. Fooled ya, didn't I? No, first I am going dissect the two words themselves and give you a "better" explanation. "Proto" is a prefix denoting "first" or "foremost," used commonly in chemical terminology. So to attach "proto" to something is to say that the following word is the "original" or "foremost" of that something. "Merkaba" is a bastardized spelling of the name for the "spirit vessel" or "Chariot of God" referred to in Ezekiel 1:4-26. It should follow then that a logical interpretation of the two words in succession of each other would read as such; "proto merkaba" can be read as the "first spirit vessel." This is the way in which I have interpreted it for the most part. I like the way it sounds, and it gets me thinking. At the start of this blog I ascribed some arbitrary meaning to the phrase "first spirit vessel" that related to Jesus Christ. Yes, that is very "mystic" and some might say "emergent" of me to call Christ the "first spirit vessel" but it makes some sense. If Christ is the first and the last, being one with the Holy Spirit, but also housing it as the human, earthly "vessel" He was for 33 years, then it isn't too hard of a stretch. On a more recent reflection for the title of the blog, it seems very arbitrary in a literal sense. I'm not sure if I totally like it, but it seems to get people thinking and that is a reason that I started this blog that I hope to continue.
Now, the main reason why this name appears as it does. I would like to say the lengthy paragraph I just typed out is the main reason the title exists, but it is only a secondary one. Truthfully, this is where I got the name from. Nerd city, bitches.
-Dan
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