Things seem to be happening. While intellectually I know that causality is an infinitely complicated thing and that I can ascribe very little to the patterns that appear, it’s tempting as a fallible human to read too much into them. I think it’s commonly known as not going mad.
Wednesday morning I didn’t go to work. My alarm went off at 4.00am but I went back to sleep and awoke again at six but rather than get up, phone the factory and rush there I rolled over. This is the first time I’ve done this since leaving London and while it wasn’t panic attack related in the slightest there is a pattern. I slept through the day and eventually phoned the agency at 1.00pm. As chance would have it I seem to have developed the stiff neck syndrome again, probably due to operating a pump truck when knackered (very easy to lose your posture when you’re falling asleep). It was similar to when I had it in February but nowhere near as bad, so I told the random woman at the agency I’d woken up unable to move, which was a lie, but kinda true as well. Not happy. Told me to phone in when I’m better. Understandable really.
I’m getting sick of temp work. It’s struck me that while the core problem with the tampon factory was the shifts there was something more general as well. I just don’t want to be spending my time doing this shit. Again with the patterns – I was getting sick of bookselling. There were other factors such as work related stress, but I’d been in that trade far too long. There’s also the financial aspect. If I work every week day in the month I take home about £500, which after rent, bills, food and travel leaves me with £50 a week, less if I take time off. I’ve been surviving fine on this but I’m starting to dip into my reserves, and I’m not too keen on that. Those reserves are not supposed to be spent ever and they’re being spent.
Again, I’m thinking that the street cleaning job opened my eyes somewhat and made the random world of agency work look a tad crappy. But that didn’t come to anything and doesn’t look like it will. So I’m thinking of actively looking for some kind of outdoors full time job to tide me over the summer.
Then there’s the house, which just throws everything into the air. Yes, I’m used to moving and in itself it’s not a problem. But the possibilities are suddenly endless. Again, a year ago I had the same thing – I hated my job, didn’t have anywhere to live and wanted to get hell out, so I did and went off to the Isle of Wight. And here I am able to do pretty much anything I want to. Add to this that if I do start flat-hunting they’re going to want to see references from my employer and statements of earnings, unless I get really lucky. So I’ll have to get a full time job in order to get a decent flat, if I can find a decent flat.
Then, as the patterns start building, the Isle of Wight comes to the fore. In my journal on July 10th I wrote:
Last year I was working through the WWOOF scheme and not getting paid, meaning I had to finish when the money ran out and depend on my family to look after me while I got my finances back together again. Even if he’s only paying a token amount the lack of rent will mean I might even be able to save some (plus there’s only so much you can do in Chale) and at the very least I’ll have some funds when I come back to the “real world”. It was always my intention to go back on a farm this summer even if it was just for a couple of weeks, in fact I saw the street cleaning job as a version of that – urban farming if you like.
Of course this would mean leaving Birmingham and I only got here six months ago. It’s been mentioned that all I really need is to settle down into a job and stop rushing about the place, but, without wanting to be melodramatic, that just doesn’t want to happen with me. This house was perfect in a lot of ways and now that’s all been thrown up in the air.
The only thing that might keep me stable is the computing stuff. These last few months I’ve really gotten to grips with my various projects, making long term but sensible plans and figuring out ways of developing them. If I go off to the IoW, or go traveling in any major way, they’re all going to have to be put on hold, and I really don’t want to have to do that.
Okay, enough rambling. I’m really just trying to get this down so it seems more manageable. Whatever happens I’ve got a good couple of months left in this house, maybe more. While I may have blackened my copybook a bit with the agency I know others have done much worse. I reckon I’ll start looking for full time council jobs starting with Refuse and Parks and see if that comes to anything. If it doesn’t then I’ll think about the farm.
“It’s been mentioned that all I really need is to settle down into a job and stop rushing about the place”
An interesting idea but actually I think it is more important to learn to apppreciate the things we are doing at any particular moment in time. I’ve been thinking about this recently, during the day how much time do you spend thinking about what you are going to be doing later, or what you did earlier? I think we do this most of the time, and never actually focus on what we are doing now. We live constantly in the future and in the past, never in the present.
Look back at the farm experience. How much time did you spend thinking aboyut what you would be doing AFTER you left the farm? Certainly its something that crops up (no pun intended) in the farm blog. Because life is moving along at a swift pace all the time we have not learnt to adjust so we are constantly out of phase with life.
I watched a very moving ‘made of tv’ movie the other day. The main character quoted a poem by Auden in which he says ‘We must love one another or die’. I did a google search and found the poem…
September 1, 1939
W.H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each langauge pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons should
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow,
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
It seems to me that as we rush about, making plans, mulling over past events, we have lost out appreciation of the present. Not only must we love each other, we must love ourselves. Until you decide what it is you want to do you will be drifting along in life. There is nothing wrong with that, it brings you a rich set of experiences that you may have missed if you were settled in one place. I fear that you will never find a sense of calm until you learn to relax with the hear and now.
Oh well, it’s not very often i’m in such a reflective mood. I’m not very good at putting all this stuff in to words and i’ve taken up way too much space in your comments section for which I appologise (sp?). I’ll shut up now :)
Do you want me to ask my friend Matt if they’re taking on farm labourers at North Aston Organics? Would be nice to have you nearby…
See here for Photo Diary of North Aston Organics: http://agricultured.gn.apc.org/photodiaries.html
Why don’t you come and live with me and Anna, we could employ you to hoover, fix meals and cups of tea etc, I figure we could pay at least £60/hr. Sorry i meant to type 60p/hr.