Laboring

It's hard to imagine a labor day when Americans really honor people who labor for a living. Then again, I have yet to see any really honor shown to veterans on their special day. Wonder why that is actually.

I have been working 3-4 real jobs lately and maybe for the first time in my life, I am starting to understand what it really means to labor. I seem to know a lot of people who work with their brains for a living, and while this is a perfectly honorable way to make a living, it is not the same as coming home from a long day of labor and needing a hot bath and a nap to continue.

When I think of labor I remember some of my first jobs. In fact, once, while taking a semester off of college, I worked as a landscape installer in Southern California. It was a glorious job on a variety of fronts, not the least of which was the concept of working outside in the Southern California sun. There was also a dire side to the entire landscape work, which was the back breaking nature of digging holes in dried ground all day. It was months of work that was meaningful in the sense that I was helping plants grow and creating beauty where only dry unused soil existed. Then again it was hard work, that left me longing for books, bongs and babes at the dorms of college.

Needless to say, I did return to college, grabbed a degree and willed myself to find work that would not leave me punished and sore. Until now.

Sometimes I think about this somewhat smart fat man I know, who has made a life of taking advantage of the creativity and skills of others. While I at first thought this was kind of a smart thing, the more I got to know him, the more I thought of his soulless existence. See, what we create in life is what will end up being our true legacy. If we spend our lives taking advantage of the creative and inspiration of others, our legacy is then one of a money changer, a manager, a user. There is no way around it, and as I watched closely as smart fat man did that to others, I realized I wanted to be the person who creates things, not the one who sells the creations of others.

Really though, labor is always about the market place, at least for the vast majority of people. The same is true of home builders, artists and filmmakers. Without a market to pay for your work, you may call yourself a homebuilder, or an artist, or a filmmaker, but in truth, you are probably something else. While there is nothing wrong with being a closet artist, there is something triumphant about being the person you should be, not the one you want to be, but are too shy to become.

I am off on a series of tangents that make little sense.

As a person who is working and working hard to survive right now, my heart goes out to the millions of Americans who are out of work, who would do anything to better themselves, who are trying to find a way to survive. On this labor day, I think about that image posted at the top of this page. I was in Seattle when the rebel artists took to the streets in front of the corporate Seattle Art Museum and latched a ball and chain on Hammering Man. The symbolism was not lost on anyone, but what impressed me was the ability and cunning of an artist to take another artists work and enhance it. You hardly ever see that, but the ball and chain on Labor Day many years ago is an image and thought that sticks with me.

On labor day 2009 may we all find a way to create a life we can be proud of , to long for goals that are hard to achieve, but attainable and may we all find ways to remove those balls and chains we all metaphorically wear and move on, move past and climb to a new place.