Welcome to my newsletter about experiments in right livelihood, itself an experiment in right livelihood!
I’m an artist and writer who wandered for the better part of a decade through a Kafka-Bosch corporate hell labyrinth. The blow of mercy came in August of 2022 when I was laid off. The essays here are a record of spiritual rehabilitation as well as exploration of alternatives to shitty jobs, with emphasis on collective utopian endeavors.
Alas, we submit to the vagaries of life, and at the time of updating this page I have perhaps the worst job I’ve had in my life, washing dishes in a college cafeteria. Still, it provides rich material—and free oranges.
I asked my friend Wayne to draw Sisyphus pushing an anatomical heart up a hill, and this was the astonishing result:
‘The laboring heart’ comes from a minor Shakespeare play in which a character performing Elizabethan forensics describes a corpse. But this Emerson quote probably makes more sense:
“The rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery:
Though baffled seers cannot impart
The secret of its laboring heart”
Thank you for your patronage! May we cast a spell of good will together.
˚ · . ig: mjbuffett
˚ · . my favorite books: bookshop
˚ · . digital letters to the editor: thelaboringheart@gmail.com
˚ · . analog letters: 459 Boiceville Rd., Brooktondale, NY 14817
