Dorothea Tanning, Interior with Sudden Joy, 1951
The Busby Berkeley nightmares are back, planetary rings of bruised pears orbiting an uninhabited brownie, french fries cartwheeling between stale cookies spinning through undulating waves of yogurt. Burnt broccoli stems grow scorpion pinchers, drown beneath vats of cottage cheese. A Giuseppe Arcimboldo homunculus advances upon us with bloodshot radish eyes, rictus grin of cantaloupe rind.
“Is disgust sensitivity an epiphenomenon of broader emotionality?”
Enough is enough is enough is enough. An army of Bartlebys: we would prefer not to. Let us seize upon the ridiculous, the impossible: a new job in 48 days, a completed book in 90, fully self-supported by creative endeavors on this day a year hence. Let us be living clickbait.
I apologize for the long delay; I needed to sort out what this newsletter can do. I’ve decided I’ll write four posts a month: two personal essays of the sort you’re used to, and two practical advisements for artists’ vocational rehabilitation. While I haven’t any talent for strategy, I’ve simply got to make space to breathe. At the top of the homepage, you’ll see the sections “thought” and “action” to distinguish between the two types of posts, and you can subscribe to one or the other, or stay subscribed to both. I turned off the ‘community features’ (likes and comments) that tormented me in their resemblance to social media, but you’re welcome and encouraged to send an email, which I’ll publish in the following issue as a ‘letter to the editor.’
A river of dishwater runs through my shoes and socks, dying my feet black. Henry, son of Henry, father of Henry, a man who robbed robbers with a stripper as bait, leans sideways in pain. This job is a study in integrity. I’m surrounded by men who gave up the thrill and profit of the underworld for a straight life, a life of terminal cooking and cleaning. This is prison in eight (ten, twelve, sixteen....) hour chunks with a two hour commute. “It could be worse,” he says, stoned, toothless, and I see in his eyes that it has been worse.
Proposal for a performance after Dishwasher Pete in which I wash dishes at every Ivy League university in America.
What is happening to me, and what may be happening to some of you, is the result of forty years of labor deregulation coupled with my own failure to acknowledge the severity of my situation. One night last week I fell down the stairs in my house and wondered if all my bones were broken, if I would qualify for short-term disability. I called a weird bank to apply for a predatory loan to pay my rent, and was redirected to a debt consolidation program that requires I destroy my credit cards, allow direct deposits to a trust fund by which the weird bank negotiates settlements. Every day is another uneasy dream.
And I’m once again summoned to the fetid office where hopping corpse manager men detail my infractions. The apex predator-manager is wearing lovely oiled boots of a nineteenth-century peasant style, no doubt purchased from J. Crew for two hundred and ninety eight dollars. I watch too much true crime and imagine him slipping in grease, hitting his head on a corner of the metal worktop. Security cameras will show I was fifty feet away placidly sorting silverware. I do not have powers of telekinesis. I do not need powers of telekinesis. Let their vanity be their downfall.
I endure twenty minutes of browbeating in good humor before they unveil a second browbeating. The accusation is so preposterous, so venal, I shout at the fresh-faced, brisk-booted general manager that he might do well to work a day in the dishroom, that this might cure his terminal condescension, his mealy-mouthed corporate palaver, his sadism and sociopathy. But, my friends, my readers, we’ve been here before. This serves no purpose whatsoever except to deepen the chasm of physical, emotional, and financial danger. Commercial dishwashing and corporate title insurance are as one with the calcification of my personality.
What I find is that sexism is an arm of classism. Because I am a woman, the flavor of classist persecution is different. However, if I were a man—I have on good authority from my male colleagues—I’d not escape persecution in this context. I note this in trying to make sense of why these meetings feel deeply, personally bad, as though some inherent and possibly unconscious characteristic of mine, a characteristic not shared by the uber-managers, provokes these attacks.
The archangel manager regularly proclaims that “money is the root of all evil,” and his grisly tales of betrayal and violence as a former dealer provide ample supporting evidence. The money system and profit-motive may well be the root of all evil. Still, without strong, organized alternatives, money is the power we need to escape perilous, precarious jobs. This is a contradiction of earthly life I must accept.
You’re not too old, and it’s not too late. We’re going to make our art, write our books, record our albums, plant our gardens. Two weeks of why and two weeks of how. Crawling along the bottom of the river to escape emotional and financial hydraulics, “paddling in a group increases safety and rescue options.”
One day I was in incredible pain, scheduled to work alone, and my eyes began leaking tears. A new student worker noticed and insisted on putting pots and pans away for me. He’s from Pakistan, attending a semester at Cornell by way of the University of Warsaw. He studies International Management and takes classes with titles like, “Consumer Behavior” and “Global Citizenship.” We argue about capitalism and ethics with big smiles on our faces—for we love each other. We make a pact to jointly study marketing, and I give him my favorite book by a psychoanalyst about consumer culture and mental illness. Friendship and kindness are everything! As long as we have them, all is not lost.
˚ · . ig: mjbuffett
˚ · . my favorite books: bookshop
˚ · . digital letters to the editor: thelaboringheart@gmail.com
˚ · . analog letters: 459 Boiceville Rd., Brooktondale, NY 14817