* from: thisisourjob
I like to sit down in front of the typewriter just as I’m waking up, when I still don’t know who I am, where I come from, or where I’m going. My head is in the clouds, hazy and chaotic, beyond Space-Time or any Dialectic.
While I write, my sense of self (whatever that may be) gradually “returns.” I open “my” cell window, take a deep breath of the cold morning air, and feel my lungs expand. I make coffee, and its aroma relaxes me, reminding me of “another time”—my childhood—as well as my mother.
My mother woke up every day at 5 a.m. to go to work. She would put the coffeepot on the kitchen stove, and in a few minutes that familiar aroma I found so appealing was wafting through the air. When I was little, I was convinced that one of the reasons my mother was so “dark” was because of all the coffee she drank. Who knows why? Kids have crazy ideas.
On weekends, “class” wasn’t in session, so I was usually able to go to work with my mother. I enjoyed helping her.
My mother was (and is) a “cleaning worker,” and to earn a living she had to clean other people’s shops and offices. She always took pride in her work. Or perhaps it just was pride in having a job. I never knew exactly which.
My father (now dead) was a construction worker, and he built houses for other people while we lived in a rented shithole. He also took pride in his work. Or perhaps it was also just pride in having a job. Again, I didn’t know which.
Even as a child, a deep feeling of hostility was beginning to grow within me toward what we now call “wage-labor,” but what was simply called “work” back then. Somehow, my daily reality was teaching me that those who had nothing were being forced to sell their time as well as their energy to whose who had everything.
When I asked my parents why there were poor people and rich people, they told me it had always been that way since the beginning of time. My parents’ “mentality” always shocked me: beggars were beggars because they were lazy, whores where whores because they were depraved, thieves were thieves because they were evil.
You had to work, obey, be honest, and be a “good Christian,” always willing to suffer and turn the other cheek. Someday, in the “great beyond,” we would find our reward.
When I was a child, I was embarrassed to say that my mother was a “cleaning worker.” Now, I feel embarrassed for having been ashamed of my mother, for having been ashamed of being poor (I mean “proletarian,” since we never had to go begging)—as if having been born poor, in the heart of a proletarian family, was a “sin” or something you chose.
No, I couldn’t get used to that “order of things.” I didn’t want to accept such an order. I didn’t want to be a proud worker who worked for “other people” and sold his time, his strength, all his energy, and sometimes even his Soul for money. . . .
To me, prison wasn’t anything distant or mysterious. Half the people in my neighborhood had been or were currently locked up in some cell. Continua a leggere→
