Once they were answered and rehung, the phones sat lonely and jealous, passion for the truth disconnected as the computer flickers this opinion and that trend. Then slothful dozing caps a busy day at the office.
A crucial model for all employees, he often dreamed of helping the poor and disenfranchised, the sick and unemployed. He wanted to feel as though he was proud of his compassionate labor.
“Thank you. It is deeply moving to be here, neither dismissed out of hand nor ignored right away. What we do here in our labors is but an echo of the movement on that day when the oppressed arise and the oppressors are forced to join the Silent Majority of history’s dustbin.”
His methods at work were highly unusual and could give the impression that he knew his employer would never, indeed could never, bleed the red blood of hard labor. Often, he gazed down at the floor where feet met ground, placing his legs apart to engage a firm stance that would not bend or falter.
So much more significant than his entrance into Heaven was joining friends for beer and a narrow view of the day, recalling what was right and wrong with working.
Who was the person who suffered most? The employee or the thinker?
Honest laboring provides a foundation for righting oneself and opening onto the seamless mosaic of a singular life: private, public; work, play; duty, frivolity–no aspect outside the whole phenomenon.
Nonetheless, when life itself seemed to fall outside the core attention of his labors, he would go watch the grass and flowers, birds and critters in their communal dance.
There is a solace in their beauty… one can stare at them in amazement. They are functionally one even when physically distinct.
Walking under leaves turning brown and brittle in the over exposure to summer time, he reminds himself of the valiant defender of ideals.
Words and syllables fall from his lips onto passers by, moist but drying silent on the life rustling winds.
Whispering without recourse for outside intervention, he scatters himself on a tapestry of “nature” woven from threads of wooly reflection and silky denial.
CALL ME MAGGIE 