June is National Workplace Safety Month

The words above met me as I punched in at the packaging plant near home. In plain English: I now work at a box factory. Six days a week, second shift, from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. and occasional overtime far into twilight.

The hours are a bit extreme, but the work isn't bad. It may be as repetitive as repetitive gets, but folding box lids from flat to their proper 3-D form, feeding unfolded boxes into a machine, and stuffing boxes with more boxes--and more boxes and boxes--at least goes by fast.

The only thing that worries me is the subject of this post's title: safety. Or rather, lack of safety. Earlier today, when one of the machines jammed, my co-workers and current trainers pulled verbal straws: Who was gonna pull out the boxes that overstuffed this contraption of twisting metal and sprinting rubber tracks? Sure as hell wasn't gonna be me. Fortunately, my rookie status excused me of this particular duty. As a perennial klutz and the newbie, the one least intimate with this thing's motions and contortions, I was definitely the most at risk of getting a finger mangled.

Zombies on my mind: Welcome to my neuroses

The weather sucked yesterday.  Overcast.  Rain since I woke up.  Naturally, then, I went for an afternoon swim.

I swam laps, and as my head broke the surface to catch a breath, my eye caught a black body and white face.  Naturally, I thought I’d seen a zombie.

I stopped paddling my arms and legs and froze.  After a split-second of frantic splashing, I stood still on my two feet, and did a double take: No, it was a grill, covered with an all-black tarp, save a pale white rectangle on its face.  Not a zombie.  Forgive me; I'm a spaz.

It doesn’t help that there’s been news of a man killing somebody and eating his face.  Or that I’ve been binging on the second season of The Walking Dead, where eating faces isn’t captured in a grainy photography; the act isn’t obscured and gray but vivid and red.  And these images enter my head and sometimes invade reality.

All this points to something bigger I learned in my four years at Davidson.  In high school, before I knew better, I was convinced my mind was autonomous from all these external influences, including images of the walking dead.  Afraid of the dark?  Imagining creepy things in the closet?  Get a grip, I’d say.  I’ve thought long and hard about this idea, of being able to control your mind, to permit what comes in and what stays out. 

I used to think I could.  And in high school, I defended that conviction; in my freshman year English class, one of my peers presented on the PMRC and the harmful influence of lyrics about rape and murder (I see you, Eminem).  I didn’t want to admit defeat to the self-righteous evangelists of PMRC; I refused to give a bunch of prudes the upper hand and say, Yeah, you’re right.  I’m vulnerable to all this, lyrics of violence and more.  These weird and inappropriate images lurk somewhere in my subconscious.

The first couple years at Davidson, I continued to refuse that my mind was vulnerable.  I denied that some ideas and images could penetrate me by way of my subconscious.  If it wasn’t on my mind, if I wasn’t conscious of an idea, then it didn’t exist inside me. 

This attitude manifested itself in some weird neuroses.  When I studied for tests, I would read the material and jot down notes obsessively; I didn’t trust that the information in front of me would find a place somewhere in my subconscious and come back to steer me true come test day.  I understood all those study notes, those scribbles on too many papers, as a bizarre surrogate brain.  This made cramming pretty arduous and ultimately ineffective.

I didn’t learn better until I really started spacing out my tasks, doing them a little bit at a time and over several days.  You know, scheduling myself like an adult.  I would start writing a paper a week before it was due, and those ideas I formulated on the first day would bury themselves in my head and build a solid base for the rest of the paper.  The argument would magically come together later in the week.  Those preliminary ideas would snowball.  I trusted that my head would steer me where I needed to go rather than try to take the reigns myself.

 So, to my subconscious and its perverse imagination: I admit defeat.  You’re still about as wild as you were at five years old.  I still can imagine grills as zombies.  You still take me to those nether regions, where I revisit the things I thought maturity and growth had banished forever.  You own me.  You let the zombie apocalypse happen; they're running amuck in the basement of my brain.  And I think I’m okay with that.  It makes mundane, repetitive tasks like swimming laps a little more interesting. 

My stomach rumbled

To celebrate a successful end to my Faulkner seminar and its often-disconcerting term paper, I bought an antique-y edition of Knight's Gambit, sat down in a coffee shop, and read a couple chapters.  Then I saw this:

Bill and Karl reunite.  I get sick to my stomach.  You can't see it in this still, but my hand's shaking as my body quakes.

Damn you, Billy Boy and Karl.  I just can't escape those two.

Fighting the post-grad malaise

As I got on the ramp to I-77 N, leaving Davidson and the last four years behind me, I felt a thud.  In the rearview mirror, I saw some creature writhing and hissing in pain.  A snake.  Soon-to-be-roadkill snake.  Looks like I’m already doing some good in this world.

In all seriousness, though, “doing good” is something I’m seeking.  At Davidson, that pursuit was easy to track.  The accompanying sense of accomplishment and self-worth wasn’t always easy to come by, but success at least had a set formula: I wrote a good paper and got an A!  Now, I got nothing.  No parameters for success, no litmus test for a job well done.  I’ve entered that transition period where I’m not a student anymore, but neither am I a fully functioning adult, supporting myself and paying all the bills.  I’m like a half-man.

I hope you’ll read along, as I become a man working for the Man. 

Weekday hippies in Asheville: Feist comes to the Orange Peel

The past couple years, I’ve made a point of leaving Davidson during Finals, that dreaded time of year when your friends are over-caffeinated, under-slept, and may or may not have cried or screamed into a pillow.  Not the happiest bunch of people.

And so my roomie Hayden and I got the hell out of here, for just a few hours.  Destination: Asheville, North Carolina’s hipstermecca, where it’s unusual for passersby not to wear skinny jeans, where you can find burritos made with fresh ingredients (Who knew?), and where it’s hard not to run into a music venue.  There are lots of great shows.  Last night, Feist played at the Orange Peel.  I’d been waiting to see her for years, and she did not disappoint. 

My expectations were uber-high.  It’s hard not to be so demanding of Miss Leslie.  For some of our favorite artists, their myth, their legend, just seems all the more magical when they don’t tour often, when you can’t be just a few feet from their flesh and blood.  When you finally get the chance to be with your heroes, a good performance can still disappoint.  For me, the show can go a couple ways: your hero is detached and removed (to say it bluntly, an ass and possibly pompous), or he/she connects with you.  You don’t have to have a conversation, but you feel the energy.  Leslie Feist did more than that.  She was an icon and a bud.

            She cracked jokes, twitch-danced (whatever that is), took the crowd’s cameras and snapped pics from the stage.  Leslie was personable.  We even got past the first question you ask to begin any relationship: “Where’re you from?”  When Leslie would name a city, state, or country, she asked people to respond in the affirmative by singing, “Ahhhhhhhhh.”  Eventually, she had the entire room singing, and this “Ahhhhhhhhh” we belted happened to be in the key of the next song.  And so we all sang together.  Tribal, hippie shit at its best.

The communal feeling helped.  Everybody was familiar with her tunes, even the deeper cuts.  That’s one of the great things about Leslie.  The friends who bash me (lovingly, I hope) for my hipster-isms know a song like “The Park.”  It’s difficult not to immerse yourself in her music.  I’m sure the crowd would agree, as most nodded, sang, and danced in tune with each song.

            I will say that the excitement could be a little much sometimes.  As Leslie went from a super catchy, upbeat song, like “I Feel it All,” to a much quieter one, like “Bittersweet Melodies,” people kept clapping vigorously in rhythm.  In front of me, there was a girl from Brazil with raggedy hair and piercings; she fist pumped and swung her hand back and forth so hard that she nearly scratched my cornea a few times.  My stature, of 6’ 5”, put my eye in line with her nail.  I’d like to note that this girl’s near-moshing was to the tune of this track.  Still, I appreciated her energy.  She even knew the song that hadn’t been released yet.  And she clapped along to that one.

My height wasn’t always so compromising, though.  Both Hayden and I were among the tallest at this show, and so our heads sort of floated above the crowd.  Not only did we have a good view of the stage, but Leslie had a good view of us.  During “The Bad in Each Other,” she averted her gaze toward us, and she and I made eye contact.  Earlier in the night, she had oriented her body toward the center of the venue, but during the song she shifted stage left, toward me and Hayden. I’m not saying she had a crush, just that the connection felt intimate.  This moment came after watching the video for the same song earlier that afternoon. Among all the hired actors in the clip, she was THE star. At the show, we were buds. Me and les. I think she's coming by the apartment later.

Feist plays at the Orange Peel

Wave your freak flag

Wednesday evening, Davidson’s (sorta) alternative culture took its place front and center at Commons, our college’s cafeteria.  The 5^th annual Phi Beta Kommons brought students together to have a long meal, dress up in costume, and attract stares from passersby.  In past years, some students have gone as far as to crossdress.

The name of the event is a suggestive one.  PBK is an obvious play on the fraternities’ Greek lettering.  In some ways, this event makes fun of those organizations’ exclusivity.  On the door to the patio, there was a sign that read,

                        Closed for a

                        Private Party

The sign, though, is a joke.  Anybody was welcome.  Greek lifers attended without resistance.

            Still, it’s important to recognize that this event exists outside the Greek tradition.  PBK affirms that an alternative social life has a place at Davidson.  For anyone who feels excluded from Greek life, PBK is a chance to say it’s okay we don’t fit that mold.  Keep wavin' your freak flag.

Jobs and Marxism: Idealism before you have to pay to have principles

It’s my last month of college.  My last month before I become a “real person,” before I am (relatively) financially independent of my parents.  Before we snip the umbilical cord, though, there’s one thing that needs some figuring out.  I need a job. 

This pursuit is no fun, as most of my classmates know—employers reject you without even seeing your face.  As of late, my search has become even more disconcerting because of my coursework.  This semester, I’m taking the William Faulkner seminar.  Faulkner’s work in itself is a mindbender.  His sentences can be as long as half a page.  He winds you up, and when you reach the end of a sentence, you’re not really sure where you left the ground.  His prose soars; it’s celestial.  So, this semester, I’ve been grappling between two divergent writing styles: between Faulkner’s semi-colon-ridden, long-as-hell sentences and business-like, clear and concise information for cover letters. 

            What makes matters worse is that my final topic for this course is a Marxist reading of Faulkner’s short stories.  All while I’m trying to become a cog in the machine.  Needless to say, these two activities don’t go well together.  Sunday morning, I sat down at Summit, the local coffee shop, where I do a lot of my work.  First, I hammered out some job applications.  After a couple hours of capitalism, I shifted to Marxism and Faulkner.  This coupling of job search and revolution was like sitting down in a nice restaurant, eating a hearty meal—heavy on the butter—and then, instead of ordering my decaf coffee, I went for a bottle of the off-brand vodka.  And then vomited.  The two pursuits didn’t sit well together.  My stomach is going to have a rough next few weeks.