Mr. Big Cheese 2000

It's not that I ever imagined a brilliant future for myself. Where I
grew up the idea of a 'career', a job for life, had long been
discarded.
So, it's no surprise to me that I'm living from job to job, in
temporary contracts, without the security and stability most enjoy, or
strive to enjoy. What does surprise me is the kind of work I do and the
persistence of these circumstances that draw me to them. Not that I've
had the world's worst jobs. I've so far managed to avoid sweat-shops,
working 60 hour weeks, singing the company song through broken teeth
with a heart like a dried up river bed. I'm not asking for pity and I'm
not saying there aren't people worse-off than me.
One thing I've been noticing recently is how it's common to hear
people in conversation putting down minimum wage earners as stupid or
unskilled. Perhaps I even once partially saw it that way too, although
that would be my upbringing, rather than me, to be exact. These people
are not stupid or unskilled. Far from it. They have bravery, compassion
and stamina beyond anything your office worker could begin to imagine.
They give up the bulk of their lives, for simple (and insufficient)
rewards so you can have your luxurious (read 'essential') timesaving
jars of cook-in-sauce, in four mouth-watering variations.
Personally, I don't have the confidence or acumen to carve a niche for
myself in this world and what's more, I don't desire it. But as far as
I can remember I have been haunted by a dream that I am somehow capable
of creating something of beauty or importance. Not a work of art in
such specific terms, but an ability to create something that would help
or enlighten people. As a child it was a feeling of magic, which as I
grew older and more cynical faded to a feeling of talent and now is
barely a memory.
I make no bones about it, this is a harsh world we live in. I don't
mean all of it. I mean not the comfort of dreams or the arms of a loved
one - but more the world of boxes and waiting and watching the clock.
This three-dimensional wasteland of assaults and hazards to the body
and soul. As I sit here, wondering what to do with all this, I breathe
in. As my lungs fill and contract they begin to feel alien, like an
exotic butterfly braced inside my ribcage. I breathe in a gaseous
cocktail, low on oxygen and thick with carbon dioxide and microscopic
particles. Of dust, Asthma-triggers and subtle pollutants. Of unknown
chemical compounds with uncountable, let alone identifiable,
mutations.

I seem to exhale nothing. I'm so tired. I can't get up. It occurs to me
it would be possible to slowly suffocate like this - I take shallower
and shallower breaths with next to no exhalation, depriving my lungs of
oxygen and filling my blood with poisons. But my body reacts; the
tickle in my throat forces me to cough, carelessly expelling the
precious poison.
This talk may strike you as dark and morbid, but you would be
mistaken. This is not dark. Darkness is living in a waking dream,
stumbling through your life of promotions, restaurants and leisure
pursuits, neglecting the essential source of life. That is darkness.
Unilluminated and without foundation, deluded and destructive.
To you, darkness is light and light is darkness, but this illusion
will one day shatter and you will feel hot with rage and confusion. It
will spread from the inside out, like a TV dinner in the microwave. You
fear calories, UV rays and muggers in dark side streets but what will
get you in the end will be your everyday reality. The reality of your
mistakes and the reality of your choices. The reality that this world
we build is askew and unjust. Please don't think I wish this upon you.
I just know it to be true.
You will wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, with a
feeling of absolute clarity, after which you will have trouble
sleeping. After a few days of sensitivity, you will put it behind you,
seeing it as a lapse of sanity and soldier yourself up, march into your
local supermarket and thrust your coffee-breath and (revised)
immortality into the face of a guileless shelf-stacker who you know is
too stupid and too thick-skinned to take it to heart, so it doesn't
matter how you behave. That you know for sure. That's why, around the
office, they call you Mr. Big Cheese. That's why tonight there are two
people that cannot sleep.

(c) 2000 Vincent Pollard