Happy New Year Everyone….Wait, didn’t the New Year actually begin back on the 21st of December? Back when the engines of the planet had ground down to a standstill, then began reversing the other direction. Back, returning towards the light. Two days after Winter Solstice the day was longer than two days before Solstice. The 21st of December is a good day to re-set the inner clock for a New Year of traveling around in the solar system, and “New Year’s Day” is a good day to hang the new wall calendar. So happy first of January 2008. Here’s hoping for the future ~ and good luck to us all.
This morning I’m sat here at a desk on Whidbey Island looking out at heavy, gloomy looking winter skies. Out beyond the beach I can look across acres and acres of blue-ish grey, bone chilling water. Scattered about me on the table here are notebooks, a ruled notepad of paper, and pens of various colors. I have been attempting to focus on the New Year and make some lists of goals, and plans. It’s the kind of work that my father excels at. He can make a list of goals to accomplish and hey presto, after a couple of months they are all checked off. As for my own luck with lists I don’t believe I necessarily inherited that particular gene from my Dad. But it being a new year I’m having a go at list making anyway. Overall I suppose the morning’s work has gone all right. The lists range from creative plans to the more mundane tasks that shouldn’t be ignored….Make a new record. Go back to booking shows and falling in love with music again. Go to the dentist. See where the transmission fluid is leaking from underneath the van. Make another record….These aren’t really lists of “New Year’s resolutions” of any sort, just plans so that days don’t escape and pass by without you noticing. Any number of days can escape, and evening can come and tomorrow arrive and there isn’t a damn thing to look back and hold in the memory with any real sense of satisfaction. If I do have any sort of “New Year’s Resolution” it’s that I’m declaring war on blank days. Not every day will launch off the rocket pad, go interstellar, and be forever remembered. Some days will be just, well, days. But the intention of not letting them pass you easily by is where I’m coming from. To give each day at least a fighting chance of being remembered. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s how I’m going to live this year. I don’t ever again want to settle for the empty experience of a day. At least not without starting it off by meeting it half way. Every day needs at least the hope for a drop on the goal, and a chance to rock outright in it’s own regard. We’ll see how it goes. But that’s my intention.
I think that my new personal vendetta against days that go missing comes from taking a temporary job that turned out to be a bit of an empty experience in nearly every way it could be. It was interesting in some regards, and one of those job experiences that you do for a time and then, in the end, you walk away and chalk it up to experience. That’s what this job was for me. You see for the last couple of months I was a Widget mover in the Widget Moving Warehouse. It looked, as these kinds of jobs often do, good on paper. A couple of months working under a roof going into the rainy bleak winter. A few regular paychecks. Something new to try. Good on paper. OK.
So I left Portland and returned to Whidbey Island for a few months and took the job moving Widgets. I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning and go outside and look at the stars. Then have a coffee, and wander down the street to catch a little bus that took me to the ferry dock. Then off on the boat to the mainland and a second bus up the hill and down a little ways, then off the bus at the frozen fish packing plant, down the sidewalk, and in through the door to the Widget Warehouse. And there they all were. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes all filled with more boxes inside, and Widgets of every kind and shape and color inside those inner boxes. Blue Widgets, red Widgets, green Widgets that make a sound, wind up Widgets that walk, Widgets that don’t move at all. Ornamental Widgets, collectable Widgets, and Widgets that will most likely arrive in the landfill a good time sooner than the rest of the other Widgets will. These Widgets all came here from across the ocean in China. Then these Widgets are all unpackaged, and then repackaged, and then sent away again to just about every town in America that you have ever heard of. Mobile, Alabama. Euclid, Ohio. New York, New York. Portland, Maine. Portland, Oregon. Cedar Rapids, Signal Hill, Grant’s Pass, Chicago, Irvine, Pacific Palisades, Waco, Duluth, Yonkers, Charlottesville, Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsville, Chappell Hill, Lexington, Boston, every kind of P.O. box in Hawaii, Alberta, Edmonton, and Toronto, Ireland, Spain, and one even went away to Australia.
The best part of the job was watching all of the address go flying past on the boxes: Number 61, Castle Hill Road in Pawcatuck, Rhode Island . Morning Glory Avenue in Fort Worth, Texas. Orleans Street in Angelica, New York. 87 Cross Patch Road in Willow, New York. South West 2nd Street in a town called Lee’s Summit, Missouri. In Virginia there’s a place called Retreat Hill Lane, and there’s another place called West Lark Street in one of many towns named Springfield. Josephine Street, Moon Township, Washington Avenue, Richmond Street in Abilene, Texas, and Alba Street in Portland Maine. There must be miles and miles of “Riverside” Avenues, and Roads, and Parkways…There’s a Kate on Devonshire Street, and a Simone on Congress Street. A Leigh on Wall Street, and William lives on Malibu Road. Bayview. Amityville, Osage Beach, Willits, Sacramento, Cross Junction, Soap Lake, Cedar Rapids, and leave a light burning in the window down on Vega Street. It’s amazing all of the things that there are to learn and think about for just standing there. Standing still affixing address stickers to boxes that are packed with Widgets and bits of paper. I mean what’s life look like if you live on Retreat Hill Lane in Virginia? Or Juniper Road in Brunswick, Maine. Or Vischer Ferry Road in Clifton Park, New York, zip code 12065. There’s humanity left in the operation yet. And actually it was simply the sheer force; the completely undeniable living presence, from the macro country and cultural level, to the micro household and street address level, all of the humanity, and the people, and all of the individuals involved in this production of, and movement of, goods that made my head spin and heart ache. This Warehouse operation is so small, tiny in fact, and yet it involves so many people and so much energy. It’s all way too much.
The way of this operation’s operation, and the eye-popping experience of it, is simply based on the notion of free global trade. Goods are made for cheap in China, shipped here, then marked up, sold, and shipped out again. I didn’t judge the job really, nor anyone who worked there - except maybe the boss – him just a little. What was completely troubling about the Widget moving experience was that it provided the smallest fraction of a peek into the ugly unsustainable reality of global trade. Just the sheer amount of Earth and Human energy that goes into moving one inadamite, relatively un-useful, wind up Widget with horns and a tail, from one side of the planet to the other was, for me, just completely hair rising.
Want to travel across the Earth for a minute? No passport, no money, no ticket, and no bags required. Really. Let’s run away and be Widgets. See, Widgets are free to move, but not people. That’s the way of it.
So here’s the quick snapshot look into the wonderful world of Widget moving, complete with shadowy and unsettled feelings of exasperation, exhaustion, despair, hopelessness, failure, ruination, and just about every other kind of glum, useless feeling out there.
Right. So, a meeting is had around the big table at the warehouse, which is Widget Central Command, and in this meeting a new kind of Widget is thought up. Then the art department at Widget Central Command makes drawings and descriptions of the new Widget and how it should look and how it ought to be packaged, and those plans are then sent away to China, where someone in a room looks them over and starts in making the prototype Widget to see if it fits the bill. After a few not-quite-right Widgets fly across the ocean and are rejected, a new and improved model arrives and is approved for manufacture and happiness settles over the noggins of the people in positions of management in Widget Central Command. Right away then people who live in China and work in warehouses start in mass-producing the new Widget. Cardboard is brought in on a truck and cut to the exact size dimensions according to the new Widget master plan. Then the printing is put on. Somewhere during this process a lot of cardboard is thrown away, and the ink jets of the printers maybe need replacing and the old one’s are thrown away and go to some landfill or other - somewhere where people live near by. Then the plastic widgets are themselves made by people working at machines. People. Working in a factory. When the Widgets are finished they are put into their printed packages, and the packaged Widgets are then put six or twelve at a time into cardboard boxes that are taped shut, and those “inner” boxes are then put four or six at a time into bigger “outer” boxes, and those bigger boxes are taped shut, and then the big boxes are piled onto pallets and wrapped in plastic and taken by forklift to another part of the warehouse. Once there, the plastic is cut away and the boxes are moved, by people, into a metal container for its trip across the ocean. Once the metal container is full of boxes, it’s moved by a person onto a truck which is filled with gas, and a driver takes the whole lot away down the road to the port. Once the container with all of the boxes is at the port, container people look over the paperwork, and then it’s probably moved by people into position at which point the big crane operator lifts the container up into the air and then down into the hold of some ocean going freighter, that is full of gas and oil, with a captain and crew of people who make their livings moving goods across the ocean. Once the port guys throw off the dock lines the big freighter moves slowly out into the open sea and away to Seattle. I don’t know how long it takes a freighter to get across the ocean, but somewhere out there and approaching the shore of Washington State, a little boat brings a temporary captain out to the big freighter and this new captain will steer the big freight boat down Puget Sound and into the pier at Seattle. After the port guys in Seattle who work Union jobs have caught the dock lines, the guy who spends his days sitting atop the big crane drops his lines into the hold of the boat and workers down in there attach them to the container from China. The big crane pulls out the metal container full of boxes and Widgets and sets it down onto a waiting truck. Then someone with some bits of paper has a look at the container, declares it good to go, and the truck driver takes it away in a truck that’s full of gas, and he drives north up the freeway and away from Seattle. The driver knows just where Widget Central Command is located and backs his rig up to the sliding doors, disconnects the truck from the container, rings the buzzer, someone signs off on the paperwork, and several thousand of the brand new Widgets are received.
At this point some of the Widgets are placed high up on an out-of-the-way shelf in the warehouse, while others are moved into a shipping area where they are made ready to be taken to larger chain stores that live in different time zones somewhere else in America. That part of the operation I don’t know too much about as I didn’t work down there. Where I did work was in the mail order area of Widget Central Command. Boxes are delivered upstairs, and someone like me takes them and puts them up on a shelf. That’s first thing in the morning. An hour or so latter I get handed a piece of paper detailing how many of each widget I need to go and pull back down off the shelf. I go find the big box at it’s right location, cut it open and take out some of the inner boxes, then cut them open, pull out the four or six or twelve Widgets, and put each of the whatever-they-happen-to-be into a bin on yet another system of shelves and there they are, each Widget ready to be collected and boxed up, and shipped out when ordered. Then, somewhere far away maybe in a place like Sarasota, Florida, your aunt Grace receives the new catalogue with pictures of all of the new brightly colored items for sale, and thinks to herself “Ah ha!” And so she picks up the phone. She orders, say, three something’s; one of that one, one of this other one here, and one last one of these. Then a piece of paper is printed out and is handed to me, and I go to the shelves and pull your aunt’s order; one of that one, one of this other one here, and one last one of these. Those three something’s are then put back into a box, and that box is then taped shut and a little sticker with your aunt Grace’s address in Sarasota is attached. Then the box is put on a pallet, and this process repeats hundreds of times every day. When the pallets are stacked up with boxes higher than your head, they are all wrapped in plastic again and taken back downstairs, and the UPS fellow comes in a truck full of gas and takes all of the boxes on the pallets away to UPS Central Command. People at UPS Central Command then unwrap the boxes on the pallets and throw away the plastic. Then the boxes are divvied up and the boxes destined for Duluth go one direction and your aunt’s box another. Then these divided up boxes are most likely wrapped in plastic again and loaded onto a truck filled with gas and driven to the airport. At the airport is a big cargo plane filled to the brim with gas, and it’s waiting to fly to Florida with your aunt’s box on board. So away it goes. Once safely landed in Florida, the boxes are driven on a truck filled with gas to another UPS Central Command post and the plastic taken off and thrown away. Then the boxes are divvied up again this time by address, loaded onto another van filled with gas and driven off around the city until finally, at last, reaching your aunt Grace’s house where the UPS man leaves it on the stoop. “Hurray!” shouts your aunt Grace when she opens the door and finds her box of Widgets. Inside go your aunt Grace and the box where she cuts open the tape, pulls out the packing paper and looks over her three new Widgets. And it might stop there. It might. Or, perhaps your aunt Grace purchased these Widgets for the grandkids living in Poughkeepsie, New York, and if that’s the case, then they are re-boxed, re-addressed, and re-sent, off to New York. More trucks, more pallets, more plastic wrap, more airplanes, more energy, bigger footprint.
None of this around the world Widget moving surprised me when I started working in the Widget moving Warehouse. What surprised me was how such a small operation can use such vast amounts of energy to create and move some numbers of things so relatively useless. The two lines of parallel thinking go: “Does the world really need another blue Widget with wind-up gnashing teeth?” to witch free market capitalism replies, “Let them have Widgets!” And Widgets we have. We’re practically drowning in them.
So I don’t know. I enjoyed all of the people who I worked with at the Widget Moving Warehouse. We laughed a lot and screwed around making jokes. We all went a little bonkers too ’cos there were so many Widgets to box up and move. We worked late. We worked Saturdays. Then it was over. On my last day there was hardly anyone else working. I finished up at half past one in the afternoon, and just sortive walked out the warehouse door. The door thumped shut behind me and that, as they say, was that. A bit of an empty experience really.
And that’s the story of the Widget moving job, and my declaration of war on days that you let pass by, and all too easily come to forget. There is fresh snow in the mountains across the water. Fresh tracks up there too...rabbits, lynx, and birds. The sky and hills are dark, with an almost blue-ish shade of winter and my bones feel cold just looking out the window. Today is a new day though. No more widgets. I’m going to write some letters, make calls about rounding up some work, and then think about my Grandfathers and what they would have done with the New Year. They had each seen too many hard times to not be eternally optimistic. It was just the way that they were hard wired. So Happy New Year, 2008. Lets put it together. Lets rock.
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