Pointillism

You can’t be what you were, so you better start being just what you are.

-       Ian MacKaye, Fugazi

1.

“Wow! This is some really nice work!”

My response was pre-reflexive, visceral, as automatic as it was heartfelt. Upon opening the door to the bathroom at the library, I just blurted out the words, sent them out into the world, to do as they may, without giving it a thought.

2.

At what point do you stop being what you were, at some time in the past, near at hand or disappearing in the rear-view mirror, and become what you are in the present, the sum total of your quotidian actions, your comings and goings, your pleasures and preoccupations, big and small, day in and day out?

3.

As a general rule, a matter of principle really, I don’t think of work on my day off.

This, in fact, is the beauty of the profession, the reason why I stepped into the beige coveralls, the reason why I clipped the keyring onto my belt loop, the reason why I got behind the push-broom in the first place.

At the end of my shift, late into the night, when I punch my timecard at the back door, the janitor entrance, the most secret one, with the freight elevator and trash bins and tool shelves, when I close that door behind me at long last and step out into the night, when the coldness hits my cheeks and I take my first sip of fresh air in eight hours, drinking it down deep, savoring its earthy tones, like a fine wine, with hints of oak and pine smoke, when the work is done and the surfaces shine and tremble and hum, I don’t take my job with me when I go. I leave it at the door.

Today, however, when I least expected it, it caught up with me.

Maté, anyone?

4.

My day off started like all the rest. Body-weary from a long night of cleaning, I threw the covers back and stumbled my way to the kitchen, using the wall for support, where I put the teapot on for some matés.

The first matés are always the best ones, the strongest ones, tiny bubbles huddling together at the base of the bombilla, my trusty stainless-steel straw. It only took a few sips to dispel the stupor. As I watched the delicate wisps of vapor rise from the newly moistened yerba, I couldn’t help but think that it was going to be a good day.

5.

The Project is like a cartoon anvil that falls from the sky and leaves an anvil-shaped hole in the pavement, so deep you can’t see the bottom. It is so large, so monolithic, so all-consuming, that a day’s work barely leaves a dent.

For years, I have been seated at the control panel, pushing buttons, pulling levers, staying up late, waking up early, but it moves so slow that, most of the time, it feels like it is barely moving at all, that I’m barely making any progress.

On my days off, I go to the library with a suitcase full of books. I set up camp on the top floor, at the corner table, the quietest, the most recondite, by the big windows. Books stacked before me, notebooks and index cards spread out on the desktop, I get to work.

I read some pages, an article or a chapter, then take some notes. I reduce the vast expanses of text to the bare bones, extract the definitions of key terms, and pick a handful of quotes to store in my satchel for later use. I write a sentence, cross it out, write it again in exactly the same words. For some reason, it looks better the second time around. I move forward, one foot after the other, from one word to the next, one step forward and two back. The phrases turn into sentences that turn into the paragraphs that turn into pages. By the end of the day, I will have a few of them, if I am lucky, pages. They will be barely legible. The majority of the text will be crossed out, pierced with arrows, coming apart at the seams. The margins will be crowded with comments and corrections. All in all, I will only be able to use a few small pieces, misshapen nuggets of text.

Together, they constitute one small dot in Pointillist painting. On any given day, I am standing too close to know what I am looking at. It is easy to lose sight of the big picture, the canvas, The Project, in all its inhuman dimensions.

6.

The library is on the other side of town, as far from The Halfway House as possible without leaving city limits. Outside of my usual range, my comfort zone, I had never been there before. I had only gone, in fact, because they had a book that I needed for The Project, an oldie but goodie, one on the Tupamaros.

It seemed like a good idea, necessary even, for the Project, to see what the English-speaking world was saying about political violence in the sixties and seventies, so I read through the volumes of The Pelican Latin American Library Series, discontinued by the early eighties for its political content, increasingly at odds with the apolitical sensibilities of postmodernism, the triumph of Counter Revolution, and the advent of the Gospel of Neoliberalism. I had read through all the volumes except one, the one about the Tupamaros. When I found out that they had a copy at the library on the other side of town, as far as possible without leaving city limits, I didn’t think twice.

7.

There was something about the library I didn’t like. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something just wasn’t right, something in the lighting perhaps, sometime menacing, hostile even. It was as if The Natural Order of Things had been disrupted again. In what way, though, I won’t have been able to say.

I couldn’t recall ever having felt that way in a library.

Once I found the volume, though, a green cover with a five-pointed red star, bleeding like a bullet wound from the two lowest points, I immediately felt better, immediately found a table, rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

It wasn’t long, however, before the morning matés began to take their effect, that is, their diuretic effect. Having put it off slightly too long, I was in a hurry to get to the bathroom. Not wanting to break into a run in the middle of the library, I was walking stiff legged, pants legs rubbing together in the middle, leaning forward, and quite honestly worried that I wasn’t going to make it in time.

And that is when it got me, right then when I swung open the door to the bathroom. I stopped in my tracks.

“Wow! This is some really nice work! Great attention to detail.”

I spoke the words as a janitor, as a professional, as one janitor admiring another’s work.

8.

When people ask me what I do for a living, I don’t think twice, or at least I didn’t until today, until that bathroom on the top floor of the library.

Lecturer. Writer. Researcher.

Sometimes I changed the order, but the words were always the same.

Researcher. Writer. Lecturer.

Only recently did I start to mention, nonchalantly, as an afterthought, what I actually do for a living, not what I would like to do for a living, not what I had once done for a living, for twenty years even, but what I do now, in the present, day in and day out, or night in and night out, as it were.

Offhandedly, obliquely, I try to fit it into the conversation somewhere.

Oh yeah, and there is this one other thing, a very small thing, no big deal really, just a little something that I am doing on the side, in the off hours, as a break from research and teaching, picking up a few extra shifts here and there, you know, what do they call it? A side gig? A gig job? Well, one of those. Nothing big, just a few hours here and there, pocket money, something to help with the bills, you know.  What’s that? At the university? No, no, I’m kind of thinking outside of the box here, you know, getting all experimental, all maverick, heading off in a new direction, a different direction. A research grant? No, no, well, actually I’m just, actually I am just… How can I put this? I’m just taking care of a community center at night, you know, making sure that everything is in order, keeping an eye on things, keeping it all, well, ...tidy. What’s that? A security guard? Well, I am the only one in the building, but not exactly. The work is a little more custodial, in that general direction, the direction of custodianship…”

9.

When I stepped out of the bathroom, I was changed. It had caught up with me. Over the past months, almost a year now, things had switched places. Without me knowing it, the order had been upturned. In terms of hours, cleaning was the center. It was no longer an afterthought, a side gig, but a part of the way I now see things.

The time to be honest had arrived, with myself and with others, the time to be more accurate, simpler even. What’s that? What I do?

Clean. Read. Write. In that order.