a fitting endeavor

I've got gas.

Well, not exactly. I've got gas fittings, which make it possible for you to have gas. That's my new job, see. I insert gas fireplaces. I do this by climbing around on rooftops, dropping liners, connecting pipes, bending copper, and screwdrivering crumbly ceramic "logs" into place. All this so that (mostly upscale) suburbanites can have "fire" at the push of a button.

When I retired from planting this year I decided to get a job that would do one or more of three things for me. First, it would have something to do with teaching art (the direction I want to be heading). Second, it would make me a bunch of fundage. And third, it would be something completely random, which would force me to grow several degrees in a different direction.

Done, done and done. First, I'm on the list as a substitute teacher, and this monday I taught sixth and seventh grade art. Second, gas fitting is piecework (we get paid by the job) and my partner Chipsauce and I are both former tree planters, so we zoom through the jobs and end up getting paid well. And finally, it is blinkin' off the map for me, personally. I mean, I put the "ass" in "assembly". If I tried to make a birdhouse, I'd probably end up with rocking chair that would kill grandparents - and here I am, fiddling around with power drills and Hiltis and pipe wrenches and threading machines. Go figure.

Traditionally when there's a job of work to be done involving building things more complicated that grilled-cheese-sandwiches, I'll stand aside hemming and hawing and looking thoughtful until other people get 'er done. This is no longer an option, and the end result is that I've started to think of this whole "trades" thing like anything else - you get a bit of training and then you leap in with both feet, getting covered in soot and making the best decisions you can as you go along. You make mistakes, sure, but you learn from them and the next time you measure a bit more carefully before you start drilling a hole through someone's expensive italian marble mantlepiece.

The best part about it is that every time you show up at someone's house, you're like Santy Clause. You're the guy who's bringing heat and joy and firelit parties into their home, so the moment you knock on the door visions of cozy, snuggly evenings start dancing in their heads. As a result, they welcome you in with open arms, offering you coffee and tea and beer and cake and chocolate cookies they made fresh for you with their cute-as-a-button little daughter. Sometimes they even give you small paper rectangles with pictures of dead people on them. Boo-yah-ka-shah!

This is a novel thing for me, because I am used to tree planting for corporations who see you as an unpleasant expense forced on them by a government disassociated from the realities of forest regeneration. As a result, I have ended up working a lot of the time for power-tripping young forestry students with a little bit of book knowledge, who arrive on the scene with a huzzah! and order me to stand on my head and play "the flight of the bumblebee" with my shovel - when all I really want to do is get on with my job of monostocking the world with genetically similar pine trees that will grow up to be obliterated by the Rocky Mountain Pine Beetle.

So what if I'm once again the last link in the chain of a nature-raping industry (this time, oil and gas)? At least now I get cookies and tea and don't have anybody yelling at me, ever. Life is good when you're the ignorant, irresponsible schlub. You just smile, eat the cookies, look the other way, and collect the cash.

lying sack of dogs

I lied to a cop a few days ago. I looked him smack-dab in the eye and bore false witness unto his personage, telling him that I played guitar. I do not. Why did I do this? Why did I risk hell and the indignity of a strip search? The immediate reason, I guess, is it was easier than going through a broker to get my friend’s music gear across the Canadian border, and I thought I could get away with it. I almost didn’t.

I looked in that Indo-Canadian guard’s eyes and I could see it – just for a moment. He knew I was lying and he was weighing it out, thinking, “this little rat-nut is trying to shyster me. It has been a bit of a lazy one… I should exercise my limitless border-guard powers and have his car stripped to the axles, his dog beaten, and electrodes attached to places on his body he will not enjoy until he admits to every walk he has every jayed and every cop he’s ever cursed. I should break this little fudrucker”.

Then, as quickly as it was there, the look was gone. “All right” he said, handing me my passport with a look of disdain worthy of the Maharaja himself. “You may go”. And go I did, feeling like dirt. Not good, clean, organic, forest-floor loam, mind you, but a chemical-laden, fetid muck oozing with maggots on the floor below a row of factory-farmed, hormonally-charged boiler hens.

This little indiscretion (or felony, if you will) is yet another reminder of a truth that these days smacks me upside of the head more than I enjoy admitting – that I’m not as swell a fellow as I have convinced myself and my mum that I am. I think this is a good thing. I think I have spent too long self-obsessing, strutting around like a peacock (pardon my french) saying, “don’t I just blow your mind? Aren’t my feathers just brilliant?”

When I am put through the testing fire and have come out as a pile of ash and some teeth, I have to admit that I am a pretentious poppenjay, and that perhaps my primary reason for being so “good” all the time is that I am running pell-mell from a fear of reprisal. It could very well be that any of the right actions I have taken have been not out of a genuine love for what is True, but rather out of a terror that is a diminution of the Real me that ought to be.

Maybe lying to a cop will prove to have been the lynch-pin that broke me out of petty posturing and got me to accept my mediocrity and really start Living. Maybe I should break more laws, so it gets harder to think of myself as OK. Probably not, but I do not want to end up chalking up my reaction to my failings as the pathos-addiction of my youth, a desire to dig up drama out of every insignificant event.

Better a penitent fool in sackcloth than a strutting fool in silk.