Monday, February 21, 2011

H.alf A. L.ife

I sit at a cubicle smaller than a jail cell. The walls are dreary grey fabric with pins holding printed memos of forgotten importance. Mixed in are de-motivational posters. People stand within a bodies length participating in discussions, exchanging information that will shape their futures. I sit with my head in my hands, eyes fixed on a screen full of opened but unused windows. The sound of fingers on keys and grumbles of down systems reverb over the cubicle walls to find passage into my ear canals. Still I sit.
A coworker breaths with exaggeration to let us all know he/she is hard at work with a million things to do as five o’clock speedily approaches. It doesn’t get here soon enough.
Conversations start and stop. Details are worked out and worked over.
I sit thinking of ways to escape.
In twenty minutes time I will take another bathroom break, spacing it perfectly every hour. The reasons to get out of my chair grow with the hours in the day. Print an email, get some water, talk to a co worker. All of these reasons get me out of my chair. The day lags.
Soon it will be over only to be repeated again. I’m looking for a way out.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Move your soul

I came across a blog the other day. Twowheelsmovesthesoul.com

It’s a blog about custom motorcycles, more specifically café racers. A café racer is a bike (traditionally British) that has been trimmed down and made aerodynamic for speed. I’ve ridden a little and enjoy it. It was not the motorcycles that attracted me to the blog, it was the title…moves the soul.

Isn’t that what we all want, to have our souls moved. What does that even feel like? Ask a Christian and they will tell you, ask an atheist and they will define it with science. It doesn’t matter as long as it gets moved.

I can think of how my soul gets moved. There are things and times and memories that create a stir in my chest that can only be my soul on the move.

The first thought is always to my Scout. I grew up in that truck and have had a lot of great memories with it. She, it, is an inanimate object. I know this, I love her still. I once pulled up next to a blonde in a Ferrari. We both had our tops down. I looked over and smirked and revved very different V8’s. Nope, I wouldn’t trade her for a Ferrari or anything else Italy can hand craft.

There are memories that move my soul. Many of them happy a few sad and some that run a cycle through my mind starting and ending in the same place with the same conclusions leaving me only to reexamine them another day. These are the things that make us who we are; the moments our souls are moved. My soul moved a little to the left and I grew colder a little the right and I was impressed and up always made me smile. The soul on the move is a soul alive.

In this world of on demand and 100% recyclable we often find a soul stagnant, or something to be used and used again. Take on demand, everything at our fingertips is not always best. Blockbuster Video’s failed philosophy was the belief that people will always want to wander a store for a movie rather than sift through a list on their TV while sitting on their couch, lending proof that what we want is to have options from our fingertips. That one misguided attitude does not negate on-demand can be a soul killer. Life is in the struggle.

Recycling is smart. There are always things to be scavenged and reused. I am a survivalist who gets off on repurposing things. Oh and free-cycling is fun for the whole family. The downside to a recycle mentality is that nothing has meaning, hold real value, because the purpose becomes very limited, a purpose with an end. Obviously I am not a Hindu. If it’s coming back as a trash bag why am I drinking soda out of it now? What was it before? Maybe your tooth brush used to be the plastic thing that holds the urinal cakes in place.

Where does this leave the soul? Is it recycled, reused, repurposed? No. Don’t confuse modern mentality with ancient wisdom. What is here today and back tomorrow as something else does not move the soul.