A MANIFESTO
by Amber.
7 January, 2006
"Get up, get up, get up!" It's 6:30 am, and there's work to be done.
You blink, bleary-eyed, and you shrug your blankets and your lover off. You tread a well-worn path to the bathroom, reconstitute your image, and move on.
Underwear, socks, pants, shirt (no, not that shirt...that shirt!), accessories. You collect your little dependencies, and shove them in your bag, pull them over your head, or otherwise append them to your body. You waddle out the door, with less than a second's regret for your still-empty stomach. You save the real composition for the commute.
Walking, riding, driving, or waiting. The mundane world slips past your unseeing eyes, as the rundown runs down. Were did you leave off? What needs doing? Did you remember to feed the cat? Did you remember to bring your lunch? Well, do you have a few bucks, to buy something instead? Well, could you spare a few minutes to drop by the bank to get som...Shit! You've mailed your phone bill to your mother and her letter to a collection service in Boulder, Colorado.
You pull your headphones on, until you pull into work.
Work! There's work to be done. You sit at your desk, you stare at your screen. You drain your coffee, and you smile mechanically at your co-workers. You think, and you think, and you miss lunch, and you miss calls, and you focus, Focus, FOCUS! It's almost 5:00pm, and there's work to be done!
You stay late, and you skip out on your friends. You're tired, anyway, of drinking and nodding and smirking and wasting time. It's 8:00 pm, and there's work to be done...
You've missed dinner, but you've made some headway. (Is that a word? How is it spelled? "Headway?" "Head weigh?" Hea...hell.) It all comes up even.
You make it to the door, and you step outside.
And something changes.
It's late, it's dark, and you can see your breath. ? Do you have a little time?
You take a 2 hour train ride to the other end of town. You're starving, but awake, and you can barely sit still. There's dancing to be done, speeches to be made--professions. Drinking, perhaps. Dancing, for certain.
The motion and color overcome you. Every doorway beckons. Every smile is genuine, and every second stretched full with a passion and receptivity you'd almost convinced yourself you'd lost.
The night blurs, and objects soften around their edges. And people--people do, too.
You can hardly call yourself away, so you stay until the company goes with you. But you do go: It's 1:30 am, and you've a 2 hour train ride home. But you're energized.
What time is it? There's work to be done!
***
It's the drum circle. It's the ecstasy.It's the Saturnalia.
It's the Mardi Gras. It's the New Year's Eve.
It's the party-to-end-all-parties.
It's the bane of shame
and the summit of long, hard, doubt-ridden labor.
And it's fellowship.
You have admission, and you have admission.
It's the few moments in a week or month in which you uncover that deep-buried, humble, but sparkling pebble of optimism you hide away from the cruelty of cynics. It's the arresting, undoing sight in a friend's eyes of the same wretched, base, earnest yearnings as your own. It's the sustaining breath you barely allow yourself the time to take, and the exhalation.
It's the righteous get-down of the righteous. And everyone's invited.
So come on: There's work to be done!
