the two ends of the barn were the lights at the end of the tunnel
The first day back on the job reminded me of why I never liked it the first time around. Always there was a deep, visceral sense of loneliness that I could never shake. By lunch I would be looking for excuses to come down from the ceiling and make the long walk to one end of the barn and out the big doors, to the outside, to see the sun and the sky which always looked the same no matter what part of the state we were in. Chicken farmers build these places in the country, away from town, away from houses, for reasons other than the smell.
On the second day back, I finally realized what it was that bothered me so much about this work. I was sitting on top of a ladder, up near the ceiling, snipping wires and installing the 80th or 90th keyless light fixture of the day, straining in the near dark to discern white wires from black, orange wires from gray. Thinking about April - cocaine eyes and mother instinct, headstrong and giving, careless and sure, animal sex and human weakness and where to take her this weekend and what is the point. Thinking about the town I'm from and the ghosts all over it, the places forever touched or scarred by memories deep and warm and choking and painful and jarring. Philosophy in the Flesh - The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. Dead white men and the places where their words touch the real. Smells of rain and dust and freshly cut wood and metal boxes...copper blood...pinky finger coming open a little...mixed with her lotion...a little trace of her sex...some of these smells real, some not...
Loosen screws...cut wires...strip wires...twist together three ends...wirenuts...stuff the wires up in the box...screw the fixture on...climb down ladder, move down 10 feet, climb up ladder...repeat...
And there it was. Its the damned efficiency of it all. All the thought and planning that went into the design of this building and all the others directed toward the treatment of animals as industrial property. I'm helping build a machine that processes life and death. I looked up and down the barn. The heaters placed so many dozens of yards apart, the vents, the fans, the lights alternating between flourescent and incandescent, twice as many on the breed side because it makes it easier to pick out the dead chicks.
The fate of the animals didn't bother me as much as how this place reminded me of everything I'd read in The Grapes of Wrath about industry pushing out the people who lived and died on the land.
My thoughts moved along this route until I came to the worst realization...Tom Joad is dead. ''Change is a'comin' ''...but it never came. Steinbeck was wrong and he's dead too, but that book can be found in the same section of every Barnes and Noble or Waldenbooks store in America. Its mass-produced and put in its proper place just like these lights I'm installing and the chickens they'll illuminate and I'm the same as the ones in the factories that make the light fixtures and the ones in the stores that stock the Tyson frozen dinners for the ones who work in the cubicles to pop in the microwave while they check their email or their myspace...
And that was my last day on the job.
On the second day back, I finally realized what it was that bothered me so much about this work. I was sitting on top of a ladder, up near the ceiling, snipping wires and installing the 80th or 90th keyless light fixture of the day, straining in the near dark to discern white wires from black, orange wires from gray. Thinking about April - cocaine eyes and mother instinct, headstrong and giving, careless and sure, animal sex and human weakness and where to take her this weekend and what is the point. Thinking about the town I'm from and the ghosts all over it, the places forever touched or scarred by memories deep and warm and choking and painful and jarring. Philosophy in the Flesh - The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. Dead white men and the places where their words touch the real. Smells of rain and dust and freshly cut wood and metal boxes...copper blood...pinky finger coming open a little...mixed with her lotion...a little trace of her sex...some of these smells real, some not...
Loosen screws...cut wires...strip wires...twist together three ends...wirenuts...stuff the wires up in the box...screw the fixture on...climb down ladder, move down 10 feet, climb up ladder...repeat...
And there it was. Its the damned efficiency of it all. All the thought and planning that went into the design of this building and all the others directed toward the treatment of animals as industrial property. I'm helping build a machine that processes life and death. I looked up and down the barn. The heaters placed so many dozens of yards apart, the vents, the fans, the lights alternating between flourescent and incandescent, twice as many on the breed side because it makes it easier to pick out the dead chicks.
The fate of the animals didn't bother me as much as how this place reminded me of everything I'd read in The Grapes of Wrath about industry pushing out the people who lived and died on the land.
My thoughts moved along this route until I came to the worst realization...Tom Joad is dead. ''Change is a'comin' ''...but it never came. Steinbeck was wrong and he's dead too, but that book can be found in the same section of every Barnes and Noble or Waldenbooks store in America. Its mass-produced and put in its proper place just like these lights I'm installing and the chickens they'll illuminate and I'm the same as the ones in the factories that make the light fixtures and the ones in the stores that stock the Tyson frozen dinners for the ones who work in the cubicles to pop in the microwave while they check their email or their myspace...
And that was my last day on the job.