Pulmonary Misanthropy

With every breath, the worker feels more and more pressed.

The most difficult thing about being a full time ditch digger is that the worker doesn't get much time to himself. Whilst he is digging the hole, he is constantly surrounded...both by those who labour with him and by those he is training to take up the spade after he is no longer able. Once he hangs up his spade, he must then go home to his family where the worker becomes the father. He spends his life either giving or being taken from in all of his various professions and, at times, in his darkest heart, the worker resents this.

The worker knows that the man has asked him to dig this hole and be this father. The worker also knows that the man has given him all the time he needs...most of it is squandered or taken up showing others how to dig, brace walls, move dirt, wet earth, or one of the many other things that go into digging a hole of the nature the man wants.

The worker can not help but be hit with a certain level of self-loathing when faced with his self-indulgent narcissism. He realizes that to want time to himself is selfish, but he also feels that he is owed it. Then again, the worker also realizes that writing in his journal is probably also idle time...but he is alone, and that is peaceful.

The worker seems to have drifted further from the man in the past few months. The grime and dirt have obfuscated his view. And in all truth, the worker hasn't really felt the need to fix that, and it worries him. He hasn't been in the man's office for their weekly meeting in what seems like months. There are reasons, most of them legitimate, but the worker still misses those meetings....and not being in those meetings seems to have somehow left the worker with a slightly less than focused sense of direction.

So the worker plods on....each day, suiting up, grabbing his spade, and moving earth...more so these days with a heavy heart. But there are days when the worker runs across a fellow laborer or one of his past proteges with their new, shiny spade; eager to plow into the task at hand....and they turn to the worker for advice or to thank him....and the worker, uncomfortable with the praise as he knows it is due to the man, looks up in the man's office and sees him smiling down.

The worker still wants others to want less of him, but he knows that the man doesn't. Perhaps the man and the worker need to discuss this at their next meeting....

Ecumenical Epiphany

"Not everyone digs holes."

The worker had a hard time believing the man. He had heard of people who were not in the business of digging holes, but had never really spent any meaningful time with them. In fact, the worker wasn't even sure that spending time with those who didn't dig holes was a good idea. Almost everyone the man knew dug holes. Most of them were his closest, most fast friends.

One should imagine that if one lives in a hole, those around him are of the same mind.

The worker has spent some time on the surface as of late...and while the change of pace is nice. His calluses are softening and he misses his spade.

Pura VIda

“Because I deserve it.”

The worker did not doubt it for a moment, however hollow the man’s answer seemed to ring.

The man had called the worker to dig this hole and dig it he had. The hole now was wider, deeper, and more vacuous that the worker ever though was possible.

The worker had help, to be certain. Many different people along the way had moved earth at his side. The man had made sure that the worker had help, for he knew that one worker could never dig the hole he wanted.

As the worker takes a break, he puts the spade at home in the earth and rests his calloused hands on the now smooth wood, not missing for a moment that the wooden handle is only now smooth because of the now rough texture of his hands. He grows weary, the worker…and no amount of cheer does he take from his co-workers. He wonders, in his most secret of hearts, why the man doesn’t just come down here and dig this damnable hole himself.

The man watches the worker as he rests. It is indeed a long way down to the bottom of that hole. The man is proud of the worker. He has dug much of the hole in a manner befitting his nature. He has worked tirelessly. The worker deserves a break. The man wishes the worker’s attitude was better at times, but he does understand. From the locked banquet room, the man watches, as he sets the table for the after work dinner party…thinking of the keys he has placed at the bottom of the hole.

Malignant Atrophy

The sound of the spade in the earth has become the white noise of the worker's life.

He has come into a rhythm of apparent ease and his mind has begun to wander. Digging simply hasn't remained as demanding as it once was. The worker spends more time looking around as he digs....noticing the other workers, occasionally talking to them about how the man has asked them to dig. He feels, at times, that he is intruding on their digging...but so far, this has not managed to stop him.

The thing most prominent in his thoughts is the enormity of the hole.

As the worker looks around, he is in awe of the man's plan. The hole is simply enormous and the more of the earth it eats away, the more workers are needed to aide in it's invasion of solid ground. The man has assigned people in the hole who no longer dig, but build support walls. The hole is getting so large, it is in danger of collapsing. It looms over the worker, reminding him every day of the work done before him and the possibility of it all crashing down with one misplaced spade in the future. The hole must be kept in tact. The man has known this since before the job started. The worker is just now learning.

The man and the worker and talking more as of late and for that, the man is glad.

There appears, to the worker, to be more in the hole than out of it. The hole has consumed him...taking him longer and longer to get in and out of it. So while the digging has become more of an extension of who he is, the commute is now more taxing. The worker seems to do less digging and more traveling.

The man knows why. The worker doesn't.



The hole continues to grow...

Spurious Obliquity

Once a year, the man lets the worker rest.

The worker hears the whistle blow and immediately his shoulders release months of aching tension and strain. His back weakens and it is as if his body weighs an inordinate amount - even still the weight feels good for the worker knows it is time to rest. Time to spend time somewhere other than the hole...time to feel something other than the hand-worn smooth pine of his spade underhand. It is a brief respite that the man gives the worker, and it is one the worker looks forward to all year.

The break comes during the winter, when the ground is hard and fast. The spade no longer dives as deeply into the permafrost at the bottom of the hole. The break lasts about fourteen days and is intended to be a celebration, a remembrance of sorts. Time is given to look back on the whole of the man's plan.... to hearken back to the day when this present hole had been a mountain and not a single spade and moved even a grain of sand. It is a celebration of the man and his origin and vision primarily, but it is also a time to celebrate with family and fellow laborers knowing that even should you give out, the hole will be dug.

It is the workers favorite time of year... not because he ceases to toil, but because he is honored, deeply, to be involved in such a project. And perhaps too, feels a touch unworthy.

After the break is over, the worker calls the man back to the hole. The worker descends the creaky hand-lashed ladder that traverses ledge after ledge. Not only is the work hard, but the commute in and of it's self is challenging. Not only must the worker do his work, he must force himself to get there. As he descends the ladder, he is buffeted by memories of the break and a strong sense of gratitude to the man. He feels this will get him through the year.

And he is right.

Whether or not he believes it.

Unabashed Nepotism

"Go, and toil" the man said.

So he was sent to dig. He was, in a word, commanded to do so... and so he went and did. Out of love, yes. Out of duty and honor and all the rest as well. With some misgiving? Indeed. But he went...and he dug.

He dug well and he dug hard. He, however, did not dig alone. Many people were sent to help the man dig. Some much stronger than others. Some much weaker. Others came to the job with such ferocity that they worked their hands raw, developing blisters and embedding splinters into their hands so as to render them useless. Some simply became exhausted with the seemingly endless monotony of digging and went elsewhere, having been told by the man to leave. Upon scampering up the sides on their ways out, they kicked more and more dirt back into the hole, which had to then be dug out again by those remaining below.

After many days on the job, the worker began to receive praise from many people. "What a strong digger you are!" "Surely you will never grow tired!" "Look at the strength with which he moves the earth!" The worker, although he heard the adulation, continued digging as if he didn't. The worker didn't believe he was a very good digger... those around him thought as much primarily because they had never dug. He was a god among men who were afraid of their own shadow and baffled by common arithmetic. His work, to him, was easy...contemptibly so.

The approbation continued and the worker became more and more flustered. He did not dig for approval. He dug because it was his job. He dug because it was all he knew. The worker dug because it made sense to him. The man knew that and that's why the man had told the worker to toil and dig. The man never told the worker he was good. The man reminded him of how bad he was and how he was only a digger because the man had made him one. The man kept the worker humble. The worker owed all he was to the man.

The approbation later turned to scorn. Not dalying in idle banter and focusing so hard on the work of digging, the worker was found cold and unapproachable. "For his lack of mirth and merriment, he will surely be sorry!" "He is so serious and devoted so as to avoid even us, his partners in digging." "He does not need our help for he feels he is our better." The worker was confused at the others lack of devotion. Were they to spend more time digging and less time observing others digging, would not this hole already be dug? The man continued on, spade upon spade, full of earth, moving alongside his feet. A Digger digs. The man had told the worker as much. "Go, and toil." he had said. And so the worker continued on digging. It was, after all, his job.

As time progressed the hole became exponentially larger. The worker took breaks now and then, leaning on the now smooth handle of his trusty, well-worn spade. As he looked around, he didn't know the rest of the workers... they were strange to him. The man had called in many new people, for the hole was getting much bigger and all these new people seemed to be digging everywhere but where the worker was. He was alone in a sea of work, digging his own hole for the man.

The man knew it. The man wanted it that way.

The worker wants to know why.

Self Study

The new title of the blog reflects a name given me by a colleague of mine. Little did I know how apt the moniker was....and this definition, given me by a friend, is eerily exacting in its description of me.

"A curmudgeon's reputation for malevolence is undeserved. They're neither warped nor evil at heart. They don't hate mankind, just mankind's absurdities. They're just as sensitive and soft-hearted as the next guy, but they hide their vulnerability beneath a crust of misanthropy. They ease the pain by turning hurt into humor.They attack maudlinism because it devalues genuine sentiment. Nature, having failed to equip them with a servicable denial mechanism, has endowed them with astute perception and sly wit.
Curmudgeons are mockers and debunkers whose bitterness is a symptom rather than a disease. They can't compromise their standards and can't manage the suspension of disbelief necessary for feigned cheerfulness. Their awareness is a curse.
Perhaps curmudgeons have gotten a bad rap in the same way that the messenger is blamed for the message: They have the temerity to comment on the human condition without apology. They not only refuse to applaud mediocrity, they howl it down with morose glee. Their versions of the truth unsettle us, and we hold it against them, even though they soften it with humor."