Please see my photography site at www.peterscottcameron.com.
Overheard during an online Self-Realization Fellowship conference, as reported to me by my “Darlin’ Companion” who most definitely gives me “peace and understandin’.” (Cue the Lovin’ Spoonful…)
A young man was determined to undergo the arduous training to become a monk in a certain silent order. The focus was meditation and accompanying study. Every ten years, monks in contemplation were allowed to speak two words to the Master.
After the first ten years, the monk had his audience with the Master and spoke his two words.
“Food bad,” he said. The Master nodded, and the monk returned to his silent practice.
After twenty years, the monk had another opportunity to speak.
“Bed hard,” he said. The Master nodded.
At the next opportunity, the monk told the Master: “I quit.”
This time, the Master replied.
“I’m not surprised,” he said. “You’ve been complaining for thirty years.”
They drive through the town, the cold, the snow and the dark, through the still Sunday night of lights-out-early-to-bed, across railway tracks by the hard-rock lake-shore, to the old red machining plant, to the dulled shuffling under the “Employees Only” sign, grunted greetings and the punch clock chatter – 11:46 PM SUN – sips of coffee: the men on graveyard sit without words before working.
Fifty-seven men, singly, in twos and threes, move from the lunch room past the rows of faded green lockers, into the shop oddly quiet and cool; alone the oddness of Sunday night hanging, alone the tired freedom of the graveyard, with no bosses, hangs.
Past the milling machines: the Clevelands, the Cincinnaties, the Toms, the Indumas, already with stainless cutters rotating and white coolant pouring, all ready silent men with rubber aprons lean over tables by the rows of lathes: the Man-au-Cycles, the Herberts, the Harrisons, the Hindustans, with vicious turrets stocked with centers and small drill-chunks and bits, the Standard-Moderns, the Acmes, a Colchester, and the pair of Warner-Swasey boring machines; levers and buttons and handles jut and bend and turn, and turn.
The noise builds, the snapping of tool boxes and the clunking of switches, gears thumping, rolling, clutches let out, oil pumps pumping, the squawk of a dull carbide bit left on Friday’s shift, clutches tossed in, chucks rotating in splashing oil, air pressure tail-stocks thudding into place, the whir of the rod straightener, high speed steel on brass, carbide on mild steel, turrets crawling like green spiders, idler-shafts and worm-gears rolling: finally, the great presses crash and pound through the floors and walls and skulls, the hot millers and grinders scream high over growling gearboxes and clattering chuck brakes.
The night moves on: finished pieces lining up on smooth metal tables; at each machine a man standing, watching, one tool box open, faded pin-ups taped inside the lid; two other boxes – the shift-partners’ – closed; cigarettes pulled from red du Maurier packs or blue and white Players; and on heavy brown paper towels lie tools in rows: the micrometers, the Verniers, the calipers, straight steel rules, honing stones, brass hammers, box end wrenches and Allen keys, go and no-go bore and thread gauges, all slick with oil, boxes of carbide bits, and perched to one side, a pile of clean paper towels at the ready.
The minutes, the hours, the cold industrial night , the pushing of black-knobbed handles, the lifting of levers, beginning the cut, solitary beings stepping back, here laying out a perfect blue smoke ring; there thinking of wives and children at home asleep; some dreaming of truck-driving, no bosses, riding high in big Peterbilts, road kings, out of this place, no metal slivers under oily skin, no ringing in the ears; others imagining the worse- off bastards on graveyard at INCO, Texas-Gulf, the Sherman Mine in Temagami and Macassa in Kirkland Lake, using the stuff they make, burrowing on down into the earth, ever closer to hell itself, a mile and more of rock above their heads; some thinking of women with long legs all the way up to there; some recalling the sour smell of dingy beer parlors and the soothing trays of yellow draft ale, and some wondering if they can make it through without sleep. Hands move, disengaging, shutting off and lifting, fingers feeling for unseen flaws, measuring for tolerance, honing, caressing the metal as tenderly as the arched back of a lover, beginning the cycle again and again.
Now and then behind silent eyes a curse to the bosses, to the banty roosters in blue suits, strutting on the day-shift, stop-watches in hand, calculating, raising the count, demanding a perfect finish, who do not work at night; the cutting tool chatters and the piece is rough, a calculation scribbled on a scratch pad, then honing of the cutting tool’s trailing edge and the next nine are perfect, but the tenth is scratchy and tight and goes into the re-work box.
At the four o’clock break the talk is slow, half-eaten sandwiches lie by plaid thermoses of coffee, there is talk about the coming conversion to metric; Guillaume says it’s more scientific, Randy, was a cop, an OPP, quit after he got shot in the face on a domestic, says, yea, but it’s the goddamn people who measure in feet and inches who put a fuckin’ man on the moon, Jorma says never the fuck mind, the government is always fuckin’ with you. Some go out, the night air burning lungs, forty-two below, to start old brown cars that will not start if left all night, motor oil as thick a sludge; a few play cards and a few sleep on hard wooden benches, ahead on their count or too tired to care.
Then back to the machines, parts worn shiny from a million hand grips and thumb touches, the shift leader strolling around, checking a piece or two, hearing the complaints – damn bearing is goin’, listen to the bugger, won’t last the night, feel how hot that goddamn cover is, I need my count, I ain’t fixin’ it, not on gravefuckinyard, no fuckin’ way – waves of hot air fluttering the hanging blueprints as high above brand new drill rods are hoisted from the furnace, long drips of two thousand degree red-yellow light.
Somehow the night passes. At six, in town some people are rising, most are still sleeping, the machines are still turning,; the first-aid man shuts down as the loudspeakers belch his name, and runs to the first-aid room, where two men wait, one close to fainting, with three fingers crushed, bloody and oily, the forefinger missing – Fuckin’ counts too high, he says, I forgot what the hell I was doing – and he passes out; the first-aid man stops the blood, bandages him up, calls the ambulance, and then runs out to the shop floor to scoop up the finger, maybe they can sew it back on. Goddamn that fuckin’ small press, how many times, he says to nobody. And outside, down by the lake-shore, brown fluid seeps from the big jutting pipe, there’s a bad smell, and sometimes in summer people see dead perch and gulls on the rocks and wonder.
And somehow the night passes.
Now the punch clock crashes – 8:01 AM MON – ringing in ears, the dull, gray snow-laden sky too bright for graveyard eyes; the old Ford groans in the cold, it’s the last winter for this heap; the frozen rubber tires squeaking on dry snow; driving home smelling of heavy oil, some going to children and wives awake – Don’ kiss me hon, the oil, sorry, I gotta go to work, make sure Tommy eats she says, have a nice soaking bath later Sweetie, I got a special treat for ya after the kids go to bed if ya know what I mean, ha, ha – some go home and fry up some eggs easy-over, bacon smell turning the stomach slightly; some go to beds with wives groggy and tempting; some to beds with lonesome smell lingering of already-gone wives and girlfriends; some go home to the brown bottle, and some go home to nothing – nothing at all.
Next week it’s days, the week after that it’s evenings, then graveyard again and then it’s days.
And now and then there’s a curse to the bosses, the their natty checked ties and their stink of after-shave, the goddamned suits who wouldn’t give a man one more nickel for an hour of his life, who roll in at quarter to nine, whose black Buicks are new and shiny and always start, the bosses with their bottles of pricey whiskey in desk drawers, who leave at quarter to four in the afternoon, who do not work at night, who do not work at night.
– original version first published in the Northern Ontario Anthology, Highway Bookshop Publishers, Cobalt, Ontario, 1977. Copyright © Peter Scott Cameron, 2020.
Please see my photography site at peterscottcameron.com.
Please see my photography site at: www.peterscottcameron.com
There is nothing surprising in the declaration that the world has changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is the enormous human toll of it: the illness, suffering and death of individuals, the grief of families, and the wear and tear on health care providers, the economic fear and devastation, and the psychic toll for many.
However, there has been another side to all this (Imagine, Part I). With exceptions for the misguided (to put it kindly) and more antisocial parts of the U.S., the world has become quieter, even where there is some reopening. There are fewer cars on the road, fewer airplanes in the sky, and fewer people on the streets. The gigantic cruise ships are sitting idle. The streets of tourist cities that were once crammed with people are suddenly liveable. Museums that were once filled with hurried and harried people snapping selfies are passable and calm; a visitor now can see and contemplate a painting or artifact. We are staying home, spending more time with those amiable companions – ourselves – and with our loved ones (not all of them, of course, as there are those whom we cannot visit under present circumstances). We have calmed down and this is a good thing.
And as a bonus, temporarily at least, we have also reduced our fossil fuel burning, with resulting lower carbon emission levels. The clear skies over cities have provided us with a glimpse of what is possible, what we can do to save our planet. As terrible as this pandemic has been, it also provides us with a chance to take stock, and to modify how we live in a way that will benefit both ourselves and the rest of earth’s creation.
(For any climate change deniers in my vast reading audience, for now I will just say: cut the bullshit.[i] I will deal with you another time.)
And so, I (and many others[ii]) propose that we seize this crisis as an opportunity to make permanent modifications in how we live, modelled on what we are doing now: not to change everything, but just to adjust and adapt. Slow down and make the recovery greener.
First is simply, once the pandemic ebbs, to stay home more and do less in the world. We, in the wealthy West and North, have been living like it is an ongoing party in our personal amusement park, complete with all the candy, rides and entertainment we could ever want. But this is not sustainable, and the planet is showing us that. And really, we must ask: is that how we want to live?
And so, my proposal is to do less in the world:
- Drive less: For many jobs, we simply do not have to drive every day to offices or other settings, including educational. The pandemic has shown this clearly. Of course, this is not true for all work – caps doffed to all those brave souls, from the grocery clerk to the nurse, who show up every day to serve and help the rest of us. But stating the obvious, technology enables many to work just as, or more, effectively from home. Perhaps one day a week in the office would satisfy social and schmoozing needs, as well as the usual managerial obsession with employee surveillance. Hybrid teaching and learning models could cut education-related travelling in half. Couple that with the sensible idea of reducing the work week to four days – which also has the advantage of spreading the work and money to more people – and bingo, we are the winners of a big door prize. Imagine less commuting, more comfortable working conditions, and more time for creative indolence.
- Travel less (we Baby Boomers especially): The crowded planes, the crowded ships, and the crowded cities are not doing anything for us anyhow. The streets in famous cities like Prague have become choked with throngs of jostling people; the museums of, say, Paris or London, are impassable thickets, and the cafés in Venice are sinking with the collective weight of thousands of wine-guzzlers. We could relieve all this simply by doing less travel. Baby Boomers for example: take a trip every second year, instead of one or two every year. Business travellers: cut it in half, use Zoom and the like instead. Imagine fewer flights: a bit more expensive, but without the cattle-calls in the airports, room to stretch and move in our seats, actual food to eat, and the end of nickel-and-diming us for our luggage and such.
- Dock the cruise ships: Park half the fleet of these floating colossi. The carbon impact of the ships is horrendous. The Oasis of the Seas, for example, uses a gallon of fuel every twelve feet, or to put it another way, gets 0.0023 mpg. Imagine ships moored and converted into mixed populace condos and rental apartments with built-in public-access community centres, party rooms, swimming pools, and playlands.
- Limit the cars and roadways in the cities: restrict access for cars and open the streets mainly for delivery, public transport, walking, cycling, including electric cycles and scooters, and sitting. Imagine our cities as accessible urban parks and living spaces, rather than mere travel grids for self-propelled metal containers.
Of course, there are so many other things we could add to calm ourselves and save the planet: buy less junk (and thereby owe less money), build smaller houses, drive smaller vehicles, and so on. We know what the list is. And, of course, these are only a part of what we need to do to address climate change. We know very well the items on that more extensive list are too. More on that another time.
Naturally, there are serious economic implications to consider. We have been living addicted to expanding consumerism and growth. If we make these changes, the economy will slow, and we will have to figure out how to live sustainably and support people more broadly than we have been, and probably with less money streaking in and out of our individual chequing accounts.
To its credit, modern capitalism has generated more wealth, health and human well being than humanity has ever seen. It must be complimented for that. Thank you, industrial capitalism. However, the current economic model of perpetual growth is simply not sustainable. It is simple, really, when you look at biology and nature: “Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse.”[iii] The planet is telling us clearly where we are headed, but we are living in a state of denial about it.[iv] In order to continue this growth, it is necessary to consume and dispose at ever higher levels, in order to keep the money machine going, so that, as Haruki Murakami, puts it, “waste [has become] the highest virtue one can achieve in advanced capitalist society.”[v] It is killing the planet, and seems to be driving us crazy as well.
The market fiction of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” will not save us from this. He was a smart fellow, to be sure, but the uncritical adoption of the metaphor constitutes magical thinking. It is a self-serving idea, that if we pursue our individual profit, that will result in the greatest good for all.[vi] It lets us off the hook of taking responsibility. It is not, in fact, the pursuit of our individual greed that will solve our problems, but rather it will be our capacity for a creative reimagining of the way we live. We are not without solid economic models of how to do this[vii], as I mentioned in Part I. But we have to change our vision of what constitutes a good life – keeping most of what we do but incorporating our experience during this pandemic.
And so, we can say that there has been a positive side to the changes we have made to cope with Covid-19. The reduction in climate-change gases is notable. But so are other modifications: buying and spending less, less rushing around, more time developing interests and talents, more time reading and thinking, more cultivating of home life overall – even literally, more gardening.
Imagine incorporating these things into our post-pandemic lives and enjoying ourselves in a quieter, less frenetic and less anxiety-riddled way. Imagine, at the same time, doing our planet, its creatures, and Gaia, a great favour.
Imagine greater freedom. Imagine less worry about the state of our planet – for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, or as the North American Aboriginals put it, the Seven Generations to follow. Imagine more serenity in our lives. Imagine more time to be our still human selves.
“You can say I’m a dreamer…”
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[i] Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press. 2005. Pages 16-17.
[ii] Proctor, Kate. Just 6% of UK Public Want a Return to Pre-pandemic Economy. The Guardian. June 28, 2020.
[iii] Powers, Richard. The Overstory. W.W. Norton & Company. 2018. Page 321.
[iv] Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2006. And Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 2008.
[v] Nurakami, Harruki. Dance Dance Dance. Vintage Books. 1994. Page 19.
[vi] This is partly a distortion of Smith’s ideas in any case. He thought that governments should intervene sensibly as needed in order to optimize free markets.
[vii] “By simulating a variety of scenarios, we have seen that ‘no growth’ can be disastrous if implemented carelessly…we have also seen that slower growth, leading to stability around 2030, can be consistent with attractive economic, social and environmental outcomes: full employment, virtual elimination of poverty, more leisure, considerable reduction in GHG emissions and fiscal balance.” Victor, Peter A. Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster. 1st ed., Edward Elgar Publishers, 2009. Page 183.
Here I am sitting on a concrete barrier near the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn, smoking a cigar, after having walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and back. I have my camera and am on my way to photograph Lady Liberty from the pier. It is a nice, sunny autumn day, a little breezy, not too hot. My favourite time of the year.
If I were back in Toronto, I’d smoke the heater in a park, but in here in New York, Bloomberg managed to ban smoking in parks, and naturally the tyrannically inclined majority went along with it. This follows the principle, noted famously by Mark Twain: “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” And so, rather than a luxurious park bench under the shade of a big maple, with an expanse of green in front of me, I am perched on top of a construction barrier beside a gritty street near a bus stop. But it is okay. It has its charms.
To my left is a construction project that I think involves drainage from the Gowanus Canal. The canal itself is a survivor from the great industrial age, and what looks like water in the canal is, in fact, toxic swill. Back in the good old days, you probably could light it on fire.
To my right is the harbour, and across that, if you walk around the corner from where I am, there is the skyline of Southern Manhattan, including the comical and beautiful Gehry Tower and the new incomplete World Trade building, that monument to resilience and resistance.
Drive past me in the more-or-less southerly direction, and you will hit the entrance to the Battery Tunnel. I think officials tried to rename it the Carey Tunnel, but it didn’t take.
Not a bad perch overall, despite the occasional blue and white city buses roaring in with a cloud of dust trailing. Interesting people to watch. And the cigar is good, too…Nicaraguan. Quite tasty if you are bent that way. I have no worries on my mind. A great afternoon, all in all.
I look down, and right at my feet I notice something I had not seen when I hopped onto the barrier: a pair of lovely satin panties, with delicate lace trim. A nice wine colour. Quite pretty, I would say. They are in good shape, though quite obviously they have been worn.
Now, how did they get here?
So sorry
about the Camembert cheese
and all that raspberry jam
so red and seedy on the brown bread
and the last yellow banana
and the left-over spaghetti
with clam sauce
you were planning
for dinner
so tangy and delicious
I am convinced that it will not be so much the big things that we will recall as we die – not the grand pleasures, the colossal mistakes, the wringing regrets; not the births, the deaths, the marriages, the divorces; neither the accolades nor the stinging rebukes; not the triumph of dreams realized nor the desolation of brutal failure. It will not be the drama of beginnings and endings of grand love affairs, the jobs won and lost, nor the fortunes gained and squandered, that we will remember.
Rather, it will be the small things and moments, the nearly imperceptible things that get inside us and become part of us. It will be a father’s whistling, as he stands in shirtsleeves in the kitchen, turning over bacon in the pan. The tune is Twilight Time and the smell of bacon is sweet and clinging. It will be the tinkling of ice in the glass, the sound of the liquid pouring over it and the cubes cracking as the alcohol hits them: a mother’s first sip of the night and the sigh of satisfaction.
We will remember the cold rain on the face and running down a ten-year-old neck, inside the collar, as we trudge home under gray skies, with fishing pole in one hand, and a string of perch and pickerel in the other, working our way in the fall rain toward the doorway that will open into yellow light and warmth of inside.
It will be the call of the loon on a fall afternoon on Lake Temagami, when the lake is still, and there is no one else for miles, just the pines standing tall on the islands at the moment when the paddle breaks from the water and a solitary flake of snow, the first of the impending winter, falls and lands on a wrist.
It will be the moment of the brush of a lover’s lips, and her breath, on a cheek, and the small delicate spaces of delusion and desire between one touch and the next, and the one after that, the moment before she leaves.
It will be the look – between question and delight – of a red-haired daughter in her green flannel nightgown, as she peeks up from the floor, caught in the middle of a private joke shared between her and the ragged little doll that she clutches as though it were a new-born.
It will be that moment years later in Upstate, mid-August, when the sun is still hot, beating down on the corn which stands high in the field sprawling beneath the eternal blue sky, the moment when the crickets sing, the solitary raven calls, and the sun is burning that spot on your face that will later turn into something, and we realize with a shiver that – just now – the season has shifted beyond ripeness, and is now moving to decay, and so are we, and all the earth is trembling in its precariousness.
We will remember the frozen seconds, those moments when the cosmic crack opens just so, when a microscopic fracture appears in this beautiful and catastrophic illusion, when the earth and we shift ever so slightly off-kilter and everything is absolutely still and we realize that it is all a perfect disaster, just as it is.
– From We Never Say Goodbye (unpublished), copyright © Peter Scott Cameron, 2016.
Prospect Hill Cemetery, Valatie, N.Y.
Please see my photo site at peterscottcameron.com.