Metatations

When I was young, I was obsessed with drawing orcas. That is all.

The old adage goes that you learn a lot about yourself and the world by walking in someone else’s shoes. Well, here’s a brief story that follows that idea, exactly…sort of:

As part of my company’s effort to “maximize” my time (I beg to differ–I am doing quite well with my time, reading online novels, watching television, and mastering sudoku, thank you very much), I am being moved offices. My new real estate was actually only recently vacated; the company buckled under economic paranoia and dismissed many of its employees in the last few months, leaving much of the firm a ghost-town. The moment I heard the news of my move, I remembered the girl who used to work in the office and thought, “I’m going to be wearing dead man’s clothes. Gross.”

Still, the living must live-on, and moving offices was somewhat integral to my continued employment. I hauled my few boxes downstairs to the new office, and once I had finally set my things down, I began to notice the eerie dregs of the previous tenant. I opened a drawer and found a box of Pepto Bismol, a few bags of tea, a blow-up globe of the planet, a marshmallow shooter, and various other knick knacks that only find company in each other as evidence of one’s persona. I immediately swept these items into the nearby trashbin, muttering to myself “dead man’s clothes” all the while.

I continued to remove remnants and add new items in an attempt to claim the office as my own. Eventually, I noticed a few plastic bags sitting underneath the desk. Crawling under the desk, I pulled out the bags, noticing that one was obviously not empty. I rustled through the bag and eventually found a pair of sandals. I paused for a moment. They’re cute. And they’re in my size.

I stared at the sandles. The words “dead man’s clothes” echoed in my head with a ringing irony that was too obvious to ignore. And yet, something powerful happened in that moment. I pulled the sandals on my feet. I wore dead man’s clothes.

So, today I’m walking out of the office wearing someone else’s shoes. What am I learning? Perhaps about the artificiality of morality and the moral sentiment of disgust. Perhaps about the microcosm of the life cycle that occurs in companies. But mostly, I’ve learned a lesson that has been passed on from generation to generation, a lesson that is still echoed by the youngest in each generation: finders, keepers; losers, weepers.

I emerge from the warm belly of the Embarcadero BART station, one amongst the throng of bodies pouring forth from the underground in the early morning. It’s a strange world into which I’ve risen—the screech of traffic on Drumm and Market and the smell of sewage snakes self-righteously around the Hyatt and its row of waiting luxury taxis. I make a left turn into the Embarcadero Center where pop music wafts from the outdoor speakers, accentuating the generic tastefulness of the stores urging me to buy buy buy because all items are 70% off. I take the escalator to the second floor, push through the rotating doors, and take the elevators further upward away from the earth.

I’ve walked this morning route over 200 times in the past six months, and yet it is still an awkward walk for me. These child’s feet are used to the terrain of the Berkeley campus with its proud center at the Campanile Tower flushing out for a rolling half-mile radius, not the neatly maintained professional landscape of the Financial District.

Today, more than ever, does this path to the working world feel strange and alien. Umbrella-less, I step lightly over the rain-soaked sidewalk; however, I can’t entreat myself to walk quickly. I tread this path with feeling that it shouldn’t be me making this walk today. Yesterday was the first day of lay-offs at my company. I had not missed the cut; I fell completely below the cut. As a low-level temp, I’m cheap enough to retain and hearty enough to handle the burden of work that will inevitably fall upon me from the mothers, husbands, and otherly abled employees who are today not making this walk, but are out there, there instead of on their way to the lofty office above the ground. Like me.

The irony is palpable. I, uncommitted and newly graduated, am allowed continued entry into this sophisticated and calculating working world with the perfect knowledge that, by my own choice, this is not where I will be in a year. I studied philosophy in college, and what Plato could not foresee was that this new world high above the ground would create its own reality as nonsensical as the illusory shadows of the cave.

The only sense of gravity in the vast lands of Central California is the perpetually dotted lifeline that connects Big City to Country Town.  Still, the narrowing stretch of the I-5 can seem just as endless as the land to the east and west.  Unaware of the surrounding void, cars speed, bounce, and lug along in magnified personification of their respective precious cargos.  My ’94 Corolla was floating like a cloud. 

They say that every cloud has a silver lining.  Accenting the wildly popular champagne color of my ’94 Corolla is a silver lining—literally.  But as I learned this past Sunday afternoon, some clouds have silver linings, have clouds.  Allow me to explain.

Cloud: Magnificently large bug hits the front window of my car with an audible smack.

Silver lining: Rainbow-like iridescence of bug guts splatters across the window.

Cloud: Being unable to take my eyes off said mesmerizing guts while doing 80 on the I-5.

After a few minutes of conscientiously poor driving, a group of clouds crowded the sky, and the sun set on my hazardous infatuation.  Silver linings are great, but maybe clouds aren’t such a bad thing after all.