2002-03-14|9:21 a.m.
I hung out with MZ yesterday. He is up from USC visiting family on his Spring break. We walked the local mall and I bought a couple magazines. He told me funny stories about rich people in LA. He also bought me ice cream. We ended the night talking about poverty, religion, and the luxury of literature.
Then, A took me to Am's house where he had made delicious spaghetti. We ate and talked and joked about many things ranging from politics to hotel maids. Am has this really awesome idea for a photography project that he has. The project requires a social story to be told through a series of pictures. Well, Am is going to take pictures of maids in a hotel room cleaning up. The room is dirty. They clean. The next room is dirty. It begins as it started. This is to show the repetition of their work. Boring, unsatisfying work that will most likely be completed by some Hispanic women who get paid minimum wage. The stupid thing is, his teacher wasn't pleased with the idea of the project. He said that Am better make it more interesting because it sounded dull. I couldn't believe it. Did his teacher not get it? Isn't that the point? The pictures induce thought. They say much more by their silence. Sure if Am staged a death, we'd all see that death is sad. Most people know this. But, this is so much more; these pictures will force their audience to think about the life of people never really seen. They go on vacation and dirty their room and never see the people that clean up after them. I think it is pretty profound.
We stayed up too late though. I have all these projects to do too that are due this Friday. I feel exhausted, but still I sit here writing.
Yesterday, here at work I started crying in my office. My mind has been preoccupied with poverty, injustice, and world suffering. It sounds lame. You know those scenes in movies where it spans quickly from point to point and you can barely see what each focal point is and things blur? I can't think of a movie with that in it just this moment. But, this was my mind. I saw credit card swipe, a purchase of something not important, a bank, an exchange, a sweatshop, and a woman at a table creating that item of no importance. I thought about how all the things in the middle are unimportant or don't even exist. Money and credit are not things; they are concepts. It is really just someone buying the labor of someone else. And the money in between the exchange makes the purchaser feel like s/he has no connection to the creator. But, when I thought of how I am the purchaser of hard, unjust labor, I felt sick. Then, I thought of people suffering all over the world and how all I contributed was the money to make it happen. Then, I thought about someone coming into the room and seeing me like that. Would I tell them that I was crying about world suffering? I dried my eyes and grew up a little in that moment.
Model UN is the cause though. All I think about is prescriptions for these problems so that I can compete with them. I'll bring my ideas to the competition and maybe we might win an award. Only, there is a price. Starving kids in Africa tear down my walls of emotional stability.
Yesterday, Debby, our store's receiver came in to talk to Randy, our boss, and to show him her prescription for an antidepressant.
"I sat in my doctor's office crying and he had me talk to him for awhile. He handed me this. Do you know anything about it?" she asked and handed the little square paper over to Randy.
Reading it, he replies, "It is an antidepressant."
"Yeah, I know that. But, does you wife take that?" she asks.
"Yeah, and others. That stuff there is kid stuff," he informs her.
Joanne, the department manager interjects, "Yeah, I used to be on that, but now I take Zoloft."
"I just haven't been myself. I yell at everyone around here. You guys know," she paused. "I told him I just wanted this hysterectomy to get over with."
The conversation drifts to other topics.
I thought it was strange to be talking about something like depression like that. It was startlingly matter of fact. They dully discussed mind-altering drugs like they might discuss what kind of car to buy. I am glad that people can find a way to feel happy again. I guess I just never saw my state of well being so easily dispensed into plastic bottles from a drug store like this one.
"You shot off your mouth, but forgot the clip."--- J-Live
Word of the Day: katzenjammer- hangover/ distress (translation: cat distress/cat cry)