But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans . . .
I found myself on the wrong side of 4:00am the other day at work. While this fact in and of itself shouldn’t raise nary an eyebrow, I need only remind everyone that I work for a bloody GOVERNMENT AGENCY. You know, one of those places where people aren’t supposed to work past 4:00pm let alone twelve hours hence. Though, I guess as a normative matter they shouldn’t. Point is, as Bernie Mac once said, "When Brothas break . . . they BREAK!"
We’ve been visited by an unbearable heatwave in New York. For this, having to spend nearly every waking hour in my meatlocker of an office seemed a drastic improvement over my still un-air conditioned digs. I bought me a window unit last weekend, still sitting on my floor obstructing my way to the bike, itself obstructing the way to my door. From the folks upstairs, moving out in a hurry. Quite unlike my former neighbors, formally evicted. The walls of their apartment decorated in graffiti.
I love you Susan Lynn
Guess that explained all the moaning.
In any event, it’s been a peculiar adjustment to the life of a bona fide government technocrat. I can call myself that now because I went to school for this. Twice. Quite brutally and notoriously at that. Though I’ve only been at it this piece for a month, there’s a decided lack of urgency to any of what I do. Perhaps it’s not the urgency that’s evasive, but the complete lack of . . . methodology.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I find methodology terribly overrated. It’s the thing of reptiles and praying mantises. Me? I’m happily winging my way through this overwhelming mess my life has become. No room for method. But at least when I was at the firm-BIG LAW-if you will-there was at least a framework, a structure of conduct, norms, and assumptions with which you were expected to adapt to or perish . . . or go home crying. Here, it seems as though the only survival instinct available is to read the minds of people who owe their employment to the incident of them being from Staten Island.
I mean, have any of you ever even been to Staten Island? Honestly . . .
And then the physical environs. Where Midtown is a grid of steel, concrete, modernism, and its successors, Wall Street is a meandering labrynth of gargoyles, friezes, and ghosts. Alexander Hamilton lies interred across the street from my office. We’re near the tip of Manhattan, Broadway by the Bull, the end of the world where the lions weep, Africa sleeping atop the sphinx, the precipe between the center of the universe and the world it controls, steamship terminals converted into bank branches, you get the picture.
Here is a museum piece, unintended for usage in the real world. Reality relying too much on trifling concerns like structure, deadlines, and accountability. The difference between getting on the ballot in Queens and staying on the ballot. Notwithstanding the fact that you may not be registered to vote, or active, or even still living. Mere triviality, right? But of course, I suppose that’s were your friendly Board of Elections staff attorney comes in.
And it’s gotten late again, I see . . .
