Of Use

[georginasand]

This was written fast that I wanted, which is partially the point of the exercise--I am used to being able to sit over these things for months. But no more! It's also a little more angsty-teenager than I hoped, I but I came up with some less personal prompts for the future, so I promise it will get better.

Also: Ten points if you can spot the clump of sentences stolen wholesale from a earlier post.

 

Of Use

 

I sort mailings, stuff envelopes, and lick stamps. I fold bathrobes, roll crinolines, and dust. I sort bank statements, staple meeting minutes and label binders. And it doesn’t pay well. It doesn’t pay as badly as the job teaching kids sailing that I paid to take, but close: it pays in peanuts…from a jar in the kitchen…and I am not a monkey. But it also pays in experience, so the cliché tagline of the ubiquitous (at least for me) unpaid internship rings true. I have another job, a part time, pays well to do nothing job. I stand in an art gallery and keep people from hugging the statues. I don’t hate it, but being human Plexiglas is not what gets me up in the morning. Mostly because, Linda made clear when she caught me leaning against a door-jam, anyone could be doing my job, especially my colleagues the glass cases which don’t have to be paid $9.50 and hour. But the theater company for whom I fold sweaters and stuff envelopes has made it clear that I am helping keep the ship afloat. And being useful, to me, is worth equity weekly minimum, plus some.

            This non-paying usefulness is a luxury. Were the food on my table, the roof over my head, or the livelihood of anyone besides my single student self at risk, I might put a higher priority on money over utility. But I study uselessness, a luxury in itself, nine months out of the year, so the ability to see a little bit of good in an alphabetized filing cabinet, means a lot. But alphabetized filing cabinets don’t cure cancer, at least not the donor files I work with. These are not organ donors, they are arts donors. They are the American aristocracy who, like me, work for the fun of it, but unlike me can give a thousand dollars to grown-ups to play dress-up and make believe. My private liberal university is to world-saving what Hogwarts is to wizardry: Convocation addresses fall in to two much related categories:  either "the human race is destroying the earth" and/or "you are going to save the world." And a lot of people have embraced that spirit. Thank goodness, because someone has to do it, and I doubt it is going to be me.

            Not unlike Homer Wells, who was sternly told in the exposition of The Cider House Rules, “I expect you to be of use,” being useful seems to be part of my identity. I get edgy when I am not, and more edgy (and slightly territorial) when I sense that someone else is being more useful than I. So I have more than a little arts major guilt, not to mention a burning desire to do THAT great good thing (you know, that one.) How can I devote my live to telling stories when there is world peace to achieve, global warming to stop and cancer to cure. I have a skill set for none of these things, but only because I’ve studied the wrong things. I am a smart kid; I may not understand, but if you teach me I can learn. I just am not an activist, or a scientist. I can’t lead rallies or do algorithms. So I am learning to settle for small scale usefulness, for licked stamps, stacked boxes, and funny or tragic or silly (which by no means is useless) stories. Someone needs to cure cancer, but in this particular moment, in this corner of 36^th and Main, someone needs to staple those scripts. Someone needs to end global warming, but someday, someone will need to direct those scripts. I could be anyone of those someone’s, I just hope my choices are enough?

I remain,
Georgie