15 December 2007
The Farriers’s Tale
The constable found horseshoe tracks near a burgled house. He wanted to know if they were from shoes I had made. I told him my shoes leave no tracks. He scratched his head. No tracks? he said. I explained how I fashioned the shoes from cold iron, which repelled weight. My horses float on them. I handed him a lump of the iron I used. His jaw dropped. This weighs no more than air, he said, where did you get this stuff? I leaned close to him. Stole it from fairies, I said. He nodded slowly. Of course, he murmured.
Labels: Laborer's tales
09 December 2007
The Garbologist’s Tale
Yeah, it’s a funny name for a sanitation engineer. My esteemed colleague thought it up. Makes us laugh, anyway. We look through the trash bins as we empty them. Never know what we’ll find. I started a vintage tie collection from what I got out of one can. The weirdest thing, though, was this one house where they put their can out every single week, but there was never anything in it. Always completely empty. Made us wonder, I’ll tell you. Never saw the people. Often wondered about them. I mean, really, who in their right mind throws out air?
Labels: Laborer's tales
06 December 2007
The Exterminator’s Tale
Tell you the truth, I actually like bugs. They’re cute and most are much cleaner than a lot of other animals that people keep as pets. But I’m not sentimental about it. People want them killed and I’m there to kill them. Sometimes I get nightmares, though. I dream about giant silverfish carrying insecticide canisters and dousing me with eighteen inch wands set on wide dispersal fan spray. I wake in a cold sweat. Then I calm myself down with a cigarette on the porch and freshen up the small bowl of sugar water I put there for the ants.
Labels: Laborer's tales
05 December 2007
The Engineer’s Tale
I called it my zen bridge. There was this narrowing in the gorge where I lived. Whenever I drove by it a bridge came to my mind. The finished design was there in my head. For years I saw the bridge whenever I drove by the narrowing. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was a bridge no one would build. There were already two bridges over the gorge, no reason for another. One day I stopped the car and walked to the lip of the narrowing. I put my foot forward. The zen bridge was there. Waiting.
Labels: Laborer's tales
03 December 2007
The Professor's Tale
My class was tough, sure, but only because my subject, Topological Constraints on Sub Atomic Singularities, was not easy. Three weeks into the semester I noticed empty seats in the lecture hall. This was not disturbing, but the next week there were several more. Two weeks later almost all the seats were empty. I asked one of my four remaining students where everyone was. She looked at me like I was mad. I don’t understand your question, she said, we’re all here. I squinted at the empty chairs. I never believed in ghosts, but right then, I wished I did.
Labels: Laborer's tales
02 December 2007
The Sailor's Tale
Our ship encountered rough seas in an enormous storm. We sunk. I scrambled onto a lifeboat and drifted for days. Eventually I beached on an island. The natives offered me food, water, and a hut until my people found me. I accepted with thanks. They brought me slaves. A man and woman in chains for my use. Reluctantly, I accepted. That night I cut off their chains. We took food and water and boarded my lifeboat. Within hours at sea the former slaves began moaning for their life on the island. They cursed me repeatedly. They called me the devil.
Labels: Laborer's tales
30 November 2007
The Telemarketer's Tale
It’s ok if you hate me. I’m not that crazy about you either. Nothing personal. It’s just that so many of you don’t hang up on me when that’s exactly what you should do. I remember one call. It was early in my career. I was selling ring tones for cell phones. The customer asked to hear them. I played a couple. She asked to hear every single ring tone in my inventory. I played the entire list. Ninety tones. You don’t have the one I want, she said. Then she hung up. That call made me smile for days.
Labels: Laborer's tales
20 November 2007
The Alchemist’s Tale
I learned how to turn anything into gold. Not such a great idea, it turned out. My method became well known and gold flooded the market. The price plummeted to nothing. People blamed me, like it was my fault they didn’t use the method wisely. So for my next miracle I labored to understand how to make gold disappear. Not such an easy thing. Matter has a certain inertia to it: it wants to remain matter. But I did figure it out. All I need is a chance to prove it. If they ever let me out of this prison.
Labels: Laborer's tales
18 November 2007
The Missionary’s Tale
People often want to know if I ever have doubts. Usually I deflect the question, but if the person is asking out of more than idle curiosity, I tell them. Sure I have doubts. All the faithful do. That’s why we need a community of believers, for the support. That’s why we go to foreign countries, to help build the world wide community. When I was a young man, I flirted with atheism. I looked to the sky, and it was empty. How amazing! How right! Now, of course, such thoughts make me sad. Emptiness will always break your heart.
Labels: Laborer's tales
17 November 2007
The Ecdysiast’s Tale
You can’t do this work for long without developing a certain loathing for the male gaze, the male desire, the male soul. On stage, I use that old trick, imagining the audience naked. Then they become so pathetic in my mind that I can go through my act unscathed by their need. It’s a living, what can I say? Truth is, I live for my volunteer time. I make meals at the homeless shelter several days a week. They have people who really need a helping hand. Lots of blind guys end up there. I like them best of all.
Labels: Laborer's tales
16 November 2007
The Taxidermist’s Tale
Once a hunter brought me a kill for mounting that I did not recognize. She was a duck hunter, but this wasn’t any duck. It had a pointed beak and fur instead of feathers. You can imagine my reaction. I told her there was no such creature as this and I didn’t appreciate her trying to fool me. But she insisted this was no joke. So I looked at the specimen again. I admit I could see the work of the creator in its form. The hunter saw it too. We filled a moment, mourning the loss of its spirit.
Labels: Laborer's tales
15 November 2007
The Sheep Shearer’s Tale
The trick is to use your free hand to stretch out the sheep’s skin. Otherwise you’ll leave all kinds of wool on the animal, which isn’t good. Another trick is to make the sheep do the work for you. They’re going to flop around, but you want them to flop around to your benefit. I remember one sheep that wouldn’t move. Stood there like a rock. Looked me in the eye. Daring me, like. I thought, what’s the problem with this one? It backed away and I didn’t follow. Maybe someone else sheared it, but not me. Not that day.
Labels: Laborer's tales
14 November 2007
The Cordwainer’s Tale
Sure, I get one legged customers. They don’t like the regular shoe stores because they have to buy a pair, which means they waste half their money on a shoe they’ll never use. So they come to me. I custom make one shoe. We’re both happy: I make a sale, and they don’t get ripped off. It’s good. But I tell you, it gets weird after the sale. The shoe I didn’t make sits on my bench. I brush it away, but my hand goes right through it. It isn’t there, see, but I feel it. It has this presence.
Labels: Laborer's tales
13 November 2007
The Pickpocket’s Tale
I believed liberating people from the tyranny of their possessions made them better people. Such thoughts helped me steal with a clear conscience. Early in my career I took a wallet from a dazed man who wandered past me on a crowded sidewalk. I then ducked through the press of people and opened the wallet to appraise my takings. It was empty. No money, no cards, no photos. Nothing. I wanted to return the wallet. I looked for the man, but never found him. I still have the wallet and open it from time to time to examine its interior.
Labels: Laborer's tales
12 November 2007
The Accountant’s Tale
We were working on a complicated account involving the judicious concealment of offshore assets when we realized one from our team had been absent for days. Her cubicle was eerily empty, only a snapshot of her dog to indicate a living being had ever been there. We called her house but there was no answer. We sent her an email, inquiring as to her whereabouts. We heard nothing for weeks. Then, after work on the account was completed, a moving company arrived and took the picture of her dog. We were all relieved that the photo was finally accounted for.
Labels: Laborer's tales
11 November 2007
The Choreographer’s Tale
I was contemplating a new production and struggling with the closing number when I found all but one of the steps I needed on the beach near sunset, following the tracks of sanderlings crossing and recrossing the surf line. I spent most of that night searching for the missing step but never found it. Decades later my granddaughter showed me her new toy: a tin wind up bird. She set it skittering across the floor. As I watched, the step that had evaded me crystallized in my mind. I closed my eyes and watched my dancers step into the void.
Labels: Laborer's tales
10 November 2007
The Biographer’s Tale
I wait at train stations. It’s mostly old people that take trains nowadays, and many of them want a summing up of their lives. The sign on my table says it all: GET YOUR LIFE’S STORY WRITTEN DOWN. GREAT SOUVENIR FOR YOUR GRANDCHILDREN. $100. I get takers, even at that price. They tell me about their life since the womb and I write it up, knowing their faulty memories distort events outrageously. There comes a point when their voices lower, and they tell me something wicked they did. But I want you to leave that part out, they always say.
Labels: Laborer's tales
09 November 2007
The Stenographer’s Tale
I was born with smaller than normal hands. This caused me no end of grief as I grew up, enduring the taunts of my classmates. I floundered in school, edging towards a life of crime. Then I discovered shorthand, which seemed like the voice of divinity itself laid bare for my adoration. I studied the system until I became expert. I earned my living by writing down what really important people said during extra important meetings. Sometimes, as I worked, I purposely left out crucial phrases. On those occasions I tightened my little hands into fists until they turned white.
Labels: Laborer's tales
08 November 2007
The Lexicographer’s Tale
Money doesn’t grow on trees, my parents told me, so I went to school to become a compiler of dictionaries, which proved to be a lucrative and stable occupation. I collected words from many sources: rivers, people’s mouths, the underbellies of clouds, and the blood of fallen creatures. Words were everywhere; all I had to do was grab them and bring them back to my office where I wrestled them into my dictionaries. On several occasions I found words hanging from trees in my back yard. I left them there and watched them turn color and fall to the ground.
Labels: Laborer's tales
07 November 2007
The Cartographer's Tale
A small bribe was usually all it took to keep a town off my maps. Sometimes less than a bribe. A simple request, coupled with a hard luck story about the need for secrecy, would often keep your town absent from all official charts. After my retirement I visited one of those ghost towns, a tiny fishing village on the rocky southern coast. People remembered me and took me into their homes. Their faces were blank. Their eyes were wide as children’s. They offered me bowls of fishy stew. The sea behind me boiled with the frenzy of living things.
Labels: Laborer's tales
