men at work

Took a short walk this afternoon as a sort of reward for staying focused at work as well as an effort to avoid future visits to the chiropractor. Since working a desk job I've had at least two visits, during which he explained to me that the long hours of sitting cause the vertebrae in my spine to settle into one another, eventually pinching a nerve which causes the muscles to spasm and tighten up in an effort to protect the damaged area. The first time this happened I found myself crawling around my in-laws' house because standing up straight was simply not an option.
My office building is a rarity in this underdeveloped area, surrounded by wide expanses of field put to various uses. Across the street is a weedy field populated with horses that I can see running or grazing at various points of the day from the office windows. Behind and around our office a farmer usually grows corn. This year looks more like hay. Other fields seem to be empty but for wild brush and weeds; someone's real estate that they are waiting to develop when the price is right. Each field is surrounded by uniform wire fences, many of them broken in spots.
In place of sidewalks, most of the roads are lined with gravelly shoulders, dotted with weeds, rocks, and assorted litter. Standout items on my walk today were a hubcap, a rusted bolt, a fine-tipped ball-point pen that I almost stooped to pick up, a used condom, and a dark backpack almost entirely hidden by a bush; I idly wondered if the backpack had been dropped there as part of a drug exchange.
Towards the end of the road, a new office building is being built. Looking from the office across the horse pasture and the trees and roofs of a few residences I can see the cranes working, and occasionally I can catch glimpses of the burnt-yellow machinery creeping through the dirt of the construction site. From the road, I saw steel beams forming the earliest skeleton of the building to come. All office buildings look the same at this stage of development, deep-red I-beams teeming with men in orange vests and neon helmets. I watch these men lowering harnesses, taking measurements, guiding the crane's dangling loads, casually mingling with the giant behemoths that will, in a matter of months, turn this chain-link surrounded wasteland into a new commercial space filled with sedentary office workers like me taking great pains to avoid the chiropractor.
I don't know anything about the men's individual duties, even less about the whole construction process, but I reflect with something close to envy that they don't have to take afternoon walks to keep their vertebrae from compressing. A second later it occurs to me that these men must be a great deal more prone to back injury because of their overly-strenuous jobs than I am from mine. Long hours of heavy lifting, bending, twisting, with scarcely a moment to sit down takes its toll on a body in a very different way. The thought takes most of the envy away with it and leaves me shaking my head at the irony. Each of us picks our own poison.
As I turn back to the office, I see a grey-haired man in a button-up shirt and khaki slacks walkng up the road behind me. I recognize our company's in-house legal counsel and wave my greeting to him. He smiles back and says, "Oh, hi. I felt like coming out to get some air and some sun. I was falling asleep there in my office and just had to get out."
He passes me by, walking along the fence-line of the construction site, throwing glances over at the progress the machines are making, probably envious that those helmeted men aren't on the verge of nodding off up there on the beams of the structure they are wrestling with for their livelihood.

RESERVED PARKING

I remember when they put up the sign. We had been brainstorming some new, free, weekly incentives we could offer to our phone reps; the sign had been Lena's baby, and she had stuck to it as her favorite one. Within days, Jason from maintenance went out and pounded a stake into the grass in front of the nearest parking spot to the door and mounted the pole topped with a horizontal rectangle: "RESERVED PARKING".
Though it drew a lot of questions from the people that worked upstairs, it didn't catch with the reps. It proved a pitiful incentive, mainly because the lot was so small--only 30 spaces or so--and they all got in before it was very full anyway. On top of that, two of our already small team couldn't even use it: there was our epileptic rep who didn't drive, and an older rep who had a handicapped permit and could have her pick of the handicapped stalls, which were closer to the door anyway. Still we held the weekly drawings and doled the spot out to unimpressed employees as if it were some kind of grand prize. Even in the face of their indifference, Lena persisted in her enthusiasm for it.
I left the company for two years, and then came back. In my absence, somehow the spot's purpose changed. Maybe because the team had shrunk still smaller. Or maybe because Lena finally sensed that it had no effect on her reps' behavior. Regardless of the motive, upon my return everyone knew the spot as Marlisse's--Lena's boss. Since Marlisse only comes in three days a week, Lena and another manager take turns parking in it on the off days. It seems so pointless, given the size of the lot, yet everyone in the company abides by the words on that sign--that parking is reserved, and it is not reserved for you.
Ridiculous as it sounds, I hate that spot. I hate that sign. I hate its tightly-kerned black letters shouting in all caps from the off-white base. I hate that it's anchored in the grass instead of lined up uniformly with the Handicapped signs on the sidewalk. I hate the smug superiority it betrays in those three ladies who share it. I have fantasized of stealing the sign under cover of darkness, picturing myself in the role of vigilante returning democracy to the parking lot, but there's no way I would follow through on that. There are cameras on the side of the building that would likely catch me in the act.
Such a small piece of property shouldn't bring such bitterness. Those of us with the sense to see the sign's senselessness should just content ourselves with snickering about those who are fooling themselves into believing the spot constitutes some elite privilege. But it can be hard to brush off someone else's condescension. I could care less about the parking, but I hate thinking of them thinking me to be beneath them.
Instead of playing the desperado, I display my distaste for the sign and its politics by parking as far away from the building as I can. I prefer to park facing north, partly to keep the sun off my windshield, and partly to point purposefully away from the sign.
Even this week when all three of them are overseas, the spot stays empty, the sign shielding it from encroachment by the unworthy. Any one of us could park in that spot without consequence; in a way, parking there could be my best gesture of defiance towards the spot's absentee regulars. But instead, I keep my distance, locking eyes with my fellow co-workers in the parking lot as we walk in, wordlessly communicating our commitment to considering one another equals.

smoke stain

smoke stained sky
heralds a battle
raging. somewhere west
soot-and-sweat faced
men grapple nature's
elemental fury, unembodied
enemy, purposeless,
insatiable destruction.
shovels, boots, masks,
hoses, trucks, maps,
lines, brush, heat,
ash, flame, smoke
spilling into blue
valley sky, troubling
tranquil white shapes,
filtering even the sun
into narrow, hard-colored
beams casting sharp
shadows, violent echoes
of the dark cataclysm
beyond the mountains.