Mary Lou

George and I sat by the bar, talking about em’ good old days of rock n’ roll.  He told me about his wife, how she was leaving him, how his son ignored him when he hung around the house on the weekends.  I didn’t have anything to say to that, so we sat in some kinda’ dreary silence for a minute or two.  Thought it was a damn shame, cause George was a good guy, I’d vouch for em’ with life, it was just that most a’ the time he was out gettin’ drunk, the week-days a night train for him with only one dismal destination.  Lord.  I never asked him what he kept in that old suitcase he took everywhere, but I woulda’ swore it was something like his soul, locked up, shut up, ain’t nobody going in.  He had some hard days, George; and me, I tried not t’ judge people anyway I could.  The bar now blurring into the distance, I told him about Mary Lou putting me up for a few months, til’ I could find work or some money to pay my old man.  George said Mary-Lou was awful good to me, and that maybe I should consider marrying her.  I told him I mighta’, but, let’s keep this between you and me, Mary Lou’s sweet on somebody else.  He said ‘what’? and I told him about the man from the post office, the post-man, and about how he’d been comin’ around often when I was out.  I knew this because Bill, the next door neighbour, had mentioned something to me in passing one mornin’, then looked funny as if he regretted sayin’ it.  George became pretty serious at this, and put it to me, one, if I thought that somethin’ was really going on, and two, if I loved Mary Lou.  I told him I wasn’t too damn sure about Mr. Post-man, but that Mary Lou had sure been cold and irritable lately, what with me movin’ in and all.  Then I said that if there ever was a girl for me, it was prolly Mary Lou, even though lord knows we’d prolly always come close to runnin’ off those train tracks.  At this George settled on a park bench.  He spoke with a slow swagger.  Well, here’s what you gotta do buddy-boy.  I’ll tell ya what we’re gonna do.  If you love this gal, you gotta be willin’ to do anything.  You gotta be willing to set fire.  You even gotta be willing to kill a man.  So here’s what we’re gonna do.  We’re gonna find out about this Mr. Post-man, whether he’s hot to trot for Mary Lou.  And if he is, we’re gonna shoot him.  We’re gonna shoot him dead.  And with that George smiled, a wily looney kinda smile, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. Then he gave his suitcase a peculiar pat, which rest on his lap, and I didn’t have wonder what he kept in it anymore.

The Reigning Sound - Reptile Sound (2001)

Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks - Mary Lou (1959)

The Compulsive Gamblers - The Way I Feel About You (2000)

Good Morning Sunshine

I was up early this morning, and I thought about messaging you with a big fat “good morning sunshine!”.  It would be waiting for you when you woke, and it would make you feel warm inside, succeeding in its intentions.  I thought about making you breakfast, coffee, whatever. — I thought about offering — and it made me happy to know that I would be making you happy.  But then I realized I don’t know where you are, let alone who.  I realized that I had no idea how to cultivate these kinds of bonds with people, and that I had fantasized about you and the situation because it was notably absent in my life.  And that made me feel kind of sad, like a kid strolling down the boulevard with a single balloon.

Capitalism Tires Me Out

Minimum wage in the province of Quebec is eight dollars an hour.  That means that legally, provided I consent, the lowest rate an employer can buy my labour power is at 8 dollars/hr.  Labour power, much as anything else, is a commodity to be sold on the market.  In a capitalist society, I consent to sell my use value (what I’m worth, can generate) for the exchange value of x (typically y amount of $ per hr).  Skill set, education, and experience all contribute to use value, and hence exchange value, but the price at which I ultimately decide to sell myself doesn’t change —with the minor exception of ‘raises’ and ‘bonuses’, which certainly don’t apply to everyone— it remains stable and fixed.  So: If I make 8 dollars an hour in a sales position, and I manage to sell $300.00 worth of product in 7 hours on day x, that means that my use value for that day is exactly $300.00.  This is what I’ve generated in 7 hours of work, net profit to my employer.  We can forget about his own expenses for the time being; they are of no concern to my generated value of labour production (300.00), which goes directly to him.  In this scenario, of course, even though I generated $300.00, and my use value for the day squares exactly with that figure, I will be paid a measly $56.00 for 7 hours of work. Why have we come to consider this arrangement so natural and quotidian it isn’t even worth challenging?  Why do we accept these sticks of measurement?  Indeed, it feels as though today the odd one out is the one questioning; he is shamelessly attacked for being a stickler and an odd-ball thinker, a complainer in a world in which it could be much worse.

Any arrangement in which an employer profits from my use-value is exploitation, so let’s not call it otherwise.  True, if I was paid fairly for the value of my labour, i.e. for the price of the commodities my employer sells at my expense, he wouldn’t profit.  But at least we’d have a tangible fairness and a real equality.

Ken Nordine - Green (1967)

Note To Self

The sun is pleasant and warm this morning. It seeps in sweet from the window, colouring my computer. In the background, the soft sounds of an acoustic guitar. Coffee percolates. Whatever else this blog is, it’s a document of self-development. Whenever I’m kind of busy, and I end up feeling like I haven’t contributed something worthwhile, it begins to burden my soul. There’s been a lot of development recently— and though I’ve tried in random little spurts to transcribe it here— it hasn’t happened yet. So this post is all bout reminding myself that the wheels are turning, and that I’ll have something to show for it, hopefully sooner rather than later. Alright.