Lacuna Moon

[The sage] makes no divisions, so what use has he for glue?

- Chuang Tzu

My job is to divide things into categories. After doing it all day, five days a week, I am intimately familiar with divisions, which might be why I scoff at divisions outside of work.

My job is to divide things, but there is an algorithm to the whole matter, as “artistic” as the algorithm may be. Still, there are patterns and a little bit of art, but similar conclusions and division can be made by people with similar levels of experience dividing abstract things. Still — I don’t take the divisions terribly seriously. Making abstract divisions of abstract things is theatre, nothing more. If you take it serious, then you are playing a game and believing the game to be real.

One problem I have encountered of late with dividing things — I can’t seem to make it a spiritual exercise like I have done with so many other jobs. Not yet, anyway.

Working in a print-shop, there was a less complicated algorithm. You followed the algorithm and eventually time would be kind and it became second nature. Then, there was only no-thought while the body performed the dance. At the end of the day, the work was done and I forgot that I had been there for 10 or 12 hours. Aside from being sick and taking umbrage to being told to ignore doctor’s order to “take it easy” or re-aggravate my still-persistent pneumonia, the job was a daily spiritual exercise.

Working at an espresso bar, there was a pattern to the artistry of crafting a latte, a mocha, a ristretto shot of espresso liquor… Even when it was insanely busy, with 30-40 people lined up, disgruntled at the other people beating them to the line — even then, there came a time when the world would fold in on itself and each shot would be an offering to the Heavens, each comic jab at the customer or fellow barista was not a jab, but laughing with the gods. There was an eroticism to creating a leaf rosetta with milk and chocolate-coloured espresso, there was a lag in time as the milk reached the perfect pitch at you steamed it and time would slow down. There was an ecstasy, a rapture…

I haven’t found that spiritual exercise yet with my current job.

There are moments, but those are rare. I think I know how to find them, but the dividing is getting in the way, I think.

But what I really need to do is quit dividing and let the work be what it is. The job in of itself might be about division, but when I quit taking those divisions seriously –even the little bit that I do — that’s when I think I’ll find the spirit of the job.