Road works, this month’s piece de jour. One and a half hour commute to my place of worship, sorry place of work, along one of modernity’s thoroughfares, a four lane concrete and tarmac highway to get the workers to work on time and get them home safely again afterwards, so the theory goes anyway. Feet hit the cold floor, feels like I have being stung, I stumble into the bathroom and have a shave (five blades now in the Gillette Fusion Mach five? How many blades should it really take to have a close shave? Oh yes the clue is in the name, stop snickering, the sun hasn’t even come up yet). My face is a mess, no amount of toilet paper will stem this flow, have to be careful not to bleed out and then I realize that through sleepy eyes have taken the wife’s lady-shaver that might explain it alright. Shower next and finally the eyes start to work and don’t feel like they have sandpaper attached to the inside of the lids. Pull a nice warm pullover on but in my state of agitated morning grumpiness it’s like a scene from some tacky reality television escapologist trying to escape from a straightjacket but in reverse. I’m in a rush, as usual. I brew some coffee, pour it into the travel mug, and scald my lip tasting it, testing the temperature. Look for me keys, swear I left them here, and finally find them under the TV guide on the coffee table in the living room. All is good. Then it’s that momentary internal debate on whether I should just use a sick day and climb back into bed. I tip toe back down into the bedroom, but the ball and chain has flopped over onto my side of the bed and the cats, never ones to miss an opportunity, have dived into that nice warm space left by my beautiful wife. Well that ends that idea. I tip toe over and kiss her gently on the cheek guilty over having called her the ball and chain. She swats me away with a flailing arm and a grunt, bitch.
The morning routine, the daily ritual, is not that what makes us human after all, routine. As Marcel Mauss argues routine that which keeps us bound within the ordinates of the culture we belong to. Everything done in sequence and second nature, habit. Keeps the big wheel turning? Letting the proletariat produce the goods and paying them accordingly to afford the goods that they produce. The glories of the capitalist era. Not so much producers anymore as consumers and we all practice our new religion in those cathedrals of consumerism, the shopping mall. Ah, what happy days. Even within the virtual environment we are urged to consume. We pay for Zaby layouts, then we pay rent for space to apply them. We buy outfits, we pay admission to clubs, we tip dancers, we consume. In world we form more habits and keep the capitalist machine fed. But I digress, (I’m Irish we are prone to wander off on tangents).
Nope this month’s gripe isn’t the horrors of the modern capitalist era but traffic works. There never seems to be a morning that some section of the highway is not being coned off by road workers whose overalls never seem to come above the cracks of their asses (is it a job requirement? Butt crack length?) And there it is, by habit you could almost say, I see a long snaking line of cars, and I have just past the last slip road so I can’t turn off. I curse myself again for not turning on the radio to hear what sections of the highway are being worked on and so I sit there marinating in my own sweat and anger along with a cavalcade of others who don’t listen to early morning radio. I try and reason that this is all necessary, if it wasn’t for these highways then how could those huge mammoths of engineering the truck get our produce to the shops on time. Then where would we be, empty shelves in all out favorite malls, the horror. I lose the argument with myself and begin to stress, I can feel the veins bulging on the sides of my forehead. Thank god for gun control in this country. This could turn into a massacre. A half hour later and I have given up all thoughts of making it to work on time but at least now I can see the worker with the big stop go sign with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, texting on his mobile trying to avoid all eye contact with the glaring faces peering out at him from the row of cars in his line of vision waiting for the word to come through on his walkie-talkie to let another few cars through. He would probably be the first to get a bullet but he doesn’t look too perturbed as the screen on his mobile flashes and he reads the message that has just being sent to him. Smug bastard. I promise myself that when I get close enough I am going to roll down my window and give him a bit of my mind. He twists the sign in his hand, its green, I start to get excited, and will I make it? The tension is too much to bare, I am afraid that the steering wheel is about to come off the drive shaft I am gripping on it so hard, willing that sign to stay in the go position. I’m going to make it. I have to wipe some drool off the corner of my mouth. Then he starts to twist the sign, I am going to implode, explode, the anger subsides as quickly as it has risen, I look at the guy like I have just lost all my family in a horrible accident, he grins like he has just won the lottery, winks and waves me through. From a minute before where I had the guy in my cross hairs he is now suddenly my bestest best friend ever and I give him a big wave as I trundle through and onto the other side. Freedom. All is good again. I knock her into fifth and speed onwards promising myself to turn the radio on first thing in the morning. Will I? Who knows, have I any more room in my repertoire for more habits. Time will tell I suppose. Have a good one all, see ye all next month.
by Will890