Chapter 1 

I discovered that when one works, even in Berkeley, in work that does not work for the meaning and beauty of the self even on leaving work there is lingering dread or fatigue with a smudge of excitement as I watched the commute traffic plunge over the off-ramp and stream up Ashby. "At least," I thought, "they relieve the pressure through their vehicles. When a guy rides a bus it all stays pinned between the grimy windows through which glimpses here and there of scenes of the low-slung city."

In the smaller companies there are four or five managers of various levels; plant manager, foreman, etc. The gaggle of salesmen with their chalkboard all lit up with sales triumphs. It is something dominant, confident, and undistinguished. They are like descriptions of iron-werkes or mills in histories of technology; a craftsman walks through and makes his notes, especially of those who run the cotton-pickin' places. In my useless thinking, in the cavern of the warehouse, with Mozart or Saint-Saens playing in the background I thought of the difference between individuals and persons who were simply isolated from everything good. The isolatos could be easily manipulated but an individual could never be manipulated because they had encountered somewhere in themselves, in their experience, whatever can possibly impinge from the outside. The only real danger for the individual was to stop along the way, turn his new knowledge back toward what he had emerged from (with a vengeance). This had proven fatal and evil in most cases.

In the executive office: Family pictures on the paneled wall; wife, children, Executive Magazine, Four photographs of a hunting expedition (truck driving on sand dunes), a worthless painting of some scant-talented naturalist of the 18th century.

"Ladies and gentlemen it's not rocket science. We're here to make more money today than we did yesterday. We don't pamper you."

David Eide
January 24, 2014