This morning, or this afternoon, I looked out the window and saw a green-leaf tree that was beginning to have clusters of golden leaves on its branches, and realized that I haven't been outside in maybe two weeks and that's why I didn't notice it before.
The past week has been stressful at work, but far more stressful for other colleagues than for me. I was just vaguely thinking of William Butler Yeats's verses:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
In the peaceful and happy microcosm of our company, it hasn't become too bad. But there are a few personnel changes, comings and goings, difficult decisions, and strikings out of people to avoid stress. Also, there is a lot of work that seems to have been suspended in the first ominous lull of the worldwide coronavirus quarantines, then restarted and accelerated as businesses try to catch up in the Christmas season to compensate for their previous economic losses and inactivity.
Of course there is also the maelstrom abroad of the US election, where the ineptitude and lack of character of the president do determine the tone of international politics; the ongoing suffering from the virus; the troubles in Belarus and the refugee camps of Greece and elsewhere; the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the shifting face of the US Supreme Court and its interpretation of the American constitution; ...
What I've been doing lately on my microcosmic plane of existence is waking up at 10 a.m. or later (or, as was the case today, earlier), then working until 1 p.m. — the company lunchtime — and taking 10 minutes to an hour to find food. But often I am still finishing my breakfast oats at lunch, because once or twice I've been so stressed that I've lost my appetite or other times I'm too busy to eat.
Then I resume working with full concentration until around 7:15 p.m., and other times still have so much to do then that I don't lose concentration then either. And as the evening news comes on for Berlin at 7:30 p.m. and Germany nationwide at 8 p.m., I listen in while doing more work, sometimes taking a break to eat or chat.
After that I watch Miss Fisher's Mysteries or an early Agatha Christie's Poirot episode or another Agatha Christie adaptation (Death on the Nile with Sir Peter Ustinov) or Dr. House out of the corner of my eye while doing more work. But on Monday I interrupted my work almost totally to watch the Emmys television awards.
Then, generally after 9 p.m., I pack up my laptop. I might exercise with YouTube videos. Then I might watch cooking or book reviews, and read news and opinions in Twitter, the Guardian and Facebook. Then I read ebooks to wind down.
Lately I've been able to sleep soon after I go to bed, although this might be after 2 a.m. But last night I did have trouble going to sleep again.
A few of my colleagues, however, are also working half or full days on Saturdays.
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That said, I always go into what I call a 'Marxist-Leninist' phase at this time of year. The way I see it 50 retailers, all in tooth-and-claw competition to survive alongside each other and the Death-Star-like Amazon, sell the same cheap or expensive, thoughtless and aesthetically shoddy items.
These items mean millions of acres of logged forest that makes way for fields, mass agriculture, indentured servitude or regular low wages, slaughtered animals whose skin is used for leather, oil wells and tar sands. The way they are manufactured means the death of small agriculture, the death of traditional fabrication techniques and design and artwork (homemade or professional) that existed for centuries before the Industrial Age and certainly before the age of the assembly line, and also the death of the very expensive and refined craftsmanship that likely kept at a peak in the 17th through 20th centuries.
The consumers who buy the products are rarely going to cherish and keep them, and then they end up in heaps on the sidewalks like I've often seen in Berlin, or thrown in the landfill. Or the items are dumped directly in landfills by the retailers if they are still unsold at the end of the season, to keep up profit margins by artificially keeping the items rare.
Black Friday season is like an annual punch in the face. I have an income, health insurance, wonderful colleagues, and the consciousness of my employer's ultimate aim of reducing this consumer frenzy a little, which makes it better.
But the thought occurs again and again, why don't I finally do something to 'square the circle' and bring forth something good? And this year, rather masochistically: doesn't it make sense that I suffer emotionally and physically a little if I am in this sometimes good, often horrible industry?
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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