I'm A Working Man In My Prime...

Michael at Chez Bez cast me back into the memory hole.

All last week at Disney World I had the frabjous callay of being surrounded by Very Important Men Of Business shouting down the cell phone towers. Filing purchase orders, scheduling meetings, checking their football picks--and letting everyone in a two-yard radius know just how valuable they were to the turning of the planet. Ah yes. These men had not only jobs but Careers. I felt so damn inferior. Writers can't call someone on the phone and shout out important sentences or plot developments with gravitas and swagger. Well, they can but it looks kind of stupid. Not only that, but this writer had decided to not worry about her work for a week and enjoy the vacation that cost her family a fair few ducats. But still. Standing on the bridge and looking at the giant Spaceship Earth with its slow-moving ride tribute to communication I couldn't help but wonder. Have I failed mankind? I haven't stopped cancer or AIDS and the work I do is largely menial. No one fails to get their heart pumping if I screw up the margins on prepress.

Then, one iPod and plane ride home later it hit me. "It" in this case being Van Morrison. What better song to describe my life at this point than his Cleaning Windows?

You know...the song about how he is working a menial job washing windows in Dublin because it gives him time to really dive headlong into his true passion of learning about the world?

I heard Leadbelly and Blind Lemon
On the street where I was born
Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee,
Muddy Waters singin' "I'm A Rolling Stone"
I went home and read my Christmas Humphreys' book on Zen
Curiosity killed the cat
Kerouac's "Dharma Bums" and "On The Road"

What's my line?
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows...


I'll see YOU when my love grows. In the meantime show your wife some respect and leave the damned cell phone in your hotel room.