Dayna

“Le Verrier left the solar system larger than he found it - one both better and less completely understood.”
― Thomas Levenson, The Hunt for Vulcan: ...And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe

“December 8, 1986

Hello John:

Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right.

They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place. You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”

And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.

As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?”

They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:

“I put in 35 years…”

“It ain’t right…”

“I don’t know what to do…”

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?

I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.

I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!”

One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

Your boy,

Hank”
― Charles Bukowsi

“He had a sudden awareness of what a wonderful organization the Weapon Makers were, with their shops existing In tens of thousands of cities and towns in the far-flung Isher Empire, an independent, outlawed, indestructible, altruistic, opposition to tyranny.”
― A. E. Van Vogt

“What does
this F. — I.W. mean?”
“Initial-slang,” informed Baines. “Made correct
by common usage. It has become a worldwide
motto. You’ll see it all over the place if you haven’t
noticed it already.”
“I have seen it here and there but attached no importance
to it and thought nothing more about it. I
remember now that it was inscribed in several places
including Seth’s and the fire depot.”
“It was on the sides of that bus we couldn’t
empty,” put in Gleed. “It didn’t mean anything to
me.”
“It means plenty,” said Jeff. “Freedom — I
Won’t!”
“That kills me,” Gleed responded. “I’m stone
dead already. I’ve dropped in my tracks.” He
watched Harrison thoughtfully pocketing the plaque.
“A piece of abracadabra. What a weapon!”
“Ignorance is bliss,” asserted Baines, strangely
sure of himself. “Especially when you don’t know
that what you’re playing with is the safety catch of
something that goes bang.”
“All right,” challenged Gleed, taking him up on
that. “Tell us how it works.”
“I won’t.” Baines’ grin reappeared. He seemed to
be highly satisfied about something.
“That’s a fat lot of help.” Gleed felt let down, especially
over that momentary hoped-for reward.
“You brag and boast about a one-way weapon, toss
across a slip of stuff with three letters on it and then
go dumb. Any folly will do for braggarts and any
braggart can talk through the seat of his pants. How
about backing up your talk?”
“I won’t,” repeated Baines, his grin broader than
ever. He gave the onlooking Harrison a fat, significant
wink.
It made something spark vividly within Harrison’s
mind. His jaw dropped, he dragged the plaque from
his pocket and stared at it as if seeing it for the first
time.
“Give it back to me,” requested Baines, watching
him.
Replacing it in his pocket, Harrison said very
firmly, “I won’t.”
Baines chuckled.

“Some people catch on quicker than others.”
― Eric Frank Russell, . . . And Then There Were None