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• Tuesday, May 23, 2006 01:28 PM

  I don't know, but I wonder.

  What is the nature of work? The purpose? What is fair pay? What is sufficient pay?

  What does it mean - if anything - that we no longer do the work of our biological historical ancestors (pre-civilization)? That we don't work to survive, not true survival. Are we thus unnatural, or are we evolved/progressive/transcendent?

  Can exercise like biking be a type of work, even if you don't compete as a professional? What about creating personal art that never gets shown? Writing done for yourself and shown to no one else (the anti-blog impulse)?

  Is it more immoral not to want to work at all or to work at a meaningless job you hate? Should people be forced/compelled to work if they are able? Punished if they don't? What are the obligations to work of people with mental illness? Chronic physical illness?

  Should there be a moral purpose to work (service? contributing to the world?) or should work enrich the worker's life in whatever manner brings him/her personal happiness? Which is a better approach to work: a zen-ish 'live every moment as it is', 'be here now', or ambition and career goals?

  Can anyone ever escape the 'siren song of the work ethic' and truly live life on their own terms? If one can drop out, how could time be spent? What goals would one have?

  I don't know if my questions are relevant to what Gary Kamiya and Tom Lutz sought to explore.

  All I know is that to be able to type this in the middle of the day - me still in my bikini from kayaking in the ocean for 2 hours this morning - insanely wealthy professionals not coming home to this plush neighborhood until after the sun sets over those same waters, I'll scrub those workaholics' top-of-the-line toilets and vacuum up their purebred dog's hair from imported slate floors for an admittedly inflated wage.

  To be able every day to walk to the beach in seven minutes, I'll live in a friend's house's guest suite with only a bar-sized fridge and no stove at all - a place large enough for me and my dog only because she's a runt and isn't interested in running around all that much.

  On the bathroom's girthless wall hangs my unused master's degree, earned before I lost my status anxiety indoctrinated through growing up on a missile testing army base where there really are rocket scientists whose obscenely bright children were virgins until college and years later show up at class reunions looking fat from accomplishment and success.

  I get enough money from these people to live among them but not enough to live like them, yet I'm the one who's rich with all this slack time.

  I never knew life could flow so smoothly, as though it were a plastic banana-shaped boat on a lazy current through blue clear calm salt water.

  —being in a play-filled scrubber woman life
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