Slum Enterprise - Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
Lee picks at his bandaid on his left hand with his pointer finger. He has a cut on his thumb from shuffling around papers at the satellite office yesterday.
The managers he presented seemed happy about the SOP method document on filtration chambers capable of ridding the air of 0.1um particles for pill packing plants.
“You can't have dust in your pills,” the managers would say. Lee would smile, shuffle his feet back and forth, and wait for any others in the meeting room to follow up with another witty comment.
Home is 2 hours straight east through dull green corn fields and chicken and beef farms. Lee likes to think that the chickens are raised humanely in cage-free arenas, fed with sunlight and enriched seed. But that wasn't the case. He viewed white long shacks with zero windows. Giant industrial fans on the outside walls (fresh air side pointing in) every 10 feet to make sure the eggs didn't scramble. The beef farms with black and brown nameless cows (ears tagged with numbers) produced methane and grazed boulder fields left by ancient icebergs.
As the city approaches, Lee tends to drive faster, and the hustle culture of city-slick living starts to trigger his subconscious actions. He hits an average speed of 87 miles per hour on 55 mph average speed limit highways. The farmland turns into sparse 3rd ring suburbs, 2nd ring, 1st ring, city zone, back to 1st ring on the south side, Lee's home. Saturday afternoon, the sun was still high in the sky, blinding Lee every so often by the reflections of waxed cars.
Overall, the work trip was successful, Lee should have a sense of “Job well done,” but only feels drained and dreads the cycle repeating on Monday. “The weekend is basically over, and I'm too tired to do anything, like a hobby or whatnot.” Lee thinks. “I might as well try to rest up and rest the neurons fried from the week. The SOP doc is submitted and approved for implementation at the new Mexican plants. I should be happy.”
Lee walks into his modest home. It's a house with white polymer horizontal paneling with a blackish/grey roof. It's shaped like a cubed cottage. Built in the 40s with small updates added in the 70s. It's simple and gets the job done. At least the neighborhood is nice. A 1st ring suburb south of the big city with great highway access and local shops still holding on for dear life. The mayor and politicians are relatively relaxed. Higher taxes, but the roads are swept monthly, and the snowplows are the best in the business. Not once has there been a snowstorm that prevented them from leaving from the side roads.
Lee walks through the front door (it was unlocked; someone is home).
“How was the trip? I miss you.” Annie walks over to Lee and gives him a hug. She holds him, trying to make up for lost time while he was away for the last 5 days.
“You don't want to hear about it… the hotel was nice, the breakfast was excellent, although I never seem to sleep well in hotels. Yes, I made sure to put an extra pillowcase over the hotel pillowcase. I don't want to sleep on other people's dead skin flakes.” He dropped his work bags on the floor and went to the kitchen that had white cupboards and appliances with black painted walls to wash his hands (a ritual whenever he arrived at the house).
“Well, I'm glad your home is safe. The dog had a hard time eating her food, but overall, her limp is getting better. Say, did you submit your document thingy… did they like it?” Annie said while sitting on the living room couch now, her voice could barely be heard in the kitchen due to the faucet sinking, hitting Lee's hands with cold, hard water.
“I think so, the managers didn't ask any questions, just stupid one-liners to avoid the prospect of others realizing they didn't know what I was talking about. They shut up and nodded their heads in silent approval while rubbing their chins with soft hand sanitized hands.”
“Well, that's nice,” Annie said blankly. She had other things on her mind now, things that had happened while Lee was away. Lee shuts off the water and dries his hands on the towel that hangs on the oven handle. It's starting to smell bad from constant use. He changed modes to an active listening state. Annie starts to discuss all the happenings that happened. All her thoughts and emotions verbalized, pouring into Lee's ears. He finds this endearing and categorizes this as one of Annie's special intellectual traits. She's able to flawlessly incorporate emotions into every story seamlessly. As Annie speaks, Lee can only nod and say short phrases like “hmmm, yes,” or “interesting, I can't believe that happened… what an idiot." Just small comments to make sure Annie knows he’s still listening.
While Annie is still trudging through the events, Lee sits down on his midcentury modern wood and blue fabric covered reading chair in the corner of the living room. He likes to sit and stare at Annie.
Brown hair, with fair olive skin, and light makeup. She has an oval, longer face with dark square glasses. She is a few inches shorter than Lee, above average for women in height. She moves her hands very expressively while she speaks. “Absolute perfection,” Lee thinks. He finds every little thing so special and lovable.
Lee interrupts, “Do we have any plans for the rest of the weekend?” He hopes that the calendar is free. Lee could check ahead, but he's just too lazy and prefers to let Annie explain the social plans to him. Lee and Annie are a great team in that sense. Lee can work and take care of the household. Annie can delegate social plans and tasks. This allows Lee to avoid doing things like calling friends or keeping up with current events; he is a very anxious man when it comes to reaching out. Without Annie at his side, Lee would be hopeless, destined to turn into a city hermit.
“No, I don't think so.” Annie gets up from the couch, moving the dog who's lying close beside her, to go to the kitchen, whiteboard calendar, and view the notes. Lee loves her dainty walk.
“Great, I'm dead beat, I need a few days just to recharge.”
Lee gets up and grabs the bags still lying on the beaten-up hardwood floors (still original). He heads upstairs, the stairs creak and moan from his weight. The black mutt lying on the couch jumps up and runs after Lee. “Penny!” Penny is getting on in age but is still slender and black as coal with deep brown eyes that can figure you out in an instant. Her face is turning somewhat white, but people in the streets, while on walks, still think she is less than 5 years old. Penny follows Lee to the small master bedroom. Penny finds her doggy bed and lies down once more and gets ready for the afternoon slumber. Right on time, too.
Lee and Annie didn't do much that Saturday evening. Lee read and worked in his basement shop while Annie relaxed directly above him on the main floor, only separated by 80-year-old pine foundation beams and floorboards. Annie could hear Lee work and shuffle equipment around in the basement shop. Annie liked to knit and watch a random rotation of the vampire shows. “It’s just stupid fun,” she would always say. Lee's basement shop has a collection of quality USA-manufactured tools from when America was the steel capital of the world. 50s and 60s hand tools and measurement equipment were passed down by his grandpa after he passed. He died more than 8 years ago, now lonely in his bathroom in the 2nd ring northern suburban house. The flu was the cause; his heart probably couldn't take it. Lee's father found him after he went for a wellness check, after Grandpa didn't answer the phone for a few days. Lee's sister bought the house after the assets were divided up among Lee's father and uncles. The tools lay dormant in the basement. Lee's sister wasn't that handy and never had a use for them. But Lee couldn't take them at the time since he was still up north in college finishing his engineering degree. After he came back home to the cities, he found himself with a degree, a long-time girlfriend, Annie, and no job. He needed to get “his shit together" and find a job in his field, where he worked for four and a half long years in engineering school. “The life system tells me to survive and somehow thrive?” Lee thought as he drove down the main highway, leaving his college town behind.
Once settled and established with a job and house of his own, Lee finally took the tools and equipment and filled his unfinished concrete basement that was more like a dungeon. Lee put up shop lights and fake walls and made a little man cave for himself. This allowed Annie to have more space up on the other two floors. It worked well for the little cubed cottage. The passing of the torch was now complete.
The workshop was a neatly arranged array of toolbox and plywood pegboards lit by cold white, fluorescent light. Any repair job that Lee had the confidence in undertaking, he could now find the right tool for the job. No more buying cheap Chinese made crap. The American tools will last 10 more life spans if treated properly. Lee always makes sure to put away all tools before the next “project” can begin. He can't work if things aren’t clean and organized in such a manner that when he achieves flow state, tinkering on a mechanical system or whatnot, he doesn't even have to think about which drawer to open or which motion of the arm is most efficient to reach over and grab that one tool on the bench top.
As the basement lights grow hot, Lee finishes designing a wood structure for Annie, a shoe rack for her vanity room. Lee recently got hold of a “good” free 3D modeling software. The rack was designed custom to fit perfectly in the corner of the room. It would have 6 shelves, enough for 15 pairs. Annie has been begging Lee to build it all summer, but he tends to find himself manic on other side projects that, to him, occur naturally and without warning. Annie would always say, “You wouldn't be so mad at my shoes lying around if I had a place to put them all.” Annie's complaints play in the back of Lee’s mind as he completes the final touches and makes a material list to build the damn thing.
Saturday bleeds into Sunday. Lee hates Sundays. “Who the fuck doesn’t, it’s an epidemic of the human mind. There's church to go to, brunches, some boring sports game to watch, family events, and the unforgiving force of anxiety and depression that sucker punches between the hours of 12 and 2pm,” Lee thought. It's the beginning of September now, and the sun sets before 8pm. Lee feels the days being chipped away by antimatter. The Earth's axis starts to point away from the sun. The air cools heavily in the evenings.
Sunday is the death of the week, everything, all momentum comes to a grinding halt. The momentum is in the void in which every human mind is located. The common person thinks about the void all wrong. They think the void is the place after death, pure blackness, and nothingness. The true void is the opposite. Living consciousness bounded by 3D space and time is the void we all traverse.
In the past few months, questions about meaning and the extraordinary states of the universe and consciousness have plagued Lee. He has spent many hours thinking deeply, trying to come to some sort of model of how the self interacts with the void. So far, he has landed on an iceberg-type model. An iceberg can be a type of vessel that floats in the void's infinite ocean but is still always controlled by the fundamental laws of nature. Lee's way to escape the void is to live inside the massive iceberg, one that has 80 percent of its mass below the surface. This is the self's home base or ship, so to speak. This secret base sits awaiting his return, but Lee still has a funny feeling that this is still an inaccurate description of what he is trying to find. Lee has had many dreams of finding himself on the iceberg. Inside, Right and Left Lee tend to the outside garden of ice roses and hydrangeas. The berg floats without a sail; the currents of the cosmic ocean carry it where it needs to go. The berg is just a traveling vessel to the established lands of the true self, off in the unforeseen distance. The top 20 percent of the berg looks like a house captured in unmelted ancient ice.
There is a wooden front door, one window glowing from kerosene lamps inside. A steel smokestack on the left side billows smoke and steam due to the chimneys' heat against the ice. Lee notices that the void ocean is a soupy web of neuron membranes. He peers down from the garden ledge and can see the deep blue of the lower berg. It glows a slate white blue.
Inside the house, there are stairs, more like a circular walkway, hidden by a floor trap door. It smells like inside a winter snow fort Lee made with his neighborhood friends when he was a child. Lee starts to descend the staircase, and it gets colder the deeper he goes. There is no sound, just the sound of his spiked boots gripping the ice floor. Lee is dressed in 1920’s mountaineering equipment with a crude mining-type lamp light helmet. The lamp beams and reflects off the walls of the inner iceberg cave. In his dreams, Lee never likes to go deep into the berg; he likes to stay in the garden with Right and Left Lee looking from little islands to the dock and finding supplies for the continuation of the journey.
Lee is now deeper than he has ever been. He strikes his left boot down into the ice. The incline was too steep, and his spikes broke loose. Lee falls onto his back and starts to slide down the spiral staircase like a water park slide; friction was negligible. Lee ends up in the deep blue basement of the berg. The cold shocks his soul; he gets the feeling of intense melancholy; it fills his body and drowns him.