Condition Other Than Normal: Finding Peace In a World Gone Mad. Gary Tetterington
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at any time leading up to my having become halt and lame, I could have searched and found the work which had assuredly been mine for the asking and risen above my deformities but chose not to. Gracious providence has always sustained me and come to my rescue whenever the screws of mischance and misfortune have tightened down securely upon my person.
Work is slavery. The wages of work are the same as any slave ever received. Ignoble survival and inglorious existence. Work done solely to survive and exist is a twisted misrepresentation and a deprivation of living your life on your terms and in close harmony with your creator. Your remarkable gift of life, on this beautiful planet is short, too short to waste on empty work and futile labor.
When I think of the important matters in my life today, the necessities, shelter and food, books and booze, laughter and loose women, I have absolutely no need of foolish complications. Such as work. Work would only be a distraction and get in my way and bring me down. I do not need work and for the record, here I am, a bit crazy from all the years but here just the same.
I like money. Yes I do. Money is good, to pleasure a man, to please his friends, to help others and to make everyone smile. However, I’m not willing and ready to debase and demean myself to acquire and hold money. Hell, I can’t understand finances past or more than a hundred dollar bill. A C – note will get me a bail of ‘Drum’ tobacco and a packet of ‘Zig – Zag’ blue rolling papers, be my entrance fee into the Regis Hotel, buy drinks for myself, a round for the boys and hopefully leave me with a few spare dollars scattered loosely on the floor of my bachelor loft the following frightening morning, for me to take and place carefully and gently on a Tight Squeeze beer table, at 7:30 A.M., to relieve the agony and put out the righteous fires inside my head from the night before. I will never be a rich man.
People no longer puzzle me. Square – john, working people, I understand real well. Someone, at sometime and to a ridiculous purpose, told them they had to work. From this belief they developed an entire philosophy of having to be responsible and this could only be attained by working hard all their lives. These people have the bitter and cheerless excuse of having to work, the fever of having to work. They lead such senseless and superficial lives. Such a waste, of such a gift. But the way it is and the way it has to be. For the squares.
Hell, I’d skedaddle from worthless and contemptible work in a N.Y. minute. I do not believe in being a slave to another man’s guilt and greed. I refuse to bow and serve any man. I will not sell myself. Any work I have ever done, for wages, has always been a well – rehearsed act of panic and consternation.
I have never presumed to be responsible with regards to the work ethic and with a credence and conviction like mine, pity on the man daft and balmy and ready to give me a job. The man deserved his reward or punishment.
I have the word, ‘notwithstanding’, in front of me, not a pretty word but I’ll deal with the bastard. Notwithstanding and only as an extreme, there are certain considerations which would force me or inspire me to labor and work, here in Canada. Certain mitigating factors could include, a long ways from home with no money in my pocket, lack of a roof over my head and the last hopeless phases before starvation. I had all 3 of these circumstances in great abundance, the summer of ’76, in Y.K., N.W.T.
Not much else will be an inducement for me to work hard, not the need or ambition to be someone extra special or superfluously important, not the idea of affluence or materialism.
I try to maintain a line of credit, always, to pull myself out of the low spots. I’ve ever cultivated a fine balance between what I want and what I need and the wisdom to appreciate the difference and to be satisfied with what I do have. I am a simple man.
Down easy with a struggling and stray thought on this sordid and distasteful topic. In Y.K., back in ’76, I could have handed any passing itinerant swagman an ax and a pouch of stale tobacco and pointed him in the general direction of the bush and more likely than not, the brave stranger would have put up a cabin and been quite comfortable. Not I. No. I would have chucked the ax into the Great Slave Lake, sat myself down on a log and smoked the tobacco and thought on my next clever and crafty move.
Further and lastly, any man who takes and hires another man into coin is a pimp. Any man who takes coin for his hire is a whore.
The only safe and rational conclusion I can draw upon, is, I was never put on this planet with the intention I do any labor, for any man.
The fear was on me in Y.K., in ’76. I had no money and no prospects of getting any soon, from any complimentary direction. Food, beer and cigarettes were becoming urgent and impossible. I was a long mile from home, as I imagined a home to be. I could have been standing at any point on the compass and I still would have been distant and lost. I had no home.
I had done in and exhausted the mooch and hustle and life was rapidly becoming a mite intolerable. I was tired and weary of being moved from one ridiculous and absurd sleeping place to another. I was dirty and ragged and I desperately needed a shave and a shower. The greatest fear I had was falling ill and infirm. Dying I could have handled but, ‘Please God, don’t leave me crippled,’ was my ritual prayer, mornings and evenings.
The rarity of my box and fix had come home to me. The awful enormity of a set of nevertheless conditions, a lively blend of unique stimuli, forlorn though they were, had come upon me like sufferance from above and I would have to go to work. Not good. No.
By the time this solemn configuration came along, I had heard tales and talk of Giant Y.K. Gold Mine. A camp! A bunkhouse and a bed! A cookhouse and a kitchen! Get clean! Get healthy! Be as silent as possible when called on to do a stitch of work. Cheat the company. Get even.
To further and finally convince myself that work was a no choice option and no avoiding it and that labor had become a necessity and beyond my control to deny and to ease the burden of unnatural duty and obligation, I charged my head with a glimmer of positive reinforcement. I persuaded myself of the fantastic and industrious idea of a touch of larceny. Perhaps I could somehow appropriate and swing with enough and to spare of the noble metal. Why not? After a dastardly thought of this nature, the cloud and confusion of hard - labor was easier to manage and helped put the issue to rest. Anyhow, what did I know about working in a mine? Not much.
Now, a speculation such as me absconding with the gold was fine, save for the true fact that there was only 1 road out of Y.K. and the town coppers would surely have tripped and fell over each other, hootin’ and jeerin’, at any man fool enough to be scampering down that gravel road, dragging an illegitimate sack of loot and treasure behind him. The man would be going to jail.
Was in mind of a vicious rumor. Idles’ gossip alleged a bright individual, maybe someone much like myself, had made off with 2 bars of gold, many years before. Story was, burnished and buffed, the gold had been sitting in a satchel, on the edge of a runway at Y.K. International, awaiting a plane that would have taken them to the Canadian Mint, when a devious and enterprising person had come along and seized and usurped the damn things and walked away. “Possibly,” I thought or fable and folklore, to keep fools like me interested and intrigued. Whatever, it was an intoxicating expectation on my conscious being.
Truthfully though, what attracted me most, was the inkling and inspiration of that pie in the sky camp kitchen. I know my stomach was digesting itself at that point in time and I know I looked like a wraith and an apparition. I needed nourishment.
I stalled some more. I searched for leaks and openings but couldn’t find any and the argument was over. End of break and delay. I was determined to grind and plug, to work and survive. So…
One clear evening, after all the reasoning on the subject of struggle and endeavor was in and done, while sitting on a moon and starlit chunk of driftwood and drinking sweet wine on the shore of the Great Slave Lake, I resolved to just do it. For me and my natural inclination towards sloth and shiftlessness, it was something of a staggering bolt and revelation. It was to become a pleasing and promising triumph and victory.
The following early and misty morning saw me standing bare – assed naked in the shallows of the cold, cold, Great Slave Lake, scouring and scraping my squalid and slovenly body. Wet but washed, I pulled on my crusty blue jeans, my threadbare