Lee Marvin

           

            On Saturday, just after midnight, I received a call telling me that my container was ready for delivery. They couldn’t bring it directly to my place because there was no room and so they said they would drop it off near the railroad tracks a little east of my place within the next half an hour. I got dressed and rode out on my bike but I overshot the spot where they said it would be delivered. I could already see the truck back a little ways west and I could hear the driver shouting impatiently. It was one of those long containers that one sees stacked up high and side-by-side in masses at freight yards, looking altogether like windowless rusted metal apartment buildings. It was on wheels though and I remembered that I’d pushed ones like it by myself along the street with some effort in the past. When I got to the container I realized that it wasn’t me the driver had been shouting for and it wasn’t even the driver that had been shouting but rather the drivers boss. He was a short but stocky old man with white hair. He was angry with the driver for having dropped the container at the wrong spot and was violently attacking him in response. There were large pieces of furniture that he was grabbing and shoving at the driver, which smashed into his body and sent him flying. He even slammed the container into the driver as well. Before I had a chance to deal with the old man myself, I woke up and went to take a pee.

            There never seems to be a day when I don’t have to go out and forego reading and essay writing for at least a couple of hours.

            On Saturday I had to do laundry. Again! What’s the point of washing one’s clothing if they are just going to get dirty again in a couple of weeks?

            At the Laundromat I put a toonie and then a loonie into the change machine, but I came out a quarter short. I told the manager, who was standing over his work table looking down at a spread out newspaper, and his already somber visage, still visible beneath his surgical mask, showed impatience as he quickly shook his head and declared without looking at me, “Machine not make mistake! Look on floor!” I assured him that I hadn’t heard anything drop, I nonetheless stepped back and looked down, but saw no coin on the floor. He acted like I was pushing him over the edge, as he had to move away from his reading and deal with me. He assured me, “Machine not lie! People lie! Look on floor!” Just to the left of the change machine, he moved a rack that held free magazines aside and close to the wall was a quarter. “There!” he barked. “”I told you to look!” Seriously? His machine throws my money on the floor and it’s my responsibility to go on a treasure hunt looking for it? I asked him when he was going to fix his machine so that it didn’t throw people’s money around. He told me that if I had a complaint about the machine I should call up the company that made it. I pointed out that I don’t have to call up the manufacturer if one of his washing machines malfunctions because it’s his responsibility, and so is the coin machine because the Laundromat owns it. He thought it was funny that he should be responsible for calling the manufacturer of the coin machine. He said something about how he shouldn’t have to follow me around like a five-year-old kid, helping me find my money. I asked him if he was born without people skills or if he had acquired the lack of them on his own. He was immune to anything I could possibly say anyway, living in his bitter world. They should make people take a kind of social driving test before they are allowed to work with the public.

            I finished reading Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism”, though I’ll need to read it again to even get a precarious grip on it.

            I read Shyam Selvadurai’s “Pigs Can’t Fly” about a little boy in Sri Lanka that gets reprimanded for playing dress-up with his female cousins. The game of “Bride-Bride” was his greatest joy because he got to be bride, until the adults found out. The story deals with his confusion about their reaction and how their response made him an exile from both sexes.

            I watched the fifth episode of the first season of the Dragnet TV series, from 1951. A young Lee Marvin put on a great performance as the murderer with no real motive. I didn’t recognize Marvin at all in this role, as he didn’t look anything like he did when he became well known. His hair had yet to turn prematurely white.