Sometimes I rue the lack of real seasons that our post-agricultural work lives have engendered. That moment when one takes stock is no longer reliably at the end of a fall harvest, nor will its end result in a quantitative and definitive idea of what the following season will hold. I have no idea the reality of this scene, of course, but I imagine an experienced farmer of yesteryear could enter his silos and instantly know how much wine would be had for that year’s celebrations. On those years when the sun and insects had conspired against him, perhaps those silos spoke of debt, and perhaps just one bottle of wine would be added to that debt, to ease its sting and to bring hope to the prayers spoken for the next spring.
To his progeny and employ, it was simply the wine that indicated prosperity or hunger and thus became the icon of success. To the forebears and their closests each bottle was in fact feet of grain in their stores, grain connected to a vast ecosystem and positioned in a long timeline that was present not just in the mind but in the blood.
Similarly, what the next day held, and the reason to start after it in the morning–and for that matter, the reason to rest that night–were well known, and in that knowledge was held satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, of art, even.
Now our seasons, our stores and our debts, and even our daily work have been abstracted, their ecosystems obscured. I can feel a new season approaching. Perhaps this coming “season” resembles summer, likely it does not. Likely it fails in any material way to fall into a cycle of sowing and reaping. I bought wine* tonight and I used debt to do so** without any concept of what it meant or to whom it was owed. My work days are dictated by ticketing systems and emails, but mostly by interruption and urgency–either in real life or via instant message. My existence is premeditated not by seasons but by a radically nonlinear attention fishnet. The value of my work relies on focus but it is not my work but my focus that is valued.
I feel like ours is the last generation concerned with these issues. Those that have followed swim natively in these seas. They travel through meanings and tasks like they click on AJAX hyperlinks, pulling data from the server without losing their place. They are unencumbered by their brain’s devolution to the plow.
Perhaps. More later.
- In my experience, the number of bottles of wine that have been spoiled upon opening has increased by an order of magnitude in the last 6-12 months. Is anyone else having this experience? Any information about why this might be?
** Granted I am not carrying credit card debt over a billing cycle and therefore in theory simply using my card as a form of payment. But the option to purchase without money lies there, in a dark corner, a monster in the closet.