My Canadiancommie bud lost his job today. Assistant Manager, 5 years in a toy store. Over without a reason given. He’s weeping openly on camera and I credit him with more emotional intelligence than me, for that. Maybe natural bravery too.

He said he wouldn’t speculate about their reasons, and then did it anyway. Maybe they saw his channel, right? Children buying their toys from a communist wouldn’t care, but the parents might; the professional managerial class sure as hell would. Yeah.

I was there last May. They didn’t say why and I didn’t ask, but it feels political or at least cultural to this day.

Fuck capitalism.

When I go out to YouTube and hear that I’m supposed to like, comment, or subscribe, it means nothing to me, since I never ever log in to any kind of Goog service, unless I’m compelled by some circumstance. Such as: the night I saw my first video from him, and wrote about it, and logged in from a locked-down browser only to point him to my writing. It didn’t work, as far as I know. I was too cryptic and cyber-ninja for him to hear me. Oh well.

And oh-well as well to the job loss. I don’t mean to be mean. But not only did he get severance, where I got a sharp stick in the eye, he lives in a less fucked-up country with a relatively angelic safety net, whereas I haven’t seen an unemployment check for ten weeks due purely to a shit-headed bureaucracy that doesn’t know what it’s doing. There’s a sternly-worded letter, as they say, churning in the bowels of the beast somewhere.

Beyond all that, I am quite truly better than I’ve ever been. I am living nickel to dime, but my creditors are very happy with me–one of them just jacked my credit limit another $2500, to tempt me into using credit, and I am not the least bit tempted. Slowly and slowly the debt-swamp continues to drain off, and somehow my job now consists of pressure-cooking another turkey, wood-chipping away the branches in the yard, and doing what I’m doing right now. God bless the natural spill. I don’t even have to worry about being good at it. I just have to keep going.

It is an undeniable fact that I don’t know how long I can go on like this, but truly my loves–that was exactly how I felt under the choke-harness of the last college, and that feeling hurt a lot more than this one. So not only am I not worse off, I have room to do as I will, and that makes me happy and blessed in this one shorter and shorter life.

Capitalism and Communism share one failure in common, and that is their shared theory that an individual is primarily a Worker.

That might even be true for a lot of people, but it’s bullshit in my world, especially now.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
–Matthew 6:28-30, KJV

There’s a rational counter-argument to this of course, which might include the fact that lilies are sometimes plowed under in genocidal atrocity to make room for shopping malls. But I’m not moved in this contented winter by rationality.

I’m siding with faith this time, as long as I can afford to. The worst case is having to go back to being a drone for a year or two. I’ll do it if necessity demands, and not until then. Until then, not only am I not a professor, I’m not a Worker at all.

I don’t even know what I am yet. I just know what I’m not. And I’m joyful. Amen.