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So it continues, because, not that I like it but I have some sort of civic obligation. And I like the people I'm working with.
It has quite literally destroyed my love of thrift shops - the donations - a never ending tide of used kitchen supplies - quality; rubbish, largely rubbish. Thrift shops are largely a dumping ground for unusable, unsaleable items. And no one - or - rarely anyone - washes their donations before bringing them in.
Everyone here is a hoarder...
I mean, who am I to talk? I know, I know. So - I'm not throwing shade, but to watch my paid partner unbox - laying aside items, he intends to price them, sell them, but he doesn't, they end up in one of several dozen boxes in the back he means to have appraised, to perhaps purchase or "up-cycle", it's hilarious, you watch his eyes and you can see the light of covetousness come on when something grabs his eye...
Another volunteer, they're all harridans, well-meaning daughters of the Church of ... asks my function - do I stage the furniture? Dress the shop?
I tell her - "Mine is more of a Cinderella role...".
My partner finds this funny.
These women, most of them volunteering to get first dibs on the best handbags, clothes, uncomfortably close to my age and so you have to be careful someone doesn't take it in their head to "set you up...".
I price shit, but I'm no authority, there's no telling, someone bought this shit once, they'll buy it again, I'm amazed, put it out and no sooner do you put it out then you walk past a shopping cart with the item in it. Why, I pluck items from the trash that my partner (the paid employee) has discarded to price and sell them - and he sees them come through the till with that de-ja-vu, there's no telling. I know quality, workmanship, what I like, but these are not indexes as to what sells.
4 hours grows long, no more a pleasure, a job, the cause, worthy, but - well, it's the necessary friction to move the wheels...
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Back at the restaurant, just reopened. And so familiar - and yet -
Not where I'm meant to be.
In misery there's comfort, the comfort of numbers, the joy of familiar faces disappeared over the winter, old customers, staff, of new faces - I'm 3 days a week, they've hired a new waitress. My age, maybe older, short, plump, career waitress, you can tell pretty quick she knows where her hands are and what's up. A perpetually stretched smile across a weather-beaten face, she's wintered in California, Arizona, someplace. And so you balance the familiar with the new, when it's slow - and it's always slow in April, but never fear the rush is coming up quick - I introduce her to...
Well, Ken of course. Who else. Start by telling her about the six pack of gerbils he picks up at the Superette every night, about how he's got the best supply of what's-it-called-that-date-rape drug GBH that's it and the time I was in the basement partying and I woke up with a PICKLE in my...
And so on and so forth
It's mindless, this, and I have to escape, time now to plan it, in the meantime the comfort of the other bad habits that accompany it, Vodka, Cigarettes, I'm never sure which one is going to kill me first.
Not this year.
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It seems an unlikely field to get a doctorate in, but - a little online searching and sure enough, there's an institution that will accredit you.
Link: https://www.metaphysicsinstitute.org/program-info/specializations/cryptozoology
Note they also offer doctorates in Para-Anthropology and UFOlogy.
I mean, if you have the money and inclination surely someone has the Obligation, nay, duty even, to accredit your studies and take your tuition.
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So I have taken on a couple of volunteering commitments to pass the time between jobs, to broaden my social horizons a little more in line with my values.
One of them, a thrift shop in town. The biggest, I limit it to a couple of days a week, 4 hours a day, I'm glad to be of service but you can see pretty quick how this could turn into exploitation. They'll take every piece of good intentioned free labor they can get.
The first couple of days, dusting, sweeping, sorting out of donations...
But, by and by they find a department they think interests me - which it does, and it's the vast repository of unsold pictures and frames.
They've not sold them, just laid them up in the back, a hoarders paradise, clutter everywhere, hundreds of unopened boxes, each potentially containing treasures, most containing nothing but kitchen appliances, used, brand new still-in-the-box, cutlery, plates, cups, saucers...
Some are valuable, most aren't, in any event, the sheer volume inoculates you against ever buying any of this shit new ever again.
And the pictures, laid up, they never found time to get around to them, as in a bunker of them laid up in storage. So my days now are spent finding space on the walls to hang pictures, price picture frames, assess and price pictures.
Now - this, while a job in every sense of the word less payment - it amuses me. Most of the pictures, bad-art extraordinaire. Hotel art. Pastel prints of flowers in vases. Or of old cartoons - think back to the 70's caricatures that were briefly so popular - "The Golfers", some painful, comical hijinks involving golfers. Or hunters or fishermen or rugby players or tennis players or cricket players or...
You get the idea.
OMG. Anne Geddes. God, if I had one bullet and it were her or President Putin I would probably put it in my own head. No, hers. He threatens life on earth, she the very heart and soul....
Prints of Holland, Amsterdam, London, the Vacation trophies or souvenirs. Bad third world paintings of tropical sunsets, someone playing the mandolin, guitar, who knows.
Commonplace landscapes, decorative arts, a lot of the acrylic pours - I've tried this, and - if I don't say so myself - to much better effect.
Portraits.
Oh, yes. The portraits.
Now we're getting to it, the meat of it, no longer prints, but the untutored geniuses of Nelson and Environs.
And there are some truly - great? horrible? wtf? I don't know.
Someone has painted his probably beautiful East-Indian or Polynesian bride in painstaking, loving detail. You can see the effort. And it's painful. The effect - not good, merely - well, painful, you can see how hard (he?) tried. And then again - exactly the same painting, only twice the size, but the same level of incompetence.
It's brutal. I look at it and immediately see a divorce. I don't blame her. And - to make matters worse - I see my own hand, the painstaking attention to minute detail that amounts to nothing of value - the trying too hard, the inability to speak what's so clearly in your heart. A bungling oaf, an inept clown. It's personal now, it hurts.
Another, sepia toned "Hobo embracing boy" by so-and-so in memory of so-and-so out of Castlegar, and - the style, like a Penguin cover of a George Orwell novel, but - not.
Nope. Nope nope nope.
A 5 panel "original" of a tree who's branches turn into 2 faces that each look at one another. Badly done, probably painted in China in 10 minutes (tops!), sold on Amazon - and - even as I laughed at it sold yet again.
This is it, my tastes, bloody hell, I have to be careful, most of what I love will never sell, and a lot of what I think of as trash flies off the shelf.
This continues, no end to bad art, the lack of signature doesn't tell me if it was painted in Nelson or the Dominican Republic, and then - once in a while you find it:
The treasure.
Here - a painting of 2 black women, with thatched huts behind them pulling water from a well. Less a painting then daubs by a well-meaning missionary that wanted to document his/her good deeds in the dark continent. It hasn't aged well.
Here - a painting of a dark Mexican in formal dress lurking in an emerald green forest. The emerald green, unadulterated, straight from the tube, it looks like a bad painting of the final glimpse of a serial killer spotted waiting to pounce...
Here - surprisingly - on a 16" X 20" panel, a collection of tree boles in a forest. The stumps extend up and above the frame, the greens and browns, I'd date it - maybe the 40's? It smacks of the Group of 7. Same color palette, perfect color harmony, hard to explain - but I like it. This I'd hang at home.
Here, a 60's or 70's portrait of flowers, oil on canvas, beautiful colors again, well realized, abstracted slightly, it needs an ornate gilt frame. I set it aside.
And - finally - perfect wood frame, an Indian sitting at a campfire. Dark, muted colors, perfect. Another masterpiece, I'd buy.
***
I've tried to talk them into having a bad-art-gala, a fundraiser, silent auction, with a guided tour by none other than myself, lecturing on the deep mystery of art, talent, in the vein of "What in the world were they fucking thinking??!!", but - I've not been there long enough, and the guy I work with, I think we disagree on a few points, a little more conservative - and - well, it's not gonna happen. Which is a shame, because, surely, I can't be the only one looking at this and wondering...
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You knew this was coming. I did as well.
Try as I might, study the menu, work faster, smarter, or slower, more cautious, it wasn't working. There was no way it could work.
The week before, turning, my back twists, lower back. Sunday, barely unable to get out of bed. Monday, very slightly recovered.
The job, nothing but stress and anxiety, you see it in the mannerisms of those who've somehow managed to fit in, the swish, swagger, effeminate manners - even affected by the straight lads, the "stoop" - shoulders hunched - the physical symptoms of having being "broken", the "Knowing" of the menu - that this morsel has 3 bites, this tid-bit has 4, the continual reprimands - about offenses you see everyone around you committing - wine glass - filled too high - not high enough - the constant querying of the Chef, because under no circumstances do you promise anything to the customer that he has not approved - and - when not reprimanding you he reprimands others in your presence - for filling your shot glass too full, for answering a question...
It's feudal - this - the managers, Chef, eat at a common table, many courses, dirty plates left for the servers to clean, to see how "the other half" eats.
Contrast this with your overcooked pasta in oil, and the same bloody salad day after day.
So, after another intolerably long night of perpetual reprimands and bitchy behaviors I'm done. Chef agrees.
He's a short man, who - through a triumph of will has realized his every ambition, but - this with everyone that has served being squashed underfoot. It's feudalism, he will accept you as a subject - but you must accept him as your Lord, these are not human relationships, or like none that I am familiar with.
I have never hated a job so much in my life, or been so relieved to escape.
But now, what next?
We will see.