A VOCATION IS A LETTER AWAY FROM A
VACATION
“You’re too god
damned stupid to go to school!
You.
Better.
Learn.
How.
To.
Work.”
He said these
words with the closed hand that templed me from the holy homework chair to the
floor. So much for any pocket protector calling, no slide rules for me, he
decided as I walked out the door at 17, to return only a few times more. Damn
near a decade of wandering the sea and shore with only two bighting
consistencies to carry me, faith and writing. Though I will admit I thought it
was a bunch of shit when I found he’d burned all my journals as another way to,
in his mind, throw me to the ground, one last time to learn if, I’d become a
man, I’d learned. I shrugged and walked off his land only to see him on his
dying day and let this voice, from this beard be the last one he heard.
I did get around though, saw all I wanted to see, in every direction the winds of the road blew me. At the time I never understood what it took to actually define a man. I became a janitor, field hand, clerk, jerk, mechanic, plumber, electrician, anything that provided me work. Nothing that I’d say was a vocation, an occupation or a title to hang on me. I worked at this, labored at that, endeavored here and moiled there; none of it a true calling. But this I will say; no matter what every bill owed was paid. Everything I saw or did back then was poetry for my pen, even though I never kept a bit ‘o it.
I did get around though, saw all I wanted to see, in every direction the winds of the road blew me. At the time I never understood what it took to actually define a man. I became a janitor, field hand, clerk, jerk, mechanic, plumber, electrician, anything that provided me work. Nothing that I’d say was a vocation, an occupation or a title to hang on me. I worked at this, labored at that, endeavored here and moiled there; none of it a true calling. But this I will say; no matter what every bill owed was paid. Everything I saw or did back then was poetry for my pen, even though I never kept a bit ‘o it.
Over forty years of dirt and grease but I always had my faith and writing to give me release from the aging aches and pains from being too God damned stupid to go to school. Back to those journals the old man burned, from that I learned the only lesson he ever taught, keep nothing except thought. Man I left poetry near everywhere I’ve ever been, told stories of all the things I’ve seen. Never kept a word of it, and damned if I can remember a metaphor or sonnet from those days long before I started to save and catalog any of my shit.
I have heard no calling or assigned myself any title of vocation. I have spent my life in pain and trouble, joy and peace filled nights far from the sight of most others living in a defined bubble. Looking back I can proudly boast I have failed algebra seven times and have written more words than most but for a calling, nah, I simply love that spirit that kept me alive and enjoy the words of that roaming life. I come from a family that prizes degree’s like a miser prizes pools of greed. I never worked me to a one. No initials to follow my name—which come to think of it was probably my hidden calling all the while, educate myself with the spirits smile, learning how to get up after falling. Vocation or not still the learning is a worthwhile endeavor, though the old man never lived long enough to see that I actually walked my way to be fairly clever
© M Durfee
.
