Petty Threat

Today at work I was informed that I'm teetering on the edge of being fired. Apparently a very informative source clued them in on all of my tremendously unprofessional activities (like workplace haikus), which are merely the product of my heartwrenching boredom and physical pain as my intellect is wrung from me on a daily basis. I'm merely suffering from the monotony of being a teller; apparently they've got it out for me, and I'm on the guillotine.

(I'm fine with that. I have more valuable things to do with my time anyway.)

So, as a silent, angsty response to the petty threats, I wrote.
I wrote on bits of scratch paper, while standing next to the exact person who "tattled" on me, making no effort to hide the fact that I was scribbling furious letters that spilled out onto more and more tiny pieces of paper, blatantly ignoring her efforts to see what it was that I was writing. I shielded my words but wrote passionately, heated with intent against this bullshit and its inflictions. Here it is for you:

1::
I'm accumulating awareness, sparked by the increasing number of hideous, harsh reminders of what is demanded of me from a world to which I no longer relate and no longer identify myself. I want out. There's more to life than routine sacrifices of my identity on a daily basis just so I can fit into their fucked-up values and appeal to their blindess. Here I stand, dedicating the hours of my life, which would otherwise be saturated with those "pointless" things like poetry, art, meditation and nature. I'm being meticulously strangled, leaving me gasping for some vitality and truth and everything that is real and thrives outside of this world that contradicts it. This world that suffocates everything I stand for until I break free and fight for it. I want to escape from money, yet here I stand, forced to sacrifice my heart for something I don't even want anymore.

2::
But what is this concept of "being professional"? Is it a complete expulsion of identity, complete allegiance to nothing but gray and beige and bank statements? Where the greatest opportunity for self-expression is the color of your pen, a choice limited to bank-approved black and blue? Conversation suppressed to superficiality and empty mentality, oblivious to the real brutality of it all. Where movement is limited to an upright posture, posed on toes unprepared for steps beyond our trained obligation to the counter in front of us- "professionalism" is our place in the bank, where we stand for ten hours dutifully waiting for customers, our minds blank and our mouths dry, our bodies motionless and cold- we are simply support beams to keep this insitution strong. Composed of cemented responsibilities and eliminated of thought or action, we are the foundation of everything that exploits us. That's "being professional."

3::
It's raining outside, the world beyond these vast windows alludes to a rich gray salvation created by the clouds' greatest mastery.
My world in here is gray too.
But it is without the vibrance and magnetism of that tremendous sky that envelopes the outside world, where life is real and beautiful and honest. Out there, the sky's gray is generous and free of inhibitions or facades, spilling forth and embracing the air and the earth and its inhabitants with real imperfections. And it's a beautiful gray. The gray out there, beyond those now raindrop-blemished bank windows, is the most beautiful color I've ever seen- vivid and rich, its color is warm with tones of the earth and rain. It's perfect beyond replication, despite its seemingly close relation to its ugly bastard cousin that drenches and suffocates the walls in here, which are flat and lifeless and mute. This gray has lulled us into a stupor from which we're awakened only the tremendous roar of thunder outside, which draws our attention beyond these walls into the deep ferocious gray that is out there. That's the kind of gray that makes us remember the world as it was in our childhoods, when summer afternoons meant warmth and puddles and worms and mud and timelessness... The world as it is still, beyond this bank that is imprisoning us in the hue we have come to accept in our lives as "gray", which is no match to its majestic counterpart.
I wish I were outside right now, relishing that gray- the deep, honest, real gray composed of every color, with unimaginable depth at the black in the heart of the storm. I'm afraid that if I escaped to that outside world, though, I could never bring myself to return to this one. It's only through blindess that we can succumb to life between these deafening, draining walls... which try so hard to convince us that a better gray has never existed.

4::
And so I stand, patiently waiting for them to deliver my fate
Simply so I can begin living.