"Sanitary Engineer" of life

Ah, the day begins so gloriously that I hope its not ruined by sewage juices spilling on me. But that's what I deal with, smells and sights that delicate "regulars" wouldn`t last five minutes with. I mean nobody talks to us, nobody helps with their own garbage. I see the looks and pitied glances when I come by. I see them rush off, coffee in one hand and a cellphone pasted to their ears. I like to imagine that perhaps they are going to better jobs, ones inside a cushy office and full of tailored suits and manicured cleanliness. Perhaps they make more money than I do, enjoy perks of a job entirely mental and requiring no more effort than punching in keys and attending meetings. It makes it easier to despise them and elevate my own importance in cleaning up the messes of a whole city. Am I not a superhero? We even get notes, scrapes of paper with messages written; rarely thanks but often belittling our job and complaining of so many things. And its just garbage, goes in the back of the truck like everything else we receive from them.

Perceptions and assumptions, ah they could drive me crazy! Though I have a little more love for my co-workers than non-sanitary engineers, they seem to have no imagination. All the negatives that we pile on the "regulars", all the more we delude ourselves to the true importance of our job. Sure we take care of the things no one else wants to touch. And sure we provide a service that allows the more talented and smarter of our race to enjoy a higher, uninterrupted productivity, but I get just as depressed at the dullness of views my coworkers have. They don`t understand the beauty of a city moving from the stillness of an early morning to full bustling and rushing that is the lifeblood flowing throughout the streets. They don`t see the stabbing light of a new sun spread over a quiet street, painting the black trash cans and still rows of cars in a faint haze of color. Conversations die when I bring up the sensations of losing one`self in half-awake exertions of lifting, dumping and repeat. The concept of zen and a state of awareness seems to be lost amongst my fellow employees. Or I think too much.

I feel like Hamlet when he is plunged in confusion, wanting to kill the king but held back by the hands of propriety and the good of all. Mike, coworker two years running, looks at me oddly when I mutter his lines "And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." I mean, so vividly can I envision better lives, more exciting avenues to pursue. The method and means lies clearly in my mind but what? What truly holds back my hand at changing jobs, changing and invigorating my life? The answer often comes just before I fall asleep, when my thoughts have slowed and neurons inside are free-wheeling about. Its both my curse and blessing: the institution of employment, a provider of security and ensurer of tradition; appearing so indestructible as to be unfailing and that is the dagger in my heart. I am afraid to breach that barrier and see what lays beyond, and yet...and yet, in the moments of deepest honesty and closest proximity to giving in, I feel the faintest murmur of some irrational fluttering of freedom, no shape or form yet there the same.

So I keep turning up for work every morning, in the pre-dawn darkness and sharp cold, waiting in my beat-up car with the heater on. There in the Sanitation Processing Center parking lot, surrounded by square buildings and poor attempts at landscaping, there in the time before work subsumes thought and will, there I can just sit and imagine I hold life in my hands and the power to shape it into something great and something wonderful. But the world turns and time advances. Work starts and I lose myself in banter, in garbage and in the crack between freedom and acceptance.