The thick backs of my steel-toed shoes are biting another set of blisters into my heels as I walk, but I really only feel it when I first squeeze them on every morning at 4, and when I squeeze them off at 2:30 every afternoon. My feet, my body, my mind just kind of numbs the rest of the time, every muscle tense and focused on enduring and finishing the work as quickly as my ten-hour shift allows.
The green lines painted on the hard concrete designate my pedestrian path across the warehouse and keep me safe from the loud PIV forklifts that go whizzing by me this way and that. "Q module, that means at least a minute and a half of walking before I make it to S module." my mind automatically calculates the journey as my eyes glance down at the screen of the scanner gun strapped tightly around my arm, "to S module then." I mumble and try not to think about how many more 50 pound boxes of jeans wait for me there.
I send my eyes in desperation to the sky, but only see the roof of the building. Letting my gaze drift a little lower I scan across the busy PIV path to the dock doors of the receiving area, and the big white "building" where the supervisor offices are. It's not very busy today, I can tell because the receiving team are all standing at one of the long conveyors and replacing price tags on new merchandise. No heavy lifting, no productivity expectations, I feel a pang of jealousy as I watch them... "Ticketing" is my favourite job in the building, but rarely am I assigned to it.
"G module" I'm half-way down the path now. I glance behind me and calculating quickly, I figure the distance from Q to S can't be less than the length of the street I live on. I glance up to the ceiling again, "but if I was on my street.... I could see the sky."
An urge to close my eyes hits me, and I indulge, holding them for just a moment. I open them, and let wonder fill my face, let imagination transform the dusty warehouse air to mountain purity as my lungs inhale.
Suddenly, it's not bright yellow lines painted on concrete pillars I see, not clanking conveyors 30 feet off the ground, or endless racking filled with endless brown boxes, suddenly these things fade and my heart expands with rapture for the distant gaze I send holds amber sunset skies; their brilliance cradled in the stately embrace of my mountains whose dark complexion stands in perfect contrast to the pure and saintly clouds of white with whom the skies above are flirting. I see this all in one glimpse, and feel and taste and smell a California breeze, and I hear the furious wind attacking the palm branches above me.
I'm not in a warehouse, I'm on my adventure. I feel a pang of joy, a thrill of rapture, and a return of hope! Memories and dreams are two things circumstances can never steal from me.
But 10 seconds isn't very long a space of time. And they end. And my mind is dragged back to reality as someone shouts my name from the stairs above me and I wave hello and dropping my eyes back down, I turn into the close and dark aisles of S module, my rickety blue push-cart squeaking ahead of me and these eyes leave-off their mountain gazing to look for that 50 pound box of jeans at location S00-45 that has 18 pairs of jeans for me restock a certain shelf with so I can go back and find 20, 30, 40 more similar boxes and fill as many similar shelves, so stores can be stocked, and customers can buy, and I can put another pay check in my bank account come weekend.
