“The world is a grindstone and life is your nose”

-Fred Allen

Washington County, Arkansas

Daniel

“Your job description is what I fucking say it is! Go grab the shit. And clean those damn stalls!” My manager yelled, spittle flying everywhere.

We stood in a white-walled breakroom that smelled of cheap coffee and fish from someones late lunch. I stand next to the sink, holding my cheep coffee mug, listening to the manager yell at me. After clocking out, I came in here to wash my cup before leaving when Harvey Delgado decided I needed to clean the restrooms. Not that we lack an actual cleaning crew. This is one of the largest IT firms in the state.

Harvey seemed to have something against me from day one and only grew more hostile as time went on. It didn’t help that he was close with one of the executives in the company. He constantly used that fact to have his way. Does his animosity stem from my half Asian background? Or maybe it’s his short-man syndrome kicking in and thought I’d be an easy target. I don’t know. He seems to find new reasons to yell at me all the time. Just a couple months back, Harvey told me we were all helping the “understaffed” cleaning crew take care of the restrooms on our floor and I was first on the rotation. Of course I refused after confirming with my coworkers but he’s been using that as another way to annoy me since then.

Harvey puffed his chest out and pointed at me with the paper-filled folder he always carries around. “What? You think you’re something special just cuz you were in the army?”

My manager is of an average build and his height only comes up to my chin while I’m on the athletic side with a little more muscle. At 173cm (5’8”), although I’m not the tallest guy around, I’m big enough that his act of intimidation doesn’t really work. In fact, he has a friendly looking face with green eyes that’d fit well in a boy-band. Regardless of his stature, I always tried to treat him with respect especially since he was my manager… at least at first…

“I’m clocked out. I’m going home.” I turn and start heading out when Harvey blocks my way and smacks me in the face with his folder.

“Don’t you walk away from me.”

Usually, I’m pretty good at keeping calm. In most cases, people won’t even realize I was angry and things blow over peacefully. But when someone comes right up in my face or worse, hits it, it makes me recall certain things… Rather unpleasant and rage-inducing memories.

I feel my eyes straining as they focus on my managers face. My breaths come slow and deep as muscles tense and twitch under pressure. Don’t do it. You’re better than this.

Harvey steps closer, almost bumping my chest, trying to match my stare and speaks in a low voice. “What? What? You going to do something? Whatcha gonna do?”

God, please help me. All these years of staying my hand while this fool threw provocation after provocation… I think I’m going to kill this man today. My breathing picked up speed as I felt my reason slipping away.

I moved to end this asshole when something shattered in my hand.

KTINK!

Harvey Delgado flinched and took a step back.

People on this floor, used to this scene, quickly walk past the break-room entrance, breaking me away from my trance.

I need to get out of here. I pushed past Harvey and out of the room with a determined stride. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything else or try to latch onto me.

The walk out of the building was a blur. I think a couple people tried to ask if I was okay but their voices were lost in my need to get away from this place. If I stayed a moment longer, I felt I’d do something irreversible. With heart pounding in my ears, I went straight to my silver highlander and realize I’m clutching bloody pieces of my coffee mug. In my anger, I had pushed the broken porcelain into my palm. It was one of those cheapo mugs given to all new employees when they start. Nothing I’ll miss.

Throwing the remnants of my cup onto the passenger seat, I plugged in my phone out of habit, smearing blood over the screen. Not bothering to clean up, I start the car and silently drive off.

The sky is heavy with dark clouds and thunder rolls in the distance as I wedged myself into rush-hour traffic. Watching as the gray asphalt and yellow lines speed past me, I drive in silent contemplation. This isn’t the first time someone aggravated me to that level but lately I’ve been getting angrier with every jab people like Harvey threw my way. It’s a bit worrying.

Why do people do that in the first place? In every workplace, there seem to be at least one Harvey Delgado to make sure people work in misery. And since I’m quieter than most, it seems I attract these assholes like fleas to warm blood.

“BEEEEP!” Swerving, I narrowly miss a red truck as my lane merges with another. Waving the driver in apology I take a deep breath and try to calm myself. It’s okay. Things will get better.

The thunder rumbles much closer this time and the staccato tapping of raindrops gradually pick up speed. Switching on my wipers, I refocus on my driving. “We’re almost there Daniel…” I whisper, selecting a playlist from my phone. Mariage d'Amour plays softly to the falling rain.

I’ve gotten some strange looks for my taste in music but it keeps me sane. My adoptive father introduced me to the classical genre when I kept getting into trouble. I fought on and off but one day nearly killed another kid at school. Actually, I didn’t really bother with music until he forced me to sit through entire Chopin albums from his record player.

Thinking of the old man, I smile a little. Joon-Ki Kwan, taking me in after child protective services removed me from my previous home, he patiently helped me deal with my trauma and anger issues. At first he just made me sit on the living room floor while the music played. Halfway through the record, he told me to close my eyes and picture an open sky. To take slow but full breaths and follow each note as it appears in front of you, to chase after it with my ears… That was the beginning of everything for me, breaking me out of the chaotic loop in my own mind.

I picture him squinting at me while playing with his gray goatee. “Child, you have every right to be angry,” he would say, “but anger is a poison. Do not hold it for too long lest it turns you into the very monsters that hurt you. If you have trouble letting go, listen to this and let it carry you away from your anger.”

Music has pulled me back from the edge of insanity more times than I could count.

Finally leaving the city, I’m in a world of gray and green with dark clouds and trees all around me. I live alone about 50 minutes from civilization. After leaving the Army years ago, I came to the conclusion that this world is just not for me. It’s too messed up. Where families try to kill one another and friends turn treacherous at the first sign of money… Make the world around you better… I honestly wanted to at one point. But people are selfish. I can’t change this. Not sure anyone can. After a while, I just felt alien. Maybe I’m the abnormal one for even trying. In the end, I felt I didn’t belong here.

Grandpa Kwan advocated some strict ideals, “to live with honor, to give more than you take, to help those in need even if they were enemies…” to name a few. But the world doesn’t let you live this way and laughs at you when you try. You become a fool to be taken advantage of as the “honor” people are intimate with today is image without substance. They’ll trade it for convenience as soon as no one is looking. I was tempted to abandon these rules and live an easier life but the longer I struggled with it the more it grew on me. It became sort of a romance to live and die like the warrior in the stories he used to tell. But the fact that it made life a lot harder didn’t change. It was difficult enough trying to untwist myself from the crazy that also became a part of me.

So I figured I’d slowly figure things out after separating myself from the world for a while. I saved and lived like a monk for 7 years, foregoing the partying, making connections, building relationships… I’ll have a lot of time to work on those once I gain some stability. About a year ago, I purchased 400 acres of land out here and finished building my house a few months after that. Sometimes I feel I missed out on a lot of opportunities but after finally getting to this point, I can tell myself, “It’s all going to be worth it” with more confidence. My plan is to become completely self sufficient and in two more months I will be… for the most part.

Chopin Op.72 starts to play as I take a side-road and eventually reach my property line. The asphalt transitions to dirt and I slow down, weaving through a mass of trees until the unpaved road opened up to a clearing. Here, the culmination of my life's work came into view. A house with a vegetable garden, a workshop, and the beginnings of an apple orchard.

The two buildings were of wood and stone, a simple two story home, white with brown trimmings and, further back, the workshop where I plan to experiment with metalworking.

I park a few meters away from the house, in front of the garden, and see a familiar orange chicken walking around. I actually don’t know where it came from. It just popped up one day and stuck around after I fed it. I was planning on getting some animals anyway so I might just buy a few chickens to get their population going.

The apple orchard was planted a short distance behind the house. They’re still barely more than saplings at this point but it makes me happy just thinking about what it’d be like when they’re fully grown.

The rain had settled into a light sprinkle when I stepped out of the vehicle. I look up at the gray tiled roof of my house. “All I’m missing now are the solar panels.” That is the only reason I’m still working right now.

“Almost there.” I whispered and headed inside.

…

After a light run, I went into my usual routine. Some weight training followed by a session with my punching bag

Music wasn’t the only thing the grandpa Kwan had introduced me to.

Pff! PffPff! PAK!! The punching bag, wrapped thickly in duct tape, shook wildly as it hung in the corner the workshop. The bag had a habit of tearing.

Ironically, the old man also decided to teach me martial arts to make sure I stopped fighting. He told me, “It is a warriors shame to fight the weak. Become strong and leave the pettiness behind.”

I recall those days with nostalgia. During my suspension from school, grandpa Kwan would take me hiking as he described nonsensical things like “grasping onto my chi.” The training was more meditation than anything physical. “Focus Daniel! Chi is as real as the earth beneath your feet! All life carry it within them, even you. Breath in and feel the energy within. Exhale and will it to flow through your arms and down into your hands.” The training was strange but I had to apply it to every movement I made until it was second nature.

One day, grandpa Kwan demonstrated his use of chi as he set up four cement blocks without spacing. For an old man in his 60’s, hell, for anyone, it was quite impressive as he broke through them with a single strike. “Strike with your chi Daniel. It is as much part of you as the rest of your body.”

I broke my hand that day.

As much love the old man showed me, he was just as obsessive when it came to training. I wanted to rest for a while but he wouldn’t hear of it. “Would your enemy wait for you to heal?” He would say on our way back from the hospital. “Train as if you are fighting a stronger opponent with your life on the line. If you break a hand, you have three other limbs to fight with. If they break too, use your teeth. Never let yourself stop, in mind or body.” He was pretty savage in certain areas, a result of the world he grew up in I guess.

I eventually was able to destroy bricks of my own but back then, and even now, I have my doubts as to whether there really is a force empowering me or if what I’m doing is all in my mind. Either way, it’s served me well when I needed to break something or someone.

Grandpa Kwan was well respected, not just by me but the community he lived in. He had a way of showing that he understood the pain people went through without being pretentious. Perhaps it was the way he carried himself, sagely empathizing with their troubles. And indeed, he did know pain and troubles quite intimately.

Joon-Ki Kwan was a Vietnam vet who came to America after the war. Before then, his life was pretty hellish. He would sometimes tell me stories of how brutal life was in Korea back in those days. People were just recovering from the Japanese occupation only to enter another war with it’s divided half. The entire population had some form of PTSD and the next two generations, suffering the effects of it, didn’t treat each other very well. Grandpa Kwan, losing both parents in the Korean War, grew up in the streets doing odd jobs until he met his own master who, taught him everything he knew about fighting. Unfortunately, the master had a drinking problem and died of alcohol poisoning. Alone once again, and without direction in life, he then joined the Korean Army, where he worked closely with American troops, even deploying in the Vietnam war with an American unit. Getting close to the troop commander at the time, he got a free ticket into the U.S. where he worked in Army intelligence.

After retiring, the old man went to visit a detective friend at work where he met me.

He’s been through a lot, the old man, with his own share of betrayals. I once heard someone ask why he’s so benevolent even towards people who betrayed his trust. He said, “What would a man be worth if he exchanged evil with more evil? There is enough of that in this world… In your darkest hour, wouldn’t it have been nice if someone had extended a helping hand?”

…

Sitting on my workout bench, I stare off for a while, letting my mind drift. It gives me a twinge of guilt choosing to close myself off from the world after everything the old man taught me. A part of me still wants to follow in the old man’s foot steps. To be a light in someones dark world… I just got fed up with it I guess… Maybe I need to learn more patience? Lower my ego perhaps? …Anger management…

How did you do it old man?

I let out a deep sigh and break away from my stupor. My workshop turned workout room is mostly empty aside from a few exercise equipment and a stack of large plastic bins in a corner.

These bins are part of a little ‘material’ goal of mine. Not something particularly useful for my life but something I’ve wanted for a while. I still need to buy the chemicals for melting down the cell phones and circuit boards inside.

It took years to collect and I gather them for one purpose. To hold an actual bar of gold in my hands. It may seem trivial and materialistic but it’s not even about getting money out of it. Call it a bucket list, something you want to do at least once in your life. To hold a bar… my own bar of gold, extracted with my own hands. “Heheh.”

I’ve seen people melt circuit boards for gold online and it looked easy enough so I often salvaged parts from the garbage pile at the companies I worked for. I just have to brush up on some chemistry knowledge. With that in mind, I had downloaded a few chemistry apps on my phone, including an encyclopedia.

It surprised me how much we could do even with basic knowledge of chemistry and how readily available some of these materials were. Just a quick look made me realize I could extract iron from rust, or silver from the remains of cheap fireworks. There are going to be many fun experiments in here.

Thunder rumbles outside the workshop as rain pelts at the windows. Seeing the glass shaking against the wind and rain worries me. I should have installed some storm shutters.

…

After washing up and getting some food in me, I lay in bed, blankly staring up at the rafters as Yiruma plays on the record player. I tried to meditate for a bit but the storm outside is becoming a bit unnerving. The room was made pretty large, taking up half the second floor, so the desk, bed, and two overstacked bookshelves still made it seem empty. Looking towards the bookshelves, I consider turning part of the bedroom into a library… Or should I build an extension? Maybe eventually… That’d be neat. My own personal library. I have more books coming in the mail and I’m running out of shelf space anyway. I’ve been interested in differing worldviews people hold lately and ordered some on philosophy. Though everything is digitized these days, I enjoy holding a physical book and turning the pages by hand. It makes me feel more relaxed, sitting next to my window with a cup of tea…

Clack! Claclaclacla! The windows are now shaking a bit too hard in their frames as the wind sounds like the wailing of some vengeful spirit.

“What the hell is going on out there? Frickn forecast was way off.” The thundering outside is getting me paranoid of lightning striking the house. Turning off the record player, I grab my phone and head downstairs.

Usually, I’d be on my computer right about now, but with the weather outside, the last thing I want is a power surge destroying my beloved machine. So I sit on the couch, contemplating calling in sick tomorrow. Just thinking about having to deal with Harv brings back my anger in waves. And since tomorrow is Friday, It’ll give me enough time to reign in my anger before I have to see his prettyboy face again. Why the hell do assholes like him get to be good looking. I’m a Eurasian mix of Korean and Polish yet still ended up with an average face. Sigh…

Laying down, I look up the news on my phone and see warning messages about the freak storm and possible mudslides and flooding in certain areas. “Hey, maybe I’ll have a legitimate excuse to skip work tomorrow.” I chuckled and scrolled through some tech sites I frequent.

“Graphene… shame busi…” My eyes grow heavy and I drift off to sleep only to jolt awake by a falling sensation followed by acute vertigo.

“Ah! Oof!” I bounce off a tree branch, then another before hitting the ground, getting the wind knocked out of me. “Huk!”