A Bad Machine

I am a bad machine, I say to myself. Whom have I failed? My temp controller, my coworkers at the companies at which I temp and above all, myself. Yes, I’ve failed myself. Conversation with temp controller: ‘I know I was wrong, I know I did badly’ – ‘What you did was extremely immature’. As I speak, I feel deep shame. My soul is ashamed and wants to extinguish itself. She’ll not use me again. I am at fault, I’m infinitely guilty.

I will be cast into the outer darkness, into the ring of broken temps who float, occasionally colliding with one another, like the asteroid belt. Now I will have to win her confidence again, my temp controller, I say to myself. I’ll have to begin with the most mundane jobs and work my way back up. One day in the warehouse in Farnborough? No problem. A half day in Basingstoke? Yes, of course. Anything, everything, for I’ve been a bad machine and deserve punishment.

Cycling into town (I do not drive; I have never driven even now, more than ten years later) it comes to be it is because I want to punish myself first of all. What is the reason for my little fit of madness? Why that small insanity of sending a soup stained spoon instead of a leaflet to the company client, and changing the name on the envelope from a he (Steven X) to a she (Stephanie X)? The answer comes to me: I did it because I want to be punished. I did it because my soul is too large and too hollow. I did it to expurgate my interiority, to destroy that echoing place inside me in which laughs (but it is not my laughter) at the madness of my job, all jobs and at the madness of capital.

I want to be punished. But the punishment will not be complete until interiority is turned inside out. Until what is hidden inside me emerges into the day and shrivels up in the sun. The Samurai take the sword and open their innards to the sun. Thus is shame extinguished. I imagine my temp controller reaching a hand into my chest and drawing my innards outside. My secret exposed, the even light of the day pouring through my insides, I know I will be fit for employment again.