Pavlovian Pillowblock…

Pretty sure that’s what they call them, in the catalogs where you buy such things, they call them pillowblock bearings.  You find them carrying things that turn, things that ride on shafts with electric motors and pulleys and belts like the big exhaust fans that keep the air in a commercial kitchen breathable, the ones that suck the fumes off the grill and dispose of the contaminated air. 

Just one of the ten gazillion and one humble things providing us our techno-industrial way of life. They are humble and they are noble and they commonly labor for decades totally unnoticed.  When things are right there’s really nothing there to notice.  Even when they start to wear out it’s not uncommon for them to run for years, vibrating just a bit, making just a bit of noise, but still turning, still doing their job, just complaining a bit I guess you might say.  Can’t say as I blame them for that, like I said, they get ignored an awful lot when all they really ask for is a nickels worth of good old axle grease every six months or so.  Such things as they have my deep and sincere respect, I often feel akin to them.

On the other hand the fellow Pavlov was a psychologist whose work is so well known his name is all but synonymous to what he investigated.  I suppose that’s about the highest honor a true psychologist can aspire to, having your name migrate out of the nouns into an adjective or adverb defined in terms of the thing you studied.  Pavlov made it, in greater or lesser degree what he studied will impact on pretty much everyone, me no exception. 

For many years I worked in a factory and for all of those years I listened to the machinery, I had to, it was my job to keep track of the beast, keep it between the bar-ditches and headed in the right direction, making product, not killing anyone.  Listening to the machine is just a habit, for me like every man who works with machinery it becomes almost an unconscious thing.  Of course you know which noises belong in which places, each environment of your life has its’ own unique sonic signature.  The sounds in the car aren’t mapped against the sounds in the factory, the factory not mapped against the sounds in the house, if they were you’d go stark raving mad in a matter of a month. You really don’t notice the noises until they change, as good old Pavlov would say you’ve been conditioned to them.

Such conditioning is a deep thing, it doesn’t fade quickly.  No, it doesn’t, as a matter of fact it often lingers on far beyond the need that created it, and in that lingering it can influence things that have absolutely nothing to do with the focus of the conditioning, influencing in subtle ways the other elements of life that adjusted themselves to accommodate the psyche loading of whatever produced the conditioning in the first place. 

This is a useful thing to understand particularly if someone in your world is or will be retiring soon, an understanding that can help smooth the transition.  Allow me to use myself as an example.

For all those years in the factory I lived with things that turned, some huge, some tiny, each of which contributed to the sonic signature of the place.  It was a responsibility I took seriously, it was my job to know the state and status of each of them, the mastering of the demand a point of ego, and honor.  MY beast.  And then the job was over, they closed us down, these days there’s not a hole in the ground to mark where we spent so very many hours of our lives feeding our families.

The job is gone, but of course the conditioning lingers on, and in the last week I’ve realized just how deep and subtle it really was and even yet still is.  You see, in the other portions of my life there was one point, just one place, where after the factory there was a similar noise.  I’ve realized in the last week just how much of me was, is, tied to such noises, just how much it really impacted on my life, why it was an almost unconscious compulsion to return to the one place where it was found.  Fact is for me such sounds became a trigger, they mean set the rest of the world aside and bring (your brain) up to speed, light the burners, pour the coal to it and get this show on the road, it’s time to go to work,  At the unconscious level if there’s no noise then it’s no biggy, nothing that important, let things idle, run easy and rest.

Truth is about the time I actually retired, well, changed careers anyway, is about the time the exhaust fan over the grill hood in me favorite little greasy spoon diner began to fail.  It died a slow death, it took it over ten years, and for all those years I’ve been going into that diner to do some of my best thinking and writing and drawing, that mechanism to bring forth my best stimulated by the sound of something turning, my mood and likely enough my determination influenced by a subconscious assessment of how much time was left to me judging by the sound of that fan.

About a week ago the owner (finally!) changed out the fan.  The new fan is powerful, silent, the way it should be.  Good to go for another twenty or thirty years.  But for me there were consequences far beyond a needed repair and much cleaner air to breath. 

For the last week I’ve been in a totally miserable mood: jumpy, paranoid, angry, don’t look at me in that tone of glance you scumbag liberal pervert parasitic son of a bitch or I’m gonna get up and whup your ass if it’s the last thing I do on planet Earth kind of mood.  Quite out of character for me.  It was just this morning I finally connected my utterly abominable mood for the last week to the new fan, realized I’m suffering withdrawal symptoms to the final and total lack of that noise I was conditioned to back when such noises signified the one thing that stood between honor and dishonor: the job that fed my family. 

Ok, I know what about half of you are thinking so go ahead and say it… collars don’t get any more blue than that… and I’ll go ahead and say fuck you if you have a problem with that, we’re the ones who keep your world turning for you.  And a good and properly heartfelt fuck you to Mr. Pavlov as well, I’m not a dog, yours or anyone else’s, I’m a self aware sentient human being known for solving problems, I’ll figure out something else to meet the need.

See you later world, I’ll be back when I’m in a better mood.