anthropometaphors

I arrived home from work yesterday to find a box from Amazon on the porch.  Inside was a layer of newfangled bubble wrap (the kind made of a several large areas inflated with air, not the kind with an expanse of little pustules full of air, ripe for the popping).  Beneath the bubble wrap was a gift wrapped in cheerful yellow paper with a wide white ribbon around the middle.

I was intrigued.

Having no idea what the package was, I picked it up and thoroughly inspected its shape, heft and thing-ness.  I concluded it was likely a book, but I had no idea which one.  Returning to the wrapping, I found a small card; a small blank card.  It was clearly a present, so I decided to open it.

It was indeed a book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, by Alain de Botton.  I considered the book.  As I had just arrived home from work, I was tuckered out and wanted nothing else than a glass of water and a nap.  Instead, I picked up the book-present and brought it with me as I climbed beneath the down comforter.  Hiding amid white pillows and fluff, I read the first chapter.  What I encountered was a homage to those invisible warriors who transport goods around the world to feed our whims and hungers.  Every other page held a photograph — brutal, real and entwined with the chapter’s theme of cargo shipping.  The experience was akin to reading exceptional pieces in Harper’s or Granta, or perhaps an eloquently crafted graphic novel.

Cargo ships (Richard Baker, 2008)

I read most of the second chapter, before sleep won me over and I was lost in another world entirely.