Letter from Boston

What Do You Do for a Living?

By MASAKO YAMADA

Sept. 1 is a major moving day in my student-heavy neighborhood, but those in the know try to get their things moved before then. My new roommate chose to do this since traffic is impossible Sept. 1. It's very common for young people to move their things with the aid of a rented van and a few trusty friends, but he decided to hire a couple of men to move his things for him.

One of the men was a young guy with tattoos all over his arms, and the other was older, with a world-weary look. The older guy, who took care of the paperwork and billing, was dripping with sweat after a couple of hours. By the end of the move, he looked exhausted. I didn't pay much attention to him, but he was more aware of his surroundings than I would have guessed.

As he was about to leave, he asked me whether I liked Vermeer. I was puzzled, and then I realized that one of my roommates had put a few Vermeer paintings on the walls in the hallway. The mover had noticed them. He said that he respected Vermeer, but that he preferred more abstract, modern art. He told us that he'd been painting for dozens of years, and that he had had an exhibition once, in the '70s, at a Dadaist cafe in the North End of Boston. He said he had been planning to put on a show at the Rhode Island School of Design, as well. It was a bit funny to discuss art with the tired old moving guy, but the most startling part is that he wasn't being ironic at all.

It reminded me of the time a friend told me that he had learned to be more respectful of local store clerks, because they could well be astrophysicists. He and I once went to a restaurant and our waiter — a friendly, 40-ish man — asked us whether we were Massachusetts Institute of Technology students. Apparently, he had overheard us talking about something scientific.

He was wrong, but it led to a lively discussion of local schools and different fields of study. He told us that he had a master's degree in English literature from Boston College, but worked as a waiter a few times a week to support himself. He was jovial, and we found talking to him very pleasant, but I think both of us were a bit disturbed to meet a middle-aged man with an advanced degree was waiting tables for a living.

There is a local Japanese restaurant at which a majority of the staff members are students at the Berklee College of Music. One of the attractions of this restaurant is that it has jazz performances by local groups every night. I was eating dinner there with a bunch of academic people when one of them said, "The guy who's playing the bass right now is pretty good, but the guy in the kitchen washing dishes is just as good."

It's true that most of my friends from high school and college are likely to pursue safely respectable — or perhaps outrageously ambitious — jobs, but this comment made me look at the dishwasher with new respect: Not only is he pursuing his dream, he's also working quietly on the side to finance it himself.

These episodes make it clear that you can't label people by the type of job that they have. People in the States change jobs often, and a job isn't necessarily a sign of a person's true avocations. It's not even a good indicator of social class.

Work is synonymous with life for some people, but for many people I know, work is a way to finance what they want to do in life. Around here, people who have been working for years often take a severe cut in pay in order to pursue graduate studies in a subject of their liking. The funny thing is that privileged people such as myself often feel sorry for those who are forced to take on menial jobs while pursuing their dreams, but the actual people involved don't seem to be looking for sympathy.

I'm sure it must be extremely frustrating not to be able to make a living from one's true love, but, then again, how many people can? I wonder how many people ever pursue a true love, or even have one?

Shukan ST: Sept. 4, 1998

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