by Bernie Libster

Imagine a large room with three windows but no direct light. Add a willowy blonde of 23, a sultry, dark-haired Latina of 28, a handsome Arab-looking man (actually an Israeli) of 32 and a less-handsome though still young man, all of them vital and eager to taste life to the fullest. Finally, toss in a tired, irritable, gray-haired former candidate for early retirement with a compulsive love of quiet and privacy. Sound effects: constant ringing of “landline” phones, cell phones playing themes from Charlie’s Angels and other old TV swill, and loud conversations in Spanish, French and Hebrew going on simultaneously. Raise the volume. Rerun this scenario five times a week, sometimes for ten hours at a clip.

One of Sartre’s rejected plot lines for No Exit? Nope. It’s the working plot line from No Office Space. The gray-haired guy sitting stage right at a desk littered with reports saying people his age no longer consider retirement a viable option is I.
And the above occurrences have been my daily life for the past five months at the time I write this. The strange thing is, I love it. And I feel as though I’ve known just about all of these people before — I mean from past lives, not alcoholic binges with children.

Keeping my end of the bargain
This adventure began after I’d spent several years attempting to make a living as a storyteller and received a stinging rebuke from my far better half, who reminded me that I was failing to keep up my half of household expenses and was becoming, on
top of that, an insufferable bore. The upside is that now I’ve not only recovered my chops — what a jazz musician develops by constant practice and endless exchanges with other musicians — I’ve become an uncle figure to dozens of young, talented youngsters. (The details of my “pilgrimage” appear in AdTalk, summer 2003.)

Now, while waiting for an office of my own, I speak French with the Israeli — who is the first Israeli I’ve ever met who rejects the Chosen People theory. I speak Spanish with the Cuban and Yiddish with the New Yorker. I discuss broadsword fighting with the willowy blonde (she may be the only broadsword wielder in New York who dreams of being a fashion model), and Christianity with the punk rocker down the way who gets up at 5 to teach a class in Bible history before coming to work.

To further season this stew, my boss is a direct descendant of the Italian architect Bramante, who designed St. Peter’s in Rome, and Catherine Parr, one of the wives of Henry VIII. Down the hallway is a woman I may have slept with 3,000 years ago in the Sicilian kingdom of Morgantina when I was the Queen’s brother and she was a member of the royal court. Next to her, in his own office, is a guy I fired 15 years ago while at another agency. Further down the hall is a past and present colleague who believes she’s the reincarnation of one of the Medici. Throw in someone who, judging by her face and bearing, was a member of a Chinese dynastic ruling family, an ex-gorilla keeper at the Boston zoo, several Scandinavians straight out of Prairie Home Companion, a few stand-up comics, and you’ve got a mix only divine jesters could have imagined.

Balancing my karmic debts?
In ten years of freelancing I never encountered such an assemblage of characters. Perhaps never in my whole life have I known so many characters at a time. It makes me stop and wonder if by some chance I’ve been given the opportunity to meet all my outstanding karmic* debts, or even collect some of the “debts” owed me, in one sitting. Such a thought gives me pause. If you believe as I do that there are many other realms, worlds, universes, dimensions, and that we only return to earth to work out our karmic debts, this could mean I might be free not to return to this earth, at least not in advertising, in another life. On the other hand, with these fellow travelers I don’t mind.

Oh, I don’t mean to be completely Pollyannaish. I’ve bumped into one or two people whose presence can only be attributed to some harm I did them in another life; why else would they be such pains in the butt? However, whether I come back or not, I take it as a sign that I haven’t been as bad as my mother said I was.

I can’t say that everyone will feel this way about returning to earth let alone returning to an office, or that going staff will solve every freelancer’s problems. It helps to have a strong extrovert streak and a big chunk of residual guilt. Meanwhile, here’s something to think about:

That boss who acts like he owns you? Maybe once upon a time he did.
Or maybe once upon a time you owned him and he’s just getting even.

*Space doesn’t permit a dissertation on karma, but briefly it’s the belief that the people you meet in this life are the reincarnations of people you’ve met in past lives and the events in this life are the result of your actions in those past lives. You’re either settling scores, making amends or simply enjoying the pleasures of reconnected friendships and good deeds. Groups of souls can reincarnate together, for better or worse; imagine having to spend life after life with Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowicz and Powell. On the other hand, one could do far worse than doing so with Bramante’s great-great-great-great-great granddaughter and one of the Medici. Hey, I was a prince of Morgantina. For further reading, I recommend Edgar Cayce’s Story of Karma, which contains, among other fascinating tidbits, the possibility that Noah, of ark fame, was in his most recent life the manager of a South Carolina supermarket.