Foreword Effort has a strange asymmetry to it. Enormous quantities of the self-destructive kind go down easily — you can work yourself into the ground for years without noticing the cost — while small amounts of the genuinely restorative kind feel unbearable. That asymmetry is not an accident. It is what makes the first one usable as currency. Suffering can be spent, and what it buys is pity, and the creditor is usually somebody who is not in the room and possibly never was. Motion is not movement. But it does show up on a ledger, and a ledger feels like proof. Lyrics [Intro] Ahem. Item one. [Verse 1] I clock in at four — keeping score, wanting more, never asking what for — Every twinge is a win when I pin it in ink in the ledger I adore. Every meal that I miss is a tick on the list, is a kiss on the quarterly chart, I'm a martyr with margins, a saint of the spreadsheet, Picasso of falling apart. I'm insured against rest — premium: dread; deductible: dinner; copay: my bed — And the policy pays when I'm spread so thin that the thin's where the dividends spread. My physician prescribed me a pause — I was appalled — so I sued him for fraud: Plotting a heist of the only hot stock that I hoard. Pain! In a leather-bound ledger, each lash of it lovingly logged — very nice — Column A: how it hurt. Column B: what it's worth. Column C: the asking price. [Pre-Chorus] There's a registry — surely! — a clerk keeping score of the sores I've endured, Every callus and cuticle, ulcer and uppercut, dutifully, duly insured, And the moment my balance is brazenly, gorgeously, gluttonously obscene, They will call me up to the head office, darling — and I will be seen. [Chorus] Billable wounds! Billable wounds! Every bruise accrues, every ache pays its dues, Charged to a name that I won't say aloud — Look how I hurt. Are you proud? [Verse 2] There's inflation in pity — the rates getting gritty, the city's gone bearish on woe: What a fever once fetched now requires the bubonic to get me a fraction of dough. So I'm doubling the damage and tripling the toll — I'm a one-man recession of soul — I've been shorting my Sundays and longing my losses and watching the interest unroll. I'm handsomely, amply, over-compensated — the mask cashes cheques with "how kind," While the face files a grievance in triplicate — DENIED — for the grievance arrived unsigned. I attend every birthday by boardroom, on mute, wishing many happy returns — On investment. And the minutes will show that the chairman never yearns. [Pre-Chorus] Oh, the registry's groaning — the clerk's doing overtime, chewing his pen — Every molar I've milled into gravel gets gaveled and entered again, And the moment my balance is brazenly, gorgeously, gluttonously obscene, They will carry me up to the head office, darling — and I will be seen. [Chorus] Billable wounds! Billable wounds! Every bruise accrues, every ache pays its dues, Charged to a name that I won't say aloud — Look how I hurt. Are you proud? [Breakdown] Item: one gastritis — vintage — gorgeously aged in the gut, Item: seven friendships, lapsed; the renewal fee: anything but. Item: every summer past thirty, sold off as scrap in the sun, Item: sleep, by the slice — eight hours liquidated to one. Item: twenty thousand lunches, eaten upright, on hold, Item: one resting heart rate, baroque — see appendix — re-sold. Item: one personality, outsourced — the role plays the part rather well, Item: family ties, neatly severed — the severance package went swell. Item: one reflection, avoided at considerable cost, Item: whereabouts of self — see the footnote — presumed to be lost, Item: one apology, drafted, unsent — refer to Item nine, Item nine: redacted. Moving on. The numbers all align. Item: one capacity for stillness, sold before it grew — Grand total: pending. Carry forward. Balance overdue. [Bridge] So I addressed the final invoice with my finest fountain pen: Forty years of itemized devotion — plus the unpaid interest — then I enclosed a stamped reply card for the creditor thereof: "Kindly remit, upon receipt, full payment rendered in—" Pity. Which is close enough. [Spoken] Came back on a Tuesday. One red stamp on the seal: Addressee unknown. No forwarding address. Checked the postage. The postage was fine. The books are reconciled. We are not. I'd have settled for a raise — from whoever raised me. I marked the account "outstanding." It is outstanding. Look how outstanding I've become. [Final Chorus] Billable wounds! Billable wounds! Every bruise still accrues, every ache overdue, Charged to a name that was never allowed — Look how I hurt! Look how I work! Are you proud? Are you proud? [Outro] Morning. Coffee cold. Envelope on the desk, unopened. I file it under assets.
