"Live And See What Happens"

Life is often a big mystery to me and yet I try so hard to know myself better and better in time.  I do not always understand my reactions nor give them the attention that they deserve.  With that, I can say that I have chosen and was reminded of a famous saying that Kay Flynn often claimed.

Kay Flynn was a co-worker nurse friend of my mother's and she came to stay in one of our "guest" rooms for a time.  Flynn had a very healthy drinking problem and yet she often had such right on comments about life like "Live And See What Happens." Maybe she just knew or maybe she had lived through many hard times and allowed for the hardships and the joy to ebb and flow along with her favorite alcoholic beverage.  Just the same, her saying today is spot on as they say and it may just become the moniker of my second half of 2012.

Live and see what happens.

Who Put The 'Ape' In Apricot?

I have been cleaning out the garage and throwing away junk as I recover from my cold and have a few days off before I start yet another new job.  Maybe this is the way life is going to be?  Maybe it will get weirder and weirder as the years move along.  It has been warm enough this week to feel like spring though it can hardly be that mid February here.  There has been just enough quiet to feel afraid and then talk myself out of it.  There has been just enough relief to miss my family in Texas and wish I could live next door and come by for coffee.

Some of us are still a little P.T.S.D. from our childhood's and we do the best we can with the adult package that must make decisions, consider consequences, say yes and say no and move on to what is next.  Some of the people that I know carry quite a bit of "core wounding" as therapists like to call it.  Some of us can feel it come up in our bodies before we realize what it is that is jerking our chain.  I am still, a work in progress.

I am fortunate and very much so, to know that I have much love to give and sometimes it doesn't get through those filters.  I do what I can and sometimes there is just way too much to take in and too much to consider that could become a regret if I do not pause and consider the outcome.  I believe that one has fear and faith in tandem or rather, I do.  I believe in myself and I am cautious. 

I started thinking about that cowardly lion again and how his sweetness was transparent and his fear palpable.  His quaking is humorous and I know how that can be as I begin another adventure in employment.  I do wonder about courage and where does that come from?  I wonder about the space between niggling fears and the commencement of courage and conviction.  It is just a pause, a hesitation, a space on the page or a gaze towards the horizon before one turns, breathes in and saunters into the next frame.  That is the 'ape' in apricot.

"Who Is The Slayer, Who Is The Victim, Speak."

I was amazed at the hustle and bustle of a Monday in our not-so-wee city today as I tried to accomplish some errands with the dying embers of my second cold in four months.  Drivers were not nice and one woman tailgating me off the freeway was yelling at me for being in front of her.  Or so I guessed.  I saw so much ugliness out there that I could not wait to come home and watch a movie with the dogs slumbering nearby.

Having a cold has its own cadence and today I felt better than I have in a week. However, the anger of people driving and customers in stores where I went, treating one another with a callousness that might otherwise seem standard was enough for me to think I needed a helmet to be out amongst them.   Thankfully I could just come home.

For me, at this juncture in life, I try to breathe in the difficulty of loss and pain and breathe out love, compassion and a greater understanding how we could try much harder with one another.  I remembered a quote my mother had cut out from a wonderful book of photography called The Family Of Man which asked, "Who Is The Slayer, Who Is The Victim, Speak?"

In less poetic language, we are all family and kindness toward our fellow travelers may be all that separates our life experiences.

The Full Moon Cloaked By Rain Clouds

What a strange week of endings and the endless midlands of job interviews and people with power.  Choices come across our thresholds in life, sometimes cloaked by rain clouds and sometimes as clear as a frosty night in February.  Neither has been true this week.

I made my decision to leave my chaotic job replete with vengeful overlord co-workers who cannot seem to prevent themselves from being just plain stupid.  I tried.  I four months of it tried.  Triple digit heat, piles of weeds, branches, compost and mulch, rotting fruit and days of sweeping, raking, grabbing, pulling, hoisting and chucking just about everything related to the earth.  I have sweated and been frozen in 26 degree frost.  I have been drenched by rain by 9 AM and had wet and cold boots on all day.  I have been tried, accused and harassed. And I am done.

I have had four interviews in the last ten days or so, all different except I was there.  My calm has come to rest here with me, knowing all too often how people in power will chose someone else for some inane reason.  They like their hair?  I have learned not to get too excited about the prospects though one must be fueled by some kind of energy.  A small hope.

My interview today took all of 12 minutes as I checked my watch walking out the front doors.  I had mixed feelings about the tasks involved though admiring of the company.  Things just seem way too hard and I attempt to see the message inside it.  The answer still evades me.  I walk ahead, I stop, I continue on in the light even if the full moon is cloaked by rain clouds. I'm still here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkjQSpfW3iw

A Multi-Cultural Farce

What a strange day this was and so glad that someone thought up the idea of  Friday.  T.G.I.F. indeed. I am now home after sharing a big old pizza with a friend who knows me well.  There is nothing like friendship to cure the ills of a weird year thus far, weird week, weird day. I am so glad someone thought up friends and pizza.

The multi-cultural farce of this day started with a very strange after lunch meeting in the crowded shop where we store our stuff and where lots of other stuff sits around or ends up on the floor until they clean it up.  Strange way to do business.  We are all sitting and standing around when my co-worker accuses me of telling one of the residents that he is lazy.  He further accused me of saying to this resident how hard I work in comparison to my co-workers and not to tell anyone or I will get in trouble.

It gets stranger.

First of all, I am not a snitch nor am I stupid or lacking in common decency enough to talk up the shortcomings of my co-workers, of which there are plenty, to a resident of our not-so-fine establishment.  In fact, I was sideswiped by his accusations.  Mr. Big I appeared quite sure I did just that though he would not say who the perpetrator in question was.  Mr. Big II started to chime in on my inability to sweep perfectly to which I got really freaking mad.

It gets stranger.

I defended myself to this very strange accusation on this strange day and we all parted after more posturing by my not-so-fine co-workers for some more weeding, imperfect sweeping and generally get me to quitting time thoughts.  It came and went and I must say it felt odd, annoying, dark and definitely filled with resentment in the air about having a tiny woman out-work you every single day. 

It gets stranger.

I find out when I get home another co-worker, a man, had a loud conversation with a resident where he said that Mr. Big I is lazy and his sister, also an employee, heard this and reported it to her brother.  Her brother-Mr. Big I, then decides that the person impugning his character is me and the snow ball comes down the hill full blast. Somewhere between someone else saying what everyone thinks without my saying so and my accuser is the multi-cultural farce where I work.

Non-native English speakers fill in the gaps just like native English speakers and something is still lost in the translation.  One thing is for sure however, I am working in the wrong job, wrong time, wrong place.  Hurt, anger and accusations sent me on my way home yet I know that I prefer comedy to drama.

Enough is enough.

If God Were A Hummingbird

I have been in my head so much lately that a song on the radio last night, as I drove home from the gym, warranted a volume up to blasting.  I have not been having nearly enough fun with very little emphasis on laughing at all.  Far too serious and far too self involved.  Not a good recipe for a job seeker or for a person who tends towards the dark end of life's spectrum.

Actually, tending towards the dark end of the pool allows me to feel compassion for others though like many humans, I am most demanding of myself.  Cultivating a gentle hand for myself was not part of my childhood lessons and so I filled in the gaps.  Or the part of me that tried to make sense of a family home as violent and abusive as ours led me to decide it must be "my fault" if bad things happen.  You know who you are so just know that I know.

I had two job interviews in the last seven days and I am still waiting to find out if I cleared the bar on both.  This silence that follows an interview often means something less than kind for those of my ilk.  And so, I have tried something different as I wait but don't wait or rather hope without knowing what hope really feels like.

I imagined that in a bay off the coast of somewhere there is a ship anchored with the employees of one store where I interviewed.  They are standing on the deck in their company sweatshirts and they are looking towards me.  At times, they cheer. At times they shout encouragement to keep rowing, keep rowing.

I am in a perfect Nantucket, white row boat with a royal blue stripe around the rim.  I pull on well worn wooden oars and my dog Rosie is stationed at the bow, her huge, white angel wings extended like a sail themselves. Rosie does that dog snot thing where she breathes in the sea air and blows snot out her long, Greyhound nose.  She looks back at me from time to time as I pull the oars against the incoming tide. 

At times this week while raking, weeding, spreading compost, sweeping and hoping, I reminded myself that I am still out there rowing.  Sometimes there is the voice of the people on board telling me to keep on and sometimes it is the benevolent voice in myself that tells me to hope because hoping is worth it.  I am worth it.

Today there was another boat in the water which held one of my co-workers who had a second interview at an awesome company called Traditional Medicinals. She is a woman who has suffered through a variety of betrayals at our place of work and who also expects the worst but deserves the very best.  And so I placed her in a boat with a man in a black chauffeur's cap rowing her white boat with red stripe to the shore where she would go for her interview. Maybe that is just the kind of prayer someone needs to get to the finish line.

I am home now writing and getting ready to shower and do my homework for a college class I am taking.  I am feeling emotional and kind of sad and I am still rowing there in the bay towards the ship with my new co-workers waiting for me. 

A thought came to me this afternoon as I freshened up the fruit tree rings in Commons B & C, as a hummingbird clicked away and drank from a nearby feeder.  What if God is a hummingbird?  Every flower would be red and full of pollen because the "God" in everyone, our benevolent better selves in other words, wants the best for us.  The "God" in everyone is there in the row boat whether we are aware of it or not.

The Verve Of Margaret Thatcher

Okay, I do drive a British car and she does wear the Union Jack on her side view mirrors.  She is a tiny little sprite of a car that can escalate the freeway entrance at a very high rate of speed.  I am in love with my car.  However, it is a fact that I was raised in the era when the Irish Republican Army was at war with England, killing people with bombs that rocked Britain for some time.  Scary times.  Fearless Celts.  My kin.

Having lived in a household with a Celtic, alcoholic mother whose favorite saying was something like, "I am sending bullets to the IRA," going to see The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep yesterday was as much about an unceasing admiration of everything Ms. Streep does and the times I lived through historically.  Having a Celtic ancestry means you feel the domination of the British empire in your flesh.  Your hackles get raised by the inference and arrogance of the Brits because "your people" survived as poor serfs under their cruel power.  Ancestry is funny like that.  I wonder if there is gene for it.

We celebrated our anniversary by trekking to Fairfax in Marin County to chase another stupendous vegetarian/vegan lunch.  We went to sit in a very sunny window table at Cafe Lotus which serves gluten free/vegan Indian food.  The aroma in the small restaurant hit me like a lunch time truck and I was ready to order everything on the menu.

After consuming vegan Samosas, Bengan Bharta and garlic vegan Nan with brown rice, we were pretty darn happy.  We walked the small town of Fairfax and came upon The Scoop-organic, homemade ice cream, and I ordered a "real double" which was a very large two scoop extravaganza.  In fact, it took me quite some time to finish it and I was finally full. 

We eventually made our way to The Fairfax Theatre in town to watch The Iron Lady.  From beginning to end, I was moved, maddened, sorrowful, delighted and swept up by Meryl Streep's performance.  Ms. Streep is Margaret Thatcher and it left me thinking about my own path in life right now.  I have often felt that I wanted to do something that mattered, on a smaller scale, much smaller and I try.  I do try very hard to do just that.

There are parallels for me.  Friday I nearly quit my job because Mr. Big I and II went to clean up the irrigation shed because it was raining.  I was left raking in the rain and now soaking wet, and slowly but surely became incensed.  I made a decision to go find an indoor project myself but by then I was furious with my bloody sword drawn so to speak. My Celtic background fuels my sense of outrage at these kinds of things with a kind of bloodthirsty ire that almost seems I can hear the pipes coming up behind me.

This is the kind of outright sexist crap that I deal with every day.  Mr. Big II never gets that he is doing something unfair.  It almost seems that both of my co-workers cannot fathom what it is like to endure discrimination even though they are both from another culture, another male dominated world.  In fact, singling out their hard working, female counterpart for outright derision and isolation seems normal.  They don't even get it.  I find it exhausting. 

I write all this because in The Iron Lady, Thatcher's story as a woman entering the very kind of world in which I work is depicted in a way that allows us to feel the unfairness as well as her unrelenting force of personal strength and fortitude.  I have that also.  Most women have this kind of courage because we usually have to fight our way to the surface.  It is called male priviledge but that is really cleaning it up quite a bit. It is business as usual and we don't let it break us.  On the contrary.

In fact I have an interview for another job tomorrow and the pipers will be playing behind me as I enter the building to show my face to be one of reliability, strength and unrelenting character.  I am a great employee and co-worker and I refuse to continue to be left raking in the rain. 

They shall "rue the day" as Maggie would say.