A Treasure Found at Home

i was all proud of myself for getting out of the house at a decent hour to get some errands done this morning. i drove to the hole fuds, which wasn’t open yet.

aside: it’s so weird to me, even after 7 years here, that things don’t open at a decent hour in the morning and they don’t stay open in the evenings. case in point, the farmer’s market 2 blocks from my house doesn’t start till 10AM! crazy!

anyhow, i thought i’d go to the chain store up the way instead since i new it was 1) open 2) less expensive and 3) across the street from my vet where i need to get meds for my meowers. it’s also next to starbucks. i know i get a lot of flack for going there, but it’s right next to the grocery store and i have a gift card. now starbucks was built on the idea that all the stores are the same, it’s easy and you know what you’re going to get. well, i got charged wrong for my drink and asked them to re-ring it. then the drink didn’t taste right so i brought it back and the woman didn’t offer to re-make it. i was still tired and hungry and getting grumpier and things not going right for me, so i just added some sugar and left (after dropping my lid on the floor).

i had two things on my grocery store list, but could only find one of them. then managed to pick the slowest moving line - even after they opened a new register and took some people from in front of me.

after that i nearly forgot to go to the vet’s! *sigh* i doubled back and pulled into the mostly empty parking lot. i looked at the hours on the door: SAT 8:30 — yes! it was 8:27. rock. on.

i sat in the car a few minutes then went to the door as one of the women who worked there was walking in. she looked at me and said, “we don’t open till nine.”

me, “well, the door days 8:30″

her, “today is sunday.”

me, “… oh. um. uh, i thought it was saturday.”

she let me in early and sold me the meds since it was just a quick pick up and not complex in the least.

THANK YOU, woman at the vet, you turned my whole day around!

other things i’m grateful for this weekend:

• free tango lesson
• easy parking for meditation
• dvr - esp. firefly
• warm weather
• swimming today

five twenty in the morning
eyes open
ears open to the crash bash drive of trucks
in the fruit-packing district

mind still in the dream
the bad dream
the leaving me dream
the not caring dream
the stupid, what was i thinking dream
why even dream such a thing

next those girls come waltzing in
the screaming girls
the wall-building girls
the name calling girls
the speak another language girls
why did i try for so long

i kick them all out

in their place come taxes
the more than i though taxes
the didn’t plan right taxes
the have no money taxes
the grow up quick, here i am taxes
how did i screw up so badly

one thirty six in the afternoon
eyes open
ears open to the mumble whirr of the office
under the bridge

mind still in the dream

saturday was an all day meeting of my shambhala buddhism class. i haven’t written about it yet because i’m honestly not really sure what to say.

we met at drala’s house since the center was busy with a weekend retreat. we shared breakfast an played with the new puppy, kiki.

we went into the other room to meditate. drala had set out a low support cushion for kiki to sit on. i was doubtful, but she plopped right down on it after going to the other room for a chew toy. she was sitting quietly, gnawing away, when the smoke from the incense floated into the stream of sunlight pouring in the window just in front of her. her ears went up and she backed into me pretty quickly. i tried to comfort her a little by putting my hand on her back, but she was really curious about the smoke and more than a little nervous. she crept up to inspect but, being smoke, there was nothing solid to inspect. she ran back to drala and started barking and growling. drala put the incense out and kiki laid down next to him and went to sleep. she slept the whole rest of the hour and a half we meditated, raising her head only when we would switch from sitting to walking to sitting.

for lunch, we went to a great little indian place in the tenderloin. it was delicious, and conveniently located for the second part of our day. after lunch we walked slowly, in silence, around the tenderloin keeping particular slogans in mind. we practiced tonglen, we joined everything with meditation, and i noticed what a different experience it was from when i lived there.

granted, i lived on the edge and would not walk alone through the areas we walked through saturday but the difference was profound. i felt much more separate from the people on the street than i remember feeling when i lived there. not that i ever felt a strong kinship with the men offering me money for sex, but at least they were acknowledging me. i had the feeling that our slow walking and silence created a bubble around us. that they knew we were there to see their pain somehow, and they were ignoring us. (except for that one woman who asked a for a pipe.)

afterwards we drove to crissy field, which was also crowded but with a very different type of energy. we looked at a display of eggs for birds and sharks and other fish in the area, we got coffee, and sat on the seawall and watched a golden retriever do his thing with a tennis ball his owner threw repeatedly into the bay.

i still feel a bit off about the visit to the tenderloin, though. i sort of wish we had done something to interact with the people we were trying to be so open to - gone to glide and served lunch or something. as it was, i feel a little like we were taking advantage of their misfortune to move ourselves just a smidgen further on our spiritual path. drala asked if i though we were hurting them at all. no, it’s not so much that, but that by saying we were being open but by standing by and observing only we weren’t helping when we had a chance to.

i’m coming to understand that i don’t believe in impartial observance when it comes to human interaction. i’m reminded of this quote from desmond tutu:

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
-Desmond Tutu, clergyman (b. 1931)

so i’m going to let mr. pants speak for me.

i’m getting hit really hard with the “not good enough”s again today.

last night i had a dream that someone who didn’t like me much decided to move into the room next to mine. we were all in college living in the dorms. the room she moved into was the room i had to walk through to get out into the hall. she started crying to all our mutual friends about how horrible i was and how i kept coming into her room. they all knew the path out was through her room, but all started to lecture me on finding another way (why not go through two other people’s rooms, the long way, instead?). they were all angry that i would lock my door and not let her into my room, but she couldn’t lock me out of hers. not one of them saw that she set the situation up. that she chose to move in there, knowing that was my way out.

i woke up frustrated and angry and feeling attacked, dwelling on my continued mistrust and misunderstanding of the actions of some people irl.

then i got to work!

there is a woman here who knows nothing about her computer and she takes it out on me. when i ask her what something does, she treats me like i’m an idot. “I. Click. On. IT,” she says slowly, “Do I have to repeat myself AGAIN?” she doesn’t let me finish my questions and isn’t able to tell me what is supposed to happen when she clicks on “it”, but she wants me to fix it for her.

i know it has nothing to do with me. that she just needs someone to take it out on, but i would so much rather be out enjoying the sunshine while it lasts. and that crazy dream where everyone was angry just primed me to be really stung by her attitude.

thankfully, s reminded me that i’ve been doing a great job and the learning curve here is steep. there is so much i can do now that i didn’t know how to solve just two weeks ago.  it’s true, but i can’t help but hear that voice that always tells me i should be learning it faster! (so good for my practice!)
tonight is acupuncture and i’m going to tell her i feel really ucky and i need the magical, “i’m good enough and gosh darn it people like me!” needle.

last night the moon was super bright as i went to sleep. the light came in through my skylight and cast shadows on my bed. with my glasses off it looked full, even though my calendar says that shouldn’t happen for another couple days. i fell asleep feeling happy and peaceful. i dreamed about exploring new places and these strange plants.

at 2:30 am i was woken up by a scream. not a playing around, calling friend, or angry argument scream — in other words it wasn’t yelling, it was Screaming. i wasn’t really sure if it was real but it didn’t seem to fit in my dream either.

then i heard her again. this time she said something. i think she said, ‘he has a gun’ or ‘he’s got a gun’. i heard a car horn, and a car driving off? driving by?

i called emergency.

they called back a while later. they found some people on the next block, but not on mine. now, in the morning, i wonder if the noise was really from the skylight — from the front of the building and not the back.

the police dispatcher said they had another call from my building, too. thank goodness! it makes me feel better about humanity in the face of something awful.

i can’t help wondering what happened. was she kidnapped? did the honking car interrupt something or was that a result of some struggle? i heard some other noises from her, but nothing from the “he” she was screaming about it. she got quieter, but she sounded so frightened.

i wanted to come down and get my computer to see if anyone was online, but i waited till i saw the officer’s search lights (which were confirmed by the call back from emergency) before i felt safe enough to come down the stairs.

i didn’t get back to sleep for an hour. i lay there trying to do tonglen for the woman, and just couldn’t. i couldn’t. for the first time in a long, long time i wished i had a boyfriend. i wanted someone who’s “job” it was to wake up if i called in the middle of the night if i just needed to talk.

i want this to have been a personal thing so i can feel safe walking in my neighbourhood. but i want it to be random so she can have gotten away and he didn’t follow her.

i want to know that woman is ok. i want to know she made it home, to a safe home, where no one hits her or pulls weapons on her.

i want us all to be ok.

today is one of those days when i clearly just can’t win. i was going to write an entry about the girl behind the register who just looked at me the whole time, smiling and nodding. i know she could hear me because she was able to copy down my drink order. the rest she just … turned off for? how going for coffee makes me feel like i’m talking to myself.

but then i got to work and got an email from a chick who i’d apparently deeply offended by asking her to whip up some eggs and make eggnog with me at the party last weekend.

one of the reasons i didn’t write much about the winter warming party is that it was pretty frustrating experience for me. that the original plan called for a group of us to have a walk around the lake in the middle of town before going to the party at around 2ish. by 1, i still hadn’t heard from any of the people i was supposed to meet up with for all this (who live together). so i called them and was told they were running behind, we’d obviously have to skip the lake, and they’d leave the house by 2 and would call then so i’d know when to pick them all up at the bart station.

at 3, i called again; they were leaving soon.

when they finally made it to the station and i picked them all up and drove them all to the party, stopping at the grocery store for the last of the ingredients for the nog, i apparently pissed one of them off by asking her to grab the eggs which i forgot while i stood in line. then deeply offended the same girl by asking her to beat the egg whites when we were at the party.

she said yes, then disappeared.

then today she sent me an email saying i didn’t need to like her but i had to stop being so disrespectful.

er?