Mean People

I've had my share of brushes with mean people over the years, especially as a little girl who enjoyed reading and had good grades without really putting too huge an effort into it. And yet, as an adult I've been overall pretty lucky/sheltered. Maybe it's because I keep to myself, but know how to fend off meanness if directed at me. Or perhaps it's the almost instinctive way I have to sense mean people around and stay clear of their path. Most likely, I've just been lucky. That hasn't blinded me to the meanness around me, though. And there's a lot. From big-picture/global-consequences actions, to playground bullying, or abuse (passive AND active) of people in the service industry.

I have very little patience for mean people. Almost as little as I have for narrow-minded people (narrow-mindedness about narrow-mindedness... how about that?), although that's a different story.

What made me think of this?

Yesterday I went to the little coffee shop behind my new office building. The place was empty of customers except for a woman -- blond, younguish (30's?) prettish, if a bit washed out, but attractive by a guy's standards, I'm sure. She was standing in front of the counter, browsing the menu. Since I already knew what I wanted, I almost went ahead and ordered -- especially because the blond was just looking diddering and indecisive and I wasn't even sure whether she was

a) standing in line, or
b) if she was in line, whether she had made up her mind on what to order or not.

Just as I looked back questioningly from the clerk to the woman, she quickly said she'd decided. I smiled and stepped aside -- after all, she was there before me.

She ordered a salad with a bunch of specifications, and paid with a credit card. Then she wanted to add a coffee, so the clerk cancelled the transaction and was a bit confused as to where on the receipt it read that the transaction had indeed been stopped. Meanwhile, I was starting to get a bit impatient and two other women had joined the line behind me. One of the other girls in the shop helped the counter clerk and that was that. In the meantime, though, the blond woman continued to be demanding (tone of voice and everything), further stalling the poor clerks:

"Can I have an extra cup of dressing on the side?"

"No, that's not decaf. I said I wanted decaf."

The women behind me laughed and jokingly said: "Of course you had to be the problem, Rebecca." At first Rebecca was so focused on being mean to the clerks that she didn't hear the women who obviously knew her. They repeated their playful tease and she finally turned around and looked at them, an exasperated expression in her face.

"It's not me," she snapped loudly. "It's her." She added, jerking her head in the direction of the clerk, who was now busy getting the 'lady' her coffee. While Rebecca did lower her voice a bit when she said 'it's her', the comment was pointed and obvious.

One of the other cafe girls, realizing all this (and the stalling due to Miss Rebecca), came quickly to me and asked me for my order. Within 2 minutes I'd ordered, received and paid for my salad to go. I thanked the girl with a big smile and skeddadled as fast as I could. Miss Rebecca was spitefully talking to the other two women about the incident as I left.

You know... None of this is any of my business, but I still couldn't help but feel bad for the clerk and more disdainful than angry at the Princess (that was her attitude -- eeww).

What bothers me is that there ARE people like that. On a greater scale, too. And they get away with their meanness every minute of every day. Not that this is a new realization or anything -- I'm not that naive.... The incident just made me think of it, made me more accutely aware of it.

There should be a way to figure out which babies are going to grow up to be mean kids, and then mean people. Then, there should be a law to let them die of exposure -- didn't the Greeks do that to their deformed kids? This would make so much more sense....

Did I mention I violently dislike mean people?

The Paco Pe~na concert is in...

1 day, 6 hours and 18 minutes

YAY! Early mornings are over!

Yesterday was, in fact, my very last day of early-morning-torture! Already I feel more alert and motivated. True, I still woke up on my own AN HOUR before I had to, but I managed to snooze off lightly after that. In any case, it wasn't 5:30, so that's an improvement. I also had the chance to pay attention to my driving time from home in real time, as oppossed to pre-pre-dawn time(14 mintues in regular traffic), and my walking time from the parkade (6 minutes at a slow, regular pace). So, the world is slowly starting to feel more real again.

The Paco Pe~na concert is in...

1 day, 11 hours and 30 minutes

I AM psychic!

That dream I posted below? The one I had last night? Well, I just opened an email from Blanca! She's an awesome person and my best friend and whatnot, but she's lousy at writing! And I don't usually include her in my dreams... So, it is definitely worth mentioning that she happened to email me the day after I dreamed of her!

So THERE, all ye naysayers!

More Empresses...

One of the things I like about Tarot decks is how pretty/creative they can be while staying true to the archetypal symbolism in them. On this day and age we have literally hundreds of different decks. I will continue to post noteworthy cards here, given due credit to the artists whenever possible. For now I'll (obviously, yeah) stick to representations of The Empress, but I might move on to other cards later on.

On that note, I found this Empress from the Women's Tarot (right-hand side)particularly interesting. I think it's quite beautiful and I just love the way it moves away from the more common Western depictions.

Now, this Empress to the left is from an Egyptian deck (not sure which one). Not your 'traditional' Tarot Empress, either. It must be a representation of the goddess Isis. I'm not particularly fond of the Egyptian Tarot myself (even though my first deck was Egyptian -- a gift from my Granny when I was 11 or so), but I do find it definitely interesting to compare it to others.

The best kind of dream.

I love dreaming. It reminds me that despite my mundane job, my mind is still quite capable of creativity. And my favourite kind of dream is what I like to call the 'movie dream'. Or, in keeping with the Jungian theme started below, the 'quest dream'.

My dominant dream last night was one of those super-cool movie/quest dreams. Unfortunately, now that I've finally made it to a keyboard (couldn't even have made it to pen and paper earlier, either), only bits and pieces remain.

All I remember now is that my best friend, Blanca (who actually goes by Edith, her middle-name, but I've never been able to get used to calling her that) and I were in some sort of mission or adventure. We had to transport something safely -- sadly, I can't remember what the 'something' was (which is too bad... It was probably some kind of symbol that would've served well for some sort of cool, free-form dream interpretation...). Anyway, Blanca and I were tag-teaming in this and we had to get this 'something' to a safe place. Unfailingly, we were also being chased by some man in black clothes, who was after the fabled 'something'.

Although the details are positively blurred at this point, I do remember a bit of an Indiana-Jonesque chase and scenery -- an old monastery lit only by torches on the walls and with a hidden, narrow spiral staircase decending into what, funnily enough, looked more like above-ground than the monastery itself. There were monks in the monastery, of course, who were trying to help us run from the man in black because they also wanted us to get the 'something' we had to its destination. And before the monastery, we were also in a hot-air balloon, at a party, and who knows where else... Gods, I wish I could remember! It was crazy fun!

Unfortunately, my must-wake-up-early-must-wake-up-early-must-wake-up-early paranoia (see the note below) awoke me in the middle of this wonderful adventure. I trie d to pick of the thread where I'd left it, but I probably didn't succeed, or I did and I just don't remember.

Pity. I would've liked to know how it all turned out. I think by the time my paranoia woke me up, we had made it closer to safety. There was more light and we were surrounded by friendly priest-clad monks outside the monastery itself, that is, the bright room at the bottom of the spiral staircase. And I remember feeling like I was closer to our destination, though not quiet there yet.

Hmmm... I really do wish I could remember more details...

Days till the Paco Pe~na Concert:

Exactly 2 days and 12 hours

The worst part of having to wake up at 5:30AM...

is that I get so paranoid I won't hear my alarm going off, that I keep waking up every two hours. So, what already is an extremely short sleep by virtue (or lack thereof) of my current ungodly shift, ends up being not only short, but stunted, interrupted and restless. Gods, I hope today is in fact my last early morning... *sigh*

Umbrella or canoe?

Rain, rain, rain and then some more rain... That's all we've had since... well, I can't even remember any more.

I keep hearing we don't really get half as much rain here in Victoria as the poor soggy folk from North Vancouver, but I'd wager this weekend could easily throw that theory out the window... (and/or into the rain...)

I'm writing from Ian's place (gotta love having a portable computer with software that picks up wireless internet). Once again, I've sacrificed a couple of sacred Sunday evening hours to work (eww). And it's not because I'm some sort of workaholic -- I personally don't care all that much about my job anyway. Pays the bills, period. Anyway, I've had to sacrifice a couple of hours a Sunday for two weeks just so I can't minimize my early morning shifts as much as possible. You see, the whole pre-pre-dawn shift thing is so I can do 'media monitoring' -- i.e. check all the bloody provincial media for stuff related to my current place of work. Now, the 'nice' people at the Top want their media summaries well in advance of the start of THEIR work day, hence the early shift, the sleep deprivation, and its natural consequences: crankiness and day-long brain-deadness.

Luckily, with so many staff movements in my current office, tomorrow is very likely to be the last day I'm forced to do this shift! *insert celebratory music here*.

That's beyond good news -- I don't know how much longer my body/mind can take this abuse...

Number of days till the Paco Pe~na Concert:

4 Well, given that's already 7 PM, it's techically 3 days and 5 hours... or to be even more specific: 3 days and 1 hour (the concert starts at 8)

Number of days till the Paco Pe~na Concert

5

By the way...

Re: the post below, the Empress on the left-hand side is from the Ryder-Waitte deck, one of the oldest and best-known (if not THE best-known) tarot decks in print. And, on the right we have Guenevere (King Arthur's wife) as The Empress, in a beautiful design from the 'Legend' deck. And this uhm... older-and-wiser-looking Empress to the right is from what reputedly is THE oldest tarot deck known, the Tarot de Marseille. Call me crazy, but I kind of like the Ryder-Waitte design much better... Not to say anything about the more modern representations.

More about The Empress (the tarot card, not me)

According to Carl Jung’s theory of the ‘universal unconscious’, we all share a connection in a subconscious level. ALL of us. Every single person in the planet. This would explain the uncanny similarities in the myths and folklore of civilizations and cultures from all over the world. The same types of characters populate mythology and folk tales from cultures as different and far away from each other as the Greeks and the Navajo. These common characters are universal archetypes. In this way, you have your heroes and their nemeses, goddesses and gods, queens and kings, mentors, wise old men and women, sorcerers and sorceresses, and so on and so on and so on… Following this stream of thought, Tarot cards are so old and of such uncertain origins, it is believed the deck was originally intended to illustrate archetypal characters. Whether or not you believe a card reading can delve beyond the ‘here and now’, the interesting fact is that each card represents a universal archetype.


The Empress is THE female archetype, the ‘eternal feminine’. She represents understanding, love and nurturing, as well as intuition and subtlety – the ‘brain vs. brawn’ approach to any situation. While some traditional interpretations relate her to pregnancy and motherhood, she doesn’t necessarily represent this in a LITERAL way. Instead, she is the archetype of the creative force (i.e. she’s ‘pregnant with ideas’). She represents beauty and wisdom (she is, after all, a ruler), rational thought and artistic sensibility.

Number of days till the Paco Pe~na show:

6

And after my dance session...

It was off to a Membership Committee meeting with fellow Board members at the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria. Again, this left me feeling refreshed and, like my private lesson before, helped reassure me that I have not lost all my intelligence, creative spark and/or braincells -- despite of the year I've spent so far in an oh-so-conventional job (thank goodness it's also oh-so-decent-paying...)

Not a bad day, yesterday

So... Despite the ongodly work hours I've been whining about all week, turns out yesterday was not a bad day for me after all -- once I was sufficiently caffeinated and had the work bit out of the way, that is. I went from work to a much-awaited private class with my flamenco teacher. I've been doing sporadic privates this term, trying to work on my own choreography, and every time I've gotten A LOT out of these one-on-one sessions. I mean, I've learned tons in the 5+ years I've been dancing, but these private classes are forcing me to think creatively while making me understand more of the art form and how my body relates to it. I'm going to try and do this once a month, so I can actually further my piece a bit every time. It's all very exciting and it in fact makes me feel more confident about my ability as a dancer -- quite an accomplishment, for someone with no dancing training previous to my first incursions into Flamenco a little over 5 years ago! I can't wait until I can really, really, REALLY hold my own on stage!

Things I like about my new office:

• Subject matter. The environment is way more interesting than social services for children and families -- especially for someone like me, who's deeply committed to NOT breeding. So deeply committed, I have The Voluntary Human Exctintion Movement website bookmarked.
• Location. It may be practically a desert as far as lunch options/possibilities for errands go, but it's so much nicer and wonderfully less crowded.
• My boss. So far he seems super nice. Co-workers aren't bad either -- I just don't quite know them very well just yet.

Things I miss about my old office:

• The people. Every single one of my old co-workers was smart, talented, NICE and had a kickass sense of humour.
• Location. Which in turn leads to the next two points:
• The most overwhelmingly wonderful variety of lunch options.
• The central location that made it easy to run all sorts of errands during my break (jewellery repair, grocery shopping, gift shopping, shoe repair, mail, etc....)
• Lunches with friends.
• Lunches with Ian.

And.... That's it. Well, there's the whole not-having-to-get-up-at-5:30-in-the-morning bit, too. But thankfully this shift will be over in a week or so, so that ought to be a moot point soon enough. Well... not really soon enough, I guess. But that goes without saying.

Number of days till the Paco Pe~na show:

7

Will this week never end?

My mum says I should have a better attitude about this whole mega early mornings deal -- she always says I should have a better attitude about stuff. Sometimes she's right, of course. But sometimes... Let's see HER doing this shift every day. Let's see HER trying to keep awake, especially during the first week, when her body and mind are still in shock due to the sudden schedule change.

I love my mum, but sometimes she drives me nuts. Email (and my moving to another country) may have changed our relationship for the better, but sometimes she just can't help herself in the mothering department.

No one likes to be told what to do. Or I don't, in any case. Funny: she mostly treats me like an adult since I moved away, but sometimes, she just can't help herself and her 'mother knows best' attitude. Even on email. It's just silly now, too: I'll be 30 this year and she's still wanting to tell me what to do.

Do I have a bad attitude about this horrible shift? You betcha I do! My whole internal clock is traumatized, my social life is impaired and I can't even make my schedule match Ian's (a.k.a significant other). And I kind of miss him.

On the plus side, HOPEFULLY by this time next week I'll be back to regular hours.

Now, that I can have a good attitude about...

Blogger = wonderful self-indulgence

I could get used to this. Journaling 'live'. The more personal shite (or the shite that might land me in trouble if posted on the web) will continue to be done long-hand. This will also be a good tool when I go on vacation -- beats sending out group emails...

Most visited website of the week (excluding work stuff):

Flamenco World

Days till the Paco Pe~na Concert at Uvic:

8

Early mornings

And by 'early mornings' I mean EARLY MORNINGS. Try starting your day at 5:30, waaaay before the sun is even an insinuation of pinkish light in the horizon.

5:30 AM in the winter is, literally, the middle of the night. Even the proverbial 'early birds' are still cozy and warm, catching Zs in their little twig-made homes. Aside from one or two other poor sleep-deprived innocents that have to start their days this early, I'm basically alone onthe drive to work. Now, this is one perk: no traffic makes for a home-to-work trip in less than 10 minutes (at least 15 on regular work hours). The other perk: I get to leave early. In theory, anyway.

That's where the perks stop.

The worst is not the utter inability to get out of bed, or the inescapable dependence on massive doses of caffeine just to keep myself from dozing off throughout the day. The WORST part is that, when I'm forced to start my day this early, I end up operating with half a brain ALL DAY LONG. It's like my poor braincells are in such pain and shock from the attack on my biological clock, that they refuse to work properly. I figure that as far as they're concerned, THEIR sleep has been interrupted, therefore they flip me the finger and go back to bed. What's left is only a minimal crew of neurones on reserve willing to complete the bare essentials as far as brain function goes: breathing, walking, driving, getting coffee, completing repetitive tasks... All hope for creative thought is stunted until the evening, and then we (braincells and me) are so tired that we can't really make much of it.

Oh well. This shift is temporary.

This shift is temporary this shift is temporary this shift is temporary...

Why I'm doing this...

Honestly? To force myself to write as often as possible. Write, think, write, think some more. Plus... 'it's what all the cool kids are doing', right?

What I write here doesn't have to be particularly good or brainy, either (though it won't hurt when/if it is). I'm just hoping to get my brain juices going again after a bit of a career-stunting stalemate.

Hopefully said brain juices will also be stimulated by the fact that this is my second week in a brand new office, with a brand new portfolio and surrounded by brand new people... I'm hoping to discover there's still a bit of a creative spark somewhere inside me.

I mean, I AM creative, dammit! I wrote a damn novel, didn't I? Sure, it's still stalled in Draft #1 Mode, but at least it's a COMPLETE draft... It's taken me the best part of... well, a decade to get to this point, but... it's a COMPLETE draft! And there have been... circumstances surrounding it's creation. Life stuff. University, trying to figure out what to do with my life, getting a real job in the real world... And that pesky business of switching countries...

But I digress. Chances are it won't be the last time, either.

Bottom line: I'm trying to create excuses/occassions for me to babble in written form, until the babble becomes a thought and the thought becomes a good one, and this good thought becomes an idea, which in turn will blossom (hopefully) into something brilliant...

Here's hoping...

PC, HTML, Macintosh...

I just discovered that all the cool fonts/colours in this blogger thingee are not Macintosh-friendly. So, if I try to type a new entry from my own computer at home, all I get in my 'compose' window is text and a bunch of geek-speak stuff (html codes???) I know nothing about.

That's ok, though

You see, I think I've got it sussed...

The Empress Goes Live (finally!)

So... my 2003 New Year's resolution is finally coming into fruition... Yes, I'm perfectly aware it's already 2006 and, come to think of it, starting a blog wasn't necessarily a 'resolution' per se... After all, I don't really spend enough time online to justify having a blog... Let's say this is just a baby step towards a more professional, world-wide-accessible Me.

Why 'The Empress'?

No, I don't have delusions of grandeur and I don't have any connection whatsoever to the over-priced-yet-luxurious five-star hotel in the core of downtown Victoria, British Columbia.

'The Empress' is actually the name of a tarot card. 'The Empress' card is one of the group of cards known as 'major arcana' -- for those in the know-how (or kind of), this means one of the 20-some cards that delve into the depths of universal forces at work. For those unfamiliar with tarot, the major arcana are the cards typically portrayed in hokey movies about fortune-telling and the paranormal.

It doesn't matter whether or not you believe in what a deck of picture cards of ancient origins can tell you about your past, present and future -- this is just a bit of background on why I've given this website its name.

You see, when I was little and my grandma read my tarot cards, the card that almost consistently kept appearing was -- yes -- The Empress.

So there.

Nice little babble to justify my very first posting ever...