Seen and Heard: Designer's Lunch Room

Today, while eating my lunch and researching menstration tracking apps on my phone (yes, they exist), I couldn't help but overhear the conversation next to me. When I say, "I couldn't help but overhear," I mean that I would honestly rather concentrate on reading reviews than hear the high pitches girly-girl voices of ladies desperately trying to sound younger and cooler than they actually are, but I had trouble doing so because certain high-pitched sounds are difficult to tune out. 

The ladies at the next lunch table were having a discussion about what it means to "really be Greek." My boyfriend thinks he's Greek, but..." "Ommigod, look at her rolling her eyes!" "Well, he's not! His family is from Minnesota or something?" "Oh, he was born here?" "No, he was born in Greece, but he grew up in the MidWest."

Then she proceeded to describe all the thigs about him that make him inauthentically Greek. I tuned in an out and didn't actually catch the whole conversation, but some qualities mentioned involved a love of potato chips and frugality. "He thinks he's funny but he's not," was a comment thrown out there, but I was more interested in tracking calendar with symptom notes. 

When I stood up to throw something away, I glanced in their direction since they sat between me and the trash can. They were a table full of mixed girls, all of whom have American accents, wearing pretentiously "edgy" outfits, eating asian-fusian cuisine from a place called something like "The Eaterie," still discussing the arrogance of someone claiming an association with a place where he was born. Like, he's less Greek for loving such obviously 'Merican things, like potato chips and video games. I wanted to ask them if they were less American because of their obvious love of Eurotrash-inspired cloth and food. I didn't, mostly because I would like to continue not being the crazy person in this, but it leaves me feeling uneasy. 

Do gossipers have any idea how lacking in intelligence they sound when their high-almost-shrill voices gab in loud volumes? 

I guess my biggest fear is, if these are my peers, am I guilty of the same behavior simply because the same mentality that led to their hiring led to mine, as well? 

Idk. Maybe I'm just PMSing. Maybe I should add that to my new lady-bits calendar. 

The American Abroad

A work-worn American struggled through her fourth day in China, visiting manufacturers with her work associate. On top of the jet lag, they’d been working long days in the cold March weather, rain noiselessly moistening the foreign world surrounding them, muffling smells, sounds, thoughts. The pollution sunk deep through the lungs and the skin, deploring the body of any energy remaining, albeit the supply already depleted. During a mostly silent dinner, her tired associate suggested the two of them get massages to help revive their bodies and spirits. The American agreed that that would be nice, and after paying their check, they set off, found a place, and were shown to their separate rooms.

The American lay comfortably on the massage table and fell into a deep reverie almost at the moment she felt the masseuse's first touch. In a warm, comforting instant, she was back in the States, the Los Angeles sun filtering through the large windows of the rooms open to the familiar hospital hallway she glided through, walking towards the room she intermittently saw more often than she did her own home. Her mother’s nurse, leaving that room, stopped and asked her a few questions that he routinely asked her.

Whether the questions were good news or bad, the American could never decide. That they remained the same always meant there was no change in her mother’s condition, which could be interpreted either way. In spite of this, following the short and habitual conversation, she moved on to the room to find her mother awake and sitting up in her bed wearing her own clothing and not a hospital gown. This was the first time she’d looked her mother in the eyes since the late November stroke. The fact that her mother was awake was an absolute miracle, an answer to many prayers, but her mother appeared genuinely furious.

“Why,” her mother shouted, “Would you allow me to stay here for so long in those rags? How could you?”

The American, unable to process or talk about the miracle of her mother’s sudden improvement in health, began instinctively appeasing her. She apologized, offered to make her new clothes to wear that were more comfortable, with better fabric. The mother consented but could not be consoled. She was upset about the lack of comfort she received and continued berating her daughter regarding it.

The American struggled, could feel herself being pushed awake from within the dream while psychically not wanting to leave it. She could recognize the weight and feel of her body again, as well as the tapping of the masseuse, waking her. She sat up, realizing she’d been likely moaning in the internal sleep struggle. She looked at the tiny, anxious, wide-eyed Shanghai masseuse and burst into tears. She could detect the awkward fear seeping from the small Chinese girl in a confused panic like a shark with blood in the water but she hardly cared, allowing herself to push the sorrow from her through every sob.

The masseuse shrieked something incomprehensible and ran from the room. The American wiped her tears as assumed the massage was now cut short. There would be no more comfort today for her work-weary soul.

Blue moon over Long Beach

Attack of The Cookies, Part I

She thought of herself as a gypsy. Not of the unintended racist meaning of the word, but of the person-of-whimsy-on-the-go meaning. Veda wore huge, dangly hoop earrings and scarves in her hair matching her long skirts. It was her uniform, worn everyday with little variation, which she thought gave her power. Her true power, though, the most elegant part of her, was actually love. She had the ability to see beyond the shortcomings of others, into the goodness within their hearts. Her magic was that she could look into the eyes of people forgotten, ignored, and misunderstood by others and love them.

She never noticed the small things about people that might drive others away. She never snubbed people when they needed to vent. She sincerely wanted to help those in need. 

But there was no helping The Cookies; evil creatures who resembled stunted humans with limp wavy hair, fuzzy bodies, and angry, colorless grey eyes. They were infamous for their passive aggressive behavior and undying love of sweet delicatessens, from which they earned their sticky nickname. 

The Cookies could not go past a certain amount of time without eating sugary foods, or dire health circumstances might unfold that would be unhealthy for The Cookie and anyone around it. This worked well enough on their home planets, where they had a variety of sweet yet healthy options. However, upon arriving on Earth, or, more pointedly, in Southern California, they promptly became addicted to processed, chemical laden, overly died and unnaturally colorful sweet junk food. This amused the welcoming Earthlings, who had never seen beings quite so egotistical (and, mind you, that's saying something for Southern Californians) and so loathing of all those others different from them while simultaneously taking an extreme and almost hedonistic pleasure in HoHos and cupcakes, and pop tarts, etc. These aliens now consumed not only sweetness, but strictly artificial sweetness, for every meal and snack. For all the sweet pleasures they sought, all The Cookies put back into this world was cranky negativity by way of condescending comments, cold stares, interruptions while others are speaking, and an awkward disregard of the warm welcome Americans gave them, despite the sharp criticism given from other countries. 

So pleased with our society's artificial food resources, The Cookies decided not to make the horrendously long trip back to their home but instead gave up the least favorite member of their pack to the American government to be tested and dissected in exchange for Naturalization, the ability to maintain confidentiality of from where they came and, of course, plenty of junk food. 

The Cookies then entered the American workforce by the hundreds, snarking their way through awkward office politics they created. They weren't dangerous, war and battles weren't their thing. The only time their eyes would light up in conversation was when talking about cakes, cookies, themselves, or how much better life was on their home planet, and how, oh if only, they could have doughnuts there, too! Otherwise, they were cold, unfriendly, and frankly annoying to work with because they were always on edge. 

Which brings us back to our Veda, in all her fortune-teller-inspired threads, whose greatest power was helping, loving, praying for, and trying her best to please everybody; which, in of itself is an impossible task. But add The Cookie who worked with her at the button factory? Disaster was imminent. 

I'm not suicidal, but...

I used to think that people who killed themselves were selfish, only able to see their pain and not the grief their actions bring to others. Lately, though, through stress, hormones, disappointments, financial problems, loneliness, and grief; I can totally understand feeling so overwhelmed with negativity that someone could be blind to the pain they cause in others. Once you lose sight of others, which could easily happen when you're buried in problems, you are totally susceptible to feeling worthless and not only unafraid but maybe eager for death to end the misery. 

I couldn't imagine killing anyone, including myself (so please do not 5150 me), but these days, when an abundace of pressure catches me at seemingly every angle in my life, I can see why someone might crave that way out, how if it's all processed in the wrong way, someone might go down the wrong path. 

The ever-optomistic saying, "Life sucks and then you die," is wrong. Yes, life breaks away at you, but imagine you are a giant sand dune. The wind, or life, blows at you until, little by litte, you've peeled away to a lesser height. It makes you smaller, or so it seems. But that sand doesn't disappear, it's just shifted to another place. Life doesn't break you down so much as it rehapes you. It can feel like you're broken because you don't feel as great as you once were, but that's only height. Your mass is the same, only your shape is different. And such is life, after everything has gone wrong. 

The Ranch Dream

Last night I had a dream geared around the possibility of riding horse, and I felt the need to share it with the internet.  

Tim & I were on a ranch, on vacation. Other people were there - his friends. 

We are always around his friends in life, never my own - simply because I don’t have any, which breaks my heart to write, but the few friends I have left in this world live 3000 miles away. I simply do not see them, or interact with them non-digitally, enough enough for me to commit their faces to memory in order for them to be able to show up effectively dreams. If only I could see them in my sleep, I'd at least get to see them at least in some way and perhaps my time awake might feel so much less empty. 
 Being annoying is a bad habit, and, let me tell you from first hand experience, it is hard to break. The less I speak to real people, the more the bad habit grows. Real conversations put me in check and I recognize that I need them. Often enough, the only people I talk to outside the home are coworkers who find me utterly and completely annoying. It makes speaking at all difficult to even imagine, except to Tim. At least I have him in my life to speak to daily and he helps me hold onto reality. 

Dreams are an exception to this. Well, no, they aren’t; but in sleep I have allies. And they support me exactly the way I never even knew I always wished someone would support me in life.

In my dream, we were on a ranch-like resort with Tim’s friends. 

There were horses and it made me long for the summer days spent on a family ranch in Wisconsin, horseback riding Western Style, which is the best style, in my opinion, for safety reasons and also because it’s a classic example of an American improvement on a lacking design - why wouldn’t you have a handle, however small, attached to the saddle to hold onto if something goes wrong with your mount? It’s practical and intelligent, yet Westerners are the barbarians? Please. 

Anyway, I wanted to go horseback riding and I spoke about it any time the mention of making plans came up. I mean, what were we doing on a “ranch” resort if we weren’t going to ride a freaking horse? But people kept coming up with excuses and delaying the activity. One of his friends has a habit of speaking condescendingly to me, especially when he's drunk. It’s not personal, he does it to most women I’ve noticed - all the women whom he has already ruled out the possibility of sleeping with. It’s a pathetic display of his ability to dominate for no reason other than his own sad fears and he stayed pretty true to character in my dream.

 In life, I hardly tolerate this behavior, and look beyond it with the acknowledgement that I, the friendless wonder, am also far from perfect. I can see that talking down to women comes from a deeply bedded insecurity pushing him to feel as though he needs to constantly prove to everyone, including himself, whatever it is he lacks confidence over. I know I probably just made him sound like an asshole, but please note that there are so many aspects of his personality which are wonderful; that is just the one part of him I don't care for. Though, when faced with him placing his expectations onto me as a way to boost his ego in my dream, I fought back as probably would have in real life.

I forget what activity he was pushing for, that’s how interesting it was to me. Probably standing around a bar watching other people square dance. Nope, that sounds like a fun night-time activity. This was during the day so I don’t know what he wanted. Maybe there was a pool and he was more interested in showing off his new girlfriend. I met her once; she was an all around delightful person and if I were dating her, I'd want to show her off, too. I honestly like her and I have no real life prejudice to bring into this dream against her, so I have no clue why my subconscious made her the VP of Team Boss You Around. She was helping to lobby people into doing whatever crap thing the two of them wanted to do and, true to an his ego, Tim’s friend was annoyed that everyone didn’t find his boring ass activity interesting; which meant, he was took a considerably condescending tone with me for insisting on going horseback riding.

In my dream, as I would in reality, I told him to go do what he wanted, that I was going riding and I'd meet up with them all later. 

In real life, Tim would say nothing, afraid of rocking the group's boat too much. I have no such fears; if you’re afraid of a little boat rocking, don’t drop it in the water where I’m swimming, but Tim isn’t like that. He’d likely make sure I’m OK without him, and still join the other party, just because he knows I’m independent enough where I don’t care if anyone joins me or if his friend freaks out a little bit when he doesn’t get his way. He'd pick the option where someone freaks out less because he's just sensitive like that. I'm not sensitive. I don't care who freaks out; I want to do what I want to do and likely it's not actually hurting anyone.

But, in my dream... it was so beautiful. Tim took my hand and we walked away. I told him that I was concerned we should break up because his family doesn’t really like me (his sister is the only one who does, but she’s moving away) and his friends all don’t like me at all. I’m a square peg in the circular cookie cutter of his environment. He didn't scold me for being dramatic, lecture me on the importance of being nice and passive, or suggest any social behavior that always ends with me feeling repressed. He just smiled, kissed my hand and said not to be silly. He made a crack about the other couple eating too much cake, which in my dream, somehow translated to being a little nutty. We giggled and made our way to the horses to try on cowboy and cowgirl boots, which were apparently required. I picked out colorful ones and Tim picked out plain ones, then we had fun teasing each other for our choices. As we were waiting for the mounts to be brought up, other people from the group showed up, also interested in joining us. Only, they couldn’t because there was a line and a waiting list. They could go together and meet us at the end of the trail.

Shortly after that, the bossy friend showed up with his Frau, having decided to join everyone else. Strangely, though, he was talking as if it was his idea all along and acted annoyed at Tim & me, not for winning some kind of popularity game that existed only in his head which we weren’t even trying to play, but instead for some other cranky excuse that he’d made up in an effort to make us either look or feel like bad friends, which had no effect on us."Thanks for going ahead of us and not putting our names on the list, too," or something along those lines.

Our horses arrived, we took our mounts, and raced to the beginning of the trail, laughing at our own inside joke about some people eating too much cake.The dream went on from there, but I don't remember it at all. I just remember the feeling of fulfillment and having someone truly by my side. 

I love how ridiculous dreams are, how what is a minor part of a person's in-real-life-personality becomes such a dominating part of a dream's plot. The brain has the capacity to manipulate scenarios that have so little link to reality, but touch on such real topics. The dream points out how alone I am, how good it feels when Tim stands by me - when it happens. It forces me to acknowledge that I'm not "nice" and that I never will be and how badly I just want to be accepted for that; how proud I might feel if only I could inspire someone else to act more socially independent. That our independence is what makes the forces trying to control us in life, no matter what their methods, weaken to the point where they are laughable. And love; most of all, this dream stressed the importance of love and interdependence; that you don't need each other as some sort of emotional crutch, but that you choose each other and work as a team from there. How we all must long for that in every relationship we have. 
Also, isn't it interesting how, when I can't think of anything I want to write about, how totally uninspired I am, my subconscious can spit out something amusing and technically correct in terms of story telling: a beginning, a middle, and an ending, with a problem (albeit a tiny one in this case, though sometimes the smallest problem feels like a giant dilemma) and a solution. Now, if only I could dream something a little more action-packed...

I just realized I believe in past lives

Sometimes when I'm reading in bed, I'll extend my right hand out, reaching for another hand I'm always subconsciously sure will be there. When it's not, I have a reality check. "Oh right, there's no hand there." There never has been. There's never been anyone in my life with whom I would lie beside, holding hands as we, Mystery Hand and I, read our separate ...separate what? Separate novels? That's what I read but maybe Mystery Hand's Owner's other hand held the day's paper? I'm unsure whose hand it is exactly that I reach for, so a reading preference is somewhat difficult to determine. What I can determine is that when it happened tonight, I finally decided it's not just a tiny neurotic quirk I partake in often. I decided that it must be a habit left over from a past life where I'd fallen into a habit of holding hands with someone while lying down and quietly reading. I must have loved this small gesture so much that my soul clung to the habit, always hopeful Mystery Hand's Owner will be there even after living such a different life as is mine. I must have loved this person very deeply and was, in return, loved incredibly much as well.
It's so much more beautiful of a thought than merely accepting that perhaps I am crazy. Crazy, sad, and lonely, but at least creative.