The 'to don't' list

Here are a few things that didn't happen to me today:  It didn't snow.  This is a good thing (the kind that is too good to be true but I'll take whatever I can at this stage in the way of good news) given we are already into December, more or less (in The Tundra, time stands still) and nothing - not even a single digit minus temperature.   Gratitude abounds.

I didn't feel the usual grip of ennui that I get everyday I look out of my bedroom window onto Edward Scissorhands Close (where I live).  I even noticed a piece of food wrapper swirling along the pavement, in a nihilistic sprint to nowhere.  Swirl paper! I willed it - while you still can before the compulsives and A-types that people this street cut your fun short and recycle you.

I didn't turn off the Christmas tree lights when I left the house this morning and am only thankful they didn't short circuit and burn every last beam to the ground.  My husband will be proud.

I didn't make the bed, or set the dryer so I have no socks again. Luckily, it isn't that cold (see point 1) - I have time. And frankly the bed is about to be slipped into again tonight so who's going to notice?

I didn't go shopping for food - my absolutely favourite pastime of all, after unloading the dishwasher and putting clothes away. 

And finally, I didn't have a glass of wine that turns into 4 but I'm about to do that now in order to kick start my list of things I did do which I hope to expand on in the next blog post, if I can see through the fug of alcohol and despair tomorrow morning.

Here, I'll get a headstart in now.  I did break all my positive thinking rules and  I did dwell on the negative side of everything...as you can see.

Hope really honest to goodness never dies

...not even, I'm sure of it, when you are certified and locked up in a padded room.  I was at the Yoga Studio as is expected from a dedicated Yogi looking to finally commit to seeing one thing through to the very end when I noticed the studio manager, a man of few words - all of them curt and scathing - looking very dapper indeed.

I want to rewind a few weeks here to hang a bit of context onto what follows.  A few weeks ago, I discovered that this man used to be married to the studio director but in true Yogic fashion, there being no judgement and certainly no ignominy when it comes to releasing the mula bandha in front of 25 strangers - I didn't really think too much of it outside of the obvious: "oh, that's interesting? but they are not married anymore?" No. "And they are still civil?"  Oh absolutely in fact weeks after separating  - the defendant signed on to the very same teacher training course you're on, that is, as you know, run by the very same director then as it is now. " How very dignified." I thought.  He has been a partner in the business ever since - this is now a few years on I hasten to add.

And with that I lowered into my Downward Dog and engaged the Ujjayi breath. 

OK, so fast forward a few weeks (from discovering their unusual history) when I noticed a usually very natural studio director (the woman in these proceedings) looking very polished indeed - the kind that required animal testing.  She had dyed her hair a sultry red and was wearing eye shadow!!  - can I just quickly at this point interject and remind everyone this is a hot yoga studio where the rooms are pre-headed to 40 degrees and where no cosmetic makes it past the first stretch - so of course my curiousity was further aroused.  I took a closer look.

Now, I may have lost the will to live many moons ago and along with it any trickle of libido but I know a snog rash when I see it.  (Snog = make-out in English).  Oh joy!  there is hope for me yet!

So now back to the present....said chin rash director takes off on a short sabbatical to do yogic things in exotic places and is due back today.  I know this because the studio manager, the usually grumpy old man who would just as happily turn up to work wearing his pyjamas was gallantly picking her up at the airport looking like Paul McCartney the day he was given the MBE.

So, my conclusion; hope springs eternal.  I say, it's like something out of 50s Hollywood.  I do hope I've got my sums right on this one because I do love happy endings.  Now all I need is a similar story for me and I'll should be ok until Christmas.

Ctrl + Alt + Del

Where do I start with regards the tedium that is my life at the moment? Let's see that would be October 2nd, 2007. Look away now if you are an unfeeling bastard and have no time to read about a person's despair however unfounded (I'm running on gland juice vapours - the bad stuff that is made in the pituitary) and I'm now left with only the desire to moan pointlessly and self-indulgently like a poor little rich girl (without the money, the social standing or the figure).


I'm not in the mood to play ball today and that is supposing there is someone at the other end waiting to catch said proverbial ball, which of course there isn't and there hasn't been for over 2 years. I play against the wall like the immigrant I am. Luckily I'm too arrogant to be a groupie where I could indulge an unhealthy low self-esteem by giving BJs to middle-aged accordion players - the only kind of musician you'll find here in the Superstore land of the Dollarama commuter. And I'm too broken to travel into town plus I fear my tongue would freeze stuck to said appendages in these here Tundra-like conditions.  Though to be honest it's been mild for November in Ontario and that's ME saying this - me, who wouldn't throw Canada a bone if it saved my life - but it is - and I still won't.  Not today in any event.

I feel like that poor sod who it turns out was in fact conscious for 23 years (just paralysed or perhaps he wasn't in the mood to play ball either), and not at all the slightest bit in a coma like those clever doctors said. Can you imagine the conversations he must have been privy too? Actually there is no way my life is as interesting as that.  Can't wait for the film. 
So, what's up? Well, I can't say. Not yet because well...it hasn't happened. I will say that I don't much like revising for exams with a 3 year old in tow. THE HORROR! Nor have I been much enjoying the habit I've developed of clock watching at work....never a good sign. And then I get invited to the FIRST party ever that wasn't through my husband and I can't go.  Still if Coma Man can be optimistic after everything that (didn't) happen to him, surely I can be too.

Roll on anything at all.

Drag

I should know better than to eavesdrop when I’m in a cynical mood. Actually if I were to re-interpret that statement as my true cynical self, what I mean is that I was quietly minding my own business reading my notes for a yoga exam at well known chain of coffee shops, when wide-face ugly blonde biddy man (biddy – because he was all of 30 but sitting, no not sitting, indulging in a round -shouldered natter with his mum and nan; trust me it’s not attractive) getting all hot under what he clearly wished was a pre-menstrual collar and loudly declaring: She could have anyone she wants.


I assume we are referring to Megan Fox. No? Well then I’m thinking you’ve taken a little bit more than your daily allowance of poetic license here. Let’s stop there for a second and think a bit more about this sentence. She could have anyone she wants. Uh huh. Question: Is she related to you? Does she share any of your wide features? Because if she does.... I mean, Angelina Jolie (at a stretch- lots of men just don’t want the drama) can probably have any man or woman she wants. That would be an accurate use of this phrase. Hell, Heidi Spencer from The Hills could probably get any man in the Bible belt (at the very least) that she wanted but apparently not Lauren Conran because she allegedly has fat beef curtains. How unsavoury. My point being that men are quite picky; so I think, in conclusion, my wide-faced knitting jockey – she is probably with the person she currently deserves to be with. I really wish you wouldn’t exaggerate like this when I’m trying to concentrate.

I’m half way through a sentence I’ve had 16 aborted attempts at reading when creepy looking hermaphrodite enters. Grateful for the distraction from wide-face biddy boy, but inwardly irritated at another interruption to my study time, I’m wondering whether I haven’t accidently walked into a oestrogen flashback dream given that I’m so short of it at the moment. Can this person be real? How to describe him/her...Ok – take Dog from Bounty Dog fame, exactly as he is but soften his beard from stubble to fluff; touch of rouge on his cheeks and pretty much you have yourself a police drawing of the suspect.

At that point, I fear I lose my appetite and decide to cut my losses. Honestly, I just can’t be with myself on days like this. Now to study for I must passeth this exam if I’m ever going to get back on the career track again.

Stop Me if You Think You've Heard This Before

I’m having one of those sunny rainy days, emotionally speaking. My mental resolve is crumbling. Tell tale signs include the gnawing of nails to the 2nd layer of the epidermis; craving wine and sweets and coffee and chocolate (all in the same sitting) and the foulest of foul potty mouths when driving. I’m seeing black again and I’m finding it hard not to pin hopes on projected outcomes of events and undertakings that have not yet happened. I’m picking fights and brushing a thick veneer of ‘bad’ onto everything and everyone. I’m also making huge assumptions and I can’t stop myself at the moment. And yet I’m also happy (my version of it anyway).


Truth is I’m short on oestrogen and sinking in the PMS quick sands. Still at least these days this mood only lasts a week, though I count weeks in Roman numerals so actually my week lasts 21 days. I have a friend who is living in his own version of Dante’s Hell in Germany who assures me he’s only ever known me to have one good week every other month. I’m totally expecting to be diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder or at least manic depression one day in my 60s during a routine flu vaccination and think...OH so that’s why....

This month’s bout of the blues brings with it disillusionment with the teachings of the Dalai Lama!! (How rational of me). What I’m reading is that happiness comes when you live in a detached bubble of ‘now’. Attach no meaning or emotion to anything and you’ll be fine but at the same time be compassionate and loving. I admit my interpretation might be affected slightly by the fact that I have a very disturbed mind but you know, I’ve been watching life from afar now for quite some time and that just doesn’t add up.

So let me see if I have this straight: sit still, do and feel nothing and get someone to feed you through a nose tube (and don’t forget to be grateful) and you’ll be happier than a vial of blood dangling down Angelina Jolie’s cleavage.

I think I’m going to put today safely away before someone gets offended. Tomorrow is another day, another test. I’m going to have to ride this one out. If you see me in the street – run.

Live Through This to Fly Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I'm in study mode, yoga exams coming at me like Clone Troopers on the Star Destroyer. I'm reciting mantras to open chakras, to set intentions; devotional mantras and Omming for England and that's just the homework. I've also had to perform so many sun salutations I may need to get prosthetic arms and legs by the time I graduate and I'm seeing cobras in my third eye (that's the Chakra found in the forehead area). Oh and then there is the small matter of Egor - my skeleton friend who I've had to become intimately and viscerally involved with.

It's all very esoteric and a little unnerving. Plus to top it all off (as if I needed help in this direction) contrary to feeling peaceful and centred I'm instead feeling very very freaking angry and just a little unhinged. I feel like I've only just graduated from being an angry young woman to become an angry middle-aged one and this time I don't have my youthful looks and firm skin to appease. No I'm just a haggard old harridan to anyone  meeting me for the first time.

No, I'm feeling positively disruptive. I want to mess things up, knock stuff off shelves and tables and just leave the mess for someone else to deal with. I want to tell the fools around me that winter is not beautiful, it's fucking miserable and cold even when the sun is out. What is the point of sun when it's minus 10 degrees? Who wants to enjoy the sun from a window like a mental patient?

Then bizarrely I have moments of utter clarity and Zen which of course lead to tremendous forgetfulness. I didn't turn up for work last Monday for example and I forgot to put a potato in the oven for my husband who'd just got back from a big day of meetings ravenous and thankful for the sustenance. Toast for dinner again.  But I aced my anatomy tests.

Could this all be part of the detox that Yoga initiates? Or am I finally succumbing to dementia?

In my defence I did find a raw potato in the laundry room which means at some point I did mean to put it in the oven.

This all has to be interrelated (one hopes to goodness) because if it's all coincidence and I am in fact going mad - well, it was nice knowing you. Hopefully see you on the other side.

Full Circle

...as in I've come (full circle) in that I've started a part time job at a well known bookstore as a "customer experience representative' or CER as they like to refer to us over the page system - CER to cash please, CER to cash" - which translates into - can someone on the floor please come to the cash desk before the cashier assassinates the customer holding up the queue with all the annoying questions.

When I was 15 I got my first job (a Saturday job - they were all the rage in London if you were still at school) at a bookshop too - though in those days they called it what it was - a sales assistant.  If you were lucky you got some customer service.  I mean the doors are open, the books are on the shelves what more do you want?

I loved it truth be told not least because I'm a book geek but also because there was no such thing as corporate culture in those days so it was total anarchy.  We made displays up, created whichever atmosphere we felt in the mood for and you were lucky to get served at all.  Not so today.  Corporate culture is coordinated at national level today; it's a big money industry - hell I used to get paid handsomely to help create cultures for brands.  Brands!  that's what you got if you touched an iron while it was still on but today a brand has to align to a culture and  a customer promise.

Back in the day if we fancied a Manga - Erotic window display, we would bloody well have one.  Death metal playing in the background and porn strewn across the floor.  If you wanted to read a book you flipping well bought it - none of this sitting on comfy leather couches, freely leafing through pages whilst sipping coffee malarkey.

I still remember a memo in the staffroom warning us to not flaunt Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses - under threat of Fatwah - so we stacked a whole column of them by the children's section and furtively escorted anyone asking for it, as if they had just asked for a book on beastiality. 

My experience on the shop floor today is a world of etiquette away from my first time around - however the familiar smell of new paper and glossy covers takes me back to those days of youthful insanity and I love it all over again.  Something that hasn't changed is the customer (directly wired to the moon) who comes in asking for a book with a purple cover about something to do with the Knights Templar, by someone who's written lots of similar books but he doesn't know what it's called or who it's by.  Usually at this point I'll lead them to Science Fiction and disappear and by golly they usually find what they are looking for.  Then there are those who want you to find a book that hasn't been written like a lady who asked me for a book on: How to Spot an Arsehole, Lying, Cheating Loser.  Tempting as it is to escort them to the office of the nearest therapist, you do have to entertain a semblance of interest and tap the title into the computer as they tell you their life story and you calculate how long until your break.

Then there are those who are just escorted off the premises. 

So I say this with no irony at all, while I've commanded positions of high (ish) rank and salaries to match (sort of) and now find myself stacking shelves alongside people with very different hobbies to me, I'm grateful for the opportunity to experience life at the granular level again.  I feel the muse tapping on my shoulder.  I feel the urge to write and that is a very difficult urge to coax out.

The job lasts until January at which time I will be let off the studio leash and into the big wide Yoga world and as I look forward to this new chapter in my life, part of me will not want to leave this crazy little world of words and people.