6-16-08 echoes

Still furious and raging over last night's mugging. I tell the story a few more times to family members and whatnot, keeping the embellishments to a minimum.

The cat refuses to take to her new litter, and has taken to peeing under the coffee table. We argue about it, but she's so old I hardly have the heart to be too stern with her.

6-15-08 Well, thank god I got THAT over with

I could see them coming over a block away - three guys, one crosses the street, the other two come on. "Here we go," I think to myself.

Hoods up, they're within striking distance, I try to go around, the one blocks my way, the other saying, "Gimmie your money."

They leave with 20 bucks and a couple of bruises, while I leave exhilerated and furious, but otherwise unharmed (details will be found here when I get around to writing, but suffice to say, I'm fine, and feel that I acquitted myself rather well).

5-23-08 Non-non-violence

As I walk through the long tunnel in the subway station this morning, a man wearing a blue hoodie and dark sunglasses walks against the stream of commuters walking towards Fifth Avenue.

As he passes by a man walking just in front of me, he throws his elbow out and knocks the guy sideways, and then just keeps walking, narrowly missing me, as well. The man he hit, an asian guy in a t-shirt, looks back, bewildered, before continuing on his way, and I feel sorry for him, and enraged at the asshole who hit him, to the point where I almost follow the son-of-a-bitch and knock him down, just to teach him a lesson.

Jack Kornfield, in his book A Path With Heart, suggests that many challenges in the personality will arise as one tries to calm the mind and ego, and selfishness and lust would have been my first guess for me, but the rage I've been dealing with lately has been a bit unexpected.

4-14-08 Seriously? Fuck Darth Maul. And Muggers.

I dreamed about fighting with Darth Maul all night. Every time I would wound him or cut off a limb with my light saber he would heal or regenerate a new limb, until finally I grew so annoyed with the whole thing that I cut him up and liquefied him in a blender, and even then, as I awoke, the mush formerly known as Darth Maul was beginning to clump together in preparation to recombine and continue fighting.

My horoscope said that I might be confronting issues of "assertion and aggression" today, and everyone who looked at me on the subway for more than a second seemed like a potential enemy, until my adrenaline levels got so jacked up I was practically shaking as I got off at my stop. Someone was mugged there a little over a week ago in the early evening, and the thought of it makes me so angry I wish sometimes someone would mess with me so I could stick a knife in them, but I'm glad they don't because then I'd have to deal with the karma and the guilt.

1-24-08 Yesterday, the Day Job

The office manager of the company I currently temp at came by my desk yesterday and asked me to follow him into an empty meeting room. To his credit, he looked vaugely ashamed of himself as he sheepishly asked me to please avoid using the executive toilet in my area, and instead walk to the receptionist in front and ask her for the key to use the regular washroom on the other side of the building. As no one had mentioned to me that there was an issue with me using it before, I did my best to bite back my defensiveness.

I couldn't hide the slight edge to my voice, though, when he apologized again and I replied, "Yeah, well I'm sure it's kind of tough for you to have to tell somebody where they can and can't go to the bathroom."