War cry

Eli took a long shower. He turned on his music very loud. Very very loud. I yelled at him from the top of the stairs. No reply. I yelled at him from the bottom of the stairs. Again, no reply. I knocked on his partly opened door and as he turned to me, wearing only a white towel wrapped around his waist and bending over to do something with his feet or his ankles, yelled at him from there. Yelled at him to turn the music down.

I didn’t really have to yell at him from there, I suppose. Its uncomfortable walking up behind someone’s back who doesn’t know you’re there and you don’t even know where they are exactly but just see them all of a sudden, because he could have been in his other room. And they’re barely dressed.

It would be different if I was a hunter. Eli is a kind of hunter. He’s in the military reserves and goes out on weekends to do war games exercises. When he comes home he’s always barely slept and talks excitedly in a loud voice.

I like turning up the music loud too sometimes. When Eli does it, downstairs, in his apartment, so you can hear it all over the house, it makes me think of some kind of war cry to scare your enemy. Like you know how the bagpipe music of the Scots was supposed to put fear into the hearts of its enemies. Except for me personally bagpipe music gives me a chill, but not the scary kind, and makes the back of my head tingle. Like in recognition.

The dynamics of this situation suggests to me that if you’re a warrior emitting, in whatever form, your battle cry you should be careful to not get so caught up in the miraculous and scary power of your cry that you forget that your deafening sounds provide an excellent opportunity for your enemy to use it as a cover and to stealthily attack you from behind.

Ships at sea

Most days during the week I work at a government call centre for Canada Pension and Old Age Security. My desk is dark. A woman came by I trained with and observed I have a lot of yellow sticky notes up. That’s what she noticed about my desk space. It’s funny when people notice things about you, you didn’t realize.

Some of the sticky notes actually say the same things because one of the programs we run is enormous and archaic and I hardly ever use it unless I have to so sometimes I accidently put up a sticky note I already put up before, not being able to find the original among the copious sticky notes I already put up. I have a helpful attitude towards myself even if I’m not always able to take myself up on it.

The other service agents and I have a lot of different programs running at the same time for looking up different things. I actually feel fairly magnificent running all these programs at the same time, like a captain of a large sailing ship at sea. Even if the person in the cubicle right beside me on the other side of separating wall between us is sailing her own magnificent galleon too. And even if we really were on ships they could collide and make a big mess at sea and everyone would drown in the high rolling waves.

Before I got the person who’s sitting beside me now I had a really mean person. She was really ugly too. If I was eating food she didn’t like the smell of she would go and tell my supervisor and not even say anything to me first. She could hear me chewing gum through the partition and told me to stop but then when I forgot that her step-mother said chewing gum is disgusting and not for ladies.

I don’t know why she told me it was her step-mother because that completely gave away probably why she was so mean, because she hadn’t had a proper mother-bond when she was growing up. Then at Christmas she gave me a Christmas card that included her husband’s, her dog’s and her fish’s name showing her friendly and unique side. She was laughing about the adorable interestingness of herself and her signing her fish’s name to the lady on the other side of her cubicle who’d she’d known for a long time and who was nice to her maybe because she was used to her, and to me at the same time. The mood was festive. It was thoughtful of her to give me the card. But I still couldn’t figure out with her whether I was coming or going.

Then it was her who was going. I was glad but didn’t gloat when I stood up to go to the bathroom or on break and was able to look directly down into her area. She decided to leave for a short term placement in another office for a change. It’s not that she told me personally. A team email from my supervisor advised me of the change. Usually I don’t complain about people but I did about her. I told my friends who I eat lunch with in the call centre how mean she was and they looked at her and declared that just by looking at her they could see it too.

When the new person moved in she asked if I would please try seeing how I liked it having the overhead light turned out because she would like to have them out. I said I’d try. They’re regular overhead fluorescent office lights. Then, phew, the second they turned the overhead light off I felt such a relief. So, I said, no problem, let’s leave them out. Perhaps the new person instantly liked me but that’s not why I did it. I did it because it felt so much better. I have no regrets even if it is darker. I have a light right at my desk too which I can turn on. To make it brighter, ideally what I could do is try to get a seat at the end of one of the cubicle rows near a window. Then, it wouldn’t be stressful fluorescent type. It would be natural sunlight. But I wouldn’t want to ask to move because I wouldn’t know who I’d be sitting beside if they moved me. I might get someone awful again.

Since ours is the phone line for pensioners we get a lot of calls from elderly people. Last Thursday, after I helped one - a lady - over the phone with a problem she was having, she said, bless your heart. It’s not the first time. My posture straightens and my heart feels all light and aglow when it gets blessed.