Been an odd workday, really. The 2200 festive Microserfs weren't that bad, and I was far away from the madness of their sheer numbers. My delve into the insanity was from the forethought. The middle of the workday was actually pretty interesting, but it was the caps... I started with someone angry at me and ended with someone angry at me, both times seemingly as an easy target for what I've guessed were started much further back than me, and just came together focused on me.
I have one of those time-bending waits for the bus I transfer from the crosstown, to get to Bellevue, being the beginning/end of the its route. The chilly weather means it's hard to read or do something beyond stand there and be cold, right now. This last evening, I was waiting, when the apartment building's fire alarm goes off, being likely a false alarm. The tenants file slowly and unhappily out of their tiny, but warm apartments (studios and mini-studios) onto the sidewalks. A large fellow, with mate and baby in tow, comes out, himself carrying a Pit Bull mix puppy of some sorts. A very handsome hound, I thought, and spent a little zone-out time admiring the pup. Which the man takes as staring at him, and my earmuffs dull the sound of his unhappy query on that believed fact. To put it civilly. He makes some less than honorable gestures, and I yell about the alarms and street noise that I am watching his dog. At which he takes further umbrage, awaiting (and I believing hoping) I will say something defamatory. The bus pulled up, and that was that. But I easily imagine there could have been a less peaceable end to that thing.
The end of my shift brought my relief, an officer I had never met before, some five minutes past the hour of that end, to leave me a scant eight or so minutes to get to central command, perform my sign-out duties, and still make it to the bus stop. I failed to do some small duty with labelling some keys out, which he wanted me to do right then and now, and even though when asked, I knew exactly who had them. I told him I had to make this bus. This is the only morning I have this constriction, usually I have more time than I know what to do with. I had already felt this was a man who came in angry at something, and would take little mind of what I said, and not be very willing to acknowledge that this would be a non-issue if he was at post on time, or earlier, and I was right. Next thing I know he is shouting furiously at me, as I leave. If anything the whole last job fiasco taught me, what I think makes sense, and what another worker thinks makes sense, and what is actually sensible, are like three drunk swordsmen in a pitch-black room. I'm sure I won't hear the last of this, even though whatever anger he had was probably born long before this, in the treatment by other workers, and other unknown life conditions. I just happened to be the trigger. Whatever my fault in the escalation, the escalation wasn't mine to start, nor probably to finish.
This kind of awareness of causality is driving me pretty nuts. But this is it, I guess.. What the now is about, what truth I need to learn about now, before I toss that truth aside and find the next one necessary to keep moving. D told me the other night how I am the kind of guy who looks for the meaning of meanings, who deals in universals... and yeah, It's true. But more I look, the more I wonder if I'm myself focusing too much on some solid state of meaning that can never exist by itself, as every effect is simply another cause and vice versa, and focus on how it works together over why it works together. Something for me to think about. Or look at.
Okay. Bed.
I have one of those time-bending waits for the bus I transfer from the crosstown, to get to Bellevue, being the beginning/end of the its route. The chilly weather means it's hard to read or do something beyond stand there and be cold, right now. This last evening, I was waiting, when the apartment building's fire alarm goes off, being likely a false alarm. The tenants file slowly and unhappily out of their tiny, but warm apartments (studios and mini-studios) onto the sidewalks. A large fellow, with mate and baby in tow, comes out, himself carrying a Pit Bull mix puppy of some sorts. A very handsome hound, I thought, and spent a little zone-out time admiring the pup. Which the man takes as staring at him, and my earmuffs dull the sound of his unhappy query on that believed fact. To put it civilly. He makes some less than honorable gestures, and I yell about the alarms and street noise that I am watching his dog. At which he takes further umbrage, awaiting (and I believing hoping) I will say something defamatory. The bus pulled up, and that was that. But I easily imagine there could have been a less peaceable end to that thing.
The end of my shift brought my relief, an officer I had never met before, some five minutes past the hour of that end, to leave me a scant eight or so minutes to get to central command, perform my sign-out duties, and still make it to the bus stop. I failed to do some small duty with labelling some keys out, which he wanted me to do right then and now, and even though when asked, I knew exactly who had them. I told him I had to make this bus. This is the only morning I have this constriction, usually I have more time than I know what to do with. I had already felt this was a man who came in angry at something, and would take little mind of what I said, and not be very willing to acknowledge that this would be a non-issue if he was at post on time, or earlier, and I was right. Next thing I know he is shouting furiously at me, as I leave. If anything the whole last job fiasco taught me, what I think makes sense, and what another worker thinks makes sense, and what is actually sensible, are like three drunk swordsmen in a pitch-black room. I'm sure I won't hear the last of this, even though whatever anger he had was probably born long before this, in the treatment by other workers, and other unknown life conditions. I just happened to be the trigger. Whatever my fault in the escalation, the escalation wasn't mine to start, nor probably to finish.
This kind of awareness of causality is driving me pretty nuts. But this is it, I guess.. What the now is about, what truth I need to learn about now, before I toss that truth aside and find the next one necessary to keep moving. D told me the other night how I am the kind of guy who looks for the meaning of meanings, who deals in universals... and yeah, It's true. But more I look, the more I wonder if I'm myself focusing too much on some solid state of meaning that can never exist by itself, as every effect is simply another cause and vice versa, and focus on how it works together over why it works together. Something for me to think about. Or look at.
Okay. Bed.
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