Purgatory I
i have some reservations about using a blog as an acceptable venue for a catharsis. i mean, who really wants to hear it? But then i think, who cares? There are things i'd love to get to talk to another human about, but that don't fit cleanly into any conversation; things i forget to bring up or don't know how to bring up, but that haunt my closed eyes and tear me down. And nobody actually reads this stuff, yet it feels like they do; there's at least a potential and that could only be warmer and fuzzier than my stoic journal. Enough poesy... on with the sackcloth and ashes.
Yesterday evening it was demonstrated to me what a jaded, cynical hateful creature i have become. i was driving to work as usual and, as usual, was trajecting for a time of arrival that would really require me to be driving a time-machine or an invisible ferrari instead of my low-geared four-banger in order to make it on time. The parking structure and the entrance thereto have for me a conch-like configuration beginning with a left at a light off of the main street followed closely by another irritatingly long series of lefts until one is parked. There's a 5 mph speed limit through the whole affair and, since it's a hospital, a conservative 90% of the people wishing to populate the garage haven't even a muddy suspicion of where they're going.
On this particular Monday evening i fell in behind the quintessential blue-hair-mobile: some sort of old-school amorphous, ill-maintained Town-Car looking ride. First, the cat looks to be taking a right isntead of a left and i sigh out some relief. Only he corrects at the last moment and cuts me off. Next it's time to turn into the garage proper and he overshoots; the huge sign and arrow aren't-- as it turns out-- huge enough. Again i find my happy place and cut in short thinking he's going straight, but he turns wide and, rather than T-bone him, i back off; problem is there's a car coming in the other lane and i find a preference within me to not die at that moment. As he musters the reserves to accelerate his pokey arse into the entrance bottleneck, i become his bumper sticker in an effort to forego having my life flash before my eyes (there are some things i'd prefer not to have replayed). Then he stops. This burly, fat chollo gets out of his car and starts cursing at me. "You wanna ride my ass you ---------censor-----------You want me to come kick your--------blah, blah, etc."
So i'm having a you-gotta-be-kiddin'-me moment. i am, in general, very poor at handling those sorts of things. i'm never prepared. Don't even know how to be prepared; i'm pretty non-confrontational even when i'm practicing in front of the mirror. Anyway, i stared at him with a squinty confused look on until it sank in. Then i put my hands over my mouth and got wide-eyed in my best mock-up of terror and finally broke out in a big grin. Here's where the confessional part of the story starts. i leaned out the window smiling at him 'till he shut it off for a breath and i said something like, "Would you just go." And he did. Slowly. That's not to say that i intimidated him whatsoever, nor even that i gave it a good try. Only, i very much wanted him to keep it up. i wanted him to get in my face. All but the nicest fibers of my being wanted to break him and to keep breaking him 'till there was nothing interestingly chunky enough left to bother about breaking. For that moment i loathed the flabby braying donkey spewing before me. i hated him.
He drove 2 for as long as he could manage it, until i could slice through some unoccupied spaces and cut him off. i actually got to work a few minutes early and began trying to get a grip on why he would have been so venomous and what a correct reaction might have been under the circumstances by summoning the scene for some of my co-workers. Most (i.e. the other two) reacted largely as i had. Then i told the girl i would work with for the rest of the shift. She said something like, "You know... it sounds like he has a deep spiritual sickness. He really needs prayer." That weighed something in the ballpark of my house (ca. 50 tons) and had very much the same effect on me that my house would have if it fell out of a tornado and landed on me, minus the bloody mess and foundation damage. That i could be nice to a bullying creature like that--- that his own hatefulness might just be a symptom of a darker disease--- didn't manage to occur; i was numb to that possibility. It's just that that possibility--- that it is a possibilty, that i might pray in the middle of the battle, "Father, forgive him because he doesn't know what he's doing," and then turn my eyes down--- is the flesh and blood of the Christianity i pretend to be trying to live.
i guess it wouldn't fit in with a quasi-humerous posting to go into how empty i felt and feel. It just wasn't very funny.
Yesterday evening it was demonstrated to me what a jaded, cynical hateful creature i have become. i was driving to work as usual and, as usual, was trajecting for a time of arrival that would really require me to be driving a time-machine or an invisible ferrari instead of my low-geared four-banger in order to make it on time. The parking structure and the entrance thereto have for me a conch-like configuration beginning with a left at a light off of the main street followed closely by another irritatingly long series of lefts until one is parked. There's a 5 mph speed limit through the whole affair and, since it's a hospital, a conservative 90% of the people wishing to populate the garage haven't even a muddy suspicion of where they're going.
On this particular Monday evening i fell in behind the quintessential blue-hair-mobile: some sort of old-school amorphous, ill-maintained Town-Car looking ride. First, the cat looks to be taking a right isntead of a left and i sigh out some relief. Only he corrects at the last moment and cuts me off. Next it's time to turn into the garage proper and he overshoots; the huge sign and arrow aren't-- as it turns out-- huge enough. Again i find my happy place and cut in short thinking he's going straight, but he turns wide and, rather than T-bone him, i back off; problem is there's a car coming in the other lane and i find a preference within me to not die at that moment. As he musters the reserves to accelerate his pokey arse into the entrance bottleneck, i become his bumper sticker in an effort to forego having my life flash before my eyes (there are some things i'd prefer not to have replayed). Then he stops. This burly, fat chollo gets out of his car and starts cursing at me. "You wanna ride my ass you ---------censor-----------You want me to come kick your--------blah, blah, etc."
So i'm having a you-gotta-be-kiddin'-me moment. i am, in general, very poor at handling those sorts of things. i'm never prepared. Don't even know how to be prepared; i'm pretty non-confrontational even when i'm practicing in front of the mirror. Anyway, i stared at him with a squinty confused look on until it sank in. Then i put my hands over my mouth and got wide-eyed in my best mock-up of terror and finally broke out in a big grin. Here's where the confessional part of the story starts. i leaned out the window smiling at him 'till he shut it off for a breath and i said something like, "Would you just go." And he did. Slowly. That's not to say that i intimidated him whatsoever, nor even that i gave it a good try. Only, i very much wanted him to keep it up. i wanted him to get in my face. All but the nicest fibers of my being wanted to break him and to keep breaking him 'till there was nothing interestingly chunky enough left to bother about breaking. For that moment i loathed the flabby braying donkey spewing before me. i hated him.
He drove 2 for as long as he could manage it, until i could slice through some unoccupied spaces and cut him off. i actually got to work a few minutes early and began trying to get a grip on why he would have been so venomous and what a correct reaction might have been under the circumstances by summoning the scene for some of my co-workers. Most (i.e. the other two) reacted largely as i had. Then i told the girl i would work with for the rest of the shift. She said something like, "You know... it sounds like he has a deep spiritual sickness. He really needs prayer." That weighed something in the ballpark of my house (ca. 50 tons) and had very much the same effect on me that my house would have if it fell out of a tornado and landed on me, minus the bloody mess and foundation damage. That i could be nice to a bullying creature like that--- that his own hatefulness might just be a symptom of a darker disease--- didn't manage to occur; i was numb to that possibility. It's just that that possibility--- that it is a possibilty, that i might pray in the middle of the battle, "Father, forgive him because he doesn't know what he's doing," and then turn my eyes down--- is the flesh and blood of the Christianity i pretend to be trying to live.
i guess it wouldn't fit in with a quasi-humerous posting to go into how empty i felt and feel. It just wasn't very funny.
posted by c at 3:53 PM
4 Comments:
oops! hehe, that post was me not John.
Well now i feel way more justified in my own reaction. Next time i'll just hop on out and beat the hell outta the whiney faggot.
This is hilarious. Laughed my arse off!
Once upon time me and BJ almost had to get out of the car and put some whoopin' on a guy with a big stick. (He had the stick.) He ran poor Linda and our women and children off the road. It was pretty ugly for a few miles. Swerving. Cussing. Dodging. Middle fingers. All I could do was thank God I had studied Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu off and on for 18 months.
:)
Hey Cody,
I have some things I'd like to ask you about but I really don't want to put it on as a comment for "others" to read.
You don't have an email in your profile but if you're willing to email me, go to my blog and email and I'll email back.
Deborah
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