Running Across The George Washington Bridge in A Thunderstorm

So at work today, I get this email from the building management that we're supposed to get this killer storm, and to stay away from the windows and such.  My boss and I are like 'Yah.  They always talk a good talk but it never happens"

Fast forward to tonight.  I finally FINALLY get my ass into some shorts to go for a run.  I've only been running like, three times this year.  Pathetic.  So despite the heat and mugginess, I decide it's do or die time.  I start out in my neighborhood heading out in my usual direction, either gonna go up to Fort Tryon or down to the River Walk, but as I'm passing the entrance to the GW Bridge I think "hmmm, maybe the walkway's open."  A cyclist appears to be just coming off the bridge and I yell "Is it open?" and he nods, affirmative!

I've never crossed the GW on foot.  I have been wanting to do this since I heard about it a couple weeks ago.  Alright!  I start my little run up the ramp and onto the bridge.  It's a tough start for my rusty respiratory, but I'm totally into this.  On the bridge proper there is a nice, strong breeze.  The sky is a little dark for this time of day at this time of year, but I just figure it's getting near sunset.  The closer I get to the New Jersey side, however, the darker the sky to the north is getting.  There're some pretty good roiling clouds gathering up there as well.  By the time I turn to head back I see the vista at the north end of the river is deep slate blue, and there are some good, black clouds hanging in the sky.  I'm hoping to see some lightning off in the distance.  The clouds are shifting, gathering closer to the bridge and overhead.  There's a big dark roiling sky overhead, and the wind is picking up.  I love storms!  This is getting exciting.  

The sky has gathered on the Jersey side and the cloud area is growing in size and darkness.  The wind has got a cold edge to it, and there are flashes behind some of the buildings to the southwest.  I'm alternately running backwards to watch the light show and jogging towards Manhattan.  It might be a good idea to be off of the bridge when this storm picks up strength.  Just after I pass under the Manhattan side tower, I feel some light drops on my skin.  The lightning is getting more defined behind me.  I still don't hear any thunder yet though.

I see two women starting to head across the bridge with a stroller.  I'm about to suggest they turn back, but they've already made that decision.  Good choice.  As I start down the bridge access ramp, the rain picks up.  The sky is dark all around now, and there are big, fat drops of rain falling.  I keep thinking it might be hail, but it's just big rain.  The lightning is starting to spread north and south of where it was, and I catch a couple of bolts striking.  I stop on the ramp to watch for a minute, but self preservation has me heading off the ramp towards safety.

As I turn on to my street, the sky opens and the wind picks up, bending the tops of trees over.  I hold out where I can still see the Pallisades so I can keep watching the lightning.  Bolts are shooting down behind the north side of the bridge now, and still on the Jersey side.  I see a few particularly striking bolts (haha  I'm punny) and decide to head back to my building.

Later, in my room looking out at the storm, I see a couple really good strikes.  What a great storm.  I've pretty much forgotten about the run, at this point, and all the calisthenics and stretching  I was gonna do when I got back.  But at least I got the run in, and I'm back on track.  Tomorrow I might even do my situps.

Believe

Whadyacallit?  What do you call it?  That waking nightmare feeling that's not a surprise or a shock kind of fear, but a low lying, persistent dread?  That dark, dark, place where you feel completely exposed without any defense against the worst from other people.

Yah, it's been one of those days.  Ya know, there's some residue from my childhood.  Sometimes I wonder if it is nurture or if it's some left over past-life memory.  I remember reading somewhere that when children have irrational fears that it could be carry-over from past lives.  One of the cases was a girl who was afraid of the shower.  Supposedly she'd been gassed in a Nazi concentration camp.  Her parents had to reassure her she wouldn't die in the shower.  I don't know if I believe in reincarnation, I tend to think I don't, but it does make me wonder.

I have a hard time believing that I've experienced this level of panic and terror in real life, although I know there were experiences I had as a child that would warrant it.  I know I don't experience it in the paralyzing way I did in my twenties.  I have much more distance from it.

But today, today was a new experience all together.  As is often the case, and my most challenging pattern, my deepest crisis of emotion is brought on by unfair treatment at work.  I know it's a reenactment of familial dynamics.  Unfortunately for me, I believe in that school of psychology that says you recreate your family relationships in your adult life.  I'm also of the school that you create your reality with what you believe and this belief is hanging on tenaciously.  Fifteen plus years of cognitive therapy has helped to lessen the hold and to move me up and to the outer rim of this spiral but it's still intense.

When I started this job I had great hope that it would be a great job.  I've wanted to work at this place since I moved back to the city and the orientation made me believe it could be what I thought it was.  I believed.  I believed that the philosophy of conviviality was true, that it was practiced by all who were employed here.  I don't know if I will ever be able to be a cynic.  I don't think I have that gene.

It didn't take long for things to devolve.  I was still operating from a belief in the employee manual ( I'm such a FOOL!) while people were demonstrating all around me that I was not over the rainbow and the Wicked Witch of the West was in charge here.  It took me about a week to start seeing the truth.  Even when I saw what was happening, I didn't accept it.  I fought against it.  Surprise, surprise, that didn't help.

I worked in other stores for this company and found that my store was the a highly dysfunctional one.  Many of the other stores I worked in not only had people who followed the rules, didn't steal and cheat, but had lovely, welcoming employees who were kind, and professional, and friendly.  I requested a transfer.  It didn't come through.  So, I tried to tough it out.

One day, after having been written up for someone else's lack of follow through the day before, I tried to call in sick.  The MOD talked me into coming in.

I gave away my upcoming shifts and  called all my temp agencies to see if there was any work available.

Three days later, I landed an assignment for a full time gig.  I decided to see if that would take some of the pressure of at the other job; see if I could stick it out.  I agreed to be kept on the schedule for weekends.

So I went in today with the attitude that I would try to let things roll off me.  That worked really well for most of the day.  Near the end of my shift a manager made some bad choices that were blatantly unfair.  I didn't react.  I stayed professional and friendly and finished my shift and gave my notice.

After all that practicing non-reaction and staying calm in the storm I thought I had made some progress with this pattern.  As soon as I gave my notice something happened.  Some switch was thrown in me and I just became overwhelmingly angry.  It's staying with me.  I keep practicing non-attachment, and I do get some distance from it, but I'm also feeling as though my soul got sucked out of me.  I go back and forth between feeling flattened by the drama and being completely detached from it.

I have just had the wonderful realization that the feeling I feel when detached from the drama is one of joy.  Underneath all of this fear is joy.

So bottom line, giving my notice was absolutely the right  thing to do.  Do you struggle with this;  with the question of whether to tough things out because you think you will grow from it or to walk away because no one should have to suffer that kind of ill treatment?

More and more I believe, pigheadedly and adamantly, the latter.  Does this mean I'm going to end up one of those homeless ladies, waddling down the street, my shopping cart overflowing with plastic bags full of mysterious items, mumbling to myself and lecturing people and swearing?  Or does this mean I'm changing my beliefs, and am going to steer myself towards employment where I'm surrounded by at least semi-reasonable people who don't have a need to treat others unkindly.

So far the office I'm in seems mellow.  It doesn't matter though.  I'm going to believe.  Let's see where that takes me.

Because Thunderstorms are Never Intense Enough

It's after 3:00pm and the storm's not here yet.  From what I can find online, it's not anywhere, and I am deeply disappointed.  I felt a bright excitement this morning when my friend put up a post that we were in for real weather, a drastic and fast moving cold front that would create lightning! and crazy winds! and Hail!.  I have spent the better part of the day trying to track the storm, but I have been hard pressed to find any evidence of its existence.   Part of me is still holding out hope for something spectacular with a darkening sky and air that turns green, gale force winds, deafening cracks of thunder and crisp bolts of lightning (with no accompanying damage, of course).  The view out the windows of this nineteenth floor office is of other office windows.  I can tell by the light that it is not a clear day, and there is a slight tint of color to the air, but it's not that threatening pre-storm darkness I want.  Didn't I read once that pre-storm air is charged with negative ions?  I seek the thrill of that intense electricity that I liken to the energy that travels between two lustful lovers.

I'm being stood up by the storm.  I put on my best dress and did up my hair special just for you, cold-front-moving-in-fast-and -thrilling.  Now I'm left standing on the corner looking bewildered and wondering if there were some miscommunication.  Maybe I got the day wrong, or the time.  Maybe I imagined the whole thing.  Yes, that must be it.  It was a dream i took for reality.

You know, that's really it, right there; my life in a nutshell.   A dream I mistook for reality.  Since I was fifteen I've had no direction.  I've had aspirations and plans, but nothing that ever felt sure, known.  Don't you, and most of the world's inhabitants, have a strong sense of heading down the right path?  Aren't you drawn by some sense of destiny, some strong inclination towards what you know in your heart you're supposed to be doing?  Don't most of us think that about each other?

I'm not sure why 'since I was fifteen'; I just remember thinking one day that I had no idea of my life after fifteen.  Not, 'I have no idea what my life will be like" after fifteen, just, 'I have no idea of a life after fifteen".

Now here I am at this advanced age on the other end of the time line and I still don't have any idea of my life, except for that one really big thing, my daughter.  But her life is her's and not a definition of mine.  Mine is still shapeless and behaving like water, taking the shape of whatever container it ends up in.

I thought it would be so much more exciting.  Or did I?  A part of me daydreamed about Cinderella gowns and truelove and an exciting life on the stage, but it was never a waking, conscientious, material thing I could grasp.  Or even had a consciousness of grasping.  Only now do I have an awareness that I can want those things in a concrete, material way.  Sure, I took steps toward the direction of where  my desires lived, but I don't think I had an eye towards trying to bushwack my way onto the actual path. 

And now, I tell myself I'm tired.  I suspect I am overwhelmed by my life.  By the seeming stagnant nature of it.  It's like a pond that is fed by a stream, but so overrun with algae that you can't see where the tributary is.  There has been some movement.  You can sense that.  But there is no real shift of the larger body of water.  The algae stays and grows, absorbing all the light, feeding on it and jamming up the pond, inhibiting further movement .

Some rumbling has started.  And the sky outside these windows is darkening.  !!! Excitement!  and thunder!! Finally.  There are free falling sheets of rain, and bolts of lightning followed by slamming claps of thunder.  The wind is shoving the rain sideways.  Now THIS is a storm!

Maybe - all I have to do is be patient.  Maybe- if I wait long enough, my own storm will roll into port and my life will be the thrilling ride it is meant to be.  I suspect, unlike a fast moving cold front, I may have to make my own storm happen.  Is that the case?  Or do our lives unfold according to some unknown plan, some destiny.  Can I? just wait for my own storm to roll in?  I guess we'll all just have to wait and see.

The first time

I've finally done it; jumped on the blog bandwagon.  Woohoo!  The first thing I'm going to do is tell you who Bug is.  Bug is my daughter.  And that's her nickname. And I know you're not supposed to start a sentence with 'and'.  Or but.  And that was an incomplete phrase hanging participle.  But I don't care.
All you grammar police better put your lazer x-ray vision glasses on because I consider myself the grammar police chief, and like so many in political positions, tend to believe I'm right whether I can back it up with facts or not.  For instance, I'm pretty sure some of you are thinking I need a comma there, after 'facts', but you're wrong.  However, it would be less awkward and cause less discussion if I had just written "...whether or not I can back it up with facts."  So let's just move on.
This is an ominous beginning to my blogging career.  I  don't usually ramble so voraciously.   I am usually much more economical with my words.  Please accept my humble apology, keep reading, and know that future entries will be thrillingly concise, articulate and eloquent.  Also, because you are experiencing my manic side, those anticipated well-controlled, graceful articles will be all the more of a thrill for you.

In light of the recent You Tube channel I've discovered where a lovely young man uses the language with ridiculous grace, skill and panache, to the effect that I laugh out loud, literally, I am slightly embarrassed that I'm allowing myself to continue this apparently chronic case of oral diarrhea.

Perhaps it is a reflection of the unfortunate case I am suffering because Fairway Market decided to add mushrooms to their Beef Shepherds pie without any warning.  Unfair.  Downright Cruel.  One of my small pleasures taken away by some indulgent chef.  Fooey!  of Phooey, if you're picky. Yes, I am allergic, or at the least intolerant, of mushrooms.  And soy too.  So if you're looking to exact revenge on me, those are two sure-fire weapons to keep me weak and indisposed.

Fortunately, I have landed a new temp job that requires no more of me than that I fill a chair, provide a pleasant appearance and occasionally answer the telephone when it rings.  Consequently, I needn't tax myself while I get over this mushroom problem.  I get to write, too.  I'd say this is a pretty ideal gig, if I forget that it's not a starring role in Chicago on Broadway and remember that all things are relative.

I pledge allegiance, to my integrity, so that you, dear reader, may suffer not the indulgences of my mania when it hits.  I don't know.  Maybe you'd prefer the indulgences of my mania.  I just have this idea (and what pesky little demons those can be; ideas) that it would be more conscientious, more serious, more kind to you if I were to take the time to write something thoughtful; something deep and contemplative and stirring.

Look for that.  Here.  Soon.