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My Spiritual Adventure
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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An older couple - my age, so perhaps I should revise my definition, thinking, start referring to them as "Middle aged" or "Young", in the restaurant, she - my age, her partner a little older.
She is proofreading his novel. Is he her husband? Lover? Is she actually an editor? I have a few questions, but I'm busy enough that I have to let it pass.
And - you know, I've been here before, asked about other writer's works and forced to suffer the discomfort of their prose or ideals. But - as always, curiosity gets the better of me...
She, more than a little enthusiastic at the job ahead of her, has been waiting for just such a moment.
"It's about his spiritual journey..."
Now here I want to guffaw, this, well, isn't everyone writing about that? I mean, 20 odd years ago in Nepal I recall running into an American tourist with her hand written journal with just such the exact same title - well, "My Spiritual Journey". But, you know, I can't guffaw, it would be appalling manners, and I've opened it up and so now I get to listen...
I'm wondering who we know in common, if I should be enquiring if they know so and so or if there's any connection to some of the other more cult-like organizations around...
As my own interests have been somewhat tangent lately - specifically my podcast and audiobook listening preferences, I enquire if it's in the line of ... or ... and he's dismissive, no, no, this is a more "Advanced" spiritual practice book, not to sound snobby, but it's the companion to a earlier, more "Intermediate" book he'd written, and he's a bit abstracted, looking off, I can just take his word that he's more spiritually evolved than the average Koot. and wants to share his wisdom, and I'm enquiring with his partner if she's professionally an editor or proofreader, but, no, she's merely helping him to fact-check all the waypoints on his journey...
So, more of the colorful locals, and I'm thinking that if I'm going to improve my income I'll have to conquer my distaste for hypocrisy and set up my own brand of Imposture...
Volunteering 2
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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So it continues, because, not that I like it but I have some sort of civic obligation. And I like the people I'm working with.
It has quite literally destroyed my love of thrift shops - the donations - a never ending tide of used kitchen supplies - quality; rubbish, largely rubbish. Thrift shops are largely a dumping ground for unusable, unsaleable items. And no one - or - rarely anyone - washes their donations before bringing them in.
Everyone here is a hoarder...
I mean, who am I to talk? I know, I know. So - I'm not throwing shade, but to watch my paid partner unbox - laying aside items, he intends to price them, sell them, but he doesn't, they end up in one of several dozen boxes in the back he means to have appraised, to perhaps purchase or "up-cycle", it's hilarious, you watch his eyes and you can see the light of covetousness come on when something grabs his eye...
Another volunteer, they're all harridans, well-meaning daughters of the Church of ... asks my function - do I stage the furniture? Dress the shop?
I tell her - "Mine is more of a Cinderella role...".
My partner finds this funny.
These women, most of them volunteering to get first dibs on the best handbags, clothes, uncomfortably close to my age and so you have to be careful someone doesn't take it in their head to "set you up...".
I price shit, but I'm no authority, there's no telling, someone bought this shit once, they'll buy it again, I'm amazed, put it out and no sooner do you put it out then you walk past a shopping cart with the item in it. Why, I pluck items from the trash that my partner (the paid employee) has discarded to price and sell them - and he sees them come through the till with that de-ja-vu, there's no telling. I know quality, workmanship, what I like, but these are not indexes as to what sells.
4 hours grows long, no more a pleasure, a job, the cause, worthy, but - well, it's the necessary friction to move the wheels...
Stormy, Weeping
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The Tuesday visit, I have to bring him supplies. Pop, candy bars, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, razors...
Get swabbed, wait for the test results, masked up, in for the visit.
These visits, they're to be in the room only, there's no visiting in the common areas, the plague, here, is ongoing.
Stormy doesn't listen. He tries to lure me into the halls, wants to show me off to his friends. I decline.
He persists. Eventually a friend of his - a "girlfriend" - comes by in a wheelchair, she assures me it's fine, and I step out of his room...
Only to be told by a passing nurse that I have to remain in his room.
Back into his room. Small, generic, ugly furnishings, it's a hospital, hospice, bleak beyond measure.
We chat. There's really, for him, nothing to chat about. He wants out. He wants me to wheel him outside for a cigarette. "I can't" I tell him. It's against the rules.
He's not taking no for an answer.
He wants me to steal a vehicle, take him downtown for the day. Nope, nope, nope.
- I don't understand what it's like here, to be here, all the time, it's a prison, when am I coming next, when are we going in to town?
And this. These visits, an hour, but with the bus, the shopping, the countless trifles, tests, etc, etc, they consume a full day. And I explain to him that he'd best now start settling in, we'll go to town once a week or every other week, but it's time face facts, we're not moving in together, I've sat in on the discussions with the nurses, caregivers, doctors, I'm not dealing with his incontinence, soiled laundry thrown in the corners of the room, time now to make friends here...
At this he looks stubbornly out the window and he tears up.
I apologize. This is horrible, but - there are people here he can talk to, there's a kindly old woman that has a crush on him, there are others, and - change is tough, but - friendship has it's limits. It kills me to see him cry, but being his full-time wheelchair pusher is not a career I wanted, and he doesn't respect the courtesy of it, takes it for granted, doesn't get that it's no pleasure for me to be the arms to his caprices...
And so this is where we are at the moment...
In misery there's comfort
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Back at the restaurant, just reopened. And so familiar - and yet -
Not where I'm meant to be.
In misery there's comfort, the comfort of numbers, the joy of familiar faces disappeared over the winter, old customers, staff, of new faces - I'm 3 days a week, they've hired a new waitress. My age, maybe older, short, plump, career waitress, you can tell pretty quick she knows where her hands are and what's up. A perpetually stretched smile across a weather-beaten face, she's wintered in California, Arizona, someplace. And so you balance the familiar with the new, when it's slow - and it's always slow in April, but never fear the rush is coming up quick - I introduce her to...
Well, Ken of course. Who else. Start by telling her about the six pack of gerbils he picks up at the Superette every night, about how he's got the best supply of what's-it-called-that-date-rape drug GBH that's it and the time I was in the basement partying and I woke up with a PICKLE in my...
And so on and so forth
It's mindless, this, and I have to escape, time now to plan it, in the meantime the comfort of the other bad habits that accompany it, Vodka, Cigarettes, I'm never sure which one is going to kill me first.
Not this year.
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