6:56 PM - 27.08.04
Coda II
I was home sick yesterday, dear diary - you guessed, right. Frustrated me no end. I don't like my work circumstances one little bit, but I'd like to think the time I have away from there is for pleasant things - or at least useful ones. Yesterday my knees hit the floor just after my feet did. Years ago, my body operated on the principle of solar energy. You know - a little bit of daylight and I could run forever. Just keep that sun shining, and in Calgary it shines a lot even at -30 below F/C, and the body would always be able to perform. These days it works more on the principle of a storage battery - still rechargeable - but man, let it get run down even a little and it feels like someone drained the entire energy pool. I keep thinking one day my body and me will get the quantum thing figured out and then the energy thing will be a moot point. Catch up with the mind - right? Right now the storage battery is a dominant issue though and it demands it's due no matter what else I do.
I started reading the "Book of Q" by Jonathan Rabb. It is well written, but it gave me a bit of a jolt too. When I was volunteering with Amnesty International and the Red Cross Survivors of Torture program, a group of us were asked to help interview and record the testimony of refugees from Bosnia. Specifically the ones who survived the concentration camp at Omarska. This writer had done his homework and the descriptions resurrected a lot of guilt and grief. Guilt that I couldn't do much to help at the time - it was when my marriage was in it's death throes - and grief that nothing has changed much in war. Inhuman abuse, but only humans engage in it. A lot of the torturers not only unrepentant, but angry and threatening yet. Members of our group and our city council received some pretty frightening calls. The worst of it was that we already knew what some of these people had done; they were capable and willing to continue on. The story line was compelling - the roots and development of Christianity from another perspective - but I needed to put the book aside until my frame of mind was better.
I think the Pluto transit that is directly squaring (challenging) my natal Moon in Pisces (emotions and intuition) is stirring up a lot of that unresolved angst. Echoes of that in the Iraqi conflict. Hearing some news report and knowing a lot more of what is really happening than is being said. At work there are issues being retriggered and that might be driving the energy drain on a subconscious level too. You see, my ex experienced quite a bit of abuse as a child - very traumatic events some of them. Around the anniversary dates of the occasions, he would try to reclaim his autonomy or control over the anguish by recreating the same circumstances only with him as the perpetrator instead of the victim. It was a phenomenon that we explored extensively in the survivor of torture training and some of the family therapy work I did as a volunteer. I witnessed the behaviour over and over again in a number of situations, including the relationship I had with the woman from the Middle East I was assigned to work with in the Red Cross program. It is nearly impossible to describe all the things I learned from working with a survivor in those circumstances.
When the boys' Dad would feel the emotions surfacing each time - about quarterly - he would create chaotic and abusive situations that would mimic the traumas he had experienced. He would try to force the rest of the people in his life at the time - especially me - into either the role of victim or rescuer, more often both. The rage would explode unaccountably and unpredictably - each episode always with unforseen variations that made defending against or protecting from them almost impossible. When I am in a situation now where I can feel something brewing below the surface, and where there appears to be a lot of manipulation, secrecy and underhandedness occurring, it can trigger my unconscious defence mechanisms. They remain very active until I can figure out what is happening or can leave the circumstances all together. They were triggered big time in June during the election and they have been the past few weeks - Pluto Square Moon transits. One of the most common reflex actions my body has is to get physically sick. I think that was because it brought other people into my home without having to explain why they were needed there. For example, my mom, the Scorpio, would come and help me care for the boys. My ex was afraid of Scorpios even when he wasn't aware of their birthdays - it's that aura they give off you know, scares me too sometimes. It brought the family doctor into the picture too. The family doctor had looked after my ex since he was a little boy. He was one of the few people who my ex really respected and he cared about how the doctor perceived him. It wasn't a conscious choice to become sick, but I think the body knew that the illness that manifested was less damaging to it than the alternative. It would usually take the form of some female disorder - I would hemhorrage uncontrollably,cysts would develop... that sort of thing. Mind, body connection is what people like Edgar Cayce and Deepak Chopra call it. I really can't articulate what the body already knows is happening at work. When I can make that information conscious, then I will be able to cope more appropriately. It's been many years since that particular defence has been triggered and that has thrown me for quite a loop.
Today I went in to work, but called my supervisor hopig we could go over some of what I can discern happening. He called just befor lunch and said he was swamped. I said I would send an e-mail over the weekend. That way it will give him time to think about what I need to tell him. It will also force me to be more rational about what I'm seeing; hopefully without rationalizing the behaviours. I wouldn't be getting sick if there wasn't something really wrong either.
Started back working on what I'd had out Wednesday evening. The brother called - from home I think - and asked if I could track down some documents for him. One of the scientists had asked him for them late in the afternoon the day before and he couldn't find them anywhere. He recalled the other scientist who had given them to him and the fact that we had worked with the information a bit - there were problems with it. He was certain I had handled it last, but I hadn't because I keep a written record of any file I work on. This type of incident is why. I checked in all the likely and unlikely places that were feasible and still couldn't track it down. I went to the scientist who had requested it to see how critically she needed it - determined what degree of effort went into the next phase of the search you see. She said it was very serious. At that point the scientist who had originally given the file to the brother walked into the office. He had been asked the day before if he had taken it and he had declared he hadn't. He started to splutter like a roman candle going off. Being very critical of the brother for losing it. I just let him blow a bit then noted that the brother was one of the most meticulous people I'd worked with - he wouldn't have "lost or "misplaced" it. The female scientist asked if he was certain that he hadn't retrieved it for some other work he needed to do and the scientist, who was near full froth, acknowledged that he did have two files on his credenza. He pulled them out to "prove" he couldn't possibly have them and ....... la voila, the very file in question. The female scientist laughed, picked it up and batted him with it - lightly of course. I just chuckled and went back to my own work. Typical in the offices I work in - typical male too. I've raised sons like him who can't find their feet somedays. The brother arrived shortly after and was very relieved, he was really beating himself up for losing the darn thing. He got the lecture "office document management" 101 - theory versus reality. "Lost files are almost always on someone's desk - usually the person who says they are certain they brought it back. In one office I know about, one lawyer used to use other lawyers' case files to prop up the broken leg on his desk. Latent hostility, don't you think?
Tried to go back to what I was working on - that had been the critical work when I left on Wednesday - when the brother came back again. He had a crisis, in that he had to have a shipment ready to go - about 20 boxes - and he didn't even have half of that prepared. Pick up before noon, non-negotiable - could I help him. Yes of course. Whatever is the priority of the moment. Flexible is my middle name after all, it comes after eccentric, autonomous, independent and unpredictable as my favorite middle names. Changeable sums it up pretty well. " Not like the moon, the inconstant moon ..." Romeo and Juliet. Never mind. The courier arrived about half past noon and we gave him a full shipment to take back with him. I had half an hour left for lunch and had been itching to go to the music/video store with the big sales on. I figured keeping it to half an hour would mean I wouldn't spend too much. Right - retail therapy took me over, I wasn't myself, honest. You see all the music on sale was, well, for old(er) and young(er) people - like me and my grandbabies. I was saving money on Christmas shopping. Hmmmmmmm, well it sounded good at the time. So did the music "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" - "Coming Through the Air Tonight". "All wrapped up in the Secrets of NIMH".
When I got back priorities had shifted again, but even the brother just wasn't sure what they were or how he wanted them organized. I'm still not doing any of the work I was hired to do but "it's the software" you know. Uh huh. Besides that I'm not all that thrilled with the work I was hired to do so I'm not that fussed either. He asked me to clean up a massive 50 lb (no exaggeration) mound of paper all pertinent to one property. What he meant was sift through and pitch duplicate copies. What I heard was clean up the problems. I think he assumed there would be no problems. One thing I can't do is ignore due diligence issues. The phrase "I was only doing what I was told to do" went cold on me the first time I read about torture in Nazi concentration camps back when I was still in elementary school. You might not be able to change the world or fight every bad thing going on, but you don't have the right to help it along by doing nothing or by continuing a practice because a "superior" said so. In democracies we are all peers - good citizens all, remember? Anyway the brother was quite annoyed with me for paying attention to anything but the duplicates issue and he let me know that quite forcefully. He must have gone and discussed it with his sister though, because he returned and changed gears again. "We'll use this as a prototype or an audit to see if our service provider is doing the job we asked them to". They aren't. Just one mound of paper, but I've already gone through three containers of Flags (coloured stickers that can be used to mark pages one wants to find quickly) with about 67% of the volumes assessed. Uh huh.
Anyway, dear diary, my youngest son returned home last night to the unending joy of the cats and me so I guess I'd better go spend some time with him before one of us falls asleep. Good night.
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