Where I live is a particularly multicultural suburb. Many people from many different countries live around here and as I walk past them in the streets, with my dog, probably 75% of those people who are identifiably Asian or African give the dog a wide, wide berth.
Occasionally, it annoys me. Occasionally I take it personally, wondering just how stupid they think I am that I would walk a rabid, mangy psycho that's going to bite them as I pass.
But much of life is not rational. And much of it is seemingly irrational on the surface until you pay it some mind. Yesterday I listened to the owner of Kidslink talk about the Mozambique trip they are taking once again in July this year*. He cautioned against touching any of the animals there because they are so often diseased that it is really not worth the risk of patting a dog and contracting something life-threatening in the process.
When I was walking my dog today two young African women walked past me. One was chatting on her phone, oblivious, speaking French. The other walked such a wide berth around Lester that she walked on the road to get past. Further behind, an Asian man gave a rather less wide berth while an African man walked past, looked at me for a fleeting second and then his eyes dropped to the ground.
And I thought, I am privileged enough that I can get irritated at people that they think my dog is going to bite them. I am privileged to own a dog as a pet, companionship. My dog is immunised every year. The changes of him contracting anything to pass on to anyone is entirely minimal.
I am so privileged that I can entertain the notion of irritation towards people, presuming that their reactions are based on irrational fears rather than on very sound berths, ingrained in many of them from birth, because to go near an animal where they grew up could be the difference between life and great illness, or even life and death.
I am so privileged that I am in a position of irritation.
+++++++++++
* I am not so sure that this will be a trip I will take this year. Apart from the 5 grand cost, there is an unsettled sense I get when I think about it. Irritatingly, those senses are often startlingly good indicators of whether to go ahead with a situation or wait. Unfortunately, they are often indistinguishable from garden variety nervousness, gastroenteritis, or a reaction to last night's meal. I suppose that is what gives life its dangerous flavour :)
Nevertheless, there is a certain sense that perhaps this is something that I should think to do next year, because this year I will have other things to do. We shall see, I suppose
Showing posts with label poor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poor. Show all posts
Wise and interesting words from Mike over at The Mercy Blog today on the difference between the two.
... I didn't really watch it. It was on the TV the whole time. I looked up here and there to see fantasmagorical fireworks or cute little girls singing or men walking tightropes to light the flame. And yes it was amazing and looked wonderful etc etc but that kind of thing doesn't really do it for me. There's so much breast beating going on at these types of things that is irritating at times, but I guess big extravaganzas don't really do it for me. They're so try-hard.
Not that I am against this type of thing. I've been thinking over the last couple of weeks about my desire to continue walking somehow towards finding the same sort of freedom that Paul had - freedom in want and in plenty. Freedom from both of those things because it's not being an ascetic and it's not being wealthily comfortable that are the points - it's not a matter to me of some sort of self denial just simply for the sake of self denial (although self denial happens to be an enjoyable thing at times), and it's not a matter of flinging myself about in my comfort because I'm too scared to go out there and be without. It's not about fear on the one hand or self hatred on the other. It's about freedom to be content in whatever circumstance I find myself in simply because it's possible with enough lens cleaning.
And so I didn't feel all Judas-ey about how many millions of dollars this ceremony must have cost. Sometimes it's a good thing to spend millions of dollars, I s'pose. I don't think it's always evil, simply because there are people starving to death somewhere else in the world. And yet I guess I tend to think that often it is.
I suppose I was in a particular frame of mind too because I left work half an hour early this evening and went and bought myself a couple of tops. I'm not your standard chick, going shopping for the fun of it. I actually find shopping to be tedious and overwhelming. This was how I felt this evening after spending 50 bucks on a couple of tops - this is nothing to most people, but it feels like a lot to me. I don't like spending heaps of money on clothes. In fact, the last clothes I bought were from the op shop. I like giving abandoned things a home, even if it happens to be a skirt or a top, hehe :)
And so tonight, I bought my two tops then went into the conveniently located supermarket located right next door to Melbourne Central train station. Gee, food stuffs are geting rather expensive, are they not? Still, I am of the opinion that our food has been way too cheap, that it's only us people living on the Standard Industrialised Diet who think that food should come cheap. I might be cheap when it comes to buying clothes but I more than make up for it when it comes to buying good food and spending shitloads in the health food shop. (For example, I had run up a debt at the health food shop because Ed is a sweetheart and he knew I would pay him back. And I did, too, when I got my tax return the other day - all $482 worth of it).
So tonight in the strategically placed, convenient supermarket, as I stood in the aisle with several items I had never planned on buying (like shitake mushrooms, for example. Those bastards are expensive but I bought them to put in a recipe I am making to take to have lunch with Jane on Sunday, and so I am rationalising it away in that way :) Anyway, shitake mushrooms are so wonderfully good for you. I wouldn't call myself a foodie by any stretch, but the more well I get and the better I eat, the more I can see the direct link between how I think/feel and what's going in my gob. There really is some sort of clear-headedness and wellbeing that comes with eating well, that's for sure. But anyway, I digress slightly, and perhaps waffle (it is after all 2.29 am as I speak and I should have gone to bed at least two hours ago :)
So I left the supermarket having spend 30 bucks, along with the 50 bucks I've spent in the clothes shop. Some people routinely spend 80 bucks on not very much at all. I used to do it all the time in my earlier incarnation as the wife of an accountant but these days Susie's salary is reasonably skimpy. And I really don't mind, even though I would love two weeks' holiday away from capitalist hell and the tedium that is my job, but maybe I will just have to write something to fund it, huh? (Now there's an idea. As I mentioned to a friend the other night, maybe in this job I am actually wrting myself into a corner, literally, where the only way out of tedium is to earn a few bucks here and there writing stuff). And anyway, although I am living on far less money than I have been accustomed to, and barely enough to have any real kind of social life, I am completely utterly conscious of my rich status as compared to the rest of the world.
Painfully reminded of it as I stumbled onto platform 3 with my bags. There was a man looking into one of the rubbish bins. There was something terribly strange about him. I couldn't work out if he was blind, retarded, drunk, wasted or insane or what but there was a long stream of dribble hanging out of his mouth that I could see from 15 paces away and man, I seriously thought I was going to puke. And I walked my feet away from him because the sight of that drool hanging out of his mouth just make me want to puke. I feel sick just thinking about it. He reminded me of the small black dog that lives in my street and roams up and down. It too has a perpetual stream of slobber hanging out of its mouth but unlike this man, it gets several square meals a day.
My 80 bucks would have fed him for two weeks. The money spent on the Olympics opening ceremony could have fed all of us for the rest of our lives. But the first part was the worst. The Olympics opening ceremony didn't see this man picking around in the rubbish bin. I did. And I could have slipped him a fiver or 10 bucks, surely, even if i didn't want to do anything else, even if he made me feel like I wanted to throw up? Because sheesh, if our ugliness is the definer of whether we should receive love, then surely we are all cactus.
I don't know how to love with the love I've been given. I am developing the Buddhist mindset that says that we all have the seeds of love within us. None of us is unable to love, even though many of us don't know how to. I need to do some major watering. I think we all do, really.
(I have this weird idea that as the world gets darker and darker and zombier and zombier, that many other people are getting lighter and lighter and waking up and coming to terms and sorting their shit and I don't know what it all means, and it kinda scares me, but this blog post has already been a diarrhoeic spewing forth of about 17 posts at once, hasn't it :) I don't have enough brain that's not mush to launch into an 18th :)
Night
Not that I am against this type of thing. I've been thinking over the last couple of weeks about my desire to continue walking somehow towards finding the same sort of freedom that Paul had - freedom in want and in plenty. Freedom from both of those things because it's not being an ascetic and it's not being wealthily comfortable that are the points - it's not a matter to me of some sort of self denial just simply for the sake of self denial (although self denial happens to be an enjoyable thing at times), and it's not a matter of flinging myself about in my comfort because I'm too scared to go out there and be without. It's not about fear on the one hand or self hatred on the other. It's about freedom to be content in whatever circumstance I find myself in simply because it's possible with enough lens cleaning.
And so I didn't feel all Judas-ey about how many millions of dollars this ceremony must have cost. Sometimes it's a good thing to spend millions of dollars, I s'pose. I don't think it's always evil, simply because there are people starving to death somewhere else in the world. And yet I guess I tend to think that often it is.
I suppose I was in a particular frame of mind too because I left work half an hour early this evening and went and bought myself a couple of tops. I'm not your standard chick, going shopping for the fun of it. I actually find shopping to be tedious and overwhelming. This was how I felt this evening after spending 50 bucks on a couple of tops - this is nothing to most people, but it feels like a lot to me. I don't like spending heaps of money on clothes. In fact, the last clothes I bought were from the op shop. I like giving abandoned things a home, even if it happens to be a skirt or a top, hehe :)
And so tonight, I bought my two tops then went into the conveniently located supermarket located right next door to Melbourne Central train station. Gee, food stuffs are geting rather expensive, are they not? Still, I am of the opinion that our food has been way too cheap, that it's only us people living on the Standard Industrialised Diet who think that food should come cheap. I might be cheap when it comes to buying clothes but I more than make up for it when it comes to buying good food and spending shitloads in the health food shop. (For example, I had run up a debt at the health food shop because Ed is a sweetheart and he knew I would pay him back. And I did, too, when I got my tax return the other day - all $482 worth of it).
So tonight in the strategically placed, convenient supermarket, as I stood in the aisle with several items I had never planned on buying (like shitake mushrooms, for example. Those bastards are expensive but I bought them to put in a recipe I am making to take to have lunch with Jane on Sunday, and so I am rationalising it away in that way :) Anyway, shitake mushrooms are so wonderfully good for you. I wouldn't call myself a foodie by any stretch, but the more well I get and the better I eat, the more I can see the direct link between how I think/feel and what's going in my gob. There really is some sort of clear-headedness and wellbeing that comes with eating well, that's for sure. But anyway, I digress slightly, and perhaps waffle (it is after all 2.29 am as I speak and I should have gone to bed at least two hours ago :)
So I left the supermarket having spend 30 bucks, along with the 50 bucks I've spent in the clothes shop. Some people routinely spend 80 bucks on not very much at all. I used to do it all the time in my earlier incarnation as the wife of an accountant but these days Susie's salary is reasonably skimpy. And I really don't mind, even though I would love two weeks' holiday away from capitalist hell and the tedium that is my job, but maybe I will just have to write something to fund it, huh? (Now there's an idea. As I mentioned to a friend the other night, maybe in this job I am actually wrting myself into a corner, literally, where the only way out of tedium is to earn a few bucks here and there writing stuff). And anyway, although I am living on far less money than I have been accustomed to, and barely enough to have any real kind of social life, I am completely utterly conscious of my rich status as compared to the rest of the world.
Painfully reminded of it as I stumbled onto platform 3 with my bags. There was a man looking into one of the rubbish bins. There was something terribly strange about him. I couldn't work out if he was blind, retarded, drunk, wasted or insane or what but there was a long stream of dribble hanging out of his mouth that I could see from 15 paces away and man, I seriously thought I was going to puke. And I walked my feet away from him because the sight of that drool hanging out of his mouth just make me want to puke. I feel sick just thinking about it. He reminded me of the small black dog that lives in my street and roams up and down. It too has a perpetual stream of slobber hanging out of its mouth but unlike this man, it gets several square meals a day.
My 80 bucks would have fed him for two weeks. The money spent on the Olympics opening ceremony could have fed all of us for the rest of our lives. But the first part was the worst. The Olympics opening ceremony didn't see this man picking around in the rubbish bin. I did. And I could have slipped him a fiver or 10 bucks, surely, even if i didn't want to do anything else, even if he made me feel like I wanted to throw up? Because sheesh, if our ugliness is the definer of whether we should receive love, then surely we are all cactus.
I don't know how to love with the love I've been given. I am developing the Buddhist mindset that says that we all have the seeds of love within us. None of us is unable to love, even though many of us don't know how to. I need to do some major watering. I think we all do, really.
(I have this weird idea that as the world gets darker and darker and zombier and zombier, that many other people are getting lighter and lighter and waking up and coming to terms and sorting their shit and I don't know what it all means, and it kinda scares me, but this blog post has already been a diarrhoeic spewing forth of about 17 posts at once, hasn't it :) I don't have enough brain that's not mush to launch into an 18th :)
Night
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
