Here is a pretty picture of meadow flowers Marz brought me from the farmers market yesterday.
Not a Pretty Picture
Michael recently blogged about a journalist using the phrase "folks on the ground" to refer to Wisconsin voters.
I thought of this when I walked up to my workplace yesterday and saw the real thing:
two people lying on the ground--seemingly passed out--one on either side of the street near the thrift store.
(Remember last summer, I'd tried to get the City to give the street trash cans? I didn't bother this year.)
Upshot: basically, there's almost nothing to be done--or, nothing the City will do.
Nonetheless, I called 911--(they did not send an ambulance, they sent a cop car that simply moved the people along, stumbling)--and I took a photo and sent it to our City Council member. I said, "I'm writing to express concern: it's like walking the Gauntlet of Hell out here".
I didn't send the photo to the therapist I'll meet in person this coming week, but this morning I emailed her about what I'd seen. She and I had talked on the phone for twenty minutes on Monday, and I'd liked her okay, but I hadn't felt she really got what I was saying.
I had said that I'm not looking for "healing" from the trauma of 2020 (specifically the police murdering George Floyd, a mile away), because the trauma, the wounding, is not over; I see it every day at work.
However, when she mirrored back to me what she'd heard, she got it wrong, and in the past tense:
"You are looking to be healed from what happened...".
No, I said, I'm not, and I explained again that it didn't "happen", it is happening.
But I didn't sense the light turning on.
I just now wrote her:
"This is what I'm wanting help with:I'd filled out a required intake form too, but I'd left a lot of the multiple-choice questions blank. All the available answers were misleading.
handling the pain of others and the way it ricochets in my life and the lives of everyone around me.
I want to be able to work alongside it, effectively, and not be overwhelmed by it.
It's more like incurable cancer than an old wound:
I want help living with it as well as possible."
Do I feel "a heightened sense of danger"?
Well, yes.
But that's because someone was shooting a gun outside the store the other day, not because I'm over-sensitized due to unhealed trauma.
Another Pretty Picture
People at work are stressed, oh yeah, for sure...
But
meanwhile, Asst Man set up fresh new end cap displays, and as I was photographing this one, below,
a customer came into view wearing a matching shirt.
I don't think he intended to strike a pose for my camera, but he did:
Let's see. Other fun things at work:
the set of Dansk silverware that I'd brought back to the store (after paying waaay too little for it) sold for $175–! (I did keep a set for myself too.)
And several expensive (for the store) books sold from the glass display case--Big Boss assisted a customer who wanted to see the set of Khalil Gibran books, which they bought for $60.
I always like when Big Boss sees I'm selling pricey stuff, because otherwise Books at 99 cents each don't bring in all that much.
I truly don't know why this low-rent thrift store of nonreaders ever decided to PAY someone to arrange the books like a bookstore, but I sure am glad they did--and every week customers tell me the same.
Another nice thing...
Below: Donated Steiff chimp "Jocko" from the 1950s, with old antique store price tag of $50, marked down from $120:
Ooooh--Marz just called and asked if I'd like to go up to
the North Shore for the day, spur of the moment. Even though it's
expensive to rent a car, and we'd be getting a late start (it's 10 a.m., and it takes two, three hours),
yes, I said, I would LOVE to go see water crashing on rocks.
Better than any therapy!
