There are days when you really, truly wonder what the heck your horoscope would have said, had you read it.
Some days just make you certain you are flung around in the karmic universe like a nicked dice.
KARMIC ACTIVITY LEVEL: 11
Yesterday I had the great fun of nearly being crushed by large truck in the morning (fortunately he just sort of mushed into the plastic flexible side of my driver’s side front door with an edge of his front right wheel well enough to mess up the car’s company name, which I leave undisclosed out of sheer embarrassment.).
The scariest thing was watching this huge truck very very slowly inching toward me while I desperately tried to find the damn side button things that worked my horn. What IDIOT decided to not have the horn in a normal, hand-slam-able place? I mean this is a PANIC situation and I can’t HONK???!!
So I then endured a beratement from the truckdriver for being there in the first place (HUH? I was standing stock still and he hit ME), exchanged info and went my way, rattled as hell, my front side panel in my trunk. In retrospect it would have made a funny movie scene if someone had been there videotaping over my shoulder — I opened my glove compartment and its malfunctioning door flew open and spilled the entire contents onto the floor. I couldn’t find a piece of paper to save my life, there were only registration and important things you don’t write on. When I finally noticed the newspaper in my back seat, I pulled the pen top off a pen I’d rummaged for in my purse, only to have the cap adhere firmly to the pen’s body and I pulled off the whole casement, leaving only a tube of ink flapping. It hit me afterwards that I was in at least psychological shock. I totally forgot to take pictures with my cameraphone. I was just eeeeeek!!ed. I had felt like I was in one of those Star Wars trash-compacter scenes for a moment.
KARMIC ACTIVITY LEVEL: .2
The midday was a complete doldrum. Virtually everyone had left the office either on business or medical appointment leave (our office is like Day of the Living Dead — it’s a parade of the walking wounded lately, as well as nasally and bronchially afflicted); so I was left doing all those things I had been dreading doing that were stupid little tangles. Halfway through I just gave up and started websurfing to cheer myself.
KARMIC ACTIVITY LEVEL: 9
The evening however, was a conviluted traffic packed ride to the Grove see MARGARET CHO, one of my favorite people on the planet, sign her books at the Barnes & Noble. There is nothing like seeing someone you respect in the flesh right next to you (or four feet away, most of the night). Margaret came in dressed in a cute skater-punkey arrangement of anti-war t-shirt and blacks, and something chiffony black lurking in the back — a sash?. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she looked like my friends do on their laundry days. I felt satisfyingly warmed by this.
She was so SMALL!! I knew how much weight she’d lost, but was surprised to see that she really is probably only 5′5′ or 5′6′ tops, and her little thin-ly boned hands were so long and elegant with a terrific black-fingernail manicure. I was SO JEALOUS of her manicured hands!
She read from her book — a section on Ann Coulter that made us bellylaugh — and answered a number of questions from the audience. A lot of what she writes on her blog comes out in the book, and what she answers in the ways of questions. It came to me that Margaret has what I value most in a person: The ability to be transparent. Margaret Cho does not lie, as far as I can tell, about herself or anyone else. She may tweak it a bit to funny it up; but she is 100% pure. And she is carefully professional at times to answer what she has thought over rather than being completely extemporaneous; something which I realized gives her space to be a little bit fragile. She knows the truth of her opinions and waves them like a flag, but I sense that she is practised at keeping her sensitive nature out of the limelight too much. There is a delicate and supremely gentle human being in there, who needs to be protected with her banners of issues and humour.
The surroundings were odd. Here were ALL THESE PEOPLE in the mall downstairs: and tons of them were Korean, too. L.A.’s Friday night at the mall is like going out to a Halloween parade night. The mall is actually an open-air small village with cobbled paths and a huge cheezy Las Vegas-style lit fountain. People are all eating in the sidewalk cafe-style restaurants under heat lamps in the chilly air with their pedigreed fufu dogs at their feet, toying with drinks that have names too embarrassing to say to my relatives, or are strolling around buying things from the accessory-cart vendors, swamping the movie theater, etc. A lot of it is just parading their new clothes around. And yet MARGARET CHO, VERY FAMOUS COMEDIENNE was only being attended by about 150 people in the one corner of the third floor of the HUMONGOUS glaringly lit Barnes & Noble. As Margaret gave her usual utterances about Bush and his minions (which are always colorful in language), a bunch of three year old kids were making noise loud enough to stop a train on the other side of a book-filled wall. Where were their mothers? Where was the manager? Somehow I didn’t think they were in Margaret’s audience. Where were the rest of her devotees?
Part of this may have been a somewhat purposeful lack of advertising (maybe they didn’t want to be swamped with screaming glitterqueen fans??) or it may have had something to do with the strange British-accented woman who ushered us through the signing like a barking pit bull, saying there was no time for pictures, move along, Did we understand there was NO TIME FOR PICTURES? and actually coming up to people in line and being all officious in their faces. I wanted to smack her on her badly-dyed black haired little skull. By the way: you’re not a “winter”, lady. You look shitty with black hair, and you totally ruined the mood for a number of us. I know we want Margaret to go home on time, but then just tell us Margaret needs to get somewhere by a certain time, please try to be brief, or SOMETHING. Have some damn tact. Or schedule the event with a limited number of people, or something. Don’t ruin it for us.
And so as I stood next to Margaret while she signed my two books trying to tell her I was married to a Korean guy who often didn’t understand her work and I wished he did, I realized she was more busy reading the little post-it notes that the black-haired pit bull had had us put in the left inside of each book jacket with our names spelled so Margaret could sign faster. Ah well, I thought. Celebrity is always taking a piece of your life away for every sparkle it adds to you. Go home and have a good Lebanese dinner Margaret, I thought, as I walked away. Have some space. Pat Gudrun and Ralph on their heads for me.
KARMIC ACTIVITY LEVEL: 4
Outside in the dark mall streets, like a boney dark carnival of anorexia, I got accosted by a guy selling snow. Yup it’s that powder in a box that turns into snow when you add water, and later returns to its crystalline state. I marvelled at it until he wanted to hard-sell me. I’ll come back later perhaps.
KARMIC ACTIVITY LEVEL: 5.5
Then I hit the Mac Store to get a swap on my iPod. Yes, it’s come to this. I have to relate the truth: My iPod is POSSESSED.
I had noticed that it was losing playing time, that the battery just kept draining, and when I pulled it out of my purse, it would be playing, with the HOLD button still on, on some tune I wasn’t previously listening to. Huh?
One night I actually saw it: since I plug it in to charge it at night and unplug it in the dark early morning, and I set it next to me while I’m doing my makeup.
>bink< The light comes on and it starts playing.
I wonder who’s possessing it? For a while I thought jovially, what a romantic idea…. I began wondering who was communicating with me. I watched the tunes each time I pulled it out, still running. I was hoping it would be someone cool, like the soul of an ancient Mongolian woman, or a dead J-rocker (there are a number of those available), or even my mom. No such luck.
One morning it was a Bhangra mix, the next it was Paul McCartney’s “Junk”, and on other days, other cheesier things that I only have on my iPod for others to hear in my car as background noise. I began to notice that the spirit haunting my iPod had really old-fashioned taste. I think I got somebody’s uncle. Someone who likes Ruby My Dear a little too much.
I decided to return it, since it’s on warranty, and I don’t want to pay a Buddhist exorcist guy to come and paste a sticky prayer paper thing on its little screen.
So my karma may change in five days when we do a swap-out (they were out of my color right then and they had to do an exact exchange). I wonder if it will have any effect on my driving luck? Strange day from top to bottom.
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