Contemplating Karma Part II

You guys probably got that I had a rough weekend emotionally. So it was with great relief that I had an acupuncture appointment for 9 am yesterday. Dr. Sunny Lee was running behind and so I sat and tried to drink my breakfast smoothie and just tried to calm down and breathe.

When it was my turn, I walked into Sunny's office and sat down. I told him that I was doing okay physically, that the worst of the side-effects were subsiding from the last dose but that I was doing terribly emotionally.

He wanted to hear more and so the way I summed it up was that while I do have lots of people who have my back--who are available and supportive and perhaps, most importantly, expansive of me generally and specifically right now --there are others, some of whom theoretically, would be more inclined than many of the people who have shown me the most kindness--who in my perception--have my throat.

They are clutching my neck with both hands and seemingly wanting me to (a) die or (b) shut up or (c) not direct what they usually describe to be my great insights and wisdom, towards them. I told Sunny that I am trying to be a kindler, gentler version of me but that it just doesn't feel safe to put down my armour because I keep getting sucker punched. I told Sunny that things were so bad that I had even lost my sense of humour.

Sunny listened to what I had to say and said "You cannot allow yourself to be distracted. It's like you are halfway up to the top of the Himalayan Mountains and suddenly a flock of birds surround you and started to squwack and pick at you...would you take both hands off to swat at them, or your feet to kick at them?" "Well," I said, "one person I made a boundary to and said that it was not okay and to leave me be." "That's good too," he concurred, "but just keep your attention focused on your goal. Never mind the distractions."

With that, we went into one of the patient rooms and Sunny gave me many, many needles to treat my peripheral neuropathy, my lungs and breathing, my liver and kidneys and several for qi-raising and emotion-soothing. Sunny left and turned out the lights so that I could just rest. Every 10-15 minutes he would come in to check and spin the needles. "Feeling better," he would ask each time. "No," was my reply each time. After about the fourth check in, he added some more needles...I asked for them in my jaw as that is where I am getting a lot of nerve pain and as I noted to Sunny "isn't that where one holds anger?" Sunny checked in with me about the time and I said that I had to be gone by 11 am, so he gave me a really long treatment including my back and also inserted three metal acupressure points around my right ear for some take-out acupuncture.

I whimpered when he put in the first and asked "What was that point?!" "Oh, that's for calming," he replied. I burst out laughing noting that I obviously needed help with that. I went to pay, nervously pressuring the receptionist when she realized that she had made an error, had to check something with Sunny and then come back and re-write the receipt.

I walked about of the building and around to the parking lot where I saw a parking ticket on my dash. I picked it up with confusion given that I knew that I was just over my time limit. I spied the ticket writer and walked over to him. Just to give you a bit of a picture...he was dressed in faded jeans and a checked flannel shirt over an old white/grey one over a good-sized beer gut. He looked like a good-ol'-boy, the kind of man who kills small, furry animals for sport. I walked up, and looked into his one seemingly-working eye and the other seemingly-not-working one.

I asked him what the time was: 11:11 am he said looking at his watch. "Isn't there a grace period?" I asked. "Yes, five minutes." Still very calmly...I guess those little acupressure points really work...I pointed out that my ticket expired at 11:00 and that he had written the ticket at 11:05. "I can't just stand by your car and wait to see if you're going to come or not," he said. "I realize that but given that I did come right away, that I was just out by a couple of minutes, couldn't you...."

Well, suddenly I was cross. My right hand shot up to my head and I ripped off my wig. I stood right in front of him--smack-dab in the middle of a very grey, filthy, downtown parking lot, feet on the ground, eyes locked on eye--I said "I was just trying to talk to you like a human being. I have just seen a doctor. I am going through chemo. I was just trying to talk to another human being. Are you a human being?"

He walked away muttering "That ain't right." and I went to my car, sat in the driver's seat and started to sob. I sat there trying to collect myself so that I could drive and suddenly the guy was back and he put out his hand and said "I'm going to take care of this for you. You did a really shitty thing...but I'm going to take care of this for you. I handed him the ticket trying to look appropriately chastened and he walked away. I pulled forward out of his sight and I replayed what just happened in my head and I started to laugh and laugh and laugh.

So...I got my sense of humour back. Thanks, parking lot ticket guy! Oh, and if I did just create some new karma with the entire male gender later this lifetime or in the next? It was worth it. Really it was.

And a final word in the delicious-irony category...I just re-watched the mockumentary "The Delicate Art of Parking" on Saturday night which is all about people's rage at parking-ticket writers.