The Plateau And The Precipice June 27, 2009

My first post about Vancity described both a of rejuvenation of faith in customer service as well as a wholly naïve disregard for any and all suggestion of eventuality on my part regarding the suspicious link between service and banks. My second post chronicled the decline and welter of common logic, which I keep telling myself exists. This, my third post about Vancity, will continue in furor to thrum along the wet cobbles of inconsistency and describe my latest altercation with the frontline. I can say that I am both miffed and impressed at the variety of ways Vancity consistently finds to inconvenience my life and I have to insist that I do try to write about other things but the subject matter is never as… absurdly entertaining. I will consider your disappointment but I will not apologize. I can’t make this stuff up, and stuff that cannot be made up should be orated and dramatized for the masses.

You are the masses and I am the orator. 

Earlier this month I happened upon a purchase. Actually, I frequently make purchases and hope to continue purchasing things to effectively satisfy my addiction to itunes and to avoid any chances of affluence. Unfortunately this time I was only buying gifts for other people and not albums from the seventies for myself. Actually I was not buying gifts but instead failing to figure out why my card was suddenly declaring itself invalid. I initially defaulted on Vancity perhaps allowing me a Monday Surprise but that was unlikely because Vancity wouldn’t push me over a cliff now after all we’ve been through and I still needed to buy lunch and dinner. I slowly realized that I was nearing terminal velocity endowed upon me by a Monday Surprise and that I had 37 dimes to spend on lunch and dinner because ATM withdrawals and point of sale purchases were no longer a part of my life – which was accelerating towards an endpoint.

It could have been worse. 

But it wasn’t.

It was past branch hours and I wasn’t going to call the customer service number because my hijacked blood pressure was donning on me streaks of intelligence and because 1-800 numbers probably cause cancer anyways. So I fell into a coma and was awoken promptly at eight the next morning by Ted, an accountant representative, apologizing for the delay in notification and suggesting that my card could have been skimmed and that perhaps I’d like a new one because until then my account would be suspended. Perhaps I would then like a new one, I said, acting like this was information I was learning for the first time and that hearing from him at the crack of dawn was a gift from above but really feeling like my insides were rotting gloriously. My card wasn’t skimmed.

I approached a branch one day during my break like one would approach a heap of smelly suspicion and the teller serviced my account robotically and as though the computer was displaying information she had never before seen. She approached the card-stamping machine like I approached the branch, and it took four tries for her to get the machine to stir, which I simply took as an opportunity to program my phalanges with the muscle memory of a new PIN. I was concerned that perhaps after all this, my card was so overwritten with the same information that it wouldn’t work, but a quick test-withdrawl outside suggested I was in the clear. 

And for two weeks this appeared the case until I spent an extra moment realizing that no money had been coming out of my account assigned to my debit card. This registered as odd to me, and I quickly deduced, in horror, that my debit card had been not only been eating at my European Savings Account, but feasting an extra five dollars from it in service charges because of the type of account it was. The robot in charge is a more expensive one, I guess. Simply, for the sixteen transactions I had processed, I was charged $80. I quickly got this fixed at another location by a polite and intelligent teller, without the use of terrorism and using all the energy available to neutralize any imminent rage outbursts or sudden anger comas. 

In my angry letter to Headquarters, I suggested that this whole experience wasn’t as bad as being secretly charged $5 per transaction before reiterating that that was what in fact happened. I hope the effect of my caustic narration describing this torrid affair wasn’t lost, all in all. I hope they send me to Rome in recompense like I suggested. I also hope that unlike Arthur Dent, my trilogies do not come in fours.

Hello Goodbye June 6, 2009

When I’m lonely – which is often, and when I’m on the bus – which is always; I talk to crazy people. I’m glad laws prevent these people from isolating themselves in cars. Generally cars should be made illegal to bring people together and – like in kindergarten – be forced to share and cause a much needed spike in compassion that lasts beyond the age of eight, but imposing car-lessness on the world in the name of peace seems too deep a dive to tread. 

Often and always, and in between bouts of self-pity regarding not being born in the sixties, I find that I have much more in common with children and mentally handicapped people than I do with my peer group. Perhaps I’m angry at people my age because they weren’t born in the sixties either and I’m in denial and maybe because I am arrogant in that respect but the truth is such as I feel. 

On the 17, a man sidled up to me with an ear-to-ear grin and some untended drool, and asked me if I had any experience working with handicapped people. I said that yes, I had, and because one-word answers and disinterest is directed to people of a twentysomething demographic, I explained to him in my teacher voice that I very much enjoyed teaching disabled children and adults at my job. He maintained his discussion grin and inquired as to whether the people I worked with were physically or mentally disabled and then burst with excitement to let me know that he had a mental disability – could I tell? I said that I could hardly tell because I was enjoying the conversation and he was rather more articulate to engage in discussion than a grand majority of the people I acquaint myself with. He giggled like he was opening a birthday gift. “I don’t have enough time to tell you all about my hopes and desires and wishes and dreams because I get off in two stops,” he said, “but I wish I could.” I told him I wish I could listen, but that perhaps he would find someone else on another bus to talk to later on, and he agreed thoughtfully. “Should we know each other by name, or by face?” He asked. I suggested by face, because I am not good at pronouncing the L’s in my name unless I practice out loud a couple of times and because I never before had a friend I only knew by sight, so this concept interested me. “Okay!” He agreed, “We can just be hello and goodbye friends.” He waved as he alighted at Oak. 

So there we were – hello and goodbye friends who knew each other by face. If only people fitting nicely in the middle of bell curves could come up with something like that. Think of the things we could do.

The many hats of Monday, of June, and of the 1st. June 2, 2009

Life is great, and so big! Many interesting things are happening in the close future that I shant elaborate on so that your interest is piqued, and because they are irrelevant to my today-hats.

It’s June. Today I could tell a new month had begun because frantic would be the tip of the description iceberg. 

Since my retirement began, (read… ten-hour work weeks teaching children who are still legally riding in car seats complex physical performance and skill with interludes of information on loose teeth and houses of twelve roofs) I have rarely needed to wake up before 10 am, if at all. The exception is every other weekend when I work at 8 Saturday mornings and 11 Sunday mornings. Let me tell you, this is dumb. I have so much time to myself which is bad news, generally, because my personalities have more inner silence and cerebral inactivity to seize, causing me to question my identity at more frequent intervals than when I worked two jobs and lost the will to eat. I don’t get anything done because my brain DOES NOT STOP. I’ve recently discovered, though, that I can stop my brain with stuff from inside bottles and this helps things like writing assignments, billing, finishing program modules, and other things I generally need to do to get paid. Win, and kaching.

But that is in the past, Cream Soda. The thing about the drug addiction and the eating disorders. I’m dramatizing. I think. Eyes forwards and onwards Cream Soda! 

Mondays I work from three until six thirty, which is nice in June, in an ice rink at the height of the heat of day. Today I woke up early because Agent Michael and I had an undercover breakfast to eat. Since we live in Vancouver (for real, like, it occurs in life…) we bussed to Main and dined in the 60’s before taking a photographical stroll through people’s back laneways. Because lately this amount of activity achieved completely sober would take me about a week and a half, I was spent by the time I actually had to leave for work and the only hat I had donned at this point was Photographer. 

Because of a hyperactive turn signal and the shape of the streets and because Vancouver is to traffic flow like Richmond is not, to cross south at Oak and Nineteenth, one must cross thrice as cars are always passing the south end of the street with general through northbound traffic, then a left turn signal for westbound traffic, and then a right turn signal for oncoming eastbound traffic. I get it, I accept it. It’s just kind of scary and unlike other intersections for a pedestrian. Today, instead of dying I got to drive an Audi TT for a total of 90 seconds. Afterwards, I had already juggled the hats of Survivor, First Responder, Witness, and Valet. I was dangerously racking in the swift accomplishments.

On second step into my journey across the street, I noticed a nice car pull up to the white line, stop, and on my third step a van pulled to a stop behind. It was like the light was red or something – turns out it was – because all cars in all directions had stopped. Except for a tiny white Toyota approaching the throng of stoppage in a fashion unlike that which suggested it would follow suit. I stopped walking at step five because to continue into the path of the collision I saw coming would mean I would probably stop other things like being alive. Seconds later a metallic cacophony rang through the pre-rush hour afternoon in two loud pops. Toyota into Van, Van into Nice Car, Nice Car into Intersection. Pedestrian alive. Meanwhile, lights are changing, so I ran to the passenger window of Nice Car In The Intersection – this is a slick Audi TT – to Scene Survey. Luckily, this happened a stone’s throw from VGH so doctors erupted from the shadows like fish from a disrupted reef and I let them administer aid in ways less questionable than I could.

Time sped up a little, and traffic stopped and ambulances surrounded, but the little Audi was in the intersection blocking through traffic and emergency vehicles and after the paramedics took the driver to the side, one asked if I would move the car to the side of the street. Could I? Sure. I slid into the leather racing bucket, the door shut with a new car whomp, and I stirred the wheel and kneaded the pedal down the street to the VGH parking lot.

Or, that is what I think happened. I remember stopping in the crosswalk and then my memory picks up as I handed the car keys to a paramedic. I remember the sun angle on the surrounding apartments as I waited to cross the street, I remember the vaguely uncomfortable stagnant heat of the summer city, and I can distinctly smell the road melting under the sun. I don’t remember any details of driving a car the cost of most houses that can turn more heads than a movie star. For a story, this sounds odd because the weight of the experience doesn’t correlate with popular values but what isn’t odd is the delicacy of life and how a moment can impress itself when the energy needed to stay alive pumps through your veins just as a moment can be forgotten while the energy hopes that the lives of others stay safe. 

Then I went to work. Teacher Hat, Mom Hat, Nurse Hat. Always know where your hats are. 

Life is great, and so, so delicate and small.

An honest supposal April 26, 2009

Vancity and I speak only when necessary and without eye contact. I hold and have held many a proverbial straw to its merciless jaws and have literally just let the last one slip through my grasp of lethargy, along with my four precious quarters of Thursday. (No, you’re right. My bank took four quarters from me. And I could pass for a child.)

But all is not in peril, I assure you. I’ve lost much change in vending machines and jacket linings so this loss hurts only inside because I bottle up my emotions and my attention span doesn’t extend terribly far about matters concerning me and my happiness. Fortunately, my intellect and resourcefulness overcome those of a bank drone and most acute spells of depression and I have found a neat and cunning alternative to teller hell. In fact, if I am fine with waiting a couple days processing time for deposits, I need never speak to a Vancity human again! Of course this all comes at the price of failure which comes out to be an even dollar.

This Plan Elk does not yet call for a Plan Laugh. I need something to complain about once Richmond is out of the photo of a thousand whines, and the grand exit comes one sunrise from now. But, I discovered that by clever use of the automated Vancity Voice over the phone, I could transfer funds and pay bills instantly and generally quell most of my Vancity Vendettae, even on Sundays and after 5pm. I actually did this while standing in line, and after entering my PIN and hitting OK at the register, I could almost feel my money fly away through bittersweet tears.

The last straw was on Thursday, and the surge was over sixty-eight cents. Three months ago, I innocently moved money from one account to the other in the interest of interest and to overcome the red tape of a locked term deposit. At any other institution (aside from UBC) this sort of thing would cause the employees to chat about my stupidity once I was cast out of earshot. Unfortunately, I am naïve. I enlisted a polo-shirted teller who went by some vowelless gallic name to do The Switch. Either he couldn’t do his job, or I was lulled into a name-pitying stupor upon hearing his rounded R’s and wooden vowels. The task was simple, but not simple enough for me to go on living a life free of service charges, and clearly way over the head of the Tellerman and now I feel the only recompense would be for me to remove his head with a spoon thereby curbing his crimes of apathy. 

I got a letter in the mail a week ago informing me that my account was overdrawn. First, I don’t understand how this happens in general. I understand credit card debt because you spend money you don’t have. But, overdrawing your account? An ATM doesn’t give you money you don’t have. If it did, that would be the only problem the world would have to worry about. A point of sale transaction doesn’t approve if you don’t have sufficient funds and if it did, again, that would solve all problems except one. Chequing? An NSF cheque bounces and compounds interest until you pay it off, like a credit card. Machines aren’t capable of giving you a dime in change instead of fumbling with pennies for eight cents. Machines will not decide to let you have money that isn’t yours. And, in my case, a Teller would never withdraw an amount superior to the one I had originally and gift me the remainder. In no way can I conceive of this alleged overdrawing business occurring and furthermore, I have no part in it because this specific account is not tied to any cards I may or may not use and realizing this, my mind instantly returned to my gallic friend. I (unwisely) strode into my branch and let known my woes to some scummy piece of donkey shit whose head was quickly threatening to become victim of my spoon violence thereby sparing the Tellerman of Yore his slavic jawline. 

I stayed standing while Donkey Shit sat and kept his focus below my acidic glower and he explained that any transaction in the branch is charged a $0.70 fee, and why didn’t I do it online, like someone of dim wattage would? Well, I explained, using words with syllables he could understand, this concerned an account I did not have online access to and there was no need to insult me over service charges that add to his paycheck. Why also, was this simply not deducted from the original sum I had? I wouldn’t have noticed, bloody hell! He fiddled with a cube of post-its. “What can you do for me?” I pushed, showing how polite I could be by omission while he retreated with an offer to unlock the term deposit via future appointment and several signatures and transfer one dollar from there to the overdraft causing it to disappear like I wanted him to. I are you kiddinged him with a powerglare-eyeroll roundoff. “I have a dollar right here,” I said, before politely inserting a 9mm in his temple in a way that projected a raw hatred while maintaining an open-casket worthy complexion. 

Unfortunately that last bit was suppressed in an impressive display of control on my part and I left less a bit of change, a lotta soul, and what I’m sure will be the guarantee of a kindly future letter informing me of the service charge overdraft for this very transaction. I just need to remember, in my Independence, to save toonies for laundry, loonies for shopping carts, and quarters for Threatening Vancity. It’s the least I can do for them.

Either die in the Vacuum of Space… April 19, 2009

Or:

A right day hands help, 
able the whitest erasable self to be a title.
Theta blue whim rev lover, a stormy
lyceum grit elapse me asleep, slur our ebb.
A broad bye hunts
babel cards.

Dear Vancouver March 15, 2009

Hi, Vancouver.

I don’t know what it is, but when I’m around you, I feel important. I feel loved and admired and necessary, and I feel I understand you in ways that others overlook while you see things in me I never knew made it past the cold read. Each drop of rain or brisk flutter of air lends itself to the ensemble I admire and there is absolutely nothing I would change. You make me feel surreal, so much that I expect to turn around and see cameras following the way my scarf pulls at my hair while I do a long-eyed glance over my shoulder and I therefore calculate every step I take just in case you see me. I enjoy those long-panning, traffic-stopping moments. You humble me, you hug me, you’re the perfect friend, and a lovely place to be. You’re there when I am alone in the crowd and when I’m part of the crowd. I like that you understand that I sometimes say things I don’t mean but you always know what I mean to say. You make me smile inside and out.

The trouble, I suppose, is how misplaced your perfection is in my storyline. When I pull back to see every side and every still, you are my biggest influence and yet I feel I can’t put you in check without completely redistributing your very vital being and I cannot let myself do that to you. Now, I find myself at an impasse which brings me to realize that I haven’t been completely honest with either of us. The truth, Vancouver, is that I’ve been seeing someone else for a while, on and off, and it hasn’t been as picture-perfect as you and I. I see us as a deep-souled match that will exist in everyone’s envy, and that I value. Unfortunately, this other hub I’m in is a chemical one. It’s something I feel attached to on a moral level even though I know it’s a downswing. I just don’t feel it is fair of me to continue splitting my attention between you, and between the other and I.

It’s all about how you feel, right? I cannot forever wrap myself in transparent reasons and I feel the more I let you go, the more I know it’s the right thing to do. I have simply found my place, and it is over there. I don’t yet like who it makes me, but I have been sculpting my character around all things good for too long and it’s not who I really am, even though it’s who I really should be.

Nonetheless, Vancouver, know that I have always been perfectly happy with you and that will never change. I think the comfort we have established throughout our sailing has created a sort of odd rift which makes you the only place I consistently wish to leave. No one compares. I just need a place to feel sad, lonely, and afraid, and I don’t want that place to be you.

You sit on my mind as consistently as your coordinates on the globe. Love always.

My past gives me presents. December 30, 2008

I was trolling around my hard drive searching for something I may or may not have written late one night high on REM when I discovered an archive of backups from… well, grade nine. I was reading some of the stuff I wrote, and aside from it being embarrassingly blunt and generally thin on diction, Past Daniella has really impressed Present Daniella. Like, I was a funny person. So, I came across a character sketch I wrote for English 9-10 and it is brilliant. Weirdly, I was all ready to edit it up and sharpen the wit-cil and make it Present Daniella Calibre but as I read it through, things I was thinking of saying (instead of whatever I was thinking at age 14, which was obviously shallow observational stuff..) WERE ALREADY THERE. I suppose I’ve spent the last five years becoming a real person because I haven’t changed at all when it comes to writing aside from perhaps gaining a better grasp of perspective. So if you all won’t mind, I’d like to immortalize this. The prompt was to write a complete sketch based on a list of odd last names.

Mr. Lazer was probably made fun of in his childhood years, although being mistaken for a superhero made him swell inside with joy. Currently, he worked for Northern Paper Products. He has a lovely wife, Marlene Lazer, and three little Lazers at home. More importantly, paper.  Mr. Lazer was in charge of slicing the paper into the proper size,  81/2×11, which was his specialty. Those 81/2×11 sheets were Lazer-cut so to say. Mr. Lazer always chuckled to himself about that. Himself meaning he never really had any friends at work. He assumed like the rest of the population they’d assumed it was just too awkward to talk to someone who had a name that was a noun and a silly one at that. And that he probably felt too awkward about his name to laugh it off. But he didn’t care. He loved his job.

Lately, Mr. Lazer was feeling dizzy. He thought it was nothing and went on with his day. His dizziness seemed to be located in his head. Not that most dizziness isn’t, but Mr. Lazer seemed particularly convinced the source of his impairment was his head, more specifically his eyes. The top of his eyes. He passed it off as a headache, popped an Advil Liqui-gel and went on to cutting his paper into the precise 81/2×11 size.

His dizziness was starting to effect his work, he noticed, when a colleague who had never before conversed with him approached, complaining about pentagonal-shaped legal size in bright white. Mr. Lazer assumed he was mad and didn’t really pay attention to his mindless drabble. But he knew something was up. He just didn’t feel like this colleague deserved the satisfaction of letting him know.

Leaving, Mr. Lazer called the wife who promptly made him an appointment with the family optometrist,   Mr. V. Humour, MD, who confirmed a case of late-blooming myopia with the uncommon dizzy side-effect. The dilemma was, to keep his job, Mr. Lazer had to face the perils of lazer eye surgery or to lose his job and wear corrective lenses. Mr. Lazer was outraged. But, he thought, the condition could have been caused from prolonged exposure to bright white and his shifts were all during the day when the sun shone through the rickety factory air vent and burnt his eyes raw like snow on a sunny day.

For the sake of his retinas, Mr. Lazer scoffed at the surgery and its copyrighted name and took graveyard shift.

Maybe I can sell this to pay for medical school.

Status Symbols October 29, 2008

As I walked down Fraser Street forgetting to buy stamps, I saw something sparkling through the leaves. Someone’s engagement ring! I was going to take the situation seriously if I found an engraving but instead I discovered tacky souldering and a half-missing “stone” on one side. Regardless, I felt bare so I put it on and headed to the bank. I needed to anyways.

Vancity and I speak only when necessary and without eye contact. I have all my account numbers memorized so that they don’t have to ask, just do. The silent sour relationship between us started on my first trip to France, when my account wouldn’t let me access money from overseas ATMs. Changing my account to enable this was like phoning the city of Vancouver to stop the rain so that I could go home dry because I forgot my umbrella. On my second trip to France I was secretly charged $70 CDN for a €20 withdrawl after the Euro-USD and USD-CDN conversion and ran out of money, thinking I had about $200 more than I did. My third trip to France, I withdrew all my money before I left (at the Vancity ATM, to save $1.50, I am so efficient!) so that Vancity would never have to know.

Needless to say, we are not friends, but only one of my jobs does automatic deposit so I am forced to engage in brief monthly encounters which seems to occur when the ratio of employees on lunch break totals one hundred per cent and the line of bleary customers fills the authoritatively logoed zig zag lineup and the closed captioning on CNN is either phonetic Tagalog, or the captioner fell asleep on the “B” key.

Today at the bank I was offered customer service. You know what happened? I gained electrons. Seriously, I went in asleep and hardly noticed the schizophrenic televisions and left with a newfound energy. I skipped across the street before noticing there was no walk signal while narrowly missing getting flattened by a WonderBread van. It was fabulous. Customer service prevents death!

It may have been because I got a fresh, motivated teller who was genuinely interested in helping me get an interest rate higher than Zero Kelvin, but I think it was because I had a potential joint checking account phare marqueeing from stage left. Or she saw my Starbucks paychecks and wanted to reciprocate the Lucy in the sky with diamonds sort of euphoric service before withdrawing into her reality of term deposits and interest maturity.

I took some free Badam Katlee on my way out, courtesy of Diwali.

cloudburst doesn’t last all day October 14, 2008

I stand here, split between splitting home (which would take an hour) to get my camera – the one time I decided I wouldn’t need the extra weight in my bag – and standing here to savour it.

It, is the photo I see.

I was walking along E 51st avenue from Main Street to Fraser to get myself something warm to drink because it was cold in the rink and cold outside. The biting cold that makes my nose run backwards, inking my throat with the phlegm enabling me to temporarily yell above a group of eight year olds in a sexy Phoebe voice type situation. The kind of cold that a whole milk americano misto would cure.

I stood on the sidewalk and watched the two men paint the side of the elementary school. Their trucks were parked on the grass nearby with multisized paint cans spotting the grass around them like cylindrical, plastic sheep on a prairie. The sidewalk sloped downwards and as I descended, the angle of the photograph perfected itself.

The sun shone white through the earl grey clouds casting pale yellow into pale violet and was aligned with the painter’s ladder which was framed by the two parked trucks. Tears of sun shone through cracks in the clouds and filled the image with a careful momentary dimension while the air held a flat glow as the image waited for capture. I stood dumb feeling only the warm cup in my hand and the rich woody lyrics of All Things Must Pass penetrate my head.

It was the perfect photo to the perfect song and there was nobody to hug.

equation October 12, 2008

the truth is in the laundry, originally uploaded by box of lettuce.

Love is life and film
and LIFE is FILM with ME.
Me is I.
I love you.
So love is film and life
with me and you.