SuperStore
I search an entire aisle, but especially one area of one shelf, for a long time, considering what it is I'm looking for, pondering, in a slow and cautious manner. [Much in the same way I work, and live.] Armand, an employee I know, comes up to me and implicitly chastises me with a particularly degrading attitude for what I am doing, as if I am doing something wrong, as if I am somehow morally decrepit for the way in which I stare at the products on the shelf, as if I am a mental patient escaped from an institution, transitioning into a periodic catatonic trance. I feel offended. He walks away from me. A short way down the aisle, he begins to organize a shelf, or pretends to, while advising me that I should leave the store. (This is the felt intent, but he does not put it so precisely into words.) I respond to him as he departs, telling him that he is wrong, but not in the nasty way that he talked to me, but rather in a calm and self-possessed manner. I mean to say that in what I am doing (nothing), I am perfectly correct, and furthermore, I not only have the right to be how I am, but I have that right as a customer. (This also is not so much spoken as felt, but he gets the message, which is later demonstrated by his reformed behavior; however, I definitely express this next item verbally): The customer is always right. [I am a customer, in America, a consumer, of corporate products and of governmental services, and therefore, so long as I do not break laws (and even sometimes if I do), I am right.] [Thus, I've not only stood up for myself, but I've done it in a calm, intelligent, and sophisticated way, unlike the way that Armand has acted toward me (which is the way I would previously, in my past, have responded in defense of myself, i.e., "in kind.") This is a kind of achievement for me, an advancement; Armand is, perhaps, an older version of me projected onto him, a connection of me with a former version of myself, expressing my opinions in a "proper" (which he was), but nasty (surreptitious; with an undercurrent of hostility that is not directly expressed, but nevertheless felt, perhaps in an intuitive, empathetic, etc.) manner] [Years later, I find a serendipitous strain of this connection in the film You've Got Mail:
"Do you ever feel you've become the worst version of yourself, that a Pandora's box of all the secret, hateful parts, your arrogance, your spite, your condescension, has sprung open? Someone provokes you, and instead of just smiling and moving on, you zing them. 'Hello. It's Mr. Nasty.' I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about."
"No. I know what you mean, and I'm completely jealous. What happens to me when I get provoked is that I get tongue-tied. My mind goes...blank. Then I spend all night tossing and turning, trying to figure out what I should have said. What should I have said, for example, to the bottom dweller who recently belittled my existence? Even now, days later, I can't figure it out."
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could pass all my zingers to you. And then I would never behave badly and you would behave badly all the time. Then we'd both be happy. But then, on the other hand, I must warn you, that when you finally have the pleasure of saying the thing you mean to say the moment you mean to say it, remorse inevitably follows."
This is the history of my life. First, I never said anything caustic to anyone, then I learned to compete in the world (of business), and I became exceptionally good at putting people in their places (like Armand tries to do to me.) Then I realized that was not the way to be, and so I tried to disarm myself, to see how I mirrored the emotions people threw at me in order to be able to blame me for their own denied inner selves. It was a difficult struggle, to regain that former self, to pull myself back in and negate the weapon I had learned so skillfully to use. But I did learn to do it, as long as I can remain relatively free of stress, because that's what stress did to me, prompted me to overtly defend myself against the slights that others unconsciously project. When I am calm and well rested, I am my demurring former self. When I am working and stressed, I am the epitome of sharpness, ready to pounce on any slight and take it to its ultimate conclusion, which despite my feeling that I am totally right, I will definitely later regret, because even if everything seems to turn out well, people will always get you back in some way for acting toward them like they really are inside, but refuse to admit to. You may never know how it is they got you, you may suffer in some way that seems totally unconnected with the true cause. But you will suffer. Seeing myself standing beside Armand in the aisle, I understand this connection. The whole of me is right here now, out in the open, split in two.
I went into the store, I remember, looking for a spring clip (like the kind on the end of a dog chain), and I've been considering whether or not I should purchase a device I've found which I think I might need, but I'm not sure what it's for. It's a mysterious spring-loaded arm which is a cutting/punching device, mounted above a cradle-like bed, almost like a phone cradle, which is itself mounted on a plate-like sub-bed, which reminds me of the kind of cradle that supported an old 8-track tape deck I had installed in my old van. Armand offers some advice as to what the device does. He does this in a begrudging manner at first, not wanting to cooperate with me when I ask for his help, but as he goes along, he becomes more verbose, because he is repentant for his former attitude, I conjecture, not because he really is so much as because he knows I'm right, that it is his place as a store employee to be civil and respectful to me, even if he doesn't feel like it; his begrudgement transitions into a still superior, but somewhat helpful attitude as he intentionally demonstrates his expertise in the area which the device is a part of, elaborating in a complicated technicalese as he goes about his business of whatever it is he was doing before I interrupted him, all the while assuming that I know more than I really do (which is practically nothing) about the subject and that he knows more than I do (which he does, but he has no way of knowing this and it is only his stuck-up sense of superiority that makes him think this way.) [Man, is this ever me. I can see it now. But then, I missed it. Memory, if you use it, is a great teacher.] I am lost in his explanations, which have to do with films, [I have been trying to explain life via films, or more generally, via art] and film splicing, [trying to connect together film and other artistic media] and how sound-tracks are added to films, but not in the traditional way with light, but rather with tape tracks. All the while, or perhaps before this, or maybe later [this is becoming one of those memories where it's difficult to remember which part came first, like the different parts happened all at once, or both before and after each other, like a dream--or maybe I really did dream it], I am playing a super-cool futuristic instrument which creates music by tapping your hands and fingers on a light-box-like panel (except that the front is not glass or plastic, but a thin, finely polished metal surface). I create arpeggios by rolling my fingers across the panel as I bump parts of my hands and wrists against it in a bongo-like fashion, thus producing a complicated pattern and range of notes, which is recorded somewhere (I don't know where; almost as if it is internally recorded) on tape--the tape which can be used to splice onto the film [or is that another subject altogether?]
I go up to the front of the store. Maybe this is the next day. But there need be no time break in memory. I search the shelves near the door, still trying to determine if I should buy these things and at the same time looking for them, because when I looked on the shelves back in the store again, I could not find the device I had seen before, and so I thought that maybe it was discontinued (and removed from the shelf overnight), or even that Armand had removed it from stock because he knew I wanted it [there is a "subconscious" sense of this--or maybe I only imagine so now], but in any case, the store is undergoing a sort of remodeling (there is no physical evidence of this, except maybe evidence that stuff has been moved around on the shelves, but I know it from what other employees have said; I know several people who work in this store.) At the front of the store, two older women employees try to be helpful. They don't know anything about the device or about the area of expertise it represents, [connection: the correlation between the disparate medias of sound and film], but they are quite willing to be as helpful as they can be, even if they are not in reality helpful at all. [The greater your level of expertise, the less of a helpful person you are? Helpful people try to be helpful in order to make up for a lack of expertise, because they want to be useful, making up for their otherwise relatively lower social value? But low self-esteem, despite your true level of expertise, makes you a more cooperative person, not only because, being more socially withdrawn, you are more compliant, but also because you're trying to make up for what you imagine that you lack? This latter point is demonstrated later by Jeanine's character. [Jeanine's not her real name. I call her that because she looks and acts like Janeane Garofalo, who is a star and yet she has low self-esteem, or so she indicates in her interviews. Stars become stars because they have an inordinate drive to make up for what they lack, which is, in some cases, self-esteem.]
The two women search the shelves with me, but we do not find what I want, and they don't even know what they're looking for. I pull the spring clip out of my pocket. I had put it there earlier in the back of the store, not with any attempt to steal it, although I think now that if I had had the opportunity to walk out of the store with it, I would have. [Or, if this is the next day, I did walk out with it, and returned with it still in my pocket.] I show it to them, pretending that I've found it on a shelf, and I ask them how much it costs. I intend to pay for it. But there is no bar code, and of course, they can't find anything else like it anywhere on the shelves. They ask me where I got it, and I tell them it was the only one. Eventually, we locate a display card, which lists prices based upon the measured (in millimeters) openings of the clips; but we have nothing with which to measure the clip. We search for rulers, and I find several, but some of them are not metric, and those that are are not so accurate, having faint divisions that cannot be so easily seen. Finally, though, I find one which is adequate, and we measure the clip and determine that it is 3 mm. This determines that it costs $.78. But the woman tells me to forget it. She gives it to me for free, because...she states a reason, but I can't remember it; but there is the feeling that she gives it to me because she likes me and to make up for all the trouble I've been through, [I am being given a free "connecting device" because of all the trouble I've been through in life? Now I am being shown how to engage in communion? (It's the "old ladies" who will be most receptive to this "strategy," the people with low self-esteem, and of lesser expertise.)
In the French film Poker, the male lead, at the end, says,
"You confuse gambling with life."
To which the female lead replies:
"I'll never touch another card. I'm...I'm finished with all that."
"I used to say that. I don't any more. You're trapped now. It's your passion, and you've paid dearly for it. I'm alone, like you. I'm immune to it, because I've paid."
I've already paid, for having pursued my passion in life through the study and practice of psychology, having gone to the edge of life, searching for the deep meaning and connections between myself and others, and attempting, coincidentally, to document it; and now I'm immune (more or less) to the temptations and manipulations which "they" create.
It is these kinds of connections that I am getting good at, associations between ideas that appeal to me, to which I am attracted, developing them into a fabric of understanding via writing.]
Earlier, and yet now, as a following episode, in proper sequence: when I have conveyed to Armand in some non-verbal way, but musically, when he hears my tape of the excellent music I have made and assumes that now I am more advanced than he previously assumed (my creative expertise being confused with a technical one) [the connection is implicit here too: creative/technical], he refers me, as a continuation of his explanation, to a girl who is working at a register back in the store in the "technical" section which is audio/video, and yet at the same time, in a generic, drugstore-like product area, both. This turns out to be Jeanine. As I stand across the counter from her, she explains some technical stuff to me about what it is I want re film and tape compatibility, etc. After she checks out a customer and then occupies herself with other busywork that she has to do at her register, I ask her why she's working as a clerk in a drug store. The meaning of the question is obvious to her, as I knew that it would be: she is far too talented to be working in this menial job. I walk around the counter to be on the other side with her. At first, she seems a bit threatened by this, but she quickly warms toward me as we talk some more about technical problems of film and tape. I feel a connection I can't quite put into words between her and me, and between tape and film, or between words and images, or between music and the visual. I remember an image I experienced on acid with a girl I knew in Hawaii when I was in the army: we watch a visual pattern created by a sound tape feed into a light box that responded to the sound, but the sound is turned off, and the imagery evokes in me a corresponding creativity of music that I wish to express, but the music I feel is not that which generated the patterns, so that my music put to the visual patterns is different from the music that generated them. So what would happen if I wrote my music and then used it to generate patterns? Would we get the same patterns, or different ones? And would, then, those patterns evoke the same musical response in me, or a different one? And so on. The chain-end spring clip represents this tentative connection between sound/music, word/image, content/book; socially accepted method/content//my innovative style, it binds one thing to another, while allowing a relative freedom of movement in its twisting action, i.e., so that the chain will not become twisted up; but it is a tether nonetheless, which is my attachment to society. One end goes to a leash, the other to be attached to a dog collar; but who is holding the leash and who is wearing the collar? Society, or me? Both. It works both ways.
The low-self-esteem thing: Jeanine and I are the same: I am already "connected," but I don't know/feel it: I "assume" I am not technical, but only creative, when I am actually both. I use the word technical here to refer to not producing text which is saleable in a commercial market, but how do I know it's not, and even if I am correct, what is there to stop me from making a market for it where none now exists? This happens all the time, when new innovations come along to disturb the status quo equilibrium of the conservative business/science/literary social forces.
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