Will The Real Strawberry Thief Please Stand Up?!

Hell hath no fury than an Italian scorned of her food. Here’s the story: I went in the main kitchen where I work to take a short break to cut up, wash and fix in a small bowl some strawberries I bought at the farmers’ market at lunchtime. Just a little snack to keep me from spending money on some candy or other sweet bread to pass the time on a long afternoon of hard work trying to win my 815th game of solitaire out of 1,246 games so far this day. (Isn’t that a record for something somewhere? I’ll have to look into that, of course, here at work.) So I put a cover over the paper dish and set it next to a fork and my newly cleaned tupperware bowl and leave the kitchen to use the ladies’ room. I leave the items there on the kitchen counter because who wants to drag tupperware and strawberries in the bathroom with them, however briefly? The association would ruin any pleasure I would derive from future storage or present sating. And hey, I’m coming back, it’s obvious the items are there for pick up by the person who left them there so why not just leave and come back?

Why not my lily white strawberry fanny, indeed! I return not two minutes later to find my covered paper bowl of strawberries GONE!! Whoosh! Outta there! The tupperware and the fork are still there but no paper bowl of fruit. And I am livid. I run out to see if I can find the culprit still walking back to his desk with the bowl. I search in the front lobby, I make the rounds of the floor, I search every open door and closed door (although I will not go into the mens’ room)--nothing and no one! No one slurping down juicy sweet strawberries from a paper bowl anywhere. I am still livid. I resurrect my plight to everyone within radius and everyone not within radius. I call The Times, I call O.J.’s attorney, the FBI, the CIA and the KGB (do they still exist?) and report missing produce. Have they found Bin Laden? Maybe he and his cohorts have been in a kitchen of an office building seventeen stories up in Los Angeles. I send out an email to the Staff of the office stating that I have a missing bowl of berries somewhere and the culprit better ‘fess up or die. Well, something to that effect although in a law firm threatening death to anyone is not a good thing. I get many replies of compassion, sympathy and a couple marriage proposals but no leads. I am still fit to be tied. A couple people offer by way of possible explanation the fact that since extra food from meetings and office lunches go into the kitchen for public consumption that maybe someone thought it was okay to take them for that reason. Uh, yeah, nice try but no cigar. See, food brought in is usually on large trays that look as if they were made up for a large quantity of people not small single paper bowls of strawberries for one. Thanks for trying to make me feel better but I’ll still pulverize the person when I find them and you are now basically an idiot in my book.

People who work in offices have nothing better to do than eat. The work is so boring, tedious and repetitious that the diversion of any type of mutton, whether stewed, french fried or candied, brings them out of the fabricated woodwork to stuff their faces. And stuff they do, leaving not one crumb for Cindy Lou Who or that mouse. Nada, niente, nyetaskavaya! And these are people who turn a good dime working in legal offices. These people pay well, no lie! I, myself, can afford more magazine subscriptions because of it and I’m the better off for it because spending my extra cash for more articles on how to live well, how to be happy and how to meet the man of my dreams is certainly money well spent to…that better life of bigger fruit bowls. So, my question is, why do these people act like food is such a finite, endangered article? Are they all so much in debt that they sacrifice groceries in their budget for cable? Do they have cable? Do they live in cardboard boxes under freeway overpasses and come to work, the rest of us none the wiser as to their fragrance? Really what is it and the draw for free food all the time? Mind you, this is food that has been breathed on, spit on, picked over and been sitting out for over two hours already. Where is the appetite for that?

I guess it’s the same idea as buffets. If you go to Las Vegas or any Midwestern po-dunk town in the country, you’ll find at least one eating establishment that caters to the fascination Americans have with “ALL YOU CAN EAT.” What does that mean exactly? All you can eat. Are you supposed to sit down and eat until you drop? Are you supposed to store up for a few days and eat dish after dish right there? Are you part squirrel, part chipmunk, part bear and hibernate for a few months and therefore need to eat as much as you can? Are you running an eight day marathon and need to shovel it in all at once? I don’t get the concept of “all you can eat” at all. All I can eat is a little bit of this, a little bit of that and a slice of this with a side salad. I really can’t do much more than that especially if a glass of wine and dessert are involved. And especially if I don’t want to roll home, if I want to fit into my car and get behind the wheel instead of on top of it. I don’t want to spend four hours at the restaurant so I can shovel one helping of everything in and then wait an hour and shovel another helping. I got places to see, things to do, I can’t be spending my time in all you can eat restaurants for several hours just to get my $12.95 or $30.95 or $100.34 dollars worth! And how do I know no other customers haven't sneezed, coughed or fingered the food before I put it on my plate? I can’t even believe with all the ebola-ecoli-e-i-e-i-oh going around that we even HAVE buffets anymore. Shouldn’t they be outlawed or something? Why are we spending so much time on gay marriage issues when basic food issues still exist in this country? I don’t get it. (I’m for the marriages by the way, so there, all you ridiculous people who oppose it.)

Anyway, after putting the workplace, well, at least the lower levels of the office in a tizzy, someone came up to me and asked me if I checked the fridge, which I already did. Apparently, the person who swiped the berries put them in the fridge in the back of a pull out tray where I would have never even looked. So they were obviously saving it for later. Hmmph! I threw it out. I mean who knows if they touched it, breathed on it or just plain salivated all over them? So I made myself another dish. Next time I’m leaving a bowl of strawberries unattended in this kitchen I’m going to spit in it just for fun. Although I know two things for sure even though I don’t know who took the berries: I’ll bet it was a man and probably an attorney! And he probably frequents buffets. Don’t worry I’m on the lookout and standing in line at an Old Country Buffet as we speak. I’ll get ‘em.

The Glasswing Butterfly

“A butterfly with transparent wings is rare and beautiful. As delicate as finely blown glass, the presence of this rare tropical gem is used by rain forest ecologists as an indication of high habitat quality and its demise alerts them of ecological change. Rivaling the refined beauty of a stained glass window, the translucent wings of the Glasswing butterfly shimmer in the sunlight like polished panes of turquoise, orange, green, and red.

"All things beautiful do not have to be full of color to be noticed; in life, that which is unnoticed, has the most power.”

April 29, 2008

I received one of those pass-around-forward-upside-down emails complete with full color pictures of the glass wing butterfly. I don’t know what it is about butterflies but I get full of hope, joy and inspiration when I see one or a dozen. I don’t see that many at all anymore. Life in the big city I guess. The new place where I moved has a nice landscape so that I see hummingbirds every once in awhile. I love hummingbirds too. They remind me there’s beauty in the world and it’s such a gift to see it in motion.

In Indian Medicine cards, the Hummingbird signifies joy while the Butterfly signifies transformation. Both cards can be read upright and reversed, meaning, depending how the card ends up in the totem card spread, it carries a different message. A reversed Butterfly card means you are resisting your transformation into a new life or from your cocoon to a new “birth.” The Hummingbird reversed card means that you have been seeing life through joyless eyes. That deep within “your sadness is your joy upside down.” Now that is something to reflect on. Your joy can also be your sadness or in your sadness is your joy. Or pain can be good or suffering is almost hedonistic. Okay, I think that’s getting a little masochistic and not the real meaning. But I think I was onto something. All I know is when I weep, I weep. And sometimes it feels like the tears will never stop. Then there is a little light somewhere that somehow seeps through and in the middle of it all there’s the eye of the hurricane where all is peaceful and calm and you feel everything will be all right.

That’s sort of what I feel like now. I feel like I’m in the eye of the storm. I’ve made so many transformations in my life that I definitely feel as if I’m resisting this one. But this is the big one. This is the big hurricane. I can’t tell if it’s male or female. I’ll call it iahklu'. Hurricane iahklu'. Which means…I don’t know but I finished this book last night that turned on a bit of that light and in the middle of the main character’s understanding of his dilemma, there was that word and with it, a sense of peace about what was to come.

The main character had a problem where he would dream during sleep and then wake up to find reality changed the way he had dreamed it while sleeping. Only it was an involuntary change. So he was afraid to go to sleep. Then he met a man, a psychiatrist, who tried to use the main character's gift for his own purposes. So the main character has to find a way to control his dreams as well as stop the doctor from trying to make use of his dreams for the doctor's egomaniacal pursuits.

Oddly enough, this is sort of my life right now at the moment. You could insert for the doctor character any number of people I’ve met through the years in my life who have tried to take advantage of my gifts for their own use and my good nature. Because as sarcastic, aloof and callow as I may seem, underneath I’ve got a very big beautiful Italian heart. I may let you in but you’d better be careful how you use my heart and my good nature because once, twice, thrice burned I will cut you off. For good.

So in the end, the man realizes that these benevolent Aliens he dreamed that now inhabit the earth gave him the advice and wisdom and the “word” above that he is the ultimate creator of his reality. His dreams are but another world, another illusion he created and he can choose to look at his reality in a different light. He can choose to look through his pain to find the joy. It took him a little while to figure it out but when he did he lived the flip side. He transformed, he released himself from the cocoon. And on the other side of the dream, he found a new reality. That’s what he learned to dream.

It made so much sense to me. I feel like that’s what I’m looking for right now. The flip side of the dream, the release from the cocoon. Much of it is releasing people and things that don’t serve me anymore. I need to dream a better reality, find the flip side.

So iahklu'! everyone! Whatever it means. Look within. Find the joy. Transform. Change your reality. Dream a better dream. Then sup a little nectar and fly.

“All things beautiful do not have to be full of color to be noticed…”

“…in life, that which is unnoticed, has the most power.”