My empty space.

Or at least that’s always how it’s been phrased for me, by others. Now I realize that my interest for the old thing didn’t fade so much as my interest for something new outshined it, and that’s vastly different. 

I was always made to feel bad about it, with every abandoned endeavour I was told I needed to stop starting things if I wasn’t going to stick with them. I was told I was wasting time and money picking up these random interests and abandoning them after a year. 

So eventually, I stopped picking things up. I told myself “what’s the point, I’m going to give up in a year anyway”. Even worse, I started dismissing every new interest, because I had no way of knowing if my interest was “real” enough or just another passing phase. I stopped trying new things, I stopped looking up stuff that piqued my curiosity, and having chronic depression made it really easy to leave everything on the dirty floor of neglected ideas. The more they piled up, the more depressing it was. All these things that could be nice, but I just can’t take care of them. 

I realize now how bullshit that kind of thinking is. So what if I stopped doing karate after a year? That’s one more year of karate than most people I know. And in that year I learned discipline, I learned to listen to a teacher, something I had never done before in all my years of private education. I learned the true meaning of respect, that it’s something you do out of faith at first and maintain as it’s reciprocated, not something you to blindly and regardless of how you’re treated. 

It gave me the foundation for the determination and grounding I needed to practice yoga. Another year. Not enough to be good at it maybe, but again a year more than most people I know and a year that is not lost, but gained. I learned balance, I learned to listen to my body, I learned how to let go of emotional tightness through physical stretching. 

And then iaido, only a few weeks because I couldn’t afford to keep going. The year of yoga I had done a couple years previous had given me a better starting point than the other newcomers to the class. I already had balance, I had strength in my legs and I had better posture. In those months I learned the importance of precision, the true definition of efficacy, the zen state that is incessant repetition. 

Did I practice long enough to get good at iaido, and yoga, and karate? No. Of course not. It takes years to become proficient and decades to master any of those things, but I learned other skills and those skills were an invaluable part of my growth both spiritually and emotionally. Likewise for my forays into painting, sewing, graphic design, film. I’m a photography student now heading into my second year of school, and every single second of practice I have in those other disciplines has given me more experience in those areas and made learning easier. 

This isn’t something that gets talked about a lot, and I have no idea how far the problem extends geographically, but if you care about poor people, if you care about sex workers, if you care about activists, if you care about privacy,

you should consider resisting the transition from cash to card-only payments that is happening in shops in some bigger cities. Including shops where only one register in a long row still accepts cash payments so anyone paying with cash needs to wait in line and sticks out.

Cash is how poor people help keep each other alive without immediately worrying about their benefit cuts, cash is what people get when they do a bit of work or sell some old stuff to feed their kids that week. Cash is how most sex workers get paid. A lot of people need to be able to make cash payments to feed their kids, pay their rent and basically to live.

Cash is also what activists use whenever they need protest supplies and don’t want their full name and address attached to the protest. Cash is how we buy any item we want to keep out of our digital footprint. But whether you’re buying a megaphone or  a dildo, you can’t do so privately if you can’t spend cash.

a) lying and sneaking around so that they can circumvent the rules you have put in place (even like, the good important ones like “don’t talk to strangers” because you probably didn’t think it was important to tell them why and so since they’re already ‘disrespecting authority’ or whatever, there is no reason for them not to break that rule as well, if they need to), and only thinking of the consequences of their actions in terms of pain/punishment, instead of like, “this will hurt my friend” or “this will mess up my future big-time” because odds are, you didn’t bother to instill any foundations of morality or compassion or foresight in them because why bother, right? 

b) turning into a terrified doormat because you taught them that questioning orders/having emotions/needing things/wanting things/having a personality is a punishable offense, and now they can’t make their own decisions without mortal terror because when they tried to do that as kids, you threatened and punished them, nor can they easily think beyond “if i do this i’ll be punished/hated/disbelieved/threatened/abandoned” because thats how you reacted to everything

or some mix of the two wherein they are a doormat when they should stand up for themself and a rebellious, calloused asshole when they should stop to consider the other person’s point of view.

Seriously. 4 years ago, I’m cashiering at a whacky mart on a register that holds all the smokes and alcohol. It’s 10pm and these two young men (early 20s) come up to the counter. They have three random novelty items (I don’t remember they were), but it was strange and unusual to get odd items this late at night. Maybe it was for some fraternity, I don’t know. It’s a college town so I get weird stuff from frats a lot. I scan the items and tell them their total is $22.xx.

Grinning at each other, they reach into their jackets and slam down two gallon zip-lock bags, full of only pennies. I stare them in the eye, but they didn’t even look back at me. Everyone else in line groan and went to other registers. These two kids knew what they were doing, but they didn’t know what they were in for because I prepared for this; I knew this was going to inevitably happen. I grinned with them, because I was gonna get paid during this. These pranksters are here for recreation. This convo occurs between Me, Ringleader (the other guy was silent and awkward), and a friendly coworker of mine.

Me: Is this $22.xx?

Ringleader: …

Me: Did you count it?

Ringleader: Nope.

Me: Are you going to?

Ringleader: Nope.

Me: Is it at least $22.xx?

Ringleader: Don’t know.

Me: Nice.

Coworker: Hey! You guys can use the self checkout. It can take all of your coins at once.

Me: Oh, don’t worry about it Cowor–

Ringleader: Nope, don’t trust them lady.  (Partner laughs)

Coworker: What? Why!?

Ringleader: Doesn’t count all your change right.

Coworker: I’ve used them before. It really works!

Me: (to Coworker) I got this.

I unpacked the ziplocks and threw all the pennies on the counter. It was a beautiful, massive shitstorm of a mess. And I digged in it. I was Frank in a dumpster in ‘It’s Always Sunny’. The two, still averting my gaze, start chuckling as if they were taking away my dignity. They whisper to each other “Dude oh my God,” “Dude yeah,” “Dude, hilarious.” I counted each penny, one by one. My coworker comes up to me.

Coworker: Guess I’ll help you count this.

Me: Don’t worry about it.

(She looks at me confused. Then she puts on her ‘get down to busy’ look.)

Coworker: I got your back.

Me: Oh…ok.

We worked up a system where we counted ten, put them in a pile, then with ten stacks of ten pennies we separated them, making $1 piles. We made progress slowly but surely. Some customers came to the line, but we advised them to get to another line. Some of them looked at us confused, but when they saw the counter full of pennies they understood. Some decided to wait, but when they realized it wasn’t going to take just a few minutes they took their leave. Another register in the liquor department opened so it wasn’t too bad for other customers. We get to about $12 (about 10min in) until I “knocked” over the piles.

Coworker: Neontonsil!

Me: Oops. Sorry.

(Coworker looks at my grin. I give her a wink and tilt my head, motioning her to leave)

Coworker: You know what, I think I better let you do this.

Me: Ha, alright.

(Coworker leaves. I look at the two guys. They are absolutely stunned at the fallen piles of pennies.)

Me: (To Ringleader) Yeah, I’m going to have to count all of this again.

Ringleader: ….Ok.

I started from zero. I count slower then ever, and made my way back up. The duo is entirely silent. I get to about $7, when suddenly I say:

Me: Drats. I lost count. I better start all over again.

Ringleader: Really?

Me: Oh yeah man.

Ringleader: Why!?

Me: I lost count, sir. I could be in trouble if my register doesn’t have the right amount of cash, and I don’t want to rip you off.

Ringleader: …

It’s about an hour later. My manager walks past, looks at me. I smile at him, and he looks at the counter. He walks away without a word. I eventually count all the change and surprisingly they had only $18!

Me: Hmm, I think that this is $18.

(The duo has been dead silent. They look done for the night.)

Me: I’ll recount it.

I fucking recounted it.

Me: I think this is actually $19.xx.

(Without a word, the Ringleader whips out a $5)

Me: Seriously? You had cash?

Ringleader: Needed to get rid of my change.

Me. No problem. I’ll just recount this again. I want to make perfectly sure that this is $19, since I counted $18 the first time.

Ringleader: Are you kidding me?

(I shake my head no, completely serious)

He takes out a $20 bill straight out of his pocket and throws it at me. My coworker gives the biggest WHAT THE FUCK face. Internally, I die as well, because they were smart enough to have a backup plan. And the fact that he was touching his cash in his pocket the entire time kinda messed with me. I take the cash, do the transaction, give him his change, thanked him and wished him a good night. The two start to put their pennies back in the ziplock bags and I didn’t help them at all. I watched them just as how they watched me. Lots of pennies dropped to the floor, but they didn’t care to pick them up. It looked like their souls were sucked out of them. It was past midnight and I clocked out way past when I was supposed to. A lot of my coworkers gave me a thumbs up or told me good night. Even my manager told me ‘good job,’ the only two words he ever said to me. Went to bed at the dorms after such a great petty penny night and crashed. Strange to say, but I’d love to count pennies again.

ancient ruins or a dead mall

deep space or the deep ocean

a fully automated candy factory or an artisan wood carver’s cabin

the past or the future

It’s why you’ll have poor whites who rely on public assistance for survival repeatedly support politicians looking to defund the very same programs that they themselves rely on, getting worked up in a frenzy about the imagined threat of ‘blacks and illegals’ scamming the system. Even when they themselves fudge the numbers a little in their paperwork to better ensure their own survival–committing the very same fraud they claim to be concerned about.

IF YOU CAN READ THIS WITHOUT FEELING A WARM BUBBLE OF HUMAN JOY IN YOUR HEART I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO FOR YOU

First, it is originally an Armenian folktale called “Clever Anaeet”. But I haven’t found more information unfortunately about the original story.

There is a version of it though in “The Fabrics of Fairytales” by Tanya Batt. It is actually a collection of various fairytales and is relatively short (80 pages according to Goodreads).

However, I think this post is referring to the picture-book adaption of the same story, “A Weave Of Words” by Robert D. San Souci.