Finding My Window to the Soul

I got burgled recently. I always feel so violated after being burgled, I think I’m just too territorial over my own space to be comfortable with someone else having occupied it. It’s always my poor little shitbox of a car that is attacked in these violations and blessedly not my houses, I’d like this status quo to remain, if I must be burgled, let it be my automobile. I drive a 1998 Mitsubishi Mirage, it’s scrapped, scratched, dented has clocked 200,000K’s, but she still goes god bless her. I managed to blow the speakers this weekend, her last feature of any value, listening to folk music of all things but, even beat-up and worthless, I know I’m going to find her smashed in once again. There is never anything of any real value to steal, I think I have less money now then I did when I was a struggling student and yet douche bags still feel the need to pinch my meagre possessions to sell for crack or whatever. Sigh.

What kills me time is I stupidly left my iPod in the glove box but the klepto would never have known this from looking into the windows. I have never before left my iPod in my car, with exception of this one time, when I had hidden it from view on a pit stop on my way back from the mountains resulting in me forgetting to take it with me when I got home. I remove everything that could be construed as valuable from my car because I live in one of the dodgiest parts of Sydney’s inner west. The most puzzling disappearance of all was my picnic blanket. A promotional off cast that I got from a former flatmate who had performed PR work for the company in question and had brought the leftovers home to create more space in their office. The blanket itself is quite nifty, folds up, zips up and turns itself a little satchel, one that looks just the right size to hold a mid sized notebook, and thus we solve the mystery. They got lucky with the iPod, I got unlucky with the repair bill. That free, slightly mouldy picnic blanket cost me my iPod, my car windows and my positivity for an entire weekend.

This January I offered my services to the always awesome Sydney Festival. In return I was given a two-for-one pass to see Bright Star. I was excited. I found myself a date, a session time and I was on my way. I jumped into my car to pick up my aforementioned date, and found my right hand passenger windows smashed in, picnic blanked gone, glove box strewn about the car, iPod missing, morning ruined and a heart that appeared to be sinking. I cancelled my date and got into the car forced to seat myself on the bed of glass that had ricocheted onto the driver’s side. The glass, that crumbly safety glass, left lots of little pricks in my rear end that bleed into little red dots on the arse of my white skirt. Merging onto the Western Motorway I felt myself going through the gambit of emotions including frustration, anger, dismay, tears and finally pity.

Self pity consumed me that weekend. I guess I’ve always championed the Robin Hood concept of thievery, robbing the rich to give to the poor. I guess it’s the pinko- lefty in me. Getting behind the cause of the battler, “from each according to his ability” and all that. Problem here in lies, I’m not the rich. The iPod was a gift; it wasn’t bought with my spoils of exploitation. I’m against exploitation; I’m the daughter of unionists! The most frustrating thing of all is, each time this has happened I’ve been a student, a traveller or in this case, a two-bit office bitch trying to get by in a world that seems to undervalue my sheer awesomeness in lieu of natural talent! I sustain myself regularly on lentil soup which rounds up to be about $2.15 a serve, I take advantage of the unwanted goods of others and when I need an iron uplift I assume the student position and go back to my parents. I don’t laze about in the lap of luxury, I’m a battler like so many others, so why me then? Why does it always feel like me?

The truth is, it isn’t. I was unlucky. I’ve just been unlucky three times. The frustrating thing is, had I have been in a better neighbourhood, with better neighbourhood security and probably flasher cars, it probably wouldn’t have happened. It just so happened that in the desperation of a come down, my little picnic blanket held a glimmer of hope to some crack addict. I cursed them with karma for a little while, I hoped their crack pipe broke and I hoped they lost a toenail in a particularly painful incident. Now that I’ve finally swallowed my self pity and abandoned the notion that I have a neon sign on my head that says “Please Screw Me”, I really just hope that their situation in life improves, sooner rather than later. If this hadn’t happened in the same year that I got mugged in Vietnam, owed the evil tax department money and been covered in the vomit of a fellow passenger two hours into a fifteen hour flight from hell, the more compassionate side of me probably would have revealed herself earlier, but at least she came to the table and we should be thankful for that.

Truth be known, I have a lot to be thankful for, the friends that took me out that night and got me drunk, the flatmates that made me chocolate sundaes with chocolate sauce and chocolate chips and especially to my one loyal fan in some crazy Swiss village who made me write this and always intuitively knows when something’s gone wrong sending me something life affirming to fuel my delusions of awesomeness mentioned above. This still doesn’t mean I want my car smashed in and while I’ve rescinded my wishes for bad karma from the good folks that look after the karma department in the metauniverse, I’d still be grateful to them if they bumped up my file in the good karma department giving me something a little extra to be thankful for.