two passive events for one hell of active thinking day


today started in mild, unassuming manner, then it spiraled into one of the weirdest day monkey had in a good while. funny enough, none of the major events (that's right, two major weird things. i thought one would be sufficient) concerns me directly, which puts me clearly over the line of active involvement. so here i am, looking from the third person's point of view, all kind of confused and a bit contemplative.

since i am going to be staying in toronto for awhile, i am filling in for the organist position at my old work. the pay's alright and the work isnt too bad really; and above all, i swear that monkey's adult family members (mom/dad/granny) are way too happy to drag her around the house of god. and it is also nice to run into old choir members and etc., oh only if i could evade some questions life could be much nicer. i still have no idea why they ask certain questions and why they want to know such personal things about other peoples' lives- i mean, do they actually remember any of those short conversations? what is my life's aspiration for them? anyways. i guess that's what monkey gets for working there for eight years since she was a teen. at least they have stop telling me to pull up my pants etc. for now.

anyways, tomorrow is a sunday and that means that monkey's gonna trek across town on public transit and spend the night at the gene pools' place. which is tolerable. dont get me wrong, i love ( ! ) my parents, but we ARE much better when we are physically far enough, like most of just-grown-child(ren) and parents. though i have to say the bus ride always kills me. i hate... buses and street cars. somehow it's always guaranteed to give monkey a motion sickness. bleh.

as monkey usually crosses the city later in the evening (wknd bus ride is even more intolerable, full of people, just popping at the seams), gene pools usually call and check on her- some general stuff like what time im rolling in, what's the plan, whether im gonna eat with them etc. so when my phone rang this morning from parents, i assumed nothing spectacular. routine calls, routine answers.

except it wasnt a routine call.

apparently the choir rep of the church suffered a bad case of heart attack and now is dead. he was at home, then bang, gone. so tomorrow is a dress-in-black day. the autopsy is scheduled for sometime on monday or so and the funeral service will be held on wednesday morning. that's what monkey's parents wanted to pass on.

it feels funny. i just talked to him last wk about being back in town etc., just a five minute conversation, nothing lengthy or anything. ive known him since his family moved to canada, i think that was during my last year of service, which would be oooh a good six-seven years ago. he is married to this lady who often plays the piano, filling in for smaller services and such and i think they have two children, probably in university by now. he cannot be much younger or older than my gene pools, perhaps younger by half a decade or so. not an obese/heavy smoker/chronic problem kinda dude. an average.

and now. gone.

because i have been away from this scene for so long, i really dont have much emotional attachment to this person nor his family. to say that i feel sad would be an overstatement- i feel sympathetic. it's the only logical thing in life, that once you are alive- you will die someday somehow. surely. there has been another funeral recently in the church choir, of this gentleman who was a pharmacist. he also was married to a lady (who is a bit pushy), with two offsprings both doing music (eldest child, now a mother of a baby, is a fabulously good fiddle player). but the difference was that he's been ill for awhile. i think the story goes something like he once had a cancer and that was somewhat under the treatment, however, it came back with vigor and took him. and it did take a bit of time, so it was somewhat logical conclusion.

silly enough, after seeing the documentary food inc., i briefly thought about this idea of death in a context with my food. how i dont really care about the personal damage my food may do to me (ya i heard about heavy metal poisoning with big tasty fishes such as tuna; i still would eat it galore if i could afford and if it was ethical), but is rather concerned about the general damage my food item may have caused. or more accurately, how my choice in food (ie. what to buy) would dictate/or rather dictated by the larger context- health industry, food industry, environmental concerns etc.

and this is a particular interest of mine that's been going on for awhile. and i remember thinking about all these health claims the food item may make ('it's wholewheat! it's good for you: hmm really? lucky charms?) such as 'consumption of this whatever item may decrease your chance of heart attack etc,' and how the stats may have been completely obscured by the time it gets to me (okay so less people die of heart attack, but i bet it has to do with medical advances than the benefit of flax bread-like products with corn and soy byproducts)(topic for another day i suppose)

and the. a sudden, unrelated news of an unexpected death of an acquaintance. weird. monkey's granny just dropped another crumb of info that he was recently downsized from his work. she feels that his death is due to the economic depression. (shit economy - downsizing - stress- heart attack). but who really knows? i cant say that it has nothing to do with it, but i want to say that we'll never know.

then a second episode. after the phone call, i decided to get my butt to the ymca for a brief workout. since the shoulder dislocation, im thinking that i should do something about it- perhaps a lightweight strengthening exercise? rotation cup friendly exercise? who knows what. anyways, moving cannot be worse than not-moving. so i go. and i got the time. on way to ymca, i decided to drop by the bank, to make a small deposit. insert card. punch pin. select menu item. then.

i reached for a deposit envelop for the atm. then realized that it's heavy. heavier than an empty single envelop. what the heck. take a peek. then

there it was. exactly 1000 dollars in cash, with two cheques. total of 1500 cad. sitting there.
someone prob was intending to deposit- then who knows what happened, it just was dropped and was left there. right ON the atm terminal i was using.

i finished my transaction. then looked around to see if there's anyone who LOOKS as if theyve lost something. no one. so now what? i brought it to the bank tellers. there were four of them. and usually banks are on serious surveillance system. no way that they can just div it up and pretend nothing have happened. it's not that i dont trust people, it is just easier if you leave less room for a possible temptations. if i approached a security officer, with 1000 in hard, cold cash, he may feel inclined to.. well, not finish the report. same with police officer. it's too big of a sum to go missing and it's too tempting of a commodity to be completely honest. like those lost-wallet surveys. most of wallets will come back with IDs and such, but usually, with zero cash, if there was any.

they asked if i wanted to leave contact info. and i was gonna. then i wondered why would i need to leave it with them? because the cheques were made by two different people for one person, to trace back the probable owner of this asset would be very easy (call the people who issued the cheque, backtrack who it was written for, etc etc). i didnt think of doing it myself because i want nothing further to do with it. i mean why would it be necessary for me to be known to that person? only thing i could think was that eventually i may expect a word of thank you, may be even a small thanks gift of a sort once the owner has been identified. i mean, i would thank the person who found my stuff. but that does not mean i should expect it, does it.

so i left.

did i thought of keeping the cash? no. it's not mine. would it have helped to just randomly pick up a thousand bucks off the street? hell ya. i couldve flown to uk for mr. salamander's birthday. i couldve put it in for student loan payment. i could have done many things.

but simply it is not mine.

and returning something to someone does not mean that i should be thanked. it's ethically right thing to do and i honestly think that most of people would do the right thing.

so two things today. weird. dovetailing. surprising yet both situations were not a complete surprise in a secondary sense. we die and yes, if one realizes what would be the ethical action would be for a given situation, one's oughtta act it out. but why is it that both situations feel rather strange? anyhows, it's all over and i am hoping both situations will resolve without further complications.

passive accidents for active thoughts. bah.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

canned cocktail wiener found in walter hall

someone quick, help poor ophelia.. wait, you mean she was 'help' herself? i guess she'll have to stay drawned then..

homo spiritualis > homo politicus