This is what they mean by reincarnation

So I have heard in many Buddhist circles that whatever issues you leave one place with will stay with you into the space you move into. I have heard many cubicle dwelling friends go to temple and explain their woes with a boss who is strangely like the last boss who is strangely like an ex-boyfriend and the person in the orange robe would say, "your situation will reincarnate until it is resolved. It's not the person. It's the soul of the situation."

Very insightful and something I carry in my Jesus-Conversational-Atheist heart (er, that's a whole other blog).

So, as some of you know, I no longer live at Sugar and I am an official Sugar community member. But I remember my days at the house very fondly. Sometimes with humor, sometimes with a grimace, always with love. And I now live in West Hollywood and work in Beverly Hills where I think of my home days fondly, my work days with a grimace, and all of it with love (yadda yadda).

Well, I must have the soul of a dirty dish haunting me.

At Sugar, there is always a problem with the dishes. People leave them, other people clean them, resentments happen. And the inevitable sign gets posted above the kitchen sink. "Wash your dishes, you fuckin' asshole" to paraphrase the many moist messages that have lived and died in the kitchen.

So here, in my little office in Beverly Hills, I am just a flight of stairs from a kitchen. Part of my job is to open the office at 7am. It includes clearing out the dishwasher and putting away dishes. It almost always includes moving dishes from the sink to the washer, and those dishes are always left in the sink by people quite capable of just putting it in the washer. As a once Sugar resident, I know there is nothing to do about this but take the extra ten minutes to put the dishes in the dishwasher and start it up again so they can pile up the next day and the next into eternity. No matter, doing dishes keeps me from having to schedule meetings.

Just now, I walked up to the kitchen to make some tea and low and behold, a fresh piece of paper taped to the wall above the sink:

"Guess what? Dishes go in the dishwasher. Trash goes in the trash."

Without even thinking I said "Oh my God! I'm at Sugar!"

No one was there to hear me. What is the sound of one Sugar Shackian in a karmic loop?

How the city works

LINK

First, that link is the project that I just spent two hours listening to people talk about. Oooohh..consumerism pretty.

Two days ago, I got a call from a rep of the Redevelopment PAC that I'm
on. He told me that there was to be a board meeting about the
development on San Vicente and Pico. This is huge as the Sugar Shack is walking
distance. We knew that the property was in full construction mode for a
bus depot, but a large percentage of the land was being fought over
between Target and the LA Unified School District. The meeting was
scheduled for 10am two days from the phone call. A few hours later, I got an
email from a very active Midcity council member that the meeting was
scheduled for 8am.

I was learning the beauty of beaurocracy.

Yesterday, the rep calls to say that the meeting is at 8 but this
particular topic would start about 10. He suggested getting there at 9:30. I get there at 9:22.

They were already in mid-topic. I likely missed a half hour of very
important stuff. No matter. I got enough to piss me off. Which is a surprise to me every single time it happens. I didn't even have an opinion when I walked in
that meeting and within 10 minutes I was offended.

Everyone wants Target there. Why? Because it generates revenue, it
makes jobs, it increases property value, it gives our little community
volunteer committees extra mad money (potentially high 7 figure mad money),
and most importantly, it makes us pretty. Why not a high school
(potentially the largest high school in the city)? Because it will make
teenagers spend time here. Not as pretty.

To be fair (more to the point, to not sound like an agenda toting
pinko), the school will likely be poorly funded, poorly managed and the jobs
it would create would not help the community (unless we have a
surprising amount of unemployed teachers in our neighborhood). With all that,
crime will go up, the drugs and prostitution already in our neighborhood
will get more action, and by more I mean under aged more action. And
forget about gentrification. And for all my liberal ways, I can still
appreciate a little gentrification.

So quite a few people made it. The neighborhood was there, standing room only. And they spoke. They spoke about how they were (we were) dying for a Target and did NOT want a high school.

Anyway, Target is a little stubborn with the wages they're willing to pay. Mind you, they promise to pay a living wage...a wage one can live on. But that's about all they promise and they don't want to promise in writing cuz really, define "living".

"No worries! Move on in!" The community begged. CRA (the suits) were a little less enthusiastic. Either let people get paid poorly or CRA would actually pay the difference so employees got a wage they could really live on. CRA did not like the latter option at all. So now it's poor paid or Target actually does pay well on the honor system or lose Target. The developer did not look amused by any of this. (He DID negotiate prevailing wage for his construction workers, THAT guy isn't dumb)

But the bad guy isn't Target. They're earning a buck.

The bad guy (yet again) is us. The community. Because we are so desperate for some revenue and some city clout that we basically beg large corporations to rape us.

Gentrification.

This is a word that I feel is the same as Lucifer. It means something beautiful and is actually a very ugly, festering thing.

(more later)