yesterday's upset

so yesterday marked one month of sobriety.  i was feeling great and had two days off from work and just got paid.  i had been borrowing my friend's Osho tarot deck for a few months prior and had just given it back last week and really was missing it.  i tracked down where to find tarot cards in the city--it's not an easy thing.  also i don't really having things shipped to me because half the time the package gets lost and even if it did get here it would take 1 month and  half most likely.  also, it's way cooler to buy a tarot deck from a funky bookshop.  so i go to the bookshop, so stoked!  and yes, i find a shelve with all different kinds of tarot decks too.  the shop was really beautiful and special, and it's in the old city part of chiang mai so it just had a sorta mystical vibe.  so, i write down the names of different decksand leave the store to go research the pictuers of the decks on the internet.  a deck isn't exactly cheap for me to buy and also i want something that will really resonate with me....but, you know, i can't open the deck in the store and see.  so i leave the store, saying to the owner "i'll be back" and he calls after me "ok, arnold schwarzenneger".....i laugh and just have a good feeling.  so i do some research at my house and then hurriedly jump on my motorbike to make the trek back into town cause i am super excited to get these cards--like so excited i didn't want to wait at all.  and the deck i decided on came in a tin and i was getting excited to have the magical illuminating tool in my possession.  my friend's deck had become an addiction of sorts, it really helped me get through a lot of stuff actually....probably one of the reasons i'm sober now.  so, i arrive at the store, grab the deck and then decide, deck in hand to actually look around the store.  it's piled to the ceiling with all kinds of intriguing books, and the store is seperated into quadrants kinda.  it had really cool vintage aisian pinup art among other things.  it really was kind of beautiful.

so i keep an Instagram account, i've mentioned that a couple times.  i don't like to be a super tourist or millenial or whatever trying to capture every moment with my camera, nor am i into taking selfies in public places.  but i love capturing beautiful things, and i was the only one in the store and i thought....this will be so cool to grab a pic of the vintage posters and the books.  so i start to take a pic, right next to the counter where this thai girl is working, not the owner who is some older european man, he wasn't down there.  and i get this really really intense negative vibe as i'm trying to take the pic.  but i always kind of feel that when i take a pic--like ashamed, or the urge to do it quickly.  but lately i've been trying to get over that feeling because i'm like, if i'm gonna stop and take a pic don't get rushed by this weird feeling, actually *do* it actually focus and take a good pic, this is all in your mind feeling like a weirdo using a camera.  so i figure it's just that rushed vibe i always get.  after snapping a pic i walk around the shop more.  there's so much to look at and then i find this awesome door and it's away from the store clerk girl so i take a pic.  suddenly she appears next to me and says "CAN'T YOU SEE THE SIGNS?  YOU CAN'T TAKE A PICTURE" but she says more and she's so belligerent and just frothing at me.  and, it's true, when she points this out to me i can see signs everywhere!!!  they are faded with centered letters saying no pictures.  it really was me being blind.  there was so much to look at!  but this is me.  i'm always half in my imagination so i'm terrible with directions and remembering where i've been, truly.  it's something i've come to really recognize in myself in thailand--unless i conciously tell myself to focus, i will lose my way to places i've been many times or forget where i parked my motorbike.  earlier in the day i had actually forgotten where i parked my motorbike.  sometimes our eyes just don't see.  but to this girl, she 100% thought i had seen the signs and that a stupid pic was more important to me than honoring their rules.  she thought i was deliberately disrespecting her.  so i immediatly apologize and say "hey, look i'll delete it right now" and also "why??  why do you have these rules, i'm confused? "  and she tells me the owner is coming down.  so i talked to the owner and apologized and also told him that i could feel the negative energy when i was taking the pic, but kept thinking to myself "why would this be anything bad?  i'm taking a picture of something beautiful?  isn't art suppposed to be gazed upon and appreciated---it's so beautiful?"  and he was kinda cool, but said he didn't like people taking pictures because they take pictues of the books and try to get it online for cheaper and he's a small business trying to survive.  I'm thinking to myself--'Ummm they could just write it down and do the same thing"....and he's like "if you go in an art gallery they don't let you take pictures!  or at least you have to ask!".....adn i'm like, after i had left the shop.....actually they do let you take pictures in a lot of them.   but, as much as i felt attacked, i should have been more self-concious and asked to take a picture, i suppose.  i just wasn't used to being a shop and them having rules like that in the past year and a half.  yes, at buddha statues at temples, but art on the wall of a bookshop?  it just suddenly all semeed so absurd, and this girl had chimed in somewhat incoherently saying random mean stuff to me too while i was talking to the owner, and she was furiously dusting the books right next to us.  she obviously had something deeper to hate about me.  i'm like, this terrible hate form this woman all because i was appreciating the beauty of this store??  this is so wierd.  so i told him, "here, i'm still going to buy these cards, have a nice life".  so i buy the cars and start walking down the street....and with the cards in my hand, i realize FUCK!  everytime i use these cards i'm going to think of this intense feeling of wrongdoing and hate from this thai woman and this uncomfortable feleing of transgressing somehone's sacred space....all mixed in with a resentment of just all these lame rules and hateful attitudes over imaginary boundaries people have.....and also knowing though, that i was wrong!  but i was innocently wrong, and i just felt so wounded that the chick automatically assumed i was guilty and rude.....it would have be entirely different if she had approached me and said "oh, hey!!  sorry!  no pictures!" with a smile or at least not with such menace in her tone....but no, it was an assault, and it was just so jarring because i....i mean,  i was there buying tarot cards! i was just vibing on all these beautiful books, all these souls and imaginations and minds captured in books.  i was feeling really peaceful and happy.  i've always loved libraries and books and bookshops.......  anyway....

so i stand there debating what to do, i mean i'm broke right now so it's like 700 baht which i can live on for 3 to 4 days.  so i turn around and pretty much expect them to say no returns, but they acquisced and he thrust the money at me, grunting kinda.  so on the motorbike i just start crying and fantasizing about drinking.  i cry all night.  i smoke weed and just try to chill, but i was just so hurt by the situation.  got through it though, talked to one of my boyfriends who is china right now and did yoga and didn't drink.  it was just such a weird experience.....but you know what?  i also heard you shouldn't buy your first tarot deck, someone should give it to you.....so maybe it had to do with that!!!!!!  hahahaha ok starting my day.