Pop 89: All The Ologies
By Madonna Hamel
Sitting at a window table, watching evening fall in Melange, a cozy bistro in old Nanaimo, we celebrate our sister’s birthday over a fancy dinner. As inevitably happens, talk comes round to dreams and mythologies. Doug tells us a story about how a scarab beetle came up in a dream Jung was working on with a patient when a real scarab actually flew into his room. Just then, our waiter arrives with our drinks. He tells us his name is Thomas. “Are you a doubter?” I ask. “Is that from a story?” he asks back. “It’s theology,” I say, about to go into the whole explication of Thomas demanding Christ show him wounds. We are well-acquainted with wounds at this table. I want to say. My brother here is Job, you see. Suffering one smote after another. Instead I add: “Some might call it mythology. We are a family who likes talking theology, mythology, psychology….” “All the ologies,” he quips. “Exactly,” I laugh. “All the ologies.”
In the 1990s, Jane Farrow hosted a CBC radio program called “Workology,” a look at the modern workplace. The show made me think about the differences between a job, a career, a vocation and a calling. I began making lists of all the jobs I’ve had over a lifetime, many of them taken to make ends meet while developing my skills and talents as a writer. Most artists spend at least a few years in the service industry. We’ve all encountered a frustrated actor working in a restaurant or bar. It is hard work, but invaluable for developing characters and stories, not to mention perseverance and patience.
While many of the jobs I’ve had would not qualify as vocations or callings, they’ve all taught me valuable lessons about humanity and given me a window into the quirks and peccadillos that drive human behaviour. I’ve been on the receiving end of snap judgements to do with class, privilege and education. But those were the days when “paying one’s dues” was part of developing depth and deep awareness for forming, as the mythologist Joseph Campbell would say one’s personal mythology. I learned how to deflect insults, to suck it up and secure my tip.
These days, the server seems to be the one in charge, calling foul if we even look at them wrong. Two days ago, I walked into a Starbucks, and the “barista” (not a title I would have accepted as a waitress unless it came with a pay raise ) informed me: “We don’t have washrooms.” Did I look like a vagrant? When I said I was ordering a coffee, he didn’t even look sheepish. He just shrugged. I’d just come out of a Canadian Tire where my brother and I were looking for a headlamp. We couldn’t get anyone who knew anything about the merchandise even though they wore name tags. One of them not only avoided our gaze but yawned noisily as she slumped past me and my brother with his blind-guy cane. “We gotta find an old guy,” he grumbled. “Preferably in automotive.”
Back in the 70s and 80s, when I worked the early morning shift at The Demitasse Cafe, pulling espressos stood me in good stead. I liked knowing what people took in their coffees and on their toast. I eavesdropped liberally and took notes on my order pad. There is a way to make a job work for you, to find material in every little task. This tendency to have one’s “calling” call out amidst chores is an inherited trait. I recently found one of my mother’s shopping lists in a box of artifacts from the family home. In between “bread” and “milk,” she’d jotted “Faure” and “Mozart,” music pieces she was considering teaching her voice students.
I know the service industry can be tough. Night clerks often find themselves in dangerous situations or up against a sourpuss with an axe to grind. It makes me wonder what shady characters made the night clerk in our hotel behave so oddly when I padded down to ask if we could have a couple of extra blankets. She looked at me as if I’d asked for a bottle of champagne to be sent to my room. “I’ll have to go the laundry to get one,” she said. “That’s fine,” I replied. “I’ll come with you. You don’t have to bring them up to us.” We walked the ten feet to the laundry where she presented me with one blanket. “Just one?” I asked. She gave me a curt smile and nodded. “And we’ll be charging you $50 until it’s returned.” Dumbfounded by her response, I went back to our room. The next morning, after we took our brother to his doctor’s appointment, we returned to find our pass keys didn’t work. Once again I received an odd and curt response at the front desk, this time from a different clerk. “I wonder if you could re-initiate these, we can’t get in our room and we’re booked for two nights,” I said, giving her our room number. She replied: “Well, I’ll have to look you up first; we don’t just give keys to anybody.” Wow. “Ok, we’ll have breakfast and return later.”
It is a common practice in our family to spend breakfast going over our dreams from the night before. It’s an “ology” we commit to. I suspected my siblings could help me sort through my dreams and find a solution to my desk clerk dilemma. Halfway through breakfast, I realized what I needed to do. Returning to the clerk, I said: “I completely understand you need to look up my name and room number, but normally, a clerk does that without a patronizing reprimand. I mean: ‘I can’t just give a key to anyone’ is an odd phrase to lead with.” The woman apologized profusely and then handed me our room keys. And an extra blanket.