Unseen influences at Canary Wharf

I went to Canary Wharf on the Isle of Dogs recently for a seasonal get-together with a former workmate.  I arranged for us to meet outside the tall obelisk at One Canada Square, otherwise known as the Canary Wharf Tower.

Things started badly: I became very confused and disoriented after coming out of Canary Wharf Station by the wrong exit. I waited outside the wrong building for a while. I had to send texts and find another meeting place, a big store that we could both see from where we were standing.

I know that many people have problems finding their way around the area, especially when visiting it for the first time. They rightly say that the signposting is inadequate and the multiplicity of levels and station exits makes navigation difficult. The tall corporate buildings and their huge entrance halls with all the plate glass and marble look much the same at ground level, which doesn’t help either.

Although I have been to Canary Wharf several times, I always have trouble finding my way around - even with a map. It is as if something inside me is reset and I go back to square one each time I go there; previous visits have done nothing to familiarise me with the area. My inner compass often goes haywire; I set off in the wrong direction and sometimes get so lost that it takes a while to get back on track.

Injury and revenge: Part II a special case

The first article about injury and revenge was created to get some general ideas out of the way before moving on to some unseen influences that might have been at work in particular cases.

I had a light-bulb moment a while back; it enabled me to look at some very painful experiences in a new light.

Robert Sheckley describes such moments of illumination far better than I ever could:

“A thought had crossed his mind, a thought so tremendously involved, so meaningful, so far-reaching in its implications that he was stirred to his depths. Caswell tried desperately to shake off the knowledge it brought. But the thought, permanently etched upon his memory, would not depart.”

From Bad Medicine, a very amusing short story about someone who, when prevented from taking revenge in one way for his – completely imaginary – injuries, finds another way to destroy his enemy.

The revolutionary idea that slipped into my mind was that the injury was not all one way; it was symmetric.  Although some people, perhaps operating under the control of unseen influences, had devastated me by leading me to believe I was going to get something I really wanted then taking it away at the last moment, I had in a sense done exactly the same thing to them – or to whatever was working through them.

A particular type of injury
Some people have been treated very badly; they have received such a shattering blow that they feel they have been smashed to pieces, impaled on the cutting edge of reality, attacked by a hit and run driver and left to die. This devastating, shattering blow has been described as a kick from the devil’s hoof, which is exactly what it feels like.

Many experiences can cause such feelings. I am thinking of a particular type of injury, one where something that someone wants more than anything else is offered to them, appears to be within their grasp then suddenly vanishes, leaving them devastated and wondering what hit them.