watch out: i'm about to foam at the mouth.
consider yourselves forewarned.
this boxing day, a bunch of kids in their late teens and early twenties opened fire on yonge street (in toronto) while it was full of shoppers looking for post-christmas deals. seven innocent bystanders were shot, and one fifteen year old girl was killed in front of her mother, shot in the head, because of arguing gangs, or whatever these people were.
i'm outrageously angry about this. like, on the verge of spontaneous human combustion angry. and i'm fighting every urge to just fill this post with useless expletives.
i wish i had one of those guys, those shooters, in front of me right now, so i could shake him and shake him and demand to know which one of his personal problems warranted this public display of violence? which one of the problems -- which slight, which insult, which anxiety -- justifies and explains this shattered girl, twitching in a pool of her own blood and brains in front of her own mother?
what the fuck's the matter with people?
i can't stand it.
i actually can't stand it.
paul martin is building his current election campaign on, amongst other things, banning handguns altogether in canada, and while i may agree with this personally -- because i think that handguns are stupid and creepy, just like the people who use them or collect them -- i have to admit that i don't think this will solve the problem of growing gun violence in, especially, toronto. stupid creepy gun collectors aren't the ones displaying their macho vigilante prowess on our streets. legal guns aren't the issue.
can't someone invent a supremo-supremo-ex-ray-machino that will pick up handgun metal in houses so that we can just go in and take them? or *something*?? what is the answer to this?
i suspect the answer lies in community building.
canadians, this is our country. our home. our living room. we live here. it's time to take matters in hand. the police, by nature, have to follow a strict set of laws and rules when it comes to their conduct, and this is as it should be, but regular citizens are not bound by all of these same rules. mothers can go through their children's rooms. siblings can turn each other in. grandparents can shake the nonsense out of their grandchildren.
this is our home, our house, and we are allowing it to be befouled by mindless selfishness and arrogance. it's like we're all sitting around waiting for someone else to clean up the kitchen, or something, but it's not going to happen. it's *Our Kitchen*.
ugh. i'm just... i'm truly sickened.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Sunday, December 11, 2005
oh. my. stars.
there are five 12 year olds running around screaming in our backyard.
it's 7pm, but pitch black.
i'm just waiting for the neighbours to complain.
i hope no one breaks anything. i think someone just fell down the back stairs. i'm not looking unless there's screaming and/or blood. i feel like i'm under siege in my own home. like i'm being set upon by a brigade of crazed, semi-pubescent midgets hopped up on sugar.
i'm glad they're too scared to go to the park in the dark, though. (they're afraid of "stalkers.") i'd rather have them closer at hand. now i think they're playing hide and go seek in the backyard. the lady who is mean to her dog has taken to turning her porch light off these days (or maybe it has burned out from all that over-use) so the backyard is actually really, really nice and dark.
like last year, j got only money (rather than gifts -- a new trend?), and, like last year, people barely touched the birthday cake i bothered to make. am i the only one who likes chocolate cake?? it's weird. it's an awesome cake -- delicious and chocolaty with a chocolate-mint icing -- but each kid only hate half his (admittedly huge) piece. (seriously, though. i would have barfed from over-eating as a child before i left cake on my plate. c'mon guys! it's CAKE!!)
kourtenay was the only girl for the bowling part of the party. she went home after that, leaving the remainder who are here for a sleepover. she was a trouper (literally. she's a cadet), and by far not the worst bowler. she's a funny monkey, that one. we chatted a bit, being, you know, girls. she's a military brat and is going to the target range tomorrow. (i can't tell you how weird i find that.) maybe this is part of where j gets his gun thing from. or, rather, maybe this is one of the things that makes him hold onto the idea of the coolness of guns as tenaciously as he does. she was chasing the boys around the bowling alley trying to put their hair in ponytails. remember that kind of thing? any excuse to connect with someone when you don't really know how to.
i kind of feel like i'm still like that.
ugh. someone just knocked over the huge, very full box of recycling that we have been saving to get money back for. do you think they'll clean it up?
what's your bet? my vote is for a half-assed attempt distracted by the start of a new game.
robbie is here -- he was my laser tag nemesis last year. i swear that kid can teleport. i actually really like him, even though he doesn't like me at all. i think he's hilarious and cute and charmingly dark spirited. you can barely see his face for the poker straight dark brown hair that falls closely on either side of it. tonight i'm going to spy on him to discover his inner nature.
nick is such a bruiser. he's smart, streetwise, pessimistic, and addicted to eating crap. i think our healthy food scares him. i confronted him with this and he denied it, claiming that he "loves vegetables and dip" (which was somehow supposed to prove that he likes "healthy" food, even though i've never fed him veggies and dip in my life, and even though celery coated in ranch dressing isn't particularly healthy).
david is annoying. and is a blond, hyper, oblivious kid who does things regardless of whether you asked him not to with the look of adrenaline rush always on his face. i think he's an adrenaline junkie, addicted to being a punk. after bowling was over, he kept sneaking away to hurl balls down the lanes, despite my reprimands, and the bowling alley people bawling him out. i imagine him growing up into the sort of adult i avoid.
then there is bob. poor bob, saddled with a grown-up name, a quiet introverted personality, and a droopy, slightly pear-shaped body. i've never met or heard of bob before, and am not sure why he's here. he doesn't seem like the type that j likes. he has no edge. he's a tag along, a frumpy wallflower, an audience for the more active kids, a spectator in his own life. i feel like bringing him inside and trying to pay attention to him. trying to coax the person out of him.
bob ate the least amount of cake. sort of chubby, like his mother, i think he may be on weightwatchers, too, like her.
she (bob's mother) was at the bowling alley before i was, which was embarrassing (we had cab problems. it took over half an hour for one to even show up, which is really unusual), and she stayed for the bowling part, helping me to keep score (when i realized that i had never kept bowling score before, and that you didn't just get one point per pin knocked down), then she went to walmart while we ate, and came back and drove a handful of kids back here. robbie's dad drove the other half. i rarely feel like a stupid kid trapped in a woman's body because i don't drive, but tonight i did. anyway, bob's mum is, amongst other things, a romance novelist. it turns out she's a member of the romance novelists of bc society, or something like that. i'm thinking of going to a couple of their workshops to see what it's about. i confessed my taste for ladies in metal bikinis brandishing swords and riding white tigers, and she said that fantasy-romance was super hot right now. should i swallow my literary snobbery and try writing some chick-lit? anyway, she gave me her card.
two of the kids just took the hugest, stinkiest dumps in our toilet and the smell is wafting throughout the house. jesus. what the hell was in that bowling alley pizza? maybe it's just been a while since i spent time with the shit of people who eat meat. ugh. it reeks. (like, preternaturally.)
hm... worrying silence coming from outside. i told them to tell me if they go anywhere else... hm.
well. if they're gone, they're gone, and there's nothing i can do about it until they come back. i told them, before we went in the house, that these are the rules: no running inside. no throwing *anything* inside. no going in my room. no going downstairs. please put the toilet seat down after you pee.
that's it.
when they went outside i told them i wanted to know... ah... now i hear them again. good.
whew.
it's 7pm, but pitch black.
i'm just waiting for the neighbours to complain.
i hope no one breaks anything. i think someone just fell down the back stairs. i'm not looking unless there's screaming and/or blood. i feel like i'm under siege in my own home. like i'm being set upon by a brigade of crazed, semi-pubescent midgets hopped up on sugar.
i'm glad they're too scared to go to the park in the dark, though. (they're afraid of "stalkers.") i'd rather have them closer at hand. now i think they're playing hide and go seek in the backyard. the lady who is mean to her dog has taken to turning her porch light off these days (or maybe it has burned out from all that over-use) so the backyard is actually really, really nice and dark.
like last year, j got only money (rather than gifts -- a new trend?), and, like last year, people barely touched the birthday cake i bothered to make. am i the only one who likes chocolate cake?? it's weird. it's an awesome cake -- delicious and chocolaty with a chocolate-mint icing -- but each kid only hate half his (admittedly huge) piece. (seriously, though. i would have barfed from over-eating as a child before i left cake on my plate. c'mon guys! it's CAKE!!)
kourtenay was the only girl for the bowling part of the party. she went home after that, leaving the remainder who are here for a sleepover. she was a trouper (literally. she's a cadet), and by far not the worst bowler. she's a funny monkey, that one. we chatted a bit, being, you know, girls. she's a military brat and is going to the target range tomorrow. (i can't tell you how weird i find that.) maybe this is part of where j gets his gun thing from. or, rather, maybe this is one of the things that makes him hold onto the idea of the coolness of guns as tenaciously as he does. she was chasing the boys around the bowling alley trying to put their hair in ponytails. remember that kind of thing? any excuse to connect with someone when you don't really know how to.
i kind of feel like i'm still like that.
ugh. someone just knocked over the huge, very full box of recycling that we have been saving to get money back for. do you think they'll clean it up?
what's your bet? my vote is for a half-assed attempt distracted by the start of a new game.
robbie is here -- he was my laser tag nemesis last year. i swear that kid can teleport. i actually really like him, even though he doesn't like me at all. i think he's hilarious and cute and charmingly dark spirited. you can barely see his face for the poker straight dark brown hair that falls closely on either side of it. tonight i'm going to spy on him to discover his inner nature.
nick is such a bruiser. he's smart, streetwise, pessimistic, and addicted to eating crap. i think our healthy food scares him. i confronted him with this and he denied it, claiming that he "loves vegetables and dip" (which was somehow supposed to prove that he likes "healthy" food, even though i've never fed him veggies and dip in my life, and even though celery coated in ranch dressing isn't particularly healthy).
david is annoying. and is a blond, hyper, oblivious kid who does things regardless of whether you asked him not to with the look of adrenaline rush always on his face. i think he's an adrenaline junkie, addicted to being a punk. after bowling was over, he kept sneaking away to hurl balls down the lanes, despite my reprimands, and the bowling alley people bawling him out. i imagine him growing up into the sort of adult i avoid.
then there is bob. poor bob, saddled with a grown-up name, a quiet introverted personality, and a droopy, slightly pear-shaped body. i've never met or heard of bob before, and am not sure why he's here. he doesn't seem like the type that j likes. he has no edge. he's a tag along, a frumpy wallflower, an audience for the more active kids, a spectator in his own life. i feel like bringing him inside and trying to pay attention to him. trying to coax the person out of him.
bob ate the least amount of cake. sort of chubby, like his mother, i think he may be on weightwatchers, too, like her.
she (bob's mother) was at the bowling alley before i was, which was embarrassing (we had cab problems. it took over half an hour for one to even show up, which is really unusual), and she stayed for the bowling part, helping me to keep score (when i realized that i had never kept bowling score before, and that you didn't just get one point per pin knocked down), then she went to walmart while we ate, and came back and drove a handful of kids back here. robbie's dad drove the other half. i rarely feel like a stupid kid trapped in a woman's body because i don't drive, but tonight i did. anyway, bob's mum is, amongst other things, a romance novelist. it turns out she's a member of the romance novelists of bc society, or something like that. i'm thinking of going to a couple of their workshops to see what it's about. i confessed my taste for ladies in metal bikinis brandishing swords and riding white tigers, and she said that fantasy-romance was super hot right now. should i swallow my literary snobbery and try writing some chick-lit? anyway, she gave me her card.
two of the kids just took the hugest, stinkiest dumps in our toilet and the smell is wafting throughout the house. jesus. what the hell was in that bowling alley pizza? maybe it's just been a while since i spent time with the shit of people who eat meat. ugh. it reeks. (like, preternaturally.)
hm... worrying silence coming from outside. i told them to tell me if they go anywhere else... hm.
well. if they're gone, they're gone, and there's nothing i can do about it until they come back. i told them, before we went in the house, that these are the rules: no running inside. no throwing *anything* inside. no going in my room. no going downstairs. please put the toilet seat down after you pee.
that's it.
when they went outside i told them i wanted to know... ah... now i hear them again. good.
whew.
Monday, November 28, 2005
so, i guess that's that, then.
to everyone’s utter lack of surprise, our government has just fallen, moments ago, in a vote of no confidence in the house of commons. it seems there will be an election in january, which is weird. a vote of no confidence is weird, too, but a january vote? it's a terrible time of year to have to leave your house on a civic errand that you were unlikely to have run in any case.
we'll see, i guess.
throughout the coverage, though, i was struck over and over again by the youthful humour with which the commentators remarked on the proceedings. cbc has always been in my background as an adult voice of mature reason and intelligent reflection. as a child i strained to understand the political discussions and the well-read sense of humour bandied about so easily. i admired all of it terribly.
then today i heard two commentators snicker over the moustache a former parliamentarian used to have in the 70's, saying it was magnum p.i.-like. and i realised:
i'm listening to people my age.
cbc now employs smart 30 year olds. it probably always has. it never occurred to me that it was possible for me to work at cbc, (realistically, that is. i mean, sure, i could put bullet deflecting bracelets on, too, and run around saving the world in my see-through airplane with my golden lasso, but, i mean, how likely is *that* to happen?) and now i feel stupid for having been conned into staying a child in front of the radio. i want a job at cbc.
i could do it.
i've seen magnum.
everyone, and i mean *everyone*, i know is getting married and having babies right now, but not me! i'm a kid in front of a radio.
shit.
we'll see, i guess.
throughout the coverage, though, i was struck over and over again by the youthful humour with which the commentators remarked on the proceedings. cbc has always been in my background as an adult voice of mature reason and intelligent reflection. as a child i strained to understand the political discussions and the well-read sense of humour bandied about so easily. i admired all of it terribly.
then today i heard two commentators snicker over the moustache a former parliamentarian used to have in the 70's, saying it was magnum p.i.-like. and i realised:
i'm listening to people my age.
cbc now employs smart 30 year olds. it probably always has. it never occurred to me that it was possible for me to work at cbc, (realistically, that is. i mean, sure, i could put bullet deflecting bracelets on, too, and run around saving the world in my see-through airplane with my golden lasso, but, i mean, how likely is *that* to happen?) and now i feel stupid for having been conned into staying a child in front of the radio. i want a job at cbc.
i could do it.
i've seen magnum.
everyone, and i mean *everyone*, i know is getting married and having babies right now, but not me! i'm a kid in front of a radio.
shit.
Friday, September 16, 2005
zach over the rainbow
zach was a rainbow puppy
a swimmer, a sniffer, a blue box diver
a humper a thumper a dog
turkey, kale and brown rice eater
evening blanket ravisher
waking everyone up with his five-star, three a.m. fart alarm
don't wait by the shore of your death
whining
as we swim on through our lives.
instead, chase rabbits
through tall grasses alive with chirps,
bound through wildflowers --
puppy breath exalting the warm sweet breezy smell of summer
eyes dancing
tongue lolling
as you jump over the star-fields
and out of sight.
we'll miss your warm body
and comforting cheerful disposition
farewell, zach! thank you!
a swimmer, a sniffer, a blue box diver
a humper a thumper a dog
turkey, kale and brown rice eater
evening blanket ravisher
waking everyone up with his five-star, three a.m. fart alarm
don't wait by the shore of your death
whining
as we swim on through our lives.
instead, chase rabbits
through tall grasses alive with chirps,
bound through wildflowers --
puppy breath exalting the warm sweet breezy smell of summer
eyes dancing
tongue lolling
as you jump over the star-fields
and out of sight.
we'll miss your warm body
and comforting cheerful disposition
farewell, zach! thank you!
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
the plums at the top of the tree
are tantalizing me with their luscious golden ripe and juicy little bodies.
i'm a pretty good monkey, for my age, but there's no way i can get at them. so they bob up there, winking at me in the sunshine, until a crow stops by and does my work for me.
crows!
it's a really big tree -- a couple of stories -- and they're really small plums, but their flavour is good. i wonder if they were always that small, or if they 'went wild' and got tiny, or something.
how.
do.
i.
get.
them
?
(and. what. would. i. bake. if. i. could?)
i'm a pretty good monkey, for my age, but there's no way i can get at them. so they bob up there, winking at me in the sunshine, until a crow stops by and does my work for me.
crows!
it's a really big tree -- a couple of stories -- and they're really small plums, but their flavour is good. i wonder if they were always that small, or if they 'went wild' and got tiny, or something.
how.
do.
i.
get.
them
?
(and. what. would. i. bake. if. i. could?)
wonderbed
this morning J left for a week in the kootenays.
when he left, i went down to the beach and sat on a rock for an hour or so, just enjoying the early morning sights and sounds and smells. when i got back, his side of the bed was still warm.
i think our bed's weird.
maybe it's slowly stealing our souls.
* * *
snuggling his side of the bed is phase one of his absence. what happens then, over the next few days, is that his side gets -- well, actually my side, as i'm a right-side-of-the-bed-sleeper who's been currently displaced by another right-side-of-the-bed sleeper, so when he goes, i revert to the right side again, and give his presence in my mind the left side. you know, where he ought to sleep anyway ;-) -- so anyway, "his" side gets piled more and more with journals and reading material, effectivly building a man out of books.
book-man is a little boney, but totally sexy nonetheless. i love book-man.
when he left, i went down to the beach and sat on a rock for an hour or so, just enjoying the early morning sights and sounds and smells. when i got back, his side of the bed was still warm.
i think our bed's weird.
maybe it's slowly stealing our souls.
* * *
snuggling his side of the bed is phase one of his absence. what happens then, over the next few days, is that his side gets -- well, actually my side, as i'm a right-side-of-the-bed-sleeper who's been currently displaced by another right-side-of-the-bed sleeper, so when he goes, i revert to the right side again, and give his presence in my mind the left side. you know, where he ought to sleep anyway ;-) -- so anyway, "his" side gets piled more and more with journals and reading material, effectivly building a man out of books.
book-man is a little boney, but totally sexy nonetheless. i love book-man.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Bug Girl and the Raid Can of Routine
we moved into this house in december. it's a little post-war bungalow, and it turned me into a susie-homemaker. in retrospect, i think the ghosts of Housewives Past were gently nudging me along with their dustpans. i mean, i was on the verge of buying a cake platter. and maybe a crystal candy dish. i even made christmas nuts'n'bolts -- and what says '50's housewife' more than savoury recipes involving packaged dry cereal? when the step-bug came home at lunch, i would have a cheese and (soy) luncheon meat sandwich ready for him on the table with a bowl of canned tomato soup.
all i wanted to do was cook, clean, and smile fondly over steaming casseroles in my oven mitts.
mind you, the glass doorknobs, marbled single-sheet linoleum floor and retro aluminum rimmed counters really did seem to make it all easy. easy to hum and scrub, easy to bake and pinch, easy to greet your sweetheart at the door in nothing but an apron and a wink.
and i was interested to see how long it would last, this playing house. the only things i never get tired of are: doing something different every day, and lying around thinking. the perfect day involves both. it's not that i'm easily bored (in fact, i often feel that a tendency towards frequent boredom indicates a severe lack of imagination, or possibly even feeble mindedness), it's more that i despair easily. and feel easily imprisoned. and being required to participate in unchanging routine seems to bring the grumpy crazy out in me. other people can be habitual around me, and i'll often find it wonderful and soothing -- something to rely on -- but when it comes to needing to pull it off myself, well... it goes beautifully for a while, and then just stops.
"what?! you want dinner again?! didn't we just do this yesterday? ugh. you've got to be kidding. look: there's the fridge. go make yourself something involving vegetables."
"what?! i *still* have to water this plant?! it never ends!!"
i can handle doing a thing or two that i don't like from time to time, but if it's the same one or two things every day? every day? i get reduced to distracted fidgets, and then i start to snarl.
i can't tell if this is just my basic character, if it's a result of spending so much time alone as a kid, unrelied on, or if it's because i'm an introvert, or a spoiled brat. in any case, i find not following my nose is like swimming upstream. last night i spent 6 hours cleaning the kitchen because i felt like it. i was up until four. i wiped everything. if, however, last week you had told me to spend six hours cleaning the kitchen, i would have... well, i would have ignored you. and now, i may not clean a thing in the kitchen aside from the dishes for a month or more.
is this weird?
i feel weird.
why is the day-to-day so challenging for me? i'm sensing that J and i are both looking for some one to be the Routine Anchor for the team, and neither one of us seems to be able to pull it off for the other. it's a problem we're going to have to figure out. but how?
all i wanted to do was cook, clean, and smile fondly over steaming casseroles in my oven mitts.
mind you, the glass doorknobs, marbled single-sheet linoleum floor and retro aluminum rimmed counters really did seem to make it all easy. easy to hum and scrub, easy to bake and pinch, easy to greet your sweetheart at the door in nothing but an apron and a wink.
and i was interested to see how long it would last, this playing house. the only things i never get tired of are: doing something different every day, and lying around thinking. the perfect day involves both. it's not that i'm easily bored (in fact, i often feel that a tendency towards frequent boredom indicates a severe lack of imagination, or possibly even feeble mindedness), it's more that i despair easily. and feel easily imprisoned. and being required to participate in unchanging routine seems to bring the grumpy crazy out in me. other people can be habitual around me, and i'll often find it wonderful and soothing -- something to rely on -- but when it comes to needing to pull it off myself, well... it goes beautifully for a while, and then just stops.
"what?! you want dinner again?! didn't we just do this yesterday? ugh. you've got to be kidding. look: there's the fridge. go make yourself something involving vegetables."
"what?! i *still* have to water this plant?! it never ends!!"
i can handle doing a thing or two that i don't like from time to time, but if it's the same one or two things every day? every day? i get reduced to distracted fidgets, and then i start to snarl.
i can't tell if this is just my basic character, if it's a result of spending so much time alone as a kid, unrelied on, or if it's because i'm an introvert, or a spoiled brat. in any case, i find not following my nose is like swimming upstream. last night i spent 6 hours cleaning the kitchen because i felt like it. i was up until four. i wiped everything. if, however, last week you had told me to spend six hours cleaning the kitchen, i would have... well, i would have ignored you. and now, i may not clean a thing in the kitchen aside from the dishes for a month or more.
is this weird?
i feel weird.
why is the day-to-day so challenging for me? i'm sensing that J and i are both looking for some one to be the Routine Anchor for the team, and neither one of us seems to be able to pull it off for the other. it's a problem we're going to have to figure out. but how?
Saturday, July 23, 2005
little old men are so cute i can't even stand it
i live in an area that has a lot of 'retirees' (it's called the City of Victoria, ha ha, no, but really: there are a lot of old people in my neighbourhood).
to watch them enter the parking lot (by foot or by car) of our little local plaza is to watch the heady confluence of darwinism with the miraculous.
i'm amazed (actually.) that more of them don't bonk into each other. or just fall over.
anyway, the other afternoon i happened upon J outside of the drug store. i was going there to buy pantyhose to tie the cucumbers up with, and he was filling a prescription -- home early from the hills to my delighted surprise.
we went into the store, and while performing our tasks, noticed a little old man trying to find the brill cream. the lady pointed out that it was right in front of him, only, it turns out, he hadn't noticed it because they had changed their box. he became a little worried -- if the box was different, would the contents be the same? he asked the lady if they still had any of the old ones.
they didn't.
he mulled the new brill cream over, then tottered over to the counter and bought it with what looked like worry-tinged resolve. he counted out his bit of money.
with his little purchase in hand, he headed for the door. we followed him out of the store, where he looked around, and then walked towards a blue car.
"oh god. he's not going to drive is he? please don't let him be the driver." we whispered to ourselves.
when he walked, he lifted his feet fairly high, then put them down almost where they just were, making his progress slow.
he arrived at the blue car and stared at it for a moment, his legs still "walking" but his body not going anywhere. he looked around again, still walking on the spot, and then headed across the body of the parking lot, towards another blue car. cars slowly went around him. people with their walkers slowed to let him pass. we spied on him from behind the florist's outdoor arrangements to make sure he was alright.
he arrived at the second car, this one with a waiting driver, opened the back door, tossed in the little plastic bag containing his brill cream in the shiny new box, and then lifted and replaced, liiifted and replaced, liiiiifted and replaced, lifted... lifted... and ... got his leg in the car. then the rest of him. then they were gone.
and that was the cute little old man. and that was his Brill Cream Outing.
part of me is sad that when jay is a little old man, i won't be able to watch out for him, because i'll be a little old woman.
to watch them enter the parking lot (by foot or by car) of our little local plaza is to watch the heady confluence of darwinism with the miraculous.
i'm amazed (actually.) that more of them don't bonk into each other. or just fall over.
anyway, the other afternoon i happened upon J outside of the drug store. i was going there to buy pantyhose to tie the cucumbers up with, and he was filling a prescription -- home early from the hills to my delighted surprise.
we went into the store, and while performing our tasks, noticed a little old man trying to find the brill cream. the lady pointed out that it was right in front of him, only, it turns out, he hadn't noticed it because they had changed their box. he became a little worried -- if the box was different, would the contents be the same? he asked the lady if they still had any of the old ones.
they didn't.
he mulled the new brill cream over, then tottered over to the counter and bought it with what looked like worry-tinged resolve. he counted out his bit of money.
with his little purchase in hand, he headed for the door. we followed him out of the store, where he looked around, and then walked towards a blue car.
"oh god. he's not going to drive is he? please don't let him be the driver." we whispered to ourselves.
when he walked, he lifted his feet fairly high, then put them down almost where they just were, making his progress slow.
he arrived at the blue car and stared at it for a moment, his legs still "walking" but his body not going anywhere. he looked around again, still walking on the spot, and then headed across the body of the parking lot, towards another blue car. cars slowly went around him. people with their walkers slowed to let him pass. we spied on him from behind the florist's outdoor arrangements to make sure he was alright.
he arrived at the second car, this one with a waiting driver, opened the back door, tossed in the little plastic bag containing his brill cream in the shiny new box, and then lifted and replaced, liiifted and replaced, liiiiifted and replaced, lifted... lifted... and ... got his leg in the car. then the rest of him. then they were gone.
and that was the cute little old man. and that was his Brill Cream Outing.
part of me is sad that when jay is a little old man, i won't be able to watch out for him, because i'll be a little old woman.
Monday, July 18, 2005
women and witches
last night my fever broke. i awoke at 1:45 am to a heavenly lack of pain. my pelvis no longer felt like it was being slowly split in two, and my eyes no longer felt like they were trying to escape through the back of my head. i was no longer freezing under three blankets and the july heat.
what a revelation it can be to only feel mildly ill. i sank into a deep and restful slumber.
today i just have to blow my nose and nap a lot.
part of me wonders if i had a bit of sunstroke along with a garden variety headcold. at the market on sunday i got quite burnt, despite repeated slatherings of sunblock, a hat, and an umbrella.
at the market i also started to think about witches.
i've been thinking about witches for a while, but more often these days. my recent spurt of witch contemplating started at the retreat i went to with my mum last month. on one of the nights, a bonfire was lit, and all the women (myself included) started to groove around the fire. it wasn't some new-age, or neo-pagan, or enviro-feminist bonding ritual. it was just for fun.
light a fire and watch women peel half their clothes off and start to dance. it's that easy.
no wonder we were pegged as witches.
is it possible that the witch hunts of early modern europe were simple a result of women liking to dance around fires?
;-)
but seriously, at the time i removed myself and thought, "wow. to an outsider this could look pretty weird. especially if that outsider were a guy who hadn't gotten any in a while."
but anyway, back to the market and the sunstroke. the thing is, bringing one's wares to market is such an age-old activity. it reaches back through the generations, this ancient profession of mine, as do the petty politics that arise when people's character (or lack thereof) is brought out by the stresses of not having a good day, in terms of sales. some people tend to despise those next to them who are doing well, some people look to every external circumstance they can to blame their lack of sales -- "i'm not in my normal spot, that girl was standing in front of my booth for too long, i don't have my usual neighbour, that man is talking too loudly, i didn't bring the right tablecloth, my new neighbour's sign is too flashy and his table is too big so i have to move a foot over and now my stuff isn't in the sun", and so on. others are lackadaisical -- feet up, dreaming of beer all day long in the heat, regardless. or philosophical, "sales come and go -- who can explain the whims of the masses? tomorrow may be better." others get depressed and don't come back.
and i started to think about the infamous witch hunting craze that really started to take off in the 15th century in europe. and i could really see how, if we were as deeply superstitious and uninformed, the same thing could happen now. there are always those who look for others to blame, no matter how ridiculously. (i lend you my pot, you refuse to give it back, i yell at you, then coincidentally, your crops get blight in the next few days, and suddenly i'm accused of witchcraft. (that's how it worked, mostly.)) we may think we're smarter than that now, but i wouldn't put it past a few of the market vendors today to watch one of their fellow craftsmen burn for the sake of getting rid of a rival, but under the guise of righteousness. it only takes a few bad apples to rot whole the barrel.
some days at the market i feel like i'm participating in something medieval.
(some days, it feels downright roman.)
i guess, what i'm saying is, i get how these things can happen. the witch hunts, as terrible and unjustified as they were, make sense to me sociologically. perception is everything and sadly, we usually only have two eyes to see from.
what a revelation it can be to only feel mildly ill. i sank into a deep and restful slumber.
today i just have to blow my nose and nap a lot.
part of me wonders if i had a bit of sunstroke along with a garden variety headcold. at the market on sunday i got quite burnt, despite repeated slatherings of sunblock, a hat, and an umbrella.
at the market i also started to think about witches.
i've been thinking about witches for a while, but more often these days. my recent spurt of witch contemplating started at the retreat i went to with my mum last month. on one of the nights, a bonfire was lit, and all the women (myself included) started to groove around the fire. it wasn't some new-age, or neo-pagan, or enviro-feminist bonding ritual. it was just for fun.
light a fire and watch women peel half their clothes off and start to dance. it's that easy.
no wonder we were pegged as witches.
is it possible that the witch hunts of early modern europe were simple a result of women liking to dance around fires?
;-)
but seriously, at the time i removed myself and thought, "wow. to an outsider this could look pretty weird. especially if that outsider were a guy who hadn't gotten any in a while."
but anyway, back to the market and the sunstroke. the thing is, bringing one's wares to market is such an age-old activity. it reaches back through the generations, this ancient profession of mine, as do the petty politics that arise when people's character (or lack thereof) is brought out by the stresses of not having a good day, in terms of sales. some people tend to despise those next to them who are doing well, some people look to every external circumstance they can to blame their lack of sales -- "i'm not in my normal spot, that girl was standing in front of my booth for too long, i don't have my usual neighbour, that man is talking too loudly, i didn't bring the right tablecloth, my new neighbour's sign is too flashy and his table is too big so i have to move a foot over and now my stuff isn't in the sun", and so on. others are lackadaisical -- feet up, dreaming of beer all day long in the heat, regardless. or philosophical, "sales come and go -- who can explain the whims of the masses? tomorrow may be better." others get depressed and don't come back.
and i started to think about the infamous witch hunting craze that really started to take off in the 15th century in europe. and i could really see how, if we were as deeply superstitious and uninformed, the same thing could happen now. there are always those who look for others to blame, no matter how ridiculously. (i lend you my pot, you refuse to give it back, i yell at you, then coincidentally, your crops get blight in the next few days, and suddenly i'm accused of witchcraft. (that's how it worked, mostly.)) we may think we're smarter than that now, but i wouldn't put it past a few of the market vendors today to watch one of their fellow craftsmen burn for the sake of getting rid of a rival, but under the guise of righteousness. it only takes a few bad apples to rot whole the barrel.
some days at the market i feel like i'm participating in something medieval.
(some days, it feels downright roman.)
i guess, what i'm saying is, i get how these things can happen. the witch hunts, as terrible and unjustified as they were, make sense to me sociologically. perception is everything and sadly, we usually only have two eyes to see from.
Monday, July 04, 2005
pretty plastic people meet hairy granola
i recently came upon this ralph waldo emerson quote:
"The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, the carnival, the masquerade is at its height. Nobody drops his domino. The unities, the fictions of the piece it would be an impertinence to break. The chapter of fascinations is very long. Great is paint; nay, God is the painter; and we rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does not love its un-maskers. It was wittily, if somewhat bitterly, said by D'Alembert, "qu'un etat de vapeur etait un etat tres facheux, parcequ'il nous faisait voir les choses comme elles sont." I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, — for the Power has many names, — is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo. Few have overheard the gods, or surprised their secret. Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle. There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream. The toys, to be sure, are various, and are graduated in refinement to the quality of the dupe. The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge."
you know, i think emerson is bang on.
mum, delving into the beginning of the new age movement in the 80's, told me, at what must have been a rare and impressionable moment in my otherwise stubborn and contrary youth (regarding her at any rate), that when something/someone bothers you, the bothersom thing is probably just mirroring something inside you that's really annoying you.
so i spent a long time trying to find my inner condescending snob because i hated this in my french teacher, my inner control freak, my inner nag, my inner suburban plebe (woo! that sounds like my inner snob coming out!), rather than just experiencing my own reactions to the world in a straightforward and full-bodied way. eventually, i started to think this "mirroring" theory was crap and a navel gazing distraction from living simply and fully.
then, when we moved into this little house where we are now, i noticed our neighbours on the other side of our back yard (next door to our silly landlords). they were a couple. she, blond, thin, little "outie" bellybutton peeking out from her flat, bikinied body, given to talking on the cell phone while sunbathing on her deck, and looking glossy and well-groomed, even first thing on sunday morning in her bathrobe. i think she must have that kind of hair that always looks brushed. (as opposed to me. my hair never looks brushed, so i've stopped bothering.) anyway, he was dark haired, and ridiculously muscular (for a normal person, not body builder). an anesthesiologist. given to that big-muscle-big-penis swagger -- legs slightly opened when walking, arms held slightly out from the body as if biceps were getting in the way. he bar-b-q-ed a lot. opened bottles of wine every night for dinner, popping the corks carelessly without apology into our yard if it was sparkling wine. they didn't have any clutter and were really tidy. little banana republic people. sometimes they screamed at each other inside their house. i could hear them from my garden. once i called the police because i heard banging and thought i heard a threat.
anyway, my habit is usually to consider these sorts of people (and there i betray my snobbery again in believing that people can be thus "sorted"), my habit is to consider these "sorts" of people "asleep". unconscious. (as opposed to i who am, relatively, "awake.") even though i've only described the aesthetics of their lives to you, it isn't about aesthetics, because i love nice things, too. excellence, good quality, a bit of style -- i can really dig it sometimes -- it wasn't aesthetics, how they looked, it was about how in love with how they appeared that really got to me. how attached they were to being fit and young and conventionally stylish. it was about being distracted from what i would consider to be the more worthwhile pursuits of connection, and creation of meaning, and care and investigation. of putting people and the earth before anything shiny. and so i sat there in my thrift store clothes, eating my beans and rice, talking to the worms and feeling virtuous.
but then i thought, how arrogant of me -- what if they just don't care. what if they aren't asleep at all, but are really another type of human than i am. with different wiring. what if they know about our impending environmental disaster, sweatshops, child labour, and the ravages of indifference even on our well-heeled streets in this pretty neighbourhood? what if they know about introspection, self discovery, poetry, good literature, original art and the importance of seeing the world from the heart, but really Just Don't Care?
maybe they're just different from me. and that's all there is to it. "awake" in their own way, and different.
i don't know, i still can't decide, but in the meantime i read this emerson quote and i'm humbled again: i may have gotten to the point where i'm not beguiled to distraction by dishes that match my place mats, but righteous indignation seems to have my number every time. anything can be a fix if you identify with it enough, eh?
turns out, what annoyed me about them was something inside me, too.
so where does that leave us, i wonder? i hope that, underneath it all, there is some sort of basic reality that it wouldn't be a deception to fall in love with.
"The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, the carnival, the masquerade is at its height. Nobody drops his domino. The unities, the fictions of the piece it would be an impertinence to break. The chapter of fascinations is very long. Great is paint; nay, God is the painter; and we rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does not love its un-maskers. It was wittily, if somewhat bitterly, said by D'Alembert, "qu'un etat de vapeur etait un etat tres facheux, parcequ'il nous faisait voir les choses comme elles sont." I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, — for the Power has many names, — is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo. Few have overheard the gods, or surprised their secret. Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle. There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream. The toys, to be sure, are various, and are graduated in refinement to the quality of the dupe. The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge."
you know, i think emerson is bang on.
mum, delving into the beginning of the new age movement in the 80's, told me, at what must have been a rare and impressionable moment in my otherwise stubborn and contrary youth (regarding her at any rate), that when something/someone bothers you, the bothersom thing is probably just mirroring something inside you that's really annoying you.
so i spent a long time trying to find my inner condescending snob because i hated this in my french teacher, my inner control freak, my inner nag, my inner suburban plebe (woo! that sounds like my inner snob coming out!), rather than just experiencing my own reactions to the world in a straightforward and full-bodied way. eventually, i started to think this "mirroring" theory was crap and a navel gazing distraction from living simply and fully.
then, when we moved into this little house where we are now, i noticed our neighbours on the other side of our back yard (next door to our silly landlords). they were a couple. she, blond, thin, little "outie" bellybutton peeking out from her flat, bikinied body, given to talking on the cell phone while sunbathing on her deck, and looking glossy and well-groomed, even first thing on sunday morning in her bathrobe. i think she must have that kind of hair that always looks brushed. (as opposed to me. my hair never looks brushed, so i've stopped bothering.) anyway, he was dark haired, and ridiculously muscular (for a normal person, not body builder). an anesthesiologist. given to that big-muscle-big-penis swagger -- legs slightly opened when walking, arms held slightly out from the body as if biceps were getting in the way. he bar-b-q-ed a lot. opened bottles of wine every night for dinner, popping the corks carelessly without apology into our yard if it was sparkling wine. they didn't have any clutter and were really tidy. little banana republic people. sometimes they screamed at each other inside their house. i could hear them from my garden. once i called the police because i heard banging and thought i heard a threat.
anyway, my habit is usually to consider these sorts of people (and there i betray my snobbery again in believing that people can be thus "sorted"), my habit is to consider these "sorts" of people "asleep". unconscious. (as opposed to i who am, relatively, "awake.") even though i've only described the aesthetics of their lives to you, it isn't about aesthetics, because i love nice things, too. excellence, good quality, a bit of style -- i can really dig it sometimes -- it wasn't aesthetics, how they looked, it was about how in love with how they appeared that really got to me. how attached they were to being fit and young and conventionally stylish. it was about being distracted from what i would consider to be the more worthwhile pursuits of connection, and creation of meaning, and care and investigation. of putting people and the earth before anything shiny. and so i sat there in my thrift store clothes, eating my beans and rice, talking to the worms and feeling virtuous.
but then i thought, how arrogant of me -- what if they just don't care. what if they aren't asleep at all, but are really another type of human than i am. with different wiring. what if they know about our impending environmental disaster, sweatshops, child labour, and the ravages of indifference even on our well-heeled streets in this pretty neighbourhood? what if they know about introspection, self discovery, poetry, good literature, original art and the importance of seeing the world from the heart, but really Just Don't Care?
maybe they're just different from me. and that's all there is to it. "awake" in their own way, and different.
i don't know, i still can't decide, but in the meantime i read this emerson quote and i'm humbled again: i may have gotten to the point where i'm not beguiled to distraction by dishes that match my place mats, but righteous indignation seems to have my number every time. anything can be a fix if you identify with it enough, eh?
turns out, what annoyed me about them was something inside me, too.
so where does that leave us, i wonder? i hope that, underneath it all, there is some sort of basic reality that it wouldn't be a deception to fall in love with.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
dying
as those of you who know me can attest, i have some death issues.
in a nutshell, i have a hard time letting go.
preemptively.
before people are even anywhere close to being dead, i mourn their inevitable demise.
it's true. with actual tears, sometimes.
people and things in the full vibrancy of life pierce my heart with sadness because of the truth that they, in all their multifaceted, quirky, unique and aching beauty, are not eternal. this crushes me. that anything can be taken away at any moment (and i know for a fact that it can be) leaves me at such a loss, so vulnerable and fearful feeling -- i think to myself that it can't actually be like that, that i must be missing some crucial part of the scenario, because if i'm not, it's a terrible design, and is just too difficult for me. i love things too much. am too attached. i'd make a terrible buddha.
so, what is this hoarding? where does it come from? i think it might be a strange form of greed. i think i've always gathered too much to myself. i'm a pack rat when it comes to everything from pretty baubles and books to memories and emotions. i gather, collect and keep. i just can't let go. i have transit stubs from my last trip to toronto. receiving bank statements and junk mail stress me out because i feel funny tossing them, but don't want to keep them. it actually mildly stresses me out. i can't throw things away. (why can't i throw things away??) and why can't i enjoy pleasures in a relaxed, unpanicked fashion?
quick -- eat all the shortbreads -- you never know when you'll come across them again.
what terrible lack have i experienced, or imagined, that has left me grasping like this?
must have: olives by the jar (can't eat just one), five scarves (all pretty, couldn't decide in the store. need them. mine.), boarding passes and receipts from journeys abroad (mustn't forget anything. keep all memories. all.), hundreds of books (can't just borrow them, need to OWN them. mine.), weird found objects (pretty! sparkly! might come in handy! gather, gather, keep, keep.), terrible photos i'll never look at again (mustn't forget any experiences, no matter how unphotogenic. and what if i need them for a collage?), and it goes on and on.
but hoarding life exactly-as-it-is-at-any-given-moment is like grasping at water. all this clinging has left me frustrated and insecure. it doesn't work very well.
that i do this is so embarrassing, but there you have it.
i grab with my teeth, both hands and ten toes to keep life from getting away from me, but it just keeps moving along, oblivious. like a father with a three year old wrapped around his leg, life can move very easily to the next room with only my small weight trying to stop it.
sometimes i think that if everything would just stop for two seconds -- just stop -- so that we could all truly realise, as a group, the impermanence of everything, we would begin to cherish it properly, and i could relax. other times i think, if only i knew for sure that there was an afterlife, then there would be no last good-byes, just see-you-laters, and i could relax (yay! i wouldn't have to let go!). and still other times i think, if i could just stop dithering and dive into life with unfettered gusto, i could come to death tired and worn and happily needing the rest, then i could relax.
don't get me wrong: i know my fretting isn't helpful. i know i'm probably missing the point. i'm just stuck.
a few weeks ago i heard an original song performed around a campfire. it was about death, and in it, the singer sings that now that she's finally going back to where she came from, the stars look so beautiful, her lover's eyes look so beautiful.
and i cried (of course.) and realised that since that time fourteen years ago when a terrible accident left a two person hole in my family, i've been dying. the accident shocked me into seeing that i'm dying. and the stars look so beautiful that i want to keep them all forever. and the little brown mouse, the scabby pothead glass painter, and these mittens, all of it. i don't want to let go and i don't want to leave. why do i have to leave?
how do i stop dying while i'm alive? it's getting in the way.
* * *
i think i'm going to go throw some stuff out now and see if it helps.
in a nutshell, i have a hard time letting go.
preemptively.
before people are even anywhere close to being dead, i mourn their inevitable demise.
it's true. with actual tears, sometimes.
people and things in the full vibrancy of life pierce my heart with sadness because of the truth that they, in all their multifaceted, quirky, unique and aching beauty, are not eternal. this crushes me. that anything can be taken away at any moment (and i know for a fact that it can be) leaves me at such a loss, so vulnerable and fearful feeling -- i think to myself that it can't actually be like that, that i must be missing some crucial part of the scenario, because if i'm not, it's a terrible design, and is just too difficult for me. i love things too much. am too attached. i'd make a terrible buddha.
so, what is this hoarding? where does it come from? i think it might be a strange form of greed. i think i've always gathered too much to myself. i'm a pack rat when it comes to everything from pretty baubles and books to memories and emotions. i gather, collect and keep. i just can't let go. i have transit stubs from my last trip to toronto. receiving bank statements and junk mail stress me out because i feel funny tossing them, but don't want to keep them. it actually mildly stresses me out. i can't throw things away. (why can't i throw things away??) and why can't i enjoy pleasures in a relaxed, unpanicked fashion?
quick -- eat all the shortbreads -- you never know when you'll come across them again.
what terrible lack have i experienced, or imagined, that has left me grasping like this?
must have: olives by the jar (can't eat just one), five scarves (all pretty, couldn't decide in the store. need them. mine.), boarding passes and receipts from journeys abroad (mustn't forget anything. keep all memories. all.), hundreds of books (can't just borrow them, need to OWN them. mine.), weird found objects (pretty! sparkly! might come in handy! gather, gather, keep, keep.), terrible photos i'll never look at again (mustn't forget any experiences, no matter how unphotogenic. and what if i need them for a collage?), and it goes on and on.
but hoarding life exactly-as-it-is-at-any-given-moment is like grasping at water. all this clinging has left me frustrated and insecure. it doesn't work very well.
that i do this is so embarrassing, but there you have it.
i grab with my teeth, both hands and ten toes to keep life from getting away from me, but it just keeps moving along, oblivious. like a father with a three year old wrapped around his leg, life can move very easily to the next room with only my small weight trying to stop it.
sometimes i think that if everything would just stop for two seconds -- just stop -- so that we could all truly realise, as a group, the impermanence of everything, we would begin to cherish it properly, and i could relax. other times i think, if only i knew for sure that there was an afterlife, then there would be no last good-byes, just see-you-laters, and i could relax (yay! i wouldn't have to let go!). and still other times i think, if i could just stop dithering and dive into life with unfettered gusto, i could come to death tired and worn and happily needing the rest, then i could relax.
don't get me wrong: i know my fretting isn't helpful. i know i'm probably missing the point. i'm just stuck.
a few weeks ago i heard an original song performed around a campfire. it was about death, and in it, the singer sings that now that she's finally going back to where she came from, the stars look so beautiful, her lover's eyes look so beautiful.
and i cried (of course.) and realised that since that time fourteen years ago when a terrible accident left a two person hole in my family, i've been dying. the accident shocked me into seeing that i'm dying. and the stars look so beautiful that i want to keep them all forever. and the little brown mouse, the scabby pothead glass painter, and these mittens, all of it. i don't want to let go and i don't want to leave. why do i have to leave?
how do i stop dying while i'm alive? it's getting in the way.
* * *
i think i'm going to go throw some stuff out now and see if it helps.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
old men are living history
i spent last weekend in refuge cove, on the secluded island of west redonda in a very small cabin at the top of a very large mountain with my mum, her bush-pilot lover, and their landlords (who are much nicer than mine, and who have now become family friends).
the husband part of this landlord duo is over 80 years old. he amazes me. he is fit, healthy, sharp, and has a pleasant and witty personality that's a pleasure to be around. he cut down ferns with a scythe while we were up there. he made us all a delicious dinner salad with home-cured olives. he cheated at speed scrabble. he says, "Once a Marxist, always a Marxist!" to describe himself.
he grew up jewish in brooklyn and as a young man, fought against the germans in WWII in northern italy. i asked him about the war and he said that war can be described in three words: stupid, stupid, and stupid.
even though he was the leader of a machine gun squad, he says he has never killed anyone that he knows of -- but he also said that with machine guns, you just spray a whole area with fire, so who knows what you hit. the two times he had a real person in his sights, and had to make a decision to shoot or not, something saved the day, and so he didn't have to kill them. one of the times a handful of germans were running away from his squad -- and one of his men shouted, in german, "Stop! Put down your guns, turn around, and we won't shoot!" two of the running men stopped, and so the other three or four who kept going were saved, because, of course, you wouldn't shoot at unarmed men with their hands in the air. the two who surrendered were so glad to be prisoners of war that they didn't even mind when H and his men raided their packs and ate their lunch (which, H tells me, is "illegal." such funny rules. killing, ok. lunch stealing, illegal.)
H saw many people die, and got a metal for bravery.
while helping to lug our provisions for the weekend up the mountain to the cabin, he said that it was easier to climb mountains 60 years ago.
he was 40 in the 60's. he was 40 when there were hippies. he grew up with people who knew what it was like to wear corsets, who knew what it was like without cars everywhere.
he has worked as an environmental engineer and urban planner all over the US and Canada.
he built the house that my mum rents from him. it's a little a-frame in the woods, overlooking an apple orchard and the ocean. it's all windows and weirdly placed electrical outlets -- like, in the middle of the wall, seven feet up.
he says the most amazing thing he's ever seen was one night, while driving alone in some remote and northern canadian location (i forget where) he suddenly came upon hundreds and hundreds of jack rabbits in the middle of the road. not little bunnies, huge jack rabbits. they all hopped away to let his car pass and no one has ever believed him.
he's an optimist -- he plants nut trees and expects to eat the nuts.
and i worry that when he and all his brethren die, we won't have a living memory of the horror of war in the same way. that we, in the so-called developed world, will lose even the possibility of having an immediate, collective, understanding of war, and of why it should always, always, always be the absolute last, last, last resort.
the husband part of this landlord duo is over 80 years old. he amazes me. he is fit, healthy, sharp, and has a pleasant and witty personality that's a pleasure to be around. he cut down ferns with a scythe while we were up there. he made us all a delicious dinner salad with home-cured olives. he cheated at speed scrabble. he says, "Once a Marxist, always a Marxist!" to describe himself.
he grew up jewish in brooklyn and as a young man, fought against the germans in WWII in northern italy. i asked him about the war and he said that war can be described in three words: stupid, stupid, and stupid.
even though he was the leader of a machine gun squad, he says he has never killed anyone that he knows of -- but he also said that with machine guns, you just spray a whole area with fire, so who knows what you hit. the two times he had a real person in his sights, and had to make a decision to shoot or not, something saved the day, and so he didn't have to kill them. one of the times a handful of germans were running away from his squad -- and one of his men shouted, in german, "Stop! Put down your guns, turn around, and we won't shoot!" two of the running men stopped, and so the other three or four who kept going were saved, because, of course, you wouldn't shoot at unarmed men with their hands in the air. the two who surrendered were so glad to be prisoners of war that they didn't even mind when H and his men raided their packs and ate their lunch (which, H tells me, is "illegal." such funny rules. killing, ok. lunch stealing, illegal.)
H saw many people die, and got a metal for bravery.
while helping to lug our provisions for the weekend up the mountain to the cabin, he said that it was easier to climb mountains 60 years ago.
he was 40 in the 60's. he was 40 when there were hippies. he grew up with people who knew what it was like to wear corsets, who knew what it was like without cars everywhere.
he has worked as an environmental engineer and urban planner all over the US and Canada.
he built the house that my mum rents from him. it's a little a-frame in the woods, overlooking an apple orchard and the ocean. it's all windows and weirdly placed electrical outlets -- like, in the middle of the wall, seven feet up.
he says the most amazing thing he's ever seen was one night, while driving alone in some remote and northern canadian location (i forget where) he suddenly came upon hundreds and hundreds of jack rabbits in the middle of the road. not little bunnies, huge jack rabbits. they all hopped away to let his car pass and no one has ever believed him.
he's an optimist -- he plants nut trees and expects to eat the nuts.
and i worry that when he and all his brethren die, we won't have a living memory of the horror of war in the same way. that we, in the so-called developed world, will lose even the possibility of having an immediate, collective, understanding of war, and of why it should always, always, always be the absolute last, last, last resort.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
you know,
not long ago our landlords (who, sadly, are also our neighbours) presented us with a bill from the city for water and garbage pick-up.
now, i don't know how things work in your part of the world, but i've been renting one place or another for 13 years now -- since i left home, in fact -- and i have never ever been asked to pay the city tax on water and garbage delivery. nor do i know anyone who has. it has always fallen under the responsibility of the home owner.
i was incensed. but i said nothing and just chalked it up to what has become, in my opinion, our landlord's typical lack of generosity of spirit.
on an aside, for some reason, i never seem to get a handle on which day is garbage day around here. it jumps around. first tuesday, then thursday, and so on.
this morning, hearing the rumble of the garbage truck up the street, i ran around the house, a lunatic in a dressing gown, trying to accumulate our garbage. finally i had it bagged, and was heading down the back stairway, when i ran into our garbage man behind the house, looking for our garbage.
i live in an area where, if you don't put your trash out, the garbage men Come Looking For Your Garbage.
they're worth every penny we paid.
now, i don't know how things work in your part of the world, but i've been renting one place or another for 13 years now -- since i left home, in fact -- and i have never ever been asked to pay the city tax on water and garbage delivery. nor do i know anyone who has. it has always fallen under the responsibility of the home owner.
i was incensed. but i said nothing and just chalked it up to what has become, in my opinion, our landlord's typical lack of generosity of spirit.
on an aside, for some reason, i never seem to get a handle on which day is garbage day around here. it jumps around. first tuesday, then thursday, and so on.
this morning, hearing the rumble of the garbage truck up the street, i ran around the house, a lunatic in a dressing gown, trying to accumulate our garbage. finally i had it bagged, and was heading down the back stairway, when i ran into our garbage man behind the house, looking for our garbage.
i live in an area where, if you don't put your trash out, the garbage men Come Looking For Your Garbage.
they're worth every penny we paid.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
my garden has the best weeds
really! they're so pretty! the tiniest blue, pink, and purple flowers (teeny tiny!), robust and cheerful dandelions, and adorable, if strangely smelly little daisies.
anyone else notice anything spectacular outdoors, lately, that usually goes missed?
anyone else notice anything spectacular outdoors, lately, that usually goes missed?
Saturday, April 30, 2005
spring bug(s)
at this time last year i was walking to the local grocery store when i almost stepped on a caterpillar. i caught myself just in time, you'll be glad to know, and gingerly lifted the poor creature off of the sidewalk and out of harm's way.
little did i know that i'd be able to make a career of saving caterpillars within a few short weeks. the city was positively infested with them. they lived in the trees, in cobwebby 'tents', and, when fat, would fall to the ground (or onto my head, or into my open, laughing mouth. you know, that sort of thing). what began as an effort to save one creature, progressed to a general attempt at avoidance, and then further to my indifference, as i waded my way through the hairy jam that smeared the sidewalks.
this year, the plague doesn't seem as bad, but i can still see a lot of them up there in the cherry and apple trees, thrashing around in the sunlight, fattening up for their fall to earth.
i wonder why the birds don't eat them.
i wish they did.
little did i know that i'd be able to make a career of saving caterpillars within a few short weeks. the city was positively infested with them. they lived in the trees, in cobwebby 'tents', and, when fat, would fall to the ground (or onto my head, or into my open, laughing mouth. you know, that sort of thing). what began as an effort to save one creature, progressed to a general attempt at avoidance, and then further to my indifference, as i waded my way through the hairy jam that smeared the sidewalks.
this year, the plague doesn't seem as bad, but i can still see a lot of them up there in the cherry and apple trees, thrashing around in the sunlight, fattening up for their fall to earth.
i wonder why the birds don't eat them.
i wish they did.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
food nazi
"can we get this?"
"no."
"WHY??"
"i'm not buying you junk food."
"it's NOT junk food!!"
"it's totally full of sugar. i'm not buying it for you."
"so?? WHY??"
"sugar makes your teeth rot and your brain shrink."
"No it DOESN'T!"
"yes it does."
"it does NOT!!"
"does too."
"NO it DOESN'T!"
"dude, do you want me to go online and find you all the studies that show the negative effects of sugar?"
"so?? i don't CARE!!"
"i can appreciate that you want this. i would have, too, when i was your age. and i can appreciate your frustration, and you're free to hate me right now, but i'm not buying it for you."
"but WHY??"
"uh... didn't we already talk about this?"
"i just DON'T understand WHY??"
"really? you don't understand? or, you don't agree -- because that's something different. if you're waiting until i say something you agree with, you might be waiting for a long time, because it really seems like you want this junk food and there probably isn't a whole lot i can say to change that, but you should, by now, understand why i won't buy it for you."
(exasperated sound from kid.)
me continuing: "look, i care about your health and well-being. i want you to grow up strong and healthy, not weak and gimpy with one tooth and a tiny, little, sugar-dried brain rattling around the base of your skull like an old pea."
"sugar WON'T make my BRAIN shrink!!"
"yes it will."
"NO it WON'T!!"
"yup. like a tiiiiiiinnnny little pea."
"ANNA?!? WHY can't you be SERIOUS?! i eat WAY less sugar than a LOT of other kids and they're FINE!!"
"well, they look fine now, but the shrinkage has probably already started. you mark my words: by the time they're twenty -- you'll hear that little pea quietly rolling whenever they shake their heads. then you'll thank me."
"WHAT?? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?? WHY can't you buy it JUST THIS ONCE?"
"really? just once? then you'll never ask me for anything like this again?"
"YES!!"
"nothing sugary until you move out when you're 18? ever? (look of panicked back-pedalling beginning to grow on kid's face) that seems like a pretty good deal -- ok, i'll get it for you now if you never, ever, ask me for a sugary treat again."
"well of COURSE i'll ask AGAIN!"
"ok, then what are we talking about here?"
"i just... (exasperated sound) WHY won't you GET IT??"
"i told you why. i have no problem buying you the odd sweet -- you know, like a donut, or whatever -- but i'm not going to stock the house with sugary treats so you can just have one any time you want. and we have practically no money, so, as a secondary point, i'm not going to spend what little we have on something with absolutely no food value. sorry. end of discussion."
but it wasn't the end of the discussion. it carried on for the entire walk home, with startling repetitiveness. at the end, he wound up crying. am i a food nazi? i feel like a food nazi. but, i mean, really, sugar is White Death. it's just not something to be consumed regularly. and we're so addicted to it. and it was almost unheard of until we europeans started "exploring" the americas and cash cropping. then there was so much of it that it was pushed on the motherland and we (especially the british) started eating pounds of it. to our peril.
i also don't see it as my proper place to endorse a sugary lifestyle to this child. it's his job to sneak sugary things behind my back, then grow to understand that it's a useless non-food as he gets older. it's my job to try to reign him in and steam him broccoli.
isn't it?
or am i just trying to replay my own youth and assuming that everyone else should live the way i did.
(but shouldn't they?)
(are there any job openings for fascists in my area? does
anyone know?)
"no."
"WHY??"
"i'm not buying you junk food."
"it's NOT junk food!!"
"it's totally full of sugar. i'm not buying it for you."
"so?? WHY??"
"sugar makes your teeth rot and your brain shrink."
"No it DOESN'T!"
"yes it does."
"it does NOT!!"
"does too."
"NO it DOESN'T!"
"dude, do you want me to go online and find you all the studies that show the negative effects of sugar?"
"so?? i don't CARE!!"
"i can appreciate that you want this. i would have, too, when i was your age. and i can appreciate your frustration, and you're free to hate me right now, but i'm not buying it for you."
"but WHY??"
"uh... didn't we already talk about this?"
"i just DON'T understand WHY??"
"really? you don't understand? or, you don't agree -- because that's something different. if you're waiting until i say something you agree with, you might be waiting for a long time, because it really seems like you want this junk food and there probably isn't a whole lot i can say to change that, but you should, by now, understand why i won't buy it for you."
(exasperated sound from kid.)
me continuing: "look, i care about your health and well-being. i want you to grow up strong and healthy, not weak and gimpy with one tooth and a tiny, little, sugar-dried brain rattling around the base of your skull like an old pea."
"sugar WON'T make my BRAIN shrink!!"
"yes it will."
"NO it WON'T!!"
"yup. like a tiiiiiiinnnny little pea."
"ANNA?!? WHY can't you be SERIOUS?! i eat WAY less sugar than a LOT of other kids and they're FINE!!"
"well, they look fine now, but the shrinkage has probably already started. you mark my words: by the time they're twenty -- you'll hear that little pea quietly rolling whenever they shake their heads. then you'll thank me."
"WHAT?? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?? WHY can't you buy it JUST THIS ONCE?"
"really? just once? then you'll never ask me for anything like this again?"
"YES!!"
"nothing sugary until you move out when you're 18? ever? (look of panicked back-pedalling beginning to grow on kid's face) that seems like a pretty good deal -- ok, i'll get it for you now if you never, ever, ask me for a sugary treat again."
"well of COURSE i'll ask AGAIN!"
"ok, then what are we talking about here?"
"i just... (exasperated sound) WHY won't you GET IT??"
"i told you why. i have no problem buying you the odd sweet -- you know, like a donut, or whatever -- but i'm not going to stock the house with sugary treats so you can just have one any time you want. and we have practically no money, so, as a secondary point, i'm not going to spend what little we have on something with absolutely no food value. sorry. end of discussion."
but it wasn't the end of the discussion. it carried on for the entire walk home, with startling repetitiveness. at the end, he wound up crying. am i a food nazi? i feel like a food nazi. but, i mean, really, sugar is White Death. it's just not something to be consumed regularly. and we're so addicted to it. and it was almost unheard of until we europeans started "exploring" the americas and cash cropping. then there was so much of it that it was pushed on the motherland and we (especially the british) started eating pounds of it. to our peril.
i also don't see it as my proper place to endorse a sugary lifestyle to this child. it's his job to sneak sugary things behind my back, then grow to understand that it's a useless non-food as he gets older. it's my job to try to reign him in and steam him broccoli.
isn't it?
or am i just trying to replay my own youth and assuming that everyone else should live the way i did.
(but shouldn't they?)
(are there any job openings for fascists in my area? does
anyone know?)
Sunday, April 24, 2005
rats! foiled again!
there i was, sitting in our backyard, sipping my morning protein shake and wiggling my toes, when one half of our stupid landlord duo emerged onto their back patio (which looks over our yard).
i steeled myself for further idiocy. what would she say this time? that we make dinner too late and that it disturbs her to see us, through the windows at night, cooking past 6 pm?
she said, "Hi Anna!"
then she complimented me on my gardening, saying i was better at it than her, and reached out further, adding that i must be an earth creature like her, who likes to get my fingers dirty.
that weasel.
in a minute and a half she robbed me of my ability to feel comfortable despising her. (regardless of the fact that i'm not earthy in the slightest. in fact, it's my chronically cerebral nature that makes gardening so appealing and restorative for me, because it's one of the few times i can forget myself and my chattering mind.)
but now she's human, not just a petty, miserly, control freak with no social skills. now she has dimension. she also confessed that she had to go in and soak her legs because she had just run 10K. how could it be worse?! now i'm forced to wonder if there are legitimate reasons for her failings as a landlord (and person), and if she might actually be, oh, i don't know, struggling just to be a person, like we all are.
curses!
i steeled myself for further idiocy. what would she say this time? that we make dinner too late and that it disturbs her to see us, through the windows at night, cooking past 6 pm?
she said, "Hi Anna!"
then she complimented me on my gardening, saying i was better at it than her, and reached out further, adding that i must be an earth creature like her, who likes to get my fingers dirty.
that weasel.
in a minute and a half she robbed me of my ability to feel comfortable despising her. (regardless of the fact that i'm not earthy in the slightest. in fact, it's my chronically cerebral nature that makes gardening so appealing and restorative for me, because it's one of the few times i can forget myself and my chattering mind.)
but now she's human, not just a petty, miserly, control freak with no social skills. now she has dimension. she also confessed that she had to go in and soak her legs because she had just run 10K. how could it be worse?! now i'm forced to wonder if there are legitimate reasons for her failings as a landlord (and person), and if she might actually be, oh, i don't know, struggling just to be a person, like we all are.
curses!
Saturday, April 23, 2005
an apology to geraniums and the elderly everywhere
i've had a thing against geraniums ever since i did a practicum at a greenhouse in germany at the tender age of 16. i don't think they, at the greenhouse, knew what to do with me at first, i could barely understand their dialect, but i wound up being in charge of the geraniums. i planted the seeds, transplanted the sprouts, and then the seedlings again. i got used to the smell of bone-meal and the tangy, peppery smell the geranium leaves would give off when i pruned them. once they were large enough, i delivered them, in enormously heavy containers, up ladder-like flights of stairs, to little be-moustached old ladies who would boss me around and require me to install their cement window boxes for them, then give me a five cent tip. i also planted a lot of geraniums in graveyards.
even then i found them drab, unimaginative, obvious, and over-done, like petunias, and i wondered why on earth people continued to grow either of them. they aren't even attractive.
and i've held this opinion for a good sixteen years then, suddenly, yesterday, i found myself at our local shopping plaza perusing the tempting racks of seedlings for sale. it was one of the first really warm days of spring, over 20 degrees, and anyone with a garden was just hopping to get digging. it was busy despite being a weekday. i had come looking for cosmos and lupins, and didn't find them, but noticed that a full two trolleys were occupied with various geraniums. trolleys that *could* have housed my cosmos, or some other actually useful or comely plant, had some one with any taste or imagination done the seedling ordering. i was indignant.
but then an angel passed, and i looked around me noticing my fellow shoppers for the first time. they were all old. they leaned on each other's arms, or their canes, smiling mildly at no one in particular, shaking slightly, large eyes, slowly looking the plants over, weighing, their gnarled fingers painfully prying the chosen, special plant from its tray, and then trying to find a way to carry it to the cash.
and i was ashamed. i saw myself in 40 years, poor, like most of the elderly, largely alone with a few small pleasures, apartment too small, and joints too aching and arthritic, for serious yard work, sitting on my tiny balcony above a city, remembering stronger, youthful, sunny days when i had had my own vegetable garden, and looking fondly over at my cheap, easily cultivated, arthritis-forgivingly low maintenance, single pink geranium in a pot on a table. a cheerful, living, thing that i could manage to have brighten my days.
i am penitent. i'm going to find a place in my yard for a geranium from now on.
even then i found them drab, unimaginative, obvious, and over-done, like petunias, and i wondered why on earth people continued to grow either of them. they aren't even attractive.
and i've held this opinion for a good sixteen years then, suddenly, yesterday, i found myself at our local shopping plaza perusing the tempting racks of seedlings for sale. it was one of the first really warm days of spring, over 20 degrees, and anyone with a garden was just hopping to get digging. it was busy despite being a weekday. i had come looking for cosmos and lupins, and didn't find them, but noticed that a full two trolleys were occupied with various geraniums. trolleys that *could* have housed my cosmos, or some other actually useful or comely plant, had some one with any taste or imagination done the seedling ordering. i was indignant.
but then an angel passed, and i looked around me noticing my fellow shoppers for the first time. they were all old. they leaned on each other's arms, or their canes, smiling mildly at no one in particular, shaking slightly, large eyes, slowly looking the plants over, weighing, their gnarled fingers painfully prying the chosen, special plant from its tray, and then trying to find a way to carry it to the cash.
and i was ashamed. i saw myself in 40 years, poor, like most of the elderly, largely alone with a few small pleasures, apartment too small, and joints too aching and arthritic, for serious yard work, sitting on my tiny balcony above a city, remembering stronger, youthful, sunny days when i had had my own vegetable garden, and looking fondly over at my cheap, easily cultivated, arthritis-forgivingly low maintenance, single pink geranium in a pot on a table. a cheerful, living, thing that i could manage to have brighten my days.
i am penitent. i'm going to find a place in my yard for a geranium from now on.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
garden bug
i have noticed two things since i have been spending more time in the garden lately.
1) worms are really strong, and really fast.
2) boys may actually be fundamentally different than girls. i've always come down on the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate, but now i'm starting to doubt myself. sure we have different bodies, and this informs our experience of our realities and therefore ourselves, but i've always thought that this men are from mars crap about unalterable differences in hardwiring was, well, crap.
until i saw my stepson spend over an hour with his friends on the lawn trying to fart on each other's heads.
now, let's make one thing clear: i wrestled and climbed trees with the best of 'em as a child. it's not a matter of physicality that i'm trying to address here, it's something else. when G moved in with mum and i, when i was little, we would have serious tickleflights that entailed me shrieking, kicking, and squirming, like i was being murdered. when we were 8, N and i used to get naked, steal G's shaving cream, cover ourselves with it, then slide around in the bathtub together (!). i could hold a boy to the ground with one arm during kissing tag.
but i have never, ever, farted on my girlfriend's head. ever. and it's not because i'm prissy about farting. it has just never occurred to me. i don't just mean that it hasn't occurred to me as something interesting or fun -- it has simply never occurred to me, period. like eating phonebooks has never occurred to me.
but i hear that this is a totally normal and frequent occurance in the lives of young boys.
can you imagine? -- the next time i see ronnie or lela, i run for their knees to take them out, pin them to the ground, and fart on their heads? (ha!)
good lord.
1) worms are really strong, and really fast.
2) boys may actually be fundamentally different than girls. i've always come down on the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate, but now i'm starting to doubt myself. sure we have different bodies, and this informs our experience of our realities and therefore ourselves, but i've always thought that this men are from mars crap about unalterable differences in hardwiring was, well, crap.
until i saw my stepson spend over an hour with his friends on the lawn trying to fart on each other's heads.
now, let's make one thing clear: i wrestled and climbed trees with the best of 'em as a child. it's not a matter of physicality that i'm trying to address here, it's something else. when G moved in with mum and i, when i was little, we would have serious tickleflights that entailed me shrieking, kicking, and squirming, like i was being murdered. when we were 8, N and i used to get naked, steal G's shaving cream, cover ourselves with it, then slide around in the bathtub together (!). i could hold a boy to the ground with one arm during kissing tag.
but i have never, ever, farted on my girlfriend's head. ever. and it's not because i'm prissy about farting. it has just never occurred to me. i don't just mean that it hasn't occurred to me as something interesting or fun -- it has simply never occurred to me, period. like eating phonebooks has never occurred to me.
but i hear that this is a totally normal and frequent occurance in the lives of young boys.
can you imagine? -- the next time i see ronnie or lela, i run for their knees to take them out, pin them to the ground, and fart on their heads? (ha!)
good lord.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
i wish i wrote this story
but i didn't. it's by david sedaris, from his book, "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" and i lifted it off of m's website (slomotion.blogspot.com). thanks m!
Us and Them
When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn't much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey would hardly merit tears or even good-byes, for that matter. It was more of a "see you later" situation, but still I adopted my mother's attitude, as it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice. I could if I wanted to. It just wasn't the right time.
Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here, when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms, watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television. This was told to us by our mother's friend, who dropped by one afternoon with a basketful of okra. The woman did not editorialize - rather, she just presented her information, leaving her listener to make of it what she might. Had my mother said, "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life," I assume that the friend would have agreed, and had she said, "Three cheers for Mr. Tomkey," the friend likely would have agreed as well. It was kind of a test, as was the okra.
To say that you did not believe in television was different than saying that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tomkey did not believe in television, my father said, "Well good for him. I don't know that I believe in it either."
"That's exactly how I feel," my mother said, and then my parents watched the news, and whatever came on after the news.
---
Word spread that Mr. Tomkey did not own a television, and you began hearing that while this was all very well and good, it was unfair of him to inflict his beliefs upon others, specifically his innocent wife and children. It was speculated that just as the blind man develops a keener sense of hearing, the family must somehow compensate for their loss. "Maybe they read," my mother's friend said. "Maybe they listen to the radio, but you can bet your boots they're doing something."
I wanted to know what this something was, and so I began peering in the Tomkeys' windows. During the day I'd stand across the street from their house, acting as though I were waiting for someone, and at night, when the view was better and I had less chance of being discovered, I would creep into their yard and hide in their bushes beside their fence.
Because they had no TV, the Tomkeys were forced to talk during dinner. They had no idea how puny their lives were, and so they were not ashamed that a camera would have found them uninteresting. They did not know what attractive was or what dinner was supposed to look like or even what time people were supposed to eat. Sometimes they wouldn't sit down until eight o'clock, long after everyone else had finished doing the dishes. During the meal. Mr. Tomkey would occasionally pound on the table and point at his children with a fork, but the moment he finished, everyone would start laughing. I got the idea that he was imitating someone else, and wondered if he spied on us while we were eating.
When fall arrived and school began, I saw the Tomkey children marching up the hill with paper sacks in their hands. The son was one grade lower than me, and the daughter was one grade higher. We never spoke, but I'd pass them in the halls from time to time and attempt to view the world through their eyes. What must it be like to be so ignorant and alone? Could a normal person even imagine it? Staring at an Elmer Fudd lunch box, I tried to divorce myself from everything I already knew: Elmer's inability to pronounce the letter r, his constant pursuit of an intelligent and considerably more famous rabbit. I tried to think of him as just a drawing, but it was impossible to seperate him from his celebrity.
One day in class a boy named William began to write the wrong answer on the blackboard, and our teacher flailed her arms, saying, "Warning, Will. Danger, danger." Her voice was synthetic and void of emotion, and we laughed, knowing that she was imitating the robot in a weekly show about a family who lived in outer space. The Tomkeys, though, would have thought she was having a heart attack. It occurred to me that they need a guide, someone who could accompany them through the course of an average day and point out all the things they were unable to understand. I could have done it on the weekends, but friendship would have taken away their mystery and interfered with the good feeling I got from pitying them. So I kept my distance.
In early October the Tomkeys bought a boat, and everyone seemed greatly relieved, especially my mother's friend, who noted that the motor was definitely secondhand. It was reported that Mr. Tomkey's father-in-law owned a house on the lake and had invited the family to use it whenever they liked. This explained why they were gone all weekend, but it did not make their absences any easier to bear. I felt as if my favorite show had been cancelled.
Halloween fell on a Saturday that year, and by the time my mother took us to the store, all the good costumes were gone. My sisters dressed as witches and I went as a hobo. I'd looked forward to going in disguise to the Tomkeys' door, but they were off at the lake, and their house was dark. Before leaving they had left a coffee can full of gumdrops on the front porch, alongside a sign reading DON'T BE GREEDY. In terms of Halloween candy, individual gumdrops were just about as low as you could get. This was evidenced by the large number of them floating in an adjacent dog bowl. It was disgusting to think that this was what a gumdrop might look like in your stomach, and it was insulting to be told not to take too much of something you didn't really want in the first place. "Who do these Tomkeys think they are?" my sister Lisa said.
The night after Halloween, we were sitting around watching TV when the doorbell rang. Visitors were infrequent at our house, so while my father stayed behind, my mother, sisters, and I ran downstairs in a group, opening the door to discover the entire Tomkey family on our front stoop. The parents looked as they always had, but the son and daughter were dressed in costumes - she as a ballerina and he as some kind of a rodent with terry-cloth ears and a tail made from what looked to be an extension cord. It seemed they had spent the previous evening isolated at the lake and had missed the opportunity to observe Halloween. "So, well, I guess we're trick-or-treating now, if that's okay," Mr. Tomkey said.
I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it.
"Why, of course it's not too late," my mother said. "Kids, why don't you... run and get... the candy."
"But the candy is gone," my sister Gretchen said. "You gave it away last night."
"Not that candy," my mother said. "The other candy. Why don't you run and get it?"
"You mean our candy?" Lisa said. "The candy that we earned?"
This was exactly what our mother was talking about, but she didn't want to say this in front of the Tomkeys. In order to spare their feelings, she wanted them to believe that we always kept a bucket of candy lying around the house, just waiting for someone to knock on the door and ask for it. "Go on, now," she said. "Hurry up."
My room was situated right off the foyer, and if the Tomkeys had looked in that direction, they could have seen my bed and the brown paper bag marked MY CANDY. KEEP OUT. I didn't want them to know how much I had, so I went onto my room and shut the door behind me. Then I closed the curtains and emptied my bag onto my bed, searching for whatever was the crummiest. All my life chocolate has made me ill. I don't know if I'm allergic or what, but even the smallest amount leaves me with a blinding headache. Eventually, I learned to stay away from it, but as a child I refused to be left out. The brownies were eaten, and when the pounding began I would blame the grape juice or my mother's cigarette smoke or the tightness of my glasses - anything but the chocolate. My candy bars were poison but they were brand-name, and so I put them in pile no.1, which definitely would not go to the Tomkeys.
Out in the hallway, I could hear my mother straining for something to talk about. "A boat!" she said. "That sounds marvelous. Can you just drive it right into the water?"
"Actually, we have a trailer," Mr. Tomkey said. "So what we do is back it into the lake."
"Oh, a trailer. What kind is it?"
"Well, it's a boat trailer," Mr. Tomkey said.
"Right, but is it wooden or, you know... I guess what I'm asking is what style of trailer do you have?"
Behind my mother's words were two messages. The first and most obvious was "Yes, I am talking about boat trailers, but also I am dying." The second, meant only for my sisters and me, was "If you do not immediately step forward with that candy, you will never again experience freedom, happiness, or the possibility of my warm embrace."
I knew that it was just a matter of time before she came into my room and started collecting the candy herself, grabbing indiscriminately, with no regard to my rating system. Had I been thinking straight, I would have hidden the most valuable items in my dresser drawer, but instead, panicked by the thought of her hand on my doorknob, I tore off the wrappers and began cramming the candy bars into my mouth, desperately, like someone in an eating contest. Most were miniature, which made them easier to accommodate, but still there was only so much room, and it was hard to chew and fit more in at the same time. The headache began immediately, and I chalked it up to tension.
My mother told the Tomkeys she needed to check on something, and then she opened the door and stuck her head inside my room. "What the hell are you doing?" she whispered, but my mouth was too full to answer. "I'll just be a moment," she called, and as she closed the door behind her and moved toward my bed, I began breaking the wax lips and candy necklaces from pile no.2. These were the second-best things I had received, and while it hurt to destroy them, it would have hurt even more to give them away. I had just started to mutilate a miniature box of Red Hots when my mother pried them from my hands, accidentally finishing the job for me. BB-size pellets clattered onto the floor, and as I followed them with my eyes, she snatched up a roll of Necco wafers.
"Not those," I pleaded, but rather than words, my mouth expelled chocolate, chewed chocolate, which fell onto the sleeve of her sweater. "Not those. Not those."
She shook her arm, and the mound of chocolate dropped like a horrible turd upon my bedspread. "You should look at yourself," she said. "I mean, really look at yourself."
Along with the Necco wafers she took several Tootsie Pops and half a dozen caramels wrapped in cellophane. I heard her apologize to the Tomkeys for her absence, and then I heard my candy hitting the bottom of their bags.
"What do you say?" Mrs. Tomkey asked.
And the children answered, "Thank you."
---
While I was in trouble for not bringing my candy sooner, my sisters were in more trouble for not bringing theirs at all. We spent the early part of the evening in our rooms, then one by one we eased our way back upstairs, and joined our parents in front of the TV. I was the last to arrive, and took a seat on the floor beside the sofa. The show was a Western, and even if my head had not been throbbing, I doubt I would have had the wherewithal to follow it. A posse of outlaws crested a rocky hill top, squinting at a flurry of dust advancing from the horizon, and I thought again of the Tomkeys and how alone and out of place they had looked in their dopey costumes. "What was up with that kid's tail?" I asked.
"Shhhh," my family said.
For months I had protected and watched over these people, but now, with one stupid act, they had turned my pity into something hard and ugly. The shift wasn't gradual, but immediate, and it provoked an uncomfortable feeling of loss. We hadn't been friends, the Tomkeys and I, but still I had given them the gift of my curiosity. Wondering about the Tomkey family had made me feel generous, but now I would have to shift gears and find pleasure in hating them. The only alternative was to do as my mother had instructed me and take a good long look at myself. This was an old trick, designed to turn one's hatred inward, and while I was determined not to fall for it, it was hard to shake the mental picture snapped by her suggestion: here is a boy sitting on a bed, his mouth smeared with chocolate. He's a human being, but he is also a pig, surrounded by trash and gorging himself so that others may be denied. Were this the only image in the world, you'd be forced to give it your full attention, but fortunately there are others. This stagecoach, for instance, coming round the bend with a cargo of gold. This shiny new Mustang convertible. This teenage girl, her hair a beautiful mane, sipping Pepsi through a straw, one picture after another, on and on until the news, and whatever came on after the news.
Us and Them
When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn't much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey would hardly merit tears or even good-byes, for that matter. It was more of a "see you later" situation, but still I adopted my mother's attitude, as it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice. I could if I wanted to. It just wasn't the right time.
Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here, when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms, watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television. This was told to us by our mother's friend, who dropped by one afternoon with a basketful of okra. The woman did not editorialize - rather, she just presented her information, leaving her listener to make of it what she might. Had my mother said, "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life," I assume that the friend would have agreed, and had she said, "Three cheers for Mr. Tomkey," the friend likely would have agreed as well. It was kind of a test, as was the okra.
To say that you did not believe in television was different than saying that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tomkey did not believe in television, my father said, "Well good for him. I don't know that I believe in it either."
"That's exactly how I feel," my mother said, and then my parents watched the news, and whatever came on after the news.
---
Word spread that Mr. Tomkey did not own a television, and you began hearing that while this was all very well and good, it was unfair of him to inflict his beliefs upon others, specifically his innocent wife and children. It was speculated that just as the blind man develops a keener sense of hearing, the family must somehow compensate for their loss. "Maybe they read," my mother's friend said. "Maybe they listen to the radio, but you can bet your boots they're doing something."
I wanted to know what this something was, and so I began peering in the Tomkeys' windows. During the day I'd stand across the street from their house, acting as though I were waiting for someone, and at night, when the view was better and I had less chance of being discovered, I would creep into their yard and hide in their bushes beside their fence.
Because they had no TV, the Tomkeys were forced to talk during dinner. They had no idea how puny their lives were, and so they were not ashamed that a camera would have found them uninteresting. They did not know what attractive was or what dinner was supposed to look like or even what time people were supposed to eat. Sometimes they wouldn't sit down until eight o'clock, long after everyone else had finished doing the dishes. During the meal. Mr. Tomkey would occasionally pound on the table and point at his children with a fork, but the moment he finished, everyone would start laughing. I got the idea that he was imitating someone else, and wondered if he spied on us while we were eating.
When fall arrived and school began, I saw the Tomkey children marching up the hill with paper sacks in their hands. The son was one grade lower than me, and the daughter was one grade higher. We never spoke, but I'd pass them in the halls from time to time and attempt to view the world through their eyes. What must it be like to be so ignorant and alone? Could a normal person even imagine it? Staring at an Elmer Fudd lunch box, I tried to divorce myself from everything I already knew: Elmer's inability to pronounce the letter r, his constant pursuit of an intelligent and considerably more famous rabbit. I tried to think of him as just a drawing, but it was impossible to seperate him from his celebrity.
One day in class a boy named William began to write the wrong answer on the blackboard, and our teacher flailed her arms, saying, "Warning, Will. Danger, danger." Her voice was synthetic and void of emotion, and we laughed, knowing that she was imitating the robot in a weekly show about a family who lived in outer space. The Tomkeys, though, would have thought she was having a heart attack. It occurred to me that they need a guide, someone who could accompany them through the course of an average day and point out all the things they were unable to understand. I could have done it on the weekends, but friendship would have taken away their mystery and interfered with the good feeling I got from pitying them. So I kept my distance.
In early October the Tomkeys bought a boat, and everyone seemed greatly relieved, especially my mother's friend, who noted that the motor was definitely secondhand. It was reported that Mr. Tomkey's father-in-law owned a house on the lake and had invited the family to use it whenever they liked. This explained why they were gone all weekend, but it did not make their absences any easier to bear. I felt as if my favorite show had been cancelled.
Halloween fell on a Saturday that year, and by the time my mother took us to the store, all the good costumes were gone. My sisters dressed as witches and I went as a hobo. I'd looked forward to going in disguise to the Tomkeys' door, but they were off at the lake, and their house was dark. Before leaving they had left a coffee can full of gumdrops on the front porch, alongside a sign reading DON'T BE GREEDY. In terms of Halloween candy, individual gumdrops were just about as low as you could get. This was evidenced by the large number of them floating in an adjacent dog bowl. It was disgusting to think that this was what a gumdrop might look like in your stomach, and it was insulting to be told not to take too much of something you didn't really want in the first place. "Who do these Tomkeys think they are?" my sister Lisa said.
The night after Halloween, we were sitting around watching TV when the doorbell rang. Visitors were infrequent at our house, so while my father stayed behind, my mother, sisters, and I ran downstairs in a group, opening the door to discover the entire Tomkey family on our front stoop. The parents looked as they always had, but the son and daughter were dressed in costumes - she as a ballerina and he as some kind of a rodent with terry-cloth ears and a tail made from what looked to be an extension cord. It seemed they had spent the previous evening isolated at the lake and had missed the opportunity to observe Halloween. "So, well, I guess we're trick-or-treating now, if that's okay," Mr. Tomkey said.
I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it.
"Why, of course it's not too late," my mother said. "Kids, why don't you... run and get... the candy."
"But the candy is gone," my sister Gretchen said. "You gave it away last night."
"Not that candy," my mother said. "The other candy. Why don't you run and get it?"
"You mean our candy?" Lisa said. "The candy that we earned?"
This was exactly what our mother was talking about, but she didn't want to say this in front of the Tomkeys. In order to spare their feelings, she wanted them to believe that we always kept a bucket of candy lying around the house, just waiting for someone to knock on the door and ask for it. "Go on, now," she said. "Hurry up."
My room was situated right off the foyer, and if the Tomkeys had looked in that direction, they could have seen my bed and the brown paper bag marked MY CANDY. KEEP OUT. I didn't want them to know how much I had, so I went onto my room and shut the door behind me. Then I closed the curtains and emptied my bag onto my bed, searching for whatever was the crummiest. All my life chocolate has made me ill. I don't know if I'm allergic or what, but even the smallest amount leaves me with a blinding headache. Eventually, I learned to stay away from it, but as a child I refused to be left out. The brownies were eaten, and when the pounding began I would blame the grape juice or my mother's cigarette smoke or the tightness of my glasses - anything but the chocolate. My candy bars were poison but they were brand-name, and so I put them in pile no.1, which definitely would not go to the Tomkeys.
Out in the hallway, I could hear my mother straining for something to talk about. "A boat!" she said. "That sounds marvelous. Can you just drive it right into the water?"
"Actually, we have a trailer," Mr. Tomkey said. "So what we do is back it into the lake."
"Oh, a trailer. What kind is it?"
"Well, it's a boat trailer," Mr. Tomkey said.
"Right, but is it wooden or, you know... I guess what I'm asking is what style of trailer do you have?"
Behind my mother's words were two messages. The first and most obvious was "Yes, I am talking about boat trailers, but also I am dying." The second, meant only for my sisters and me, was "If you do not immediately step forward with that candy, you will never again experience freedom, happiness, or the possibility of my warm embrace."
I knew that it was just a matter of time before she came into my room and started collecting the candy herself, grabbing indiscriminately, with no regard to my rating system. Had I been thinking straight, I would have hidden the most valuable items in my dresser drawer, but instead, panicked by the thought of her hand on my doorknob, I tore off the wrappers and began cramming the candy bars into my mouth, desperately, like someone in an eating contest. Most were miniature, which made them easier to accommodate, but still there was only so much room, and it was hard to chew and fit more in at the same time. The headache began immediately, and I chalked it up to tension.
My mother told the Tomkeys she needed to check on something, and then she opened the door and stuck her head inside my room. "What the hell are you doing?" she whispered, but my mouth was too full to answer. "I'll just be a moment," she called, and as she closed the door behind her and moved toward my bed, I began breaking the wax lips and candy necklaces from pile no.2. These were the second-best things I had received, and while it hurt to destroy them, it would have hurt even more to give them away. I had just started to mutilate a miniature box of Red Hots when my mother pried them from my hands, accidentally finishing the job for me. BB-size pellets clattered onto the floor, and as I followed them with my eyes, she snatched up a roll of Necco wafers.
"Not those," I pleaded, but rather than words, my mouth expelled chocolate, chewed chocolate, which fell onto the sleeve of her sweater. "Not those. Not those."
She shook her arm, and the mound of chocolate dropped like a horrible turd upon my bedspread. "You should look at yourself," she said. "I mean, really look at yourself."
Along with the Necco wafers she took several Tootsie Pops and half a dozen caramels wrapped in cellophane. I heard her apologize to the Tomkeys for her absence, and then I heard my candy hitting the bottom of their bags.
"What do you say?" Mrs. Tomkey asked.
And the children answered, "Thank you."
---
While I was in trouble for not bringing my candy sooner, my sisters were in more trouble for not bringing theirs at all. We spent the early part of the evening in our rooms, then one by one we eased our way back upstairs, and joined our parents in front of the TV. I was the last to arrive, and took a seat on the floor beside the sofa. The show was a Western, and even if my head had not been throbbing, I doubt I would have had the wherewithal to follow it. A posse of outlaws crested a rocky hill top, squinting at a flurry of dust advancing from the horizon, and I thought again of the Tomkeys and how alone and out of place they had looked in their dopey costumes. "What was up with that kid's tail?" I asked.
"Shhhh," my family said.
For months I had protected and watched over these people, but now, with one stupid act, they had turned my pity into something hard and ugly. The shift wasn't gradual, but immediate, and it provoked an uncomfortable feeling of loss. We hadn't been friends, the Tomkeys and I, but still I had given them the gift of my curiosity. Wondering about the Tomkey family had made me feel generous, but now I would have to shift gears and find pleasure in hating them. The only alternative was to do as my mother had instructed me and take a good long look at myself. This was an old trick, designed to turn one's hatred inward, and while I was determined not to fall for it, it was hard to shake the mental picture snapped by her suggestion: here is a boy sitting on a bed, his mouth smeared with chocolate. He's a human being, but he is also a pig, surrounded by trash and gorging himself so that others may be denied. Were this the only image in the world, you'd be forced to give it your full attention, but fortunately there are others. This stagecoach, for instance, coming round the bend with a cargo of gold. This shiny new Mustang convertible. This teenage girl, her hair a beautiful mane, sipping Pepsi through a straw, one picture after another, on and on until the news, and whatever came on after the news.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
academic snob weevil
my latest business enterprise with my sweetheart takes me to college and university campuses all over bc and alberta. while this is only our first week actively on the job, i have noticed a few things.
1) many university students look 12.
2) many university students act 12.
3) there is grave concern on the part of instructors over the vigorously burgeoning stupidity, from year to year, of first year students. universities have begun to offer remedial courses, and to consciously dumb down their existing classes to avoid needing to fail so many of their "clients."
4) evidence of this is everywhere at UVic in the form of shockingly simple bristol board "projects" all over the walls of departments. at first i thought it was a Science Thing: that because you get to play with rocks and bugs and formaldehyded frogs, you also get to use coloured markers and cut up magazine photos rather than employ overhead projectors and powerpoint in your presentations like everyone else who has graduated from junior high. but then i realised that it's not just a science thing -- the business department, languages, environmental studies, history -- all plastered with photos of malaysia and terrible, simple, hand-drawn graphs, or renditions of famous works of art, studies of the racoon, or photos of historic locals.
and, you know, i'm torn. i don't know whether to weep or applaud. i mean, i'm the product of waldorf education -- i'm All About pretty illustrations, the actively creative self, and drawing multidisciplinary connections. i don't believe that academia needs to be dry in order to be worthy. it's just that i can't help thinking that while grown-ups need to paint and colour, too, this sort of thing should really be happening a lot more than it is in elementary and even high school. by university, even creativity should be a lot more sophisticated than shoddy grade-six science-fair posters. i despair that we're raising a generation of adult children, unable to compose an appropriate, logically constructed argument, ignorant of basic grammatical rules and historical/scientific fact, incapable of writing in the cursive, numbed to math, and barely past the stick-man phase of illustration.
clearly excellence and learning haven't been a priority for these students (or, presumably, their teachers/our government) -- leading one to wonder why they're even bothering with university at all, but whatever -- i just wish that institutions of higher education would at least try to stem the tide of idiocy by not lowering their entrance requirements or changing their course content to suit nearly the lowest common denominator. if getting into university were actually more difficult than rolling out of bed onto the floor, then maybe we'd see some striving, and maybe we'd see some changes in our public school system for the better.
1) many university students look 12.
2) many university students act 12.
3) there is grave concern on the part of instructors over the vigorously burgeoning stupidity, from year to year, of first year students. universities have begun to offer remedial courses, and to consciously dumb down their existing classes to avoid needing to fail so many of their "clients."
4) evidence of this is everywhere at UVic in the form of shockingly simple bristol board "projects" all over the walls of departments. at first i thought it was a Science Thing: that because you get to play with rocks and bugs and formaldehyded frogs, you also get to use coloured markers and cut up magazine photos rather than employ overhead projectors and powerpoint in your presentations like everyone else who has graduated from junior high. but then i realised that it's not just a science thing -- the business department, languages, environmental studies, history -- all plastered with photos of malaysia and terrible, simple, hand-drawn graphs, or renditions of famous works of art, studies of the racoon, or photos of historic locals.
and, you know, i'm torn. i don't know whether to weep or applaud. i mean, i'm the product of waldorf education -- i'm All About pretty illustrations, the actively creative self, and drawing multidisciplinary connections. i don't believe that academia needs to be dry in order to be worthy. it's just that i can't help thinking that while grown-ups need to paint and colour, too, this sort of thing should really be happening a lot more than it is in elementary and even high school. by university, even creativity should be a lot more sophisticated than shoddy grade-six science-fair posters. i despair that we're raising a generation of adult children, unable to compose an appropriate, logically constructed argument, ignorant of basic grammatical rules and historical/scientific fact, incapable of writing in the cursive, numbed to math, and barely past the stick-man phase of illustration.
clearly excellence and learning haven't been a priority for these students (or, presumably, their teachers/our government) -- leading one to wonder why they're even bothering with university at all, but whatever -- i just wish that institutions of higher education would at least try to stem the tide of idiocy by not lowering their entrance requirements or changing their course content to suit nearly the lowest common denominator. if getting into university were actually more difficult than rolling out of bed onto the floor, then maybe we'd see some striving, and maybe we'd see some changes in our public school system for the better.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
who, the trees! do you hear the birds gurgling?
today, J woke me up early to help him get out the door and on his way to the hills, so, after sloppy sandwiches were thrust into plastic bags, and paragliders packed into the car, i found myself standing in the yard, one eye open, in my pyjamas, waving absently at the receding subaru.
i turned, continuing to breathe, as is my habit, and my nose woke up suddenly -- the first part of me to do so.
the smell was gorgeous, sweet, delicate, tender. i sniffed ravenously, wanting to eat the freshness of the as yet unpolluted morning. i trudged a few steps towards the house, but missed the intersection that would lead me up the steps to the door, continuing, instead, around the side of the house, past the Freak Parsley.
i nodded solemnly to The Parsley (such a force of life seems to demand this acknowledgement. there is simply no stopping my Parsley, and i am a girl who pays her respects where respect is due). i passed the pretty-but-slightly-scary-in-an-extra-terrestrial-sort-of-way stripy, curly tulips and shuffled across the back of the house towards my new garden along the north fence. it's my route. i like to greet my plants in the morning. to check on them. on the way, i stopped to peer under the blooming cherry tree to look at my baby strawberry plants. all was well according to my one, half-opened eye.
then, somewhere between the cherry tree and the garden, my ears woke up and i was suddenly aware of the birds. how could i have missed them earlier? i felt surrounded by their delightful cacophony, and blessed -- like i was in a garden in paradise. i closed my eye and listened to the sweetest, most miraculous music i have ever heard in my life and felt grateful: for having ears that work, for spring, and mornings, and this little rented house with the huge yard, for weather and trees and birds and all natural phenomena, and for finding myself in the middle of it.
my toes communed with the baby slugs in the grass, the slugs that will grow to be as long as cats' tails and that will eat all my strawberries.
i opened both my eyes, this time, and took in the bovine feast that lay before me. the most tender shoots and leaves. spring always makes me feel like grazing. it's that pale green colour. i saw early morning golden light dance on each moist blade, illuminate each delicate blossom, saw it reach down to heat the dark chocolate earth where i will plant my little crop, and saw it lovingly encourage my pea sprouts to exceed themselves.
i wished i could spend my whole life at 7:30 in the morning, right here.
i'm shocked to think of how often i forget that this nourishing universe is at my doorstep. it's so easy to fall into the trap of believing that my day to day struggle with my own life, and the people and circumstances within it, are the only reality around me.
i turned, continuing to breathe, as is my habit, and my nose woke up suddenly -- the first part of me to do so.
the smell was gorgeous, sweet, delicate, tender. i sniffed ravenously, wanting to eat the freshness of the as yet unpolluted morning. i trudged a few steps towards the house, but missed the intersection that would lead me up the steps to the door, continuing, instead, around the side of the house, past the Freak Parsley.
i nodded solemnly to The Parsley (such a force of life seems to demand this acknowledgement. there is simply no stopping my Parsley, and i am a girl who pays her respects where respect is due). i passed the pretty-but-slightly-scary-in-an-extra-terrestrial-sort-of-way stripy, curly tulips and shuffled across the back of the house towards my new garden along the north fence. it's my route. i like to greet my plants in the morning. to check on them. on the way, i stopped to peer under the blooming cherry tree to look at my baby strawberry plants. all was well according to my one, half-opened eye.
then, somewhere between the cherry tree and the garden, my ears woke up and i was suddenly aware of the birds. how could i have missed them earlier? i felt surrounded by their delightful cacophony, and blessed -- like i was in a garden in paradise. i closed my eye and listened to the sweetest, most miraculous music i have ever heard in my life and felt grateful: for having ears that work, for spring, and mornings, and this little rented house with the huge yard, for weather and trees and birds and all natural phenomena, and for finding myself in the middle of it.
my toes communed with the baby slugs in the grass, the slugs that will grow to be as long as cats' tails and that will eat all my strawberries.
i opened both my eyes, this time, and took in the bovine feast that lay before me. the most tender shoots and leaves. spring always makes me feel like grazing. it's that pale green colour. i saw early morning golden light dance on each moist blade, illuminate each delicate blossom, saw it reach down to heat the dark chocolate earth where i will plant my little crop, and saw it lovingly encourage my pea sprouts to exceed themselves.
i wished i could spend my whole life at 7:30 in the morning, right here.
i'm shocked to think of how often i forget that this nourishing universe is at my doorstep. it's so easy to fall into the trap of believing that my day to day struggle with my own life, and the people and circumstances within it, are the only reality around me.
Monday, April 04, 2005
papal bull
two days ago, when i heard that the pope died, i found myself wondering how he was doing. i mean, he was quite conservative, as popes go, disallowing the existence of alter girls and other such nonsense, and the strict catholic notion of the afterlife is quite specific. so... i wonder how he's doing. i wonder how sweet the fruits of his labour taste.
nevermind the fact that no one has any clear grasp of what happens after death, that it's reasonable to assume that there aren't words or even non-verbal contexts in which to put the experience of being what we call "dead", nevermind all that. think, just for fun, what if he was mostly right -- but not quite completely? if there is a heaven, is the pope there? en route? or is he slogging his way through the bardo? having his heart weighed against a feather by anubis? if there is a heaven, and he managed to get there, would god be pleased with his work on earth, or would god look at him and say, "You know, you pretty much got it all wrong. You should have known better. 'E' for Effort. Into the Pit with you."
after a life of trying his best within his narrow framework of morality, influencing over a billion people, is being dead easier for him? is he being rewarded? is it what he expected? is he coming face to face with the sometimes heartbreaking results of his party line? is he being set straight by a female jesus? is he hunting the furthest shadows of the universe for our absentee watchmaker deity? how's he doing?
everlasting life in paradise is supposed to be the reward for a life virtuously lived and right now, the pope knows if it's a bluff or not.
nevermind the fact that no one has any clear grasp of what happens after death, that it's reasonable to assume that there aren't words or even non-verbal contexts in which to put the experience of being what we call "dead", nevermind all that. think, just for fun, what if he was mostly right -- but not quite completely? if there is a heaven, is the pope there? en route? or is he slogging his way through the bardo? having his heart weighed against a feather by anubis? if there is a heaven, and he managed to get there, would god be pleased with his work on earth, or would god look at him and say, "You know, you pretty much got it all wrong. You should have known better. 'E' for Effort. Into the Pit with you."
after a life of trying his best within his narrow framework of morality, influencing over a billion people, is being dead easier for him? is he being rewarded? is it what he expected? is he coming face to face with the sometimes heartbreaking results of his party line? is he being set straight by a female jesus? is he hunting the furthest shadows of the universe for our absentee watchmaker deity? how's he doing?
everlasting life in paradise is supposed to be the reward for a life virtuously lived and right now, the pope knows if it's a bluff or not.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
mean bunny
you know, i realize that this sounds sadistic, but i derive a sharp, if guilty, pleasure from hiding chocolates on children. especially children who can be difficult. heh heh.
telling this particular kid that he couldn't have Any of his chocolates if he didn't find All of them was especially fun.
naturally i reneged, but his split-second look of panic was priceless.
who says stepmothers aren't really evil?
mean, mean bunny.
heh.
telling this particular kid that he couldn't have Any of his chocolates if he didn't find All of them was especially fun.
naturally i reneged, but his split-second look of panic was priceless.
who says stepmothers aren't really evil?
mean, mean bunny.
heh.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
our back yard looks like a timotei commercial
...the blossoms waft gently to the ground in each gentle breeze, the long grasses (which should probably be mowed) sway...
now all we need is a long haired blond lady in a dress running in slow motion with a few butterflies.
(or was she riding a white horse? hm. i forget. hard to say. i think i may be confusing the timotei commercial with a liona boyd album cover, now. i can't remember.)
now all we need is a long haired blond lady in a dress running in slow motion with a few butterflies.
(or was she riding a white horse? hm. i forget. hard to say. i think i may be confusing the timotei commercial with a liona boyd album cover, now. i can't remember.)
Monday, March 07, 2005
hawaiian bug
ok ok ok.
d, because of your comments on my last entry, i'm going to come clean on hawaii. it's going to sound like i'm complaining, though, which really isn't true. for the record, i had a pleasant time. the wind howled, which happens relatively rarely in southern bc, and which i love, so that was exhilarating, and when it wasn't howling, it was wafting, heavy with the smell goodness-knows-which colourful blooms that grew everywhere in extravagant abundance. visually, if there was a garden of eden, it would have looked like hawaii: tropical fruit trees growing casually about, as if this is what they always did, gorgeous and brilliantly hued flowers climbing and trailing all over the place, lush green grasses, towering palms replete with abundant clusters of coconuts, white sandy beaches, turquoise waters, black lava rock, jagged but green mountainous ridges like landscape wainscotting on the grandest scale, or like giant green curtains, reaching halfway up the sky and working with the cloud patterns to make the sun's light always appear in rays, rather than the more standard blanket of light found elsewhere in the world.
there were absurdly adorable tiny lizards all over the place, plus this mink-like animal, and there was a strange type of cardinal that looked like it had just emerged from the london punk scene 30 years ago, with its fluorescent red mohawk. we ate at a place called Luigi's, where dinner is cooked, individual order by order from scratch, by Luigi himself. it took us three hours to have supper. (i had a steamed broccoli salad with lemon and garlic, and a pasta dish with walnuts and capers and the like. it was very good.)
the temperature never swings too far on either side of a reasonable and comforting 25 degrees, all year around, and the water, always shockingly cool upon first exploration, never ceases to reveal itself as perfect after a moment's acclimatisation. i could have stayed in all day. there are few menaces in the water -- really only sharks (not in my area), jelly fish (cyclical according to the moon), sea urchins (only near rocks) and this weird little fish with a long nose that tends to break off in your skin if it accidentally bonks into you (didn't see any). i got stung by a jelly once, but it wasn't for the first time in my life, and who cares, so i kept swimming after a quick damage check. for the first week i had a weird rash on my neck, from the new bacteria in the water and all that, i imagine, but, really, what *doesn't* give me a weird rash? and just as there is little danger in the water, there is nothing to pester a person on land, either -- just centipedes, the odd scorpion, mosquitos, and bees. that's it. no poisonous spiders or snakes. being the united states, the infrastructure was reasonably good -- the buses regular, the water safe for drinking, that sort of thing. i mean, if you're going to go somewhere warm, but don't want to get sick or infected or bitten, hawaii's the place to go. a tropical paradise for the phobic.
and, of course, the fresh pineapple is out of this world.
this is all the good stuff. and it *is* good stuff. i liked it. i did. it was nice.
but, it's also still america, and oahu, where we were, has a huge military presence. there were "support our troops" stickers on everyone's car, and there was little in the way of vegetarian food outside of the healthfood store. the urban areas were full of chain stores in strip malls (why on earth would anyone come to hawaii just to go to The Gap?), everyone drives everywhere, and i couldn't for the life of me find an area of town with funky shopping, or a market where locals sold their crafts or anything more interesting than starbucks, jamba juice, ABC stores, and cheap bathing suit shops. i found this bland and disappointing. in fact, both locals and hotel concierges alike seemed mystified by my request for directions to an artsy area, or place where i could buy locally made stuff, or an old part of town, or something other than ugly, new, american, urban sprawl. i found no local colour, little social complexity, and no romance. not a single grass skirt, no visible history. the few native hawaiians i interacted with said "aloha" and "mahalo", it seemed, because hawaii's "aloha spirit" is its main marketing trick aimed at mainland tourists deciding whether to go to mexico or not.
also, because its economy is tourist driven, and everything has to be shipped in, prices are very very high, and in US currency (obviously). i was on a shoestring and couldn't afford to rent equipment or take lessons in surfing, or kite surfing (which looks really fun) at USD$295 a pop. as for snorkelling, i was discouraged by two people who told me that it didn't compare to florida (where i've gone) and is crowded and expensive, so i didn't bother.
the other thing that shaped my trip is that i was there by the graces of two of J's students, who paid for my flight. the boys were all there to paraglide, and so when i wasn't hanging around waiting to see where and if they would fly, i was making due with my own company. this is fine, and i knew it would be like this. it just means that J and i weren't exactly at large in hawaii, painting the island red. he and i arrived first, four days before the others, and initially, J was jetlagged from Australia and wanted to lie around, not having had a homebase for a month. somewhat frustratingly, and in opposition, all i had had for the last month *was* a home base and i was positively *dying* to get out and about. anyway, i managed to prod him out of the house a little bit and we and spent one day walking up the beach in one direction, and one day walking up the beach in the other direction, and one day hiking a ridge, and then the other pilots arrived and from then on they were in the air whenever possible. i don't drive, but i did take the bus on a few adventures while the boys were flying around -- one to waikiki, and one to a buddhist temple.
waikiki had two nice things about it: one was the most enormous banyan tree i've ever seen in the shockingly misnamed "International Market" -- it was so big it was mesmerising -- and the other was the sheraton hotel. it was beautiful and i would happily live there if everyone but the waitstaff would disappear. locals tried to dissuade me from loving the banyan tree, saying it was full of thousands of rats, but this made me love it even more. it was like a rat hotel! if i were a rat, i'd want to live there for sure! but anyway, waikiki wasn't really my thing. it's a tropical concrete disneyland and i found myself endlessly grateful that i wasn't staying there. it consists only of resorts and tourist traps squeezed together in each other's shadow. the only things to do in waikiki are sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers on a dismally overcrowded beach, getting burnt, or spend ridiculous amounts of money on greasy food, or cheap plastic crap "designed" in hawaii and made elsewhere.
i didn't really explore honolulu, of which waikiki is an area on the outskirts, and it may have had redeeming qualities in the way of a museum and gallery, or two. over all i found the city too hot and tiring, though, and not much fun without a buddy (where were you when i needed you, d?) so i didn't return.
before i left waikiki that day, though, i had really good kimchee-fried-rice near the rat hotel for lunch, and that's when i met Interesting Person #1. i sat eating at a table next to another table inhabited by a mousy, twitchy middle-aged woman and her burnt, tall, fat, red-faced grouchy looking blond husband waiting for their meal to be ready. they had new zealand or australian accents. the woman suddenly got up, clutching her backpack to her chest like a snuggly, and darted into the other seat at my table. she regarded me with sharp, bright, mouse-like eyes and said, breathy and quick, "Are you from B.C.?" i smiled, in what i hoped was a surprised and delighted manner, and said i was. she said, "I thought so. I just had to check or it would have bothered me." then she darted back to her table where she busied herself looking anywhere but at me.
i hounded her a bit, trying to make her happy that she had approached me, and trying to figure out where she could have recognised me from, but to no avail. all i got was that they were on a 6 hour layover from BC on the way to australia, and that they normally live in penticton and never go to victoria, where i live. her husband took off his huge leather jacket and handed it to her to put in her already teeming backpack. i said, still trying to put her at ease, "I hope he's not making you carry that! ha ha!" to which she replied in a startled but doleful tone "Oh! Yes. It seems to be my lot. My lot." And then she trotted off, dwarfed by her gear.
next, on my way home from waikiki, waiting for the bus, i met Interesting Person #2. he was a wino, drinking from a bottle in a paper bag, at least half native hawaiian, and a former english teacher. he was greasy and smelly and reading a new-looking copy of something by henry miller. he seemed very concerned that i read henry miller, to which i replied that i already had, and he was visibly relieved. when he found out about my theatre degree, he launched into an animated discussion on the merits of teaching Jacobean drama to 8th graders over paltry shakespeare. he was learned and interesting, even if he did confuse King Lear with Othello and smell like rancid oil.
the buddhist temple, on the other hand, was a completely different experience than waikiki. it rests in the rainy, moist Valley of Temples on the island's windward side. it is an exact replica of a temple in japan and was finished in 1968 (i think) to commemorate the landing of the first japanese immigrants on hawaii one hundred years earlier. there was an enormous bell -- over 6 feet tall and five inches thick -- that one could ring by pulling a horizontal log on a rope outwards, then releasing it. the deliciously rich tone rang for minutes, cleansing the ringer's soul of temptations, or so the story goes.
there was also a small network of ponds filled with enormous koi. i was surprised to learn that koi can live up to one hundred years. to encourage their longevity, i bought a little bag of fishfood from the lone staff member on the site (a notably contrary and ignorant young white woman), and tossed some of it's contents onto a dazed group of fish crowding motionlessly on top of each other in the water by the side of the bridge. the food made them wake up and they thrashed around gulping for it. then the birds came. not to be bothered by the fish, and possessing a (i thought) peculiar taste for fish food, the birds would catch the food i threw in mid-air, or even briefly land on the fish to quickly nab the pellets before they sank or were gobbled.
i soon forgot the fish altogether and busied myself with the birds as they landed on my hand and arm, hanging out, just waiting until i provided more food.
there was also, of course, a large buddha inside the temple. it is the largest wooden buddha carved in the last 900 years, or so the temple literature claimed, and was covered in a lovely gold leaf that had begun to wear off in places. the eyes were carved so that they looked like they were watching you and you felt that that mischievous, yet serene, smile was actually for you.
after the temple i went to the nearest strip mall to forage for lunch and met Interesting Person #3. he was an asian local and had some interesting views on god and the military and george bush, but i forget every one of them. he and i found each other because the ceiling was dripping brown creepy water by my table at the little food place, and his was the only other, so i imposed myself on his company.
on one raining day, too, i was lucky enough to convince the boys (with the car) that we should go to the north shore. this is where pipeline is -- the famous beach, and the famous surfer competition named after it (or is it vice versa?). we missed the competition by a few days, but there were still surfers there doing their thing. they are insane. that water is insane. the waves are monumental and they arrive onshore at such an angle as to pretty well guarantee you a broken neck or death by drowning if you don't know what you're doing. i didn't even put my toe in. near pipeline is a little town called haleiwa. it is what people consider "old hawaii" and it was by far my favourite spot.
haleiwa is small and quaint, and the road leading up to it is full of ramshackle houses with laundry hanging off the line and chickens in the yard. seeing this i heaved a sigh of contentment. the town itself is a little cluster of low sitting wooden houses containing small galleries and craft shops, little bakeries, restaurants and funky one-room museums dedicated to things like surfing. it had personality. i liked it. we spent the afternoon there, and then on the way home, we stopped by a pineapple stand and bought arm loads of pineapple from a very large and very smiley soft-spoken, shy-seeming young hawaiian man.
and that's about all that's noteworthy about my trip. over-all, hawaii felt like a pretty and warm place to go swimming. it didn't strike me to my core the way northern canada did, or various spots in europe did. i encountered none of the magic you hear about, but then, i only stayed on oahu. it's possible that i'm really no better off than all those unfortunate souls who stay in waikiki. if i went to maui or the big island, perhaps i would have had a different trip altogether.
and i would love to put this theory to the test next year. no matter what, it's always nice to go somewhere warm and sunny after the gloomy westcoast winter. it lifts the spirits, stupid tourist traps or no.
so, d, does that satisfy your curiosity?
d, because of your comments on my last entry, i'm going to come clean on hawaii. it's going to sound like i'm complaining, though, which really isn't true. for the record, i had a pleasant time. the wind howled, which happens relatively rarely in southern bc, and which i love, so that was exhilarating, and when it wasn't howling, it was wafting, heavy with the smell goodness-knows-which colourful blooms that grew everywhere in extravagant abundance. visually, if there was a garden of eden, it would have looked like hawaii: tropical fruit trees growing casually about, as if this is what they always did, gorgeous and brilliantly hued flowers climbing and trailing all over the place, lush green grasses, towering palms replete with abundant clusters of coconuts, white sandy beaches, turquoise waters, black lava rock, jagged but green mountainous ridges like landscape wainscotting on the grandest scale, or like giant green curtains, reaching halfway up the sky and working with the cloud patterns to make the sun's light always appear in rays, rather than the more standard blanket of light found elsewhere in the world.
there were absurdly adorable tiny lizards all over the place, plus this mink-like animal, and there was a strange type of cardinal that looked like it had just emerged from the london punk scene 30 years ago, with its fluorescent red mohawk. we ate at a place called Luigi's, where dinner is cooked, individual order by order from scratch, by Luigi himself. it took us three hours to have supper. (i had a steamed broccoli salad with lemon and garlic, and a pasta dish with walnuts and capers and the like. it was very good.)
the temperature never swings too far on either side of a reasonable and comforting 25 degrees, all year around, and the water, always shockingly cool upon first exploration, never ceases to reveal itself as perfect after a moment's acclimatisation. i could have stayed in all day. there are few menaces in the water -- really only sharks (not in my area), jelly fish (cyclical according to the moon), sea urchins (only near rocks) and this weird little fish with a long nose that tends to break off in your skin if it accidentally bonks into you (didn't see any). i got stung by a jelly once, but it wasn't for the first time in my life, and who cares, so i kept swimming after a quick damage check. for the first week i had a weird rash on my neck, from the new bacteria in the water and all that, i imagine, but, really, what *doesn't* give me a weird rash? and just as there is little danger in the water, there is nothing to pester a person on land, either -- just centipedes, the odd scorpion, mosquitos, and bees. that's it. no poisonous spiders or snakes. being the united states, the infrastructure was reasonably good -- the buses regular, the water safe for drinking, that sort of thing. i mean, if you're going to go somewhere warm, but don't want to get sick or infected or bitten, hawaii's the place to go. a tropical paradise for the phobic.
and, of course, the fresh pineapple is out of this world.
this is all the good stuff. and it *is* good stuff. i liked it. i did. it was nice.
but, it's also still america, and oahu, where we were, has a huge military presence. there were "support our troops" stickers on everyone's car, and there was little in the way of vegetarian food outside of the healthfood store. the urban areas were full of chain stores in strip malls (why on earth would anyone come to hawaii just to go to The Gap?), everyone drives everywhere, and i couldn't for the life of me find an area of town with funky shopping, or a market where locals sold their crafts or anything more interesting than starbucks, jamba juice, ABC stores, and cheap bathing suit shops. i found this bland and disappointing. in fact, both locals and hotel concierges alike seemed mystified by my request for directions to an artsy area, or place where i could buy locally made stuff, or an old part of town, or something other than ugly, new, american, urban sprawl. i found no local colour, little social complexity, and no romance. not a single grass skirt, no visible history. the few native hawaiians i interacted with said "aloha" and "mahalo", it seemed, because hawaii's "aloha spirit" is its main marketing trick aimed at mainland tourists deciding whether to go to mexico or not.
also, because its economy is tourist driven, and everything has to be shipped in, prices are very very high, and in US currency (obviously). i was on a shoestring and couldn't afford to rent equipment or take lessons in surfing, or kite surfing (which looks really fun) at USD$295 a pop. as for snorkelling, i was discouraged by two people who told me that it didn't compare to florida (where i've gone) and is crowded and expensive, so i didn't bother.
the other thing that shaped my trip is that i was there by the graces of two of J's students, who paid for my flight. the boys were all there to paraglide, and so when i wasn't hanging around waiting to see where and if they would fly, i was making due with my own company. this is fine, and i knew it would be like this. it just means that J and i weren't exactly at large in hawaii, painting the island red. he and i arrived first, four days before the others, and initially, J was jetlagged from Australia and wanted to lie around, not having had a homebase for a month. somewhat frustratingly, and in opposition, all i had had for the last month *was* a home base and i was positively *dying* to get out and about. anyway, i managed to prod him out of the house a little bit and we and spent one day walking up the beach in one direction, and one day walking up the beach in the other direction, and one day hiking a ridge, and then the other pilots arrived and from then on they were in the air whenever possible. i don't drive, but i did take the bus on a few adventures while the boys were flying around -- one to waikiki, and one to a buddhist temple.
waikiki had two nice things about it: one was the most enormous banyan tree i've ever seen in the shockingly misnamed "International Market" -- it was so big it was mesmerising -- and the other was the sheraton hotel. it was beautiful and i would happily live there if everyone but the waitstaff would disappear. locals tried to dissuade me from loving the banyan tree, saying it was full of thousands of rats, but this made me love it even more. it was like a rat hotel! if i were a rat, i'd want to live there for sure! but anyway, waikiki wasn't really my thing. it's a tropical concrete disneyland and i found myself endlessly grateful that i wasn't staying there. it consists only of resorts and tourist traps squeezed together in each other's shadow. the only things to do in waikiki are sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers on a dismally overcrowded beach, getting burnt, or spend ridiculous amounts of money on greasy food, or cheap plastic crap "designed" in hawaii and made elsewhere.
i didn't really explore honolulu, of which waikiki is an area on the outskirts, and it may have had redeeming qualities in the way of a museum and gallery, or two. over all i found the city too hot and tiring, though, and not much fun without a buddy (where were you when i needed you, d?) so i didn't return.
before i left waikiki that day, though, i had really good kimchee-fried-rice near the rat hotel for lunch, and that's when i met Interesting Person #1. i sat eating at a table next to another table inhabited by a mousy, twitchy middle-aged woman and her burnt, tall, fat, red-faced grouchy looking blond husband waiting for their meal to be ready. they had new zealand or australian accents. the woman suddenly got up, clutching her backpack to her chest like a snuggly, and darted into the other seat at my table. she regarded me with sharp, bright, mouse-like eyes and said, breathy and quick, "Are you from B.C.?" i smiled, in what i hoped was a surprised and delighted manner, and said i was. she said, "I thought so. I just had to check or it would have bothered me." then she darted back to her table where she busied herself looking anywhere but at me.
i hounded her a bit, trying to make her happy that she had approached me, and trying to figure out where she could have recognised me from, but to no avail. all i got was that they were on a 6 hour layover from BC on the way to australia, and that they normally live in penticton and never go to victoria, where i live. her husband took off his huge leather jacket and handed it to her to put in her already teeming backpack. i said, still trying to put her at ease, "I hope he's not making you carry that! ha ha!" to which she replied in a startled but doleful tone "Oh! Yes. It seems to be my lot. My lot." And then she trotted off, dwarfed by her gear.
next, on my way home from waikiki, waiting for the bus, i met Interesting Person #2. he was a wino, drinking from a bottle in a paper bag, at least half native hawaiian, and a former english teacher. he was greasy and smelly and reading a new-looking copy of something by henry miller. he seemed very concerned that i read henry miller, to which i replied that i already had, and he was visibly relieved. when he found out about my theatre degree, he launched into an animated discussion on the merits of teaching Jacobean drama to 8th graders over paltry shakespeare. he was learned and interesting, even if he did confuse King Lear with Othello and smell like rancid oil.
the buddhist temple, on the other hand, was a completely different experience than waikiki. it rests in the rainy, moist Valley of Temples on the island's windward side. it is an exact replica of a temple in japan and was finished in 1968 (i think) to commemorate the landing of the first japanese immigrants on hawaii one hundred years earlier. there was an enormous bell -- over 6 feet tall and five inches thick -- that one could ring by pulling a horizontal log on a rope outwards, then releasing it. the deliciously rich tone rang for minutes, cleansing the ringer's soul of temptations, or so the story goes.
there was also a small network of ponds filled with enormous koi. i was surprised to learn that koi can live up to one hundred years. to encourage their longevity, i bought a little bag of fishfood from the lone staff member on the site (a notably contrary and ignorant young white woman), and tossed some of it's contents onto a dazed group of fish crowding motionlessly on top of each other in the water by the side of the bridge. the food made them wake up and they thrashed around gulping for it. then the birds came. not to be bothered by the fish, and possessing a (i thought) peculiar taste for fish food, the birds would catch the food i threw in mid-air, or even briefly land on the fish to quickly nab the pellets before they sank or were gobbled.
i soon forgot the fish altogether and busied myself with the birds as they landed on my hand and arm, hanging out, just waiting until i provided more food.
there was also, of course, a large buddha inside the temple. it is the largest wooden buddha carved in the last 900 years, or so the temple literature claimed, and was covered in a lovely gold leaf that had begun to wear off in places. the eyes were carved so that they looked like they were watching you and you felt that that mischievous, yet serene, smile was actually for you.
after the temple i went to the nearest strip mall to forage for lunch and met Interesting Person #3. he was an asian local and had some interesting views on god and the military and george bush, but i forget every one of them. he and i found each other because the ceiling was dripping brown creepy water by my table at the little food place, and his was the only other, so i imposed myself on his company.
on one raining day, too, i was lucky enough to convince the boys (with the car) that we should go to the north shore. this is where pipeline is -- the famous beach, and the famous surfer competition named after it (or is it vice versa?). we missed the competition by a few days, but there were still surfers there doing their thing. they are insane. that water is insane. the waves are monumental and they arrive onshore at such an angle as to pretty well guarantee you a broken neck or death by drowning if you don't know what you're doing. i didn't even put my toe in. near pipeline is a little town called haleiwa. it is what people consider "old hawaii" and it was by far my favourite spot.
haleiwa is small and quaint, and the road leading up to it is full of ramshackle houses with laundry hanging off the line and chickens in the yard. seeing this i heaved a sigh of contentment. the town itself is a little cluster of low sitting wooden houses containing small galleries and craft shops, little bakeries, restaurants and funky one-room museums dedicated to things like surfing. it had personality. i liked it. we spent the afternoon there, and then on the way home, we stopped by a pineapple stand and bought arm loads of pineapple from a very large and very smiley soft-spoken, shy-seeming young hawaiian man.
and that's about all that's noteworthy about my trip. over-all, hawaii felt like a pretty and warm place to go swimming. it didn't strike me to my core the way northern canada did, or various spots in europe did. i encountered none of the magic you hear about, but then, i only stayed on oahu. it's possible that i'm really no better off than all those unfortunate souls who stay in waikiki. if i went to maui or the big island, perhaps i would have had a different trip altogether.
and i would love to put this theory to the test next year. no matter what, it's always nice to go somewhere warm and sunny after the gloomy westcoast winter. it lifts the spirits, stupid tourist traps or no.
so, d, does that satisfy your curiosity?
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
flatfoot floozie on the fly fly
every once in a while i pause and thank my forgetful and somewhat scattered nature for encouraging humility in me, and a sense of humour. this morning, for what was certainly not the first time, and most likely will not be the last, either, i found myself woken up by the garbage truck, and the subsequent bleary-eyed, half-dressed dash after it, holding a big, stinky, drippy bag of trash. this experience, and the solitary giggles enjoyed shortly afterwards upon private reflection, are surely lost on those of us who are mindful/diligent/organised/rhythmical enough to find a way to remember garbage dates -- or, at least, to write them down and then remember to look at them.
i figure that organisation is a small price to pay for ongoing subjective hilarity.
(yes, that's it: it's not that i'm allergic to mundane details, it's that i've sacrificed my attention to worldly matters at the alter of The Absurd, and her twin, The Goofy.)
it's now 7:45am on my last day in hawaii. i'm alone, after my mad garbage truck chasing jump-start to the day, packing and doing laundry before we leave for home. the boys have gone off to try to squeeze in one more flight before we leave, and
i found a lizard in the dish cupboard. it was outrageously cute and i took a ridiculous number of pictures of it (with the flash on, poor thing). it is very lovely here, but i have to say, that it hasn't tugged at my heartstrings at all. i would come back, if it was easy and made sense. it's quite agreeable and very pleasant and pretty, but is somehow lost on me. i don't know why.
anyway, time to get packing....
i figure that organisation is a small price to pay for ongoing subjective hilarity.
(yes, that's it: it's not that i'm allergic to mundane details, it's that i've sacrificed my attention to worldly matters at the alter of The Absurd, and her twin, The Goofy.)
it's now 7:45am on my last day in hawaii. i'm alone, after my mad garbage truck chasing jump-start to the day, packing and doing laundry before we leave for home. the boys have gone off to try to squeeze in one more flight before we leave, and
i found a lizard in the dish cupboard. it was outrageously cute and i took a ridiculous number of pictures of it (with the flash on, poor thing). it is very lovely here, but i have to say, that it hasn't tugged at my heartstrings at all. i would come back, if it was easy and made sense. it's quite agreeable and very pleasant and pretty, but is somehow lost on me. i don't know why.
anyway, time to get packing....
Saturday, February 26, 2005
snot loaf
along with insects, weird things floating in the water, and chatty crazy people, i seem to attract food industry horror stories. i'm not sure if i perceive these horrors more often than other people because i'm a hyper-vigilant person, or if the restaurant gods are actually mischievous, but there it is: gross things happen when i try to eat out.
and it's funny because i've worked in the food industry. i'm very supportive of wait-staff. i never make a fuss or behave in a rude or obnoxious manner in restaurants, and i always tip at *least* 15%, so i can't imagine that it's restaurant karma. although... hm. i suppose it could be germ karma, since i am rather, um, shall we say, 'aware' of the ways in which potentially harmful microbes can be transfered....hm.
anyway, aside from the very ordinary assortment of discovered hairs, bugs, and incorrectly filled orders, the best story i have happened at subway. i ran in quickly on my busy, errand-filled lunch hour to grab a sandwich. i ordered. the woman nodded, and grabbed a pair of those plastic sanitary gloves that all subway workers wear to assure cleanliness. she put the gloves on, and stuck her left index finger deeply into her left nostril.
she stopped, suddenly aware of what she had done, her finger still buried up to the first knuckle, but safely protected from her own boogers by the plastic glove. she stared at me. i stared at her. the rest of the world came to a standstill, except for maybe one lone cricket sounding in the distance. time passed.
she stood transfixed, like an animal caught in the headlights of my awareness. it was like she suddenly realised that air is a two-way medium and that if she could see me, i could see her, and the cogs began to slowly grind to life as she tried to decide what to do.
should she apologise profusely, remove the finger, wash her hands, change gloves and just keep on apologising and offering me free stuff?
should she apologise, distract me with a few brain fart jokes and try to get me on her side as a fellow harried person who sometimes just did the craziest things, as she washed up and changed gloves, offering me free stuff?
or, should she pretend that nothing happened and carry on as normal?
evidently she chose the latter, because, keeping perfect, startled, eye-contact with me, she slowly removed her finger, and then slowly reached over to the bread i had requested and wrapped her fingers around it, preparing to cut it for my sandwich.
at this point i jumped about four inches in the air and squeaked something about having changed my mind as i bolted for the door. as i was leaving the manager rushed out from the back, grabbed the snot loaf and waved it in the air as she shouted, "i'll make it for you! i'll make it for you!"
not to be thus reassured i was already out the door and halfway down the street.
and, you know, this is just the tip of a giant iceberg of restaurant stories that i have. most people are incredulous when they hear claims that before we die we eat two pounds each of stranger-drool, insects, hair, and rat turds, but i totally believe it.
and it's funny because i've worked in the food industry. i'm very supportive of wait-staff. i never make a fuss or behave in a rude or obnoxious manner in restaurants, and i always tip at *least* 15%, so i can't imagine that it's restaurant karma. although... hm. i suppose it could be germ karma, since i am rather, um, shall we say, 'aware' of the ways in which potentially harmful microbes can be transfered....hm.
anyway, aside from the very ordinary assortment of discovered hairs, bugs, and incorrectly filled orders, the best story i have happened at subway. i ran in quickly on my busy, errand-filled lunch hour to grab a sandwich. i ordered. the woman nodded, and grabbed a pair of those plastic sanitary gloves that all subway workers wear to assure cleanliness. she put the gloves on, and stuck her left index finger deeply into her left nostril.
she stopped, suddenly aware of what she had done, her finger still buried up to the first knuckle, but safely protected from her own boogers by the plastic glove. she stared at me. i stared at her. the rest of the world came to a standstill, except for maybe one lone cricket sounding in the distance. time passed.
she stood transfixed, like an animal caught in the headlights of my awareness. it was like she suddenly realised that air is a two-way medium and that if she could see me, i could see her, and the cogs began to slowly grind to life as she tried to decide what to do.
should she apologise profusely, remove the finger, wash her hands, change gloves and just keep on apologising and offering me free stuff?
should she apologise, distract me with a few brain fart jokes and try to get me on her side as a fellow harried person who sometimes just did the craziest things, as she washed up and changed gloves, offering me free stuff?
or, should she pretend that nothing happened and carry on as normal?
evidently she chose the latter, because, keeping perfect, startled, eye-contact with me, she slowly removed her finger, and then slowly reached over to the bread i had requested and wrapped her fingers around it, preparing to cut it for my sandwich.
at this point i jumped about four inches in the air and squeaked something about having changed my mind as i bolted for the door. as i was leaving the manager rushed out from the back, grabbed the snot loaf and waved it in the air as she shouted, "i'll make it for you! i'll make it for you!"
not to be thus reassured i was already out the door and halfway down the street.
and, you know, this is just the tip of a giant iceberg of restaurant stories that i have. most people are incredulous when they hear claims that before we die we eat two pounds each of stranger-drool, insects, hair, and rat turds, but i totally believe it.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
what's she building down there?
something weird happened to me a week ago. i became obsessed with the basement.
it was a few short days before i was scheduled to depart on a much-needed holiday and there i was, digging out the most obscure boxes, sorting and weeding through their contents, while spinning around cleaning madly like a runaway ferris wheel made of june cleavers.
i actually chafed the insides of my thighs with all the brisk walking about and cleaning.
and, you know, i'm really not a cleaner. i mean, i've lost roommates because i Just Don't Clean.
and i'm not using the word 'obsessed' lightly, either. every night i was up until 4 am, at which point i would reluctantly admit that i should probably go sleep. i would then lie down, only to toss and turn as my thoughts yelled at me.
at the same time i found myself freakishly moody. tears and anger were always barely beneath the surface, and, at one point, as i swept maniacally and wondered why on earth i suddenly cared about my basement, an exercise my class did in grade 11 (?) english came to mind. we were learning the story of parcival as an allegory of human development and wound up doing a number of jungian based personal exploration exercises to compliment our lesson plan. one of them was to design the perfect house in detail. after our houses were completed, we were told that the contents of the basement were supposed to reflect our basic needs and subconscious.
i stopped sweeping up the shocking numbers of fruit fly carcasses and dust bunnies and surveyed my subconscious. all the stress of being alone with a demanding and often difficult child for the past month, added to all the ways i normally beat myself up and fret about what i'm doing or not doing, about my future, about my partner, all of it, swirled around me. i grabbed a scrub brush and attacked.
i couldn't even imagine making it to hawaii. i began to wonder if i was freaking out about the house because part of me knew my plane was going to crash, or something, and i didn't want to leave a mess for my loved ones. i wondered if i was losing my (already suspiciously tenuous feeling) grip on sanity. i wondered a lot of things, growling at any person i had to interact with and protecting the cleanliness i had just created with a vicious ferocity.
this tuesday i flew to hawaii on, i noticed, a surpassingly dirty plane, and while i resisted the urge to clean it, i did glower from time to time at the antique-looking crud seeminlgly caught mid-dribble all around my little fold-up eating table. i'm still feeling unusually emotional, but seeing J has been really lovely. we've been shamelessly slovenly, getting up late and wandering along the beach for hours. the trade winds have been howling, jiggling the coconuts on the trees ominously, and playing with our hair. everyone has banana, papaya and date trees in their yards like we in canada may have spruce or cedar. the flowers smell glorious, and the water is breathtakingly warm, blue, and inviting.
and, to sweeten the deal, when i do finally go home, it'll be to a clean house!
it was a few short days before i was scheduled to depart on a much-needed holiday and there i was, digging out the most obscure boxes, sorting and weeding through their contents, while spinning around cleaning madly like a runaway ferris wheel made of june cleavers.
i actually chafed the insides of my thighs with all the brisk walking about and cleaning.
and, you know, i'm really not a cleaner. i mean, i've lost roommates because i Just Don't Clean.
and i'm not using the word 'obsessed' lightly, either. every night i was up until 4 am, at which point i would reluctantly admit that i should probably go sleep. i would then lie down, only to toss and turn as my thoughts yelled at me.
at the same time i found myself freakishly moody. tears and anger were always barely beneath the surface, and, at one point, as i swept maniacally and wondered why on earth i suddenly cared about my basement, an exercise my class did in grade 11 (?) english came to mind. we were learning the story of parcival as an allegory of human development and wound up doing a number of jungian based personal exploration exercises to compliment our lesson plan. one of them was to design the perfect house in detail. after our houses were completed, we were told that the contents of the basement were supposed to reflect our basic needs and subconscious.
i stopped sweeping up the shocking numbers of fruit fly carcasses and dust bunnies and surveyed my subconscious. all the stress of being alone with a demanding and often difficult child for the past month, added to all the ways i normally beat myself up and fret about what i'm doing or not doing, about my future, about my partner, all of it, swirled around me. i grabbed a scrub brush and attacked.
i couldn't even imagine making it to hawaii. i began to wonder if i was freaking out about the house because part of me knew my plane was going to crash, or something, and i didn't want to leave a mess for my loved ones. i wondered if i was losing my (already suspiciously tenuous feeling) grip on sanity. i wondered a lot of things, growling at any person i had to interact with and protecting the cleanliness i had just created with a vicious ferocity.
this tuesday i flew to hawaii on, i noticed, a surpassingly dirty plane, and while i resisted the urge to clean it, i did glower from time to time at the antique-looking crud seeminlgly caught mid-dribble all around my little fold-up eating table. i'm still feeling unusually emotional, but seeing J has been really lovely. we've been shamelessly slovenly, getting up late and wandering along the beach for hours. the trade winds have been howling, jiggling the coconuts on the trees ominously, and playing with our hair. everyone has banana, papaya and date trees in their yards like we in canada may have spruce or cedar. the flowers smell glorious, and the water is breathtakingly warm, blue, and inviting.
and, to sweeten the deal, when i do finally go home, it'll be to a clean house!
Monday, February 07, 2005
the leprafurger
this is a story that step-bug wrote for school. they were asked to draw an imaginary creature and then to write something that described the drawing and what the creature is like. j chose to draw a leprafurger, and what follows is his description:
The Leprafurger
The Leprafurger preferably eats pickled staplers through the blue stars on his feet. He is a singular species, and can be found prosperous in Southern Arabia. When in hibernation, the Leprafurger unconsciously eats nuns through a straw. All the black lines and dots on the Leprafurger are used to scare away the farmer that is constantly trying to baptise him. Lemon is his favourite word, though he hates limes. There is no animal that doesn’t fear him, and he lives in a tree. The only thing the Leprafurger is afraid of is mustard. He uses his giant brown thumbs to hear. He is in constant solitude when not being chased by the farmer and his holy water. He uses that time to tell his only friend, Fred the worm, that he feels the inner machinations of his mind are an enigma, and that when he changes color for no reason, he says it’s because he must obey the inscrutable exhortations of his soul. Since he uses his thumbs as ears, he uses his ears as thumbs. The symbols on his body, as in the hourglasses and oddly drawn ‘4’s’, are graffiti as a result of sucking nuns through a straw. He has an average life span of 300 years.
The Leprafurger
The Leprafurger preferably eats pickled staplers through the blue stars on his feet. He is a singular species, and can be found prosperous in Southern Arabia. When in hibernation, the Leprafurger unconsciously eats nuns through a straw. All the black lines and dots on the Leprafurger are used to scare away the farmer that is constantly trying to baptise him. Lemon is his favourite word, though he hates limes. There is no animal that doesn’t fear him, and he lives in a tree. The only thing the Leprafurger is afraid of is mustard. He uses his giant brown thumbs to hear. He is in constant solitude when not being chased by the farmer and his holy water. He uses that time to tell his only friend, Fred the worm, that he feels the inner machinations of his mind are an enigma, and that when he changes color for no reason, he says it’s because he must obey the inscrutable exhortations of his soul. Since he uses his thumbs as ears, he uses his ears as thumbs. The symbols on his body, as in the hourglasses and oddly drawn ‘4’s’, are graffiti as a result of sucking nuns through a straw. He has an average life span of 300 years.
will you be my briny valentine?
i've fallen in love.
with sauerkraut.
there isn't much else to say, really. sauerkraut, you are perfect. salty, tangy, full of friendly bacteria because you are un-pasteurized, happily peppered with little caraway nubbins.... who needs hot dogs? i eat you by the bowl-full.
* * *
i first came across this crispy, juicy, unpasturized sauerkraut at the annual victoria health show last weekend, and, after just one sample, bought a whole bottle (and then ate all the other samples). i mean, how could i not? it was like eating crunchy, shredded dill pickles, which, as any of you who know me will confirm, i can eat by the jar-full (pickles i'm talking about here. and olives).
other highlights of the show included this rogue band of vegan seventh-day-adventist senior citizens bent on curing the world's problem with heart disease by touting the benefits of a plant based diet; alarming looking 'probes' filled with tumbled semi-precious stones and attached to very large generators; a woman who would hold coat hangers in front of her, as dowsing rods, then move them dramatically apart from each other to show the expansion of your energy field if you put your hand on your head to "centre" yourself; and john gray himself, touting his latest 'men are from mars' book.
as soon as i noticed john gray i vowed to give that guy a piece of my mind, but as i paused to organize my fit i think i was distracted by the electric amethyst 'probes' and forgot all about him until after i had left. oh well.
with sauerkraut.
there isn't much else to say, really. sauerkraut, you are perfect. salty, tangy, full of friendly bacteria because you are un-pasteurized, happily peppered with little caraway nubbins.... who needs hot dogs? i eat you by the bowl-full.
* * *
i first came across this crispy, juicy, unpasturized sauerkraut at the annual victoria health show last weekend, and, after just one sample, bought a whole bottle (and then ate all the other samples). i mean, how could i not? it was like eating crunchy, shredded dill pickles, which, as any of you who know me will confirm, i can eat by the jar-full (pickles i'm talking about here. and olives).
other highlights of the show included this rogue band of vegan seventh-day-adventist senior citizens bent on curing the world's problem with heart disease by touting the benefits of a plant based diet; alarming looking 'probes' filled with tumbled semi-precious stones and attached to very large generators; a woman who would hold coat hangers in front of her, as dowsing rods, then move them dramatically apart from each other to show the expansion of your energy field if you put your hand on your head to "centre" yourself; and john gray himself, touting his latest 'men are from mars' book.
as soon as i noticed john gray i vowed to give that guy a piece of my mind, but as i paused to organize my fit i think i was distracted by the electric amethyst 'probes' and forgot all about him until after i had left. oh well.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
true bear stories i heard the other weekend
1: up in bella coola mum and john had a boarder in their house who was from malawi, africa. he had won a scholarship, and had decided to use it studying forestry on the north-west coast of canada, of all places.
so, as he was traipsing around in the woods one day, the man from afirca jumped through some bushes down into a small dell that was totally clear - except for the grizzly bear in it.
the bear, only a few steps away from him, stood up menacingly, and then lunged forward, pinning him to the ground.
man and bear regarded each other, face to grizzled, rank, fetid face.
then the bear gave the man's terrified expression one giant lick and promptly ran away.
the next day, the man was back on the plane for malawi -- you know, where you only have to worry about lions?
2: after visiting several times, the same african man fell in love with, and married, a nuxalk woman in bella coola.
after the wedding, he drove to the large, open dump to get rid of the garbage from the ceremony and subsequent dinner.
the dump is often a destination for the few tourist busses that come to the area because it's typically full of bears, and this day was no exception.
most of the bears seemed to be foraging at a distance, so the man from africa climbed into the back of his pick-up and busied himself throwing bags over the side, until a bear jumped up onto the flatbed itself. the man paused, blinked, then passed it a bag.
3: in bella coola there's a youth program that aims at (re)acquainting local kids with indigenous first nations spirituality and wilderness survival skills. part of the program entails enduring a "solo", where each kid is sent off alone, or nearly alone, into the bush for a day or two with a potato and two matches.
so, this visiting german girl found her way into the program and was on her solo with two other kids. that night they decided to sleep by the side of the river. they were out in the open, tentless, in sleeping bags, probably smelling like the dinner they had just eaten, dozing soundly, when the girl was woken up by what she assumed were the snorts and snufflings of the camp dog.
she was lying on her stomach, but when she opened her eyes she saw that the creature in question was really a bear who probably thought she looked, and smelled, like a sack of garbage in her sleeping bag in the dark.
he sniffled and snuffed, huffed and nosed at her, for what felt like an eternity. finally the suspense was too much for the poor girl and she thought to the bear, "If you're going to bite me, just bit me now and get it over with!." so, right at that instant, it did.
she screamed, of course, and the poor bear had never heard a bag of garbage scream before, so it ran away terrified. the girl, on the other hand, was taken into the clinic and given all the necessary shots and medications for a bear bite to the bum, after which she elected to rejoin her solo comrads and finish the program. brave girl!
so, as he was traipsing around in the woods one day, the man from afirca jumped through some bushes down into a small dell that was totally clear - except for the grizzly bear in it.
the bear, only a few steps away from him, stood up menacingly, and then lunged forward, pinning him to the ground.
man and bear regarded each other, face to grizzled, rank, fetid face.
then the bear gave the man's terrified expression one giant lick and promptly ran away.
the next day, the man was back on the plane for malawi -- you know, where you only have to worry about lions?
2: after visiting several times, the same african man fell in love with, and married, a nuxalk woman in bella coola.
after the wedding, he drove to the large, open dump to get rid of the garbage from the ceremony and subsequent dinner.
the dump is often a destination for the few tourist busses that come to the area because it's typically full of bears, and this day was no exception.
most of the bears seemed to be foraging at a distance, so the man from africa climbed into the back of his pick-up and busied himself throwing bags over the side, until a bear jumped up onto the flatbed itself. the man paused, blinked, then passed it a bag.
3: in bella coola there's a youth program that aims at (re)acquainting local kids with indigenous first nations spirituality and wilderness survival skills. part of the program entails enduring a "solo", where each kid is sent off alone, or nearly alone, into the bush for a day or two with a potato and two matches.
so, this visiting german girl found her way into the program and was on her solo with two other kids. that night they decided to sleep by the side of the river. they were out in the open, tentless, in sleeping bags, probably smelling like the dinner they had just eaten, dozing soundly, when the girl was woken up by what she assumed were the snorts and snufflings of the camp dog.
she was lying on her stomach, but when she opened her eyes she saw that the creature in question was really a bear who probably thought she looked, and smelled, like a sack of garbage in her sleeping bag in the dark.
he sniffled and snuffed, huffed and nosed at her, for what felt like an eternity. finally the suspense was too much for the poor girl and she thought to the bear, "If you're going to bite me, just bit me now and get it over with!." so, right at that instant, it did.
she screamed, of course, and the poor bear had never heard a bag of garbage scream before, so it ran away terrified. the girl, on the other hand, was taken into the clinic and given all the necessary shots and medications for a bear bite to the bum, after which she elected to rejoin her solo comrads and finish the program. brave girl!
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