Somewhere out there, in any number of Postcolonial courses in any number of liberal arts universities, a certain book has been made required reading. I feel badly for the misguided souls who end up here, hoping for Chinua Achebe, or maybe even The Roots. A little Yeats?!? Pshaw! None of the above. Dropping the reference drives a bit of traffic this way, which was not my intent, but there it is and so it is. However, on a recent google check of how far into the pack you'd have to click before coming up with this site, I gave up after 240. There are a few liberal arts students who are far, far greater procrastinators than I ever aspired to be in my university days.
I feel ripped off by the fact that I completed both degrees before the overabundance of the internet, before I could source material from the comfort of my own hovel on Fairmount rather than fluishly mounting the stairs at McGill's library, then again at Concordia, often out to the Loyola campus as well, then again at UQAM in search of the ever-required Sexual/Textual Politics by Toril Moi (a must-read for all occasions, including the Ascot and Coney Island mermaid parades).
Let me make one thing clear to all students sourcing the Achebe book: Homi Bhabha does not make sense. Admit this now. But remember, when in the wee hours of the morning on the day when your term paper, "Don't Shoot the Messenger: The Role of The British in TFA", is due, you can lean back on your futon and repeat the words Homi Bhabha, Homi Bhabha, Homi Bhabha, and derive a moment of glee from the entirety of your work in postcolonial theory.
My former feline
feasted on a wine cork, made
intestinal plonk.
Word up: MontrealPaul (not to be confused with TorontoPaul even though MontrealPaul really lives in Vancouver now) is fast nearing completion of his epic hip-hop documentary "5 Sides of a Coin". There'll be a secret screening sometime soon; in the meantime, check out the CBC online initiative, 120seconds. Click on features and it'll bring you to the entry to the online portion of "5 Sides of a Coin".
In 45 minutes, I should be at the Kid Loco show. I say "I should be" because I'm still not 100% sure if I'll go. In fact, I'm about 98% sure I won't go, for various reasons all tied to the fact that I live in the wrong city. It's cold out, and it's raining, and well, really, no one I know is in the know about Kid Loco. No one in this city, anyway. So, were I to head down to Sonar, I'd be the solo girl, which doesn't depress me as much as it should. I've never gone to a show by myself before, and perhaps it would be a character-building event, the sort of (goddamn) character-building event I could write about for next year's (crumby) three-day novel, which, like this year, could be based on all sorts of character-building events of solo girl outings. I prefer to go to movies by myself, why should DJ sightings be different?
More importantly, why should women have all the fun? And shouldn't this guy be concerned about a few more pressing issues than the contoured construction? Oh, those crazy Austrians.
Yesterday, I gardened. I planted assorted bulbs for assorted tulips (one is even black, how Goth of me!) and hyacinths. I tore out dead stuff, and cut back the morning glory, and finally put to soil a perky lavender bush that is meant to fill the gap in a sickly shrub, the name of which, Latin or otherwise, I’ve never learned, though this sort of shrub is quite common in these parts. Factor a guess and I’ll look it up and tell you if you’re right or not.
In my family, you’re either an avid gardener or you have an active sex life – there really isn’t any in-between. So for the longest time I wasn’t necessarily bothered by my brown thumb (hey, get your mind out of the gutter, but, ahem, not entirely out of the gutter). I would buy perennials, and they would die from neglect because things were germinating in other areas of my life. I should clarify that this is a patrilineal trait. Take my uncle, for instance. His plot of land turns out an impressive array of bloom every season. In fact, the last time I went visiting, he had just finished digging over 500 bulbs out of his back yard. When we walk through gardens, he knows both Latin and common names for everything in sight. But there are plenty of things he’s never done in foliage -- namely, roll in the hay.
My garden, unfortunately, is doing quite well. German daisies that were under duress months ago are thriving. The sickly shrub has taken on a whole new attitude, spunky with chlorophyll and ready to take on the winter. Whatever. I’m hoping the tulips fail to sprout shoots come Spring.
I secretly think that Dean and I know way too many people in common, even moreso now that he's dropped the Goldstein Boy into Textism. This is not a bad thing, not like we're in a Hutterite colony and there's one healthy gene left to pass on before we all end up on the porch playing banjo. It was comforting back then, and it's comforting now. More on this later.
Bagels are in the house! Has anyone ever done a shout-out for bagels before? Bagels deserve such acclaim. I thought I'd change up my passive/aggressive activities for the morning, and watch a bit of television while rejoicing over a plate of solid food. Whoah! Woe! In the countdown from the Outdoor Channel (hell, if I can't get to Cuba, I'll torture myself by watching drunken Welsh hosts travel the globe) to CBC, right there, midway on the counter, was Billy Bob singing on the Country music station. Yes, I said "singing". It gets worse than that. The song -- "Angelina" -- well, I won't even go into the subject matter of the song because the title just sums up the cheese so nicely. Oh, and please give Steve Van Zandt back his Sun-City era beret (see link) (I apologize in advance).
But, the saving grace...Jonathan Goldstein (I've raved about him in the past and even mentioned my crush on him, I believe, but it should be said that it's more than a crush but a deep admiration for just how perfectly and unaffectedly cool he is) has been working for National Public Radio for the past while in Chicago on a show called This American Life. You, yes, you can listen to TAL via Real Player. Right now, clad in chicken socks, I'm listening to Jonathan's tale of the Division Street Russian Bath from the episode entitled I Know What You Did This Summer (Ep #191 August 17, 2001). Includes bodily functions. Also give a listen to Howie Chackowicz, pal of Jonathan, who drew strange comic books about naked fat kids. I have one, somewhere. I'll show you if you come by with more bagels.
Yesterday, I thought I felt better. There were errands to be run. There were guilt walks promised to the dog. I ended up pushing myself too far, and thus straight back to bed after returning home from the beach. While at Jericho, I remember a chain of seemingly "crazy" events, so crazy that I had to phone myself and leave a message lest I forget any of the "craziness". I'll let the flu speak for itself by transcribing the message:
"Okay, it's the BC cross-country championship and the next thing is going to be in Dublin. Holden Caulfield moment with the ducks. The world's supply of pigeons are all roosting in one tree. The passing conversation was comparison and contrast between The Golden Girls and The Gilmore Girls. And that's it so far. Oh, the Ricky Martin love ballad playing in the background as the guy was announcing the first, second and third place people. And that's about it. (Duck quacks in b/g). Oh, did I mention the Holden Caulfield thing with the ducks? Probably. Okay, bye."
Note the fact that I said "bye" to myself. Oh, wait, I'd probably do that when healthy anyway.
Remember when being sick was fun, when it meant your mom would cook your favourite "I'm sick" dinner and you could spend all day on the sofa waiting for the cartoons to begin at 3:00? Yesterday was sort of like that. Mark dropped by in the morning with a little J.D. Salinger. Calls came from work with queries about care packages. The oft-mentioned fellow phoned to check in as well. Then, today, the whole "sick is fun" thing didn't happen. Today was "sick is sick". On a day when everything is about liquids, I've come to a few solid understandings:
1. I need a new bed. My brother calls me "cheap", I prefer "frugal". I mean, I don't deny myself delicious foodstuffs or impulse clothing purchases and I pay more rent than he does. I am gruffing about the possibility of paying $500 to fly myself and my dog to Calgary for Christmas considering Havana was only $100 more. But the new bed scenario is no longer under the category of "want". This is now a need. When Martin was here from China, he was telling me about his bed investment back in Tian Jin -- a full month's income had gone into his sleeping arrangements. But his justification was that we spend 1/3 of our lives in bed. I think I'm more in the 2/5 range. So, flu permitting, I'm sourcing new beds tomorrow.
2. This yuppie neighbourhood is sorely lacking in comfort food. I like Tom Ga Kai as much as the next person, but flu and spicy food are just not a good combination. Back in Strathcona, there was the Union Market, run by Andy and Gloria, who made a mean chicken orzo soup and rice pudding. These were my mainstays during sickness in the old 'hood. When I moved out of Strathcona, I brought a bouquet of flowers for Gloria to thank her for feeding me for three years. She gave me a pie in return.
3. My dog, if I haven't raved about him enough, is excellent during the flu. He keeps to himself, isn't desperate for affection, and has everlasting bladder control. If only he could cook like Gloria!
Some years back, my mom bought me a pair of chicken socks. Let me take a minute to describe said socks: The toe and heels are red, the foot bright blue. From the ankle upwards, a hue of yolk yellow, with wings protruding from the sides and a small tail jutting out the back. An orange beak pokes from the front. The chicken has green eyes, and sports a jaunty blue bowtie.
These are my "sick day" socks, and today I wear them while stuck in bed, realizing how badly I need to get something softer than the cement "zen" futon that makes me feel as though the Taliban came in and tried to stone me to death during the night. I'm closing an embarrassing gap in my reading (I'm hanging my head in shame as I type in Catcher in the Rye). But fuck me if being sick isn't really a self-indulgent vacation in disguise.
Got a bit nostalgic yesterday for the moment of serendipity (the mathematical equation of which is "time since I've started working here - time since I realized I may have had a crush on the formerly & oft mentioned fellow = mark on a scale of 1-10 reflecting my ineptitude since April regarding all things romantic")*.
But then I came across this, which knocks my nostalgia meter off the charts:
Give it a click. La Maison Simons (#3 vice when I visit Montreal), is just out of reach behind the camera.
This aft, having not much to do but scan old emails for moments of serendipity, I came across this account of a June breakfast mission regarding a hottie co-worker who seems to have lopped the sleeves off of every t-shirt in his collection:
This morning, enroute to Americano central, I had a brief Nosleeves encounter. Standing with a bag of steaming dogshit in one hand, I tried to seem friendly and laissez-faire, all the while thinking I have a steaming bag of shit in the hand you can't see, Nosleeves. Then, the cute rockabilly boy sitting out front of the Americano place knew Lecky from Commercial Drive. Lecky should throw dinner parties.
And this:
(Sidebar: last time my dad was in town, while watching Much Music, I tried to teach him the rapper phrase "bling bling", which he immediately forgot and thought it was "bloop bloop", to which my brother said "ginko ginko". Best use of the phrase was by Chris. While he and Jordan and I were waiting for the ferry to Victoria, this dead ringer for Eminem walked by with a gold chain with a huge $ medallion. When I pointed him out, Chris deadpanned "He's bling blinging.")
For the past year, I have been sleeping with an electrical outlet dangerously close to my head. It's not so much the fear that my hair will get caught in the slots, but that I am growing a sizable brain tumor with all that electrical energy pointed at my cranium. Early on, I bought plastic plug-pluggers in the hopes that this might stop the flow of electricity, but somehow I think I'm fooling myself with this ploy.
I had tried another configuration of the furniture when I first moved into this apartment, but facing the closet (and the lack of anything new therein) was resoundingly more depressing than facing the window and just dealing with the proximity to the plug. Though, this has also put me in closer proximity to the laundry room, and to the realization that my upstairs neighbours are really quite obsessive about getting the laundry done. Daily.
Back to my brain. Last night, I could feel things happening in my brain. My head was tingling, and my upper lip felt numb. Were I not so exceptionally tired, I would have rearranged the furniture right then and there. Instead, I tossed my pillows to the far end of my bed and slept the other way around, knowing full well that I would wake up in the middle of the night and not know where I was. At about three in the morning, the dog lept on the foot of the bed, which, because I was turned around, was now the head of the bed, startling us both -- he because this normally safe point of entry to the bed was now no longer a point of entry but my head, and me because my dog was on my head. Of course, I was immediately lost -- where was I, what room was this? But because my brain tumor was not being massaged by the fingers of electricity, I quickly regained my bearings. My lip was not numb. My head did not tingle. I slept soundly, and am still a big groggy even now.
Tonight I am going to map out a sleeping plan so that my head is in the middle of the room, nowhere near any electrical outlets, but free-floating in a zone of good non-vibrations. There is, of course, the problem of the overhead light fixture and the potential bad electricity beaming down on me like a cheap Star Trek effect, but this is less often used than the bedside lamps, which will be nowhere near my head either. If all else fails, I'll look into a good lead nightcap. Or a nightcap of the vodka variety, which would erase any hypochondria about the tumor in the first place.
I am also convinced that my laptop is giving me cancer of the knees. I have noticed a strong correlation between the amount of time I spend on the computer and my inability to bend at the knees. I shall call it Compaq-fracture of the kneecaps.
Why have I not seen this film before? Danielle told me about this film years ago, and after watching me flail in and out of relationships, she always suggests I take a lesson from Sherman's March. So on Friday night, after bashfully walking half-way home with the co-worker of previous mention, I decided to cut the walk short and head back to my neighbourhood because, well, I was really hungry and somewhat tired and not really in any form to be considering lengthening the walk or suggesting we stop for a spot of food or a smart cocktail or gay karaoke at the Dufferin.
The video rental place in my neighbourhood is plentiful with dog biscuits. My dog is well aware of the kindness and the cookies available at Black Dog, and so he sauntered in there on Friday night looking for his midnight snack. I felt somewhat obligated to rent a video as he crunched on his biscuit, and as the documentary section is right near the back desk, I spotted Sherman's March. But the weekend was full of pannekoken and end of season gardening and flamencking, and so I didn't get around to watching the documentary until rainy Sunday afternoon.
Don't be like me. Don't wait to see this film. Rush out and rent it this very evening. Though meant to be a study of how Sherman cut a swath of destruction through the South during the Civil War, our narrator Ross digresses so often to focus on the women in his life (the pantie-less "female prophet"; the sexual linguist; the seemingly perfect blind date who springs her Mormonism on him at the 11th hour) that Sherman's March takes a back seat. In fact, we learn very little about Sherman.
Here's an excerpt:
Charleen commenting on graffiti: This is the way women want to hear men talk to them. Now, you see, Becky knows how to talk. "I love you and I can't help it and I don't care who knows it." What is she saying? "I give you my life and heart." This is the way I want you to talk to Dede. This is what... This is the language women can understand. That's what they believe. They experience it in their own lives.
Ross McElwee: Well, not all women, I mean--
Charleen: Well, the only women I know believe that. That's the only way I can-- could-
understand you--
Ross McElwee: Well, I've felt that way about a couple of people. It doesn't solve everything. That's the point.
Charleen: Well, you never solve everything, Ross. You never solve everything. The only thing you've got is a chance for a few passionate hits. You see how foolish it all is. You see what the army comes to. The bunkers, the island, the burned-out house. Hell, it's all a tragedy. It's just a matter of how you get through it. And the most interesting way to get through it is to say, "I can't help it. I'm full of passion and I'm gonna die this moment." It's the only way to pretend you're alive. It's the only way to not be alone and depressed. You've got to kid yourself and you've got to kid her and then you'll both believe it.
An email from Adam Yauch...you couldn't ask for a better way to start the morning. If I were to go on Gonna Meet a Rock Star, I'd want to meet Adam Yauch. Hands down. I can't understand folks who want to meet these one-hit faux-aggro bands like Linkin Park. Amateurs. So, you can imagine how cool it was to open my email account and find MCA's name in my inbox.
(Please note: I am fully aware that one billion other BB hipsters received this email so don't go doubting my sanity, k?) (maybe?)
Here's what Adam has to say:
"hi there,
i hope you are doing well in the very crazy times that we are living
in...
in the midst of this madness adam and mike and i got together to
discuss what we might be able to do that would be constructive. and we
decided to put on a benefit concert called "new yorkers against
violence." we (beastie boys) will do a short hip hop set with mix
master mike. also on the bill will be the strokes, B-52's, cibo matto,
saul williams, rival schools and rahat fateh ali khan. i hope that
anyone that has the time and is in the neighborhood will be able to
come and join us. it will be taking place at the hamerstein ballroom
in manhattan sunday, oct 28th. and tickets are available at:"
NEW! This has been extended to the 29th as well. Check out the roster . Damn, I live in the wrong city. Thanks for the heads-up anyway, Adam. Coffee sometime?
Ah, the rain. On miserable mornings, today, for instance, I can't ride my bike to work and am thus relegated, along with the other soaking masses, to the Main Street bus. It's a quick dash from 16th to Hastings, so I don't feel quite as downtrodden as the poor sods that have to stand from Lynn Valley to Downtown. This morning, I even managed to get a seat, and as the crowd shuffled to the back following the drop at Broadway, a rough'n'tumble cutie ended up standing next to my seat. He held the upper bar with both hands in a sort of primate courting gesture, and I must admit that there was a bit of flirting from my side of the affair as well. Then, as the majority of the bus cleared out at the last stop before Hastings, a woman at the front approached my cutie and said "So I hear you're going to try to defend yourself in court today..." He yelled at her to shut up. And kept yelling at her because she kept going on about how she had acted as her own defense after she got busted.
Yep, I know how to pick 'em. This led me to ponder on another, relatively connected, subject: the pick-up. The other night I watched a documentary on sex addicts and one woman declared that she couldn't go two hours without sex. I wasn't so much amazed by the quantity of sex this woman was having as by her organizational skills, firstly to find the time throughout the work day to pop off every couple of hours (unless, of course, this is her occupation), and secondly to find such an impressive roster of participants (unless, of course, they're not so much participants as clients). I mean, I've had my fair share of on-call boys, but the production coordination behind sex addiction is mindboggling when put against my current situation, which is more like a scientific study of how inertia begets inertia.
Leaving my office after work is always a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes, the elevator doors open onto emptiness. Sometimes, I step out to find the latest neighbourhood guy naked, dancin' it up to Swollen Members (sort of a fitting choice). Usually, it's one of the many who do the butt circuit, searching through the outside ashtrays that hang on the building like mezuzah for the nicotine-infused. Today, Eduardo was outside, having a cigarette on a break, and a rubbie was there, waiting patiently for Eduardo to finish. I unlocked my bike, hoisted my dog up into his milk crate, but didn't do this fast enough for the guy not to notice Lecky's patented crazy-legs walk. He came over to ask me what was up with my dog, and when I looked up, I realized it was my step-brother Brad. Thankfully, in a chain of events straight from the botched suicide scene from Delicatessen, as I looked up, my sunglasses, which had been propped on my head, slipped and covered my eyes, making it slightly less probable that he would recognize me. This at the exact moment Eduardo finished his cigarette and walked over to make the hand off. And at the exact moment that the one synapse connecting memory of me to the remainder of his brain snapped in lieu of finding someone with matches.
I skedaddled and was blessed with green lights until the corner of Hastings and Columbia. There, the wheelchair guy, and another bit of history repeated:
Him: Got yerself a hitch-hiker.
Me: Yup
Him: He doesn't jump out.
Me: Nope
Him: I wish I could fit in your box, and you'd take me for a ride (giggles to himself).
Light changes to green.
After thinking like a preschooler all day yesterday to come up with script ideas, I had great fun over dinner last night with Mark's daughter Ellie. We had an indepth discussion about my allergy to coathangers (Ellie's solution: don't breathe when I'm near them) and discovered that rubbing your head against the bolster of the booth has the same static effect as the old hair-balloon combination.
At one point, Mark escorted Ellie to the loo, and our food arrived while they were tending to this business. As they were coming back to the table, I said "Look who came while you were away...the food fairy!"
It was then that I realized our gay waiter was within earshot.
On the way home, I saw a neon orange sign nailed to a pole at Main and 17th that read:
Don't Fink on Me because I do Crazy Things (Maybe?)
What's with the "(Maybe?)" Has this sign-poster been subjected to the Rains of Doubt?
Note: Unless you had dinner with me tonight, you wouldn't know that the Rains of Doubt are a weather pattern much like those found in The Phantom Tollbooth. I made it up today at my excellent job where I get to make up things like the Rains of Doubt, even though the Rains of Doubt are based on my personal experience of waking up in rainy Vancouver and doubting whether I can get out of bed. Don't steal this idea, or I'll have to punch you in the heart. Over at tremble, todd comes up with a brilliant idea for a cartoon. Well, I think it's brilliant, and David Letterman would watch it too.
Phew. I feel much better. If you saw me yesterday, I woulda been all "mountains out of molehills" crazy, ranting about everything in sight, and a whole lotta stuff not quite in sight but just over the horizon. I seem to recall an old Art of Noise video with a little girl stomping her feet by the railway tracks. Yesterday, that was me.
Still, I think I need to see the chiropractor again.
I'm working on a script for a short film to be part of our application to the National Screen Institute. It is based on a short story I wrote back in Montreal about a woman who is trying to commit suicide by eating oranges. This is turning out to be much more of a challenge than I first perceived. Here's a sampling of the task at hand:
Film text:
Ext. Maeve's Garden - Late Afternoon Indian Summer
Through the overgrown garden, bees drowsy with heat move through plants. Voices of children can be heard in the distance through the open windows of the house.
CHILD
...eight, nine, ten. Ready or not, here I come.
Through the branches of an orange tree, we see an elderly figure moving through the garden. It is MAEVE, 78. She wears a paper birthday hat, elastic band under her chin holding it at a jaunty angle. She slowly negotiates her way to the greenhouse. In tow, a small dog with billowing ears.
Int. Greenhouse
Maeve enters and runs her hand over the contents of the wicker baskets inside the door: potatoes, tomatoes, etc. She reaches the oranges and selects one. She sits and peels the orange with precision. She is momentarily distracted by a butterfly which has been trapped inside. She eats the orange wedges and sighs. The peel, extracted from the orange in a single, long coil, sits on the shelf next to her.
Short story text:
On Maeve's seventy-eighth birthday, she sequesters herself in the hothouse. Her sister's family, visiting for the day and celebrating in the parlour, do not notice her disappearance. They are playing a game of hide-and-go-seek; and Maeve, being too slow to hide and too blind to seek, prefers the silence of the hothouse and the company of her white dog with its billowing ears and tongue like greased paper. Maeve is dissolving, chin gone, sight blurred, nipples no longer like butterflies, wings always directed north. She is slowly committing suicide.
Maeve is eating an orange, picked from one of the wicker baskets near the hothouse door, and, though she can't see well, she can distinguish the orange from the tomato by its pimply rind; from the potato by its compulsively round disposition. The tangerine smells more like lover's flesh would, the grapefruit less so. The mandarin is not unheard of in these parts, but seldom arrives, an indicator of something else entirely.
Slipping a finger between skin and muscle, her hands chalk over in bitterness. Maeve strips the innards of white pith; there must be no buffer in her attempt. She removes each cord, like spines, from the sections, pulls open transparent curtains until only the sweet smudged flock remains, tapering at each end like caterpillars. And when the fluid has occupied her body, corroding the walls that hold her within, dissolving, she sighs; her attempt is still failing.
I haven't gone the narrator route, though the director had asked for this and may still ask for this after reading the first draft. Interesting, this whole business of adaptation, and so much easier when it's not your own work to be adapted. I must admit, since I've started working in film, I haven't read a book without at least once considering its viability for adaptation, and haven't written anything that could be adapted without great difficulty. Of course, this makes me a hypocrite, as I'm working on an adaptation of my mentor's novel about a hockey player at the end of his stick, and have done another of a gothic novel for sport. But there's a long history of this...my headmistress, who held the head chair at the table at which I was forced to sit after cracking a joke during supper hours, used to scoff at my inability to eat foods that "touched" on my plate. She half-threatened to get me one of those kiddie dishes with compartments so that she wouldn't have to be so careful when placing food on my plate. I don't sleep entirely naked because I don't like my legs touching (also, there's that phobia about housefires and having to run out naked in the night). I like to keep things separate. Until now, that is.
Sigh. Today I lose Liane. She's flying back to London. Tomorrow I lose Martin, who's returning home to China. And Cuba? It'll have to wait. I've been offered another script, and this takes priority. In addition to work, hurricanes are blasting through Jamaica, I'm not particularly keen on flying out of Toronto or Montreal on the connector flight, and there's that whole "mercury in retrograde" business.
On a lighter note, what are those things that look like urinal cakes floating in the #9 soup at the Pho place?
Look who's chatty cathy today...um, that'd be me. But Genvieve just brought up an important point here in the world of animation. While the WB (also known as The Frog in industry terms) has taken the time, money, and conscience to restore live-action film classics like Gone with the Wind, Casablanca (overrated) and Citizen Kane, they have yet to take any action to restore the animated classics in their vaults. This includes the Saturday morning staples Looney Toons and Merrie Melodies. So there's this petition floating about to encourage the WB to restore their toons, but it's couched in a push for a DVD release, which makes the whole thing a bit suspect.
Far more fascinating than that is the host site, a hub for petitions as diverse as "A Petition for International Investigation Committee on Ariel Sharon’s crimes against humanity" to "Enterprise Theme Song Must Go!" Over 12,000 people would like to see Aaliyah remain in the Matrix 2, while only about 9,000 oppose the Taliban's treatment of Afghani women. Can we make a petition to complain about these statistics?
Tired after my night out with Martin and Liane (but thrilled to do it all over again tonight), I offer the Famous British Novelist section of my three-day novel for your reading pleasure:
Itinerary: New York tonight, Washington tomorrow. Bouncing around the Eastern US like a cue ball after the break. Hands in trouser pockets. Stiff upper lip, but let’s not forget the Jameson’s in the carry-all.
I’ve learned to expect the same string of questions: who inspires you (can I say my adulterous wife?); what are you reading now (can I admit to not having read anything other than my horoscope and the funnies for the past two months?); why did you start writing (here I’ll blatantly tell the truth: in an attempt to get laid).
Keeping up appearances, my reading appearances more and more by rote as the book tour drags on. Tonight in New York I’ll change up the accents: hackney here, cockney there, ringing out the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow and the cockles of their hearts are easily warmed. Alive, alive-o.
In Dublin, a fair city, my pretty wife has shacked up with a green grocer. The obvious jokes about handling the melons aside, the affair has lost its initial humour. I expected her return by the time I’d finished the tour in Scotland. Her laughter about the unfortunate plimsoles I’d packed and the endless rain of the north ensuring something akin to trenchfoot. As I strolled the aisles of the Glasgow bookshop, awaiting fans whispered behind stacks of reference texts, ‘I swear it’s ‘im. Lemme see the back cover photo again.’ Found a book for her on the wild finches of Northern Scotland which the bookshop keeper granted gratis, slid into my worn carry-all with a shush-shush, a wave of his hand. All those earlier novels dedicated to her (and my agent). Then later also to our daughter.
Oh fuckery. Philadelphia. Why she would choose this shabby city of boxers and bells I will never understand. She could have lived anywhere, but followed love. I will see her next week, and will have to explain why her mother is not along on this tour, moreover why she has flown the proverbial coop.
Ornithology is the root of it all, with the Greek ornis or bird being the root of that. The wife is a bird specialist; I was in need of heady research on the diet of gulls. Simple enough, really: cockles, mussels. Should I have considered setting my book in Canterbury rather than Dover, we never would have met and I would perhaps be in divorce negotiations with a Chaucerian, or an expert in witch dunkery.
When I returned to London, the house still echoed with her absence though her Shalimar lingered on the bedroom sheers, the unwanted clothes still hung amongst the remainders of an unwanted life. She’d met the produce man in a pub. How entirely pedestrian. It was meant to be a quick plowman’s lunch on her way to the office of Lord Weatherby, who had discovered nesting zebra finches on the window ledge of his office in the Parliament Buildings. The wife was to meet him during a break in the afternoon; instead she spent the mid-day shagging a leprechaun fruit vendor.
Let me tell you this, my proofreader lived in Ireland for five years and has had her fair share of lads, and she claims they don’t call them "the little people" for nothing.
A green grocer! Bloody hell.
In lieu of fruit baskets left on side tables in hotel rooms, my agent has requested strong Roquefort and water crackers. In addition to breaking my heart, the damn woman will also mess with my digestive tract for lack of fibre.
(You Liked Me, So I Started Liking You, Then You Stopped Liking Me, Now) I'm Stuck Liking You
This would make a great country song, or perhaps it should be the title of my memoirs, the chump years. And thanks to calebos for the link...if I knew ya'll were coming I'da vacuumed or something.
Walking home with my dog, he greets a burly guy who lives in the one house in the entire neighbourhood with a punk rock couch out on the front porch. You know this sofa, it's the colour of mustard y-fronts, and despite the number of rainy winters spent outside, still smells of the Old Stock spilled from stubbies in the 70s. Lecky is transfixed by this guy, and has to see what is in his house. He says it's probably his dog. I expect something equally burly, a rottweiller, say, or an elkhound. Instead, a dead ringer for Dos Pesos comes tearing out of the door, and the two dogs do the I-pee-then-you-pee-ad-infinitum game while the guy tells me how his dog had been napped last week from Wreck Beach and he re-dognapped the napped dog after being tipped off by a concerned citizen.
I don't think anyone would dognap Lecky. But if they did, the whole episode would play out as though straight out of After Dark, My Sweet where the ex-boxer kidnaps the diabetic kid, only the kid is a dog with a macrobiotic diet and gimpy legs. Again, I don't think anyone would dognap Lecky.
it's never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
it's never over, all my riches for her smiles when i slept so soft against her
it's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
it's never over, she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever
boy, these lyrics sure look cheesy when written out like this, but I can't get enough of this song.
Last night, enroute to Black Dog Video to for post-commute Bunuel, I spotted my first Vancouver sukkah, constructed off the back porch of the house with the great passion fruit vine that snakes up the side fence. If you’ve never seen a passion fruit flower, they truly are a thing of beauty.
October in Montreal…the changing of the leaves, and sukkahs that seem to pop up overnight along the upper balconies on Jeanne Mance. Of course the Hassidim rarely make eye-contact with a golden shiksa like me, let alone stop to explain the sukkah. So, for me, they are reminders of sweater-weather and mid-term essays on the subjective "I" of Running in the Family. They signify the time spent tossing through piles of vintage handbags in the church sales by Papineau, and guilt-free portions of poutine jardinare from Mondo Frits burning in my belly like peat moss in Dublin stoves. When I see a sukkah, I know I am fully into my favourite season, and the flannel sheets can come out of storage.
Damn this mercury retrograde messing with my normally flighty Gemini-ness. It’s Tuesday. Should I opt for Cuba, I’d be leaving on Saturday night. Have I booked a flight? No. Have I booked a casa particular? No. Have I learned how to say "How much for your monkey?" in Spanish? Hell, I’ve had that one mastered for years.
The weekend was spent in the hottub in Kelowna, except for the lame bit of exercise walking back and forth on Cook Street between the two ends of the Kelowna marathon route. Angelika came in at 3:41 and has now qualified for the Boston Marathon. I just can’t gush enough about how proud I am of my sister-in-law, not only that she can run a marathon, but that she qualified for Boson after running only three marathons. Sunday afternoon, she looked as though she’d taken a brisk walk around the block rather than a 26 mile run. I’m sure the guy who, at the 15 mile mark, had blood streaks down his white jersey from rubbing his nipples raw, wasn’t feeling quite as spritely after the run. Everyone grab your chest and say "ouch".
On the drive up, we reached the summit of the Merritt-Kelowna Coquihalla connector, and the moon hung low and orange, tucked behind a swath of purple cloud. The radio stations narrowed down to a choice of chinese opera or G.Gordon Liddy. In the right company, it would have been the perfect setting for a momentary "park".
Kids, innocent as they may be, have a way of delicately pouring salt on wounds. Case in point, this evening, I'm in the hottub with K. (8), A. (14) and A2. (12), gazing up at the Kelowna stars, when K., in true Barbara Walters form, attempts to devastate me with the following line of questioning:
Auntie, when are you ever going to get married? I liked Chris...why don't you live with him anymore? What did YOU want to be when you were a kid? Why aren't you doing that now?
I hope I answered in a reponsible manner. However, in a reverse on the questioning, I can now confirm my theory that, way before they ever think of marriage, 98% of girls know what they want to name their children. This is why I'm not married. I have yet to find a guy who will allow his son to be named "Ephriam". 'Nuff said.
All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away...
One small thing (again, not falling apart) -- though I hate the counter on my blog, I'm forced to have the counter in order to get the information from gostats, and the information is very...um...informative. For example, I now know that it is possible to reach underwire by googling "new york perogies". Some poor hungry Ukrainian may right now be wandering Soho looking for the Anna Kournikova look-alike who sells perogies on Granville Street here in Vancouver.
So last night I did not do the adult thing by listening to Sonny Rollins and cleaning my apartment. Instead, Liane, Leah and I took Martin, fresh off the plane from Tianjin, for fusion Chinese food. It hadn't really occurred to us that he might want something other than egg noodles and wonton after having lived in China for three years. Martin, in true all-day-spent-drinking belligerent form, harassed the hostess and I'm sure our soup came complete with hork because of it, which fits neatly under the whole "fusion" cooking definition.
Later, Liane and I splayed out on John's fine carpet, Jack Daniels on the rocks or with a pinch of brown sugar in crystal tumblers and Spiritualized on the stereo, and Johnny and Martin talking about everything and nothing at once. Nights like this don't happen often enough and so when they do, we all know just how good we have it; the impact certain people have on our lives regardless of where they live or how often we see them.
One sad note: I never thought I would see the day when one of my naughty tales would outweigh anything Martin and John had to offer. Especially Martin. After all, the man is currently dating a Madame.
New scientific studies show that the longer you spend away from someone, the more likely they are to be married and mortgaged by the next time you see them. The scientist: me. The study group: friends from high school. The petri dish: sushi at Tojo's last night (admittedly the best sushi I've ever had, and I've had quite a lot of sushi in my time).
I love my friends from high school dearly, not just because I love them, but because they make me, a self-proclaimed hermit, feel like a swingin' hipster with my thumb on the pulse of everything that's "now". I realized last night that I clock distances from landmarks by their proximity to watering holes, and that Al's wife was maybe not 100% thrilled by the fact that I took him to a stripper bar the last time he was in town. In my defense, it was the BEST stripper bar in town, and I'd take anyone there just because, unlike most stripper bars, this one is truly worth seeing.
I don't have this same feeling with friends from university, especially grad school. In Montreal, I feel as though I am amongst my peers: none of us have our shit together, and that's okay. C'est ca.
At lunch, enroute to the tailor for a quick fix on my suede vest, which has, as of this morning, decided to have a falling out with its stitching, I stopped in at one of the many used CD vendors in Gastown. Gastown sells four things: native art, cigars, used CDs, and t-shirts with flag-waving slogans like "Canadians Rule, Eh" or "I Got Hosed in Vancouver".
I snagged the new PJ Harvey (who is dating Vincent Gallo...I don't know why that fascinates me but it does) and had a listen to Sonny Rollins "east broadway run down". I've always thought of jazz as "adult" music, and now that I'm eating brussell sprouts and like the taste of beer, I sure I'm ready for jazz. Karim is a jazz guy -- his dad is the Victoria equivalent of Bleeding Gums Murphy, and so I've always felt jazzy-by-association even though my entire collection consists of Kind of Blue. So as I'm listening to Sonny Rollins, I'm thinking "this music makes me want to clean my apartment". What a revelation!! Listening to jazz = clean apartment...I've got the whole "adult" code cracked! Soon, my coffee table magazines will change from Fade In to Architectural Digest, and I will have wine on hand for drop-in guests. Wait, I already have wine on hand! See, I'm half-way there!
You know that feeling when you first wake up and you stumble into the kitchen, a bit stunned by the light of the fridge, and you drink something cold, say milk or orange juice, and you can literally feel it spreading through your system as though it's that Pepto Bismol commercial with the graphic of pink goo coating a plastic model stomach?
That's sorta what it feels like to get your neck adjusted after three years. Only it's blood rushing to my brain. Ahhhh....
Time has come for some serious adjustments. I'm off to the chiropractor this aft. This is the last ditch effort to get my back to act like the 32-year old that it is, and not like the 80-year old that it is trying to be. I'm frightened. I don't much like the chiropractor, mostly because all those cricks and cracks get amplified in my head like a tiny taiko group practicing along my vertebrae. But I've felt off for too long, almost on the verge of flu, and cranky, and tired, and so I'm putting my faith in the hands of the bone doctor. Plus, there's nothing quite as splendid as the feeling of a perfectly aligned spine.
Over at asecretsmile, entirely more exciting reset buttons have been pushed.
On the way home, at the corner of Hastings and Columbia, naughty words that have fallen out of common usage.Rubbie #1 in wheelchair and Rubbie #2 fixing his bike as I pull up to the red light on my bike, with my dog in the milk crate on the back.
Rubbie #1: Got yerself a hitch-hiker.
Me: Yup
Rubbie #1: He doesn't jump out?
Me: Nah, he knows when he has it good.
Rubbie #2 (looking up): Hey, she's got a big box, I gotta get me one of those.
Rubbie #1: Which box do you mean?
Me: laughing and shaking my finger at Rubbie #1
Light changes to green.
Rubbie #1: Just kidding, missy. You have yerself a good night.
This, last night. On unforgiving Anglican pews, our fibula trembling with sound, on the verge of shatter like the stained-glass all around. The band were demonic with backlighting, lanky arms arcing bow over guitar, looking more like Nosferatu than impish neighbours of Godmunsdottir. The face of the slumbering baby on the screen, jackolantern lit by wick's flame, suggested the sense of this all: the ghastly within the wholesome. And that voice -- castrato of ice flow, with words that sound eerily like our own though they are made of hard palette and sleet.
The added treat: coming home to find the cellphone call from the upper nave, this night caught forever on my machine.
I posted too soon last night. While I was online (archaic dial-up chez moi, but it's free and I like the "free" aspect of anything) posting the previous sob story, he clocked in at #3. Phew.
