This is going to sound peculiar, be warned. My mother’s transfer to Calgary has come through, so it’s now time for me to make tracks out of Vancouver. I know I sound like a momma’s girl, but why stay? Sure, I love my apartment, my job, my watering hole and video rental place which always has biscuits for my dog and my den of butter chicken where the cute server offers to work the kinks out of my neck. But I can’t stand this city. One of the few things that has kept me here for the past four years has been my mom, and the relationship that we’ve developed as her life fell apart, then mine, then hers, then mine, etc.
Our lives are back on track and so there’s really no reason for either of us to stay here any longer. While she’s off to Cowtown, I have three places in mind: Toronto, LA, NYC, and not necessarily in that order, but that’ll probably be the most likely chain of events. I took the first step towards the grand move this morning when I emailed my sort-of-agent in Toronto and updated him on my progress over the last year in the hopes that we can erase the "sort-ofs" from our relationship as sort-of-writer, sort-of-agent.
There are people who don’t mind living out their adult lives in the cities of their childhood. I’m not one of them. While Vancouver will always be "home", I’ve felt a sense of limitation here -- a glass ceiling that doesn’t seem to exist when I’m in Toronto. There, I am the most together version of "me", if that makes sense, because there is no former self linked to that city. Here, I’m the accumulation of years wherein every city block holds a memory.
I’ll be having sushi four times a week and stockpiling Gortex in the interim just in case the next destination ends up being Toronto.
Whole lotta stage-humpin' going on...last night, this fair city hosted these two concerts: Britney Spears & Prince (yes, the artist formerly known as who now allows himself to be called as such). However, the lustiness of one cancelled out the faux-sweetness of the other so the city didn't implode into a gyrating sweatpit. Damn. I would have actually left my house for that.
I'd like to say I'm heavily medicated, but I'm not. I just feel like I am. Woozy. Tingley. Thankfully, there are two new Tom Waits albums. Have a listen here and here. Perfect music for wooziness. Also for lustiness. Not so much for faux-sweetness.
Turns out having the flu while getting a new tooth created is a blissful state. Also blissful: the stamp of approval from the big Canadian broadcaster on the outline for my pilot episode. Now I can stop grinding my teeth until I send in the second episode for comments, so that buys me about three nights of peaceful sleep.
The flu + blinding toothache pain = my Monday morning. I managed to drag myself to work, only to turn around and drag myself home again. The day's task -- obtaining tickets to David Cross on Thursday night -- is still on the "to-do" pile because there was much sickness and sleeping to be undertaken and subsequently interrupted by the phone and one of the neighbourhood cats who decided my stoop was the ultimate killing field. There should be some sort of silent deal: mice, okay; birds, that's just not on.
I know I've been raving about my new place of yoga rather heartily, but it must be said that, during one class, the male instructor asked us to relax a certain muscle, which sounded downright poetic in Hindi. "For those of you who don't speak Hindi", he said, "that's the anus." Oh come on, how was I supposed to focus after that? The word "anus" just kept echoing around my head for the rest of the class. Which brings me to the cartoon below:
Over at Tower of Hubris, Christian has formulated the perfect equation for music snobbery dating. I concur. Two good albums are worth one stinker, and no amount of hotwax is going to save a guy if I spot The Barenaked Ladies in his racks.
I once dated a crazed key grip/stalker who brought a Will Smith CD on our road trip to Oregon. Were he not clinically insane, I would have snapped it in two and tossed it out the window on the I-5, but I got the feeling that if I touched his stuff (and by "stuff" I mean" personal belongings"), my bodily remains would still be in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Lincoln City.
Or this: after going home with a bodybuilder after an art opening, an acquaintance was faced with the following CD selection: Ricky Martin vs. The Backstreet Boys. The strangest part: it didn’t occur to her that she had other options, like not listening to music at all, or just leaving.
It’s disappointing when you find out the guy you’re dating has horrific taste in music, or worse, he exclusively listens to reggae. Listening to reggae is like admitting you haven’t showered for sixteen days. There’s always been this healthy balance between what men and women bring to relationships (men – electronics and music; women – fashion sense and proper bed linens) and it's disconcerting when that's turned on its ear. When I think back on the relationships of my 20s, they are intrinsically linked to significant albums, like Andrej with Lemonheads’ "Lick", Kirk with The Pixies’ "Trompe le Monde", Derek with Fugazi’s "13 Songs", or Christian (not of Tower of Hubris) with Sugar’s "Copper Blue". And try as I might to be more than High Fidelity shallow in my 30s, I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow the urge to scan bookshelves and music collections for the hidden truths.
Which isn't to say I don't have the odd crappy CD and book myself, but I keep my guilty pleasures safely stowed where no man would think to look: on my bed.
At one point during the weekend, I found myself trapped between two pools of conversation: the "baby" chat in the kitchen vs. the "golf" chat in the livingroom. Having learned the lesson of learning from lessons, I promptly decided to start a golf school for babies.
On a related note, I'm glad the conversation in the living room was not about gambling because babies and craps already go hand-in-hand.
Wheeeeeeee! I'm giddy as a schoolgirl (wouldn't you like to see me haul out the old uniform?). The last time I purchased an album on the day of its release was back in Grade Twelve. The album: The Joshua Tree. Thanks to a heads-up from the kind boys at slatch, this Tuesday I'll be laying down the big money for the latest from DJ Shadow. Wheeeeee (remix)!
This has come up all over the place in the last two days, especially as I’m nearing an anniversary of sorts. How I’d lost Derek ten years ago when he accused me of not being able to see a future with him, yet that’s all I’d done – imagine what our lives would be like years down the road. I’d just never told him what I was thinking; I’d never transferred our future from my mind to his. And I’d had it planned out to the most minute detail: the colour of the firewood box outside the kitchen door.
Cautious with emotions, yes. Cautious with creating these mental images, hardly. And to a much lesser extent, I’ve done the same with the oft-mentioned fellow, imagining us on sweltering Sunday afternoons. I'd just assumed that, sooner or later, it would come to fruition.
Once, not so long ago, a tarot card reader created such positive visualization for me, but I didn’t believe her, at least not until I ended up meeting the person she had seen in my future. I was cautious to a fault, but I have to admit he was exactly how she described him save for two details: he wasn’t a doctor, and he wasn’t from Germany. He was a graphic designer in San Francisco. We attempted to overcome the distance but the ideal of haphazard connection was swiftly crushed by the expense of long distance communication. Here’s the crux: we never actually met. It was a shared love of certain music that led to a complex dance of fools rushing in, then rushing away in the coldness of "how would we make this work?" reality. Still, still.
I hadn’t been in contact with him for about a year, until yesterday, when a coworker mentioned the caveats he's planning to set before his new girlfriend moves here. It got me thinking about Herr Doktor and the lad from SF and so I dropped him an email. Of course, I should have seen this coming – he now lives in Germany.
Caveats are for chumps. The world throws up enough roadblocks for us already, so why create more? If someone wants to be with you and you feel the same, why not just allow it to happen?
Mark was able to sum things up perfectly yesterday: "whereas women are looking for the right guy to marry, men are looking for the right time to get married." I think guys put out the marriage vibe when they start to wear casual "husband clothing" – you know, button-down shirts and khakis. Which is to say, if you’re cruising for a husband, hit up golf courses and Old Navy.
Funny that, because a year ago when my career prospects bottomed out and I thought I’d just get a husband instead, the candidate had a shocking amount of Banana Republic hanging in the wardrobe. Damn that thing about chemistry getting in the way of my practical thinking. I could have been planning my son’s post-bris brunch right now.
On the other hand, there’s Lemmy, who stood in all his surly finery outside the No. 5 Orange yesterday. I passed him on my way to the drycleaners, holding my excitement until I could 100% identify the man in black cowboy attire (and white boots) as the Ace of Spades himself – that is, I withheld until I saw the moles, then ran to a payphone and asked a coworker to all-page the office and let them know that Lemmy was hanging at the local peeler bar, but when they showed up ten minutes later, he was gone. Lemmy, who’s never been married, does not wear khakis. He wears a scowl.
* Donnie Darko: A brilliantly disturbing study of schizophrenia, time travel, the delicate nature of high school social interaction and the disintegration of the nuclear family at the tail end of the Reagan era.
The first and last hockey game that I attended was in 1983, when my best friend Lisa landed tickets to a Canucks game. Her older brother was a hockey fan, and thus she knew all the players, their numbers, home countries and marital status, as though we, as fourteen year olds, stood a chance. From my older brothers, I learned that Le Corbusier was god and how to make the "goat" if ever at a Blue Oyster Cult concert. They were football boys at the time – hockey was something that happened between they Grey Cup and the season kick-off.*
So we went to the hockey game, which was surprisingly and stunningly boring. I had brought along reading material just in case and secretly snuck glances throughout the game. Unfortunately, as I had mere seconds to grab a magazine before leaving my house that night, I reached blindly inside my mom’s briefcase hoping for Vogue but coming out with Hotelier Magazine instead. That months’ feature was on Wedgewood place settings. It was still infinitely more interesting than the hockey game.
Afterwards, Lisa was determined to snag a few autographs, so we huddled by the back doors of the Coliseum in the cold, Lisa, me and the obligatory Down’s Syndrome kid, and waited for the players to head out to their GTOs and XR4Tis. She asked for three autographs. I asked for one from Mo Lemay because he was cute – had I not asked for the autograph, I would not now know his name. The Down’s Syndrome kid gave me his Tomas Sundstrom, shaking his head at my inability to recognize skill over beauty.
Our national sport is Lacrosse. I know nothing about Lacrosse. I know a lot about Lacoste.
* I also know nothing about football except the details contained in this sentence.
I swear our receptionist is trying to make us all think we’re crazy. She’ll do an all-page to let someone know there’s a call, and she always changes up the information on the repeat. You know the standard spiel used worldwide and in France: "Gaston, line one please, Gaston, line 1." Her pages go like this: "Gaston, line one please, Gaston, line 3." Or "Richard, line one please, Dave, line one."
Today, burrito lunch in Kits, and the drive past the beach on route. This is the sort of weather that makes me yearn for a round of lay-offs and UI and my patio with a stack of reading material. But the axe could drop any time, so for now I’ll cling dearly to my paycheque.
Two things about this weekend:
* astrologers are predicting something messy, including a potential internet virus, so back that shit up. I’ve been using my old workplace server for the last year and a half, freely surfing for hours at a time…until last Friday when they finally caught up with me. So internet viruses be damned, I’m not online at home right now anyway.
* the oft-mentioned fellow permanently returns from his sojourn. This is neither a cause nor affect of the above point.
Daily grocery list for the craft services person on Atanarjuat:
Three kilos seal heart
Eighteen packets ramen noodle soup (original flavour)
Six dozen cormorant eggs, hard boiled
Five flanks caribou meat, raw
Five kilos natural seaweed gummy bears
Two packages of La Vache Qui Rit
Walrus, whole
Variety of hot sauces for the grips/gaffers
What was going on yesterday, you ask? I was having a frail day, beginning with the hailstorm, then followed closely by workplace politics. I was not in the right frame of mind for a critical comment, and really, it wasn’t critical at all. A couple of entries ago, I’d mentioned an experience I had during yoga. I’m of two thoughts on this: yes, you’re absolutely right, we should never stop striving, and no, you’re absolutely wrong, there has to be room for being satisfied with the person you have grown to become. And then again, it’s possible to occupy both at the same time.
Two additional points to be made:
1. Lately, I’m never not working. I’m never not in the critical eye, whether it’s story editors or producers or broadcasters. So any moment of self-acceptance is unsatisfyingly short-lived.
2. When I said I was the person I’d always dreamed I’d be, I meant this: were the 32 year old me to meet myself at 23, the 23 year-old me would want the life I have now. That’s not to say the 32 year-old me is entirely satisfied, or ready to stop growing. I have a vision of where I’ll be in 2 years, 10 years, 27 years, and it’s not where I am now. But it was reassuring to realize that I’ve hit the markers that I’d set out for myself as ten years ago. However, self-congratulatory as that sounds, they are markers that I should have hit five years ago. Instead, I spent those extra five years raising show poodles and travelling the show dog circuit. Sure, I scooped a lot of shit in those days, but it was the small moments of falling asleep with a wet nose against my cheek in the Airstream that made it all worthwhile.
I am not invincible. I am not perfect. I am not without feeling. Some days are better than others, and I wish this wasn't so determined by external things but it is. The weather, or shitty people. So, you're right, for a fleeting moment last week, I was the embodiment everything I envisioned I'd be, but then, weak as I am, all it took was you to remind me that I'm not.
Addendum after the fact (why, because I can): I was thankfully and happily proven wrong, not to the point of pumping my fist in the air, but to the extent that I included this addendum.
Something that makes me angry: after yoga last night, I returned home, flicked on the TV to watch CSI and caught the "next week on Survivor" teaser at the end of the show, during which the producers alluded to some sort of crisis that puts the island experience into perspective. Of course they don't come right out and say what the crisis is, but the show was shot about eight months ago, which, theoretically, means Mark Burnett is using 9-11 as ratings fodder. Am I surprised? No. Am I pissed? Yes. It angers me that these sorts of events become marketable commodities after the fact. No one owns world history, yet Time magazine can issue commemorative volumes and pocket the profit.
Something else that makes me angry, but less so: the Verisign fiasco with respect to hoopla.com
I joined a new yoga studio last night. I’ve taken yoga in the past, but never at a dedicated yoga studio – I’d always gone for the community centre courses where you downward facing dog on cold linoleum floors and lose your focus to the basketball pick-up game on the other side of the thin wall. But this place was all karmic bliss, dimly lit with candles burning, a good supply of filtered water, and music! It was warm. And after meditation, we had chai and cookies.
Two strange things happened:
1. at one point, during a pose, this thought crossed my mind: right now, I am the person I've always wanted to be. I'm writing for television, I have a clean apartment, and homemade squash & ginger soup awaiting me in the fridge. I don't think I've ever, EVER thought that before.
2. during shavasna (or however you spell it, you know, the meditation session at the end) the instructor came around to each person, well, my eyes were closed and the room was dark and warm so I can only assume she did this with everyone, but she came up behind me (I was lying on my back) and pushed my shoulders gently to the floor a couple of times, swept the energy down my arms, pulled my head gently away from my shoulders to lengthen my neck, then pressed her thumbs into the centre of my forehead then down my eyebrows and massaged my temples. I couldn’t have been more relaxed.
Then she tried to dip my hand in warm water to get me to pee my pants, but I was on to her after having tried the same experiment on my dog earlier that evening.
* forwarded an email I shouldn't have to a person on the show who should have received an edited version:
* signed up for a new sample shade of Chanel lipstick;
* showed up stupidly empty handed to my aunt's birthday lunch, and then had my portion of the tab picked up by my mother;
* found a good pair of pants for $1 from the senior's centre (crotch-stain-free!);
* can't get this song out of my head.
