Conducting the Birds

2010-03-08T09:09:00.002-07:00

Currently, the literature people have been fighting for prestige with the cultural studies people, even starting their own professional organizations, and, of course, both of these combatants disdain the rhetoric people, who are thought to be doing something vaguely "remedial" that the mayor or the governor or somebody should put a stop to--and probably will, if you live in New York, anyway.
-Robert Scholes. 2001. The crafty reader. New Haven: Yale University Press.

2010-02-09T18:03:00.001-07:00

There's an apartment complex east of 109th and north of Whyte called The Branding Place. I'm not sure what the strategy was when coming up with that name.

2010-02-08T18:17:00.002-07:00

This room is freezing.

"There's heartbroken and then there's all the stuff that comes each second after that, depending on who broke your heart."

Heartbroken isn't a thing. But you can point at it. He's living heartbroken. Heartbreaking.

"She is so eager to find herself fascinating."

My fingers are too numb to finish the mittens that would un-numb them. harumph.

Music in no particular order

2009-10-05T18:20:00.002-06:00

look up the actual video on youtube. It's great.

2009-09-29T19:24:00.000-06:00

I heart him.

2009-09-25T22:07:00.004-06:00

I forgot the most important thing. Hopefully this will make you laugh as much as it made me laugh.

It's hilarious and creepy. He'll /never/ stop. My time is up! Ah!

But, for real... go listen to Bat for Lashes and Florence and the Machine and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and John Vanderslice and Joe Purdy and The Maccabees and Badly Drawn Boy and throw in some Beach House.

2009-09-25T21:24:00.009-06:00

Pictures I took over the past month and then forgot to post...

Lesley and I went to the park and then we stayed late and then we decided to attempt cartwheels.

and while we were cartwheeling, we were approached by three hilariously drunk Lebanese men whom we enjoyed making fun of, and then we agreed to pictures so we could show friends, except that drunken Lebanese man #2 decided he would take the opportunity to sneak-grope me...

If there had been a bit of warning, I would have protested, but it was a complete sneak-attack! Not cool, but also, kind of hilarious.

Then, a few weeks ago, David and I are heading west on Stony Plain Road when I notice this sign out of the corner of my eye...

And, given each of us regress to the maturity level of a 13-year-old around sexual innuendo, David immediately turned the car around and headed back to investigate.

First: gourmet dog treats? Seriously? Second: Why, when naming their gourmet dog treat and dog spa business did these managers figure that what would truly appeal to dog owners would be a reference to the method of fornication inspired by /named after their puppy's sex habits? Is it supposed to make one feel closer to his or her furry friend? "I hear ya Fluffy; nothin like a little lovin from behind" *snicker snicker* Ew. Seriously ew.

And finally, an environmental clothing campaign gone terribly wrong...

Can you see the room full of wired slogan-writing businessy people? Can you see the one leaping up with a cry... "I've got it! 'I'm reusable!' Yes! Yes!"

"Brilliant," they all cheer, "we'll have it printed and sent out in a week! We'll make millions!"

You'd think there'd be a system in place to catch this sort of thing. Consumer sampling? Perhaps review groups?

2009-09-04T19:31:00.005-06:00

I got home about two hours ago and I realized it was the first time I had Gotten Home in months. I've been back here, in the apartment, but I've been dropping things off, picking things up, feeding the cat, hurriedly showering before heading back to some other temporary place: a hospital, my parents', work, school, David's. Always heading out and off. My 'home' - the one with the lease that I'm paying for and the mailing address and all that - has become a giant messy storage bin containing dirty clothes, a dead plant and an angry cat. My belongings are scattered in three different locations and I never know where anything is and the thing I need is never in the place I happen to be.

I called Sarah and frantically explained how I needed to break up with my boyfriend and disown my family and hire a maid and ignore everyone everywhere forever. She calmly suggested that this might be a teensy tiny overreaction and it might make more sense to but off hermit-dom until I had first tried cleaning the apartment, living at home a bit more often, buying two hair dryers, leaving some clean underwear at David's, updating my datebook, and taking some deep breaths. Thank God for best friends. I can't count the number of irrational decisions she's talked me out of.

Conclusion: I'm a hopeless homebody. Whether home is my apartment, a suitcase, or a tiny sac containing a hairbrush and undies, there can be only one, it needs to be relatively nearby at all times, I need to know exactly what's in it, and I have to see it at least once a day. I think I'm okay with this. mmmmselfawareness.

I started my master's degree on Tuesday and I think I love this program. I'm taking an IT class, as in no Lacan, no Derrida, no Butler, but lots of computer coding and podcasting and wiki creation and website design and management! But I'm also taking Information Management, in which we talk about the varied methods and implications of cataloguing systems and information grouping. And also I'm learning about the history of libraries and information organization. And next semester I'm taking practices of reading and storytelling and more IT! I'm so frickin excited!

Also, on Thursday, on my way home from school, I rounded a corner and what did I find on top of the dumpster?

If you think what you're looking at is a taxidermied deer head, you're very correct! Here's a closer look for those who missed it:

If I had had anyone with me to help carry it, I totally would have snagged it. Where the heck were you? I could have had my very own deer head!

This week has been a bad week for embarrassing nakedness. On Monday, my Dad walked in on me naked which blowdrying my hair. The best part (because it was so awesome that there were multiple awesome parts) was my Dad's reaction, which was to casually avert his eyes and continue looking for the item he had come to fetch. My Dad's not big on modesty himself, nor has he ever seemed bothered of phased by anyone else's nudity. Mostly I find it hilarious, though it's less hilarious when I'm the one naked.

And this morning, David's roommate came downstairs to do laundry while I was once again drying my hair and, once again, naked Laura was caught off-guard. Poor Travis seemed significantly more upset than I was.

The moral of the story? I should really start putting on clothes before I dry my hair.

2009-08-18T16:20:00.003-06:00

Up until 30 seconds ago it was pouring rain outside. Up until a minute ago, I was outside too. That's why I look like this:

You're jealous.

2009-08-14T14:00:00.007-06:00

David has been in Fort McMurray for the past couple weeks. Work travel can be awesome, but not when it sends you to Fort McMurray. Mostly I was pleased it wasn't me, but disappointed he didn't go somewhere that might yield cooler pictures or awesome presents. Of course, being the conscientious partner that he is, he brought me presents regardless. Someday, when my children ask me when I knew their Daddy was the one, I will recount the moment when, after returning from Fort McMurray, he opened his suitcase and presented me with these two CDs, purchased from the hotel lobby vending machine:

A Harry Hibbs Tribute: Tiny Ferries
...your nephew
...John Gerald Delaney
Second Edition

The back cover:

The best part of this one, aside from his stirring rendition of Skip to my Lou, is the notation that reads SONGS: (REALITY TIME)
See it? Yes? Are you as confused as I?

But the best...

come closer east coaster, by Eddie Coffey, sexiest man alive.
My favourite selection thus far is "With Me Rubber Boots On"

Be still my heart.

...in other news, two weeks until school! Eeek! And this morning I managed to express the romantic allure of librarian-ship better than I ever have before. It's because I get to see the menu! The menu of all possible people, and I don't have to commit to anything, but I get to survey all the options. And when these people come to me, whether they're filet mignon or a greasy cheeseburger, it's my job to find the appropriate condiments to keep them company. Maybe a red wine reduction/high-brow philosophy, maybe raw mustard seed/insect research, maybe ketchup/trashy pulp novels, maybe an earl grey tea/librettos. I get to be part of figuring out what best accompanies them. Because, while I don't like most people, I find them endlessly amusing, and though I may not have a taste for foie gras, I find it fascinating that it's out there and there are other people who just can't wait to sink their teeth into a juicy duck liver.

Now I'm intensely disturbed by the idea of looking out across a library floor and seeing nothing but giant walking hamburgers and steaks and omelets, or leading a huge baked potato to the Nick Hornby titles. Also, keenly aware that, following my metaphor through, I imagine the people I love to be items I've chosen off a menu and devoured. mmmmmm Sarah-curried-tofu. mmmmmmm David veggieburger. Fathima chai! Bacon 'n eggs 'n Joe! Ian crab! Noor cornbread! basit pomegranate! Lesley fries! Julia pizza! Megan broccoli with cheese! Everyone's so yummy!

2009-08-12T12:40:00.002-06:00

-I talk to you every day. We talk for hours. I have whole conversations with you in my head. In my head, we’re very close.

-What do we talk about?

-You tell me about your Dad. I ask about your Mom. Sometimes you cry. Sometimes you get really quiet and can’t go on and I have to prod you. I ask if you love him. I ask what that feels like and what it means. You tell me it’s like a ton of bricks bearing down on you, stacked on your shoulders, like walking around balancing all those bricks all the time, knowing some of them will inevitably slip off, and how on earth will you bend down to pick them up without dropping all the rest?

-Why would we talk about that?

-There have to be clues there, right? Connections needing to be made. Because you move around me and I don’t know where you’ll pop up, and I don’t know if you’ll hug me or look at me with disappointed eyes and turn your back. Because maybe if I know about him – you and him – I can better anticipate potential points of attack.

-Are we warring?

-Aren’t we?

*pause*

When we talk in my head, I don’t hide things and I don’t lie. I tell you about every pound and every cut and every impulse. I talk to you while I shovel food into me. I tell you why I hate it and why I hate myself. You hold my hand and watch with steady eyes. You don’t often say much while I’m eating.

-No, I don’t imagine I would. I don’t imagine there would be much to do but sit still and love you.

*pause*

-But most often, I tell you about all the men that came after you. I tell you about how each one was a less- good version of you, and how they all let me down, and how you let me down over and over again through them. I tell you how I watched them, comparing. We talk about how I lay in bed at night trying to decide if they weren’t as good as you, or if they weren’t as good as the you I talk to in my head.

*pause*

Last week you told me how you knew she was the one. You told me what it was like to fight for her and I asked why you fought so hard. You said “How could I do anything else? That’s what you do for people you love.” And I knew it was a cliché and I knew it was too simple, but I loved it anyway. When I asked if it was worth it, you gave me a funny look and said “What a stupid question. You’re smarter than that. You’re like your mother; you’re difficult women. Easy to fall in love with, hard to hold onto. You don’t make love easy; you demand more than easy. Loving her, loving you, is not simple. But I don’t want simple.” And I knew that was too simple too, but I wanted you to want my mess.

-So people leave you because you’re difficult?

-People leave me because I’m prickly and demanding and stubborn as hell and I talk too much and I'm ambitious and terrified and cocky and challenging and headstrong and I’m always right, even when I’m wrong. People trade me in for models with less sharp edges, that smile more and want less.

*pause*

Last week David promised he wouldn’t trade me in for another model. I don’t believe him. He doesn’t know yet. Also, he only said it in my head, and I’m never sure if people mean what they say in my head.

-I’m not leaving.

-Promise?

…A recent conversation I had in my head with my father.

2009-08-04T11:18:00.003-06:00

PS: listen to Joe Purdy and Francoise Hardy and Delta Spirit and John Vanderslice and The Rural Alberta Advantage

Then listen to Grizzly Bear and Magnetic Fields again.

2009-08-03T22:21:00.003-06:00

Because dinosaurs are awesome.

This was interesting. I think probably every kid is different and a basic modesty kicks in for all of us at some point. Julia, by far the most conservative dresser in our family, insisted on wearing loose-fitting jumpers and refused to wear underwear straight through till grade 2. Chris ran around naked at home until he hit grade 1. I'm not sure what degree of naked abandon I adopted, but we all ended up wearing clothing in the end.

My vaguely considered ideas of childhood nudity aside, I'm thinking about modesty and shame. Does encouraging modesty also imply that the body is shameful? The unspoken end to the sentence "You should cover up..." is often "...because your body is offensive, inappropriate, dirty, unruly and shameful" but I don't know that it has to be, nor do I think it always is. Sometimes it's more like "...because your body deserves privacy and respect" (though I guess that's an interesting thought all on its lonesome). The article does talk about encouraging clothing in appropriate vs inappropriate contexts, but that's not quite what I mean, and the equation of clothing = body consciousness = body shame seems implied rather than proven or discussed. Can we insist children wear clothing all the time, guard their bodies, and not portray those bodies as shameful, or, alternatively, more valuable only if unseen, untouched and chaste?

This little girl is not sure. Islam maybe sometimes tries, but the reality strays significantly from the idea. That might be unfair and lord knows my perception of what my body meant and where it fit within that group was disproportionately influenced by a very select few muslims, but I still wonder if anyone really pulls off (modesty = good) = (body = good), A = B, C = B therefore A = B = C. Do we ever use modesty to inform a positive relationship to skin, breasts, thighs, vaginas, penises that is not contingent on hiding, avoidance, and refusal? In all of my queries posed to other muslim women, I don't know if I got an answer or if an answer was really possible. Certainly no /one/ thing determines our relationships with our physical selves, but, in my experience, this particular article would be mostly irrelevant to all the muslims I know/knew. Nudity = bad. Covered = good. Body = what-the-hell-do-i-do-with-this-fleshy-thing-that-keeps-reacting-to-other-fleshy-things-dammit! ...which is not to say Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Atheists and Scientologists don't have the same problem, but I'm inexperienced at how often each of those groups take a shot at that particular equation and how.

In my own head, the mention/thought of modesty as a concept applied to the body will, henceforth, forever make me cringe. I have no idea what to do with it now, but my immediate reaction is to keep it as far away from my children as possible. That doesn't feel quite right either, and maybe it's just semantics, but definitions of modesty and expectations surrounding it are swirling in my head, confusing my relationship with my self, my corporeality, my sexuality. I'm not sure where it fits, or if it /can/ fit without landing me in a perpetual barrage of baggy sweats that scream "I hate myself and I want to disappear!"

Today I'm wearing a skirt and short sleeves, and I'm less afraid to be seen, but I'm still grappling.

2009-07-29T17:36:00.003-06:00

He loves me...

...he loves me not...

...he loves me...

...he loves me not...

...he loves me...

...he...

...oh fuck this.

2009-07-16T14:23:00.003-06:00

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/01/09/060109sh_shouts?currentPage=1

I need to marry him.

While house-sitting for my Dad, I discovered my Mother's violin, tucked in the back of her closet. I discovered this because, despite being a supposedly mature 24 year old woman, I find it impossible, when left in the house alone, not to try on everything in her closet and spend entire afternoons twirling in her wedding dress. Judge me if you will.

But, violin: I haven't played in years. My violin was given to my younger cousin who lives in Ontario and hasn't been returned. I thought my mother's violin was in Ontario with her, but apparently it was transported back recently (in expectation of her return in October. And, no, I don't want to talk about that.)

On the day that I found the violin, while wearing the wedding dress, I took the case down from its shelf. "Don't touch Mommy's violin. Mommy's violin is very expensive. Never touch Mommy's violin." But I took it down from its shelf anyway, and the wedding dress didn't seem all that exciting anymore, so I took it off, and I tiptoed downstairs and into the sun room, and I stood staring at the case for a while. Then, I undid the clasp and I unzipped the sides and I removed the velvet cover and there it was. I ran my hands along the ivory, embedded along the edge, over the f holes, grazing the strings. I undid the velcro strap around its neck and gingerly lifted it out of its case. I found the shoulder rest, I removed the bow, tightened it, rosined it. I placed the violin under my chin, and ran the bow across the G and D strings, the D and A string, the A and E string, and I tuned it. I pulled out my old music, hidden in the piano bench and I started my scale exercises. I worked my way through my first book of songs, my teacher's notations all over the page, songs I learned when I was 6 years old, that, after 18 years, my fingers still remember. I worked through the Gavotte, Handel's Bourree, Paganini's Witches' Dance (my favourite), Dvorzak's Humoresque, my back-up solo piece for years, all the way through the first three Seitz concertos to the Bach Double, the piece I was working on when I finally put my violin down for good at 15.

I'm not nearly as good as I was at 15, probably not as good as I was at 6. Decades later, I can muddle through, but so much of my skill is gone. It's curious, because at the time, I felt my ability was ordinary, unexceptional and my skills at best mediocre. I lived in the arts community, a place where prodigious talent was expected of everyone, and really good meant why bother? Now, playing through these pieces, I think really good actually means that I was really good, really young, playing challenging music really well, and all the while thinking Seitz didn't count, was too easy, another 'why bother?'

I wasn't amazing; I wasn't anywhere near the best, and I certainly never will be now, but now I take it out every day anyway, rosin the bow, tune the strings work through some etudes, practice my shifting, my tonalization, strengthen my fingers. I've cut the nails on my left hand down to nubbins. My pinkies are bruised and I'm working up a nice callous on the left hand pads. I'm having fun, experimenting, playing things I want to play. I don't expect I'll ever manage to get back to really good, but I'd like to work on it nonetheless.

I'd like to work on a lot of things. I am working.

2009-07-08T23:17:00.000-06:00

Today:

Hijabman talked to me! *giggles like a schoolgirl* Do you think it’s too early to propose marriage?

I was amazed by the number of people able to ride bicycles while holding their umbrellas. What a formidable skill!

I trimmed my own bangs. I think I did pretty well. Potential plan B, should library sciences fall through: hairdresser. How much fun would that be!? ← not being facetious (for once).

Tyson wore Prada pants! They were soft and white and I think they might possess magical powers. Less of a good look on me, I think, but holy guacamole did that tiny gay boy’s butt look good.

During a particularly lively round of the sarcastic banter version of chicken, I committed myself to producing a guinea pig with a beehive by dinnertime tomorrow night. I’m pretty sure he’s going to find a rat with a mullet and I will not be defeated! Damn you David!

Listen to: Magnetic Fields, St. Vincent, The Junior Boys, Slow Club, the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs

2009-07-03T09:33:00.002-06:00

So the plan in May was to be very, very quiet. I was hoping to tiptoe through the summer and even the fall without anyone noticing I was there. I needed to retreat, lick wounds and protect myself.

I'm kinda over that now. I'm happy for the first time in years. I feel really, really happy and it's not because of any particular thing, it's just there. Happy is good. Everyone: put on some weight, stop communicating with your "it's complicated", talk to your family more, accept help, redecorate, and smile! Good things will come to you. Scholarships and new friends and charming men and awesome new music and family reconciliations and maybe even an iPhone (gasp! I caved! I'm now proud to say my phone, Wilhelmena, tells me when to pray. There's an app for that!)

I'm reading a lot more poetry. Working my way through all the volumes of Atwood and dabbling in others. So. Poetry that has meant things, and made me smile:

After all you are quite
ordinary: 2 arms 2 legs
a head, a reasonable
body, toes & fingers, a few
eccentricities, a few honesties
but not too many, too many
postponements & regrets but

you'll adjust to it, meeting
deadlines and other
people, pretending to love
the wrong woman some of the
time, listening to your brain
shrink, your diaries
expanding as you grow older,

growing older, of course you'll
die but not yet, you'll outlive
even my distortions of you

and there isn't anything
I want to do about the fact
that you are unhappy & sick

you aren't sick & unhappy
only alive & stuck with it.

letting go. relief.

and...

Is / Not

i
Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry
the slick filing of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your surprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but against you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.

ii

I am not a saint or a cripple,
I am not a wound; now I will see
whether I am a coward

I dispose of my good manners,
you don't have to kiss my wrists.

This is a journey, not a war,
there is no outcome,
I renounce predictions

and aspirins, I resign the future
as I would resign an expired passport:
picture and signature are gone
along with holidays and safe returns.

We're stuck here
on this side of the border
in this country of thumbed streets and stale buildings

where there is nothing spectacular
to see and the weather is ordinary

where love occurs in its pure form only
on the cheaper of the souvenirs

where we must walk slowly,
where we may not get anywhere

or anything, where we keep going,
fighting our ways, our way
not out but through.

I love my parents. I love my Father desperately. I think I always knew this, but now it's clear and almost cutting. It's incommunicable, especially to him so it aches in my chest.

I'm going back to school in September!!!! I'm so excited that it's sometimes awkward and people give me strange looks. My mom says they're just jealous.

I'm feeling fairly confident that I won't die alone with 43 cats who will eat most of me before anyone notices the smell. It turns out I'm kind of a catch. I'm pretty funny, I'm smart, I'm starting to think I'm kind of attractive too, even at my goal weight. Men seem to find me purdy and want to date me. It's fun! I feel like I've discovered a new superpower.

It's summer and I get to wear cute skirts, and twirl and enjoy the sunshine and the walks and the greenery.

Also, I have a freaking awesome view from up here. If you live east of the university, especially anywhere along whyte ave, I can probably see you from my window. Creepy....

Life is good. I'm hoping it stays that way.

oh... and look up Royal Wood and Blitzen Trapper and Grizzly Bear and Lily Frost. They're great.

The Hospital at Night

2009-05-16T13:00:00.007-06:00

5th Floor transfer collage in total and my favourites:

Many a fake flower in the hospital. But 4th floor atrium = real flowers.

sort of still here.

stairway to heaven? Nope. 2nd Floor Radiology.

Laura the voyeur.

The road home...

2009-05-15T21:07:00.003-06:00

Season 2 True Blood Premiere: June 14th!!! EEEEEEE!!!!

In case I never posted the intro

The season 2 promo:

eeeeek!!!

2009-05-13T20:34:00.005-06:00

Dark times, these seem to be. I am a hair away from packing my bags and running back to what I know, the comforting ache of being empty. I can hug the concavity, like a touchstone when I just can't anymore, when I'm sure I'm utterly forgettable and completely worthless, and I can know that I'm still strong enough.

One meal at a time these days, then to my room, fixing my eyes on Sarah and I at 17, a printout sketch photo from Chucky Cheese, a best friend I most certainly don't deserve, but by some great mercy have managed to hang onto for this long. And my little sister in her grade 9 grad dress, so beautiful and so much older than she should have to be at 17, her voice on the phone, sobbing, "You're Laura fucking Winton. Who wouldn't love you? You're fucking amazing and fuck anyone who made you feel any less than that and stop fucking around and go be fucking amazing!" She swears like a sailor and I love her and love her and love her. And Lizzie who brought me her art projects for the year, who always smiles, always loves me no matter how many times I disappoint her, no matter how used to being disappointed she's become by 14. I can sink away and disappear. But them.

So one meal at a time. I can cry all I want and I can be as depressed as I need and I can hurt and hurt and hurt but goddamit one meal at a time.

Afternoons are for walking, looking, maybe hoping to find something worth it. On Monday I found clouds

A sunny spot by rail tracks to lie in the sun and listen to Jeff Foucault and cry discretely behind sunglasses.

Today I found birds flying so high they were barely specks. And trees against a veiled sun. And grass against my cheek.

And now I'm done for the day, wishing they distributed tranquilizers immediately following the final bites of snack.

There was a gypsy selling papers
she sounded like a morning bird
calling soft and sad and quiet
one part grief and one part love.

2009-05-11T11:44:00.002-06:00

After much discussion, bonding, deep spiritual intercourse, my pig converted. A hijabi pig! Yay! I will hear no discriminatory comments from the peanut gallery. Shalina, Aminah and Shahida are all thrilled. Alhamdullilah.

2009-05-09T15:22:00.002-06:00

Recent life news: On Tuesday I was abducted by a barrage of nurses and their ring-leader, a floppy hair, nutjob whose many years working with crazy skinny women has rubbed off more than a little on his own psyche. I suppose it was a while coming, but I didn't really believe it would happen. I know what set it off this time - that at least is clear - but never have I been set off quite like this. I'm not sure if I'm more ashamed of my actions or the catalyst, but regardless, I find myself in familiar surroundings, a hospital bed, wearing a bright orange band warning everyone I am not to be trusted, confined to the ward.

In good news, I was freed from my IV pole yesterday afternoon and I was given a single room, in which I sit and try to read with little success due to oh so much medication. Four times a day I’m watched as I eat a controlled number of calories, after which I go back to my room and stare at the picture on the wall at the foot of the bed that appears to have been placed there to make the room seem cheery and homey. This strikes me as hilarious.

I’m told two to four weeks, but the thing that gets me is that I honestly don’t care. I’d like to leave so I can stop with the eating, but other than that I just don’t care. I can’t currently think of anything more appealing to do with my days than lie in this bed and stare at this picture and breath through the hours. I’m not sure how to wake myself up. I don’t really want anything, so why move?

They say motivation is the thing, so I go to groups and I make collages of what my life would look like without the eating disorder, whatever the hell that means. The eating disorder isn't making me sad. Indirectly, sure, but it's not the primary problem in the oh so messy picture of my world. God I wish it were.

My little sister bought me a stuffed pig. I'm amazed by the power of fluffy animal to comfort me, regardless of age. I'm holding tight to a fluffy pink pig and it's keeping me going, coming with me everywhere, smiling up at me.
My window sits two floors above a graveled platform, below that two more stories to another similar platform and then a mere 1.5 stories to the ground level and freedom. I'm not sure that I even want out or what I would do, but it would so be exciting. I could smash the window with the chair and make my great escape. I'd certainly make a name for myself. My pig could accompany me on my adventure. I feel he would be a willing, grateful accomplice. I imagine that, as the teddies are all lined up, waiting to be placed in the appropriate boxes for the appropriate destinations, those left in the hospital gift shop boxes are met with looks of pity from their compatriots. Off to sit with the dying, to be slobbered with germs, vomited on etc. Yep; the pig wants out too.

And I said 'hello'
can you help me?
do you know?
What I'm doing?
Can you tell me where I'm bound?
Stars all have names and the angels have the same
But I'm lost and I so wanna be found.

2009-04-28T03:47:00.002-06:00

oh right... in case anyone hasn't seen this...

"you make me touch your hands for stupid reasons!!!"

men are pigs.

2009-04-28T03:01:00.002-06:00

I’ve not been sleeping much. It’s one of those times, and though I spent the first few weeks frantic and overly concerned by my potential inability to function on 4-5 hours/night, I quickly remembered that, when I have to, I just do and that’s not great, but it’s alright. Since this recollection, I have stopped resisting and started enjoying evenings lying awake. Sometimes I read, but more often over the past few weeks, I put on awesome guitar music and stare at the ceiling, or adjust until I find the one location on my bed where, if I lay completely flat, the parking lot disappears and I see nothing but night sky out the window.

Unfortunately, these times also bring an itchy trigger finger when it comes to those terribly seductive “buy” buttons all over itunes, chapters.com, zappos, ebay etc. Also, I learned yesterday that I am likewise not to be trusted in flea markets and a few days before that, that Gravity Pope must be avoided. I have spent a lot of money, which I’m justifying by way of all the overtime I recently worked plus the large GST rebate cheque I will soon be receiving, but really? Really? I need all that money. I need to pay for grad school and my ever-rising rent. I do not need new sneakers, new bras, an NES, SNES, all three original marios, super Mario and yoshi’s island, Persepolis, more of Bergen and Atwood and Peters Case and Mulvey, Kris Delmhorst, and Jeff F. I was fortunate enough to find the entire Alison Krauss discography in torrent form, but it’s taking for freaking ever to download. Also, got the newest Sean Hayes free of charge, but it’s little comfort given the number of times I have hit that damned “purchase” button on itunes over recent months. I’m simultaneously pleased and annoyed that many of my favourite artists are massively unpopular. I like the secret-ish-ness and the sense that I belong to a quirky, esoteric, indy crowd, but, as previously mentioned, I’m very poor and cannot afford to fiscally support these folks.

So: moral: poor, relatively overlooked, struggling artists of the world! Please rise above circumstance and give me free copies of your music to improve my nights of insomnia. Thank you.

and tonight…

.... searching youtube... rearranging search terms... closing and trying again in the vain hope the system will remember that it does in fact have the thing I want hidden away in its archives... giving up...

… I am further disappointed to discover that none of the songs I wanted to post have copies on youtube. Dammit. Okay. Well...

Imagine that the below is actually “I’m Alright” or “Sunrise in the Rearview” from Jeff, “Words too Small to Say” From Peter Mulvey and “Time” with Sean Hayes. In actuality they are “One for Sorrow”, and “The Trouble with Poets” cause they're also both awesome, especially the trouble with poets, but also the only ones I could find. And… uh… an interview with some guy named Sean Hayes who isn’t a singer at all, but apparently won some emmys and was interviewed on the Megan Mullally Show (since when does she have a show, and good God why?).

I tried people. I tried.

From 'I'm Alright'
There are stars in the daylight
But no one can ever tell
You can only see them
From the bottom of a well
And I have been down to the bottom
I appreciate the view
But I am on my way up
And I am coming to tell you
I'm alright

I freakin hate it when Sylvia Plath waxes metaphorical on my clumsiness.

worst interview ever. please don't actually watch it. I'm not sure why I've posted it. Because something Sean Hayes-related, however loose the association, felt necessary.

2009-04-16T21:44:00.001-06:00

2009-04-07T00:20:00.002-06:00

AHHHHH!!! Sarah found a copy online! Sarah is my hero of the week.

2009-04-04T10:31:00.004-06:00

I found I was standing before acres of ploughed earth. There was a fence keeping me from stepping into the field, with two lines of barbed wire, and I could see how this fence and the cluster of three of four trees above me were the only things breaking the wind for miles. All along the fence, especially along the lower line of wire, all sorts of rubbish had caught and tangled. It was like the debris you get on a sea-shore: the wind must have carried some of it for miles and miles before finally coming up against these trees and these two lines of wire. Up in the branches of the trees, too, I could see, flapping about, torn plastic sheeting and bits of old carrier bags. That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imaging just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I'd lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood was washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that - I didn't let it - and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

Ishiguro, Never Let me Go

Lots of things to quote over the last week, but this one left me sobbing. My chest is heavy and I'm trapped in this emotion now, desperately needing to shake it. Sometimes reading hurts.

At the Passport Office

2009-04-01T22:54:00.000-06:00

A little boy in a puffy red coat is playing in front of me. He has three plastic dinosaurs, all very tiny, and he’s playing ferociously, still in the stage of childhood wherein he can choose to completely forget where he is, whether he is alone or surrounded, and live in his own world. With dinosaurs. He would stand out no matter what, but what I notice is how much he looks like a slightly bigger boy I know, or more appropriately, am vaguely acquainted with. The bigger boy’s name is Muntaka, and I’m pretty sure that if you shrunk him down to 3 feet, shaved the goatee, raised his voice an octave and asked him to twirl around making “vvvrrshmoosh” noises with three plastic dinosaurs, these two could be twins. I don’t know Muntaka well, but, from what I do know, I’m pretty sure that, if placed in a passport office line with three dinosaur toys, today, yesterday, 15 years ago, Muntaka would do exactly this. I hope I’m right. My image of him makes me smile.

2009-03-18T13:14:00.004-06:00

I have this dream all the time! It's pretty much exactly that. Creepily exact, in fact.

The Link! The Link! this week is both late and boring. Boring is the wrong word; it's awesome, but I think I used to have it as a permanent link and I'm pretty sure most people who read this blog will have already seen it. But, for those who have not, enjoy! It's great.

I blame the lateness of The Link! The Link! on the second stomach flu of the year. That's right folks. Again. Sick again.

But even before the flu hit, last week was strange. Good strange, but still very, very strange. Regardless of outcomes, the pieces have shifted and I know they can't shift back now. Things are very, very different and people mean different things and my thoughts are elsewhere and the rhythm of life is altered. It's all really good change; I feel a bit like I've stepped out from under a dark cloud, or out of a freaky alternate reality where I'd been trapped, but it's still a big change and those who know me will know that I don't deal well with change, even if the change is really, really good change, and so I'm very anxious and generally disoriented and not sure what to think of most anything. But: this is the life, or so I hear. Things change, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, and we keep up as best we can.

I chatted with a friend yesterday who was sorta fundamental in the alternate reality/cloud time and for the first time in over two years, I didn't feel heavy interacting with him. I don't expect this will be a permanent change as of yet, but yesterday was the first light, happy, easy, unweighted conversation I've had with him in a long time. It felt like we were old war buddies or something. We got through it and now, on the other side, we can look back and proudly say we're both still standing. Go us! It was happy-making. So was the long walk with the new boy last night that came complete with a 5 cent candy stop, and was followed by dinner curled on the couch with Little Miss Sunshine and snuggling. And tonight is a pierogi extravaganza. That's as complicated and dramatic as life should be: pierogies and maybe a movie. I'm loving it.

The new boy is a Christian boy, which I am thankful for simply because, if he were not, he would not have been able to tell me all about the existence of this. Bible Quizzing! It's a whole new level of nerd! There are videos on uTube that you should definitely go check out. He made it all the way to the nationals one year, too. I'm not seeing just any bible quizzer! Hell no! I think the best part of the story was that, apparently, quizzers was teeming with illicit sexual interaction, including his first make out, behind a bible quiz venue. To paraphrase Jon: what the hell do you expect getting a bunch of horny, inexperienced, massively naive, and sexually clueless, ill-informed teens together?

"What are you doin on Saturday night?"
"I'm hitting the Our Lady of Sorrows Presbyterian quizzers competition. You?"
"I heard the chicks at Redemption Baptist are hotter."
"Dude. Good call."

2009-03-09T13:18:00.003-06:00

The Link! The Link! Has been updated. Old The Links! The Links! Will remain for one week further I've decided... either that or I will create an old link section to compile the hilarity. I'm on the fence... thoughts?

Other news... things are changing really quickly all of a sudden and I'm not quite keeping up. I go to Palm Springs in three weeks and with any luck Sarah will be there with me. Sarah: call me, dammit, so I can book this flight woman!

Noor is a beautiful, wonderful person, who gave me the most incredible hug today. If we hadn't been in public, I think I would have held her and cried, possibly for hours and I have a feeling she would have let me do just that.

I have a date tonight with a guy I really like. It feels muddled and confused. Like having a pleasant picnic in the woods, but with one foot still caught in a bear trap. That was a terrible metaphor. Sorry. I'm sleepy.

2009-03-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

I’m walking to get my tea, before I plunge into chest rounds. I’ve just sent a difficult email and my chest is tight and the reality of yesterday has been completely replaced by confusion and a new layer of hurt. Standing by the glass elevators is a woman in a heavy green winter coat. She is bracing herself against the brick edging of the artificial garden in front of her, designed specifically to temper moments like this. Flowers! Look how cheerful this place is! She is staring at the artificial dirt and crying. Her friend is in a brown coat, standing close, one hand on her back, saying nothing. As I pass I hear her say “I can’t…” and trail off.

The hospital is an odd place to spend your days, especially as an administrator. As a doctor it maybe makes more sense. But as an administrator, your work environment is also a building in which people are, as you send that fax, type that memo, organize that lecture, dying, being told they’re dying, on the verge of dying. And some of them are being saved, sure, but that doesn’t make it any less weird. I do banal administrative labour in a place where life and death gets decided. It’s weird.

What this means is that it is not at all infrequent to be on my way to drop off forms, deliver paperwork, grab a snack, and pass someone crying. I don’t know why specifically, but I know that the chances are good that they have either just been told they are going to die, they have just been told their child is going to die, they just found out their child did die, their parents aren’t going to make it, their best friend just got told 3 months.

So as I walked by this crying woman, I knew I should be thinking how lucky I am, how silly and inconsequential my own problems are, but what I was really thinking was how wonderfully simple that could be. You are going to die. You have three months. There’s no negotiating. You don’t get a choice. It is and it will be and you have three months to live it out.

I’d get on a plane to Ireland tomorrow, see Greece, figure out who of the people in my life would be there at the end, and dispense with everyone else. I’d be really honest. There just wouldn’t be any time for the gray areas anymore. In or out. Here or not. Caution to the wind.

…I think. But I don’t know that I’m dying in three months.

2009-03-02T14:29:00.004-07:00

As you can see, I streamlined the link section. Sadly, my list of friends with blogs recently went from 3 to 2. Don't worry though; no one died. This was more of a junior high "So now I'm not even your cyber-friend anymore? Well fine then! You're not my cyber-friend anymore either! HA! *sticks out tongue*"

Sigh. I promise I didn't instigate it, though I did stick out my tongue, which I suppose automatically disqualifies me from any claim to the mature high-ground. But he started it!!! ...and, of course, I say that with all respect and maturity... um... *cough*

To compensate, I've added "The Link! The Link!" which will be updated weekly with a new hilarious thing I found and think everyone should see.

This week is courtesy of Doug. Enjoy :)

2009-03-02T11:52:00.001-07:00

It had been 20 minutes since she started scraping dirt out from underneath her nails. It started with the dirt and then nail biting, followed by tearing at cuticles. Her right thumb was mangled and rough and blood was pooling at the right corner of her middle finger on her right hand. Squeeze from the bottom, watch the red bubble rise, wait for tension to break, suck back the mess and start over. Repeat until there is nothing left to squeeze. That should take at least 15 minutes more.

Mangling fingers and the resulting mess are truly a blessing, she thought. She held an overwhelming appreciation for such a simple joy and often wished others might appreciate it with her. Her attempts to articulate the beauty of the activity always failed, but she continued to advocate its calming effects in the hopes that one day someone would, at last, respond to her finger-mangling non-sequitur with a gaze of recognition and she would finally leave lonely behind.

She was generally and constantly terrified by her perceived overwhelming isolation and the massive expanses between people. She had friends, boyfriends, dates, acquaintances, but the broad similarities, circumstances or aligning worldviews that brought her to these people seemed to lack intimacy. Perhaps they both enjoyed the works of Atwood, had an appreciation for the poetry of Frost, never missed an episode of Flight of the Conchords, refused to work outside the non-profit sector, or dreamed of traveling to Greece. So what? That must describe any number of people. But how many people find eating their own fingers until they bleed calming? That would be touching. That would be intimate.

Sometimes she daydreamed about creating her own dating site, based entirely on specific but banal idiosyncrasies. How much happier might people be if they were matched with the only other person in the world who shared their love of surgically dissecting wooden pencils, eating giant bowls of cheerios one O at a time, encasing their entire body in saran wrap when cleaning, or placing their feet in buckets of playdoh and mashing it between their toes while watching TV. What would that world look like? What would that love feel like?

Like touching, she thought. Finally touching.

A single drop of blood fell from her finger, leaving a solitary crimson spot on the fax cover sheet in front of her.

2009-03-01T23:04:00.002-07:00

Today I learned that it is absolutely impossible to eat more than 7 premium plus crackers in one minute. Seven is the world record. After four tries, I managed 6. It’s really hard.

In other news, I wish people weren’t such goddamned, bloody, incredible, fucking, clichéd disappoints. And that’s all I have to say about that.

"It’s about surrendering your ego,” he said, sounding as though he must be gritting his teeth behind the hood. “The first time, after forty-five minutes, I was in another world. It was like onion skins were being peeled off my psyche.”

- The Other Side of Desire, Daniel Bergner. A masochist describes his experience with bondage and electric shock.

“Like onion skins were being peeled off my psyche.”

I’m transfixed. “Like onion skins were being peeled off my psyche.” The first time I read that section, that phrasing left me breathless. I still don’t know what to make of it. I think of cutting. I don’t think of sex. But I suppose the point would be that the two are not so very distinct, that the threshold between pleasure and pain isn’t really a threshold at all, but that the two necessarily overlap and implicate one another.

I hear that phrase and I think of clarity. It’s a process of uncomplicating, paring away layers of confusion and self, to find some distant calm. It seems counterintuitive. Both sex and torture, extreme pleasure and extreme pain, put bodies in states of chaos. During orgasm, muscles contract uncontrollably, pupils dilate, heart races. It’s a moment of abandon, not clarity. No? Or maybe there is clarity in the abandon.

Pain makes more sense. Cutting is wonderful for the sharpening of focus it brings. There is sensation and the red welling up and then calm. Onion skins peeling away.

...perversion, in one current psychiatric conception, is characterized by "relationships in which relatedness disappears.”

What is relatedness? Related to another person? Can we relate to objects? What about masturbation? Can sexual experience why physically alone be counted as lacking in relatedness? I sympathize with the impulse to define perversion like this – as a sexual experience without external connection, without mutuality – but that can’t make sense. It’s all arbitrary, a realm of argumentation that lacks any proofs, maybe a matter of faith, and ultimately unjustifiable.

I recently read a very different sort of article on desire, written by an Islamic scholar. The first quote reminds me of that article. That article is one of the layers of onion skin. It spoke of tempering desire, everything in moderation, we don’t mind sex, we just like it to take place by way of this correct order. It strikes me as nonsensical. Certainly it is possible not to act on desires, and to live by rules, but in my own experience and in reading experiences, hearing from others, the notion of attempting to overlay sexuality and desire with a tidy rubric based on the rule of temperance is laughable. It’s absurd. It’s arrogant and dishonest.

I’m not advocating complete abandon. I don’t think it would be possible even if it were “allowed” normatively speaking. I think every individual has to determine independently how to be sexual, how their desires will translate into action, and why. I think it’s an enormous moral obligation that no one should be allowed to escape by simply pointing to a rule. To suggest it can be narrowed to a universal and ultimate “good sensuality” is, to my mind, wrong, misguided and kind of funny.

But what do I know? Wait til I manage to stuff 8 crackers down in 1 minute. Then I’ll have some real authority.

2009-02-24T15:14:00.002-07:00

If I am lost for a day try to find me...

I need the sun to come out. I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to be doing and everything is in place and I'm on track and there are exciting things coming and life should be good, but the sun didn't come out. I made hard decisions that took courage and self-respect, but the sun isn't out. I'm a big girl, capable and functional and strong, doing good things, living independently and responsibly. But the sun won't come out.

So today I feel very tiny. I want my Mom. I miss my friend.

The pages keep turning
I'll mark off each day with a cross
and I'll laugh about all that we've lost.

2009-02-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

I moved offices about a month ago. The new office is great. It’s enormous and I share it with two radiologists who are never there, so I have a giant office with a massive window all to myself. This frees me up to listen to music all day, since there is no one to disturb but myself. Sadly, I am disturbed easily, and I find it difficult to work with music in the background. I’m getting better, and after some practice, I’m able to listen to mellow music, quietly while I work and not be distracted by lyrics or the potential for impromptu mid-day dance breaks. This, however, limits the number of artists to whom I can listen. For the past three weeks I’ve been stuck on Iron & Wine, whom I always liked, but I now really appreciate.

So I don’t usually/ever have music on in the background because of the aforementioned difficulty splitting my attention. If I listen to music, I’m listening to music, concentrating on music and usually singing along. What I’ve learned over the past few weeks with Iron & Wine is that I can learn music really well while being completely unaware that it’s happening. I know all the lyrics to all their songs now, but didn’t realize this until, while singing to myself on thursday night on my way home, I got lost in the middle of “Naked As We Came.” Then I realized that, though I knew the lyrics, I hadn’t really paid any attention. I knew the lyrics, and simultaneously couldn’t tell you what any of the songs had to say.

So I went home and looked up all the lyrics to all the songs and I sang them off the screen in front of me and I fell in love with them all over again.

I didn’t know I could relate to music like that. It’s particularly weird for me, because I sing almost constantly, even in public. I’ve mastered the art of humming under my breath, just quietly enough that others can’t hear me. At home I sing much louder and have to remind myself when people are coming over so I can return to the under-my-breath humming when they are expected. I was unaware that I did this at all until, a few years ago, Joe asked me what song I was singing, and I said I didn’t know what song he was talking about, and he said ‘the song you’ve been singing for the past few days,’ and I said ‘I haven’t been singing,’ and he said, ‘you sing all the time, but I don’t recognize the latest song, what is it?’ and I was unable to tell him because I had no idea. Since then, I’m more aware of my singing, in that I know I’m doing it most of the time, or if I’m not aware at the moment that I’m actually singing, I am generally aware that I sing all the time, whether or not it’s conscious. But I didn’t realize I could do it like this, with lyrics, knowing the lyrics, while being unaware of the lyrics. This is newly weird.

I’m not sure what to think of it. I don’t think I like this. It seems absent-minded in a less-good way. It seems to demonstrate a lack of appreciation that simply singing without knowing I’m singing doesn’t. Knowing verses and not knowing them is different than singing without knowing I’m singing. It feels careless and rude and entitled and (to invoke Heidegger only because the inside joke has so ingrained the term in my lexicon that I can’t think of a better way to describe this sense), like I’m dwelling very badly, or maybe not dwelling at all (God forbid!)

Also interesting: on friday, when I knew the lyrics, I kept getting caught by the songs. On more than one occasion, I stopped work altogether to sit at my desk, singing along, and most of them made me cry. I’m not sad. It's been a surprisingly good few weeks despite situations that would normally dictate sad. But I cried anyway, lots and lots, about the songs themselves and then about things I didn’t realize I was sad about.

It then occurred to me that it's been a while since I've had a good cry. I usually cry every couple weeks, a really good, intense, sobbing cry, whether I'm sad or not. Every now and again I just need a good cry. Why I haven't cried recently, I'm not sure, but I haven't, and, on friday, I wasn't in the mood to draw from my own life for sob-fest material, so I stopped at the movie studio on my way home and picked up Legends of the Falls. If you ever need to cry, rent this movie. Now that I've seen it and know what's going to happen, I pretty much cry from start to finish. It's magic. Julia Ormand + Brad Pitt + Anthony Hopkins + the other two brothers, and I'm an instant mess. Everyone should go see this movie, just for the experience.

Also, so you can appreciate too, my current Iron & Wine favourites /with/ lyrics so you won't make the same mistake I did:

love is a dress that you made
long to hide your knees.
love to say this to your face
'I'll love you only'
for you days and excitement
what will you keep for to wear?
someday drawing you different
may I be weaved in your hair?

love and some verses you hear
say what you can't say.
love to say this in your ear
'I'll love you that way'
from your changing contentments
what will you choose for to share?
someday drawing you different
may I be weaved in your hair?

There is light in my lady's house
and there's none but some falling rain
this like a spoken word
she is more than her thousand names

no hands are half as gentle or
firm as they'd like to be
thank god you see me the way you do
strange as you are to me

It is good in my lady's house
and the shape that her body makes
love is a fragile word
in the air on the length we lay

no hands are half as gentle or
firm as they'd like to be
thank god you see me the way you do
strange as you are to me.

2009-02-19T14:00:00.005-07:00

My Grandmother died a good while ago. She died terribly, painfully, slowly and with very little dignity. By the time her body finally gave in, he weighed 75 pounds and didn’t know who she or anyone else was. An incredibly quiet, reserved, and conservative woman her whole life, she spent her final days ranting about the explicit sex-acts the doctors wanted to perform with her. She finally passed away two years ago.

I didn’t know her. Not really. I never mourned her death. If I’m honest, I don’t think I really… noticed? I was unaffected.

I didn’t know her and I wasn’t sad at the time, but the further we get from her death and the more she fades, and the less I think about her, and the less everyone else thinks about her and the great likelihood that she will be completely forgotten, makes me very sad now.

So I didn’t know her, and I’m not really sure why this, but here are the things I knew about her:

Her father was a farmer. She had five sisters and a brother who died when he was a little boy. She was the youngest. She milked the cows and helped with the laundry. She would chuckle when she told us the story of the time she slept in and the cows didn’t get milked and her father found her at noon, still asleep and said “Vinah May, God doesn’t wait for you to get up to start the day and neither do those darned cows!”

She lived the whole of my life, save the last few months, in the tiny house in Sudbury where she raised my father. She married my Papa late, already in her 30s, the best I can figure, because he was the only man left and asking, and therefore her only way out of becoming an old maid. In her last few years she told my mother and I, very matter-of-factly, about the man she was supposed to marry, Tom, who left to fight in the war and never came back to her.

My Papa was, by all accounts, cold, demanding, patriarchal and generally disappointed with her and his life. He died when I was 2 and I don’t remember him. They were poor, so she worked two secretarial jobs, coming home between the two to cook him supper, which was expected on the table promptly at 5, after which he headed off to his shriner’s meeting or, alternatively, the pub, and she headed back to work. She had three children, the last two only because she wanted a girl whom she would name Cheryl Anne. Cheryl never arrived, and according to her own recounting, she cried in the delivery room when they told her Uncle Don was a boy.

She loved the colour purple, ate raw onions like they were apples, drank her tea black and in large quantities, had an incredible collection of fashion jewelry and an award-winning rose garden, enjoyed a good game of solitaire, ate toast that was burnt to a crisp, loved the Young and the Restless, and knitted entire wardrobes for each of the grandchildren. The only movie she ever watched was the TV mini-series of The Thorn Birds with Richard Chamberlain. I have a distinct memory of her sitting at our kitchen table in Toronto and saying, sheepishly, re Chamberlain, “I wouldn’t mind his slippers under my bed.” She then went bright red and excused herself. I now own a copy of this mini-series on DVD.

She was bizarrely distant from her children, at least bizarre in comparison to the family in which I was raised. They spoke regularly by telephone, discussing the same subjects each time: the weather, the house, recent church sermons, the neighbours. Dad finished these conversations with a curt “cheers” before hanging up. I never heard either of them say they loved each other. I never heard her say she loved anyone. I don’t think he knew her either. I don’t think she knew him.

As we got older, she got significantly better at hugs. Practice makes perfect I suppose. They seemed like less and less of a shock to her as the years went by and she eventually progressed to the point that one might feel some slight squeezing pressure from her end; at the beginning they consisted mostly of her awkwardly placing her arms, like limp spaghetti, somewhere along our backs. I remember how she felt when I hugged her: all bones and loose skin. I remember thinking how wonderfully compact she was.

We never had a funeral for her. She died in the middle of midterms, so most of the now-grown grandchildren were not at liberty to travel to Ontario. It was put off until the summer, and by then everyone seemed to have forgotten. Her ashes are in an urn at the funeral home, waiting to be placed somewhere more appropriate. I wonder if they ever will be.

She never wanted a funeral. She said she was afraid no one would come and so she would rather avoid the humiliation. I guess she was right.

I didn’t know her, but I remember these things about her. I remember watching Y&R with her in the basement of that tiny house, the only time I was allowed to watch it. I remember her teaching me to knit and calmly taking my snarled projects from me when I got confused, fixing the problem and setting me back on track. I remember the hundreds of tiny trinkets she kept in the basement, little porcelain animals that used to come in boxes of teabags. I loved those animals and she let me play with them to my heart's content. I remember her back porch where we used to play house and I remember her taking me outside to cut fresh roses every morning. I remember her purple living room set. I remember that she always had a box of After Eights on her dining room sideboard. I remember that she moved out of the master bedroom immediately after my Papa died and into the tiny bedroom in the middle of the house. I remember that she loved turtlenecks and always smelled like flowers.

I wish I had known her better. I remember she was very, very lonely.

2009-02-16T17:56:00.003-07:00

Things this week, in no particular order:

1) On Thursday, I made my daily 9:30 trek to the east cafeteria to get my cup of Red Rose tea. By the tea packet dispenser is a small, plastic tub in which people can deposit their tea bag packaging before filling their cup with water. Either tea is very unpopular or that tub is emptied into the larger garbage really regularly because there are rarely more than three paper tea wrappers in there at any given time. On Thursday there were three tea wrappers and one condom wrapper. I don’t laugh out loud often in public spaces, but I did then.
When I got back to my office, curiosity set in… are the kitchen staff having secret sex? If so, why dump the condom in the tea wrapper dispenser and not the larger garbage? Did someone have sex at some previous time, stash the condom wrapper in a pocket and discover it while checking that they had the change for their cup of tea and then figured this was as good a cup as any in which to deposit the wrapper? Maybe someone did it on purpose. Then I thought what fun it would be to remove all the tea packets and stock those dispensers with condoms and but the tea bags in the bathroom condom dispensers! It would be very unkind and would lead to at least a few unwanted pregnancies and possibly a small outbreak of gonorrhea, but it’d be a pretty good practical joke!

2) Here’s a totally weird story that made me laugh lots and lots. I guess it’s sad and not so much funny, but come on! It’s kinda funny too. What a hilarious mix-up.

3) Look kids! Security checkpoints are fun!!

4) For Valentines Day Sarah got me a vampire-themed valentines day t-shirt that reads “I’m a sucker for vampires.” Apparently stitches or Urban Planet or Dynamite or one of those stores has a whole line of Valentine’s Day Vampire t-shirts with such gems as “Runs with Vampires” and “Bite me!”. Apparently there were even his and hers vampire themed love t-shirts. She can fill in the details. We agree it’s hilarious and bizarre.

5) 4D ultrasound is here! Check it out! How weird and cool is that?! The best one I could find is, sadly, a pro-life production, but it’s still super cool!

6) I finished my first sweater. It’s huge and it makes me look like a woolly mammoth, but if I ever go to the arctic, I’m set! Also, I made legwarmers. I’m a knitting superstar. Also, a princess. My mom says so.

7) I’ve watched all the academy awards movies, but I think I did it way too quickly and also while sick and now I can’t remember some of them and others have bled into each other. There’s the one where the variety show host wants to interview the president, but he doesn’t have enough money, so he goes on the game show to win a million dollars using the knowledge he’s accumulated from his hard knocks life in suburbia where his marriage disintegrated after his wife was discovered to be a concentration camp guard who accuses the parish priest of child molestation and then he’s shot just as his campaign for gay rights is gaining momentum… right? Hm.

8) I saw “He’s just not that into you” yesterday. It reminded me how much I liked that book. That’s right. I’m jumping on the self-help, overly simplistic, he’s just not that into you bandwagon openly, publicly. I went home and re-read some of it. It’s great. Laura, in future, remember: He’s just not that into you if he’s not calling you, he’s not dating you, he’s not having sex with you, he’s married (or other insane variation of being unavailable), he doesn’t want to marry you and/or he’s disappeared on you. Remember, Laura. Remember.

I think my favourite moment of the movie was when the wife has the dramatic angry hissy fit and breaks her mirror, then pauses, looks a bit confused and disappointed, leaves the frame and returns a moment later with a broom to clean up the mess. I've done that! "I'm so heartbroken and justifiably outraged I will break my own possessions!!! *SMAAAASH* And now I will huffily clean up my own mess because he neither knows nor cares that I trashed my own apartment on his account!!!!"

9) My boss has signed off on paying to have me do 900 dollars worth of tech training courses over the course of the next few weeks! Flash, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop here I come!

11) Fathima introduced me to www.somecards.com. The cry for help section might be my favourite, but the below, from the flirting section, made me laugh the hardest, I think:

and... The End.

2009-02-09T16:30:00.001-07:00

I was sick again this weekend. I was sick towards the end of January as well. That time was a stomach flu. This one was a nasty cold. As luck would have it, the last sickness struck while I was stationed on the family couch. As a result, I was surrounded by concerned family for the duration, had Dad around to bring me soup, tea, juice, to watch movies with, and to smooth my hair and promise I’d feel better soon between vomiting spells.

This time I got sick in my apartment and spent the duration alone with the cat. It was miserable. I had forgotten how incredibly alone one feels when sick and physically alone. Aside from having to feel crappy and still prepare your own food/tea/etc, find extra blankets, bundle up despite the chills to venture out for cough medicine, etc, etc, one also has to feel absolutely awful, disgusting and in pain and realize that no one is responsible for you. It is no ones job to make you feel better. No one is going to disrupt their routine to bring you warm soup, no one is going to tell you it’ll be okay, no one wants to watch movies with you, and no one wants to hug you despite the fact that you have mucous spewing from your nose and throat, you haven’t showered in two days, and you look disgusting. There are limits. Maybe some people like you at your best, but in the dregs, it’s all you babe. No one likes you that much.

It sounds self-pitying, and I suppose it is a bit, but also it reminded me how great getting sick can be. The actual physical feeling shitty was never fun, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as loved as I have when I’ve been really sick and people have taken care of me. Dad checking on me at 3am, finding me crying on the couch, carrying me upstairs to his bed and sitting with me til I fell asleep. Mom stirring ginger ale for hours to make sure all the bubbles were gone. Joe calling in sick to work so he could stay home in bed with me all day and watch movies, rushing me to the ER in the middle of the night with my kidney infection. Mostly the contact. The complete disregard for ones own health, and the not seeming to notice the various bodily fluids and the general stink… the genuine desire, despite all that, to be close to the person who is sick, to care for that person, and hold that person and do whatever you can to make them feel better. I think I’ve felt the most loved when I’ve been sick.

Next time I will remember this and immediately relocate to Ontario (Mom) or the west end (Dad) prior to becoming sick.

2009-02-05T15:13:00.001-07:00

EEEEE!!! I know it's a long ways off, but I think everyone I know who lives in the city should come:

April 11, 2009: 'Eggs' Marks the Spot
You're never too old — or young — for an Easter Egg Hunt. Candy-lovers of all ages are invited to hunt for tasty Easter eggs on campus — you might even spot a real bunny. A hot chocolate reception will follow.

Saturday, April 11, 2009. FREE!
Easter egg hunt begins at 1:15 p.m. on the main Quad; hot chocolate reception from 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.

2009-02-05T11:16:00.001-07:00

A few things:
1) I got into grad school, officially! It’s weird that next year I will be a “grad student”. It used to seem like such an elite club. They took me though, and it was actually not all that difficult to get in. I know it’s just an application, but, despite knowing that, I figured there might be some more complicated trial in store. Or that I would just be rejected. I’m a bit disappointed, actually. I wanted to have to fight to get in. It feels like not much of an accomplishment now. I think maybe it was never so elite after all.

2) A disturbing story: I ran into an old friend from surgery, the daughter of a urologist who works across from my old office. She was returning from one of her father’s surgery. She got permission to watch in the OR. It’s not something I’ve ever known her to do before, so I asked why she decided to attend. She started seriously discussing her plans to go into medicine, the experience, getting a feel for the operating room, then eventually cracked a smile and admitted that, actually, she was poking around her fathers’ OR slate on Monday and had noticed her old professor was scheduled for a hydrocelectomy, so she made plans to watch. A hydrocelectomy involves removing a fluid sac surrounding the testicles, enlarging the scrotum. The surgeon makes an incision in the scrotum, drains the fluid and removes the sac. It was weird, horrifying and really too bad she didn’t do it sometime over the summer so I could have dropped the anecdote into my thesis, somehow.

3) I am sick again. Whine. This time my upper respiratory tract is afflicted. Sidenote: I can’t say/type/hear “upper respiratory tract” without launching into Adelaide’s Lament in my head (or out loud, if on my own). For those who don’t know it…

Reading from a medical text: “ It says here: The average unmarried female/ basically insecure/ due to some long frustration may react/ with psychosomatic symptoms/ difficult to endure/ affecting the upper respiratory tract.”
*Adelaide pauses, considers what she’s read*
“In other words/ just from waiting around for that plain little band of gold/ a person can develop a cold” … but all in a heavy Boston accent. It’s fun.

4) I’ve settled into my new job and a new routine. Now that the job is less stressful, I’m totally enjoying the no school thing. My evenings are all mine! I’ve taken to inventing projects for myself. The latest is to watch all the academy award nominated films before the Oscars. Best picture and the extras for which actors are nominated. This will definitely not be accomplished by viewing the pirated copies I downloaded, because that would be wrong. I would never, ever do that.

5) I don’t want to jinx it, but I’m really happy lately. I’m excited for September. I’ve rid myself of some bad habits and I’m thinking about things differently, more clearly. I’m less scared and panicked; in fact, I’m generally relaxed. Things have been put into proper perspective and I feel surprisingly able to cope, or that it’s no longer a matter of coping, dealing with the difficult reality and just getting by. The reality doesn’t feel difficult anymore. I feel the way I felt for a month after Joe left two years ago. Light and optimistic and free and excited to be alone, move forward… onward and upward!

2009-01-02T19:31:00.004-07:00

"No. Girls who 'park in cars' are not really popular. Not even with the boys they park with."

Dammit. I've wasted so many evenings parking cars with boys. Why didn't someone tell me parallel parking instruction wasn't the way to a boy's heart sooner?

There's a whole series of them. They're mostly awesome.

Also, I think we should all talk like them.

Say, how would you fancy watching some more videos with me next Saturday? Really? You don't say! You'd love to? Maybe we could make it a double date? I think that would be just swell! Unfortunately you'll have to learn how to park all on your own, because I'm no longer the kind of girl who parks in cars with boys. Let's say 6 o'clock so I have time to do my hair and nails.

2008-12-22T16:22:00.002-07:00

And now for something completely different...

2008-12-22T14:12:00.003-07:00

I realized a few days ago when I went out to dinner with a friend that, in life outside of work, I haven't worn real pants in months. I put on dress pants at 7 every day, work the day, take them off promptly at 4 upon returning home and, from there, dawn an array of worn in sweats. I do everything non-work related in sweats. I hang out with friends, grocery shop, other things shop, go out to dinner. It's getting pathetic. 4pm = real pants, real shirt and bra off, sweat pants, Dad's old t-shirt and either my ripped and stained purple AE hoodie or my giant GAP hoodie on. It started as around the house wear, but now it's just everywhere except work wear. My Dad told me I look like a boy the other day. My younger brother, whom I haven't seen in three months, and whom loves to poke fun at me for everything and anything (nothing is off-limits), arrived home this weekend and, after the third day of me in sweats, said "so you've sort of, uh... given up, hey?"

It's a bit concerning. But not enough to put on real pants. not nearly enough.

I love Christmas. This Christmas is weird, because my parents aren't together and my Dad's a bit of a mess, so I feel we've missed a significant bit of the required hype and enthusiasm. But we made cookies yesterday and the first present appeared under the tree and the Wintons not residing in Edmonton are trickling in. And tonight is shopping with Sarah! I love Christmas shopping lots and lots and lots. Nothing makes me feel warmer or fuzzier than giving awesome presents.

Also, Sarah recently got me watching One Tree Hill. It's the most terrible-awesome show ever to air. Bad dialogue, hilariously complicated interpersonal drama, and teenage angst. High school is complicated man. So many problems. Problems that matter, dammit. And best TV line ever... Hayley: "I thought sex was supposed to be magical!" Well yes, of course. Unicorns appear. Leprechauns dance on the headboard. Centaurs play accompanying lute music. She must be doing it wrong.

And this...

= the best motivational poster ever.

2008-12-19T14:30:00.003-07:00

Overheard in the pediatric radiology waiting area:

Child: Yow tuwn to say somefing, Gamma.
Gamma: Uuuuummm... would you rather eat an alligator or a hamburger?
Child: *giggle* zats siwwy! A awigayda of couwse! *giggle*

Sophisticated culinary tastes.

I'm worried that if I spend much more time in the hospital, I'm going to start applying to med schools. I have a bad habit of picking up other people's passions based largely on our proximity. If the person next to me is really enthusiastic about law, I will likely be seriously considering a career as an attorney by the end of our conversation.

But radiology /is/ really cool. A few days ago I watched a barium enema study in fluoro and on tuesday I got a tour of the PET scanning area and watched a MUGA scan. It's all pretty nifty. Also, the reporting rooms remind me of the bridge on star trek voyager. My office, unfortunately, is significantly less cool.

My parents both seem to understand this job as primarily the avenue by which I will find and wed a brilliant and handsome budding radiologist. Their intentions are good, mostly, but they appear to have hung some serious hope on this. They're all but convinced I will soon be swept off my feet by Mr. Radiology, thus ending all past, present and potential future romantic woes. It's mostly cute with a dash of annoying. And I /will/ admit to having a fairly serious crush on one of the PGY2s.

For my part, it has been... different to be in a new group of people, with new priorities, new interests, new schedules, new paces. It's good, I think. There's enough distance from previous ways of living to think myself really differently. Change is good for shifting perspectives, escaping stagnant self-understandings, or just letting them expire.

And Christmas in 6 days!

2008-12-08T16:56:00.002-07:00

Charlie bit me!

This made me laugh way too hard for way too long.

Yesterday was Christmas decorating day at the Winton house. As a result, our family room now looks like Christmas vomited all over it. It's verging on tastelessly festive. I love it!

Also, my sisters and I pulled out our ancient VHS player, as we do every Christmas season, to watch our VHS recording of all the awesome Christmas specials. It's mostly all about the Rankin/Bass shows... Santa Claus is Coming to Town is our favourite, but you can't miss out on Rudolph, Frosty or Jack Frost either.

When I informed a friend of the afternoon's activities, the friend informed me he had never heard of the Rankin/Bass movies. I was, naturally, horrified. In case others are in the same unfortunate circumstance, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, below:

2008-11-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I held a snake named George. and I don't mean that as a dirty euphimism, but literally. Sarah's roommate, Tyrell, has a pet snake named George. I've seen George before, but never when Tyrell was around, so I've never had the opportunity to ask to hold her. But yesterday I did and then I got to spend about ten minutes with a snake wrapped around my neck. It was awesome. Snakes are such sleek, graceful creatures. Also, I now have a bunch of fun facts... mostly about snake sex, which was, naturally, the first thing I asked about. females have a hole toward the base of the tail through which they excrete waste and have sex. but, but, but, best fact of all: male snakes have two penises! two! like a back-up system! also, when flacid, they're innies. snakes are so cool. and also, I scored myself an invite to the monthly feeding. It was a good night.

Also, speaking of penises, I don't know if I ever posted this, so if I didn't... behold the world's most phallic building.

2008-11-09T15:06:00.002-07:00

I suppose I should be happy to be misread
better be that than some of the other things I have become

Today I ran out of aspartame infused calorie-free beverages, necessitating an emergency trip to Mac's. Cam was working. Cam is my favourite Mac's employee. The other regulars are all older men, all business, with no interest in pleasantries despite my best efforts. Cam took a while to crack, but after a few weeks of unrequited friendly small talk at the cash register I got him chatting about the weather, and slowly we moved toward matters of more import. Interestingly, Cam thinks I'm married to an engineer named Ethan and I have a daughter named Anne. There's a story behind this:

When a similar situation struck a few weeks ago (an urgent need for diet pop), I similarly headed to Mac's and met Cam at the counter. We'd been doing the weather small talk for a few weeks at that point and apparently on that day Cam decided it was time to move the relationship to the next level. Some background: Inside the front flap of my wallet I have always carried pictures of my siblings. I used to have an uptodate picture of each of them along with one of their newborn pictures. Not sure why I did that; maybe I was tracking how far they'd come? At any rate Elizabeth's baby picture has worked its way to the top of the pile and is currently displayed for various cash register workers to see. On that Saturday a few weeks ago, Cam saw and said "Is she yours?"

I should have corrected him and launched into an explanation, but instead, without really thinking, I said "Yep. That's my baby." I'm not sure why I said it. I'm going to say a third was a purely reflexive response, a third was boredom and the final third was me sorta wanting to try it on, see how it fit. So I invented a baby named Anne, born in August and a husband named Ethan, in his final year of an engineering degree.

When I got home and told Sarah of my adventure into sort-of-motherhood, she suggested this might be a sign of unsound mental health. I'm pretty sure it isn't. It wasn't lying so much as it was make-believe. When I was younger, my mom would take us to this restaurant in our neighbourhood in Toronto where you placed your order at the counter, left your name, and they called you up when your food was ready. My mom and I would leave a different name every time and we'd get to try on Jessica or Sandra or Madeline or Abbie. It was one of my favourite things to do. This seemed only a slightly more developed version of the same thing. Same name, different life.

Last summer I spent a lot of time thinking about how little I make-believe anymore, and how exhaustively rooted in reality I sometimes feel. Who wants to be themselves all the time? I don't want to be myself most of the time let alone all the time, and, as a result, it has been fun to have a fantasy life to ponder when I'm tired of my own reality.

And besides, Cam started it.

Today though, it was kind of sad. Today I really, really wished I was going home to a husband and baby... or to something other than a cat. Something that would notice my absence for reasons with a bit more emotional depth, beyond a desire for food. Sarah and I watched an episode of Without a Trace on TV a few weeks ago in which a woman was missing nearly a full week before anyone noticed. Both of us noted that, if we were to go missing, the only people who would reliably notice our absence would be our bosses and each other. Rarely do we go a full day without contact, but we both agreed that, while each of us would be worried, neither of us would be likely to contact the police until two days of absence had elapsed. Similarly, we agreed that, after the second day of not showing up for work, our bosses would probably get in touch with our emergency contacts, informing our parents, who would then, finding us to be in fact missing, report to the police. Either way, it's likely that two days would go by before any reports would be filed, and given that most missing persons who are not found in the first 48 hours are never found (a fact I assume to be true based purely on the existence of the TV show entitled The First 48), we concluded that we're both pretty screwed if we're ever abducted.

So, yeah. Though I suppose the baby wouldn't really increase my chances, a husband/significant other would be nice if only to ensure a better shot at rescue post-abduction.

2008-11-05T20:54:00.003-07:00

Did you ever have one of those days where you feel like a tired old whore whose uterus is about to fall out?

Yes.

But then I bought Californication as a birthday present to myself and Hank knew exactly how I felt. Everyone should rent/purchase/pirate this show.

2008-11-02T19:12:00.003-07:00

Halloween is great for a few reasons. Though I never dawn a costume myself, it's pretty awesome that one day a year it's entirely acceptable for grown men and women to show up to work dressed as devils, witches and mummies. My favourite Halloween moment this year: walking along the second floor poetry walk at the hospital I pass a mother with her maybe 2 year old daughter who is dressed in a fuzzy bumblebee costume and repeating "buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..." over and over and over...

Another wonderful part of Halloween: the terrible movies broadcast on television. Sarah, Lizzie and I enjoyed From Dusk Till Dawn and snippets of Ghostbusters II. From Dusk Till Dawn we decided to watch because of the George Clooney factor. What he was doing in this movie, we can't quite figure out, but anything with George is worth sitting through, and thank goodness we persevered; had we not, we would have missed the moving yet suspense-filled tale of bank robbers, a lapsed preacher and his children who end up at a strip club in the middle of the desert that turns out to be run by vampires who then eat almost everyone. Memorable quotes:

Clooney to the preacher: And if there is a hell, and those sons of bitches are from it, then there has got to be a heaven... Jacob, there's gotta be.

Seth: Do you have a cross?
Jacob: In the Winnebago.
Seth: In other words, no.
Scott Fuller: What are you talking about? We got crosses all over the place. All you gotta do is put two sticks together and you got a cross.

Scott is a freaking genius.

In need of holy water and therefore a holy man to bless the regular water, Seth turns to Jacob and says: So what are you, Jacob? A faithless preacher? Or a mean motherfuckin' servant of God?

Well when you put it that way, religiosity sounds way more badass. Religious groups could really amp up conversion stats if they started marketing to the angry, punk teen communities using that buy-line.

The best, though, has to be the monologue about the big angry biker's time in Nam. I haven't seen Sarah laugh that hard since our Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America party (go rent it now).

And, of course, from Ghostbusters II:

A distraught Sigourney Weaver: Oh it was terrible... terrible... the bathtub tried to eat Oscar!

And today, on Drew's recommendation, I rented The Tudors. He was correct; it's crazy hot. I don't think sex will ever again be as sexy as 21st century representations lead me to believe 16th century sex was; we lack the heaving bodices. Also, the very real threat that indiscretion will lead to beheading, which I'm ultimately going to put in the pro column for 21st century sex, but still. Everything's a tradeoff.

2008-10-30T22:58:00.003-06:00

The fire alarm has been going off for about 20 minutes. I find this annoying because I would very much like to sleep. I'm wondering if I should be concerned that the danger of burning to death doesn't really rank on my list of behaviour motivating factors.

I got a permanent job. It comes with benefits and vacation time and paid sick days and the whole shebang. I'm a grown-up or something. Also, I think I'm figuring out what I want my life to look like. Sadly the present situation doesn't much resemble the desired existential design scheme, but fear not! I also have a plan and a schedule and a timeline. Plans and schedules and timelines make me feel much, much better.

The past week has been a bit odd. I find that when things change, stuff gets shaken loose--thinking stuff and feeling stuff and The State of Affairs in The Life of Laura stuff--and I start to notice it all. It's been lying around for a while now in the thinking places and the feeling places and the places where information on The State of Affairs in The Life of Laura is kept, but I managed to miss it, or skim over it or ignore it. Then things change and while going about my daily routine, I glance up or away or over there or over here and suddenly: there's a giant ficus plant sitting next to my worn in armchair. How long has that been there? And who put the creepy porcelain doll next to my family picture? When did that happen and who smuggled it in? Where the hell did this stuff come from and when? Why is this stuff in my apartment? This isn't my taste at all. I'm not the kind of person who keeps ficus plants. How have I managed to have a ficus plant for all this time and not done something about it, not registered that it's a godawful ficus plant?

I think I should be really, really upset about my now suddenly stark decorating faux pas (not to mention my clumsy and overall poor use of metaphor), but most of the realizations have involved realizing that I know I have terrible taste in home decor and I've known for a while. The realization is that I already knew somewhere, in some realm of consciousness that the big green thing in the corner was a ficus plant and I've managed. So mostly revelation has been met with eerie calm. I have a giant ficus plant and a hideous porcelain doll collection. I've been living with them for a long time now and I'm still going. I know these big scary things and I'm still going. So I'll probably keep going. And eventually I will move the dolls into storage and replace the ficus with a lovely fern but right now the storage room is full and I haven't found the right fern, so for the time being I'll live with things as they are. hm. Look at that.

And the fire alarm has stopped. I guess I won't burn to death after all. Yay.

2008-10-29T12:46:00.001-06:00

2008-10-19T09:28:00.002-06:00

I love A-Ha Take on Me. I'm not even going to waste time being ashamed of it. 80s pop music was awesome. But I had no idea how much more awesome it was with lyrics that described what was actually happening in the video.

"Ooooh... Watch out for them; they're gonna beat you up with that pipe wrench!"

2008-10-14T16:54:00.002-06:00

It's been three weeks since my return to the hospital, working once again. About two weeks ago I decided that rushing home to make wudu and pray dhuhr after work was 1) soon to be not an option as the days grow shorter and 2) silly given that I am entitled to a 15 minute break in the afternoon and there is supposedly an interfaith chapel in the hospital. I decided to investigate. My investigation (which included looking up the location of the chapel and traveling to the 5th floor... I'm quite the sleuth) revealed that there is, in fact, an interfaith chapel in the hospital and it's quite nice, complete with a separate muslim prayer area, stocked with all potentially necessary paraphernalia, Qur'ans, other reading material and the direction of the Qibla marked on the roof. I was quite pleased. Also quite pleasing is the fact that there never seems to be anyone there and so, despite a closet-sized screened-off sister's prayer area to the side of the larger prayer room, I have been taking secret defiant pleasure in praying in the main area, usually at the very front. The paucity of fellow brothers and sisters left this a non-issue until today when I had my first muslim encounter/confrontation.

Seated on my prayer mat at the front of the room in the final sitting, I was startled to hear the door open, followed by some confused whispering behind me; the upset was clearly me. I experienced the usual initial wave of embarrassment mixed with fear at being recognized as an offensive intruder, but a brief assessment of the situation suggested there was little to be done but to finish my prayer and deal with whatever was thrown at me upon standing. So I did. And as anger replaced the embarrassment, I decided to take my time. Probably I took more time than was needed. Then I picked myself up, smiled large, turned around and faced two disgruntled men both of whom immediately approached:

"The sister's prayer area is behind the screen, miss"

Whether they thought I was blind or just really stupid, was unclear; the area is well marked; it's not like I wouldn't have noticed. The patronizing "miss" almost threw me off, but no. Not today. Today I would not be intimidated by two squat bearded men with their air of superiority, their annoyance and their "she must be new" looks. I thanked them for their concern but explained I preferred not to pray behind a screen. I then smiled, said my salams and exited without allowing them time to respond. As the door shut behind me, a moment of regret: I should have suggested that, if my presence was upsetting, they were more than welcome to pray behind the screen. It might be a little tight/hot/demeaning, but please, go ahead. I don't mind in the slightest.

2008-09-22T18:16:00.002-06:00

A long, long time ago Sarah and I talked about tragedy. I don't recall whether this was a series of conversations, a theme that stretched, or maybe one particularly intense conversation, but at some point there was talk of tragedy, and every now and again I'll think I've figured it out conclusively and remember our talk(s). Today I'm pretty sure tragedy is defeated middle-aged men. Pathetic, spent, lost, directionless, depressed, weak middle aged men. I'm sure I could justify that (hello Death of a Salesman) but I don't really want to argue it. I just want to say that nothing makes my stomach drop and my chest tighten and my heart hurt like these men. I want to cringe and cry all at once... the horrific combination of defeat and embarrassment with a hint of self-pity, having failed so completely at their prescribed role. It's awful.

And this weekend:

1) My cat attacked me. My right wrist is in a brace and I'm on massive doses of penicillin. She is curled in my lap, purring. I mostly feel guilty and ashamed. I'm pretty sure I deserved it, though I couldn't say why.

2) I finished my first knitting project. Go me!

3) I found a job.

4) I made chapati, which was way too complicated for a food containing only water, flour and oil.

In sum, life may be shaky, but I have a job and a warm neck and a new food that I can badly approximate.

2008-09-16T20:59:00.002-06:00

Oh my! Why Laura, what is that delicious-looking item sitting on your stove?

Well Laura, that’s a lentil loaf.

But Laura, where on earth did you procure such a delicious and nutritious iftaar meal?

Why, I made it. I bought lentils and I cooked them and I added bread and eggs and spices and oil and I put it all in a pan and I baked it! Alhamdulillah!

Alhamdulillah indeed! But also some praise to you too Laura. Cause you cooked something! You cooked! Good God you cooked! It's a Ramadan miracle!

2008-09-10T19:15:00.003-06:00

This afternoon I found myself standing in the self-help section of Chapter's holding a copy of Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin and wondering how I became the sort of person who stands in the self-help section considering purchasing Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin. Tracing back through the day, I think I became this sort of person around 4pm at the end of an hour-long phone conversation with my Father, the second such conversation in less than 24hours, a conversation I finally ended by bursting into tears, saying "I'm not your wife" and hanging up. Yup. I think that was the moment.

Also during this trip, I purchased a copy of Me and the Mosque. I'm excited to watch it.

Hence, in one trip to Chapters I managed to feed my dysfunctional family personaility and my dysfunctional Muslim personality. I considered purchasing It's Called a Break-up Cause It's Broken and Gainful Unemployment: Living Without Work and Liking It to feed, respectively, my dysfunctional relationship personality and my dysfunctional jobless personality, but I decided two was enough for today. If I sought assistance to improve the health and general operation of all the aspects of my world I might find myself feeling good and functional and then where would I be?

2008-09-08T17:48:00.010-06:00

It's been four years since I was last in Ontario and had the chance to visit the family cottage in Haliburton. I was there for a week at the end of August. It was wonderful. The cottage is like a giant time capsule, except we didn't bury it underground, it just never changes. The walls are covered with random, ancient pictures of relatives I didn't know I had and random scraps from newspapers, journals etc. The guestbooks date back to the 1950s and include entries from my 8-year-old mother and six year old me (six year old laura managed to write HAD FUN LAURA, in giant block letters). It was kind of like crawling inside of my childhood for a week. I wonder if I could live there? The lack of heating would be troublesome in the winter, but who needs heating when you have fond memories to keep you warm?

Sunset

and again.

Ducks are bizarre and ridiculous. I love them.

An example of the strange wall-hangings. My great-grandfather was the mayor of St. Catherine's in the 50s. This is his daytimer. Being the mayor involves many serious responsibilities of great import, for example, attending the "retarded children's party." My Uncle Hugh thought that was funny enough to justify a spot on the wall.

Our favourite guestbook contribution (also from Uncle Hugh). I'm thinking perhaps I didn't give Christianity a fair shot. I bet I would have liked it a whole lot more if it had included naked hymn-sings and dance parties. But wait; it seems I made the right choice after all because, as the article later explains all dancing must be done clothed as "dancing is a vertical manifestation of a horizontal desire." Yes. Of course it is.

Odd and interesting family trivia: My gramp was born and raised in Japan where his father worked as a professor of English. They left in the 30s, before World War II. My Gramp later enlisted in the 40s, but before being shipped out, it was discovered that he was fluent in Japanese. He was transferred to the Intelligence Corps to work as a translator. Given that the chances he would have returned safely are slim, I have this division to thank for my existence. Yay Nisei Association!

And my mom when she was my age. Except she was married and had a medical degree and was gorgeous. Anyone wanna marry me, allow me to treat their medical concerns, or perform free plastic surgery on me? Come on. Save me from a crippling inferiority complex.

2008-08-16T19:24:00.003-06:00

'Cosmopolitan' Institute Completes Decades-Long Study On How To Please Your Man

I still, still heart The Onion.

2008-08-02T18:16:00.002-06:00

my very own website!

2008-07-11T11:31:00.003-06:00

There is a lot of construction going on in Edmonton. So much construction that it is wise when planning a trip, even if that trip is just to the grocery store, to anticipate it will take you at least twice as long as it usually would. I don't mind construction. I mean, it stinks, but it's summer, we all saw it coming, I get the necessity and I wouldn't begrudge the workers or city planner or whoever if it weren't so incredibly badly managed. If you are shutting down an entire street/a major highway exit, it would be wise to post signs alerting people to this reality before it is too late for them to plan another route such that, at rush hour, hundreds of cars end up bottle-necking into dead ends that they then have to figure a way out of. It's just stupid. It doesn't take much planning or forethought to put a sign up saying "_____ exit/street closed." Seriously.

Also, why is it that the only women I see on these construction sites are the ones holding the "Slow/Stop" signs? I find this annoying. I don't really know anything about the construction industry, so I won't make any sweeping judgments. If there's some explanation for this (i.e. women are specifically applying for the position of sign holder rather than being dumped in that job) please let me know. Cause I find it disheartening that "women in the trades," in this case, means women standing at the side of the road all day holding signs. The situation irks me. I am irked.

2008-07-06T22:11:00.002-06:00

Come on skinny love just last the year...

Today I passed a church marquee that read “It is desirable to seek purity.” I wondered what their definition of desire might be and then imagined the defeated pastor who chose such an unimaginative message.

I’m home again, mostly. I think my cat is depressed. I’m mostly discontented. Not quite depressed, just generally uneasy and restless. I just signed another 6 month lease and am instantly panicked about the decision, struck by an intense need to move away from here now that I cannot.

Yesterday a friend and I commiserated over the various forms of ickiness and psychic unrest brought to the fore by thesis-writing.

L: I keep dreaming of having babies. I’m always pregnant.
D: Yeah, while I was writing mine I was constantly having broken condom dreams.

Uncontrollable reproduction! AH!

Weird Muslim rule of the day: apparently it is forbidden for women to use tampons because their use resembles masturbation. I take this as further evidence that these rulings were all written by men. Men who are apparently terrible lovers with a serious misunderstanding of the mechanics of female masturbation.

I think everyone should go download some Girl Talk. He’s awesome. He now provides the musical background for all of my thesis writing dance breaks.

The sunset out my window is unusually purple. Purple and magenta. God is embracing his inner five-year-old girl tonight.

2008-07-04T19:44:00.002-06:00

A week ago I received an email from one of my new muslim "brothers" (it feels odd calling these strangers with whom I have very little/almost nothing in common my brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles etc… strange and contrived and disingenuous). He was hoping I would be willing to be interviewed for a documentary he is putting together in an attempt to unread some of the unflattering interpretations of ayahs derived from out of context, poor readings. I was wary. A) I'm not all that familiar with the Qur'an, certainly not someone to ask re appropriate interpretations etc. B) I couldn't help but feel the sneaking suspicion that the reason my participation was so sought after was not so much because I might have useful things to say (that seemed doubtful) but because I possess dirty blonde locks and pasty white skin. "Look, look! The white girl doesn't think we're terrorists! She thinks Muslims are so awesome she even decided to become one! If the white girl's a muslim, how bad can they be? Did we mention she's white!?? See how "normal" she looks!? See? Muslims are just like you!"

But the guy doing the documentary is so far one of the few muslims with whom I can have a conversation and I figured I should probably not alienate any more of the community. Also, having had a few good conversations with him, it did occur to me that perhaps he might actually think I have something interesting or useful to say, and so I agreed to help out.

I really do like him and I think the project could be interesting and good, but the interview was mostly not. Questions like "When you hear people suggest that all Muslims are terrorists, what do you think? How does that make you feel," seem mostly useless to me. Answer: "It makes me angry and sad?" Seriously. What do you want from me?

A piece like this tends toward broad strokes and massive generalizations. And I understand that "the other side" is painting in broad strokes too, and so what is the alternative but to present an equally distorted, unrealistically rosey image of Edmonton Muslims? but I really didn't want to participate in that.

Sadly, I think I did. I quickly heard myself saying things like "Muslims are caring, friendly people. Get to know some." And feeling my self-respect dwindle. “They're just like you and I"/"make a token muslim friend!" Ultimately, none of the folk who think all Muslims are terrorists are going to see this production, and the overly positive assimilationist picture it portrays to everyone else just upholds the (I think) overriding sense among non-muslims that muslims are kinda different and that's okay as long as they walk, talk and act like the rest of us in public.

I think the real value and perhaps challenge in a project like this is to attempt to capture the nuanced character of the Muslim community, a community struggling with the challenge of maintaining a distinct, minority orientation towards the world within an incredibly different, often opposing, social frame. What sort of community does that create and why? I have seen and heard lots of perspectives on this, some offensive, most defensive, some insightful and nuanced negotiations. I have certainly met Muslims who seem "just like us" and Muslims who seem scary and extreme and Muslims who are clearly attempting to straddle the fence. All the Muslims I meet are very nice to me, very eager to help me out in any way they can, and that's great, as long as I accept their help, which generally comes in the form of instructions on how to dress, act, talk, be, look, feel, relate to God, and keep all my problems to myself. Ultimately, I've come to know an extremely insular community with a lot of unaddressed internal issues, a shitload of denial, but, also, enough good intentions, well wishes and helpful sentiments to eliminate world hunger through sheer will... and if stuff worked like that, it’d be a great community to be part of (and we would have ended world hunger!) But stuff doesn’t work like that. Fortifying borders and refusing to address problems simply because you don’t think they /should be/ Muslim problems is just stupid. There is a gaping canyon of difference between saying Muslims should strive to live in particular ways and saying Muslims always do live in these ways, moreover, they do so easily, without struggle or failure, because “western problems” do not affect Muslims. They do. Get over the shock and deal with it realistically and maturely.

Anyway, the point: “Muslims are friendly and awesome and caring and you should get to know some,” is maybe not the most useful or accurate message to be sending anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim.

So when I was asked "What do you think or feel when you hear people say that Muslims are extremists or Muslims oppress women" what I really wanted to say was that the good liberal impulses that once would have allowed me a very simple defensive reaction, negating the statement, are now gone. Now that I know Muslims, now that I’ve shed the naïve and patronizing liberal sentiments the documentary is meant to instill, I'm no longer comfortable saying that's wrong, absurd, unfounded, ignorant. The motivation for the statements is mostly wrong and ignorant, but I'm not going to blindly and generally insist Muslims aren't extreme, aren't oppressive to women. I have found this community very oppressive, as a woman and as a /person/. I have found it offensive. I have found uncritical homophobia, misogyny, essentialisms, frightening pro-life sentiments, and compassion, love and mercy only for those who stay strictly within the lines, within the rules.

In Islam, in the Qur'an, in the sirrahs, I have found a hope and a God and a way that makes sense. Not in the community. I think I mostly respectfully retire from the community.

2008-07-01T20:32:00.002-06:00

hm... the embed doesn't seem to want to work. Let's try the link.

You should probably watch all of them. Sarah Haskins is great!

2008-06-30T10:28:00.006-06:00

Yesterday I fled my tiny apartment-come-oven in search of asylum from the heat. I landed at the mercifully air-conditioned family homestead.

Now significantly less smelly, sweaty and overheated, I am back to work. 5 pages today. I will crack 25. Yes I will. To help in this effort, my siblings have provided a motivational wardrobe. Chris lent me his samurai t-shirt. It pictures a shadowy ninja, sword drawn, ready for battle and the word "Samurai" scrolled large at the bottom. Apparently he wears this whenever he feels the pressure of deadlines. He says it lends confidence.

Julia saw my samurai and suggested that tomorrow I try her version of this motivational technique. She proceeded to produce a t-shirt that reads "GI Joe: A Real American Hero"--the western version of persona-adopting as strategy for essay completion. I find it amusing that both my siblings consider this standard practice. Whatever works...

Also today my advisor relayed the tale of the children's book he once assigned as reading for his class on theorizing the subject:

"Did I ever tell you that one year I assigned a children's book for 333 entitled, The Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business, in which a happy German mole pops his head out of his hole one sunny morning, only to have it pooped on. The rest of the book is about his obsessive search for who did it and how he got his revenge."

I promptly inquired as to the nature of this revenge. He replied:

"The culprit turned out to be a dog who was much larger. The mole climbed on the dog's head and defecated there, but because of the size difference, it was like a pea bouncing off the dog's nose and it was utterly indifferent, but the mole, convinced that he had won a great victory, returned delighted and deluded to his hole."

He also sent me these pictures:

I laughed so hard I had to run to the bathroom so as not to pee myself. I'm a bit confused as to why the mole hasn't removed the coil of shit from his head. I'm pretty sure that if someone were to poo on my head, that would be my first order of business.

2008-06-26T14:35:00.003-06:00

Oh hilarious...

Yesterday I got an email from my good friend Ian. Ian recently completed a thesis and is now wasting time before he departs for Europe. Apparently yesterday his newfound time-wasting task led him to eHarmony.com where he proceeded to fill out their personality profile survey to see what the world of internet dating might have to say about his romantic prospects.

For those of you who know Ian, you're probably already laughing. For everyone else, I will say that Ian, though I love him dearly, is... abrasive. Pessimistic, dark and depressive to the point of near-absurdity and often intentional cruelty, he is the sort of person for whom insanity is ever-waiting just around the corner. If asked to sum up his personality I would say something like sociopathy meets suicidal ideation.

So it is not really a surprise that, upon completing the survey, eHarmony presented him with the following message:

"eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive research with married couples. One of the requirements for successful matching is that participants fall within certain defined profiles. If we find that we will not be able to match a user using these profiles, we feel it is only fair to inform them early in the process.

We are so convinced of the importance of creating compatible matches to help people establish happy, lasting relationships that we sometimes choose not to provide service rather than risk an uncertain match.

Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching model could not accurately predict with whom you would be best matched. This occurs for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand, and we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time."

He forwarded the message to me and suggested I take a crack at the survey myself. So I did. My result:

"eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive research with married couples. One of the requirements for successful matching is that participants fall within certain defined profiles. If we find that we will not be able to match a user using these profiles, we feel it is only fair to inform them early in the process.

We are so convinced of the importance of creating compatible matches to help people establish happy, lasting relationships that we sometimes choose not to provide service rather than risk an uncertain match.

Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching model could not accurately predict with whom you would be best matched. This occurs for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand, and we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time."

Ouch. "We regret to inform you that a complex matching system has determined that you will die alone. Unfortunately you are so unloveable we don't think it would be ethical to subject even sad, internet daters to you. Enjoy your hermetic existence."

Awesome!

UPDATE: Sarah gets to be happy, but apparently only with Chinese men. The front runners so far are Richard, who says the first thing Sarah will notice about him is that he's tall, dark, handsome, and has the ability to make people feel good about themselves. She might date Ryan out of pity. He's looking for someone who looks forward to seeing him... standards so very, very low. But then, the last book Ryan read and enjoyed:

"It was a book about the lives of bodybuiders. I liked that it showed that even though alot of them are on PED's it takes a total commitment to the goal to be successful and even though their sacrifices may not lead to success they continue in pursuit of their goals."

"Even though they are on drugs, they can still try really hard and not accomplish things they want to."

2008-06-24T15:59:00.002-06:00

I would like to suggest that this is the least depressing Elliott Smith song. It's actually kinda happy. Must have been an off day for him. But it's one of my favourites:

London bridge is safe and sound
no matter what you keep repeating.
nothing's gonna drag me down
to a death that's not worth cheating.

for someone half as smart you'd be a work of art.
you put yourself apart.
I can't help you until you start.

It's maybe a little mean, but by Elliott's standards, this is joyous.

2008-06-23T22:35:00.004-06:00

Sarah got back Friday night and since then we have settled right back into our usual routine, seeing each other almost daily, which means that life is good again! Also, tonight Sarah convinced me to be her date at the Sterlings and so we both got to dress up all fancy, but actually ended up in matching dresses, both belonging to me since she lacked time to obtain one of her very own. AND it was, I think, the first time in years that the gang of us were back together. Witness, Lauren, Sus, Laura and Sarah, together again!

Unfortunately, fancy dress + heels = Laura with sore feet and a stomach ache. I'm not sure how I'm justifying blaming the stomach ache on either the heels or the dress, but I'm sure they were behind it somehow. And so off to bed. Night all!

2008-06-23T14:38:00.003-06:00

I watched Angels in America again yesterday. There’s a lot to be said about that film, and most of it probably shouldn’t be said by me, but I also love it so much that I think I have to take a stab. And so...

Basically: The movie follows a group of New Yorkers in the mid-eighties, living in various relations to and with AIDs. Prior Walters is our dying, unlikely and reluctant prophet, who is, at the outset of the film, abandoned by his lover, Louis. Miserable and alone, Prior begins to hear voices and have visions, culminating in the finale of Part One, as an Angel crashes through the roof of his apartment to deliver the book and the message: stop moving. Human movement, progress, change, shakes heaven, causing earthquakes, “shaking Him.” Says the Angel to her prophet: “Quake follows Quake, absence follows absence […] then… He left… and did not return. […] You have driven Him away. You must stop moving”

Prior refuses this message. “I want you to go away. I am tired to death of being done to, walked out on, infected, fucked over and now tortured by some mixed up irresponsible angel.”

Replies the Angel:

“You can’t outrun your Occupation, Jonah.
Hiding from Me one place, you will find me in another.
I I I I stop down the road, waiting for you.
You know me, prophet: Your battered heart, Bleeding Life in the Universe of Wounds”

So biblical references are pretty blatant, self-confessed, throughout the film (I suggest you dust off your Children’s Bible before renting). Enter Jonah. For all you heathens, Jonah was a reluctant prophet, who fled the call of God only to be swallowed by a whale and released through God’s mercy upon repenting. (Though I’m pretty sure I’d apologized too if faced with a life-sentence in the belly of a whale.)

Anyway, Prior isn’t down with the whole prophesying gig, though, admittedly, Kushner is a bit more lenient than God, leaving out the giant man-eating fish. For Prior, the request for stasis is equated with a request for death. “Stop moving? That’s what you want? Answer me! You want me dead.” The angel demands submission to mortality, surrender and acceptance of death, and Prior will not relent.

The refusal to surrender life is pretty prominent throughout the film. (Not a surprise in a film most obviously about AIDs). We run into it again with the Angel’s second visit, except now Jonah is replaced by Jacob. The (relevant) lowdown on Jacob: Isaac is Jacob and Esau’s Dad. Isaac is dying and so he decides he’s gonna bless Esau before he dies. Jacob is, it seems, a crappy brother (and, as Roy Cohn's chracter says, "a ruthless motherfucker"), so he disguises himself and steals Esau’s blessing. Esau is understandably pissed and swears to kill Jacob once Isaac dies.

So Jacob’s on the run, with a seriously badass brother out to get him. He figures he’s pretty screwed without backup, so he settles in for a night of communion with God. Then it gets a bit confusing, cause instead an angel shows up--or sometimes it’s just a man, it gets called a messenger, or maybe it’s God himself, not totally clear on this. Regardless, a badass man vs. heavenly being wrestling match ensues. The match goes to the underdog; Jacob wins, incurring only an injury in his left thigh, and then demands a blessing from the angel, which has been interpretted as Jacob demanding life, that he not die at the hands of his brother (of note, Prior walks with a limp in his left leg throughout the film.)

So... when the angel appears for the second time, Prior is with his ex-lover’s, new lover’s mormon mother (about which Prior comments “I wish you would be more true to your demographic profile. Life is confusing enough.”), who advises him on scriptural precedent, suggesting that he demand a blessing from the angel. Prior takes the advice, grabs hold of the Angel and refuses to let go, screaming “I will not let thee go except thou bless me. Take back your book!” Eventually the angel relents when Prior injures her (she states that she has pulled a thigh muscle). A ladder of fire descends from the sky and Prior is instructed to ascend to heaven to return the book. Before a committee of angels, he proclaims “we can’t just stop.” The angels urge him to remain in heaven, but he insists upon his blessing:

“But still. Still. Bless me anyway. I want more life. I can’t help myself. I do. I have lived through such terrible times and there are people who have lived through much, much worse, but you see them living anyway. When they are more spirit than body, more sores than skin. When they are burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corner of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don’t know if that’s just the animal; I don’t know if it’s not braver to die, but I recognize the habit, the addiction to being alive. We live past hope; if I can find hope anywhere, that’s it; that’s the best I can do. It’s so much not enough. It’s so inadequate. But still. Bless me anyway. I want more life. And if He returns, take Him to court. He walked out on us. He ought to pay.”

The monologue is awesome. The whole scene is awesome. But, ultimately, Prior refuses the call of religion... or maybe God himself: solace in what comes after, the promise of better things to come. He clings to life instead, no matter how despicable, messy, unbearable. Life instead. And so also a value in life itself, on its own, divorced from a hereafter. I was reminded of a line that struck me from one of my favourite TV shows as I was rewatching /that/ recently.

Cameron: You find it more comforting to believe this is it?
House: I find it more comforting to believe this isn’t simply a test.

Life as something more than an inventory of actions that fall into either a heaven or a hell category, actions judged solely based on their utility in earning one entrance into heaven. Life can’t be reduced to that, or maybe can, but shouldn’t. Does that belief require rejection of the very notion of an afterlife as religiously conceived? Does it boil down to a choice: life or life after life?

... and now I’m off-track. Back to Jacob. He’s littered throughout, with the other blatant reference coming from Joe, the closeted, gay, Mormon, Republican lawyer. Joe is attempting to explain his struggles to repress his homosexual desires to his wife:

“I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I’d look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the Angel. I don’t really remember the story, or why the wrestling—just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is…a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I’m…It’s me. In that struggle. Fierce and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of fight is that? It’s not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God’s. But you can’t not lose.”

The picture:

Here it’s Joe’s turn to do battle with the Divine. But, while Prior seems to win by rejecting God altogether, Joe-as-Jacob points to the inevitability of defeat. He eventually surrenders to the angel, embraces his homosexual desire and becomes Louis’s lover. In both cases, angels do not stand in for God, rather they symbolize the very absence of God. For Prior, the angel appears because God has abandoned Us, Them. Embracing the angel, for Joe, means embracing a life of sin, forsaking God. Kushner offers his characters opportunities to refuse submission to God, the Law, the Father, or at least to refuse the uncomplicated ease of such a gesture. Further he troubles the hierarchy of Heaven and earth; Heaven is not ordered paradise, but is in disarray just as is earth. Angels are dragged down to earth, people climb to heaven and back.

The troubling of binaries doesn’t end with heaven and hell, though it is most always linked thereto. Kushner is committed to destabilizing categories throughout, demonstrated most obviously in the instruction that actors must play multiple characters. Identities are not stable. Neither is sexuality. Even Prior, the gay protagonist has his orientation troubled. During the first visitation, Prior and the angel (who, though described as hermaphroditic, is manifestly a woman, a gorgeous Emma Thompson to be exact) have sex, what seems a fairly anomalous moment, inserted expressively for the purpose of denying Prior an absolute or essential sexuality. Ultimately, Kushner punctures the entire script with troubling juxtapositions of love/hate, sickness/health, pain/pleasure, heaven/earth, heterosexual/homosexual, progress/regression, movement/stasis, past/future, life/death in what seems an attempt to explode them all and ultimately rebuild, hence the title of Part II: Perestroika. I don’t know if he gets there. I want to say that Kushner, rather than actually destabilizing binaries, actually inverts the hierarchies, favouring liberal progress over all else. Example: the only straightforwardly heterosexual character in the film is Harper, a delusional Valium addict who ultimately leaves New York, not making it to the rosey finish.

The refusal to regress (hence the incitement to progress, forward motion) shows up again in Prior and Louis’s relationship, but this time tied to notions of forgiveness and redemption. When Louis leaves Prior, Prior denies Louis claim to love:

Louis: You can love someone and fail them. You can love them and not be able to…
Prior: You can theoretically, yes. A person can. Maybe an editorial you can love, Louis. But not you. Specifically you, I don’t know, I think you are excluded from that general category. A Person could theoretically love and maybe many do, but we know now that you can’t.
Louis: I love you
Prior: I repeat: who cares? We have reached a verdict your honour, this mans’ heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing.

And later:

Prior: When you cry you endanger nothing in yourself. It’s like the idea of crying when you do it. The idea of love.

Love, for Prior, is something to be proven, born out in actions. Love is a verb.
Louis’s abandonment effaces the possibility that he loves, for Prior. Love would not allow the act, or more precisely, the act cannot be love and so the love cannot be said to exist.

By the end of the play, Louis returns, physically battered as Prior requested, and declares that he wants to come back.

Louis: I really failed you… (crying) This is hard… Failing in love isn’t the same as not loving. It doesn’t let you off the hook; it doesn’t mean you’re free to not love.

(Louis crawls into bed next to Prior.)

Prior: I love you Louis. I really do. But you can’t come back. Not ever. I’m sorry but you can’t.

Prior accepts, finally, that to love someone and yet damage them irreparably is possible (is perhaps the very nature of love), but just as love does not let Louis off the hook, neither does Prior. Forgiveness is perhaps possible here, but going back is not. Damage done can be forgiven, maybe, but not erased and the prices that attach hold regardless. There is finally no redemption.

...and there's so much more to say, but I should really go write my thesis instead. Stay tuned for more stupidly long posts designed to allow me to escape guilt re not writing thesis by continuing to write, just not about that. Also, everyone go watch this and then leave comments, or come find me and talk to me about it. That would also provide an excusable distraction from the task at hand.

Oh, and the final scene. Enjoy!

2008-06-16T16:58:00.004-06:00

A random array of links...

Read the comments... Now imagine me huddled before my computer screen thinking alternately "Good God; what have I done?" and "I'm going to be single forever."

And, oh dear. Not Angelina Ballerina.

This is just cool. Bodies are awesome. Especially ovaries.

And broadsheet's take on the Sex and the City craze.

And then there's this, which (thank goodness) reminded me that in the midst of worrying about mastering the prayer thing, reading sirahs and scripture, giving up alcohol and pork, and kicking my pesky coke habit, I completely forgot to book my hymenoplasty and obtain my certificate of virginity. Silly me. Sucks to be used goods. Or maybe it just sucks to be muslim? Tonight I'm not sure, but I'm tired and sick of being disappointed and angry and frustrated. sigh.

Also, I recently watched The Laramie Project again. It is good. Go see it if you have not already. I usually cry a few times during this movie, but this time I held my own through the entire thing until the point where Clea DuVall speaks to the local preacher who comments, "I only hope that Matthew Shepard, while he was tied to that fence, had time to reflect on a moment when somebody had spoken the word of the Lord to him, and that before he slipped into a coma, he had a chance to reflect on his lifestyle." Duvall's character looks stunned, thanks him for speaking to her. The film cuts to her leaving the restaurant with Nestor Carbonell (playing Moises Kaufman). She says "I let him say that to me. I let him say that and I didn't say anything back."

I cried then. I guess I know where I am.

Also, I'm going to a thing at the end of the month that requires fancy dress. I mentioned this to the family a while back, and last week I was presented with a new dress via Dad. This weekend Mom supplemented the outfit with fancy strappy heels. Girls' clothes! The idea arouses a mixture of ick! and wee! Honestly, I'm excited. I feel like I felt when I used to break into my Mom's closet as a kindergartner to play dress-up. It will be a night to play the part of the woman who wears the little black dress and the high heels and does her hair and sports lots of makeup. The trickery is thrilling: I might get caught wearing someone else's clothes; but if I am not found out, I will get to leave myself behind for a night. I'm reminded that it still sure is fun to play dress-up.

And also, I need to stop starting paragraphs with also or and.

2008-06-14T22:23:00.004-06:00

Someone pointed out to me a while back that I have a large bump on the top of both my feet. It’s a bone that juts out between my big toe and my ankle. I had assumed everyone has this bump, that perhaps mine is a bit more pronounced, but that this is a common feature of all feet.

I began a survey. I have been checking the feet of all those I know well enough to see barefoot for some time now. The onset of summer has allowed me to expand my sample size significantly, and it turns out that my friend was right; this bump appears to be an anomaly particular to only my feet.

My mother is in town this weekend. My mother and I used to be very close; we were, as it turns out, close to the point that psychiatrists and psychologists would later tell me that our special bond was symptomatic of an inappropriate parent-child role reversal. After much therapy and significant practice in boundary-setting, my mother and I are no longer so very close. It’s good, healthy and necessary distance, but it wasn’t and couldn’t be achieved without substantial wounds on both sides. There is hurt now that doesn’t disappear easily and a wariness from both of us; we are careful not to come too close for fear of further injury. The disconnect feels blunt, as though I have emptied myself of her. She is foreign now, a stranger or a visitor.

This afternoon we found ourselves sitting side by side on the couch with our feet on the coffee table.

“You have the same bump as I have,” she said.

My mother’s feet are two sizes larger than mine and while her big toe clearly stands out as the largest, my second toe outreaches my big toe by a full nail’s length. But exactly halfway between the end of her big toe and the beginning of the curve of her ankle there is a noticeable protrusion. My mother has the identical set of bone-bumps on each of her feet. None of my siblings have them. Just her and I. A tangible, material connection, marking our bodies. Distance and boundaries and therapy and miles and innumerable battles aside, I’m from her or of her or bits of her or a rearranged version of her, a her she might have been. The proof is in our feet.

2008-06-08T15:41:00.004-06:00

Hmmm...

I appreciate the sentiment; I get what they're trying to do; I have a limited amount of sympathy for the "love your body just the way it is" movement when it is framed in the context of a beauty industry that problematically represents ideal womanhood. But part of the problem with that industry is that it reduces women to sex objects and suggests that women are of value primarily because we wear bikinis, and so all women should wear bikinis and should want to wear bikinis. The next step is to say we should all look a certain way in them, but the first step seems to me to be enforcing bikinis as appropriate beach wear to begin with.

I have been privy to the pressure to wear revealing bathing suits; how else does one get noticed at a pool/beach? (And the point, of course, is to get noticed; enjoying your swim is a secondary concern.) Mostly I feel ridiculous and naked in bikinis and don't much like wearing them. Swimming comfortably, for me, does not require a bikini mind because I would rather wear my one piece and swim shorts and not have to worry about strangers seeing my stretch marks or admiring my flat stomach, noting my love handles or ogling my breasts.

It's a fine line and a contentious issue, and I get that some women want to wear, and feel comfortable wearing, bikinis and that is a-okay with me. But I'm not sure that, if a woman is hesitant about trouncing around in the equivalent of her underwear in front of total strangers, our first response should be to assume she needs to adjust her thinking, push through the doubt and discomfort and wear that bitty number. I think labeling this a feminist move is problematic, and labeling it a liberatory move, even more problematic. Maybe it's okay not to want to wear a bikini. Maybe it's okay not to feel comfortable wearing a bikini. Maybe, just maybe, it's even okay if you don't feel comfortable wearing a bikini because you think you look bad, fat or otherwise unappealing in it. Honestly, you're probably right; not many people look awesome with tiny pieces of spandex strapped across their naughty bits. It's not pathological; it's realistic.

But I suppose women of all shapes and sizes should have the right to feel comfortable enough with their bodies to be ogled at the beach. Yeah, that sounds about right.

2008-06-05T14:47:00.002-06:00

Scroll down...
I'm sure there must be intelligent things that could be said about this, but I'm busy being confused. Just... why?

2008-06-05T14:29:00.002-06:00

I bought a new phone a few days ago. Today it occurred to me that, while no lights were flashing in an attempt to tell me I have messages, it is possible that this phone doesn't have a message indicator light in which case I should probably check for messages anyway. So I did. And the scary robotic woman informed me that I had 22 expired messages and 3 new messages. I don't know what my phone/answering service has been up to, but I just listened to messages dating back to the middle of May. I promise I have been checking my messages regularly. The lady told me I had no new messages. I thought I had become wildly unpopular, but, as it turns out, I am instead accidentally terribly rude.

Anyway, if you've called me in the past month and not received a call back, I promise I am not avoiding you. I probably love you dearly and value our friendship/acquaintance/professional relationship greatly (with the exception of the guy who wanted to sell me a home security system and the people who wanted to inform me of an exciting opportunity to lower my interest rates.) I would have called you back had I received the message. In fact, call me right now. I'll go out, and you can leave messages and, just wait, you'll see, I'll call you right back.

2008-06-04T19:53:00.003-06:00

I am soaking wet. sopping. drenched. to the point that whole beads of water are running down my chest underneath my sweatshirt. I hope everyone in Edmonton took full advantage of the particularly impressive thunderstorm that just went down. For those who are out of town, I pray weather currents blow the storm clouds in your direction (although, due to my limited knowledge of meteorology, I'm not entirely sure that's even possible.)

There are things to be said about thunderstorms, rain. The feeling of water seeping through fabric, touching skin, trickling along grooves between goosebumps formed by the combination of the chill and the roar of thunder, creating eddies. Drips tracing paths, tiny tickles, creeping across tummies, pooling in bellybuttons, overflowing downward. There are things to be said.

2008-06-02T19:01:00.002-06:00

This also made me laugh lots. It's written across the butt too. To quote one of the comments: "Because nothing says "I plan not to have sex until marriage" like plastering text across your ass."

I wonder if they've made a similar boys' version. Something tells me no.

2008-06-02T17:23:00.002-06:00

Today: this made me laugh

Also today: Drew introduced me to Dexter, which is awesome. Watch it. I am particularly loving the flashbacks of his childhood, watching his father attempt to teach him how to be a person. The making strange of mundane social interaction. Is murder more or less immoral without remorse?

In other news: I am in the process of making a tofu stirfry. I realize this doesn't sound like a complicated dish, but, if you're thinking that, you have clearly overestimated my culinary skill. This is a fairly significant risk; it is very possible I will burn down the building.

2008-05-31T22:17:00.003-06:00

Approximately 7 years and 10 months ago I was sitting in a decrepit lazyboy chair in the hallway in the back corner of a hospital ward playing Nintendo, when a scrawny, red-headed teenager with flaming red hair and hideous coke-bottle glasses positioned herself beside my television and began to discuss her habit of purchasing clothing without checking sizes and without trying anything on, such that the brand new, very baggy, dark blue pants with a slight sheen that she was wearing were about 10 sizes too big. It was fairly evident right off the bat that this eccentric character was not just any girl. I did not yet anticipate, however, that she would turn out to be the best person I have ever known. Today she wears clothing that fits, has very stylish glasses, retains the flaming red hair and is still just sort of... sparkly. And today she turns 23.

Happy Birthday Sarah!

2008-05-28T22:53:00.002-06:00

Things are good. For the first time in a long time, things are suddenly good. It may be premature, but I am thinking that things might stay good, if I can stay here. I’ve been alone for a few days now, all the major influences in my life absent. My best friend is in another province, the love-interesty-sorta-friend-sorta-more character is in another country, my family is incommunicado. I am alone. Organizing my life is me. Just me.

It’s wonderful. I feel the way I felt for about 10 seconds last March after evicting my ex-partner and resolving to, for the first time in almost four years, go it alone. That kick-ass Eurythmics-esque “sisters are doin’ it for themselves” sort of feeling. If you’ve never had this feeling, I suggest you leave your partner/boyfriend/husband/children/parents instantly and experience it.

It has been months of living, publicly at least, neutered (metaphorically and more literally—an anxious portrayal of asexuality.) In the process I’ve become, not surprisingly, boring (not to mention sort of annoying, un-insightful and needy.) What I am remembering now is that I’m not altogether awful, certainly not awful enough to be perpetually ashamed of myself. I may not be particularly intelligent, markedly gifted, breathtakingly beautiful or impressively pious, but I don’t /need/ to be. I’m not a Bad person. I’m just doing my best, surviving day by day and trying to avoid major fuck-ups. I think that’s good enough, at least for now; so I’m gonna go back to being me—honestly and unapologetically me—publicly and privately. I suppose it’s always a performance, but this spectacle will at least be less foreign.

Now days are organized around reading—engaging, sexy reading—and writing—interested, exciting writing. I don’t know if any of it is good—don’t honestly expect any of it will be—but I also don’t really care. Not right now. I’m having fun; screw the rest.

“The female mantis has been scientifically observed since at least the sixteenth century in the act of decapitating the male, not only after or during coitus but even before! He would be devoured completely after copulation. For centuries it was believed that such acts of cannibalism could be described in terms of utility: needing protein to make the newly fertilized eggs grow, the female could find great quantities in devouring her mate. However, it seems more likely that the males’ decapitation may well serve not only procreative but also specifically sexual functions for the female mantis: ‘Dubois’s theory… wonders whether the mantis’s goal in decapitating the male before mating is not to obtain, through the ablation of the inhibitory centers of the brain, a better and longer execution of the spasmodic movements of coitus. So that in the final analysis it would be for the female the pleasure principle that would dictate the murder of her lover, whose body, moreover, she begins to eat during the very act of making love.’”
- Elizabeth Grosz, “Animal Sex” in Space, Time and Perversion.

Oh man. Praying mantises are awesome.

2008-05-25T18:45:00.001-06:00

27 and 14 days respectively.

and so much to accomplish in that time...

2008-05-23T23:03:00.001-06:00

I miss my best friend :(

2008-05-20T21:39:00.012-06:00

Yesterday (because my family is ever so white and WASPy to the core) my father suggested that we lunch at the Country Club (yes; we are members of the Edmonton Golf and Country Club. Please don’t judge me) The Country Club is a surreal alternate universe in which everyone wears knee length shorts, denim is illegal, and no one makes less than $200,000/year. It reminds me of Pleasantville. The dining room is fitted with pristine white table clothes and polished silverware, chandeliers and giant windows displaying the view of the secluded green oasis cordoned off from the rest of the city as a haven for the rich and snobby. Over lunch they play terrible mixes of hits from the 70s, specially selected to appeal to the 50-60 year old demographic.

It’s fairly horrifying.

After lunch my mother and I took a long walk behind the new subdivision behind our neighbourhood. This subdivision was finally approved a few years back after much debate over the justifiability of tearing down acres of forest in order to construct mansions for families of four. Guess who won.

Now the subdivision is nearly completed and… the pictures mostly speak for themselves. The houses are enormous.

the front view

the back view

Apparently the must-have item in all new homes is an elevator. All these houses have elevators. Most also include a panic room. No one seems entirely sure what might be the cause for panic… unspecified danger seems to be all that was required to make the sell.

witness the elevator shaft. This particular house/elevator shaft belongs to the people who currently live two doors down from us. They have 2 children. This home will house 4 people.

It’s fairly horrifying.

If you cut past the giant private property sign at the end of the neighbourhood and scoot down the service road and over the large barrier constructed at the end, you wind up in the midst of a multitude of beaten paths through the woods and down to the edge of the river. But before this, you end up in the middle of a giant, empty field.

the field from above

...and from below

And then back into the woods and eventually you emerge onto a sandy beach. Later in the summer, when the water level is lower, the beach stretches out another 20 feet. You can sit in the middle of the river.

It’s fairly amazing.

Also on the schedule for yesterday was bathing the dog.

witness bathing the dog

Once the bathing was done and the little monster smelled no longer of poo, wet grass, and old food, and instead, bizarrely, of pina colada (who decided dog shampoo would be best scented as a coconut cooler?) she headed outside to dry in the sun...

I think it's good to see that no one in my family is confused re who calls the shots or takes priority. The seating arrangement seems well in order.

2008-05-15T22:10:00.000-06:00

He walks through the door and I’m astonished that he still exists. This is followed almost instantly by annoyance. What a ridiculous cause for consternation. Of course he still exists. What did I expect? I made a dinner date with him; why should I be surprised or offended that he showed up?

His hair is the same and his beard is the same and it’s the same smile and his easy eyes.

He’s wearing the purple shirt I bought him, and shoes I picked out.

He’s laughing in odd places, rambling, talking too fast. He does this when he’s nervous. This and playing with his watch and adding poorly placed space fillers like “yeah…” and “well…” for which he has no follow-up such that they linger awkwardly.

And then: “we can just get our usual.” The we’s and the our’s slip out and feel half like mistakes and half like non-committal pseudo-claims, or empty reminders.

As we catch up, little intimacies leak into responses. I know too much, and yet I don’t know him at all. But familiarities add up until I feel like I can’t sit at this table any longer. Everything is heavy with disconnected strands of an old life.

He’s proposing to his new partner next week. I hear the elaborate plan. /This/ is what should hurt, but it’s only surreal and dulled and disorienting. This isn’t the worst of it, or even a highlight. It’s the little bits of him that I still have. Inconsequential idiosyncrasies that only a partner would know, things I didn’t realize I’d held onto, that I didn’t mean to keep or remember. It’s the bits he has of me, despite everything else and distance and time and lives that don’t touch.

At one point he tells me he reads his blog and says “he’s smart. I don’t even understand it, but you would.” And I feel like I might vomit and I have no idea why.

He hugs me goodbye and it’s almost awkward. I leave quickly so he doesn’t see me cry.

2008-05-13T23:17:00.003-06:00

MODESTY, n.

I. Modest quality or character.

1. Moderation, temperateness, self-control; freedom from excess or exaggeration; clemency, mildness of rule or government. Obs.

2. Decorum, propriety; scrupulous sobriety of thought, speech, conduct, etc.; natural avoidance of coarseness or lewdness.

3. a. The quality of being unassuming or of having a moderate opinion of oneself; reserve or reticence arising from an unexaggerated estimate of one's qualities and abilities; freedom from presumption, ostentation, arrogance, or pride.
on a modesty: from a feeling of modesty (obs.).
b. Humility before God. Obs.
c. Shame, discomfiture. Obs. rare.
d. Deferential feeling or impulse. Obs.

4. The modest appearance (extent, etc.) of a thing; unpretentious character; absence of luxury.

- Oxford English Dictionary

To suggest that this crucial aspect of faith is, for women, primarily or most urgently a wardrobe concern is offensive and condescending. Please stop evaluating my faith based on my shirts. Thank you.

2008-05-13T10:09:00.003-06:00

so here I'm sitting in my car at the same old stop light
I keep waiting for a change but I don't know what
so red turns into green turning into yellow
but I'm just frozen here on the same old spot
and all I have to do is to press the pedal

but I'm not

so baby kiss me like a drug like a respirator
and let me fall into the dream of the astronaut
where I get lost in space that goes on forever
and you make all the rest just an afterthought
and I believe it's you who could make it better

but it's not

I've decided I would like to hibernate for the summer. I realize this deviates from the well-establish winter hibernation norm, but I've never been much for rules, and so.

In other news, I spent an hour yesterday at "Baby Gym". Mothers are fascinating creatures. Maybe it's just yuppy mothers; I shouldn't generalize; but it was... um... how to put this gently... ridiculous and vomit-inducing. The babies do very little. They occasionally attempt to eat the lacklustre toys. The mothers, on the other hand, are quite active. It is imperative to each and every one of them that every other mother in the room confirms how adorable their child is. This is followed by detailed reports of their child's astonishingly unastonishing accomplishments over the past week. Apparently Eva can't get enough of the dog's water bowl. It's adorable! Why, if you don't keep your eye on her every second she will drag herself right back over, fast as you can imagine, and have her whole face in the water, blowing bubbles! Isn't she clever? --No. The fact that your baby, if left to her own devices, would drown in the only source of water available to her, which, by the way, consists of a tiny one inch deep bowl of mucky dog water, does not make her a genius. She's a baby. She's not smart. She's not supposed to be.

These women are also very committed to baby romance. Eva is apparently a terrible flirt, and she and David have an ongoing courtship. So far as I can tell, this consists of her mother placing her directly next to David which is followed by synchronized drooling. Occasionally one of them falls over and makes contact with the other. This initiates a chorus of clucking from the mothers.

Clothing is also important. Apparently collared shirts are in. Ben wore a collared shirt yesterday and he was the talk of the gym. There also seems to be a mutually sustained delusion that the babies dress themselves. Eva puts together the most adorable outfits. Paige dresses just like her Mommy. Ben likes to show off his muscly arms.

These women are crazy. Crazy.

2008-05-11T21:15:00.003-06:00

This morning I attempted to unclog my bathtub drain. This was round two of liquid plumber, which I poured in the night before and left to settle. At 6 am I added warm water as per the instructions. After a solid go with the plunger I backed off and waited eagerly for the sound of water draining. Nothing. Nothing at all. No draining whatsoever. Baffled, I tried again. Still nothing.

I decided to walk away; maybe it needed some time. When I came back a few minutes later to find no progress, I started to unravel. Back into the tub I climbed and resumed my plunging. And still nothing. This was enough to push me over the edge. By 6:30 I was sitting in two inches of stagnant water in ratty shorts and my father's tshirt, soaking wet and furiously plunging while sobbing hysterically. Eventually I gave up, sat in the smelly water, and cried to my heart's content. About 20 minutes later I realized that at some point during this fiasco, I had flipped the switch that closes the drain. So basically I'm a genius. And then I cried some more.

But: my drain is officially unclogged.

Later in the day I cried because the dog was sitting in my newly washed blanket. A while after that I cried in the grocery store because they were out of the lettuce I like. Then I forgot to get my jeans out of the dryer right away and found them all creased, meaning I will have to iron them, and that seemed a sufficient excuse for more crying. About a half hour ago Julia informed me we are out of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and another flood.

I'm thinking I should go to sleep now, before any further minute disappointments lead me to hysterics.

2008-05-11T00:16:00.002-06:00

My little brother's idea of support for my new religious beliefs:

Me: I promised the girls I would take them out for dinner tonight. They're fighting between Moxie's and Earl's. You're the tie breaker. Which one?

Chris: Mmmm.... which one's closer to Mecca?

Later in the evening he wrote me a spontaneous song entitled "Alhamdulillawesome" which was followed by "Rock the Kabbah", an homage to the Clash.

2008-05-09T21:37:00.002-06:00

The big secret is that it doesn't actually get better. That's just an empty promise designed to ensure compliance. ... and the world keeps turning. Giant lies, unfulfilled promises, and massive naivete.

Appearances improve; this is important. If it looks good, it'll pass. Blend in and be quiet. Go crazy quietly. Quietly go crazy. sh.

Dad took the redeye to Ottawa and then drove through the wee hours of the morning to see her. I guess we never get smarter.

Better take the keys and drive forever
staying won't put these futures back together
all the perfect drugs and superheroes
wouldn't be enough to bring me up to zero.

So get out while you can
I'm pouring quicksand
and sinking is all I had planned
so better just go.

At least there's Aimee Mann

2008-05-01T18:27:00.002-06:00

It started out not so badly, but I am now thinking that if I hadn't previously committed to dinner with friends, I would down a handful of sleeping pills, crawl into bed and wait for tomorrow. But I have committed to pizza, and so I will make the healthier choice and opt for food and company in lieu of CNS depressors and entirely unjustifiable self-pity.

I fell asleep again this afternoon. I have taken to doing this regularly and sometimes in completely inappropriate places. I can mostly sleep anywhere. It's actually kind of astonishing. Yesterday I dozed off for a few minutes while a two-year-old repeatedly smashed my head with a toy hammer. I woke up when she attempted to strangle me with my own scarf.

At any rate, falling asleep midday leaves me irritable. I didn't know this until recently because it is only very recently that I started falling asleep midday. I might try to come up with a logical explanation for this recent phenomenon, but I'm in a pissy mood and so I will arbitrarily blame... fathima. Just cause. It has to be /someone's/ fault.

Also, amusing experience today: I was at a friend's house. Asma wears the niqab and today two men came by to fix her dryer. While the niqab was, I think, mostly amusing to them, more shocking and out of place than a face cover, was me, 20-something white girl, bare-headed and wearing jeans. Husna was fascinated by their work (the two year old) and called me over to investigate with her "Laura-Auntie! Come here!" Worker: "So... you're their aunt?" Me: "No." It was kind of amusing to be a puzzle.

In other news I want to learn french very badly. I know some french, but I'm not fluent. I have many textbooks. I will go through these this summer. I will, I will, I will.

Also, I'm coming out: I converted to Islam a few months ago. It's a thing. A weird thing. And a good thing. And a confusing and infuriating thing. It's a thing.

2008-04-27T20:17:00.006-06:00

Recent Discoveries:

1) I am capable of eating an entire large pizza with dipping sauces, while retaining room in my apparently freakishly large stomach for handfuls of chocolate chips for dessert.

2) No matter how old, wise, or experienced, no one ever grows out of ill-advised impulse sex. Not even parents.

3) My resting pulse is 66 beats per second.

4) The Four Seasons were full of crap; big girls most certainly /do/ cry. What's more, I have recently discovered that big boys also cry. In fact, I'm pretty sure we're all secretly sobbing alone in our apartments of condos or houses.

5) Five hours of sleep/night is not enough for me. I start dozing off in the middle of conversations.

6) There /is/ such a thing as too much candy.

7) “Stilettos are the post-terrorism shoe” Though I have no idea what this means, I feel it to be intuitively true. Or completely nonsensical. Regardless, fashion television stands behind the statement.

8) Though I am generally stoic and composed during the saddest of movies, if films involve a birth--pretty much of any kind, under any circumstance--I /will/ cry. It’s unavoidable.

9) I am not growing up to be who I thought I would be, and I have no idea if I think this is a good or a bad thing. I remain ambivalent.

10) Sarah is correct; Christina and Burke’s first kiss on Grey’s is the single hottest moment in television history.

My family owns the most ridiculous looking dog on the planet.

The Great Human Race! Wow!

This seems creepy and kind of... desperate. "Eat our yogurt or you will die." Incidentally, they also manufacture "Comatose State" cottage cheese, and "Circling the Drain" sour cream.

... or, on second thought, maybe they are pointing out that the yogurt is alive? In this case, I suppose it's just... accurate labelling; but I mostly don't want to be reminded that I am eating live bacteria. hm.

2008-04-24T15:39:00.001-06:00

I promise this is the last one for today. These are too good not to post.

...and...

2008-04-24T11:32:00.005-06:00

To each is a goal to which God turns him; then strive together (as in a race) towards all that is good. Wheresoever you are, God will bring you together. For God has power over all things

2:148 :)

2008-04-24T08:27:00.004-06:00

I have recently made a habit of waking up early. Currently, around 5. At first my presence in the wee hours of the morning lasted only about 20 minutes, after which I would return to bed. (It's a long story; never mind the details). But more recently, I find myself wide awake by 5.30 and so I stay up. The period between 5 and 7 is now my favourite time of day. I avoid email, facebook, other distractions, am alone, to read, often to lie on the floor and think. It's a good time. Quiet. Or noisy depending on the day, but it's my noise. I find I need this lately. I seem to like people less and less, feel more and more isolated. Alone and quiet or angry or sad but honest, as the sun comes up, is better. It's not necessarily a bad things, just unlike me. It's not the way I /want/ to live. But lies are tiring.

--------

I had dinner last night with a good friend. There are a few people with whom I can be mostly honest (as honest as one can be) and he is one. We find that, by the end of our evenings together, the lull of the ongoing company loosens things, as though we are both a bit drunk on a, perhaps unwise and unsustainable, feeling of safety kindled by mutual frankness. And so we both talk and talk and talk. Last night, at about 10 he proclaimed, triumphantly, that he has rid himself of all Daddy Issues. He is free of such Freudian snares. His sense of victory is, I suspect, unfounded, but listening to him talk about that relationship made me wonder. Maybe it would be easier to know He doesn't love you. Maybe that would lead to less. No love, lower stakes. Less neuroses, less worry, less responsibility, less hurt.

I retain significant Daddy Issues.

Dad: So, how's your love life?
Me: Oh, you know. The usual. A mind-fucking mix of elation and depression topped off with general mistrust. Kinda like I handed my heart over to a manic depressive five-year-old.
Dad: Ha. You and me both babe.

2008-04-22T14:25:00.004-06:00

me (after sending Sarah a picture of my brother's friend's new baby): seriously. how totally incredibly over the top amazing is it that four days ago that was inside someone's belly???

sarah: i have to say, i find animal births a little more amazing. when there's like, 12 that come out, or if it has hooves or something. bighorn sheep babies can outrun a cougar within a week of being born. i think you and i have different biological clocks... mine wants a cloven footed litter of babies. dude. now that i think about it, how amazing would it be if i gave birth to 6 goats or something? wait. it was way more amazing and less weird in my head.

My best friend is awesome. And will hopefully someday be the first woman to give birth to a litter of goats. Let's all cross our fingers.

... but wait! it got even better:

me: okay. that made me laugh lots. can I post your depraved notions of reproduction on my blog?

sarah: but it wasn't depraved, it was the miracle of birth and these little things that are instantly fit for the wild, just ready-made survival machines in moments. just. weirder thinking there are six goat babies in my uterus.
why won't ____ come parent his goat children? They love him. They just want to butt him with their heads and nibble. It's not their fault they're freaky goat-man babies.

2008-04-22T12:45:00.002-06:00

It is a blustery day. I wish suddenly that I owned a copy of Winnie the Pooh's Blustery Day. I haven't read or seen it in years, which is sad. Winnie the Pooh has always been sad for me, even when I was very very young. Nostalgia for... something; I can't put my finger on what. I think that I am sad for the fact that Christopher Robin will leave them behind, that their lives and their characters are utterly dependent on his imagination and so with age they will go back to being stuffed fabric. Even as I watch the action unfold, I am old enough to know that they are, in reality, inanimate. Their personalities are a lie. Piglet doesn't actually speak with a stutter, doesn't speak at all, and Rabbit does not really garden. So there was always an odd sort of betrayal there.

But today seems right for Winnie the Pooh, regardless.

Also, today is my older brother's 26th birthday. 26! We are old. We're supposed to be grown-ups. When did that happen? Did that happen? Where was I? Also, this reminds me that I'm going to be 24! TWENTY FOUR!!! In seven months. I'm pretty sure I should have some things figured out by now.

But this morning was a fabulous breakfast and babies and a good friend. Abdallah is walking! Walking!!! I want one! ...someday. When I'm financially stable. And hopefully married. And infinitely more responsible.

2008-04-21T21:09:00.002-06:00

Holidays are made for reading
And remembering the things that are worth repeating
In the clatter of the afternoon
In the sunlight that is left
We can make a list of things
To forget
the false starts
And the loose strings
The feelings of regret that ring
On a day when you haven't done much of anything

I'm done. And now I have no more excuses not to sort things out.

2008-04-15T16:09:00.003-06:00

It is sunny out. It is also snowing. There is also thunder. I think maybe God fell asleep and the angels are massively underprepared to handle things on their own. Either that or it's the apocalypse. If it's the apocalypse I won't have to finish this paper. That would be nice.

2008-04-14T18:43:00.006-06:00

It starts at 3am. How can he do this to her? After four years. How can he walk away?

By 3:30 she begins to catch on. Is there someone else? There is someone else. How long has this someone else been slowly stealing her life? He is evasive; what use can there be in reviewing details? Surely it is best not to know specifics. What does it matter who she is, where they met, why he fell, first date, first kiss, first coitus; surely this information is not necessary. Surely a sanitized version, dry and factual is all that is required at this juncture. Be reasonable, he says. Be rational.

Just after 4am he leaves, and the night returns to a now eerie silence. It doesn't last. The still breaks as the wall that separates us comes under attack, a slow, methodical attack, by-- from my best estimate, based on the clamour--what was once their dish set. As the minutes tick by the porcelain is transformed, plate by plate, glass by glass, memory of morning coffee by flash of innumerable comfortable dinners, into her mess.

Another silence follows, but is once again short lived. Perhaps she needed something to look at. Perhaps the flood gates would not open until she was able to somehow materialize her shattered world. Broken glass strewn at her feet, the sobbing begins. Frantic, uncontrollable, seemingly dangerous in its intensity. Raw, animalistic.

It goes on for nearly an hour.

I lie a few feet away, on the other side of the wall.

--------------

This morning, I rode downstairs in a packed elevator. The man at the front was listening to what sounded like an audio book. What sounded very loudly like an audio book. What sounded very loudly like an audio book containing the phrase "...he grabbed his stiffy...". What sounded very loudly like an erotic audio book. Oddly I was the only person in the elevator unable to stifle a laugh. Everyone else continued to stare straight ahead.

--------------

In HUB a few days ago Sarah, Ian and I passed an advertisement for the beauty parlor/spa that read: "Spring Cleaning! Brazilians $59.99" Please never let me be the kind of woman for whom spring cleaning consists of removing all of my pubic hair. I'll stick with the more standard scrubbing of the bathroom, dusting of the living room, clearing out of the storage room.

-------------

Also, this semester I did a community service learning component for one of my classes. I ran an art class with seniors and it was... great. More to say about this, but for now a picture is worth a thousand words.

And a recent discovery that came on the heals of an email whose purpose was basically to clarify that homosexuality is indeed a sin. It is in fact one of the gravest of sins. In response:

... in closing, big hugs for: Sarah, Brent, Ian. And Happy Birthday to Noor.

2008-04-06T09:58:00.003-06:00

It snowed yesterday, one of those wonderful frantic snowfalls where the giant flakes are so excited to be descending that they can't even nail down directionality and instead blow upwards and sideways and backwards, in spirals. Like the winter knows its time is nearly up and so it squeezed in one last desperate effort, a final blanketing of snow before spring.

There is a cup lying on its side on my coffee table. It has been lying there for two days. My cat knocked it over on Friday morning, spilling water all over the table and floor. Instead of reacting, picking up the glass, drying the water, I left it. The water will dry eventually, has dried now. This has become, sadly, my attitude towards most things lately. A lazy lethargy has taken over and so instead of reacting to situations as they present themselves, responding to responsibilities as they fall, I remove myself, wait it out until the situation resolves on its own. This, in effect, means I have taken to responding to responsibility through complete inaction, which continues until people lose all faith in me and give up. It's... problematic.

2008-03-30T19:18:00.003-06:00

Wow. Just... wow. My favourite is the 10% stat. Overall ludicrous and offensive, yes, but I particularly love the wording: "a number of sexual partners." What exactly does that mean? I've had a number. I won't disclose the number but it's a number. I guess I'm fair game. I disagree, but I suppose that's a moot point. If I've done it once...