Systemic Surveillance

I am being monitored. Right now. In my own home. This isn't a paranoia of potential conspiracy. I've personally filled the requisition. A few days ago I was very scared of dying.

When Ack, the ex-husband/best friend and I were still together, I remember lying in bed practicing shadow puppets in the cold glow of morning light in a Wedgewood blue room. High in the tower of no Rapunzels. My hair only grows to a certain length and then it breaks off. The root can only sustain a certain weight before releasing. Ack and I shared what was the servant's quarters of the manor originally alloted to York county's Postmaster General. York was the Toronto's previous incarnation. Between shadow-swans flying in, signaling a scene change, I would occasionally check my pulse.

Beat, beat, silence
Beat, silence, beat
Beatbeatbeatbeatbeat
Silence...

It was something I never really paid attention to.
I was 30 years old and impervious to mortality.

When I was 8 years old, lying in bed counting the years before I could legally drive a car or calculating the age I would be in the Year 2000, I would wonder who I would be in the future. I never really wondered what I would do for a living. That didn't really peak my interest. I wondered who I'd be, what I'd believe in, what I'd stand for. I thought about when I'd die. How old would I be? 80? 37?

From an early age I'd heard about freakish cancers that riddled the bodies of young women. Women who neither smoked nor drank even moderately. They exercised, ate sensibly, wore sensible shoes. Were sensible women. Dead at the age of 36 or 37.

Those were Black Magic numbers to this child's mind.

My sister lost her best friend this way.

After the arterial damage I'd more than likely done after a day of bingeing in SE England, I secretly vowed never to eat clotted cream nor attempt a huge portion of bland, tasteless fish with chips again. The pints stay. I draw lines all the time.

Lying prone and as relaxed as possible in my current bedroom, the dawn light maintaining its cold glow until late morning on the day after our return, my heart was both racing and erratic again. Fatty, the love of my life, dialed the number to the official doctor for the Toronto Blue Jays, who also happens to be my GP. Dr. Ron with the excellent bedside manner. Nurse Anne, a registered nurse for as long as I've been alive, answered the phone.

Nurse: Doctor's office.
Comrade: Hi Anne. Um, I'm wondering if I can come in to see Ron.
Nurse: What's the problem?
Comrade: I think it's my heart. It's currently doing a beat, beat, nothing... Beat, beat, beat, nothing... beatbeatbeatbeat, nothing, BEAT!
Nurse: What does it feel like?
Comrade: You know when you're really, really excited about something?
Nurse: Yeah.
Comrade: Or you're really, really anxious about something?
Nurse: Yeah.
Comrade: And you know when you're really scared?
Nurse: Yes?
Comrade: Okay, well, put all of those together and that's what I'm feeling right now. But I'm just lying here in bed. Oh, and add very jumpy and nearly passing out.
Nurse: 1998 was the last time you had a physical!

Strangely, I love her reprimands.

Comrade: Yeeaah. Hm.
Nurse: I've booked you in to see Ron, but in the meantime, please stay off the coffee.
Comrade: [alarm, alarm] Okay.

As soon as someone tells me to avoid something, it becomes fetishized.

Visions of glazed coffee cup bodies on can-can dancer's colourful legs step onto a black stage. With comrade slung cup arms, they perform Rockette-style kicks in line formation. Each thrust of a bit of leg sends hot liquid onto the scratched and dusty floor. Where's my straw?

In the office, Nurse Anne told me about the dozens of hypochondriac calls she fields weekly. They attempt to create appointments for inoculations against the week'sX virus.

Does CNN have a Sweep's Week?

Random Hypochondriac: I heard about the Avian Flu! I think I have it!
Nurse Anne: [in monotone] Why do you think you have it?
Random Hypochondriac: I have a sore throat! I need a shot.
Nurse Anne: First of all, there is no inoculation against this flu. There is something to treat a person after a definite contraction of the virus, but there is no documentation that this treatment actually works. Your doctor doesn't support this shot.
Random Hypochondriac: Well, flu season is coming!
Nurse Anne: Yes, I suppose it is.
Random Hypochondriac: Well, I need a shot!
Nurse Anne: [groaning] You'll have to talk to the doctor first. I'll schedule you in for Tuesday at 11:00.
Random Hypochondriac: 11:00? Tuesday? Is that the earliest?
Nurse Anne: Yes.
Random Hypochondriac: Is there parking?
Nurse Anne: Yes. Across the street.
Random Hypochondriac: How much is it?
Nurse Anne: I... don't... know... click.

Comrade: Nurse Ratched, you're a pillar of tolerance.
Nurse: I'm a crotchety old biddy and I think I need to look for another job.

Being a "good audience" is a reasonable explanation for why people tell me things they don't normally tell other people. This involves ruckus laughter and effusive incredulity. Also, going to the doctor's once every 4 years tends to boost nurses' confidences when it comes to complaining about their patient base of Chicken Littles.

In the white, fluorescent lit examination room taking my pulse at my wrist...
Dr. Ron: I can barely detect anything. I'm going to use the stethoscope.

Great. My heartbeat's as faint as a ghost. I'm dead. I'm dying at least. How much is parking?

Dr. Ron: Can you lift up your shirt, please?
The Comrade (the Prude): Okay. [as she extends the bottom of her t-shirt out towards the cabinetry, exposing nothing.
Dr. Ron: Up, please.

Jesus, he's you're doctor. What the hell's wrong with you.
It's because I'm a bartender and dirty bastards come in all guises.

Case in point: Doug, the Dirty Cop
About 10 years ago I was working at a restaurant in the (then fashionable now corporately trendy) Queen West district. Flanked by 2 girlfriends, who were just friends, was Doug - a 6'4", raven haired, beefy cop in his 30's, with a penchant for gin.

After 3 triple Tanqueray martinis, Doug bade his farewells.

The Comrade: How are you getting home, Doug?
Doug: I'm driving.
The Comrade: No you're not. Give me your keys, you filthy cocksucker. You've had 9 oz of gin.

With 3 splashes of scotch. I don't use vermouth in my martinis.

In his most condescending tone...
Doug: Do you know how much a person needs to drink to blow over?

By "being a good audience", I suppose, Doug let me in on a few trade secrets.
1. Because of his large frame, coupled with his muscle to fat ratio, it takes Doug about 12 oz of liquor to feel much effect. My mistake. I guess it wasn't the booze making him be a condescending cunt.
2. When he pulls someone over for speeding, say, he cautiously approaches the car and sizes up the offender. Employing a scientific method of analysis to the face, body and rack of the transgressor, he will do one of 2 things: A) Write the ticket and deliver demerit points or B) ask the slutty malefactor out. The bigger the rack, the greater the chances of being publicly paraded. I got to see quite a few sheathed DD's.
3. Apparently, what cops look for in a drunk driver is not a weaving all over the road. They look for large variances in speed. Without applying the brakes, a highly suspicious car is one who travels 50kms/hr, then 20, then 60, then 30. All within a short period of time.

Dr. Ron: Yep, well, I hear it. It does sound erratic. It's probably nothing to worry about, but I'm sending you off on a two step process anyway. First you're going to get an EKG. I should have that back by Monday for review. Then I'm sending you to the cardiologist to get fitted for a halter monitor.

Interesting.

EKG Lab Attendant: May I see your Health Card?

My plastic gateway to receiving medical attention is riddled with my maiden name. Remembrances of roll calls past swirled in my head. One reason I keep getting married is to rid myself of a maiden name which is synonymous with penis. After bellowed and repeated mispronouncements of a name I don't respond to anymore, coupled with a mild panic attack, I made a resolve.

Technician [into her computer monitor]: Take off everything above your waist, roll your jeans above your knees and lie down.

She asked me to do this while she was in the room. I never really thought about protocol while in a medical examination situation before. Sure, my gynecologist goes eye to sacred portal, but she still allows me a private opportunity to undress and sheath myself with the provided paper coversome.

The technician never said:
This will only take a minute.
Please don't move during the procedure.
This is what I'm going to do. Or,
This is what this test is designed for.

With a bedside manner best suited for cadavers, this technician hooked me up to impulse wires with the gentle touch a farmer reserves for plucking chickens.

Technician: We'll have to do the test again.

The computer can't detect my heartbeat. I'm dying. I'm dying.
In the last 3-5 years I've said, "I'm okay to die," at least 20 times. I've meant it each time. I've felt my life fulfilled enough to leave this Earth, content to travel in my astral body for eternity. If that's how it pans out. What I never considered before was leaving anyone

Like Fatty
Or Ack
Or Chicken behind me.

Technician: Why are you crying? It's normal!

I don't think any person has the right to question the response of another.

When I was a child I used to think there were a finite number of beats a heart would possess before giving out. Commencing countdown. Engine's on... There's still a part of me that believes this. What if we do, joggers? Adrenaline junkies? Death-defying tightrope walkers?

Ack once told me a fact. Well, he's full of facts, really. Some are useless, some are useful. I suppose it depends on the person. He'd read somewhere that humans should only fly, at most, once a year. This makes sense to me. At a dinner party I once attended, there was an invited guest who crosses continents as often as I go to and from work. He is on prescribed heart medication that thins blood. Most doctors will agree that the position one remains in while travelling for prolonged periods creates a pooling effect in the legs. As I sit in half lotus position most of my sitting life, this doesn't happen to me. I have a theory of my own.

I believe that the human body is not meant to go faster than the speed in which one's own limbs can propel. Running and cycling will not produce adverse effects. But automobiles, trains and airplanes travel at speeds which our bodies cannot relate to; do not have a proper refresh rate regenerator. And what about the elevator operators of the world?

The flying lines from one hamlet to the next, as correctly identified as my labour of love by my darling Spider, totalled 15,137.6315 km from airport to airport.

I am no physicist, but we are being hurtled into space.

The Comrade: [to select close friends] Dudes! I get to wear a racy little halter top that charts the activity of my heart for a 24 hour period. THEN I return it back to the lab where it gets processed producing a perfect 24 hour readout! Technology! What will they think of next?

Q: Will it look à la Heather Graham in Boogie Nights? Or something Victoria Secret-y?

Disappointment Factor: The Holter, though pronounced halter, named after Dr. Norman J. Holter, was not a slinky top full of nanotechnology - something 7 of 9 would have catwalked.

From skin's surface I was cleansed with rubbing alcohol, scraped with sandpaper and adhered with jellied snaps connecting to colourful wires at 5 locations on my chest. The Holter, a beige plastic box fueled by one ordinary AA battery, is tucked into my bra. For 24 hours I am part robot.

Under constant surveillance.

Dr. Ron: It's probably nothing to worry about.

It did make me think about my own existence and my eventual absence.

My resolve:
If/when I go out, I don't want to do so with the name I was born with. I will go with my given name because I feel it is who I am. I may have been born with my family's name, but I'm not leaving this Earth with it. Being invited into both my best friend and boyfriend's families, I've finally seen that even the most loving family is almost entirely fucked up. It strangely fills me with peace. In their dysfunction, however, there is never a moment when any party feels less loved or less than cherished. This fills me with resentment.

With a clear determination, 2 pieces of identification, a utility bill and my marriage certificate to Ack, the ex-husband/best friend/chosen family, I went to the Ministry of Health offices to have any previous clan's affiliation removed. I will die with my chosen family's name. Fatty's promised to take care of it. Ack would too, but he's still away on vacation.

A rose by any other name would still be as thorny.

Whatever the number, 37 or 80, my care will be left with my two apt gardeners who know my thorns protection, my fragrance sweet and the roots that can only sustain a certain weight before releasing.

It's probably just heartburn anyway.

Appetite Suppressant

The 3 words, the ones we cannot live without when in any significant relationship, weren't uttered from my mother until I was about 30, I think. I'd imagined I would be more shocked than I was when I did finally hear them. I'm convinced she tried this sentence out on me as a homework assignment from one of her English as a second language courses. I thought she'd get more use out of it than one of the words they were teaching her: roundabout. We don't have roundabouts in Canada. But boy, while in England, did I marvel at how deft the people maneuvered their way around those things. I forgave her teacher for creating a lesson plan around an object my mother would more than likely never use, only by virtue of teaching her how to verbally express a good feeling.

Taking the back of my hand, sliding it up from the base of Fatty's jaw to upper cheek region...

The Comrade: You know what that is?
Fatty: What?

That was how my mother expressed love before entering that class. The other non-verbal way she expressed love was by plying me with food. Somewhere between my mother and the path I've chosen, I've learned that food = love and the removal of ready food = abandon. Goddamned monkey brain.

Now, no matter where I go, be it cottaging, camping, vacationing or working out of house for over a 12 hour period, there is a strange response which flashes its impulse from the nucleus of my simian brain: I don't know when I'll eat again. Panic, panic... I have to eat something now! I could placed in a foreign environment where anything could happen, really. Locusts could swarm in, laying eggs all over my packed picnic basket of assorted meats and cheeses. With one bite of gorgonzola, incubated in active bacterium, I could then be host, sustaining life of a new breed of organism - some biological hazard which looks like a humanoid/crustacean cross with giant, half-cocked robotic grasshopper legs. The scourge would eat like Jared before he discovered Subway, destroy/devouring everything in its banquet wake.

Hm. Seems like the Amsterdam hash has had some residual effects.

As an off-shoot, a more forgiving fact while in foreign lands, is the urgency I have to explore certain culinary phenomena.

Really? You take the lining of a creature's stomach and create soup with it?
This I will say yes to.
Are you sure this is the national dish? (Anything)
Again, yes please.
Ack (the ex-husband/best friend): Hey! There's pig's knee on the menu!
Occasionally a line is drawn.

For me, eating a nation's indigenous dish feels much like receiving communion. This is the body and blood of, well, the land. With each swallow, I am less Hawaiian shirt wearing, zinc applied (on olfactory receptor bridge) or Canon decorated. I hate feeling like a tourist.

No matter how effusive, charming or inquisitive one is, in most parts of the world tourists aren't truly embraced. I'm not thinking of Amsterdam when I say this, because of all the places I've visited in this world, I've never seen this before:

Stopping on a corner for exactly 4 seconds, Fatty and I looked up and to the left once and then to each other.
... Out of the shadows in Amsterdam's Leidseplein District stepped

Random Helpful Amsterdamian: [whose cape was at the cleaners] I am a resident! May I be of assistance?!

This or a variation of this happened more times than I can count. It became almost freakish.

At home I am a practicing ambassador of my city. This was something I learned the importance of years ago while solo trekking in Costa Rica.

About to mount my rented 250cc scooter, I was hand-drawn a map of the region by an emigré (ex-pat); a treasure map showing marvels reserved only for locals. Travelling at 110km with only a sundress on, I caught flies in my teeth that day from smiling so much. This was the trip where I learned how pineapples grow.

Travellers will remember a place not so much from the experience of the land, though this one was laden with experience, as from the interaction of its people. Remembrance good and bad.

Visiting Prague 6 years ago with Ack, the then husband, now ex-husband/best friend:

The Comrade: I don't think they like me.
Ack: Why do you say that?
The Comrade: From all the hate shooting from their eyes.
Ack: You're just imagining it.

Years ago I nearly pursued post production sound editing for film as a career choice. I love sound. Every single sound you hear in a movie has been layered and inserted by no less than 3 different sound editors. When a park scene is shot, a reverberating bounce sound is perfectly synched to its companion basketball dribbling in the foreground. It's inserted along with traffic noise, the sound of a bunch of 6 year olds playing tag and the footsteps of the hero guy just about to step into frame. All of these separate and layered sounds are found in sound libraries. They're as intricate and vast as the myriad colours detectable by the eye. They're all layered together rather painterly.

What I learned in this process was that every city has a unique sound. New York sounds very different from San Francisco which sounds very different from Venice which sounds completely unlike Toronto. What I discovered travelling this time was that every city left me with a different feeling. Amsterdam left me strangely aroused.

Amsterdam is notorious for its permissiveness. Visitors go for the drugs, for their Red Light District. I found the former refreshing and responsibly used on the most part. The latter was a bit lurid for this prude's taste: window shopping for human flesh fantasy. A glint of aureola playing peekaboo behind neoprene. Bathed in black light, the real mannequins' smiles were niet-menselijk. But still they beckoned with their eyes, their smiles, a single vermillion talon. Some would enter. The velvet curtain would coyly close, reading as a cross between ultimate danger and promise of a satisfied customer. The cold white tiled room could be used by a dentist in the daytime. Plaque, or any other self-produced protein, receiving the same disinfectant hosing at the end of business day, after the last panting customer exited and the Open sign flipped to Closed by a soft, manicured hand.

It was all above board. And that's alright.

But it was what I didn't know about Amsterdam prior to going that probably led to its arousement in me.

Everyone rides bicycles. I don't mean hepped up mountain bikes or hybrids. They ride heavy, upright, beautiful town riders. All of them. They are not unique from each other, though they are unique to the place. Single professionals in all age brackets to or from work, on their way to to the ballet. Families of 4 on a single 2 wheeled, non-motorised vehicle; children on handlebars, on crossbars, on after-market footrests positioned just above derailleurs. No man, woman nor child wore a single helmet. They know that concrete is the ultimate teacher.

I saw a kid wipe out. The mother stood there watching for a second. Waiting for the lesson to sink into the child. She then crouched down, hugged her little one and when the tears subsided she explained where her daughter made the misjudgment. And she got right back on her bike, still brave, but a little wiser. I loved the parenting style there.

When I was in Prague this time I saw a family of Japanese tourists. In Prague's core there is no concrete. There is only cobblestone. Cobblestone is like a con-artist. It's a no good teacher. It's too deliberate in its shiftiness. A little girl was holding a plastic shopping bag, one that nearly grazed the ground when she walked upright. She tripped on the cobblestone, wiping out. A shock even to a spectator. Her father walked away from her. She moved in a slow motion as only wounded children do. The only motion in regular speed was the screwed up expression of pained horror on her face. Her mother stepped in, crouched down in front of her daughter and hugged her own knees. The girl, in her 4 years of existence, had learned that her mother's arms made meals, carried loads of laundry, covered her own eyes when napping, but never did they embrace to console. The little girl had to go around and hug her mother from behind; to console herself.

And I wondered why Japan as a nation has so many suicides.

10s of millions of visitors a year.
Prague.
A more beautiful Baroque city one might never see.
The city of 100 steeples
And thousands of ghosts.

I never thought I'd return to the Czech Republic.

Though their beer was exemplary, their food was entirely beige. Their city was beautiful, but their people wore krabice (a Czech word for box-mouth, or an expression-free zone coupled with a look of distain in their eyes). 6 years ago they had 2 separate pricing systems: one for locals and one for tourists.

I didn't think that was fair.

But Fatty, the love of my life, has never been there. And Ack was visiting his mother, whom I'm quite fond of (particularly since she's no longer my mother-in-law). She owns property in the countryside.

I am no polygot by any stretch of the imagination. Ask my mother. Because of my unique route, acknowledging finally that food is the essence of life, the expression of love, I can be placed in most parts of the world and never grow hungry. I speak restaurantese. Talents of any modicum of multi-linguistics have only surfaced from my fierce survival instinct. That and my gift of mimicry.

Much to his annoyance coupled with a secret twinge of delight, I can do impersonations of Ack's entire family. Including Ack.

Wonderful things can happen when you're playing or gently poking fun of your best friend and his family. It took me my return to the Czech Republic to discover that over the better part of 10 years, from sheer poking fun, I'd actually picked up enough of the Czech language to not only prevent myself or anyone I was with from starving, but also to A) explain to a hotel waiter that Fatty had too many Slivovice (a national drink consumed in shots) the night prior to come down for breakfast and B) make a Customs Officer do a double take, asking (in Czech), "What the hell were they teaching in Canadian schools?"

After a most luxuriant bus ride, if that's not an oxymoron, from the Czech countryside to Prague proper, I had tucked a recovering aforementioned hungover Fatty into a king sized bed and took to cobblestone streets alone. To visit:The Museum of Communism.




I expected to see kitschy propaganda posters,
Giant Lenins and Stalins.
I wasn't disappointed.
I wasn't really surprised to see field workers depicted as proud, flag waving, fierce bronze casts alongside soldiers and political leaders.
I meandered into the darkened room where, decorated with the emblematic hammer and sickle, a video portion of the years preceding the Velvet Revolution played on a loop.

Regime after regime taking over their land.
Occupying Prague's castle, a pensive Hitler gazed upon his new land.
Where no money remained for the People to eat, sustaining life,
Funds were allocated for a bronze statue of Stalin destined for a local park.
Which no longer exists.
Which neither Stalin nor the designer saw upon completion.
The former died 1.5 years prior.
The latter committed suicide.

When I was teasing my hair in the 80's
A young student set himself on fire in Good King Wenceslaus' Square.
He ended his own life for the freedom of his People.

From his ashes germinated the Velvet Revolution,
A peaceful demonstration
Which reached a half million in demonstrators.

The tanks designed for enemies
Pointed at their own People.
The military positioned
For Your Protection™
Poised to rid you of surplus supplies
Like life.

The location which I forfeited 5 years of vegetarianism, hunkering down on street dog, was visited again after I left that museum. Where there now exist 4* hotels, sklo (glass) shops and brasseries, tanks rolled. Human rights and life were beaten out of them. Blood still binds their cobblestone like mortar.

I didn't know.

I was a tourist.

We're the locust scum. We are. We come to lands and for an indefinite period of time we take over their streets. With any number of cohorts, we subject locals to customs which may or may not be honed from our respective homes, or worse, inflict them with behaviours we wouldn't dare perform at home.

The weekend we were in Prague, a multitude of Dutch tourists clad in inmate orange coveralls, exited planes and took to the streets. Holland was playing the Czech Republic in an important soccer match. The helpful people we'd experienced in Amsterdam charged, en masse, as Agent Orange.

[Interesting to note, Agent Orange was manufactured by the Czechs]

They took to their streets in mob fashion. Sang their own nation's songs. They came to win. They came to goose their women. And they went home to parade their booty.

But they know their economy needs us, so they put up with the shenanigans.

The last time I remember feeling as much reverence was a practiced one from being in a House of the Lord. This time I was full from the experience. This time I was let in on a secret; a horrible, horrible secret that they don't want to talk about anymore. They want to forget the whole thing ever existed.

But they can't let it pass.

What would it be like if they swept the Holocaust under the rug?

I am happy to have returned to have seen the krabice morph into an easier smile. To see the People less fearful of being taken over by a new regime. To be inquisitive of other cultures. To finally feel free enough to ask questions. To talk to others unfettered by the possibility of being snitched on, because at one time that was their civic duty. Rats were rewarded for their rodent behaviour.

Mostly I learned to be a better visitor. To treat each place I visit reverently. To not be so self-absorbed because sometimes it's got nothing to do with me. Sometimes a nation is so haunted by its ghosts they seep through cracks in cobblestones to remind the very, very fortunate.

It Went Something Like This

In the Beginning: England, England

I haven't written about my experience abroad yet because I wanted to give myself some time to allow the experience of travelling to sink in. It's been 6 days. According to some, or most in the country just south of me, an entire world had been created in 6 days. As a puny mortal, I need time to allow dust to settle, experience to penetrate.

I don't think there's any way I can capture the 18 days of experiences within a single post. A) I'd be here for about a week. B) It would be as long as a city block. I think it best that I write about it in chunks.

Historically, I've had few reasons supporting the absolute need to travel: work burnout; a dullness in perception, subsequently welcoming any new thing; a weariness regarding my environment - either being sick of the sight of the local yokels or, given enough dreary days, Toronto's communist carry-over architecture. With an airline ticket in hand, I've tended to perform a psychological warm-up a few days preceding take off. The usual manifestation includes, but is not limited to, being caustic at work and/or at home. Interesting to note (to self): It didn't happen this time. The days prior were like a mirage.

4 countries in 18 days.
Still hard to fathom.

In the past when I've been fortunate enough to have the means to travel, I'd considered the experience to be wholly for mine own pleasure. How many experiences can I cram into a week? For years, on a day to day basis, I'd denied myself experiences or treats only allowing these things for myself in the rare moments of travel. Reasoning? Petty enjoyment was allowed during an allocated respite, but not for regular times. Regular defined as: a lifetime of panicking while pursuing serious work. When travelling I shamelessly watch people; repeatedly splurge on espressos; go on excursions; eat like a queen; not worry. The question always on my tongue when I return to Canadian soil has always been: How can the experiences gleaned from travel be incorporated into my life at home?

I didn't ask myself this question when I returned home. Things have changed for me in the recent years, mostly because I've learned that serious work isn't something I'm cut out for. Panicking does nothing more than make my newly discovered irregular heartbeat extra-terrestrial. I still seek new experience, but not in the way I'd imagined.

I've eaten the best food in the best restaurants, sipped the finest wines, the most exemplary beers and the most kick ass coffee in the most astonishing environments. But not everyday. Not every year. I feel lucky to report if it's once over a lifetime. I realised that at home I don't give myself every little whim thing, but I no longer feel I deny myself anything. So, what can happen when a person is want for nothing material, but still craves experience? Still feels the old pull of bringing her experience home with her?

During a visit to W.H. Smith, an English bookseller, a book reached its pulpy fingers out to grab me. Kate Fox's Watching the English. The author is a self professed ethno-anthropologist. Travelling to different countries, she studies the behaviour, customs and unspoken etiquette of the nation's peoples. Being British herself and genuinely fascinated by her own culture, she's compiled a book about the bizarre, but to me imminently charming, behaviour of her own people.

Like queuing up.

The Brits have a natural instinct to stand in a line, conceivably for hours at a time. Even if there is no visible queue they will create a line of one. They also don't tip. They will buy the bartender a drink, but they won't make a big deal about it because any talk of money is vulgar to them.

The idea of watching people to gain a deeper understanding of where they've come from to be who they are at a random moment of witness, is who I am fundamentally. To find a through line that bridges gaps from one culture to the next, that makes us wholly individual, yet inescapably, commonly human, is what I feel I've been placed on this Earth for. The bridging of gaps. The understanding of past leading to present, informing future.

But I was still on vacation.

Before we left for the European Family/Friends Tour of 2005, I created a set of expectations. Loose as they were, they were expectations of the flesh. Eating and drinking like locals is always my mandate when abroad. I hope upon hopes that the only people inside the McDonalds found in every major city we visited were locals and not travellers. I don't respect myself much when I turn my nose up to cuisine I wouldn't normally suss out. But getting combo #3, or whatever the McChicken combo is, while out of district, is, to me, on par with xenophobia to the Bush degree.

In England I found myself performing an action I've never demonstrated before.
Clutching my heart in hopes to prevent further chest pains.

Potential Causes:
Traditional English Breakfast consisting of 2 fried eggs, 3 pieces of toast slathered with butter and jam, 3 kinds of pork, sautéed mushrooms, fried tomato, 2 jugs of orange juice, 2 pots of coffee.
Selection of cheeses, pâtés, ales
Cream Tea. This is a tradition in the Devon region. A cup of tea served with 2 enormous freshly baked scones, homemade strawberry jam and clotted cream (which one is supposed to pile high enough that, upon first bite, whipped matter, the leading cause of UK coronaries, enters both nostrils simultaneously).
Some bland/tasteless fish that was allegedly grilled, but looked closer to boiled, served with chips (fries) and peas. Total weight of plate= 3 lbs.
3 pints

All within a 6 hour period of consumption

The Comrade: So, this seizing feeling? The kind that's redolent of Freddy Kruger shoving his hand into my chest and repeatedly fanning, FANNING his fingers? Is this heartburn?
Fatty: Hm. I don't know. Mine feels more like burning.
The Comrade: I think I need a walk.
Uncle Eric: What you need is a scotch.

Uncle Eric.

85 years old
Former Shell Oil lifer
Conservative to the nth degree

The Comrade: [at dinner at the local pub] Would anyone like to try my fish? (Subtext: This bland/tasteless wonder)
Uncle Eric: I never mix meat with fish nor seafood.
The Comrade: I suppose you fancy yourself a bit of a purist then?
Uncle Eric: [slipping it on like a glove] Yes! Yes, I suppose I am a purist.
Aunty Annie: I find it rather sad that he never wants to share anything I'm having.
The Comrade: Eric! Share with your wife!
Uncle Eric: She orders what she likes and I order what I like.
The Comrade: So, the concept of surf and turf is lost on you?
Uncle Eric: Only fools mix. [He says as I pile bland/tasteless fish onto Fatty's plate of bland/tasteless meat]
The Comrade: You know, Eric. There is a fine line between purist and curmudgeonly old coot!

Silence for exactly 5 seconds
Then (gratefully) an eruption...
of the good sort.

I met him 15 minutes prior to this transaction.
Ah, yes. Making friends and influencing people again.
But what I learned later was that Uncle Eric's curmudgeonly self was never challenged. He was simply allowed to bully his wife, be nothing more than a spoiled little boy often. Fatty's Aunt Annie looked at me like a scientist looks at a lab rat.

After a rousing game that Fatty initiated: pin the accusing finger on the multinational, the aforementioned oil company not excluded, Eric accused Fatty of looking bright but being stupid. Fatty was looking at me for support. Sitting in their parlour, one room of many in their manor, a manor furnished and secured by the Shell company, I knew nothing I could say could sway this man's opinion. To the day he dies, he will maintain he was honoured to have worked at such a fine company. Poor Fatty didn't think I was supporting him though. I thought I'd make it up to him later.

Uncle Eric: [12:30am according to his (unfurnished by Shell) watch] Well, it's bedtime!
Fatty: Um, Uncle Eric? Do you mind if we duck outside to have a cigarette before we go upstairs?
Uncle Eric: No, I'm tired. [with a wink] Just smoke out the window, eh?

This seemed better than bundling up and shivering outside.

The Comrade: Is it so cold in here or is it just me?
Aunt Annie: We turn the heat off at exactly 10:30 every night.
The Comrade: Oh.
Uncle Eric: And from your bedroom, don't walk downstairs, whatever you do!
The Comrade: Why?
Uncle Eric: I'm turning on the alarm. Anyone on the stairs will trip it.

All of a sudden I felt like I would never be fed again. That the jailer would forget about us.

Fatty: Let's just go to bed.

Twin frozen ice floes masquerading as Mary and Dick Van Dyke's single bed scenarios were never to reach the Titanic to iceberg reality that evening. The doorway to the ensuite bathroom was the insurance policy.

The other policy, the one I've grown up with in understanding the English, has been one of No sex, please. We're British. It makes sense if only by virtue of the fact that, well, they're not having sex, so why should we? It's not our bunker. It's the only explanation for their rigidity when it comes to bedtime and restricted wandering about in the middle of the night.

Curmudgeonly as he was, Uncle Eric is okay with me, though.
And he was bang on about the scotch.

They're not all rigid. Some are very permissive. Some, like the fellow we made the 5 hour flight, followed directly by a 5.5 hour bus trek, for in the first place.

Fatty's grandfather, Granbobby, must be taking Viagra. He drives like Mario Andretti, takes stairs two at a time, smiles constantly and I think I saw him goose his wife a couple of times. He wears hearing aids in both ears, not from old age, but as a consequence of being a bomber during WWs I & II. He turns his hearing aids down or off when he doesn't want to bother listening to people who probably don't have much to say. I think it's the secret to his marital success.

Granbobby: Where are you going?
The Comrade: Well, I thought I'd peruse your garden as I smoked a cigarette.
Granbobby: You smoke? Well!

He said, as he delightfully pulled out his package of rum dipped Colts and escorted me to the conservatory, a much nicer word than sunroom. With pride, a large hand-cut crystal ashtray was gently placed in the center of the designated smoking table next to my glass of sherry.

God save the Queen!

He laughed at all my jokes, including the ones he didn't hear; escorted me crawling from one fine pub to the next, not daring to let me enter a seedy one.
90 years old.
He's the one Fatty looks like the most.
I miss him like mad.

With the generous aid of extended family, we had pints in real British pubs, ate a fine curry, gingerly walked through pastures where wild ponies graze, to skip through moors that led to old granite mining sites. We saw real English weather. I've never seen as many sheep in my culminated life. It was like a Greek man's wet dream.

Thinking about Kate Fox, the ethno-anthropologist, as much as I think I'd like to be her, or something like her, the best I can muster is a comment on the individuals I meet. Evidently there are culturally unique attributes that every region of the world has, but I can't comment on them. I see the stuff that bridges one human to the next. And that's okay with me.

I knew I'd love England. As Canada is part of the Commonwealth and had been a little part of the British Empire™ for most of its life, the English had left their brand on my homeland. We say sorry quite a bit and we're generally very polite people. Generally. Like right proper hooligans, a term derived by the British, we don't mind a scrap here and there, though. Depending on the situation, of course.

Hm. I think I'm discovering my roots, more and more.

A Note for Capitalist Intent

We arrived safely back from our European adventure late yesterday afternoon. Nineteen days of travelling abroad is something entirely (please give generosity to the following pun) foreign to me. My previous limit had been 9 days. And what do I come home to?

13 phone messages
65 emails
15 comments on my last post

All of which were riddled with advertising.

I'd said in the past I would not delete a comment. Deep within this labyrinth, embedded in certain wormholes, there exist comments which have tried to lambaste, reprimand and ridicule me. All of these stay because they were someone's truth at the time. As much I value the opinion of others, though will argue a point if I see fit, I find myself now needing to add an amendment.

This site will not act as a billboard for other's obvious greed masqueraded as mere commerce, or worse, putting food on the table. I don't wear obvious labels, unless it's my new pair of Camel (the cigarette company) shoes. The only reason I bought these shoes?

Would you like to see my camel toe?

So, sellers of cheap airport parking, effective methods of hunting unsuspecting and undeserving prey, deodorizers for pet waste, widgets and pyramid schemers...

Fuck off.
You've got the wrong place.
The gutter's just down the road.
Go hock your lugie down there.