[ love and comraderie ]

And At the Sound of the Bell Beep Turn the Page, Please

2009-08-02T00:02:00.001-04:00

There's been a whack of days that has brought more dense cloud cover, with all its humidity, and downpour to the region of late. The flora love it and so do I. Well, maybe not the humidity, but the monsoons, I love. It washes the filthy land that the lovely ayis (a really nice way of addressing the nice Chinese women who clean up the crap you may or may not have contributed to) try to keep tidy. They put things back to where they should go.

I'm doing the right thing.
I'm doing the right thing.
I'm doing the right thing.
(right?)

Brute force threats of torrential rain turn my bra straps into Vulcan-like death grips. Godspeed You! Black Emperor pounds my amygdala. The alternative is rapid-fire Chinese in sharp, staccato, crescendo forte bursts. It is always the signal that a meeting among Chinese teachers is 2 minutes to close. Gosh, I'll miss those.

School's out for summah!
School's out for evah!

This year's curtain call leaves me with a mixture of gladness, sadness, excitement, and a bit of irritable bowel. A full stop was placed at the end of my tenure of my first and only job I've had abroad here in China. Specifically Suzhou.

Home of the canals. Aortic canals, the breeding grounds of the world's stealthiest (!) mosquito. But they bring about the most dazzling displays of dragonflies, one insect that I'd like to be if I could choose the next biosuit. Suzhou, a place whose dialect first sounded more Kling-on-mid-fight-scene than Earthbound. Suzhou, a place that when I'd first arrived had seemed soulless, mean-spirited, void of any culture, and peppered with people that were mostly concerned with the accumulation of generally useless but really shiny stuff.

One of the reasons I moved to this country was to find my place in the world, because the place I'd called home my entire life stopped feeling particularly homey. Communities were dissolving into single family unit insularity. Self-reliance, the new cooperative. The magical street that I grew up on, where all kids were allowed to freely play or roam into any neighbour's house to raid refrigerators for spoonfuls of leftover spaghetti sauce (yum!), or freezers to split a popsickle with a best friend, can now be carbon dated. Invitations, once only sent out for events that required requisite pretty party shoes, were now needed for "play dates". They do that here among some rich, white people, but more often than not kids just roam free, exploring their neighbourhoods.

I also came to this new country in hopes to find my people.

I was explaining to a 4 year old the other day that nearly everything about her was in a state of growth; her arms, her legs, her fingers, her nose, her heart. But the one thing that wouldn't grow any bigger was her eyes. And even though she'd grow up to see things beautiful, disgusting, and all things in between, her eyes would stay the same size, even when she got as big as me.

For the most part, my "people" are 3-6 year olds. To this set, there is nothing but wide eyed acceptance of any scheme, nutty or otherwise. Everything except vegetables sounds great. And their self-esteem is so malleable at this stage that you can override a bad installed program and swap it with one that's Sky's the Limit, Baby™.

I'm still marvelling at how one job was at once the easiest, yet hardest, most fulfilling, often thankless, whirlwind love affair this person has ever experienced. I remember once worrying about the sudden torrents of tears, sweat, pee, snot and blood that I would suddenly be covered in. Mom is an obsessive-compulsive hand washer, so some things rub off. I eventually developed an immunity to the kaleidoscope of DNA that was produced by the collection of creatures who either fell, or found that the hardest thing in the whole world was to share, or say sorry, or to give a hug after they had personally caused another pain. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a greatest fan of repetition, but there is one thing I never get tired of: explaining the merits of fair play and the absolute valour involved in great friendship.

There was the gaining of a new posse of righteous chicks to run with. A gang of beautiful, interesting, occasionally troubled, but luckily questioningly introspective, girls. Maybe I was the only one, but I marvelled at how fast it was to fall in love with them. Just like with children. Being around the right women feels like being towel dried/hugged by your Mom. And when we're being honest with ourselves and each other, true epiphanies get eked out.

For most of my life, against whatever odds, I've searched for that person who I could be with forever and ever, 'til death did us in. But experience and too many National Geographic videos in succession proved otherwise. Love was simply the vehicle for furthering the species.

Sure there were the rare examples of absolute faith and fidelity. But magic is often the first thing that gets pummelled out of you. Santa's got a B&E record that spans the globe; the Tooth Fairy, who has painstakingly built her fortress, moat and all, entirely of tiny, enameled pearls, finally gets done in by a scourge of gingivitis and a planted crack pipe. They are legion. But it's the one where the girl lives happily ever after with her prince which had largely dominated the imagination of this one for the longest period of time.

And though the arms and legs and other bits grew magnificently well,
Sometimes the only thing the eyes grow are dim.
And sometimes the light goes completely out.

But nothing lasts forever
(admittedly a nihilistic sounding phrase).
Rather, nothing remains the same,
Gratefully.
If you're really lucky, there are those that come around that shake hope back into you.

And I'm a lucky girl.

In truth, I sort of implicitly asked for that gorgeous monkey and exactly the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

At my farewell party, my other boss, Qian Bing sat next to me. Well, he actually had little choice as my hand kept patting the seat next to mine, calling him over like a chihuahua. We were talking about when we first met. It was during my job interview.

Me: You didn't like me.
Qian Bing: That's not true.
Me: Yan told me!
Qian Bing: I'd just never met anyone like you before, so I didn't know where to put you. We couldn't understand all the goodness that you possess. To the Chinese, it takes time to understand natures and personalities. There was nothing that was ever wrong with you; you've got a killer personality. It was us who needed to adapt.

Jeez.

And then he said, "Enjoy your adventure. If you're having a great time, please don't forget about us. But if you're not having a great time, please come home. We will always be here with open arms."

Sob.

I'm leaving home
Again.

Ah, it will work out.

I'm moving to Chengdu, Sichaun (Szechwan), People's Republic of freakin' China, where I will be studying Chinese at a university; I will buy a guitar (or ukulele, I can find one); learn how to play the former, or keep practising the latter; and I'd like to work with some of the children that were affected by the monstrous earthquake that hit the region in May 2008.

Though I find myself so incredibly attached to this place that I had once dismissed as soulless, mean-spirited, void of any culture, and peppered with people that were only concerned with the accumulation of mostly useless but shiny stuff. It's not that way, largely. I didn't understand them yet. I just needed time to get to know them.

I just needed to adapt.

Grateful to be here.

Ready, Steady... Go!

2009-08-01T23:59:00.002-04:00

I'm just going to start.

Though I have a natural propensity to want to document chronologically, I'm afraid I can't. I haven't been keeping the whole thing up. I've been busy doing some other stuff. And having a great time.

Okay, so after a 2 year hiatus, here's something.

The Great Firewall

2007-08-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

This is a test.

This is only a test.

Pulse Check

2007-06-07T19:03:00.000-04:00

By clasping two conductive metal handlebars, information is sent to a stroboscopic light source, which shoots an illuminating representation of your* infernal throbbing into the cool night's sky.

A wonderful exhibit at Harbourfront that is on until June 11th, 2007.

* In this case, my wonderful friend Barbara Anne.

38 Going On 39

2007-05-28T13:38:00.001-04:00

I was in the middle of a useful Chinese lesson, learning how to say, Who farted? when Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend called. He wanted to lubricate himself in preparation for a meeting he had scheduled with a banker later that evening. Though I don't have much money to spend on non-essentials right now, pints and burgers are one combination that I find kind of hard to pass up. Besides, I don't have that much time left in Toronto. And Ack is my best friend.

The Comrade: I'll be ready in 7 minutes.

I've been having a huge problem with banks these days. Just to access my pittance, I have to either maintain a really high balance or pay a monthly double digit figure just for the convenience of accessing said pittance. But only to a degree, because some corporate body decides for me how much of my own money I can access daily. They tell me things like, "Oh, it's for your own good. It's a safety measure, just in case someone tries to hold you up at the bank machine."

Say you have a lot of money and a kid. And say one day you found your kid missing and in his place was a ransom note. You couldn't just go to the bank and say, "I'd like $20 million in small, unmarked bills, please" and get it A) on the same day or B) without paying a shitload of money for your own money. There are people who have the sole job of brokering transfers of unimaginable sums. This process can take up to a week. Ack's new friend has this job.

Ack had met the banker some months back through a friend and his new girlfriend. An aerial photograph of their double date looked sort of like a Audi shaped quadrangle represented by two towering Bay Street power women up front, strung loosely to a couple of puny film pawns in last year's H&M. A small Minolta capture of the big city zeitgeist.

I'd written about Ack's friend a couple of years ago. He's a writer, director, producer. He was the one who was disappointed with Tim Burton's scrambled eggs. He'd stolen an idea from me and used it, without my permission, in a script he'd pitched to the CBC. I'd called him the Applier because he was the one who made a play for me in Ack's house when our bellies were full of his chili and beer. After a flat refusal, I'd suggested we go down the street for a public drink in a neighbourhood bar. At one end of the L shaped bar, I was busy thumb wrestling with an old friend. At the other, the Applier was putting new moves on a young lady he'd just met with Crystal Gayle length hair. It's good to know that some aren't deterred by a little rejection.

Within a week a conundrum loomed.

Crystal Gayle turned out to be exactly half amazing and half annoying.

Amazing
• equipped with an undulating vagina that does all the work for you. Time to recline!

Annoying
• calls several times during regular business hours to tell you about who she went to the zoo with, losing a hair elastic, what she ate, etc.

Amazing
• makes delicious and nutritious fruit smoothies in the morning

Annoying
• blares Kid Rock as an accompaniment to the smoothie

Eventually, annoying won. To get rid of her he rented a stack of ill fated romance movies, looking for break up dialogue. Apparently, the crème de la crème was: I need my space, baby..

This guy has actually sold scripts, plural.

Most recently, the Applier had been caught and released by one of the Bay Street power women. She sent him back to again fight his way upstream alongside all the other minions. He didn't understand it. Act III had been rewritten and got final approval. Look! It says right here on page 174: They lived happily ever after! They did, dammit!

The Comrade: So, this time she needed her Space Baby?

On an outing a few days ago, Ack and his banker friend got a lecture from the freshly dumped and newly embittered Applier, who now had to write an epilogue to his magnum opus. The satellite photo revealed the Audi replaced by a rusted tricycle, with half ravaged streamers and a tiny corroded license plate bearing "Xanadu".

According to the Applier, there are some women who have never been in love before; who have never left their safe circle of friends; who trade superficial, cursory relationship stocks while sipping Cosmos and tapping Charles Jourdans. If it pans out, great. If not, it's no big loss. It would never be a real investment, just a fun penny stock. These women are pleasant enough, sweet even, but lacking real substance.

Facebookers.

Because there's nothing really special about her, and she's been known to spout the mantra We Have An Obligation to Our Shareholders, without a hint of irony,

Ack: I've got to break it off with the Banker.

Neither a shareholder, nor a client with unimaginable sums of money, Ack was simply prospecting.

We started with a pitcher of Stella.

The patio was filled with the same daily regulars, the ones who continue to pay off owner Dharam's mortgage and to set aside his childrens' educational nest egg. As it was a statutory holiday, these people had clocked in early to enjoy a full day of sun. The only variance amongst them was their differing degrees of pinkness.

There was a couple I'd never seen before. Aged hipsters with hair-do's and humungous designer sunglasses (I almost wrote shun-glasses). They were the food-free, but liberally-boozed types. They reeked of the film industry. Production side. I thought I recognized the girl. I thought she was someone I once knew. Vicky from Montreal. I used to call her Vichyssoise. Cold and tasty potato soup. It's actually better warm, with a drizzle of truffle oil.

I waited until Ack and her date were away from the table.

The Comrade: Vicky.
Nothing.
The Comrade: Excuse me, is your name Vicky?
Annette: [slightly slurring, and peering from behind humungous shunglasses]: Did you say Nicky?

Annette invited herself to come sit with us. If we didn't mind.
What can you say? She'd already gathered everything together.

The Comrade: Where's your friend?
Annette: He's gone.

Ten minutes earlier I'd commented to Ack how everyone has had a "domestic" on that particular patio. I'd had 3. With the same person.

It turned out that the guy who left was an ex-boyfriend from years back. They were purely platonic friends now. He had been talking her down. Annette was broken hearted from the most recent break-up with a man who was either a physicist or a scientist of some denomination.

Once she sat, she spewed a continuous stream of dissatisfactions. She'd never been married. The last man she was dating was too boring and too depressing for her. She wanted someone else. She wanted someone more cheerful, I guess. She didn't need anyone as a reminder of her own depression she'd lived with for years. She deserved more. She was doing so much for herself. She's read all the current bestseller self-help books; she talks to her family and friends about her problems constantly; she's taken yoga; she's tried mediation.

Each time that Ack or I tried to make a suggestion, she talked on top of us.

I hate being talked on top of.

And then she began to repeat herself.

Annette: I'm 38 going on 39.

She had made this statement no less than 6 times in the hour we were together.

Annette: I just want to be married!
The Comrade: Why?
Annette: I'm 38 going on 39.
The Comrade: I know. Why do you want to get married?
Annette: Have you ever been married?
The Comrade: Twice. It's overrated.
Annette: Twice? I've never been married once! I've never even lived with a man!
Ack and the Comrade: [in unison] Really?
Annette: What?!
Ack: Nothing. It's just that usually people will have cohabited by this time.
Annette: So, there's something wrong with me, right?
Ack: No, I didn't say that.
Annette: Well, I used to party a lot. I don't anymore. I want to settle down now. I'm 38 going on 39!
The Comrade: We know. You've said.
Annette: Oh, so now you hate me.
The Comrade: No, I just think you're a narcissist.
Annette: That's mean. How am I a narcissist?
The Comrade: We don't know you and you just sat down and told us every little thing that has irked you in the last year, without hearing a single word either of us have said to you. All you do is churn your problems over and over. Every person you know has had to listen to your story. More than a few times, I suspect.
Annette: [drunk and crestfallen] Now I feel bad.
The Comrade: Don't feel bad. I believe the Universe brings people together.
Annette: Me, too!
The Comrade: And that everyone you meet has a message for you.
Annette: I believe that, too!
The Comrade: You're a narcissist.
Annette: You're so hard! You could be nicer, you know!
The Comrade: You want me to be nicer?
Annette: Well, yeah. I think if you said things nicer, then I would take it in more.
The Comrade: [rubbing her back] I think a lot of people have been saying kind and gentle things to you, but it hasn't worked. Besides, isn't that why things didn't work out with the last guy? You were never satisfied with who he was. You kept trying to make him into something you wanted him to be.

And when I said that to her, I said that to myself, too.

A couple of years ago, when I visited the Czech Republic, Ack's native land, I remember sitting in (Good King) Wenceslaus's Square flanked by Ack and Fatty. All of us were eating street meat and chugging travellers - 500mL cans of beer. My eyes rested on a family from Japan. There was a father, a mother and a 4 year old child.

Choosing to carry one of the heavier shopping bags, the child was determined to be a useful one. The bag, however, was just as tall as she was. The plastic traitor slid under a pretty party shoe, tripping her not yet coordinated self. Cobblestone flew to her face in a split second. I was blinking wincingly as I waited to see what the parents would do.

The father walked away entirely. The mother watched the child for a few moments then simply crouched down and wrapped her arms around her own knees. When the mother crouched down, the child went around and hugged her neck from behind. She gave her child a temporary place to go, but her maternal arms never once comforted her. She was teaching the child to learn how to comfort herself.

The tepid back proffered when young is merely a set of training wheels destined for the compost in life's solo journey.

Sometimes when we're 38 going on 39, we think our life should look a certain way. Maybe we won't have kids, but we think there should be someone next to us. Handsome, not handsome, it doesn't really matter. A family cottage would be nice, though. Skinny dipping. Someone to travel Europe with. But when we're with you, sometimes we girls treat you boys like science projects. We put all of our energy into this one creature: honing, editing, organizing, diapering.

Because if we keep ourselves busy with you, we never have to look at ourselves.

Staggeringly Amazing

2007-04-20T20:15:00.001-04:00

There is a little internet add-on that I have attached to my Firefox browser. It is called StumbleUpon™.

It is a random website generator. Well, not completely random; you set your interest parameters and it does the rest, roulette-style.

Every day I am dazzled by what humans can do. Guess what I found out from this excellent science site?

When we take a deep breath there are more molecules of gas in our lungs than there are stars in the universe. It's true; just a couple of litres of air that you breathe in contains more molecules of nitrogen and oxygen than we think there are stars in the known universe. There are a gob-smacking 50 million (50 x 10^12) molecules in the lungs of every person on Earth. And when you breathe them out they all get mixed up in the air around you. So each of us, every time we breathe, is taking in a few molecules that have been breathed previously by everyone, and everything, that's ever lived!

Wowsers.

Shirley, Good Things Come in Threes

2007-04-18T19:24:00.001-04:00

3 things that have never happened to me before happened within 3 days of each other.

It was the week preceding my big presentation at the teaching English as a second language (TESL) course. I had to prepare a mock 45 minute lesson plan for a class of 16 kindergarten kids. 15 of those 45 minutes involved a real teaching demonstration. Doing well on it was something that I thought about constantly and often got a nervous puck over. For the duration of the course, regularly scheduled dates and important relationships were placed on hold until the next available opportunity, which turned out to be weeks later. This included paid work and, sadly, power-lifting pint sessions with pals.

Anomalous Scenario #1:
As was having a mild anxiety attack: Should the presentation include 5 little monkeys, or an equal amount of ducks? Which?! I decided to take it to the road. One of my best qualities is knowing when to stop doing something when it's going badly, or around in circles. I switch it up by doing something different for a little while. Clarity usually comes during a walk. That day I was riding my bike. I was sailing under a CN rail bridge, narrowly escaping bombs by the roosting pigeons above. Thoughts of how a species that can court and crap at exactly the same time momentarily distracted me from weighing the swinging or winged conundrum.

For a few seconds, I was part of an angular hard shadow that the late afternoon/ early evening waning sun casts. For those who put in a full day of Trinitron gaping, subtle shadows within larger ones become like textured backgrounds in created 3D environments. At 5:30 on a weekday, when the sun turns into a Nazi interrogator, and when the only thoughts perforating grey matter is How am I going to close that deal? How many more ridiculous changes are they going to request? How much more hog must I suck?

Thoughts ricochet from how to stay on top of your game, to pitying your shitty life circumstances. 100 points for touching on your unbearable home life, 200 more for being chronically unhappy; you're the Pinball Wizard. The song that's playing loudly on your iPod mirrors your frustration, confirms your uniqueness. The silver Honda, the one you saw in the magazine at your doctor's office that time when you were waiting for the rectal exam, corners just as the ad said it would. 244 horses move in symphony as you turn hard onto your street - that shitty street with the shitty apartment you took on a whim. Good thing you're moving out of

WHAM

SCREECH

Oh, look!
Just when you thought things couldn't get worse...

You've hit someone
on a bicycle.

The impact knocked her fedora clean off her head.

She landed
on her back,
Thank God.

Then bounced back up
And said... well, actually yelled:

The Comrade: [who was fully prepared to throw her U-lock at the silver Honda if it didn't stop] Were you wearing those fucking earbuds while you were driving?! Because that is against the law!
Driver: [alarmingly calm, but noticeably shaking] No, it's turned off. Are you alright?
The Comrade: Look at my bike!
Driver: Let me take you to a hospital.
The Comrade: [ visions of 8 hours evaporated before my eyes ] I am NOT going to the hospital.
Driver: Let me take you to a doctor, then.
The Comrade: Buddy, this could not have happened at a worse time! I have a very big presentation this Saturday!
Driver: I'm sorry. What do you want to do right now. Do you want to call the police?
The Comrade: I WANT to have my bike fixed!
Driver: [aware we were not alone] Of course I'll pay for that.

I live in a formerly zoned-industrial neighbourhood. Housing was created for factory workers, so there wasn't unnecessary filigree applied on veritable bunkers. When the factories closed, unskilled labourers went on pogie (CDN)/ the dole (UK)/ won the lottery (USA). To this day, there are grease, blood and urine splattered taverns that dot the main artery. From 11:30 am onwards these taverns are packed with leathery former factory workers and their offspring. The pittance that is their pension or unemployment cheque is cashed by their friendly neighbourhood bartender cum banker. During my interaction with the driver, no less than 6 tavern regulars had my back, ready to pounce. They were all a little slow from rheumatism and the gout, but it was a precious gesture nonetheless.

The Comrade: Thanks, fellas. It's okay.
Driver: Tell me. What can I do for you?
The Comrade: I need to return a video!
Driver: Okay. I'll take you wherever you need to go.
The Comrade: And I need to go to the liquor store!
Driver: Just think of me as your personal chauffeur.

I neither went to emergency nor the doctor's because A) I think I know my body well and B) I'd probably end up with some incurable disease completely unrelated to what I came in with. I did agree to have him pay for a series of shiatsu massages (5 / 75 minute sessions) and, of course, to pay for my bike's repairs and a tune-up. Strangely, both my body and my main vehicle are maneuvering better post accident than pre.

I quit my job at the Beer Emporium. Quitting is not an anomaly for me, it's actually the chief evacuation device I initiate when employment is no longer savoury; I just needed a preface.

The Lovely and Very Amicable General Manager: (notably crestfallen) Why?
The Comrade: For so many reasons.
The Lovely... GM: Like?
The Comrade: The number one reason is because I cannot work for someone I have no respect for.
The Lovely...GM: [inhales sharply]
The Comrade: Not you! Your partner. I think he's abusive, manipulative, disingenuous and cruel. And that really is tip of the iceberg stuff.
The Lovely... GM: There's more? What else? Can you tell me?
The Comrade: I'd love to. How much do you want to know?
The Lovely and Very... GM: I want the truth.
The Comrade: (stepping into shadow, a flashlight's beam illuminating chin to brow) Are you sure?
The Lovely and Very... GM: Yes.

Anomalous Scenario #2
I was asked if I would do an exit interview.

The Comrade: It would be my pleasure. Though, I expect pints!

[Well, it's not as if the entire experience of working there was a complete sham.]

I arrived two days later, post shiatsu, deeply relaxed. It had been my first rubdown since the accident. Terry cloth pressure lines created a road map all over my face and cleavage. I ordered a pint and put it on her tab. She eventually escorted me to a table for 2 adjacent to the washrooms.

While I was systematically running through the bullet points of what I considered to be the restaurant's flaws, and this included, but was not limited to:
• sexism
• racism
• favouritism
• fickleness
• food so putrescent that it made one pee out of one's ass
• abuse
• nepotism
• bribery

And since she was asking, I told her that I thought that all roads of amateurishness led back to the chef. I included footnotes of course.

She was very interested and respectful of my opinions, but at one point I noticed her attention had been momentarily distracted. I turned to see what she was looking at.

Three feet behind me, in the corridor leading to the washrooms, was a man in his late 40's, crouching, while reading some restaurant propaganda on the walls. I thought nothing of it and returned to our conversation. Moments later, I caught that same man, in my periphery, walking away.

The Very Lovely GM: [whose eyes followed the man who was making his way towards the exit] I think he just took something out of your bag.

I'm reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman right now. I just learned yesterday that the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the of the limbic system, was the responsible party in the following:

Without thinking, I leapt out of my seat, ran through the very full restaurant, jumped in front of the perpetrator, took my 2 open hands, threw them on the perp's chest, grabbed shirt and chest hair while yelling:

The Comrade: What the fuck did you just take out of my bag, motherfucker?!

The restaurant went silent.
Why does it seem like even the sound systems are cut during those moments?

The guy was at first startled, then shocked, then indignant. He wanted to prove his innocence right then and there, so it was his idea to go back to my seat and check my things.

The Comrade: After you... asshole!

By this time, a floor manager arrived on the scene. When I returned to the table, I noticed that my rather large MEC bag, which I distinctly remember tucking snugly between chair and wall on my left side, was now fully underneath my chair, zippers facing the washrooms. Keep in mind that this bag is large enough to hold a tucked 4 year old, and with enough secret compartments for a Harry Potter side plot.

The Comrade: Explain the location of the bag, buddy!

The perp had been pulled away from the raving maniac who didn't find anything missing from her bag. He probably got the manager to apologize for the rude and obviously incorrect allegation. Perhaps there was an offering for a free dessert next time he came in. Who knows? He was hurling enough back at me that for a moment I thought, Did I just make the wrong allegation? But then, the Lovely GM said,

Nope. He totally tried to steal your bag.

And then the amygdola kicked in again. Throwing my finger and screaming,

The Comrade: I know you fucking tried to, you asshole!

This time the restaurant didn't go silent, but I'm sure they were looking at me like I was the crazy person as the perp was whisked away by the floor manager. The Lovely GM told me that two weeks prior, a woman who was on a blind date sat in the same seat as I had. The date was arranged by this organization. Their distinction over other dating services is their patented 10 different dates with 10 single, rich, yet lonely, people for $1,000 feature. Not only was her date blessed with the combination balding head and hirsute body, but she'd had her handbag and briefcase stolen during the brief engagement.

A Recap:
1. I was hit by a car while I was riding my bike. [ Do NOT tell my mother! ]
2. I was asked to perform an exit interview.
3. Someone tried to steal my bag.

I've been thinking about this a lot. At first I was thinking that numbers 1 and 3 were only two things and that there was third thing to watch out for. But 1 and 3 were near misses. Then I was thinking, Maybe they were designed to help prepare me for my journey to China. There are 40 times more people there and I'm going to have to be very extra careful at all times. But then I thought more about it.

3 days.
3 things that have never happened before.
What is the common thread?

Truth.

Though he seemed like a really nice guy, the guy who hit me was a liar. He had been listening to music with earbuds in. He would never admit it because it would lead to a lot of personal problems if ever discovered. Had I been pedalling a fraction of a second faster than I had, I wouldn't be writing this right now. His response reminded me of the one I'd given upon the parental discovery of cigarettes in my high school pockets. They're not mine! I'm just holding them for a friend... obviously! God! Where I've always been a supremely bad liar, he's been a gifted one. He's in new media.

In his vision of the future, all television programming will look like this. Imagine watching Steel Magnolias, the hockey game, and La Traviatta, while receiving the latest numbers on pork bellies. All at the same time! Think of all the time you'll save! I love corporate evangelists. They really convince themselves!

Whenever I told people that I was going to do an exit interview, they thought I was wasting my time. It's not like anything is going to change. I didn't think it was a waste of time. If someone wanted to hear my opinion, I was happy to share it. Maybe it would help. Maybe it was bunk. But there could be no changes in the world if there was only silence. I learned days later, from the sous chef who had quit the day before I, for similar reasons, that the chef whom I had pointed an accusing finger at was beginning to look at his own behaviour. Apparently, he said: If we lost someone like [the Comrade] because of my actions, I'm going to have to examine my behaviour. I also learned that new sensitivity measures are being implemented against some of the "isms" I'd brought up.

Now whether I believe this or not, remains to be seen. But if I have made the path a little easier for someone else, then my attempts were worth it.

Which leads to incident #3. That guy was a born scam artist. He got off lucky. He only ended up with a little turd in his pants and spiked blood pressure for an hour or so. But maybe it's enough to make him think twice about what he's doing and who he's doing it to.

In the end it was the ducks that won over their simian counterparts. The kindergartners, my 21-65 year old fellow student teachers generously, though begrudgingly, submitted their will and better judgment to a person who thinks the world can be a better place if we held hands more often, sang loudly and danced around like pretty butterflies. They did put their foot down when I was trying to get them to Take Their Little Bodies Pounce, Pounce, Pouncing!

I think I got the best mark in the class.

I bought my ticket to China. I leave on July 13th of this year. I have no job prospects as yet. I'm going to wait to apply for jobs once I get there. Making plans for a year's tenure from a different country makes no sense to me. I'm taking advantage of the time I have right now while happily and gainfully unemployed. I'm getting all my ducks in a row, so to speak. One of the ducks is a kind reference letter the Lovely GM had written for me.

I'd rented Rocky Balboa the other night. I actually enjoyed a double bill of Charlotte's Web, followed by the Italian Stallion. Suffice it to say, it was a bawl-fest at my house. The last Rocky installment confirmed my excellent taste in the gigantic crush I've had on that character since I was 8 years old. One of the best bits in the film was, "I stopped thinking about what other people thought a long time ago... The only respect that matters in this world is self-respect."

I can honestly say that when I look in the mirror, I smile back.

A Full Refund at the Despot Depot

2007-02-17T20:43:00.001-05:00

Biological Father: Until you're on your own, you'll live by my rules.

I was raised in a highly restricted zone of totalitarian rule during adolescence. All communications were monitored. Through observation of my siblings, I learned that honestly earned money from a job = freedom. Working was one of two activities that a child of my father's could perform outside of the home that was looked at with little to no scorn. The other was academia. Anything else was considered idiotic. And he never grew tired of telling you, or anyone else for that matter.

My first job title was Salad Girl at a well-heeled, neighbourhood lobster restaurant. Though I didn't deal directly with customers, I was still obligated to wear the 100% polyester, red, white and blue sailor's dress that was, and still is, the front of house uniform. Wearing it at 16 was only kind of embarrassing. Seeing it on a rectangular 50 year old, stacked atop of nude support hose and scuffed nurse's runners was kind of tragic.

Anna: I vill show you how to make roquefort dressink.

A huge hunk of blue cheese was shorn off a wheel, coarsely broken into in a metal bowl, and was then doused with milk.

Young Comrade: I'll just get a spoon, I guess.
Anna: Here you don't use schpoon.

After each work night, I went home with active bacterium under my nails. But, I got to hack menthol 100's with the kitchen staff, eat tasty, cholesterol laden food, and stroll home alone with a sense of freedom, albeit fleeting.

I've never been one for a 5 year plan. I've always liked the idea of one, but if you have no idea what you want to do, how can you plan for the future? Lots of things have sounded good for a while.

Mom: Remember when you wanted to be a fireman? Hang on, was that before or after you set fire to the basement on Christmas?

Har-har. My mother is prone to gross exaggeration. In my defense, I was 8 years old with a stack of paper snowflakes and a brother who'd just made a disappearing act. In his place was his down-filled ski jacket and a black Bic lighter. What would anyone else do? To this day, touch wood, I've never set any fire that I, myself, couldn't put out. That was including the ski jacket and snowflakes.

Anyway, the firefighter thing wasn't really in stone.

My dentist (an old family friend): With you, nothing is ever in stone.

Gosh. Am I a flip-flopper?

After having been fired any number of times, mostly for insubordination - which, I think, is really a lack of free opines - I've finally learned the rules of the game. It's now up to me to decide whether I want to keep playing.

Do I want to continue in a field where employers legally don't need to pay minimum wage?
Where I am looked at as just another person trying to hock something for a buck?
One way of looking at dining out is having to pay grossly inflated prices for booze, and mediocre food, in a dated environment. Add to that 15-17% federal and provincial tax, plus the 15-20% that is not just suggested, but expected in tips: the real wages restaurant employers don't have to pay servers in this continent. So, in the end, it's just another case of the public getting screwed.

I just don't feel good about what I do anymore.
I really want to do something that is good for this world.

Fatty's Mom [the ex-boyfriend's mother whom I see twice a week while volunteering in her kindergarten class] : Why don't you teach?
The Comrade: Oh, I don't know.

Of course, the truth is there's a very big part of me that is afraid of making seismic errors. What if I'm no good at what I do?

The Comrade: I was talking to a girl who is a paramedic. Maybe that's for me. I don't throw up easily; I'm really good when the shit goes down; and I've had to clean up a veritable bloodbath once.

At the Beer Emporium, my current place of employ, I was talking it over with the general manager, who, if memory serves correctly, has a degree in kinesiology.

Amiable General Manager with Knowledge of the Human Body: That sounds great! You should take a course in dissecting cadavers, to see how you like it.

That was the first instance of a l-u-r-c-h. The second came while on my bike a couple of months ago. I was pedalling past Maple Leaf Gardens when I spotted several EMS workers. They were surrounding a bloated, 58 year old, Eastern European fella. He looked as if he had been zig-zagging home from Oktoberfest, where he'd been wassailing with a debretziner. Tripping over some well chewed gum, I surmised, his face hit pavement dislodging exactly 2 teeth. He was sitting on the curb, spitting and bleeding from the mouth. I imagined myself in EMS uniform standing with the others, surrounding him, discussing procedure, next steps. All I kept thinking was: He is absolutely the last thing I wanted to touch. Even on the shoulder.

Another thought struck me later: What if I saved someone who didn't want saving?
Back to the drawing board, she lumbered.

It is not unusual for me to go to the Beer Emporium directly after the kindergarten class. It is also not unusual for me to be serving people from Cloud 9 because of the kindergarten class. Why? I love getting lectured by 4 and 5 year olds.

A Very Concerned 4 year old Brennan (who incidentally made me a smashing Valentine): [shaking his head] You won't be helfy unless you eat your bwekfast.

One of the girls at work was wondering why I hadn't considered teaching.

The Comrade: I don't know. I don't have the the time or resources to go back to school, and then go to Teacher's College.

She suggested a private school route, specifically Montessori. They have their own independent training facilities. From what I've read about their methodology, it makes a great deal of sense to me. And wonderful minds have come from those institutions: George Clooney, the Google and Yahoo creators, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julia Child.

Maybe I could do this.

The Comrade: Okay, so, um, I've decided to teach.
Fatty's Mom (the kindergarten teacher): Wonderful!
The Comrade: But I'm not going the public school route. I'm thinking Montessori.
Fatty's Mom, the kindergarten teacher: So, you're going to teach rich kids.

Well, I hadn't considered that.

Maria Montessori was the first female doctor to Italy. She had created a method of education which was designed initially for poor children. It was so effective that the rich took it away. Anheuser-Busch also did this with the original Budweiser.

America, Fuck Yeah: Hey, we like the name of your beer. Here's some money. Go on, now. But first, change the name on your labels. That's ours now! Y'all don't wanna get sued now, do y'all?

Again with the drawing board.

As it's getting colder, the pull to go to a warmer clime is as strong as gravity would be on a volleyed anvil. Hm. New concept: I've got tonnes of love to give; maybe instead of going to Happy Jail, what I call all-inclusive vacations after Day 4, I'll go to a tropical locale and volunteer in an orphanage.

That night I did research.

If I wanted to work in an orphanage in Costa Rica for two weeks, say, it would cost me US $1,100. Not including airfare. A friend from work volunteered with Habitat for Humanity for two weeks in Brazil. It cost her $2,500. Wow, I'd first have to fundraise to volunteer.

Later, while surfing the online drawing board, I happened upon a couple of ESL tutoring sites. Hm, teaching in rural China for a year. Holy moly, this could be it! I mean, the timing is perfect. The Universe is helping me grow my hymen back, successfully obstructing any possible germination of an affair of the heart because it knows that as soon as there is a guy in the picture, all else falls to the wayside. If my nature is prone to single-focussed zealotry, why not take advantage of it? Use the ol' powers for good, is what I always say.

Though, sometimes the ol' powers get zapped.
Last week I had a major crisis in confidence. It was my second day in a row at the kindergarten.

I was asked to help the children with books they were working on. They were 6 stapled pages of halved 8.5x11 sheets of printer paper. The books were made of compact, bullet-point summations of the original story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Goldilocks, the Princess of B & E, the hooligan with a false sense of entitlement. I was given 5 children to work with.

Each page had one line of action. The exercise, though I suppose not explained fully, was to get them to illustrate and then write the next action, in their own words. So, not only did they have to create a line, which in the end would be edited by an adult, they had to spell the whole thing, which none of the children knew how to do. With pencils or markers in one hand, their individual heads in the other, some were getting sleepy while others were frustrated and whiny because they didn't even know where to begin. Not every child knew the corresponding sound to a letter.

How do you spell this, 5 children whined simultaneously. I wanted to give them all equal attention, but it was impossible.There simply wasn't enough of me to go around.

5 year old Elizabeth: [the best reader in class] How do you spell broke?

I wrote it down for her and tried to help someone else.

Fatty's mom, the kindergarten teacher, came over to check the progress. Elizabeth had beautifully illustrated her page with 3 chairs and a princessy-looking blonde criminal. Her next line was: Goldilocks broke the baby chair.

Fatty's Mom: [whose glare bore a hole through the piece of paper with my handwriting] Did you write broke all by yourself, Elizabeth?
5 year old Elizabeth: I got help.
Fatty's Mom: (to me) Don't you see what you're doing? You're doing the work for them.

All I felt in that moment was s-h-a-m-e.
What the hell kind of teacher was I going to be?
Who did I think I was, anyway?

Even though in my brain hammered: They can barely read these pages, but, without hesitation, they know the story inside and out. And if they can barely read, how are they expected to write new sentences? All I felt was their frustration. But the kids and I have learned well to do exactly as the teacher says, so that no one gets hurt.

I didn't know it was alright that they spelled things wrong. I wasn't told that. And besides, that didn't make sense to me. I am unconvinced that getting corrected by a big, red ball-point is any sort of learning aid. All it says to me is: See, kid? Yer instincts were wrong. Ever resourceful, though, nearly all of the students were copying phrases that were written by the teacher on huge banners that decorated the adjacent walls. Strangely, it felt like a familiar grade 7 experience. Or was that grade 12?

I'm one of the best spellers in my peer group. But, words are like pictures to me. When something is spelled wrong it's like looking at rings on a coffee table; it just doesn't look right. Songs were very helpful, too. To this day, when I need to spell the first day of the weekend, I always sing the hit single by the Scottish boy-band, the Bay City Rollers. Or as George, the dad to my oldest friend in the world, used to call them: The Gay Shitty Strollers. Something else I've never forgotten.

The Kindergarten Teacher: But you didn't really do this on your own, though, did you Elizabeth? Hm? Did you?
Elizabeth: No.
The Kindergarten Teacher: You should know better than that.

Oh, great, a shame strata.

Elizabeth: [silence]
Fatty's Mom, the kindergarten teacher: Elizabeth, are you crying?
Elizabeth: [rubbing something that got caught in her eye] No.

And then a big, fat tear fell.

Fatty's Mom: You are crying.

Fuck. Just give her a shred of dignity.

That day I left that class barren, knowing nothing, feeling ridiculous. Useless. I'd failed them. What kind of teacher would I make?

I steeped in shame for 2 days. And then I watched some things on YouTube, like the the video that is the previous post. It made me think about the one impetus I've witnessed in the kindergarten classroom. Fear. They perform because they're afraid of being ostracized, alienated, excluded, sat out, found out. Learning isn't a joy, it's a circus series of tasks to perform, to the exact specifications of one.

I remembered a conversation I'd had with Fatty's Mom, the kindergarten teacher, months ago. It was regarding Elizabeth.

She had admitted to not liking Elizabeth, a girl who always pays attention, is always ready to please.

The Comrade: Why?
Fatty's Mom: She drew a picture once, stopped and said, "It's perfect." And I thought, "Perfect? Well, aren't you conceited!"

5 years old
And already she needs to get over herself.

Ack (the ex-husband/ best friend): The kid just knew when the picture was done.

Any self-esteem she enjoys now will be systematically chipped away, like the scissored bits from paper dolls.

I keep forgetting that people in power, those that sign our paycheques, who grade us, rate us, berate us, they're all individuals with quirks, pasts, and neuroses. The kindergarten teacher who shamed both me and Elizabeth was once forced to attend Catholic boarding school. Among other things, those nuns ripped compassion away from her. There was so much damage done, she can't even hear the word God without cringing. Abuse's legacy lives on and on.

Heathie, my oldest friend in the world, once explained why she got the McKinley Award, for best female student at our grade 6 graduation.

Heathie: I was explained the rules of the game.
Her mother was an educator in the Toronto Public School system.
Heathie didn't get to play outside for as long as she wanted. She had to stay in to practise her viola and maths.

My father is a higher learning advocate, though he barely has a 3rd grade education. To outsiders, it would seem like he wanted a better life for his children than he'd had, but that's not the real reason. Telling others his children are university graduates (well, most) is a notch on his belt. Besides, no matter how many degrees his children have, he will always be smarter than us. He lords any information, often propagandic, over anyone who didn't skim that same factless, biased article... and agree with him.

My father is a type. This type enervates through slander and condescension. They are the Do As I Say, Not As I Do contingent. My father used to courier drugs for local mob men in his native country. They neither inspire learning, nor greatness. They don't compliment, as it might go to their heads, so, instead, they take people down a peg. They whisper in corners. Pick favourites. It's only within this group that this question, or any permutation thereof, is asked: What? You don't know that already? Their tactic is to continue where the others left off in chipping away delicate self-esteems. They inflate themselves by deflating you. They lead by fear. They laugh when others fall down. They are unable to concede, as they are never wrong. It is despotism. And they are educators, bosses, and spouses.

Their greatest fear is being found out that they have no idea what they're talking about.

I was watching the Despot (who signs my paycheque and makes a HUGE production about handing them out personally) try to teach a prep cook (incidentally the same person who paid $2,500 to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity) how to juggle all the incoming/ outgoing food orders on the kitchen's board.
Despot (who signs my paycheque): Faster, faster! You didn't call that one! You've got to watch that. God! C'mon! [audibly] Tsk!

As the Despot was spit/spewing, I was watching Christine, the prep cook. All the shame I felt from my own circumstance, the previous week, was put in perspective when I got the opportunity to observe a similar situation. When I looked at her, who I saw was me.
The next day I asked her when she was going to call the board again.

Christine: Oh, I don't think I'll be doing that again.
The Comrade: Do you want to know how to do it?
Christine: Yes. I think it would be good to know.
The Comrade: One of my kindergarten kids asked me how I knew how to whistle.

5 year old Darren: Hey, how you do that, mister?
He calls me mister.

The Comrade: I told him that when I was his age I didn't really know how to whistle, but I really wanted to make music. So everyday I kept at it, and eventually I got pretty good at it, because nobody can be good at anything without a lot of practise.

Christine: Yeah, I know, but...
The Comrade: And no one wants to practise anything when there's an asshole breathing down your neck. Don't let a bad teacher stand in your way. Let me ask you one thing: Would you teach that way?
Christine: No way.
The Comrade: There you go.

I believed every single one of them that made me feel less than I am.
But, I am just as complicit. I freely let them take my power away.

There are those that are in positions of influence that have the distinction and the honour of being called teacher, mentor. These are not positions to take lightly. People look to them for guidance, direction, approval. It makes me want to claw eyes out when I hear people in mentorial positions flagrantly losing their patience while someone is trying to learn. It makes me remember the first excellent teacher that came along my path: skillful, patient, knowledgeable, and witty, Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend. Through him, I've learned to lead by example. I want to give kids a safe place to learn anything they want to learn. And being consistent, loving, fun and patient gives me a decent base in which to start.

So, I've made some big decisions:
In three weeks I will begin school. I'm taking the TESL (teaching English as a second language) course. When I'm done, I'm going to take a specialization module for children. I want to concentrate on kindergartners, as they are my people. When I'm done and become certified, I'm going to China to teach for a year.

Last year I wanted to be a mother. In preparation, I quit smoking (13 months, 3 days, $3,300 saved), and began volunteering at a downtown kindergarten class in an attempt to curb a sense of terror-of-creatures-shorter-than-4' tall.

Last year I wore heart monitors. I had atomic 88 radium shot through my veins twice. I lay in MRI machines. I cried because I thought I was going to die. Everyone, I thought, had a predetermined number of heartbeats. Mine, I reasoned, must have been drawing to a close.

Last year was one of the saddest in memory.

This year, through the help of my newest, shortest friends, I've found my vocation.
And it only took 38 years.

I don't remember being as consistently happy.

The Comrade: Here's Toronto. Here is where Kai went on vacation in Cuba.
Kai: Olà!
The Comrade: Olà, buddy. And this is where I'm going to teach later this year.
Elizabeth: That's China?
The Comrade: Yep.
Sam: I've been to China!
The Comrade: Really? I have never been. I'm a little scared, but I can't wait to go.

Now, the trick is not to get arrested. I'll put that in my 5 year plan, now that I know what I want to do.

Lately, I've been thinking that genius will win out. When I mean genius, I mean the things we are all naturally gifted at, but our corroded self-esteem has prevented us from knowing or seeking. I know a very talented painter who had to endure a 60 hour work week to support a family he didn't really count on having. Decades later, his children have grown and flown, and he and and his wife have separated. He bought a dog and called it the same name as a former neighbour. Eva, the first, didn't take to it well. He is retired. All he does is now is laugh, drinks wine, paints and puts on art shows.

5 year old Darren: [who doesn't like me drinking coffee in the morning; he'd rather see me have a glass of milk and some cheese] You know, everybody lub you! I lub you, too!

It's funny how things go. Now I don't want to have my own children. I want to devote my life entirely to other people's kids.

I hope I have time to learn Mandarin.

2007-01-25T22:44:00.000-05:00

Animal School

Snake Eyes

2007-01-03T15:45:00.000-05:00

A couple of guys at work were talking about how January is the big month when people get gym memberships that they won't use come February. It made me think about years I've ever tried (and failed) to keep resolutions. I don't tend to make them because I'm one of those lucky people who, if suspects there's anything wrong or toxic in her life - and sometimes this takes several months with frequent blows to the head - can actually make changes.

I'm also the kind of girl who, if a new idea settles, and if convinced enough of its usefulness and plausibility, becomes a zealot about it. With a megaphone. And then into a workshop I go, building a colourful bandwagon... with leather straps that can allow others to easily grab hold and pull themselves onto - just in case they are itching for a roadtrip. That's how I quit smoking 355 days ago. But, alas, I remain the solo traveller; none of my friends have given it up, which is alright because I still love the smell of cigarette smoke.

I also have a very strong authoring program installed, which continuously upgrades who I am (or who I think I am), and who I want to be.

I had become someone who couldn't leave her house, wouldn't be caught dead at certain restaurants, nor deal with any problem without a specific substance at the ready. Dunhills. Being a drug addict didn't fall in line with the who I thought I'd be when I grew up construct. If I'm never a parent, I'll always remain a conscious role model to the 8 year old kid who constantly lurks within, busy baking 1 layer chocolate cakes with her Easy Bake Oven - with one eye judging the adult me.

One of my very good friends, Death (that's how she likes to roll), has been nursing her decades-long friend ever since her really rich, media mogul boyfriend dumped her 7 months ago. To deal with the loss of boyfriend and luxuriant lifestyle, she performs post-work poundings of Grey Goose vodka while face-planting fluffy white hillocks of cocaine. Every day. Apparently, this is the only method she's discovered to combat the constant feeling of "bad". When she makes an ass of herself, like calling Ack, the ex-husband/best friend in the middle of the night, playing coy while slurring - two things Ack doesn't tolerate, nor finds attractive - she requires a circle of rotating babysitters to rescue her from herself. She reminds me of a female version of Robert Downey Jr.; witty, charming and mostly still lovely, but the booze has attacked her face - leaving a puffy, grey pallor with bloated inflation from chin to clavicle - and isolated clusters of irritated friends.

Last weekend Deathie (that's how I roll with her) and I were talking about how we're relative sexual prudes. Nobody would ever guess that either us are prudes in any way, mostly because the stuff that flies out of our mouths can often be provocative (read: disgusting). Walking along a pedestrian-light, but traffic-heavy street, she told me that her alcoholic/ drug addicted friend had once discovered a pair of dice up her vagina. Apparently, the boyfriend of 10 years, who subsequently dumped her, had found them.

Deathie: She didn't know how they got there.

From my ears, those facts grew tendrils with hooked talons straight to Bileville. I lagged behind about 8 paces, clutching my gut. Cars continued to whiz by. I was a doubled over blur.

Bill Cosby was once a guest on Sesame Street.
Mr. Cosby: Remember boys and girls, the only thing you should put in your ear is your elbow.

At the cult-like Beer Emporium, my new place of employ, my disarmingly honest and extremely lovely general manager had expressed to me how tied her self esteem was to requests for sex from her partner.

The Comrade: Really?

But then I thought about. She was just the first person in all of my 38 years that has been able to articulate this shameful truth.

Sally Fields, upon receiving her first Oscar™: You like me! You really, really like me!

Historically, a man wanting to fuck me, well, specifically the man I chose, has directly been tied to my opinion of myself. If he doesn't feel like it, my mind will autonomically churn out: I mustn't be attractive enough, or desirable enough, or enough of enough. At other times, if he (whoever he is) isn't there to defend my honour - if needed, perform basic heroic acts - if warranted, or say the right thing at exactly the right time - he is either essentially flawed and must be eliminated (remove the shame), or I must be essentially flawed and therefore not worth any of the above.

Back in late summer I was still stuck. The above mentioned and other cycles of negativity continued to loop inside my cranium. Yoga, for me the most effective way to calm down and reconnect to my body, was reintroduced. It was helpful, but my body was sad and all it wanted to do was heave and sob. And it did for a while.

I couldn't articulate it at the time, but I needed to receive alternative ways of thinking.

It was an accident, if you believe in such things. I was over at my friend Dirty's house. She is a relative luddite, though likes pretty gadgets that light up and can do tricks. She asked me to come over for Mac tech support. I only had so much time to solve an issue as I later had to meet up with someone who, at the time, was bound to my self esteem. The push to solve her problems while having the tick, tick, tick of time running out of an evening created a substantial anxiety attack within.

Feeling bad about the amount of time it was taking me, Dirty searched through cupboards, nooks and freezer to find items she could re-gift to me. She found a film canister full of pot that her ex-husband/ best friend (the number one thing we have in common) gave to her. This canister had been sitting, untouched, in the concentrated juice department in her freezer for several weeks. She didn't want any; pot doesn't agree with her.

She proffered rolling papers, scissors and the canister. As I sometimes miss smoking, it was a welcome experience. In the past, whenever I'd try to smoke it I'd either get immediately sleepy or eventually paranoid. But I'd never tried smoking A) just a little and B) by myself.

The first discovery made was: The anxiety lifted.
The second was: I was able to observe myself while behaving as I would normally.

Though I came up with computer solutions for everything she had initially asked for, she created newer items that I couldn't do. Upon a rushed exit, brimming with remorse, I said:
Sorry I didn't do it perfectly.

Puff, puff...
Perfectly? This, and I'm sure others, had been things I would have said, but had never really paid attention to. Pot is something that helps me observe the kneejerk statements I'd normally not have cause to reconsider.

For years I'd try drawing on it while in social situ, but now I don't think it was designed for that purpose. Certainly, it can be used as a giggle inducer, if one needs it, but I don't have trouble in that area; giggling, or full out guffawing, happens to be my forte. What I discovered was it is a wonderful tool for eliminating the pesky negative feedback loop that I have a propensity toward. When I'm stuck on something, it helps change my perspective. I am now able to view a problem from a slightly different angle, which is something I often need as I have been the kind of person who cannot do crossword puzzles because I consistently get frustratingly stuck on 6 letter answers to 5 space solutions.

As a bonus, it really helps the wise, reasonable voice within, come out - who, as I discovered, is a bit of a revisionist agitator.

Puff, puff...
What if, way back when, when women ruled the world and men were utilized exclusively for braun and sperm, men sensed their imminent extinction and started a clever uprising? Knowing their greatest advantage was their physical prowess, what if they created something, like, say, evil, just to demonstrate valour and usefulness by protecting their women from this fabricated enemy? Don't worry, I'll save you from a manufactured boogyman, or UFOs over Chicago (I mean come on, CNN reported it), or Weapons of Mass Destruction (which they created for real). A revolution of fear, with men at the helm, promising to save women from these schemes, created to insure the survival of the male species. It's plausible. The Brothers Grimm and Disney penned stories that had fair maidens with tiny feet in need of brave rescue - the pressing of a man's lips upon medically dead women; raising a woman's station, through marriage, to save them from their lowly, servant's plight. We were all willing students that were taught, what? That we are nothing without them.

I found myself sicker than I ever remember being. It was the kind of sick where you have to spend the entire weekend, delirious, in a soaked bed. The kind of sick that puts you on the toilet, because it's the only sane place to be while there are a dozen Ginsu knives and one artless teppanyaki chef in your belly. And while all of this activity is going on, you're rapidly panting while sheets of sweat roll off you. I honestly thought I was going to die the way of Elvis. This was 2 weeks ago. This was, incidentally, the first time I ever remember being sick... by myself.

And it was alright.

Well, to be fair, Chicken, my 17 year old, partially blind cat, was by my side the whole time.

I know that if I had been with someone... human, in any significant capacity, I would have wanted some kind of highly charged care - the kind that concerned parents give to their small children when they get sick. There's always the fear the child might die. I think we all sort of look for that level of care when we're adults and sick. Or, maybe that's just me... and all the men I've ever been with.

Not without back-up, I did get a power assist from Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend. Ever reliable, he did a supplies run which included Neo Citron. As 'tis the season for viral infections, might I suggest the addition of vodka to this hot elixir. It provides A) sweaty good times and B) a 1-2 punch straight to unconsciousness. Nothing heals faster than action-packed bed rest™.

So, I'm all better now. It just took an extended weekend, one that did not fall on Christmas this year.

Christmas was lovely. I enjoyed the exotic Czech-style schnitzeled carp on the Eve with Ack's family, and the traditional English bacon-draped turkey - with all the accoutrements - with Fatty's family on the Day. Apparently I put the eX, in X-mas. Just because I'm not a wife nor a girlfriend to either of these men anymore, does not mean I don't love them or they don't love me. And these 2 are my favourite families in the whole world.

Ack: It's good; you've got your surrogates all lined up.

Lately I've been watching people with a different polarized lens prescription.

On Wake and Bakes I'll consider that maybe men married as an insurance policy, making sure that the women they married never had sex with anyone else but them. And maybe women married men just for financial security. And the only reason they stayed together was from fear of loneliness. Odds were they would have a date for special occasions, and someone to hover over them with chicken soup when they ran a fever. The ball is permanently affixed to the chain and possession is 9/10ths of the law. I've looked into the eyes of the Bored and their spouses, the Accused, and I don't ever want to be there again. I will maintain that the loneliest I have ever been has categorically been while in a serious relationship.

Maybe there is no One. No Neo. No Superman. No Jesus. No One to save me, because I never really needed saving in the first place. Maybe this sounds like I'm shitting on love, but I'm not. I hold love in the highest esteem. I just don't know if I'm cut out for marriage or its equivalent anymore.

Loving many, though...

Ack: What? Are you turning into a Mormon, now?

They're all just plausibilities, anyway. I actually have no idea about anything.

And Now For A Musical Interlude *

2006-12-10T19:16:00.000-05:00

The Bastard Fairies - Whatever

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*This delightful band has a full album to download for free

2006-12-10T03:21:00.000-05:00

Hi, Universe. It's me. I know it's a bit premature. I know it's something I tend to reflect on at the end of the year, or maybe sometimes on my birthday. It's not something I'm used to being overwhelmed with at quarter after 3, Sunday morning. As you know, I've not historically been the sentimental drunken sort. Argumentative, yes. But the I love you, man sort... well, no.

I just wanted to thank you.

Thank you for granting me my birthday wish of receiving as much love as my heart could handle. Sometimes what I've been receiving has been a bit more than I thought I could take, but with each increment it's getting easier to get used to. I'd like to make an addendum to my wish. I wish to never get used to the love that I will constantly receive. I wish that each time I hear how much someone loves me or appreciates me that it thrills and delights me until my heart brims over. I hope, I hope, I hope, forever, forever and ever.

And thank you for making me feel as special as I am. You're right. Life is markedly different than it was just a few short months ago. Hopefully I'll have the better sense to listen next time.

Lucky Numbers

2006-10-29T20:23:00.000-05:00

I don't remember many years. By that I mean the age I was when things went either swimmingly or shittily. 10, was nice. 10 meant only 6 more years until I turned 16. Which meant that I could drive. Which meant ultimate freedom. A motorized engine that could make the Great Escape. By the time I reached 16, however, I was grounded for something I'd done, like breathing the wrong way, so driving school was put off for a few months. 21 was how old I was when I married Stupid, the first husband. 21 was also the age I was when Chicken and I laid eyes on each other. Now a steady 17 year love affair. 33 was the year I learned how to truly love another person. That was my best year.

37 stank.

It was up there as one of the all time most wretched years in any memory. Between my job, which had begun to suck sweaty balls, and the state of my romantic life, which made the reeking ball sucking sort of attractive in comparison, I'd hit a silt-free rock bottom. Hard. And then broke both my legs. I'd experienced this kind of blue fleetingly in the past, but only as a drive-by visitor, never as a resident requiring an immigration card.

On one of the last days of being 37, I walked into work. Business as usual at the Cheer's Equivalent, if you count slogging through weird vibes as usual. Friends/co-workers were shooting me looks that were a combination of pity, horror and fear. I was asked by one person/coward at work if my boss had contacted me earlier that day. Apparently he needed to talk to me about something. Something this person/coward "didn't know" anything about.

Sometimes something is really nothing.
Sometimes something is you no longer have a job.

I was holding the key to door number two.
This time it's not because I write a blog.
It was the second certainty in life that was the culprit.

The Certainties of Life
Death + Taxes.

If you've ever examined a standard Ontario sales receipt, you'll notice, just above the grand total, there is an 8-10% line for provincial sales tax (PST). This means that the actual retail price for a pint and curry, say, is subject to provincial sales tax first. The curry portion is subject to 8% because it's food, stuff we need to maintain life, but may lead to clogged arteries, which will need Drano-ing. For the pint, taxation is at 10% because it's booze - the insurance premium for when our indulgent livers go on dialysis. This tax is collected by all establishments that offer goods and sometimes services. What the government does with it is up to the government that I didn't elect, but that, I suppose, is besides the point. The point is: retailers collect PST, and then a proper governmental arm reaches out and catapults it home. To Ottawa. Around sprucing up time at Rideau Hall.

I just found out that the once right honourable Adrienne Clarkson had once doubled spending on her residence. Apparently $10 million wasn't enough. Having been the Queen's Canadian proxy, I guess there are a couple of things that rub off. Like needing to go for stroll through one's own private gardens, while considering which gown to wear to the ball later.

Partial Tally of Accrued Gardening Costs During Adrienne Clarkson's Years of Representing Her Majesty, the Queen of England:
Rose bushes: $43,449
Other trees and shrubs: $63,000
Installation of beech trees: $32,665
Dirt: $9,318

Of course, if she wanted to enjoy/endure the 4 seasons aspect of our Canadian climate in the comfort of her backyard, the $1,299 in taxpayer's money spent on one pair of snowshoes is justified, I guess.

Sometimes people forget to file their PST on time because, well, maybe something shiny distracted them. Or, when they do remember to file, the government might not always believe the numbers reported. The thing about any government is: If it doesn't think it's getting what it's due, it's got no problem coming to do a crosscheck. Jack Palance style.

Based on a randomly selected fiscal year, and according to the government-sent agent, the Cheer's Equivalent was off by $10,000. De rigeur among the tax collecting sect is a decision to apply whatever discovered miscalculation to all the years it's been in operation. In this case, it was 3. $30,000 to be paid in full immediately. I imagined Oxford cloth covered mid-level management with staplers pounding rhythmically on my boss's tarsals and metatarsals.

They had to cut corners. This I understand. Having me show up to a shift without telling me in advance that they couldn't afford to keep me, and not finding out until I called, is shitty. Having the rest of the staff know before I knew anything about chopping blocks is something entirely rotten. My old boss got a reproving earful. I was offered 2 weeks notice over the phone. I refused, insulted. I quietly collected my belongings, and immediately left another thankless job.

Freshly 38 years old, just after Labour Day, I found myself labour-less, and with love's labour lost.
Fatty and I severed the final tie.
So when I say I was really depressed, it probably goes without saying.

The Comrade's Bank Account for Week One, September 2006
+ 17 year old cat
- Job
+ Diver's Certification
- Boyfriend

I booked a meeting with my bank manager to raise my level of esteem.
I was advised to diversify my portfolio.

Changes had begun to get harder as I was getting older. The bigger I got, the greater the fear of falling. But, this wasn't like me. I'd never been afraid to make changes before.

Fuck it,
She said, while pounding pixel pavement.
A girl's got to eat.
And so does her cat.
[... who just nudged me]

As far as restaurants went, there was only one place I was courting. With a list of 20 flowing draught taps and 200 varieties of bottled beers, the Beer Palace sat highest upon Mount Employer. It beckoned me with fanfare.

Ew.
Mount(ing) (the) employer.
Gross.

Before the interview started, I was asked by Grizzelda, the ghastly day bartender, which draught I would like while I waited for the manager.

The Comrade: What do you mean What beer do I want? Oh, yeah, I get it; I order a beer and then I don't get hired because I ordered a beer! Nice try, lady.
Grizzelda: No. Here at the Beer Palace, we drink beer.

I nearly burst into tears.
The radio dial tuned away static to receive: Country roads take me home... to a plaaaace... I belong.

After a 45 minute interview which included personal philosophy, suggested non-fiction, and wonderful girl giggling, I was asked if there were any further questions I had. One was pressing: When will you be making your final decisions to hire?

Interviewer: I've already decided. I love you. You're hired.
The Comrade: Atta girl.

I'm old enough to be her favourite babysitter.

For nearly 2 months I've been working at the Beer Palace. That's not its real name, but it is a vault for legions of fine ales and lagers. I say, who better to represent a line of goods then one who imbibes in it daily? I am torn in a lopsided two, a 60/40 split, as to being absolutely in love with the place (mostly because of the inhabitants), and hating the place (corporate policies and the endless array of side duties the jailers/management demand of us before granting us leave). It is corporate, though they don't think it is. The best thing about corporate is its ability to hire wonderful, if not broken, staff. They're attracted to the promise of empire building, and that their individual contribution will be felt. That their lives will somehow have meaning through being part of this engine. The worst thing is their cult-like behaviour.

There is no criticism of the corporation or its figureheads, no matter how ridiculous or wrong either is. If someone does say something negative or suggests a radical solution, that person is first ostracized, then penalized (bad section, extra side duties, reduced shifts), and then, if not corrected - eliminated.

For the rest, the ones who comply, there are team building exercises and inhouse competitions, with prizes. There are pop quizzes, meetings, focus groups and tastings galore. Though we're routinely asked our opinion, again, they aren't looking for criticism of policy, protocol or product. All they seem to be looking for is validation, and worse, adoration. I've noticed that those who thrive in corporate environments also have a greater susceptibly to brainwashing. Yes, I'm parched! Thank you for the kool-aid!

I'll probably last 6 months before I manage to get my insubordinate ass fired... again.

The second thing I needed to do was manage my depression. For over 6 weeks I hadn't worn a stitch of make-up. For this, there were 2 reasons.

Reason #1 for hurting the cosmetics industry for a few weeks: I didn't know when I would erupt into tears, leaving me wrecked and Alice Cooper-esque. My ducts were on a feather trigger. Culprits included, but were not limited to: disappointing human behaviour; the full reality of my new circumstances; kindness or generosity.

Reason #2: I wanted how I looked on the outside to reflect how I felt on the inside. Bare, empty, abandoned. Eventually, thankfully, once those feelings passed, putting make-up back on seemed weird and inappropriate. But, I like being a girl, so a little mascara made a grazing. That night was a Friday, and I don't remember the last time I was macked on as much. Make-up or not, I did feel rather radiant that day.

I went to the health food store to get some amino acids to help my brain neurons fire properly. I know I read this somewhere while researching all-natural depression combatants. Helen, the ever helpful herbalist, scrunched up the left side of her face, eyeballed me sideways and asked, with a not so hushed, thick, Chinese accent: I think? It's a hormone problem! How old are you?!

Sometimes a question can sound like a violent interrogation. Especially when there are other people in the store.
I quietly told her.

Helen the Herbalist: See?! What if there's nothing wrong with you?! Your body's changed a lot! What if it's just your hormones not being balanced?!

With ringing ears, I hadn't considered that.

Helen the Herbalist: You are peri-menopausal!

Great. No kid in sight, and now the medical community has come up with an anteceded term for shrivelled egg baskets.

Helen gave me this. When she tried it, it was like taking G.

Helen the Herbalist: I had thoughts I've never had before! It scared my husband!

It doesn't do that to me, but it does make me lighter on my feet. The soft-shoe routine I've been working on is but a whisper these days.

Oh, and then I discovered the pot.
[cue angel choir, disco balls and feather-blowing machine]
The next time I find a line that asks for a description of hobbies, I will say weekend Wake and Bakes.
... but that is an entirely different post.

Of all the nice things I had added since turning 38, the best new thing I've done is started volunteering. I'm not working the front lines at Second Harvest, the food bank where all rich socialites want to give back to society. I overhear fantasies in my sister's circle of wankers who want to be the steam-glistened angel at the hub of homeless. The central figure who doles out a single ladleful of soup from her house-brought silver tureen into the bowls of dirty faced children. The need to give intensifies on Christmas. No, no, no. Not on Christmas Day. Everyone's resting and enjoying their dumpster-destined presents on Christmas Day. I meant to say Christmas Eve, like around 2:00pm, while everyone else is still working. Hello?! I'd like some recognition for my efforts here! You're welcome! Really, what they really want is for the bum that they ignore everyday to say: Thank you, lady. Thank you for your kindness and generosity.

No, I don't volunteer there.

Two days a week, I assist Fatty's mom in an inner-city kindergarten
Where I sing songs titled How long have we been friends?
Learned 19 new names
Get covered in snot and acrylic paint
Where tiny hands unreservedly run up and down my bare, crossed knees
Where shy little smiles momentarily turn earnest as I hear the words: I love you
Where 12 children routinely rush me to have them read them a story
Where a child once wished out loud that I was her mother.

When I leave this class I need a tube of Elmer's glue to put my heart back together.
I don't remember being so happy.
They are the joy of my week.

What if?

I worked at a restaurant years ago just to meet my favourite sandbox friend
Who ended up as my lover.
But
What if?
I fell harder in love with his family
Especially
The mother?
[she and I are secretly heartbroken that the whole thing didn't work out, mostly because we wanted each other as family]
But,
What if
The whole point of the relationship with the sandbox friend
Was so I could work alongside his mother
And thus getting that much closer to what I'm supposed to be doing while I'm here on Earth.

I was so depressed just a couple of months ago. I was so desperate. I didn't know who I was anymore. I didn't recognize myself. All it was was being stuck in a bad feedback loop. Since I wasn't busy enough, I was left to nurse that bad brain. I coddled it. I bounced it on my knee. I read it bedtime stories each night before tucking it in. And when it grew up, oh, they grow up so fast, it became a monster.

The whole thing turned around when I stopped lamenting exactly what others weren't doing for me, and instead looked at what I could do for others. Cliché and true.

New Co-Worker Jordan (who I can imagine perfectly at the age of 4): Are you on crack?

This question was asked after bellowing his name in a Polish accent no less than 25 times during dinner service, and intermittently body-checking others into walls or walk-in fridges. Oh, God, I've missed working with others.

The Comrade: No buddy. I'm just so happy that I've finally found my people.
New Co-Worker Jordan: Your people are kindergarten kids?

Most people find this sad.

I think 38 might just be the year I truly learn to love myself.
Hmph.
I smell a new favourite year.

Or is that the pot?

What the Postman Brought Me Today

2006-09-19T16:37:00.000-04:00

WARNING: Huge Ass Post Follows

2006-09-18T23:31:00.000-04:00

You were warned.

Dead Bodies in Lakes

2006-09-18T23:19:00.002-04:00

When I was little, every time my birthday rolled around, there seemed to be a small tradition that held. After having dinner, I would perch on one of the injured vinyl sofas in the basement, avoiding the gangrenous foam guts from Dorito contamination, plunking myself in front of Arnold, Laverne, or, if very lucky, Julie McCoy. Moments later, usually during a morality lesson, or at the peak of a tragic affair, my mother would bellow for me to come upstairs, just for a second. In the early years I was a bit miffed. I mean, it seemed irreverent to suddenly leave during the flush-burial of Gary Coleman's goldfish. Those that come from the sea, must then return to the sea. Half sulking, I'd trudge up the stairs, opening the door that led to a newly darkened kitchen.

Young Comrade: Ma?

Haaaappyyy Birthdaaaaay to yoooou!!
Yoooou live in a zoooooo!!
Yoooou look like a monkeeeey!!
And you smell like one toooo!!
And many more!!

Upside to having ADD: I was always surprised.

For most of my life I never really knew what to wish for. I was never really want for much. It's not like I had a lot, I just didn't really need a lot. I looked around and thought well, maybe a baby grand piano. I don't know why. We already had a piano, albeit an upright. Why I wanted another piano is still beyond me. When I was a kid, the only time I ever remember wanting something badly was when the Bryants (the Jones' of the street that everyone tried to keep up with), got a brand new Corvette.

It was a very cool looking early prototype Batmobile. Healthy, pragmatic families purchased Volvos because they came with excellent safety ratings. A 2 seater Corvette's body is made of fibreglass. Its allure is made more intense because of its danger. Upon potential impact, the car would shatter into a million pieces. Mix in the possibility of dying - before your time - with hair, no paunch, and with the world still your oyster. Midlife crises was a phrase I hadn't learned yet. I just liked its body and the sound that 400 horsepower made. Being a passenger wasn't the same. I wanted to drive it.

Blowing out the candles that year, I wished for a Corvette.
My father laughed at me.
I learned that year never to speak a wish out loud.

At least I got the cake I wanted. Strawberry shortcake. Yum. Mom and I share the same taste in cakes. Nothing chocolatey or too sweet. For me it was the same while on ice cream expeditions.

In the '70s there were less expectations to uphold pesky seatbelt laws or maximum human cargo capacity restrictions. Like a natural law, smaller bums routinely rode on larger laps. A simultaneous shotgun's call allowed 3 to pile like a laughing totem pole in a bucket seat. All others turned themselves into potato bugs, packed tightly in the back of one of a fleet of rotating station wagons. It was just one of those lucky streets to grow up on. Discomfort didn't last too long. 10 blocks tops. We'd all poured out, half of us landing on asses, hands, anything but feet. Squeezing the quarters our mothers had given us, the ones that had made a big impression on our palms, we ran and pressed our noses against frozen glass casings that held tubs of all the colours of the rainbow, if, of course, man had made that rainbow... and put sprinkles on it. My compatriots unfailingly picked the most obscene, over the top sounding frozen confections each and every time. Half purist, half scientist I'd only order strawberry. By 10 years old, I'd become a strawberry ice cream authority.

But, every now and then, while you're al fresco collectively sucking up the last vestiges of A) summer, B) creamy Irish oysters, and C) Dutch pilseners with your on again off again on again off again I don't know boyfriend, a molten chocolate cake scenario (something I've grown to appreciate) may play itself out in front of you. And if you're very lucky, said molten scenario lands directly under your nose on your birthday. I should have played the lottery that day. On the public patio we were on, I rallied strangers to sing me that song everyone gets directed at them once a year. It took everything in me to keep from partitioning the vocalists into harmonizing sections. Most sang. Some were too cool. They were pointed at and mocked.

Close your eyes.
Count to three.
Make a wish...

I didn't wish for a piano this time. I certainly did not want a Corvette. I didn't actually want anything tangible or physical, though there are manifestations of both of those things in my wish. I can't tell you what I wished for. I can tell you I've been getting it in spades since I asked for it.

My brother, Walter, the one who estranged himself from the family, was always giving generously to himself come birthdays, Christmases, or personal telethons. This year I decided to take a page from Walter.

I was going on a solo trek up to Tobermory.
With a car full of rented scuba gear, I was
Going camping.
By the end of the weekend, my goal was to receive my open water scuba diving certification.

As a kid, in a hider position during hide 'n seek, I remember squatting under a neighbour's backyard pine tree. I was so excited, then nervous about getting caught that my puck would go nuts. At least 50% of the time, I'd have to run home to take a quick poop. I don't play hide 'n seek very often anymore, well, mostly because the same effect still happens. I could never be a private detective. At 38, having been granted by God the wisdom to know the difference between the things I can and cannot do, I've decided to try slower build excitements like driving long distances by myself, camping alone, and scuba diving in lake waters, with perfect strangers, where I'm half expecting to see a dead, bloated body float past me.

Pilot to co-pilot
Oh, right, no co-pilot.
Okay, okay, okay, don't panic.
Just sing Shirley Bassey songs for a while.
Loudly.
Transition into Ethyl Merman singing Nina Simone.
Crack open the snacks cooler.
Crudité? A bit unsatisfying on the road.
Pull over to indulge in a rare early morning guilty pleasure: a McDonald's sausage and egg combo... wretchedly ambrosial.
Seeing fields of wind power generators. Hundreds of them! So beautiful (even if they are killing eagles and hawks).
This isn't so bad.
This is actually really wonderful.
Snap, snap, digi-snap.
Cows... as far as the eye can see,
Consuming everything,
Just like us.
We're cannibals.
Passing cars on 2 lane highways,
I am Maria Andretti.

I got a tiny bit lost at one point. Man, did that make the old puck go. Though I kept it together without making a pit stop, Welcome to Tobermory sprang in front of me, 1/2 hour after I was supposed to meet my new dive buddies. Being the latest, I arrived spilling with apologies.

Random Obnoxious Diver: We thought you'd changed your mind. You know, with the whole dead body thing.

I used to be terrified of seeing a bloated and distended body float past, with a locked expression of horror, as soon as my unseeing eyes cracked the surface of any body of water. Mr. Turtle pools, the only exception.

Nothing that a series of sharp inhales and a mantra of: There's nothing but fish, there's nothing but fish, there's nothing but fish down there won't fix.

If you removed compressed air tank, mask, snorkel, buoyancy control device in the form of a vest, hoses, and fins (Christ, don't call them flippers), my outfit looked like this:

but a little less flattering. Hence, no self portrait. Unless you're built like a guy I knew in high school, Chris Cudmore - the one with the concave chest - everyone has a fat ass in neoprene.

As you can't dive without a buddy, the one assigned to me was Mark. Mark was a double threat: socially awkward with severe halitosis. The wonderful thing about scuba diving is you can spend time with people without all that unnecessary talking. The other wonderful thing about scuba diving, or snorkeling for that matter, is, even above the surface, once you put your mask on, you can't smell a thing.

The Comrade: [while adjusting her face mask] Go on, Mark. Tell me your whole life story. And take you time.

The company I went diving with was Aquasub. The worst thing about them is they will try to sell you everything in the store. Fairly aggressively. They make up for it by having a wonderful, knowledgeable body of instructors and dive masters. Halitosis Mark's and my personal instructor was Dave. At 27, Dave was a gentle, patient, scuba genius.

Prior to my birthday weekend, my limited underwater CV contained A) lake or oceanic snorkeling to a maximum depth of 8', achieved only to examine something shiny for 2 seconds, (again, my cursed ADD) and B) two weekends of controlled SCUBA (self contained underwater breathing apparatus) descents, in a mix of skills building and prolonged examinations of the rec centre's 10' deep tiled pool bottom. Among my scientific discoveries were clumps of hair matted around elastics, flecks of skin and the occasional band aid. The most exciting thing I'd seen was a half a dozen other divers in various states of suspended or actual animation. The thing I liked the least was meeting the eyes of other divers underwater. With masks and regulators donned, everyone bears a creepy expressionlessness.

In the lake, for our first real assignment, Genius Dave asked me and Halitosis to grab a line that was attached to a buoy, go down 25', and wait for him at the bottom.

Let out all the air out of the buoyancy control device (BCD).
Check.
Grab the buoy line.
Check.
Start scaling down while equalizing every couple of feet.
Check.
Adjust buoyancy levels before crashing into the bottom of the silty lake.
Crash.
Sideways.
Unable to control movement.
Fuck!
And then the reality of being and breathing 25' below the surface of the lake set in.
Panicking!
Hyperventilating!
Which causes a diver to go up and down not unlike an aquatic yo-yo. When that happens, enormous pressure builds in little air-trapping crevices. If the pressure isn't released, it feels much like having an ice pick shoved firmly in one's good ear.
My ear's bleeding!!
I'm going to explode!!

I didn't know the hand signal for I can't level out my shit and stay in one place. All I remembered was the signal for I'm out of air!

Dave's masked expressionlessness showed concern, I think, but I'm sure he was still incredulous as I had just hit the bottom of the lake. Strapped to my back was nearly 3,000 psi of compressed air and bubbles, bubbles, as far as the eye could see.

Okay, I'm not out of air, but I need to surface! I said like charades.

Genius followed me up.

Genius Dave: Are you okay?
The Comrade: [pant, pant, pant] Yeah, sorry.
Genius: Don't worry about it.
The Comrade: I just can't level out. I never had that problem in the pool.
Genius: Let me watch you again. Do you want to go back down?
The Comrade: Okay.
Genius: I'll be right behind you.

In an investigation, heralded by the Genius, a 2 lbs weight was discovered tucked into the left pocket of my buoyancy control device. Genius said that even a single disproportionate pound can cause severe balance issues. With great restraint, I shook my fist only once and uttered a single curse to the maternal penetrator who wittingly or unwittingly was the cause of my submerged, skewed sinking for Day 1 of my certification.

On the up side, just in case it happens again, I'll know for next time. Fool me three times...well... um...

Talk of solo camping prior to departure inspired pointers from ever helpful friends:
Ack: Set the tent up on a downward grade, so that water doesn't collect.
Zontar: Hang your food from a tree, so that wild animals don't get to it.
Dirty Diana: Set tealights all around your tent to ward off bears.
Fatty: Sleep with the Leatherman™, blade facing away from you.

All of that advice would have been great if I'd gone Grizzly Adams camping, or at least pitched a tent in a provincial park. I, however, stayed at the Happy Hearts Tent and Trailer Park. It was much like how I would imagine camping in my neighbourhood dog park would be, just a lot less private, and peppered with slack-jawed yokels.

No need to have strung food from a tree, well, for 2 reasons actually. 1) All the trees on Site 100 were planted last year, rendering them strong enough to air out one stinking wetsuit [Reasons for stink to follow]. 2) The only wildlife were local residents of Barrie, Ontario. From my understanding, that species doesn't eat raw vegetables.

Tealights surrounding a tent would only attract drunkards to play flame-soccer until my little blue wigwam turned into my funeral pyre. Besides, the adjacent washrooms, replete with showers, cast both enough light to target any potential prison escapee, and created a glowing orb out of my blue nylon world. I slept well on percale sheets atop of foam mattresses (plural), snuggled in a down duvet; Leatherman™ under my pillow, blade closed.

DIVE DAY 2

Genius Dave brought out his phone to take a picture of me while I was gnawing on broccoli, waiting for my soup to heat up. I'd emptied the contents of a Chunky number into the 18/10 stainless pot, set atop the Mr. Stove butane burner I'd brought from home. Appetizer and entrée were perched upon the upholstered ledge of the VW's rain shielding hatchback. I was accused of being the most prepared diver he'd ever seen.

Dive Master Scott [with a physique like my old school chum, Cudmore]: There are 2 kinds of divers: Those that pee in their wetsuit and those who don't admit to peeing in their wetsuit.

I considered this carte blanche.

A wetsuit is a really tight fitting neoprene jumpsuit that loosens slightly when wet. When submerged, a thin layer of the surrounding water trickles between skin and fabric. This thin layer of water, or by hour 3 - urine, gets distributed from neck to ankles, and everywhere in between, then finally gets heated by one's own body temperature. The design is to keep you nice and toasty warm.

It's made of people!

Luckily, I had the spindly little tree to hang my olfactory horror from overnight. And, as God tends to smile on me, it rained all night. The rest of the group were staying in various hotel/motel scenarios. Though they had the luxury of having taken long, hot showers, they stomached the $125/ night poorly maintained digs, while inhaling the radiating stench from self-commanded incontinence -- a bouquet in a locale somewhere between outhouse and cat box. Keep in mind, this fetid jumper needed to be wrenched back into the following day.

Over the weekend, the skills testing included but was not limited to: non-verbally expressing to my buddy I was out of air, grabbing an auxiliary regulator from his tank, breathing from that to the surface, then repeating the whole process but with roles reversed; pretending my regulator got knocked out of my mouth, then trying to find it and replace it blindly; partially, then fully flooding my mask to then purge it clear again; whipping off the mask entirely, opening my eyes, then putting the mask back on, purging the contents and smiling at my instructor. The hardest bit was swimming to and from markers using only a compass. Thankfully, my buddy with the bad breath was a navigational savant. I would have had us cross Huron, heading straight for Gaylord, Michigan.

By mid-second day we were all feeling really comfortable in the water. There was plenty of time to adapt as we were all waiting our turn to be personally skill tested. I always imagined myself happiest if I was travelling underwater. Surprisingly, I was the happiest when I wasn't moving.

Once, I landed on a bed of algae. I'd never guess, but they give off so much energy they're actually radiating warmth. On my knees, I imagined it the Atlantis version of a dream that began on a virgin flight at 6 years of age -- of one day having a postal code in a cumulus cloud cluster. Otherwise, the usual bottoms where I landed most were sandy. If you don't move too much you can go eye to eye with the goby fish.

The goby is a small, sandy coloured fish native to Japan. It was brought in by man to solve the zebra mussel problem. As welcome as any immigrant to any country these days, these foot shearing creatures, with their propensity to eat everything that falls into its gaping shell, made their way to the Great Lakes via their curious attachment to ship hulls. The solution to control this organism was to bring in a creature higher in the food chain. No one really guessed the goby would have no real predators. And their numbers keep increasing because they're not particularly picky eaters. They are a gluttonous scourge to the freshwater world. When I stayed still, waiting my turn for a skill testing demonstration, there were gobies staring me down, praying to their fish god for my air to run out. I learned over the weekend that Australia did something similar with their cane sugar lovin' beetle population.

The government brought in 3,000 venomous cane toads from the northern crest of South America. They didn't kill many beetles, but they did breed easily and killed off potential predators with their own unique toxicity. Today, these little horny toads run into the millions. Here's how a recent initiative, apparently created to compete with the piggy bank market, dealt with this decades long issue:

Way more portable, easier to access, but thus easier to spend than the perennial porcine repository.

I don't know exactly how I did it, but I shaved an hour off my time on the way home. I actually loved the ride home. For most of the ride I was thinking that the best thing about my birthday weekend was how incredibly lucky I felt.

Not everyone knows how to drive, or has access to a reliable car. Sometimes I beat the hell out of the strong body I have, and it retaliates, but I'm still able to haul heavy gear in and out of trunks or lakes without braining myself, gratefully. Not everyone could or would want to lie on the bottom of a lake watching life sustaining air exit lungs like a rising smack of mercurial jellyfish. Certainly not many would happily lie there until they got the bends. I'm sure a couple of my fellow divers thought I was a bit weird, some were laughing because they thought I'd become the dead body I was so afraid of running into. Surfacing, I caught the eyes of a couple of folk who thought I was kind of special. It's nice to look through the eyes of others for a while, to put their eyes on like a pair of glasses. Sometimes the ones I regularly wear get dirty and they don't see out very well. Sometimes all I see are the things that are wrong.

It's been a long time since I've felt so lucky.
I'm glad I found something good to wish for every year.

Apocalypse Pony

2006-08-16T13:33:00.000-04:00

Diver Down

2006-08-12T12:19:00.000-04:00

Last week, I'd looked at the collection of spots where Chicken had just jumped from. There was a constellation of scabs on my right knee. I don't know where they came from, but it was the first time since I was 12 years old that I remember having scabs there. Prior to 12, my knees were in a perpetual state of fresh or scabbed wounds.

Over the long weekend (an unspecified civic holiday - the sole purpose: providing a long weekend in August), Fatty and I went to his family's cottage.

Yes, we're working it out.

In the rickety, most definitely crotchety, but ultimately reliable '94 VW Golf that Ack and I still share custody, I was at the wheel, Fatty was the co-pilot, and the gunner between us was my nearly 17 year old cat, Chicken, who was sitting squarely on Darth Vader's face. His left paw was kneading Princess Leia's scant chest; his right, Hans Solo's nuts. Any cries from Chewie were silenced by his tail. The gunner's seat was a pillow sheathed in Fatty's highly coveted, to second graders, Star Wars boudoir collection from the late 1970's. Cruising at an average of 140 km/h, we three headed to Lake Skootamatta.

Fatty: Let's play DeNiro.
The Comrade: Okay! What's that?
Fatty: It's a game where you start with a movie, say Scarface...
The Comrade: DeNiro wasn't in Scarface.
Fatty: I know.
The Comrade: Then why is it called DeNiro?
Fatty: Hang on! You start with a movie, say Scarface, and you name someone in the movie...
The Comrade: Michelle Pfeiffer!
Fatty: And then the other person has to think of another movie Michelle Pfeiffer's been in. If you can't think of an answer, you get a letter from DeNiro's last name. Whoever spells DeNiro first, loses.
The Comrade: Okay! Dangerous Liasons!
Fatty: But, if you can't think of anything else that person's done, you get another letter from DeNiro's name. Okay? You start.
The Comrade: I thought I already started.
Fatty: Start again.
The Comrade; Okay, um... Madeleine Kahn!
Fatty: Who's that?
The Comrade: The bride in Young Frankenstein!
Fatty: Okay, I challenge you! What else has she done?
The Comrade: What the hell is that?
Fatty: If the other person says challenge, and you can't come up with another movie your actor's done, you get another letter.

I learned two things in 30 seconds: That I was no good at this game, and that there are 30 year old men who don't know who Cary Grant is.

The Comrade: Do you know who Abbott and Costello are?*
Fatty: [indignant] Of course!

*[Anyone who remembers the Who's On First skit, might like this.]

Over the weekend I'd given myself a goal: I will learn how to dive.

Fatty moved the floating dock farther out into the, normally still, rough waters.

Fatty: Show me what you got.
I showed him.
Fatty: Wow. That must have hurt!

I found out from the mare's mouth that Fatty's mother has not submerged her head since she bonked it on the bottom of a pool at the tender age of 13.

Fatty: And you know? I don't think I've ever seen her hair wet.

On shore, too disdainful to even look at me, Chicken thought I was wasting my time. He continued sunning himself by the blackberry bushes, building up strength for the 3, easy-prey, baby mice he would kill later that night. I paid him no mind. I had a mission. After each imperfect dive, I climbed back up the aluminum ladder, thought about it, and tried again. And again. And again. Sometimes it was painful: the little bridge of my little nose still hurts from the impact, and there still is a vertebrae that is misbehaving. But during one or two dives, I'd felt one of the sweetest sensations of grace and beauty that has ever come out of me. And then a bellyflop followed. Actually, it was more like a boobyflop. But that was okay. I kept trying. The thing about diving is you know when you've done a good one. And they're never a fluke or a one-off. They absolute require skill.

I have trouble doing things the way others do, sometimes. For example, I have trouble swimming without a mask and snorkel. There are reasons for this. One pragmatic reason is you can scream through a snorkel. Without one, and coming across a bloated, dead body, say - something I'm always half poised to see - screaming might lead to death by drowning. Oh, and also, if ever the shit goes down, you can hide in a bed of reeds with a snorkel. Or a straw for that matter.

Eyes can't refract light properly underwater unless there is a bit of air between the water and the cornea. Also, by wearing a mask, you can see underwater life at 30% increased magnification. This I learned in my scuba diving course. I need to wear corrective lenses at all time, as I am a bit myopic, so this is like wielding a Sherlock Holmes hands-free magnifying glass. All the better to see freshwater mussels with. When I used to snorkel with Ack, he used to fly over crayfish and salivate, which is harder to detect while submerged in water, but disturbing nonetheless. He never did catch any, and I sense he always regretted it. Looking at those huge mussels, I thought of Ack. And I thought about the Christian Right.

What if those crazy Evangelical weirdos get what they want? You know, the ones who are pro-war, pro second coming of the Lord? What if they mostly succeed in blowing up much of the world, making Christianity the only game in town? Why, it inspires in me the need to survive. And what better way to do that, than by living off the land.

Blackberries bushes, Chicken's camouflage, were picked clean of ripened fruit for pie and shredded wheat garnishing. And those mussels didn't stand a fighting chance. Well, actually, other than clamming up, they have no other defense. It didn't stop me from conjuring up venomous sprays or hidden incisor scenarios for these seemingly innocuous mollusks. With a red plastic kid's bucket, the kind that molds turrets for sandcastles, I greedily went hunting. 3 lbs of freshwater mussels were caught, scrubbed of all slime and beard matter, and sautéed in a pan with red wine vinegar, garlic, onions, tomatillos, lime, chilies, and cilantro. Heaped in a ceramic bowl, served with crusty bread, they were absolutely disgusting tasting. I do not recommend the freshwater varietal. They taste like stringy, dirty lake water. Horrified and guilt-ridden, I apologised to each of them as they were set upon a blazing funeral pyre, the former wieny-roast pit. I felt like Hitler, but with a conscience. I'm making up for it.

I've just finished reading A China Study, the most comprehensive study on nutrition... ever. I think I'm off animal flesh. Just like a severe night of alcohol bingeing can promote a serious reduction in consumption, needless slaughter of innocents can produce the same effects. That, and information government agencies and corporations want to keep from you.

There is a community centre located 5 blocks away from where I'm typing right now. Of the five years I've lived in this neighbourhood, I've never once participated in any of the programmes this centre offers. Until yesterday.

I went to the pool and did laps. With my snorkel. And when everyone in the slow lane was heading back towards the shallow end, I practiced my diving. I still did some boobyflops, but that's okay. I kept trying, and that's the most important thing. There was something else I'd forgotten, something I'd known well when I used to have scraped knees. You don't get good at anything, unless you do it a lot.

Buddha, Gloria Gaynor and The Universe

2006-07-25T14:01:00.000-04:00

I have dialogues with the Universe. It's a more modern day, less apocalyptic, version of God, I suppose. We generally have a really nice relationship. I say generally as there are times that I forget the Universe exists, mostly because I can't seem to see past myself. The idea of myself. I think I was sort of mad at it for a while, too. Things hurt me. People hurt me. Situations were unfair. Or maybe I just forgot where I fit in the grand scheme of it all. I'd abandoned it, and my role within it. It was better for me, for a spell, to huddle in a corner, filthy, self-protective, hateful, with a twitch. And like the kind of parent I would want to be, the Universe, as pained as it was to watch me in that state, watched, at a distance, with tears, as I made my own discoveries. Like maybe I needed help. And maybe I needed to learn how to ask for it.

Proud Mary keep on rollin'

Asking doesn't come easy to me.
What if they say no?

The Comrade: I don't really wanna be back here.
The Universe: Why not?
The Comrade: They're mean.
The Universe: They've always had that propensity. That's never stopped you before.
The Comrade: So, what are you saying? It's me?
The Universe: What do you think?
The Comrade: I think I need a judge's ruling on this one.
The Universe: I am the Universe. And I think you're being paranoid.
The Comrade: I think I need some help. Could you send me something? Something I would understand?

These days I never know when acute mental retardation hits.

That's how our talks normally go.
That's why I don't usually go to church anymore. I talk differently when I'm in church. Too pious. Too much on my best behaviour. Neither of us recognises myself. So, now, while I walk up and down aisles at Loblaws looking for anchovies, say, it does sort of look like I'm talking to myself. Where the hell are the anchovies, anyway? They're not kept with the sardines. Near the pickles, you say? I'll look next time.

A woman in her 50's walked into the Cheer's Equivalent Bar, the place of my employ. Marilyn. I took to her instantly. She came in alone, something I always think is a brave thing to do in this city. With solo diners, I have a tendency to take them under my wing. She had a Germanic severity to her. It was framed with a pragmatic Lego-man hairstyle. I learned she was a practitioner of Buddhist therapy/philosophy. The principal of these philosophies is to chip away our feeling-centered subjectivity to get to the reality. One of these therapies is Naikan. Its basis is a three step process:

Within any relationship, ask:
Step 1. What has that person done for you?
Step 2. What have you done for that person?
Step 3. What kind of trouble could you have caused that person?

Marilyn started by dissecting her tenuous relationship with her mother. When she broke up time into manageable blocks, answering each step specifically - we're talking every single birthday cake made, every time Happy Birthday was sung, the ride to school during a rainstorm - she recalled, at around age 6, the image of her mother in the kitchen, sweating in a bra and half suspended house-dress, canning and pickling food from the garden to place in the cellar, so her near to poverty-struck family would be able to eat in the wintertime. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten that. She'd been too busy feeling sorry for herself; sorry that she didn't have the life she'd imagined, like she'd seen on TV.

Marilyn used to believe she was a self-made woman. She did it all on her own. She didn't need anybody. She couldn't rely on anybody, anyway. When she was studying, her teacher had asked her to list all the people who were involved in getting her the banana she was saving for lunch. If she could list 30 people, she was told to sit back down. To think about it some more. She was only scratching the surface. People are there. We just poke needles in our eyes, so as not to see.

He'd called me at work one day to tell me how beautiful, capable and wonderful I was.
The next week I'd forgotten about it. Laundry taking greater precedence.

What have I done?

I'd secretly scripted how I'd wanted to be wooed, then proceeded to be disappointed because no one was following my script. What kind of trouble could I have caused him? Telling him he wasn't enough, in as many words, is one of the shittiest things I've ever done. I didn't love him properly. Insert shame. Insert depression. Throw in a molotov cocktail of anxiety into the mix. I have a stomach ache.

What the hell am I supposed to do?

Universe: Comrade? I'd like you to meet someone.

Marilyn told me about Morita. Another Buddhist based therapy. Have a goal. Feel what you're going to feel. Do what needs to be done to achieve that goal.

Excerpt from the ToDo Institute:
Psychiatrist Shoma Morita used the term "arugamama" to describe the state in which we simply "accept things as they are". He believed it was fruitless to try to work on our feelings, our thoughts. A better solution was just to accept them the way we accept distracting thoughts and feelings during meditation - we notice them and bring our attention back to our breath. If you are beginning the process of divorce, it is normal to have feelings of anger, sadness, fear, loneliness, etc… Rather than use your energy to try to elevate your mood, you can accept these feelings as natural and learn to coexist with them as you move through the challenging and painful process of separation. This idea of "coexisting with feelings" is what distinguishes Morita therapy from many other approaches. It's very much like going for a long walk and getting caught in an unexpected rainstorm. Once you accept the fact that you are going to get drenched you stop trying to avoid the rain and are free to simply walk. Once you are home, you can concentrate on getting dry."

"Every crisis tests our faith - our willingness to trust that life will unfold the way it needs to unfold. The crisis brings us face to face with the limits of our power to control the world in which we live. Ultimately our personal destiny and the destiny of friends, family, even the planet, is outside our control. Yet it is still important to do what we can do, for our ability to shape the future will never be known until long after we have taken action. As Ghandi said, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it."

Hello Universe? I need you now. I think I let too much time pass. I think I let my pride stand in the way. I think I kept pushing until he...
He's been pushed and he learned to push back, too. See that.
Okay, I see that, but...
It's both of your responsibilities. His friend is right; he needs to want to do it. You don't want to be the one to force his hand. It's like that couple you heard about last night. She threatened suicide, so he married her.
It's different.
But the same.
What if I don't get him back?
You won't crumble and die. Just tell him how you feel. Tell him how scared you've been. Tell him how you've learned to not trust others who are closest to you, just as he's learned to fight the ones who were closest to him when they expected too much of him. Both of you have been guilty of not understanding each other enough, to love each other properly. You now have a goal. The ultimate goal. Feel what you're going to feel and do what you need to do to realise that goal.

Did you know...
There are times this stupid girl doesn't think any one gives a shit about her.

If you'll excuse me, I have important business to attend to.

Free Association

2006-07-03T13:13:00.000-04:00

My second eldest brother, the one the ex-boyfriend always reminded me of, once said: You talk in riddles.
A Wee Comrade: [at the tender age of 8] Everything is connected.

On
Off
On
(yet tentative)
Off
[blows out pilot light, gently shuts door behind her]

The Applier once commented on the single break-up attempt between Ack, the ex-husband/best friend, and his short-term if-you-close-your-eyesTeletubbie-sounding girlfriend of some months.

Ack: How many times does it normally take?
The Applier: My last one required three. Expect further contact.

He was right. I suppose it does take a while, considering the equation (2 people + time) x investment to the power of this day and age. And after the first break-up attempt, one occasionally runs into an old friend, say, who happens to know both parties and says something like:

Old Friend: So, you're all ready to move on then?
The Comrade: [with as much pride as the ship's commander, ten minutes into the Titanic sinking] Yep.
Old Friend: Ready to have sex with other people?
The Comrade: EW!
Old Friend: Okay, okay. But, are you ready for him to have sex with other people?
The Comrade: What?! No!
Old Friend: Everyone looks for comfort.
The Comrade: God.
Old Friend: Would you like to borrow my phone?

So, we made another stab at it. By stab I mean we didn't talk about the things that were really the problem. Glowing by fetching tea lights, we illuminated only the bits that had held our tenuous union together. The rest we just avoided. Put up the green screen. We'll finish it in post. Until I, at least, couldn't avoid any longer.

I tend only to see epics on the big screen. The last one was remember, remember the fifth of November... the gunpowder, treason and plot... my most cherished graphic novel, updated and brought gloriously to the silver screen. Regardless of endless script changes or fetal celluloid curled on cutting room floors, there are desperate times that I seek extra significance. Meaning. 9 times out of 10, this being no exception, I go to see movies alone. I went to see The Break-Up. Watching the movie was, well, just like being a non-invasive third party viewer into my own relationship. It was gut-wretchingly accurate replete with no Hollywood ending. I have no idea what I was thinking, as it didn't give me the answer I was looking for.

Bugg? Tom? You were right. I was trying to aid and abet it
By sadly trying to mash it into something it was never meant to be.

My wonderful friend Ryan brought this to my attention:

I make associations
Not riddles, as my brother accused.
I like to think of them more as connections.

New Friend Lisa: [on the topic of an affliction her ex-boyfriend once suffered] He had a floating testicle.
The Comrade: That doesn't sound so bad. It sounds sort of freeing.

It's anything but freeing, as I learned. A floating testicle is connected to the body by a tube and blood vessels but, because it's not in a fixed spot, as normal testicles are, the connectors can severely twist into a torsion state. If immediate medical attention is not sought, family jewels will be robbed.

The Comrade: So, is it kind of like a bunched up telephone cord where you have to let the receiver drop every now and then just to get the twists out?
New Friend Lisa: Exactly.

I imagined an ornately drawn Monty Python hand of God reaching from the sky to pluck this young man by the chode. With legs splayed, he spins slowly, then like a dervish, until his scrotum is straightened and stretched like salt water taffy. Relief eventually reaches his (also) twisted face.

I make associations because it makes me see myself more clearly; it shows how everything and everyone is interconnected; it's the universal translator; and it gives life meaning. I haven't felt myself lately. I've been feeling angry, hurt, useless. More than anything else, I've felt disappointment of late. My friend Andrew, a co-worker at my place of employ, at the Cheer's equivalent bar, had something to say about it.

The Comrade: They're breaking my heart.
Andrew: The sooner you realise that people are shit, the better off you'll be. I used to be like you; I believed in them too, but all they do is disappoint.
The Comrade: So, what do you do?
Andrew: I expect nothing of them. Actually, that's not true. I expect them to be absolute dickheads and when they're not, if they're nice, then I'm pleasantly surprised.
The Comrade: Sigh.

At least once a week, someone would say to me, I've never told anyone this before, but... I would hear incredible tales. And I would feel lucky. They would choose me because I told them intimate stories about my own life and I listened with generosity. I have an empath's soul because I remember where I've come from. I can trace my snail's slime back to its source. Each time there's an interaction, wisdom is simultaneously drawn upon and gained. No one's told me something they hadn't told anyone before for a very long time. Why? Because I've hated more than I've loved lately. And what I've learned this year is not to trust. So, why would anyone tell the enemy anything truly dear to them?

My new friend Lisa, the girl who once saved her ex-boyfriend's sack, not that anyone noticed, is a singer/songwriter who is also a private music teacher to lucky children between the ages of 5 and 17. I say lucky because they get to choose their course of musical study. Standard, outmoded curriculum hasn't chosen it for them. They learn how to sing and play an instrument at the same time, something I wish I could do. I'm still working on rubbing the belly and tapping the head to 2/4 time. As they progress, they learn to create their own compositions. Lisa encourages them to craft music around pieces they create in creative writing classes. Things that matter. A couple of weeks ago, I got to hear some original pieces at their end of year recital. Fervent codas reiterated why that guy didn't look her way, or who to cast blame for Mom's cancer. At the most awkward time of their lives, these kids performed with deft ease in intimacy and confidence. That's the greatest tool Lisa teaches. I secretly promised to seek her out as a future guide to my unborn child. How different a child could turn out if only she was given the freedom to realise her faculties. I didn't have private tutoring. I did, most gratefully, perform music throughout my youth, though. I was lucky enough, fuck that, I was one of the last students who took advantage of her educational right to study music. A right that has been ripped away from the poor kids today. The one thing that gave me a modicum of self-confidence. It's probably the one explanation of why I feel more comfortable walking across the stage of a packed theatre than singularly meandering down a fluorescent lit, antiseptic corridor to anywhere.

It wasn't until I started writing that I paid attention to lyrics. Words didn't penetrate until at least the 5th rotation. Anyway, music was the salve I sought, not cheap words. Music was the thing that jettisoned or plummeted me. Lyrics were heard more like another layer of sound rather than anything with meaning

and I ran, I ran so far away...
I couldn't get away

... maybe.

This is my new favourite song by my new favourite band.

I am a waterfall waiting inside a well.
I am that wrecking ball before the building fell.

I have not been using my powers for good.

Someone just whispered that tomorrow is another day.

The Global Village

2006-06-16T14:48:00.000-04:00

For daily righteous final frontier pics, please visit the nice people at: Astronomy Picture of the Day.

[The following is from the site randomania.net. This url was sent to me by my best friend, because sometimes we need a little perspective*.]

If Earth's population was shrunk into a village of just 100 people- with all the human ratios existing in the world still remaining-what would this tiny, diverse village look like? That's exactly what Phillip M. Harter, a medical doctor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, attempted to figure out. This is what he found.

57 would be Asian.
21 would be European.
14 would be from the Western Hemisphere.
8 would be African.
52 would be female.
48 would be male.
70 would be nonwhite.
30 would be white.
70 would be non-Christian.
30 would be Christian.
89 would be heterosexual.
11 would be homosexual.
6 people would possess 59 percent of the entire world's wealth.
All 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing.
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
1 would be near death.
1 would be pregnant.
1 would have a college education.
1 would own a computer.

The following is an anonymous interpretation

Think of it this way. If you live in a good home, have plenty to eat and can read, you are a member of a very select group. And if you have a good house, food, can read and have a computer, you are among the very elite. If you woke up this morning with more health than illness... you are more fortunate than the million who will not survive this week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation... you are ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are fortunate, more than three billion people in the world can't. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ...you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy. If your parents are still alive and still married...you are very rare, even in the United States. If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful... You are blessed because the majority can, but most do not. If you can hold someone's hand, hug them or even touch them on the shoulder...you are blessed because you can offer healing touch. If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.

* Perspective to a broken hearted girl who no longer has a boyfriend anymore.

You're Under { Cardiac } Arrest

2006-05-22T18:25:00.000-04:00

Lying in bed, in mid-April...

Check pulse.
Still erratic. Still arrhythmic.
Pick up phone.

Nurse Ann: Doctor's office.
The Comrade: Hi Ann. I never did hear from you about the test results from the Holter monitor.

This was a beige plastic device, tucked neatly into my bra, acting as central hub to the many diodes connected to adhered points on my chest. For a 24 hour period, it monitored every one of my heartbeats.

It's been 6 months since I wore that device. Proof.

I'd called a couple of times, months ago.

Nurse Ann: When we hear something, you'll be the first to know. click

Eventually, with the combination of no longer feeling weird, coupled with the Silence of the Doctors, I figured No News really was Good News.

But then, one day, I felt weird again.

Nurse Ann: Oh, oh.
The Comrade: That's not too comforting, Ann.
Nurse Ann: I don't have that information. Let me call you back. I'll try calling the lab.

I took the opportunity to make myself another caffe Americano.

ring ring

Nurse Ann: It seems that the lab moved. They don't seem to have the results. [voice now frantic and pitched one octave higher] They don't have any record of you even visiting the offices, let alone wearing the...
The Comrade: What? (Visions of having to go through another 24 hours of being part robot flitted through my head.) Did you give them all possible name variations?

Six months ago, after leaving the first EKG testing lab, a place where somehow I thought I was going to receive a print-out prediction of the time and place of my death, where streams of tears ran off my face in sheets, I resolved to have my provincial Health card absolved of any remaining maiden name residue. If I was going to die, I wanted my tombstone, or the homemade bristle-board placard, to be emblazoned with my chosen family's name, not the one I was appointed at birth.

Nurse Ann: I did! Nothing.
The Comrade: See, this is unsettling. The public puts their trust in their doctors. We are led to think that if we don't get a call from you, there's nothing wrong with us.
Nurse Ann: [Insert complaint about other medical facilities, accepting no responsibility on my doctor's end**]

**{freaks out, throws hands up in the air and does not know what to do next}

The Comrade: Ann, dear. What is the name and the phone number of the facilities you've tried.
Nurse Ann: Here! But I've already tried it!

From one number as bait, undaunted, I called three facilities while maintaining the kind of calm usually reserved for absolute emergency situations. No other time is my head more level than when the shit's going down. I was sent on a moderate goose chase. The one that repeatedly went to voicemail, though the calls were made during regular business hours...

ring, ring
Voicemail: You have reached the offices of... click.

...was called 12 times in succession.

After reaching a human and providing my Health card number, my birth date, all possible name permutations (always a bride, never a bridesmaid), the missing file was discovered.

The Comrade: That's terrific. Do you think you could fax that over to my doctor's?
Technician: Well, it is 5 minutes to 5:00.
The Comrade: Please? I've waited a very long time for those results.
Technician: I'll do my best.
The Comrade: Thank you.

Next day...

Nurse Ann: [leaving sheepish voice message] Um, yeah... hi. I have the files now. Can you call me back so I can tell you about it?

ring, ring

Gruff, familiar sounding voice: Hello?
The Comrade: Is this the doctor's office?
G, FSV: Yeah. (as if I was retarded)
The Comrade: Dr. Ron?

Ron's his first name.

Dr. Ron: Yeah. (less condescending, more rushed)
The Comrade: Oh! Uh... why are you answering the phone?
Dr. Ron: Ann's at lunch. Nobody else is here. I just came back from a funeral.
The Comrade: Oh. I'm sorry.

Silencio.

The Comrade: The reason I'm calling is that Ann told me the results of the heart monitor I wore are finally in. I'd actually waited...
Dr. Ron: Well, why don't you call Ann in about an hour. She'll be back from lunch then.
The Comrade: I'd actually prefer you to read me the results.
Dr. Ron: [issues an audible sigh, walks off, rifles through papers, returns] Okay, well, there is atrial fibrillation, and (insert 45 seconds of rapid fire medical jargon)...
The Comrade: Okay. So, what does that mean?
Dr. Ron: It's not that severe!
The Comrade: In layman's terms, what does that mean exactly?!
Dr. Ron: You'll have to come in.
The Comrade: Again?
Dr. Ron: Yes! You'll need a referral for a specialist.

Thoughts flying through my head: He's already seen me. If he's got the results from the test in and if it warrants the expertise of someone else who knows more about a specific field than he does, why doesn't he just do a phone referral? Why continue to waste our collective time? This is a bullshit cash grab!

The Comrade: Can't we just do this over the phone?
Dr. Ron: No, you'll have to come in. That's just how it's done.
The Comrade: Can you make an appointment for me?
Dr. Ron: No! Call Ann in an hour. She'll be back then.

After I hung up the phone I went shopping.

Interesting:
I read about this study, done by a husband and wife team of social scientists, where they charted the lives of a sect of Berkley nursery school kids through to adult 23 year olds. The crux of their study showed that scared, whiny kids grew up to be Conservative/ Republicans. The more sunny, outgoing, laissez-faire kids grew up to be liberal.

Shopping for a new doctor made me realise I might have biases.

Dr. Robert Edmund Smith? Sounds like he uses Stephen Harper as his sexy muse.
Dr. Kenneth John Josephson? Probably gets his office supplies here.
Dr. James Cabbot Chenoweth? Never realised his dream of being a whinging operatic counter-tenor.

This is how my brain works: If I could imagine the years of torment received in various playgrounds for having a name like, say, Ralph Lifschitz, then grow up without changing it? I reason that guy's gone through enough torment to have gained just enough humanity to be my new doctor! The problem was, the only Lifschitz who fit that bill was going to be away for 6 months. I imagined my version of dashing Dr. Ralph flying off to save 12 year old African girls from fistulas. My hero. Hurry back from the Congo, doctor! I'll be here, clutching my heart.

I had another marathon phone conversation with the future grandmother of my children a couple of weeks ago.

I told her about the deciding phone call which inspired the seeking of a rotation of general practitioners.
Grand-maman: Well, that's not entirely fair, though, is it? You don't know who died.

Oh, shit. I didn't think of that. What if it was his mother? Or his dog? Sister? Wife? Oh, God! I really liked his wife!
I'd forgotten that my doctor was human.

Nurse Ann: It's Dr. Ron's office. Why haven't you called back yet? Dr. Ron really wants to see you and the Head of Cardiology at Sunnybrook does too. Call back, please.

Sometimes I just need extra encouragement.
When I called back, Nurse Ann was at lunch again.
Another nurse, one less charmingly crotchety, made my appointment.

Less Crotchety Nurse: We'll see you Tuesday at 11:00.

See you next Tuesday.

One of my major complaints about the film industry was the caste/ military/ echelon system used therein. On a call sheet, a foolscap sized sheet of paper denoting the day's shooting events, all cast and crew are represented by a number. If one guy's number is higher than yours, that guy may think it's his God-given right to treat you like scum, because, well, that's how it's gone down for him. Nobody really questions tyranny. Like in most businesses, someone always has a higher number than you. Unlike most businesses, numbers change from production to production. I have held a 3 digit spot on a call sheet. This usually entails having a 4th assistant director (the main director's 14th brain amplifier) on your ass for 12 hours straight. It evokes all the grade 11 pangs of vindictive, rebellious youth. Likewise, I've held a single digit number. We're talking lattes, dancing girls, oral/ manual stimulation to fruition. That day, in the doctor's office, at exactly 11:00:32, I was given the treatment of the highest order single digit number.

We're number one!

I have been going to see this doctor since I was 21 years old. The usual 45 minute wait was preempted. Whisked into an examination room, I was fawned over by no less than 2 nurses.

Smiling Nurses in Unison: The doctor will be right with you.

This is new, I said under my breath as the examination room door was closing.

And he really was right with me. Immediately. With small talk, interested questions about my personal life, clever quips, gentle bedside manner, extra care and caution. The only thing missing was the dancing girls.

Dr. Ron: I'm going to take some blood for a thyroid test. Do you have any problems with needles?
The Comrade: Not really. Not more than the average person, I don't think.
Dr. Ron: Well, I'll be right here if anything happens.

Wow.

Upon returning to the front desk, I got a doctor's escort. I was informed of the rare opportunity to be examined by the wealthy North Toronto neighbourhood hospital's resident head cardiologist. I was being sent to the best, though issued one slight warning about the heart specialist.

Dr. Ron: He might seem a little rude, but he is a really good doctor.

Hm.

The Love of My Life (who no longer wants to be called Fatty): Did he apologise?
The Comrade: No, but I'm not sure whether I went to the spa or the doctor's office today! I don't think I'll ever know whether he was being remorseful or if he was just skirting a potential malpractice suit.

And I'm not all that curious, really. I realise I'm pretty much a dollar sign to my doctor. Over the phone, I don't think he had any idea which patient he was speaking to. If he was into developing a relationship with his patients, he'd had ample opportunity to do so, with this one anyway, over the last 17 years. But he hadn't.

Incoming patient calls readily garner appointments, not answers to queries. Outgoing calls are made only when there's something to be gravely discussed between doctor and patient. Something you don't know? Don't call us. We'll call you. What it creates is more mystique and extra presence for their noble profession. And makes us relinquish our own power in deference to those in white coats and ties of stethoscopes. Our own number, associated with personal power, becomes an exponent. It's bullying. And it's all designed.

For me, the greatest thing about being 37 and having been raised the way I had, I understand the designed inducement of authoritarian fear. Most people accept this, giving wide doctor deference berth. Reasoning: They're doctors! They know more. Are more. Or employer berth. They control my fate. I have a mortgage and a family. What can I do? I do not accept numbers higher than my own. I spent too long doing that. Now, I will give you all the respect you deserve.

And that can go any number of ways.

Cleansing the Absentee

2006-05-16T18:42:00.000-04:00

And after a near 3 month leave of absence, she returns.

I've thought about it every day. Because of the absentia, I've been both happy and sad. But each day I was away, it kept getting harder to get back to it. Eventually, I couldn't write a thing. I couldn't read anything either. Words would scramble and conjoin in an alien fusion.

It was just easier to stop.
I don't feel like it.
I don't wanna.

And this applied to a great many things in my life.

Around the beginning of this year things started collapsing. Relationships turned into a bilious poutine. People fell gravely ill. Babies were lost. Cancers were discovered to be inoperable. Friends were indefinitely hospitalized, one (gratefully) dead from a massive coronary.

And then there were the survivors...

For us, there was a poisonous brine being injected into parts of the populace. It seemed like an unauthorized pharmacological experiment.

Participants wanted!
Healthy? (or as healthy as one can be in our culture)
(relatively) Drug free?
Call this toll-free number NOW to take part in this IMPORTANT experiment.
$$ <-- We got these to give!

Except we weren't being paid.
We signed no waivers
Because we didn't know we were guinea pigs.

We were just left
Depressed
Anxious
Sobbing sad
And Angry

When Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend, and I were still together we had a friend who, after a night of grand pontificating - ever with a tasty adult beverage in hand - was usually found the next morning passed out on our couch. Lucky days were counted when his nether regions were sheathed. One morning, my eyes fell to where the usual weekend lump resided, only to find a heap of thrown-back covers and a blood red stain on the carpet.

Panic.

Upon closer inspection, the stain was the uninspired and regurgitated bordeaux from the night prior. Along the bathroom walls and floor was its companion art piece. The toilet remained pristine.

Though his DNA was splattered like a Ralph Steadman drawing,
He was nowhere to be found.
His car had disappeared from the driveway,
And he wasn't answering his cellphone.

He-who-never-returned-to-clean-up-his-own-filth-and-was-subsequently-never-invited-back-to-my-house once told me that just about all organisms seek an alternative mental landscape.

Aforementioned Self-Inflicted Projectile Puke Abandoner: Take the ever-lovable koala. It's a dual tasker. It feeds on eucalyptus while getting stoned in the process.

Lesson: Look to nature to explain man's shortcomings.
We can't help it; we're animals.

It's as good an excuse as any.

For me, one who's been prone to picking up new addictions with a zealot's enthusiasm, once I gave up cigarettes, I turned to new vices or reinvigorated old flames. Vast quantities of the following were gorged:

Chocolate
Tequila shots, vodka, beer, coffee - in rapid-fire succession
And something I'm not terribly proud of, unless I'm in culinary circles, at which point I brag: the engorged liver of a force-fed duck or goose

The city: Montréal, Canada
The restaurant: Au Pied du Cochon
Translation: With the foot of the pig
Item which sent triglyceride levels soaring: Duck in a Can (recipe as follows)

Take one Muscovy duck breast, partially slice its fat along the meat to make the protein more malleable. Pack said breast into an Alpo dog food sized can, pushing the flesh into the sides. Fill the centre with foie gras. Season with balsamic vinegar, thyme, salt, and pepper. Can (following manufacturer's directions). Place in pressure cooker for exactly 28 minutes. At the table, a plate of celeriac purée, the cushion before the fall, is placed in front of the poor sod who ordered coronary-on-a-plate. Then, as the tin is punctured with a razor sharp tin opener, a fine savoury mist releases to the east. Best to wear protective lenses for this portion. Once the can is deftly opened, pour/ slop the contents onto the celeriac mash... and enjoy.

I downed 6 pints of water during that meal, in a poor attempt to curb cirrhosis of the liver.

Lately I'd been using food and booze to numb myself.

Over the last few months I've been really upset with the state of humanity. No one seems to care about anyone anymore. They avert their eyes to pretend they don't see someone who may obviously be in need. A friend of mine, the one mentioned earlier who is indefinitely hospitalized, fell - splat - on a busy sidewalk on a cold winter's night. For two hours people walked over and around him. Was he drunk? Yes. Had he peed himself? More than likely. And it probably froze to his old, drunk ass. He'd also just had a stroke. And because it was so cold and because there had been so much time that had elapsed, he'll probably never walk again.

Around me and including me, I felt as if there was flagrant injustice happening, and there was no one to readily come to the defense of myself or anyone else for that matter. I stood alone, again, feeling I was the only person who was doing anything.

At work.
At home.
Around town.

Plenty of people were around, plenty of things were happening, but no one seemed to be doing much. Or maybe they couldn't do anything. Their lives' trajectory had led them to a zenith of ineffectuality. Or I was asking too much. This began a building of general malaise, nervous anxiety, seething anger and feelings of not wanting to do anything either. I can't beat 'em, so might as well... Why do now, when it can be done later? Or whatever. I had no energy to do things that had been easy and natural to do before. Any creative process seemed both daunting and pointless. At home, fight rounds had intensified and multiplied.

I thought I'd increase my exercise quotient.
I went on epic bike adventures for hours,
And not only gained weight, but my treasonous clothes were treating my body as life snuffing, binding sausage casings.

A few months ago my Klipsch 2.1 computer speakers blew. My only link to decent music. It was a premature self-annihilation, as I learned later. One satellite was non-responsive. The other sent crumbled cracklings out its clothed maw. For over 2 months I didn't listen to music. Sure, I'd hear the canned stuff while strolling cleaning supply aisles in supermarkets, or while ricocheting between tables at work, but those were more the supporting tunes for the Bob Ross painted backdrops of our days.

A couple of years ago I gave up cable television.
In January, cigarettes went bye-bye.
Now music.

I had no desire to listen to music.

This ain't right.

After a few nights of being despondent after work, coming home and sobbing for several hours over what, I can't remember, though, I'm sure, there was major significance at the time, I decided that my brain physiology wasn't firing properly. Luckily, I'm not the kind of person who A) denies there might be something wrong with her or B) wallows for too long in a situation in need of change. I just tend to do the kind of things others might not have as their first choice.

Ack: What have you given up this week?

That's his new question for me.

The Comrade: Food, booze and coffee. I'm detoxing.

What if:
People weren't actually depressed, they were just slowly poisoning themselves with everything they ingested regularly.

With record cases of depression and simultaneously the highest level of processed food available and consumed, it's plausible. Fasting was what my body was telling me to do. And I'm a slave to the wishes of my body.

I'm currently on Day 7 of the Master Cleanse.

The summary is something like this:
Drink a concoction of lemon juice, cayenne pepper, maple syrup and distilled water throughout the day.
Before bed, drink a herbal laxative tea.
Wake up like a shot, tail-tucked, screaming all the way to the toilet.
Sweet release.
Chug 1L of lukewarm water with 2 tsp of Celtic sea salt dissolved within - as fast as possible.
Release some more. Less sweet.

Times 10 days.

Strangely, I have more energy than I've had in a very long time. On no food, I'm doing bike distances I've never done before. My head is clear, the sausage casings removed, and the depression is gone. Any obstacle that has come up this week has been handled with minimal emotional attachment. I've worked, serving the street's most delicious food, with no qualms. Last night, in a moment of missing the practice of utilizing my culinary skills, I made dinner for my darling boy.

I've got 3 more days to go. Fantasies about drop kicking and rushing poor vegans to get to their plates of kasha and sauteed green beans only come up a couple of times a day now. I'm fantasizing about my first meal: a soup of wild and tame (whatever that means) mushrooms, a touch of cream, a float of wild leek pesto and a drizzle of truffle oil. It's currently holding a spot of prominence in my freezer. Cupcake, my friend and the culinary prodigy at my place of employ at the Cheer's Equivalent bar, its inventor.

My relationship is still maddening. It still leaves me winded and staggering to think how a man and a woman in love can have a conversion, that sounds like it's in English, but really it's in two foreign tongues from the farthest reaches of distant nebulas. With, of course, the resulting universal hurt pride on both sides. Both of us are in our respective corners waiting for the bell to ring again. The fighting's a little different for me now. I still fight my side. I'm still passionate with my convictions. I'm just not raging with utter frustration on the inside when I'm doing so.

Amazing what falls out of our ass during a cleanse.

2006-05-14T14:37:00.000-04:00

The maker of this blog has not forgotten about this place. This is a space she loves very much. But like a person who hasn't seen someone she's had eyes for for a very long time, there is bound to be some awkwardness involved upon the reunion. Some tongue-tiedness as well. I'm stabbing away, but nothing's really sticking yet. Baby steps, I'm telling myself.

It's coming, though.
I can feel it in my bones.

Love,

The Comrade

The Special Olympics

2006-02-23T22:43:00.000-05:00

They're at the gates. Number 17 looks oiled and limber. Ooh... do you see the exchange of loving glances between 17 and 36? They've been in constant training for 8 months. They may take it. Or maybe 33 Squared will. They did well in the Finishing Each Other's Sentences prelims earlier. It's all very exciting. A beautiful day for it, ladies and gentlemen! Thousands of athletes all lined up for Love's Race.

And they're off!

Though the course waivers, the beacon continues flashing throughout the course, of course. They can see their goal if they're looking really, really hard. What's that? What do you mean they can't? There's zero visibility? They're going to crash and burn! God, I can't look.

No one in my relative proximity, who has been in a romantic capacity for 2.5 years and under, is currently running that race without the surprise element of oil spills, hurricanes, (quick)sand traps and unseen walls that love-runners slam full force unawares into.

Who is laying those deathtraps?
Who the hell designed this obstacle course?

Rubbing a flea market lamp, nicked from the set of Disney's Aladdin.

The Comrade: Genie? Geeenie? Ollie ollie oxen free. Come out, come out wherever you are. C'mon buddy. What do you think?

Tones of a xylophone cascading like waterfall.
A poof of white, dry ice smoke.

The Comrade: [cough, cough] Pride? False sense of entitlement? Weird ego emanations? Survivor? The series? Really? That's what you see?

The first season had been the only one I had ever watched. Contestants converged from all over a country, placed in a desert island scenario eating and performing heinously for alleged "survival". The commonality was consistent performances of one-upmanship from all. Well, only one person could win the prize. So, the girls stuck it to the girls who stuck it to the guys who stuck it up each other. Blur providing musical accompaniment.

We're sticking it to each other
Because we want to win a million dollars?
Is that what you're saying, Genie?

Oh.
Metaphor.

We're born alone. We die alone. It's as if we're preparing ourselves for the inevitable.

Sometimes I'll watch Chicken, my Sweet Sixteen cat, walk across the room with his tongue at half mast and a grumpy/bewildered look on his face. It sends me into a neighbour's state of heaven's. I'll think: If I was scared of loving something because I was scared of losing something eventually, I would never have known how much joy and love a 6 lb, yelling, little dude could bring.

I also have no expectations of Chicken.

Chicken doesn't have to be on time, doesn't have to clean the washroom, doesn't have to protect me. I don't hold him to his word. He makes me no promises. He just simply loves me. And there isn't a doubt in my mind that he doesn't.

The progression trajectory between myself and Fatty has looked like this:
Platonic friends for 4 years. A beautiful kiss. Moving in with me within 2 months of that first kiss. Regularly scheduled fighting like coed WWF wrestlers who had also vigorously enjoyed their high school's debate club. Truth, beauty, floods of tears, great love, the greatest embraces, and alas, more fighting. It's like a strange continuous loop, inside an old Sears wringer washer.

It's also only been 11 months.
Prior to that we'd been ourselves by ourselves for a hell of a lot longer.
It makes sense that we're still figuring it out.

Last week I was talking to Ed, a new regular whom I met while A) working and B) intoxicated. Apparently. Ed had been seeing a girl a while back, but they were currently friends, one whom Ed occasionally goes out for cocktails with.

Ed: We were never that serious.
The Comrade: How long were you seeing each other for?
Ed: About a year.

I don't know how things can not be serious after seeing someone for a year. But maybe that's just me.

Sure, it would probably be easier to just have good times with a fella, ask nothing of him, be nothing to him, and make no plans for the future. Unfortunately, I'm not that kind of person.

And then there's the whole being 37 thing. Not asking the advice of my mother, yet getting advised nonetheless, I get nuggets like this: So you want to get pregnant? You'd better hurry up. The longer you wait, the greater the chances of a Baby Retard.

Verbatim, though translated.

My friend the Doyenne, my original boss at my tenure at the Cheer's Equivalent Bar, said, "I was trying so hard not to become my mother that I didn't even see the turning into Dad thing coming."

So, being a serious person who has potentially found the man she wants to have as the future father of her children, culminated with the clock ticking and 2 marriages under her belt, she feels the need to quickly nip buds and waste no further time. You'd better be it. And if you're not, you better make yourself known pronto lest I live with yet another grave error in judgment.

I can't afford to do that again.

Testing, testing, one, two, three.
He keeps getting 87s.

We are a continent of big kids. Me, me, me. We got used to living alone, by our own rules, until living alone served us up a rather large platter of loneliness. That was uncomfortable. But then, if we were lucky, we met someone to love. Sharing our sandbox or our toys for an afternoon is much different than sharing them indefinitely. We wanted it all yet we wanted to sacrifice nothing.

When two people converge, they have to do so from different parts of the world, or just the city. Either way, there are individual roads, travelled alone, that each takes to meet the other. Once the roads intersect, one person, in order to meet the other, needs to merge into the other's lane. Succumb might be a nasty word for the Millennial Girl. Or emasculating for The Metrosexual. Maybe yield is better. Yield's got that cool yellow sign appeal.

Somehow we've been having difficulty adjusting to the other person.
There's been a lack of providing our lover with what he/she really needs.
We know what's best for the other.
Aren't we clever?
Somehow our inherent generosity fled and control began to dominate.

Men somehow forgot how to be men, and women don't know how to be girls because we're too busy being a strange combination of both. Anytime I see an example of girlishness, even though it tickles a man, I catch myself viewing it simply as manipulative.

But maybe it's not. Not when I see the resulting delight on a man's face.

I need to remember to tell him how wonderful I think he is, and not just point out the things that need to be done. I need to remember that what I have is rare, and that I'm truly fortunate to have someone love me so much, and to have an opportunity to practice love.

With the exception of Valentine's Day diners, their one day off, I've seen, in the eyes of young lovers, passport holders who unwittingly became visitors to the Twilight Zone, whose ticket was purchased by the one who loves them.

If you really loved me, you wouldn't be driving me fucking nuts.

I see the exasperation in their eyes. I see, "Is it worth it?" flash momentarily nearly every day these days. I have personally ignited magnesium, having the phrase pop - overexposed - on my own expression.

Is it worth it?

He dared to hold a mirror to my face to show me my imperfections, wept that I could not see them, still vowed to continue to love me, but if I didn't want his love, or his presence, he would go, granting my wishes. He just wanted my happiness. Pushed away for the countless time, then pulled back, he would consistently demonstrate longevity by not leaving me until my last heaving, snotty tear was shed. Every single time. He never grows tired of holding me. Or telling me how much he loves me. Or how much he wants this to work.

Is it worth it?
He's everything I asked for.

At the end of my marriage to Ack, the now ex-husband/ best friend, I promised myself that next time, if there was to be a next time, I wanted to have someone who fought back, who didn't just extinguish my flame with baking soda. I wanted someone equally as passionate as I.

All of the girlfriends that Fatty had prior to me were girls who hung on his every word, never challenged him, could have easily been taken advantage of. He wanted someone challenging, someone strong, someone who fought back.

It's everything we asked for,
Just not the way we'd asked for it.
It was supposed to be easier.
Wasn't it?

Something we'd both shared in common was going if the going got too tough. Yesterday we made a pact that we're not allowed to leave because it's too hard. The rewards will be there if only we stick it out. Besides, I want us to demonstrate longevity to our children.

So, maybe it wasn't supposed to be easier.

Oh, this Universe, who thinks us so special as to grant us everything we ever wished for.... In the future, if you're just as generous, I wouldn't mind a little black Mini Cooper with white racing stripes, please. Or a cheapo 4 day journey to Cuba. That might be nice.

Maybe there's not a finish line in this race, just a target to keep stabbing at.

Darling Universe, for the next event I'll take a handicap with a Special Bus pass on a par 14, if I could.

Reset Command

2006-02-03T00:36:00.000-05:00

[From an episode of an Australian DIY television programme, as witnessed by Ack, the ex-husband/best friend]
Average Looking Aussie Male: Ugh! I cannot be part of this any longer! You people are all plastic!
Perfect Looking Aussie Female: (to an equally attractive male counterpart) [blink, blink, mouth agape] What does he mean plastic? I do yoga!

Sigh.
I do yoga too.
Right now I kind of have to. For a couple of reasons.

As I have successfully quit smoking for 21 days, I have come to accept that there are things that go along with this much lauded success: expanded hips, protruding belly (combined with accompanying cavernous button), and a penchant for, well, everything edible. The other reason, the real one, is to calm the savage beast.

Here at the target coordinates 44˚N / 79˚W, the weather outside is not frightful. It's closer to Postal Service's bleak yet plausible Sleeping In; now we really can swim any day in November. It's not right. Everyone outside is parading H&M's spring collection.

I believe true Canadians are the ones who don't complain each year about How cold it is or say stupid things like Why do I live in this country? during the bleaker months of the year. I count myself among the contingent True. We've wholly accepted the fact that this, our home and native land, is a 4 season festivale. Some seasons are longer than others. Others are very much like a magician's disappearing act. With no wand in sight, spring, with bunny, vanish into thin air. We're lucky to catch magnolia in bloom, the perfect shade of pink, the tree that takes the cake 2 out of 52 weeks of the year. With premature petal loss, branches seem to cradle, curving down, mourning, trying to recollect. God, I love that tree.

Blink.
Mouth agape.
I do yoga.

Canadians get used to our seasons. Expect them. Fall means going back to school or starting something new and scary, leaves kicked all the while. Winter means snow forts, hibernating, dutch ovens, soups, stews and chili. Spring is smelly and everything is possible. Summer is frolicking and sweaty, dunking bunions into cold lakes with tadpoles nipping at your heels.

We don't really have winter this year. We have Finter or Wring, a far less satisfying combination than, say, brunch. I know it's only February, but now we've got 2 more months of not knowing what to expect. I'm not sure, but I think somehow this new weather, which is conceivably manufactured (a new paranoia), could be wreaking havoc on lovers in my vicinity. That and the sudden stop of the Chandler wobble last weekend.

Fatty I have been fighting a lot lately.

Without a winter, gone are the cozy nights of running in from blizzards panting and half frozen. There's no need for collective foot stomping to rid boots of slushy matter. Unnecessary are hands to run up and down bodies to recirculate. No need to bring the duvet out to the sofa to snuggle warmly together. No need to exchange Eskimo kisses. Nothing's frozen for things to thaw. With thaw comes examination and putrescence.

Mr. Holmes: Damn it Watson, give me back my magnifying glass!
Mr. Watson: If I may say, sir, perhaps you should examine the world less scrupulously.
Mr. Holmes: Whot? Would you like a sacking?
Mr. Watson: You can't actually sack me, Holmes. We're fictional.

You're not perfect.
I'm not perfect.
This is what's wrong with you.
I'm avoiding what's wrong with me.
You're wrong.
I've been wronged.
You hurt me.
And I will hurt you back.

This has been going on for a month. It doesn't matter who said it because the parts are easily switched around. Boy in italics. Girl in plain font. Girl in italics. Ordinary font boy. Doesn't matter. The end is the same. No end.

But you can bonk a snake on the head when you see that it's trying to eat its own tail, telling it there are healthier menu choices.

I believe in breaks, in breathers. Reset time. Especially when things are too volatile and situations are too close to be able to see any truth or real solution. I have to step back from macroscopic. Choose letterbox. It all gets in then. No sides are cut off unwittingly because of screen deficiency. Step back, step away. Not forever, just for a while. Gain some perspective. Cry on someone else's shoulder. On many shoulders. Hear different opinions. Work. Watch other people. Mediate other lovers' fights.
When you do that, sometimes you're lucky enough to learn:

We're all varying degrees of broken.
You can't change other people's behaviour, but you can make better choices.
Lose the battle to win the war. [If I was the tattooed type, this would be the one.]
I am not too proud to read self help books.
You're doing no one any favours if you're helping with resentment.
Maybe yelling and screaming is a bit self-indulgent.

I have friends that I wholly accept. They are all quirky. They all do things that are slightly irritating, but I don't take offense to them. I don't gutturally attack them because I know them intrinsically. I know that any uncharacteristic behaviour of theirs comes from another place, another planet perhaps, certainly from another time in their life's cycle. Luckily my gift is empathy. My gift, however, has been charred and rendered useless while in a romantic situation.

This week I'd discovered something I'm not terribly proud of. There are things I've picked up from my father. Things like treating strangers or pals with more consideration and more patience than the one(s) closest to me. Expecting perfection from that poor one. Punishing him if I didn't get it.

And I set out to be exactly everything he wasn't.

Luckily these things have all been unconscious behaviour. If they had been conscious decisions, I'd have to check myself into a Walk-in Sociopath's Clinic. I'm out of Bay Street's clutches this week, at least, but now that I know that I've been doing wrong, I have to do something about it. I can't just go on the way I have been. What I can do is change my behaviour, my response, which has the power to change everything.

I had a conversation with my boss's boyfriend the other day. He's not only gay, he's Sicilian, which means he's not adverse to yelling.

Sicili: I can't HELP IT! It's because I'm FRUSTRATED!
The Comrade: I know, sweetie. I'm the same way.

But there are those who hear no words beyond the roar of rising decibels. Maybe they learned that yelling really meant something hellishly fierce and brutal. Wait 'til your father gets home. Maybe they learned it was the aural blast just before being hurled into a freshly painted wall by a single clenched fist.

Somehow my body had been impervious to harm. My flesh was knight's armor protecting my soul. Besides I was doing the 20 Minute Workout during high school. I'd jumping jack anyone's ass... while yelling and screaming.

But yelling and screaming, though expressions of frustration, are ungenerous to the ones we love, as well as self-indulgent. I suppose it's a bit caveman.

Sicili: But that's how I am! I can't change it!

I had been a smoker for 24 years. A pack a day. Then one day I decided I didn't want to smoke anymore, mostly because I felt these filtered friends had fucked me over and made into a junkie. I didn't want to label myself Former Smoker Now Ex-Smoker. I don't really like labels unless it's a Sexy Stinky Cheese™ label that more than likely doesn't exist. I don't want to have been this and now that. I happened to have smoked before and now I don't smoke anymore.

I want to be able to say, "I happened to have yelled out of frustration before and now I don't anymore." It's an issue of a bit of self control.

If I had to pick one distinguishing feature from 2005, it would have been this: I allowed myself to feel sorry for myself. And I've allowed myself to express pain to the ones who dispensed it.

Giuseppe, the ex-boss who fired me because his disgusting transient partner didn't like what I'd written about him in a blog past, came into the Cheer's Equivalent Bar a few weeks ago.

Giuseppe: You don't call. You don't write. You don't visit. Aren't you happy to see me?
The Comrade: Do you want the truth, Giuseppe?
Random Drunken Darling at the Bar: NO! Not the truth!

But he knew. He knows. He lives with a lot, which is just fine as he's always welcomed failure.

It was also the year that I had finally realised that I helped others who were afraid to help themselves. I've always spoken out on injustices, defending others. But when injustices happened to me I've historically made concessions for those transgressions. But they get stored. Filed. Released after due reset time.

Over the Christmas holidays Fatty and I were invited to my brother Vince's house for dinner. His whole family was there: wife, 3 kids and him. We brought booze. On the way up I gave Fatty a brief debrief about what to expect.

The Comrade: Vince is the whitest Chinese man you'll ever meet. Baritone robotic, if you can imagine. He used to be really funny. He's very serious now. He once asked me to tell him if there was anyone bothering me at school. If there was, he'd go beat them up for me. He'd tell me this as he steered me on handlebars to grade 2.

At dinner my 44 year old brother had produced a flowchart outlining the ongoing life cycle of my father. This exercise was more than likely one dispensed by his therapist to gain empathy towards someone who was less than the idyllic example of paternal.

Vince: See? From this year to this decade he was starving; his mother had died 6 months after he was born; he was in the care of abusive women...
The Comrade: That was when he was straining corn from cow dung to get any nutrients?
Vince: Correct.
Anita [Vince's wife of 20 years]: My father went through a similar situation during the war in Germany. He made the best of what he had and became a good and patient man, an excellent father and doting husband.
The Comrade: Yes he had. [To Vince] She's right. Because our father had been mistreated, he thought he was entitled to mistreat.

And I was doing the same.

Later Anita, whom I've grown to really like over the years, expressed empathy to me about my situation at home.

Anita: Knowing the family from which you were raised, I don't know where you came from. I have no clue. You were left alone after everyone hightailed it to university - their salvation, their freedom. You had to stay. No back-up. That must have been so hard.
The Comrade: Thank you, Anita. Thank you for acknowledging that.
Vince: I've acknowledged that before.
The Comrade: Not to me you haven't.

And silently she wondered where he had been when she needed a bully beaten.
In absentia.

Because it was said, it was assumed that the grief was over now. But sometimes when an unnamed thing is finally christened there emerges something really dark and unforgiving within a person who was once light and forgiveness. And that darkness took her show on the road and became the most caustic girlfriend in the Greater Toronto Area.

But I hurt!
Everyone does.

New lesson plan. A morphing plan created by the Universe.
I have some work to do.

Change Has Come

2006-01-17T15:33:00.000-05:00

The one good thing about having been the youngest of 4 children was implementing archived plans in the new occupation of a long coveted bedroom. A sibling had left in a Ford Tempo taking him/her on a one way ticket to freedom. Education.

Still serving my sentence, I was upgraded to a larger cell in the east wing. A hurled twin mattress was the new pass allowing entry through a doorway which had previously required permission and favour to enter. Dragged was a cheap fibreboard dresser and a solid collection of pigs along a narrow strip of time and tag worn wall to wall. Planting my small collection of plastic farm animals in the center of the room, I was Columbus. I was Noah.

In this new room I rearranged old objects; pinned idols (Billy and beyond) on walls of genuine imitation wood panelling; stubbed toes on doorjambs; made loose plans; gossiped and dreamt of freedom. I'd walked through this room 10,000 times.

I daydreamed of who I'd marry, recalling the psychic game of predestined unions. 3 watermelon seeds stuck to my forehead. Each seed had a boy's name assigned to it. The seed that remained was the boy I was going to marry. Mrs. Rick Springfield.

On 500 of 10,000 passes, variational occurrences of wondering who the noogie and wedgie-giving, stringy haired, skinny kid would grow into popped up like crocus.

In high school I could talk on the phone for 3 hours, watch television for 6, eat 2 square meals, smoke a half a pack of cigarettes, sleep 8 hours, and continue to dispense no less than 2 noogies or wedgies per day (a childhood past time).

20 years later, I've stopped watching television. I'm one of those people who not only identifies with characters, but who mentally throws herself into the screen. I was the bonneted Anne of Green Gables rebelliously duking it out with Marilla. [click] Or any one of the girls from the Facts of Life, depending on what the weekly disparagement was. When Tootie outgrew her rollerskates, I felt her bunions. It was like a Vulcan Pain Meld.

At 37, I prefer seeing people rather than talking to a disembodied voice who is usually in the midst of a distraction. Or worse, using me as a distraction. When the phone rings in our house now it does so exactly 3 times before heading to message land. In that time, if I choose to answer - these days a 1 in 10 chance - this is generally how it goes down.

ring ring
Where the fuck's the phone?
ring ring
Oh.
Cigarettes, cigarettes... where the hell are my cigarettes...
ring ring
Singing: There they are!
(Tripping over x, stubbing 3 toes) [BANG] OWWWW!

The Comrade: Hello? [sparking up]
Future Grandmother of My Children: I've made a resolution to be Super Woman this year!
The Comrade: 3 years running?
FGoMC: I've never been Super Woman. I'm talking about going on my cross trainer daily.
The Comrade: Oh? Oh.
FGoMC: Yes. My youngest and I purchased one years ago. This year I'm finally going to do it.
The Comrade: Shall I start designing the cape now?
FGoMC: Yes! I'd like something pink with big flowers on it. Nothing garish like icky black or one with webs.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that Spiderman never wore a cape.

I don't remember the last time I made a New Year's Resolution. Well, last year I did make a lukewarm resolve to take more pictures. Good start. These days resolutions mean a wall of yellow tagged monitors where the actual retail price reflects dots per square inch capability.

I'm been thinking about things I should change. A new year is as good an excuse as any.

I think the wedgies may have come to a complete halt.
Sigh.

I asked if he wanted one. He said he did. I explained what was involved and he still wanted it. I warned him. I did. But it was like he begged me for one. So I gave it to him. A Super Atomic variety. And paraded him around for a bit. His feet didn't touch the ground. He screamed to come down. I complied. With his back to me he dislodged pants and underwear by repeated yanking from one side of his bum. He turned around in a slow, steady Jack Palance style, whose glare bore straight through me. 5 years old. Arms akimbo. He was 3 feet of undiluted hate.

Something I could work on is keeping track of things. Of course, there are some things I could let go of too, but that's an entirely separate post. I mean I don't keep track of certain things.

Like St. Agur cheese.

I will treat this precious hunk of bacteria like an over-possessive lover, spreading only a communion's worth on my tongue. It will then be carefully rewrapped and replaced to a remote spot in the refrigerator. 4 weeks later, during a monthly tour of fridge duty, a hardened, encrusted, inedible version of its former self will emerge, untouched further, and I will weep bitterly.

Keeping track of my period had fallen under the stinky cheese category.

Fatty, the love of my life: Drugstore? What do you need at the drugstore?
The Comrade: Um... drugs? And things?

The worst liar of all time. Also a non-habitual drug taker.

At home I had a calm conversation with myself.

Okay, there are some definite symptoms here. So, if I am pregnant how much of my lifestyle would I really have to change? I mean, a slight variance, maybe. Maybe a bit of exercise in the department of moderation. Maybe no more tequila shots... in succession.

Just wanting to verify, I went online to research the potential effects of reduced espresso intake, smoking the occasional Virginia Slim, and/or sliding in one or two drops of scotch like a christening on an unborn child.

In no particular order:
Sudden Infant Crib Death
Low Birth Weight
Low Immune System
Fetal Alcohol Poisoning

Great!

En route to the drugstore I imagined myself pregnant. I mean, really imagined myself pregnant.
I was instantly protective of my body's new inhabitant
In a Schwartzenegger way.

Walking through the fluorescent lit lanes of cotton balls, anti-chafing devices and adult diapers, I reached the Family Planning section of the local drugstore. At ramming speed, with blinders on, I pushed passed feminine protection products, thumbing them like a Sicilian. Though I wasn't 100% sure, I thought: I wouldn't need pads for nine months!

I also couldn't have triple vodkas either.
Less reason for celebration.

At the destination, I scrutinised no less than 4 varieties of home pregnancy tests, choosing a modest no name brand as every penny began to count now that I was saving money for a college fund.

Hm... what's that strange cramping? Oh, right. I read about that. It's normal. But, didn't it say it was usually located to one side? Ah, it's probably nothing.

Glowing all the way home, as only a pregnant woman would, I had to wait a couple of hours to perform the test effectively. The chemical which would spell m-o-m-m-y in my pee needed 4 hours to collect. 2 down, 2 to go. Frequent trips to the bathroom? Just another symptom of pregnancy.

Or a bladder inflection.

And then it came.
A small, warm, red gush.
And I was a little sad.

And not prepared.

I hadn't picked up any protective sheathes.
I had been too busy thumbing them.

Later I told Fatty, the love of my life, all about it.
He was a bit sad too, but more relieved.
Timing.
He thought 2 years max. would be better.

The next day we went to the house of the Future Super Woman.

The Comrade: blah, blah, blah... pregnancy scare.
Super Woman: What?! Pregnant?! [SHRIEK]
The Comrade: It was just a scare, darling.

Which made her take her eldest aside.

Super Woman [in private with her eldest]: Were you two planning, darling? You know, not that it really matters, or that I care all that much.
Fatty: One day, Mom.
Super Woman: Well! I shall start knitting now! [SHRIEK]

The Comrade: You know something? If I had been pregnant I would have told him or her one day, 'You were conceived purely from love.'
Super Woman: Well, he's guaranteed to be a complete shit, then.
Fatty: What the hell's that supposed to mean?
Super Woman: Oh, nothing, darling!

So I'm not pregnant. But that's okay because this marks the first time in my life that I would actually welcome having a child. The first time that I've thought that I wouldn't fuck up a child too much. Maybe just 2 years in therapy. Or a session or 2 in regressionist therapy of the future.

I will be a Mom one day.
Wow. This is really big for me.

This pregnancy scare made me consider every single cigarette I put in my mouth.

I had no intention of quitting. I had none, and don't laugh, because I honestly didn't think cigarettes affected me adversely. I didn't have a cough, I didn't hack up blackened lung butter. I never could run anyway.

But then I got sick. Bundling up, crossing the street with a fever, I asked the variety store clerk for a pack of Dunhills in the voice of a tracheotomy survivor.

Doing research one day, I found out what happened to me each time I opened a pack and lit one. I was going from one fix to the next looking for the perfect level of nicotine in my system. I was chasing the dragon. I had become a textbook junkie. Totally in denial. This absolutely messed with my self construct. I am not a drug addict!

I am a drug addict.

On Limewire I typed "Quit Smoking" in the search parameters. I ended up downloading some guy with a thick southern drawl who kept repeating "Yer gettin' sleeapey, real sleeapey. Yep. Sleeape now." This went on for 13 minutes. Then for about 3 minutes there was a barrage of: "You cannot smoke. You will not smoke. You must not smoke. But you can be in a room full of smokers and it will not bother you."

10 years ago I had quit smoking for 6 months. For those 6 months I didn't go out. How could I? I had associated every good memory with cigarettes. Every friend I made. Every lover I took. Every laugh expelled. Every hurt felt. Cigarettes were my constant companion.

Bunkering up in my apartment, Comrade NonSmoke cleaned everything. Then I joined the gym and became buffed. I became a Reformed Smoker. Lecturing, gazing disapprovingly upon the poor sods who huddled outside of office buildings. I became an anti-smoking Nazi cunt. The worst.

I'd given them so much power: my old friends, the cigarettes.

Sleeape now. You can be in a room full of smokers and it will not bother you. But you do not want to smoke. Nosir. If you smoke you will puke. Sleeape now.

After 18 minutes he starts pulling me out. I remember everything. I didn't really fall asleep. It was the first time I'd listened to him and with hypnosis you really have to be careful.

When you wake up, kill all things that have 2 eyes.
But for now, sleeape.

5,4,3,2,1
awake
alert

Sitting in front of my monitor
I quit out of iTunes
Then light a cigarette.
I don't feel like I'm going to puke.
And strangely, the chorus of Rebel Yell rose in a recess.

After finishing the smoke, I stubbed it out. I panned from the butt to the large pack of Dunhills that only had 4 removed. To my own amazement I said, "That was the last cigarette I'll ever have."

And then I wrote it down.

Friday, January 13, 2006
The Comrade had her last cigarette at 5:00pm
And then made herself a big plate of brussel sprouts.

No ceremony.
No credence.
They didn't deserve it.

The following is an example of one of the distinctions between men and women:

A man has a friend. This friend totally screwed him over. The man will lay out the transgression. Maybe there will be fisticuffs. Maybe not. After it is aired, and after a sufficient number of apologies and suggested methods of appeasement occur, the man forgives the friend. And they never speak of it again.

Women don't do this.

Someone screwed over a woman? Oh, Jesus. That poor sod is done for. For good. Betrayal? Head for the hills, all!

Cigarettes had been that wonderful friend who ultimately exposed himself as the greatest betrayer. Who turned me into a junkie.

I look at them now with disgust. Just like that.

Fatty hasn't quit yet. He wants to, but he's not ready. As much as it kills me to keep quiet, anything I do say ends up making things worse. So in the interim he continues to smoke the occasional cigarette. I allow him to do it in the house as it doesn't bother me. [Thanks Tex] Watching people smoke doesn't bother me.

It's been nearly 96 hours since I quit smoking. The worst of it is apparently over. Astonishingly it has been remarkably easy for me. Cold turkey with one free hypnosis session.

I feel calmer.
My libido seems like it just had a coffee.
Mostly I feel like I'm holding a new truth.

And I'm starting to prepare my body for a future, eventual inhabitant.

How Was Your Christmas?

2005-12-30T21:20:00.000-05:00

There is one question that is posed more than any during one time of the year: How was your Christmas?. As I am Canadian, a breed of generally thoughtful (and fearful of ever looking racist) people, the second question which follows more as a subsection amendment invariably is: Uh, do you celebrate Christmas?

Valid question.

Fatty, the love of my life and the future father of my children, was accompanying me for a fine curry meal at Stratenger's, that wonderful establishment that allows people to double fist pints while performing dialogue solely with smoke rings.

How was your Christmas?, he'd asked the bar owner.
Strat's Owner: Oh, it was very good, thank you.

Judging by skin tone and menu offerings at his fine establishment, the odds were 50 to 1 that the gentle man queried did not celebrate Christmas. But because he's Canadian, he didn't say anything.

I work with a fellow named Andrew. Though smart as a whip, with one look in his skittish eyes and at his shaky hands, one can tell he had a sordid past. This past landed him back into his familial home. Circumstances. A home he shares with 3 generations of immediate and extended family.

Andrew: This was the best Christmas ever.
The Comrade: Why?
Andrew: I got to spend it with kids.

I keep hearing how Christmas is for kids.

When Fatty was a kid, Santa would leave crammed to containment breach 4' high stockings at the feet of his and his brother Tristan's beds. There was a time when these stockings were taller than both boys. The boys would drag these appendages to their parent's bed, unravelling the spoils Santa bestowed upon them.

The last Christmas I hung a woolen sock from my family's fireplace mantle was when I was in high school. Technically a kid (within this society anyway). I had begun to sprout boobies and to defy my father's word. Mammary growth and the development of a combative nature were the reasons I received a solitary gift, reputedly from St. Nick.

One rock.
It wasn't meant to be a paperweight.

Tiny Little Angel: It's not that you've been bad and Santa's punishing you; it's just that your dad's an asshole.

Unfortunately my own internal dialogue drowned poor Tinkerbell out.

To save any future yuletide shame I stopped hanging wooly foot sheathes from wooden mantles. Toasty feet were a greater short-term reward. Besides, I couldn't imagine a fat man, jolly or otherwise, sullying his suit by coming down a sooty, cobwebby chimney which had been boarded up to prevent burrowing creatures from entering through the flue. Much like a Trick or Treater bypasses a house with no lights on, any rooftop welcome mat was simply removed before the big day. I suppose it was pragmatic as reindeer could have ruined a new roof.

I'd mentioned to my mother several weeks ago that this year I was intending to spend Christmas with people who didn't make me feel bad. This year Christmas Day was spent at Fatty's familial home. His parents had given fair warning that this was going to be a "low key Christmas" with only one rule: No extravagance. Fine by me.

Years prior I'd decided that the last minute shoppers of the world were silly fools who got themselves up to the nose hairs in negative bank balances by the 26th. Maybe 3 months of overtime might cleave a chunk out of their cyclical debt. I stopped buying extravagant gifts and started making presents for my chosen people.

This was in the form of created Christmas CDs featuring the Flaming Lips, Tom Waits, Axl Rose, The Ramones and George Michael (because he makes me happy). Artwork was designed. A half dozen bars or cookies were baked and parsed out into cellophane bags with gold stars. Christmas became non-consumerist, grown-up, and with an eye to relative ecological responsibility.

2 out of 3 ain't bad.
The grown-up part needed to be reevaluated.

Fatty: So for sure you haven't spent a lot of money on me?
The Comrade: Under $100, baby. I promise.

80% of which was from the online trickster's boutique Penguin Magic. Fatty does amazing card tricks. He's now trying to master mentalism.

Last summer while we two were sitting in massaging pedicure chairs upholstered in genuine Naugahyde, Fatty leaned over to me, speaking above the whirlpool jets attacking our bunions and callouses.

Fatty: You see here? I've found the reason why men don't listen to women.
The Comrade: Oh?
Fatty: It says here that we only use half of our brain's hemisphere when you're talking to us. Women use both hemispheres.
The Comrade: Really?
Fatty: Cosmo wouldn't lie.

I have a dream of being in a ukulele band.
I've lately wanted to have a giant blackboard.
I think Spirograph is beautiful.

Fatty and I were picked up by our Christmas Chauffeur. Fatty's dad. He's the one who did something huge and dangerous within his medical career not unlike Russell Crowe had in the Insider.

I asked Fatty to imagine something.

Imagine a father who would never consider picking his child up.
Who would never hug you,
Let alone greet you at the door.
Never ask how you're doing.
Never call you on your birthday.
Never thank you for the dinner you spent 4 hours cooking,
Though he might complain about the turkey being dry.

Fatty can't imagine. His father is the antithesis of the example I'd been shown.

Pulled up at the door.
Flickering candles greeted us on the porch
Along with a gorgeous mother who'd dipped into the ruby port early.
And a brother who had the remains of Ikea-made bed head.

All of a sudden it is loud.
Not piercing and accusatory,
But boisterous and joyful
All we faithful and triumphant.

We brought mistletoe.
I kissed the lot
And announced I was thirsty.
Spiked cider!
Ma favorit.

And then the stockings came out.
No lie, they were 4' high.
The boys had their matching pair.
And I was given one too;
An old woolen English Army sock once worn by Fatty's grandfather,
My beloved pub crawling companion whom I met at the tail end of last summer.

One item was a "romance package" containing massaging tools and synthetic rose petals.

Upon opening this gift,
The Comrade: Someone really wants a grandchild.

They didn't have to do it.
The lot of them.

Fatty didn't have to get me chalkboard paint or a Spirograph set or His and Her ukuleles. Besides, if Cosmo was right, he wouldn't have heard me anyway. His family didn't have to supply the most gorgeous dinner or require us to fully fill the large trunk of a cab with entirely fun, useless crap. They didn't have to do it. They didn't have to try to erase the pain from previous Christmases passed. They just did because they love me.

This was the best Christmas since I was 8 years old.
(The one with the EasyBake Oven)
And I have calluses on all of my left hand fingertips to prove it.
I am one step closer to actualising my ukulele dreams.

Whether 29, 37, 58 or 61 years old, Andrew was right: Christmas really is for kids.

The Oral Tradition

2005-12-02T15:39:00.000-05:00

When I was little, I used to think people shut off like robots after I left their company. Powering down in 5... 4... 3... 2... Power down. They existed only to fill in the landscape I perceived as Life. Sort of like they'd mentioned in Wim Wender's Wings of Desire.

Hm. [Film] extras. Extra... people.

My high school's student body was comprised of a cast not unlike those found in The Breakfast Club or near the zip code 90210. Leads aside, the rest were mere imaginings.

Without my imagination giving them animation I surmised they went home to pretend houses, shut a door sequence to their virtual bedrooms and froze in a semi-erect locked position. Empty eyes glazed over, devoid of sparkle.

I've never denied the existence of my hyper-developed ego.

I was a lousy, lower lettered student in high school. This fact used to really bother me. During lunch hours I would mingle from clique to circle jerk chatting the spectrum from popular to leprotic. One day I was engaged in a typical banal question/answer sequence which ended me up with a giant question mark over my head and an exclamation point next to my ear.

The Comrade: What did you get on yesterday's test?
Dull Yet Peppy Robot Girl: Oh, 87%, I think.

How does a robot girl get marks in History I couldn't ever achieve?

I learned that she was of the small percentile that actually retained information through rote memorisation. But not for long.

Dull Yet Peppy Robot: When I study, I can remember stuff for 2 days and then it's gone.

At home, I would wrestle with assigned homework for only so long before looking for any distraction. Sneaking into an elder sibling's bedroom, I spied something of interest sandwiched in the pile of university textbooks. The Introduction to Psychology. Human behaviour. Now that was interesting. Consider it nicked.

16 Year Old Comrade (with Flock of Seagulls hair): Fascinating.
Brother Vince: So you like psychology? Well, you're going to have to do better in high school before you get to that.

Not only would I have to finish high school, I had to do it with flying colours. Then I'd have to apply to different universities, potentially leaving my cherished city, to spend 4 years studying. Something I wasn't terribly good at. The earliest I could begin practicing would be 10 years in the future.

For those proficient in Pig Latin:
Ew-Scray
At-They

Aside from playing my double bass and occasionally writing prose in creative writing class (taught by a poor, wretched creature who left her tenure due to a nervous breakdown), high school offered no scintillating fodder I desperately wanted to explore. There was no raison d'être. There was only raison de sauter. So, instead, I honed my obnoxious social skills and secretly read what I wanted.

One evening, after demonstrating the assembly of snowmen configured marshmallows, I tucked some young clients into bed. I needed to get back to this new discovery. While chain-smoking cigarettes at the breakfast nook of my weekly babysitting job (God, I loved the 80's), I poured over the covetous textbook I'd placed in my school bag before departing from home. Just in case I was lambasted for reading material prematurely, I used a dummy book as a dust cover. The Joy of Sex.

Becoming a therapist was one small fantasy in the sea of possible career interests I'd uttered throughout my youth: firegirl, big rig driver, cop, veterinarian, decorator.

One-Time Fired Hairdresser (with no variance, always giving me the same haircut): Mary? It takes a fairy to make things pretty!

Aside from the decorator, they were typical Sesame Street occupations.

A ______ is a person in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood, in your naaayyboorhood, yeah, a...

Though Ernie and Bert were assumed to be gay, they weren't the campy, I'm Every Woman type. Their bedroom was utilitarian, pragmatic. The only splash of colour was on their uniquely pigmented faces.

It's a small world after all.
A cabdriver as a father.
It's a small world after all.
A seamstress as a mother.
It's a small world after all.
Sesame Street on television.
It's a small, small world.

After being handed my grade 12 diploma, with an avuncular hug and a kiss by a vice principal I visited weekly for bad behaviour, I decided to go to work instead of finishing grade 13.

During my first shift as a server I'd spilled 2 vodka cranberries on a white linen jacket and one piping hot French onion soup on one man's back. Both tables left me a 20-30% gratuity. Mortification pay. When it comes down to it, there's no sorrier person than I. At the end of my first shift, I'd made $80 in cash.

18 years old.
I was fucking loaded!
Drinks for everyone!
Bring out the dancing girls!

Most anyone who's worked as a waiter in a busy restaurant has usually had The Waiter's Nightmare.

This is a horrific mental reenactment of an evening when a server could barely keep up with her duties. Hundreds of patrons simultaneously yell, snap their fingers and basically make the poor creature feel like she did while immersed in the public school system. No end in sight.

I don't get waiter nightmares. I'm 37 years old and I still get drenched in cold sweat night terrors about high school.

Typically:
A missed assignment that was worth 90% of my grade.
A class I've missed for the entire semester. The administration has decided to tell on me.
An essay, having no idea what the topic was, due yesterday.
If not handed in today, a resulting failure was imminent.

Why do I still get these?
Could this possibly be designed?

The people I most enjoy engaging in conversation with are nerdy, brainy folk who tend to flip and sautée ideas and concepts into a colourful melange full of conflict and emotional catharsis. Add a liberal sprinkling of word play. I like this realm because this is where I tend to do my best learning. The topics are 80% interesting to me. Luckily, at the helm of this nerdy brain factory resides Ack, the ex-husband/best friend. I say luckily because he can always tell when I'm completely disinterested in a particular subject, halting the subject in its tracks because he's very sensitive to any guest's conversational needs. Usual tip off: a rolling of the eyes, heading off to the horizon. Horizon usually smack at the tequila bottle found center square in the sunken bar at Stratengers, the fine, fine bar that allows fumez bien in a city hell bent on smoking crackdown. Damned flatfoots!

It took people like Ack to make me realise that true learning, the full digestion of ideas reaped from critical thinking, involves discussion (back and forth action). It does not happen through rote memorisation of text. It does not happen during orations. No thought is involved. It happens by doing, by living or through thoughtful discourse between 2 people.

Tell me a story rich in narrative and it sticks.
The Oral Tradition.

I think teaching a subject like high school History is kind of bullshit because you'll never truly begin to understand the impact of what happened until you look into the eyes of the survivors. For the vast majority of xenophobic neighbours to the south, I implore you to get on a plane and leave the continent. They were there. Those are the people I would like to talk to. Those are the people who should be writing this stuff of history. Memory and knowledge is permanently etched into their muscles. My educators failed to mention that history is written by the victors. And subsequently it's full of holes, lies and blood.

Why didn't you tell me that WWI was about steel? Given corporate mentality, that would have been more plausible than what was claimed; seeking retribution for the offing of an Archbishop.

Michael, a regular at my engagement at the Cheer's Equivalent bar, urged me to check out the Catherine the Great exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

The Comrade: I can't look at that stuff.
Regular Michael: Why not? It's amazing. That golden coach alone.

To conquer a nation, they've had to conquer the people. Which means bursting into their towns, raping their women and/or killing their children and torching their homes. Not first without specially selecting the victims' finest possessions to take back to their master.

There's a good boy.

The Comrade: Pirate or empress, it's still booty. There was a lot of bloodshed for all that bling.

It took me over 35 years to truly understand that the school system is designed to create dull, unthinking consumers who are placid; who placate their "need to shut off" by watching television; who retain information for 2 days, then expel it forevermore along with the nutrition-free cafeteria food they ate the day prior. There is an essay worth reading by a 30 year US public school veteran educator by the name of John Taylor Gatto. Here he expresses not only how the public school system fails people, but keeps them down, keeps them mindless. Keeps them servile. They don't want us to be great. That would be dangerous.

What if the school system is designed to create little thoughtless creatures whose best hope is to be a middle manager? It becomes their dream. Or is it their dream? Many of the young Americans I've met have felt lucky to have a cubicle farm job. Could these feelings have been supplanted? And what of the others? They marginalised those who didn't get with the programme, sending them into a world of self-doubt, isolation. A place where gimps reside.

After high school I worked in restaurants, mostly as a bartender, for 10 years. It was at one of my favourite places of work where I met Ack. He was a garbage collector at the time. Occasionally he'd bring me castoff treasures. He'd finished his fine art degree at a local university, but he hadn't found work in his field yet. Through serendipity and my gift of bringing people together in collaborative work scenarios, Ack found work in a multimedia company not because he was necessarily talented. He happened have a fascination for a unique historical figure. Nikola Tesla. Disclaimer: I have big ears while working.

The Comrade: Did you say 'Tesla'?
Multimedia CEO: Yeah, we've been working on a pet project on this lesser known inventor. Edison is a household name, but Tesla was shoved under the carpet even though he gave us more.
The Comrade: I know.
Multimedia CEO: You do?
The Comrade: I have someone you should meet.

Ack still remembers this bunch of renegade nerds and geeks as some of his greatest educators, enabling exponential learning.

I was having burgers and Wellington's Best Bitter beer with the love of my life, Fatty, yesterday. We were talking about jazz musicians.

Fatty: Do you know who this is?
The Comrade: No.
Fatty: It's Miles Davis. This was the last recording he did. It was a collaboration with some hip hop guys. He didn't get to hear the master cut because he'd died before it was completed.
The Comrade: Oh, that's too bad.

Though I thought it wasn't his greatest work.

Fatty: When he was a kid, he was dirt poor. He'd won a trumpet in a church raffle. He wouldn't have been able to afford one otherwise.
The Comrade: He never played before he got that first one?
Fatty: Nope.

Wow.

That made me think about the divination of vocation.

What if we are all led along a path towards a direction we'd been designed for all along? Will or no will. Effort, or none.
What if, during those times when I thought I wasn't really doing anything, I was heading in the direction I was intended for anyway?

I listen to people wherever I go. I can't help it. I think human behaviour is the most breathtaking thing in the world. Much to my mother's chagrin, I've never really took heed to her warnings of Don't talk to strangers. I kind of have to go against it anyway, given the business I'm in. Subsequently, I learned things on my own by checking them out myself.

May I have the magnifying glass, please?

Discoveries:
Cheating on someone is yucky, for everyone involved.
Black folk are not scary; they're just the most unabashedly expressive people I've encountered. Maybe that's scary to robots.
Trust your gut. It's the only real thing you've got.

I think because I've been unafraid to love and unafraid to say 'yes' to most everything when it comes to adventures in people, there's a lot of knowledge my body's retained from doing, not by learning through rote memorisation. Through my body's knowledge, wisdom is gleaned. As I am a theoretical Communist, I like to share everything I have. My findings have shown time and time again that universally we are no different from each other.

I know what it feels like to lose something valuable.
I know what it feels like to be ultimately betrayed.
I know what it feels like to be abandoned.
I know what it feels like to be the happiest person in the world.
And it's because of these that I understand people.

And maybe because of these, people tell me the craziest things.

Like...
How they jerked off thinking about the biggest set of bajoongas they'd ever seen and happen to work with. And how they admitted, after some prodding, to not having washed their hands before heading out to have breakfast with me. Apparently t-shirts are very absorbent.
How a man adopted his niece a day after she was born because his sister was unfit to care for her.
How they (God, so many) are on lithium because of manic depression or bipolar disorder.
How someone they loved just died and they were really sorry they hadn't introduced them to me.
How they hadn't had sex for over 7 years.
How they love each other, but it failed because they have no time for each other.
How their boyfriend is really, really great, but equally as boring.
How their girlfriend only sleeps on the couch. Alone.
How they had contracted herpes from "that slag at the end of the bar".
How a man in his 40's is having sex with a 70 year old woman who keeps him in fine clothes and a lovely manor.
How they did it because they were lonely.

I think about Miles and his trumpet.

What if the specific gifts we need as tools are bestowed to us in divine ways? Something happens. Something is given to us that changes our world. We might not recognise it at the time of reception, but years down the road, if we're lucky, we might. I'm thinking now that what we were meant to be... we will become, if we're not already. Just in a way we hadn't imagined.

What if it's divined?

In regards to my past vocational aspirations:
Fire Fighting: I put fires out all the time. Also, I had a fire truck pull up directly outside of work last week. The Fire Chief, a regular at the Cheer's Equivalent, was flanked by 2 other male fire fighters. Because I will never mention any of the myriad women he's brought in (we're talking James Bond proportions) to any new potential prey, he's promised me fireman pants. I love the barter system. I also love firemen pants. It's the thing I suspect makes fire fighters hot.
Policing: Every single time I step outside my home, I serve and protect.
Veterinary Medicine: I am now administering sub-cutaneous fluids to Chicken, my righteous 16 year old feline partner.
Big Rig Driver: Well, not quite, but a Hummer's pretty big, though kind of a ghastly pig on gas.
Decorator: Every single palace, treetop turret or cardboard box I've ever lived in.

Every time I go into work, I counsel. Or I just listen. Hold the occasional hand. Dispense the occasional hug. About a month ago someone wrote an article in a local free weekly about my therapy sessions masqueraded as serving at the Cheer's Equivalent. I won't link it, but it was a wower. To a friend of the restaurant reviewer, I had prescribed a hit of MDMA to her and her wonderful, if not boring boyfriend.

Ack was telling me that MDMA was prescribed by couples therapists initially as a marital aid. The success rate was so astounding they stopped prescribing it. Why? A therapist can't get rich by solving people's problems. I prescribe it. Just once. As pure as you can find it. No dancing. No loud music. Just 2 people in a cozy environment who love each other, but for some reason can't understand each other right now. My prescription would not be called Ecstasy. It would be renamed Empathy.

I don't make $100/hr. And that's okay. I'm fed really well by both the kitchen and everyone I interact with. In comparing couch with bar, I think truth comes out much easier with a cocktail. And they come back weekly to fill their prescriptions for pints or martinis. I will tell them a story about my life and in turn they tell me astounding bits of theirs.

In the Oral Tradition our muscles get wiser and more loved.

Turkey Basting

2005-11-25T16:32:00.000-05:00

Nearly 4 months after writing the letter outlining how I wouldn't/couldn't attend my father's 70th birthday charade, the dust settled. Exactly 2 flecks of it.

I learned somewhere that household dust is mostly comprised of sloughed off dried skin cells. A disgusting fact when first learned. Swirling farmed dust bunnies wrangled under beds, culminating over days and nights from a body vigorously recruiting another as an amorous cheese grater.

The most impressive fact (to me) about dust is a very small percentage is matter that has fallen from space. Space dust. Far more appealing than unconscious exfoliation.

Hey! You're epidermis is showing!
No, it's not!
A childhood favourite segue.

I went out for lunch with my mother last week. It was the first time since writing the letter that we'd made a date to go out. Mom and I used to regularly lunch. Things sort of halted after writing that letter. In the process of writing, I realised it wasn't just my father who had habitually wronged me. Say nothing and you're complicit. It had been systemic familial lynching. After careful reexamination, I realised that for years I'd let these hurts go unvoiced. Repressed.

What happens to those who have been unfairly treated is one of 2 things:
1. Join 'em.
2. Beat 'em.

Superhumans in colourful tights didn't speed-plummet out of the biosphere to save me. Not that I'd let them anyway. Why champion myself when there is a world to defend? In modest clothing, including holes in nearly every pair of socks I own, I defend a select sect of the Earth's inhabitants. Those who have no voice.

I would say that at least 80% of my friend base have immigrants as parents or are immigrants themselves. Perhaps it's part of the clumping theory Ack, the ex-husband/best friend told me about. It's an urban legend, as I learned today. But it does make sense.

Like finds like and is magnetically drawn to it.

The older I get, the more I find these little condom people creating my own reef.

What they share in common is they don't expect much from anybody. Had great difficulties growing up. Their lesson plan centered around the hope for nothing. It was pointless. You were always disappointed. Though, sometimes it helped.

Expect nothing and you can be pleasantly surprised.
Expect the worst and it's never as bad as you imagined.

But conversely, expect nothing and you can get just that.
And in the end you receive a gold star for the valuable lesson regurgitated.
You see? The world is shit.
You proved them right.

Sitting across a dim sum dotted formica table, I asked my mother about my letter's aftermath expecting a bomb to have dropped. Nothing. Even with toothpicks prying eyes open, it had hardly created a millisecond onscreen blip. The majority of my family had shoved it under the threadbare wall to wall carpeting, buttressing issue with matter that had accumulated over decades. That lump had to be drywalled in; the neighbours might have begun to suspect.

Random Neighbour: I didn't notice that pillar before. Is that new?

The Comrade: There was no discussion?
Mom: No. Hey, did I tell you we went to [So and So's] wedding?

Distract.
Misdirect.

So and So is the daughter of my parents' next door neighbour. The daughter from the first marriage. The bride met the groom, a native Cuban, on an all-inclusive holiday 2 years ago. So and So's wedding was being held at Toronto's exclusive Granite Club.

The Comrade: Did you know that not until very recently there wasn't a single black or Jewish member at that club? I have no idea why they'd join, but I think they now have one token representative from each ethnic camp just to keep self-interest groups at bay.

I told her that I'd been a guest there once. I was invited by my high school friend, Wendy. It was my introduction to unabashed, open mouthed gawking. Is that an Ornamental? I think she brought me, in part, to thumb old money and what it did to her mother. Her beautiful house, located at one of the best addresses, was scarcely decorated with crumbling antiques and ass-worn needlepoint upholstery. It was both messy and filthy. Not unlike Wendy's description of her mother, who presented herself to me only in whiny, cracking, disembodied voice. Pleading at Wendy.

Wendy's Mom: Did you go to the drugstore for me?
Wendy: Yes, Mummy.

Mom: Don't they mind all the Filipino ladies they have working there?
The Comrade: No, they love it.

Mom: So and So's father paid for the wedding.
The Comrade: Mm hm.
Mom: He's really rich.
The Comrade: [mentally jumping into a print full of winged goldfish] Uh huh.
Mom: The second husband has no money. Why would she marry him? It must be because he has a nice face.
The Comrade: [contemplating shoving Sambal Olek into my eye] I can think of no better reason to remarry.
Mom: Why would she give up her first husband?
The Comrade: What are you saying, Mom? That money alone is enough reason to stay? No matter how bad it could get?
Mom: How bad could it be if there is a lot of money?

How bad indeed?
My mother puts up with inordinate amounts of abusive crap and stands in line to receive no masochism pay for it.

Time for a topic change.

The Comrade: Mom, I've been thinking about Granny lately. This is what I know: she loved her pigs and cigarettes, had you after 12 prior unsuccessful attempts and hated my father. I really want to know more about her.

Another misdirection occurred.

After a second brief attempt to try to sway her back to more disclosure of a grandmother known only to me as an enigma, coupled with further distraction/misdirection, I desisted. And realised, quite painfully, that my mother never really knew my grandmother as a person.

And then I questioned how much I knew my own mother. How much had she disclosed to me? How much was there to her?

My mother's opinions are not her own. They are not cleaved from interacting with the world and making her own diagnoses. She was made fearful of the world. Hers are wholly learned from 2 sources: the news media and my father.

Mom: Did you get your flu shot yet?
The Comrade: I don't get flu shots.
Mom: I saw doctors on a commercial telling people to get the shot.

I'm not really a doctor. I just play one on TV.

Every year, specialists with a framed piece of paper come up with what they think is going to be the next seasonal flu scourge. They create a synthesized version of this, then shove it in millions of veins with the hopes that the battalions of 12 gallon Stetson hat wearing white blood cells will duke it out. But what often happens is a wholly separate flu strain enters and now the body has to try to fight off 2 alien infections.

The Comrade: I don't play roulette games.

In America, 20,000 accidental, unrelated to the initial illness, deaths occur in hospitals annually.

The Comrade: These people make life or death decisions being on call for 36 hours. My brain's fried after working 12 hours straight.

Fatty: Some guy went in to have his leg removed and they removed the wrong one.

This happens all the time.

On the bright side, it makes more beds available in hospitals and geriatric wards cross-continentally.

Your epidermis is showing!
Still my favourite segue.

Lately, I've been referring to Fatty, the love of my life, as the future father of my children.

Anyone Who Has Known Me for Over 5 Years: You said you were never having them.

I've lately come to realise the word never conceivably means missing out on things.

The Comrade: I think I never wanted one because the right person hadn't presented himself. He has now.

Fatty will be an extraordinary father. He is a bottomless pit of love. But, of course he would be. He learned from the best in their field.

His mother, Judy, is the best kindergarten teacher I've ever seen in action. And the most devoted mother.
His father, Peter, heads a specialized pediatrics clinic, but spends the bulk of his time researching cures for rare diseases. And kids, including this one, are magnetically drawn to him.

Both of these remarkable people share 2 things in common:
1. Both came from less than desirable, borderline or full on abusive familial circumstances.
2. Have risked endangering both their own personal and professional lives. As a subsequence, these heads of Fatty's clan are fierce fighters in their continued cause of What is Right™.

Peter, who blew the whistle on a pharmaceutical debacle so major that he was issued death threats at his office and home.

And as for you, my pretty...

Scene: Black cab. 3 American tourists comprised the fare. Cab approaches a 4 way intersection without stopping. Cab hits the back tire of a cyclist. Accompanying friend of cyclist is narrowly missed.

Cab Driver: Siete ciechi, voi idiot?
Occupant #1: Cool! We get to see a real Italian fight.

Sometimes I'm a little slow to react to things that are completely dumbfounding. While I was still trying to work out how the cab driver could be calling the cyclist a blind idiot when the car clearly never stopped or even slowed down until Fatty, myself and a mess of golden locks owned by his mother stepped in front of the car. A dainty, pale, freckled hand slammed the hood of the black VW.

Occupant #2: This really doesn't concern us. And it's taking up our time.
Occupant #3: Lady, I don't know why you're concerning yourself with this.

She concerns herself with injustices. She knows how it feels to be powerless and have no one there for a rescue.

Occupant #2: Lady, it's none of our business.
Judy: None of my business? None of your business? Shame on you.

She shamed the men in the car, as only a kindergarten teacher could do. When they rolled up their window, she slapped it and lobbed a great big fuck you to the "fat cats", replete with matching middle finger. I believe the occupants left with quite a real sensation of snug dunce caps.

Judy does this all the time. She can't not do it.
It drives her kids crazy because they are afraid she's going to get hurt one day.

The Comrade: That will never happen. You mother is highly protected.
Judy: No, I'm not.

The Catholic church stripped away any possible spirituality she may have had.

The Comrade: Yes you are, darling. You're a truth speaker. Nothing bad will ever touch you.

Those days are over.

I told Peter and Judy about my familial circumstances. They never once expressed a single cliché, nor did they try to make me feel responsible for bridging the gap between me and my sordid family. They know how it feels to not be heard, to not be believed, to be ignored. They listened and understood and never once gave me advice. There was merely an empathetic exchange spoken only with our eyes.

Later on a walk to visit my Granny's grave, after trying to digest both lunch and my mother's supposition of good material living equating good marital living, I found myself a bit teary.

Over Granny's grave she asked me if I was Chinese.

The Comrade: Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Most times, I have no idea who or where I came from.

She chose the moment while we were hovering over her mother's grave to tell me all things she thought were Chinese.

Mom: In Chinese culture the children are expected to take care of their parents when they are too old or infirm. And they should only marry once. Twice at the very most. That's the Chinese way. Other people don't look well upon it otherwise.

The Comrade: I see.

Of course, I've seen, saw and digested this matter over the entire course of my life.

The Comrade: Mom, I wanted to know about your mother because none of my immediate family makes any sense to me. I don't know where I come from. Where the hell do I come from?

Of course this went unheard. Or maybe she thought the question rhetorical.

Not to be an ingrate, but the thought of having to care for my elderly parents day in and day out sends a ripple of fear so intense I think I'd rather do a header into heavy industrial farm equipment. The mulching kind. As for the marriage(s) thing, I think I've got that covered.

As much as we are committed to each other, Fatty and I are not going to get married. We talked about it today.

The Comrade: As far as marriages go, I think I'm cursed.

He doesn't think I'm cursed, but he doesn't want to be the 3rd in a line of unsuccessful attempts.
I wouldn't either.

The Comrade: I want to give you a ring, though.
Fatty: You do? [he smiled]
The Comrade: It's not going to be gold or platinum. I don't want it to be too precious. I like the idea of stainless steel. It doesn't corrode. It scratches. It takes bumps well and it always shows where the rough bits happened. But it's durable. It will withstand everything.

At lunch last week, I talked about my plans for Christmas this year.

The Comrade: You know Mom, I've decided not to spend Christmas with you guys.
Mom: Okay.

No why. Just an okay.

The Comrade: I've decided that for the first time in a very long time I want to spend Christmas with people that don't make me feel bad.
Mom: So, what are you going to do?
The Comrade: Christmas Eve will be spent with Ack's family. I've told Fatty about the Traditional Czech Christmas Carp.

This not so pretty bottom feeder is usually bought live, placed in the bathtub for a day to swim around, orally cleaning the dirty foot matter heels smear onto basins. After a day or so it's bonked on the head, sliced into steaks, schnitzeled, fried and eaten with potato salad.

The Comrade: He's very excited. Then I'm spending Christmas Day with Fatty's family where I'm finally going to get some damned turkey.

Judy had promised me turkey on Thanksgiving, but found the preparation too mentally taxing as she and Peter were going to be taking off the following day for Italy, then Jerusalem. We had Indian food instead. Boy was I sore. To this day I note my disappointment with every ensuing email I send her. As I've finally decided to have children, I'm working on any applied guilt I can. It's a learned skill all mothers possess.

Sometimes I think about the potential of our unborn child. I wonder who he'll be. What his character will be like.

I think I'm drawn to Fatty's parents because they seem like the parents I should have had.
But if I was raised by them, would I have turned out the same way?

Looking at Fatty and his brother Tristan, they didn't turn out like their parents at all. Well, parts, sure, but not the freedom fighting sort. How they both turned out was carrying all the love in the world and liberally basting it on the ones who save others.

One Chinese custom I learned and liked was the practice of cleaning one's house of the previous year's dirt to make way for the new year. Clean slate. None of the previous year's baggage. I think I'll do that this year. But maybe a week earlier.

Christmas.

I'm really looking forward to it this year.

The Astral Triad

2005-11-11T18:22:00.000-05:00

I'm fine. As far as I know, I'm fine. I haven't had any weird flare-ups since the week after we returned. I thank the sweet people who have expressed concern. I've heard nothing of the Holter monitor's results. In typical western medicine fashion, I'm following the adage No news is good news. When I told Ack, the ex-husband/best friend about it, he didn't seem worried in the least. In fact he didn't see me kicking any buckets, pails or paint cans for a very long time. I feel confident in his prediction as Ack is a bit of a seer, even though he turned that part of himself off some time ago.

The Comrade: Do you see dead people?
Ack: Hm... yeah.

In the former servant's quarters we shared, a beautiful treetop turret in the home formerly bequeathed to the Postmaster General, Ack saw things that most were happy not to see.

Having fallen asleep on the sofa one night, face pressed into the backrest, a little drying drool having trickled, Ack awoke, stretched and flipped over. He cracked his eyes open 1 mm and saw an unfamiliar shape in the armchair facing him. A woman in her 40's with long, greying auburn hair sat staring at him.

The Comrade: Have you ever seen her before?
Ack: Nope.
The Comrade: What did you do?
Ack: I quietly rolled over and didn't face her anymore. When I looked back later, she was gone.
The Comrade: Do you think you were dreaming her?
Ack: Nope.
The Comrade: How do you know for sure.
Ack: [sigh] I just know.

Ack discovered years ago, aided with my incessant questioning, that he's a bit of a channeler. A conduit. On my 30th birthday, the two of us talked in the kitchen until dawn. Well, it wasn't really me talking to Ack. I was talking to several different people through Ack.

That night I learned some things. Things that are too personal to write here. They are written somewhere else. Somewhere where only my eyes can fall upon them when most needed. Or can be recalled when most needed. Like now.

Don't worry.

I'm always so worried.

I learned through Ack that I have three entities that watch over me. I believe one of them is my grandfather, my father's father. I can't tell for sure, but it's a feeling I have. I never met him in life, but I think he's just beyond in a scenario much like what happens in life.

A boy has a father who is not there. The father either works away from home for excessive amounts of time, coming home only to eat and sleep. Or he is compelled to go away to distant lands, pursuing his chosen career path. Children are viewed as a hinderance to personal development. The father justifies this behaviour because he is the bread winner, the one who puts food on the table. Yer mother can do the other stuff. I'm tired. But what if there was no mother? What if the mother died after childbirth with the boy? Ah, yer sisters can take care of it. But what if your sisters provided nothing but ill intent? Were abusive? Denied the boy everything? Starved the boy to the point where he had to strain the corn kernels from cow dung just to survive?

He let him down. In the afterlife, maybe he's seen my father in all of his hurt. But because of a childhood filled with misery, perhaps a boy is unable to forgive. Unable to forget. Only able to repeat the pain and anguish he felt as a child, passing it on to his brood. Ignoring his anti-establishment, consistently fired for insubordination, fiery yet loving daughter. Perhaps the boy's father sees a chance of making good with his granddaughter. Maybe he sees that she's not too far gone. She can see light at the end of the tunnel. The only time she can't happens when the tunnel has been created by her alone.

I asked Ack if one of the other three was a woman.
He said no.

Born on the day before my mother's birthday, dying on the day before my sister's birthday, the other whom I wanted to be protecting me was my mother's mother.

This is what I know of her, what has been shared to me. She was married to a man she loved. She had 13 pregnancies which resulted in one child living past the first year of life. My mother.

A proud pig farmer, my grandmother raised these creatures like her own children. The ones she lost. When the time came for the trucks to collect her children for slaughter, she wailed on the nearest steps that would collect her broken soul. My mother never understood her mother's love for the piggies that went off to market, that never returned. My mother never understood my father's love for plants either.

Sometimes "never understood" can be replaced with "resented".

Smarter than dogs, I've always understood my grandmother's love for the pink beasts.
As they don't talk back, I've always understood my father's need for plants.

My grandmother smoked cigarettes with abandon. She apparently had a spooky way of speaking. And she cursed my father's every action. She loved my mother. She passed her love onto her. Onto me. She held me until I was 2.

I hate that I don't remember her.
At least once a month I wish I had grandparents.

Every year my mother and I make a date to visit Granny's grave. It's located in Toronto's prestigious Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. Location, location. The alive are dying to be buried there, but the plots are full and they'll have to start piling bodies on top of each other to accommodate remaining family members.

Mom: [in Chinese] Hello, mother. Look who's come to visit.
The Comrade: Hi, Granny.
Mom: You have to say it in Chinese, otherwise she won't understand you.
The Comrade: You know what I think sometimes, Mom? What if, once you're dead, you can understand all languages? Or you can go inside minds to hear people's internal dialogue. I bet she understands everything I'm saying. I want to think so, anyway. Visiting her always leaves me with a great peace inside.

My grandmother's plot is positioned in the most ghettoized area of this gated necropolis. Her bones permanently rest under an unmanicured coniferous most suited for an independent, underground Christmas film.

Ack had never visited my Granny's grave before. I'd told him about her. My limited knowledge of her, anyway. He wanted to meet her. At least to see the heavy stone that marked her final stop. I explained the protocol.

The Comrade: You put your hands in prayer position in front of your chest and bow three times. Like this.

On the first bow, I bonked my head on a wild, bony branch of said coniferous, creating a swollen contusion above the left eye.

Crap.
I had a callback the next day.
They weren't looking for bruised, lumpy-headed girls.

The thing I hated most about acting was auditioning for commercial auditions.

Casting Director('s Assistant): Do a slate and profiles, please.

A slate is stating your name and your agent for the camera. Profiles are facial profiles, left and right, held long enough to capture a photo still, just to see what you look like holding the product sideways, I guess.

Casting Director('s Assistant): Tell me a little (pick one) about yourself, your day, your interests. Keep it under a minute.

I told them about bonking my head on the tree and the steps I needed to take to hide this fact that I'd disclosed. I went to Drag Queen Central: the MAC cosmetics counter.

The Comrade: Do you think you can fix it?
Cosmetician: [after one full minute of intense scrutiny] No problem.

She (he?) was an artist.
And I got the job.
I'm sure my Granny pulled some strings.

When Ack was channelling for me, he saw 3 entities. All he assumed were male. But what if there is a transgendering in the Afterlife? Who's to say what we look like after we're dead is the same as how we presented ourselves while alive? If I'm wrong, I have no idea who is watching over me. I'd just like it if it were my grandfather on my father's side and my grandmother on my mother's side. The rest is gravy. I hate leaving the third one out, but I have no idea who that might be. Some poor soul assigned to me from an exclusive gated necropolis not of this Earth. Lucky me, regardless.

Sometimes I beckon them. I beckon with a clause. I don't want to see. Of course this sounds rather shitty because I'm asking for their help, but I don't want to see an astral body in the process. I hope they're not offended. They're probably not because most of Chinese culture want to send the dead away for good. Any reinvigoration of a dearly departed beloved is usually viewed in a horrific way. I welcome their wisdom, but not their physical manifestation.

Do you think you might help me with my anxiety?

I'm half scared shitless these days because something really great could happen. Fatty and I have a tremendous business idea that is good for people, incredibly creative and unique. It could also turn into a massive shit pile. It's all very much in the incubation phase right now. We have thousands of ideas, but right now I feel mere wheels are spinning. We're not getting any closer. We're caught in a gritty vortex. The anxiety is harnessing me.

During research, Fatty, the love of my life, found a Black Ops hypnosis package available for online purchase, for a limited time only. It promised the effective removal of self-doubt.

The Comrade: Okay, that's great. That's exactly what I need. I need to get rid of the stuff that holds me back.

It also promised the effective control of anyone you pleased. All for $100 USD.

The Comrade: We can't get this, honey. It's fundamentally evil.

After a day and a wonderful full body kneading from my beloved, I realise now what I have to do.

I'm going to go write in a space that no one else reads. When I write, I speak aloud. Just barely audibly. It may sound like a conversation with myself, but I know there are listeners. Dispensers of sound advice. And just because I don't physically have grandparents anymore, it doesn't mean they aren't around.

Systemic Surveillance

2005-10-29T12:45:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-24T14:39:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-20T17:47:00.000-04:00

In the Beginning: England, England

2005-10-20T17:46:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-16T07:18:00.000-04:00

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.

Expect to Trip

2005-09-24T21:27:00.000-04:00

Though my darling Fatty, the sweet love of my life, is 8 years my junior, he at times hits me with solutions so sound it's hard to argue.

Though we do anyway.

Fatty: It's very important for us to express our individual expectations.

Several months ago I was sitting a white linen and brown paper covered booth table with friends. On this table was a potted white orchid, a dog house gift from Fatty. It was the commencement marker for all the fights we will have in our lifetime together.

And believe me, there are plenty. The kind that reduce me to the emotional intelligence of a 6 year old jumping on the spot while stomping my foot accusing him of being a Crazy Bitch Bastard.

And meaning it.

But back at the table of linen and brown paper...
Along came a spider
Who sat down beside her.
Who said, "I'm going to Amsterdam
Wanna come?"

In the spirit of choosing "yes" over "no", I opted for the former.

But why just stop at Holland? Why not Belgium? Germany? The UK, too?

Hang on a second. All these countries share something in common.
Exemplary beers.

The Comrade: This could be Beer Tour 2005! Dear Spider, we'll see you in Amsterdam.

But things don't always go as initially planned.

My first alcoholic purchase was lemon gin. Don't try this at home. It will blind you. Tanqueray gin is lovely. That was my second purchase. I will find a particular drink and it becomes my drink of choice for years at a time. From gin I went to tequilla. Tequilla to single malt scotches. From the peat I went to pilsner beer and Russian vodka. Now I'm kind of off the beer.

Great.

In a vodka haze one night we learned that many of our cherished friends and family will be in that part of the world around the same time as we'd planned.

Interesting.

Hops/ Barley to
Friends/ Family

Works for me.

We are leaving tomorrow at 17:30, commencing the 2005 European Friends and Family Tour.

We fly from Toronto (YYZ) to London Gatwick airport. Once departing the plane we will hunt down the bus terminal housed within the airport. A six hour bus ride on the left side of the road will take us to Fatty's 90 year old grandfather who will hopefully remember to pick us up in his stately car. Seaside, the lovely retirement community Teignmouth (pronounced Tinmeth), in the southwest of the country, is the town.

Expectations of this trip:
Pints and curry.
Clotted cream, strawberry jam and fresh scones with the Earl of Grey.
Hearing the correct pronunciation of can't.
Anything more would be gravy on my steak and kidney pie.

After a 2 day visit we reboard the bus enroute to London Stansted airport. Hopefully there will not be a grudge match, which leads to the evolution of our current fighting - wrestling to settle a score. We need to sleep 5 hours to board a little plane to Verona, Italy.

Where apparently there will be an accordian player, handsome Milano models and Limoncello to welcome us upon our landing. If our welcome wagon does not show up, Fatty's parents have promised to pick us up. On sabbatical Fatty's dad, the doctor who did something major not unlike Russell Crowe had in the Insider, has rented an appartemento in the heart of the city. Apparently the apartment has a bidet.

These have always slightly creeped me out.

We're off via train to Venice for the day. Gondola. Gondola. Gonorrhea. I hope only to catch the first two.

Expectations:
Order something from a menu that I don't understand, but have to eat anyway. A person has to live with her choices.
Please, God. Please don't have me order horse. Or pig's feet. Everything else I'm pretty much fine with.
Visit the cemetery. (It's a thing)
Get drunk and laugh like mad with my future in-laws.
Mange, mange until I can't see.

Hungover, certainly, Fatty and I will board another plane. This one's headed for Amsterdam.

Expectations:
Visit and sample the selection offered at one of the many hashish bars.
Ride bikes while very drunk and slightly high.

Then we're off to Prague where we will be collected by Ack, the ex-husband/best friend, who will be acting as tour guide and translator.

Expectations:
Constant consumption of beige food.
Visiting the cemetery. (It's still a thing)
Drinking the best beer in the whole world.
Seeing a puppet version of Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Ack's borrowing his mother's car. She has a property in the Czech countryside that she lives in 6 months out of the year.

Expectations:
General passive aggression.
Aggressive bitching about her side of the family.
Listening to complaints about the recent scourge of Vietnamese immigrants.
(While reminding his mother of Monsanto's Agent Orange plant, situated in the Czech Republic, Ack said, "They're coming home!")
Smoking cigarettes with Ack's grandma.
4-6 hour hikes with Evil Ack, the goddamned hiker.
Being force fed pig's feet.

And some people say my expectations are too high.

I expect everything will change.
And I hope I embrace it.

Destination: South Pole

2005-09-14T11:12:00.000-04:00

Something I am blessed with is the ability to know what I want. I'm not really the I don't know. What do you want to do? type person. This does not translate to knowing what I want long-term. I just know exactly what I feel like for dinner and exactly what I'm looking for in a movie, say. In this state I feel in greater harmony with myself. If I need something I will support the proper nourishment.

Like the occasional bout of the very fine Chester Fried Chicken, located 100m from my house.
Obviously my body is missing the essential minerals and fats found in these battered (in every sense of the word) and fried little parts of Heaven.

With a sprained ankle on the anniversary of bombs bursting in air, gave proof that I needed to watch movies that had nothing to do with humans. I am of the small percentile that actually likes humans, but there are times that I feel they lose focus on their objectives. Their vocations. Why they've been placed on this Earth. They have no meaning. Subsequently they create wars on any scale almost to validate their existence.

My left ankle is partially pooched. It's not the worst sprain I've experienced. What I consider the worst is not being able to touch big toe to the ground without Tchaikovski's tympani punctuated overture bursting from my left stump. That's bad. The last time that happened was around the tender age of 21. Who knew whole melons could be stuffed into the thin skin around a joint? This time it's not epic nor grande. It doesn't feel like someone has shot my foot off, or that I wish that someone would shoot my foot off. I've got the kind of sprain that makes me hyperaware. It's there beckoning me to be careful. More considerate. Please take your time, young lady. Weigh all angles. Consider all sides. Physical pain has always done that for me. It's sometimes been a gift.

It's a real feeling that the mind, this time, doesn't create. Well, I guess if you're talking biologically or scientifically, yes, the mind does create all that we feel, but when a tendon is stretched beyond its capability, really quickly, it is genuine physical pain. What's curious to me is how I am at my best at these times.

There is almost a sweetness that is attached.
I feel more for humanity.
I feel more for myself because I see beyond myself.
I become more deliberate, yet shyly tentative.
All the thoughts of feeling the need to do more... vanish.
In its place is a slower pace. A careful step. A reach for an arm nearby.
Real pain can make people better.
This one anyway.

But then sometimes a person feels trapped inside her home and needs to step out. To find nature based documentaries because it is with single-minded, near obsession that she needs to watch, say, Microcosms right then. Right there. Sometimes the world doesn't allow the things we really think we need at exactly when we think we need them. Out of freakish obstinance, however, some (okay, me) will do all they can to make something happen.

But then you park the car directly across the street from a video store. Step into the neon runway lights. Attempt to cross the street. A single voice beckons, but doesn't beckon. Barks at the night sky, more like it. A scratchy, booze and unfiltered cigarette enhanced esophagus straining the voice of an outmoded West Side Story Jet. Too old and grey to dance with switchblades concealed in leather jacket sleeves. Still slicking back hair, but raven is a much fiercer colour than what's left: a combination thin strands of white/grey/tobacco stain.

Former Jet: Why don'tcha PARK A LITTLE CLOSER?!
The Comrade: I'm sorry, are you talking to me?
Former Jet: NO! I'M TALKING TO YOUR BROTHER!
The Comrade: If you would like me to move my car because you can't seem to get out with 1.5' on either side of you, then I would be happy to. All you really need to do is ask.
Former Jet: OH NO! DON'T MOVE IT! YOU INCONSIDERATE (I can't remember the expletive)!

They've got nothing else it seems.

It's confusing sometimes.

Going to 4 separate video stores that night left me a bit disheartened. Why aren't there more video stores that carry fun and educational programming? That does not involve former murderers and Nazi governments? I don't wish to Dismantle the Third Reich. Or find the special formula used in the communion Kool-Aid.

Truth: I was just sore because I'd missed the last screening of The March of the Penguins that night.

Fatty, the love of my life, promised to take me the following night.
Hmph! I wanted to see it right away.

Sometimes I'm a spoiled little girl.

But then sometimes the waiting makes things a little sweeter. Gives you something to look forward to.

Iceberg, iceberg, ice floe.
Just the tip.
Underwater, it's massive in scale.

On deck are
Penguins.

They feed then travel 70 miles by foot to find a mate.
Just one that they will stay devoted to for a year.
One egg
That gets carefully passed to the father
Who balances it on his feet, keeping it warm under belly in temperatures below -80˚C
For months
While the mother leaves,
Trekking back to the spot of origin.
70 miles to feed.
Or she dies.

When the egg is hatched, the father who hasn't eaten in months,
Has one tiny meal (lodged in the back of his throat)
To feed his young.
When the girls return,
Walking or sliding the 70 miles again,
The chick goes back to the mother,
Who just went to the store and will be back in a few minutes.

The chicks now with care,
The males then make the long journey for themselves.
140 miles.
And eventually come back!
To have a little family time.

They do this every year.

The suffering that penguins go through. The elements in which they survive. The complete lack of time saving devices they implement: Their methods are not efficient. Though they work as a collective, they are not the Borg. How they know exactly what they are supposed to do is confounding. To humans. All for the preservation of their species. Born of love.

There's no talk of which school one penguin is sending their child.
Or where they can find their child on the height chart.
There's no doubting their partner is going to cheat on them,
Or never return.

They are penguins.

God, I want to be a penguin when I grow up.

Pull Over to the Side of the Road, Ma'am

2005-09-12T16:14:00.000-04:00

Something I never cease to marvel at is how the Universe has the most wicked sense of humour.
Irony... not just for breakfast anymore.

The old adage Ask and ye shall receive often gets transmuted in my little life as Well, fuck, I didn't ask for that, really. It was more a wanton plea in another arena, but now lookit.

In my last post I was looking for a way in which to relinquish my control.

My darling friend, Mr. Webster, is the fellow who looks not unlike a Jam era Paul Weller. He likes to kiss Comrades on the mouth, particularly when alcohol has lay claim all appendage faculties. He has a tendency to have a wake of swooning homosexuals in his every pass, though claims he is hetero. He had a birthday held at his best friend's summery home, located on one the islands that create Toronto's archipelago. My guests were my darling Fatty and Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend. Wrought from good neighbourly relations (and let's face it: no noise complaints), Mr. Webster's best friend invited the next door neighbour.

A very attractive woman in her 30's.

The Comrade: Would you like a seat?

I had gestured to a vacant spot on a makeshift outdoor bed replete with no mattress, just hard fibreboard with a saffron coverlet disguising the raw, chipped wood and glue surface. At the time of invitation, three sets of asses were perched on the side of this haremic lounger.

Attractive Woman: I don't know if my fat ass will fit.

I hate when women do this to themselves. I don't mind a little self-deprecation. My pork lusting Hebronic pals often successfully make this quite lovable. I just hate it when women make any derogatory statement about their bodies. Especially when the complaints are about their natural curves. Are they your thoughts or were they planted? We are curvy. Along with a minimum of facial hair, it is the distinguishing feature, that line that separates the boys from the girls.

Though it's hard to tell the difference these days.

The Comrade: Who are you? (she asked, thinking she was being charming)
Attractive Woman: Who am I? Who are you?!

So I tell her.
And ask her again.

Attractive Woman: I'm Sarah.

I learned somewhere that if you want to remember someone's name, you repeat it after they say it. Once repeated three times, it actually sticks.

The Comrade: Sarah! It's very nice to meet you.
Sarah: Oh, as if I believe that!
The Comrade: Sorry?
Sarah: You're dripping with sarcasm.
The Comrade: No, no. Actually, I wasn't.
Sarah: You're full of shit.

Ah! Someone smack dab in the red zone of crazy.
I haven't come across one of these in a while.
No matter. I was in a feisty mood that night.

Crazy Sarah: I want to know something.
The Comrade: Okay.
Crazy Sarah: What do you do?
The Comrade: A little uninspired, but I sit here sandwiched between yourself and a man with a brand new cast on his arm with a rather large penis drawn on it.
Crazy Sarah: Fuck you! What do you do?
The Comrade: Well! That was uncalled for. I do lots of things. Why is what I do so important to you?
Crazy Sarah: I'll tell you what I do.
The Comrade: I really don't care what you do.
Crazy Sarah: Of course not. You wouldn't be interested in me anyway.
The Comrade: It's just not my kind of question, Sarah. It's nothing personal.
Crazy Sarah: I want to know.
The Comrade: Well, I'm not telling you. Ask me about something else. Ask me about something that you've been thinking about. Something that bothers you. I'd love to talk about that.
Crazy Sarah: I'm FINE. I'm really HAPPY.
The Comrade: That's great that you've been working on your happiness. That's really important.
Crazy Sarah: I don't have to work on it. I AM IT.
The Comrade: Oh. Well, all I'm saying is there are circumstances beyond our control of happiness. Take for example a 6 year old child who is repeatedly abused...
Crazy Sarah: LOOK, I GOT PAST THAT! OKAY?

What's that? Cake's being served in the other room? Lovely.

The Nutbag got up to get herself another drink. Apparently she needed one. But like duck to water, she wormed her way back onto the makeshift bed scenario.

An immediate, yet accidental, or who knows, maybe on purpose, spilling of her drink splashed all over Fatty.

Crazy Sarah: What?!
Fatty: You were one who spilled a drink on me. I didn't say anything.

And then she turned coquettish.
This is another quality that appears in certain girls. A quality that I despise.

The Comrade: So, Sarah, since you did spill a drink on Fatty, shouldn't you apologise?
Crazy: Well, I was going to.

tick tock
tick tock

The Comrade: And any normal person would go get something to clean up the mess that she created.
Crazy Sarah: Oh, you think so?

She then reached around behind her and found someone's non-absorbent fleece jacket.

The Comrade: No, no, no. You don't do that. Go get a paper towel or something absorbent that no one has to wear later on when it gets chilly, you crazy bitch.

Yes, I did.
I always do.

We learned later that the best way to deal with a crazy person is to ignore said nutbag. It's a sad state when any attention is good attention. Alas.

Though there is a water taxi service that motors up to 8 passengers back to the mainland, a service we learned that is run by 2 brothers who were more than likely in the midst of a punch-up since they weren't answering their phone, the lot of the invited guests decided to catch the free public ferry whose last shuttle left the island at 11:30pm. Sharp.

No one likes being stuck on an island, especially when there isn't the slightest chance of winning a million dollars.

As it was 11:25, the only other recourse was to

RUN

Which we did.

I cycle, dance and drive very well.

I am no runner.
I wouldn't even place in the Special Olympics.

I was one of those kids. The ones with buckling knees and inverted skates scraping along the perimeter of any created ice floe. A Zamboni a distant memory judging by the evidence of other weak ankled scrapers. In my mind, though, I was an Ice Capader. One with giant plumes of ostrich feathers shooting from my cranium. My body housed in a yellow chicken costume. Gliding poetry.

Needless to say, I've sprained or strained my ankle twice before. Running to catch the last ferry, trying to shave a few seconds off the sprint, I took the grassy knoll. In the dark. The scaling the terrain at high speed, while high, was precarious at best.

Snap.

I hate being incapacitated. I do not convalesce well. I am a surly patient. I feel like a prisoner in my own home.
I have no control.
Thanks Universe!

One lesson I learned at the top of my class was: In the end, you only have yourself. You cannot rely on someone else.
Thus spake my mother.
But if you really, really want to help me, well then, I'll tell you what to do.
In step by step fashion.
Without leaving any room for improv or general creativity.

Fatty: You don't make it easy to help you. And you won't let me do it my way.

I can honestly say I'm really good at first person shooter games and making the men in my life feel like completely useless assholes.

Shift gears, darling (she said to herself).

Lying in bed last night, Fatty and I were talking into the wee hours like we used to. He suggested I caress his armpit just to feel how soft and fluffy his pit hair was.

The Comrade: No.

What I learned from Funny School was that the first rule of improv is never to negate. Always say "yes" to everything. As soon as you say no, the scene dies.

The Comrade: I'm saying "No" a lot lately.
Fatty: Yes you are.

What's happened to me?

The same thing that happens to me in nearly every romantic relationship I've ever had.

The Comrade: Oh my God! I'm a parent!
And then I heard myself.
The Comrade: Not apparent. A PARENT!

How did that happen?

I'd turned into an incredibly repressive, oppressive bitchy person that had become highly restrictive. But it's everything I'm against. Why am I so permissive with friends, yet harness free behaviour in my romantic relationships?

Brake.
Turn off ignition.
Pull out the map.

I'm fucking lost.

Stop by a gas station.
Ask for directions.

Girls can do that.

High Endurance Roll-on or Stick

2005-09-10T14:10:00.000-04:00

I watched one more episode of that show I hate: Chicken and His Poo-Poo Pants, Episode 5 - the one where he's despondent, hides under the bed and comes out only to squat, leaving a brown viscous batter behind his behind.

The other day Fatty, the love of my life (though has of late been my opponent in the Relationship Ring),

And in this corner, weighing in at 140 lbs, wearing Aquaman Under-roos, the underwear that's fun to wear, with teeth baring, the undisputed nagging champion of the world... Theeeee Comraaaad.

said, "It's true what they say about pets and their owners acting alike."

I don't know about that.
Even if I could reach, I don't think I'd lick my own ass. I have had opportunity to lick others, but nary a sacred portal have I applied even a gentle kiss upon.

He is funny, though. I'll give him that. Having been a recipient of a rather prestigious scholarship to Funny School, I'm always first to say, "He got that from me."
He does does give excellent cheap shots and love bites, something his mother does to everyone in the household.
He plays a mean peek-a-boo.
He rarely complains.
He never wants my pity. He'd rather hide under the bed.

Bitching is a completely different matter, though.
He does that. And that he got from me. For sure.

I'm in a relationship with my dear friend of 4 years who has become my dear love of 6 months. My darling man who is flawed. Who does things that at first I had completely accepted because he was my friend. Now in a full blown relationship, one with the added bonus of co-habitation, he has of late been driving me absolutely bonkers. I have begun to enlist that thing that Chicken picked up so well from me: yelling. A little nagging here and there. Maybe more nagging. And then I turn into a full on cunt. I hate going out like that.

Why is this happening? And why does it all feel so familiar?

I came into this thing not wanting to repeat my past. When I said that I really meant I didn't want to have another workaholic or alcoholic or drug addict. I never again wanted to be usurped by something else. Tangible or intangible. I wanted to be the first priority. I'm very helpful. I'm very nurturing. I think of him often and do things that I know will please him. But in the end, I reach a saturation point where I don't think my rate of investment is garnering my expected ROI.

I do it for them. I reason that they should do it for me.
This is a pattern that has happened in nearly every relationship I've ever had.

And of course this reminds me of a date I had last year. This fellow had a cursed gift of being able to see frailties and blunderous quirks. Not of himself, but of others. His specialty was either identifying the very qualities we don't want others to see or (worse) the qualities unbeknownst to even ourselves. Of me, he said, "You're basically a good person, but you're prone to dissatisfaction."

Hello Hammer! It's me! Nail! Go on, I know you want to. Hit me! For old times sake!

I think the problem is I make myself indispensable. I do things that are far beyond the call of expectation. I do these things at first with a smile on my face, but in the end it's like standing in the receiving line of a wedding party where there are 300 invited guests you have to smile at. Shake the hands of. Be nice to. The face eventually seizes. A twitching grimace takes the place of a genuine toothy spread. The whole affair becomes obligation. Duty.

And then there is the Melting Point.

Of course the man never sees it coming.
You said you wanted to do that. You said you loved doing that.

It's true,
But I don't want to take care of everything.
I am capable of taking care of everything, but in the end all I feel is resentment.
This is the pattern of my life.

An interesting incident happened during the denouement of one of Fatty's and my epic fights. Oh, yes we do! He said that giving me help wasn't easy.

I would counter with:
You didn't do it fast enough.
Or the way I wanted you to.
Or with the intent I wanted you to have.

Control.
Another pattern in my life.

So, how does one relinquish control? That's my big question. Fatty's extraordinary at knowing that somehow things will always resolve themselves in the end. I was never gifted with that belief structure. What I was always good at was listening. I believed everything I heard. But when someone promised me something and faltered with that promise, another special gift of mine, I felt betrayed.

There's been a seismic shift somewhere in the old cockles. My whole life I had trusted nearly everyone I met right from the start. Tabula rasa. Clean slate. Getting to know them, I'd discover frailties (which were fine), blunderous quirks which were not so fine and the horrible little secret that they would try to keep from the populace, but I'd find out somehow. Somewhere along the way I'd find reason not trust them anymore. I'd power-spray the umbilicus tying me to them. And vanish.

And that is my first reaction.
To get the fuck out.

I'd discussed it with Ack, the ex-husband/best friend. Ack who in 2 hours is commencing break-up procedures with Truth/Freedom/Beauty. Grounds for dismissal? Fundamental lack of compatibility.

Ack: Maybe he's not good enough for you.
The Comrade: He is. But maybe I need a break.
Ack: You saw how good a break did us.

Though we've only been together, in a biblical sense, for a short period of time, I've had to present to myself the ultimate question several times: Would I rather be with him or not?

And it is that simple.

The answer is yes.
So if the answer is yes, then we have to enter the realm of Compromise because I can't live with how some things are panning out and he can't live with the constant nagging and upset.

The Comrade: Well, how about you don't give me any reason to nag you?
Fatty: That's fair.

It was after the 5th episode of Chicken and His Poo-Poo Pants that I bundled him in my blue sarong and hailed a cab, juggling keys, doors and a wrapped Master Chicken. I don't believe wholeheartedly in Western medicine. It is this reason alone that I have not taken him into the Hospital for Furry Fellows. The reason I chose this time to take him in was because I met a vet whom I could trust. Doctor Mark. From what I know of him, I know to be kind, patient and loving. He got into veterinary medicine for the right reasons; the love of creatures great and small. I know he's not the old jaded type who doesn't give a rat's ass about the little dudes, only interested in fleecing the frantic pet owner for everything she's got. I could picture him as a young boy bandaging a fallen robin. Never once having applied a magnifying glass on a line of ants. Banishing the thought of ripping the wings from a butterfly.

Chicken had no fever this time, but his stomach really hurt. All that hurt shot out of his eyes. All that pain sent me into a depression. Though I showered, I could smell the emanating reek of my armpits once stationed in one of the examination rooms. I no longer wear antiperspirant because I am convinced the aluminum will rot my brain. I don't usually reek, though in a crisis where I am dealing with a very sick, very small loved one, my body bears a combination odour of fear, fight and anxiety. This formula equals stink factor high.

Poke
Prod
Scrape
Squeeze
Spread
Pick

Which led to:
HISS

The Comrade: Sorry.
Dr. Mark: I'm used to it.

I don't know why, but I am always secretly delighted whenever Chicken hisses at someone.

I explained the recurring scenarios of what generally happens: frothy pools of vomit, land mine puddles of liquid bottom drip, despondency, self-imposed isolation, the releasing of one hardened turd, and then fine.

Dr. Mark: The water's not absorbing into his stool properly which is why there is mucus preceding it. It's not the diarrhea that should be addressed. The question is why is he having difficulty passing?

Dr. Mark explained common ailments that happen to older cats, ones that will be off to college soon. Issues with hypothalamus, kidney disorders, cancer. My armpits were working overtime.

After an ultrasonic urine extraction, Mark noticed Chicken's levels were at the preliminary stages of kidney disorder. Apparently quite natural in more mature felines. All around us in the reception area was kidney formulated cat food. Armed with a debit and 3 credit cards I could have bought every can in the place. If I was a native New Orleaner who had no money but had someone who relied on me, you bet your sweet ass I'd steal this stuff. All of it.

Every hospital has a Nurse Ratched. It's a fact. This hospital had one at reception. Dripping with saccharine, she was the wing ripping sort. Dr. Mark had instructed her to show me how to self-administer an IV into Chicken just in case he fell to extreme lows in hydration levels at home.

At first she wanted to use a saline bag with the names Fluffy and Margot on it. They were 2 extremely depressed cats in locked cages with plenty of fresh food and water, yet an absence of spirit. Both sets of eyes met mine. Both sets of eyes made an instant spring of saltwater elixir form behind my glasses. Dr. Mark instructed her to get a new bag of saline drip. She challenged him for a spell, but was encouraged with a little help from the daggers shooting from my eyes. With a fresh needle she demonstrated how to inject my loved one, pricking the skin of the area in which I routinely singlehandedly pick him up. She looked like she was sewing, for Christ's sake. With saline compound spurting from a newly created watery hump, drenching his furry side, it took everything in me to keep from punching her in her wretched face.

But it filled him out a lot.
He was far less boney.

Nurse Wretched gave me a clean, yet torn towel to carry Chicken home in. Walking down a busy Beaches street some people noticed us. Look at the Kitty Cat! Awww! He's not a Kitty Cat. He's a dignified Chicken.

He'd never been taken out for a stroll before. He was quite interested in everything he saw. Every new smell he encountered. It took his mind off of the recent violation he'd experienced.

He's home again. In the morning he had his old verve back. He had a good appetite. The IV drip's effects didn't last all that long, but he's pain-free and happy today.

He sits and cleans his head now. I could watch this for hours. Lick paw. Rub over cranium. Repeat.

I marvel at sixteen years of non-stop loving someone.
It is possible.
And it's only because I expect nothing of him but his health and his happiness.
I'm going to go squeeze my boyfriend now.

33: The Year of Truth

2005-08-22T13:12:00.000-04:00

I'm not exhausted, which is good because I've been exhausted for a while now. Add overwhelmed as well. Not by big stuff. Big stuff I can handle. 911 emergency? No problem. As for the piddly little stuff like laundry, dishes, scraping Chicken's petrified shit off various locations throughout the apartment... I'm having trouble.

No, no. I'll take care of it.

I take care of things. When the shit hits the fan or if there is a modest hand raised somewhere in a sea of people, I'm the front line girl who takes the shots, finds the quickest and dirtiest solution, and gets shit done. I like this position. It serves me well. In truth, it gives me hero/martyr status.

Last week was Ack's birthday weekend. Ack's the ex-husband/best friend. Fatty, formerly my 4 year friend, currently the love of my life, was busy working so he couldn't attend any of the festivities. On the Friday I had invited Ack over for lamb burgers, something he loves as it's one of those dishes that is easily paired with ketchup, his favourite mealtime companion. He shares this companionship with his mother.

Little known fact: When ketchup was first introduced to the Czech Republic, Ack's home and native land, his mother was found with her girlfriends gossiping and tittering while inserting straws into the slender necks of this newly imported premium sauce, sipping gingerly at first, then voraciously to the end.

After clearing once white plates of charred protein matter and smears of 57 spiced vermillion, I placed a wrapped gift in front of the slightly bloated, burping birthday boy.

Ack is an artist. As long as he could remember his life's trajectory has been gunning towards making pictures for a living.

Yeah, but...

[with heavy Eastern European accent] Vat are you goingk to do for livingk?

So being ever helpful to their son's life trajectory, they ripped pen out of hand, removed paper and replaced the objects he loved with a hammer or a handsaw. Useful things. Things that would allow him to get ahead in this world.

He still went to art school. He couldn't help it. In university he took as many mediums as he could. He became a jack of all art trades. Master of none. How could he master something he grew to be ashamed of? Something he had to hide between his mattress and rock spring. There were no magazines filled with flesh that was the ham in most every boy's bed sandwich; there were only secretly coveted art supplies.

Even though he earned back to back prestigious awards for creative web designs, even though he had risen in the ranks in art departments in film, Ack has no language in which to receive praise for what he does. There are parts of him still too ashamed.

He currently works in the crème de la crème of art departments. Most of the artists share credits from the X-Men film series. The most talented artists never had their pens and paper removed from them. As children, they were either encouraged or neglected.

The Applier was over at Ack's the other night. He's got a new/old girlfriend. During his foray into Let's-see-how-many -women-I-can-score-with-including-my-best-buddy's-ex-wife, his current girlfriend was 1 of 3 he was juggling on his member.

Keep your balls in the air!

I don't trust the Applier. Not 100%. Not even 50%. Not only did he try to ply his wares on me, the ex-wife of his reputed best friend, but after fully explaining to him the world of blogging, something he was completely ignorant of, he then stole not only the concept, but my identity including my real name, for a film project he is working on.

Without telling me.
But I found out.

The Comrade: Really? I want $100,000... in small, unmarked bills.
The Applier: I'm not even making that!
The Comrade: You thieving cunt. How do you live with yourself?

The Thieving Applier had expressed a stipulation upon embarking on his new relationship with the new/old girlfriend.

Thieving Applier: You have to understand that I have priorities. The first is to my son. The second is to my work. You will always come third.

He may be a thief, but at least he's honest.
And she's accepted this condition.

Ack is still dating the girl whose name translates to Truth/Freedom/Beauty.

The Comrade: How's that going?
Ack: I almost fired her the other day.

I asked him what her plans for his birthday were. She wanted to take him to Stratenger's, that fantastic bar that allows smoking, smoking, smoking indoors for a one time fee of $10. This bar is great for impromptu, casual double fisting, but as a birthday venue? Dubious. As I had not received a call from her I wondered if this was to be an intimate evening.

At the top 20 percentile of scummy bars around town.
Apparently it wasn't to be intimate. It was to be with other art department folk. People she feels comfortable with.

Ack: Who did you invite?
Truth/Freedom/Beauty: One other person.

Ack loves birthday parties, particularly in his own honour.

Calling all pals. Calling all pals.
Fifteen friends showed up with 2 hours notice, including the one invited guest TFB RSVP'd.

The majority were old friends of Ack's. There were those whose shared company spanned at least a decade. History. With history comes skip-regaling down Remember Avenue. This came in the form of roasting the poor boy, which was fun for all because most everyone, save 5% of the population, absolutely adores him. Nary an ill word is spoken. The 5% think he's an asshole. It's his own fault, really. Whenever he's being inauthentic, he comes off as...

well, please allow a preface.

One of the games instigated by me around a not quite round, but more L shaped table was:

The Comrade: What was your very first impression of Ack upon meeting him?

The Replies in No Particular Order:
Used car salesman.
Aloof.
Snob.
Long-haired hippy.
Art wank beret wearer, who happened to be hot, but not my type. (Mine)
Genuine.
Considerate.
Tamer of shrews.
Uncomfortable.

The Comrade: Uncomfortable?
Truth/Freedom/Beauty: Yes.
The Comrade: He was uncomfortable?
TFB: No, I was.
The Comrade: Yeah, but what did you think of him?
TFB: Uncomfortable.
The Comrade: He was?
TFB: No! Me.
The Comrade: [1/2 elapsed time] So, you were too uncomfortable yourself to make any judgment on him.
TFB: Yes!
The Comrade: I see.

I looked over to my friend Dirty who, with mouth agape, looked as if she was trying to find meaning in the heavens.
I looked across the street
To see a familiar '94 VW Golf
A car which Ack and I still share.

The Comrade: Dude. You drove the fucking car here?

As soon as I see anyone I care about in a state of alcohol induced disrepair, even if I too am drinking, I shift into another mode, one in which takes care of others. In this past year alone I have either personally driven or arranged cab passage home, of an inebriated loved one, 6 separate times. 6 separate loved ones. As soon as I assume responsibility, I cease drinking all together and every cell in my being straightens and sobers up with this new responsibility.

The Comrade: Don't worry, I'll drive your stupid, skank-ass home.

As Ack and I were married for 7 1/2 years and have been best friends for 9 years total time, many of the memories everyone had of Ack involved me. They noted the marked difference in Ack pre-Comrade and post-Comrade. All of these stories flew in the face of Truth/Freedom/Beauty.

When she left the table momentarily:

The Comrade: Dudes, this is really sweet and everything, but I think it's causing some upset in the new girlfriend with all the stories that involve me. Could you maybe tell the story while omitting me somehow?
One of the Invited Guests: Well, you're here aren't you?
The Comrade: Well, yes, darling. But I think it's causing a rift.
Another Invited Guest: You are a big part of his past. That's something she's going to have to get used to.

We were mid-roasting of the birthday victim when we all noticed the man of the hour was MIA. Halfway up the street Truth/Freedom/Beauty was giving Ack his birthday gears.

TFB: She wants you back.
Ack: What? No she doesn't. I explained this to you before: We're like brother and sister.
TFB: If it was my brother I wouldn't step on the toes of his wife. It's the wife's responsibility to take care of her man. I'm your girlfriend now. I'm supposed to take care of you.
Ack: Yes, but there's precedence. She does this. I've asked her to do this in the past.
TFB: I want to leave. I want to go back to your place.
Ack: Stop running away.

When they both returned, the stories had been modified with no mention of his former wife.

Seated at the table which had 8 remaining guests, Ack was visibly drunk though received a thorough exploratory tongue examination by his current girlfriend. All remaining grew exponentially more and more awkward.

Ack: Okay, we're going to go now.
The Comrade: Already?

Ack is known to be the last (drunk) man standing.

The Comrade: Do you want me to take you home?
Truth/Freedom/Beauty: [releasing a succession of razor-sharp Ninja stars from her eyes] I... will... drive... him... home.

Okay.

Ack: Do you even know how to drive stick?
TFB: Yes.

The difference between Truth/Freedom/Beauty and the Applier is that the Applier is not a liar.

What's in a name?
Sometimes wishful thinking.

She does not speak truths; she avoids them at all costs.
Her idea of freedom is abandonment; of running away.
As for her concept of beauty she is the industry prescribed 85 lbs, soaking wet. Her idol is Barbie. Her dream-boat is Ken.
In the art department, an office she and Ack share air space for 12 hours a day/ 5 days a week, there is a picture of the two of them taken by her on my deck with handwritten, 36 point font entitled: Barbie + Ken. Ack hasn't been taking pictures lately because the last digital camera he had froze and never thawed.

Ack has asked her to remove this picture from her bulletin board which welcomes directors, producers and production designers.

She's pushing.
Okay, so he says he just wants a casual relationship, but really, if I try hard enough, he'll want more.
It's what girls do.

Truth/Freedom/Beauty doesn't want what all of us are trying to stave off: the repetition of negative aspects of our pasts. She repeatedly finds herself in relationship scenarios with men who don't parade her around with pride. Who harbour her as a secret. Who don't take pictures of her.

The Comrade: His camera's broken, sweetie.

This comes as small consolation as she peruses his photo archives on his hard drive.
It's riddled with images of me.
Ack has always been my personal photo documenter, something I am eternally grateful for.

Ack has turned 33 this year. 33 represents Truth in numerology. It is a significant year if you embrace Truth. It is my favourite number, one I share with my darling Fatty. It was the year I learned how to love properly. It was the year I started to love myself properly. It was the beginning of realising my own faults, accepting responsibility and making considerations about what I felt I deserved in conjunction with what was being offered.

One of the Top 5 reasons why Ack and I are no longer married is because his work will always come before any one.
This was never expressed in our marriage, but it was a reality.

In this year, his Year of Truth, he's needed to repeat his previously denied mission of creating art several times to TFB. It's something that he's no longer ashamed of. Something he no longer feels he has to fetishise. She counters that perhaps he's working too hard, therefore he'll burn out or is drinking too much.

He drinks just the right amount with friends.
He's working on a project which allows him more creative freedom and experimentation than he's ever experienced before. It is his dream job. For him to not give his whole would be redolent of looking back at his life with a sense of missed opportunity.

The Comrade: I've seen you tired. You look fine.
Ack: I feel good.

He's finally learned to counter the nay-sayers with a plainly stated, "You have no right."

I've been to many fine art galleries in my lifetime. As I'm going to Holland, the Czech Republic and Italy in the fall, I'm sure I'll see more fine art. Of everything I've seen, this, however, is my favourite painting.

A couple of years ago Ack and I went to visit a gallery in the District of Distillation. The gallery was adjacent to the restaurant I survived a 2 week tenure in. The exhibit was in the medium of digital photography. Each framed piece was at least 7'x9' in scale. They were good, but I knew Ack could do better. Ack had captured more important (subjective, subjective) subject matter than the artist whose work we were scrutunising. I examined the tags at the bottom right of the framed photographs.

None were less than $30,000.

Ack's truth is he is an artist. He's not always received the support he's needed. Not from everyone. Not from his immediate family. Not from the ones he's needed it from the most.

Though it did cost a limb, I bought Ack a 7.1 megapixel SLR camera for his birthday.

Fatty: Let me get this straight. Ack gets a digital camera and I get a bright yellow visor that says I'm Ship Shape?
The Comrade: And you look very sexy in it, my love.

I gave Ack 2 stipulations upon receiving his birthday gift.

1. As long as he keeps his girlfriend, he should be taking pictures of her.
2. I eventually want a big-ass, framed piece fashioned from this new tool.

He agreed to my conditions.

In the days succeeding his birthday weekend, we had a brief debrief on some of the events including those surrounding the new girlfriend.

The Comrade: So did she know how to drive stick?
Ack: No.
The Comrade: How did you get home?
Ack: I drove.
The Comrade: What?!

With jutting jugular I commenced a diatribe most fierce.

The Comrade: This was a pissing match on her end. If anything happened to you because of her vanity, and that's all that it was, I would hunt her down and kill her. And I mean that.

Everyone who knows me, knows this to be true.

It's a good thing he'll be taking pictures of her.
I might need a visual aid.

What I Really Want to Be When I Grow Up

2005-08-16T15:22:00.000-04:00

So I meet this girl in a bar.

Well actually I've met this girl before. We shared a class together. I sensed her competition then, but found out she was just a Networker. Hobnobbing with everyone she thinks might have a glimmer of hope of aiding and abetting her dreams. Part of the Landmark Forum. It's akin to L. Ron's Empire. She invited me to an orientation session thinking I was of the right stuff. What my brain computed at the end of it was

CULT

Yes, I see that everyone else has a glass! As much as that Kool-Aid looks very tasty, I'm not thirsty, thanks.

So years pass. And this same girl walks into my bar - the once a week engagement I have at the Cheer's Equivalent. She's with a date. During the date she is coquettish. She whips out the wiles. They don't sit across from each other; they sit side by side. Time elapses and she begins to cry. Not quite Hollywood crocodile tears. That kind doesn't produce a facial bloating or extreme redness in and around fine features. Hollywood tears are a beautiful, lush, dropper-fed saline compound that is nothing short of haute couture accoutrement when plummeting down the right cheek of Cher.

They're not real though. If they were I think I'd cry in public more often.

After some time of waiting for the moment to pass, waiting for the swelling to reduce, I reengaged this girl by using the tactics learned from my brother, the one that Fatty most resembles in nature - generally being an annoying twat, but at least a funny one. And she tells me she's fallen in love with me.

People fall in love with me all the time. It's a curse.

I think it happens because I genuinely care about people. And I listen. And I make fun, while telling them exactly what I think. And I dispense wedgies. But mostly it's because I pour drinks. I mean, who's kidding who?

As she's about to leave she asks me if I'm still in the business. Film. I tell her that the business leaves me cold. I told her I got into it thinking there was a day coming soon where finally the business of race was irrelevant. I half stuck with it for about 5 years, but discovered it was getting worse. Further racial compartmentalising which may or may not have been due to homeland security threats were informing the parts written and subsequently the parts offered. I'm not speaking of my homeland. My own homeland is secure, thank you. It's the one south of me which is the Great Dictator, the one we look lovingly up to. The Big Daddy who sets the precedents and takes chances, pushes proverbial envelopes by squirting inordinate amounts of gall.

These have been the parts that have been offered to me. In no particular order:
Asian Shopkeeper
Asian Reporter #1
Asian Reporter #2
Kung-Fu expert
Doctor So-and-So
Pharmacist

I think the only reason I haven't been asked for the role of Pianist is because my hands are bigger than some men.

The Comrade: There's nothing for me. Out of 200 scripts there is one that actually makes me think. I want to do something that changes the world. I'm sick of the constant pandering to the lowest common denominator.
The Girl: I want you to write something with me and my writing partner.

Fatty, the love of my life and joy of my loins, took me out to a wonderful restaurant a few weeks ago. The French name literally translates to an amusement for the mouth. I don't know how amused my mouth was, but it was more than a little delighted with the massive plate of seared foie gras brought to the table. This dish would certainly be one component of my last meal scenario... if given a choice.

During dinner Fatty and I made a pact. Individually or collectively, we would accept offers of any hair-brained scheme that came our way.

We shook on it.

The Comrade: I've never done it before, but sure, I'll write a movie with you and your writing partner.

Which took 2 sessions.
Which was great fun.

These two girls who became my writing partners met at the L. Ron Look-a-like, but without the alien infestation. The organisation's greatest espousement is the actualising of one's dreams. These two girls became Power Women to me. They get shit done.

Like...
Securing locations for nothing.
Rounding up 40 cast and crew who worked either pro bono or for a small honourarium.
And did it tirelessly.
Getting all the equipment and consumables needed for making this short film a reality.
Shooting in public without a permit and not getting arrested.

Without...
Any shame of asking.
Any fear of the answer "no".
Feeling responsible for everyone else's satisfaction.

It was in the can by 1:30am Monday morning.
They even had a bottle of bubbly
Which was cracked directly after the last shot.
They did it right.

I was hungover when I went for rehearsal.
It was Ack's birthday weekend.
But, I learned my lines.
It was the least I could do.

Throughout the process my body was retaliating. For years I thought I didn't want to be in the business because there were no parts for me. But the truth is I don't like the medium. I find having a marker snapped 2" from my face rather frightening. I find having a bunch of cooly dressed young sycophants telling me how wonderful or how great or how beautiful I was in that last shot really rather irritating and mostly unbelievable.

And that's it.

Film is the business of induced reality.
It's not real.
It's pretending.
It's nothing I'm about.

Random Person: Do that thing again.
The Comrade: What thing?
Random Person: You know. That thing you just did. It was fucking hilarious.
The Comrade: I can't. The moment's gone.

Last week I helped Fatty make a gift for his 90 year old grandfather. It was to be a story told in 4x6" photographic allegory. I shot it in black and white digital, had it processed online at the very convenient and most impressive Vistek - a mere 3 blocks away for photo finished pick up. It's all to be arranged in an acid free flip book adhered with old photo corners. We're employing adhesive UHU, sticking little captions under most of the 90 commemorative shots. Thus far, this process has been sent through 6 different computer applications. Though much time has been massaged upon it, it has been nothing short of a labour of love.

Last night at my once a week night of employ at the Cheer's Equivalent Bar I felt shy. It happens sometimes. There are some times that I like to retreat into a bit of a shell. I like to do a bit of behind the scenes orchestrating. Sometimes I don't like fronting. But I eventually warmed up a bit. Naturally. Something you don't have the luxury of in front of a 35mm lens.

I'm happy to be doing little projects that don't make my wallet any heavier, but do make my heart fuller.

I went out for lunch with my brother Vince today.

Vince: The problem with kids today is they have no direction. They don't want to do anything except hang out with friends and play video games.

The Comrade: But those are fun things to do.

I was waxing politic on the entire education system in North America and the dangers of sending a child through all the steps a parent thinks a child should go through.

The Comrade: Well, what is he good at and what does love doing?

Languages.

The Comrade: Why isn't he being guided in that direction? Why are you setting your kid up for either middle management or slave cubicle farmer?

In 2 weeks I will be 37 years old. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Not in that sense.

I don't want to be a hypocrite. I believe that parents shouldn't foist their own trajectories or dreams upon their offspring. Each child is an individual but certainly part of the Collective. The answer to the question: What do you do for a living? should be I do happy for a living.

Jimmy, my darling brother-in-law who is married to my sister whom I can't even look at right now because she's too appalling at the moment, once said: Love ain't gonna pay the bills.

It's a hair-brained scheme, but I'm going to find a way for it to.

This Frustrates Me Too

2005-08-15T15:12:00.000-04:00

Little Ferg Buddy.

I got one on the hopper, I promise!

Deliverance

2005-07-31T20:07:00.000-04:00

When I was 21, married to Pronoun Stupid, I remember having a conversation with his brother Tommy.

Tommy, can you hear me?

Tommy was much nicer than Stupid. More than once I'd wished I'd married Tommy instead, but Tommy was devoted to his Tracy. T'nT. We'd be C'nt. It wasn't in the stars.

I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but it had to do with my level of expressed honesty that led him to say to me, "Maybe you're the one to save our family."

Smoking joints and chugging domestic light beer in the hot summer sun, Tommy and Stupid were 2 brothers that seemed incredibly close. They'd lost their father a couple of years prior. Their mother, who loved a ghost more than most women have loved any living partner, was a devout Baptist. She never killed a fly or went fishin' (flies and fish are our friends); didn't encourage card play on Sundays, or dancing - ever - because, well, dancing led to sex and Sunday was God's day. She loved her boys, including the eldest who seemed not only old-fashioned, but just plain old. His sons were closer to my own age. An old seeming man shrouded with a bristly nest-like, dull brown beard with woven strands of non-shimmering grey. Who seemed and commanded learned.

How the hell did he think I could save anything? Stupid and Tommy were at least 11 years older than I. Doesn't age lead to wisdom?

For the majority of my life if I was in the company of someone with little letters preceding or succeeding their name, I would perceive them to be in a greater position of knowledge, subsequently, of power. In tandem, I created a self-induced, reduced sense of personal adequacy. I reasoned that these people - who have lived longer than I and/or went to Serious School - knew more than I. Were more than I. In my mind I had elevated their status, thus relinquishing all of my own personal power.

Yes, doctor.
Of course I don't mind being booked in for an appointment at 9:00am, to not be seen until 10:30.
The fact that you have sixteen 9:00am bookings seems perfectly reasonable to me. You are the doctor.

Personal power, belief structure and general code of ethics - sold - to the only bidder.
All for the low, low price of free.

It's all perceived value anyway.

Something happened this week.
I did things I'd never really done before.

As an addendum to the 2 weeks of hell work tenure in Toronto's District of Distillation, I returned with a lilting tail, not quite between my legs, but more wrapped around one knee. As much as I needed to leave that job, which would have been both the demise of myself and the dear relationship with my darling Fatty, I had never before left a post as unceremoniously. Just up and walking out in the middle of a shift. In truth, there was a bit of shame attached to my right heel as I walked again through ominous doors, adjusting the Comrade Collection Agency cap on my head. I had both a pay cheque and cash owed from 2 night's work.

The Comrade: What do you mean you can't find it?
Floor Manager Fabio: [Shaved head, club clothed, guttural Gino-type] I saw an envelope kicking around with your name on it, but that was a while back. I haven't seen it in a while.
The Comrade: Well look harder. Peter did my cash out one night. Where's that?
FM Fabio: You're going to have to take it up with Peter.

Rip the needle off the vinyl.

The general manager.
Clear over 6'4".
Nice man,
Though
Falls squarely into my reductive-self complex.

A little terrified, I went home and sent an email to the general manager. It was sweetly asking if he knew the whereabouts of any of the money that was owed to me. One night was accounted for, but the other night left a great big question mark over his head. The best explanation was that the bartender I was training that night, incidentally her first night, something that doesn't usually warrant a 50/50 split, more than likely received not merely half, but all of the evening's collective earnings. That one night produced a 14 hour workday-induced hemorrhoid the size of a quail's egg. It took 2 weeks for it to return close enough to my body to no longer consider it alien.

Years, nay months, ago I would have just let this one go. I'd reasoned that I was the one who left, so I should face some sort of punishment. Besides, it's normal to take some knocks along the way. Normal. If you get out with yourself intact, that should be enough.

But it nearly killed me.
But it almost tore the ass out of my relationship with the love of my life.
But I had felt repeatedly raped and pillaged there.

Plot/scheme
Plot/scheme
Think, think, think

Why was considering to let this go? If I'd heard about this happening to someone else, I'd have all kinds of things to say and more suggestions on how to deal with the matter. Why has it been easier for me to choose to defend other people over myself?

I earned this money... the hard way.
While in its greatest protrusion, I nearly painted the ass goiter a robin's egg blue.
Fuck this.

With conjured powdered wig and reaper's gown, dodging swinging gavels while rising from a block of oak, I delivered the opening statement to my peers of imagined Comrade clones: I deserve to receive all the money that is owing to me.

The Supreme Court of Comraderie.
It does have a nice ring to it.

Without holding anything back I presented the general manager with a rather long essay outlining exactly why I left and how it was his sole responsibility to give me all the money I am due.

Bridges need burning sometimes.
They light your way.

[excerpt]
I left because of the lack of regard and respect for the staff.
I left for the unfair and illegal practices demonstrated [by management].
I left because there was no proper recompensement for working 14 hours straight in a relentlessly busy environment when in the end I couldn’t fire one neuron against another to complete a cash-out.

Which was why I handed it off.
Something you accepted the charge of.

Regardless of how much time has passed, money that I earned, that I had entrusted to you, has gone missing. I can only see it as your responsibility. If the lion’s share of earnings went to the bartender-in-training, someone with whom I was fully prepared to equally share my earnings, no matter how time has passed, the money that is rightfully mine was allocated incorrectly.

I’m asking you to correct the situation.

Yeah, well, he didn't like that one bit.

He wrote:
I disagree with everything you say.
Which is fine. Had he agreed on much of it, it would be terrific evidence that the Labour Board would be quite interested in.

In the end, as a method of appeasement, he asked me how much money I'd like. It was more than likely a resolution to make me happy because I was proving to be a potential whistle-blower. Who cared? I had a goal in mind. Though he tried to fracture the amount, using a dirty underhanded method of do-you-really-think-you-deserved-that-much-money, something historically I would have caved over out of guilt or feeling: He's right; maybe I didn't deserve it. He did make the mistake of asking how much money I thought was fair. I may present confidence often, but I don't always feel it. Though when working behind 2' wood,

I feel like a master.

I responded:
Thank you so much for taking the time to read so thoroughly and respond so thoughtfully. I am earnestly grateful. As for fairness in recompensement, I do feel that $200 for that shift is fair.

As I learned selling weight loss programmes to poor, overweight women once upon a time in my sordid, professional past, the first rule of sales: Bring things to a close.

Continued:
I will be by next week to collect it.
Many thanks again.

God knows he's not the first person to call me a bitch.
I don't suspect he'll be the last.

In my last post I'd promised myself I'd write a letter to my family which would exempt me from further annihilation of self-esteem. As I am a girl of her word, and as I was on a roll anyway, every family member I was raised with was CC'd.

[abridged excerpt]
I have decided to create a self-imposed exemption from any further function where obligatory attendance is required.
[T]he truth is this man, whom I am obligated to honour in his septuagenarian year, has for 20 years simply ignored my existence. A few years ago I was told I could be “forgiven” as long as I proved something to him. A presentation of another fiery hoop in which to jump through. To prove the validity of my deserving love.

For a lifetime I’ve heard all the rationale of forgiving the father for “he knows not what he’s done.” Or other clichés like “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” But he learns new technology. He applies knowledge of newly learned trades. All of which he lords over his wife, our mother, further elevating his status while reducing her self-esteem to rubble. If learning to love was important to him, he would have made it his life’s goal; something I’ve mandated within my own life. The process albeit is riddled with both success and failure, but it is still a process.

I do not make concessions for ignorance in my own world. To continue to allow this because it's "family" is a continued personal breach.

At the heart of every function is an unwritten clause that we all must maintain a façade that everything is fine, that we were all raised wonderfully and we think our dad is the greatest.

The World’s Greatest Dad who hasn’t spoken to his youngest child in over twenty years.
I beg for any other rationale than that of nonsensical pride.

I cannot take part in another scene in this ridiculous, self-destructive farce. It’s beyond disheartening. It’s morally corrupt.

When I wrote this, it was for no other design but to eliminate a sense of massive impending doom. I didn't expect a response, unless it was that of ridicule or further judgment.

My eldest brother, who speaks in monotones, no caps, little inflection and certainly no italics, wrote first:

Excellent letter!!!! I agree 110%.
I will be out of town until next week.
Maybe we have lunch the week of August 8 to talk!!!

Sincerely,

Vince

7... count 'em, 7 exclamation points.
He's never invited me out for lunch before in his life.

Second to respond was my darling brother-in-law Jimmy:
Well done. Is there anything I can do for you!!!

Always in service to others, this man who has "everything" I thought could do something for me. I requested:

What you can do for me is to be happy. And to do what you want. And to realise you are a remarkable person. And that I love you very much.

Besides that, I'd love to go for a pint soon.

As good things reputedly come in threes, the third, more than likely final, familial response came with the subject line: Your long lost brother

Walter

The apple of my childhood eye,
Whom I miss so much,
Who had estranged himself from the family,
Broke his silence
And invited me back into his world.

Tommy, can you hear me?

Maybe you were a guru.
Maybe you divined it.
You were right.
Maybe I do have the power to save.
You just got the families wrong.

Bleep Bleep

2005-07-25T14:40:00.000-04:00

I've heard that No matter where you go you'll never run away from yourself.

It was repeated in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know, a nice starting point in the world of quantum mechanics. Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend, finally has company in which to speak. He's been immersed in quantum theorising for quite some time. Working with intentionality - the creation of one's own life - not feeling like your life or your fate is in the hands of a vengeful karmic god. You're your own vengeful god.

Or loving one.

The thing that struck me most about the movie was the dissection of emotions. Victimisation, anger eruptions, et al. The anger bit often doesn't have a safety. These eruptions have historically exploded in the faces of the men I've shared my life with. Fatty is not exempt. It has to do with the level of comfort I feel with them. I've always said that during the first 6 months of a relationship, no one is to be trusted. We're on our best behaviour. With Fatty it was different. We've known each other very well for 4 years. The level of comfort was established quite early.

I think the root of my anger eruptions is You didn't do what I wanted you to. This is of course stupid. This is also elemental victimisation. Instead of posturing Why me?, which is essentially the same, though seems weak, something I have a hard time displaying, I create an ensuing caustic maelstrom of Fuck you's.

But again, this only comes out in the ones I hold dearest.
So where the hell did I learn that from?

I had a depressing Saturday night. I'd just found out that the short film I was asked to co-author is actually getting shot and sent to Sundance.

There was a moment of over-the-phone hyperventilation when I heard this news.

Writing partner: So, just learn your lines!

Learn my lines.

Years ago I was cast as a day player on a television series. My level of fear of success was at its peak then. The night prior to shooting I thought it was a really good idea to get hammered with some friends. I only have 12 lines sailed through my central nervous system, which had a mandate to consume vast amounts of sauvignon blanc. When I made it to set the next day, on time mind, I had a pounding sieve-like brain that only felt moderately controlled in the position foetal. As I was supposed to play a high-powered military executive (I think), lying prone on one's side was not written in. They didn't go for the suggestion of my character being an opium smoker.

In film, every minute costs $10,000.
35 takes in, I couldn't get my lines straight.
Shame masterminded every cell in my body.
I couldn't run anywhere.

Luckily I have an extraordinary agent who happens to be a very good friend. She told me that Marlon Brando's first role, a part that required him to just say one line, was fudged repeatedly. It took him over 50 takes. Dear Connie. She always makes me feel better.

But still, every time I receive a script then subsequently get handed a role, panic flies rampant like cancer in my body. Consuming. Exhausting. I always need to lie down. Back to foetal. Back to where we don't breathe air. We are surrounded by nourishing liquid.

So I have this emotional reminder, one which takes me back to a time where my behaviour from the night prior both halts the progress bar of the day's schedule as well as halting any progress in my own life. And I think back to the What the Bleep movie.

They said that the responses we muster, these automatic responses to stimuli or situation, are designed to get the emotional response that we're addicted to. To get our fix. Well, that short circuited me a bit. They also said that each time we fall victim to these automatic responses, they form synapses that lock onto neurons, creating a strong hold in the form of a neural net. This of course then forms the idea of who we think we are.

Without giving pause, I don't know how many times I've said: This is just how I react.
It truly taps into my Cave Girl construct.

I don't want to be one of those people who blames other people for her reactionary behaviour. I know it does, however, start somewhere. We are nothing but highly programmable machines. The trick is to learn how to reprogramme.

I was trying to write through some of the depression I was feeling the other day. The source of anxiety that came up was the looming dark cloud of my father's 70th birthday party. It's something I promised my mother I'd attend.

Ack's new girlfriend, the woman whose name translates to Truth/Beauty/Freedom, told me a story about her Italian friends. Well, their families, actually. These old world folk came to this country 50 years ago, say. They hold onto the romantic idea of what they remembered Italy as then. This memory is then housed in a trapezoidal cortex vault with the added value of passing decades and department store sectional sofas covered in thick plastic. These memories and ideals are then foisted upon their children. What no one knows is that Italy, or any people's country of origin, grows and develops. Becomes modernised. Changes in old world views.

My mother: You can't tell anybody. How will people look at you having had another failed marriage? If they ask how Ack is you just pretend that you're still together.

I see these people, friends and neighbours of my parents, maybe once a year. Not out of choice but out of obligation.

I promised her I'd go.
And I am a woman of her word.
But I would be expected to lie.
And that's a greater breach of contract to self.

After getting to know Fatty's family - the ones who cared for and nurtured the love of my life, the parents who go along with any hair-brained scheme that either of their sons dream up, the ones who have always created the best most creative and supportive environments in which to thrive, the ones who can easily and readily tell their sons all their best attributes - I began to reconsider my life and where I came from.

"No one knows a child like the mother," my mother has always said.
And I believed her.
Whenever I've asked her to list off the positive characteristics of her children, she is hard pressed to come up with an automatic response.

Fatty's Mom: [during a marathon conversation with the Comrade] I hope he knows how wonderful we (she and the dad) think he is.
The Comrade: Oh, if he doesn't, I'll beat it into him.

I never heard how wonderful I am from any of my family.
I often hear how loud I am.
How irresponsible I am.
How inappropriate I am.
How disrespectful I am.
Never wonderful, though.

That I had to find out in the real world.
And it took me a long time to believe it.

Supposition this:
Take a man who has never recognised the birthdays of any of his children or his wife,
Who then requires a massive blow-out for the celebration of reaching the age of septuagenarian, as mandated by past cultural dictates coupled with an elevated sense of self,
Whose only demonstrative kindness is displayed for friends and neighbours,
Never for his family.
Who taught his children a bastardised version of honour and respect under a totalitarian state,
Who repeatedly pitted his children against each other,
Who only wants his children at this celebration as evidence of being the perfect father.
His children who have spent tens of thousands of dollars in therapy.
Who has ignored his last born child for the past 20 years...

Is it forgivable to not want to learn the lines to this scene in Act III?
Even if promised?

There is a neural net that needs an explosions expert in the art of defusing.

Look at that. I gave myself permission.

The entire family will be receiving a minced-free version of exactly why I will not be attending this farce.

This isn't running away.
It's saving myself.

The Introduction of the Swap Meet

2005-07-21T19:55:00.000-04:00

Chicken, the light of my life, had another episode. The uncontrollable pooping and hurling varietal. It's at best disconcerting. At worst, I find my hand on his ribcage. Movement detection. I try not to let him see me cry. He's a very sensitive cat who doesn't like me to see him in less than optimum health. He only presents me with his best. If he's too tired he doesn't come out to play. If he's in a foul mood he'll shoot me a look and that's pretty much all I need to back away from him. When he's sick he recoils from me. There's really nothing I can do for him. He hates pity anyway. It's a trait he's picked up from me.

Last Monday at my once a week night of employ at the Cheer's Equivalent bar, I was having a discussion with Cupcake, the chef formerly known as Cartman sounding Mike. The topic was the timeline in which I thought a natural relationship trajectory should go.

The Comrade's Timeline
Date 1: The sniffing of butts
Date 2: If a second date is warranted, there's more than a slim chance in hell that it could turn into a relationship.
Date 3: Back seat or on the beach - sex, sex, lurid sex.
Date 4: Invitation to inspect living quarters/ meet roommate.
Week 3: Respective introduction to the most significant friends.
Month 2: Meet the family (unless there are extraordinary circumstances which are made clear from the start).

My darling Fatty, the man who shares my life and my bed along with Chicken, is fully aware that I have mentally divorced my family by reasons of emotional damage and irreconcilable differences.

Cupcake thought the timeline for familial introduction was a bit premature. His Stupid Bitch, and I say that most lovingly as I quite adore her, has not yet met his family though they have been romantically linked for nearly a year. The reason I call her his Stupid Bitch is because of Interpol.

The preamble to the most anticipated concert of Summer 2004
Cupcake gets a new girlfriend.
And brings her to the concert.
As mentioned in a previous post
This is not done.

Having not yet met her, though in her presence
The Comrade: Dude, you brought your fucking girlfriend? Stupid bitch.

Though this comment was geared solely at Cupcake
She hated me for 6 months.
(Sometimes I'm not funny to everyone)
But then she got to know me and we now quite love each other a lot.

The Comrade: Do they live really far away?
Cupcake: No, not really.
The Comrade: Then why?

Being embarrassed of your family is an extraordinary circumstance.

Cupcake comes from Germanic stock. Strong, proud and resourceful. He takes great pride in carrying on traditions in his kitchen that his grandmother passed onto him. Cupcake's coveted potato salad is second only to my ex-mother-in-law's. Her salad is nothing to look at, especially with the addition of canned peas and carrots, but man that was savoury confection perfection on a spoon. Bite after compulsive bite, Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend, is now the only one subjected to exponentially growing hips.

Cupcake's Stupid Bitch, who happens to be one of the most beautiful, smart women I know, is in the natural healing profession. Occasionally she will visit us on a Monday night for a light supper, a bit of conversation, company to smoke cigarettes with and is always available to discuss alternative health procedures. We never have a shortage of things to talk about.

Cupcake: My mom's been sick for a few years. She's on anti-depressants.
The Comrade: Are they helping?
Cupcake: No. When she does get out of bed, she just gets into her bathrobe and watches television all afternoon. I don't want my girlfriend to see that.
The Comrade: Your Stupid Bitch could help.
Cupcake: I know. It doesn't make any sense, really.
The Comrade: Have you talked to her about them?
Cupcake: Sort of. I just remember them strong. I wish she had met them then.

It's a rather terrifying spectacle watching your parents age. People who seemed invincible at one time, moving towards the mark of weakened, slightly feeble.

Fatty and I hosted a send-off party for his parents the other night. We prepared another tasting menu. This time it wasn't 10 courses. We reduced it to 5.

Aperitif: Kenya's Tusker lager.
Course 1: Risotto with oyster mushrooms, garlic scapes, seared mammoth scallops with a truffle oil drizzle. Paired with Veuve Cliquot champagne.
Course 2: Fried Kumo oysters with debretziner sausages on homegrown raddicchio leaves. Served with Quebec's Fin du Monde ale.
Course 3: Panko fried chicken wings with spicy Thai mango salad. Accompanied by Marlborough, NZ's Babich sauvignon blanc and Goldridge Estate riesling.
Grilled individual whole sea bream with baby bok choi, fennel and red onion. California's Kendall Jackson and BC's Mission Hill pinot noirs to quaff alongside.
Artisanal cheese plate with red grapes and fresh figs. Malivoire ice wine and Cockburn port to cap.

We killed it.

I asked the dad, my potential future father-in-law, the British doctor who did something rather massive during his medical career not unlike Russell Crowe had in the Insider, why the pronunciation of Cockburn was changed to Coburn.

My supposition was the original Cockburner must have either been a male chicken roaster (sorry for the imagery, Chicken) or the town's highly chafed celebrated bachelor.
I didn't really get an answer.

Thought not quite as extravagant, I used to do these kind of meals for my own family. I think after the 3rd straight year of Christmas dinner at my home, without a word of grace nor gratitude from my father, as it seemed almost expected, I stopped. I'm hard pressed to do anything without at least a whiff of incentive.

Throughout Fatty's family dinner there were earnest queries as to the preparation or ingredients chosen. There was no shortage of appreciation. There was no shortage of laughter. There were real conversations. Not the best stock option to buy or the latest media scare of some virulent disease, something that would keep one scared, safely tucked at home, computer on, television glowing, an online or phone line purchase - the best option for connection to the world. They didn't do any of that. They didn't foist their opinions on their sons or on me. They listened to each of us. And we them. Every opinion counted.

And they wanted to know about me. About my relationship to my family. How I felt about it.
They understood without trying to change my mind with the static, demoralising statement of, "But it's your family. It's the only one you've got. You ought to try."
Maybe they didn't press because both the parents came from less than desirable familial circumstances themselves. They moved to a different land to get away from their oppressive pasts. They started a new family, a rare and beautiful gem, one that welcomes Comrades.

Being a true adventurer and marvellous guest, after several glasses of everything, my future father-in-law was more reputedly "blotto" (his word) than he'd been in 10 years.

He stumbled to the bathroom in a wave pattern.
He fell asleep in the adirondack chair.
It was the first time Fatty had seen him look so vulnerable.
Older.
It made him consider his father's mortality for the first time.
This scared the crap out of him.

The Comrade: How are you doing, darling?
Future father-in-law: [very British accent] I am chilling.
Future mother-in-law: [high pitched British accent] Are you cold?
Future father-in-law: No, I am cool.

Though the rest of the family was holding their heads in mock horror, there is something rather adorable about a Dr. Mac Daddy feeling safe enough to conduct experiments in street vernacular within a controlled environment.

It was the first time we'd entertained Fatty's family here. I can't wait until the next time.

I've modified Chicken's diet. He's now receiving a combination of 3 different types of cat food. He seems to have taken to it. He's still blind as a bat, still can't hear me yelling at him, but he's starting to put on a little weight. Thank God. His poops are of a healthy consistency. And yes, I look at his poop as scientifically as I do my own. He hasn't thrown up and he hasn't crapped uncontrollably for a little while now. He's on yellow alert. He'll always be on yellow alert.

My little boy
Who will be celebrating his Sweet Sixteen this year.
Off to college soon,
Where he'll probably find a girl.

I hope he'll want me to meet her.

Weeding the Garden of Deception

2005-07-13T20:38:00.000-04:00

I value honesty high among the traits humans bear as their finest decoration.

Fatty: Yeah, but you said there are some things you should never tell the truth about.
The Comrade: No I didn't.
Fatty: Yes you did.
The Comrade: No I didn't.
Fatty: Yes you did.
The Comrade: No!
Fatty: Yes.

[elapsed time: 45 minutes]

The Comrade: Okay, maybe I did.

Do you like this [enter random object the asker is displaying with obvious delirious pride]?
Truth or no truth, the answer is always yes.

Fatty and I went up to his family's cottage last weekend. We drove up in the middle of the night making only one pit-stop at the wretched golden arches, a place neither of us had entered in nearly 2 years. While insidious, there is something contemptibly delicious about their sausage and egg contraption. Alas.

We arrived 18 hours before any of the other guests. In those 18 hours were meals made, dishes done, a swim, mosquito slapping, tent raising of all denominations, leisurely yard and beach work and naps.

Uncertain whether it is a consequence of my darling Fatty's occasional night terrors, an inheritance from his mother's side of the family, the sweet love of my life is prone to waking up bitchy. I don't have this affliction. Mine is wholly different. I have a tendency to become incredibly irritating to others by way of either being über chipper or panicking because I've arisen late and there is still too much to do.

We were napping in a tent at midnight by the time our guests arrived. I wanted to greet these guests with Fatty. I wanted to go up to the main cottage with my boyfriend. I didn't want to go alone.

Subtext: What would they think about us? The strength of our relationship. Appearance Keeping 101.

But I couldn't find the thing I was looking for in the nyloned dark as Fatty was standing outside the blue, guaranteed to sleep 3, biting-fly inhibitor.

The Comrade: Where the fuck is my [insert random personal belonging which I couldn't care less whether he liked or not]?
Fatty: I don't know.
The Comrade: [panicked] Well I can't find it! Don't go anywhere!
Fatty: I'm not going anywhere.

Apparently I frantically asked him not to go anywhere about a dozen times. The decibels and panic levels grew by increments. Approaching the 8th time, the last place Fatty wanted to be was where he was.

Fatty: I'm getting eaten alive out here so I'm going to go up.
The Comrade: What? Okay.

Abandoned.
What an issue that is.

I found out later that there weren't any bugs that were giving Fatty any grief. He used that as an excuse to get the hell out of a situation that was too taxing, too irritating. Boy did that not sit well with me. And boy did he hear about it later. And boy did I regret handling it the way I had.

But we now had company. In total there were 4 other adults and 4 children. The children's ages ranged from 10 months to 10 years. As neither of us care to air our dirty laundry in public, we waited as I seethed.

My least favourite cottaging kid was Emily. I don't blame Emily for my not liking her as much as the other kids. Her parents were my least favourite adults as well. Something her dad liked saying was Giv'r. This is a word that I don't suspect will become part of my everyday vernacular, though you never know. My lovely Fergus was the inspiration to my now incessant awesome's. What I didn't like about Emily's character was that she was 5 years old without a proper vocabulary in which to express herself. Everything that came out was whiny grunts of dissatisfaction. It was made doubly bad by her constant state of having twin rivulets of snot cascading from nostril to lip in varying degrees of viscosity. Emily was born snotty but pretty and that was apparently enough. There was no need to develop character.

Though I still don't think it right, I chose a favourite.

Aidan.
He looked like a young Orlando Bloom.
Whip smart.
Slightly shy.
Independent.
Always asked when he didn't know.
Total grammarian.
Brown belt in karate.
When asked who he wanted to live with, his father or his mother (who has a tendency to leave good men whom she has children with), he chose his dad...
(An excellent choice).
Tried desperately to put me in an arm lock but I kept levelling him into the sand.

Aidan: Oh come on! Just let me put you into an arm hold.
The Comrade: You're not going to hurt me?
Aidan: No, I promise.
The Comrade: Okay.

The lovely Aidan puts the Comrade into a delicate arm hold and asks her to try to get out of it.

The Comrade: By any means necessary?
Aidan: Just try.

I kicked his feet out and mock jumped on top of him, looking, ever searching for a pair of Ninja ginch to yank up over his head, knowing inherently that young Aidan was light enough to string up in a tree.

Strange fruit.

The little bastard was going commando.
Drat.

Aidan: Yeah, well I'll be able to kick your ass when I'm as big as you.
The Comrade: Darling Aidan... How old do you think I am?
Aidan: Twenty.
The Comrade: That's right, mister.

Like I'm going to correct that.

His dad Craig, incidentally my favourite cottaging adult, is one of the best dads I've ever seen in action. The mind altering drugs he's done in the past had expanded his natural inclination towards philosophy. He spoke to his child once of fear.

Clap on.
Clap off.
Fear of the dark.

A bedroom is still the same bedroom with one difference. The absence of light. We fear what we cannot see. He is teaching his child that the generation of fear is from the very powerful mind. We do it to ourselves. I grew up on a street where some of the parents propagated the concept of the Boogeyman. Horrible, wretched liars.

Later, from this lesson, young Aidan will be better equipped to be able to detect the fear generation of media and government. He currently sings old songs of Rage Against the Machine. I wish to be there when he fully understands the magnitude. By the time he's 20, I'll be 30 anyway. I'm not going anywhere.

When Fatty finally told me the truth about my driving him nuts because his mental faculties were reduced while my panic level had increased, I initially lost it. I was hurt that he left me. I was angry because he couldn't tell me the truth. As a rule, I don't want to be lied to. I can actually handle it when someone says to me, "Look, you're being a crazy bitch. Now stop it." I hope he knows to do it next time because it hurts like hell when someone I love walks away from me.

When I first started seeing Fatty in a romantic capacity I did stress the utter importance of truth. I would not accept deception of any kind. If he was caught in a lie, there endeth the union. But he's right: I did say there are things that are better left unsaid or to lie about.

Certain white lies need to be weeded out just in case it mushrooms into a garden of deception. But there is clover in my own garden that I choose to not weed, maybe in hopes for that 4 leafer the mini Irish fellas sit at stirring their pots of pure gold.

There is a Santa Claus.
I'm not a disgusting person for looking at my own poop every single day.

But there is a line.
If it is selfish, self-serving or harmful to others, that is a bold line crossed to a point of no return.

Let My People Come

2005-07-05T15:17:00.000-04:00

As much as I don't care for the world of film, the one thing I was very happy about in my one time pursuit of a theatre career was the study. Every actor has a choice. The word "no" could be said in infinite ways to reveal much of a character or his motivation. Subtext. Or it could just be a wank. Not all actor's choices are good ones. For a glaring example, please see Orlando Bloom's entire depiction of Balian in The Kingdom of Heaven. Wow. An elf does not a gladiator make. Strange, even to me, every single choice Simon Pegg selected in Shaun of the Dead was... ding, ding, ding... we have a winner.

Kicking, screaming, acting out, accusing, raging, becoming cold and unresponsive... This was not acting class. This was at home.
Subtext.
What's really the matter?

This question is the reason why Ack, the ex-husband, is still the best friend.

My darling Fatty and I were invited to accompany my future mother-in-law in an outdoor production of The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare in the Tent. It's Shakespeare in the Park... with a budget.

I read somewhere that Shakespeare's plays wouldn't be properly understood unless one reached a certain age. King Lear wouldn't have absolute relevance until one was 50. I hasten to add that it might not have ultimate relevance unless the reader or theatre goer was also male.

Romeo and Juliet was understood very early. I hid a boy in a closet. I jumped out of a second storey window to be with this boy. Our families hated the fact that we were together. When Fatty I go to fair Verona this fall, part of our European beer tour, I am going to visit the cemetery. Cemeteries are always on my travel itinerary whenever I'm fortunate enough to travel. I want to take pictures of tombstones with the names Capulet and Montague, if that's possible. Framed, I want them coexisting on the same wall, in a distance close enough for one violent hand to hold the other. Peace, a hated mortal word. Maybe they learned to embrace it in the afterlife.

Over a decade ago I worked at a wonderful restaurant where I received inordinate amounts of attention. At brunch a regular customer/ doorman from the club across the street had asked what the appeal of me was.

The Comrade: I don't know. Maybe it's an issue of the taming of a shrew.
I never studied this play in school. I'd never read it nor seen it performed before. Frankly I had it confused with A Midsummer's Night Dream. I was really looking forward to seeing Puck in action again.

No Puck.
Not even a urinal cake.
Only a child scorned by having her love usurped by her manipulative, sycophantic sister.
Favour cast aside by the one she learned her insatiable craving for acceptance.
A child treated as a commodity.
Where her worth is measured by her marriageability.
Must make her fit for society
By the removal of any spark or opinion she expresses.
Hurt.

If I wasn't sandwiched by 2 lovely people, I would have walked out prior to curtain's close. Upon the actor's bows and curtsies someone else was clapping my hands. I felt like a grimacing, maniacal monkey with cymbals.

Fatty's Mom: She didn't like it?

It's too close to home.
Too close to the world I live in;
A world of banishment if one can't tow the company line.
If one introduces shears to the company line.
No one seemed to understand.
Everyone was too busy being entertained.
Laughing, laughing.
At my expense.

I spent a lot of time crying over the weekend. I generally cry a lot. For the year I spent alone, crying was as routine as the morning coffee I'd prepare myself. It was a way to start my day. Sometimes I'd cry because I had a bad dream. Other times I cried because I felt so lucky. This weekend I cried all over Fatty because I felt orphaned and broken.

If you're a girl who ever had an older brother you were crazy about, Grave of the Fireflies will leave you in fetal position, bawling your eyes out for at least an hour afterwards. Well, this girl anyway. And this was my second viewing. A glutton for punishment, maybe. Or perhaps it was an unconscious reach-out, a catalyst for my own subtext.

Fatty: But now you have a new family. My family.
The Comrade: [choking on self-produced liquid] But I don't think they'll ever feel like my own family.
Fatty: Well, one day we'll have our own family. Together.

And then he held me and cried with me.
And for this action, Fatty has me for the rest of his life.

Months ago, Ack initiated a conversation that 5 other people, including myself, had on different occasions, mournfully expressed. The concept of Finding One's Own People.

It's the most lonely a person can feel.
Not being understood.
Where every mode of expression is met with equal expressions of incredulity, shock and horror.

Where are my People?

I met someone new this weekend.
Someone I suspect I'll see much of.

Ack, the ex-husband/best friend, has a new girlfriend.

Her name translates to Truth, Freedom and Beauty.
She has a remarkable Tree of Life tattoo covering her back. It protects her.
She's needed protection.
Not everyone has treated her well in her life.
She's small
But learned fierceness...
At least in work.
English is not her first language.
And you can tell.
Throughout her romantic life she'd been harboured as a secret.
A fetish.

But not anymore.

The Comrade: He'll never do that to you.

She draws amazing pictures that get made into realistic 3 dimensional forms. Film sets. Ack and I rode bikes through one of these forms years before we got to know Truth/Freedom/Beauty. We were introduced to her spirit that day. Her astral body. Not the lithe, sinuey, cumbersome one she uses in this mortal plain. She secretly wishes to be a cyborg.

The Comrade: Why?
Truth/Freedom/Beauty: So I can run faster and jump higher to save the world.
The Comrade: How do you save the world by running faster and jumping higher?
T/F/B: You can see things better from higher up.
Ack: Like kittens stuck in trees.

Last year at this time Ack and I desperately wanted to have love in our lives but it wasn't there. We plastered ourselves with self-pity, vocalised by repetitive mantras of We deserve love. Chugging beers. Faster and faster. We were certain it was going to happen to the other person, but really couldn't conceive of it happening for ourselves. What did that say about us? I started to look at toothpaste differently.

The Comrade: You use that much toothpaste each time?
Fatty: That's what you're supposed to use.
The Comrade: No. I use half of that.
Fatty: And how many cavities have you had in your life?
The Comrade: [hangs her head low]

I was taught to use 2 squares of toilet paper at a time and only a dot of toothpaste.

The year off has made Ack and I think about a great many things in regards to sharing a life with someone. It was very important for us to not have someone there to have love from, to be comforted by. After seeing a few different women over the course of 12 months, Ack discovered his litmus test for the potential of new love.

Hugging someone for 15 minutes straight without thinking about anything else, including sex.
Fatty agreed.

Ack: The last person I felt that with was you. That's how I knew.

And she shares his favourite movie: The Hunt for Red October. She gives him ethereal art books that only he would buy. They talk of worlds of spaceships, of flying, of life in pictures.

Ack and I sat across his kitchen's counter on Sunday. The same counter we'd licked our wounds from not having the kind of love we'd separated over. Telling him how I much I liked her, there was a moment of tearful revelation:

The Comrade: Oh, Ack. You found your people.

The Comrade: Does "Ack" mean anything in Japanese?
Truth/Freedom/Beauty: Oh yes. Bad, evil, Satan.
The Comrade: Yep. That's what I thought.

Sandcastles Guarded by Seahorses

2005-06-26T13:16:00.000-04:00

There is a public school nestled in downtown Toronto's Regent Park district, an area my sister won't yet drive her BMW Z3 through because she thinks it's too dangerous. Regent Park is subject to the city's latest stab of gentrification. Once in place, she and all her neighbours will likely practice their retail therapy there. By guess of architecture, my method of carbon dating, the school's conception was in the 1920's, an era I imagine to have been prosperous, full of flapper girls and mid-level Capone wannabe's. History is written by Hollywood.

The school yard can't exactly be described as a concrete jungle. A jungle would suggest areas to swing from; high precipices in which to lob objects, be reigned the title King of the Castle, All Else Dirty Rascals. The city block sized area, which I'm sure once had a playground, is presently poured concrete with giant, trench-like cracks which nearly every child hurdles in order to save their mother's lower lumbar. In one small area there is a mowed but never watered thatch of once green grass.

There are:
No colourful tubes to burn thighs itching to slide.
No monkey bars to consider life from a different angle.
No swings to give a child the excitement of flight.
No opportunity to escape or dream of a better life.

Fatty: I don't know if you'll want to come, but...

My darling Fatty, the sweet love of my life, was asked by his mother to come along on a field trip with her class of combined Junior and Senior kindergarten kids. It wasn't a request to be a watchful grown-up or surrogate parent. The design was to take photographs of these kids, later creating a sort of card or commemorative item they could take home. A passing year with physical evidence that at least one good thing had happened to them.

Whether you're trying out your best Bob Fosse inspired Frankenstein routine, or delighted by the first blown bubble you ever tried to capture, but discovered was a little too elusive, it's important to have someone photodocument your life.

I love photographing children. They are the only sect with whom a documenter stands a chance in capturing unabashed fun.

The lessons of guilt, shame and self-consciousness haven't sunk in yet.

Fatty and I went armed with 2 256MB media cards in our respective cameras.

No extra weight was carried home in my bike's basket, but both memory cards were full by day's end.

The field trip's destination was the Beach. The Beach is capitalised because it is not only a habitually raked, sandy oasis reminiscent of tanning stations in one of the Florida's Keys, but it is also a district around town. The area is not exclusive, but the residents are mostly white, fairly affluent and tend never to leave their neighbourhood. The general idiom is We have everything here. Why would we leave? Many people, including the natives, call it The Bubble. Once you're in... urine.

The children Fatty's mom teaches are Regent Park area residents. No parents outside the district request an out-of-district transfer to her school. Fatty's mom could have had her pick of any number of schools in better areas with less occurrences of crime, reported or otherwise. Throughout her career she has chosen inner-city schools because they are where attention is needed the most; where the lack of funding is at best frustrating especially if one is prone to want to help. To make a difference.

Some of the kids have never been to the beach. Have never seen the water.

The children's parents work multiple jobs to try to keep their heads afloat. Try to keep the tax simian off their back. Try to keep their habits and rage unknown, or at least manageable. Many parents send these children off to school with nothing in their bellies, or more insidous, they make their child clutch a dry piece of toast, bitten once, as evidence that they are being provided for. That things are swell at home. That they are fit parents.

Fatty's mom had a created list of requirements pinned to every child's shirt to take home days prior to prepare for the field trip. To stress the importance, all the required supplies were in bold caps:

HAT
SUNSCREEN
EXTRA JACKET
TOWEL
KNAPSACK
LUNCH
WATER

At the long, green, outdoor lunch table there was at least one child whose parent neglected Item #6.

Parent/ Volunteer: Does anyone have an extra sandwich for Moosa?

Moosa, whose imaginary world is incredibly rich and rewarding to make up for the neglect he receives at home.

Moosa: I have a Seahorse in my knapsack.
Fatty's Mom: You do? May I see it?
Moosa: No, not right now.
Fatty's Mom: Well, you know, with Seahorses they need food and water.
Moosa: Oh, there's food and water and a LIGHT!
Fatty's Mom: Oh, well, that's wonderful, then.

Fatty loved Moosa.

Fatty is a natural with children. Particularly with boys. A boy could be 2 or 92 years old. It doesn't matter. They all have a very special affinity towards him. With 4-6 year old kindergarten kids, the affinity is demonstrated by Jet Li high flying kicks and punches and, when thought particularly highly of, the occasional hocking of a lugie is launched.

For 15 years I was scared to death of children. I masked this fear by saying aloud that kids bugged me. They were little irritants, little monsters. But really, I didn't know how to behave around them anymore. I did once. But then I received a local anesthetic at 17 years old. Alone. Shaken. The most violated I'd ever felt. I had life sucked out of me. And an egg salad sandwich afterwards, recompensing my sacrifice.

For a long time I couldn't look at my 18 year old niece because she was a constant reminder of what could have been. What I gave up. What I couldn't possibly have. Beyond not receiving any support, I would have instead received further emotional vanquishment, greater banishment and armfuls more ostracism at home. 17 years old. I couldn't have done it on my own. Not very well, anyway. The strength of my familial web? One sweeping hand could have demolished the clinging trappings of a creature's final imprisonment.

To be accepted and loved by a child feels like the kind of ultimate purity and goodness redolent of God smiling upon me. But how could I be accepted? It wasn't really me I was presenting. It was Me-Trying-Too-Hard. Children, true seers, are repellant of insincerity and exaggerated feeble attempts. Tail between legs, I hung out with the parents more. The consolation prize. And hated every minute of it. And then I was given 8 year old Megan, whom I had a week to get comfortable with. Who fell in love with me as much as I did her. Megan. Daughter of Walter, my second eldest brother who has completely estranged himself from the family.

Walter and his then new family were living in the Rocky mountains. While in Toronto, according to our father, Walter would never make much out of his life. He was a born loser, an embarrassment. Walter was the apple of my eye. Post post-secondary school, Walter made his way west. Clean living to compensate for a filthy past. But it wasn't the memory of the harsh, immobilizing words; it wasn't the repeated physical fights that would often lead to broken glass doors and tissue invisibly scarred for life that caused the final act of divorcing himself from his immediate family. For decades he tried to understand my father and his ways. He too had become a father. He forgave him his injustices and flagrant abusive behaviour in favour of a father's acceptance of a son. Of paternal love. He gained it for a while, too. Until he stopped trying too hard.

Actually, he just stopped trying altogether. All the instances of his father never being there for him, or rather being there but shooting down his every effort, came as a culminated realisation, one in which entailed Walter to give up any false hopes of hearing, just once, "Son, I'm proud of you."

Pride.
It's just a reflection back.
An opportunity for self-congratulation.

Most of the people I am close with grew up not having everything. They were secretly want for many things, but their family's income-predisposition didn't allow for trips to Disneyland or the best shoes or birthdays at Chuck E. Cheese. I think kids that don't have everything, but do have more than just the basic requirements (healthy food, decent shelter, clean clothes and an occasional glance from the parents), can grow up with more of a sense of wonder, potential joy and far more general appreciation than kids who had everything.

When Fatty was doing one of his astounding magic tricks for a couple of >4' lads, though delighted, they never pestered him to do it again. Do it again! They didn't ask. They were simply happy with what he gave them.

I'd asked my future mother-in-law if she had favourites in her classroom. Yes, she had. I don't think it's right to choose favourites, mostly because I hate the idea of a parent being more partial to one child over another, but I suppose it's human. That's how we distinguish best friends from mere acquaintances, I guess. I honestly thought I could like all the children equally.

This is Heron.
She will grow to be tall and languid like the bird.
She considers everything.
And if she doesn't like it, she'll let you know.
After we rolled around on a grassy slope, she came around and hugged my neck from behind.
At the swings, she got dinged in the head.
She came to me.
I knew I probably shouldn't have done it. It probably wasn't the correct thing to do. Like how you don't see kids riding on bicycle handlebars very much these days, I couldn't help myself.

I hugged her.
And kissed her boo boo.

Heron was my favourite.
She made my ovaries hurt.

I watched Fatty's mom throughout the day. Darting eyes to make sure everyone was safe. Individual attention was given to every child. She is a deeply caring crusader, a child's rights supporter, a musician, a wonderful storyteller who reduced both myself and her son to tears, one hell of an educator and she takes shit from no parent. I haven't met someone this extraordinary for a very long time. She is my newest hero.

And she's always been Fatty's.

I learned that with further cut-backs, Fatty's mom has been rendered assistant-free. In addition to a lack of funding for books, toys and other learning materials, she is reliant on volunteers for anything they could possibly spare. Her home's basement is filled with teaching materials she's purchased out of her own pocket.

She was once scared of children too. But she learned just to be herself. And, to me, she made it into the top percentile of mothers just by keeping Santa Claus real until Fatty was about 12.

Don't worry, the world will dispel any myth. Any magic.

Fatty and I are bringing in our new $50 DVD player with a prepared photo slide show for the kids to watch on their last class before school's out for summer. Our fine collection of smiling faces and diligent sandcastle makers.

It will mark the beginning of my volunteer work with my newest hero.