Snow Day

It has snowed all day, adding 30 cm to the 45 already blanketing (smothering?) the city. I'm dreaming of sun-dresses and sandals and gardening.


amaryllis.


paperwhites.

leggies

These are not for me, they're warming some beloved shins in Calgary.

adjustments.

My new phone takes pictures, has an fm radio, can surf the world wide web, and, if I ask really nicely, will transport me to the future while performing open heart surgery and brokering peace in the middle east.

The new house has a dishwasher, laundry machine, barbeque, insulation, and the interwebs.

An embarrassment of riches.

notes on faith

I went to church this morning. It seems odd to write that sentence for two reasons. Until I moved out of my parents house eight years ago I spent almost every Sunday morning at Church. Since then, apart from a couple of Easter services and a chorister stint at a Presbyterian church during university, I haven't been back.

I never felt as though I'd left the church, eight years can dilute cradle Anglicanism, but it's not long enough to wash it away completely. And I had no beef with my faith: so long a part of my life, believing in God and understanding the new testament was as regular to me as breathing. Something I didn't think about much. Something that just sort of happened.

But there was a shift. Or there is a continual shifting. I'm not sure exactly. Perhaps my complacency made me spiritually lazy or maybe whatever faith I had was only ever a learned habit.

I don't think I believe in God any more.

I'm not sure when this happened, if it's permanent, or what to do about it.

A year and a half ago, when I organized my dad's and grandmother's funerals, I remember wondering how non-religious people dealt with death. At the time, I was thinking more about the structure of funerals, the processes of public mourning. I couldn't imagine organizing a "celebration of life" without any rules during the spinning teacup ride that is the early stages of grief. My family would have been paralyzed by the plethora of choices.

Now the question looms larger, like a guy looking for a fight in a bar. "How're ya gonna do it on your own? Huh? Huh? Wanna make somethin' of it sissy?"

I feel akin to the native Hawaiians, who, when forced to convert to Christianity, chose Anglicanism because they liked the pageantry of the "smells and bells" of the High Mass service. I take comfort in the liturgy because I know all the words off by heart and the music, particularly this morning, was excellent. But, as far as I can tell, there is nothing in me beyond a deep appreciation for the ritual, history and scholarship of the church.

Given all of this, is it ironic, that I'm considering singing in a church choir again?

Somehow, no. Singing would be no full court press to find God, rather, choral music is one of the more wholesome salves for my quarter-life crisis panic attacks. And I'm trying to spend more time in quiet, contemplative spaces.

the city is at its best...

... on Thursday mornings between 8:30 and 8:45. When the light on Bloor street is luminous pewter and the grocers are watering the buckets of cut flowers that somehow survive the icy wind.

The to do list:

1. Pay attention. Use my mind more. Float less. The statute of limitations on befuddlement looms.

2. Clean my desk. Last Sunday, a zen Buddhist teacher interviewed on CBC's Tapestry said people seeking enlightenment should clean up their kitchens. I'm neither seeking enlightenment nor do I have my own kitchen, but quick extrapolation led me to conclude: Buddhists seem to have their shit together. The Buddhist guy and I agree that clutter and mess is bad. My desk is a mess. I should clean my desk.

3. Eat breakfast. This has nothing to do with a morning egg-fest being the most important meal of the day. Rather, a commitment to morning eating has unforeseen positive externalities; I will get up on time and keep a reasonable amount of food in the house.

4. Stop procrastinating. An all encompassing task, as I seem to be able to procrastinate about doing laundry as easily as filing taxes.

5. Have more fun.

For Lake Simcoe, turn right...

On Wednesday morning I was in a hurry. I gave no thought to my attire* and forgot my ipod. I also forgot to bring something to read on the subway. Thus, on the 9:15 train, I found myself doing the shifting stare - five seconds on the anti-gambling advert above the door, three seconds on the business woman in the seat across the train, a glance at the floor, seven seconds studying the train map...

Two stops before I alighted, a man walked into my car. He was older, with scraggy, greying, brown hair and a quilted jacket that probably had a flannel shirt under it. He bounced a little as he walked, and, in marked difference to the comatose commuters around him, looked around alertly. Perhaps too alertly. A whiff of crazy or chemically enhanced floated around him.

He walked down the car and stopped in front of me. Close enough that there was no obvious alternative place to look. Swaying slightly (with the movement of the train? with beat of his own drum?) he looked down.

"Those are great boots... And I like your hat. You look great!"
-Beat-
"Do you fish?"

"Uhh... no" I stammered.

"Huh. Too bad." He rejoined, and carried on down the car.

I seem to have found my people in Toronto: crazy ice fishermen.


*I was decked out in jeans, Sorel boots, a down vest, and completely unmatching scarf, hat, and mittens. I probably looked like a homeless person who had robbed MEC...

flight dream

It always happens in the last hour of a flight away from BC. That patch of time after I have to put away my computer and the inflight movie is turned off, and I am maybe filling out a customs declaration card or flipping through the airline magazine and lazily reading the feature article in french.

Relatively unoccupied, my mind drifts toward what will happen when I get off the plane. I'll wrestle with carry-on bags (when will I come to my senses and get civilized luggage with wheels? Only 16 year old soccer team members fly with duffel bags), hike through airport tunnels that smell vaguely of bleach and sweat, and will walk through frosted-glass sliding doors into a sea of expectant people.

I'll wind my way to the exit en route to the bus or train or taxi that will zip me anonymously to wherever home is.

Having thought my movements through, I'll scramble around for transit fare, put my shoes back on, and return my chair-back and tray-table to the upright position.

And for a second I'll let my mind flit to the recurring fantasy:

I'm not sweaty or dehydrated. I've thought to retouch my subtle makeup and brush my hair in the airplane bathroom before the seatbelt sigh flicked on. My luggage is neatly packed in a chic rolling suitcase which I negotiate perfectly. And when I walk through the sliding doors, I scan the waiting faces for the one that lights up when we see each other. And then I'm wrapped in a tight hug and a voice in my ear says "I've missed you."

Left unchecked, I can spin the whole daydream out to include flowers, a quick drive into the city and dinner reservations somewhere warm and quiet.

Regardless of how far it is from reality, on my way out to the taxi stand I allow myself a quick scan of waiting faces, just in case.

surprised

Last night I read the first two chapters of Anne of Green Gables to the children I babysit. And I was entranced by LMM's writing. So much description, such enticing vocabulary. The intricate sentence constructions. So many references to knitting.

Again, I am surprised by that which I thought I knew intimately.

ten things that happened this weekend. (Not a complete list)

1. A tv show got shot. Blind Date is actually pretty staged.

2. I Deduced that my taxi driver was probably high.

3. Poached eggs.

4. Ikea!

5. An extreme rush of happiness produced purely by the confluence of scarlet sheets and an orange duvet.

6. The experience of walking against the crowd leaving the Santa Claus parade.

7. I quaked: No Country for Old Men is suspense-filled. Eek!

9. Estonian beer was consumed. (Also Ukranian, Kenyan, Latvian, Lithuanian, Canadian, Sri Lankan, and German.)

10. Road rash: my bike fell over. While was on it. (This has nothing to do with #9.)

These days...

have been difficult. Explaining would swerve dangerously close to clotting self-pity, suffice to say the real world is kicking my ass.

Days like Sunday are the worst: when I have nothing pressing to do and nobody I want to talk to is in this city and in the silence that is my current stereo-less existence, my mind jerks around the salmon that I reeled in last New Years Day. It jerked around in a frenzy for fifteen minutes, pulling my shoulders out of joint and demanding my numb fingers function. Then it settled down for about five minutes and I caught my breath and methodically reeled it in as the boat trolled back and forth in front of the wall of cloud that sat on the hills of Sooke. We repeated the saga, my salmon and I, for about four cycles, before I got it close enough to the boat for someone to scoop it up in the net and deposit it, writing and gasping on the aluminum floorboards of the boat.

Reeling my mind in took until four in the afternoon when I gave up. Let 'er spool out behind me as I walked down Bloor street into the wind.

the cheese shop

I look forward to shopping for cheese the way some women look forward to a pedicure.

My particular favourite cheese shop is nestled in Kensington Market - Toronto's answer to Camden - around the corner from the fish markets and just up the street from the shop that sells I-don't-know-what but that always has reggae music blasting out the doorway.

The first thing that hits you when you walk through the door (glass, covered in cheese posters) is the smell. Cheese. Fermenting, aging, delicious cheese. On my inaugural visit I was so unprepared for the smell that my eyes watered. I may have stumbled, blinded by cheese fumes.

The shop isn't small, but it seems to be. Along the right hand wall is the service counter, with dockets helpfully numbered. Like going to the bank, cheese shoppers wait in a queue and wait for a free teller. When I am at the front of the line, I walk up to place my order with the cheese-teller. Except I can't see who I am talking to. The entire service counter is covered in a wall of cheese. Massive rounds and block are stacked taller than my head, and the window through which I am talking is above my eye level. I'm actually staring at the label of a jalapeño spiced Gouda.

I ask for Parmesan, and a few seconds later a sliver balanced precariously on a slicer descends over the Gouda. I pop it in my mouth and pronounce it delicious. The disembodied voice of my cheese-teller asks me how much I want and I hold my hands above my head in what I hope is a rough approximation of my weekly cheese consumption.

The voice tells me to pay down at the last docket, and I wind my way through other cheese buyers and head for the door. Ten dollars disappears and I'm shoving a healthy slab of Italy into my bag.

When I get home and open the package, a blast of smell rushes out of the wax paper.

The perfect excuse to make lasagna.

Through a glass dimly...

I spent last week in San Francisco:

Sunshine and a view of the bay every morning. Striding up hills through pine trees - I miss that smell - to emerge at the top of the world. Sand in my hair. Olives and rose (accent acute) under THE bridge. Cafes and more cafes(more accenting). A pirate shop with real glass eyes and a literacy tutoring mandate. Banjos in the park. A mad dash to the Cliff House and an almost perfect sunset. Micro-brewed bitter. Domesticity. The Sunday New York Times. Naps. Drag queens and 11 am beers. Smelly bus people. Dancing in the kitchen. Sorting out our lives while sitting on a rooftop overlooking the skyline. Laughing at cliches (last damn invisible accent). Five old cinemas on Mission St, now used as warehouse shops.Corned Beef Hash.

On Power...

My placid morning walks to work have been usurped by a small asian woman armed with a hand held stop sign and a reflective vest.

I came of age as a pedestrian in Lebanon and Montreal where walk signals were advisory and a charming sense of carpe pavementum prevailed.

The reticence of Torontonians to step off the curb before the little white man appears bemuses me.

However, to the crossing guard stationed at the first intersection I cross in the mornings, the little white man is LAW. (Which, come to think of it, it actually is.)

Traffic or no traffic, all wheel-less commuters must wait for his elusive appearance. We then must continue to wait until the crossing guard has stalked to the middle of the road, held up her stop sign and tapped it with a businesslike briskness, and beckoned the waiting sheep to pass the danger.

Never one to kowtow to toad-stool tyrants, and quite happy to take my safety into my own caffeine-deprived hands, I often walk against the light. If there are no cars, cyclists or moving things that may hit me, I stride forth with purpose.

The crossing guard doesn't like this. The first time I pulled my daredevil stunt she stared me down from across the road. As I passed - still in one piece - she muttered, "Be careful!" in a tone not unlike that of my mother when I left for a date with an unsavory boyfriend.

The judgment of strangers, that's what I live for.

Some variant of the scene has played out most weekday mornings since school began. But I'm not an irresponsible cautionary tale, nor do I set a bad example. If there are children waiting to cross, I wait with them patiently. But if it's just me and the crossing guard and an empty street... Let's just say, danger is my middle name.

Today, she saw me coming and turned her back. I was pointedly being ignored. In a decidedly karmic moment, the usually placid street was filled with whizzing vehicles. I assessed my options, punched the button, and waited for the light to turn.

I work all day with words...

... and I find that when I leave the office I no longer think in words or have the ability to form sentences.

and there has been no time for writing:
visitors
revolving housemates
a second job
laundry

and friends. there are starting to be friends.

pedestrian

So I've learned that Toronto is really big. Things are far away from each other. For example: despite living 'downtown-ish' I actually live 4.25 km from work. My under-exercised body is still in shock that I expect it to traverse that distance twice a day on foot.

But the walk is lovely. Setting off southwards on my street, I admire the well tended front gardens of the Italian families, and compare architecture styles. No Montreal walk-ups here, Toronto is all about the front porches where people relax on easy chairs and watch the goings on of the sidewalk.

I cross College street at the heart of little Italy. The Sicilian Ice Cream Cafe is to my right and a sausage shop to my left. Instead of banners hanging from streetlights there are outlines of Italy in white chrismas lights. Complete with the islands. They look sweet and only mildly kitchy at night, but at 8 in the morning I barely notice them.

Further south is Dundas St, nominally Little Portugal. Crossing Dundas, I wend my way through a park and end up on Queen West. The park is usually quiet in the morning - some runners, pedestrian commuters like me, and occasionally an old man doing tai chi on the tennis courts. On my way home in the evening, the park is full of baseball teams, tennis players of varying caliber, and people walking their dogs.
Every day I ache for a dog. (Perhaps this is the overture of my hitherto non-existent maternal instinct...)

The final stretch is Queen St West. Slightly grotty shops selling clothing I can neither afford nor pull off - I was born without a hipster gene - are interspersed with restaurants, fabric and bead shops and the ubiquitous corner stores, their front steps festooned with buckets of cut flowers. Though I love the flowers, I carry an irrational grudge against the shops for not selling beer and cheap, bad wine.

(I think the archaic alcohol selling system could be ultimate reason I will never fully fall in love with Toronto. The provincial liquor stores are terribly stocked, the beer emporium bears a strong resemblance to Lordco auto parts stores, and the hours of opening are bizarre.)

As I continue east on Queen, the street gradually cleans itself up, such that, by the time I reach Spadina, I've passed a series of chain shops and at least two starbucks outlets.

And then it's into the featureless office buildings and the blacked out windows and heavy double doors that signal clubland. A quick turn south and I can see my office building, the neighbouring Corona bottle gently waving in the breeze.

City: snapshot 1

Through the window of my new office I can see a two story high inflatable corona bottle on the roof of the next building.

the departure: moments of zen

#1. having coffee after pilates class on friday.

mum to the table of pilates ladies: "well, it's been remarkably un-fraught this time, probably because she isn't breaking up or hooking up with some boy..."

#2. having lunch with dear friend R (dfR) today.

R, after I briefly whined about my hatred of packing: "for someone who hates packing as much as you do, you certainly seem to put yourself in a lot of situations that require it."

#3. as I descend, yet again, to the basement of doom (aka: the packing HQ).

frere to moi: "Is that my wine you're drinking?"

Prague - a photo essay

May 22

Prague’s light this afternoon reminded me of Santiago’s haze and a lot of the buildings seem to have similar colours and styles. Also many churches.



Tomorrow we’re checking out the communist museum and finding a café with 60 types of tea.



May 23

Lots of walking today…

The Museum of Communism is housed in a large grand building between the casino and McDonalds – typical?! Lovely high ceilings and moldings. I think the rooms used to be an apartment, but they are now a very well curated chronology of the Czech communist experience. There is a lot of Soviet Realist art – all the workers and peasants had to be hearty and smiling – and a great explanation of the process of building a massive statue to honour Stalin’s legacy. First step: lengthy consultation of the ideological framework for the piece.

When it was eventually erected and unveiled in 1955, Stalin had been dead for 2 years and a few weeks (months?) later Brezhnev made his speech detailing Stalin’s atrocities. Rather embarrassing for the Czechs. It was finally (and expensively) blown up in 1961. Also interesting were the examples of anti-American propaganda. Firstly because it was all aimed at the US, Europe didn’t even figure, and secondly b/c it is so close to the rhetoric of imperialism leveled at the USA today. We got some lovely subversive postcards.

Now we’re sitting at a sidewalk table drinking beer (yet again).


He’s reading Borges – another one I don’t know – and getting excited about the good bits, reading them to me. I think he’s on page 20 and I am already plotting to steal it when he’s done.

Prague is immensely beautiful. The streets are all cobbled and the facades of buildings are decorated with purposeful purposelessness. Other than to bring smiles to the residents, I can’t comprehend the outlay of such design and construction energy. Mamet says the purpose of art is to delight us…


The city swarms with tourists, this café is in a stylish neighbourhood and most of our sidewalk-mates are speaking Czech, but mostly I catch snippets of English, German, Spanish, Cantonese…

I also feel I should have read Kafka, but I have read, an will re-read, Rilke. ~Live the questions now.~ Good advice.

The most important thing I learned at university...

... was how to assemble ikea furniture.

I can't get a job in my field, but I can whip a set of shelves together in no time.

And they're level too.*


*(see previous post re: garage. The shelves are level because I can find the bloody levels. All six of them.)

Summer: an gastronomic tour

Dolmades.


These are not fish.


Nanaimo.


Crave.



Marakesh tea.


Prague picnic.

moving forward, re-arranging

One of the conditions of my gainful unemployment this summer is that I 'lend a hand around the house.'

Before I arrived, mum sent me a list of projects she would like completed in and around the family farm. Most of it involved de-cluttering, and organizing. We are a family of packrats, chronic hoarders, and we are aided and abetted by the house itself which is extremely large with lots of little places to stash stuff that you don't need now but might need one day in the next 25 years. By which time you'll have forgotten where you put those welding canisters (if not forgotten that you had them in the first place) and you'll probably end up replacing them.

Over the past week I've been mired in the garage. A passing glance reveals that it contains two cars, 4 bicycles, two motorcycles, and a random engine on blocks in the corner. And about two tonnes of stuff I can't identify.

It is strange, this situation with my dad. Now, over a year after his death, I do not expect to hear the sound of his keys dropping into the drawer in the back hall, or hear his voice starting answering machine messages with 'hello family...' He is absent, he is away.

But, then again, he isn't. Pockets of the house and yard are so physically imprinted with my father, that they leave me short of breath. The garage is one such place. I'm pretty sure that a visual representation of my father's brain would look like the inside of our garage: the corners of military orderliness, the cupboards overflowing with screwdrivers and ratchet sets, the bits and pieces of projects, a battered but eminently useful radio.

It's tidier now. We can see the back corner by the vacuum tank, and I know exactly how many wire spoke MGB wheels we have.* The screwdrivers are all in a labeled jar, and most of the broken, unidentifiable, unusable in the foreseeable future stuff has been given a new home at the dump.

I guess now the garage has my brain's stamp - which could cause all sorts of problems - but, for the moment, my shoulders don't clench when I walk through, I can find a hammer if I need one, and I've got a new (ish) radio.

*Four on the car plus six extra. Thank you for asking.

I still knit

my hometown makes my brain melt

Things I did this weekend:

1. went to the dump. three times. the dump people now know me by name.
2. avoided being hit by stupid tourist drivers who don't know what they are doing or where they are going.
3. decided not to look at aforementioned drivers' license plates to see if they were from Alberta.
4. was the whitest person on the beach.
5. drank beer on a patio. was chatted up by a 39 year old guy in a blinding hawaiian shirt who thought I was 21. the mind boggles.

happiness...

two scoops of mint chocolate chip ice cream in a waffle cone still warm from the waffle iron.

Fes tanneries

ancient history

So I am cleaning out my years of accumulated stuff from my mum's basement. And while I am most certainly display the least packrat-like tendencies of all our family members, I have managed to squirrel away* an alarming pile of photographs, letters, school assignments, yearbooks, and other random crap that must have meant something to me once.

But since I am flying the coop soon** it is time for a little consolidation if not an outright bonfire.

This morning I found my grade 7 year book. The one made especially for my class when we graduated from elementary school and stood on the cusp of 5 anxiety ridden, hormonal, years of high school. We all had two profiles: our kindergarten one and our grade seven one...

"Claire is five years old. She has blue eyes and brownish hair. She has a two year old brother. Her favourite colour is blue and her favourite food is cookies. At school she likes to play with her friends. When she is not at school she likes to play in her tree house. Claire likes the summer best because she likes to swim. She takes ballet lessons and wants to be a ballerina when she grows up."

"Claire likes dancing, shopping, volleyball, cross-country skiing, running, reading , swimming waterskiing and motorcycling, but dislikes people who only talk about one thing all the time, computers, boring science classes, tennis, football, coleslaw, and rice salad. Her pet peeves are people who think they are the best at everything and stupid guys. Her favourite saying is 'But that's ok.' Her goal is to get through college, move to New York and be on Broadway. Her favourite parts of being in grade seven are not having anyone ahead of you in school and the privileges. Being a graduate of the year 2000 means she will be able to wear a 'Class of '00' sweatshirt, but it's also a big responsibility because people will have high expectations of us."

I could analyse these to death, but this is self indulgent enough. Mostly they make me giggle.


*Monday is the official "day of bad animal similes/metaphors"
**It's true, I could keep this up forever...

limbo

clearly "soon" is relative.

I left England a month ago, but it seems simultaneously like a moment and decades since I stepped on the plane.

I am not good at saying goodbye. I hate the implied permanence and the wrench in my sternum when we actually part and walk away from each other. The sudden absence of loved ones, when an hour ago we were laughing and drinking wine, throbs for days. And every encounter leading up to the appointed minute of waving through a train window borrows the upcoming sadness. Like paper towel absorbing spilled coffee.

While goodbyes are not my forte, being said goodbye to is even worse. I hate being left behind. I feel so futile, (is that even possible? for one's entire being to be futile?) whenever I am the one wishing safe travels and helping with luggage. Standing at Heathrow crying into my sleeves I remembered a teeshirt slogan: "If you leave me, I am coming with you." Except it was in French, so it sounded much more chic and less desperate. And, to be fair, when people leave me I don't always want to go off on their adventures with them, I just want to be going on my own and not right back out the whooshing airport doors and into a normal Saturday.

So then it was back to canadia: cupcakes, wild laughter, a drunken thursday, and manic conversation started the relocation off. Then another trip to the damn airport to put someone I love on a plane, and a few days of quiet before an orgy of landscaping and construction. When I am 87 I would like to be able to haul landscaping ties around in 30 degree heat. My grandfather did for the better part of a week, and now we have a nice retaining wall that is both level and not about to fall over.

The garden is planted with goodies: peppers, beans, tomatoes, and carrots. But since le frere used the carrot patch for theatrical pyrotechnics practice* we have seen no carrots. To be fair, I don't think he knew about the carrots because I didn't label them, but then, I wasn't expecting the symphony of fire in our back yard.

As promised, Morocco...



The Sahara, 15 km from the Algerian border...

(in an effort to force myself to actually write more regularly, the photos will be spread out over a bunch of posts. for all 2 of you who read this...)


*yes, my brother was setting of fireworks in our vegetable garden. No, I don't have pictures.

Five Things

1. The best result of French colonialism in Morocco is killer espressos.
2. The worst is French keyboards.
3. Camel riding is not, and never will be, comfortable.
4. Vache Qui Rit cheese tastes just the same in Prague as in Marakesh
5. I have a job in Toronto, starting in August.

photos will be posted ... soon... inshallah

time...

Damien Rice is singing about time. And, as per usual, I am wasting it. These aren't the procrastination diaries for nothing.

Unsurprisingly, after a seemingly unending series of unhappy days, as soon as I made the decision to leave the universe cranked up to warp speed. Now I am running on quicksand: writing articles, editing and re-writing other articles, pulling loose ends together, planning out the last month in minute detail.

The funny thing is, I still have no concrete plans. As of June 11, I have no itinerary, no job, no plane tickets.

Stuff is in the works, interviews are pending, and my bank balance is (for now) healthy. I am practicing deep zen breathing, because we all know how well I handle uncertainty.

What I have found interesting, as I search for future opportunities, is how much my perspectives have shifted. Jobs that a year and a half ago would have been first on my list, are relegated to the maybe list by virtue of what would have attracted me to them in the first place. Case in point: Uganda. A fantastic journalism job, opportunity to travel and work on human rights issues. The possibility to actually do good things in the world and change stuff.

And the thought of accepting (if in fact it is offered to me, which, to be accurate, hasn't happened yet) turns my stomach. Another instance of Claire running away from the chaos that is home. Immersing myself into a whole other type of chaos because I don't want to deal with the familiar stuff. Selfish. But also... angry with myself for caving, for giving up something that I would be good at and that I've always wanted.

It's not a fine balance. There is no balance.

it's really only 100 words...

... but I've been staring at the computer screen all day, alternately trolling my bookmarked websites for updates or idly stalking people on facebook.

100 words. No big deal. In fact, I am pretty sure I will surpass that in the next three minutes of typing here, explaining to myself and the hinternets why I am incapable of finishing off what we all know is a task I am more than capable of.

I think that's the point. That I can do it. That I know I can do it. In fact, it is so abundantly clear to me that writing this damn paragraph is something THAT I CAN DO WELL, that I feel as though just calling up the potential employer and explaining what lovely paragraphs I write would be a better use of my time.

And also, if I don't write it, I can't screw it up.

That's the other side of my bi-polar literary paralysis: the numbing fear that somehow I won't be good enough, that my 100 words will suck so insanely much that I will hear the editors' guffaws all the way from Toronto. Because they are like that in Toronto: they guffaw.

I also know that I write best when I am so stressed that I secrete terror and exhaustion from my pores. Fear is my greatest motivator, and over the years I have learned that I will procrastinate until I am so wound up with anxiety that I am about to puke, and then I will sit down and write killer stuff. It's 8 pm now. The 100 words are due at 3pm tomorrow. I figure I've got another 2 hours before I really light on fire.

Maybe they'll see my hair burning from TO.

[293]

the coolest thing today:

is this

Also cool is calling up the designer and asking him "So, how did you come up with this idea...."

I've decided to haul myself out of Dodge. The unhappiness and insanity of the last few months don't seem to be abating and the job isn't worth it. I'll be somewhere else in June.

Not exactly sure where yet, but not in a house with 12 other people.

living vicariously

It's official. I have no life. This isn't a terminal condition, and I'm planning my escape, but for the moment I really do not have a personal/private/social/cultural life.

The other day, I read an article which explained how, if one is ever kidnapped and held in isolation, one can retain one's sanity by thinking about doing a favourite hobby (for example building model boats)down to the most infinitesimally small details (imagining the tiny little nails and knots on the boat).

Not really into boats, I've been trying this technique with knitting. I've long ago given up hope of actually knitting- 3 inches on one sock in 3 months is embarrassing- but imaginary knitting just hops along during staff meetings.

Just last week I finished this and this and I'm almost done the sleeves for this.

Maybe next I'll teach myself to crochet...

today I learned...

...that certain departments of international organizations do not understand the principles of basic punctuation. Show me a language in which a space between a word and the semicolon following it like this: "claire is slowly going out of her mind ; a process rapidly advanced by inane emails and questions." It is WRONG! So do not waste my time asking me to fix mistakes in a translation that YOU MADE that don't exist.

...how annoyingly self-centered anorexic teenagers really are. I mean, even at my most neurotic and foodless I didn't steal 12 apples and 6 pears and a bunch of bananas from a communal kitchen and expect nobody to notice. I NOTICED. I NOTICED WHEN I WENT TO THE KITCHEN TO GRAB A SNACK AND ALL THE FRUIT THAT WE BOUGHT AT THE MARKET THIS MORNING WAS GONE. Since I've only seen you eat fruit in the three days that you have been here, I am pretty sure it was you. Honestly. If fruit is all you are going to eat, go buy your own damn pears.

...to be careful when I send emails and to make sure not to accidentally include the address of an ex-girlfriend when I send an email to my dad. Because I'm pretty sure he'll feel stupid when I email him to point out that since we haven't spoken in a year, hearing from him via an email explaining to his father how to use skype and how his job sucks, is an odd way to get in touch.

...that I am a hellish procrastinator. I have one final article to write for the magazine. 250 words. I'm facing down the wrath of my editor in a big way. Yet somehow I can write angry, incoherent blog posts. Time management: a concept clearly lost on me.

I am a terrible photographer...

...but Maria is not.

check her out.

talking to the top of the world...

Mostly I really like what I do for work. Researching, writing and editing for a publication that is vaguely scientific forces me to expand my mind and learn about stuff that I'd otherwise be totally oblivious of. Like myoglobin and how it helps Weddell seals dive for up to an hour without breathing.

But. The last couple of months have felt less like rainbows and cotton candy and my little ponies, and more like a perpetual pine cone probe of my nether regions (sans Vaseline).

It's kind of my own fault, since I am bad at politely saying: "No, I can't help you with that project that you are totally capable of doing yourself, because I have other commitments-such as my own job description, my sanity, and self worth."

And the fun doesn't stop for another five weeks.

Anyways. This morning there was a small moment of zen.

Listening over a crackling satellite phone line as a warm New Zealand accented voice described what he could see out the window of his office. At 85,32N, 125,56E the sea ice stretches out in every direction. It's pretty flat, except for the pressure ridges that form where currents and wind grind ice slabs together, plate tectonics in miniature. Right now, nearing the end of the Arctic winter, the sky gets light between 4 am and noon, bathing the luminous landscape in weak twilight. Aside for the noise of wind and creaks of ice, it is quiet.

I disappeared...

... because what with work, and life and the universe, it's been a tough couple of months.

I am really, really tired.

The best hour of the week

Yesterday four of us went tramping off into the Hertforshire countryside. Public footpaths and bridleways and rolling green hills bleeding into silver as the sun set. Puddles. Mud.

Because Sundays are for Pubs, we ended up at my favourite in the village: leaded windows, warm, buttery light, exposed beams and local ale on tap.

We entered hesitantly because our wellies were muddy and English Wellie Etiquette is ephemeral and we didn't want to screw it up and be forever known as "those fooking foreigners who tramped mud all over our carpets". The village is too small to take such risks.

The Irish barmaid told us to take off our wellies and put them on newspapers on the hearth of the fireplace. "Ahh sure, and it's a good thing to see wellies by the fire. It's the right place for them."

Sitting by a fire, drinking ale, in a pub, in one's stocking feet is the best use of a Sunday afternoon I have found yet.

May grace and peace be with you...

... may your hearts be filled with joy.

No matter that God and I are on a hiatus. I still like benedictions. There are a lot of them swirling around at the end of December and I usually give them short shrift. They seem to be ironic, smug, cliches. All that peace and love and sanctity blaring out from speakers in frenzied shopping malls or in snowy, packed, parking lots.

I can't take their cloying happiness. Especially not this year. Escape came in too much sleep, mind numbing television (Q:how much csi can a person watch before her brains run out her ears? A: a lot), too much wine and the resultant rough mornings.

But it is January now. Everything is grey. And I can breathe more easily. So a benediction.

Personally, joy is too much to strive for. That'll take a while. But in the last three weeks there were moments of peace and more of grace. It's always grace, isn't it? And because I am not the sharpest needle in the haystack, it surprises me every time.

Laughing with le frere on the ferry deck. Wet cedar logs on a west coast beach that stained the tide pools crimson. Choosing my grandmother's diamonds, catching my earlobes sparkling in a shop window. Reeling in a fish. Walking Vancouver's downtown grid with splendid music in my ears-oh ipod, how did I ever live without you? Unexpected kindness. Being held in strong arms and resting my head on your sternum and ceasing-for five minutes-to be self sufficient.

Canadiana

The snow started Wednesday afternoon. A frere et soeur christmas shopping trip was aborted and instead we drove around in the frere's hatchback, pointing and laughing at all the people who were stuck/had driven into the ditch. Snowtires do not make one invincible, but they kick up the schadenfreude a level...

Good clean fun.

Then we came home and shoveled the driveway.



There is little that evokes home/canada/family for me as much as shoveling the driveway at night in the snow. Our street is quiet and has no street lights, so its usually the shoveler and the moon. Shovel scraping against the frozen ground and the bottom of my lungs tingling when I inadvertently inhale the wisps of my airborne shovel-full. Meditative work. Only, because it was me and le frere, we raced a little-the intricacies of sibling rivalry prohibit us from saying how much we'd missed each other so we compensate by trying to outdo the other in driveway shoveling prowess.

When it's cleared, we head inside. Flushed and with suddenly runny noses. The house is warmer, brighter, more cozy than when we started. And there are rewards...

the lead up

to home?

Thursday: Scott Polar Institute. Cafe in Cambridge in the rain. Acquiring more books-Christmas presents. Is it ok to read aforementioned christmas presents before one wraps them and hands them over? The Fox and Duck. Pints. Foot massage. Tea laced with calvados.

Friday-Escape from potentially ackward housemate situation via London. Camden. Fruitless search for cheap noodles. Posh British people at a fancy dress party. All of them named Ollie and Ellie and Georgie and Betts and Camilla. Fox stoles. Vodka and The Proletariate. The longest cab ride EVER.

Saturday-Hangover. Hungover posh brits making breakfast. Coffee in the best coffee house in central Londres. The largest independent book shop. Postsecret exhibiton. Sun in Trafalgar Square. Aimless wandering in Soho. Eating pizza outside at a cafe in December. Spending far too much money on a dress. Scottish women enabling said purchase. Roping a defenseless Swede into coming back to the farm. Wine.

Sunday-Sleeping in. Walking in the rain. Making lasagne for ravenous housemates. K's Choice for the first time in years. Finally sorting out work prioraties for January. Packing. Wine. That 70's Show. 3 Julians at one dinner table.

Monday-Putting the Swede back on the train to London. Weaving in the loose ends or just ignoring them. Cambridge for dinner. El Amin sausages and sweet potatos. Transatlantic calls and planning: haircut and dinner party on Friday, the Messiah on Saturday...

Tuesday-(tbc) Train to London. Tube to Heathrow. Mince Pies. Will my knitting needles make it on the plane? Calgary...(stay tuned...)

Learned today: Lemming Availability

"A snowy owl's preferred meal is lemmings—many lemmings. An adult may eat more than 1,600 lemmings a year, or three to five every day. Lemming availability may determine the extent of southern migration."

In which she rambles...

[this will probably not be well structured, thematic, or readable in any way. I was going to distract you, dear reader, with pictures. But the pics are not uploading for shit, and they'd be a cop-out anyways. Pictures may absolve my lack of blog content, but won't do a thing about my laziness concerning writing...]

November has slid by in a string of ever shorter gray days. My copy deadline for the magazine was Dec 1st, and most of the month was spent typing steadily toward the magical 1200 word mark. 1200 words is not that much, really, but 12oo well chosen words strung together in kicky, funny, hip sentences on topics that I have no prior interest in or understanding of, quickly turns into a strange nightmare of google searches and abuse of the MSWord thesaurus function.

But. It's all done, and I think that I did ok. It'll be posted online around Feb 1, and y'all can check it out then.

Highlights of November include ... The gala 25th anniversary party for my ngo. Chatting to the brother of one of the founders, only to figure out later that it was Yusuf Islam... formerly known as Cat Stevens. Yes. I managed to serve Cat Stevens food and wine, and chat to him about theatre and publishing in a completely normal manner-BECAUSE I HAD NO IDEA WHO HE WAS... I think it is best not to wonder how much of a blithering idiot I would have been had I clued in earlier.

Germany. Sent on my first ever 'real journalism' job, to cover a conference of young environmentalists. A whole hotel room to myself. A whole bathroom to myself. An invisible person who made my bed every day. Heavenly. The conference was good too. I met a bunch of very inspiring young people, and a bunch of journalists who taught me a lot about reporting. The conference was sponsored by a multi-national pharmaceutical company, so I got a first hand glimpse of how big, profit driven companies are tackling environmental degradation, and I've been mulling over what I think about that approach. As usual, I am sitting on the fence, but I want to think more about it over December and hopefully come to some kind of position I can defend.

Wales. 10 hours on the train=one pair of wrist warmers and finishing some leg warmers. Hiking up a 'mountain' in Snowdonia. Walking on a beach. Drinking beer and eating steak and kidney pie in a pub on the beach. James Bond. Cooking. Talking. Comfortable silence. Driving: complication-free mobility. A bit of a rest. No rain. Sun, even.

Yesterday. Nina and I discovered the best pub in the world. The Beehive. We were adopted. 3 hours. 5 pints. Sent on our way with blueberries 'To keep your strength up.' Apparently I am a dead ringer for Renee Zellweger, even though I hem my trousers with duct tape.

Back to the motherland in a week. Not exactly sure how I'll navigate the 'holiday season'. For the moment I'm wondering what to cook for dinner.

how am I?

I was in London yesterday, talking to a friend who I last saw when I was in London in June before everything fell apart. We've been in touch throughout the summer and autumn-emails, phone calls- but when someone ask you face-to-face, how you are doing and really means it... well, that doesn't exist over phone lines or the ether.

She was waiting, her question hanging in the air between us, twirling like a wind chime. And I didn't know what to say. Shrugging and saying "I have no idea," summed it up pretty well, and she's a good enough friend to understand both the weight and and ephemeralness.

The truth is that I don't really want to discuss, on a deep level, how I am doing. People who have grieved understand the fear that, if I lift the rug to see what's fermenting underneath, I will be swept away-back five months to being a zombie with no memory.

Come to think of it, I am still a zombie with no memory. Only I've kind of mastered the art of 'pulling it together' and so, like the classic little-type-A that I am, I seem to be doing fine. F.I.N.E.

A wise woman, whose words I read regularly had this to say yesterday:

As an adult I often feel like I have put my feelings away quickly, that I haven't got a right to love or hate or grieve or celebrate for as long as I feel each of those things. That my emotions are somehow not polite to have, particularly when they relate to other people, or when, upon occasion, they show as sloppy as a slip hem trailing or a run in my stocking. My adult life is littered with emotional fallout from trying to make important things small and falsely insignificant, from trying to be a grown up who gets on with it, over it, lets it go because that's what maturity does.

I don't think it is. And I want to know where and how I lost the freedom to feel whatever I feel as long and as exactly as I feel it. Why do I, why do so many of us, think that there is no point to uncomfortable emotion if the root cause is beyond our influencing?

Dirty Laundry...

...should be washed at home. (sorry mum, this might make you cry) But despite our herculean protestant efforts, the family dirty laundry is about to be washed very publicly.

An eviction is never pleasant. And when the evictor and evictee are family, no matter how estranged, a peculiar kind of horror descends upon the proceedings.

Today, after three months of warnings, negotiations and court proceedings, the bailiffs and locksmith arrive.

The awfulness of the eviction is bearable only because the alternative is worse. There is a kind of freedom in slicing the threads that attach us to each other. Though, in this case, the threads are more like fraying twine, and the slicing closer to sawing with a butter knife. And I don't know what colour this freedom is. The velvety close-to-black green of a hillside of pine trees? Gut wrenching scarlet?

I am grieving for two little boys with blonde crew-cuts and seersucker shorts, digging in the Departure Bay sand. The one who dug the frere and me Gabriola sandcastles at low tide- who is gone. And the one who is tall and gaunt and who is getting cut off today. Set adrift for perhaps the first time in his life.

How to annoy me

Invite people over for pizza and beer and when we hand over money for the pizza delivery, ask for more money to cover the bottle of wine that was drunk. Especially since we brought beer. And you offered us the wine. Bitch.

The Elm Tree has live jazz on Saturdays

(merci a Julien pour la belle photo!)

Flying

Tallis' motets for four voices are swirling through my ears and filling up my empty spaces. The music, rich and full, curls around itself. The voices take the lead and tonic in turns, as though they are flock of birds whirling and turning through the sky.

The memory of this evening's run is still coursing through my muscles and, though a totally different kind of salvation to Tallis, without it I could not sit here on an alien island and be able to relax into familiarity of music.

I've been running since I got here, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Most of the time it is a battle. To put one foot in front of the other and continue to do so for 45 minutes at speed. I come back sweaty and irritated and still stressed out.

Tonight Julien and I set out in the darkness that is a seven o'clock October evening. We hadn't run together before and at first settling into a rhythm was tricky. At some point around the 20 minute mark everything clicked into place and we began to fly. One of us would drive the pace for a while and then, without thinking, we'd switch-feet slapping the pavement and breathing raggedly. Closer to the house we sped up in increments. An unspeaking agreement to push ourselves as far as we could.

We ran along the back lane by the creek, strides lengthening with every step. We were shadows racing the wind, oblivious to the other save the sound of our footfalls.

At some point in the middle of burning hamstrings and lungs and blurred vision, I felt the fogginess lift. Sharp focus and clarity gouged my grown-soft self.

The feeling lasted until I stopped running, doubled over, gasping. Now, three hours later, with Tallis rather than a drubbing pulse in my inner ear, I can just grasp the fluttering edge of what I was running toward.

Angus dei, qui tolis pecata mundi. Misere nobis. Dona nobis pacem. Sanctus, sanctus. Benedictus.

Yesterday Afternoon

the two best sentences

that are making me laugh and cry at the same time:

"I want you sitting next to me in class so that we can stare at the boy eye candy before one of us reminds the other that they're all probably six years younger than us, making us dirty old ladies, already, at 24. "


"Anyway if I sincerely believed in things like empathic warm thoughts fleeting over the mountains, prairies, lakes and atlantic ocean, I'd tell you I was sending some such thoughts to comfort you, or prayers I suppose is what those are, but you'll have to be satisfied just knowing that I am thinking about you for what that's worth and wishing I could act somehow as some sort of anodyne to please you or turn the corners of your mouth upward or make you feel good about who you are and how you've existed in my life."

Yet again, I am inarticulate trying to explain how a series of black letters on a white screen wring my heart. Thanks.

Fragile lately. The coping floats like the thin skin that forms on the surface when someone boils a kettle of hot chocolate and doesn't stir it. The world is too much with me, it buffets me along and, because I am too tired to resist, I am propelled forward.

Interesting things seen on a walk in the English Countryside this morning:

A rabbit hopping through a hedge.

Two pheasants.

A fox running across a field, chased by a murder of crows.

Teeny tiny transparent mushrooms. They had a long thin stalk and circular flat tops that were accordion-pleated.

Many slugs.

Some snails.

A hare, which loped toward us and then hid in a grass knoll until we were close enough for it to figure out what we were. Then it bounded off across the pasture and up over the hill.

Six llamas. Not roaming.

An old abandoned church and its overgrown graveyard.

Two thatched cottages. One called Grange Cottage, and the other called Pig's Nose. Pig's Nose has topiary rabbits hopping out of the top of its hedges.

A farmer feeding his cows.

Three gates that needed to be climbed over. Well, actually, two gates but we hopped one twice.

A scare-crow made of a mannequin dressed in a ball gown and a denim shirt.

One hardy daisy.

Quite a bit of mud.

steaming piles

The blog writing muse has been absent lately. Perhaps because I spend most of my days reading stuff and writing stuff, I am written out.

My job description at the moment is one word: writer. I send emails on a semi-regular basis to a fair amount of people, so even though I am crap at keeping in touch, I have a high gross level of correspondence. I over use the postal service sending letters and postcards. I keep a pen-and-paper journal that I write in almost every day. Periodically, I blog.

I don't consider myself a writer. If pressed, I grudgingly acknowledge that I am "a person who writes", in much the same way I used to say when I worked in restaurants that I wasn't a cook, I was a salad architect.

I am not exactly sure why I duck away from the mantle of writer.

For one thing, I don't think I am particularly brilliant at wrestling the english language into sentences and prose. I am a verbal person; mentally I am at my best when in the middle of a conversation with smart, quick, interesting people. I love the energy of good conversation at a dinner party. The idea of sitting alone in front of a cataract-inducing computer screen gives me cramps.

Including myself in the pantheon of writers seems to do them a bit of a disservice- diluting the genius, so to speak.

Also, my mother is the writer of the family. Delayed teenage rebellion dictates that I must run away from family occupations even if, secretly, I covet them.

However, since I am locked into being a writer for a year at least, I had better amputate the irritatingly self-absorbed angst and just get on with it. Practice. Writing. Bite the bullet and churn out the shitty first drafts. Torment the blog readers (do you really exist?) with aforementioned shitty first drafts and half baked ideas.

Since this particular forum has no special theme, randomness is endemic.

I am encouraged though. An email that recently landed in my inbox concluded thusly:

"I always get email-envy when I read your lines as they are so well crafted, unlike my steaming pile of email poo."

Email poo. Random self-absorption could get a lot worse.

Last Sunday

Not Boring

Last night, after a day of dealing with incompetence, Cooper, the graphic designer and one of the housemates, and I sat in his room and drank beer and talked and talked.

Evidence that the universe has a sick and twisted and tender sense of humour: Coop's father died this summer too. A consequence of a motorcycle accident.

The two of us are like the survivors of a bomb blast. The ones who stagger from the wreckage apparently unharmed and head off down the street. The ones with wide empty eyes and shaking hands.

Most of the time we function passably. Some days we crash. Other days, like yesterday, it is a slow descent into awfulness: the way a leaf skates across the breezes before gently landing on the pavement.

We are our own therapy group. We drink and talk and smoke and talk. We compare weird relative experiences at the funerals or the most insensitive things people have said to us. We ask each other if we are crazy, or try to decide if we are crazy in the same sorts of ways. Because if we are the same kind of crazy, then maybe it is normal and will pass. We decide we are assholes for being far away from our families. We decide that we would be insane if we were at home. We laugh like maniacs.

For an hour or two we gently salve our wounds and we relax.

The best part of yesterday was when we were talking about how fucking emotionally erratic we are. Apparently, one of the ways that grieving manifests itself is by shortening my temper. Also I have zero patience. (Stop laughing. I had patience before, I just chose to override it.)

"Well," said Coop, "You know, the thing about this is... It's never boring."

My editor looks like...

Jack Nicholson.

Circa: The Shining

blighty

So yes. I am in England again. Buntingford, to be specific.

So far the weather has been damp and gray.
The beer has been good.
Lots of tea has been consumed.

On the list: Fish and Chips. Punting on the Cam. Gin and Tonics or Pimms and Lemonade.

Trying to avoid: Mushy peas. Salad cream. Rude children.

I am here working for a magazine, but I don't meet my editor until Thursday, so work-wise it's been mellow. Rest-of-life-wise it's been a whirl of travelling meeting people, unpacking, pretending to be sane.

I miss Canada like hell. Still not sure if this was my best plan.

"homesick, 'cause I no longer know where home is."

Mr Norton

My dad's first motorcycle was a 1969 Norton Commando He bought it when he was 23 and before he knew how to actually ride a motorcycle. He rode it up and down the ally behind British Motorcycles in Vancouver for about a month before he knew enough to ride it home.

When my mum met my father, the Norton was his only means of transportation.

The Norton was my dad's entry point to the world of (now) vintage British motorcycles. His next purchase was a 1952 Vincent Black Shadow which drew him into the community of Vincent owners in the lower mainland. A motley crew of men-Danny the tool and die maker, Tim the maritime lawyer, John and Dale the mechanics. And my dad: Gerry the hospital administrator. They met periodically to drink beer and monkeywrench. 35 years later, they still do. The best house was Jack's. Jack had named his eldest son Vincent and kept his bike on a piece of greasy carpet in the living room of his house.

My father's affinity for motorcycles gently shaped our lives.

My mum got her bike license and her own little Honda twinstar. When we moved away from the coast, my dad reluctantly sold the Norton, but kept the Vincent, mum's Honda and his own Moto Guzzi. I was about 14 before I knew that there was another way to start a motorcycle than kickstarting it. We took family holidays on the bike. I remember being wedged into the sidecar and the fierce rush of wind past my ears. We traveled to rallies: Calgary, California, New Zealand, England.

This spring my dad bought another Norton. A 1973 Commando. It is pristine, the only concession to the march of time is its electric start. I spoke to my dad the weekend after he brought the bike home, he was giddy and excited like a ten year old boy. He had ridden it around the block a few times and was planning to insure it when he came back from the California trip in June.

The bike is in the workshop in our basement. It's a room that I can hardly bear to go into.

Last week I was downtown with my friend Rhys. It was a bad day, one of the days when I want to eat sleeping pills like candy and have trouble finding the energy to brush my teeth. We came out of the cafe, and prepared to sit at one of the sidewalk tables. Rhys glanced past my shoulder, and the words, "Hey, that's a Norton" flew out of his mouth.

I turned around disbelievingly. That Rhys could correctly identify a Norton-I failed to remember that Norton is written on the tank and that Rhys is literate-and that there was actually a Norton a few feet behind me seemed far too much of a stretch in reality.

But there it was. A 1974 Commando. A year younger than the one in our basement. Like a moth to flame, I was standing beside the bike before I realized what I was doing. A lanky guy, a few years older than me, with red hair in need of a trim and the beginnings of a beard looked at me quizzically. I hadn't noticed him. This was his motorcycle.

Awkwardly, I asked about the specs of the bike and then blurted out, "My dad has one." Flushing scarlet, I realized that I had made a tactical error: he would ask who my dad was, I would have to explain that actually he died a month ago, and if possible the conversation would get more hellishly awkward. I apologized for bothering him and sprinted the 8 meters to the cafe table.

As we drank our coffee, the Norton guy put on his jacket and helmet. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him roll the bike off its center stand and balance it for a second, gauging the weight of the machine. Grasping the handlebars, he deftly flicked out the kick starter and jumped to kick it over. Nothing. He tried again. Some faint coughs from the Norton.

I cannot count how many times I have watched the same scene with a different cast and sets. I felt my heart being squeezed in a vice grip. I would lose it if I kept watching. I would lose it if I looked away.

It started on the ninth attempt. I counted.

The Norton guy opened the throttle and gently pushed his feet away from the pavement. He pulled out into traffic, looked over his shoulder at me and gave a small wave.

I closed my eyes and felt my self explode into a thousand tiny fragments.

fame becomes me

So my brother is by far the cooler of the two of us. He's the guy with the hook-ups, the one who knows 2/3 of the interesting people in this city (while I know just 2) and the one who has the style.

Most of the time when we hang out, when we are both at the ancestral home in chach-ville, I am just along for the ride. I sit in the background, watching the entertainment, and occasionally catching Tim's eye when something funny needs shared appreciation.

A few weeks ago he came up with free tickets and backstage passes to the upcoming Hot Hot Heat concert. Something about a girl he works with being the girlfriend of the brother of the lead singer of the opening band.

I have barely heard of Hot Hot Heat, and never of the opening band but it seemed like a good way to spend a Tuesday night.

The audience at the show was mostly tanned girls between the ages of 15 and 20 in tiny tanktops and "indie boys" in tapered jeans, white teeshirts and too much hair product. There was no bar.

After the show (which was quite good, though the music was not so much to my taste) we toodled backstage with Alexandra, girlfriend of brother of guy... and met the bands. And the girls.

There were a number of girls just hanging around. We weren't sure if they came with the bands or were plucked from the audience, but the number of tiny tank-tops fluttering around the band members makes me suspect the latter.

A plan was formulated. We would head to a bar downtown and wait for the bands to finish packing up their stuff.

By the time the bands arrived at the bar, it was past last call (because in this city, last call on a Tuesday in the summer comes at 11:45) and the only place to get alcohol was at the strip bars.

Heading off to the strippers with my younger brother, his friends, and some marginally famous rock bands didn't weird me out as much as you may think it would. The early closing of bars in this town means that the bro and I have found ourselves with friends at the rippers rather more times than I like to admit.

The bar is fairly typical. Beer and dancing naked ladies. The lead singer of HHH is blatantly making out with a girl who I previously saw flirting with the bassist of the opening band, and later the drummer of HHH. The principle of upward mobility is rarely so easily observed.

Everyone was pretty loaded.

Suddenly, the song changes from random 50Cent to the most famous song by The Killers. The one that goes "...somebody told you... looks like my girlfriend... last summer..." Anyways.

The HHH singer surfaces at the opening chords of the song.

"Hey, this is the Killers," he comments to nobody in particular. "We toured with them last year."

Whipping out his mobile phone, HHH singer proceeds to text message the lead singer of the Killers.

"HEY MAN, I AM AT A BAR IN KELOWNA AND A NAKED GIRL IS DANCING TO YOUR SONG."

You know you've made it when...

Random Saturday

I was on Vancouver Island at my grandfather's house for a week and a half, planning, executing and recovering from an onslaught of relatives and the funeral itself. That the internet chez grand pere closely resembles two coffee cans and a piece of twine made anything more than checking emails a seventeen hour enterprise only to be undertaken whilst fortified with copious amounts of gin.

Nan died after a prolonged illness at the age of 82. She had been living in a nursing home for four years prior to her death. Still, it was strange to see the uncles standing around in the kitchen, leaning on the edges of countertops. Had Nan been there, they'd have been shooed out into the already packed living room to make room for the plates and plates of food coming out of the oven, going into the oven...

I'm home now. Well, back at my parents' house. (I cannot yet refer to it as my mum's house...so much of it is my dad's.) There so much to do: little jobs like keeping up with dishes and laundry, and big jobs like thinning the trees around the house, selling the 55 Ford sitting in the driveway, and deciding how to proceed with probating the will. On top of the actual energy required to accomplish these tasks, the real kicker is the energy required to think about them and decide how to proceed.

I keep almost saying, "We should wait until Dad gets back..." So far I have managed to check my motormouth before it rolls off my tongue.

To add to the general state of confusion and chaos, I am leaving for England in three weeks. In the week following my dad's death, I was offered a position as researcher and writer with a magazine published by the UNEP. It is exactly the job I have longed for. And it is in Cambridge. Which is Very far away from my mum and brother. Sometimes things balance out in strange ways. Lately, everything does.

On the one hand, it is a really phenomenal opportunity that will open far more doors, career-wise, than I can even imagine. A job like this does not exist in the city I grew up in and where my mum currently lives. If I stayed here, I would be waitressing or tutoring, living at home, and mostly marking time until we were all "ok enough" for me to take off again. I have two friends here, and it would be all too easy to become (more of) an anti-social depressed recluse.

On the other hand, I haven't worked in an academic environment for at least a year. My research skills are terrible at best, and I have serious doubts about my abilities as a writer. I don't want to leave my mum and brother. I don't want to stretch myself and have adventures. I don't know if I can pull off being a functioning member of society, let alone holding down a job.

I think I am selfish for running away. I think I will regress into a neo-conservative evangelical with permed hair who wears oversized teeshirts printed with cats and who works the checkout at Saveonfoods if I stay.

Finally, in happier news... I finished the legwarmers. The pattern seems to be designed for people with pipe-cleaner legs, and I have, in my grand father's words, "shapely pins." Some aggressive blocking may help matters. They are black and green, and as soon as my camera gets fixed I may torment all of you with photos.

One of the benefits of going to the Island, was an excuse to take an afternoon to wallow in the Yarn Porn Store. A small fiber shop so stuffed with amazing yarn that hard core knitters have been known to pass out from sheer ecstasy. I can't remember exactly how it all went down, but I have a hazy recollection of diving head first into a pile of Noro, of my normally very pragmatic mother shoving six skiens of fuschia Manos Del Uruguay down my shirt, and something about hand-dyed sock yarn. Also, and this part is crystal clear, I remember the staff lady's lilting voice telling me that all knitting yarn was 20% off.

The rest, as I am sure you have guessed, was history.

Into the Maelstrom

[my grandmother died this morning.]

In an email a friend mentioned striving to become an "emotional jedi", and, though my Star Wars theory is weak at best, I assume he was alluding to one's ability to slide through the wreckage of daily life without losing a sense of purpose and the all important zen.

I am not sliding right now. Sliding implies the pull of gravity and the potential for loss of control. I glide. Like an astronaut looking out the shuttle window and gently drifting head first into the sink. I think there never was any control, therefore the loss of it is a non-event.

I glide through my days the way I used to effortlessly consume
choose your own adventure stories: read for a while, come to the page where I had to choose to one of two or three options, choose one arbitrarily, continue, come to the end of the story, read another. My day to day choices seem unimportant; I will feel exactly the same if I go out for beer with a friend as if I lay on the couch and watched reality television programs. Zero emotional range.

Emotional Jedi. Teflon girl. Ice princess.

Everything is gray, and not in the nuanced, between-black-and-white sort of way. Gray in the whispery-November-stalks-of-shasta-daisies way.

But shasta daisies are perennials. And below the gray something simmers. Nothing else explains my fascination with Grey's Anatomy, the hospital drama that I've been watching on DVD. I am pretty sure that my mum and brother think I am deranged: having spent the better part of a month in the ICU of various hospitals, and having watched my father die in one, we were part of that drama, albeit with worse lighting. I think I watch to make sure that parts of me still hurt. To make sure that I haven't lost myself completely. To remind myself that it wasn't all a dream. Twisting the knives so I can bleed again.

I wonder: how long will this numbness last?
How bad will it be when I start to feel again?

concentration

I flew back home a month ago today. Looking back, it seems like years since I left the south of France, and the blink of a hummingbird's eye since life was "normal". The absence of my father continually surprises me, blindsides me while I set the table for four.

Thinking is the worst. Not constructive list-of-things-to-do-today thinking, but the idle musing that happens while one is doing something else. I stay awake watching banal television until I am so exhausted that I fall asleep immediately. The before sleeping time terrifies me.

To fill my mind I have started knitting again. Because knitting falls into the category of things I can do and think about other things at the same time, I have chosen a complicated fair isle pattern knitted in the round. Should keep my mind occupied for a few hours a day at least.

Mt Belinda

Staring Competition

and to dust you will return

Again, it is early and the house is quiet.

My dad died on Monday, six days ago.

It has been a tiring and busy week-the service and wake are today- and I have been on "Type A Personality Autopilot" for most of the time. That looks like me at my most efficient but with the air of zombie and no short term memory.

There is so much I could write about that has been funny or uplifting, but right now I can't.

It's going to be a long day today.

48 hours

It is 5 am and I am wide awake (thank you 9 hour time difference jet lag). The sun is peeking over the mountains across the lake, and in a few minutes the whole valley will be awash in golden light.

Joan Didion wrote, after the sudden death of her husband, "Life changes in the instant," and for my family, our lives have changed in a series of instants: The instant of the accident, of the heart attack, of the decision to move my dad back to the hospital in our city, of hearing the neurologist carefully form the words "severe brain damage...discouraging progress," of hearing the surgeon rationalize amputating my dad's right leg, of nodding in agreement.

The 56 hours that I have been home have been the most horrific and agonizing of my life. I have been told that I am 'doing well' and 'holding it together,' but nobody has told me the criteria for achieving these two status'. We are all doing the best we can under extremely terrible circumstances. Most of the time when I am talking to doctors, nurses, concerned friends of the family, my voice is steady and I can even be humorous-albeit rather blackly humorous. And then I turn around and I just feel hollow, as though the contents of my body cavity were sucked out, or I rock back and forth like an autistic child as though by rocking I can control my desire to sob until my ribs split apart. I never imagined that I could feel this terrible and still keep breathing.

change

Two weeks ago, my dad was broadsided by a jeep as he was motorcycling in Northern California. His injuries are extremely severe ranging from compound leg fractures to heart attack and anoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain).

My mum, brother and I are walking around like zombies and trying to remember to breathe.

Please pray for us.

There are no words for this existance.

South Georgia

The edge of a glacier. We stayed here all morning wating for it to calve. It didn't, but the hours in the stillness were the better for it.




King Penguin and chick at Right Whale Bay.

floating

I'm in Liverpool right now.

Truth be told, it seems to be a nice place. Highlights include: a sumptuous pub, the maritime museum's smuggling exhibit, yet another Tate gallery, interestingly unintelligible accents.

I am here because my first love lives here now. And in the six years since we were 17 and the orchestra played in the bushes as we walked around, we've become friends. It was one of those round about processes, and I am glad we have arrived where we have. He's great.

Before here was London. Three days of shite weather but glorious catching up with one of the Montreal girlies.

Because both of my friends have entered the real world and have jobs which require regular attendance, I have had a lot of time alone in the last week.

Still re-adjusting to crowded landscapes and many, many people, I've been walking around a lot. Staring at the little bits of ordinary lives that spill out from four walls of home and into the streets. Snippits of conversations. Clothing choices. Destinations.

As though the world around me is an ephemeral mirage, I observe my surroundings with placid detachment. Minimal engagement. I'm not sure where the cognitive, passionate, opinionated, me is, but it's certainly not here.

More January.

Zavodovski Island: the northern most island in the South Sandwich chain. It belches sulphurous gasses and steams. And has about 800,000 pairs of chinstrap penguins living on it.

They also hang out on icebergs.

(the horror of digital cameras is that I now have 700 pictures of penguins on icebergs...)

January 22/06

Visokoi Island.

the 5 month hiatus

is over, and I am back where the internet doesn't cost 13pence/minute (that's 30 cents) and isn't attached to a phone line.

haven't really decided what to do with this blog. There is too much to say about the South, and so many pictures.

And Europe is calling, and I will be there soon.

More adventures.

So here's the deal...

For the seven of you that actually read this...

On Thursday, 4 days from now, I am leaving Canada and heading to the Falkland Islands. Those would be the ones just east of the bottom of Argentina. They are pretty far away from everything I am familiar with, although I have it on reliable authority that they import a hell of a lot of good beer, and the prospect of actually being there in a week is scary and exciting and enormous.

I will be working on a small yacht called The Golden Fleece which will be heading to the South Sandwich Islands (just get the damn atlas out already)for a five week trip chartered by National Geographic. After that-provided I haven't died of seasickness-a trip to the island of South Georgia (I wasn't kidding about the atlas) for another five weeks.

The plans following ten weeks of sailing are a bit up in the air, they depend on sailing work and weather and my sanity, but I am planning to be in the UK and France by early May.

I haven't taken leave of my senses, nor am I going into this blindly. I am as aware of the risks and challenges as I can possibly be, short of actually experiencing them- and I will be doing that soon enough. I am well aware that this is not perhaps the most career forwarding plan I could have taken, and that it is dangerous. But I am only 23, the grad school and work plans have been shelved, not dropped. And I survived a year in the Middle East where people kept blowing stuff up- elephant seals, while a nuisance sometimes, have not yet shown a predilection for suicide bombings.

I know that my choice of location/occupation for the next few months is not mainstream, but instead of asking me if I am out of my mind, how about smiling and saying, "That's amazing, what an adventure".

Being that I am neurotic enough for everyone I know, let's not focus on the negative, just wish me luck.

And if you want a damn post card, you better send me your address.

today please...

have a wonderful day. Whatever you choose to celebrate.

Even if you've got nothing-celebrate vicariously, through me, because I finished the moehair monstrosity. And it doesn't look half bad.

As usual I have nothing profound to relate, I just hope that whoever reads this is surrounded by people who love them, lots of food and wine, and music.

ethics

la famille was out to dinner on Sunday.
A friend of mine, and the daughter of the family who were feeding us, is working on her PhD. She's doing something related to business ethics.

She taught her first university course this past semester and was regaling us with anecdotes of university scholarship.

The best one concerned plagiarism.

She had a student lift his entire term paper from the internet. Which is not actually that funny.

Except that the course was on ethics!

poetry-life-poetry

(with great thanks à János...such a necessary reminder right now.)

"...Ah poems amount to so little when you write them too early in life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)- they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gestures which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming: to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for someone else-); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that’s rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars,- and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of woman screaming in labour, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves- only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them."

brief joys

-painting clay penguins

-Tracy Chapman singing "Never Yours"

-flying down a rolling hill, half blinded by late afternoon sun, the wind in my face and the snow sizzling under my skis

-sleep. Long, uninterrupted, sleep.

-watching the sun inch over the mountains across the lake, the golden wash of light spreading over the valley...

my newly cut hair looks like...

...the love child of Chewbacca and Jennifer Aniston circa 1993.

Trust me, people, when I tell you that this was not the look that I was going for.

Fortunately, as the owner of the tutoring business that I work for pointed out, I don't get out much. (She made this comment after I spent 5 minutes expounding on the greatness of a cbc radio documentary I heard last night about the history and political culture of Alberta. Given the fact that I was both enthusiastic and mentioning Alberta and Politics in the same sentence I am surprised that she didn't immediately conclude that I was drunk.)

Thus, few people will ever see the hideosity.

In other news:

-yes, Jeremy, I probably did misspell Chewbacca... I don't care.

-I am dealing with my mental meltdown in the best of WASPy ways: total denial. No, I am not terrified of the distance. Yes, I love the fact that I have no plans after the next 6 months.

-Christmas knitting is continuing apace. By which I mean that I don't have a hope in hell of finishing what I planned to finish...Someone will doubtless find me mummified in red moehair yarn sometime around New Years.

crash and burn

In classic fashion, I have managed in the past two days to nosedive off the bandwagon of my staid little life. It's nothing serious, and I will pull myself together directly, but it's always alarming when I realize how self destructive I can actually be.

This all sounds very melodramatic and overwrought. Which is fine, because it is how I feel right now. I'll probably recant the whole thing tomorrow!

I don't handle change very well. Even if I am not happy in my current incarnation, and it's certainly been the autumn of my discontent, change in the equilibrium scares me. I knew the whirlwind would start in late November when my parents arrived back from their holidays, that it would intensify when my dear brother returns from kangaroo land, and that Christmas week itself would be stuffed full of relatives, friends, food, and noise. I was hoping that the chaos would distract me from niggling doubts about my choice to leave everything familiar and move to a place where there is one flight out per week, and long distance phone rates are astronomical; or the rising ball of hysteria that rises in my throat every time I think about applying for a master's program.

This too shall pass, and I guess once I am on the plane I will have the choice to settle down or spontaneously combust.