that's nuts!

ah the silly rambly things that flitter through my brain while savouring a slow ride into work on a bright, crisp morning...

riding down a tree-lined street, i chuckled at the sight of a chestnut being chucked from a tree by a clever squirrel. the nut popped out like a stripper from a cake, it was beautiful. and for no apparent reason, that got me thinking about tree huggers. i mused over how many of the friends or people i've met who were radical environmentalists or tree planters or greenpeace warriors or whatever were also vegans. i get it, it all kinda fits together, ya know? it's all about the celebration of the sanctity of non-human life, right?

well then i thought specifically about the dedicated tree lovers - the ones who are just oh so in love with big wise ol fluffy trees dancing in the breeze just for them. and i thought of how, as vegans, many of them consume a startling amount of nuts. gotta get their protein, right?

well...

don't they realize that nuts are tree fetuses??

(shrug)

theeeahtah

i know that for most people, autumn signals a time of hermitage: time to curl up under fluffy blankets after a summer of feasting on the city's non-stop smorgasbord of cultural offerings. but for theatre types, the opposite is true. while the summer has its own delicious treats (fringe and summerworks, for example), september is when the theatres come out with guns blazing, eager to lure you into their seats (as well they should!).

so last friday, i sank my teeth into my first play of the "season"; i saw Judith Thompson's latest offering, Enoch Arden at the Theatre Centre.

as the Globe and Mail so accurately states, it is "a beautiful, wise piece of theatre and what a thrill to experience it..." skillfully, tenderly, it combines music, poetry, pathos, grit and soul-stirring/heartbreaking beauty. i could not recommend this play more. it's only fifteen bucks, so ditch the comforter and head down to Queen West. you'll thank me...

and tonight i'm off to CanStage to see "What Happened Was..." not sure what it is, but i know it's theeeahtah, and that's enough for me!! (grin)

trent reznor saved my soul

i fancy myself a bit of a life savourer. what i mean by that is i like to stand at life's buffet and try a bit of everything. so a long, long time ago, when i first tried my hand at post-secondary academia, i sampled a little christianity.

ok - who am i kidding. i dove right in: born-again pentecostal (though sadly i never got to speak in tongues, sigh), bible study groups, even the early-morning prayer marches around campus. yup, i did it all! i even practiced celibacy - to the dismay, i'm sure, of my boyfriend with whom i'd shared some red-hot fire engine sex for several months prior to my unfortunate conversion.

now, there are a lot of reasons for my foray into religious insanity, but i don't feel like getting into all that. i'm more interested in telling you the story of how i emerged from the holy water, back to my good ol' debauched self...

when school released me from its jaws in late april, i returned to my home. no longer subjected to the daily encouragement/chastising of my converter and other christian friends, the lord started to lose his grip on me. i stopped believing i was alcoholic. i stopped believing my instincts and impulses were actually the misguided whisperings of the devil. i stopped believing i was evil and going to hell.

i started hanging around with non-christians. i allowed the f-word and other such blasphemy to find its way into my vocabulary again. i started to smoke. i enjoyed the occasional alcoholic beverage (egads). i may even have smoked some marijuana. yet though his grip was loosening, still my fearful heart was squeezed in the good lord's frightful fingers.

and then i moved to vancouver, and discovered luvafair. every thursday and sunday night (nights without cover), you could find me sitting on the speakers (a luxury position placing me between floor- and speaker-dancers, where i could feel in the centre of it all), or on the dance floor, thrashing my hair and limbs about. and oh, i remember this so clearly...

week one
a song i didn't know began pulsing through me. oh, this is goooooood, i enthused, and jumped to my feet. frenetic and wild, it filled my pores with yes!! until the chorus belted out "god is dead, and no one cares," that is. the song: heresy by nine inch nails. as though god's hand had come down and smacked some christian sense to me, my limbs froze. sorry god, i murmured, and returned with bowed head to my seat on the speakers.

week two
there i was dancing like mad, and the song i did not yet recognize well enough again urged me to well up with energy. yes! yes! yes! i danced ferociously until the chorus snapped me back to god's fold. fuck. sorry god, i murmured, and returned to my seat on the speakers.

week three
again, i was compelled to dance. only this time, when trent screamed out "god is dead" i screamed with him. fuck you, god, and your ridiculous rules. fuck you and your archaic morality! i'm gonna fucking dance!!!

to this day, i consider that dance my final break from christianity. you could say trent reznor saved my soul.

now please, don't get me wrong. that christ fella had some interesting things to say. assuming anything in the good book is actually in any way close to what he actually said, i think he was a hell of a political visionary and we have a lot to learn from him. and buddha and confucius and muhammed and so on... but christianity made me more evil than my current debauched lifestyle ever could. i became judgmental, condescending, paranoid and i hated myself and all my instincts.

now, if you find a religion that actually makes you a better person, then i'll support you 110%. just ask my raelian brother... but if it makes you a bitch from hell, as it did for me, then trust me: slip on some trent reznor cuz you needs some proper saving.

frosh

frosh week has desended upon our fine city. or certainly our corner of it.

i just sat on a desk, legs curled under me, forehead leaning near the window, looking down on masses of frosh parading through the streets. cheering, laughing, dancing, proudly donning their new colours. and it brought a sting of tears to my eyes. don't know why really... i guess a bit of envy: that sense of hope, of belonging, of community. there was something really exciting and beautiful about it.

labourless weekend

i had such a lovely weekend. i went up to my friends' beautiful new home, a converted barn just north of the hurly burly, but still south enough to be relatively city-esque. indeed, close enough to be torn down to appease the suburban sprawlers. yes, in less than a year this beautiful home with its pond, its large lush garden, its serene perfection will be torn down and replaced with an army of bland, oversized suburban dwellings. but i don't want to talk about that, not now...

i want to talk about sleeping in my tent (likely the last time this season) on nights so beautiful i was brave enough to leave the fly off so i could gaze at the stars. i want to talk about slowly waking up to clear crisp mornings, lying in my sleeping bag, listening to birds, watching soft fluffy clouds float in a careless sky. i want to talk about making breakfast for friends in a beautiful big kitchen, while being serenaded by a jazz pianist and upright bass player.

could anything be more perfect?

how about playing in the dirt on a hot day, sun beating on my back as i dug a fire pit with garden tools. it was such fun! like a sandbox, only filled with cool creepy crawly bugs instead of syringes, yay! or how about eating my first fried green tomatoes - plucked fresh from the garden. or just in general eating way too much delicious food, grilled to perfection by the lovely and masterful alana. or drinking just enough delicious beer.. (grin) or cozying up by a raging fire and talking shit, punctuated by acoustic favourites.

it was so splendid, i didn't want to leave. and so on monday afternoon, after all the lightweights left, us few intimate stragglers decided to grow some sideburns and be real men: we set up the card table by the tv, turned on some cfl (i'm not a sports fan, but i do love the occasional joy of feeding off other fans' enthusiasm), ordered some pizza, cracked some beers and played poker.

from nature to friends to good manly fun, i'd have to say i had a perfect labour day weekend! : )

dreams

Romeo: Peace, peace, Mercutio peace,
Thou talkst of nothing.

Mercutio: True, I talk of dreams:
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy:
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind

kindness of strangers

he has been yearning for adventure, for something to happen. he has been invoking something new.

he and his friend have spent the night at the bar, taunting the bartenders to entertain them. "the robot" was their most succesful offering. the night has been amusing, high in entertainment. and yet... nothing new. he has invoked, and the universe has not listened.

until they are stumbling through their apartment building's front door.
___

it's 3 am and she's hovering over the landlady's buzzer. what to do what to do. two guys walk in behind her as she hesitates, debates. "do you need a hand?" he asks. she turns to him and giggles, embarassed but needing a little kindness from a stranger.

"i've lost my keys, and so i guess i have to wake the landlady to be let in."

his eyes go wide, "don't do that!!"

"i know, i know," she enthuses.

the landlady is a fiesty 80-something year-old woman with sharp eyes and a sharp tongue. the prospect of waking her to drunkely explain how she's lost her keys is most unsavoury. he takes pity, dons his shining armour, and offers her a couch. (it doesn't hurt that he's seen her riding her bike from his sunroom.) she accepts the salvation immediately, gratefully. (it doesn't hurt that he has mischievous eyes and a sexy smile.)

she has found shelter.
he has found an adventure.

such a nice man...

"he was such a nice man."

the rallying cry of the neighbours of psychopaths, sociopaths, and some of my ex-boyfriends. people who, if they're catholic enough, might torture themselves with the idea that they should have known better.

is the fact that serial killers, rapists, bombers are viewed by many of their neighbours as nice:

a testament to how antisocial us social beings have become? oh, we'll nod our good mornings, we'll chitchat about sitcoms and reality tv in those forced moments of social interaction - colleagues in the kitchen, neighbours in the elevator. but there's no depth to any of those exchanges, no furthering of our crucial interconnectedness. in overpopulated cities, in an overpopulated world, should we not learn to respect our neighbours? look out for our neighbours? rely on our neighbours? interact more, more regularly, more meaningfully with our surroundings and with each other?

or

is it a chilling testament to how we treat our weak? our quiet? our "nice people"? dedicatedly ignoring, perhaps even scoffing them, until their exile eventually, inevitably drives to the ultimate antisocial act?

just wonderin...

childhood

the tears came out of fucking nowhere, man.

we were sitting, enjoying a quiet sunday, a calm breeze. we were talking in semi-hushed tones, careful not to disrupt the intensely easy-going vibe. we were talking about.. oh, this. that. a bit of everything, a whole lot of nothing...

how did we lead into it? i can't remember. but i remember how the anecdote started. playfully waving my fist in the air, i decried Sean P---. "if i had minions, i would get them to do some serious damage to Sean P---." Sean went to grade school with me. ah yes, grade school: purveyor of all my happiest memories. (she stifles a shudder)

my friend laughed gently, wondering what Sean had done to me. first i gave the short answer, "oh you know, the standard grade school semi-torture..." and then i decided to flesh it out with an exemplary anecdote. i guess i'd never told this story before, not out loud.
anyway.

i was in grade 2. i had just gotten these death-locks, these bear-traps-in-training on my molars. the idea was these silver bands wrapped around my molars (top and bottom, one each side) and had a wee jagged bit (not unlike a thumbtack) that jutted out into the cheek, onto which you would hook elastic bands that would then straighten out the jaw. (as a side note, i love my semi-straight smile, but come on: orthodontists are sadistic fuckers.) anyway to be fair, the metal hooks that jutted out were not that big, but in a little girl's mouth, they were giant enough to wreak some serious havoc. anyone who's bitten their tongue or the inside of their cheek while chewing might be able to extrapolate...

to try to allieviate the damage being done by these metal rods that were incessantly tearing into my cheeks, i'd been given a box of wax strips. the idea was i would roll up a wad of wax, stick it onto the metal rod and round out the protrusion.

the bell rang, and i remember running across the field to get in lign. somewhere near the end of the field, Sean was waiting for me and with deadly precision, stuck out a leg and tripped me. did i say tripped? somehow that word doesn't do it justice. i caught air, man. as he laughed and jogged off to get in lign, i felt the air soar through my hair, felt my chubby little body land hard and fast, heard my little box of wax fly from my pocket and shatter on the ground, and watched in horror as the wax flew in all directions.

when i said caught air, my friend winced sympathetically for me. i kept on, but didn't make it to the end of the sentence. somewhere before the landing, i had to stop myself: "holy shit, i'm going to start crying, this is ridiculous." valiantly i breathed deep and plunged forth. my voice cracked. i tried a few more words, but tears came instead.

wow. i was blown away. here i thought i was telling my friend a silly little story of childhood malice. instead i found myself crying, remembering a pathetic little girl, pathetically wiping the dirt and grass off those fucking pieces of wax, terrified by the gruelling alternative of not having that fucking wax.

i was hoping in retelling it i could be a little stronger over something so small, so long ago. but jesus fuck, i am crying right now as i type.

Sean P---, know that there is someone in this world who will never forgive you.

weekend pass to cottage country

it was friday evening and i was an urban virgin, embarking for my first time on the journey so many city folk take every weekend: fleeing to cottage country. i was off to whitestone lake, and could not be more thrilled. grinning and humming in the passenger seat, i was a tangle of giddy excitement and profound mellowness. ahhh, the weekend at last.

it was somewhere around barrie that i noticed the air had shed a few pounds. released from the shackles of humidity and smog, she danced naked and unfettered in my hair and lungs, and swam through my veins making me feel calm and luxurious. i gotta tell ya, there's nothing more exhilarating after a few weeks of intense heat than feeling the air's cool bite as you race topless (car, not me) through the countryside. as the sun fled to the other side of the world, i craned my neck to smile at a sky shimmering with stars.

finally we arrived and gathered on the beach to swill cool beer and swap ghost stories. the goosebumps charged over my flesh and Bruce made me yelp and jump with the ol' hand-on-the-other-shoulder trick. fucker. (giggle)

a night and morning of giggling in bed and our saturday began. i moved steadily but slowly, from the patio where we feasted on eggs florentine (how civilized!), to the chair under the tree, to the chair on the beach, to the raft on the water. and such water! not too cool, not too warm... had my fingers not been uber-pruned, i would never have left it!

then we got all energetic-like and rented a boat. a boat that would take us to cliffs ripe for jumping off of. i love riding in boats, and since i was knee high to a grasshopper, my favouritest thing, as the wind and spray whip through my hair, has always been to daydream about boys. being kissed, specifically. mmm, eyes closed i savoured each succulent thought.

as for the cliff diving, well.. i'm glad i did it. the best part was the anticipation. as i peeked over the edge to the water far below, i realized i'd never really done anything dare-devily before. lived in the downtown eastside? yep. put myself in precarious positions around the globe? you bet. but nothing like this. the anticipation was great, the soaring through the air was amazing, but the hitting the water... well, i could have done without that. but even the raging pain that seared through my freshly cleansed colon could not take away from the yay of it all.

saturday night we sank comfortably into some poker. but you know, as a side note from someone who doesn't watch tv, all i gotta say is: hey, there are more games out there than texas hold-em! christ. well - we had a great time anyway, recklessly gambling away all our little risk men until exhaustion carried us to another night and morning of giggling in bed.

sunday was mellow. the sky was gray (rain at last! hurray!), the souls were quiet, and i sat and listened to keane and mused and watched the water and wrote until hélas, at last, we donned our brave faces and made for the city...

so a giant thank you to Bruce for inviting me, and to Lindsay and Michael for hosting us and to the countryside for being so damned lovely. whee!