It's all grey to me

Oh my GAWD.

2008-09-16T21:30:00.000-07:00

Girl #1 in University bathroom, maniacally applying peachpit lipbalm: 'So like, I'm taking medical anthropology, intro to english lit and intro to psych. You?'

Girl #2 in University bathroom, burning holes into the mirror from staring at her own reflection so intensely: 'Oh, like, I'm only taking one class cause you know, I'm like, working on my album.'

Girl #1: 'Oh! Like, totally cool!'

Girl #2: 'I know! It's pretty awesome. So, like, see you at church on Sunday!'

Girl #1: 'K, bye!'

27 going on 19

2008-09-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

"And isn't it time we recognize, that we all lead such broken lives"?

-The Be Good Tanyas

I’m working this semester as a TA for a poli sci statistics course, up on Burnaby Mountain. I haven’t had very many occasions to get up there since moving to Vancouver – my own campus is conveniently housed downtown, right in Harbour Centre, where students creep in and out of classes relatively unnoticed by all of the conference attendees our building is constantly being rented out to. I guess that’s what you get for going to university in a prime piece of real estate in the financial district of one of the world’s most expensive cities, but for today, that is beside the point.

It’s funny and strange and sad to be around so many undergraduate students, now that I’ve got close to ten years on a lot of them. Most of the people in my class are 19 years old and I remember so vividly, like a bad, bitter, sweet and sorrowful taste on the tongue what it meant to be that age, when you had no clue who you were but were in such blissful denial of that possibility. And so, when I look around the room and see the girl with the bleached blond hair and the standard grey hoodie over an overpriced American Eagle t-shirt, the girl with the jeans her mom hemmed for her and brought to her residence room, the girl who laughs too hard and too loudly in class when the 30-something prof accidentally on purpose uses the word virgin, instead of version, the girl who rolls her eyes and flips her hair, picks at her nails and sighs audibly, because the whole tedious business of living, of life, it’s just all such a terrible bother. The guy who plays interactive dungeons and dragons on his outdated Mac, a present from his ailing grandfather upon high school graduation, the 21-year old European guy who oozes sex appeal and a power he is only beginning to harness but knows will carry him far, the girl who lays out her gel pens and colour-coded folders at the start of every class, who scribbles furious notes and tries to write away the sinking realization that it’s all a little over her head and she just isn’t cut out for this…as I look around this huge auditorium I fight back tears and hold back the desire to cry out, ‘I was one of you, once. I thought I had it, whatever ‘it’ was. I thought I knew it, knew it all, knew who I was, where I was going. I thought it would all work out.’

Because now, just a few years later and a few too many, I’ve realized that being 19 means being alive in a way you can never get back again. For I too, flipped my hair and talked about politics I didn’t understand. I too, scribbled furious notes, and never read them. But somehow, that sense of self, of myself, has faded away. And so, while I talk to these students, these teens and twenties about z-scores and standard deviations, about linear regression and homework due dates, what I really want to tell them is to hold on. To hold on to that sense of self, of possession. Because one day, just a few years down the road and a few too many, you might find yourself in a different city that will never be yours, with different friends and different tastes. You might find yourself without a net, without a safe place to land. You might find that you cry into a glass of red wine that substitutes as supper, find yourself out on a daily run when you realize you aren’t really running anywhere, you might find yourself with a boyfriend, a man who looks into your face and tells you he will perish without your love, and this is the same man who hurts and betrays you in a way you could never have imagined, never even heard of, at 19, and really why should you have?

And so on Tuesday morning, when I file back into that auditorium, and look around at the hundreds of faces, some bored, some keen, some sleepy-eyed, some smiling, when I take a seat and pull out my own notebook and pen, it will be with the realization that while I sit among them for two and a half hours every week, I sit aside, I sit outside, with the wisdom, the pain, the sorrow and the joy that sense of knowing brings.

The wonder years

2008-07-11T08:26:00.001-07:00

I’m going home tomorrow, to Montreal, for my ten-year high school reunion. Unlike a lot of people who dread gatherings of this nature, I’m actually looking forward to it. While I still keep in close touch with many people from high school, there are many I haven’t seen in a full decade. People who have shed braces and puberty-induced pounds, trading them in for careers and baby strollers. People who never left the small town we grew up in, others who left the country in search of multicultural adventures.

The woman responsible for organizing this reunion first took on the task about four years ago, amassing email addresses and phone numbers so that when the time came, tracking people down would be a fairly easy feat. I remember filling out the information she requested, fantasizing about where I would be another four years down the road. I had just started working as an editor at a magazine, and was confident I would be made editor in chief by then. My handsome fireman boyfriend and I would surely be married, but not with kids – not yet. But we’d live in a house – an old stone one, and I’d be a fabulous cook and gardener, in addition to world traveler and I would also grow another three inches and drop 20 pounds. I would also somehow be a natural blond.

Fast forward four years – I left the magazine a year ago – just two months shy of a changeover that would have seen me positioned as editor-in-chief. The handsome husband-to-be kicked me out of his life in a fiery rage, and my heart has been broken a few times since. I moved to Vancouver to go back to school and my roommate and I eat bowls of cereal for dinner because neither of us can cook to save our lives. Most of the travelling I do entails visiting the man I'm dating who is from Newfoundland, I met in Montreal, and recently moved to California. Any weight I’ve lost has come from trying to live on a student budget and I haven’t spent a cent on my hair in months.

But somehow, this is all ok. Somehow, this is all pretty great. It will be sad and funny and sweet to see the tiny offspring of the girl who shared my Bunsen burner in science class, and the engagement ring of the girl everyone was certain was gay. But when it’s all over, I’ll be happy to return to my life, in all its uncertainty and all its quirks, only to fantasize about where the next ten years will lead me.

A few of my favourite things

2008-07-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

I love seeing people walking down the street, by themselves, eating ice cream cones.
This makes me inexplicably happy.

Tiny ocean of tears

2008-07-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

On my way into work this morning, I passed a young girl, maybe in her mid-twenties. She was sitting outside the Parliament buildings, in dress pants and a black blouse, her honey blond hair pulled into a ponytail. She had one of those doughy, open, honest faces that are so beautiful in their own way. She was sobbing into her cellphone, as quiet and controlled as she could manage - and despite that the person on the other line was doing all the talking, you knew her heart was being broken. First thing, on a bright, sunny July morning on Rideau Street, a chapter of this young woman's life closed, and it was all I could do not to sit down beside her and cry, too.

Who's in charge, here?

2008-04-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

I do not consider myself a religious person. I have had fleeting moments of what I would call an increased sense of spirituality, but even those have been tinged with guilt, as I only seem to search for something bigger, all-knowing, or other-worldly when I'm hurting or confused.

And so, yesterday afternoon, as I found myself walking rather aimlessly around in the hot sun in the California foothills, wondering how exactly I got here, I felt that creeping sense that maybe (hopefully?) a good deal of this is out of my control anyway, and that somehow, some time (hopefully soon?) I will find myself propelled forward and away, to a new chapter in my life. Maybe a better one.

But I have to say – whoever it is who's in charge up there, I don't know if there's been a shift change, a maternity leave, maybe? Perhaps you're new at this, and I can make allowances, but just so we're clear, things haven't been going so shit hot down here, and so, maybe, when you get a chance, you could sneak another quick look at my file?

Because I'm pretty sure, although I guess you're the expert, but I'm fairly certain this isn't the way it was meant to go.

Remembering

2008-04-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

I remember the dates of everything. This can be annoying to people around me, but I seem to have a remarkable memory for recalling the day, the month, the year of situations that had an impact on me.

And so, it has been very close to a year since the night his leg wrapped around mine underneath the table, cutting short the conversation I was having with the drunken girl beside me. As our eyes, colour still unfamiliar, met, I knew that the look on his face would remain a burned image in my brain for a long time to come.

The months that ensued were a whirlwind and ones also not soon forgotten. And yet, it's so strange that while I can recall so many of the dates, the times, the places, spaces, faces, the month, the week, the day, when it comes to the moment, oh, that cruel moment, when everything shifted, I cannot remember, cannot remember at all.

Late for dinner

2008-03-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

And it's a bit too late, now, for teenaged insecurities and changing in the bathroom. It's a bit too late to become an adult bulimic or a red wine alcoholic. It's a bit too late, but you've missed it somehow even though you go over and over it in your head and can't quite pinpoint where it went. And yet the hands you love so much that firmly grasp your weakened shoulders to push you away are real - they're there and the intent is clear even though your head feels fuzzy.

And so why, then, is everything around me settled? Why are there weddings, and babies and dining room sets and living room carpets and fridges bought on credit and loveseats paid in full?

Captured

2008-02-27T20:27:00.000-08:00

"It's ok for you to say what you want from me. I believe it's the only way for me to be exactly what you want me to be."
-Wilco

It's strange how a camera can capture a moment where everything in your heart felt perfectly at peace. And how that brief flicker of an instant throws colour on all the grey, murky doubt, casting a bright, welcome shadow.

Seesaw

2008-01-29T21:07:00.000-08:00

'I trust no emotion. I believe in locomotion.'
-Jeff Tweedy

So of course everyone around you thinks you're completely crazy and the sympathetic smiles and the hands that cover yours make your stomach turn to water. But, for some reason, you cannot erase the memories of wine-fueled summer nights on a front porch and the tangled mess of clothes on the floor. Of iceburg-chasing boat rides and CBC Saturday mornings and too much coffee and an easy smile that has burned it's memory into your brain, forever taunting.

Cool

2008-01-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

Overheard in a conversation amongst fifth graders on a Vancouver City bus.

'Everybody thinks he's so cool, but, but, but he's not. He's married!'

To you.

2008-01-13T16:56:00.000-08:00

And to you, because I know you’re here, I miss you, despite it all.

There are moments when I realize just how much you got me through. And I can hear your voice in my head telling me to get it together, to seriously get my shit together because it’s starting to become ridiculous and on the days when I do manage to hold my head just a little bit higher, to you, because I know you’re here, well, that’s thanks to you.

Gloss

2008-01-13T16:47:00.000-08:00

'It's become so obvious, that you're so oblivious, to yourself.'
Wilco

And it’s funny how you cross over. How you swallow a bit harder and smile a bit brighter. How you pretend. How you laugh, how you say what you don’t mean and you say it again until you’ve convinced yourself. Or at least, him. And how you feel so betrayed that he buys all your crap. Because it isn’t great, it isn’t even good and the high ceilings and the bamboo floors and the sunken living room and the fireplace – those things are someone you don’t even know.

Someone you aren’t sure you want to know. And what you want to say, what you want to tell him is that you want poor heating and bad lighting and doors that don’t lock and windows you have to slam shut. That Porsches are dumb and Parisian balconies are for jumping off of. That you want scruffy hair and lopsided smiles and you just aren't sure anything else will do at all.

Away from her

2008-01-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

"What was I thinking, when I said it didn't hurt?"
-Wilco

My dad is an airline pilot and when I was a kid, and he would go away on trips, I would pack and sneak elaborate snacks into his suitcase when he wasn't looking. Snacks made of delicacies such as Chips Ahoy! cookies and swiss rolls, things that undoubtedly could not be had in far-off places such as Chile or Calgary.

In my mind, these carefully packed bundles were sure to provide some small, cherished comfort that would serve to ease was must surely be the worst possible pain of all - being away from me. So imagine my dumbfounded confusion when I padded, slippered and pyjama-ed down the hall early one morning, to slip one of my carepackages into his flight bag, and there lay the startling, sweet evidence that my existence was not all-consuming on the other side of the world. Maybe not even at home. The four, chocolate chip cookies and homemade brownies (I had really outdone myself that time) from last week, remained untouched - their love and reassurance untapped.

It's funny, how you can feel like a six-year old girl in a 26 year-old woman's body when someone who means so much, too much, really, lives on the other side of your country. How you can be reduced to a cookie-pushing mess unable to see, unable to grasp, how that someone, can be ok, being without you. And you somehow manage to hold back from infusing their dusty corners, and you smile smiles that are too bright. And no one notices but you.

And so, and maybe some space, Heather. And California, maybe, Heather. El Dorado. And can you watch my dog, can you feed her, walk her, love her? What about the grey, what about the yellow? And is my hair ok? How about these shoes? You think? And my ticket, the airport, five-thirty, really? And, of course, of course. Oh, but of course. There is gas in the car and money for pizza if you want, and the wine-opener is in the righthand drawer. Oh, and there are cookies in the cupboard.

Enough

2007-11-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

It's hard when you realize that it will never be enough.

Because you're there already, aren't you? You did what you set out to do and you're there, you're here, you're it all and it's not very much. It's nothing at all, really.

It looked bigger on paper.

Much bigger.

And so, what now, where now, where to, who to, and what then, what after that?

And then?

It's hard when you realize that your entire life is a plan. It's always the next day, the next week, the next month, next year, next time.

I walked out of my professor's office the other day encouraged. Jubilant, maybe. And yet, I recognized that feeling - the one I had when I found out I would be coming here. And it hit me then, that I had fooled myself into thinking this would be enough, that this time, it was enough.

It is never enough.

Page one

2007-11-04T21:25:00.001-08:00

I remember a few years ago one of my best friends made a temporary move to Sydney, Australia. The hardest part, she said, was knowing that she could walk down the street armed with the full, yet sad knowledge that there was absolutely no possibility of bumping into someone she knew.

The sun was beautiful and bright that morning and as I made my way along Point Grey Road, it seemed perfectly natural that he should be there, that he should call out my name, hop of his bike, and we would walk there together.

Tonight, as I sat around a crowded table, filled with pitchers of beer and Diet Cokes, half-eaten plates of pizza and discarded napkins, I looked at the smiling faces around me and remembered, with a deep sense of pleasure, how good it feels to laugh, to really laugh, until tears well in your eyes and threaten to spill.

It made me realize that it is a beginning that is starting, slowly, to take shape and to take hold, and that while the middle and the end remain so strangely unknown, that the first page has been turned.

In between

2007-10-30T14:29:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, I think it would be very peaceful to live in between.

In between cups of lukewarm tea in paint-chipped mugs. In between black and white photographs, between winter nights and wine-soaked summer suppers. In between organic cafes and trips to a market. In between runs in the rain and slow walks by the ocean. In between phone calls home, in between cold mornings wrapped in afghan blankets.

In between.

Because sometimes, living on either end, is where the hurt is.

A love quad-rangle

2007-09-20T20:44:00.000-07:00

Just to look at her, you know she takes her coffee with sugar. And probably with 35% cream. Because it tastes good and that is enough.

She has a knapsack slung over her shoulder and the straps are worn. She’s a Vancouver Film School student but you know she doesn’t carry the bag so that people know. She carries it because it’s comfortable and that is enough.

Her hair is a tawny shade of bottled red, her jeans are frayed. Her leather jacket is a size too small because it wasn’t bought for her. But it’s warm and it’s worn and that is enough.

Her boyfriend hands her back her thermos of coffee, a small hand poking out of a sleeve too long. He stares at her. She laughs.

“I’ll be back by ten,” she says. She promises.

She places a Dock Martined-foot on the first step of the bus, turns her broad, smiling face towards his. “Have a good day, babe,” she drawls. He stares. She laughs.

A barely audible sigh escapes from this small man, this boy, with a thrift shop plaid jacket and a walkman in the pocket of his Levi’s. He’s still wearing the Ramones t-shirt he wore to bed because it smells like her. He turns to walk away, to start his day, to start to fill the hours between now and 10 tonight, when his world will feel right again.

A couple gets on the bus. A powerful couple. His hair is full of K-Pax, his shoes are shined. He’s tired, he was up at 5 and in the gym; he doesn’t drink coffee. He doesn’t believe in coffee. He is conscious of the eyes that turn, he awaits their recognition. He welcomes and shuns them. He glances over at the film school girl and straightens the collar of his Banana Republic trench coat.

A woman sits down beside him. Her electric blue rain coat looks strangely obscene on such a grey day. She is thin in a nervous way, her face is pretty, but drawn. She will not be attractive when she’s 45 and she knows this. She drinks coffee in the bathroom and munches anxiously on soy beans during her lunch hour. An engagement ring fits loosely on her finger – no wedding band yet snuggles up against it. But it will come. Oh but of course it will come!

She opens up an oversized leather purse, pulls out a cellphone with a poodle charm hanging from it. She flips rapidly through the screen, and curls up next to her fiancé. ‘Look at that one, babe, isn’t it just soo cute of us?’ Arms crossed, he allows his head to tip slightly. A forced smile mercifully curls out from a strong, pronounced jaw – he remains silent. She is encouraged and tries again. “How about this one – adorable!” This time, he verbally agrees with the digital representation of their lives, of his life. He is in pain.

They get off the bus and she immediately tucks a bright blue arm in his. It is teeming rain – she shields her salon-styled hair with her purse. She stumbles in her heels – he doesn’t change his pace. He forges ahead, and they fall out of step. The distance between them grows.

And as film school girl bops off the bus, her face, her hair, her smile gratefully meeting the rain, I couldn’t help but think, how right would it be, how peaceful would it be, what an awakening would it be, were film school girl to spend a night in a smoky bar with Banana boy, for nervous soy muncher to spend a night laughing, really and truly laughing over a bowl of greasy popcorn and beer, with a man who actually saw her. Sometimes, all is just not right with our worlds, and it's such a shame that sometimes, only strangers on buses on rainy Vancouver days, can see this.

A city's finest

2007-09-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

Alright.

So I just moved here, and I'm in no position to pass judgement on what has aptly been dubbed North America's most beautiful city. But coming from a lifetime in Montreal, to be plopped down in Vancouver, does not come without it's challenges.

And so, while freckled mothers here feed their wide-eyed children named Juliet or Charles peeled apple slices dipped in white organic honey, while people compost and gaze at you with deliberate, though passive horror as you accidentally jog over into the 'bikers' lane, as people smile and wave and wish you a great day and actually mean it, while the sun commands you from the sky, in all its yellow glory, to be happy, to be bright, while people discuss the virtues of slicing open vanilla beans diagonally as opposed to straight, while people let their dogs run free and their cars on biofuel, while the beaches are packed with grandmothers doing yoga, all of this, all of this and more, makes a girl a little nostalgic.

A little nostalgic for a night on a Montreal street where Guy would stagger out from Saint Sulpice bar, to vomit his twelve Labatt Blues all over his Walmart running shoes, to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, not bothering to roll up the sleeve of his Point Zero shirt, to place his hands firmly on his knees, to turn in the direction of his buddy Jean who leans out the door to shout that he's ordering another round, and is that cool, and of course, and oh but of course, Guy nods his head in an emphatic 'yes' because that, all of that and more, is Montreal.

Soul surfing

2007-09-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

Some observations on Vancouver.

There are more dogs than people in this city.

A person's salary can largely be determined by the type of coffee he or she drinks. The sliding scale runs from Tim Hortons, to Starbucks, to rest at Antigua, which boasts a $200 cup, if you're so inclined.

Despite the strike that is running into its seventh week, the streets are exceedingly clean. And that is because all the city's litter is being dumped into the downtown eastside.

People here have disturbingly low BMI's. I am beginning to suspect that Vancouver ships all its overweight citizens out onto islands somewhere, along with the garbage that overflows from the downtown eastside.

People who pass you on the street at 6:30 a.m. as you trudge your way to school smile at you with toothy, soul-penetrating smiles that make you feel strangely violated that early in the morning.

Stores have insultingly obvious names, such as moMENtum, for a males-only spa.

Everyone is blond. Everyone is always discussing his or her existential crisis while simultaneously balancing a cup of non-fat-mocha-latte-extra-tall-extra-hot-extra-extra-blah-blah-do-I-sound-cool-yet-do-I-do-I, while stretching into the downward dog position on his or her LuLu yoga mat. Everyone has a gay best friend.

Oh. And I saw two complete heads of hair lying on the pavement as I crossed the Burrard Street bridge the other day. I'm not entirely certain how that fits in with anything, but there it is.

Daybreak

2007-08-31T06:18:00.000-07:00

The morning comes quickly and no sun greets you. And yet, everything seems a bit brighter, somehow. You turn and look into an unsmiling face, and the arms that reach out squeeze a little too tight.

And yet, not tight enough.

Salut, Montreal. You have been good to me.

Heart of Hearts

2007-08-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

As I get ready to make a cross-country move, I am reminded that home isn't where you lay your head - it's where you lay your heart.

Dead on impact

2007-08-16T20:20:00.000-07:00

I got an e-mail this morning from someone I dated very briefly last winter. We parted amicably, and so to see a message with his name on it in my inbox wasn't surprising, as we had made very casual plans to see each other some time in the next two weeks or so, before I head off to BC. I had to cancel those very same plans this weekend, and felt no real sense of urgency to reschedule, which was why the content of his message this morning struck me as so bizarre.

Mmmm there is something in particular I wanted to talk to you about. I have seen a therapist a few times since our relationship ended, and one of the things we talked about was you. I thought it might be insightful for you to hear some of the things that I took away from those conversations. Don't worry. I don't think it would be an unpleasant conversation for you...perhaps a little bit uncomfortable at worse, but there is also a chance you might find it...hmmm...educational *lol*.

That being said, I am not sure if I am feeling an urge to talk with you more for my benefit or your own. Well...I'll leave it to your judgment to decide if you have time for a talk. I suppose I could just write you a letter instead.

It amazes me the impact you can have on someone's life, when taking leave of their company brought you nothing less than a sheer sense of relief. It leaves me stunned that a four-week period in my life I can barely recall the details of, and am not particularly interested even in revisiting mentally, could have prompted someone to spend even five minutes worth of a therapy session discussing.

And yet, the reason for my amazement, and subsequent sadness, is the realization that some of the men who have had the greatest impact on my own life, likely felt that same sense of relief when they walked out of my proverbial door. It feels so tragic in a way, that the surest way to hurt someone, is to feel indifferent towards their pain, because that is the one thing you simply cannot help.

The heart, as they say, does not lie.

Cheesecake

2007-07-31T18:10:00.000-07:00

It's the intense, blinding hatred you feel for your telephone and the inability to see the madness behind such emotion for an inanimate object. It's the questions, the ambiguous answers and the questions that come from those answers. It's the roller coaster ride. It's the wondering how on earth you ever managed to sleep alone every night, and how you will again. It's sex that leaves you starved, it's intimacy that leaves you ravaged. It's you, betraying everything you thought you were, and loving, hating every minute of it. It's the clear sense that you, are slipping away from you, it's the fogginess, the blurred edges, the impossibility of interpretation. It's the shift, it's the change, it's a tiredness you can't quite name. It's knowing and it's ignorance.

It's sitting at your friend's kitchen table and watching as her husband cuts her a third piece of cheesecake and knowing you will never have that.

Unfortunate Coincidence

2007-07-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying ---
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
-Dorothy Parker

Hmph.

Watershed

2007-07-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

It's funny how it changes.

How you can sit and stare at your convictions, hold them in your tired, cupped hands, only to watch them slip through your weakened fingers like water. And what amazes you even more, perhaps, is the complete absence of desire to try and capture them, to regain some sort of stronghold over what you thought mattered most.

Because somewhere, in the tiny, wet beads that remain, hopefully, lies something better. A little less certain, a road not quite as traveled, but with the promise of a pool at the end, an entire body of water, waiting, just for you.

Kids in the hall

2007-06-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

He strolls down Robson, a yoga mat tucked neatly under a toned, tanned arm. Bluetooth firmly in place, a warm smile of recognition breaks across his face as he sees you sitting, folding up your copy of the Vancouver Sun at the plastic, umbrella-shaded table to make room. An airy kiss graces each of your cheeks, an order for a non-fat-something-or-other is placed. A sense of calm, of relief washes over.

He glances down at the frantic, red-penned circling you've done on the 'apartments for rent' page.

'We'll find you something babe, don't you worry one bit about it.'

The briefcase is opened; a blackberry is placed on the table.

He sees the smirk you tried, failed to hide.

'I know he says,' sheepish. 'I know.'

But he's a lawyer now, he's a grown-up now, and I guess you should be, too. And it's heavy lifting now, and it's no more playtime now and I guess you should follow suit.

He tells you of people, of places and things. And they all feel so far from the nights piled into his mom's minivan, from backyard parties with ice cream cakes and first kisses. It's property now, it's research grants now, it's car co-ops and broken hearts.

As you stroll through your goodbye, making plans, making promises, you remember to gently inquire. The girl, the sweet one, with the brown eyes and the light laugh. A silence casts over, and he turns to you, eyes questioning.

'I'm scared, Heath,' he says.

And you realize, that despite, or perhaps in spite of, courtrooms, Lacoste running shoes, flaxseed and composts, regardless of London jaunts and ski weekends, conference presentations and tailored-suits that he is still what he always was. That you both are, what you always were. Kids playing at being grown up. And not always doing a good job.

The hug lasts a little longer, and you feel it might be because you're trying to hold onto something that always feels so out of grasp. And so, you take the opportunity to whipser,

'You're alright. We're alright.'

Faceless, spaceless

2007-05-28T19:44:00.001-07:00

'I'm trying to tell you something about my life. Maybe to get me in between black and white.'

-Closer to fine

And it's good, sometimes, to be nameless. And it's better, sometimes, to be faceless.

So that you can eat ice cream for breakfast and cookies straight from the box for dinner. So that you can ride a merry-go-round in the rain and laugh so hard your face hurts. So that you can splash through puddles and kick at stones, so that you can run up a flight of stone steps just to see what's at the top. So that you can laugh at your own breathlessness when you realize there's nothing. So that you can board a train when you have no idea where it stops, and no real concept of where it started, either.

It's good, sometimes, to be nameless. It's good, sometimes to be faceless. Because often, what's hiding, what's lurking and what's smiling, is you.

Unwedded Miss

2007-04-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

I started packing.

I started packing, and I have one, small box now sitting in my living room, apart from all the others, the name of my new city written bravely across the top. Housed in that cardboard container are several, select items, pictures, three books and a few candles, that will keep me company for the next two years, as I trade in a half decent apartment and a decent-paying job, a car and a medical plan, for a dorm room, a bus pass and textbooks, on the other side of the country.

I am excited about this move. I'm excited about my new campus, which sits on top of a mountain. I'm excited about my new program. I'm excited to be able to wear jeans again every day and be justified in eating cereal for dinner if I choose to.

But most of all, I am excited to be escaping the stark realization that I, unlike many of my close friends, am not getting married. I do not spend my weekends out house hunting. I don't care about tile samples and I don't stress over the colour of my bridesmaids' dresses. I am not pregnant, and I won't be for a long time. I may not ever be. And so, I do not spend my Sunday mornings at Baby Yoga or Stroller Aerobics. I don't post copious amounts of photos of me and a swollen belly to my facebook, I don't e-mail my friends with the latest pictures of me and baby in the park. I don't browse the David's Bridal website and I have not given two seconds thought to whether I prefer white or yellow gold wedding bands.

I'd like to be able to say I am completely comfortable with my life and where it is. In a lot of ways I am. But there are instances, situations, exchanges and times where a 26-year-old, unmarried woman with no marriage prospects can't escape the feeling she's done something wrong, that she has missed a critical step somewhere, and will be forever branded by this fumbled, foiled footing for years to come.

Or at least until the first of her friends gets divorced.

Maybe it was the look on the face of the bank teller yesterday as I signed for my Japanese Yen, when he wished 'my husband and I' a fabulous trip, and I smiled and told him I was going alone. Maybe it's in the note of smugness I detect in some of my friends' voices as they show off their new dining room tables and stainless steel refrigerators. Or maybe it's me and my own insecurity, and my fear at knowing that when I step on that plane at the end of August, it will be to get away as far as I can from the sounds of wedding bells and baby showers, registries and seating plans.

And hopefully, with a bit of time a bit more courage, it will feel like home.

Child's Play

2007-04-24T18:29:00.001-07:00

You know you're not cut out to be a mother when, at a children's birthday party, a balloon hits you in the back of the head, prompting you to spill a glass full of Diet Coke all over the new linen pants you're wearing, and your fury at the four year-old child whose antics culiminated in this disaster is entirely disproportionate.

That, or when you realize that while everyone else brought the one year-old child gifts of teddy bears, corduroy dresses and blankets, you bought her a pair of pink, leather Puma shoes. And your reasoning behind this gift selection was, that if they had them in your size, you would have bought them for yourself.

Baby and the Bathwater

2007-04-15T18:47:00.000-07:00

"I throw myself, at nothing."
-The Be Good Tanyas

It sure feels like it sometimes, n'est pas?

Update: Which is alright, because on those particular days, specifically when the weather is ghastly, lamposts throw themselves, or rather, hurl themselves, at my car, hitting their target with a disturbing amount of accuracy.

Sigh.

Holding Hands

2007-04-09T19:18:00.000-07:00

I went to a figure skating show on Saturday afternoon.

I know.

I had to.

It was a fundraiser for the women's shelter, and everyone on the board pitched in to sell tickets, direct people to hot dogs and hot chocolate, etc. It actually turned out to be a fantastic event, and despite having to sit on a freezing cold, cement bleacher for three hours, it was a lovely day.

My favourite act of the entire show was the group of 12 and under kids. There were roughly 20 of them, decked out in bright yellow outfits, shaky on their tiny skates, arms spread wide for the balance they hadn't yet mastered. At one point, one of the taller girls in the group, lanky with long, stringy brown hair and glasses, tripped over her own skate, and went crashing to a cruel fall on the ice floor. The girl performing beside her, stopped dead in her tracks (which didn't appear to be an easy feat in and of itself) and reached out a hand to her fallen comrade. Oblivious to the fact that the routine was carrying on without her, this girl's sole concern was helping her friend safely to her feet. It was the best part of the show.

That evening, I went to a going-away party for one of my closest, childhood friends. We ended up making the trek to St. Laurent, to wait outside in the bitter, freezing cold, to get into Rouge. When we finally got the coveted nod from the sombre bouncer, standing, arms crossed, expression firm, we made our way inside. I'll skip over the details of the evening (the place is red inside), but what struck me was the washroom system. They were set up so people waiting in line could peer in and watch you washing your hands, sucking in your cheeks, or fluffing your hair, but this wasn't terribly surprising. What was remarkable, though it perhaps shouldn't have been, was the fact that people literally trampled over one another, jockeying for position in front of a mirror. Stepping on toes, slamming into shoulders, making no eye contact, the mission was the mirror, and nothing else mattered.

As I made my way out into the cold Montreal night after our evening, and my friends and I piled into a cab, I started to think; when did we stop holding out hands, and start crushing them instead? When was the moment where we decided, that when someone was falling, we wouldn't provide a safety net, but rather, we'd move out of the way to give them ample room to land alone?

Sometimes, I think we, with our grown-up faces and our grown-up pink drinks, our perfume, our busy, self-consumed days and nights and in-betweens, could stand to learn an awful lot from a seven-year-old girl, shaky, unsteady and uncertain, on a pair of figure skates.

2007-04-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

'Take a look, at my face. For the last time. I never knew you, you never knew me. Say hello. Say goodbye.'
-David Grey

He sits down at your table, which is crowded with practice exams and Splenda wrappers; he looks like he hasn't slept in a month. He leafs through your textbook, bored eyes glazing over the numerical equations, looks at you and says, 'Christ, H, I'd rather edit the bloody thing.' Heads swivel in your direction at the accent, reminiscent of Manchester United and enviable jagged-sharp wit, much in the same way they always did. The way they always do. Your face breaks into a smile you immediately wish with a vengeance you could undo. Because this is the thing. This, is the point. You always smiled. You always laughed. You always bought in, and you paid full price. And this time, the cost was so high it left you begging on the street corner in ratty clothes with a tin can.

'You've hurt me,' you say in a voice that unwittingly takes on the tone of a child, and the moment the words escape your dry mouth, you realize how pathetically hollow they sound. Because he knows. Because he always knew.

He leans forward. He leans too close.

"I know," he says.

You kick open your own floodgates now, start rambling about the moral integrity that used to be yours, how you were tricked, lied to, used. You launch into a bitter tirade of a tainted history, of misinterpreted tears and shallow fears. Of cars and houses, of wives and friends, of careers and plane tickets. Of oceans and ignorance.

"I'm sorry that it was you," he says, tears welling in his eyes. Tears filled with salt you would rob, if you could. "I wish it had been anyone but you."

You tell him to leave and don't mean it. Because as he looks into your face and stands to turn away, you know that you have been forever changed. That he holds a piece of you that you will spend many years to come, trying desperately to get back.

And yet, the truth remains. Because the truth is, you probably wouldn't have had it any other way.

The last supper

2007-04-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

I went out for dinner on Friday evening with some girls I know through work. Sitting at a table slightly behind us was a group of four women, roughly between the ages of 45-50.

Amidst their chatter of husbands and a lack thereof, of high school curriculum, the benefits of probiotics, of mortgages and Disney World vacations, each woman took a systematic turn at cutting a small bite of carrot cake from the slice that sat on a plate in front of them. It was comical to watch the pattern that developed; bits and bites, decreasing in size were removed from the hunk, as no one wanted to assume responsibility for attacking the middle. The cake took on the distinct appearance of a top-heavy, withered apple core, finally toppling over in collapsed, weakened surrender. The four forks took turns hovering, none making the daring move to dive in. The cake lay there, under the forlorn glances of its polite consumers.

Meanwhile, at a table across the room, sat roughly 12 men, between the ages of 25-35. Working like a well-oiled machine, slices of pizza, french fries and slugs of beer were traded back and forth across the table, unabashed hands reaching, swapping, slapping away.

Sometimes, I think men have got a really, really good thing going.

Lie to me. I promise, I'll believe

2007-03-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

I lied, he says, and it's plain and it's simple.

Only nothing will ever be plain again.

And the truth floats between you like a teasing, helium balloon that neither of you reaches up quick enough to grasp.

It's a betrayal you can taste, it's a ravage of all you hold dear.
It's an anger you don't quite feel.

It's what was there all along, but what you, in all your childish delight, squeezed your eyes shut in front of, in defiance, in fear.

In love?

Building her case

2007-03-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

And it makes a case then, for being alone. It makes a case.

She makes a case, the girl does, as she screams into her cellphone on the corner of De Maisonneuve and Guy, spitting and swearing, cursing and crying. The male passersby chuckle, thinking 'glad it's not me,' and the women glance upwards shyly, because we all know we've been there.

She makes a case, the woman does, as she packs her things into boxes, forced to start over, to make a new beginning, again, only this time, it doesn't feel new. It feels tired and forced, messy and in shambles.

She makes a case, then, the girl, who rummages for phone numbers and sifts through errant pieces of paper, who checks e-mails and msn's and all the other voyeuristic technological mediums of our generation. She makes a case, because she's right. Of course, she is right.

She makes a case, the woman does, as she redecorates her house, as she cuts her hair. As she treats herself to measured slices of chocolate truffle cake and walks in the Arboretum. She makes a case, as she gets a library membership, a gym membership, an art club membership, as she sections off her time into manageable compartments, filling up the days, the hours, the weeks and the life not lead.

You make a case then, for yourself, you do, as the hurt rolls in, as it rolls over you, and you think, 'welcome in, old friend, welcome in again.'

But the question remains of when it will end, and as the fog slowly becomes replaced by a daunting clarity, that it will only end when you make a choice, when your case, is won.

A Million Little Failures

2007-03-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

She stands, she hovers, arm extended, invisible particles of sea salt falling to the carpeted floor. Eyes bright, hopeful, she shakes her hand.

A silent offering.

I glance up from my computer screen, finish typing the sentence I have in my head before I lose it.

‘Would you like one?’ she questions tentatively, waving the Miss Vickie’s chip bag in front of me.

I wrinkle my nose.

‘No thanks,’ I reply.

The arm falls, the bag crinkles in her hand as she bunches up the top of it. She smiles a sad smile, turns and leaves my office.

I watch her go and I immediately I begin to feel badly.

My co-worker is on a diet. Of sorts. We cheer her on as she measures out her teaspoon of salad dressing at lunch and look the other way as the cookie cupboard is mysteriously raided in the afternoon.

I realized that her offering me part of her already guilt-ridden snack was in actual fact, a request for an accomplice to a little failure. A plea to share the pinprick of shame; to make it somehow seem not so bad.

We all fail. In a million little ways, we fail. We fail ourselves, our friends, our families, our co-workers; strangers.

The other day, in the locker room of my gym, a middle-aged woman, relatively new to the club, stands on an electronic scale for an agonizing, five full minutes. She leans slowly to her left side; re-balances to the right. She steps off, removes the elastic band from her graying hair, shakes it out and steps back on again. Frowns. Leans forward. With a final sigh, she steps down.

No one says a word. No one, myself included, says what should have been said to that woman. That it’s OK. That she is beautiful anyway. That she looks healthy. That her skin is rosy, that her smile is bright. That she is a woman and she is radiant.

And most importantly, that the scale on the other side of the room weighs you in at five pounds less.

You phone a girlfriend at two in the afternoon on a Saturday.

‘Hey hon, how’s it going? What are you doing?’

‘Drinking a glass of wine and watching my roommate make my bed.’

‘You ok?’

(Laughs) ‘Why, because it’s two in the afternoon and I’m drinking or because I wasn’t able to make my own bed and my roommate is doing it for me?’

‘Well, you know. Either.’

You’re in a food court, trying to manipulate a piece of sushi in and successfully out of an impossibly small plastic cup of Soya sauce. A woman, standing in line for a piece of pizza, is holding a roughly eight-month old baby girl who is screaming with fierce determination. The child’s face is red and angry; she is pushing with all her force against her tired, frazzled mother. The woman tries to shush her. Rocks her. Tries to give her a bottle. A Pacifier. The child screams and then screams louder. Finally, in a moment of pure frustration, the mother looks into her child’s face and screams back.

A man you care about, a man you care about a lot, tells you he’s sorry, that he’s really sorry, that he can’t. That he’s failed you; that he’s failed her. Tells you he’d like it if you understood, but that it isn’t really necessary at this point in time.

We all fail. In a million little ways, we fail. But I find, that as I bumble along, that it’s the failures in people that make them human. It’s the failures in people that I like.

10 little things

2007-03-07T17:57:00.000-08:00

A tag by Vila over at http://thesmokingsection.wordpress.com prompted me to put together a little list on the ten oddest things about me.

Alors!

1) I always spoil the ending of a book by reading the last page before I get there, no matter how much I'm enjoying the story.

2) I never pay parking tickets, license or medicare renewal fees or return library books even remotely close to on time. Which reminds me...

3) One of my absolute favourite snacks is peanut butter stirred with Splenda. Don't judge.

4) After finding a bug on my pillow a few months ago, I now unmake and remake my bed every single night, just to make absolutely certain no unwelcome visitors are crawling around in there!

5) I am shamelessly addicted to Oprah magazine and read it religiously every month. From finish to start, of course. Don't you judge me!

6) I don't own a working television.

7) I have absolutely no fascination with celebrities. I can honestly say there isn't one famous person I feel my life would be enriched by meeting.

8) I make 99.9% of my phone calls from the bathtub.

9) I once got yanked over by security at the airport for a 'conspicuous-looking item' in my bag, which, I humbly admit, was my bathroom scale. I was 16. So don't judge.

10) This list got progressively easier to write as I went along. And that makes me nervous.

I am ridiculously terrible at inserting links properly, so I'm not even going to try. But Arthur, Walters, K, Mood Indigo, S'Mat and Jonasparker, kids, you're up. A vos tours!

What they didn't tell you

2007-03-03T18:02:00.000-08:00

It hurts a lot more.

That crossing your own boundaries is harder on you than when someone else does it.

That no, you actually won't grow up to love green beans.

You won't feel as guilty as you should.

That the world can be polarized into two, broad categories: People who are good at math and people who aren't.

And that the people who are good at math hate you.

That a piece of you really in fact does die from a broken heart.

That time doesn't heal all wounds. Some remain oozing, gaping gashes for years to come.

You don't learn from your mistakes. You keep making them until you simply arrive at a point where you've accepted the fact that you are a person who makes mistakes.

Big ones.

Scary movies get scarier the older you get.

That always being true to yourself doesn't always work out.

That just being yourself is really, the hardest thing in the world to do, because your concept of self is in perpetual shift mode.

You really weren't the prettiest girl in the class, and plaid did, in fact, make you look fat.

Face forward

2007-03-02T19:32:00.000-08:00

I know.

I said, I know.

But in my defense, I was blackmailed.

I joined facebook.

And all that it implies.

Explain me this

2007-02-25T19:51:00.000-08:00

Finally.

I finally got myself accepted to grad school. Two years and an amount of money I'd really rather not acknowledge spent on under grad classes later, I got that coveted piece of paper that officially tells me I'm in.

And so, if everything goes to plan, which it rarely does (with an ironically disturbing amount of regularity), I will be leaving Montreal for a city I've never so much as set foot in, to study public policy.

I'm happy about this. Really happy. And what has made me even happier has been the reaction of my friends and family when I shared my news. It was the reaction of one person in particular that gave me slight pause, and prompted me to write this.

One of my very good girlfriends is married to a fantastic man, has a spectacular child, and lives in a lovely home. We've known each other for years, and although our lives have gone in drastically different directions (read: I live in apartment, sans fabulous husband or child and this situation is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future), we have remained mutually supportive of one another's endeavors, and highly respectful of each other's choices.

I wasn't surprised, therefore, when she sent me a beautiful, congratulatory note, telling me how proud of me she is. It was the way she signed it that threw me for a loop.

'Just wait- now you're going to meet a fantastic guy, the man of your dreams, and then you'll be set!'

Why can't I be set without the man of my dreams? What if there isn't one? Does this somehow make my life unfulfilled, somehow less than what it should be? Does it inevitably imply that I still have my work cut out for me, that I've failed in my inability to find someone to share my life with? Can't I share my life with me, just me, and have that be OK?

It wasn't that her reaction hurt my feelings, but it did make me think, make me question the female perception that anything a woman does outside of marriage, of having and raising children is just that -outside. Just part of the waiting game, just a girl biding her time and trying to make herself useful in the interim.

Just filler.

She's a big girl now

2007-02-17T21:58:00.000-08:00

"It's a big girl world now, full of big girl things."

-Kendall Payne

Enough said.

It's all around me

2007-02-14T21:05:00.000-08:00

I am not going to release yet another disparaging post about the commercial, despair-inducing, chocolate-indulging nature of Valentine's Day into the blogosphere, as I am quietly confident there are already enough of them floating around. I have never been a large supporter of the day to begin with, and although the temptation to condemn it with a vengeance this year is perhaps slightly stronger than holidays previous, I will not give in! If Hallmark tells us this is a day to celebrate love and the joy it brings to our lives on an individual and collective level, I figure I can do that. Because to be truthful, although I won't be going home to a bottle of wine and a home-cooked meal, lovingly prepared by some fabulous man, this doesn't discount or discredit all the other amazing ways that love rears its lovely little head in my life on a daily basis.

It's in the Valentine's card my best friend made sure was in my inbox this morning.

It's in the e-mail my mom made sure I would get as soon as I got into work, wishing me a happy day.
It's in the exchange I had with my elderly neighbour in the elevator this morning, when he asked me if I enjoyed the books his wife gave me.

It's the anonymous someone who collected my newspapers for me all last week while I was away at a conference, and slipped them under my door when I got back.

It's in the shared cup of coffee with a friend as she confides in you about her excitement about moving in with her boyfriend, and her fear of what her Catholic family will say.

It's in the guy in your economics class who shyly hands you copies of the notes he took for you, unasked when you missed last week's lecture.

It's in the excited message from your friend who tells you to find something decent to wear, because she bought you tickets to the opera for Valentine's Day.

It's in yourself, in the cup of tea you brew, the workout you force yourself to do because you know it's good for you, it's in the evening you spend reading a fantastic book.

It's in the smiles you give, the hugs you squeeze, the tears you dry, the consoling words you speak.

It's in the letters you write, the compliments you give, the favours you extend.

It's knowing that this year, you don't have to look outside for love, because it's all around.

It's next door, it's down the street. It's in a friend's apartment, it's in your family home.

It's in an e-mailed letter, it's a phone call away. But most importantly, it's in you.

So Happy Valentine's Day to you all. However that happens to play out in your corner.

Expecting the accepted

2007-01-27T15:03:00.000-08:00

It's the said, and the unsaid.

It's in the eyes that follow you, and what they scream.

It's in the smoulder.

It's in what you shouldn't have done, but what you did.

It's in what you feel the next day.

It's in the quiet realization, the quiet compliance, the quiet acceptance.

Of yourself.

In the eye of the beholder

2007-01-24T06:23:00.000-08:00

If I ever had doubts about my ability to be a good mother to a baby, the piercing skepticism in this child's eyes certainly brings my insecurity to a head.

A guide

2007-01-22T11:54:00.000-08:00

I feel I can say this because I have been on the receiving end of a broken heart myself.

And I can honestly say that while yes I did indeed resort to eating ice cream directly from the tub, I did get ridiculously, falling-down, embarrassingly drunk, I did call my girlfriends in the middle of the night, bawling, I did listen to David Gray and cried until my face hurt, I did max out a credit card and I did call in sick to work.

I joined a gym; I joined a new gym. I worked at a gym.

I took a yoga class, I oil painted. I took a feminist literature class, I cut my hair, I grew it out again, and I resorted to all the other token, get-over-him tactics that any girl in the depths of despair would turn to when her world feels as though it has been shattered and her heart feels like it’s been put through a meat grinder and then strained, just for good measure.

But for the love of God.

I didn’t continue to text message him with little notes that read *hugs* every week. (Isn’t it painfully obvious that when someone decides to take leave of your relationship that they likely don’t want you hugging them anymore? And what are we, 13?)

I didn’t send a barrage of e-mails.

Nor did I elect to attach copies of my political science essays to those e-mails in the hopes of impressing him with my witty (wordy?) examinations of social democracy.

I didn’t call at 2:30 in the morning, two weeks after the fact, asking if we could 'talk.'

I didn’t send birthday cards and I sure as hell didn’t send flowers.

So P.S.

You shouldn’t either.

Missing the boat

2007-01-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

I think this is kind of neat.

http://montreal.craigslist.org/mis/

Grey's epitome

2007-01-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

It seems an irony of the cruelest proportions.

On my 26th birthday, in the locker room of my gym, I happen to look into the mirror above the sink while washing my hands, only to be nearly blinded by the light glaring off of it.

A grey hair.

Sigh.

Required reading

2007-01-20T14:47:00.000-08:00

Are men necessary? by Maureen Dowd.

And when you're finished with that, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

This life

2007-01-14T14:54:00.000-08:00

It can be hard, sometimes. It can shake your faith, sometimes. The faith that there is some sort of plan. Some sort of big, general idea. Something bigger than you that says, 'this is how it will be.'

She was a woman full of grace, a woman full of of love. A woman full of life.

This life loved you, Angela.

And this life will miss you.

Bigger than this

2007-01-10T08:39:00.000-08:00

It’s 7:30 and your alarm is screaming. You open your eyes and think 'you have GOT to be kidding.'

But you force your feet to slide to the floor and into a pair of slippers and pad your way down the hall. You toss a piece of whole wheat bread into your toaster and pour a glass of skim milk. You drag out a yoga mat and yawn your way through a series of crunches.

You eat, shower, try to do something that could be considered acceptable with your freaking wreck of hair. You go into the office. You drink coffee and chat with your co-workers. You drink more coffee.

You check your e-mail, arrange an interview for the story you’re writing, you check your e-mail again. You do some writing, slash some red pen marks through other people’s writing, you go home.

You change into a pair of jogging pants and drag yourself to the gym. You suffer through a 45-minute workout. You go back home.

You set your alarm to time the fifteen minutes you have to soak in a bath. You dry off, get dressed and head off to a board meeting.

You drink more coffee. You give a little presentation about the financial status of the women’s shelter project you’re working on. Two and a half hours later, you get back in your car and drive home.

You open the textbook for the economics class you’re taking and force yourself to study for a half an hour. A measly 30 minutes. 28 minutes pass. You figure this is enough.

You turn on your computer. You open the file and wait for inspiration to come. You decide it will likely come along with the handful of mixed nuts that are calling out to you from the kitchen. Definitely the next handful. You contemplate the right combination of words that will impress the review committee of the grad school program you’re applying to. You work on this for an hour and when your eyes feel like they’re going to bleed or roll out of your head or both, you shut off your computer, wash your face, smear an antioxidant you paid way too much for all over it and climb into bed wishing you never had to get up again.

You lie down, and just as you’re about to close your eyes you notice that the light on your phone is blinking furiously. You know you won’t be able to sleep until you’ve listened to that message. You dial the number and wait.

Her voice comes through the phone and with only the words, ‘Hi Heath,’ you immediately know that everything in her life has changed, for good, forever.

Her baby is born, although there is no more ‘her,’ no more ‘his,’ it’s ‘theirs,’ it’s ‘ours.’ A little girl, a little person, a little life.

Suddenly, your eight hours, your static hair, the flatness or complete and utter lack thereof of your abdominals, the illiteracy story you’re working on, the shelter, the economics class, the applications, they all seem very, very small. You feel very, very small. Like no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, how little you sleep, how much you study, it will never be big. It will never be bigger than this.

Breaking up is hard to do

2007-01-03T20:27:00.000-08:00

It's hard when you know that across town, in a cozy little apartment, there is a man, a really good man, with curly hair and a smile to melt your heart, who is crying himself to sleep over you.

It's even harder to realize that you cannot quite, although you really, really try, muster up the same sort of qualifying sadness that prevents unwelcome thoughts such as 'if I eat this banana at 11 o'clock, will I have nightmares?' and, 'is it cold enough to wear socks to bed?' from creeping into your mind.

Breaking up is hard to do. But I think the knowledge that you're going to be fine, that you're going to be better, is even harder.

Merry Christmas, Baby!

2006-12-30T10:47:00.000-08:00

Missed that memo

2006-12-29T11:40:00.000-08:00

And as you sit, drinking a cup of tea, laughing at taped episodes of Arrested Development, thinking to yourself, well, this is comfortable, it's comfortable at least, it changes.

He calls to you, through a door steamed shut, faint scents of cologne and shaving cream seeping from underneath it,

'Hey -babe, do we have plans on the 30th?'

And suddenly the Earl Gray in your mouth turns to cement and you think,

'Christ, when did this happen?

Liar Liar

2006-12-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

The five of us are snuggled up on her couch, sharing a plate heavy with a sizeable chunk of homemade Black Forest cake, her Boston Terrier wedged comfortably between us. Wet, tossed tissues are strewn about the floor, a multi-colored afghan blanket covers our toes. Her husband opens the front door, home from his poker game, takes one look at our puffy red eyes and flannel pajamas and says, ‘can I get you girls a glass of wine?’

It’s ten o’clock on Friday night, and we’re watching our friend’s wedding video. I had forgotten, in all the chaos of that day, how beautiful she was. Really, how beautiful we all were. And so, as we laughed at ourselves dancing barefoot to Follow the Leader and cried at the ‘I dos,’ it dawned on me just how incredibly, and untouchably happy we all looked.

And just how much a girl can hide behind her smile.

She's come undone

2006-12-03T18:02:00.000-08:00

I guess it’s a good sign that I didn’t drive home crying. That I didn’t come home to sink into a bath with a cup of tea only to emerge red-eyed and discouraged. I guess it’s a good thing that I walked away with a smile, and phoned a close friend to giggle like a 16-year old girl and say, ‘guess what?’ And to feel her smile back at you through the phone because she knows.

It’s the glimmer of something you can’t quite name in the eyes that meet yours across the table, the glimmer, as you talk of elementary school plays and family vacations that seems to say, ‘I understand, and it’s ok. I understand, and I like you anyway.’

Cost of a good deed? Why, that will be $42!

2006-11-28T06:11:00.000-08:00

About three months ago, I was named editor of Aids Community Care Montreal’s newspaper. It’s a nifty little publication, and in my humble opinion, does an excellent job of tying what is already a pretty close community even closer together. And so, I don’t mind battling 4:30 traffic to the complete other side of the city after a day’s work, to hole up in a church basement, pouring over articles, placing graphics, putting in commas and coming up with headlines until 11 o’clock at night. What I DO mind is coming outside, completely exhausted, hungry and ready for bed, to find a GD $42, soaking wet parking ticket on my car.

Montreal, sometimes you really, really suck.

The power of one

2006-11-21T18:47:00.000-08:00

And there are moments you can taste it. Where you can hear the voice and feel the hand and you hate this, because you realize you haven’t moved. That sure, you may have a list of accomplishments to rattle off, and good for you, but really, who cares. Not you. Not anyone else. And the despair at the knowledge that you’d trade it all in a blink. And you hate this even more. Because really, you’d like to be stronger. You’d like to have cried all your tears and tossed all your pillows and laughed all your bitter, hurt laughs. But it’ll get you. It’ll sneak up. When you least expect it. Like tonight, at the apartment of the elderly couple, who pry you with books and chai tea and photo albums of curly-haired children and spice muffins. And you look at the walls full of smiling faces and you smile back at them, but they see through you. And the fear that everyone does.

And it’s one more day of pulpy, orange juice mornings and yoga class nights, of meeting-filled afternoons and 3 a.m. longings. It’s you and it’s only you and it’s the fear of how much longer, how much more of this, and where is the reward, the payoff, the gold star, the end.

You know?

Just who do you think you are?

2006-11-20T12:25:00.000-08:00

I went to a conflict mediator training session this past weekend. There were eight people in the group. Some old, some young, some wrinkled, some fresh-faced. Some well-dressed, others shabby, some smiling and bright, all of us waiting expectantly for the animator to provide us with some sort of indication or direction as to how the day would start off.

So, paperclips.

We were each instructed to select as many of the tiny tools as we wished, in order to create some sort of artistic display. Some members of the group were incredibly creative, blowing my simple-minded spelling of the word ‘Hello’ right out of the water. We then learned that for every paperclip used, we would have to tell the others something about ourselves. (At this point, I began to desperately wish I had gone for a simple, hi).

Blessedly, I didn’t have to go first. A girl sitting to my immediate left did. I expected her to launch into the typical, “I work here, I studied there, I live here.” But to my surprise, and only mine, she didn’t. Instead she spoke of her faith. Of her love for nature. For her neighbours. For her belief in herself and the universe around her. She spoke of not being afraid of death, as she is so certain of a beautiful afterlife.

And as we went around the table, I became increasingly shocked, and impressed, that no one, no one, spoke of what they did for a living, what neighbourhood they live in, what kind of car they drive, of what their husbands do. Instead I learned of depressions and delights, of battles with food and diets. Of children and miscarriages, of weddings and losses. I heard of personal beliefs, of fears, of failures and pride, of wrinkles and laugh lines.

It may be simple, but that afternoon changed something for me. I am not an editor. I am not a student. I don’t live in Pointe Claire and I don’t drive a car and I don’t have a degree. I don’t have ten pounds to lose and I don’t hate my hair.

I am a daughter. A sister. A friend. I am a lifeline. I am happy and at times desperately sad. I am excited and I can be terrified. I am love and I am loss. I am a million things in this world and not one of them has anything to do with any of the things I, for a long time, thought made me who I am.

And so, it begs the question. For me, and for all of us. Who do you think you are?

One of these things is not like the other

2006-11-19T15:36:00.000-08:00

Oh, the baby shower.

The mothers and the mothers-in-law.

The crust-less cucumber sandwiches, the macaroni salads, the carrot sticks, the fat-free dressing, the cheese cubes, the cheese-less pizza squares, the cream cheese tortilla wraps, the pretzels, the smoked salmon, the jelly beans, the little iced cakes, the rice krispie squares, the apple juice, the caffeine-free tea.

The pastel-coloured everything.

The playschool games, the oohs, the awwws, the pictures, the cameras, the tales, the stories, the registries, the balloons.

‘Have-you-picked-a-name-have-you-painted-the-nursery-have-you-chosen-godparents-have-you-picked-a-hospital-how-are-you-feeling-how’s-hubby-feeling-are-you-excited-are-you-have-you-will-you-do-you?

The pervasive sense you have been irrevocably transported into a Jane Austen novel and are struggling, fighting desperately to come up for air.

The reams of tissue paper, wrapping paper, ribbon, streamers, discarded envelopes and gift bags. The diapers, the 15 receiving blankets. The booties, the bonnets, the baskets. The cribs, the cradles, the carriages, the clothes.

Fake smiles, fake laughs, weak hugs, kissed cheeks, tears with questionable causes.

The deep breath, the promises, the lies, the goodbyes.

The keys, the car, the drive home. The knowledge of one of many.

Word to the wise

2006-11-12T09:41:00.000-08:00

‘And children, don’t grow up. Our bodies get bigger, but our hearts get torn up.’
-Arcade Fire

You don’t say.

Head of the table

2006-11-11T14:29:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting in a pink conference room. In front of me are ten bottles of spring water, arranged in two, neat rows of five. Behind the bottles, strawberries and bananas hang out of a crystal bowl, set in a thoughtful, deliberate arrangement. A box of oolong organic tea cozies up next to a whistling kettle. The CEO stands at the head of the mahogany table, his manicured finger tips brushing the top. The navy blue pin stripe suit contours his fitness club-toned body like a bone-crushing hug.

‘Please’ he says, opening wide his arms to the ten industry journalists who stand before him, tired, weathered, hungry for something other than a freaking banana and in dire need of caffeine that only comes from coffee taken black. ‘Welcome to Virginia. Welcome to my company. Sit. Eat.’

We do as we are told. Caps are whipped off pens, tape recorders are set, papers fly. Alec introduces us to his company, the history of which traces well back to the late 1800s in Manhattan, when his grandfather came from Russia with a good idea. The business was then passed onto his father and then with his retirement, subsequently landed in his own hands. Pictures of models wearing Revlon, Chanel, Estee Lauder, and Elizabeth Arden frame the walls. Women dancing with flimsy pieces of gauzy material and spritzing themselves with Clinique mock us from their frames. Alec glances up at one particular woman, who smiles down at him with purple lips and wide, silvery eyes. She makes me think of a fish.

‘And now, I am sole shareholder.’

‘Jesus H Christ’ whispers one of the male journalists sitting to my left. ‘He even bought out his dad.’

Alec’s laugh is warm, but confusing. It bubbles in a way that lets you know there is something additionally funny about whatever has just occurred that you will never understand. In his presence you become immediately and acutely aware that the mascara you’re wearing was bought on sale and that because you forgot to pack enough socks, you’re wearing yesterday’s nylons. And you’re even more aware that he somehow can sense this. Suddenly, all of your flaws seem magnificent and huge, and so do everyone else’s, to the point where there is in fact no one in the room but him, just an overwhelming and messy pile of split ends, fleshy thighs and unbalanced chequebooks.

‘So,’ he bellows. ‘Shall we head over to the facility’?

We shuffle out. As he walks, the sleeves of his custom-made suit fall to just the right length, covering powerful wrists. Each step and swing of his arms punches through the air, making me almost want to shield it from him. He smiles and says hello to the overweight secretary, who coddles a bottle of Diet Coke, tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear and looks at her swollen feet, whispering a barely audible ‘hi there’ in return.

We enter the manufacturing facility. Alec pauses to clap a man named Steve on the back, asking him how his newborn son is doing. Steve’s eyes glimmer with something beyond happiness.

‘Oh, he’s just a beauty mister Alec. You wouldn’t believe!’

‘Children truly are a joy,’ Alec smiles into his face. ‘Truly a joy.’

We move on. A young girl wearing Jordache, stonewash jeans and a faded Guns n’ Roses t-shirt quickens her pace as she passes us and does not return my smile, or Alec’s nod.

The plant is full of workers scurrying about, rushing through the room with fluorescent earplugs and safety glasses, running from one workstation to the other in their Walmart running shoes, and all of a sudden it hit me, that all these employees, every single one, is working for Alec. That Steve is away from his newborn son so that he can help pay for Alec’s suit, for his brownstone in upper Manhattan, for the jewelry his wife wears. That the young girl with the chipped nail polish and the November Rain t-shirt didn’t go to college, but instead is working in a plant whose profits pay for Mediterranean vacations she will never go on, to pay for cars she will never drive.

Now, of course this isn’t Alec’s fault. Given that he only spends one week a month in Virginia, and still manages to know all his employees by name, all 120 of them, is impressive. It’s the nature of the system that’s at fault. But it’s the system I’m starting to really, intensely dislike.

And, starving though I was, I politely declined the offer of a perfectly ripe banana on my way out.

Life is a cabaret

2006-11-06T07:01:00.001-08:00

And we thought the smoking ban was a bad idea?

http://www.thirteen.org/nyvoices/features/license.html

Pity Party

2006-11-01T12:14:00.000-08:00

The things you notice.

I stepped into the elevator yesterday afternoon and in crowded a woman, mid-forties, dressed in a cheap, Le Garage, polyester suit, cut for a 20-year-old, but she was determined. Pink, plastic jewelry clasped her neck and wrists like a vice, had I reached out an index finger and pricked her arm she would have toppled over, such was the height of her patent leather heels. She flicks her head, gives her purse an arrogant little toss over her shoulder, cocks her head and says to the man standing to my left,

‘So. Whadiddya think of the presentation?’

The watermelon Bubble Yum she’s chewing snaps violently, the bubble inflating and collapsing in surrender behind bright orange lips.

‘Brilliant,’ he lies. ‘What a great team.’

She runs a hand with a chipped manicure through drugstore-dyed hair.

‘Yeah –sure. I did all the work.’

The man standing beside me says nothing, gives a smile that hints at sympathy that isn’t quite intended for her. And I got the distinct notion that at that very moment, this man and I were overwhelmed by a crippling sense of pity for this woman, this worker, this probable wife and mother, who teeters into work every day, armed with green and pink highlighters and an advanced understanding of the photocopier machine, this woman whose husband likely belongs to a bowling league and whose children don’t open up to her, this woman who scans the mall for sidewalk sales and the publi sac for coupons, this woman whose co-workers almost certainly don’t like her and she can’t understand why –didn’t she remember Josée’s birthday, didn’t she work late almost every night of the week? This woman who feels the need to claim responsibility for projects she does not share in order to impress passersby and elevator riders.

Pity, can be an awful thing.

City slicker

2006-10-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

It makes a noise.

There is a distinctly audible click.

It happens when you know, in no uncertain terms, that it’s closed. That there has been a shut off, a shut down; a closing of the proverbial book. And you further know, that any futile effort on your behalf to pry it back open, to jam a foot back in the door, would be viewed as somewhat pathetic. The moment is gone, opportunity lost. Move on, move away. For God’s sake, whatever you do, leave the room.

Two years ago, I found myself sitting in a news editor’s office, interviewing for a position as a city reporter at a community paper. I was pretty sure I didn’t want the job; I had just been offered one as an editor at a magazine I had interned at all through school, but I hadn’t started yet, and being superstitious as I am, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

So let’s go back.

I’m sitting on a swivel chair, which is clothed in faded grey plaid. There is a huge, bright yellow plastic, decorative pencil in a corner of the room. The editor of the paper is sitting on an equally worn-out chair in front of me, one thin leg tucked under the other. Her long hair is loose; she wears a chunky necklace that makes me think of a beach vacation. She is the only person I know to actually look good in a pair of white jeans. She takes a swig from a Naya bottle and screws the cap back on tightly.

‘So,’ she says to me, ‘let’s see what you’ve got.’

Tentatively, I hand over my portfolio, bursting at the seams with clippings on library closures, school board meetings and bake sales. There were a few articles I had written on such weighty matters as softwood lumber, international trade and energy policy, all for the magazine I was due to start working at in a few weeks time. I proudly displayed these on top.

She looked at these first.

‘Hmmm.’ She screws up her mouth, bunching her cranberry lips into a terse, wrinkled, 0. I would have put a semicolon there…sorry…I’m a sucker for grammar.’

The insult. The assault.

We chat. She questions. I answer. I qualify, she quantifies. She tells me about her passion for journalism, for the written word, for the community her paper reports on. We talk about her kids, I listen. The phone rings. We talk about juggling domestic responsibilities with work demands. I decide I like her.

‘So. What are they going to be offering you at the magazine?’ she asks.

I toss out the truthful number.

She sighs.

‘I can’t offer you that. I can’t offer you even close to that.’

We stare at each other.

‘I’m going to tell you something,’ she says. ‘When I was in my late 20s, I had two young kids and my husband had just lost his job. I was making a pretty decent salary in a PR firm. But you know what? An opportunity came up at a little, community paper, as an assistant editor. I would be making $17,000 a year. And I took it. Then I became a single mother, but I still never looked back. And now, here I am. I’m the editor-in-chief here, and I make good money. And I love what I do. But I never would have got here had I stayed in PR, had I not taken that risk, had I not taken a gamble. Had I not followed my heart.’

I thought for a minute. I thought of the amazing staff I knew I would be joining soon. I thought of the spacious office that would be mine in just a few short weeks. I thought of the expense account, of the travel, of the three weeks vacation.

‘I really appreciate the offer. It was so kind of you to meet and discuss….’

Click.

She smiles. Unscrews her water bottle.

‘Hey –you gotta eat. I understand that. We all have our own priorities; we all know what makes us tick.’

‘I know that any young, Journalism grad would be lucky to work here, in fact I think I may know someone who…’

I had the distinct feeling, a knowing, that the decision I made that afternoon was a defining one. I was choosing more than a job; I was choosing a set of priorities, of standards. I felt like I had heard so many stories of young reporters cutting their teeth at community papers who wound up running major dailies years down the road. Young journalists who took a gamble, who followed their hearts, and wound up winning Pulitzers. I felt like I was staring myself straight in the face, and wasn’t sure I liked who I saw.

Skip ahead.

I had dinner a few weeks ago, with some friends from journalism school, one of whom landed that city reporter job, and who is now the editorial coordinator at the paper. I got there first. The rest of the girls filed in, and work-related stories began to fly around the table. The city reporter friend came in last, rushing over to our table in a breathless, apologetic frenzy.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late guys!’ she starts. ‘I was doing an interview with the most amazing man…it’s going to be such a fantastic story. You wouldn’t believe…’

Click.

A thank-you card

2006-10-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

My girlfriends and I got to chatting the other night about the men in our lives (or total lack of them) and the impact they have all had on who we ultimately turned out to be. It turned out to be quite an interesting exercise, in fact. Of all the people who make up my world, my family, my friends, my co-workers, the people I volunteer with, the people I go to school with, from the woman who kicks and punches her heart out beside me in my Body Combat class, to the teenage kid in the Couche Tard downstairs who smilingly gives me change for my laundry every week, I think it’s safe to say that collectively, none of these has had such a big say in who I am as have the men I’ve shared my life with at different points along the way.

I’m grateful for these experiences. No, truly, I am. Sure I’ve had my heart broken a few times. I’ve broken a few, as well. But, as a relatively new member to the singles pool, I realize just how many things I’ve learned, and how thankful I am for those life lessons.

And so, here is a brief list of compiled thank-yous. I think it’s safe to say they all had a fairly large stake in who I call myself today.

Thank you for teaching me that I don’t need to be the loudest, flirtiest girl in the room to be noticed.

Thank you for showing me that being part of a relationship doesn’t mean I have to give up any part of who I am.

Thank you for showing me how to use a set of chopsticks properly.

Thank you for teaching me that respect, admiration and love aren’t necessarily bedfellows.

Thank you for teaching me not to take myself too seriously, or no one else will.

Thank you for teaching me that not everything is black or white. In fact, most things are confusing shades of grey.

Thank you for teaching me that absolutely everyone has something to offer.

Thank you for showing me I deserve to be brought flowers, to be walked to my door, to be wished sweet dreams.

Thank you for not saying anything.

Thank you for crying.

Thank you for teaching me that sex should be silly.

Thank you for showing me what matters.

Thank you for showing me that what I always thought matters, really doesn’t.

Thank you for teaching me I can get through.

Thank you for teaching me the best way to get over a hangover.

Thank you for making me feel like everything I had to say was important.

Thank you for the challenges.

Thank you for teaching me what I don’t want.

Thank you for having the courage to walk away.

Thank you for showing me that sometimes, hiding away from everything and everyone is more than ok.

Thank you for showing me how to make a kick-ass sauce for salmon.

Thank you for making me feel I had something to teach you.

Thank you for choosing me, but not needing me.

Thank you for turning everything I thought I knew on its head.

It made me search for new definitions.

I like the ones I found.

I found me.

Culture Clash

2006-10-18T19:03:00.000-07:00

"I much prefer the anthropological definition of culture, which, has nothing to do with holding your pinky finger out when you drink a cup of tea."

-Lister Sinclair
1921-2006

A small life

2006-10-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

A few things.

Last night, I spent a few hours strolling around the city with my friend and her six-month old baby. We lazed through Ogilvy’s, stopping for tuna cakes and diet cokes, browsed through the exquisite shops and marveled at the equally extravagant price tags. We popped into the flower shop on the basement floor, sticking our noses deep into lustrous arrangements of calla lilies and roses. Oh! Look! my friend shrieked, holding up an adorable plant pot, crafted of rich, creamy ceramic, with the word ‘plant’ tolled across it. ‘Heath, this would look so sweet in your place!’

She was right. I stuck out my hand for the pot, inhaled as I turned it over, and peered down at the price tag. Exhale. Totally affordable, totally adorable, a total must-have. On my way to the cash register, I additionally picked up a little pot of African Violets, the tiny purple buds housed in a glass cup. I paid my bill, content, already envisioning where I would station my new purchases in my apartment.

When I got home, I threw down my purse, ripped open the plaid bag, tossing aside the reams of lime green tissue paper. (I think half the thrill of making a purchase at Ogilvy’s is the decadent wrapping the shopkeepers enclose your purchase item in). I scoured my living room, trying to decide which plant would have the honour of being plopped into my new, prized pot. I made my selection, rearranged a bit of earth, and finally put my plant holder in its final resting place –a little table with hand-painted flowers on it. (Please note that I only have two tables in my entire apartment, so it wasn’t exactly a mind-bending decision).

Content, I stood back to admire my work. I was pleased. But then, ever the self-doubter, I asked myself why in fact I was pleased.

Had it come down to this? Is my life so small, my wants, needs and desires so limited, so confining, so shallow that buying a cute little plant pot, (admittedly one that is sure to garner lots of attention –yes it really IS that fabulous) fills me with a sense of self-satisfaction and accomplishment?

I made myself a cup of tea and sat down on my couch to ponder this question a little further. I thought back to a few hours ago, the hustle and bustle of Ste. Catherine’s street, Montrealers and tourists elbowing their way through shops, shouting into cell phones, running red lights. All of these people, all these hundreds of thousands of people on their own versions of plant pot quests. It struck me how individual we are, how individual I am, how disconnected we can be.

Shifting courses.

I had a very quiet day. I went to the gym. I did my groceries. I joined my local library and spent an hour sitting on a rock hard chair, drowning myself in Alice Munro’s The Love of a Good Woman. I made filet of sole with mushrooms and tomatoes. And then I decided to go for an evening walk. It’s a chilly evening, but busy-bee west islanders were out full throttle raking up their leaves as though their lives depended on removing every visible trace that their lawns in fact have trees planted on them.

I walked by one house where four, small children were out in a large yard, raking furiously. A middle-aged, portly man pulled into the driveway of the home, hopped out of his Toyota Prius, slamming the door. He had arrived to pick up his two of the four children.

‘Alright guys, time to pack it in! Sally, Ben, in the car guys! Tomorrow it’s our lawn!

‘Awwwww’…the children cried, in unified, staged protest.

‘What time are you two coming over to our place?’ the man asked, turning to the other two kids. ‘Better be bright and early, we’ve got a lot of leaves!’

‘How about 6?!’ one of the boys suggested. The man’s face turned a distinct shade of grey.

‘Well, six is a little early…could we make it just a little bit later’?

‘Ok….how about ten?’ the boy asked, eager to please.

This is what I love about children. That they have no concept of schedules, of timetables, of itineraries and to-do lists. All the errands, running around, cleaning, shopping and raking that could be accomplished in the four hours between 6 and 10 a.m. is of no consequence to a child. And it made me sad to be able to recognize that this trait is confined largely to childhood.

Switching again.

I decided to suck it up and buy myself a ticket to the kick-off session of this year’s Massey Lectures. I went on Wednesday evening. Having had the experience of doing this alone, I have to say, it’s the only way to go. The sheer opportunity for people watching was well-worth the $21.

There were the women with coarse, long grey hair, pulled into long pony tails with rubber bands, decked out in flowing skirts of vibrant colours, Birkenstocks enclosing feet and toes that have never felt the brush of nail polish or exfoliating cream. There were the men dragged there by their golf-club wives, eager to have something to discuss with their friends over tomorrow’s afternoon tea. There were the university kids, burdened by the quintessential North Face school bags, Nalgene water bottles bouncing off the backs of them.

Then there was the guy I wound up sitting next to. The tech writer who just got back from a four-month hiatus to India where he spent 16 weeks shuttered up in a dark room learning the depth and beauty behind the art of yoga. The guy whose family has a house in Halifax, where he ‘reeeealllllly tries to get to every summer –it’s restorative powers are just so intoxicating.’ The guy who leaves and breathes yoga, but you know is probably a lecherous carnivore with a condo in the Plateau and his own art collection.

I couldn’t, and still can’t decide if the lecture itself was all that interesting. Margaret Somerville, medical ethicist, spoke about ‘The Ethical Imagination’ and how to reconcile a shared sense of ethics within a shifting global dynamic. I spent a good deal of the two hours watching the people around me watching the stage. Crossed legs, folded hands, cocked heads. Stifled yawns, stifled coughs, stifled boredom. Sitting on my other side, was a man and his wife. The wife sat attentive, the sleeves of her pink cashmere sweater shoved up to her elbows, exposing three, solid gold bangle bracelets, a shimmering wedding ring and Tissot watch. She cupped her pointy chin in her hand, leaning forward, misty-eyed.

‘We are now engaged in debates about what we may, must not and must do with the extraordinary powers that no other humans before us have ever possessed.’

The wife shook her head in mock amazement. The man snuck a quick glance at his own wristwatch, quickly covering the evidence by pulling his sweater sleeve far down over his wrist. And this one small act of indulgence all of a sudden made him so completely and entirely human I could have leaned over and kissed his balding head.

Best Bumper Sticker Ever

2006-10-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

'If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.'

Shed, Saturday, Single

2006-10-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

“Woah! I am SO full.” Sheila pushes the bowl away from her with deliberate force. She leans an elbow on the back of her chair and starts fanning herself with her free, perfectly manicured hand. “That was sooo spicy, and soooo filling. I can’t believe I ate almost HALF of it!” The rest of us look up guiltily from our own, less than half-full plates, enjoying every mouthful and not even contemplating putting down our forks. “It’s going to be a hard workout at the gym for me tomorrow!” she cackles, smug.

I’m sitting in Shed Café, to celebrate a friend’s birthday. A trendy little bistro on St. Laurent, just north of Sherbrooke, I feel entirely underdressed in this place, under scrutiny from discerning, fashion-expert eyes, and am still slightly sore over the $15 it cost me to park my car as trying to find a place to station one’s vehicle in this effing city is next to impossible. Sheila isn’t helping.

Our plates have been cleared (Sheila graciously declined the waiter's offer to pack up the remainder of her meal to bring home) and apparently, it’s time to get down to business.

“So,” Sheila says, three octaves higher than is necessary. “Who is single here?” She points an accusing finger at me. “Are you?”

“Y y y yes,” I stammer, not sure how to account for what has all of a sudden become a major shortcoming in my character.

“Are you?” She barked at the girl sitting next to me.

The poll was conducted, and the results poured in. Six of the girls at the table were without boyfriends.

“Gawd!” Shelia snapped, slamming both hands down on the table, sloshing the water in the glass I’m holding all around. “You see? THIS is what I’m talking about. Here we are, six gorgeous women, single. Single! What IS that?”

By this time, I should note that heads are starting to swivel in our direction. I’m trying to slink indiscernibly down in my seat.

“I mean, I have gone on more set-ups that I can even COUNT and nothing. Nothing! What IS THIS?”

I’ve heard from my friend that Sheila has indeed been in a frantic search for a boyfriend. But, considering the fact that she’s been in medical school for the past five years, I chalked her singlehood up to her manic schedule. Now, I’m mentally revising that perception.

“Did you hear that Jen and Kevin got engaged?” the girl sitting to my left says, innocently, smiling, bright-eyed. “Isn’t that great?”

“Reeeeally?” Sheila asks, her voice dripping with sickening sweetness. “That’s soooooooooo nice. I can’t believe it. How long have they been engaged? When’s the wedding? What does her dress look like? What does her ring look like? I’m sooooo happy for them. I’m sooooo excited!! So, so, so excited!”

At this point, I’m wondering if there is some sort of a marriage God Sheila feels is keeping tabs on her ability to be happy for the nuptials of other people. Maybe she worries that not showing the proper amount of enthusiasm for someone else’s engagement will be a strike against her, casting her into some sort of spinster purgatory.

I have to say, that Sheila’s obvious insecurity surprises me. She’s a good-looking girl, wicked smart, she’s a doctor of all things and yet, the fact that she is on her own overrides all other aspects of her life.

“So Heeeeather,” she drawls, turning to me. “You live alone. Do you love it? I really like the building you’re in, and wanted to look at it. Do you have a pet?”

This is followed by a series of questions that I assume are part of a checklist she has on the ‘ultimate single girl living alone experience.’ Apparently the fact that I don’t have a cat is a mark against me, that I have a few plants and fluffy white throw blankets are pluses.

The whole thing just made me sad. Sad because I can somewhat relate to her anxiousness about being single, and sad because she’s not able to enjoy something as simple as a friend’s birthday without harping on her lack of a male counterpart.

As the conversation turned to a play-by-play of her last disastrous set-up date, I took the opportunity to tell my friend that I would likely be skipping out after dinner because I wasn’t feeling all that well.

“Oh, sweets,” she says, “don’t worry about it. Feel better. Hey! Why don’t you talk to Sheila! She’s a doctor, after all!”

I look over to where Sheila is now standing, talking to some guy. Her spine looks like it could snap in half at any given moment, she is thrusting her chest out to such a degree. I honestly think if she could have temporarily removed her breasts and physically handed them to the guy for his inspection, she would have.

I turn back to my friend. “It’s ok hon. I’ll be fine. You go and have a good time.”

I walked back to my car, politely declined the offer from the parking attendant to take me out to dinner (It’s 1 a.m., who the hell goes OUT for dinner at 1 a.m.?) and start my drive home. Alone. And I was perfectly fine with that.

Q & not so many A's

2006-09-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

I’ve been wondering lately, about the degree of truth to be found in the old, and somewhat overused adage of trusting your gut. My own seems to be relatively unreliable. I can’t even count on it to tell me when I’m actually hungry, let alone to serve as my guide when making decisions that vary in degrees of importance.

When do we know we’re making the right decision, and for the right reasons? I seem to have a rather remarkable knack for justifying whatever it is I happen to be doing at the moment, and seeking validation from people, places and things I know will confirm my particular path at the time, while equally avoiding the people places and things that will cause me to doubt.

I don’t necessarily think I’m alone in this concern. I think we’ve all been spectators to the stunning mistakes friends have made, knowing full well what they’re in for. But, we recognize that this is their path, and they need to travel it to learn what lies ahead, and to gain the wisdom to choose a different direction the next time around. Why isn’t it so easy when it comes to our own decisions?

I’d like to think that as we get a little older, our needs mature a little, too. I’d like to believe this is why I took leave of someone willing to make it his life’s work to cater to my every need. A few years ago, hell, maybe even a few months ago, spending time with someone who wanted to eat, sleep and breathe all things Heather would have made me a very happy lady indeed. Now I’m quite sure it doesn’t. What I’m not entirely certain about is the validity of the things I do feel are important. Does it matter that someone spends hours watching television every day if he never forgets to call, ask how my day was, and always wants to be with me? Does a lack of ambition really factor significantly into the grand scheme of things if he knows exactly how many freckles I have on my nose and tells me, as I’m scarfing down cheese cake like I haven’t seen food in a month, that I eat like a rabbit?

Sometimes, I just don’t know.

Things that make me feel awkward #244

2006-09-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

Checking out my own ass in the mirror beside the elevator in my building, coming to the depressing, yet decided conclusion that it has attained proportions of enormity that were previously beyond even my own belief, only to come to the sickening realization that my cute neighbour is in line for the elevator behind me, looking like he not only thinks I have a big bum too, but that I'm also vain beyond belief.

Dude. Not. Cool.

An ode

2006-09-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

‘You’re such a good driver, you like eggs I like eggs, your hair smells nice, I’ll pick you up, I’ll drive you home, I’ll never leave you ever, don’t go, don’t go yet, come back, come over tomorrow, stay the night, just have a glass of orange juice first.

You like that movie I like it too, you’re funny, you’re smart, you’re sweet, my grandmother will love you, my dad can’t wait to meet you. Come to the cottage you’ll like it there, meet my friends they’ll make you laugh you’ll make them laugh. You’re a breath of fresh air you’re the best ever did I tell you you’re the best. Your eyes are blue I love them did I tell you I think I love you too I love you because your eyes are blue.

Want flowers, want candy, want that magazine I saw you glancing at I saw you looking I’ll buy it for you just say the word. Do you like flowers, all girls like flowers, just tell me what your favourite flower is and I’ll buy a bouquet of them for you. I’ll buy those flowers for you every week so that you can wake up and see your favourite flower beside you every morning.

You don’t eat meat? I don’t have to either, you eat fish how about salmon how about sushi how about asparagus do you like asparagus.

Call me later call me now call me anytime you want make sure you call to let me know you got in ok. I’m always here for you always you know that don’t you. I’ll be your friend I’ll be your best friend, I’ll be your best friend ever. I don’t need anything I just need you all I’ll ever need is you.’

Who wouldn’t want it.

Me.

Lego that ego, baby

2006-09-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

Things you will find in a political science class at Concordia University:

Fake British accents
Coke bottles with the labels ripped off
Briefcases with nothing in them except for gel pens and peanut butter sandwiches
Hemp clothing
Docker pants held up by Banana Republic belts
People wearing glasses who don’t need glasses
A disregard for the entire ‘raise your hand, wait for the professor’s nod, now speak,’ process
A disproportionate amount of people with unverifiable ties to politicians, lawyers and reputable journalists
Yourself, feeling shocked at the amount of nostrils you’re suddenly able to see into, because it has been scientifically proven that poli sci students hold their noses in the air at a quantifiably higher rate than students in any other program.

Things overheard in a political science class at Concordia University:

'I’d be inclined to disagree with you'
'That is a statement of obvious ignorance'
'Dude, like, I’ve got a blog'
'When I was working for the GOVERNMENT'
'And so that is why I am completely awesome, and am therefore better than all the rest of you and when I leave this class will sail onto a positively brilliant career solely based on my own, innate fabulousness.'

NB. This last one is an exaggeration, but not by much.

Random

2006-09-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

No wonder women are so paranoid.

Yesterday, while I was walking through the Hall Building to get to my class (did I say walking? I meant being aggressively shuffled between 6,000 people yapping on cell phones), I overheard several snippets of conversation men were having with friends. They were disturbing.

‘Yo man, like I’m hanging out with Laura later, but like, her sister is gonna be crazy mad if she finds out.’

‘Dude, it was so locked down, like totally.’

‘Bro, I was like, babysitting, you know? She’s total underage. It’s wicked.’

On another, unrelated note, I have to give a heartfelt thanks to gmail, for single-handedly boosting my self-esteem in a way I never dreamed possible.

I got this, lovely note this afternoon from a friend:

Thanks Heather...

I want you to take two mins., smile and tell yourself you're great.
You really are.

I know you're having rough day.

This too shall pass.

Nice, no?

Apparently the folks (or robots, spiders, whathaveyou) thought differently, for the sponsored links beside this e-mail read as follows:

Why he manipulates you

How to get a lover

Learn the secret psychology to getting a man hooked for good

Sigh.

World Press Photo

2006-09-12T07:42:00.000-07:00

You should go.

Date this

2006-09-09T22:26:00.000-07:00

This dating business. I don’t think I’m cut out for it. Somehow, feeling like I’m going to throw up while trying to coax a meal down my throat feels more like torture than fun. Trying to make small talk, while keeping a smile plastered to my face, one that doesn’t betray the fact that I can no longer feel my legs for the umpteen glasses of wine I’ve drunk in an effort to find something to do in between awkward silences, is not my idea of a brilliant way to spend a Saturday evening.

And what are first dates, anyway? Does he really care what the name of my best friend is? Where I went to high school? Do I really care where he went on vacation last summer? Do I really feel the need to press for details about his wisdom teeth removal? I hate the superficiality of dating. I hate trying to get to know someone who I am fully aware is not acting like himself, because he is likely just as nervous as I am. I hate that I make someone nervous.

I think first dates shouldn’t involve the two people in question actually spending time together at all. They should involve a two-way mirror phenomenon, so that you can observe the behaviour of your potential date in a setting where nerves, awkward cheque-paying scenarios, door-holding fumbles and frantic searches for something to wear, are entirely eliminated. And the futile wish for a sick bag taped to the underbelly of the dinner table wouldn’t even be on the radar.

This girl

2006-09-08T19:19:00.000-07:00

And this girl...

...Has been known to remove several items of clothing while packing for vacation in order to accomodate the space needed to jam in a bathroom scale.
And this girl
...has on more than one occasion been guilty of truly believing a particular song was in fact, the soundtrack to her very own life.
And this girl
...has deliberatly hurt a man.
And this girl
...has deliberately hurt a friend.
And this girl
...only felt bad on one of those occasions.
And this girl
...has lied to make someone feel better.
And this girl
...lies often -to make herself feel better.
And this girl
...has a deep-seeded distrust for men who fall in love with her.
And this girl
...is secretly afraid of the ones who don't.
And this girl
...dreams of one day living in a cramped apartment somewhere on the outskirts of New York, with only cloth-bound books and a cat to keep her company.
And this girl
...knows she will likely end up embracing suburbia and Oprah's Book Club.
And this girl
...remembers the nicest compliment ever paid to her -and will never divulge what it was.
And this girl
...'s biggest fear is of being ordinary.
And this girl
...'s second biggest fear is that this makes her a snob.
And this girl
...feels strangely validated when she hears obscure, literary references and she knows what they mean.
And this girl
...isn't sure what this says about her, but is pretty certain it's nothing good.
And this girl
...thinks men who wear plaid shirts and corduroy jackets and square glasses, are interesting, purely out of definition.
And this girl
…drinks soy milk, does terrible yoga postures, and goes to the gym.
And this girl
…hates all three.
And this girl
…uses Sugartwin in her coffee, and eats brownies for breakfast.
And this girl
...is forever changing the way she defines her love for her life.
And this girl
...knows there should be some consistency there.
And this girl
...will probably, despite all her pushing and shoving, not change.

What it looked like

2006-09-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

It was a good summer, wasn't it?

An open letter

2006-09-04T17:51:00.000-07:00

Hey –do you remember apple pie and glasses of room temperature milk, spurts that would come out of our noses as I would stab my fork into the last bite of cinnamon –covered pastry sitting on your plate, just as you went for it, and we would both laugh so hard your mother would come into the kitchen, fully ready to administer the Heimlich maneuver she was certain would become necessary at any given moment? Remember mini-putt, and how I would jump in front of the little pink-speckled ball, making sure you’d miss your shot? Remember how I’d make sure to show our scorecards to the acne-covered 16-year-old-boy working behind the counter as we handed in your clubs? Remember Ally McBeal, how you said you hated it, but would hum the theme song under your breath as I would fall asleep? I never called you on that.

Remember me honking your car horn as we’d sit in traffic and then ducking in my seat, saving all the angry faces and upturned fingers for you to contend with? Remember eating Timbits until we felt sick, and then going for ice cream right after? Remember playing thumb wars during your best friend’s wedding ceremony? I won. Both times.

Remember me blowing off studying for my final to go for a late night walk with you, in the dead of winter, and we pushed each other into snow banks? Remember your neighbor coming outside in her terrycloth housecoat to tell us to be quiet?

Remember when you told me you loved me in Italian, even though you knew full well I had no idea what Ti Amo meant? Remember how that became my favorite phrase ever?

Remember how we dunked each other in the pool in Barbados, spraying water and shrieking with laugher, much to the dismay of the wrinkled, Botox-ed, bottled-blond women floating serenely by us on their air mattresses?

Remember going out for a ridiculously expensive dinner to celebrate my new job, knowing the waiter fully realized we couldn’t afford it? Remember driving out to watch our new place being built, walking around in the mud with flashlights, peering into the construction, giggling and saying, ‘that’s where the couch will go, that’s where we’ll sleep?’ Remember holding hands as we walked back to the car, not saying a word, because really, everything had been said already?

Remember when you got food poisoning and you threw up for three days straight? Remember me going back to Subway’s that very night, full of righteous indignation for the high-school student whose sloppy work ethics made you sick in a way I couldn’t bear to see? Remember me being in the hospital with a ruptured appendix and you sleeping in the tiny bed with me until the nurse came in and asked us to stop our ‘inappropriate’ behaviour?

Remember when I had a blinding headache and you spent a full hour massaging my skull? I had tears running down my face because your hand made it hurt so much more, but I thought it was so sweet, and I didn’t want to tell you.

Remember dancing in your basement to the Cowboy Junkies? Remember us falling asleep, entwined as though we didn’t want to acknowledge that we were in fact two separate entities, and then waking up at 5 a.m. and me tripping over the newspaper on your doorstep, eager to get away before your parents realized I had stayed over?

Remember how we smiled when the salesgirl at the Gap told us we were the best-looking couple she’d ever seen?

Remember the ‘missing person’ report I made of you and taped to our front door when you were working so much and I never saw you? Remember how our kitten would pee on our new bedspread every night without fail, but when we locked him out of the room, his meowing would make you cry and you would last about five minutes and run out to get him? Remember me getting up at 3 a.m. for four nights in a row to change the sheets while you sat and cuddled with him?

Remember me coming back from Vancouver, and you picking me up at the airport and asking me what was wrong? Remember me not knowing? Remember your face, ashen, yet angry, sheepish, yet stone, telling me to leave? Remember me not looking back? Remember?

Remember?

I do.

Millennium dread?

2006-09-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

I swear this will be the absolute last time I write something disparaging about the CBC's choice of programming. But yesterday afternoon, our national broadcaster devoted an entire 20 minutes to a female, Vancouver-based writers's moans about the existential, millennium dread that swept across the city in the year 2000, in the face of sweeping technology's collide with raccoons that are claiming back nature.

Huh?

Time?

2006-08-31T19:21:00.000-07:00

"You know, it's time that we grow old and do some shit."
-Broken Social Scene

Yeah, probably.

ABC's revisited

2006-08-31T18:58:00.000-07:00

Seriously, what IS with news readers arbitrarily changing the pronunciation of middle eastern country names? Did you know that Afghanistan is no longer pronounced as Af-gan-i-stan, but should now be enunciated as Af-gahn-i-staaaahn? Or so says CBC. For real, what's up? We've gone from Airrak, to Eerak, to Iraak, from Eeran to Airan, and now they're messing with Afghanistan. Do news services simply feel pressured to consistently come up with new and inventive ways to present information and come to the conclusion that by throwing in a fake accent here and there, or putting emphasis on syllables that have no business calling out for attention, that listeners are more likely to tune in? Cause uh, p.s. it's just annoying. And it sounds stupid.

Where East meets Dead End

2006-08-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder what it might look like if a cartographer were to map out the love lives of Montrealers in a format something similar to Google Earth.

If we could identify ourselves, our little stick-people selves, running after someone who doesn’t love us, running from someone who does.

I can picture the man tasked with the job, a grey bearded gentleman with a potbelly and a tweed jacket with elbow patches, looking down on us, laughing with disdain. Because truly, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

And yet, how much more logical would it be if there were some overbearing, governing force, who could reach in with capable, steady hands, and turn a stick-person in another direction, face him forward, away from the pain and heartache he’s veering towards, dead on. Set him on a path paved with happiness, blissful, ignorant contentment, away from the desperation and heartache he convinced himself made sense at the time.

I’ll bet the map would inevitably take on a distinctly circular pattern. And we could look down on it and point sympathetic fingers as we watched Suzy chase after John, and accusing ones as we glared at John running after Jen.

And then tuck all ten digits safely into our pockets as we start off on our very own sprint towards the woman or man who will in turn duck and dodge us, only to set off on his or her own, destructive path.

A little to the left

2006-08-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

“These are not my people. I should never have come here.”
-Martha Wainwright

Do you ever catch a glimpse of yourself in the reflection of a surprisingly clean building window, or flip through a stack of photographs, happen upon one of yourself and think, ‘man, that’s me?’ And the question you’re asking yourself is not in reference to anything related to physical appearance, but rather to how far you’ve traveled from what you know yourself to be?

I remember an old boyfriend would sometimes look at me wistfully and drawl in breathy tones, ‘Oh Heather, what a woman you will one day be.’ In my naivety at the time I didn’t think to snap back and ask him what the hell happened to be particularly wrong with me at that very moment, but it’s beside the point. And to his credit, which I will now permit him, I don’t think he meant it that way. What I do think he implied was that he could see how my life would likely play out, and the heartache, struggling, pushing and reinventing I would go through in order to get there.

But I guess this is the question. When are we there? Am I there? Are you there? How do we know when we’ve arrived? Is there a cover fee? Is there a coat check? Will there be a big welcoming party where pink-power-shirt-wearing-and-Red-Bull-guzzling young executive men with solid stock portfolios, greasy-hair artists with untouchable creative ideals, social worker women with a line of troubled, doe-eyed children trailing behind them greet me with wide open grins, pat me on the back, and welcome me to the club? And will we all rejoice in our collective sense of belonging to the ‘we’ve made it’ sect?

Sometimes my lines feel a little blurry. A little undefined. Like they’re subject to the charcoal pencils and erasers that are the influences of other people. Maybe this is me buying into the stereotype of women being people pleasers and paying full price for the privilege. But there are moments where I feel invisible I’ve moved so far away from what I know myself to be. And it’s hard not to want to go crawling back to the past. To the times that felt comfortable, to the people who expected nothing more, nothing less than whom they had learned of me to be.

Because sometimes, all this pushing, all this trying to define, trying to grow, challenge, change, alter, shape, learn, acknowledge, it just makes me tired. And at times like these, I find myself half-heartedly looking for the entrance gates to that ‘we’ve made it club.’

Cooking 101

2006-08-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

Hey, does anyone remember that show "You can't do that on television" -or some derivative combination of those words, and the pale of green goo that would get dumped on a contestant's head if he mistakenly uttered the word 'no'?

Well guess what? If you spend an hour and a half chopping onions and peeling carrots to go into your green lentil soup, and then with a toss of your hair and a wad of cherry lip balm spread across your lips, you saunter out the door to go and meet your friend for coffee, unwittingly LEAVING THE STOVE ON, only to return to an overwhelming smell of oregano that hits you in the face like a brick when you walk back in the door two hours later, voila! You will have a pot with contents that exactly resemble the slime that would ooze down the heads of the poor actors on that ridiculous show.

Now you know.

Keeping me in the dark

2006-08-22T07:53:00.000-07:00

I’m wondering, what the statutes and limitations are on being a decent human being. If I’m essentially a decent person, am I allowed one major, earth-shattering screw up? What about two? What if they’re related, does that count?

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the details of my life that no one is privy to were suddenly and shockingly exposed. Details like my licking the peanut butter knife and melting honey and cornflakes in my microwave and calling it dinner. Details like telling a friend I didn’t feel like seeing that I had a meeting when really I spent the night soaking in my bathtub reading. Details like me just shutting off my phone sometimes when someone calls that I just don’t have the energy to talk to. Details like me calling back three hours later saying, ‘I’m so sooorry I missed your call, I was at the gym when you phoned.’ Details like me eliciting sympathy when I know I don’t deserve it, giving it when I don’t feel it.

So I guess it begs the question. Are those who look like fairly decent, honest and trustworthy people on the outside, simply better schooled at hiding their flaws? And do we really care to find out anyway? Sometimes I think I’d rather live in the dark when it comes to these types of things. And I sure as hell won’t be handing out flashlights to my inner life anytime soon.

Tapping in

2006-08-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

Can anyone shed some light on what the big idea is with the CBC's Wire Tap program? I feel like there has got to be some sort of larger, creative ideal going on there that some programmer is aspiring to, but I seem to be missing the point. Because to me, it sounds like a bunch of ridiculous blather.

The Golden Rule of School

2006-08-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

He has kind, pale blue, watery eyes and an affable smile. He’s gentle, soft-spoken, unassuming and thoughtful. He’s pensive, reflective, intellectually curious and mindful.

He’s the competition.

I had my last summer class last night. A few of us scrambled over to the photocopier in the Hall Building afterwards, trading notes from missed classes back and forth. John* and I got to talking about why we were taking this class, as it had come up before that we both already hold undergraduate degrees and as such, this course is not a necessity for graduation.

Our stories, as they unfolded, were conspicuously similar. We had both applied to the same Master’s program and were both initially denied entrance. We had both visited with the same graduate director, meetings from which we both, albeit unknowingly, walked away with the exact same advice. We’re both taking the same class in the fall; we’re both applying again in November.

‘They take ten people!’ I sputtered, nervous and anxious in the face of such stark competition. He could be number 10, taking up the last, coveted spot, I told myself. And yet, I found myself rambling on and on about how I had been told to ask this particular professor for a reference letter, how I had been advised to take this course as opposed to that one. As I passed on these words of wisdom that have disturbed my sleep and ruled my free time for the past few months, I realized that this, this is why I am not, and will never be, competitive.

When I was in high school, for some reason that remains unknown to me until this day, I made the basketball team. I was a horrible player. What?! You expect me to get in someone’s WAY? I have to BLOCK someone? What if I hurt their feelings? What if their parents are watching and I make them miss their shot? How are they going to feel then? I once got yanked off the court for being too ‘friendly’ with the other team.

“Heather, get your pink-ribboned head over here NOW,” Mr. Baxter shouted, seething, his vein-cluttered eyes popping. “Stop yapping with the other team. We’re trying to BEAT them, in case you haven’t realized!”

I was dumbfounded. I had just made friends with a girl who was going to be attending the same CEGEP as me next year. This was great! Who cared about the stupid game? What did it matter who actually won the thing?

I thought about this last night as I was talking to John*. Sure, his Liberal-Arts-College-Ottawa-lobbyist-totally-kick-ass-smart background might earn him a spot in this Master’s program. If it does, he’ll deserve it. And, if my advice helps a little, well then, so be it. I would want him to do the same thing for me.

And so, as he lightly touched my elbow, looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘good luck Heather, I really hope we both get in,’ I knew he meant it, and I knew I had probably made a friend. And that makes me feel a lot better than being a death-eating, competitive monster.

Eye of the tiger

2006-08-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

Things that make me feel awkward #243

Being the only person in a large cardio room at the gym and then having an attractive man hop onto the stairmaster immediately next to me just in time for all 20 flat-screen televisions on the wall directly in front of us to flicker and default to a station featuring two large tigers having noisy, aggressive sex.

I mean, there's just no easy way out of that one, really.

The Voice

2006-08-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

I was sitting out on my balcony one afternoon, nursing a sore throat with cappuccino swirl frozen yogourt when I first heard her voice. A throaty, deep and mystic voice, the words poured from her mouth into the cordless with seamless ease, blending and mixing into drawls and bubbling laughter.

Until she had an argument with Tom.

Screaming and yelling, the voice now brimming with fury and tears, she barked into the phone as though every ounce, every fibre of her being depended on it. The conversation jumped from vicious accusations of betrayal, financial difficulties, broken down cars and lying, cheating mechanics, step children and ailing, wheelchair-bound parents.

The woman screamed for Tom's lying, for the father that betrayed her. For the friend who turned her back, for the car that wouldn't turn over, for the mechanic who set his price too high. She yelled for the injustice done to her at work, for the empty fridge that mocked her, for the cupboards that would remain bare until the end of the month. She shrieked for her unreturned love, for leaky faucets and floor fans with a rattle. She cried for her life and her hatred of it.

Although the woman's screams were enough to rattle the cappuccino-covered spoon in my flowered mug, the desperation that was edging into her voice was enough for anyone who happened to overhear her to know who the winner of that fight was.

She knew it. She knew that as she launched into a spitting monologue laced with every profanity the English language would permit her that she was losing. That she had already lost.

'Don't fucking laugh at me.'

I went inside, rinsed off my spoon, and turned on the radio. And if I said I didn't shed a tear for that woman, you could call me a liar.

Shed a little light

2006-08-08T05:43:00.000-07:00

Last night, I spent two and a half hours discussing whether or not there should in fact be windows in apartment bathrooms and it was time extremely well spent.

Six women and I, crowded around a table spread with countless architectural drawings, shortbread cookie crumbs, sweet & low wrappers and coffee cups, to discuss the details of the apartment complex that will soon serve as a second stage house for female victims of domestic violence and their children.

I truly believe that it takes a group of women to be sensitive to details such as a windowless bathroom, and the sentiments that darkness will inevitably invoke in the woman who wakes up each morning to shower within it.

It was my second board of directors meeting with this group, and I am proud to be working with them. I am proud to know each of these six women, and to take part in their fight for the details, their fight to make hard lives a little bit softer, a little bit brighter.

And so here’s the thing

2006-08-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve always had a really hard time trying to come up with headlines for things. I seriously contemplated my deserving of a spot in Concordia’s Journalism school when it came to my feature writing class. I could bang out the actual story no problem. Ask me to name the thing? Forget it. I became a nail-biting wreck.

It logically follows then, that I had a ridiculously hard time trying to name this site. Everyone seems to have such clever, witty and though-provoking ideas, and I was drawing such a blank. Or, such a grey. A lot of things really are grey to me, and I find that as the older I get, the less sure I am of many things, situations and people –even the ones I thought I had all figured out.

Since I was a teenager, I kept a sort of mental tally, developed and refined first with friends over bowls of buttered popcorn and plastic cups of Diet Coke, later over glasses of wine in smoky bars. The list included things I truly believed I knew for sure, about myself, about others, and my inevitable collide with those ‘others.’ Top on the list: infidelity. Would never accept it. This was agreed upon with vigorous nods from friends, waving cigarette-clutching and slightly drunken hands, declaring, ‘oh my God NEVER.’ Second: violence from a partner. Non-negotiable. ‘I’d be out of there SO fast…I’d make his head spin…I’d knock him back one…I’d tell all his friends…I’D tell his mother.’ Right. Check. The list went on to include things such as never getting involved with a married man, never sacrificing career for a man, etc, etc.

Now, as I look back and remember those heady days of declaration, I feel somewhat humbled. Who was I, who were we, to pass judgement on what the future would hold for us, and ultimately what our responses would be to those instances? As I recall that list, I shamefully admit that I’ve had to cross some of those items off, because I didn’t initially live up to my own expectations. There was always a ‘but’ always a ‘it’s different this time,’ always an excuse, a justification, a rationalization to make it be ok –to paint the grey over with a gloss of pure white.

It is all grey to me. I feel grey to me. And yet, I think that maybe what this really means is that as I start to discard some of my fast-held convictions, I’m replacing them with acceptance, for myself, for the friend who went back and went back again, for the family member who crossed my weakened and faltering boundary, for the man who said he just wasn’t strong enough.

After all, to be human is to err, and then to do it again, harder, faster and stronger than the first time.

Blogging up the job market

2006-08-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060807fa_fact1

And I went to Journalism school for three years because...?

Only you

2006-07-31T11:23:00.000-07:00

I read an article a few weeks ago about loneliness, and it made me really sad.

Not necessarily because I felt I could identify with it on a daily basis, but because I have experienced in the past, and certainly will again, the sickening pang of fear upon the realization that sometimes it’s me and only me, and am up I to the challenge?

Dealing with those feelings, fleeting though they were, was challenging, and the intensity of the sensation of relief that washed over me when I talked sense into myself and picked up the phone to reach out to a friend or family member was tremendous. But it made me think: what if that feeling never went away? What if that sinking, pervasive and all-encompassing sense of aloneness was perpetual, a constant companion, something you had to carry around with you like a heavy handbag, or ten extra pounds you want to lose and can’t?

I got to thinking about this on Saturday night while I was out celebrating a friend’s birthday. (Leave it to me to start worrying about being lonely as I’m throwing back glasses of red wine as if they were water, in the accompaniment of five good friends). However, there was a man at the bar we were at, mid-forties, with a Philip Seymour Hoffman air about him. Top-heavy, balding, poorly dressed, and very much alone.

The man bopped about the bar, dancing as if he were the only one in the room, which from his perspective, may very well have been true. He started off hopeful. Imitating some of his younger, more attractive male counterparts, he tried grabbing the hands of a few women, hoping they would go along, would just start dancing with him. Time and time again the technique proved disastrous, until one older, bolder woman placed both hands on his Point Zero-covered chest and gave him a good, hard shove. Deterred but not entirely discouraged, he started dancing alone. He would alternate swaying movements with fast-spinning, both-arms-out movements, banging into couples, bachelor party members, single women and men alike, oblivious. Or was he?

Watching this, I remembered reading somewhere that for a person to maintain a healthy emotional equilibrium, he must come into physical contact with at least three people a day. Animals could be substituted.

Imagine not having anyone in your life to touch, no one to hug you, hold your hand, pat you on the back, and so you leave your 1 ½ and you set out for Peel Street and you pay your $7 cover charge, buy yourself a drink because there is no one else who will do that for you and you close your eyes and spin to an overly jazzed-up rendition of ‘Spank’ and hope to reach out, touch, feel, connect?

Keeping the space

2006-07-25T08:23:00.001-07:00

I hate MySpace. I hate everything about the concept of MySpace. A hot, festering cesspool of teenage boredom, antipathy and ignorance, to me, MySpace embodies everything I have grown to despise about pop culture.

After reading this article, I loathe it even more. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/murdoch_pr.html

Did you know that anyone and everyone who signs up for an account is automatically befriended by someone named Tom? Fake friends, folks. Who was the marketing mogul behind this genial decision? What was the thought process behind the creation of a generic 'Tom'? Is MySpace looking to singlehandedly save the self-esteem of shy teenage girls and creatine-consuming boys, ensuring that each and every user has at least one friend in their file?

Gross.

What I want

2006-07-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

And I want to drink eight glasses of water a day.

I want to grow my own organic vegetables and have all the right political opinions. The kind that make people look at me with squinty eyes. I want to shun reality television and watch only foreign films. I want to be able to walk by the Gap and wrinkle my nose and think ‘no thanks’ while I make my way over to shops with names like “Milk.”

I want authenticity, honesty, just the right combination of naivety, cynicism, optimism, and hope. I want to read the New Yorker, Colours and Harpers without feeling proud of myself.

I want to stay up late drinking red wine with a man who wears square glasses and chain smokes and doesn’t own a hairbrush and doesn’t have a real job and will talk to me about the book he’s been writing for twelve years without checking my watch and counting the hours of sleep I’ll get before I have to be at work.

I want to stop making excuses.

I want to stop wanting.

I want to write terrible poetry and think it’s great. I want to be funny. I want to be thought-provoking. I want to own a pair of dancing shoes and use them. I want someone to fall madly, sadly and desperately in love with me. I want to keep someone awake at night. I want to break someone’s heart. Except I don’t.

I want to not to care what others think. I want to be a raging bitch. I want to stop saying I’m sorry. I want to stop feeling sorry. I want to tell her I hate her, I want to tell him I think he positively sucks. And then hug them both so hard I can feel their heartbeats. I want to be ten again with scraped knees and red, messy wild hair. And a flat stomach and not know what it means to have a flat stomach.

I want to stop changing my mind.

I want validation and not want to want it. I want to move away and I want to stay right where I am. I want the answers. I want to feel ok with not having any of the answers. I want not to be afraid of being on my own, I want to not be afraid of being me. I want to stop feeling ridiculous.

I want to want to eat tofu.

I want to tell my high school boyfriend I miss him. I want to be sixteen again and drunk on screw-top wine and convinced I’m going to be great.

I want to cry. I want to stop crying. I want to finish the book I’ve been reading for three weeks. I want it to stop being hard. I want to live in a basement apartment and listen to Sarah Harmer’s ‘Basement Apartment’ and not feel the irony. I want someone to bring me home strawberries and not the Californian kind.

I want my head to stop hurting, I want all of this wanting to stop eating up my energy at a furious rate. I want to refuel on M&M’s.

I want to throw out my vacuum and not care about antibacterial soap, anti-aging cream, birth control and antioxidants. I want not to know that one day I will be forty, with two kids and a dog I am indifferent to and will laugh at my twenty-five-year-old ramblings and indulgences. I want to dust by pursing my lips and blowing and not care.

I want to stop instinctively smiling at babies and wanting to cuddle them. I want to wear clothes that make me look fat and not care about split ends. I want to be a bad friend, and know my friends will love me anyways.

I want to fall into a deep, lovely sleep and wake up laughing.

Truly, truly I do

2006-07-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

It's all grey to me

The amount of press releases that find their way into my inbox during the week is just incredible. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t suffer pangs and twinges of guilt as I swiftly remove the bulk of them from the little wooden box only to swivel around and dump them directly into my recycling container. I mean, some of these companies go to what appears to be a significant amount of trouble to communicate their products in fairly inventive ways, and unfortunately, the amount of space available in our magazine isn’t able to accommodate them all. I’ve seen CDs, slide shows, hard copy photos, full colour brochures, invitations, the list is endless. But, one of the many I received this morning caught my attention, and as such, I’m using it in our September issue. The woman who penned the thing signed it, “Very truly yours.”

Now, I don’t even know this woman. I wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a crowd of two people. But hey -she’s very truly mine, and I think a distinction needs to be made here between the connotation of truly, or sincerely, or kind regards, and VERY TRULY. It almost makes me feel like she’s made me a candidate for her first born child, or something.

Very truly yours,

Heather

Living the Goodlife

2006-07-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

So, after much deliberation and a fair bit of money spent on hand weights, stability balls, yoga mats and running shoes, I've decided to stop kidding myself and join a new gym. In my defense, I have been pretty good about working out at home, but the endless stream of Adidas-clad people I can see filing in and out of Goodlife Gym with what I consider disturbing regularity from my balcony (usually while I am wearing something flannel and spooning ice cream into my mouth) is starting to get to me.

Sigh.

Gym: You win. I'm coming back. But I'm not happy about it.

It's for you!

2006-07-19T05:35:00.000-07:00

As I was standing in line for the Britcom show last night at Just for Laughs, I was privy to a conversation being had by a rather large group of 40-something women. In between bits of boisterous laughter, complaints about teenager daughters, the colours of this season's golf pants and the pros and cons of home-cooked meals verses takeout, one of the members of the group warned her comrades that it was time to shut off their cell phones, so as not to disrupt others during the show.

On cue, charms, theme songs, beeps and flashing lights went off, as these women disconnected from their husbands, babysitters, and daughters named Courtney. However, delving into the World Without Cellphone proved problematic for one of the women.

"I don't know HOW to shut off my cell!" she cackled, staring at her pink, sparkly Razor confusedly.

Um, is no one else concerned about the possibility that Montreal is a city that houses people who are incapable of performing the strikingly simple act of closing a cellular telephone? Has no other occasion in this woman's life proven to be important enough as to provide the impetus for learning how to perform this task? Is no one else frightened by this?

Let's just say that my friend and I made certain to find seats far, far away from "Mrs. I-don't-know-how-to-shut-off-my-phone." I'm just speculating here, but I don't think it would be that much of a stretch to assume that someone who has never, ever shut off their phone, has a spectacularly irritating ring on their cell. A digital version of 'Stop in the name of love,'or 'Hey Jude' comes to mind...