a mere mortal

Strange that when somebody famous dies, a vault of interesting tidbits is suddenly opened by the media and fans, and there are so many stories on everyone's lips -- things that you didn't know before and wish that you did. Today, talking with Trevor at breakfast and watching/reading clips about and interviews with George Harrison, it is becoming clear to me that my knowledge about the man and his life is pretty slim.

Whenever Trevor and his brother begin one of their many discussions about the Beatles, I usually listen quietly, but feel quite unable to participate in the conversation -- mainly because I didn't grow up knowing much about the band. Something was released a single the year I was born. I know Beatles songs as "those songs" that my parents listened to on CJOY when I was a kid. I didn't gain much of an appreciation until I was older and could notice their influence on the bands that played on my radio stations.

But today I am learning that George is responsible for many of the Beatles songs that do fall into the "life soundtracks" of many people my age, that he organised the first-ever pre-"Live Aid" Concert for Bangladesh, that he backed The Life of Brian and ran his own film company (Handmade Films), that he carried in his heart a deep love for India, and that he was a spiritual and peaceful man.

And I must admit that George's death hit me in a personal way that I didn't suspect. As an article on BBC News put it: "Very slowly, and reluctantly, we became accustomed to the tragic passing of John Lennon in 1980. But 21 years later, the passing of George Harrison, succumbing to cancer makes us realise that even the great Beatles are susceptible to the things that affect mere mortals." Mere mortals like my Dad, and other Dads I know.

30 November 2001, 16:11

shh. the sidewalks are listening.

Often I think about sidewalks (or pavements, or walkways) and the events and conversations they witness every day. After all, they are a silent witness to all the monotony and melodrama that makes us human: arguments between lovers, boring business negotiations, stolen moments of gossip between co-workers during smoke breaks, cafe confessions, stories narrated aloud by children, unintended soliloquies of people like me that sometimes catch themselves speaking their thoughts out loud. I think of all those words -- all those narratives and expletives -- that leave our mouths and drift onto the the sidewalk. I think of all that has collected there. The sidewalks know all of our secrets. I hope that they never learn to talk.

28 November 2001, 20:11

geek

And btw, it's been officially confirmed: I am a geek. I scored 80% on the e-bore-ometer.

27 November 2001, 20:11

sticky and pink

It's now completely dark when I walk home from work. Today the SkyDome changed the floodlights from blue to pink. In the fog, it looks like a giant mound of candy floss.

27 November 2001, 20:11

swooning over john boy

Tonight on the fab show So Graham Norton (PrideVision), the first guest was Micheal Learned -- the mother from The Waltons, a show from the 70s that I absolutely loved when I was a kid. I remember thinking that the mountains of Virginia must be the most beautiful place on earth. I was enamoured with the idea of living in a big house with so many brothers and sisters. And most of all, like so many other girls, I swooned for the shy, kind-hearted, and perfectly-mole-dotted John Boy. Handsome (then) and a writer. Maybe that's when my plans to be a writer first took hold.

26 November 2001, 22:11

more than meets the eye

You know, just between you and me, sometimes I'm a lot more worried and scared than I let on.

25 November 2001, 23:11

new monitor

Looks like that digital camera purchase is going to be put off. New hardware purchase today: a new monitor. Nothing terribly sparkly, but it's so lovely to have a flat screen. Everything is so crisp and brilliant.

And no, we can't really afford it, but a girl needs a monitor (the computer is useless without one, don't you know), and the old monitor started to die again last night. Something fell on it and, afterwards, black bleached to an odd dark brown and the future of other colours looked bleak. It was part of the system package we purchased in early 1996. The individual price was steep -- but it lasted almost 6 years with just two trips to the shop (however, the cost of the last repair bill was the same amount as the new monitor!).

Anyway, the old one did us well. And the new one is just so pretty.

25 November 2001, 19:11

I need a digital camera.

I need a digital camera.

Now that we are Daylight Savings Time, my walks home from work begin in the minutes just after sunset, when the fading gradients of mauve, purple, and orange turn into twilight. A circle of haze clings to the moon and ripples soft yellow light across the lake -- the same pale light cast from the lights on the docked Empire Sandy. Sometimes, the pink and blue neon lights of the pier restaurant echo the colours of the sky. Last night I was greeted by coloured christmas lights strung across the bow of one of the little boats left in the harbour. I would have liked to have included a picture here.

Our apartment building is built around a basin of water that flows under the road from the Lake and acts as a recreational pool for ducks, seagulls, and geese. Unfortunately, the basin also acts as a trash receptacle and too often there is garbage floating around the birds. Last night as I walked into our building, I thought that I saw four white plastic bags with trapped air floating on the surface. But I gave it a second glance, and saw one of the bags move. The I realized that I was looking at four swans with their heads underwater searching for food. They were so beautiful. It would have made a really cool photograph.

Did I mention that I need a digital camera?

24 November 2001, 12:11

stuck in a moment

Sometimes I feel like I am surrounded by inertia. By apathy. Sometimes it seems as though the people and events around me are suspended in plasm, waiting for what happens next, content (or not so content) to float. To drift. Perchance to live. Nothing seems to be moving forward. Everybody and everything seems to be waiting for something to happen -- molecules stirred neither by heat or cold. Silent. Waiting.

Lack of direction or ambition is something I don't understand very well -- and I need to find more empathy and patience in my heart when I come across it. There is always something that I want to learn or experience. I enjoy setting and reaching goals, seeking a sense of accomplishment, making people happy, enjoying as many minutes of life as possible (and no, I am not Type A; I took the test). This is what makes me feel alive. And this personality trait probably drives a lot of people absolutely crazy -- the same feeling of frustration that I experience when I see people that I care about wishing they were somewhere else with a different partner or a different job or a different life, unable to focus or to act or to care. Impartial. Immobile. Immpassive. This makes me sad.

"You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out if it"
Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of, U2

24 November 2001, 11:11

2001 inventions i managed to miss

I've just been reading TIME.com's Inventions of the Year 2001. It makes me wonder if I read the paper or watched the news at all this past year. I had no idea that a new form of birth control had been developed or that someone has created a shirt that records your body temperature, respiration and heart rate -- and will let you know if you're having a heart attack or not. There's even a robotic slug catcher, stink-free footwear, and self-cleaning windows that neutralize dirt and bird shite plus guard against ultraviolet light. And, although it would probably get used three times then join the sandwich maker in my cupboard under a cover of dust, the mashed potato machine speaks loudly to my starch-loving soul.

22 November 2001, 15:11

feeling grinchy

Just before I left work today we all received an email announcing that the company Christmas party had been cancelled. And what was the reason that the holiday soiree had drowned in the eggnog before the mistletoe had even been hung? It was certainly not due to lack of interest. No, the company decided that, in these times of economic instability, it would be fiscally prudent to cut costs wherever possible, and that meant immediately axing the Christmas party -- even though our parent company is one of the largest and most stable of companies in the country. So, the Grinch has stolen Christmas from Whoville -- well, these days it's pretty much WhoCaresville. Morale is at an all-time low. At least we can look forward to layoffs in January.

21 November 2001, 22:11

take your pick

vegblog. or naked blog. just do it.

19 November 2001, 23:11

"what's the frequency, kenneth?"

People seem to feel compelled to deliver us messages this week. On Monday Trevor was approached by an odd woman. And yesterday in the grocery store a woman walked up to me with a warning: to stop carrying so much in my basket. She told me that using a cart would guard against certain obstacles that lie waiting to trip up naive basket shoppers. She then pushed back her jacket to reveal a nasty purply-yellow bruise covering her upper arm and told me that it was broken -- broken because she was carrying too heavy of a load and fell. There was an urgency in her voice that left me feeling more superstitious than usual. And on the way home, lugging my bulging bags of veggies, I paid particular attention to steps and cracks in the pavement.

18 November 2001, 21:11

missing simon

Today is the sad anniversary of the death of our cat, Simon. I miss his animated morning stories. The way he came running when I sang songs to him. When he rolled on his back and showed off his huge white tummy. The way he relentlessly pawed at me until I would rub his head. When he would poke me in the nose in the morning. I miss him sitting next to me on the couch. The rare times he moved to a pillow in my lap. His unique howly-meow from another room. Playing ball. Playing with the housecoat belt. His voracious appetite. I miss his moodiness. His snarkiness. His temper-tantrums. His love bites -- even the ones on my legs as I stumbled to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And what I really miss is the way that we connected on some special kind of human-feline level. The way that he and I understood each other. Where we were coming from. Where we needed to be. I miss that most of all.

18 November 2001, 10:11

blood-sucking

On Thursday I gave blood for the first time in years. In 1997 the Red Cross blacklisted me for having a heart mumur. Luckily, when Canadian Blood Services took over, heart murmurs were taken off the list (and rightly so). So, once again, I am free and able to let my arm get punctured every 56 days.

It was a really nice experience. The donor clinic is on Bay Street -- in the heart of Toronto's financial district -- so the nurses are accustomed to siphoning from suits. I was probably the only girl they've had in there for weeks. Everyone fussed over me. We laughed at cat jokes and chatted about shoes. I was plied with cookies and a second serving of peach juice. And I left with warm fuzzies all round.

17 November 2001, 14:11

poem

New poem today: A Study of Fruit at the Monthly Team Meeting.

This afternoon I've been searching (in vain) for homepages of other poets. All of the usual resources I check seem to have a) let their site registration lapse, b) forgotten to have paid their hosting bill, or c) simply do not care to maintain their databases anymore. It's sad, really. I love seeking out personal pages of writers.

17 November 2001, 13:11

living on the edge

The days are getting shorter; daylight is shrinking. Today I left work 15 minutes later than normal, and already the sun had stolen quietly into the still lake, leaving the bruised sky to wonder where the day had gone. An Air Ontario plane drifted down out of the sky toward the Island airport, its lights reaching forward in the thick moisture of evening, reaching out for the embrace of land. And walking in the damp darkness, past the silent harbour cruise boats and the empty docks, past the restaurants closed for the season, I just felt so incredibly lucky to live here in this place. In the city, but at the edge of water.

14 November 2001, 21:11

stop asking me for money at work

I get really uncomfortable when events at work move beyond work-related activities, and take on a more personal focus. For example, I try to make myself scarce during the yearly United Way campaign at work. It's not because I don't want to help people. Quite the contrary, I regularly give to charities that help people and animals, donate groceries to the food bank, etc. I am just not convinced that umbrella organizations are the best route to getting money in the hands of those who need it, and I find the corporate zeal to be associated with a charity a little too PR-ish. So I do what I can on my own and try not to flag myself as a non-team player.

So today when the VP's secretary came around with a bag and asked me to draw the name of the person to whom I would play "secret Santa" at the December team meeting, I felt the same awkward uneasiness. There were so many reasons for me to decline -- ideological, environmental, socio-economical -- and frankly, I would rather we all donate the $10 to the Food Bank, Cancer Society, the AIDs Society, the Amnesty International, or the countless starving people in the world. We all have a good jobs, roofs over our heads, and the things we need at home. And for goodness sakes, half the people I work with aren't even Christian, so the idea of a secret Santa seems a bit culture-centric to me.

This situation has really challenged my thoughts on work-related giving. On one hand, I love to give gifts, and often present little tokens of my appreciation to colleagues. But this giving is self-propelled -- it's something that I decide to do because I feel moved to do it. But on the other hand, I do not like sitting here worrying about whether or not my colleagues assume that I am a total Scrooge. It leaves me wondering, should I just keep my opinions to myself and go along with it all?

13 November 2001, 21:11

"can't buy me love"

Sometimes I am astounded (and most often saddened) about the level of pampering a lot of children receive from their parents. I know that this makes me sound like a cranky, jealous adult, but there are so many times that I find myself cringing to hear about all the costs that parents incur for their children's involvement in certain sports and clubs, or the money that is dished out for ridiculously-priced shoes and collector's items "that may be worth something someday". Too many times it seems I witness parents catering to their child's every whim, and it makes me worry about what kind of boring or self-centred adults they will become.

Last night while visiting Trevor's family, I had the pleasure of sitting next to his grandfather, Carl, at dinner. I listened, completely engrossed in Carl's tales of living in Guelph in the 1920s. When playing hockey, they tied catalogues to their legs for shinpads and used frozen "horse buns" for pucks. They made their own fishing poles. They smoked tea and cornsilk or found inventive ways of making money to buy cigarettes. They had odd jobs and paper routes. They rode their bikes for miles and miles every day. And in the winter they rode ice floes down the Speed river, and stole rides on the backs of cutters. There wasn't any money, so kids had to use their imagination to create what they needed. Everything had to be invented -- or it just didn't happen.

Carl has had no shortage of inventiveness in his life. His childhood ambitions led him to jobs as a pharmacist, engineer, architect, inventor, etc.. And although he created for himself a prosperous and successful life, the inspiration to create has yet to cease: even into his 87th year he paints and carves the most beautiful ducks and birds I have ever seen. He continues to create, to invent.

It makes me wonder and worry about the children of today who are given everything. What happens to their creativity? What happens to their imagination? What will they be doing when they are 20, 50, or 86?

12 November 2001, 19:11

I miss you Trevor! :(

I miss you Trevor! :(

10 November 2001, 23:11

happy birthday, dad!

This morning I took the bus to Fergus to spend Dad's 57th birthday with him and Mom. It's been a wonderful day, and I am so glad that I came. But wow, Fergus is cold. But it's also full of friendly people, pretty -- and not the city. It's also where I was born, went to school, met my future husband, and lived until I was 21. And it's home. And right now, although I do really miss Trevor and Sarah, it's a good place for me to be.

09 November 2001, 23:11

lighting up my day

By the way, I love when lightningfield posts new photos.

08 November 2001, 22:11

ill-fornello

Does anyone else dislike Il Fornello as much as I do? Apparently there are 10 Il Fornello restaurants in Toronto. So far I've been in two, and I find the food overpriced and lacking in any culinary creativity. And the newest location on Queens Quay was built without accoustical evaluation or a thought to personal space. Cramped. Noisy. Uninventive. Expensive. Boring. Bah.

08 November 2001, 22:11

what did you say?

"Word of the day" on the elevator screen this morning: cunctator. What a crude word to call someone who has a tendency to put off housework, projects, or answering their email. "You know what, Bob, you can be such cunctator sometimes!"

06 November 2001, 19:11

twilight

Walked home from work at my favourite time of day: twilight. Crisp November air. Sun slowly falling into the cushion of charcoal clouds. Water slapping at the sides of the tall ships -- two of the very few boats left in the harbour. Strings of lights swaying in the cold wind: on the bridge, along railings, and wrapped around the trunks of the willows, making them look like tarted-up palm trees. The cold glow of neon lights on Pier 4. No one else around but a man obsessed with sound of his own exaggerated sighs, and a woman walking a fat dalmation in front of the marine police station. Quiet. Cold. And calm.

05 November 2001, 17:11

things under your sink that make you think

Today when I was cleaning out the cupboard under the bathroom sink, I found a bottle of green stuff (Benzydamine) that my doctor presribed for a throat infection I had in December of last year. When I read the label looking for a "best before" date, I saw that it is also prescibed for the relief of mouth sores that some cancer patients get when going through radiation therapy. And I remember reading the label back in December -- when I was just dealing with just a sore throat -- how very much more terrible it must be to be taking the green stuff for to deal with just one of the many nasty side effects of radiation, and how horrible it must be to have someone close to you suffering through the cancer. And here I am, 10 months later, on the eve of my Dad's first day of radiation. Sometimes it still doesn't seem real.

I didn't throw out the green stuff.

04 November 2001, 20:11

metal queen

Trevor had MTV on this morning while I was making breakfast, and the program (I think) was basically charting the evolution of (American) heavy metal from the late 70s/80s, interspersed with comments from current bands reflecting on how heavy metal influenced their teenage lives and music. So I listened to the clips of music that I revered during my early adolescence and enjoyed a few misty water-coloured metal memories of my own. Metal was the voice for so many varieties of the 80s geeks, and I still can feel that adrenaline and energy produced by one of my favourite AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Bon Jovi, Judas Priest, Def Leppard, Ozzy, or Motley Crue anthems. And even though the music I listen to now if very different from 15 years ago, I wonder if I called up my best friend Heather and asked her, if she would like to sit in her bedroom sometime with her old ghetto blaster blaring and have me sing backup again to her lead vocals on Photograph. "Oh, look what you've done to this rock 'n' roll clown".

04 November 2001, 20:11

fog

It was such a beautiful walk to work today: drizzly and foggy. Walking beside the lake, the mist was thick enough to shroud the downtown core; it was like it had disappeared completely. The CN Tower was non-existent. The dome of the SkyDome had lifted off. And the island was nowhere to be found. And I enjoyed being in usual space without the usual surroundings, loosely held between the hands of fog.

03 November 2001, 00:11

milky

And it's something quite peculiar
Something that's shimmering and white
Leads you here despite your destination
Under the milky way tonight
Under the Milky Way, The Church

01 November 2001, 22:11

wearing thin

Strange how we can use stress and activity to insulate ourselves from what we are afraid to feel. That's how I deal with difficult situations anyway. I make myself busy, and I keep myself busy. I let my mind fill up with a million thoughts -- an infinite blanket of stars forming constellations that vie for my attention, keeping my brain distracted. But then there is always the point when I start to focus on the depth of it all, and I begin to feel calm. Which in my case means vulnerable.

There is so much going on around me. And I have been using work stress and all the activities of having Trevor's Mom here for a visit protect me from thinking. But now that insulation has worn thin. And now I'm thinking. Thinking about the phone call that I answered as I stepped in the door from the gym. Thinking about the news I didn't want to hear from Dad on the other end. Thinking about how cancer just won't leave him alone no matter how positive and strong and courageous he is, and how fucking angry that makes me. Thinking about my Mom and how she is dealing with all of this. Thinking about the radiation that starts on Monday and the weeks that stretch from here to Christmas. Thinking about how I really want to be with my Dad right now.

01 November 2001, 21:11