Things a girl can do in her first week in Chicago

1) Get hooked up with a transit pass. This is goodness all round.
2) Move into a cute (though cold) little place in Wicker Park (it's got it going on).
3) Join the local gym. They have free apples.
4) Go to work and try to get the paperwork going. Cook County is traumalicious.
5) Check out the spoken word awesomeness (themed around the MOON!!) at the theater at the end of the street!!
6) Go to the Art Institute of Chicago, 'cause it's free on Thursdays.
7) Have your dear, dear, dear friend come visit you from Indianapolis, and drink a lot of cheap Aussie wine.
8) Go see a play -- it'll be fantastic.
9) Continue, again and again, to be amazed at how nice, helpful, interactive these midwesterners in the US's third biggest city are!
10) Find that working in a large "charity" hospital makes you feel prouder than ever to be a Canadian (social healthcare, more equitable distribution of wealth and opportunities).

perpetual motion

Six more months in transit and all of it to be packed into one trip back.

I am so bloody tired of living out of my car/my suitcase/boxes and bags, on buses/planes/the road.

Really, really, really tired of it. Three years and all I want is a little nest. A little place to put things away in. So that I can sort through boxes and bags once and for all and not have to try, every 4 or 6 or 2 weeks to figure out what the best place each thing should inhabit. So that things aren't always lost or almost so. So that I can stop anticipating what material items I am going to want to use 2, 4, 6 months from now. So that I know that at the end of the journey I have somewhere to go.

In spite of the massive cull that saw all my possessions sold or given away 18 months ago so that every last item would fit into my tiny little car, it still just doesn't fit. It still continues to expand (books, papers, and more GARBAGE). And all of it burdensome: I have to worry about how to keep it safe, or accessible.

Six more months, and then, and then, and then I will continue wishing for something that I still won't be able to afford, alas. But I'm going to try, because I can't see, from the thick of it, how this is worth it.

make soup

olive oil
1 sweet potato, little cubes
1/2 small japanese cabbage (daikon), cut into 3 cm pieces
small handful carrots, chopped coarsely
veg. stock
white pepper (or black)
water

Combine the first 4 ingredients and soften in pot over med. heat.
Add remaining ingredients and simmer. = brothy soup.

Serve with friend.

Yum.

Movember

Resolute

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Here I am - by happenstance and for lack of good weather in Nanisivik/Arctic Bay - in Resolute Bay for 3 nights until the next flight can attempt to land us on a typically fogged-in strip a little south and east of here. Sitting around in the lodge (inhabited by research and construction folk) I was treated to 30 year old scotch and such stories: grizzly encounters, mud-sunk twin otters, downed planes! Riding around in the back of the RCMP truck today, I got to see my first polar bear! What a way to spend the first days of fall. A balmy 7 below, with snow and barenlands, whale carcasses and hungry dog teams. Similar in some ways to the many other Nunavut communities I've visited, but stranger still because truly, no one is supposed to be here. The Inuit were almost forcibly relocated here decades ago, for reasons strikingly similar to what has prompted Steven Harper's two visits to the territory: sovereignty and the promise of resources. There were Thule families here more than a thousand years ago, but it was a different land then - warmer, and whalier. I am intrigued and pretty delighted about my stranded state.

Canada Day in the Far North

Just arrived two days ago for a four-month stint in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

Today, Canada Day, there were festivities and fun in town, and three images that will cement my memories of my first national day spent in this uniquely Canadian town:

A diminutive (not 5 feet tall) Inuk woman, striding about proudly in her seal-skin kamiks (boots) and one of those umbrella hats in red and white with maple leaves shielding her eyes from the the sun (all 21 hours a day of it).

Stan Rogers' son, Nathan, singing about the northwest passage, under a giant circus tent erected for 11 days of arts festival, which attracted performers from Cuba, New Zealand, and everywhere in between.

Steve and our new friend beaming as they carried deep-fried bannock ($2 a piece) over to me at the door to the tent, where I'm stationed as the (dancing) first-aid volunteer.

i love you,
and there aren't
better words
than that
i love you.

mourning a little in advance

thank you for caring for my precious

as angry as you are over her leaf-like nature

as if these are to be her last days

please try to be as gentle with her spirit

nutty goodness in kelowna

HPIM2909, originally uploaded by Dalziela.

There are worse things than going nutty at the nut farm on a thanksgiving aft.

Mine freundline Anne's photo.

I (vegetarian) kill mice with hammers

bloody hell. roomie picked death-traps for the house-guests. enticed them with peanut butter. but she's never home to count the bodies. this second victim met his fate while i was down-stairs, having spent much of the afternoon packing away dry goods, and vacuuming mouse-poo from the kitchen shelves. i came upstairs for other purposes to find him trapped, but alive, bleeding and screaming beneath the wire. so in the end another met his end, but this time at my hand - my tiny hammer, like maxwell's did him in.

it was the dog in the guyanese jungle that i was thinking of (half-skulled, brains exposed and writhing with new life), who begged me with his eyes to put him out of his misery (i didn't then have it in me, i regret it to this day).

thanksgiving is for turkeys.

westward i have traveled

let's see. since may i have: had my nose adjusted by a well-meaning 'drop-it-like-it's-hot' collision; flown kites with my male relations; graduated (again); moved no-one-died-but-i've-inherited-them-anyways pieces of massive, heavy furniture; performed another tremendous purge; eaten just one last time, and then again one last time at cambodiana; strolled through kensignton market; taken courses on 'saving lives' and 'catching babies'; purchased a practical and staid little blue car and fitted it with a roof-rack; driven over 4,000 km (through northern ontario, southern manitoba, sounthern saskatchewan, southern AND middle alberta) with an old friend to reach my current (re)location -- kelowna, bc; splashed and swum in my new lake; bounced on a trampoline; visited wineries; picked cherries; eaten goats cheese in spades; canned: cherries, peaches, peach chutney, apricot jam, pickles, tomato lemon conserve, salsa, hot peppers, and now apple butter; played (hooray) soccer again; suffered from sternal rub injuries; bought my cross-country skiis in quiet protest against the down-hill culture i'm imbibing; been sleepless; slept lots.

cattails are yum

Cattails are yummy! I still have marsh-goo under my fingernails from scratching around in search of cattail shoots. The inner white core is yummy raw, and can be boiled to make a nice cooked veggie.

There's more to look forward to, too: the taller shoots can be peeled and eaten in much the same way. Later, the young flowers (before they send forth their pollen) can be boiled up and gnawed at just like corn on the cob (super extra-delicious), and later the pollen can be collected and used as/with flour.

And the gathering is half the fun! Happy cattail hunting.

to a raven i have loved

raven, flying thoughtful circles
raven, with his long, straight bill
raven, who stole the light and cracked the clam to bring forth our world
raven, clever trickster:

floating above my gaze across the valley,
deep traveler's call, vibrato undertones announcing his game
each time another loop is complete.

and then a wonderful airborn dance:
three slow beats of his wings, brief glide,
then in one motion wings quickly tucked in and tilting to bring his shoulders
perpendicular to the many trunks below - eyes on both of his worlds at once,
a graceful shallow dive, only a moment long, then untucked a stacato laugh,
three beats of his wings, a moment's glide,
and sidelong dives of only a few feet's decent again and again,
around and around, in a lazy, agile spiral descent.

he is not greedy with his magic.

wee creatures and their mothers

i'm working in labour & delivery this month. i've learned some stuff:

1) it's not so bad to be covered in blood & goo, especially if your boots are black

2) it is just incredible what a woman's body & mind can do to get those wee little creatures grown and out into the world.

3) even women who are self-described 'whimps' can tolerate an incredible amount of pain, whith the help of all of those endorphins.

4) joyfully crying dads make me cry.

5) a new understanding about why women & enjoyment of sex weren't thought to mix for such a long time: imagine delivering a baby, maybe getting important and tender bits of your anatomy torn and mashed in the process, maybe having those shreds healing whilly-nilly with infection and scarring (before the joys of clean and timely repair), and then try to work yourself into an aroused frenzy when next an engorged phallus comes your way.

6) babies are slippery.

30thirtyTHREE-OHtreintatrente

that's how many years complete. same old same old, but i feel pretty alive, i do! skinny dipping in icy-cold mountain-top lakes is one way of celebrating. donuts and a misty morning are another. standing on the mountain-view porch, watching the magic of a tipsy raven is one more way. supper with new friends promises to be a fourth. i am a lucky lady, this is sure!

letters from a thursday in the BC north

let me tell you about this particular piece of heaven.

i arrive in the new home. view more stunning than i remember as the late afternoon sun pours into the living room past lush houseplants and wooden furnishings. high ceilings, glass almost filling the walls that face the mountain.

i walk the eager black dog waiting for me - through more sunshine, down the gravel road to my only 3 neighbours. woods and mountains are all we meet.

i return to my new temporary home and prepare myself a lovely little salad - fresh greens from an earthenwhere pot on the mountain-view porch, fresh basil from the kitchen garden, beautiful black olives and fine cheese, sprinkled with italian olive oil and fragrant red wine vinegar.

sitting on the porch, overlooking the forest that is the backyard and leads only to the mountain, my borrowed black dog licks my feet as i please my palate, and i look off at the glacier-capped mountains further in the distance beyond the forested hills that close the valley of the Hazeltons.

i can't imagine feeling anything but peaceful with this massive rocky slope towering over me, with all those tiny spots of trees rising up its slopes, with that persistent snow up near the clouds to put me in my tiny little place.

everyone has apple trees (and bear-visitors almost without exception). berries are plentiful, and I've heard mushrooms are as well. so are fish - today i feasted in Gitsegukla with a clan celebrating a gravestone placement ceremony. the big chief had passed-on 3 years ago, and today was a celebration, in blanketed regalia, with 'burnt fish' and cold potatoes, and elders and speeches. so much to eat, so much to watch, so little that i could understand. then back to work at the community clinic, and then an early end, which was good news -- today i am tired after a moderate night on-call.

the day, living beside a mountain, is extended beyond the dusk that falls to earth -- the peak reflects back another hour of sunshine and light to keep me from napping just yet.

still, i'll soon be asleep, maybe even here on the couch with my book that i'm unlikely to get too far with. and then tomorrow i'll run the four and a half kilometers into work, i think.

on the other hand, i could tell you about how last night, i terrorized myself with handed-down stories of violence. of scars perched on cheek-bones cut by her lovers' fists when their son was small and she too was only a child. of a desperate father, molding gold and setting diamonds while his family, his life are shards scattered around him, and his child, still very much a child, returned to him with a black eye and a need for powdered crystals of another kind.

or my frustration today -- first, disappointment, though there are any number of possible reasons to explain why the mother of my 19-month old patient from emerg last night never made it back to see us about figuring out whether her little one has rickets or not. and more frustrating was the 2 and a half year old who's young parents came to see us today to see about getting disability allowance for her -- she wasn't speaking well (and had been identified over a year ago with hearing problems), but somehow had slipped through the cracks. ears perforated, teeth rotted away to little stumps, and her little brother on a similar tack - and i can't tell who will make sure that they are looked after.

enough of ramblings.

hope all are well!

xome.

6 weeks of madness

i have been plunged into madness -- 6 weeks of psychiatric institutions, psychoses, depression, confusion and mania. but (this time, at least?) not my own -- work brought me to the constellation of crazy, and i came and went between the two sparkling pools of madness in this town.

fine strong minds scrambling for a way to keep afloat. this world is hard, this much i know. beautiful, and hard, and there are many, many ways of being in it. for some, their way of being doesn't suit, and some such folk stopped a while under my watch, and ate my pills, and shared some thoughts. there was a little healing, there was worstening, there was a great deal of hanging on. it was work i could sink my teeth into, fangs and all. challenging, in nearly too many ways. i loved it, absolutely.

and strangely, for all the fear and sadness around me, i drew a great deal of energy into my own quivering mind - emerging with a staff in my hand and the sensation of steady for the time being.

i felt - i feel well and rested and with only a slight longing for my own days of ecstatic energy. and now i'm off again. to serbia, then northern b.c. before i again refuel here in my home, and in the splashing waves of this fine lake. fingers are crossed that the water remains warm enough for more dancing in the wind (i've taken-up windsurfing, and i'm hooked!).

dragonslippers

a friend lent me this really incredible book, Dragonslippers. it's a graphic memoir, written by a bright young woman who survived a 10-year long abusive relationship. the drawings were from her time during those years - very honest. it's a very incredible document, and really worthwhile, i think, regardless of one's experience with spousal abuse. i'm sure i will find occasion to share it with someone who needs it in the future. find it, read it. that's what i suggest.

so much hot air

admiring the joy of falling through air, but feeling so far from all that freedom myself today. instead, too much hot air and knots.

it can be said that happiness = 1/|expectations-reality|.

but trying too hard to remodel expectations in anticipation of an unsatisfactory reality is another kind of lie. it probably won't allow disappointment to be avoided, just postponed. better to adjust reality or feel more comfortable with disappointment.

already summer's heat

last i wrote it was avril. month of fickle sky-sourced tears and wicked winds taunting with warm undertones and the promise of floral blooms.

and now, already it is june. i missed a lot in between. as ever, a lot of expressive silence is the theme when i'm around that mildly intoxicating creature. now i'm back home (oh! frabjous day, calloo, callay!!), and though working too hard, so thrilled to be here for this season. bike rides and long strolls in my favorite woods to help me hang onto shreds of sanity after 29 hour slumberless shifts in the bottled-air halls of the hospital.

so glorious to feel at home -- a feeling fairly foreign to me and mine until i settled into this town years ago now. home. a place to come back to after wild wanderings and mad adventures. (bliss and sigh)

and from here a better place to reflect on the transformation. chrysalis. so hard to resist the shiny new lenses i'm expected to wear, as i learn this professional role. but this for later.

now, to revel in the tingling buzz of blood pumping every which way after a glorious evening bike ride -- strip, a quick dance around my apartement, and some supper, before no-doubt collapsing for some welcome sleep.

happenings in the environment:

a baby bird, dead on the pavement, beneath its tree,

an enormous concrete tower over the grave of our community garden,

clear sky, have stars, will travel.

un stage à Montréal

bon, alors - j'suis ici à Montréal. learning all about drugs. drugs drugs drugs. and addiction. dependence. abuse. detox. relapse. abstinence. harm reduction.

gambling, booze, smack, crack. and methadone. people who are sooo happy that they're in a methadone program. people who hate being on methadone. some on methadone a few weeks, others on it a dozen years. people who are trying very, very hard to re-write the stories of their lives. except that they're not stories. they're just lives, just people, and just a whole lotta drugs.

and i'm floating along through the maze of this city. happy en français, less happy en ville. but transpo isn't so bad with my handy-dandy metro pass, and there's good eating at every corner, and i've become hooked again on coffee and croisants. all i have to do now is go and find some friends to drink a little substance with myself, and a little art to help my brain process.

this world.

i told her she might have breast cancer.

she told me i was wonderful.

poporchestra

forgive me if this is news only to me (i don't really drink pop - but i have one beside me now...)

i'm sitting with a can of sodypop, and it is MAKING MUSIC. the little bubblybubbles are tinging and ringing against the sides of their aluminum can. it sounds rather lovely, especially filling the pauses between the clatter of these keyboard keys.

sip. and gone. more of a dull splat-splat now. maybe just the right level gave just the right resonance?

ah little magic!

wrecked on ice

out on the sea-ice, on the way to try to hook some sea-fish, we came upon this trapped relic.

and while i'm at it, just wondering: couldn't we make a pedal-driven snowmobile? (it would be too fantastic to bicycle across the frozen ocean)

my little bag of worms

with a hole at each end
he worms his way into mine
to start an itch that won't die

transformation

i think that i will surely look back on this period as a transformative time in my life. i have been rushing around the world of late (haven't even been in my own home since january, with another 2 months to go), but it's not catching up with me at all - i think because it's just been non-stop learning.

first it was nunavut, and what will probably prove to be my favorite month of this beastly thing called medical clerkship -- the final long months before a new md is minted. i had a ball up there - fun, warm people, interesting work every moment of every day, and the adventure of a place unique in so many ways.

then, a whirlwind working trip to chile, and the buzz of youthful energy collected. five hundred and fifty bright and empassioned students from around the world, wading through protocol and policy to get to the heart of some very hearfelt dialogues.

now goose bay, labrador, and surrounded by islanders and an ecclectic mix of docs from all over the world (mexico, nepal, england, poland, iraq, colombia...). and i feel, here, where i'm outside of my comfort zone professionally (surgery was never what i thought i would voluntarily sign up for, even if only for a few weeks -- i'm more of a 'healer' than a 'fixer', more jazzed up by process than by outcomes, and ever-tentative about creating wounds) that i'm stretching a tough, fibrous capsule that was close around my arms. in spite of myself, i am enjoying this time, this learning, this material, and my expanding vision of what i am capable of immensely! no doubt largely due to the very good fortune of having an exceptionally kind and gentle teacher in a field known for neither.

it all feels bigger than the words i can find for it. i wish i could capture it better - it will soon have faded, and i'll be unable to evoke the magnitude in memory.

Pastoral Pucón, Chile

Frobisher Bay, day's end

sitting in the plane, reading words of the world.

a flight from ice-country, with sea-food tastyness, and the best damn airplane food i've ever tasted (thank-you First Air, and the purse-strings of the government).

lovely words, also, of that fine wordwizard, christian bok. diamonds on the page...

red wine and fond memories, already, of fantastic fun with voyagers from various corners of our south. and the first (and maybe last) time i've enjoyed 2 disinterests: olympics, and television. such fun when it's a social gateau.

sweet warmth in my finger-tips
as the blood of a god
seeps from lips
to bathe synapses
in memories of kisses.

goodbye to such lovely people who make me happy to be transforming into: this thing i am becomeing; that role i will absorb; the healer i would like to be.

hmm. hot cookie, hot damn! they even make cream-topped capucchinos on this flight!!

leaving blizzards and blowing behind. gusty white-outs and taking flight with the wind behind us as we hopped down the long hill towards fur-hats, skinned foxes, and stone-cold fertility. and i miss him already, his legs crooked into mine, his arm holding my head, his heart keeping time. his a long night, and mine as well, the rush of air under this plane, over that bus, to take me to a room full of somber silence in celebration of a life lived too quickly, and its breathless end. i'm sorry, simon, that you wanted it to end. now i dream of the ends of imagined loves of those i've loved, rather than thinking of you, and you, and you - 3 with likely more to follow, who've found no salve for your weighted sorrow.

with love to you all, and looking forward to trees.

blustery day

Nunavut notes - on the 6th day she sang with delight

This morning is stunningly lovely. An icy white mist softens the hard lines of the frozen bay, and adds a hint of citrus smudge as it picks up the warm glow of sunrise spilling over distant hills.

Sunrise carries on for hours, and soon enough becomes a drawn-out sunset. And it has been cold, but I've quickly acclimatized. I don't think I've really felt cold since the first day, and this probably because I've learned to dress for these temperatures. In fact, most of the time outside I'm swelteringly hot beneath my layers and layers of insulation.

Yesterday, Steve & I found time to wander about town for the afternoon. We visited the museum, which has lovely artwork and objects of lives past and present to explore. The Cape Dorset prints and carvings are stunning - wish I could go there to see more! There are works by artists from many of Iqaluit's 27 communities here, and a print that Steve & I have our eye on (if I'm to buy something here, I should try to do so before the 50+ pilots and other Boeing engineers and tech folk descent here for a week of cold-weather testing of the new 800-seater airbus!).

Upstairs, at the museum, there are several large photo albums with pictures from the 1920's, the '50's and the '70's. This little place has been completely transformed in that time. From a Hudson's bay trading store and sparse tent settlement, to a landing strip and ?geological survey operation, the erection of a few buildings (igloo-shaped church, pre-fab space-station-esque school building), to what is now a busy, if still improbable community of oil-heated, electrically-wired homes, a hospital (and a newer replacement in the works), several schools, and even an 8-story 'high-rise' with a public swimming pool inside. We continued walking a little after the museum - besides the over-priced NorthMart, there's an Outdoor Survival shop, which warm gear and guns, and at Arctic Ventures, the competing over-priced grocery store, we found Bollywood classics blaring loudly to entice passers-by into the shop. Apparently, some people order their produce weekly from Montreal (at normal prices), and then pay to have it flown up here in order to save money! Hard to imagine that it's worth it until you've seen mark-up on goods that the bi-opoly has managed.

and other tidbits:
Each house is uniquely numbered here, so taxis ($5 per passenger, flat rate no matter the journey) need not worry about street names and such. There is a red light at the front of every home - when the water tank is empty, the light goes off and the water truck, which drives up and down the streets all day, comes to fill the tanks (too cold for water or sewage pipes here!).

Nunavut notes - day 1 in Iqaluit

1530h, sunset, as I trudge up the long, long hill to the apartment. It's been a long day, it seems. I left Ottawa in the grip of an icy storm, with tree-tops heavy in snow-dresses, and leafless branches twisting to the sky. Twenty minutes of furious de-icing by the ground-crew, and we were off. The day was bright, and I could catch good glimpses of bright snow sweeping across the earth in every direction. Almost flat - an undulating ripple much like the swells of the sea. And my sense of scale and perspective all wrong - are we flying low, just above the surface of the treeless barrens, or far above, distance dwarfing rolling hills and rocky lands?

The run-way here in Iqaluit is just long enough that it has apparently been designated as an alternative landing site for the space shuttle. Probably overkill for our comfortable little jet. We landed, and after a short wait for the stairs (they were frozen, so was the back-up generator for the spare set), we disembarked. The air against my face, in my lungs, was cold, but I felt well-prepared with my new cold-weather gear: down vest, parka, 2 layers of mits, fleece hat, balaclava, long-johns... I missed my greeters at first, but then I saw Steve, dwarfed by his giant blue, borrowed parka with thick fur trim, and we gathered my too-full bags to take them to the apartment. First, we dropped off two optometrists preparing to head further north for a week of prescription-writing out in the community. There seem to be lots of people like us here - short stints of work in this remote piece of Canada.

Iqaluit in the sunshine is busy, with a steady buzz of SUVs, taxis and pickups to-ing and fro-ing, and a healthy crowd on foot. I joined the walkers for a few hours in the afternoon, wandering down the hill from the hospital, across town at the NorthMart, and back up again to close the loop to the hospital. Most of the big banks, many government offices, a few coffee shops are here, along with chools, a new, half-finished hospital, and even an electronics chain. The NorthMart has everything - $800 Snow Goose parkas, a small pharmacy, big-screen televisions, dry goods. Produce, fresh or frozen, is exorbitant, but the selection is impressive. Tomatoes - $9/lb, snow peas at outrageous prices, bananas $1.50/lb. But I found (of all things) an avocado I could afford, at $1.49, and bought a small package of tricolor pasta and a little bottle of pesto sauce for a grand, three-item total of over $11. Something to eat tonight if I'm hungry, at least. Will have to be careful not to get scurvy up here (!), and not to be taken-in by the promise of cheap calories offered by the bargain-basement prices on the bags of chips and other junk.

There are many Inuit wearing at least some recognizably traditional outerwear - knee-high skin boots, and babies in the hoods of brigthly decorated amautiks - women's coats with hood-pouches perfect for small children to be carried in. It's not uncool for teens to walk around in snowpants, or big parkas, either. Though there are enough people wearing far less than I can imagine wearing below 30.

Sitting in the apartment, warm roibos tea in hand, watching a calvacade of 13 little spots of light, like ants, crawling across the frozen surface of Frobisher Bay. Clear night, blush of the day's memories lightening the brow of the far-off hills, and steam rising from the houses dotting the hill below mine. No stars yet, but soon, I'm sure, along with dancing sky-light unique to the north, if I am lucky.

why did i cry today?

First tears: I had to endure the dentist, which has never, once, gladdened my heart. As he gently squeezed the burning numbness into my gum (it seeped up to my lip, my nose), one eye was stoic. The other, further from him, spilled a steady stream of my pain. What a thankless profession.

Second tears: I voted. As I tapped that little piece of paper into its fragile cardboard box, a wave of awe rose through me, and I blinked back tears. Kept blinking them back as I left city hall, and walked across the newly finished square with skaters dancing. I think it's because we come from a country where votes for most were hard-won only a little more than 10 years ago. What a priviledge, what a responsibility, what power safely managed by the masses!

why don't we tie their jaws shut?

mouths hang agog,
at the afront
of another breath denied.

Today in the city

Today, in the city,
I read prize-winning poems.

None nearly as nice as your pretty pomes.

but now,
my dearest,
from this train,
on this train trip,

I am reading words
that draw me pictures of our loving,
that drip with our liquids,
and run with our juices.

Words that make me think of you,
each one:
tentacled beasts, and running red wine,
and fragrant nectar breathed into loving nostrils
by broad-cased lungs.

These words that I will carry back to you,
and hope that you will be entertained,
as I am moved.

With love.

even though you 'fixed it' with one hanger

in spite of whatever MacGyver-esque techniques you used to reconstruct the fallen exhaust system on your cute red truck,

i am sitting here, up above the trees,
and i can hear that you'll soon be walking through
the door.

nice truck.
still loud, like us.

taking stock

just to summarize:

pushing the end of almost thirty
still full of love and all that shimmering
quiver

just like years ago. only better.

serious biznach

so. it's been brought to my attention that i may have sounded a bit too serious in that last post.

be it resolved: never sound too serious.

now, everyone, take off your pants!


(unless you're always gettin' 'em off, Tudor, in which case, maybe leave them on for a change)

in conversation

in conversation, the other day w/ my friend, at The Favorite Cafe...

we were talking around and around. and he reminded me of this thing: this fear of inhabiting an Internal Universe in which many nice ideas are collected, and pondered, and chewed upon, but from which no action is initiated.

you know it: "will i end-up doing nothing will all of this grooming/prep/privilege...?"
a pinch of guilt: "all of those Big Ideas brought me here? to this path to safe comfort?"
mingled with: "will i forever be alone in all of this?"

and so, be it resolved:
planning/thinking/preparing MUST have the intention of action as its kernel. inaction is a valid consequence, but it must be calculated - a choice, rather than an accident of inertia.

be it resolved.

fortune

best fortune ever, and it's been sitting in it's cookie on my kitchen shelf, next to the porcelain spoons, for months...

The only way to catch tiger cubs is to go into the tiger's den.

missing madness

I (almost) miss the madness of the fall.

Most winters these past few years have found me struggling, searching for things beginning with the letter 's':
support
sanity
serenity.

This time I have just wild energy and more happy feelings than I know what to do about.

It is good. A treat, even. But so was spring and its rebirth as I climbed out into lightness and dancing.

beneath this stately pleasure-dome

Last night we touched again,
cool, crisp air moving between us.
You at my feet,
in my hair,
the shivering ecstacy of your touch,
my tongue,
this familiar pleasure.

Then my hot madness
making you wet, small, dying!

But the night warmed, and you,
snowflake, were gone by morning.

tears are wasted salt

i must do better than weep: over the rabble-rouser words of stephen lewis.

a day

sick, and a little tired. but glad to have the brother here for the evening (an exuse to leave my solitude for a few hours of twinned sense of humour and a film enjoyed). and enjoyed a nice long chit-chat with meg-à-new-york as she wandered on and between trains back from princeton towards her home.

the sweetness of an afternoon in this sun-warmed home.

i have just spent the last 12 hours on email. that's right. half a whole day. there's another half a day more i could do, though i've made a dent.

this is the price. that i pay, and would gladly pay again, for 3 days away from my many accounts, queer queries, tiresome tirades, rushed requests...

three days in which to frolic in the woods (throwing windfall apples, picking burrs off of fleece burred eternal, hunting mushrooms); in which to make sweet, slow, hard-core, life-loving, flesh-adoring love; in which to stroke forbidden kitten fur and eat eggs from 9 new chickens; in which to play games (charades, board games, war games) and gamble; in which to visit families and friends; breath smoke into tired lungs; get sick but well at the same time.

and as always, left wanting more.

(which is always better than leaving wanting less!)

in the blink of an eye, hours have passed

looking through old notes from my never-sent drafts box. too many words that revealed too much emotion. but here's something that pleases me to remember - ah, the pure exhilaration of wonder (please take me back there soon!):

do you ever get lost, caught in the spell of experience? i do – it’s both lovely and a bit frightening – tearing myself away from concentration that focused too sharply, or maybe sharply enough... the play of light on the pavement receding away from my window’s view as we race along the highway towards belleville, napanee, and kingston... once, i remember being completely enthralled by the quivering perch of a drop of muddy water on the window pane before it began its halting, shuddering criss-cross journey down the dusty glass. each pause a glimpse of spinning flecks of grit and dirt in a magical, synchronous, chaotic dance – i remember thinking it was like colliding schools of tiny silver fish racing around in this tiny aquarium. a dribble-dance encased in nothing more than surface tension. and how fortunate, how very, very lucky to be the chosen witness.

do you ever fantasize about smashing things?

if by 'things' you mean 'my bloody computer'? then yes.

yes yes yes. smashy smashy smash- smash.

i can imagine the sound, the smell, the feeling as i release this beast from sweaty hands to fly across the room to die!

connected, and disconnected both.

how to make a little paneer

boil a litre of milk (powdered is fine)
remove from heat and add 2 Tbs. of lemon juice
the curds (!) will separate from the whey (!!)
[it really is that cool]

drain through a few layers of cheesecloth.
can be pressed overnight between heavy things in the fridge and cut into cubes,
or not.

presto magico - fresh home-made milk solids ("cheese" if you will)
yummalish in tomato-y onion-y tumeric-garam masala-chili-y peas-y goodness.

THIS is how to celebrate having time for grocery shopping and the fine rituals of selecting, preparing, consuming delightful nuggets of nutrition.

a blurr

i don't know how it is that i haven't bought any groceries in a month. or that i've moved every 3-5 days since the end of june... or that i'm about to spend my first week-end in my own home since sometime in april.

isn't this some kind of perpetual-motion-pergatory? and the true sign of insanity, for this is all of my own choosing.

and in contrast with the moving-spinning-running-rushing, is the tether that keeps me fixed to the electrical charge of my bloody computer. email now officially owns me. i'm so far gone that i'd seriously consider an implantable connection to this machine. the only redemption, that i can see, is that hard drives spin; like a spun prayer wheel i have been connected to something greater, right? would that it were so.

instead, the electical pulses cauterize the living flesh of love and warmth and connectedness. so here i am, another installment of another cold blue backlit night. human voices re-worked by phone, built-in-speakers, ear-bud headphones, into instant-messaged madness (it's NOT a meeting if no one is met).

thank ? for fuzzy dogs, independent springy curls, the sound of laugher (however trasmitted), and the kindess of near-strangers. and thank ? also for that weak instinct for self-preservation that has (finally) let me share my woes with just about all and sundry.

and coffee should never have been invented.

well, good-night.

year's love

gilded gelding lover:
let me receive your calm

stolen sunshine swimmer:
bobbing in filled tub of balm

woods-walker, feeding forests:
dancing in sky-lantern's light

whisp'ring wool-winder, quiet:
wrapped in warmth and darkest night

mine

i only have pale skin,
in fine lines little mystery.

absent the exotic,
erotic promises.

in this telling, an ordinary tale.

home again

i come from away (CFA), as they say in st. john's. but now i'm home again. this is going to be a year of extreme motion. loco!motion, for sure. the highlights are likely to be - brazil in january, the far north-ish for 6 weeks in the winter, somewhere else (maldives perhaps?) in feb, chile in march, and serbia in august. add to that a hectic schedule of meetings and placements in various ontario cities and towns, and then some. guess it's a good way to test the theory that i'm a nomad by nature after all (a nesting nomad, maybe?).

in any case, st. john's is beautiful, and the people as friendly as they are reputed to be. had a lovely time.

it's after 2 a.m. must be september.

but i'm enjoying your words.

364 days

364 days till the next year is added. had a lovely day, even if it was the last first day of school ever. and i learned to roll a kayak, in preparation for whitewater kayaking this week-end. it's only more of my favorite people that could have made it nicer.

i am home

once again ensconced in my little 2nd-floor apartment. the plants are here, the clutter, the sunshine, and the lake.

it's the lake that i've missed, these months away. tonight, as the clock marks the turning of the date, i should be in her arms, feel her cool fingers on the skin of my belly. that is the way to celebrate the passage of another year, and to welcome the last days of my fickle decade.

endless 8

let me count the ways,
for there are many:

one membery deep, but not forgotten, plunges into
two lips gently parted, whisp'ring softly
of three lines of words, and again of three little words
and then the four letter words - i want to, let's
and five, four, three, two, dive into
dark waters as the fires, rageing, heat the little home
at 678 East Greenbay Road and a tangle,
entangled in 8 limbs, complete with tentacles

for to carry us away one day.
let us carry them all this way.

this is the way,
to count the ways.
this is the way.

susurrus

his silence
hence his fill
of fun

hers mourning
lined up mornings
empty

two frenzies,
both sides
of their island

healthy lessons in unusual playces

i visited a township school yesterday. a primary school for 800 kids. 30ish teachers. it is an unusual school.

some kids come to school hungry. and they are fed - food grown in the school garden at lunch, porridge cooked by early-bird teachers in the morning, and a snack for all mid-morning provided by a local programme.

if they arrive dirty (they have no soap at home, or no parents), then they are bathed by parents volunteering and dressed in clean clothes while their uniforms are cleaned.

if they are HIV+, they are welcome. and if the social workers assessing suitability of their homes for regular, daily, life-long dosing with anti-retroviral drugs (now, finally, available) deem their homes too chaotic, too unstable to warrant these medicines? the school now intervenes - they find neighbours who can help ensure that the children eat the right foods at the right times and take the pills just so. teachers accompany sick parents to the hospital. the principal advocates to have sick students admitted when the system wouldn't ordinarily be bothered.

the principal recently adopted a young girl who is 'positive'. the girl had been very very sick - was delirious, was dying. and the principal had felt that she'd not be able to speak at the funeral if she hadn't done anything to intervene. now the child is back at school, is doing well, may soon start on antiretrovirals. another teacher has taken in her sister's grandchild, and people see that there are things they can do.

the kids in grade 7 and 8 performed for me a play that they had researched and written about antiretrovirals. there are many myths here about these, and the reasons for that are complicated. but their play was marvelous.

none of this is ordinary. if that is sad, it is also true.

from letters, to you (hard copy to follow)

Thus the long letter is begun. I write to you smiling, in spite of being trapped, as I am, in a kind of purgatory; Heathrow is a mall, and I've no escape!

...I spent most of the night trying, rather unsuccessfully, to sleep. But that meant that a fair amount of drifting - into and out of sleep was done. And this I like: all those dozy thoughts that bleed into one another...Nice, I think, because none of the thoughts are meant to be hung onto, so there's no regret at losing them.

...Today we went to the art gallery, to see the work of William Kentridge. You would have loved it, I think. He does these fantastic (dark, funny, playful) sortof animated short films by drawing and erasing on the page. Very political and v.v. cool. We'll find some of his work someday...

...Part of me thinks this is stupid - that I should stop and leave and go do all the other work I've started and hang out with my father...But I'm also glad to be here - with people who can laugh at miserable things, who can be crazy and talk about it and carry right on being incredibly caring and bright; who love second-hand-clothes and start massive art projects and hospices and anti-retroviral programs; who love cheese and yoghurt and tea and walking...

...In other news, the beach is stunning and walks with the dogs are blissful. My accent is quickly morphing. Jaqueline's dogs killed a chicken overnight, and she is torn, because in the village, one is supposed to kill a dog that has killed a chicken. They're supposed to protect, not eat, these valuable commodities (and it was her rooster that they killed!). But she loves these dogs, and doesn't know what to do. I made the kids (about to write their final grade 12 exams) laugh by goofily "dancing" to illustrate nervous/hormonal coordination in Bio. yesterday. Meanwhile, I'm begging them to let me play soccer with them...

...I find here in this isolated little dorp, it's more clear how people are symbols to one another...

...Instead I'll tell you how funny I looked on the deserted beach that my dad and I were hiking along on Saturday. We'd finally reached the rocks, and there found some respite from the driving wind, as well as a vantage point from which to see the angry sea. And what should I hear from my pack? Cell phone ringing! My dad has photos of me (taken, I'll add, with his camera-phone) at last immersed in the culture o my time...Just as I have always whined that I didn't ever want to be so reachable, I have been reached!...

...I miss you, and think of you often...

back in sleepy grahamstown

spent some time, after jo'burg, after the karoo, after a few days chez papa, with a high-energy crew in tiny little middle-of-nowhere hamburg. a little rural community in old ciskei of the apartheit era - one of many eastern cape communities struggling with extreme poverty, services in shambles, and ill health all around.

there i always meet people that force me to think. and my eyes and ears are forced open. and there are many interesting things underfoot - an arts project, a new HIV/AIDS hospice tucked into an old house, struggles to attract a few tourists to this stunning coastal estuary. and there is also lots to make me uncomfortable. lots to question, and the question of which roles to play. this is not really a place for outsiders. but it's not much of a place for insiders, either. and sometimes i marvel at south africa for that. it's often said of india that it is the land of contradictions, but it as true here as anywhere. and somehow there's also less comfort in the contradictions here - less resignation to that fact. a sense that things must change. and in spite of old patterns deeply entrenched ("it's like apartheit all over again"), and a lot of learning from scratch (pressure-groups and municipal demonstrations and undoing dependency in fits and spurts), there is also the whirlagig spinning of happening.

of course i can leave, and most never will, but still, it is hard for me to imagine reconciling to life here (though s.a. draws many refugees - mostly economic: it is also a land of opportunity; it is the place my father has returned to; it is where my people come from, and still are). new perspectives on home, and the power of stories.

and now i'm back in sleepy grahamstown, pretending to work, but mostly visiting with my father. saving up time with him to buffer what looks to be a four-year absence looming on our horizon. sometimes i need to move, but sitting still is good for me as well.

my initial revulsion is softening

far, far away from the comfort of home, i find myself so comfortably released from the routines. strange though, that it's all the way over here in southern africa, that i end up finding the time and mental energy to focus on projects long procrastinated on. maybe it's that there are other hyper people madly clappety clappetying away with me on this - the fire of collaboration!

so here i am, safe in the cocoon of the paternal homestead, and that of the academic institution. my initial revulsion - at the fear and tension of rich beside poor and this old canyon between races, is softening. but i am anxious to get back out to that rural place and the people of mine own heart - where restless energies of all sorts can find a home, and impossible, dangerous things come together to turn baby steps into great strides. we shall see, i suppose, just what it is that i will find there, beside the keiskamma river, and the nguni cattle, and the rondavel homes, the funerals, the students and such potent history.

dark flight

staring eye to eye with the full, beaming face of the moon:
9 1/2 thousand metres above the continent that bore us,
or maybe the rocking cradle, pulled by her bright face,
to wash us up against the shore.

biznach...

that is what i invariably talk about when my social skills are too notably lacking.

biznach. business.

on which many of my closest relationships are founded. that which has forged some stellar friendships.

but why are these connections not the stuff of skinny dipping and a love of the moon and the pleasure of cutting a x-country ski trail through untouched snow and of corporeal joys like food and sweat and wind-burned cheeks?

after a lovely b.b.q.

swimming by red moonlight
white skin blushes
paired salmon interrupted

lake swimming in the river

here in kingston, some people call the water a lake. others think of it as the st. lawrence river. in any case, it is a generous body of welcome refreshment on these dog days of july.

carrie, who may be the closest thing in my world to a sister (she'd probably laugh to know i'd written that) is leaving kingston to start a new job in her home and native land. since we've been doing new things together for a good many years, what better way to bid her adieu than to take her for her first shore-side dip.

the pier at the water treatment plant is one of those community spots where people are pleased to share in the unsecret when they meet there. strangers like to chat about the water, and everybody smiles. the edge is about 2 meters up - high enough for good plunging, and the water is deep and safe for dives of any sort. today it was positively glorious. we swam and swam and floated and chatted, and it was good.

i am a very lucky girl indeed. a few days ago, lovely meghann bundled us into her mother's car, with lovely doggy in tow, and whisked us out of the city to gould lake. the beach was full of laughing children and the water was as warm as the day. meghann and i barely emerged; i'm sure we were mermaids.

on being waterproof

isn't it wonderful to cary a waterproof skin?

i can walk, dance even, in the rain.
i can plunge my entire body into lakes and rivers and bathtubs

let's talk about menstruation

Menstruation is both marvelous, and a bit of a pain. For me, a pad-hating tampon-user since the age of 14ish, the amount of garbage this monthly event was producing bothered me muchly. After all, menstruation is a natural, age-old alternative to manliness - why should it create waste to clog the dwindling waterways and chocked garbage pits of this tiny planet?

A friend of mine, many years ago now, persuaded me that tampon applicators were for chumps, and showed me the light of OB tampons. This pleased me, and I found it to be a much more comfortable option than sharp, stiff applicators. Know thine body, I thought - stick what needs to be stuck where'er it needs to go. But even this option troubled my enviro-mind, after a while. I knew that another internal, but reusable, option was out there, and I kept asking other women if they'd tried it. Well eventually I took the plunge and shelled out the bucks for a little rubber menstrual cup; I've been a proud user of a keeper for several years now.

Why I love my Keeper:
1) no waste
2) no monthly expense
2) i can wear it for a long long long time, and it's comfy
3) perfect for traveling, camping, etc.
4) cute. cute little carrying bag, too
5) conversation piece when left on the bathroom sink
6) get to know the flow - i make it, i see it, i can photograph it, play with it and more!
7) while not officially recommended, i've not found it to pose any impediment to social intercourse of the intimate kind
8) discreet for carrying around; and smaller than a box of anything else
9) no bleaches, dioxins, etc. to wear inside my not-at-all pristine body for nearly 25% of my life
10) that sense of belonging - the keeper family is free and fabulous!

That said, if I were to buy one today (of if I ever give birth and thereby necessitate getting the other size) I'd probably choose the silicone equivalent, since it can be cleaned at higher temperatures. That said, I'm v. happy with what I've got for now. I only wish I'd switched sooner.

Yay gadgets that make bleeding fun!

bombs

my friend andrea's message was the first in my inbox this morning, before i'd even turned on the radio, or opened my browser to the news of the world.

she told us she was safe, in london, and not to worry about her if we'd heard the news of the bombings.

not too long ago, a classmate of mine was to have gone to a show in qatar at a venue that was bombed (but she was not there after all).

4 years ago, my friend sara was on a train, taking a crowd of kids to new york to bring their play on peacebuilding to the sec. general of the united nations when 2 planes struck the towers that shattered the american world.

some cbc reporter has just wondered aloud whether canada, the only one on the list del terroristas not yet burned, will be next.

bombs are falling. fear builds.
life continues: unlike our flags flying low on their poles, the stock exchanges, our dollar, all are up today. and i catch myself wondering whether i'll now get a deal on my british airways ticket traveling through london. but if i'd been 'touched' by this note in the chorus of tragedy, i would never have written these words.

violence has been visited on our brothers and sisters, our grandfathers and grandmothers, since first hands were folded into fists, or fingers wrapped around weapons of minor destruction. all of it unnecessary. but then, it seems we can hear pain far more clearly than the sound of words anyways. touch was the first language. it will be the last.

what mothers do

mothers seem to me to be some other species altogether. and mine is no exception. she just does and does and does for her children. it is lovely to be on the receiving end of such endless support, but it makes me sad as well. i don't think that i should be allowed to become a mother, as i just don't want to ever have to do all that for my kids. i simply cannot imagine giving that much. which is funny to say, considering that a great many of my waking hours are spent working on various activities that are meant to be benefiting other people (but who's kidding who - i get much more out of all of that than can be described). but with kids, there's all this obligation. when they're little, and helpless, they need and need and need - for survival, growth, support. and then they're older and they imagine that they don't need you, and you have to put up with their ungrateful, yet demanding abuse.

i don't know how it is that mothering hasn't yet gone out of style.

various happenings and adventures

i danced and danced in the rain the other day. a visit to k-w, and a storm. the clouds were screaming that i must dance as they would, bathed in our collective sweat, feet bare, hair plastered to my feverish forhead. so i left the dog to her quivering at the ruckus, peeled off most of my layers, and scampered out to the frothing street to be alone in public.

i dominated a dinner party that the octagenarians were hosting with loud talk and politics, reminding myself of my father once again.

we found a lovely patch of cattails - common and thin-leaved and i shook their yellow pollen into a plastic bag and carried it all home from the k-w trail for to bake it into something tasty. and we've been eating many treats from the forests of thunder bay-hey! forests and lawns, that is. lots of dandelions: their young leaves in salad, their young buds fried in lemon-butter sauce, their flowers in pancakes... fiddle-de-diddle heads gathered from the swampy woods which we fed to our friends and hoped that nursing mother and the wee child wouldn't swap their proud, firm poos for something softer. cattail corn-on-the-cob was lovely, especially the boy-bits (at the top - best picked when still swaddled in their papery husk-like shells). painstakingly candied marsh violets. and then those treats gathered but not eaten: marsh marigolds; rock tripe.

our tri-state (minnesota, wisconsin, michigan) and tri-lake (superior, michigan, huron) tour was a fun, if sweltering drive back to southern climes and claire's wedding. swam naked in only 2 of the 3 (and not at all at the wedding, alas), bespectacling ourselves in good doctorly form.

i learned to knit. made an (ug.) hat for me (well, i pretended it would be for steve, but not very convincingly). and then a super-cute little hat for a babe yet unborn. knitting is fun! and kind of addictive. i've found myself wrapping yarn around cold little metal sticks in the wee hours of several mornings already.

of course i worked, and learned all sorts of things about cancer and such, but that's for another day or another page perhaps.

and all this while i've been playing games and laughing and walking and kite-flying and frying fish and garage-saleing and working and learning and making merry and yet no words have been written at all. not a line of haiku, not a paragraph of drivel, not a line of impationed notes on the projects buzzing across my brain. how odd the effect of connected company!

various adventures - part n, out of sequence

Now in London, with the ancestry: the octagenarians, as they like to be called. Today I interviewed MamaSue on medicine and art, though we've really only just got to the art part. We journeyed, over beer and shrimp, through France and Belgium in the 20's and 30's, then Rwanda in the 30's and 40's, South Africa through the second world war (her father wept - the first battle in which he'd spent 4 years in the trenches was meant to have ended all wars). She talked about studying medicine in a language she'd never spoken before. I heard about the petty tirades of sexist administrators and the mysoginist ministrations of senior doc's in the neurosurgical O.R. Why is there so little time for stories? I'm hungry for stories, but she worries that I'll be bored - she is so certain that she should be winding down (her body tells her so, it's true), but then, she comes from a long line of mid-90-survivors...

Our clan has bathed in wine, cognac, beer, champagne, belgian red bubbly, g&t's, and more wine. We have marched our delighted tongues through mounds of St. Andre, brie, camenbert, roquefort, chevre et plus. Chocolate and tea and strong black coffee and espresso have kept us from naps when our eyes would have been heavy. These hot days have been nothing less than a celebration of extravagent consumption. Yet it is all simply a ritual, to keep us face to face, in conversation among us 4 or in the fine company of friends. These are the days my jiggling bottom will never forget!

various adventures - part 1: Guyana

apres une longue silence...

Guyana (this news is now a little old): I was there, again. It was a whirlwind tour, and lovely to be back. Reminds me that too short is just too short - 10 days was all I had. To work as hard as I could at orienting my team to the way things go there; to reconnect with lovely people; to eat as much of my favourite Guyanese treats as possible... All told it was good. Unfortunate to be stuck in and around Georgetown, but kinda nice to find things familiar and comfortable.

Too bad I was a little too comfortable as I was leaving. Had a little run-in with danger as I rode in the wee hours to the airport in a taxi. Driver was way too friendly - decided he wanted to "steal [me] away so that [he could] have [me]"... You know, because I'm "a lovely one". Ug. So silly, since my role with my team is to be their authoritarian safety boss - yet somehow I managed to ignore the one cardinal rule: though shalt not be unnacompanied while 'on project'. In any case, I talked my way out of that particular terror, and made it safely (though shaken indeed) to the airport. Don't tell my mother!!

The take-home message was that I wish I could have stayed longer. Next time.

ecstacy

electricity arcing in my brain, light flowing in through dark pools of eyes and exploding when my fingers, quivering, meet damp flesh and the sky.

late late nights, talk and skin and words to raise my blood. 8 lbs of muscles bathed in wine and cream, to fuel my steam, to feed my screams. ecstasy: social, solitary, coupled. uncoupled as the days have grown long and somehow, the nights also - when sleep becomes a comma between feverish, quivering days.

dancing close to bodies pressed. running through the bars, the streets, bestowing cool damp strawberries on strange night-walkers, and stranger friends.

i have a need. to be alive and exposed in the streets, in the water. to be folded into dark, damp human warmth with whispered comforts. to touch all who share my little world. to be alone, or almost. to speak.

embracing rationality and being quite mad

I'm deciding to stop trying to be consistent. It's a trap.

Because very little matters, it's okay that I'm a vegetarian who doesn't much care about animals, and loves eating things that swim. It's just fine that I eat mangoes shipped miles from who-knows-where while refusing to own a vehicle, insisting on taking my own packaging (even to take-out!), and dutifully collecting compost for the abandoned field near my home. It's not a problem that I believe in free love, and jealousy. It's fine that I live for exposure, but reveal details in tightly controlled doses through shrouded anonymity: intensely private and an exhibitionist. That I am intensely opinionated, argue on ethical issues till the bloody end, behave amorally, listen to anything, accept absolutiely any behaviour from those I love and strangers too - these things too are quite alright. There is no conflict in embracing rationality and being quite mad.

send me yourself singing

today i pace. make-work learning tasks to tide me over this hump of frenetic energy. i've been in busy la-la land: full of meetings to discuss this summer's research (yay, got all the funding i wanted to go cavorting around talking to people about how they conceptualize health, where they get their info., what they do about it when they make decisions), meetings to pass the torch of student-initiated, multidisciplinary, "sustainable community development through health promotion" on to the next crop of energetic idealists... all this talk with all these marvelous folk...

the hump of frenetic energy should pass when this absurd role-playing activity, "testing" my facility with mock patients in a cacaphony of souped-up sound bites and rote recitations of lists of questions, lists of ways to touch strangers that i might "know" them, or better yet, "know their problems" is finally finished. diagnosis psychosis. one more hoop in a long line of hoops - a proper obstacle course, but the obstacle all seem the same, dammit (what kinda party is this, anyhow?). and then i'll feed my (hopefully) spent brain with something spicy, something cambodian, something fine and soupy before once more taking refuge in notes and books and the happy home that my head built. and a little blaring music if the other winds don't quite clear the mist.

i think i need colour. sound. i need scale - giant scale. to revel in the magnitute of creative energy that steeps the best tea going. i've got t-shirts to make, collages to construct. i've got columns of words, un-columns of words. i want to stick words to everybody, and then see them ripped off suddenly. maybe lick the welts. maybe just love their redness. and i want voices - choral voices, screaming-whispering dirty secrets in languages foreign. let's make a symphony from the chaos of people singing to themselves. let's. send me yourself singing/humming - just the way you sing to you alone. we can make something lovely, just as we are.

authority

I was thinking about teachers, and people trying to get to become professional teachers, and, this got me to wondering about authority (I love adult ed, because people are there voluntarily - when I was supply teaching in Toronto public schools, I saw what a struggle it is for me to be an authoritarian figure, though I've been directing projects of all sorts for years. At lunch the other day I realized how difficult that part of parenting would be for me).

Empowerment: the joy of witnessing the enactment of one's will.

Authority: the joy of subjugating the will of others.

I feel empowered, even enfranchised. And I have authority over no-one. I'll have to work hard to hang onto that, given that doctoring is partly about playing the role of 'authority on health' though I prefer 'expert on medicine' - health is a state of being, experienced by people in unique ways, and I will never be an expert on that, no more so than I will ever be an expert on the myriad expressions of life and death. A witness? Certainly. With a role to play? It seems so. Maybe one day even a bit of a guide, should I get wise along the way. We had an interesting session on ethics of end-of-life care yesterday. Parents of a sick young man were there to tell us about their frustrations when he had been in intensive care. About how much they'd hated the messenger, our teacher, who'd been so convinced that the 'right' thing to do was to "let him go" (for reasons, she now confesses, might have had a lot to do with her own feelings of what would not be doable should she be in the same situtation). It was a good lesson in remembering to check the boundaries of authority - it's innevitable that people practicing medicine begin to feel empowered, start playing the role of authority and get confused about the differences between expert and decision-maker. And it was good to see how the clash of one physician's 'authority' with a family's autonomy played out. We'd all learned something from this. I remain grateful for and consistently surprised by peoples' openness in the name of my education.

I love going to market in the rain. That's where I'm off to now.

arguments w/ andy

lunches with andy are always long conversations that diggle with questions of identity, social norms and values, and various human roles and identities. they often also involve cambodian food and are always argumentative.

good.

a friend has recently retired from blogging. he says (and i repeat it here because it rings true - limits me in the blogosphere too) "I always hate myself as soon as I express an opinion". which is interesting - we're both opinionated people, yet there is for me something difficult about committing all of the complexity of an idea, all the variability, all the caveats and angles to a few printed words. printed words can feel limited and stifling (or maybe that's just what happens when you're too lazy to write all the rest down). but i think somehow i don't give people the benefit of the doubt - don't believe that they will understand that printed words are just a beginning, are necessarily a simplification. maybe i need a disclaimer as a banner for my page:

the following statements do not accurately reflect the opinions of the author and should not be taken to reflect her feelings, experiences, or thoughts either in their entirety or at any other point in space and time.

and so in waffling i invite discreditation. great. how to win when you think the world is beautiful because of it's variability, complexity, and shifting contexts?

if sometimes

if today is a day of rambling rambling,
if sometimes i lapse into silence,
then there are many ways to speak of hollows filled.

my secret identity

Tomorrow is Meghann's birthday. Today was her birthday party. It was a special kinda party, 'cause she's special kinda people. It was both a vegan potluck and a dress-up-to-reveal-your-secret-identity kinda do. Vincent was wolf-boy, with facial hair artfully glued all over his lovely face. M. was cute as always in a flowery dress, pretty little sandals and her new blonde hair. I decided the best thing to do when arriving at a party where I'd undoubtedly know no-one(ish) would be to show a little flesh. And since my secret identity really is a soccer-playing nudist, I thought I'd dress the part. So I donned my soccer socks, shoes and shorts, took off my shirt and bra, and wrapped myself loosely in Steve's old brown bathrobe. Then I jumped on my bike and sped off to present myself and as much of my breasts as they would bear to the scrutiny of others. They wouldn't bear too much, so I didn't either. But it was good.

Since I got myself somehow onto the topic of scrutiny and humiliation (see link above), I might as well give you this link too. Humiliation - does it have a positive role? Is it more than a useful tool of socialization? Why are domination and submission such compelling stimulants for many (sexually ordinary) people? Maybe that's not a fair question - here it might be the personal power that comes from consenting to / inviting humiliation and turning it into something exciting / powerful). But still - not everyone hates being laughed at - some people seek it out, but others avoid it completely. Is it humiliation if it's enjoyable? I'm thinking, as I write this, that the answer is probably no. Humiliation that is invited/consented to probably isn't humiliation (rather, a form of attention gained; a type of role played). Which leaves me back at the beginning. Is there a positive role for (not-sought-after) humiliation? Or maybe the bigger question is, if humiliation is simply one means to an end, is there good that comes from that end: socialization (for isn't this a form of suppression of a free will)?

You may well be wondering what I'm talking about. Good question. What am I talking about!? Wow. I'm good when I don't feel like doing what it is I'm supposed to be up to. To bed, then, for dreams of exposure and flesh.

delicious

Delighted that Mother and Brother drove all the way here for a visit and many fine decadences. I brought the wine, champagne and whipped up some (use up old) bread pudd, she treated us to spicy meals, and we all shared in the wizardry of producing a lovely picnic for the sunny water-side rocks of Lemoine Point. Getting out there pleased me muchly - especially since my last visit yesterday to the community garden that I've loved (where I've been taking my compost for 2+ years) found me long faced: the heavy machinery is there, a fence up, and rubble strewn about the erstwhile Queen Anne's Lace-rich field. Big things are coming, and they stink more than my weeks-old kitchen waste!



I never really got the appeal of the big long week-end trecks home, but I see now that Family is good. And when I've two visitors, guess who gets the hammock??

With the rest of my day, I vacuumed up mouse shit from my pantry, packed (m)any foods in bags away into plastic mouse-proof tubs, and now sit with fingers crossed in hopes of avoiding more drastic anti-vermin measures. Oh, and in celebration of spring, we re-potted a few plants, too. And I've adopted a stunning new giant Jade plant that they brought from my grandparents in London. I'm delighted. Now how to avoid killing it, as 4 months of infrequent home occupancy approach...

Provocative

There is a painting on the stone wall of my favorite Kingston cafe just now. It depicts a young woman astride a young man who looks to be passed out on the floor. She's fumbling under her skirt at his pants. It is entitled, The Rape of Lot. It is both terrible, and marvelous. I can't keep my eyes off of it when I am in there.

There I sat last eve, w/ AGE. We were there for a meeting, that led to talk about many fine things - spirituality and compatibility and what it is to be needed and how intolerable type A's struggle to be with the perpetually contented. Funny that in talking about S., over chocolate crumbs and frothy milk, I discovered anew the joys in my frustrations: we talked about how i was so attracted to his un-need. The self-sufficiency, absolute hapiness regardless of me, is so freeing, I explained. Freeing because I am so clearly not responsible for the hapiness of another, even at the cost of being also somewhat dispensible. Frustrating because there's insecurity for my moments that want to control a future as yet unwritten - a man is harder to reach if he does not need (but control is an internal state of mind, entirely illusory in any case).

And then we talked of restlessness - the need for stimulus that drives our mothers (perhaps us too?) to being always doing, asking, wondering, wandering... And of fathers and moral/religious upbringings that demand testing each situation, each idea against blacks and whites and a rejection of grey. We talked of many things, and it was good.

12 steps to not building an igloo

1) carve a large, flat circle into the snow with a shovel and lots of effort while beer and snacks are on their way.

2) using a saw and long knives, cut large slabs of perfectly packed snow from under the snowmobile tracks and carry them to the prepared site, being careful not to loose your footing in the powder along the way.

3) rejoice in the sunshine that lets you prance around in few clothes and absolute bliss.

4) drink beer while listening to DNTO blasting from the radio and place the foundation blocks in a circle that is much too large for your engineering skill.

5) happily lug blocks about and chink them together using the packing snow that the sun is making for you as you play.

6) when your mits are soaked through, start getting a little cranky - the sun will be setting in a few hours and there is much left to be done.

7) it won't work, you say? too big, too much angling of blocks for only 2 builders? no plan? that's okay - keep going! your pants can only get soaked through completely and then they won't be any wetter after that.

8) get frustrated with your co-iglooist and the impending failure as the topmost blocks keep crashing down around you, trapped as you are within the "walls" of this labour of love.

9) go inside to keep drinking and warm up a little as your long-johns and panties dry over the stove.

10) go back out as the moon is rising to build your igloo by dusky light.

11) when the walls crash in once again, admit temporary defeat, and scramble back inside to prepare for supper, saunaing, and sex.

12) congratulate he who resurrected the igloo all by himself once you've left him alone to sculpt the snow.

Bathed in white,
There is only light
and Snow

The heart is cold,
the heart is cold
Bathed in snow

Fire warms
hands warmed
by hands

There is only night,
There are also nights,
Cold nights warmed.

sound of mind

Before they all left me to walk home alone, I had a lovely time listening to Leiderhosen Lucil and Carolyn Mark tear it up at the Grad Club. I never did get LL to sign my panties. Damn.

And we all had dinner and much wine at Laura's. I made rum-fried bananas and ate many of Carrie's cocoa-lishious brownies.

And now the lovely songstresses, and the 'I got left behind' blues have got me, guitar in hand, singing a few songs of my own.

Maybe I should write about the boys of yore whom I keep running into, with no worse than affectionate pleasantries between us now. Or the lonely blues of not being much of a number one. Or the velvet warm glow that tickles the front of my brain when I'm bathed in red. Or wishing for it to be my birthday (or at least summer again), so I can run around naked, dripping in cold lake water and lamp-light.

Or maybe I'll end this endless night listening to Kathleen Edwards, my newest aural crush.

it's day # 3 without caffeine

What's a life lived without the buzz of caffeine? I ask you again - why live without caffeine? I'm doing it, for no particular reason other than that it might be reducing the tone of my esophageal sphincter. And since I seem to be wide awake always (these days), why not?

Why not indeed. In spite of this new 'rule', last night must have been one of the worst sleeps ever. I can't fathom why. Must have been the sugar.

Right. Well, today I've tried a different approach - beer. Beer's good for many things, and one of them is the induction of somnolescence when taken in sufficient quantity. Judging by the fact that I've been speaking at nearly 900 words a minute, and imposing said chatter on just about anybody I could find, I'm not entirely sure that the sufficient dose has been acheived.

The computer is demanding to be restarted. Probably just as well, for this is begging to be a long and rambling post if I'm to be left undisturbed.

W I D E awake

nearly 2:00. a belly full of ice-cream, brownies, sauces and seconds, and my head scheming even as it laughs the night's laughter a second time around.

i should at least go through the motions and pretend that i'll sleep tonight.






and dream of red wine, or of crepes and baths, or of the new dolphin vibrating toy that my friend bought herself today, or of the adventures of strangers in dark rooms and public spaces. dream of dreaming. dream of waking and failing to make tomorrow day # 3 without caffeine.

coppers come hither

As per usual, there are other things I should really be doing, as I clappety clap away on this keyboard, at my desk, waiting for the police to arrive. Waiting for the police because I filed a complaint against a driver that sorta hit me as I was biking this afternoon. Damn drivers - I'm, of course, totally fine, was just nicked, but this silly fool tried to squeeze in between be and the cars that were properly giving me a wide lane's worth of grace, on a snowy road, with snowier gutters. All I'm hoping for (I didn't know it would mean a visit from the folk in blue) is that someone let them know that they hit me (though I'm pretty sure, by the way they sped off, that they do know). And all this because I was out trying to get an external hard drive for to back up this beast (I've lost faith, and am afraid). I say 'trying' because, once standing at the cash, I discovered that I'd forgotten my wallet and was thus trying to get home and back to the shop and then home again in time for listening to friends on the radio.

Since then, while waiting, I've cleaned, cooked, broken a glass, vacuumed up broken glass and mouse shit (shit!) from my kitchen, cleared away the dredges of R's pot-shared-with-friends (in anticipation of the law's arrival), hung 3 of mother's photos, listened to B interview Wayne on CFRC, listened to lots of CBC sounds, etc. etc. I have not backed up my computer, reformatted my disk, installed a new operating system, created anything beautiful, created anything ugly, created anything honest, created lies, thought about love (much), or done any work.

Some people love babies - C told me hier that she'll probably make one soon, I learned today that S is carrying #2 now (!). Babies are cute, but then, they do grow up to be less cute. Then what??

Perspectives

from the other side: Jon's Jail Journal.

beginings of endings of beginings of endings of beginings

I lapse into silence
when I don't know
where to begin

morning sitting with tea

snow falls through grey light
golden fish marks his
sky's surface

you can be like me

and listen to Tune up your Science on tuesdays from 5:30-6:00!

fandango for the saint

so my question is, why does it all come down to a tangle of arms and legs, and the rules of engagement. sex sex sex. don't get me wrong, i'm a very very big fan, but i know too well the complications, when heads or hearts get roused more than the flesh.

here am i, trying to live a life a little freer, with love and fewer rules. but it seems rules are the rule after all. today i ran into a friendly fondlee, and that was nice, but for the first time he seemed awkward. yesterday, before sweet ring tones, we talked about missing and other people's curves, and all i felt was nothing. we dance a champion dance around the black hole that speaks of lonely, the void that says we're going it alone, when the tally of the days is reckoned. but you don't really go it alone. and i don't really want to. my needs: debriefing, in both senses of the word, and the crook of a warm arm to lay my head upon.

i miss you, far away.

exhausted again,

but delighted, too, at the prospect of a monday evening all my own! yet another amazing mentor filled my head with ideas and my bag with books. and the last grant proposal submitted.

i'm weary, as i should well be, after slipping into slumber's arms at well past three, well past four... but also (")motivated(") to actually get shit done! so i'll trundle off through the icy rain to the goat for to do a little of the work of necessity. lest i hook up my hammock and nap and nap and nap till only the night remains, and the cycle of topsy-turvy wakedness repeats.

aujourd'hui

it is lonely
to be loved
by a lover
of a lake
that has frozen

gold chains=good sounds

where are the poems?

i'm not sure i can go to any more films. i couldn't figure out why i couldn't sleep last night. a long night of tossing and turning, straining to breathe. Fitful rest that left me wide-eyed but dopey early this morning. silly that it took me this many hours to figure out that the images of bodies hacked up, of children-turned killers, of rooms filled w/ decayed bodies might be able to touch me.

and i notice i've been de-friend-listed. sniff, deflation.

but maybe i'll persuade one of the evening film-goers (if'n i do go) to debrief with me over some beer after. i don't think i'm allowed to go it alone.

i feel something's a bad beginning. i'll soon need to make masks, i think. masks with lovely noses.

today i feel ashamed to be human,

even as i feel some joy that there are courageous folk among the many.

a human rights film festival may not be the most uplifting way to spend a week-end. just now i watched an NFB film: "Two Worlds Colliding".

and here is what i scribbled down, as the discussion, led by a student micmac former OPP, ensued:
we canadians
need to stop being so bloody self-righteous. it makes us blind and limp.

we failed as much as anyone, in spite of our 'hero',
in rwanda.

we fail here at home, our own people.
and we don't want to see.

amnesty international draws attention to our failings, even.
apparently (see the documentary!), an aboriginal child in saskatchewan is more likely to go to jail than to high school.
apparently, over 1/2 of people with 'african' heritage in toronto live in poverty.
and then someone told us all the story of his uncle, a native man, who died on manitoulin island while in police custody. he was diabetic, but they probably thought he was drunk, and took him to 'the tank'. by the time they got him to the hospital, and by the time the doc arrived, it was too late, and he died.

so i drank some beer

and off i went, thoroughly exhausted after impassioned meetings with marvelous mentors, to the human rights film festival's screening of dallaire's "shake hands with the devil"(director, peter raymont, in attendance, along with co-author mjr.. beardsley). excellent. most very.

and i'm so glad they chose, during the q&a, to talk about sudan. like me, you may be wondering why we haven't done anything yet, given that few disagree that at least crimes against humanity (if not genocide) are occurring at the hands of the complicit government.

i know why. either we learn nothing, or we've learned not to care.

i ranted a bit about how we allow one ideal (in this case state autonomy, if i'm feeling generous, or the lack of political will to face the loss of a handful of valued lives for the protection of the faceless poor, when i'm feeling more realistic) to justify our failure to meet all the other ideals. but again i think i was being too kind. i don't think ideals come into it at all. ideals are myths, just like heroes and enemies and gods and love stories. we construct them to suit our purposes, and then we re-write them when our purposes change.

we can wait for all the political delay tactics, or we can remind them that voters haven't forgotten...here are things you can do, if you'd like. writing to parliament requires no stamp!

(was that me saying ideals were dead?)

freedom's just another word

there are, in this world, people who surround themselves with absolute merriment. the kinds of people who know people who live life completely. the barriers have melted away.

it makes me breathless, and i'm only a bit-part by-stander.

i love my people, and i love people. but it seems i'd rather be interested than loved, which should leave me freer than i am.

but i won't be too hard on my sometimes-staid self: after all, i did moon the sea plane, grace the train with a little bit of us, and commit myself fully to the joy of skinny-dipping by day and night alike.

one day i will be venus,
open wide to swallow the world.

fun with ice: 3

when what aches can't be bound.