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??