tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57664904361492280822024-02-07T03:11:58.020+01:00My Tropic of CancerI have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest woman alive.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-91069838981759236972015-05-21T07:51:00.004+02:002015-05-22T07:33:16.864+02:00True Mourning - In The Apartment - Not Cemetery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I realize that the kids aren't dying and I should probably grow a pair but every time I have to say goodbye to these little creatures at the end of a contract, it feels a lot like a death in my heart. It's the only bad part of this job (when you're dealing with reasonable human beings for parents, that is), I think partly because the years I manage are already temporary by definition. Toddler memory is particularly fallible too which makes matters even more complicated. You share these strong bonds with these children, bonds that feel a lot like family, like true love. And then one day, you are no longer needed (or you must go for your own reasons) and when you return, it's like nothing ever was. Children do not remember these years. They do not remember your face or your voice. Your time with them - though insanely important - feels totally inconsequential. They look at you now and do not recognize you as a person they once loved. They look at you like a stranger. Because you are. Because that toddler doesn't exist anymore.</div>
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Yesterday Ari told me I was beautiful and Mila told me she loved me so much and I burst into uncontrollable tears. Absurd but I feel a bit like I'm in mourning this week - so many ups and downs - out of nowhere, 'true mourning, in the apartment not cemetery,' </div>
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Anyway, to all of you parents out there who get to spend a lifetime watching your children grow, count your blessings and don't take any of it for granted, and be especially thankful that you never have to say 'goodbye' to your children, it's heart-wrenching! </div>
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As someone who's been at the helm of at least a dozen childrens' 'toddler years' now, I can tell you from experience that although they are surely the most challenging years, they are also the most rewarding - For YOU, that is. I carry the memory of all of these children with me, everywhere I go, knowing they will not exist like this again but that I was there, with my eyes open to see them grow and become more human, to listen to all they've had to say - moving from nonsense to reason - and learning to love them, ever so naturally. I try hard to capture their beauty in photos so I can share a little of this magic but it's impossible. I work hard too to remember their faces and their words so that they are not really gone even if they age. But they are, I know they are and I must learn to let go because I know that they will grow up and grow old, like everyone must and more than that: because I will be quickly forgotten to them (this is how human the brain works). But the beauty and innocence of these years is incomparable to everything else I have experienced in life and although it can be hard, I wouldn't trade it for the world. Living in a perpetual state of this: i.e.: specializing in toddler years, has been both a gift for my soul and incredibly difficult to shoulder all by myself but it's made me a stronger, better person and I'm thankful for each and every little being I've had the pleasure (and pain) of caring for. These kids will all grow up to be different people than they are today and because their parents remain witnesses to all that follows, I am the ONE person who is left with these very particular & vivid memories of a very special time. For that reason (and that reason alone), I am the luckiest woman alive.</div>
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So I will continue to live here in Paris, alone, surrounded by my little ghosts and haunted by our good times together until I learn to to be truly ok with being completely forgotten but I won't lie, at times it's really tough. Like all of the best love stories, I suppose.</div>
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you can, with your little<br />
hands, drag me<br />
into the grave - you<br />
have the right-<br />
-I<br />
who follow you, I<br />
let myself go-<br />
-but if you wish, the two of us,<br />
let us make...</div>
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an alliance<br />
a hymen, superb<br />
-and the life<br />
remaining in me<br />
I will use for - </div>
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no-nothing<br />
to do with the great<br />
deaths-etc.<br />
-as long as we go on living, he<br />
lives-in us</div>
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it will only be after our<br />
death that he will be dead<br />
-and the bells<br />
of the Dead will toll for<br />
him</div>
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sail-<br />
navigates<br />
river,<br />
your life that<br />
goes by, that flows</div>
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Setting sun<br />
and wind<br />
now vanished, and<br />
wind of nothing<br />
that breathes</div>
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death-whispers softly<br />
-I am no one -<br />
I do not even know who I am<br />
(for the dead do not<br />
know they are<br />
dead-,nor even that they<br />
die<br />
-for children<br />
at least<br />
-or</div>
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heroes-sudden<br />
deaths</div>
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for otherwise<br />
my beauty is<br />
made of last<br />
moments-<br />
lucidity, beauty<br />
face-of what would be</div>
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me, without myself</div>
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Oh! you understand<br />
that if I consent<br />
to live-to seem<br />
to forget you-<br />
it is to<br />
feed my pain<br />
-and so that this apparent<br />
forgetfulness<br />
can spring forth more<br />
horribly in tears, at</div>
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some random<br />
moment, in<br />
the middle of this<br />
life, when you<br />
appear to me</div>
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true mourning in<br />
the apartment<br />
-not cemetery-</div>
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furniture</div>
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to find only<br />
absence<br />
-in presence<br />
of little clothes<br />
-etc-</div>
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no-I will not<br />
give up<br />
nothingness</div>
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father-I<br />
feel nothingness<br />
invade me</div>
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-Mallarmé</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-29584553391043894212015-03-20T10:01:00.004+01:002015-03-20T10:01:53.990+01:00Gone Fishin'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-6h8tAZABB90lYO7mYLVo7yblYKn1UpHL4b4HS5n-QnVtJyPkUrHFlhkSmlRXfgOYCGQ1KUVW1u1sm_7fQA390K1aRytBaCu4uBmFDe1VNbnJsc852jZnkBRMBJsq_fYtjP0cr0DNgG0/s1600/fishin'%2B4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-6h8tAZABB90lYO7mYLVo7yblYKn1UpHL4b4HS5n-QnVtJyPkUrHFlhkSmlRXfgOYCGQ1KUVW1u1sm_7fQA390K1aRytBaCu4uBmFDe1VNbnJsc852jZnkBRMBJsq_fYtjP0cr0DNgG0/s1600/fishin'%2B4.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Losing a parent has been even harder than I ever expected. I made it through the slow death-by-cancer and then the funeral part in one piece but once all of that's over, once the house becomes quiet again and holidays come and go, leaving you feeling empty, there you find an unearthed desperation that longs to find some way to continue your relationship with the lost parent. In my case, I started fishing in the strangest of places, looking for my Dad.</div>
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My father loved to fish. The annual family fishing stag was a big ordeal in our house and it drove me mad. As a young girl, I quite liked fishing. My grandfather taught me how on Rice Lake and I could spend afternoons out there all by myself, just staring into the water and dreaming of a big catch. Apart from taking the slimey fish off the hook at the end, I found the entire process both soothing and exciting at the same time. But the fishing stag was a male-only event - only the sons and uncles, fathers and grandfathers and male friends of the family were allowed to participate. The young feminist in me found this tradition cruel and sexist. Especially since we girls were meant to go 'shopping' while the men were out in their boats. I didn't want to shop. I wanted to drink and smoke and gamble on who was going to catch the biggest fish of the weekend.</div>
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When I finally got back to Paris, my father's would-be 60th birthday was approaching and I wasn't sure how to handle it. I wanted to find a way to pay tribute to him on my own, somehow continue our relationship in one way or another. He had no grave to visit. His ashes lay in my mother's apartment in Newcastle, a million miles from where I live. So I decided to put on my waders & my bowler and head to the Seine to fish for my Dad. Pretend to fish, of course because the only thing you're finding in that water are some dismembered body parts and empty beer cans.</div>
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The first time was one of the funnier experiences of my life. Thanks to <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=638480975" href="https://www.facebook.com/ryley.byrne" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Ryley</a>& <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=720335191" href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=720335191" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Angela</a>, I had the confidence to sport the look of a young man by the Seine with a fake fishing rod made out of a broom handle, some beading thread & some crystals while the French stared at me like I was the strangest woman in the world. We blared Louis Armstrong & Frank Sinatra's 'Gone Fishin'' on the stereo and went for it, taking turns casting our lines into the fishless Seine. It was a wonderful sunset full of laughter and liquor and cigarettes. My father would have loved it.</div>
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You see, one of his last words of advice to us was to work less and spend more time fishing. By fishing he meant a lot of things: enjoying friendships & family, good company and conversation, good times, mostly. His warning was not to do as he had done and spend a lifetime worrying about nothing but money and work. In the end it all meant nothing and he wished he'd spent more of it - ALL OF IT - just fishing.</div>
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The next year, I invited new friends to do the same and it has become an annual March tradition on my Dad's birthday to come out in your most 'male' attire and to fish in an unlikely place with me, for my father. My friends have been ultra supportive and these 'fishing' trips have left me with my own happy memories, which I think was the best birthday present I could've offered my Dad. I believe it's what he would have wanted anyway.</div>
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It isn't about the catch, of course. Fishing rarely is. It's about good friends and feeling good. It's about doing nothing. It's about a good laugh and surely, nothing is funnier than being dressed in costume in the streets of oh-so-serious Paris, fake-fishing through dirty looks from the French along the Seine. The pictures make me smile every time I see them and for the past three years, at least for one evening of the year, it feels like my Dad isn't gone. I know that the photos would have irritated him a little, he'd have found it absurd me fishing in a fishless river in downtown Paris, dressed like a man. We argued about a lot, though and pretending I'm getting under his skin a little makes me feel even more like he's still around. Like our relationship goes on, despite his permanent absence. </div>
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I hope it's a tradition that I will keep up all my life.</div>
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VIDEO: <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjN3NFTFhDSXU0X1E/edit">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjN3NFTFhDSXU0X1E/edit</a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-87626248433927924592015-01-20T05:00:00.001+01:002015-01-20T09:09:31.653+01:00LOVE.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu973Q9HfU7NmRZj_YDgJIsqbNeqpYSSyA44vSkl6U3VaQuIEC4sp75sl-8Mm9R6ENSPvsIQyr956Ck51hB_QZhvdTueNm4JTl9pKDH1GBQmMZCDkgBE65fH0Cmhap5trfzqVXF_HV_EU/s1600/IMG_6345.JPG" height="491" width="640" /><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjY3IxaWNTT0pNaGc/view?usp=sharing">https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjY3IxaWNTT0pNaGc/view?usp=sharing</a></div>
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Part Three: <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjY3IxaWNTT0pNaGc/view?usp=sharing">https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjY3IxaWNTT0pNaGc/view?usp=sharing</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-67188008344669453062015-01-12T12:07:00.001+01:002015-01-12T14:31:59.173+01:00JE SUIS UN ÊTRE HUMAIN.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">If fear was the goal, the attacks missed their mark and then some. Immediately following three days of violence in our city with the threat of racial confrontation, bombs, riots, etc. - very real dangers - we piled into the streets with our daisies blazing, not our guns. If the plan was to divide the people, which I very much expect it was, terrorists failed miserably.</span><br />
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Imagine. 2 million people in the streets of Paris. We were all coming from different parts of the city. Corey was at Chatelet and walking with the masses from there. Emma & I from Ledru Rollin, Elsa from the 19th, Elodie in the 20th - all of us blocked so far from our rdv point that getting to Republique was not even an option. I had been warned earlier that morning by worriers to be so careful. About how foolish Hollande was to suggest a rally so soon after the attacks. But we weren't afraid. And that wasn't because of the police presence.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvbKmX0TxnrGBjAmBgd7XNhUprASez3udEnVgg7B9n5wwRUpPa-FHCOY7KIzHHRmoKZF7ypoGD2a7GK4osLploXVSnYUo48mivAqrALOLUOOGf_PzVJlmtHWXRR3lat88RcyfGR-5vGJc/s1600/IMG_8323.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvbKmX0TxnrGBjAmBgd7XNhUprASez3udEnVgg7B9n5wwRUpPa-FHCOY7KIzHHRmoKZF7ypoGD2a7GK4osLploXVSnYUo48mivAqrALOLUOOGf_PzVJlmtHWXRR3lat88RcyfGR-5vGJc/s1600/IMG_8323.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhDA1K4AgUBG1V60G9uWofxxgUR_gfY1cJpymQIGiso6XHBasljRrnYlVqpfw6Dl38dB3XmX6Yk6IAcKPxp6Uz0tb903X1mkTUUEzO82yuZ3yyct5pCeG0goUiHTw-uBp695YFB7LX3SQ/s1600/IMG_8244.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhDA1K4AgUBG1V60G9uWofxxgUR_gfY1cJpymQIGiso6XHBasljRrnYlVqpfw6Dl38dB3XmX6Yk6IAcKPxp6Uz0tb903X1mkTUUEzO82yuZ3yyct5pCeG0goUiHTw-uBp695YFB7LX3SQ/s1600/IMG_8244.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a>Now, I'm sure there were the occasional morons wandering around wondering where this Charlie fellow was but I don't think I've ever witnessed such a gathering of minds in all my life. People were informed. Most of us, it seemed, were not there for Charlie, we'd stood vigil for those victims Wednesday, Thursday and Friday already in equally impressive rallies of support. Of course we were horrified by what happened to them but even standing at Voltaire with a couple of friends of those who were murdered, the atmosphere was light. We weren't there because Francois Hollande said so, either. We weren't there to protect our freedom of speech. And we definitely didn't come out to watch all of those heads of state hold hands (btw, where the fuck were YOU, Harper?!), we knew we'd never get close enough to see that anyway. So why were we coming out by the thousands?</div>
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You've all heard me rant for years about my experiences immigrating to this country. It has not been easy and yet, I have ZERO doubt that for me, it has been a cakewalk compared to what most others experience going through the same process. I know this because even as an immigrant, I am treated differently because of the colour of my skin and my country of origin. Between the CPAM's tendency to 'lose dossiers' if they don't appreciate your tone of voice, the visa renewal office's perpetual power trip of making people wait outside in the cold for hours or putting certain people ahead of the line, demanding more proof for some than they do for others for no other reason than pure racism. Segregated hospital quarters for those 'sans papiers'. Secret low income pharmacies in basements. There is a larger problem in this country and this march was a huge spotlight on that issue, more than any other.</div>
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People everywhere were talking about the fact that so many news sources had changed the death toll from 20 to 17, excluding the three terrorists from the count. But in Paris, 20 people were killed this week, make no mistake. Of course I feel as much anger towards those three men as you do for what they've done to so many innocent people but the deeper issue here is that France was attacked by three of their own. Three nationals who felt abandoned and betrayed by their country and leapt right into the arms of a manipulative organization that was willing to treat them as one of them, not an 'other'. I heard many speaking of this before, during and after the march. Although it is hard to see it now, those men were victims too. Victims of a country that let them down.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyKmU7RfW2uQ3LzqKokH6eDButFBuxZJFrPxsSoG7ikrnfUmnyVYkqkx6eCbW18GB4hy4KNhk0Xhyhg4ls2QGS1bMPve4AA0-A_WDY5RuWj4fho0KGrOI5gRIJdRFIUYOhV1z-EGu8WXc/s1600/IMG_8309.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyKmU7RfW2uQ3LzqKokH6eDButFBuxZJFrPxsSoG7ikrnfUmnyVYkqkx6eCbW18GB4hy4KNhk0Xhyhg4ls2QGS1bMPve4AA0-A_WDY5RuWj4fho0KGrOI5gRIJdRFIUYOhV1z-EGu8WXc/s1600/IMG_8309.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a>LIBERTY, FRATERNITY, EQUALITY - for some more than others.</div>
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On an even MORE interesting note, I was thinking back over my integration courses a few years back, part of the obligatory process of becoming French and remembering being in a room full of people from all countries & religions being taught that SECULARISM had recently been added to the list. The fact that not a soul has talked about this since is a good indication of the on-going problem in France. In this country, not everyone has the right to equality. Not everyone is welcomed as a brother. Not everyone is treated equally. And now you're teaching the next generation of Muslim immigrants that they must be secular while the rest of France is not required to observe this as law? Really guys? It doesn't take a brain surgeon to see the discrepancies. No wonder there is anger bubbling up and boiling over.</div>
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However, yesterday, change was brewing in Paris. People were talking about THIS. THIS was why we were all gathered here together, peacefully. Because we were well aware that this problem exists and needs to be addressed. The perpetual inequality in this country is more than partly to blame for the unnecessary violence that occurred in Paris this week. We were not afraid because we were as much the enemy as anyone if we couldn't admit this fact. We marched because we needed to be reminded of the tenets we're meant to uphold as a nation, as a planet.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihqY-ZURQaNYG0VN3ueu6DHrcliB-mHlwUHvEFgYwCQxQZLbMRx4SmjrPWlg9hyVv5uahwxQVCbJIwWmfwUx8WOJGEYvzddPH-WqUo2BsCT0w0iu-qap2lnOGMYc-ig8KgDfBIWiF6tZU/s1600/IMG_8274.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihqY-ZURQaNYG0VN3ueu6DHrcliB-mHlwUHvEFgYwCQxQZLbMRx4SmjrPWlg9hyVv5uahwxQVCbJIwWmfwUx8WOJGEYvzddPH-WqUo2BsCT0w0iu-qap2lnOGMYc-ig8KgDfBIWiF6tZU/s1600/IMG_8274.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a>What happens next is integral. But if yesterday was any indication of things to come then we are on our way to a better world. One with a big lens directed at these problems that rip us to shreds and the consequences of what happens if this change isn't accelerated and accepted.</div>
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Yesterday, for the first time since I moved here, I was very proud to be almost French. We are a country of so many different cultures, constantly struggling to co-exist & uphold our differences in peace amidst the constant threat of inequality from the administrations that rule over us. I am proud because I feel ONE with the people. All people.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFOb5r_PNaarmRLTpLlJOD6RK6soFuivSmN5lJ9D3lKrEsE8nptVy68y29Q3I4CoaVoPzJ0RyXrk-oLbC7brFJs1Ev3aZkmAVKM7NXhUt9vc5h0I8qcLUoGFAGpByvoOO5NJWr7rmzdPw/s1600/IMG_8271.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFOb5r_PNaarmRLTpLlJOD6RK6soFuivSmN5lJ9D3lKrEsE8nptVy68y29Q3I4CoaVoPzJ0RyXrk-oLbC7brFJs1Ev3aZkmAVKM7NXhUt9vc5h0I8qcLUoGFAGpByvoOO5NJWr7rmzdPw/s1600/IMG_8271.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a>Paris is one complicated town - at times infuriatingly so - but in all its piss stained corners, sardine-squished metros, incessant noises and sirens and constant tendency toward brutal honesty in everything from customer service to cartoons, it is a city that we love and cherish too. Not for its government but for the international citizens that comprise the LIGHT in the City of Lights.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5wVIhyphenhyphen-ybXGBmEJbwKTSD_PxvgkLw_aZwEQVNgWKV8ap8KdiXq6lMgFUsHZjQq9l3V4U69a8cP54_FdyR5CLmycRialg3B5HpEn7y0Ck7irGwJdEITwwQCiCK2cH0rlJHh8Gmgx55hYw/s1600/IMG_8334.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5wVIhyphenhyphen-ybXGBmEJbwKTSD_PxvgkLw_aZwEQVNgWKV8ap8KdiXq6lMgFUsHZjQq9l3V4U69a8cP54_FdyR5CLmycRialg3B5HpEn7y0Ck7irGwJdEITwwQCiCK2cH0rlJHh8Gmgx55hYw/s1600/IMG_8334.JPG" height="289" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkSibhgOxq1s1z9IS-mR0Iz7FrWjvifAao92RXXujNdx5miS1Egwknr-pU2go520rWS7KJVlgx9abRKsvsoUGn-G9SdtzOBJzzUZ0bf434EbVH6jFJXOSbpcjYJoypjvLN7uOjrP0F-TY/s1600/IMG_8202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkSibhgOxq1s1z9IS-mR0Iz7FrWjvifAao92RXXujNdx5miS1Egwknr-pU2go520rWS7KJVlgx9abRKsvsoUGn-G9SdtzOBJzzUZ0bf434EbVH6jFJXOSbpcjYJoypjvLN7uOjrP0F-TY/s1600/IMG_8202.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a>Yesterday was one of the most beautiful gatherings of solidarity I have ever witnessed and I am optimistic that this attack will only result in an unprecedented unity in this country and not the divide that was intended.</div>
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Like I tell the kids every day, the only way to deal with a bully is to ignore them. Responding with violence of any kind, no matter how angry and frustrated you might feel, will only make you as bad as them. Ignore them and find another way to amuse yourself. They'll come around eventually and want to join in on all of the fun, you'll see.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYtJX-193fdtWgAgy4kJfqU9gapgA715lBLS4g8ynRjMMg6QIn3t_G3ck9wohPM8DaWVeSiT70xJFval6Ko2fP9keyxLKT2FvwD1uktwjSiMb4hewJPW8Pu7Pe-41OcClISfd8R1Lfic/s1600/boots+walkin'.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYtJX-193fdtWgAgy4kJfqU9gapgA715lBLS4g8ynRjMMg6QIn3t_G3ck9wohPM8DaWVeSiT70xJFval6Ko2fP9keyxLKT2FvwD1uktwjSiMb4hewJPW8Pu7Pe-41OcClISfd8R1Lfic/s1600/boots+walkin'.JPG" height="131" width="200" /></a>We have a long path ahead of us but I am hopeful that change is possible and humbled thinking that so many of us are prepared to stand up for our beliefs. Changing the word 'WAR' to 'CHALLENGE' on terrorism is not enough. We have serious work to do and a duty to uphold if we hope to protect our country and our values from those that seek to dismantle it. May we never forget again. </div>
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May we stay informed and stand up for LIBERTY, FRATERNITY, EQUALITY AND SECULARISM. ONE and ALL.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24oJqVLgxaktsPzTV4JS5SBJGLoH3X9Hmhe6yB5o-JD90gVjt3vgyefVm4lOzaA7NOLtAdXDsfcO0P8_Ax0XzsLGd6prI45oOTy8bFk2qP79TsBkyDbPUT8BqgZrF4vKOf7WxThqY_vc/s1600/l'amour%2Bmort%2Bnon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24oJqVLgxaktsPzTV4JS5SBJGLoH3X9Hmhe6yB5o-JD90gVjt3vgyefVm4lOzaA7NOLtAdXDsfcO0P8_Ax0XzsLGd6prI45oOTy8bFk2qP79TsBkyDbPUT8BqgZrF4vKOf7WxThqY_vc/s1600/l'amour%2Bmort%2Bnon.jpg" height="577" width="640" /></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-16744503254508763122014-01-28T19:15:00.004+01:002014-01-28T19:20:10.730+01:00Presenting: The Lemon Tree House<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE2F5vVnkRjuKHTsRgrDsgl1FdOQweSVJ_XQOh6-hQbH116chDhM71JT7V6h5L4P9HqS1jx6JOLobdWBIkow6z3Jy0FMMCK4Fqo5eF1toCEIQS1apVx8pYMHoy1XlXInqFmTRCiUGFGyg/s1600/1461826_10153459892900710_2089338171_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE2F5vVnkRjuKHTsRgrDsgl1FdOQweSVJ_XQOh6-hQbH116chDhM71JT7V6h5L4P9HqS1jx6JOLobdWBIkow6z3Jy0FMMCK4Fqo5eF1toCEIQS1apVx8pYMHoy1XlXInqFmTRCiUGFGyg/s1600/1461826_10153459892900710_2089338171_n.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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It is with great pleasure that I present The Lemon Tree House Writers' Residency Sept 13 to 27, 2014<br />
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<a href="http://www.thelemontreehouse.org/"><span style="font-size: x-large;">www.thelemontreehouse.org</span></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-29763169318323269952013-11-10T17:43:00.002+01:002013-11-12T22:54:10.676+01:00Pray.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit1CPscE5bKGmdxzpIK-MFPEHpXaV0eT0SiCP0eoBmrwiTHAsdxkA-1yplTSL5k3yeN4PiT_odYrmQFSgDrUWE5hQSsZWz9bXGUga359gW5-H1zWeqXv_Ex4d8UnY4HiDz34hXEXD-gs4/s1600/chapel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit1CPscE5bKGmdxzpIK-MFPEHpXaV0eT0SiCP0eoBmrwiTHAsdxkA-1yplTSL5k3yeN4PiT_odYrmQFSgDrUWE5hQSsZWz9bXGUga359gW5-H1zWeqXv_Ex4d8UnY4HiDz34hXEXD-gs4/s640/chapel.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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Part Two: Pray.<br />
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjRWtYV0FYLS1iaEU/edit?usp=sharing">https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjRWtYV0FYLS1iaEU/edit?usp=sharing</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-7747202584256630982013-11-02T23:31:00.001+01:002013-11-12T22:56:27.519+01:00The Horoscope<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Y4FJ86UTS0wFRXUbgX294UQBtR4XPHNxZYZH_B5v6IXKjyZ7kG4vN7m_dw_UQ8sWt9kJsFe6N1H0TyD1MqFmfA8GSvyu0Rt4BT-O5CA1J-8OpP9TtI1-BFOnBBwmVhe5N44qL8DDpYE/s1600/old+italian+man.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Y4FJ86UTS0wFRXUbgX294UQBtR4XPHNxZYZH_B5v6IXKjyZ7kG4vN7m_dw_UQ8sWt9kJsFe6N1H0TyD1MqFmfA8GSvyu0Rt4BT-O5CA1J-8OpP9TtI1-BFOnBBwmVhe5N44qL8DDpYE/s400/old+italian+man.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Part ONE: The Horoscope</div>
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<a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjWmJTUGMzOEpOd0k/edit?usp=drive_web">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjWmJTUGMzOEpOd0k/edit?usp=drive_web</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-80776879600234737452013-06-17T20:45:00.004+02:002013-10-13T17:49:36.981+02:00Eat.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-76466929866672106682013-05-11T01:43:00.002+02:002013-05-11T10:42:22.509+02:00Dear Friend<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></i></span> </div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“All the unhappiness of man stems from one thing only: that he is
incapable of staying quietly in his room.” - </i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Pascal</b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dear Friend -<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I am going to come home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I don't know when and I don't know how yet but I'm going to
make my way back to nature, to myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to at least inch a little closer to
what I thought I was on my way to when I left this town before. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I think part of why I felt so in love again - despite
everything that was happening with my dad - was that I felt like me
again. Maybe that's all love really is: feeling as YOU as is humanly possible,
no matter the distractions – for better or worse. I read somewhere that when
people say they just 'know'' that they are in love, it's because they can
see their best self reflected in their partner’s eyes. That they are
really just seeing themselves the way they want to be seen (and vice
versa).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is exactly what I've felt
both times I've felt 'madly in love' and felt the opposite when I was uncertain
of my feelings. In love I felt beautiful and good and that someone could actually
see it and that felt amazing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When there
was doubt I felt ugly, of no consequence, certainly not worthy of any man’s
love. In love I felt appreciated and that his pedestal was my rightful home.
But once I had taken enough hits, once I’d reached my breaking point – and I did
several times over in the past few years - I felt myself shrivel up into
something that was worthy of no one's pedestal. And I knew everyone else
saw in me what I saw in my own reflection. The ugly abandon of hope and
faith. Hence the anxiety attacks around other people. Hence the
hermit in the woods. It all makes perfect sense now for some
reason. Weird.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I couldn’t know
it then but running away and hiding was just exactly what I needed to face my
worst fears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because they never left my
side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And instead of drowning them in
other peoples’ dramas, I’d essentially locked myself up with them until there
was no place to run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there, in the
dark, I was forced to face my worst enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
It was Me.</span><br />
<br />
Maybe all the unhappiness in isolation stems from what we already know for
certain: it is not life when you do not feel like your best self. Often
times in the past couple of years, I’ve woken up in the morning and I am
uncertain that I care whether tomorrow comes or not. It is not wallowing
in pain or craving death so much, just nothingness, total ambivalence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it’s the first time I’ve ever known this
feeling. Those moments do not belong in any story. And if they do,
they ought to be shortened, condensed phrases 'the next few years where very
hard on J' (and then quickly get back to the exciting parts if you actually
want the reader to turn the page and not put down the book, never to pick
it up again) No one wants to read about endless hours of suffering and
submission – especially not me. No one wants to hear the story of a
loser, especially not one who’s lost her own thread.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ3wv8D4vGj1gW4r6BEvGkm0-u0BAiq9l0J3RxfatfNvLTP5OpNhmTSJxwChpUwR98M4JFNw2aP8F4Kg7nVd25SMkPUkJ1kCI-B50vXRaeCmwWclak0klbmzYWuOzE-bqiObeA0s2yAJc/s1600/jj+blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ3wv8D4vGj1gW4r6BEvGkm0-u0BAiq9l0J3RxfatfNvLTP5OpNhmTSJxwChpUwR98M4JFNw2aP8F4Kg7nVd25SMkPUkJ1kCI-B50vXRaeCmwWclak0klbmzYWuOzE-bqiObeA0s2yAJc/s400/jj+blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And right now, we're in an important part of our stories,
both of us, but I have no doubt in my mind today that it is only a condensed
amount of shit - because what heroes can emerge from anything short of a
disaster? And we've both been through disaster. A disaster that has
shaken our faith and made us feel like we've been ripped out of our own
stories. But soon, we'll forget any of the particular pains and we'll
shorten that bit. “Remember that time. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man,</i> they were the worst of times.”. Because we’re heroes and the only
thing keeping us from happiness is the worry that how we feel now will never
change, that the story won’t get better. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If only because we’re too <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in
touch with life’s comedy to be tragic heroes.<br />
<br />
I remember coming home because I was traumatized by the lady jumping
out the window. And it felt like the only thing to do and nothing in the
universe made me as happy as that trip. It was perfect. I felt at
home. Not because of Toronto. But just because I felt like I was
living my life. Surrounded by the characters who's endings I gave a damn
about. Me being a part off their lives felt good too. Or maybe I'm
full of shit. Maybe my presence meant nothing to them. But I think
of you, of new beginnings and that silly writing group and it made no
difference what we did or if any of it worked out, only that we were doing
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the sun was shining and
there was beer and music and tomorrow. In no way was I living the success
I'd hoped for but I was living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that
was enough.<br />
<br />
And this year in Paris, it's been horrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I have never been so alone and yet have never needed support as much as now. What's stranger still is that I have experienced more instances of enlightenment and spiritual peace during these awful times than at any other happier moment in my life. Horrible
does bring about positive. Because in being conscious of the horrors you
are equally confronted with the good you've already known, maybe even the good
that is still yet to come – there is balance in everything. Otherwise
we'd just kill ourselves. It's not really hope that keeps us holding
on. It's the certainty that there is more to come even when it feels like
things might not ever get better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
always change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And life always goes on.<br />
<br />
I read a book by Paul Auster while I was here in the Alps called The Invention of Solitude. As usual, when
you need a friend the most and you find yourself all alone, all it takes is to open
a book to see that the person you needed to talk to, more than anything,
was in your living room, right beside you the whole time. But you were too vain, too blinded by your hardships to notice.
Books are the one constant in life that always reminded us that I am not
really alone. People you cannot always count on but books are infinitely loyal friends. It is like having a friend with you, since essentially, they are meant to show us that everything we are feeling, someone has felt before us, perhaps not the exact scenarios we are living but he has the same emotions, the same questions.
And while they're telling us their stories (if you are reading the right ones), we slowly begin to identify with humanity again. Because when we are suffering, we must be able to know how that suffering compares to others'. Everybody needs confirmation that they aren't a hypochondriac. And everybody also needs to hear that the hero's pain did not last forever. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Things changed. Always have. Always will. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not necessarily for the
better. But they changed. And why couldn't we remember that? Take
comfort in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why NOW did everything feel
so much heavier? And he described it perfectly. Missing
magic. And the structure of the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The thread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The solitude.<br />
<br />
We feel we are living when our life feels in line with our surroundings and circumstances.
That’s when we feel truly infinite. Not when we feel normal, average,
when we are just getting through, even just learning who we are - we feel
depressed then, or maybe incomplete would be a better word. Void.
You do, that is, if you READ. If you are someone who values a good story,
then you must look at your own life in a similar manner, judging it the way you might judge a book. Do I like the main character? What are his best and worst traits? Was he right or wrong when he... what other literary characters does he bear similarities to?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not a choice to suffer but a reflex. Either you are the kind of person who cares about their thread, their life, their story, its analysis, or else you have simpler wants: dinner and endless hours of stupid television or meaningless movies. Passive and ignorant.</span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a novel, it would be perfectly normal to witness a
metaphor that puts the main character so in touch with his own story, or else
so deeply connected to what the narrator has designed that what happens to him is
impossibly beautiful. In literature, nature: the rest of the world, their
hopes and desires and actions, the weather – they are all there as devices to
prove the hero’s story is rightly his, and more, that it is a good story. That is what
makes literary imagery so wonderful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Orchestrated
magic being revealed carefully by the author, slowly, only tidbits at a time,
just so, making sure the reader feels as though he is the only one truly able
to follow the whole thread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life can
feel like that too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But not if you’re too
busy or too crowded to see it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my
experience, only solitude has permitted me to follow my own thread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is only in solitude that I see how magical
and beautiful my life is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> While I am busy living the human dramas, I forget that I am not the narrator. I can only see as far as a two dimensional character. That is, unless I see the signs. Unless something puts me in touch with the greater story at play: its subtle meanings, archetypes, metaphors, symbols, devices. Alas, only omniscience can tell us if our traits are flawed, if our actions are correct, if . Only the narrator can tell us if we're living a tragedy or a comedy. Only the narrator is privy to that information, until the story's over that is. And it's already been widely confirmed that the narrator remains shroud in mystery and therefore no means to communicate directly. We cannot see the Wizard. We have only the signs to link us. Metaphoric Moments. Take them or leave them. As far as I am concerned, however, without them we are only secondary characters. I don't know about you but I'm not interested in being a device in someone else's story.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Friend, our stories have been full of metaphors in the past - in the
good parts anyhow - and yet this year, I'm not really cool with any of these
tragic ones becoming part of the larger picture: hardships, death, winter,
desolation, impossible goals, cancer, secrets, old lovers, broken friendships
- they're all heavy - and I want more than just heavy, I want relief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there's no light at the end of the
tunnel. Where is it? Where is the light? How do you go
forward into the darkness? How do you accept yourself as a tragic character and go on?<br />
<br />
I've been trying to find a way because this whole time it's felt like things
might really not get better. And then it occurred to me: I don't go
forward into the darkness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
refuse. I remain patient. I do what I have to do to get through and
then, when the storm has passed, I stand up and I do it better and I end up
thanking myself for all that I learned through the horrors. Heroes are
boring anyway if they haven’t suffered and survived.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnF-t5iWRzWEFFqKf9x4DSh4RG1PgKPdxJSxKUs8pfghZ09iJZjtYD9xHH2dqT_On1RvFG5ChkX0k7kNDVEFclEs_zGryiI9A3P_bCjZ4T6BmTQVr9gDpgY8_tFJM2x6Znx1JjvGahjv8/s1600/picture445.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnF-t5iWRzWEFFqKf9x4DSh4RG1PgKPdxJSxKUs8pfghZ09iJZjtYD9xHH2dqT_On1RvFG5ChkX0k7kNDVEFclEs_zGryiI9A3P_bCjZ4T6BmTQVr9gDpgY8_tFJM2x6Znx1JjvGahjv8/s400/picture445.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And that's when nature comes back into play. It's
here and it’s messy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dark. We've
been in a never ending storm. But lucky for us, weather is about as
unstable as life. Nothing lasts forever, that's true and it’s a little
sad. But then, if it DID, this feeling might last forever too. But
it can't. There will be rain and there will be sun. And chances
are, once a year, we'll be drowning in snow and it'll be fucking cold and
everything'll be shit and that someone we know'll probably die of cancer but
we're older now and we finally understand that impermanence, shaking
things up, starting over, losing and getting back up, endings, beginnings,
firsts and lasts - it is actually a great part of the story. It's
the only way to make a happy ending, actually. If things don't suck, if
they don't REALLY REALLY suck for you at some point, then you're never really
equipped to see the beautiful moments that take you out of it, that fill
you with will and desire and good. You need those crises to remind you of
the story you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were</i> writing. And
maybe even all the rest too, to give your story the fine balance pathetic fallacy
it needs to be half decent. This, after all, is precisely what gives the
character depth. Thank God. Thank FUCKING GOD.<br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Yesterday afternoon, I stood at the top of a mountain and I saw exactly the same
image that used to be on the wall of my living room when I was a kid. It
was a painting my dad brought home from Europe - I think it might have actually
been what would eventually become just a small square of a much larger
wallpaper design. I imagined, dreamt about that painting all the
time: who each of the people were, what they did, who they loved, the secrets
they kept which houses were theirs, what job they did in the village. You
could never really make out the faces of the people and I loved that
because it was a permanent mystery and the story was ever changing. Just
blurry colours in a beautiful backdrop. Even the setting wasn't clear if
you stood too close but when you took a step back, it looked like the most perfect
place in the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It looked exactly
like the villages down below from here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The sun is lighting up the two villages below amidst the green and the
rock face, and it is simply perfect and the same. It's hard to explain in
words. It’s not just that it is beautiful (and it is, which is refreshing
because not much has seemed beautiful to me of late) but it’s also that it has
flooded me memories - good ones - different states of mind when I remembered my
story being different. Back when I had the will to write the kind of
story, with my life and with my pen that even I would want to read. I
remembered thinking that I could face anything back then. I had no
fear. Because you can be fearless when you're not alone. And
finishing that book on The Invention of Solitude this week, it also reminded me
why I came here in the first place (to write) and how I am suddenly armed with
a shitload of things to write about and the total freedom from distractions to
be able to do it. And I didn't feel sad or lonely for the first time in I
cannot tell you how long. This morning, I set my alarm for 7 am and I was
writing with fervour. And the story, now matter how self indulgent it
felt, had enough metaphors to make me feel like it might be one worth
writing. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So keep your eyes open for a thread. There's bound to
be one. Even in the solitude. Maybe only in the solitude are you
able to find it. And maybe the writing itself will be shit and it will
only ever mean anything to me but at least I have that feeling back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least my eyes are open again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I like who I see in the mirror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s beautiful and good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think I am in love. I wish you the same dear Friend. And I hope to see you very soon but even if I do not, we will be okay.</span><br />
<br />
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<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Venez les beaux jours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Faites de moi ce qu’il faut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Je suis forte et maintenant je le sais. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Je suis une héroine à la recherche d’un happy
end pour ma jolie histoire. Venez les beaux jours, venez avec vos sophismes pathétiques et </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Je te suivrai partout où tu iras.</span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So take those long, painful, horrible years of shit and
condense them now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“They were terrible
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The worst of times.". For me it will be shorter still:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bad men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bad decisions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bad luck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> But the times, they are a changin. And if Bob says so.....</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So get to your room!</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s time to turn the page. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love Julie</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">xoxo</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-10406354252188107082013-04-25T07:44:00.004+02:002013-04-25T07:51:35.655+02:00Paris Is Like A Whore.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYz6IHLdpDfT7nNJjG0nxVwoSLhx__bcZbt7gD4r3AxctkV4gfu1dxE01rupygLsj-ijhhg3Y653jx9lcWR0IKBVyHJlWXymbdrcjDOi05-lzBusfWOGg6y7UtRML5G-Oc8SwP6tfnOA/s1600/483625_10151407360330710_628790071_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYz6IHLdpDfT7nNJjG0nxVwoSLhx__bcZbt7gD4r3AxctkV4gfu1dxE01rupygLsj-ijhhg3Y653jx9lcWR0IKBVyHJlWXymbdrcjDOi05-lzBusfWOGg6y7UtRML5G-Oc8SwP6tfnOA/s400/483625_10151407360330710_628790071_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
In a year's time, I've barely found any words to describe the way this town looks to me now. It has changed. Again. There are not words, only faces and places that come and go. And a lot of soul searching. Equal parts suffering and pleasure.<br />
<br />
So click on the link below to see the weather in My Tropic of Cancer. No matter how hard I try to describe it in words, I think you have to see for yourself. <br />
<br />
Bisous.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjMkpaOUxEQ1NTMjg/edit">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0ROjz8IeEKjMkpaOUxEQ1NTMjg/edit</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-70053290746975726992012-04-12T14:36:00.005+02:002012-04-15T09:21:09.765+02:00LA VIE C'EST PAS DU GATEAU<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUVHqAuxR_LY2bk_FnEbs9D3ZosUo236llavbu6uKDIi7yioT4urSQZeW-8NGc4Tmb0k9Qis7ASxYXPWE-H3FynovJ56sX7l0HgagelV0BY15aS6hA9HGMJZPoNMOF2qfzWENL1zhAxhA/s1600/IMG_1752.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUVHqAuxR_LY2bk_FnEbs9D3ZosUo236llavbu6uKDIi7yioT4urSQZeW-8NGc4Tmb0k9Qis7ASxYXPWE-H3FynovJ56sX7l0HgagelV0BY15aS6hA9HGMJZPoNMOF2qfzWENL1zhAxhA/s400/IMG_1752.JPG" width="300" /></a><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">This summer I saw a grief counselor. I spent a lot of time in high school raising money for a cancer support centre in Oshawa (Hearth Place...for anyone who after reading this is looking for help!) The place was headed up by a friend's Mom who struggled with cancer for years before succumbing to the terrible monster while we were in high school. By that point, only a few close friends had been personally touched by cancer. It was somewhat rare. Now it seems every other person is dealing with cancer. Six degrees of separation is down to only one or two these days. </div><br />
Anyway, I decided to take advantage of some of the services the place had to offer since it was in town and I knew that it had provided a lot of help to a lot of people over the years. I believed in the place from the start but I wasn't really going for me. I was going to see what options there were for my Dad and also hoped that I could contribute something of value to my family to help them deal with everything. I thought maybe even just being around other people who had a clue what it was I was going through might help everyone cope a bit better. My father had not yet passed away but I had accepted by this point that he was going to die. It took some of the rest of the people in his life a little longer to accept. That's the funny thing about cancer. It's never a sure thing: there are so many treatments now and it's so darn rampant, that it's almost become a right of passage. But it's also this stressful thing that lurks in the darkness. Every time you close your eyes you wonder if this is it. <br />
<br />
The doctors were pretty clear about what my Dad's short future held, as much as the brain tumour guide they sent us home with after St. Mike's anyway but because so many people we'd know had been struck and made it out alive, after watching the battle first hand last a decade in some cases, it was easy to hold false hope too. While the surgeries were happening, I was busy on the internet trying to get as may clear answers as possible: what to expect, at what kind of pace he was expected to degrade, how we could minimize his suffering, what different dosages of certain medications could tell us, how much time he had left. On top of it all, during this time, we were still in the phase where we had to pretend that wasn't the case. Not in a repressed, 'He can't be dying!' kind of way; which of course we all felt as well but the doctors had warned us that the stress of imminent death would likely worsen his condition and in the case of the brain, if we wanted to make the most of the time we had left with him we literally had to live in the moment. In other words, we couldn't tell my Dad he was going to die. We had to walk into the room with a smiles on our faces, not get upset and pretend as though he was only sick but that in the end, he'd be just fine. Obviously, this wasn't an easy thing to do knowing in a few days time we were going to walk out the door and take Dad home to die in his bed. All of this was especially difficult as my father had already transformed into another person: he was childlike now, had very little balance and a particular sense of humour: no sense whatsoever of the 'inappropriate'. Traces of himself but not the real deal. Of course, there were funny moments here and there. One afternoon, my brother took him for a ride in his cruiser. Walking back towards the help, impatient as ever and feeling 'FINE', he fell and my brother luckily broke his fall (he just about cracked his head open on the cement walkway leading to the house) with his foot. 'So Dad, how was your day?! How was the drive?' 'Well, it was great. But it would have been better if your brother didn't kick me in the head on the way into the house!!!' We were much the same, playing along with his temperament, encouraging him to eat more if he wanted to, to fish to play golf to do anything and everything he wanted while he could, but, in the meantime, we were all holding back the tears and the words we wanted to say, the questions we wanted to ask, the undying love we wanted to impart and we just went on pretending it was any other Tuesday: everything was hunky dorey. Eventually, it all became a little more than I could handle on my own. It became too much for anyone to deal with on their own. Each of us took turns having breakdowns. Mine hit me like a ton of bricks.<br />
<br />
I'd seen a counselor a couple of times before but wasn't wowed by the process of it and it didn't make me <i>better</i> in and of itself. I remember it easing the conscience of a lot of the people I was leaning on for support. Because the truth about grieving is there as much guilt to the process as there is sadness. You feel guilty that you aren't letting people in. You feel guilty for asking too much, for being a downer. You feel guilty about being weak.<br />
<br />
The first time for me was after a couple of my friends died rather young. I was twenty two at the time and found myself in lecture halls writing their names over and over on my notebooks because I couldn't hear anymore. I couldn't listen to anyone talk about anything, it didn't make sense. <i>This</i> was all that mattered anymore. They were dead. We would all die too. What was the point? Suddenly talking about existentialism and international relations felt masturbatory and I wasn't in the mood for it. Anyway, I didn't have any ambition left, no appetite, no sex drive or even a life drive at that point. I wanted absolutely nothing and getting out of bed in the morning was becoming increasingly difficult. <br />
<br />
I was pretty messed up about it all, seeing both of them everywhere. Not in a scary ghost way but in the kind of way where I couldn't accept that they were gone. Deep down I already knew what I needed to do and was unconvinced that going to see some university counselor was going to make it any clearer. I studied psychology and philosophy: I had the tools and the know-how to talk myself down from the ledge but somehow when real life is happening to you, all of that goes out the window. Before I knew it, I wasn't me anymore and I could feel the Julie in me slipping away into that black hole of depression. I didn't care anymore about love or friends or family or enlightenment or anything. How could I? We were all going to die. And sooner than we think. And having been so sick for so long as a kid I partly felt guilty that life had taken these two great 22 year old friends of mine in such horrific ways. Should have taken me instead. But, you can't go on living that way - I'd done my share of reading about depression already by that point - one foot in front of the other, day-to-day -to-day. So, I caved and made an appointment at the University and I spoke to a psych student, only a few years older than me for a couple of hours a couple of weeks in a row. <br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Going into the appointment, I half expected the black leather sofa, mohogany cabinets full of books, framed diplomas from this school or that, and paisley curtains. Maybe even a particularly beautiful area rug. I expected him to have thick rimmed glasses and a beard and to ask me questions and YES, to answer yours: I've obviously seen too many movies! Instead, we were in a white room that looked a lot like the reading rooms in the library. Plastic and metal chairs and a fake wood desk with a desktop computer and a grey telephone. The man asked me nothing. He told me to talk about what I've been going through, what had happened. What I expected to get out of counselling sessions with him. The first time I didn't cry. I told the story matter of factly: my friend died. I was fucked up about it. I couldn't concentrate. I was ruining my personal relationships and thinking about dropping out of school or at least taking a year off. Then another friend was in a horrible car crash and escaped as the only survivor, including the three other passengers in her vehicle and the truck driver who struck them. She was in a coma for a month and then died too on the operating table. We weren't extremely close but we were starting to be. I felt lost. I felt that life was unfair and I wasn't sure I wanted any part of it anymore. What was the point? I was reading way too much philosophy and only weeks prior had conditionned myself to see the world in a very different way than before: fearlessly it all fell to pieces quite literally. Particles of matter moving around aimlessly – nothing mattered any more than anything else and everything was suddenly simple and clear to me. We were one, all of us. Every experience, every breath, every life, every death. And then death knocked at my door and my feet slammed back on the ground and I felt like a pretentious bullshitter chasing down my own kind of God so that I could have something to believe in. The church had never done it for me. And believe me, I'd tried that too. At the time, I couldn't see the comedy in this ultimate test of faith. I should have and a few weeks before, I probably would have but once Ian was gone and the funeral was over and done and I was back in Vancouver where no one knew my old friend and no one could undestand how sad I was that I'd never see him again (it happened very suddenly in a swimming pool and he was cremated before I got back home) I was just a scared child, feeling alone and little crazy. What did I expect to get out of counselling? Fuck all. And I expected about as much out of life itself. <br />
<br />
Eventually, I allowed the counselling to be what it should be: an outlet for talking to oneself. Permission to be selfish. No one really goes in looking for advice, they just need to hear themselves tell their story out loud. It permits you to distance yourself from your own inner pain and brings you back to the bigger picture. You don't have to feel guilty about suffering. Until you're talking about it aloud, until you can describe to someone who you once were and the fear you're feeling now over losing some big part of yourself, you can't get better. You need to get it out of you. And as long as it's there, locked up inside, you can't get better. It'll eat the rest of you alive too if you go about it that way.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBkj8oFXez2amaqzlADe3vZZvqCn4sMgOqaxMKgrI1GoXO89XSlCkwuysqvFPCkfwrJKFQQbCG-KY3njOiMnT3L0ElySOJsLKW4ETttKktrlghAWg2nT9-oAYTKmqjY7R-HLuxzYmUc1E/s1600/IMG_1765.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBkj8oFXez2amaqzlADe3vZZvqCn4sMgOqaxMKgrI1GoXO89XSlCkwuysqvFPCkfwrJKFQQbCG-KY3njOiMnT3L0ElySOJsLKW4ETttKktrlghAWg2nT9-oAYTKmqjY7R-HLuxzYmUc1E/s400/IMG_1765.JPG" width="300" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUVHqAuxR_LY2bk_FnEbs9D3ZosUo236llavbu6uKDIi7yioT4urSQZeW-8NGc4Tmb0k9Qis7ASxYXPWE-H3FynovJ56sX7l0HgagelV0BY15aS6hA9HGMJZPoNMOF2qfzWENL1zhAxhA/s1600/IMG_1752.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>Truth be told, I probably should have been talking to a therapist for a large part of my life with all the crap I've been through. Sometimes the people you're with make you feel strong enough to deal with anything that comes your way. Friends can be magnificent for that and yet, it's also an unfair facet of the relationship between two people to lean too much on their supporters. It's not what you want to share with people you love. Of course, yes, people who love you will always be there for you but no, friends are NOT for leaning on when times are tough. They are only reminders of the things to look forward to later. They are the people you CHOOSE to LIVE WITH. Family is different. And friends can be like family sometimes,it's true, but in my opinion anyway, there is something all-together mean about dragging your friends into your depression. It's hard not to feel for deeply when your friends are down and out. It's hard not to sympathize and want to help but we all know that there is nothing to do but get through the feelings. We all know that the battle is within us and that no matter how many times we hash the same awful stories to our friends over and over again, they still won't be able to do anything to help apart from reminding you that they exist and that they're there to have fun with whenever you're ready. Anything more than that evokes that 'guilt' thing I spoke of earlier and a breach of trust. Both parties feel guilty. One for making their friends feel so bad, the other for being unable to solve the problem for you (because a true friend will WANT to do that!) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There is also a weakness associated with asking for help, especially from the people hat you love and trust and respect that I've never been partial to. I'm kind of a boy that way. I don't like to cry in front of people. I don't like to talk about feelings. I make jokes so that nobody ever digs any deeper, I make light of the serious because if I don't, I'll drown in the suffering. It's not phony and I don't even think it's a defense mechanism (Freud might disagree, who knows...) for me, it's a choice. I used to call myself the ETERNAL OPTIMIST. My goal in life was to make people happier. To do good. To love well. To understand. To laugh. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then, out of nowhere, I wasn't able to laugh at my life at all anymore, I was losing my father and a lot of other things too simultaneously (we're friends...I'll spare you the details!) but mainly, I was losing the last of my faith that there would ever be a happy ending. And I didn't want to bother my friends anymore, they'd already been at my side through piles and piles of other crap leading up to the cancer. I didn't want to drag them down with me and I could tell that's where this was going.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div>Things were bubbling up and bubbling over inside of me and I'd already exploded on a couple friends over minor infractions (as though anything whatsoever was their fault) and as soon as I saw myself putting my stuff their shoulders, rather than dealing with my baggage, I sought professional help. It wasn't so much for me but it was to be a better person. I was smart enough this time around to not repeat the same mistakes. I also wanted to be able to ask questions for how I could help my own family get through this impossibly difficult time. Anna Sapershteyn told me something years ago: 'People need to learn to own their own shit'. But the brain is a funny thing. It tricks us into all manners of madness and folly. It fools us with the notion that we are right when often we're wrong. It has a self-destruct button that is so easily set off by the slightest disappointment. Mine does, anyhow. But I had surpassed all that. I was already done with living. Tired. Exhausted. Too much bad. No good. And I felt like a homeless orphan because my family had too much to deal with to be there for ME and of course I wasn't expecting them to. There were bigger things happening but I was also going through some pretty heavy stuff and I didn't know where to turn.<br />
<br />
So I called, made an appointment, sucked up my pride and saw Ted one morning at ten o'clock. I was going to own my own shit, even if it killed me. I knew I probably wasn't ready to talk about any of it yet, it was all too fresh. My father was still at home. Still upright. Still eating. He asked me why I'd come to see him and I told him the truth. This happened. Then this. And this and this and this and this and this...he sat there with his jaw dropped and I felt guilty for complaining but only for a few minutes, impossible to feel unlike a whiner when you've got so many complaints and so little gratitude. I knew the cliches applied: 'La vie c'est pas du gateau' (Life isn't a piece of cake). I already knew all of that and I was naive anymore. I also knew people who were going through things a Hell of a lot harder than what I was dealing with but I couldn't shake the cursed feeling inside of me. For the first time in a long time, I felt like a victim. Like it wasn't fair. People were unkind.<br />
<br />
How did some end up with far simpler existences? Happy families. Love. Profound friendships and careers they reveled in. Mine was the kind of solitary story you write tragic books about (and for that I was grateful, of course) but I didn't want to be ME in my story anymore. I couldn't take one more bit of bad news. When I finally got around to talking about what it was like for me going through all of this stuff I started to cry uncontrollably. Not out of sadness. Not even out of pain, really. It was more overwhelming and inexplicable than that. For the first time, maybe ever in my life, I was listening to myself tell a stranger who I was, where I came from and where I was going and it was too much to hold in any longer. And by the end of the hour, I knew I'd made the right decision by calling.<br />
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Ted let me cry. And he said everything I was feeling was perfectly normal. More than normal. Sometimes we need to hear that from someone that we don't love (because our friends and families can't be trusted in those circumstances!) It's not even about being 'normal' perse, because you don't feel normal when you're going through all of these things; you feel isolated and separate from the rest of humanity and truth be told, you're probably NOT normal while you're going through them. You become effectively crazy. But we all need to hear that it's okay to be feeling all that you're feeling while you're feeling it. That you're not alone in feeling empty - the whole damn world feels the void - why do you think counselling is such big business!? Ted proceeded to tell me a story about his own life. He lost his father and his brother in the span of a week: à la Joan Didion. He talked about how awful it was, how alone he felt. How there seemed to be no purpose to go on living without them. How he almost lost everything in the process. Somehow it put things into perspective for me in a way that I knew I could only do in my own head. He made me feel less alone. He didn't make it better. He didn't make any of it better but he made that light in my head go on reminding me that 'this too shall pass'. And while you're in it, you feel like you might drown in there. You certainly don't see an end in sight.<br />
<br />
Everyone has their own bag of shit to deal with. Full of madness even the Brothers Grimm didn't bother to teach us as children: I'm not talking murder and betrayal, I'm talking about those 'life' things that happen to everyone eventually: the human traumas that makes you question the point of anything at all. For some people it's just loneliness for others, it's evil for some it's just the plain lack of justice in any of it. There are days when optimism seems impossible, futile and plain foolish.<br />
<br />
There's always a reason to be sad and there's always going to be. If they'd have just said that from the beginning, I'd probably feel a lot less dissappointed now than I did in the beginning. But it's enlightening all the same. And that's because of the way I feel today. I feel alive. I wouldn't say good or bad or even alright but I feel alive. I feel like I'm fighting my way through. I feel older. I wouldn't call myself an optimist anymore but I'm shedding a bit of the cynism. Enough to remember the things that I love. The people that I love. Enough to taste my dinner and wash it down with a nice glass of wine.<br />
<br />
Ted told me one other thing that stayed with me throughout the time my father was ill and again following his death: <i>'You'll be surprised at the people who are there for you through all of this and those that aren't. I couldn't believe it. And be ready, the ones you think are going to be there, they're going to be the first to disappear. And it's not because they don't love you but some people just don't know how to deal with death. These types of things make you realize who your friends are.'</i><br />
<br />
He was absolutely right and it wasn't all a negative experience. In a way, I was happy of the people that weren't around and glad of the people that were. Friendships were solidified in some cases and idealism was negated in others. I saw the best and worst in people. I sometimes felt at home just being in the presence of the right person at the right time - occasionally that person was someone I didn't know very well prior to any of the 'crazy' and going through that together has cleared a space for them in my life that didn't exist before. There were other moments, I couldn't be around anyone but myself (hence the house in the woods...). Anything more seemed too intense. There was a long period this year where I'd tested the hypothesis: if you don't have human relationships, then you've only got your own pain and suffering to deal with. If you're alright with yourself, you should still be able to realize a pretty satisfying life: I tried with writing and guitar and piano and cooking. I was right and being alone was necessary to the healing process and it took forcing myself to do those selfish things just for me to remember who I was. But there was also an element of humanity that integral in regaining some element of faith. There was also a time where I needed to clear the cobwebs and tell people what I thought. Sometimes I didn't have the nicest things to say. Other times, it was just to say 'I love you' when I had the epiphanies of knowing who I did and didn't love. Life is short, after all. And we are all connected whether we want to be or not.<br />
<br />
Which of course brings me to the end of this meandering journey through my brain: death. It's always present. It's on everyone's minds a lot of the time. Sometimes we push it out because we're afraid of it, other times we long for it because anything else seems too much or not worth the trouble. Death's going to follow us around for a long time, part of the family. It's not going anywhere no matter how much living we do. Apart from birth, it's one of the few experiences we've got in common universally. You're born and you die. And everything in between is a whole lot of emotional wonder. Wonderful because of it's beauty and heaviness and ability to move us to the poles of pleasure and pain with the flick of a switch. In one year I have felt love more profoundly than I've ever felt in my life and I have felt it's equal share of horror and pain. The best and the worst of it all. And the rôle of death has taken on a different meaning. It's just the end of the story. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not something to fear or chase or even avoid. It's just there and when it's ready for ya, it'll get ya. <br />
<br />
I think there are two different parts to living. One where we're alone a lot, reflective, looking at the world we're in, where we've come from, where we're going, where you're going and where you've already been. There's the personal struggle with the universe that we all share: the reasons we look for love and the reasons we seek out the pain and suffering too. And then, there's the debauchery part. The living part of the program. Above, we wouldn't consider 'living'. Thinking somehow gets shoved to the sidelines in today's society. There's just too much to do to wonder why things are the way they are. <br />
<br />
Those of us who take the time to look in once in a while, generally fair better in the scheme of things. So let me be the stranger that tells you you owe it to yourself to be selfish. You owe it to the people you love too. You've got to sit down and look at your story. And it might be a horrible story at points. Tragic. Bloody awful but it's yours. If it's not bad, you probably haven't done enough living yet. And until you're ready to look at it front to back, to read it out loud and to analyze yourself as a main character, you just can't get better, plain and simple.<br />
<br />
That's what I think.<br />
<br />
<br />
Don't lose all your faith. There's always a little to hang onto if you put your mind to work. And don't deny anything that you're feeling ever. It doesn't give you a licence to be a dick but it ought to take away a bit of the judgment that we're beaten over the head with as children. And if more people felt okay to express what was really going on inside of them without the fear of what 'others' might think of them if they say or do this or that, we'd be getting somewhere.<br />
<br />
So true. La vie c'est pas du gateau. Life's just slightly more complicated than that. Life's not covered in sparklers and icing. It's not there just for weddings and birthday parties and first communions. You could never make one with so few ingredients as cakes...an egg, some flour and sugar and oil just won't do. Life's a lot harder to digest too. Sometimes it can take years, decades even. It's sole purpose is not only to be eaten or even shared. And yet, sometimes we all wish it were a little closer to cake. At least then we'd always know that at some point, we'll get yet another shot at having our wishes come true. No. Life just ain't that easy and it sure ain't a piece of cake, but then, no one said it would be easy...and anyway, easy usually means 'too good to be true.' <br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-62721758306592032192012-03-05T16:46:00.013+01:002012-03-11T21:43:18.096+01:00L'Etrangère à Paris<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkoOryWTznAzBZ3jJCygMa2l0o6fWfhINNZePyh9d2qRKgUqi3WAlymyZ76voCOoHuLgKLaooJxyxk0ZP3vtQUV5oKixB2_xvKeFqEz7GBMOPgx0_12xBr3yUAf57ow0OMzzKowbvOvBs/s1600/Get+Lost+-+JJ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="83" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkoOryWTznAzBZ3jJCygMa2l0o6fWfhINNZePyh9d2qRKgUqi3WAlymyZ76voCOoHuLgKLaooJxyxk0ZP3vtQUV5oKixB2_xvKeFqEz7GBMOPgx0_12xBr3yUAf57ow0OMzzKowbvOvBs/s400/Get+Lost+-+JJ.jpg" uda="true" width="400" /></a><br />
Back to Paris.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Unpacking again. I'm always unpacking, it seems. Nesting and re-nesting. There's less stuff every time I do it and I wonder where it's all gone to.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It's Sunday so that means Bastille Market. Men yelling, old women budding-in, young farmers in charge. I love it. I want to see my Egg Guy and my Shallot Guy and my Hummous Guy and of course my Italian guy. I've missed the fresh mozzarella and confit tomatoes and artichokes. I fill my bag quickly now, not like before. I buy two bunches of tulips for 10 euros instead of 2 for 14 what most of the florists are charging today. I don't feel like a tourist at all here. I feel like I know my way around. Paris was always the place to come to get <i>lost. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Now, here I am: giving the taxi driver directions and talking back in French to anyone who tries to mess with me.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhqQsXKRc9JerPTJx8oedX1Om1DTSFfeCLqrCXco0kMJE9r_P_TR2xH2HnPzKHXWtzVSRakOKCV16_oI8-ANWws0NTSrECQ-LcsenygY41e7RXLbKGyFKXnig0XMHuVe54a8eGchYcQQA/s1600/George+Eliot+quote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhqQsXKRc9JerPTJx8oedX1Om1DTSFfeCLqrCXco0kMJE9r_P_TR2xH2HnPzKHXWtzVSRakOKCV16_oI8-ANWws0NTSrECQ-LcsenygY41e7RXLbKGyFKXnig0XMHuVe54a8eGchYcQQA/s320/George+Eliot+quote.jpg" uda="true" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Yesterday there was wine and music in the streets. A bottle Coteaux du Lyonnais with two glasses, half drunk at the sardine-can-Sunday place I adore most in Paris. If you're smart, you rush to the bar, try to score a spot leaning on the aluminum to get a good look at the menu and most importantly the bartender's attention. <br />
<br />
Surrounded by old French men - with gold-rimmed glasses and wool hats drinking varieties of whites and reds, washing down their charcuterie and aged cheeses - we chat about this and that and guard our spots from the throngs of folks desperate to sit or at least lean. The rest of Paris, it seems is waiting outside eating oysters off window ledges and garbage cans, anywhere they can get a spot, trying to breathe the air outside a little and they can: the Aligre Market is quiet today, everyone is at the Bastille. There's a kid's park just at the corner. Only in Paris...</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">We took our wine to the park and smoked cigarettes and watched children in Argyle sweaters play while a young man jumped rope and an old man did Thai-Chi. Mostly, we were just shooting the shit and waiting on the rain. It was a nice afternoon. But it didn't end there. There was frip shopping but it felt so much more leisurely than before too knowing which places were open and closed on Sundays. I know which stores I want to see and I know which roads to avoid all-together. And, sometimes on a Sunday, if you're really lucky, you'll get a free concert in this walkway or that, ours with an old lady with flowers in her hat jancing a jig while the singer, an old man chimed along with a perfect English accent and a band full of horns to back them both up I want to fill their guitar case full of all my euros but I've barely got any to spare. Anyway, I have a rule when it comes to musicians: I'll give them a coin if they play one of three songs. Most do and you can't please everybody all the time. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLhrfaO8aXfmu-YK-EO1tNDME83p5PntyYcHOmeMgoQ3-UHxxIc84c8a6OtkPoXXda7Zp82FqBCOqTe3Jhgooe9uoY6Y8DKS6r_bIo-zipXkGBsl-OdoO1jIs8TvsBzS5Jll4D2sLgMBk/s1600/ugly+toilet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLhrfaO8aXfmu-YK-EO1tNDME83p5PntyYcHOmeMgoQ3-UHxxIc84c8a6OtkPoXXda7Zp82FqBCOqTe3Jhgooe9uoY6Y8DKS6r_bIo-zipXkGBsl-OdoO1jIs8TvsBzS5Jll4D2sLgMBk/s640/ugly+toilet.jpg" uda="true" width="384" /></a>When the bottle's done and our bladders are full, we push through the stampede to get to the washroom. You need to take the back exit, go outside. Yes, that hole in the floor out in the courtyard with the closet door, that's it. Men are putting down their glasses and zipping up their flies and girls are doing everything they can not to pee on their shoes. There is something charming about the toilets here - maybe because it's a challenge - like the first time you finally figure out what 'chasse-d'eau' means and why there is a warning about it above the basin. This time, I know enough to dive out of there as quickly as possible to avoid the involuntary shower. I carry toilet paper just in case and I know that I will find no soap. No towels. Just a bunch of happy Parisians getting back to their meat-spreads and cheese trays.</div><br />
I felt comfortable at the bar later on too. Comfortable enough to drink my supper and push my way to the toilets. I should have had lunch or something but the day's gone and I'm full on vintage clothes and macarons from Carrette, on coffee and wandering through cobblestone streets and empty churches. The first drink goes down easy. The second and third and fourth do too with laughter and tears and good conversation in a couple different languages.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNkfbHKfYgk88bZ20MKnSWLISQzMo2UKEfpI7MA9cPZNVlb2jyfdYOdR-BI8hdDN4G7tytMux7ChIG5_woXgm4pp2kPleZnyGPsTFsWnwYJR2wCpK5Kvrq3PBfIDJeIwaAa0rhE59xAHI/s1600/IMG_0570.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNkfbHKfYgk88bZ20MKnSWLISQzMo2UKEfpI7MA9cPZNVlb2jyfdYOdR-BI8hdDN4G7tytMux7ChIG5_woXgm4pp2kPleZnyGPsTFsWnwYJR2wCpK5Kvrq3PBfIDJeIwaAa0rhE59xAHI/s640/IMG_0570.JPG" uda="true" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixQPHCccnZU28N1WaTriMvrHXVKbn_YRQZsrSr_teYZQwHsSlAGmbyVY4x_yJOQ5TM5XS0Sqezf1XuTb6bRqQRGmoYv7vSxY4V535kNGRBl0crdx_N_iIo-ml-PPPDYcdjPOohc8Q1ccs/s1600/Jung+quote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixQPHCccnZU28N1WaTriMvrHXVKbn_YRQZsrSr_teYZQwHsSlAGmbyVY4x_yJOQ5TM5XS0Sqezf1XuTb6bRqQRGmoYv7vSxY4V535kNGRBl0crdx_N_iIo-ml-PPPDYcdjPOohc8Q1ccs/s320/Jung+quote.jpg" uda="true" width="320" /></a></div>By eleven, I'm drunkenly reversing my path, knowing that this is to become my usual commute: Gentilly Bus to RER. RER to Chatelet. Chatelet to the 1, careful not to bump into anyone on the crowded rolling walkways of shoppers and students. The 1 to St. Paul. St. Paul to Place Des Vosges by foote. I'm becoming conscious of how the days are going to play out. Who I'll see and what I'll do. What's important now. The quiet of having no television and a computer that barely works. Books. And of course the piano. I think my neighbours hate me already. Every time I play there's a knock on the door and I just don't answer. I can play if I want to. All I've ever wanted while I was here was a piano. From the very start, it was the thing I missed the most.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
I'll have to find a new place come June or July – they're rennovating the whole place and moving everyone to the 13<sup>th</sup>. I wonder where I'll be then. But for now, I'm here and I've got a fridge full of groceries and my kitchen smells like basil and thyme and coffee. It's grey out there so I'm staying in today to hang my laundry dry and make a savoury Tarte Julie with all the goodies I got from my favourite guys at the market. I have an oven for the first time since I've been in Paris so the sky is the limit. Well, that and eleven hours of straight drinking with old friends in old places...</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-25561636951617150952012-02-15T15:43:00.005+01:002012-02-18T15:29:33.381+01:00Better than Baskin Robbins<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAXYSVsVnu2lqw344mV5x5dDJSy7tSd9uqvLBqEHgbAC8tsRkVzq0QFvH5fzO_8IbEYSc9uUN_anMNCAKmoRj734d7snFzumr7o3s13hZWM9-mDPbaLmMngeP4mY1-HNVSfmhanErCSo/s1600/IMG_0416.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAXYSVsVnu2lqw344mV5x5dDJSy7tSd9uqvLBqEHgbAC8tsRkVzq0QFvH5fzO_8IbEYSc9uUN_anMNCAKmoRj734d7snFzumr7o3s13hZWM9-mDPbaLmMngeP4mY1-HNVSfmhanErCSo/s400/IMG_0416.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A lot of things have happened this year that I want to talk about but can’t. Not because they’re embarrassing - I don’t care about that - but because people will get hurt. I’m not a secretive person and I like to write about real life. I don't typically hide details about my life from anyone. In the short life I’ve had so far, I’ve learned that secrets don’t do us much good – they’re just our way of trying to preserve some phony ideal about who we’d like to be. At the same time, I've also learned that it’s not my place to out people who want to keep their private lives private. Not everybody wants to live the way I do, not everybody has to, either. Not everybody wants their dirty laundry out there in the open for everyone to see – some people still feel shame and judgment and guilt, three emotions I had to shed fairly early in life. Not everybody can laugh about their own misfortunes the way I’ve learned how.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, what’s new that I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can</i> talk about? I made it through the holidays with a red dress and a smile on my face but the anxiety attacks caught up with me again just after Christmas. The season was a lot harder than I anticipated. I had to quit my job because the thought of any responsibility in that moment was more than I could bear. I had a lot of out-of-nowhere nervous breakdowns, mostly in the car or at the cabin, mostly private. There is thing that kept happening. I could feel the tension bubbling up in my belly, it would move to the right side of my neck rather quickly. Tears came and went the way hunger pangs sometimes come and go. If you weren’t paying attention, you might miss them all together – if you let them take hold, you might eat yourself alive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There was one afternoon where I felt as though life was pushing me over the edge while laughing at me. I lost it on a few people I shouldn't have. It happens. Do I feel bad? Not so bad in hindsight. I think I’ve held it together pretty well until now, considering. Do I wish I would have acted differently? No. I’m done wishing that. We act how we act and as long as we are doing our best, that’s all we can ask of anyone. We do what we do. Life is not the projected fantasy in our heads of what we ‘might have’ done and the players aren’t the people we ‘dream of’ being with. Life is what it is and the people in your life are there for a reason. Period. If they aren’t there, they aren’t part of your life. What’s important is how we treat them, how we act and how we love one another. I’m more sure of this now than ever.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But try telling that to a romantic. It’s tough and somehow, I suppose because my parents were so different, I ended up with both traits. I have dreams of people on occasion, of how easy everything <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could</i> be, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i> be, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">should</i> be. The sad part is that the ‘what-you-want-out-of-life’ bits and the ‘who-you-want-to-spend-your-life-with’ bits aren’t always complimentary. Friends can do unforgivable things. Romance can get lost in expectations. And even though sometimes it can all seem so easy, so clear, life’ll always find a way of making a big mess out of your happiness if you forget for even a moment to appreciate all you’ve got, all that you’ve had, all that’s to come. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A friend once told me that love is the most selfless thing in the world, I argued with him at the time but it turns out he was right about that and after this trip, I now truly understand what he meant. It wasn’t so long ago I was writing a love letter to my friends. Toronto had taught me so much about so many people. It taught me that I was surrounded by heroes and superstars and even a little magic. It taught me that everything would be alright. I wouldn't write that letter today. Not because my friends aren't still wonderful people (they are) but because I don't feel a lot of love anymore. I just don't.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So many bad things have happened – death, heartbreak, car accidents, lies, family feuds, logistics gone awry and I've found myself giving up on everything I've ever believed in, feeling hopeless and alone and like there was no point to anything. I’ve since looked up the definition of depression in the dictionary and I have exhibited not one but all the signs this year, voluntarily self-destructing. I smoke more. When I drink (which albeit is rare) I drink in excess. I lead a generally unhealthy lifestyle and why? Because I've stopped caring. I can vividly remember the last time I felt this way – ready to trade it all in for Nozick’s Time Machine. I was fifteen and I wanted to die.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I was in and out of the hospital a lot. My medication wasn’t working and I couldn’t make it up a flight of stairs at school without having debilitating attacks. My doctors were telling me and my family that there was no chance for me and that I wouldn’t likely survive until my eighteenth birthday. You can’t imagine how fucked up this is for a fifteen year old. Most kids at this age are looking forward to the boys they’re going to kiss, the parties they're going to crash and the friends they’re going to make. Not me. I was busy planning my own funeral and wishing there was some way of separating the mind and body so that I didn’t have to go but didn’t have to stay chained to this malfunction of a vessel either. What was the point? I’d have chosen the dream over reality if given the choice, hands down.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A few months later, there was a mistake made at our pharmacy. I opened my usual bag of medication at the kitchen table and noticed that the colour of my inhaler was a slightly different shade than I’d remembered. Upon careful checking, we learned it was. Turns out for the past 2+ years, I’d only been on an infant’s dosage of the stuff. No wonder it wasn’t working and everyone thought I stood no chance. In the meantime, because of the downward spiral in my health, doctors also had me on a lot of steroids for my asthma. My face puffed out like a blowfish from the moonface. I put on weight everywhere, not because of food consumption but because of swelling. I felt more emotional and irrational and than your typical teenager and I was constantly shaky: had trouble sleeping or relaxing or sitting still. At least a dozen times a day, every day, I wanted to die. But it was an illusion – it was human error that put me here, not fate. I wasn’t going to die. I was going to live and this would make me stronger.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Lately I’ve had that same feeling again. I understand a bit more what it is that gets to me - it's not friends letting me down. It's not loneliness. It's not relationship trouble. It’s this lack of control. It's being forced to bear the grunt of the responsibility for the things we do (both positive and negative) while somehow pretending to ourselves and others that we could have done differently but the truth is, most of the things that I’m upset about this year I haven’t been able to control one bit. I know that I shouldn’t let them get to me so much because I haven’t done anything regrettable: I’ve quite literally done my very best. This is not to say I haven’t made any stupid mistakes – I have made those too, mostly in those random moments of inebriation – and like a normal year, there are moments where I simply should have known better and acted differently. But I’ve never been one for regrets and in my experience, we are who we are because we make errors in judgement. If we never made them, we’d have no opinions about anything and we’d learn nothing at all. Seriously, though, the major ones – the ones that give me that shoulder crunching, heart palpitation, crawling out of my skin feeling – those are the moments I’ve got no control over and they’re the same moments that are pushing me to self-destruction. But why? How could I be so weak to lose myself in things I couldn’t control? Leaving this week, I've finally come to understand why. Judgmental people. And I don't need any more of them in my life, period. I don't need to be 'shamed' and I don't need to be criticized for my decisions - for the same reason I don't need praise for my accomplishments. Because I am an adult now and I am doing my best. And no, I'm not perfect but Holy Christ - you're one to talk. From now on, I'm going to laugh like a hyeena when someone judges. I'm going to walk away.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A while ago, I was talking to a good friend with whom I have somewhat of a complicated history. He’d been through a fair amount of the same type of stuff – doubt in oneself, betrayal, frustration, reality looking a little more like a Jerry Springer episode than the dream he’d once imagined. He was drinking more these days and generally just unhappy with his life. But he was surviving and successful in what he'd set out to do and I was proud of him for that. I asked him what exactly he had done to get to that point of being beyond it all. He told me that I was the person who made him feel better about everything. That I made him smile and that even if he couldn’t piece it together to see me, he thought about me often. He told me not to forget who I was in all of it and to have faith. It was the best letter I’d ever had from anyone and it made me feel like a million bucks when I didn’t have a centime to spare. Some might argue that things only got worse from this point forward. That’s because they did. And thinking of that person believing in me, that I had somehow made his life better, it helped a bit. It made me feel less alone on the planet. The way I've felt when the kids I've looked after have learned the word 'love' (all words for that matter) and have found their own ways of expressing theirs for me. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In one of my father’s lucid moments, he asked me to ‘take care of everybody’ for him as though there was some way I’d end up being stronger than the rest of them, more wealthy, more able. I held it together for as long as I could but the more out-of-control things got, the less I believed in myself. It made me think of that mother on the airplane needing to put on her own mask first before she could help her kids as her plane was going down. For a while there, I think I’d lost myself all-together in all the bad news and I really couldn't help myself, let alone my family or friends or co-workers or anybody. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m leaving for France in a few days. I’m somewhat excited to go back. There are things and people that I miss. There are places that I want to touch again. There is something powerful about standing in the same place your ancestors stood. There is something even more powerful about standing in the Musee d'Orsay Thursday nights in the wintertime when there are hardly any other people around. There are things that I know now that I didn’t know the last time I was in Paris that will change the place for me, yet again. Some details that will make it easier to go on, others make it incredibly tough to imagine tomorrow. Mostly, I’m just scared and I feel like I’m letting my father down so far. I want to give him what he asked for. But I'm not doing that here. Not yet, anyway. Not like this.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Saying goodbye to a few friends last week with absolutely zero control over my emotions, I quite literally burst into tears a couple times. It came out of nowhere. It was partly heartbreak, I think. It came also out of a fear of never seeing these people again – that this goodbye was the goodbye that would last because sometimes you know that you can’t go back. I wasn’t entirely sure that I had reached that point yet but something in me had definitely changed. Toronto had changed. The place that had once been a ‘new beginning’ had its own bad habits and reasons to flee now. I felt terror that I’d hurt any one of those people that I loved unintentionally because of my circumstance and/or anxiety attacks. And most of all, I knew that these tears came out of a sincere gratitude and appreciation for having the kind of people in my life that could make me want to hold on to anything at all. I was scared to say goodbye to that because I’ve never felt this kind of love before for anyone but my own parents. And then it occurred to me – I’m so darn upset because these people <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> my family. Because like brothers and sisters we might bicker and gossip about each other, we might yell and scream and act like total imbeciles but there is love there and a lot of it. We might even take out all of our anger out on one another but that’s only because we know we can. Sometimes we do it for the attention, other times we do it because we're so angry at the way things are that we need to blame it on someone. A true friend understands that and lets you. He/she forgives the next day with a hug or a beer or even just a laugh. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">So, to my Father,</b> I’d like to say, I’ve done my best and I’m going to keep doing my best but I can’t promise anything until I learn to look after myself again and I miss you so much that sometimes it’s awfully hard to focus on me. I once felt untouchable, indestructible, tough as nails. I’m going to get that feeling back because it reminds me of you and the way you lived your life – unapologetically, confidently, fearlessly. It reminds me of feeling protected and cared for; like a daughter should feel. And if I can’t keep you in my life, I’d at least like to keep that feeling so that one day, I can give it to someone myself.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Friends and Family,</b> I’m working on finding a way to be strong without having to lean on you. You sure do make excellent support systems but that’s not what I want to share with any of you and although I know <i>‘that’s what friends are for’</i>; really they’re not for that at all. They’re people to share and enjoy living with. I had this weird thought earlier this winter in the woods. I was standing in a forest and looking up at the trees. The snow had fallen and everything was so calm and beautiful, I was overwhelmed with a lust for life for just a moment. And then I recalled a discussion from a first year philosophy course; that cliché we all know: "<b>If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?</b>" I was a big fan of Berkeley at the time and this question hit home. Well, standing there alone in the forest, I realized that no one I cared about was seeing this tree. If I didn’t tell someone about it, no one would even know that I had this epiphany out there in the woods on my own and while maybe that shouldn’t matter, it did matter. I felt like I didn’t even exist. Without you – I was nothing. And that’s when I realized that no matter how far I pushed everybody away in hopes that minimizing the social would bring about some calm inside of me, it just wasn’t living if I couldn’t share it with you.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Knowing you exist should be (and will once again be) enough to hold me up straight and I need to be able to stand up on my own to be able to share with you anything of substance in this lifetime and you all deserve it all. Thank you for never letting me fall. I trust you all. I love you all. I’m thankful for every one of you – strengths and faults and all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Future,</b> I’m not expecting much here. I’m not asking to win the lottery or have a million kids. I’m not asking for a white knight or true love or anything perfect. I’m not asking for a big house and a lifetime of travel. I’m just asking for what I need. And like Mick Jagger said way back when: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you might get what you need’</i>. Well, that’s all I’m after and I'm going to keep trying my best. I’d like to get what I need and to suffer less so that I might appreciate more often all that I do have. My Grandmother taught me how important it was to appreciate the little things and it's kept me happy this long. Time to get it back again.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Past,</b> I’ve tried to ditch you, suffocate you, ignore you, replace you, forget you, erase you. It hasn’t worked. You follow me around like a lost puppy and you re-appear at the most peculiar of times. Often it makes me wonder if chronology isn’t simply an illusion, if it’s not at all like you just ‘feel’ real in my present; maybe you are still there. Maybe time doesn’t move only forward. Maybe it really can move backwards and sideways too. I carry you with me everywhere I go. I’ve tried to learn something from you and I’ve also tried to put you behind me. I’m going to try to be more conscious of you, more thankful, more understanding of your place in my life. Put it in a book. Or two. Or three.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Present:</b> Alice Morse Earle probably said it best. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present."</i></b> I remember hearing someone pull out this quote from their back pocket at a fundraiser I’d organized back in 97/98 for cancer research and support services and thinking it was a little corny but a little true. Usually the things that are corny are that way for a reason…because there’s a little more truth to them than we’d like to admit or because they give us that fuzzy feeling that makes us feel like everything’s going to be okay and we all know that’s not really the case. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But sometimes it is the case. Sometimes we can just feel in the pits of our stomachs like everything is going to be okay. Like we’ll survive. Like we’ve had something worth suffering over – love, for instance. If we never felt it in the first place, we’d never feel loss or anger or pain. No human emotion exists without its counterpart. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is no fear without courage. </div><div class="MsoNormal">There is no pain without pleasure.</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is no hatred without love.</div><div class="MsoNormal">There are no friends without enemies.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
There would be nothing to lose if I didn’t have you in the first place.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, to answer my Doctor’s question: no. I would not like to take anti-depressants because I think I’ve got a pretty solid head on my shoulders and I think I’ve just been dealing with a rough hand here, truly. I’ve got a little faith left that things will get better again, even soon. I'm going to try different methods first: solitude, meeting new people, having my eyes open, st. john's wort, melatonin, literature, music and being true to myself. Sounds like a solid recipe to me. Better than something that's going to permanently fuck with my brain chemistry.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A good friend of mine came up to see me in the woods and had a word of advice for me from a Vipassna Meditation that changed her life: ‘This too will change,” she said. “Because everything changes always and that’s one constant that we do have.” I was both frightened and comforted at the same time by this thought and knew instantly that depending on whether you’re in the good parts or the bad parts – even this meditation could change value. But what it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>, always, is true. This is the nature of human existence. Impermanence, fluctuation, struggle, uncertainty.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal">I'm not a religious person but there is something about religion that makes sense to me. It's the faith quotient, I think. So while I can't promise to give myself over to the Bible or to Jesus or the Greater Good - I can and will try to be more conscious, to have more faith in the experience itself, to feel comfort when it's there for the taking and to be less shocked and dissappointed when life is so much harder than I believed it would be. I'm going to make myself a new Sunday ritual. And it's going to be better than Ice Cream. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In my book, the hero struggles for ten years because he is obsessed with knowing the answers to life’s greatest questions. Towards the end of the book, he gets those answers and it doesn’t change a damn thing in his ‘story’. Life is what it is. It’s a pile of things that don’t make any sense while we’re living them and although we try to put our faith in the hope that one day, we’ll find those answers, that things will make sense and be easy, we’re missing the point and forgetting what makes it all so precious in the first place. Why is it so hard to think of this when times are tough? I don't know. But that's part of the puzzle too. Human drama.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yes. Today is a gift. And I’m not going to try to open it and spoil its magic and possibilities because I have a hunch that those two things are the whole point of it all anyhow. I’m going to hold that wrapped box under my arm and just live for a while, conscious to put a little less hope into what might be inside and be comforted, if only by my discipline and strength in being less hasty, in making it last, savouring it all. I’m going to be thankful that I’ve got a present at all. Anyway, I’m certain that there’s something great in there but I think I’m finally smart enough to know that it doesn’t really matter what’s inside. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">After all, it’s the thought that counts. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-27239397018386053132011-10-22T07:11:00.005+02:002011-11-28T01:07:29.301+01:00My Stations of Solitude<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1FawwiPhIKlm8Z97On08fkUekyUOG_SM3KOOWaxU2j_7ysyxvxu19AJOt_0X5pBrFy8Vr4014MrlwbXtRYpfmO-vuauD57l2CQM1M7gq6E96gHKCL0rNGDdSIBY_fQu7SVsfT9LyV-Zk/s1600/Thanksgiving+2011+024.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1FawwiPhIKlm8Z97On08fkUekyUOG_SM3KOOWaxU2j_7ysyxvxu19AJOt_0X5pBrFy8Vr4014MrlwbXtRYpfmO-vuauD57l2CQM1M7gq6E96gHKCL0rNGDdSIBY_fQu7SVsfT9LyV-Zk/s640/Thanksgiving+2011+024.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Many of you have been politely asking why I haven't been writing much on this thing anymore. You want to know what the Hell I do up there when I leave Toronto with groceries and Baileys and say 'I'll see you next week'? Well, I'll tell you.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But first I need some Diesel. This car is amazing, I can't thank my Dad enough. I can do several return trips with only half a tank: $20. I'd need at least twice that for a couple of hours of stop and Go downtown. I put the Balsam Lake Mix in the CD player: a perfect compilation of country-themed tunes, part bluegrass and part my own past. I stop for a coffee with two raw sugars and I light a cigarette when the speed limit changes from 60 to 80. I'm crusing at 100 and there's no one in front of me or behind me. I've got just over an hour's drive and I'll be home.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>It's dark by the time I arrive. The house is cold and the pump and hot water are off so it takes a while to warm the place up. At the moment I'm still breaking off pieces of wood that we broke to bits ourselves in the forest when some of you were up with me before my father passed away. I twist up old copies of the Globe and Mail and build a mini teepee out of sticks and light the fire with the door open. The flew open too if I can remember which side it goes to before the living room fills with smoke. If not, it's not such a big deal. I like the smell. It reminds me of camp, of cooking a turkey underground, of little girls dreaming of up what they'll be and who they'll be it with, carrying love letters in their camp uniforms beneath the makings of friendship bracelets. It reminds me of happier times.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Then I head for the records. Bob. Neil. EmmyLou, John, Louis, The Last Waltz of the Band. Depends on the day. Depends on the dishes I left in the sink the last time. While the fire's burning and the speakers are booming, I unpack the car and move back in. There are things that need to go in the refrigerator, there's another pound of coffee, there's a lot that's got to be frozen.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">If I can avoid it, I wait to use the loo. There's nothing worse than washing your hands with icy water when it's cold outside and you haven't warmed up yet. I pull out my furry slippers. The ones that help me forget that I've forgotten my socks. I put my clothes back in the drawers I stole them from, always just enough to get through one weekend of city life. I sigh as I take off my pantyhose or my blue jeans that in a couple of days, I'll have to forsake the jogging pants again and wear something more 'street appropriate'. In the meantime, I'm alternating five sweatsuits and I love them equally. The one that says 'Trojans' on the ass could never really be worn in Toronto and yet, at 10 AM at the Kirkfield LCBO, I didn't even get so much as a funny look. I turn the heat to 50, just to get the place cozy again and then I'll cut it and live off the eco fan that blows hot air into my living room from the blaze inside the wood stove for as long as I can stand it. I think about how I need a cord of wood yesterday but I can't reach The Wood Guy.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Once everything is unpacked and I'm warm and the pine needles have disappeared from the living room floor, I'll either pour myself a manhattan or I'll bake myself some cookies. Depends on the spirit of the evening. Lately, it's been a lot more of the latter. I pull out my secret tin box that says 'Cough Drops' on top of the television set and its accompanying ZigZags and I disassemble a Belmont and get rolling. I'm not supposed to smoke on the terrace. Most days it's raining anyway so I opt out but tonight, it's a clear one. I strap on my head lamp and venture out onto the lawn to activate the sensor lights with no manual switch so that I can see at least in front of me, to either side and behind. Still, sitting out there is a bit like smoking in a tiny black box. Apart from the noises, I haven't got a clue what is beyond the shadows on any side of me. It's scary but apart from one unfortunate encounter with a raccoon and some squirrels who seem to like the guitar, most of the rest of my neighbours: the skunks, the deer, the chipmunks and the black bears seem to respect my space.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The first night is usually the same. With a collection of recent films from a variety store on Roncey, I cuddle up on the couch with my favourite cushions and a good drink and sink further and further into the futon, into the 1970s crochet blanket and the smell of the fire behind me and I watch for as long as I can take it. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Most first nights, I wake up somewhere around 1 or 2 in the morning and literally drag myself off the couch and into my enormous, comfortable, pleasure centre of a bed. 600 thread count sheets, great down duvet and a heated queen blanket in between that I usually leave off until after my morning pee. When you crawl out of the warm duvet and remember that December is just around the corner and that it's windy out there and that the kitchen floor is freezing.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Goodnight.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
<br />
The second day is exciting. I wake up when the sun decides it's going to make its way into my room. I don't generally close the blinds. The leaves look electric in the wind and I feel so lucky to see trees through my window rather than tall buildings or speeding cars. What a change this is from the city. It's so nice that the phone hasn't rung. That I can stay here or get up and it doesn't matter. That I can curl up with a book and fall back asleep if I feel like it. I'm so excited by the thought of no responsibilities I can't possibly stay in bed a minute longer. Anything is possible.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">No later than 8, I am up. I scoop out the coffee from the antique tin I bought when I arrived and get it brewing while I pull back the dining table in the living room and set my yoga mat by the fire. In no way am I am shining example of excercise but it feels nice to stretch in the morning again. I had forgotten what it was like to take the time to feel good before leaving the house. I do the Sun Salutation 3 or 4 times with the crackling of the fire behind me and the lake lapping at the road in front of me. I'd like to do it on the dock. There is nothing more relaxing than the sound of water first thing in the morning. Before too many minds are a flutter, poisoining the day with things to do and places to go, before too many cars and buses come to take people away from Paradise and back to where they 'have' to be.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">When the yoga's done, I take my medication with a big glass of water. For the first time in my life, I am faithful to the ritual of it. It does not end up forgotten, like it might when I had only 3 minutes to catch a bus so I could be here or there or anywhere. I see it in the bathroom, like I see my toothbrush, my towel and my New Yorker magazine. It's one of the only things I have to do today and it is important. And now, now it's time for coffee.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I began a rule at the house when I first moved in. Morning coffee should be Irish. Because it can be. I love Baileys and don't drink much but there is nothing so warm and sweet as a fresh cup of beautifully strong coffee with a hefty shot of Baileys. The smell fills the whole house and I get excited for the day. So far, visitors have been mostly amenable to joining me in my sins. There has only been one instance where a culture divide let to a French man almost spitting his coffee across the room saying 'This isn't coffee! What is this?!' From that point forth, even said French man understood the value, the luxury of being able to spike your coffee at 8 AM. Because you've got no place to go. No place to be. I'll be damned, we said, we're finally free!</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is a different kind of house, this is, when the guest rooms are empty and it's only me. For one, I like to go to the bathroom with the door open. I always have and here, it's like a paradise. I can almost see the lake if I lean properly and to my right I've got a big leafy tree to keep me happy. Not to mention a big basket of old New Yorkers to keep me occupied. No shame in taking a few extra minutes. I'm in no hurry. I've got no place to be. I wonder what I'll do with the day, apart from the 'quotidien' of the Cow Shed (that's the name of this place...it used to be an actual cow shed). There are certain things that are done every day. And they don't feel a thing like those 'quotidiens' that exist in the city. I don't have to go to work. I don't have to take the subway or the streetcar or the DVP. I don't have to meet anyone for anything. I don't have to pay bills or find parking or find a solution to this or that problem. Unless of course this or that problem is that I'd like to go for a walk in the woods and I need to decide between the whistle and the bear bell and the risk of taking that walk at all, given it's hunting season and all! </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">My phone will not ring today. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">No matter if I turn it off or not. It will not ring. People have stopped calling because they just don't know what to say anymore and that suits me fine. I don't know what to say to them, either. Some have let me down too much, others have warmed my heart to the point of bursting open but I sure don't want to torture any of them with another speck of my wounded heart either. I'm thrilled at the moment with being rid of the stress of what I'm supposed to be for other people. That seems to be a bigger part of grief than I expected. You almost feel like you need to console everybody for feeling so sorry for you. For some, just the sight of me makes them cry. Seriously, it's happened on numerous occasions. I know this won't last forever. And maybe that's what is so perfect about this place. It's not leading me anywhere. It's just a shelter from the storm and for now, there is something freeing about knowing there isn't a single thing I have to do next. Not one. And maybe here, I'll figure out a way to get to where I want to get to. Just when it's heating up again, the owners will come back for their summer home and I'll have to take a choice. In the meantime, I'm on a really long working holiday in another strange place, maybe stranger than Paris. I'm going to enjoy it until I find a place I can call 'home', - finally - either here or in Paris or some other place in this gigantic world.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There used to be a guest room. It was empty until just a couple weeks ago but I have since moved my writing materials in. My typewriter. My laptop. My books and notes and research on owl species throughout North America and Europe. It has become a bit of a shrine to my book and I'm guessing the next person who comes to stay will feel slighted that I have all but evicted the 'guest' room but I can because it's mine. Because it's all mine. I can leave private notes all over the place and no one will be there to read them. I could leave a porno on the dresser and feel no panic to conceal the truth. I am alone. And if a tree were to fall in the woods, I'd be the only one to hear it. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I generally like to get some writing done in the morning. The writing room is colder than the living room so I wrap myself up with a blanket or a poncho or something, coffee sitting close by, desk lamp on, though there is probably enough natural light in the room not to bother. Still, it feels a little warmer with the soft glow of the pompom lamp. My desk is filled out perfectly. I adore being able to see the trees through the window and being surrounded by wood. My writing desk is beautiful, perfect. I've got a bed beside me if I get tired and if there's a good book around, I just might take a break.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">For a cigarette. I want one. I still want one. I do until I get it to my mouth, anyhow. But, out there in the wind, its importance is downgraded a percent with every inhale. There is something unnatural about smoking tobacco in the great outdoors. It's a bit like that feeling I got smoking indoors in Paris. It feels dirtier than usual. Wrong. A destruction of beauty. But until I figure out a way to keep my mind calm enough not to need it, I'm keeping my butts in an old red coffee tin from the 50s and hoping tomorrow will be the day I stop. In any event, with the snow on its way and no covered place to puff puff puff, I'll be forced to re-think my bad habits any day now.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I love breakfast. I haven't always taken the time to make one but here, meal time is pretty well the only organized event of the day, I buy pastries half baked and finish them off in the oven. I snack on peanuts and sunflower seeds, raisins and bananas. I drink water. I can't remember the last time I was conscious of drinking enough water. I pull the bacon out of its package and lay it on the wrought iron pan, letting the house fill with the smokey scent of crispy fat and pumpernickle bread. More coffee. Runny eggs. And a movie. Or two. Or three. I answer to nobody.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I don't have internet here. There are no emails to go through, no distractions, I couldn't give less of a shit about facebook status or tweets on a good day but here it seems comical. I'm not getting any instant messages and I couldn't even call someone if I wanted to, apart from 911, I've been reassured. My cell phone doesn't work out here and I love that. I do, however, have the largest television I've ever had in my life. It's not a big screen, really, it's not flat or modern and the picture's a little off but it's all mine and I've re-arranged the furniture to suit my needs. I can see the lake and re-runs of Party of Five and Six Feet Under all at the same time. There are no commercials and I've got a fire crackling just behind me. Life is good. It's really good.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">And did I mention I can go to the bathroom with the door open?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The other afternoon, I sat down to lunch only to find twenty-two, yes I counted them and yes, it happens to be my favourite number, turkey vultures on my front lawn, doing their best with the rotting apples all over the property. The wind has retired the orchard for the season but here in God's Country (that's how the locals refer to it), there are all kinds of surprises in store for the winter. The dock will come in tomorrow and soon the snow will fall and my kayaking terrain will become a skating rink and the woods will get quieter. And I'll need snowshoes to get out to the street if I don't find a plowman soon.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">And then, what will I do? Probably the same thing. Play more music, I'm enjoying the guitar finally and have somehow, through the quiet, have found in myself the ability to play and sing at the same time. It isn't any good but it feels great and I'm writing songs and sure beats singing along in the shower to the sound of the garbage truck stuck in a line of honking cars on rue St. Maur. And it most definitely beats paying $900 to live in Toronto.<br />
<br />
Do I miss it? Not one bit. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I eat a late lunch. I relax. I nap. I wake up and I fiddle around, write letters I'll never send. I read pages of The Stations of Solitude slowly, trying to make it last as long as possible or I read a novel front to back. It's been a long time since I have been free enough to do that. This book remaining partial to me. I found it by accident in a used bookstore in the West End. The man at the store was more than surprised when I brought it to the counter. For me, it was a no brainer. A book about a female writer who moves to the woods by herself (well, she's got a dog) to write, to be alone. Well, it's not a very famous book and the coincidence was that someone else had just dropped off a hard cover, leather-bound copy that they had had specially made because they loved it so much. I bought the soft cover version for $10 but I think I might go back for the real one soon.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I look forward to human contact again. I don't miss it yet but I long for it. Before, all I wanted was for it all to stop. And now I want to see my friends again and hug them and have them up for a weekend with too much wine and bad board games. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I don't need the anxiety medication anymore and I can hear myself think. I suppose that could be it too.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">All in all, things are getting better. I think I am healing. Thank you for asking. You should come up sometime.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTdUAAk96DS8jss34l981pj0lAxM8zslSGX87sm47Hytb-7nRdAbHfL-lyGn-ySKW9N-JYpEJithGaG3N4nDpH7PlNcoA2Qz9ZI_3hWnvbzelnACMI4USBNydw4iIByNLc116wP99Nddc/s1600/Thanksgiving+2011+013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTdUAAk96DS8jss34l981pj0lAxM8zslSGX87sm47Hytb-7nRdAbHfL-lyGn-ySKW9N-JYpEJithGaG3N4nDpH7PlNcoA2Qz9ZI_3hWnvbzelnACMI4USBNydw4iIByNLc116wP99Nddc/s400/Thanksgiving+2011+013.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
Gotta run. Time to get wood.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">See you next week.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">-Julie</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-53052312638606760012011-09-05T13:24:00.000+02:002011-09-05T13:24:58.014+02:00Moving DayToday I am leaving the City and moving to the Country.<br />
<br />
Here is my horoscope:<br />
<br />
Sometimes things appear to be wrong when in fact they are right and with the benefit of hindsight you will realize that what looked like a setback a few days ago was actually a very good break. Lucky you.<br />
<br />
Fingers crossed I am turning my setbacks into benefits but moreso that I'll be happy (or at least more content) all by my lonesome up North. <br />
<br />
Take care, Toronto. It's been real.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-15971174045407581452011-08-25T15:21:00.009+02:002011-09-01T00:24:40.925+02:00MY GOOD LUCK<h2 class="subtitle"><br />
</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcMo68Jez1C7guuFzrNWhbAbDyeSfFxZcpWbSTPfPzQhoZtENIaVfQ_m1CzP8DgN7NOT9DhVhA4M5hC-dKey-PKBleLU7aT9ZSE4_P31SHWzuRpVeaV_dYHGAta5Gr0myioOxmMSfUYtI/s1600/rose+thorns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcMo68Jez1C7guuFzrNWhbAbDyeSfFxZcpWbSTPfPzQhoZtENIaVfQ_m1CzP8DgN7NOT9DhVhA4M5hC-dKey-PKBleLU7aT9ZSE4_P31SHWzuRpVeaV_dYHGAta5Gr0myioOxmMSfUYtI/s320/rose+thorns.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><h2 class="subtitle" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses."-Tom Wilson</span></h2><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I stopped writing the blog for a while because frankly, I didn`t have it in me. Things got worse. Way worse. I had to leave Paris suddenly and writing about being back in Canada didn`t seem to make sense. This blog was supposed to be about living in France. Paris may be a moveable feast but I didn`t much feel like writing about anything that was going on here. My vie en rose had grown too many thorns. I am in the eye of the storm now and my Tropic of Cancer has just taken on a different meaning. And maybe it`s time to open up again. Here goes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Unlucky is a feeling I am oh so familiar with and it’s never really bothered me before now. If nothing else, it’s provided my life with a much needed sense of humour and a light-heartedness that lets me laugh at the cliché moments where life meets cartoon: think Julie slips on a banana peel in an intersection and is swept off her feet or Julie sits on a white wet paint bench in black pants or Julie’s grocery bags split open while wearing white and the only thing to fall and break is the bottle of Heinz Ketchup. There have been too many to count. And yes, when these things happen, they suck. They are frustrating but laughable. I’ve always said that my life was full of these little mishaps because minor mishaps leave us unscathed by the bigger stuff: cancer, accidents, ruination.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I told a friend a couple of months ago that I was feeling cursed. Bad things happen to everybody and I don’t like to be a complainer because I’m usually an optimist. I’ve got a lot of faith and hope and goodwill under my belt but lately, definitely moreso in the past year than ever, God and I are more on the outs than before. It is disproportioned. I am feeling like we’re enemies but not sure why. He has all but shat in my mouth at this point. I’ve still got a smile on my face but you can see in my eyes that I'm full of shit. I’m still getting up every morning and forcing myself out the door with plain ol’ coffee and cigarettes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">YOU: “How are you doing?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">ME: “Fine thank you, and you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have this conversation several times a day. I want to tell the truth and I am biting my tongue to keep it inside.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">YOU: “How are you doing?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">ME: “Shitty. I don’t understand why these things are happening. It feels unfair. I’m exhausted and I ask myself every day if I deserve this. Do you think I`m cursed?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The truth is, these truths are met by a dirty looks, not on purpose, but because people just don’t know what to say when you tell them your life is in shambles and whining & complaining makes everybody uncomfortable. Especially when people can’t quite relate to what it is you’re going through. Everyone should know that it is equally uncomfortable to be the Truth-Teller. I know that nobody wants to hear that my father is slowing dying from the lime-sized tumour in the cavity of his brain. Nobody wants to hear about my post traumatic stress from finding that woman who jumped out of the window this winter. No one wants to know why my ex and his family aren't speaking to me or why I can't set foot in his restaurant or why my SECOND marriage is in shambles or why my neck hurts from the hit and run. No one wants to know because they don’t know what to say to someone with that much bad shit happening to them. Partly because it upsets them but mostly because complaining about it just makes everybody uncomfortable. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">YOU: “I’m so sorry to hear about all these things that are happening to you. I’m really sorry to hear about your Dad. I am worried about you. It`s all just so bad, I don`t even know what to say.”</div><div class="MsoNormal">ME: “It’s okay. Thanks, though.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s not really okay. Shit maybe I shouldn’t have said that it was okay. I can already see that worry in your eyes is taking over. Now you think I’m in denial and I’m some kind of time bomb who might just have a nervous breakdown any moment. I can see the look. There is as much pity as sympathy. My phone has stopped ringing because no one knows quite what to say to me and also because there`s no good time to hang out with a grieving downer. My outfit is the same every night: unwashed hair, a sad look on my face and an inability to concentrate or listen to others’ problems. That’s not usually me but it’s me right now and I’m losing friends fast because of it. And you don`t know what to say because there is nothing to say. And I don`t know what to say because no matter what answer I come up with, the response is the same.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here is the answer I`d like to give:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">ME: “I believe I am cursed. Can you believe I didn’t win the lottery?!”</div><div class="MsoNormal">YOU: “What do you mean? Millions of people didn’t win the lottery. That doesn’t make you cursed.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">`You’re right. Millions of people didn’t win the lottery. And millions of people are suffering and going through ridiculously painful shit too. Cancer is rampant. People are dying. We are aging. Everyone has their own share of misery at their doorsteps. No one needs a precise description of mine, nor is it any worse or better than any others’, I just happen to be raking up extra points for quantity of stress. But, on the other hand, if I say: ‘I’m fine thank you’, I’m a liar and will more than likely be mistook for a rude bitch when I fade out during someone’s story about how their boyfriend means well or the topic of their thesis. Sometimes, it’s better that people know that you’re going through things. That you’re not able to take their call right now but if they leave their name and number, you’ll get back to them (and hopefully yourself) as soon as you can. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When my friend died back in 2002, I remember the odd shock of the first couple of months that followed his funeral. You’re not really there but you are. I remember feeling, possibly even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being </i>high for most of it. I couldn’t concentrate anyway. School was a joke. Sex was pointless. I couldn`t talk to friends about it because they didn`t understand. Food didn’t taste like much and I didn’t even have an appetite. I suppose this is what they call depression but I’ve always considered depression to be a sadness that emerges from nowhere and not so much a sadness that comes from true horror. I tried to keep to myself as much as possible and shut down to friends and family because I couldn’t handle the thought of telling the truth.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And that’s the other thing. I’m not a big fan of secret depression. It’s the scariest beast of all because it`s usually one that leads to suicide. Suffering in silence is polite and all but it only makes you feel that much more isolated than the rest of the planet; something anyone going through too much pain is already more than familiar with. So I took the right steps this time right off the bat in hopes of not losing too big a hunk of time this time since the first time around, it was these things that helped me pry my way out of the Bell Jar and back to something that ressembled a hopeful reality. I sought counselling immediately. I did massage, reflexology, physio, yoga, meditation. I tried to eat healthy and drink plenty of water. I was open with the people around me about my limitations. I stayed away from drugs and alcohol. I talked to my doctor about stress. He told me the hard truth: if you want to try antidepressants, go for it but otherwise, there is nothing I can do for you – you just have to live this out. The reality is, sometimes life just sucks and there isn’t a pill that’s going to stop these things from happening. He said I could give it a shot. I opted for riding it out. Circumstance doesn’t justify medication and my grieving is garden variety. This time around I am trying to be vocal about these depressive feelings (which probably isn`t helping my social life but an essential element to my mental state at this point). I asked some coworkers the other day if they ever felt like living was just too much. They laughed. It made me laugh because I knew how absurd it must have sounded but I meant it. I feel overwhelmed and exhausted and every time someone questions my mental state my answer is the same – It`s either continuing with one foot in front of the other or putting a bullet in my head. That`s the truth and my options, though both equally terrifying seem as plain as that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There has been a little too much tragedy in my own life these days and I only say too much because I’m finding myself at wit’s end and I’m not laughing anymore. It doesn’t feel like dark comedy the way it once did it just feels dark. I was crying at a friend’s house about all the bad things that were happening to me the night we got the phone call that my dad’s depression wasn’t depression at all but a stage four inoperable terminal brain tumour that had imploded and that required emergency surgery to drain the fluid in his brain to stop the horrible pain my father was having for weeks. I fell over when I got the news. My body literally lost its ability to stand up straight. Once that simmered down, there were more deaths, more cancer, more bad news. It seems we couldn’t make it through a day without something adding to the bucket of misery.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And yet, no matter how bad it gets, the moment I think to myself, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it can’t get any worse</i>, it does. The other night, after some advice from my counsellor to try to relax a bit more (apparently the massage, meditation and mantras just aren’t enough), to indulge and to do something nice for myself, I decided to buy some music on iTunes and make myself a killer cd. I was in a great mood. My dad had a good night on Monday, he thought he was in Germany but other than that we were able to have a nice chat and what almost seemed like a normal evening with no vomiting and minimal complaints of pain. I had a great day at work. A nice visit with my university roommate and friends I haven’t seen in a while were coming from France for a visit the next morning. I was feeling hungry and actually excited about the day and some of the new projects I’m delving into (writing, catering, etc…). Happy to be moving to the lake next week and ready for red wine and raw meat. I sent a message to a friend about what a good day I was having and how everything would be okay.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So,when I woke up, I decided not to bother making myself a cup of coffee in the morning, decided not to smoke a cigarette with that ‘first day of the rest of your life’ feeling bubbling in my belly, I put the new cd in the player – a CD which I titled ‘MY GOOD LUCK’ after a Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson song, put the car into first and headed to Starbucks to treat myself to a far too expensive cappuccino and maybe I’d even buy a cake and eat it too.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m not even two minutes away from the house, driving in the right lane, when I notice two cars stopped in the left lane in front of me. There is a truck and a silver car. The truck is turning left and the silver car is waiting behind him. I proceed through the intersection and BAM! The guy decides just at the moment I am passing to not check his blind spot and sideswipe me head-on on the driver’s side, hard. So hard that my car was slammed, my neck was fucked and I was pushed right off the road and way up onto the curb. I watched the car slow down for a second after the shock of the impact, figuring he would pull over just ahead and come exchange info but instead, sped up and drove off as fast as he could, leaving me with a busted car with a door that won’t open, a brutal headache and unable to turn my neck to the left. This is not happening.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m going to be late for work. I’m going to miss my friends from France. I need the car to get to the lakehouse or I haven’t got a way to get there. My dad just paid this car off, he’s going to be so upset. Insurance? Fuck. I don’t even know what to do. I don’t move. I just sit there. I can’t believe this is happening. I wasn’t even able to see if it was a man or a woman, a license plate, nothing. Nothing! Do people really do this? Just leave? What if I were dead or an old woman? They didn’t see me either.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This morning I’ve got whiplash, my neck is aching and my back hurts a lot and I’ve still got a bad headache. We’ve got a personal support worker at the house for a couple of hours this morning so that we have time to buy groceries and go to the pharmacy and all that stuff but instead, we need to take the car into the shop to be repaired and assessed and after spending the day with the police and at the hospital in x-rays yesterday, I’m scheduled for a bunch of physio for the rest of my free time this week. It’s good, I want to get better but a bit annoying to have yet another challenge to overcome.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m not feeling suicidal. I don’t want to die but I don’t really want to live either. It’s fucking annoying and without the F-ing incentives: Family, Fun & Friends, it doesn’t really feel worth it. Nothing good happens. Literally, NOTHING. I don’t remember the last time I had ‘fun’. I don’t remember laughing or smiling. I don’t remember that excited feeling in my belly. Food doesn’t taste good. I’ve got no love. No resources. No hopes. No money. I don’t care about anything and I am out of faith. Out of faith in many of the people I really counted on, cared about and cared for. I’m out of hope because it seems just too dangerous and I am out of resources because literally all of these issues have cost a shitload of money, time and energy. I’m tapped.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What I’ve concluded is that survival does not justify faith. If there is a God and he is responsible for all of this, I’m not a fan. I don’t see the lessons here and I don’t think it’s just my impatience kicking in. I feel that things are seriously unfair. I feel that people are not good. I feel that life is pointless. I regret buying into optimistic bullshit as a child. I regret believing in love. I regret having hope and I certainly regret trying to live as a good person. Where has it gotten me? Absolutely nowhere. No one's around. No one calls. And if I died tomorrow, I doubt a soul would take notice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My close friends are around when they can be but of course every one of them has their own bag of shit to deal with as well. Emotional turmoil, troubled relationships, money problems, cancer. I need people around but people need time to themselves - c'est drole. I keep trying the ones who promised they would be there but they’re either busy with work or just can’t do it. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just another unfortunate truth.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The grief counsellor told me that in his experience, the hardest thing to come to terms with is that the people you expected to be there for you in a crisis were actually the ones who shut down completely or just left you high and dry. That afternoon, I contradicted him saying that I had an especially good group of friends and a support network and that I didn’t think that would be the case with me but he was right, within a matter of days, the phone stopped ringing. Offers for help disappeared and suddenly it wasn't all just hard, I was lonely on top of the rest. Every plan I’ve made, even the unimportant social ones is cancelled, usually only minutes before it’s supposed to happen. People tried their best to be helpful for the first couple of weeks: offering food and the occasional couch to sleep on but I don’t need helpful, I just needed company: friends, family, people around me smiling and talking about nothing. Even if I can’t really listen or participate, I need to not feel more alone. I’m worried that I’m already surpassed the point where that’s possible as I’ve mostly abandoned even the attempt of making plans with people because it’s only another thing to fall through and I’m entirely done with feeling disappointed. There just isn’t time for that on top of the rest. THIS is why I’m moving by myself in the middle of nowhere. There is no point to be in the city, surrounded bymillions of people if all that does is make you feel more lonely. I’ve always been a big believer that solitude and loneliness are two very different entitites. Solitude is wonderful because it’s a choice. Loneliness is standing alone in the middle of masses (a quote from a poem I wrote about depression a few years back which I am attaching to the bottom of this post). I truly believe this. There's no worse feeling than being around a group of people and feeling like you don't belong. Think back to Grade Nine dances. It's that but times a thousand. It's got nothing to do with self esteem, either. It's just life. It's why love is so important. Because THIS feels too bad to describe. I'm sure it's only amplified because of everything that's going on and that if things were easier, none of this would be so un-nerving but right now, it's weighing on my mind and my shoulders and my patience a lot.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Anyway, my good luck...not so good. Obviously. But I’m going to stop caring about it and maybe that will change. But I’m not counting on anything (I say to cover my ass).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m not going to say I hope tomorrow will be better; I'll assume it won’t be.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m not going to say I know my friends will call me tomorrow; I'll assume they won't and that if they do, it’s only to say they’re sorry but they’re tired or busy or working or can`t make it tonight after all.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m not going to say anything else that I hope might happen because Hell, that seems to be my jinx in the first place.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In a sincere attempt to comfort me, another friend this week told me that:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I believe that like attracks like. Of course right now it's hard for you NOT to see the negative in everything. No fault of your own, but please take care of yourself.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If I were giving myself advice, I’d most likely come up with one of these too. Bad things happen to good people. It’s not your fault, positivism breeds positivism etc…I already know all – I believe, though I`ve never actually read it, that this is the mantra of The Secret. See the good things happening and they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will</i> happen. I tried to go there for the first few tragedies. I genuinely tried not to let life get me down but it doesn’t change the fact that bad things are happening and if like attracks like, I’m a bit fucked. I’m not trying to see the negative in everything at all. At this point, I’m not trying to see anything but tomorrow in front of me. Hell, even that’s an overstatement. I’m looking as far as the next ten minutes only. If I can make it through those, I can make it through everything. I’m trying to keep a smile on my face and do good when I`ve got the strength. I’m trying to say thank you and to be as grateful as can be for the good things I`ve got. I’m trying to keep up with my own creative and work projects and being vocal about my limitations. I`m learning to say `no` and I’m trying to be supportive to friends in need. I’m trying a lot of things so if like attracks like, I`m screwed. I’m absolutely fucked. I`d much rather go with the rock bottom philosophy. That the good thing about everything going wrong is that things can only go more right from here on; I just won`t make the mistake of saying it aloud again.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t know where to go for some peace but I’m hoping that this house on the lake, a little isolation, a little water, a little writing, a little coffee with baileys, no television, phone or internet and nothing but time to read, write and reflect – I`m hoping this brings about a change in me that is positive. It probably won’t (I believe it will but I’m saying that as a ‘just in case’) but who knows, right? For now, I`m trying to take Corrie`s advice and focusing on the fact that my Dad is sleeping through his pain somewhat peacefully today, that the deductible for the insurance is only $200 not to mention the accident could have been far worse, that I`ve got free physio and massage for a few weeks, that I`m lucky I`ve got such understanding bosses, that the friends who aren`t around aren`t worth having around anyhow and the ones who are in my life are truly great people and finally, that the food poisoning I got for my birthday last week helped me forget that no one remembered the sixteenth of August and better still, the vomiting and diherrea has allowed me to fit into my way-too-tight-for-years blue jeans. Like attracts like but with my good luck…Nah, I`m not even going to say it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I wrote this poem years ago when I was going through a lot of emotions over a troubled relationship. Oddly enough, it's more fitting than ever. Poor Eve. Please don`t let me eat myself to death. And to both Tom Wilson and Corrie and the rest of you, I will do my best to stop complaining about the thorns in my roses and try my best to remember the roses that grow from my prickly thorns and eventually will widen my scope from ten minutes to ten days to ten years again. I'll get there. I will. But I'm not going to lie to you and pretend I'm just fine. Those thorns, they do cut and I'm bleeding and it fucking hurts like Hell. </div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTHt2w5_15mI9lT1RSfPCVWolyFAX-BEC-nEAX0lbLrGBqC0o1EY-6EdY58Ep0lGJRgnDCUJrP2lsZAcO15WWDUoSmL0_j9tNMXNnlUBFx9UwbeXvvfK9Xv3FZDNR8i7kkXgicN0p8xeY/s1600/rosebush2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTHt2w5_15mI9lT1RSfPCVWolyFAX-BEC-nEAX0lbLrGBqC0o1EY-6EdY58Ep0lGJRgnDCUJrP2lsZAcO15WWDUoSmL0_j9tNMXNnlUBFx9UwbeXvvfK9Xv3FZDNR8i7kkXgicN0p8xeY/s320/rosebush2.jpg" width="240" /></a>EVE in PARADISE</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Winter had gotten her pregnant with possibility<br />
But she lost the baby in the springtime and this,<br />
This third miscarriage would be the end of her.<br />
<br />
Eve never liked roses; she preferred daisies.<br />
Roses brought sacred promises and sacred hearts<br />
That were easily broken to bits.<br />
So, Eve plucked them when she found them growing.<br />
She brought them home,<br />
Turned the heat on high and dried them out while<br />
She filled her bath with hot water, then drained it<br />
And filled it again a second time,<br />
Because it wasn’t wasting water<br />
If it made her feel something.<br />
<br />
Lately, she'd noticed the birds were talking to her,<br />
Black cats were looking white.<br />
She’d started seeing Hemmingway in the jasper again,<br />
And worried if someone didn’t save her soon<br />
She’d go back to Henry Miller again.<br />
Tortured by the lovers she’d had<br />
And those that had her,<br />
Eve stood alone in the middle of masses<br />
Wondering how she got here and<br />
Who gave her the bad directions?<br />
So Eve went to Paris<br />
Because it was closer to Paradise.<br />
Her suitcase, full of rocks, and Being and Nothingness and<br />
The past,<br />
It proved heavy, even for Eve.<br />
Heavy enough without the books she carried in her handbag<br />
But she’d sworn she’d make it through this story, <br />
This time, without skipping <br />
Straight to the end, without cheating, the way she did sometimes<br />
With all the anticipation and good intentions of Christmas morning<br />
And the dénouement that comes on the twenty-sixth of December<br />
With its empty boxes and spoiled magic,<br />
Learning patience was not worth the wait.<br />
<br />
Instead, she’s woken up with hope to find her stocking’s full of clementines but<br />
She wanted chocolate.<br />
Still, He didn't listen.<br />
And even if they were cheaper and better for her, <br />
Clementines would never do for Eve.<br />
Clementines were devoured too quickly<br />
By morning, they were gone and forgotten.<br />
But not before she’d peeled them, <br />
Skinned them to their naked core.<br />
Not before she’d sucked out the juice<br />
Mashed up the guts, chewed their intestines and swallowed<br />
Everything but the seed. <br />
Eve always spat out the seed.<br />
Or two, or three or four or more, depending on the fruit<br />
Because the seed always killed those juicy moments<br />
With a bitterness she never anticipated and<br />
The disappointment that came with fruit being substituted for chocolate<br />
And Boxing Day falling on a Monday.<br />
<br />
In Paris she learned that morsels of bread could always be summoned up,<br />
To soak up whatever pleasantries were left on the porcelain.<br />
Stale could be brought to life with soft salted butter and somehow<br />
Just crumbs, yesterday’s spoiled loaves, were enough to nourish her.<br />
Enough to fill her up.<br />
But even when she was full, Eve always needed more<br />
So she could clean her plate clean.<br />
It wasn’t politeness that drove her but gluttony.<br />
She would still be hungry even if she were full.<br />
And when the man at the Boulangerie would ask her <br />
If she wanted three croissants for two euros<br />
Or two for one euro eighty, she had no doubt<br />
That twenty centimes could not only buy her happiness<br />
But temporary satiety and also, that she would finish<br />
The whole bag herself before her crème was done.<br />
<br />
Still, she had time this time<br />
So, she invited Beaudelaire for a second,<br />
And he said he was dying for a drink and would she like to meet him<br />
In an Artificial Paradise?<br />
"Pourquoi pas?"<br />
They brunched in the park and had wine before noon<br />
And she noticed their noses<br />
Ran at the same time as<br />
They dragged themselves along the same sorry path.<br />
Eve was sure it was love.<br />
Two full stomachs that were<br />
Still empty and manual flashlights <br />
So they wouldn’t get lost together<br />
In the dark.<br />
They were two strangers needing exactly the same thing:<br />
For Milton to be wrong.<br />
She wasn't sure what it meant,<br />
When he hesitated to make love to her for the first time<br />
In French or in English<br />
Huxley had left too many door open<br />
And perception was hard to narrow down.<br />
<br />
Eve was afraid of heights because she had fallen twice before,<br />
And she knew bloodied knees<br />
Were more painful than they appeared and that <br />
Praying had gotten her nowhere in the past. <br />
As always, before too long, she caved.<br />
She let him climb her to the top of the catholic church<br />
And when she was able to stand fearless on the steeple<br />
He took her through tunnels and caverns and catacombs<br />
And Hell.<br />
And the park.<br />
If she asked, he always came with her.<br />
She wanted him to come always <br />
Because he brought her chocolate bars in the morning<br />
And taught her to ride a bicycle when she didn’t think<br />
She knew how.<br />
<br />
Eve lost her fear and he lost his way<br />
And red was looking blue to him and the blue was turning grey<br />
And there were broken promises and broken condoms and somewhere<br />
Between the Eiffel Tower and Tokyo<br />
In a little hotel near Trocadero,<br />
He gave Eve the child she always wanted.<br />
And when her belly was finally full<br />
He left her and <br />
She lost it.<br />
<br />
Eve continued to suck the marrow from life alone,<br />
Only, through a thin straw,<br />
Careful not to let too much happiness through the plastic.<br />
Where she once saw swing sets, she began to see hanging ropes and <br />
The watery tombs of the Seine were calling her vertigo to attention <br />
And attention was called to the sky. <br />
It had laid itself<br />
On the river and she wanted to throw something<br />
Over and up but<br />
All Eve had ever thrown in were towels<br />
And her home beckoned for her with baskets of laundry<br />
Already brimming with broken dreams and dirty sheets<br />
But she knew she would never be in the mood to deal with the wash.<br />
<br />
By May Day, Eve started edging herself <br />
Closer and closer towards the grey line of the metro,<br />
Watching the 01 flash to 00 and the people get on and off,<br />
Only remotely surprised that no one else today<br />
Had thrown themselves into the tracks of the Line Three<br />
Between République and Havre Caumartin.<br />
They’d be better off, she felt,<br />
Ending their pain now instead of later<br />
Before all of Paris,<br />
With rush hour as their audience. <br />
Eve knew she should have opted for the Eight.<br />
But she’d never had much luck finding Bonne Nouvelle.<br />
Dommage, done.<br />
<br />
So Eve consoled herself.<br />
She drank demis by the dozen<br />
And laced her tobacco with cocaine<br />
So she could continue drinking<br />
Until the whisky went sour.<br />
Until she was drunk enough to forget<br />
That her eyes had gotten so busy watching watches,<br />
She'd always miss the way day and night made love at six o’clock.<br />
Beaudelaire had broken her heart<br />
For good.<br />
So, when a stranger offered Eve a rose in the street;<br />
A red one,<br />
She took it with jaded thanks and instead of keeping it,<br />
Instead of caring for it and helping it grow full of life,<br />
She ate it.<br />
Petal by petal, <br />
Thorn by thorn, <br />
Leafless to lifeless.<br />
<br />
That rose disappeared into the six foot hole in her stomach<br />
That she had dug herself to grow potatoes someday.<br />
But potatoes would never grow here.<br />
“He loves me nots” lined the lining of her insides and she didn’t believe<br />
In Princes or Knights or Magic or a Miracle Man anymore.<br />
The rose had made her barren and<br />
She couldn’t eat a damn thing.<br />
And when the man at the Boulangerie offered her four croissants for free<br />
She didn’t even take one and twenty centimes,<br />
It bought her absolutely nothing.<br />
And that afternoon, she knew she’d lost her daisies for good.<br />
<br />
Eve couldn't bare another Fall so<br />
She left Paris, <br />
And her rocks, <br />
And her past behind her.<br />
She left the wash to the river,<br />
And the chocolates to the Clementines,<br />
And she emptied her handbag so she could <br />
Be light.<br />
<br />
They found Eve in the park on a Thursday morning<br />
Bleeding on a rosebush.<br />
She had cut out her own heart and eaten it whole.<br />
At last,<br />
She had found Paradise in night, <br />
And filled herself pleine,<br />
And her story was finally done.<br />
"Et la vie simplement la vie", they said<br />
When they buried her in the park <br />
Leaving flowers on her tomb.<br />
<br />
All the flowers, <br />
They too died before morning came.<br />
Before Beaudelaire came back <br />
For her <br />
With daisies at dawn.<br />
It was too late.<br />
Impatience had already gotten the best of her.<br />
Before she’d given winter the chance to come again<br />
A rose was just a rose and<br />
Eve was as cold as Springtime.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-14995715363966048792011-04-24T09:41:00.000+02:002011-04-24T09:41:53.130+02:00Give Me The Simple Life - A week in Gué Bas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibnbBlN1e2dhVx4YwrfA_2viDsKEomYfImuooc8CW1JWtZr8BO52yC4EOvtbcTgaPeJtbDsrmcUOv79Du-tEGZtU4KSxiPDdgvIQ7ECTY65e-XDDF3FkzYBdPSywQC0BlPgte9TAxCGvY/s1600/perche.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibnbBlN1e2dhVx4YwrfA_2viDsKEomYfImuooc8CW1JWtZr8BO52yC4EOvtbcTgaPeJtbDsrmcUOv79Du-tEGZtU4KSxiPDdgvIQ7ECTY65e-XDDF3FkzYBdPSywQC0BlPgte9TAxCGvY/s400/perche.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">There is a giant black bug crawling across the carpet and it's so big, I can't be sure what it is. Last night, there was a spider the size of my fist on the wall beside my bed. My face is covered in mosquito bites and the bees here are the size of birds. If I were in the city right now, I'd be calling an exterminator. </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">But I'm not. I'm in Heaven. And here, I'm in good company.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">A couple weeks ago, it was decided that my apartment would be painted this week. After three long years in the place, the owner has decided to put it up for sale and we're getting it into tip top shape for 'la vente'. In the meantime, I'm homeless and on holidays. What to do? Maison de Campagne, Basse Normandie, thanks to my sweetheart and his father who have arranged for me to have the place to myself for the week to work on my book.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">It's hard to explain the euphoria of being in a place this beautiful and rustic and perfect in words but I'll try.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">I get up at seven. The sun is shining through the bedroom and I write best in the morning. Get the coffee going. Add Baileys. One cigarette and I'm off. If I'm lucky I'll be able to complete a whole chapter by nine. It's so easy to write when it's quiet. When the phone doesn't ring. There's no better accompaniment to the sounds of birds singing than a little Motzart.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">Never in the city would I have 40 pages done before 9 AM. No way. Maybe I'd have blewn my hair dry and on a good day, taken a half hour to pick out something to wear.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">At nine, I come into the kitchen and make breakfast. Two fried eggs, four pieces of bacon, one croissant, a small glass of fruit juice, a yogourt and half of a grapefruit in the garden. Maybe I'll do some editing, maybe I'll read. Either way, I need more coffee. More Baileys and one more cigarette before I bathe.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">I might as well be bathing in the lake, this bathroom is that perfect. Stone walls, stone tub, I wash my hair and comb it and get dressed. Clothes I like to wear not something to blend in with the rest of the Parisians. Jogging pants. Overalls. Tank tops. Straw hats and flips flops. I let the sun dry my hair and try to get some yardwork done before it's time to get back at it. Pick dandelions, water the field, talk to the cows for a while.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">Then inside to write while I get lunch ready. It's too sunny to see the screen from the big wooden table in the garden and anyway, I've probably got a sunburn as it is. A ham and cheese sandwich will do or maybe a salad with peppered goat's cheese, shallots and tomatoes.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">I should have a nap. I know it because I'm feeling so good, I'm certain to have sweet dreams but there's a tv with a satellite and there is the option of changing the language to English. It's been so long since I've seen a show in English, I can't resist.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">Then, back at it. I've got the place set up for writing. All my research spread about on the table, beside it, an owl feather and a rope. Symbols of the demise of my hero. An Oxford dictionary and a Roget's thesaurus. A little more coffee, maybe a coke and I'm good to go for a few hours more. Until it's time to get dinner ready. You would think that I'd be depressed writing about death and suicide all day but I'm not. I'm alive and I'm happy and my fingers can't help but pump out page after page. In Heaven there are no telephones, no interruptions, no responsibility. Writer's Block begone!</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Around six o'clock, I take a break and lay in the sunshine, taking in the property, listening to the birds sing and the cows moo. I'm reading Proust at the moment which fits perfectly as it's about a region just a ways from here. It talks about Chartres and its famous Cathedral I visited one afternoon when I had a free train ticket and no idea where to take a day trip because Paris was all I knew of France. I imagine Combray being not unlike this place.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">I take my MP3 player outside and the mini speaker I bought so I could use my new iPod this winter while my dad and I took a long drive to Ottawa. Motzart seems appropriate. I play it loudly because it reminds me of being in church. The best church on Earth. I am in God's land now. The cows hear the music and come to see what all the fuss is about. I imagine they don't get much excitement in their short lives before becoming dinner – steak haché, entrecote, bifteck. They come right to the fence and look me in the eye as though they recognize me or the music I can't be sure. I smile and wave 'hello', not because I'm strange but because it's probably the closest I've ever been or will ever be to these beasts, my asthma having always kept me at bay from such magestic places. There aren't many farmhouses to visit that don't contain at least one farmer who works among the dander. Then, all at once, to the music, the cows gallop off for feeding time. The bees are getting feisty too and the mosquitos are rampant. I should go inside and get dinner ready.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">I marinated the meat in the morning with onions and salt and pepper and wine so that by dinner time the meat would be perfectly tender. I'll boil some potatoes and steam some vegetables and I'm all set. I set up the table in the garden, even though I know that I'll be hounded by the bugs, I can't stand the thought of missing out on the sun tucking behind the long trees over the hill and the orange glow of the sun on the castle up the way. A little glass of wine and everything is perfect.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">After dinner, before the sun sets, I'll take a walk. Down the garden path and up the quiet country road which is interrupted only every half hour or so by a passing car or tractor on their way home for dinner or back to the little villages they've come from. The roads are lined with all manner of beauty, butterflies, brown squirrels, fields of gold and purple and green. Across the road there is the guardian's house. I contemplate taking the pathway to explore but I retrace my steps when I hear a strange sound in the bush, knowing that I haven't got a hope in Hell against any animal with my allergies or my inability to run fast. I opt to stay on the country road until I arrive at a little cemetery with tombs that date back to the 16</span><sup><span style="text-decoration: none;">th</span></sup><span style="text-decoration: none;"> century and a gate worth the jaunt from the house. Before the sun sets, around 20h30, I should be back at the house. I don't know the area well enough to explore at night and despite the infinite beauty, I am terrified of coming upon someone who is unkind or worse an animal in search of dinner. Having been in a city so long, I feel out of my element in Heaven and am far more accustomed to the brutalities of Hell, or Paris, as they like to call it these days.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">I watch the sun and the moon trade places around 21h. It is beautiful and soon I will retreat back into the house to set up again for an evening session of typing. There are things to edit, others to finish but anyhow, I'm getting nearer to the end and it's exciting to see your project come together. It's exciting to piece together a year's work page by page until you realize you've got more than three-hundred on your hands. This time I'll back it up. This time I'll back it up twice.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">I write until my eyes are too tired to keep going or until there is a good movie on the television. While my steak was cooking, I've peeled the leftover apples and covered them in butter and sugar and crumbled some Petit Bruns on top. I'll stick it in the oven and enjoy my little treat before bedtime. I know I probably shouldn't but there is nothing quite as fun as watching a thriller when you're alone without a vehicle in a house out of the way of civilization and public transport.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Sometime before midnight, I turn the heat down in the living room and up in the bedroom, lights out, apart from a little reading lamp beside the sleigh bed with satin sheets and a down comforter. Again, probably not the best way to call on nice dreams but still good to stay on topic, I'll read about suicide or some other philosophical text from the vast library that Michael's father calls the Living Room. And then, when the moon is bright and high enough to bring the outdoors in, I'll sneak out one last time in the darkness to soak in the starry sky to smoke a cigarette and to watch Orion's belt come undone. I've never seen the stars so clearly in all my life. Afterwards, I'll come back inside, turn out all the lights and close my eyes while I listen to the frogs sing their songs until the birds stand-in at dawn. It's been so long since I've known quiet like this that I manage to sleep through the night without waking up. No drunks throwing things at my window; no women being harassed by five men down the road at five AM; no punks screaming from below begging me to invite them up. Just me and the moon and the stars and the snakes and the mice and the bugs. And that's enough. </span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">Thank you to Michael and Viorel who made this week possible. It meant more to me than I can even say. </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">Needless to say, I feel like I've spent a week in Heaven and feel revived. Here, with all its maginificent creatures and sounds and lights and colours and tomorrow, when I board the train at Nogent-Le-Routrou, while I'm sipping a café allongé in the little bar just outside la Gare, it will be hard to bade adieu to Gué Bas. Hoping that the next visit isn't too far off because I could definitely get used to this. </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">And as for the book, no, it's not quite done but it's very close and I can't wait to see 'ce que ca donne!'</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">If this is what life<i> could</i> be, I want to live forever.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">Bisous a tous.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-90431888079625576842011-02-23T19:00:00.008+01:002011-03-09T17:53:49.433+01:00This is a love letter.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQw2JJoEb1zOP0vbNIbOq-xDlqtNhDhZBUnbOE74ePyMtFXNm-TSLbqf-QwpbE4p0s16XoUlowd7V7xkYht8jV4io57K8uw1Ixd1BGGNGpm3mYCy_9k_SYPES6sTS31PWwe7G5s8asGWE/s1600/Laurier+Manhattan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQw2JJoEb1zOP0vbNIbOq-xDlqtNhDhZBUnbOE74ePyMtFXNm-TSLbqf-QwpbE4p0s16XoUlowd7V7xkYht8jV4io57K8uw1Ixd1BGGNGpm3mYCy_9k_SYPES6sTS31PWwe7G5s8asGWE/s400/Laurier+Manhattan.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><i>To my dearest friends - </i> <br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Make no mistake. This<i> is</i> a love letter.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I'm in another hotel bar, eating the same snacks I sold from 2001 to 2004 when I took that job at the Fairmont to pay for school. I swore ten years ago I'd never be like these idiots: buying over-priced shit to show off. I'd never be a big wallet tourist. You'll never see me in this kind of place.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The Manhattan is expensive but it's strong and the barmaid has brought me three cherries and a pen and paper so I'm feeling warm in my jeans and t-shirt while the rest of the room swarms in with their ballgowns and tuxedos. I feel like I'm in love. It is a perfect end to my perfect day in Canada's capital. Skating, poutine, beavertails, shopping for syrup, The Bay, CC.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">This year has been heavy for us all. Deaths, marriages, babies, bankruptcies, lawsuits, violence, hospitals, breakups, breakdowns – pure madness. I can't believe we've made it through and yes, I realize it's not even close to over but we're getting over the hump...(when people say life is tough, this is precisely the kind of shit they're talking about!) </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Thirty wasn't quite what I was expecting. As a little girl, thirty looked a lot more like white picket fences and rugrats and a lot less like this jet-setter fanstasy that is becoming my life. Living in Paris seemed like one of those things people said they'd do but never came through on. I expected to be settled down by now – somewhere in the country with a couple of kids, an apple tree and a typewriter; that was all I ever wanted or needed. By twenty, I seemed well on my way. A ring on my finger, finishing school and already talking about making littles ones. And then, before I knew it, I lost it all and my blank slate and empty bank account looked me square in the eye, gave me a big fat F and said <b>'do over'</b>, drowning me in debt and heartache. In shame and self-destructive behaviour.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">And thank God it did. Because for everything I lost, I sure have made up for it in spades by making friends with the likes of you people.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Since <i>LONG</i> before I got married, love has been more than a bit of a fascination of mine. What the HELL it means; who's got it; who doesn't; how to win it and lose it; how to kill it dead; our tendency to convince ourselves we've found it when we're totally lost and how we never know just how good we've got it until it's gone. Love is that thing that both fuels us and ruins us. We're desperate to have it but once it's in the bag, we just don't appreciate it anymore. It's inate, in all of us and it's that one piece of sustenence that nobody tells you about when they send you on your way with your diploma, harping only about the roofs, the clothes and the shelter you're going to need down the line. Nobody tells you just how much you need love in your life. Youth swells the illusion of the urgency of it, age distills the hope a bit, even breeds cynicism until one day you look around you and you can't find a single happy couple in the flock and <i>again</i> - it puts it all in doubt and that terrifies me. Because, when you've spent a lifetime looking for the answers to these questions, if there isn't love in your life, you've got to ask yourself why you get out of bed in the morning at all. I've asked myself that question more times than I'd like to admit.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Not so long ago I was sitting in my apartment in Paris second-guessing every decision I'd made so far: the moves across the country or to new ones all-together, the jobs, the degrees, the men; the loyalty, the trust – every damn bit. My once glass half full of dreams was sitting empty on the kitchen table with a chunk of red sediment in the bottom of it and suddenly that cup wasn't half full anymore, it was just an empty, cracked, piece of shit Ikea goblet. I drank a four euro bottle of Bourgogne before dinner that night and was passed out cold by eight o'clock thinking dark thoughts alone in a dark room. The darkest thoughts I've had in a long while. Everyone was in so much pain. I couldn't make a single phone call home without hearing how shitty your days were, how bleak things were looking. It wasn't just me, it was all of us. Everything was so intense and it was killing me. Where was the love? Where did it all go? I know I had it once – I know because I wanted to drive with the windows open and hold hands and laugh all night long. I once wanted to make love in the grass and run through wheat fields and forests with no clothes on. I know I felt whole not so long ago. It was what had gotten me to Paris in the first place but lately, I hadn't been recognizing it anywhere, in anything or anybody. It was all just a big pile of poo. One stolen manuscript, one depressing apartment with mice and cold showers, one boyfriend who was all over the map, zero people in town I'd call 'friends' (not because I don't care about them but they're just not <i>you</i> - friendship takes time and trials to develop properly), a shitty job that paid shit just so I could stay in a country I wasn't even sure I wanted to be in. A country that just might eat me up and spit me out if I wasn't careful.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">And then one of you walked into my apartment and made me laugh. You dragged me out of bed with cans of beer and André Ethier and you were obnoxious and rude and you woke me up. When I drunkenly blurted out that I wanted to die, you told me to shut up but I know you were listening even though you turned the music up so loud - almost so we couldn't hear our own voices - then looked me square in the eye and said maybe the single most important thing anyone has ever said to me to pull me out of the quicksand: </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>'If you do it, I won't come to your funeral.'</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">In the moment, I didn't care much but a good half hour into the evening I remembered what I'd forgotten all alone out there in Gay Paris – I already had love and apparently that was all we needed. I had LOTS and LOTS of it. It had filled me up and out and it <i>was</i> the reason I got out of bed in the morning. I once wanted to make the lot of you proud. And I definitely wanted you at my funeral. Shortly afterwards, that pretty picture I'd set out to paint in real life was bullshit and my thoughts were a heck of a lot clearer again. It wasn't real, these things I was suddenly after again and I'd given that kind of life a good hard try already once and walked away from it - more than that - <i>ran away from it,</i> sprinted even, after only a year and a half of marriage and a fistfull of pain. It all came flooding back. I'd never been such an angry, miserable, uninspired, lonely, bored, and heavy bitch in all my life as I was after walking down that aisle. So what was it I was waiting for? Why all of the sudden did I feel like I was missing something? </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Because I was. I was missing you people.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I wasn't a fool. I knew that moving to France was a huge risk. People always say they'll keep in touch but rarely do. It's not malicious and I'm not judging; it's life and I'm no exception. It's hard enough maintaining regular contact with people who live in the same town as you but feeling close to friends when they're out living their own lives in another country – it's an awfully great expectation and it's too much to ask of anybody. And still, when I needed you most, you all came through for me. As usual. As always. Phone calls, emails, skypes, cds and all the words I needed to hear. And like Hermann Dune insisted '<i>Don't you worry a bit. Try to think about me.'</i> It worked. And remembered what I was doing it all for. Why I was writing, living & loving - it was because you people existed. It was because we loved eachother (well, I hope you feel the same). That was worth celebrating.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Just when I was starting to think that it was all going to be okay again; despite everything; despite writing for years and producing shit; despite my up and down drama of a relationship; despite all the craziness that was happening to the lot of you; I had this sneaking suspicion that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Still unsure about what to do next – visa on the way out, a second wedding looming (this time for VERY different and far more practical reasons), feeling like I just couldn't be a thirty year old babysitter any longer, I played hookie from work and pretended I was sick. Turns out, mentally, my excuse would likely hold up in court and I wasn't quite right in the head – that time off was not only deserved but necessary). That morning, I was determined to figure it out on my own. I boiled some water, made a cup of coffee and listened to a cd from an ex-boyfriend that to this day is still one of my all-time favourites because it reminds me of a time when everything was up in the air and life was throwing signs at me by the dozen. <i>I would ask God for a sign. </i> If my eyes were open and my stomach was willing to accept the hard truth it usually preferred to deny, it ought to work, it usually did. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Minutes later, my neighbour jumped out of the sixth floor window and landed in my courtyard. I found her lying there, almost lifeless, shocked and apart from calling the Pompiers, I had no idea what to do next. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">That fucked me up more than I can tell you. You all know the story by now: the blood, the bones, the breakdown. The woman survived and I made it out of there with just nightmares and anxiety attacks. Could've been worse. Could've been much worse. It had this strange effect on me, though. I was dreaming about it again and again, obsessing over the details of the day and, like any woman – wondering what it all meant. I couldn't nail it down, though. It could've meant a whole slew of things:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>1.-I ought to just go through with it myself already. </i> </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>2. -I saved someone's life. I should be thankful, proud, even feel good about myself.</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>3. -DO NOT get married again, you idiot!</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>4. -This town is not for you, leave, PARIS, VITE! You don't belong.</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>5. -It doesn't get better. It only gets worse. If I'm not careful, I'm next.</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>6. -Finish this fucking book about suicide already, loser!</i><br />
<br />
<i>The possibilities were endless. </i>God could really be an asshole when he wanted to be.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I couldn't figure it out and my head was spinning with regrets and worries realizing that the rest of my life was moving on over here while I was over there trying to be bohemian but making a big ol' depressive mess of it all. After three long years of trying to shed the fear, it was back and all flared up again like a bad yeast infection that you're too embrassed to tell anyone about, one that's in far too private a place to scratch in public so you just go home and put some cream on it, hoping for the best but knowing that it's going to come back again and that this is only a temporary solution. Only one thing seemed crystal clear for me after the jump. I needed to come home. I needed to see my friends and my family. I know I wasn't supposed to need anybody, but I did. I needed you.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">So I hopped on a plane back here yet again hoping that a little time here would cheer me up. It often does. A little tequila, some good music, a benny, a corned beef sandwich, sleepovers, bowling, guest brunch shifts after late nights of binge drinking – Canada is still my miracle cure for depression. It's not Toronto, though, it's you people that make this place. I've always known that this town wasn't for me. The drama, my inability to keep anything private or sacred, the booze, the money, the drugs – it overwhelms me. All of these lives and loves I've led and lost – this place has elements of them all. It's a lot for my fragile heart to take and I've always known that I needed to venture out there on my own to find myself (SO cliché, I know but that's me, cliché) and part of what propelled me to head to Paris in the first place was this weird series of coincidences and this feeling that I was meant to live in France (the French education, the last name, the food, the wine, the lovers, the writers, the free asthma medication – every compass pointed there) but without YOU, without the people who have made my life possible, I'd never have had the courage or the confidence to even try. Before I left in 2007, I was just a broken down Chevy and when General Motors went belly-up, you guys got my motor running again, paid for the fix-ups and the touch-ups and even offered to change my tires for me when it all went flat. You literally saved my life and got me back on track and I owe you my life.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Growing up in Oshawa and Vancouver and finally in Toronto, I couldn't have been farther from making it to Paris and settling down there to do what I love. And yet, suddenly, here I am, not so far from this fantasy that I dreamed up as a girl. It most definitely hasn't all been easy or fun but it's incredible all the same, this irony that's coming to life and hey, if we don't suffer, what the Hell do we have to write about, right? It's all got me to thinking about worries and regrets. All of us, we've spent so many years worrying about what our lives would become, what they could become if we weren't careful: accidental babies, mental breakdowns, business failures, divorced, alone, bitter, poor, having to speak French all day every day..GASP! In the end, none of the worrying did us much good. We've all had to face our destinies as they've come for us with black cloaks and those scary reaper scythes and all those lives we were trying so fucking hard to avoid, they got every one of us and, let's face it, they're not so bad. In fact, some of them have actually improved our quality of life. They've given us futures. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Life is what it is. It's a happy accident and that's it. I think of the hours I've spent making plans for this future or that future, rather than just going with it, I'm amazed at my own naiveté. Who did I think I was, anyway? We've all been through the shit and not only have we survived but we're doing pretty okay for ourselves. No, we may not be rich or in control of a God Damned thing but we're good people and that's something, it is! I for one can say that those things I've always dreamed of finding: real love, a family, traveling, spending my days reading and writing and playing music and not working for an asshole in a place that inspires me, that's worth a lot more than cash. Christ, I've pretty well done it all. And much like my grandma said just before she died:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>'At night, I lay in bed and I think to myself – I really have done it all. Nothing's really fun anymore, you lose that, but I appreciate things and I am so thankful for my life. It's amazing'</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I see it now and I'm fucking glad that woman jumped out that window while everything was up in the air. It's brought me back to you guys and now I remember again. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I'm happy to say I've already got more love in my life than most people ever get in a lifetime. It's in my blood and my bones. You're the smile on my face, that spinny buzz in my head like when I've had few too many beers, you're the consciences perched on these shoulders of mine and that warm feeling I get in my heart whenever anyone says the word 'love'. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I'm not looking for love anymore. I've found it. I've found you all. And they're right. Love is all you need. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I've got myself a big, happy, dysfunctional family full of new adorable babies, picket fences & typewriters and well, I'm going to plant that apple tree this spring in Normandie and soon I'll have had everything I've ever needed. So, one day, when I finish this book and publish it and make my fortune, I'll pay you back for everything you've done for me over the years. I'll call you all and fly over for Thanksgiving (because it's the only sacred holiday left) and I'll make you a duck-stuffed duck because they don't quite get the turkey dinner thing over there yet. We'll eat foie gras with griottes and eau de vie and drink bottles of delicious cheap wine and when it's time for dessert, we'll all head out there together and pick an apple a piece: peel 'em, chop 'em up and soak 'em unpasteurized butter and brown sugar; maple syrup too if you're bringing it. While it's in the oven, we'll nibble on stinky cheeses and let the kids play around in the yard, fantasizing themselves about how one day they'll create something for themselves like the lives that we live now. And when it's good and hot and cooked through and through, we'll take it out and each take a fork and dig in together and remember these times and laugh at the thought that we'd never make it through.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">So do me a favour and keep your fingers crossed for me and think positive thoughts of me locking myself in a library basement and finally finishing this puppy. I'm due. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">You are the great loves of my life.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Thank you.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;">You are literally everything to me.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">*********************************************************************</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">HERE ARE THE SONGS ON THE CD I've made for you all. I hope you love it and I apologize for the bad sound quality of my piano. This digital recorder isn't the best and I haven't played in ages. Each song on this album has a special meaning and if you know me, you'll get why. If you don't, just listen. There's some good shit on there.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">TOURIST IN MY TOWN:</div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">- Winter 2011 -</div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><ol><li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">FUCK YOU – Cee Lo Green</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">CASTLES & TASSELS – Adam Green</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">US – Regina Spektor</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">AXIS: THRONES OF LOVE – Pink Mountaintops</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">IF THERE'S SUCH A THING AS LOVE – Magnetic Fields</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE – The Smiths</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">THERE GOES THE FEAR – Doves</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">FIRST DAY OF SPRING – Gandharvas</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">TRY TO THINK ABOUT ME – Hermann Dune</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">HOME – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I DON'T REALLY LOVE YOU ANYMORE – Magnetic Fields</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">HOLIDAY – Pink Mountaintops</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">SHANGRI-LA – M Ward</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">ANOTHER TOWN – Regina Spektor</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">DON'T THINK TWICE – Me, on piano</div></li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">TOURIST IN YOUR TOWN – Pink Mountaintops<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ymztEW6iyMw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div></div></li>
</ol><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">If all goes well, I'll be back on the 1<sup>st</sup> of June for a visit and to get my visas sorted out. Looking forward to every minute of it.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Lots and lots of love.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A bientôt.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Julie Jolicoeur</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">XOXO</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-9993613334243309472010-12-13T08:56:00.002+01:002010-12-13T13:14:17.457+01:00La 'Positive Attitude' des Paresseuses<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgST8HnSNQc4W5xAt1OihSVLWvT_wv0qlpteBBzuLQtilTZZ2feZl6eekR-6LyylsAGR8a2XbueLoK3G2VAq2cFmpfaWcl4Cowg5_1VoWL9qfrAEJtP72YIsT09fclw_Sem5uXslUGl6B8/s1600/du-pont-des-arts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgST8HnSNQc4W5xAt1OihSVLWvT_wv0qlpteBBzuLQtilTZZ2feZl6eekR-6LyylsAGR8a2XbueLoK3G2VAq2cFmpfaWcl4Cowg5_1VoWL9qfrAEJtP72YIsT09fclw_Sem5uXslUGl6B8/s320/du-pont-des-arts.jpg" width="215" /></a></div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">This week a lot of stuff happened but nothing happened at the same time.In many ways, it felt like a scene I've already lived, already wtinessed, already watched from outside myself and felt alongside of me, burdened by every awful and beautiful emotion known to man in the process. It's all a bit much to digest. And I find I keep thinking about THE END. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">For those of you who don't know, I've been writing a book about a man who fails to kills himself. No, he doesn't throw himself out of a window. He'd never be that brave. And while some events/places may ressemble my past, they say to write what you know and this isn't me here at all and it's entirely fictional and hey, I'm much more used to telling the truth than being able to make up whatever ending I'd like to. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">As a teenager, the boy takes a pile of pills with some vodka and feels like an idiot the next day when he wakes up and realizes, he can't even get suicide right. He leaves for University the following autumn and after a humbling experience, decides to try love instead. He really loves. But all that love, it gets mixed up in a pile of firsts and fears and he jilts his bride at the altar, gets in his car and just drives until he can't anymore. He eventually finds himself pulling over in the middle of nowhere when his car breaks down, closes his eyes and goes to sleep.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">He recalls a dream he had as a child several times before. A house. A strange ceremony of death and spirituality that he still cannot understand in his adulthood. He remembers cloaked men tearing off their faces one by one in a hall of mirrors. He sees claws in the place of hands and the head of an owl where the head of man should be. When he looks in the mirror, he sees that he too is exactly the same.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">He awakes the following morning to a tap on the window, a farmer up early to check his cows, asking if he needs a hand with the car. The nice family takes him in, gives him work and the quiet he needs to figure out his life, they make him one of the family. But the man can't help himself. His needs and desires grow larger than he and the man gets caught jerking off to a picture of the farmer's daughter in her room while she's at college. He is asked to leave and isn't particularly troubled about his moral capacities.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">He moves to Toronto where he tries to reconstruct his life but makes a bigger mess of things than he means to. Works in a crapy old pub on King St. East and befriends all sorts of people he never imagined himself knowing. There are a lot of drunken nights and a lot of free-flowing drugs and girls and when he is asked for help by two people in the same situation, one on the 'good' side, one on the 'bad' side, he is torn. His hesitation leads him to quit and makes him ponder where his sense has gone to. He hasn't a clue what to do now. His ex-wife wants nothing to do with him. The only girl that he's had even slight feelings for since has already left him for the bus boy at the bar. He knows it's time to move on but to what?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">He travels to Paris, rents a small apartment in the 11<sup>th</sup> and tries to figure out his next move. He meets another woman. She is terrified of love. She is worried that it will swallow her up again, like it did the last time when she let someone in and he cheated and lied and broke her heart in two. Walking around the Bastille Market on a Sunday afternoon – when she stands him up for their date - he notices that she is indeed there and following him, watching his every move but saying nothing. He confronts her and for the first time in a long time, he really feels as though he's getting to know somebody. He wants to love her. She is beautiful and interesting and makes him laugh. They marry in Paris the following Februrary and start a life there and a family soon after. Life couldn't be better and he is finally able to shed his guilt and confusion over his last relationship. They have a son. For the first time, he is happy. He sees the world for everything he had always hoped he would see it for. There is magic again and light until one morning, on the 27<sup>th</sup> day of his 27<sup>th</sup> month, his son suffers from a heart complication and dies in his arms. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The couple try to recover from the tragedy but cannot. They are devestated. Each one spending sobering night after night facing the bleakness of it all. One night, they finally have a powerful connection and agree to make it work but by dawn, she has packed her bags and left him. Alone again.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">He has nothing left. No reason to live. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The man, who cannot face another moment of so-called living goes for a final walk. An all-day stroll through Paris to see its beauty and filth walk alongside one another and to remember. When the Pont des Arts finally empties, he will hang himself from it. It will be done. Parisians would like the statement. It would be a good death.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">He visits one last person before he ready to go. A guard he used to smoke hash with in front of the Mazzarine Library who asks him to come insisde and read while he does his rounds, then he will join him for a cigarette. While he's in the library, the man discovers a story that is almost <i>identical</i> to his. The similarities are too strange: the women's names are almost the same, the events scarily akin . He flips through the pages and can't help but see something beautiful in the fact that his tale makes for such an interesting one. A tragedy but a great read. He wonders whether he lives or dies. Even his strange dream is in there. How bizarre. Was it a strange coincidence or a sign? That depends on the ending...</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">He flips to the last page and sees the end of his tale. He smiles. It was a good ending. A really good ending.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">He leaves the library and stands on the empty pont des arts. Paris is so beautiful before the break of day. After the drunks have fallen over and the shops are closed and the last kebabs and after hours are locked up. The Eiffel Tower is but a shadow in the distance and only the occasional taxi disturbs the perfect silence. The cobblestone roads, in all their quiet glory act as a sounding board as the river licks its banks. The air feels fresher. He understands now. He gets it. He wants to jump into the Seine and celebrate. He wants to live! He can't remember ever feeling this alive.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Just then, an owl perches on the bridge beside him. The owl speaks but of course he cannot understand him, they are not real words. The owl's eyes pierce through him and then the animal bends over and pecks at the man's toes until he falls from the bridge to his death; hanging himself unconscious with his own rope before drowning face down in the filthy Seine.</div><div style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1px; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm 0cm 0.07cm;"><br />
</div><div style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1px; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm 0cm 0.07cm;">WHAT? You just told us the end? Yeah, so? It's such a small part of the story.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So, this week, my neighbour jumped out of the window and survived. The last guy I was in love with had a baby with someone else. My boyfriend's psychotic ex girlfriend called AGAIN, fucking up my work week AGAIN. I confronted her, she acted like a spoiled maniac and said really hurtful things and told me I won, as though it were a competition. Thanks to her, my boyfriend and I have spent the weekend on constant replays of 'the big talk' because that's what happens when someone interferes too much in your life. I'm on stress overload. How much suffering can a person handle before they melt down? When does the good part start? Please God, tell me when the good part starts! </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I have a plane ticket leaving for the 28<sup>th</sup> of December that I don't know what to do with. I could stay here and ruin my chances of ever becoming legal in this country and let go on the love of my life forever aka, play it out til it's good & done. I could go back to Toronto but I feel like like that ship has sailed. I could go to the countryside but I'm not sure retreating to the middle of nowhere at this point is a very productive move either or I could go somewhere else and just pretend like there is no beginning and no end. Anybody know how to get to Never Never Land by any chance? I've been watching an awful lot of LOST re-runs to get myself in the mood but as usual, I keep having nightmares about monsters and the black smoke.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The point of this story is - there are no happy endings in life. No story's a good one anyway until it's done and the main characters aren't supposed to know what happens before the author tells them. Snooping is dangerous.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Eventually you've got to stop trying to write pages and focus on letting the story write itself. When I can't find anymore words for feelings, it's because there aren't words left to describe how I'm going to miss this if it's gone. Still, with everything going on, I'm trying my best to keep a positive attitude. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I bought this ridiculous book at the FNAC about things to do to STAY positive. It's really silly and reminds me of a really long Cosmo article. Perfect bathroom reading. It's called La positive attitude des parasseuses and reccommends all the things I'm already doing to deal: magnesium in high doses, less coffee, more sports and ample meditation. I have the warm baths and the comfort food and I'm trying not to drink either (it's not easy when I remember how all-too easy it is to drown your troubles away in a couple of gin and tonics and some basement bar with loud music). The rest of the book basically breaks down the important tenets: Self-confidence (check...fine), Personal Development (c'mon, I actually caved and bought a self help book, I'd say I'm participating here too), Worring about ME (I think I've had my dose of this), Tears are good for you (good thing because I've had an abundancy), Moral or WILL in English (I've still got a bit, not to worry), Orgasm (check) Heaven (this one, i seriously don't get. It suggests I imagine the wonders of Heaven...seriously, France? To give you an idea of the grand sophistication of this book, it refers to Heaven as a magic country where allt he shops are open on Sundays where hairstylists never mess up their haircuts and where silver grows on trees – they MAY simply be referring to Canada but I cannot be certain...) Then they warn you of the two greatest enemies of man:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">LAZINESS and PESSIMISM.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A good friend this week told me to keep my head up. I think I'm going to keep it up. Already, I'm going to buy some Christmas lights today for my mini tree, do a couple good deeds and throw a clothing swap dinner party. That ought to keep me busy and bubbly for a couple of days.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Maybe it's because of the defenestratror, maybe it's because Ive had so many beatiful messages from good friends lately, maybe it's the simple fact of being in a place where you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT TO DO but, I'm writing again. After a big long break of paralysis, I'm writing again and I'm glad. And I am going to boil it all down to the lobotomy that occurred when my neighbour jumped ou the window for me to find her, changing the order of the universe and putting things back into perspective. After all, we can't obsess over the end. It may make things a Hell of a lot more clear but there's a whole lot more to the story than just the end. And right now, I'm going to concentrate on why I came to Paris in the first place - to write.<br />
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I'm going to take a little bit of everybody's advice this week. I'm going to forgive. I'm going to ignore. I'm going to write more and worry less. I'm going to keep busy and positive. I am going to try to stop worrying about the END and start succumbing to the fact that just like everyone else, I'll just have to wait and see. Oh, and I'm going to assume that the end really only is a very small part of the story and that all the tragedy makes a lot more sense after you've skipped ahead and read the last pages. It'll be a good ending. It'll be a very good ending. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">What's going to happen next? </div><div style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1px; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm 0cm 0.07cm;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">****Eventually she dies too. But <i>that</i> is only a small part of the story. ****</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-45636978805150023012010-12-06T08:53:00.003+01:002010-12-06T13:53:17.828+01:00Defenestration means acquainted with the night.<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqGyUM6AEnVV8r1YhrV9JDme4bFhl1iynv7-0NuZM2ZU6JMs7-jIuPtSvqAkwvpvQPjbzcwVHV52N4dPuJJEWiqngvyNeQVGgMLgjKneOmlwue6U-1D3RAqovfNj17HAoXu6UV4S55cCo/s1600/paris+snow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqGyUM6AEnVV8r1YhrV9JDme4bFhl1iynv7-0NuZM2ZU6JMs7-jIuPtSvqAkwvpvQPjbzcwVHV52N4dPuJJEWiqngvyNeQVGgMLgjKneOmlwue6U-1D3RAqovfNj17HAoXu6UV4S55cCo/s320/paris+snow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Within the first few weeks of arriving in Paris, thanks to a scholastic friend and Merriam Webster's word of the day, I learned a new word.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">DEFENESTRATION: a throwing of a person or thing out of a window.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Over the weeks that followed, like any good student or keener, I tried to toss the word out there with locals, after all, the first important French lesson I learned in France was that all words ending with 'TION' were the same in either language. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">« DEFENESTRATION , ca veut dire jetter quelqu'un ou quelque chose d'un fenetre »</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">« More than that, it can also mean to throw oneself out a window ».</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Really? An entire word dedicated to going out the window? Are there that many people going out the window? Apparently, no one here seemed shocked when I brought up the word. In fact, I was rather shocked at the lack of shock. Everyone here already knew the word. There were defenestrations all the time. We lived in Paris, after all. From then on, I started hearing the word regularly. It was in the news almost every other day.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A couple weeks ago, in the 20<sup>th</sup> neighbhourhood, there was this amazing thing that happened. A ltitle boy, a year and a half old, I believe, fell out of the sixth floor window. Sounds like the beginnings of a mejor tragedy but a miracle ensured making this one of the few pieces of news I actually followed. The baby should have been dead but he wasn't. Three kids were left alone in the apartment.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The night before the accident (this happened on a holiday Monday), the bar beneath the apartment was set to close their awning, like always, like every night, every closing. But it wasn't working. The mechanism was broken, had a glitch – in any event, the owner gave up and would try again Tuesday.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">At the same moment, on the very same evening, a man, a doctor, was walking his kid down the same street. The child, not much older than the toddler who DEFENESTRATED himself, looked up, noticed the baby about to jump and got his father's attention by pointing up. The doctor, able to see the child was about to fall was able to prepare himself, put his arms out and be ready to catch the child.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The baby fall six stories, bounced on the awning below, back up into the air and right into the arms of the doctor, father, saviour. Within seconds, the baby fell right to sleep. Shock for sure.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">DEFENESTRATION. Alright, alright. Here is my new example for the word, I thought to myself.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Then Friday morning happened.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I was supposed to be at work. A couple days of flu-like symptoms, vomitting, aches, a sick baby all week and very little sleep, I needed a morning off. Michael offered to go watch Zac for the morning so I decided to sleep in. When he got up to shower, like any two people who are going on little to no sleep, we got in an argument over the laundry in the bathroom (I don't always like to fold 'au plus vite' and sometimes I'll make a point of taking a bath, rather than shed my laziness for 5 minutes to fold the laundry that hangs over the tub; Friday was one of those, 'I don't know if I'll ever get it to it...' kind of days). Anyway, I was convinced that my morning of sleeping in was already ruined by our little spat and lay in bed staring at the wall for a couple hours, thinking my angry thoughts and sending bitchy text after bitchy text.<br />
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It was always a strange feeling to be at home when you weren't supposed to be there. You heard day-time noises that you often missed out on. The sound of the postman knocking on door after door trying to find the woman to whom this package or that package is addressed. The sound of kids running down the stairs and off to school. The sound of exhausted mothers trudging back up again after the drop-off.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">By noon, I gave up. I wasn't going to fall back asleep. I might as well get up, grab some breakfast on the way to meet Michael & Zac, maybe pick up some kind of thank you for taking my place for the morning. I got up, made my way to the bathroom to get ready, pulled the shower curtain closed and undressed and then I heard a strange noise, a very strange noise.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">BAM!</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">It's hard to articulate in words but imagine this sound to feel like the person who lives above you must have just dropped a bar bell on the floor. It was loud, it made a physical impact and for the life of me, I couldn't imagine what the Hell it could have been. And then, I heard it. I heard whimpering in the courtyard behind my shower wall. Anyone who's ever been to my apartment, likely remembers that my bathroom houses 3 strange holes to the outdoors. Two windows the size of cookie boxes and an open great across from the toilet, allowing the room to air out and making the tiles feel like a hockey rink in December. We Canadians weren't completely used to that much outdoors in our bathrooms. I heard another little voice. It was strange. I had never heard a sound from any of the other apartments before and this, this was literally as though there was someone right in my bathroom. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But that was impossible. There was nothing out there but tin roofs and pigeons. There was no way to get out there without going out the window. Unless.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I opened the little window above my shower and there she was. One of the only neighbours in my building I saw on a regular basis, always smiled to, quick hello, a held door here and there. I didn't know her name but I knew <i>her.</i></div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">« Oh my God! Are you okay? What happened? Did you fall? I'm going to call the pompiers, okay? »</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">She was looking around for me, half in a daze, almost as though she wasn't really there. When she finally noticed me in the window, I looked around at her body to see the dammage. Her leg bone was coming right out of her leg and staring me in the face. She was bleeding a lot. Jesus Christ. How the Hell did this happen? Still, I didn't think much about it. There wasn't time. She needed help and I was thankful for fight or flight. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I figured she fell out the window, that the terrace broke or the window broke or something along these lines. At this point, defenestration is the furthest thing from my mind. This woman lives only a floor above me with her little kids. She dropped a tea towel once onto my balcony and came down to my place to pick it up. It was pretty cold out, though, I should check again, see if she needs a blanket while we wait for the fire department. Seeing her leg bone is making me nauseous but I know there's no time for this crap. I've got to get help and fast. She's in a lot of pain.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I bang on my neighbour Martine's door and we call the fire department together. My cell phone keeps dying every time I hit dial. They answer, ask a lot of questions and eventually, Martine just tells them to hurry and suggests I don't throw my duvet out the window if I'd like to keep it. It'll just be covered in blood. She's going to be okay, anyway. Martine, like me, remembered her apartment wasn't much higher than ours. She reassured the woman by telling her the fire department was on the way and I ran upstairs to knock on her door to make sure the children or someone else wasn't home or at risk and I ran into the hallway to see if there wasn't a window I could climb through to get to her. Rushing through the hallway, and back up and down the stairs to the courtyard to see if anyone else knew how the Hell I could get on the roof, I crossed a man looking somewhat frantic on his cell phone as well. I noticed the cleaning lady by the mailboxes and told her that a woman had fallen out of the window and needed help. The firemen were on their way but did she know if...</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">« NON! » the man screamed at the top of his lungs, running faster than I'd ever seen anyone run in my life. People were rushing in and out of the apartment to see what had happened and the man, it was obvious, knew her quite well. He propelled himself out the window and onto the roof and within seconds was by her side, holding her head and crying.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The cleaning lady informed me that she had just seen the woman between the 5<sup>th</sup> and 6<sup>th</sup> floors. And then I realized, this wasn't a little fall and it wasn't an accident. Another woman said she had heard that she and her husband had broken up a few times and that she wasn't dealing very well. They had kids.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In the next half hour a lot of things happened. The firemen showed up with ladders and re-animation equipment, covered her body with blankets and were checking her signs. Did she have feeling in her legs? What happened? Soon after, the police showed up in numbers. There were people in the hallway, people on the roof, people in the apartment. And then I heard it:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">« Defenestration, 115 rue St. Maur. Woman. Mid-30s. »</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">After an hour or so, they were eventually able to put the woman on a plank and pull her out the window. She lay outside my apartment door for quite a while, oxygen mask, panic, vitals. One paramedic told me that he didn't think she would make it, that he wasn't sure she was even conscious. There was a lot of blood and she had fallen from a good height. Another told me that she was conscious and not to worry. Then another, that if she survived, it would be a miracle.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I was in total shock. I hadn't cried yet. I had been too busy processing everything that had happened. Eventually, I was able to call Michael to tell him why I was late but that I was on my way. If only so I wouldn't have to be alone in here anymore.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">On my way to the subway, I noticed that they still hadn't moved the ambulance. It was sitting stationary in front of the apartment and I assumed the worst. What if she hadn't made it? What if this was a suicide? What if I hadn't gotten there fast enough? How could this be happening? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The weekend was a bit of a blur. Saturday, I found myself re-playing the event over and over in my head wondering what exactly made her defenestrate. Wondering if she was alive. I kept seeing her vacant eyes staring back at me, her leg bone popping through her pale skin. I kept seeing the sheer terror in her husband's eyes. Panic attacks ensued. I was terrified to be alone in the apartment, every little noise made me jump, burst into tears. I didn't want to be in here but I couldn't move. This wasn't an accident, I kept telling myself. She'd just had enough. I couldn't take a shower or go outside. I was paralyzed. And all because of a woman I barely knew but what if she was right? If she couldn't handle it, how would I?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">We all think about, from time to time, what it would be like to take our own life, most of us just aren't able to talk about it without people thinking we're absolutlely nuts. It's not, for most of us, that we really want to do it - that we want to die - but sometimes it can just feel like the only choice we have left. It's Plan B. The In-Case-Of-Emergency, little blue pill. If push comes to shove. It's there and throwing yourself out the window was as good a way as any to end it, unless of course you live.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The worst of it wasn't even wondering what had happened. The worst of it was living this moment of pure darkness with these strangers. The worst of it was that these kinds of things happened all the time, to families, to mothers and father and other lonely young people who I smile at every day without even noticing that they are so close to the edge. The worst of it, is that even when I feel those pangs of emptiness myself, no one can see it on my face, either. What fools we are to take people for who they pretend to be. Isn't it partly our responsibility to intervene? No. We can't. That path has its own word too – GUILT. We can't be responsible for everyone. But why not? I could have offered her a cup of coffee sometime or offered to help with her kids or carried her groceries up the stairs. I could have done something. This woman lives only meters away from me. If not me, then who?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I kept my phone off all weekend. I didn't feel like talking to the police or recounting Friday's events again to anyone. Friday night I couldn't sleep, I just kept seeing her face over and over again and it was making me tremble. It was making me think of Robert Frost. I tried to forget. Tried to think of other, funnier things, anything really but what had just happened. Every time I tried, the same thing would happen over and over again, my heart would beat faster and I couldn't breathe and I imagined how she could have been me. She could have been anyone.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">What if she hates me for calling the fire department? I mean, who expects to jump out of a window to their death and instead of seeing pearly gates, sees only their young Canadian neighbour and her leg bone protruding from her body? Is this final humiliation going to give her the will to live? I doubt it.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">There are days of such despair among us all. I'll bet you all know more than a few people who think about defenestration all the time. Not because they want to die but because they just give up. Because it's too fucking sad. Too hard. Too much. C'est lourd. I'm not going to lie, sometimes when you look at the bigger picture, looking into your possible futures, it sure looks a lot less like the Disney movie we were projected as kids and a lot more like The Silence of the Lambs. Love isn't easy. The day-to-day isn't easy. You can't just make a happy family happen. Most of the beauty in our lives comes, not from things that we witness alone but how connected we feel to those around us. And sometimes, it's just plain lonely out there. Heck, I've got enough friends that I should never feel alone and still do. What about someone who has nobody? Sometimes we forget just how much other people are suffering alongside of us and this great waste of lifethat is what happens when, for one reason or another, we just <i>can't</i> be with other people. It's a symptom of depression, isolating yourself from the rest of the world. We all do it occasionally. Death does it to me, every time. Break-ups. Cancer and just plain despair.<br />
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You know what I'm talking about: 'Things are never going to get better. It's time to be a realist. People aren't good and life is fucking hard. This is as good as it gets'</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I am sad today. Sad for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes it's easier to have a concrete reason for your tristesse. Today I was planning to buy a Christmas tree. To listen to Frank Sinatra and hang my stockings while I drink coffee with Baileys and fry eggs and bacon. But I am not. Today I am thinking about a practical stranger who jumped out of the sixth floor window hoping to die and how my being there at the right time had to mean something. It was a sign of something. It has to be because I can't think of anything else. Maybe we're more connected than we think. This woman lives only meters away from me, every day and had I not been here Friday morning, I would have never known what had happened to her. I'd have never known she wanted to die, that she was ready to go. That it was over. It's too much to process. All I can see is her face at what she'd hoped would be the end. </span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Just to cope with it, I've got to focus on the fact that it's snowing outside and I'm overwhelmed. I can't find more words than that because there's nothing more to it. It's too much. </span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Her husband stopped by last night to update me. Only her legs are broken. She is alive and it's a miracle she landed on the roof and not on the concrete. It was a miracle someone happened to be home to hear it and find her. It was a miracle she had survived the ordeal with only broken legs. He was greatful that I was there and thanked me for calling the fire department right away. He looked sadder than anyone I had ever seen in my life. It was too much. I told him I could help him with the kids for a few weeks if he needed some time to be at the hospital and wasn't surprised when he didn't elaborate on what exactly had happened.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Later, I heard him in the stairwell, coming home with their kids telling them that mommy was still in the hospital because she broken her legs falling out the window.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Too much. </span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I got it. DEFENESTRATION was a very important word. Important because nobody, NOBODY could handle hearing the whole story, in all its gruesome details and black reality. It was just another way of saying <i>'too much.'</i></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>I have been one acquainted with the night. </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain. </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>I have outwalked the furthest city light. </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>I have looked down the saddest city lane. </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>I have passed by the watchman on his beat </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>When far away an interrupted cry </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>Came over houses from another street, </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>But not to call me back or say good-bye; </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>And further still at an unearthly height, </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>O luminary clock against the sky </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>I have been one acquainted with the night. </i> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>-Robert Frost</i></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
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</div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-68788773951152292412010-10-24T16:49:00.000+02:002010-10-24T16:49:21.662+02:00An Eye. Foreign Eye.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRmxxsGtZQYDndWfE0pI1fvFGMvhVP2kzFsY9y_Ec_dyc1QlbPQH_77M51nuH7A0kOnzrP6UQCupdgLVx_8DIRnJBeBAq3MToC0P_JmlH6IE7NdBFCIi3Up_elD2Xu_OVUd76buDp2SqE/s1600/033.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRmxxsGtZQYDndWfE0pI1fvFGMvhVP2kzFsY9y_Ec_dyc1QlbPQH_77M51nuH7A0kOnzrP6UQCupdgLVx_8DIRnJBeBAq3MToC0P_JmlH6IE7NdBFCIi3Up_elD2Xu_OVUd76buDp2SqE/s400/033.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">It’s finally here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Months of figuring out and anticipating this trip back home for my best friend’s wedding, it’s finally happening tomorrow morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As usual, my last day in <city><place>Paris</place></city> is a tough one but I keep a positive attitude because if the past has taught me anything, it’s that if your last day in <city><place>Paris</place></city> isn’t hard, you don’t nearly appreciate the jaunt back home as much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suffering is important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s one important lesson I’ve learned on the other side of the fence.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">This one sucks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got three kids under four years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It starts alright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mini croissants and pains au chocolates keeps them happy while I drink an Allongé<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at Café Noir and even though the elevator’s out of service and I’ve got to walk these three rascals up and down six flights of stairs, they’re good sports and they fall for it when I tell them to pretend it’s a mountain and whoever makes it to the top gets to help me make lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kids are awesome for foolery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things take a turn for the worse when a shortened nap makes them all miserable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m taking them to a toddler music class at <time hour="16" minute="0">4 o’clock</time>; get them dressed, lug the double stroller down the stairs and off we go to the Montessori school just off Grand Boulevards.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">On the way an old man carrying books pushes me onto the sidewalk and tells me in French that I could make an effort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to let the stroller go and punch him in the face but instead, I stand up for myself and say “EXCUSE ME?!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Old Man, does it really look like I’m NOT making an effort?!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m fairly certain that he’s thinking these children are mine, that I’m over breeding, that I’m bad for <city><place>Paris</place></city>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If only he knew.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Arriving at the school, I am met with another challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turns out the teacher of the class is blind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had been to three classes prior and had never remarked her eyesight before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taking a quick look into the classroom past the sea of babies, I noticed a big black dog rolling around on the carpet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My asthma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m going to have to turn right back around and walk these kids home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Summer, the teacher comes out to explain the dog is actually a seeing eye dog, hers, and is always at the school and free to run around in all the classrooms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things are becoming abundantly clear and now I know what sent me to the hospital the last time – this dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Normally, I would make a stink about having pets indoors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Don’t people GET IT?!” but instead, she finds the one room where the dog wasn’t and we head in for class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kids are horrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Screaming, doing summersaults instead of listening, screaming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At one point, Zac climbs up on the window ledge and while I’m watching the 18 month old and we’re busy playing cymbals, the four year old, Myrna, opens the child-proof lock for Zac so he can propel himself out the 3<sup>rd</sup> story window if he likes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m furious and we’re asked to leave the class.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">On the way home, I’m threatening everything I can think of, “You’d better be good or I’ll tell your mother.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“If you don’t behave, you’re going straight to bed.” “No snacks ever again.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing’s working.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We get to the park for pick-up and then I’ll be left with only Zac.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m absolutely exhausted and winded already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other mother arrives and asks where Myrna’s polar fleece is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s left it at the school but the mother asks me to go up to Zac’s apartment to check.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Sure, yeah, no problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll climb back up the fucking six<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hundred stairs AGAIN to have a gander, why not?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m getting excited again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One hour left until total freedom, a nice dinner with my man and some final touches in the packing department and I’m OUT OF HERE!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No screaming kids for 2 weeks!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No dishes!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No laundry!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No nothing!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Michael and I head home together and I’m bragging about my cloud nine and we’re rushing home so I’ve got time to get my eyebrows waxed before dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m a moron but I like to arrive back home looking good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want everything to be perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is my greatest fault.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Eyebrow wax goes well and while Michael’s at home making us a beautiful smoked salmon salad, I remember that I still have to print my e-Ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I run over to the Internet café, sit down and print it out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first one doesn’t work, it prints only on half a page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ask the guy why and he says I should just try to print it again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do, the second one works fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The guy charges me for the first printouts and I’m furious and start arguing with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His friends are all looking at me like I’m a crazy, greedy American when I refuse to pay for something that’s his fault.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, that’s not how things work over here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You get screwed in <country-region><place>France</place></country-region>, it’s your problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The customer is NOT always right, in fact, it’s a pretty safe assumption that the customer’s a fucking idiot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, he tells me the total price to try and trick me and I can’t be bothered to argue anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t sweat the small stuff, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m pretty well good to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just a little more packing and I’m off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I skip home for dinner and….</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I’m standing at the door to my courtyard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t reach my keys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re deep in my pocket so I put my e-ticket in my mouth and grab them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In doing so, something happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God happens, the way he likes to anytime I’ve mentioned my happiness out loud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A gust of wind blows my ticket up and the corner of the page I didn’t want to pay for stabs me in the right eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s very painful and I can’t see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tears start and I’m furious.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I get upstairs and ask Michael if my cornea is scratched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Michael has a look and tells me it’s probably alright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I had really hurt myself, I’d be complaining a lot more, he figures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either that or I’m the bravest girl in <city><place>Paris</place></city>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a lot of water coming out of my eyes but my dinner’s so good I try to focus on other things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have a nice night and the pain calms down a bit for a while even though it’s still quite irritated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We head to bed after a game of Go and I set my alarm for 5h30.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the RATP on strike, I was told I needed to leave the house no later than 6h30 to be sure to catch my flight at <time hour="11" minute="0">11 AM</time>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have access to a car but with the manifestations blocking off the auto route, the metro, despite it’s 1 for every 4 trains`status, is a better bet.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">At <time hour="5" minute="0">5 AM</time>, I`m jolted awake in agony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t open or close my eye and I can’t see a bloody thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also can’t open my left eye because it hurts my right eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something’s wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something is REALLY wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t stay calm so I just start screaming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Michael calls SOS Medic to come to the house to take a look at my eye because I’ve only got an hour before I’ve got to head out to the airport and I refuse to go back to the hospital again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ll keep me there forever!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end, we decide against the doctor because without my security sociable number (oh yes, did I mention that after the appointments at the CPAM they seem to have LOST my dossier COMPLETELY?!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Michael has to pack for me because I’m blind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m also screaming at him because I’m not dealing well with the pain and tears are dripping down my cheeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing has ever hurt so much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I get a cold compress, pack it on and head out for the airport, Michael carrying all my heavy bags and me holding his arm because I can’t open my eyes.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">We arrive at the airport in good time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a nurse on the lower level and even after I wait in the check-in line for 2 hours, it should be enough time to see the nurse and the pharmacist and even time for a coffee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, if a woman has EVER needed a coffee, it’s me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I wait in the Swiss Air line-up, a little confused as to why about every other customer is being pushed aside and told to wait.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When finally, after 2 hours of tears and begging the counter guy for help, I am also told to move aside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are behind schedule today and all the morons who just showed up for their 9h30 flight at 9h20 are being let ahead of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, those people at the back of the line are also being let ahead of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are so fucking stupid I want to cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell the man who’s directing the line up that I have come early on purpose so I can see the nurse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That there is a problem with my cornea and I’m in a lot of pain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would have thought the endless swearing out loud would have been a good enough tip off but oh no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He tells me I’ll just have to wait like everybody else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t sweat the small stuff, Julie, just be patient.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">It’s 10h15 when I’m finally through the line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s no time now to see the nurse so I head directly to the pharmacy and all of the sudden, the pain lessens and I feel okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe this cold compress is working?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe I just had a leaf in there or something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe I won’t be blind after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The woman at the pharmacy gives me some antiseptic eye drops and offers me some eye patches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m already feeling stupid and they’re 12 euros.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I opt out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides, I’m feeling alright and I have just enough time to get a coffee to go before heading to security.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank you, God.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I get my along from a stuck up teenager working at the airport café who likes to show off her English and answers me `would you like some cream and sugar with that, Monsieur.` despite me being a WOMAN (Ok, Ok so the towel pressed up against my eyeball and my swollen face and my inability to take a shower this morning may have put my sex into question for just a moment) but to answer me in English just because she hears a slight accent put me in a bad mood again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take my coffee begrudgingly and head up to departures.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">On the stairwell, I am pushed aside by a middle-aged woman who wants to take a picture of her family before they head to <place>Hong Kong</place> on holidays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The push makes me hit my eye lid with the towel and the pain starts anew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not happy but just try to keep going without screaming at anyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m in no position to argue and I’m guessing that yelling might hurt my eye even more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the woman turns around and flails her arm, sending my coffee sky-rocketing into the air and all over me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s scalding hot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She gives me a dirty look `What was that?! and keeps going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No apology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m going to lose it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And before I know it, I’m talking to myself again. `Are you fucking kidding me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You bitch!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re not even sorry!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People are unbelievable!` Just then, it occurs to me how ridiculous I must seem to on-lookers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Check out that crazy GUY talking to himself and holding a hand towel against the side of his swollen face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I shut up and head upstairs.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I’m selected for an inspection when crossing through security.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m angry because if I end up missing this flight, I’ll also miss my connection in <city><place>Zurich</place></city>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got exactly two hours to make it to my connecting flight and the flight from <city><place>Paris</place></city> to <city><place>Zurich</place></city> is an hour long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No time for mistakes or delays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m supposing it’s the wonky eye making me look suspect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a quick check though and when they realize the only thing in my knapsack is a copy of Crime and Punishment and some eye drops, they allow me to put my boots back on and head to my gate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I get there and to my dismay, the flight is delayed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first by just a few minutes, then twenty, thirty, one hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m a goner.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">The man sitting behind me keeps yanking on my chair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each time, my eyelid pushes up a little harder against my cornea scratch and I’m in agony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that </i>sensitive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I start to feel a familiar pain in my lower abdomen and get anxious and run to the washroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life is funny, aunt it?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">We arrive in <city><place>Zurich</place></city> an hour late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve already missed my connection time and when I ask the stewardess what I should do in this case, she suggests I sit down and stop worrying so much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take the milk chocolate bars they handed out for being late and mowed down trying to up my `happy hormones and decrease the worrying bitch ones that are making this day so much worse than it needs to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got sleeping pills in my knapsack too and as soon as I get on the next plane, I’m taking one and the rest should be no problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just then, I learn that the next flight to <city><place>Toronto</place></city> isn’t until tomorrow and I am recommended to run to the next gate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From A to E.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve held the flight for me and I’ve got ten minutes to get there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>E47 is all I’ve got on my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I start a runnin`.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Running, as any of you who know me will already know is not easy for an asthmatic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m having an attack but don’t have time to access my ventolin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of it, I can hardly see a bloody thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have to take a metro and four rolling walkways to get to security and when I get there, I’m panting and begging people to let me ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple do but when I finally reach the security gate, I’m met with three people who look at me with suspicion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">`Please, please…I have to make this flight.`</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">`Just wait, Maam.`</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I’m re-directed to a room behind a curtain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, friends, I am going to be strip searched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter how much I plead, they tell me to wait.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By now, I’ve missed the connection for sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m screwed and I start to cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crying makes my eye hurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a vicious cycle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I realize I must look like a lunatic and finally concede to waiting.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">They take off my clothes and inspect me like a terrorist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no drugs on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No weapons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nada.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They finally let me go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sweet old man arrives to accompany me to the gate and tells me I don’t have to run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re holding the plane for me because they understand I’m having vision problems and feel a little guilty for this whole rigmarole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am escorted arm in arm by the man onto the plane and directed towards an empty row of seats where I’ll finally be able to sleep soundly.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No I won’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have also been placed directly behind a row of a negligent mother and her two screaming two year olds who hurl through the entire ten hour flight and take turns throwing things at my face while their mother isn’t looking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stop one from being run over by the drinks cart and another from trying to enter the pilot’s cabin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far, this holiday is looking very much like my day to day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Badly behaved children and constant, agonising pain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m miserable so I ask the stewardess for 5 coffees and 5 baileys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They help but only a little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I manage to sleep for only an hour of the world’s most boring flight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite having a private screen in front of me and an infinite supply of HBO and English sitcoms (something I would normally LOVE!) I can’t look at the screen because it hurts my eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Landing hurts even more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The light is too much to bear and the pressure in my head makes my eye feel like it might actually pop out.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Finally, we’ve landed and I am told by the steward that my bags have probably not made it to <city><place>Toronto</place></city> because of the short connection time in <city><place>Zurich</place></city>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mother fucker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I need to get to a hospital as soon as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want to wait for nothing so I head to the information desk as soon as I get off the plane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They tell me they don’t have a record of my bags so I wait with the rest of the <city><place>Zurich</place></city> passengers for a half hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They all get theirs and me, nada.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I head back to the desk to file a missing bags report.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They tell me I’ll likely get them sometime Saturday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m wondering where this newfound bad luck is coming from and I’m eager to get out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wait, though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m going to take a last gander just in case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there they are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both bags.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing broken or ripped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a miracle and I grab them and head out the sliding doors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As soon as I see my mother, I lose it, tears everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I let myself close my eyes and led her lead the way up some more escalators and towards the car, hospital-bound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the rush hour traffic, we arrive about an hour and a bit later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am rushed in and then told to wait in the waiting room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another two hours of pain later, the doctor finally comes to see me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">It’s not a scratch, it’s a cut and a big one at that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gives me some aesthetic and puts some goo on my eye and a nice prescription for Oxycodone, then sends me home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take a couple of pills and I’m feeling pretty great (apart from the nausea and vomiting), despite my pirate patch.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I’m just today coming out of a three day high and able to keep my eye open.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not nearly as red anymore and last night, for the first time since last Wednesday, I had a good night’s sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I’ve been told that I can make $15 a pill if I don’t finish the bottle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s some more good news, no?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I don’t know what I did exactly to merit this kind of start to my holiday but it must have been something really bad.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-26004196107549430672010-10-03T00:19:00.000+02:002010-10-03T00:19:15.349+02:00Sucks to my Asthmar. October 2010<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkATeg0XxKsfWeGXpx6ToWECXLxOrKG1mPS5YmNJn5dI2y1kUz2gXspqY633Urel2R__-eii-yjL4Vj6HpTxL61UjPiby1U5iQxPE3fAtx-xvSmGYsQW7VUDyaGsSvvqhR_Y4iTNEb1IQ/s1600/Snapshot_20101002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkATeg0XxKsfWeGXpx6ToWECXLxOrKG1mPS5YmNJn5dI2y1kUz2gXspqY633Urel2R__-eii-yjL4Vj6HpTxL61UjPiby1U5iQxPE3fAtx-xvSmGYsQW7VUDyaGsSvvqhR_Y4iTNEb1IQ/s400/Snapshot_20101002.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I should be sleeping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It’s been days now of one hour here, another there, with a lot of breathless wake ups. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re quite different than waking up from nausea or worry or just because you have to pee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Waking up without breath is true, vivid, Hell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re sweaty, you can’t talk, you’re afraid of disturbing the people around you so you try to tiptoe to the washroom to spit up all the gunk in your lungs without a sound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You try tea, doesn’t work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try sitting up, distracting yourself, doesn’t work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try puff after puff of a rescue medicine that just makes you gittery and anxious until your heart is beating so fast and you’re almost unable to stand when you use your last bits of energy left to shout or whisper, more like it– <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I have to go to the hospital,” and only you knows just exactly what that means – days of being convinced that you have no idea what you’re doing, being taught and re-taught about an illness you’ve had all your life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Begging them for days to please send you home after they’ve doped you up with the goods so you can get a calm, peaceful night’s sleep once and for all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The woman next to me turned out the lights early.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m fairly used to the hospital rhythm, though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s the wise one, I’m the young fool watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy because somehow shows about hospitals – watching fiction about people who have got it way worse than you in an atmosphere you absolutely detest – it’s just enough to make you comfortable in your sweaty, static hospital sheets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She knows better because in a half hour or so, one of the nurses is going to burst in anyway and wake us both up for one of us for the regular temperature, heart rate, oxygen level tests that make it all but unbearable to spend a night locked up in a place that’s supposed to provide relief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, of course I’m happy they’re taking my vitals, that they’re keeping an eye out for me and making sure I’m not getting worse but it’s hard to drift off knowing that everyone’s waiting for them to bottom out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s hard to sit up straight with the lights on to take an aesosol for 30 minutes every couple of hours so that you make it through the vitals checks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, it’s hard to watch the lines go up and down and the numbers plummet when you know exactly what it means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s hard to have another doctor say, “You could have died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d like to keep you here for a while.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s hard to get last night out of my head so I can’t close my eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway, they’re all wet tonight.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I know, I know, it’s not that big of a deal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a stupid illness that affects almost everybody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know many people who don’t know someone: a brother, a sister, an aunt, a best-friend with asthma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hate watching people shrug and roll their eyes at me like it’s the easiest thing in the world to deal with, like they’ve got a clue what it’s like to lie down in their beds and feel like their breathing through a skinny straw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact is, they don’t and there are very different varieties of this illness that make it difficult for people to understand the severity of your symtoms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Most people also don’t know what it’s like to be ashamed of themselves for being the one who wrecks a party by leaving in an ambulance just because someone brought their dog or the looks you gets if you want to have a couple cigarettes with cocktails (like everyone else around you) and look upon you with scorn when you then needs a hit of ventolin to get through the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t understand how much it hurts to avoid people you care about when they’re sick with respiratory illnesses in fear of catching something or how traumatic it is to fall in love with <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a man who dreams of owning a dog or a horse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody gets how depressing it is to know that for the rest of their lives, they’ll need to work extra hard to afford the medication they need to get through the workdays or just how grueling it can be to try to go for a leisurely jog through a park despite being a relatively fit young person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most women don’t shop for purses that must fit their ventolin, atrovent and aerochamber.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most people don’t know this stuff because it’s not their job to know this stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, today I encountered a respirologist who didn’t seem to get it one bit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Every time I am hospitalized, it’s the same story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They send some resident to my bedside to lecture me about the way I’m controlling my asthma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That I’m not taking good enough care of myself if I’ve ended up in a hospital so many times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That I don’t take it seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They teach me AGAIN how to breathe better, show me a peak-flow metre as though it’s the first time I’ve encountered such an object while I secretly imagine my childhood collection of them on my dresser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually they start asking the details, trying to pick apart my life to find the one and only reason why I’m still in this state, making me feel guilty for every choice I ever take.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“What floor do you live on?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you have cockroaches?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you noticed any mould in the building?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why didn’t you come to the hospital sooner?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why didn’t you increase your medication?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why don’t you have steroids at home?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Sure, let’s address these, bitch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I live on the first floor of an apartment, the cheapest, most affordable one I can find in Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t have cockroaches but it’s Paris and the place is old so sometimes I’ve got mice and I’m not allergic to insects but I am allergic to rodents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, I’ve noticed mould in the building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you got a better place for me to stay?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A better job?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A better visa?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pass it along, I’m in!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why didn’t I get here sooner – well, that’s my favourite question of all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have been waiting 8 months for health insurance in this country…8 months of taking days off work so I can get this magic number.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8 months of waiting in 2 hour+ lineups to be told that I need another piece of paper they forgot to tell me about on my 6<sup>th</sup> and 7<sup>th</sup> visits,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yet another piece of paper that’s going to cost me yet another 30 euros.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should tell my government that our birth certificates are insufficient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, I’ll get right on that if you can afford to buy me a ticket back to Canada on the less than minimum wage job I’m able to get in this frickin’ country despite my University degrees, fluent French and genuine effort to immerse myself in the culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why didn’t I increase my medication?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the stuff is like gold to me – gold given to me for free by a very generous doctor in my hometown once my respirologist retired and my pediatrician passed away and I had no one else who quite understood the predicament I was in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I’ve only got one week of the stuff left as it is and I’m trying to make it go as far as possible because I don’t have 400 euros a month to pay for the stuff and NEVER EVER will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I haven’t got steroids at home because to get them, you need to pay 30 euros to see a doctor and even then, they won’t likely trust you because they don’t know your history and they don’t just hand out meds like candy anywhere, even if you know as much about your illness as any doctor by now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t know how many nights you stayed up having treatments as a little girl, making midnight tea parties for she and her stuffed animals with a plastic mask strapped to her face to get her through it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t know what it felt like to be a teenage girl on so much medication that it made her face bloat out like a chipmunk and her skinny jeans fat ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t know how much it sucked to have to sit out an inning or a period because there’s not enough oxygen to stand straight and you’re already seeing stars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, they don’t know a God Damned thing about me and I’m sick of being brought to tears by complete strangers who don’t think before they open their fat overly-textbook-educated mouths.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This time, I cut the bitch off in mid-sentence because she told me I ought to forsee attacks and manage the symptoms before they become issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Really????<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for example, how am I to know that someone who’s just seen a cute Labrador in the street bent over to pet him and got hairs all over their coat and jeans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How am I supposed to know that that same person sat on the same chair as me just before me on the metro or has stopped by my place to help with my homework?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How am I supposed to know the kids I babysit for spent the weekend horseback riding and haven’t washed their knapsacks yet?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How am I supposed to know that if I avoid every possible risk at a wedding of two great friends– arrange to sleep in a van of a friend with no pets, away from the hostel where the rest of the gang are staying which operates occasionally as an equestrian centre, away from other possible problems like rooms in a big castle on a property big enough to have horses and dogs and therefore likely to have had clients who touched them and spread the dander onto the furniture?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Should I not go to the wedding at all?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, I ask you, how can you stop people from resenting you for flaking out one to seven times a week on the day-to-day reality that might end up being harmful to your health?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">And finally, you tell me, Lady, how am I supposed to know that the kid I look after every day is going to sneeze in my mouth while I’m changing his diaper and that I’ll catch his bronchial cough on a Tuesday morning, despite washing my hands like surgeon and anti-bacterializing everything?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not even close.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christ, I can’t even control my lung capacity, let alone the everyday risks that are everywhere and everything.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I don’t take my illness seriously enough?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Really?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you know how many years I spent depressed, wanting to die because I knew that my life was going to end like this, slowly losing breath until there was none left?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How much courage it took to play sports knowing that I was playing with fire every time I tried?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you know what it was like to listen to both my grandparents suffocate to death in just the same way I’ll likely go?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you know how many hours I’ve thought about not having children out of sheer fear of passing this onto them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or how I look at donor cards and think to myself, ‘really, could you really give this shitty, broken to another person?’ Do you know what it’s like to lie on a stretcher and have people watch you, stare at you, wondering what’s wrong with you and if you’re going to make it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To have your skin pierced and stabbed and your bone marrow tested, needles broken off in your forearm?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To have to try out new medicines in desperate hope without knowing the side effects?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To spend a year throwing up because you were on such high doses of meds that you couldn’t swallow properly?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you know what it was like to take up smoking because it actually made the every day pollutants easier to digest than trying to live in a bubble that doesn’t exist?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you know what it’s like to desperately at least want the CHOICE to breathe this way or not?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, you don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would you give anything for a body that worked?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, you wouldn’t, because no one has ever threatened to put a hole in your throat so you don’t die.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’ve been laying here for hours already, crying into my pillow listening to an old man down the hall choke to death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can only exhale and even that is depleting him quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s coughing up everything, mucous, blood, tar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though I’m not there, I can tell you that his throat tastes like metal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His back is so tense from the motions of the coughing, he’s in agony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every cough makes his eyeballs want to jump out of his skull and he’s seeing stars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s seeing stars because his body can’t take this kind of trauma any longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wants to die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know this because everytime I have an attack like this, I want to die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want it to stop – the struggle, the pain, the spinning head, the pulsing temples, the black and white hallucinations from an overworked cranium, the pain in my chest, the quickened heart rate from too much ventolin that’s not working and the dry mouth from too many preventatives that haven’t prevented a damn thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just don’t want to go like this, and definitely not in a place like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want this struggle and pain to be the last thing I feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just the thought of it and my face is wet with fear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been scared of this my whole life and every time I lose my breath, I wonder if this is the one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is this how I go?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are these ceiling panels the last thing I’ll ever see?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do I die alone?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or worse, in a room with a stranger?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does everyone else know how I feel about them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is this diabetic meal of steamed fish and buttered macaroni the last thing I’ll ever taste?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I close my eyes tonight, am I going to wake up?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Believe me, I take this very, very seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Of course I do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">life</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even when I do everything just right, I end up right back here, in yet another blue tie-back v-neck gown, arms filled with needles and bruises, greasy hair, IVed-up tape marks all over my chest from all the heart monitors and yet another lecture from another person who thinks they’ve got me all figured out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I’m scared enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t need some healthy bitch to make me cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can do that all by myself without any help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t come here to feel worse about myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I came here to breathe a little easier.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Wish me luck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m going to close my eyes now and try to think happy thoughts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; tab-stops: 269.25pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Lights on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seat upright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Time for more tests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, there’s a senile old man taking a leak in front of the nurses station.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing like a little elderly nudity and endless machine beeps all around at midnight to get me into an REM kinda mood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Maybe I’ll sleep tomorrow;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>if they discharge me that is.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-87289179976252886252010-09-29T09:55:00.001+02:002010-09-29T09:56:29.340+02:008 months later and I'm finally (almost) a real nanny. September 2010<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp6aijV7zP_iKRUI_9S3PtQBEbssPZxt3AfXBf6jA3GHe-7oIAlPf4fluCW-C5Y2w3eTSGv10rHIhuqgKMl_VseA_PHP871lSlAivRs_gLHdtLXEg65mXBh_p98DTDmT-ecYqCAaYhGiw/s1600/Cour+Carr%C3%A9+balloon.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp6aijV7zP_iKRUI_9S3PtQBEbssPZxt3AfXBf6jA3GHe-7oIAlPf4fluCW-C5Y2w3eTSGv10rHIhuqgKMl_VseA_PHP871lSlAivRs_gLHdtLXEg65mXBh_p98DTDmT-ecYqCAaYhGiw/s400/Cour+Carr%C3%A9+balloon.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>This won't be long.<br />
<br />
I've been here TRYING to become legal (just for the year, not as a citizen) for over eight months now. After months of paperwork, medical visits, long metro rides, meetings, running all over town with a baby and a broken stroller, expensive photocopies and letters and at least one daily encounter with a complete imbecile, it seems as though I may have once and for all obtained all necessary documents for la gouvernement française to grant temporary Health Insurance and an 'okay' to be in France.<br />
<br />
And I'm Canadian.<br />
<br />
I'd hate to think what other immigrants have to go through in this town on a regular basis and I'm starting to understand the French interest in 'manifs' and greves. It's because the whole system is a frickin' waste of time and money. <br />
<br />
But...at least now, if I end up in the hospital again, it's not the end of the world and after five years of nothing, I might be ablet to finally see a dentist too.<br />
<br />
Oh, did I mention that next week it's time to renew my visa? And so it begins anew.<br />
<br />
Vive la France!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-64830772100953137472010-09-27T15:52:00.002+02:002010-09-27T15:53:45.861+02:00In Paris, you can have your cake; you just can’t afford to actually eat it.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRR51hcdnrKGc7PkoQjZVi0t2_Ge140sM0TauXsqdHxSWRAKUQqdiqFTTJh4yRBz_eRPM-UDS5zwVdv6k19B69T-eJug6IkX1FHyLlp-K0Ikn7YY_3AdWlO7q5NyboB3xgvcm5EMp9xNE/s1600/No+thanksgiving+photo.png" imageanchor="1" style="cssfloat: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRR51hcdnrKGc7PkoQjZVi0t2_Ge140sM0TauXsqdHxSWRAKUQqdiqFTTJh4yRBz_eRPM-UDS5zwVdv6k19B69T-eJug6IkX1FHyLlp-K0Ikn7YY_3AdWlO7q5NyboB3xgvcm5EMp9xNE/s400/No+thanksgiving+photo.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">When you move to Paris, you don’t assume that you’re going to miss a lot of things back home and never in a million years could I have possibly forseen just how much I would be willing to pay for pre-packaged gravy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I certainly didn't think I'm be having dreams of Kraft Dinner or that I could crave Maple Syrup in my coffee and it never occurred to me to pack a few cases of black beans and spicy salsa, that's for sure.</span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Saturday morning, I woke up relatively early.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kettle on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bigger than normal dose of Carte Noir plus an extra couple scoops of the Kraft brand French coffee I love so much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My machine broke so I’ve gone back to a no-fail classic: plastic filter, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hand-pouring boiling water over the grinds myself into an old-fashioned bowl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bit ghetto but man, does it ever make a good <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cuppa Joe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">While enjoying the rare quiet of rue St. Maur, I got to list-making.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What am I going to need for this Thanksgiving dinner?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Twenty people have already RSVPed ‘yes’ and I’m still waiting on answers from ten more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got a gas range and a microwave oven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m going to need a lot of ready-mades if I’m going to be able to feed all these people with my minimal kitchen equipment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No worries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turns out there’s an American grocery store in Paris called THANKSGIVING and they sell all kinds of stuff: stuffing, cranberry sauce, turkeys, gravy, cheesecake pans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">When Michael woke up, we rented a vélib, otherwise known as Paris’ practically free bike rental system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should have guessed that things weren’t going to go smoothly this morning when the first two stations we checked out were out of service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually we found one and off we went, weaving in and out of traffic down Richard Lenoir towards the Bastille and then up Rivoli to St. Paul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still can’t believe after all these years in Paris that this store exists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Driving past the window of the Thanksgiving store, I’m flooded with flashbacks of Canadian visitors I’ve begged to bring me my ‘special requests’ from home: used English novels, glass bottles of Maple Syrup and endless cans of black beans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of which have hampered the travel plans of my friends – heavy, space consuming, dangerously sticky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ll be thrilled to know that I’ll have no more requests, that Paris can finally fill my every request and has everything I could ever need or want.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My first roundabout in the store I’m like a kid in a candy store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve got everything from Pop Tarts to Philadelphia cream cheese!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m ooing and awing over Old Tyme Ginger Beer and A&W Root Beer and gummy bears when I see the cans of cranberry sauce and know it’s time to get serious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got more lists to make.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Ocean Spray.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sachets of powdered gravy mix, PERFECT!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How much?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6 euros each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>WHAT?!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To give you an idea, cans of cranberry sauce go for - $1.19 – making the markup on this stupid low-quality grocery (with the exchange) +85%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, there’s the cost of importing or the hassle of asking one of your American buddies down south to bring a few extra cases of the stuff for his next pilgrimage to Paris but walking around the store I’m starting to wonder if I’m in the wrong business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe I should just be importing crappy groceries - I could open </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">a store that sells only Belmont Milds and cheddar cheese and make a killing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's when I see it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Betty Crocker Devil’s Food Cake mix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Done and done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>7 euros! That's a bit much, no?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, whatever, it’s a one shot deal and at least I get a whole cake out of it, not just a tart side dish or powder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I grab a chocolate icing to later on top knowing that in the past, I’ve never been able to properly ice a birthday cake without at least 2 cans of the stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 7 euros a can, that would bring this homemade cake to a whopping 21 euros and that’s not including the oil and eggs I'll have to buy on the way home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t get over how expensive this store is.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">They have French’s mustard, so I grab a container because it’s only 3,50 euros.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pick up a can of Black Beans and set them right back down because 4,50 is just too much, besides, I’ve recently found some dried beans at the Oriental markets up by St. Ouen so I’m all stocked up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hum and haw over the cereals and syrups but realize that a small bag of groceries at this store is going to cost me a month’s rent so I’d be better off sticking to filet mignons, ducks and fresh chèvres than splurging on shitty American products I’ve grown up with and gotten used to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just because they remind me of home doesn’t make them worth any cost, though I’ve gotta say, the price inflation has made even Dr. Pepper look like a bright and shiny object that I need.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t need it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got Orangina and Gini soda. I've got better stuff, it's just not the same.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So back to Thanksgiving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I revert to English when addressing the owner of the Thanksgiving store and I’m a bit shocked to hear he’s got a thick French accent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell him that with Thanksgiving coming up in a couple weeks, I was interested in ordering a turkey and all the fixings to feed the twenty to thirty of my closest French friends I’m expecting on October the 10<sup>th</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He calls his wife out from the back who seems to be American and reveals that they aren’t really equipped for Canadian thanksgiving, it being so far in advance of American Thanksgiving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That being said, it will consist of a special order, may or may not be able to get fresh yams, might not have all the stuffing and cranberries I’ll need.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The turkey, well, I’m looking at 12,50/kilo minimum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5 kilos/10 people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m looking at 187,50 euros JUST for the turkey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you factor in enough cranberry sauce, the stuffing and the gravy, you can add at least another 100 euros, taking this traditional family meal of your average staples to a staggering 350 plus euros!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unbelievable.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Needless to say, I’m a little discouraged and unconvinced that I’m going to be able to pull this off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wish things could be easier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wish I could drive on down to Loblaws and fill my mother’s large fridge with fresh veggies and butters and cakes and pies, pick out a couple nice Butterballs or even be fortunate enough to find one big bird to feed the whole table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, I’m going to have to send an uncomfortable email to everyone cancelling the day because it’s WAY out of my price range, because I couldn’t possibly fit everything in my university dorm fridge, because I don’t have enough chairs for 5 people in my teeny tiny place <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and because there’s no way I can cook three separate birds in my mini toaster oven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What on Earth was I thinking?!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So once again, Canadian Thanksgiving is going to roll on by without too many loud voices in my house, without tablecloths loaded with candles and maple leaves, without stretched-out sweat pants, without leftover sandwiches on hot buttered rolls with cranberry sauce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without gravy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But that’s okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m still going to organize something for the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A game for all of us to play together, a bar for us to gather in so we can all have a place to sit and be together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the meantime, I’ll take the cake mix and the icing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s overpriced but 21 euros,(as opposed to 350) is a small price to pay for a bit of home this holiday season.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And besides, I’m going to need something to wash down my one-millionth frickin’ ham on the 10th of October.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766490436149228082.post-19017608209286733982010-09-25T17:59:00.000+02:002010-09-25T17:59:09.684+02:00Je ne fume plus. October 2010<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhePy8EmDP77AJuLUd2nRHc7UV0hlaxo7SqIR5W9wayQGUeFW-Jf8Eol7Qut5-nOnS7wgC07yifz-B1eSfOzwsP_Z_zmcy_AfOWIAnx-AX1c2qeAYTxiOTPBu2xui8j9GP2sfxtJi0cX7g/s1600/n603085709_3889974_3158.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="306" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhePy8EmDP77AJuLUd2nRHc7UV0hlaxo7SqIR5W9wayQGUeFW-Jf8Eol7Qut5-nOnS7wgC07yifz-B1eSfOzwsP_Z_zmcy_AfOWIAnx-AX1c2qeAYTxiOTPBu2xui8j9GP2sfxtJi0cX7g/s400/n603085709_3889974_3158.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I may have done the unthinkable. I may have become a non-smoker...in PARIS!<br />
<br />
I don't know why this time it seems to be taking but I've been almost 8 days without cigarettes now and I'm feeling FANTASTIC! I'm not even struggling, I'm amazed.<br />
<br />
After all, I'm in Paris. The city where even non-smokers ask for a Marlboro after dinner. My walk home like a stroll through second-hand Hell, terrace after terrace of scarf-clad, wine-drinking, sour-faced Parisians sucking back my forbidden fruit. It's hard. The first couple days, I just tried to sleep as much as I could; that helped. Third day was a challenge for sure but drank a lot of water and crunchy veggies and that helped. I had a tantrum or two that I day, I believe. Day four, a breeze. Day five, NOT EASY. Whoever made up the ridiculous notion that it takes 3 days to get over the craving is a liar who didn't make it to Day Five. I was bitchy, I was sweaty, anxious, nauseous, tempted and my own worst enemy and great gatekeeper. I almost caved. I was this close but I got through it, psychologically and physically.<br />
<br />
There are the occasional few moments a day where I miss the activity of it. After dinner. With coffee in the morning. When I push open those heavy wooden doors at 19h30 after a long day of nannying and light up for my walk to the metro. But, then, this overwhelming feeling of simplicity and happiness that is filling up my lungs where the smoke used to live suits me a bit better, I think. I have energy. I'm less emotional.<br />
<br />
I'm weary about gaining weight but I'm taking things one step at a time. This week I've allowed myself to indulge in what I need to get through it - quiet time, bad tv, chocolate, ice cold water, easy reading and orange juice. I suppose that's still 'cold turkey', isn't it? I haven't had a drink in fear of losing my resolution, I have cut back on coffee and drank a lot more tea and soda than I'm used to.<br />
<br />
DOWNSIDES:<br />
I'm eating too much (but I'm going to start physical activity next week)<br />
I have acne from stress.<br />
Alternate between fever and chills when cravings happen.<br />
I'm having a hard time breathing still and seem to have a perpetual cold.<br />
Still a bit irritable every now and again.<br />
I'm hesitating being social because I'm afraid temptation will get the better of me, avoiding cafés, bars, restaurants and anywhere I associate with smoking. <br />
Waiting for the bus has never been so boring. <br />
Sleeping a lot more.<br />
<br />
<br />
UPSIDES:<br />
More money which I'm going to put aside for a regular massage instead. <br />
More time to myself.<br />
No feeling of anxiousness awaiting my next cigarette. <br />
No guilt over the one I'd normally be finishing and how I ought to quit but can't.<br />
Less ventolin required so less shaky.<br />
Actually want to ride a bike.<br />
Cooking more.<br />
I can breathe through my nose and smell again!<br />
I actually feel happy. Not just good but happy and fulfilled. <br />
Stress has been minimized and things that seemed impossible feel manageable now.<br />
<br />
Anyway, not trying to convince anyone to do the same. It just doesn't work that way. Even someone wanting me to quit smoking didn't help matters. It just had to be me. It had to be in my own time.<br />
<br />
Over the next couple weeks, I've got a few more well-being plans. I want to eliminate other bad activities from my life for a short stint, I want to do more physical activities and start riding my bike to and from work again now that I can breathe normally. I want to start eating more carefully again, so not to risk replacing smoking with 1200 pounds of fat. I want to get writing again, more regularly and with two hands able to run over the keyboard and no flaming embers to watch in my hands anymore, that should be a lot easier. I'm going to start a yoga class, maybe some racketball and start organizing more dinners which is WAY more fun than emptying ashtrays I must say.<br />
<br />
Alors, oui. C'est vrai. Je ne fume plus et c'est la mort si je le reprend encore.<br />
<br />
Serieux.<br />
<br />
Bye Bye Belmont.<br />
Bye Bye Marlboro.<br />
Bye Bye American Spirit.<br />
<br />
Hello Freedom.<br />
It's been a while.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1