Holiday musings

Christmas is often an odd time of year for me. I tend to be consumed by envy with the idea that everyone else but me is having a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas. I bemoan my small, irreligious but lovely family.

My family is not your typical, greeting card family. It doesn't help that the left half is Jewish, the right half completely non-conformist, and the middle easily distracted by foam swords. It is also a family that is scattered like dandelion seeds, distant like planets. We orbit towards and away from each other. Sometimes a planet has many moons and sometimes we don't see Pluto for years, but the arc of our lives always casts a glimmer throughout the familial galaxy, even if we don't sit down for turkey dinners (many a vegetarian) and bottles of wine (recovering alcoholics and teetotalers), even if we see each other only every couple of years.

Often when I go out on Christmas, I do so with a sense of furtiveness, a mild sense of shame. I fear that everyone can see that I am not rooted in a firm family hold, held by a tether to the emblazoned fir tree. Today, like most years, I walked the icy streets but today felt different. I saw sleepy parents with bright eyed children, lone men carrying skates and paper bags, Indian, Turkish and Pakistani couples out to enjoy the distant sun. I saw a young mother and her gap-toothed teenage daughter, sharing a joke at a bus stop. I saw bus drivers tired and bus drivers cheery. And it all made me feel like I was part of the big bustle of humanity, in all of its complexity, in all its variety.

I have made peace with the shape of my family, with the planets, the stars and the comets, the seeds and the roots. I hope you do, too.

Happy holidays.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Neighbourly news:

Neighbours A and B have gone to do the Haj in Saudi Arabia.
Neighbour C has gone to Pakistan to support his son, accused of murder.
And I am pretty sure Neighbour D is a drug dealer (you should see the strung-out types that I find jonesing in the lobby for a fix).
Neighbour E has finally gotten his schizophrenia under control.

Seen like that, it almost seems threatening. Funny thing is, it totally isn't.

Life in Parc-Ex.

Eyebrows

It has been a day for eyebrows.

Coming home from daycare this afternoon:
D- quite taken by the elderly gentleman sitting across the aisle from us. 'What a loud cough,' he commented after the man had coughed. He stared some more. 'Mummy, he has funny eyebrows,' he concluded after closely examining his face. I hustled him off the bus fairly quickly after that. It sure is great living in a neighbourhood where most of my fellow bus passengers don't have English as their first language.

In bed, reading stories:
'His eyebrows are like moons,' D- remarked, as we looked at a Thomas the Train book together.
'Your eyebrows are like moons, too,' I said.
D- then turned and looked at me closely. 'Your eyebrow are like birds,' he told me.

Call me Birdie Eyebrow.

Oh, and for the die-hard Thomas fans, I know Thomas' eyebrows are like little triangles. We were looking at a picture of Percy.

Cosmicomics

Just finished Cosmicomics (1965). I think Italo Calvino is my new favourite author. He rocks the Casbah, even in translation. I am tempted to learn Italian just so that I can read him in the original.

Cosmicomics is a series of stories based on theories regarding space and the universe. Example:

The more distant a galaxy is, the more swiftly it moves away from us. A galaxy located at ten billion light-years from us would have a speed of recession equal to the speed of light, three hundred thousand kilometers per second. The 'quasi-stars' recently discovered are already approaching this threshold. (The Light-Years)

And from this, Calvino creates a story, a wonderful, smart, audacious story. Wow.

Particular mention goes out to The Aquatic Uncle about the transition from water living creatures to land living ones, and to The Distance of the Moon, which is about a time when the moon passed super close to the earth and people would jump up to gather a cottage-cheese like substance from it's surface. It's about unrequited love. As a matter of fact, so is The Aquatic Uncle. Now that I am thinking about it, The Dinosaurs is truly fantastic as well, about the last dinosaur who lives with those who have replaced his species in the earth's evolution. Bittersweet.

In other news, I just spent ten minutes engrossed in a Youtube video-slideshow of Arnold Schartzenegger' s early bodybuilding days. Random.

Barbershop

While eating a snack in the Turkish pastry shop, D- pointed across the street and pointed out the barber's spinning pole. "What's the blue and red?" he asked. I told him it was for cutting hair. "Oh, a barber," he answered. "How do you know that word?" "Oh," he suddenly seemed blase, "from Mexico."

Really?

On the way home he insisted on going across to the barber shop. He wanted a haircut. Now understand, D- gets 'home haircuts', that is I chase him around the house with a pair of scissors, or surreptitiously snip while he drinks milk or watches a video. His haircuts are crooked, awkward but made with love. The reason is that the one time I took him to a hair salon, when he was two or so, he screamed and shook his head like a dog with fleas the whole way through, the stylist grit her teeth and snipped madly, and I cringed and wrung my hands. Not worth the hassle.

But now? Now, he wants a haircut? I am not one to pass up an opportunity when it is offered on a platter. We went into the barber shop, the local Greek place, with two old guys sitting in the back.

"Do you cut children's hair?"
"Is he a boy?"
"Uh, yes."

The barber, who reminded me of my grandfather with smoothly groomed hair and hands that were clean and strong, then set about to seduce D-. He got him up into the chair and kept up the chatter while he put on the smock and got the clippers ready. D- sat very still. He looked very very serious. As the haircut progressed, D- seemed closer and closer to tears. When the barber finished, D- looked at me and burst out crying. He said he had gotten scared and that he wanted his hair back.

Now D- looks like a little boy from the 1950s, his ears suddenly visible, a neat buzz cut framing his large brown eyes. I can't stop running my hand along the spiky edges. His hair smells like aftershave and my Zaide. I will never be able to join the ritual of a barbershop but D- allows me a glimpse. He's beautiful.

She locked me in high heels

After almost two years of having this blog, I recently happened upon the 'stats' section which allows me to get a breakdown of the traffic on my blog. First off, let me to tell you that I was under the impression that the views of my profile (seventy something views) was the actual traffic so it was a bit of a shock to see that there have been close to seven hundred views.

And where are people looking from? Mainly North America (thank you, mum and L) but also Israel, India and Latvia, among others. Hello my foreign friends! Let us sit down for some thali and falafel and (insert appropriate Latvian dish here) and talk politics. I think Harper is a bozo, Netanyahu is dangerous, the Indians seems to be doing alright with their new environmental standards for mining. And Latvia? What's happening there??

And search words that brought people to my site? "Asymmetrical haircut" is a big one. It must be such a letdown to get to my site, with me rambling about books and my kid and random stuff, instead of a well-designed picture bank of awkward haircuts. Another was "she locked me in high heels". How fucking awesome is that? My friend, you can hang out on my blog any old time. I don't know exactly how I will lock you into high heels, but gosh darnit, I'll do my best, because if we stand for anything here at AM, it is to please.

Fun.

Wolf Hall

Just finished Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009). I read it, all 600 plus pages of it because I am a sucker for a prize winner. It won the Booker last year and I am easily impressed by the glitz and glamour of posh writing prizes, especially those out of the UK.

I had been unsure about Wolf Hall because the only people I had seen reading it were men of a certain age on metros and trains. Men, whose reading taste I feared I would have little in common with; men with bellies starting to bulge from grey suits, watches heavy and shiny on hairy wrists; briefcases tucked between knees, maybe reading a hardback copy but definitely not one from the library. "It seems a man's book," I said to a friend but she assured me she had seen women reading it, too. So I got it out of the library.

In case you don't know, Wolf Hall is about Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power under the reign of Henry VIII and all those shenanigans with divorce and marriage and creating a new religion in which the king is top dog and not Rome. Pardon my lack of articulateness, I feel all the good words got used up in the book. It made me curious to read more of Mantel's work. Does she only do historical fiction? What about short fiction, say a novella?

It is, in my humble opinion, a man's book; politics, detailed history, kings, not much romance, power politics, and diplomacy. Interesting nonetheless.

In other reading news, I read Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey which is a reworking of de Tocqueville's journey to the USA somewhere in the time of the French Revolution. It was great and reminded me yet again that I really must read Democracy in America (1835).

And now onto Cosmicomics that has finally come in for me from the library. Viva Calvino!

Autumn

The season turns inwards. The trees shake off their leaves, rid themselves of finery and jewels, turning towards the sky with dark and reaching fingers. Only the pure and empty handed enter the kingdom of winter. The sun makes diamonds between my lashes and the blue of the sky is a painter's puzzle.

Shade and sun push at each other as I pull out the last tomato plants and add them to the dried bean stalks that lie defeated on the driveway.

A man I was once in love with described nature as shrouding herself in fog in the winter, hiding away from the world so she could renew herself in peace and in private. That may have applied in his part of the world but here there is a sense of stripping bare, going to the bone, ridding ourselves of the superfluous. It is not only the trees. The grass and plants fold into themselves, dig towards the earth in a penance, kneeling to the soil can be the most humbling yet most fulfilling position. The sky alternates between the quick scrub of blue skies with fast clouds and thrashing rains, washing away all the dirt.

All to prepare for the austerity of winter, the frugality of colour, the chill in the bone.

Despite despising winter, I do see the beauty in it, but especially in nature's preparations.

If on a fall's afternoon a reader

Just finished Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller (1981). Wow. I have been curious about Calvino since I read an excerpt of a new translation of Cosmicomics in a magazine. At the time, I thought, "who is this guy?" the writing was so out there. I then did a half-hearted search for his works in a Renaud-Bray but could only find him translated into French and figured if I was going to read a translation, since my Italian isn't what it should be, I would rather read it in English.

It was in London, J- rummaging through her book collection, looking for something to give me for the return trip to Canada, that I saw his name again. If on a winter's night a traveller was my distraction during the long haul across the Atlantic, having found its way into my hands in a most circuitous way. I love books that come to me by way of accident, serendipity, coincidence. One of my most beloved finds was The Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski, that I found in a tiny, second hand bookshop in Havana on a sunny evening while L- and I searched for a reasonable restaurant. Anyone who has been to Cuba will know that a reasonable restaurant is hard to find.

Back to Calvino. If on a winter's.. is a reader's book. It is full of winks and nudges to the reader. In fact the main character, if he can be called so as he is addressed as 'you', is called 'the Reader'. His/your love interest is 'the Other Reader'. It is all twisted inside out. Stories within stories. Murders and plots and a grand scheme to put 'fakes' inside of books. I laughed out loud.

There is one fantastic scene where the 'you' is distracted from his mission of finding the conclusions to books by a young woman, who he starts to seduce. This is how Calvino describes the scene:

"With this, Sheila-Alfonsina-Gertrude has thrown herself on you, torn off your prisoner's trousers; your naked limbs mingle under the closets of electronic memories.

Reader, what are you doing? Aren't you going to resist? Aren't you going to escape? Ah, you are participating... Ah, you fling yourself into it, too... You're the absolute protagonist of this book, very well; but do you believe that gives you the right to have carnal relations with all the female characters?" (p. 219)

Pure, hysterical brilliance. Now I just have to get my hands on Cosmicomics.

On the way home (04/10/10)

Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The day slowly erases the night. I am sitting in the departure lounge of Terminal 3, the poor cousin of impressive and cosmopolitan Terminals 1 and 2. I am feeling a little worried because I was told that I cannot take my four bottles of wine through on the plane in my hand luggage. I had to put them into my suitcase. I hope that I don't arrive in Montreal to a wine-drenched suitcase, my dirty underwear and lovely gifts ruined for the sake of a cheap (but good) drink.

Impressions of Paris (03/10/10)

I was meant to be writing this from the cafe down the street called 'Irene and Bernard' but E- upon leaving the apartment this morning for her morning run locked the door behind her and now I am trapped inside. I have taken off my shoes and opened the windows to the street. I will write from the enclosed comfort of the couch while Paris life clatters by on expensive heels on the street below.

I love Paris. I love it for all of the cliches that have been repeated a thousand times before much more eloquently than I could hope to match so I will only say that I truly do love Paris. It has been seven years since I was last here.

Yesterday, we went to the local grocery chain, Carrefour, and bought wine. There were aisles upon aisles of wine. I bought a bottle of St Emilion with prize-winning stickers for 5 euros. I was truly in heaven. The yogurt aisle was varied and exotic. I bought whimsically shaped pots of coconut and chestnut flavours.

Last night, E- brought me to a bar in the heart of a park where the doors open at 6 pm and dancing finishes by midnight. My kind of place.

I am now at the cafe, E- having returned mortified that she locked me in. I was turfed from the terrasse where I get the impression only those planning to order food are allowed to sit. It was suggested I have my coffee standing at the bar but I managed to negotiate a table inside. It's a shame because it is a beautiful sunny day. Only in Paris.

Where was I? Rosa Bonheur, with sparkly lights and a tree in the middle of a garden where we wolfed down take-away pizza on a park bench before entering. Tons of people of various ages. It was so nice to go out and not feel like I was somehow impinging on the amusements of the young. The hook: for a piece of i.d. you could borrow a headset that was tuned-into one of two d.j.s who stood behind a table with their laptops. Depending on which channel you chose you got completely different music. And to those without a 'casque', the spectacle of people shuffling about rhythmically, head-bobbing and hip swaying was absolutely hysterical. So in the silence of Parisian night, people danced and danced, the only sound the scraping of foot soles on the grit of wet pavement. It created a wonderfully convivial atmosphere: strangers would share headphones with each other, dancers would gesture with their fingers to indicate what channel they were listening to ( I remember a man across the garden indicating an A with two fingers of his left hand and one finger of his right, a big grin on his face as he grooved to what turned out to be a remix of an old Whitney Houston song. Whitney Houston! Only in France.) I met a tall, curly haired Spaniard who was so full of joy, a beautiful Parisian with long blonde hair, tight jeans and high heels who cried and cried and told me "je suis malheureuse" and wanted my phone number. Of course I gave it to her. And Nicolas, the Toulousian with an accent so thick I was sure he was putting it on. Headphones in a nightclub: the great social icebreaker.

Impressions of London III (01/10/10)

Last morning in London. Am sitting in an ostensibly Italian restaurant called 'La Barca' around the corner from J-'s apartment but I had trouble finding anything Italian on the menu besides my cafe latte. The place, like many in the neighbourhood, is run by Turks which is fine by me because I have an intense and long-standing desire to visit Turkey. I also noticed, after I sat down, that aside from the waitress, I am the only woman in the restaurant but in a very non threatening way. Across the street is a Western Union office called Cedi House. The discussion towards the back of the cafe is becoming heated - hand gestures chopping through the air and a random elderly gentleman feels compelled to add his voice to the debate.

The trip up north was fantastic. I kept saying that, day after day, "this is fantastic!" It is so rare to be truly happy and to be aware of it at the same time. Here, therefore, are the ingredients for happiness as defined by myself: 1) a bicycle 2) changing landscape, sometimes shrouded by fog and cloud and sometimes dramatically exposed 3) sheep 4) good company 5) financial security such that fancy B&Bs don't leave a tightening in the chest, so that supper can be appreciated and not choked down 6) cheap and varied drink 7) physical exertion (see 1) 8) good health. There it is , the recipe for pure undiluted joy. Northumberland and Cumbria crossed coast to coast on Hadrian's cycle path. And today, Paris.

Birdoswall, Cumbria (27/09/10)

In the B&B this morning we asked the owner about the relations between the Northern English and the Scots seeing as how the border is so tangible, what with Hadrian's wall (around 100 a.d. but I could be wrong) still standing. After telling us about the savage Scots who would rape and pillage before crossing back over the border in Scotland, she told us that a local woman had been hung in the town square for marrying a Scot in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Moving to the present, she made us to understand that the Scots were a bunch of freeloaders. It seems relations remain tense.

Impressions of London II (25/09/10)

Saturday, Hampstead Heath

Am sitting next to a pond , hills and trees across the way. Black ducks with white tipped faces and beaks churn the water gracelessly, their heads bobbing rhythmically, one can see that they are working hard just under the surface of the water. Like young teenagers, they haven't mastered the technique of making it look easy.

I love Hampstead Heath. I recall walking for what felt like hours here the first time I was in London at the age of nineteen. I especially liked the forest of trees that opened up onto vast rolling fields punctuated here and there by wide reaching and centennial trees. I remember the unexpected pleasure of coming across swimming ponds. There among the reeds and lily pads were the English, splashing about enthusiastically. It seemed to me then the height of genteel hedonism.

I am, if anything, a creature of habit. Even here in London, I have made my little rituals, which is why this morning, I went for the second day in a row (I have only been here two days) to the little Turkish grocery to get my breakfast of cheese wrapped in a flat bread. While walking down the street, breakfast in hand and feeling quite pleased with myself in the sunny, crisp morning air, I heard a man yell. I turned around to see a young man hollering at me from a car, from the back seat no less. I leaned towards him to try to understand what he was telling me but the light changed and he drove off laughing. I have no idea what he said, like I mentioned before, these accents are impossible to decipher. I am certain though, that he was not remarking on my stunning good looks nor on my intelligent taste in breakfast.

The sun has come out, casting my hand in shadow across this page. There are men fishing on this pond which is no larger than an American football field. I wonder if the city of London stocks the pond with fish each year to satisfy the cravings of urban fishermen. Behind me two women discuss the swimming conditions of the ponds. Could they still be open? It is late fall and probably no more than ten degrees. I shiver in my wind jacket and the idea of taking off even one item of clothing seems unhealthy.

I contemplate the hill across the way. I would like to climb across its grassy back before returning to the gated bourgeoisie of Camden but a pressing need to pee is tempering my enthusiasm.

Impressions of London (24/09/10)

Rain. Sun on the French side of the channel but rain and cloud when the train came out in England. It has been raining since.

I am sitting in a pub, Chandos, near Leicester Square, waiting to meet with P- and B- and their children, whom I haven't seen in over ten years. There is a pub lounge upstairs, they may be up there but I want to finish my (incredibly cheap) beer before I go up to check. They are quite possibly up there but if not, I'll have to find another place to roost when I come back down, will probably have to buy another drink as well. Still have some beer to go.

The transition from Montreal to Paris to London: All the English men in suits in the Eurostar waiting lounge, shoes that click like high heels on the their feet. The sudden complexity of English accents throws me. I keep thinking that London is full of foreigners (which it is) but often when I listen more closely I realize most are speaking English.

Where J- lives is a predominantly Turkish and Ghanaian area. The grocery store with a wall of olives to choose from and another wall with teas so exotic I am not even tempted. The woman behind the bakery counter tries unsuccessfully to teach me 'thank you' in Turkish. Esh-dashesh?

London retains an aura of soot and grime that decades of rain have not been able to erase. I feel the weight of coal here.

Beer almost finished. I hope they're up there. I'll be drunk if I have to come back down and order another beer before they arrive. Maybe I'll order a Sprite or something.

I walked most of the way here from Bethnel Green. I'd gone to the Museum of Childhood to see a photo exhibit of dolls' faces. Turns out there were only half a dozen pictures so I spent the rest of the time looking at children's toys in the museum and listening to teachers and parents reprimand their charges.

Have gone for a look upstairs. No dice. Have come back down and gotten a juice. Luckily for me, no one has taken my table near the door. No watch. Not quite sure of the time. Two thirty, maybe? Perhaps closer to three? I have nowhere else I have to be. What a great feeling.

One of those days

There are days when I do everything wrong, when I end up crying in the bathroom at work and yelling at small animals, when my bike chain falls off and my new pants get covered in grease, when I lose my keys and my wallet and my sanity. Those are bad days. Then there are the days where I keep hurting myself accidentally, slice of the finger while cutting tomatoes, stubbed toe as I walk from one room to another, bruised shin as low furniture darts out to attack me, twisted neck as I dream in awkward positions. When I have an accident, bruising day, I remind myself to pay more attention, to be more aware of wayward furniture and deceptively sharp knives. It usually passes within a few days and I return to a fairly pain-free existence.

Today was D's turn to face the wrath of the accident gods. To start, he did a faceplant in the grocery store at nine a.m. this morning, giving himself a nice fat lip. Many tears later, we went to the park. D ran out into the road (no, he wasn't hit by a car) and had a meltdown when I reprimanded him, throwing himself to the ground and scraping his knee. More tears. On return from the park, he ran towards the door at top speed, fell, managed to shove his finger into the door which then promptly shut, leaving his finger wedged in between. More tears and this time, howls of disbelief and rage. If he were more articulate, he might have said, "Why me?!"

Then as he farted around next to the screen of the patio door, he got stung by a wasp. Pain and shock and more tears. "The bee bit me!" And then an eventual drop into a hot afternoon nap, two throbbing fingers, a scraped knee, and a fat lip. Poor little fella.

It's not even three o'clock yet.

Wash n' wear

As a rule I wash new clothes before wearing them. Whether they come in a package or off the rack, they go into the machine before I put them on. While new could imply clean, it doesn't guarantee it. The smell of new clothes often makes me think of a factory in far off lands, huge rolls of cotton blends lining the wall, cut scraps on the floor, women bent over sewing machines, hair tied back. And then being put in a pile, loaded onto a truck, then a boat, then another truck. Weeks pass, maybe months. The dust settles, insects pass by, crates creak, steel bangs. Always best to wash after such a journey.

If I have told you the above it is to highlight that sometimes there are exceptions. Tonight, for example. As I paid for my purchase this evening, I knew that the second I got home I was going to put them on, washing be damned. I just bought the most comfortable purple sweatpants on the planet. Maybe purple is putting it too strongly, mauve. Old school sweatpants from one of those stores that is embracing all things eighties (there were also fluorescent shoes and Mickey Mouse off-the-shoulder extra large t-shirts) with tight ankles and straight legs. And pockets for pure lazy slouching.

They are awesome for their undeniable comfort. I may never take them off again.

There is a poem about growing old and wearing purple. Since I feel I am going through an early mid-life crisis (youthful dreams gone to dust, post-baby fat now here to stay) these may be the perfect companion.

Thing is, I am traveling soon and to places far more stylish than Montreal (c'est pas possible!) and the purple pants may just have to join me on my adventures. Europe may never be the same.

Camping in the US of A

Things I didn't know about Americans (or had forgotten):

1) There is apparently no motorcycle helmet law in the US. People barrel down highways on their motorcycles at breakneck speeds, without a helmet.
2) You can buy guns everywhere. And they advertise: Guns! Guns! Guns!
3) Americans are friendly, but it is an aggressive kind of friendly, it dares you not to be friendly in return, just see what happens to you then, because gosh-darnit, they carry guns. * No casual 'hellos" or nods of the head for these folk, no sirree. We got "well, you have a really great day, now!" and "how are you today, folks?" And not just from the older, middle aged crowd. Teenagers that wouldn't have even made eye contact in Canada, gave us shiny toothed grins and elaborate salutations. My son would stop on the path, confused, after yet another friendly American had greeted us, and ask "who is that?" expecting as one might, that someone so friendly must be a relation or at least selling something. * The return to frosty Canada a bit of a shock. No 'hellos' here. In fact, you're lucky if someone acknowledges your existence. We are... more reserved.
4) Along with friendly, Americans have a sense of self-assurance that has long been discussed in literature (the Brits and other assorted Europeans being the first to remark upon it) but I had never really noticed it until this most recent visit. I can barely put my finger on it, but it is a way of moving through the landscape, a sense of perfect fit; this is me and I am alright and am well liked and cared for and all is well. Not a glimmer of self-doubt to be seen.

Or not in the campgrounds of Acadia National Park, anyways.

Tea

There are mornings when life seems glum and boring and grey. Today was one of those mornings. Rainy and cool, my son whining and throwing whatever he could get his hands on, me stomping about and yelling like an ogre. There was no food in the cupboard and my laundry lay limp on the line, the air wet.

To escape we went down to the backyard where D ate green tomatoes and I glowered at the neighbours' yards and the trash in the alley. Sinking self pity sucked at my toes.

Then my neighbour, the one who lives below us and only complained once in the whole year that we have lived here about the noise, offered me a cup of tea. My heart sang. Warm chai with two biscuits. I briefly hypothesized that the optimism and determination of the Indian subcontinent was due to so much tasty tea but then remembered that Indians are known for their fatalism.

D and I sat on the fire escape stairs and talked about the joys of sharing, more specifically, how glad we were that the neighbour had shared with us.

She barely speaks a word of English my neighbour, but she made my day.

And then the sun came out, my clothes dried and I made pasta salad for lunch.

You can bite me, Mr. Pip

It appears, from the the cover, to be quite promising: short listed for the Man Booker, winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. Not only that but it came recommended. "You must read this book," said my aunt, pressing Lloyd Jones's Mr. Pip (2007) into my hands. Were my expectations too high, am I giving up too early (I admit, I am only about halfway through)? Am I really just a jaded and cynical book reader, hater of Paolo Coehlo and all that is simplistic and pure?

What, exactly is my problem with Mr. Pip?

Well, let me tell you.

First off, one has to be very, very careful in taking on the voice of a young woman of colour especially when one is not in fact a person of colour nor for that matter a woman. Lloyd Jones is neither. A tricky place to start considering the long and illustrious history of sexism, colonialism, oppression and patriarchy weighing on his shoulders. This does not seem to bother our dear Mr. Lloyd who has as a protagonist a quasi-pubescent girl from somewhere on a pacific island. Mr. Lloyd doesn't seem to see a problem in having a main character who is mind-bogglingly innocent and who seems to have grown up, in the nineties no less, completely isolated from any sense of global culture (what, they have generators and airplanes but no one's ever bothered to get a television?). I have been to some far flung villages, too. No running water, no cars or scooters, no doctors or candy, but the people were a lot more worldly than Mr. Lloyd's land of dopey islanders.

So that's a start, but to make matters worse, Lloyd contrives to have the story revolve around the last white man on the island. A strange and marginal character named Mr. Watts, who somehow becomes the local teacher during the beginnings of a civil war. Why this foreign yokel should become the teacher when all he does is pull his wife around in a cart, can only be explained because he is white, and therefore the holder of great wisdom. I kid you not. Of course, Mr. Watts is faux-humble and then reads to the kids, who admire him above all else and are ashamed of their parents, from Dickens' "Great Expectations". The kids of course (of course!) love the book, never having read one before themselves, and admire Mr. Watts even more. And friends, none of this is written with even a hint of irony, not a trace of neo-colonialist shame, not a smidgen of self-doubt. Mr. Watts is great. Everyone thinks so, except the parents and they are superstitious losers anyways.

The island's parents come into the school, one after the other, to share their own educational wisdom. This is of course Mr. Watts' idea and he looks on most benevolently. The stories they tell are sweet and innocent (ahhh, them native folks) and they are all crushingly embarrassed or shy or humble. Noble savage, anyone? The kids squirm in shame and I am left to wonder why the parents wouldn't just tell these stories at home or in their proper context rather than in the white man's school. Really!

Now, don't get me wrong. Some of my favourite authors are white men who have strayed too long in the tropics: Kapuscinski, Graham Greene, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux. But their writing always has a sort of self-consciousness to it. Their characters may be self-important losers but the reader is made aware of the discrepancies, the fault-lines, the power dynamics, the fragility of being a white man in a non-white world. Mr. Watts, while sometime shown to be frail and at times a victim, remains a character without any sense (internally, from within the novel to externally, through Jones' prose) of power, responsibility, or sense of himself as a white man in a non-white environment.

Instead, everything is syruply straightforward. Island full of innocent native folk, wise and genteel white man educates island's children, everyone loves Great Expectations (hey, I had to read it in high school and found it so boring I couldn't get past the first twenty pages and bluffed my way through the exam), and then rebels come and ask, "who's this Pip character?'" because they've seen his name written on the beach. Yes, the rebels are stupider than the villagers, and that's saying something.

Mr. Lloyd, please. Give your characters some credit.

(to be continued and perhaps amended once I have actually finished the book)

An old dog and some tricks

I might never say it out loud but in my internal narrative, I would tell you that I am plagued by dirty bathtubs. Every apartment I have ever moved into has a dirty bathtub. Perhaps the bathtub was not disgusting, painted-in-shades of yellow when I moved in but by the time I left, it was a stained, horrendous, sticky-footed mess. The state of my bathtubs has been a source of private shame. I pull the shower curtain when I have visitors. I exclaim loudly about the state of Montreal apartments to all who will listen.

Please understand, I am not a pig. I have spent hours, ok, minutes, at a time, scrubbing away at grimy bathtubs. I have used fluorescent orange products flogged by bald muscle-men. I have emptied boxes of Ajax, hoping that those magical blue granules would somehow dig a hole to the enamel below. I have soaked my tub in bleach, vinegar, baking soda, dish-soap. You name it, I have tried it.

This being my own, half-conscious narrative, I blamed it on the water, the tub itself, the lack of proper cleaning products or some unexplained tub cleaning technique that everyone else had cottoned onto but that I never learnt. I had mainly given up on solving the dirty bathtub situation except for a half-hearted swipe every now and then. The dirty bathtub thread takes up little space in my ongoing inner analysis of everything and anything. Only when I sit on the toilet and am obliged to take in the ever darkening circle of hell that is my bathtub, do I contemplate my failure to figure this one out, one of life's great mysteries.

A recent coincidence of events has changed everything.

First, sitting on the toilet, staring at the tub, I asked myself, "what do other people do?" Because I have looked and most friends', strangers' and clients' bathtubs are cleaner than mine. Second, my mother having a surfeit of metal pot scrubbers, left one by my sink one recent afternoon. And then, friends, the Eureka moment.

Today after work, I cleaned my tub with the metal scrubbie. And like that, it was clean, gleaming, pristine, glowing.

Jesus, it took me long enough.

I heart Granta (For E.G.- bonne voyage)

Oh, Granta, how I love thee. How I salivate when I see you. How I want to hold you, flip through your pages, read your author summaries, pore over your photos.

I once told a friend that one of my fantasies was going to a garage sale and finding a whole bunch of Grantas but for really cheap, like 25 cents each so I could get all the ones I don't have, so I could be Granta-guaranteed for a year and a day. My friend looked at me like maybe I need to work on my fantasies.

Then another friend, who first started my Granta addiction, moved to Iqaluit where there seems to be endless supplies of Granta everywhere: lying next to dog sleds, rolling in the tundra, holding up houses, mopping up seal blood. In her abundant generosity, she started sending me issues that she found in the street or abandoned in bathrooms. Wipe off the blood stains and they are good as new. I think there is a tourism-marketing strategy that Nunavut could exploit here: Come to the North, you will have a good read!

Just read A. L. Kennedy's Story of my life, in Granta 105 and I want to jump at the sheer talent of the writing. Damn, it's good. Even Richard Ford, who normally I don't have much time for, is good in Granta (The Womanizer, Granta 40). And that one by Hanif Kureishi about being a loser in Pakistan. Oohhhh.

Six a.m. conversation

D: Mummy, look! An ant!
Me: Mrgghrrrlll
D: Hello, little ant! How are you?
Me: What time is it? (looks at clock). Jesus!
D: Mummy, the ant is tiny.
Me: Great.
D: The ant is tiny like Ahanni and Sarah (babies we know)
Me: Yes, that's pretty small.

Five minutes later:
D: (singing) Happy birthday to youuuu. Happy birthday, mummy.
Me: D-, it is not my birthday.
D: Happy birthday, happy birthday D-!
Me: It's not your birthday either.
D: First mummy's birthday, then D-'s birthday.
Me: That's true. We both have July birthdays. Can I sleep now?
D: Mummy time for supper.
Me: Really?

Wax me madly

Went for a bikini wax today. It is a new addiction but I still haven't found the perfect place. This is the story of my life. It could be put on my tombstone: Looking for the perfect place. So. Tried a new place this time.

A south east Asian nail place with a curtain in the back. My esthetician had a lazy eye which was a little disconcerting. There were no other customers just two employees draped over chairs chatting. Sounded like Vietnamese or something from there round-abouts. No pre-wax chit-chat just off with the pants and onto the waxy paper covered table. While Ms Eyes was doing the wax she was chatting with the employees on the other side of the curtain. I can only imagine what she was saying: Jesus! We've got a hairy one here! Thank god we're not white, they're so fucking hairy!. Then the phone rang and Ms Eyes started chatting away on one of those hands-free ear phones, her eyes (or at least one of them) still focused on my crotch. All to say, it was a little asymmetrical. But ladies, that is the name of the game.

The best bikini wax I got was also my first. The first time is the best? It was in a suburban basement. The esthetician had dyed blonde hair and wore a shirt that I also have in my cupboard. She had a big pot of wax bubbling away on the stove and didn't even use strips (don't ask me how that works). It was 5$. Cheap and good. What more can a girl ask for?

The eighty

The eighty.

Straight up the hill from Place des arts metro if you are coming from downtown. Stare at the lips and the smoke coming out of them on the brick wall. Admire the fancy football lights for the jazz festival. Then get on the bus. Up the hill that is killer on the bike unless you have been biking all summer and then it is easy and awesome. Left on Sherbrooke then a quick right on Parc where that really nice art store used to be. I stood there for ten minutes one morning, not understanding how it could be closed in the middle of the day, really wanting paint, and only after a while noticing the official-looking bankruptcy sign. Then up through the McGill ghetto (students, students and more students! Will they ever get dressed or live perpetually in pyjamas?), before up the hill, across the mountain's toes and into Mile End. Through Mile End where the abundance of the good looking and well dressed always leaves a slight taste of envy. Through the industrial wasteland to the north (international bowling!) and a left on Jean Talon, right on Hutchison. Parc metro. Then up into Parc Ex. Ugly buildings but fantastic allies. But then, I am biased. All the way to the end, the forty, with booming traffic, and a feeling of being hemmed in.

So much for the view. People watching is layered on the eighty, as we pass from neighborhood to neighborhood. At the start of the ride, a mix of ages, colours, styles, attitudes. Students in dishevelled school uniforms, lounge in the back. The older Greek immigrants hog the single seats near the front, gossip across the aisle. The Mile End hipsters, over-sized glasses and hair hanging in their eyes but skin fresh and young, lean on each other or crouch over their cell phones. South Asian women clutch plastic carrier bags and stare straight ahead. Teenagers plugged into some sort of technical device, slouch or pout depending. Depending on what? On how pretty they are, on how confident they are are in their youthful beauty. All youth is beauty. No, that's not true.

By Van Horne, all of the hipsters have gotten off, to totter (those shoes!) to overpriced and shared apartments, some of the school kids, too. There are still a gaggle at the back, the immigrant kids, heading home, flirting and yelling. The old guys are still there, firmly rooted to a seat, legs wide apart, hats askance. The South Asian women have spread out their bags, taking up more space now that the hipsters have gone. And the Muslim couple with the over-sized stroller, did I mention them? Their baby has started to cry, wrapped up like a treasure, like a gift. Which it is.

Yesterday, there was a woman, young, beautiful, with long dark hair. She was wearing one of those tube tops that have come back into fashion, just a stretchy bit of fabric across one's chest. But the young woman was having none of it. None of what? The lack of support, the fear of the downward pull of gravity on her shirt. She'd put on a very bland white bra underneath and sat looking about as if the world was owed to her. She made my heart happy.

Just finished "The Smoking Diaries" by Simon Gray (2002?) which has made me want to embrace my inner curmudgeon.

A small slice, please

So we go into this tiny pizza place yesterday and order a slice because I'm starving. And this midget (little person) walks in and D's eyes just about pop out of his head he's staring so hard, and he says (loudly and pointing), "Little man!" "Yes, yes," I whisper. But he hasn't made his point yet, or perhaps I haven't fully understood, so he says again, louder now, and pointing emphatically, "little man, little man!!" He stops eating his pizza and stares open-mouthed. Then he looked at me again and then back to the patient man waiting for his pizza, "little man, mummy, little man!" Did I mention the size of the pizza joint, that it was smaller than most suburban bathrooms. I smiled apologetically at the man. Then a gangly teen walked in. "BIG MAN!" D yelled joyfully, almost hysterical at the variety of sizes people come in. Let me tell you friends, I don't think I have ever eaten a slice of pizza so fast as I did yesterday.

Saturday afternoon

A sunny and windy afternoon. My hands are cold and I crave tea. The wind whips the clothes on the line, shirts upside down, snapping like flags, long live the country of argyle.

Cold hands and painting, an association with deep grooves in my mind. I have never painted with warm hands. I have never painted without feeling an inner shiver. Even when I have painted in the summer or the tropics, my body cools, concentrating blood in my mind and leaving my limbs goose pimpled.

What comes first, the cold hands or the desire to paint? Today, I think it was the cold, keeping me inside on this bright spring day when I would rather be in the garden.

I recently read Alain de Botton's "The Art of Travel" (2002), a philosophical treatise on travel in the post-modern world. The penultimate chapter was about drawing or sketching while travelling and the importance this can have in our perception of our journey. De Botton uses the artist and art teacher John Ruskin to illustrate the influence that drawing can have on how we see the world around us. I still remember the square in Venice where I spent an afternoon trying to capture the light and shades of decay on a row of buildings. I remember the feel of the stones beneath my feet, the grit and the light as I tried to draw statues on the Cathedral in Santiago de Compestello. I remember these moments much clearer than much of the surrounding journeys. Making art doesn't have to be something done only on a journey, the point is that in slowing down, in taking the time really look, whether inward or outward, I am more present when I make art. I remember spending hour upon hour last winter (again cold) making an alphabet book for a little friend. I remember that kitchen, the radio playing "Key of Charles", the joy of making a perfect aubergine with purple, black and blue pencil crayons.

Today, I painted a picture of my son and I and for the first time in as long as I can remember, when I finished it, I took a nail and a hammer and I hung it on the wall. I am trying very hard not to be stuck on results (it is not a very good painting) but on the process of creating and what that painting now is in my memory: a bright Saturday afternoon in April. All the clean clothes soon to be brought in from the line. MIA playing on the stereo. The simple joy of being alive. Cold hands.

The colour of the afternoon

A grey afternoon of imposed quietness. My son has a fever and sleeps and sleeps through the day. I read and look out at the tree branches, the brown grass turning green, the cars and pedestrians. A minivan stops at the corner, a Sikh man descends and strides down the street. Light blue shirt, grey pants and long white beard, turban like a maraschino cherry, bright bright, eye-catching red.

I once asked a Sikh friend about the meaning of the different coloured turbans one can see in the neighbourhood. Sometime I come across groups of men all in sherbert orange turbans, or serious men in black ones to match their beards; mauve, green, blue, yellow, beautiful colours swirling, dancing down the street. What does it all mean, I wanted to know. Some sort of affiliation? A political gesture?

She waved her hand, dismissing my question. "It's fashion," she told me.

Blowing in the wind

Being the mother of a boy and being an only child of a single mother, there are certain things about boyness of which I am uncertain. Primarily, little boys and their willies.

While potty training is almost complete, a new challenge has come upon us, one which I have watched other mothers preform in parking lots and in parks, with admiration and wonder: peeing outside. Whereas up until yesterday, if my son needed to pee when we were outdoors, he would invariably let loose, soaking his pants and underwear. Perhaps having done this several times in sub-zero temperatures he realized that walking around with freezing pee sticking to your bum and legs isn't the way to go. Today, while taking our post-nap stroll, he stopped, looked around, somewhat furtively, and said 'toilet.' I stopped walking and asked him, 'do you need to pee?' He looked around some more, at the buildings, the sidewalk, the parked cars and told me, yes, he needed to pee. We walked around the corner, into the alley. I pulled down his pants purposefully and held his little pickle (gherkin probably the more appropriate euphemism). He said, 'it's cold,' and looked around some more. 'We're outside,' he said. 'C'mon,' I said. He let out a little trickle. It splashed down the front of his pants. 'Is that it?' I asked. 'No', he said. Then he peed. I aimed at the wall. Pee splashed on the wall, his boots, and my hand. Some dribbled on his pants but not much.

'D- peed outside,' my son said proudly. I wiped my fingers on my mittens and pulled up his pants. When we got home, I sent an email to friends who are mothers of more than one boy. Is there a way to do this without getting full of pee, I asked them.

I feel like I have become a full member to the mother of boys club.

Rock and roll.

Maybe one day my son will join the ranks of the likes of Mark Wahlberg (see above), peeing publicly at all hours of the day. I can only hope.

Soundtrack

Different times of my life are associated with certain songs. If I hear Counting Crows, I am immediately brought back to the final years of high school: first love, the taste of adult just over the horizon, my boyfriend's ripped jeans that I wore obsessively, drinking hard liquor mixed with sweet sweet drinks, the moodiness and angst, "And I don't understand why I sleep all day and I start to complain that there's no raiiiiin.'

Then, a few years later, I lived in Africa. Certain songs from that time and place bring me right back to the dust and the poverty and the laughter. Kofi Olomide. Black-so-man. 'Birima' by Youssou N'Dour. I hear those musicians and I am sitting in a roadside bar, it is late and the heat has abated, grilled tilapia makes my mouth water, the wide lights under which students study late into the night, the ragged gangs of homeless children, their clothes uniformly brown, wait in the shadows for any food that may be left over.

Recently the soundtrack that accompanies my ramblings has changed. I listen to a lot more children's music now than ever before. Also, to calm myself from living with a crazy two and half year old, I listen to a lot of classical music. Well, relatively a lot. Recently, I spent an evening cleaning the leaves of a plant after trying to deal with an unending tantrum. I didn't even listen to any music.

What will the soundtrack of this time be? Will it be The Wiggles' saccharine version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? Will it be the Pirate Song, a sing-a-long book that my son loves to listen to over and over and over? Or will it be The Beatles 'Hello Goodbye' which my son sings quite well and seems to represent exactly his stage of development: 'You say yes, I say no. You say stop and I say go go go.'

Spicy!

Living in the neighborhood means we eat a lot of South Asian food. Thalis, rice drenched in oil and chilies, samosas, pakoras, wadoos. All delicious and all dangerously spicy. My son loves these spicy dishes. He jumps with excitement when the neighbor brings a plate of rice just for him. "Aunty brings rice! Aunty brings rice!" he cries. Sometimes, impatient, he bangs on her door and demands chapatis. When she gives him just chapatis, he looks confused and asks, "Where's the sauce?" And by sauce, we all know I mean some firey concoction of a million spices and chilis.

Because he learned so early the joys and pain of curry, he has made a strange association with the word spicy. "Careful", I warn him as he is about to dive into a plate of steaming pakoras, "it's spicy." Forewarned, he proceeds with caution, taking small bites and keeping a glass of water on hand. "Spicy," he says, gulping down milk to dampen the curry fire on his tongue. "Spicy," he says, showing me the red scrape on his hands from a fall in the snow. "Spicy," he says, when told it's time for bed when he'd rather play with his puzzles. "Spicy," he says, when the path is icy and he knows he must be careful.

Spicy, indeed.

Speculation

The walls of the apartment are thin. I hear the children next door laughing and screaming as they run up and down the hallway of their apartment. When the baby cries next door, friends open their eyes wide and ask, "Is that D?" so close is the sound of screaming, it is hard to believe it is next door and not here.

Luckily, the bedrooms don't share a wall so I am spared intimate night sounds. Mostly it is children yelling, whining, running and playing, comfortable and warm sounds that make me feel part of a world larger than myself.

Yesterday morning, D and I engaged in our weekly ritual of making buckwheat pancakes. Lined up along the long counter, I placed a mixing bowl, the maple syrup, buckwheat flour, rice milk, a spatula, frozen berries, and a plate. D mixed the pancake batter and I heated the frying pan.

The woman next door started to yell, her voice full of recriminations and resentment. I heard no other voices so assumed she was speaking on the phone. Both of her parents and her sister are currently in Pakistan so I figured it was a long list of pent-up complaints to family far away. Her voice shaped our pancakes, making them thicker than usual, clotted and condensed with rage. Then to my surprise, I heard the quiet mumble of her husband, a murmured response when she paused to catch her breath.

So it shifted in my imagination. Why is she yelling at him? I wondered and added more water to the batter, making it easier to pour, making nicer pancakes. D asked for more maple syrup.

Why do wives yell at husbands? My first thought was: another woman! Loving a scandal, I immediately dived into thoughts infidelity and promiscuity. What else do couples argue about? I listened carefully to her voice. Maybe money? She has complained to me that she doesn't have a 'good husband' because he lacks ambition, working in a restaurant kitchen while her sister's husband is slowly working his way up the ladder in a fruit-packing company.

Has he spent too much money? Gotten involved in some ridiculous money-making scheme? Bet on horses, men or roosters?

D takes his pancakes to the table, no longer satisfied to eat standing at the counter. I pour myself some cereal coffee. The front door of the nieghbours' slams shut and there is silence.

Perhaps I should sign up for Urdu lessons and end this idle speculation.

Hairy scary

Like many women, I have had a long and complicated relationship with body hair. Armpits, legs, bikini line, all have at one time or another been a bane to my existence. Like many, I have gone through phases where I was obsessively sans poils, trying out laser, tweezering until cross-eyed, and shaving gleefully. I have also gone through years where I proudly wore the hair on my body as a sign of my feminist beliefs, arguing loudly with men who told me it was disgusting. Each choice, hairy or hairless, had strong repercussions in my mind of who I was as a person and woman. Hairy: a lazy, repulsive, de-sexualized sloth; hairless: a sell-out to the cheap ideal of femininity sold in glossy magazines. Either way, I lost. Lately, I have become less analytical and obsessive in my approach to body hair and have chosen the path of least resistance: whatever's easiest and makes me feel most comfortable. Sometimes it's full bush and sometimes it's smooth as a baby's bottom.

So as I was rushing about getting ready for my boxing class, I thought, let me have a look at those legs. I pulled up my pants, placed a foot on the edge of the tub and inspected the growth between ankle and knee. My legs were not at their hairiest but were definitely sprouting a fine carpet of fur. Seeing as I was going into a predominantly male and somewhat macho environment and was already feeling insecure about it, I chose to blend in, to become invisible. To do so meant a quick shave before I ran out the door.

I rolled up my pants properly, turned on the taps, found a razor, lathered up and shaved my legs. Quickly. Then some body oil. Rub rub. As I was rolling my pants back down, I noticed there were some nicks on my legs, little red drops of blood where I had shaved an ingrown hair or a follicle. Only problem, there were a lot. No worries, thought I, it'll dry by the time I get to the gym.

No such luck. When I peeled off my pants in the changing room, my legs were streaked with still flowing blood. No clotting whatsoever. I put on my shorts and started to curse under my breath. I then spent ten minutes rubbing at my legs hoping to make the blood disappear, stop, whatever. I just ended up with bloody hands.

Then I had to go to class, where I was the only woman among half a dozen guys, most under twenty. I looked down at my war-ravaged legs: strange streaks and spots of blood glowing in the midday light. I felt, what is the word, SELF-CONSCIOUS, yes, that's it. Luckily no one said, Oh my god, your legs are bleeding!!

And then it was time to fight. I gritted my teeth and told myself that next time, I would definitely not shave or even better, would bring pants instead of shorts, the easiest option of all. God love long pants!

Don't worry, the irony is not lost on me.