Merry Christmas

I wish I had been more serious about all those piano lessons I had as a child. At the time though, I felt like an inmate forced to attend musical workshops as part of my incarceration. My mother would drag me over each week, my fingers in the same fuddle as the week before since I never bothered practicing. Mrs. Best would walk an endless circuit – living room, kitchen, dining room, living room – humming the tune, swinging the bologna sandwich in her hand back and forth like an edible metronome. I have no natural talent for music, but if I had stuck at it these past 40 years it’s possible I may have been able to play something like this by now. What a blockhead I was to have wasted that opportunity. But if Snoopy can be taught new tricks, I’m sure I can too. That’s my New Year’s resolution: to learn how to play a musical instrument.

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, and Indigo, Deloney, Mrs. Slocombe, mm, Mali, Susan, Bridgett, and anyone else lurking out there…

Room for Rent

Most years I rent a room to a student from September to April. This year I decided not to, but now realize that the bathroom was way over-budget (I didn’t actually have a budget, which may have been part of the problem). So last week I placed an ad on the university’s accommodation listing service.

Two people were interested, but they wanted it for longer than April. Some mother called, looking for a place for her son. Hmmm. Next time I must remember to put “no apron strings attached” in the description. Then yesterday I got an email from someone asking about the room. She ended her email with “God Bless.” This isn’t so alarming, except that God and I have been on uneasy terms ever since Sunday school. So I wrote back and said I really only wanted to rent the room until April. This was the reply:

Helen,

Thanks for the timely response. I am still interested in renting your unit and I will like to know more about the facilities that are available in the home. I will be coming by January and I will be staying for five months.

I am a Briton and I reside in the United Kingdom. I am a graduate student from the University of Liverpool, England, UK.

I am a christian and I am a down to earth lady. I also get along with people easily. I don't smoke and I drink socially.

My hobbies are traveling, cooking, nascar, arts, painting, listening to music, dancing, swimming, badmiton, tennis and reading. I love meeting people and hanging out with friends.

I also love going to the movies once in a while. I like been neat and clean cos cleanliness is part of holiness.

I will like you to tell me about yourself as well. You can contact my references for more information:
Prince Richard
447031954176

Mrs. Shari Dixon
447024084935

I hope to read from you soon. Thanks and God Bless.
Diana.

Now the alarm bells sounded. I don’t want someone living in the house and nagging me about my unholiness because the kitchen is perpetually messy. NASCAR??? Prince Richard as a reference? And the spelling and grammatical errors reminded me of those emails I get telling me that so-and-so’s beloved husband of 35 years has just died but the money has to be transferred to a foreign account and could I please provide a bank number in exchange for 50% of $25 million dollars and thank you and God Bless. So I sent back an email asking who she would be working with at Queen’s, and what department they are in. Another email came back stating that it was the Department of Biology, but no name was provided. She asked for some details about the house. Before replying, I typed Prince Richard’s number in a UK reverse phone number search. A web page pops up warning me that phone numbers that begin with 44-70 are usually directed to a Nigerian mobile phone service. This helped me formulate my reply to Diana:

Dear Diana:

My house is a 20-minute walk from campus and the nearest grocery store is 2 blocks away. The room I rent is on the main floor of the house, and it has its own thermostat so you can control the temperature. The phone is included, but if you want internet or cable you will have to arrange that yourself. I have a washer and dryer, and you’re free to use the living room, kitchen, etc. I mentioned in the ad that I have 3 cats, so I assume you’re not allergic to them? If you would like more information please let me know. I would also be happy to send you some pictures of the room, the house, the cats, and my prized collection of shrunken heads that were lopped off of scam artists.

Helen

I hope to god (bless) that Diana isn’t just a poor speller with a peculiar assortment of hobbies…

A Christmas Tradition

One of my favourite traditions took place on Friday night – Christmas dinner at my house with the former Cake Mix group. We all worked at Case Mix Research, which was, with the exception of the director, an all-woman research group. We used to have so many celebrations at work involving various desserts that the leaner, phallocratic research group down the hall nicknamed us Cake Mix Research. Eventually the unit folded. It wasn’t only because we spent the bulk of our time eating instead of researching; the director died and his next-in-command didn’t hold a faculty position, so the university forced the closure of our delicious group. We all waddled to different jobs, but most of us remain friends, and we get together often.

This year I was on dessert duty. I had originally planned to make a boozy bourbon chocolate cake, but on Wednesday I heard “figgy pudding” mentioned twice. I had never heard of figgy pudding, so I took it as some sort of sign that there was a second coming of the term in the same day. Curious, I looked it up on the internet. Apparently, figgy pudding is “often thought about at Christmas time, but is not very popular.” I asked people at work if they had ever had figgy pudding. No one had. But that led to talk of sticky toffee pudding, and how President’s Choice now sells it at Loblaws, and if you didn’t see the box you would never know the pudding had been made in a factory. It is so divinely sweet that my co-worker advises drenching it in whipping cream to cut the sweetness. One pudding, which is the size of a modest cupcake, has 500 calories. Add an extra 200 for the whipping cream, and you can get one-third of your required daily caloric intake in a most efficient manner. We need fat to protect our vital organs in winter, so it's natural to crave high-calorie foods at this time of year. I don’t think we should resist these sorts of biological urges; it might lead to dire side effects, like blindness. So I decide to serve sticky toffee pudding for dessert. I’m running out of time, and I’m a little worried after reading the warning about the bourbon-sugar mixture igniting (I’ve been involved in two kitchen incendiary incidents, and realize I don’t react calmly in a crisis).

Tiny Christmas lights festoon the fig trees, and candles provide the ambient lighting for a leisurely dinner. Afterwards, we gather round the fireplace for the gift grab. Everyone has brought a present, and we pick numbers from a hat. Whoever has #1 gets to open a present first, and the person with #2 gets to steal #1’s present, or open one of the remaining ones. Usually we are civilized and don’t steal, but this year I can’t resist the alpaca scarf Betty just opened, and there is much cursing on Betty’s part and lively discussion about whether a present can be stolen twice, and whether a person can steal back what was just stolen from them. Holding the all-powerful position of hostess, I overrule both these rule wannabes. Then we settle back in our chairs, full of heat and food and friendship. (But I keep the alpaca scarf securely tucked under one arm, lest Betty be led into temptation).

The End is Nigh!

Oh, not the Apocalypse. Although maybe that’s nigh as well, but hopefully not too nigh; I want time to enjoy my bathroom, which I started renovating on August 3, 2006 and am finally finishing. The room is only about 50 square feet. So why did it take so long? Well, it’s been the main focus of my procrastinatory efforts, so perhaps I should be proud of my achievement in taking 16 months to finish it. There were some holes in the drywall that I stared at for months, pondering what to do about them. Someone told me about drywallschool.com, so I spent a lot of time looking at that website. When I finally got around to actually doing something, I discovered that I liked using a drywall saw so much that I had to make an immense effort not to cut more holes just for the sheer pleasure of it. I was also somewhat loathe to cover up the artwork under the wallpaper. Someone had sketched caricature-like portraits of themself and their partner, and I grew fond of the artist’s statements (“Fuck you Wanda!” and “Fuck you Wanda?”).

I used olive chartreuse on the walls and lemon yellow for the trim. I really love the combination, but I can see where some people wouldn't, and if you were (water) closeted in there for too long it might bring on some sort of mental illness, like in The Yellow Wallpaper. So far only two other people have seen the room, the carpenter and the plumber. I asked whether they like it. One answered: "They're quite the colours. I can't tell if that's green or yellow on the wall," and the other one replied, "It's whether you like it that's important." I suspect they think that my vision and taste are both on the decline, and soon I will be wearing an orange puffy polyester shirt tucked into the elastic waistband of fluorescent pink pants.

The room is funky and functional. Funktional. And it’s got my signature touch, which appears on all my bathroom designs – the door can’t open very wide, since the vanity sticks out too far. So no one very large can use the bathroom, unless they sidle in sideways. Perhaps I should start a WeightWatchers chapter at my house and instead of having a weigh-in each week, people can check whether they fit through the bathroom door.

It’s been a long haul, but I’ve learned a lot. For example, I had never heard the term “rough-in” before. Now if I feel I’m not being taken seriously enough I throw it into the conversation, and the other parties look suitably impressed (unless we’re talking about something other than toilets, in which case they look unsuitably flummoxed). On more than one occasion tears of frustration and exhaustion mixed with the olive chartreuse, while at other times I wielded the brush with anger or exhilaration. If a Like Water for Chocolate magic was present, it’s quite possible that a myriad of emotions will sweep over you when you’re in the bathroom, but don’t worry; the final one will be euphoria.

?

I was reading Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, which I got to via Sewa Yoleme’s comment on Deloney’s blog. It got me thinking about abandonment issues; not the kind that flare when lovers leave – that seems like it’s part of life’s script. (Or maybe it’s just that I need a new scriptwriter. Who writes the screenplays for Walt Disney films?) And at least when a lover deserts there’s usually some explanation provided, even if the other person doesn’t want to accept it. It’s when friends desert that it seems so incomprehensible, and hence so difficult to come to terms with. I know there’s no until-death-do-us-part covenant, but aren’t friends supposed to be forever? Or did I just get that from a Hallmark card?

The last time I talked with a certain someone was three years ago. Prior to that we had been what I thought were close friends for almost nine years. It wasn’t like one day he suddenly withdrew; it was a devolvement that took place over a period of almost a year. He had met a woman who he obviously was developing a close connection with. This didn’t bother me at all, and from what he said, it didn’t sound like she would have minded if he maintained a friendship with me. So why was it a problem for him? The last conversation we had was not our last communication. I emailed three months later asking him what he wanted to do about Nwitha, a child in Kenya who we were co-sponsoring. He said he would like to continue with that, and that he was dealing with some personal issues but would be in touch soon. I haven’t heard from him since, and have taken over all the payments for Nwitha. I met a mutual acquaintance last week and she told me that he married, and when she spotted the couple one day they looked very happy. This confuses me even more. His silence can’t be explained by alien abduction, depression, or death. He just chose not to explain it.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we found ourselves in the same place at the same time. This is an unlikely scenario, as we live in different cities. Even though I go quite frequently to the one he lives in, it has a population of over 3 million, so what are the chances? Still, if it did happen, I imagine we would both do a double-take, thinking that maybe we know the other person, and then we would realize our mistake and turn away.

The medium is the message I

The train glides past snow falling on cedars, taking me to a place where anything can happen, where I will wait for someone magically unexpected to appear. Alas, a stoic Macedonian is the only one I will meet, but never mind. Maybe the glass slipper has been lost at the back of a closet or shattered in last year’s move, but anticipation endures far longer than footwear. The day is icy, invigorating, and the streets are full of happy bustle.

Fast forward to shortly after midnight, and the enchanted wonderland has vanished. Now it’s the winter of our discontent. Misery huddles in doorways or over subway grates. The bus station has an unhealthy pallor: gray floors, gray walls, gray faces. It’s the night of the living dead, except we’ve lost our interest in human flesh. Bodies slump, until a mechanical voice announces it’s time to board the bus to who cares where.

Politic Ill Logic

Many years ago I was accepted into law school, but I deferred entrance for a year because of travel plans. Fortunately I procrastinated and didn’t get around to buying a return ticket until nine years later, which gave me plenty of time to re-think my future. I would have made a terrible lawyer. I bloviate far too much to produce anything resembling a brief. When someone presents a viewpoint contrary to mine I often see the logic in their argument and am no longer convinced about what I thought were my convictions, a bad thing in a profession where convictions count. I would have been the judicial equivalent of the hockey player who shoots the puck into their team’s net.

Occasionally I do spot the flaw in an argument however. This happened the other day, when the Ontario Minister of something-or-other explained, following a Rick Mercer report on the Zenn car – which as far as I know is the only Canadian-made car, and an electric car to boot – that the reason the Zenn car can’t be sold in Ontario is that “it’s not safe to mix high- and low-speed vehicles on the road.” I started scratching my head when I heard this, and now I have a burgeoning bald spot. Never mind that the car can be sold in the U.S. The reason I find the Ontario Minister of something-or-other’s statement so illogical is that I am told I can’t ride my bike on the sidewalk; I have to ride it on the road and be part of normal traffic flow. I went to the Zenn website and checked the car’s specifications. Its top speed is 25 mph (which they don’t bother translating into kilometers because what’s the point? They can’t sell the car to kilometer-savvy Canadians). OK, it’s not fast. But neither am I on my bike, especially since I never oil the chain and the tires are seldom properly inflated. Here’s another bit of illogicality on the part of the Ontario government. You can’t drive a car until you’re 16, but you can buy one when you’re 14 (as long as it’s not a Zenn car). Do you save up your allowance, buy a car, and ask your mom to drive it home for you? That law does, however, harmonize with the federal government’s law regarding the age of sexual consent, which is also 14. So I guess maybe a car could come in handy, even if you can’t drive it. You can have legal sex in the back seat of your legally owned car when you’re 14, and what can your parents do about it?

To get into law, medical or graduate school you have to write an exam that has a logic component. When you apply for a government job you must have to write the same type of exam, but instead of going after the high scorers, the government must recruit the people who score the lowest on the logic section. Bonus points if, when asked why you want to work in the civil service, you reply that it has been a dream of yours ever since you read Nineteen Eighty-Four. More bonus points if you don’t see any contradiction in a signatory nation to the Geneva Conventions using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and still more bonus points if you can craft euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation techniques.” And you’re definitely hired if you can write passages like the following, which help prevent anyone from discerning the illogicalities in your government’s policies.

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.*

* Judith Butler, professor of rhetoric and comparative literature, University of California 1997. This won first prize in the world’s worst writing contest.

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die

I give up. I’m trying to write an essay about Buddhist perspectives on abortion and euthanasia, but my mind or my stomach or my tastebuds keep making a break for Friday’s potluck (this is known in Buddhism as Wrong Concentration, or in my version of the eightfold path, Right Priority). I’m on dessert duty, and find myself in the midst of a delicious dilemma: which one of these should I make?

1) Carrot coconut cake with cream cheese & white chocolate icing (also contains pineapple, walnuts, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice, plus the usual workhorse ingredients like flour, baking powder, etc.); or
2) Bayou chocolate torte with bourbon and dark Belgian chocolate. Usually I don’t like chocolate and liquor together, but this one contains lots of eggs and butter so I’m willing to make an exception. Oh, I almost forgot the pièce de résistance, a raspberry-Grand Marnier coulis that’s drizzled on top of the torte. Résistance is almost futile, save for that sublime carrot being dangled in front of me.

I’m indecisive at the best of times, but when it comes to weighty issues I dither and dather and blither and blather. Before I end up as a Dr. Suessian character, please help me decide.

Where do you go to my lovely?

This needs no adornment...

Private Walter Donald Benger

Today I was leafing through the “to do” pile on my desk and came across a piece of paper on which my mother had written:

Pte Walter Donald Benger
Killed in action Aug 26 1918 (19 years)
British Military Cemetery
Vis-en-Artois
(France P.P.C.L.T.)

Walter was my mother’s uncle. I had told her I would look him up on the internet, but then the slip of paper got buried. So today I googled his name and the name of the cemetery, and found the Canadian Great War Project website. It has details on over 75,000 soldiers who fought in WWI. According to their records, Walter was 5 feet 5” tall, had a 37” chest and a 3” expansion, enlisted on May 31, 1917, and was killed in the Battle of Monchy on August 26, 1918. He’s buried in Plot #IV.I.2 in Vis-En-Artois British Cemetery, in Haucourt, France. The site also links to soldiers’ diaries that have been digitally transcribed. Unfortunately, Walter left no last words. I wonder, did he ever go to a Parisian nightclub and oogle can-can girls? Or enjoy red wine and love down by the Seine, or in red fields where the odd groan of pleasure was easily concealed amidst groans of pain? Or regret his decision to enlist?

My mother, who normally is quite Gandhian in her views on the use of violence to settle conflicts, tells me she regrets not having been born earlier so that she could have joined the Allied effort. Perhaps this isn’t that difficult to fathom. I once saw a wartime photo of a woman in France who was living on the street. All she has is a small bag of clothes and her dog. I wonder if she survived the war. I wonder if at some point she had to kill her companion in order to survive. One of Anne Frank’s friends tells about the last time she saw Anne, naked, crying, covered with lice bites. If god survived Nietzsche, he/she/it must certainly have been exterminated in one of the concentration camps.

In Japan, cherry blossoms symbolize the beauty and brevity of life. The kamikaze flew their Cherry Blossom gliders into US ships; the alternative was disembowelment in a cement bunker. Like cherry blossoms, poppies have an extravagant, ethereal beauty. I never buy a poppy, but I plant lots of them. Let’s not forget they also bloom in soils unpopulated by the dead.

Sexy flannelette lingerie

I recently discovered Dragon’s Den. It’s a Canadian show where people pitch their business ideas to a panel of five aptly-named “dragons”, all of whom are sitting on gargantuan nest eggs. I want to apologize here for stereotyping dragons; they’re not all irascible creatures. Take Puff for example. An endearing and gentle soul, although I know some cynics claim it’s because he indulges in mood-altering substances. Unlike Bill Clinton, who if we are to believe his assertions (does anyone?), doesn’t go all the way when courting White House interns, or smoking pot. Unlike Barack Obama, who, when asked if he inhaled replied: “I thought that was the point.”

But back to the dragons. If one, some or all of them like what they hear, they invest part of their gargantuan nest eggs in the venture. This happens infrequently. More often they savage the idea until there is nothing left to salvage, including the person’s dignity. I like to think it’s not because Kingston lacks a Colosseum that I watch Dragon’s Den. I like watching it for the ideas that spring up, like exuberant jack-in-the-boxes that have been compressed for too long. Take the menolith, a polished granite slab that you hold against your body if you’re having a hot flash. Once you’re post-menopausal, you can use it in your next kitchen renovation. Or as a headstone.

I’m not sure we should be trying to eliminate hot flashes though; perhaps they are the answer to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Maybe we should be inducing menopause in the entire population. Yes, even you males. If one is going to propose a radical idea it should be uber-radical, like the suggestion about putting Prozac in the water supply so that every town becomes Pleasantville. Maybe I should go on Dragon’s Den and pitch my universal menopause idea, since a certain dragonish* co-worker of mine thinks my sexy flannelette lingerie idea is ridiculous. But it’s no more ridiculous than some other things that have been marketed. Take the pants I ordered from the back of a magazine when I was going through my adolescent fat phase. They were plastic with a tube on the side where you connected a vacuum cleaner, which would suck all the air out of the pants. I’m not sure how this classified as a weight loss device; perhaps the people testing it laughed so hard that they burned scads of calories. And what about the Mark Eden bust developer? When my two best friends and I were twelve years old, we decided that we needed to do something about the sorry state of our breasts. We weren’t to be satisfied with an elegantly appointed cleavage; we were after big, raunchy tits. We found an ad for the Mark Eden Bust Developer in the back of a magazine (where I spent much of my adolescence), and ordered one. Six weeks later a notice came in the mail advising there was a package for me at the post office. My father brought home a box wrapped in a plain brown paper. I don’t remember what was listed under “Contents” on the customs form, but fortunately my father was a shy man and didn’t ask what was inside. (I had planned, if he did, to say it was a present for my mother.) That night, my friends came over and we passed the bust developer around. It was a simple device that consisted of two panels joined by a spring. You squeezed the panels together to exercise your pectorals. Either we were overzealous or the Mark Eden bust developer was shoddily manufactured, for we broke it that first night. Gone were our dreams of lavish bosoms.

If these two items made it to market, why shouldn’t my friend Dave’s idea for a new type of toilet that incorporates an art component? When you flush, the water cascades from the tank above through some sort of glassed-in thingy (he hasn’t worked out all the details yet), creating a visual effect akin to viewing Niagara Falls, or if you have a low-flow toilet, a futuristic vision of Niagara Falls when the US has commandeered all the water from the Great Lakes. Maybe he can even put little pinholes in the glassed-in thingy to simulate the effect of being sprayed by the falls. While I’m enthusiastic, no doubt the dragons would let loose a collective fire-breath that would incinerate Dave before his knees had to chance to start quavering.

If, as Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, I think a less-than-brilliant idea can generate lots of money, if great effort is put into marketing it. But that conflicts with my love of procrastination, so likely will never happen. Just stare at the pendulum going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. When I snap my fingers you will wake up and won’t remember that sexy flannelette lingerie is an absurd idea, particularly if you live in the South Pacific. You will only know that you feel compelled to go out and buy some…

*in the endearing and gentle sense

On beauty and aging

Moles and real estate have something in common: it’s all about location, location, location. Take that mole that was so unfortunate as to have been born on the wrong side of the tracks, residing on the wicked witch of the west’s nose; move it to the upscale neighbourhood of Marilyn Monroe’s cheek and it becomes a beauty spot. And just like in real estate, timing is key. If Marilyn had stayed on the market her beauty spot would have decreased in value, eventually reverting to a mole. Regardless of the descriptions we start out with - elegant tudor, sprawling estate, modest bungalow - we're all doomed to end up as fixer-uppers.

There’s a book that attempts to deal with modern-day problems from a Buddhist perspective, responding to questions like “What would the Buddha have done if he had noisy neighbours?” and “What would the Buddha have done if mice were destroying the wiring in his house?” I wonder what the Buddha would have done if he looked in the mirror one day and saw a wrinkled face staring back at him. Maybe he never had to deal with this issue, since he took refuge from the sun under a bodhi tree and remained supremely equanimous. Even if he did develop laugh lines and a furrowed brow, it probably only made him appear more rugged, like a Marlboro Buddha. I imagine his heavy meditation schedule meant he was sleep-deprived, so maybe he had to deal with dark circles under his eyes. Maybe he didn’t have a mirror. Maybe every day is a bad hair day in the land of the boddhisattvas.

I hope I can be a conscious objector in the war against aging. I don’t want to return to the battles of WWI, lobbing poison into the trenches of the enemy. Let’s all sing a lullaby to the axis of evil. Nature should be the envy of the United Nations in resolving this conflict peacefully: I age, and your vision fails.

Mediterranean Diet

Is it the salty air of the Mediterranean
that ionizes romance? Where
lovers share tender flesh and ruby wine,
dogs greet one another with tails a-whirl
anticipating carefree one-night stands
and even the lighthouse darts come-hither looks
at boats that rock with joy.

Is this why people living here
enjoy long and healthy lives?
Or is it because, as dieticians remind us,
they eat lots of fruits and vegetables
and consume monounsaturated fats?

Olives are good for the heart she says.
so is love, he replies.