Gettin' a move on.

I'd always been scared to live alone. I would get quite worked up about it if pressed for reasons, because I felt it was an unnatural state to exist in-no one to chat with in the kitchen? No one to share cleaning duties with? No one to borrow a banana from? It struck me that single dwellers lived in a kind of social void that was unhealthy and irritatingly selfish. I would get lonely just thinking about it. Which is not to say I didn't. It's inevitable that when you live with a gamut of people, from one other, to seven others, some lovely, some certifiable, you will contemplate getting away from it all. You will imagine a large main floor one bedroom with room for a studio and a pony, a backyard for your dog to play in, and friends over for dinner all the time in your spacious and ever-stocked kitchen, complete with wine rack and boughs of hanging garlic and herbs growing on the sills of large, eastward facing windows. Yes? But for me, fear and finances kept me in the realm of multiple-dweller abodes, and for the most part, quite happily.

It was last year that I changed my entire outlook. After all the 'bumping heads' with roommates over the years, and being in a semi-new relationship which needed privacy and space, I decided to move out. On my own. Only I was with someone, and I just assumed he would be at my house, or I would be at his house, so I wouldn't really be alone. I wasn't scared, I was exhilarated, I felt brave and independant. A week before I was scheduled to move to my fabulous basement apartment for one plus guest, we broke up. And so, freshly single, freshly moved and living alone, I spent the better part of my first week in my basement apartment terrified. Quaking in fear amidst strange refridgerator sounds and the scraping of chairs across the upstairs floors that were my ceilings. I'd even bought a double bed, figuring it was time to upgrade from my childhood single mattress, because I had a boyfriend. After it was delivered, and I'd assembled it, minus one missing bolt(I'm still waiting for the whole thing to fall apart) I lay there, alone, and let it in. The loneliness that issues from solitary living. There was more than enough room for it in my bed. I wondered if I'd made a terrible mistake. I wanted my mom.

But a funny thing happened as I struggled along, alone. I found big reserves of time, time I could use any way I wanted! I could write, I could draw, I could use all the hot water. I had to make an effort now to see my friends, but without the social safety net of roommates, I did exactly that. I made my neighbourhood a home, by going to the same fruit market every week, where there are usually more flies than fruit. Or to the video store across the street, where the fellows always let me off my late fees and laugh at my corny jokes. Or to the cd/book shop down the way where the employees are all bashful politeness and occasionally steer me away from bad recordings I pick up. Relations with my landlord and his wife have been terrific, they took on my various pest control problems as their own, and in return for my never complaining about the frequent, early morning furniture moving, they never complain about my frequent, all day loud music. This living alone lark has grown on me, and grown me up. I've come to rely on myself for organizing my time, entertainment, toilet paper.

But there is one downside to this kind of freedom and independance. And that is, that with every relationship, whether with another person, or just yourself, there is the tendancy to get a little too comfortable. To let loose those behaviours you were taught to suppress for the benefit of social progress and development. For example, there is this pair of pants. They are made of flannel. That's not the worst part. They are made of flannel, and I have loafed in them so much, the bum reaches down to the back of my knees. It's not pretty, and I wear them all the time. I come in from work, take off the pants I'm wearing, and on go the saggy bum pants. I would never wear such a thing in public, but in my house, there's no need for style. I have no one to impress here. There is also the eating of food in the fridge. Yes, I mean opening the fridge, getting a fork, and opening a container of food and eating it with the fridge door open. Why I can't sit down like a normal person at a table is beyond me, it's like I'm fooling myself into thinking I'm not really eating if I'm still in the fridge, which is supposed to be a decision-making area only. There is the not-as-infrequent-as-I'd-like renegade hair removal, grooming for the sake of avoiding social humiliation, like errant chin hairs, or freakishly long eyebrows, like Larry Hagman/J.R. Ewing on Dallas. And there's the dancing. I know we all do this, turn music up really loud and dance in our rooms, but this is the reason I don't dance at shows or clubs, because I know what I look like when I let loose, and it's alarming. If I was dating me, I'd be a little turned off by now. I'd want to put some of the mystery back where I found it.

I find myself missing those impromptu chats or nights out with roommates. I worry I'm becoming too set in my ways, too unyielding, too independant. It's really kind of fun calling home to ask if you need to buy milk, or if you should pick up a movie. Or when a roommate crosses the border of cohabitant into the kingdom of friendship, that's a bit of magic. I suppose it's a good thing, to get the chance to really see yourself uncensored, unguarded, unkempt. I think everyone should try it. And at the end of the day, it is lovely to come home and strip off all the trappings and pretenses of control, out of plain sight. But it's far more humbling, somewhat endearing, and definately braver to let yourself be really seen. Just as you unstylishly, imperfectly are.

Debunking the myth of cool

In the social pecking order of youth, I'd never been "cool". I blame, in part, my parents, for doing their most unintentional best to ensure my sister and I were never hip. We weren't allowed to wear denim. Ever. We weren't permitted to wear anything with a logo, for my father's fear that we would become walking advertisements for unworthy clothing companies. We couldn't watch television during the school week, except for Fridays, when we were allowed to watch both Dallas and The Love Boat. We couldn't hang out at the mall with friends, or go to rock concerts. My parents did this completely out of love, out of wanting us to be individuals, thinking independantly from the crowd. In hindsight, I really respect this brand of parenting. At the time, though, I really resented it. I just wanted to belong. I didn't want the harrassment that was meted out to me by the school bullies for being so shy and awkward. I walked with my eyes cast low, the weight of my misery pushing my head down deep into my shoulders. I hid my pimpled gawkiness between the two curtains of hair that hung in my face. I ate lunch in the school bathroom, with spirals of toilet paper and sexually explicit graffiti for companionship. I hid in my pained nerd vortex. I wanted to be invisible.

They say your teenage years are supposedly the best years of your life. Really? Had I lost my government-issued manual on adolescent enjoyment? Because the bluebirds of my teenage years persistently shat on my shoulders. My clouds didn't have silver linings , only rusted ones. It wasn't so much that my emotional mountains were insurmountable, it was that I just wasn't very cool. Coolness dogged me at every turn. And in high school, it's everything. This all-pervasive myth of cool is what drives us, what aligns us with our cliques, what determines how happy we will be from one day to the next. It's an indescribeable quality that some people genuinely possess, while the rest of us scramble to shopping malls in vain hopes of purchasing the illusion. For me, the idea of being cool was really the absence of loneliness. It was the recognition and acceptance of being different. It was, in reality, a cruel mirage. I was locked in social purgatory, and my only escape was growing up.

But the thing is, even with the passing of time and the coming of age, we are no more immune to the need for cool as we were in high school. We simply have a more disposeable income with which to camouflage our inner, shivering nerds. We can legally drink away our insecurities, blather on about the miseries of irrelevant jobs and opine our socially acceptable left-of-center political views. We can admire Mexican-trucker couture one season, only to replace it with old-man avante-chic the next, outfitting ourselves with fleeting styles made from scorn and irony. We approach new ideas with almost vampirical desperation. But on some level, we've realized that cool cannot be bought. It is an energy that can't be harnessed or co-opted. It's a visceral element, one that depends on its shape-shifting mystique for survival. We've confused style for cool. We've created advertising and marketing wet dreams with our confusion, and they, in turn, have freed us of millions of our dollars spent trying to get it right. Coolness is not, as consumerist culture would have us believe, the one-way ticket to respect and universal love. It is not freedom from public scrutiny and judgement. So what is it? What is this idea that promises us a little piece of heaven at the cost of so much social hell?

I was thinking about it as I walked home from a coffeehouse this morning, a sloshing take-out cup in my hand, a newspaper under my arm, and as I watched the random strangers passing by, it hit me. Coolness is the complete lack, either of posturing or awareness, of 'cool'. There's no such thing. It's been this social boogeyman for as long as I've taken breaths, held me hostage, kept me foolish, and the whole time, it's simply been a fake! Golly, why couldn't I have figured this out sooner? I could have erased so much self-loathing and doubt! Maybe those years really would have been the best of my life. Who knows. And really, who cares. Those years are gone now, and I survived them, with relatively few battle scars. It's taken me 27 years to learn how to walk with my head up. To look people in the eye and feel I have something of value to say. To have the sand to be a little bit different. And it's as close to cool as I've ever felt.

ex, why, zed.

Jason Steadman. That was the name of my first boyfriend. He was nineteen years old, and I met him one night at a seedy rooming house that sheltered ex-street kids and various welfare fraudists and substance abusers past and present. I was going through a time in my life where my home life was so painfully functional, I simply had to tamper with it to conform to my non-conformist, existentially heartaching friends. Jason was into Deep Purple and drugs, had long hair and wore tie-dye(eeek!). But I didn't care. I was fifteen years old, and I had a boyfriend. I was one of those girls in high school who had somewhere to be on weeknights, someone to give me illicit hickeys that I would make little attempt to hide(the elbow-jab hint of sexual activity-scandalous!), someone to buy me wine coolers...My first love affair lasted a lengthy three months, and when I broke up with him, I was so wracked with the guilt of inflicting his tears that I gave him forty dollars for beer.

After Jason, I had several short term, ill-fated relationships. There was Bryan, who had no intention of ever taking me out in public, or loving me. There was John, who I lived with for one month, and who broke up with me by moving away, and taking all my belongings with him, never to be seen again. How I cried over these unworthy fellows! Each time, I vowed the next time would be different, but I kept dating a different hue of the same colour. I was drawn in by their damaged childhoods, their dark moods, their fixer-upper potential. I wanted only to be their saving grace. In teenage years and adult retrospection, love can be quite selfish. It can be fickle, volatile, and awfully temporary. Our first forays into love are often quite a far and frequent cry from the fairy tales we grew up hoping for.

Then I met someone in high school, and over the next six years, we would shift from a true love, into a vivid hatred, and then into a quietly acid complacency. This relationship imprinted me, changed me, scarred me. As with most of us who live and date in Toronto, I can't seem to throw a stone far enough without hitting someone who knows my ex. Occasionally, I see him. He walks past me like a shadow of something once sacred, and I'm thrown by how someone who could once mean so much can now be a stranger with a familiar face. The process of reclaiming once mutual property, like songs, or restaurants, neighbourhoods and friends, is endless. There is always some reminder, some backwash of memory to be triggered and endured.

So what good can we glean from our exes and the affairs that sour like milk? What purpose do they serve if their memories mainly cause twinges and pangs and upset? Who we chose to love speaks volumes about who we are; Are we still looking for someone to fix? Are we afraid to be alone? Are we shivering with anticipation at the prospect of seeing them? Or is it really about how they see us? Maybe exes are simply barometers of where we are, emotionally or otherwise, in life. And if we're lucky, we grow up in between the spaces of lovers. Our standards and hopes rise monumentally. Our capacity for forgiveness expands, and we become more accepting and open to imperfections. We are less afraid of being academic about the formulas of people and emotion that yield us the greatest happiness. We stop fixating on the aesthetics of desire, and become braver with our vulnerability.

Lots of us rise triumphantly out of the ashes of a troubled love. We redefine who we are, which is easier when you aren't in a relationship. Me, I started my own business, and learned how to be my own girl. I take myself to the movies I want to see, and sleep in my own bed among the cracker crumbs and piles of pajamas behind the pillows. I get to cross contaminate the peanut butter and jam jars with the same knife, something that used to drive my last boyfriend crazy!, and I get to inhabit a space free of compromise( a treat which may be kind of hard to give up one day when I'm dating again) And I've had a chance to commit to memory some of the lessons I've gleaned from loving the men I've loved best;
Never date cheap people-anyone who freely and miserably monitors every last penny is usually stingy with their affections as well.
Don't go to bed mad, just go home. There is no greater loneliness than sleeping next to your partner with an ocean of anger and bedsheets between you.
Date someone who will be your best friend.
Always trust your gut. Sometimes, it's not just nerves, or last night's chicken curry rolling over, it's that instinct that is urging you to be saved, from headaches, heartaches, and sometimes even from yourself.

If I'm to use my exes as a barometer, I think I'm finally heading in the right direction...

Part-time waitress, full-time grrrl?

I was sitting at work, moderately busy with the dinner rush, scribbling notes about what makes a good waitress, and whether I was one or not. I was recalling all the examples of my shaky server instincts, like timing, something that makes a bad waitress-the poor man who scalded his throat because I asked him how his food was right when he was spooning in some freshly heated soup. Or of how you can't fool some customers with shortcuts, that there really is a difference between Coke and Diet Coke(who knew?!?) as I found out tonight by a horrified diner. Sigh. The night wore on, and towards the end, this couple came in, and turned my night upsidedown.

I am not one to judge on appearances, in as much as my socialization allows me. Yes, they stank of already consumed booze(or perhaps they bathed in it?) And yes, they did look like the stereotypical inhabitants of a mobile home facility. But it's just my way to treat everyone with a little graciousness unless proven wrong. Sure, they were suspect, the man paid for his coffee with a roll of nickels, and they both kept pretending to take calls on cellphones that didn't appear to be ringing. And yes, red lights flashing, the man seemed a bit off when he went to the back to look at some empty jazz cd cases. I kept a watchful eye, made sure he knew I was watching him, and listened patiently as he told me of his mother being in the hospital with a short time left to live(really? I'm very sorry) and of his frequent trips to our bathroom because of his kidney stones(yes, they can be quite a nuisance, can't they!) But, for the most part, I let them be. Because I didn't want to be that kind of person. Mistrustful because they weren't dressed like 'downtown' folk.

But as they were leaving, something didn't feel right. All my senses were heightened, each one calling on the others to man all stations, batten down the hatches, call the captain. It was the oddest thing, but from all the way at the back of the restaurant, I heard his fingers in my cash jar. I heard two coins clink together, and I knew. I just knew. I got out of my seat, and the woman came up to me trying to distract me, "Ok, so we're all paid up? Oh don't get up, take a rest, we're fine", but I ignored her, ran to my cash jar and saw all the bills missing. I don't really remember any thought process taking place, don't remember any swirl of colour or inner rage rising like a tidal wave. I just ran. Ran after the man and screamed at him. "Give me my money back. Give me my money back, I know you stole it." He looked at me blankly, and I repeated my instructions, adding a few salty words my mother would blanche at if she heard me. He reached into his fanny pack(I mean really, who wears a fanny pack for Pete's sake!) and pulled out some bills, they floated like smoke in the cold winter air, and fell to the ground. "All of it," I hissed, "Give me all of it, every last dollar." He reached in and more money fell. I told him to get out and never come back again, not before I wrung the wad of money in his face and said "I have to work really hard for this money!", (which isn't entirely true, because most of the time, the restaurant is empty and I'm doodling in my notebook) I firmly ushered his lady out, and stood there, clasping my money, shaking.

I was prepared to hurt him. I was prepared to throw a soup can at his head, like in Crocodile Dundee(don't pretend you didn't watch the movie!), to behave like the inner banshee we all subdue most of the time. I didn't think for one second that he could have a knife, or that there were two of them against me. All I could think was "No. I've had enough." I was pushed to that place you never want to push the quiet ones to, because even we don't know what rage we're capable of. Women aren't really taught how to manifest anger, we're taught to tame it, to knit it or bake it or yoga it away. And that's wrong. We have to learn how to be effectively mad, we have to learn that sometimes, there is no room for docility, there's no time to wait for someone else to save us.

And so, miles away from caring whether I'm a good waitress or not, I've realized my voice isn't always too quiet to be taken seriously, and that sometimes, beyond rosy cheeks and wide eyes, I am a force to be reckoned with.

Rejection, have you met my friend fear?

There's a fellow. There's always some fellow who I imaginary date and feel imaginary happy with. It happens in an instant. A fellow comes into my work, and with him, he carries that thing, that 'I'm comfortable in my own skin' thing that draws me in. He takes my breath away, not in a Romantic novel sort of way, but in a literal, uncomfortable, I-need-my-air-back way. I blush and try to recapture the composure he's stolen from me. He is handsome, but I honestly don't care, so long as he just keeps wearing himself like a favourite sweater. He's got something lovely I hope is contagious, some sweetness I want to be near.

One day, I force myself to talk to him, because the possibility of letting him slip away and be unbearably great somewhere far away from me is impossibly unbearable. I'm aware the whole time we're talking that the words are slipping out of my mouth like wet soap, that he's making something physical and silly to happen to me, that maybe he could become more than daydreams to me one day.

He'll come in and out of my daily life, and have no idea how many times he has imaginary held my hand.

Months go by.

There are other fellows, some gentlemen, some not, who try to woo me in the meanwhile. I hate knowing already that they are not for me, but you know when you know. I go on some bad dates and try to stumble graciously out of second bad dates without hurting anyone. I have a boyfriend for a little while, and he is handsome as can be, and smart, and really wants to know me, but he's also a little too selfish and hurt from past loves, and we break up. Then come some serious changes to my life, and there is little room for daydreams and the fellows who inhabit them, because my heart is instead breaking for someone closer to home who needs me.

And then, through some weird snap of luck, the fellow somehow, after two years of intermittent and imaginary courtship, is in my life in a real and unromantic capacity, and he's sitting in front of me,talking to me, asking my opinion on things, and it all seems so unreal and tenuous because all I want to do is impress him. I want him to think I'm neat. And in moments of bravery and feeling hot, I convince myself I'm going to take some kind of risk. Bolstered by coffee and the advice of encouraging friends, I prepare, look at all the angles. I even imagine the conversation we might have(don't pretend you don't)

me: Hi, um, you there, do you want to go out sometime?(a little vague, lacking finesse, I know, but I'm nervous and trying not to pee myself like the perps do on NYPD Blue when they're being interrogated)
him:Oh, geez, (because I think he's the type to say 'geez') I'm terribly flattered, but, um, I don't think it's a good idea...
or
him: Oh, gosh, that's awfully nice of you, really, but I'm seeing someone.
or
him: Oh, good heavens. No.(head shaking vehemently)
or, finally,
him: EEEEUUUWWWWW.

I know. He won't say that. But this is what I do when I'm scared. I try to familiarize myself with the negatives, examine them critically, because maybe if I get used to them, they won't scare me so much. Right? Right? Only I am scared, pull-the-covers-up-tight scared of the possibility that he will reject me. Scared of being so naked with my want, and naked with my disappointment. Scared of what's on the other side of rejection. I'm so scared of the hundred or so crash and burn scenarios I've 'familiarized' myself with that I'm a 27 year old with an imaginary friend...

So how do you do it? How do you get over the fear of rejection?
Do you try to understand it?
Do you just say it really fast;"doyouwannagoonadatewithmesometime?"
Do you try to talk yourself out of wanting someone?

Perhaps what it all boils down to isn't his wants or his response, or anything about him really. Maybe taking risks isn't about being at the mercy of someone else's opinion of you. Maybe it's just as simple as thinking enough of yourself to go after the things you want...

The silencing of Peter Pan

I've thought a lot lately about why I named my blog after a quote from The Outsiders. When I first watched this movie, in my early teens, it had little impact on me. I would never have said it was one of my favourite films, nor would I ever have quoted it to express something that is being left unsaid, something that is being lost in our society. It was just a movie about the greasers and the soc's, with an impressive roster of the young, male heartthrobs Hollywood had to offer us at the time, playing it young and misunderstood on the wrong side of the tracks. So I rented it the other day, to refresh my memory, to understand why this movie's relevance surfaced after all these years. The wary adult in me snickered at the tight jeans and corny lines, the awkward overacting. But the other part of me marvelled at just how natural the awkwardness was. This movie was made at a time when kid actors played kids, and were allowed to let some of their own pimpled angst seep into the roles. The authenticity, the lack of pretention, made the message of being safekeepers of innocence all the more potent and gave weight and validity to the emotional lives of kids.

Kids are heartbreakingly easy to damage, their ideas and naivetes entirely too vulnerable to prey upon. Having a childhood is a necessity. It is the temporary and unparalled freedom to indulge in awe and curiosity, to feel and act on emotion unfiltered by propriety. And as we age, and adults guard, guide, misunderstand and envy our youthful dispositions, we bristle and resist the interference, protecting our wonder and freedom to explore it in the context of an adult world. Drinking booze and pretending to like the taste, feeling the first hazy fog of pot, understanding sexual potency and identity, groping it in the dark. This is the electric thrill, playing adult with the closeted sensibility of a child, and it marks that time in our lives where we straddle the line of innocence and maturity, and are forced to give one up for the other. It is the first choice of real consequence we have to make in our lives.

But it's a choice that is riddled with interference.We are a society crackling with contradictions. We are obsessed with youth, but we impose maturity and adult situations on kids when they are scarcely out of the womb. We tantalize them with sexuality and the power structure it operates within through visual mediums like movies and television and magazine ads, and are somehow shocked when they display a willingness to participate in it. We are loathe to putting kids and sex in the same sentence, but are unable to accept our complicity in doing just that. Kids are being ruthlessly seduced into relinquishing their childhoods for the illusion of respect, to grow into lives shaped like beer commercials. We are hesitant to explore the depths and complexities that come with being a child, and scratch our heads with confused defeat when we fail to understand the surges of aggression and violence, high risk behaviour and emotional acidity they exhibit. Where has the joy of being a kid gone? When were books replaced with video games and television, when did materialism replace idealism? What's the mad rush to grow up?

I count myself as one of the lucky ones. I had a real childhood. I have the pictures and recollections to assure me. There were long car rides to Niagara Falls, ending in the consumption of countless cheese sandwiches and Oreo cookies. There were walks to the library every Saturday afternoon, holding my father's hand. There were skating parties in winter, all rosy cheeks and hot chocolate and avoiding Wilson, the boy who pestered me with his affections every year. There were movie nights with the old projector and a pull-down screen in our living room. There were magical nights sitting on lawnchairs on our backporch, watching the skies turn from day to night, swaddled in blankets and parents' arms under the watch of stars. And there were days to follow that were filled with inner torment, depression, migraines, acne, arguments, struggles with authority, and early dalliances with adult vices, all symptomatic of growing up. Like Holden Caulfield, Ponyboy Curtis, Thomas Penman, any of my coming-of-age anti-heroes, I wanted to be brave enough to question the pressures of 'cool', eye them through critical lenses. To hurt and act with quiet tenderness, and be a little bit delicate. To be weary of both adults and my peers. To never fully grow up and out of wonder.

And so, years later, I am still straddling the line. I can feel the ligaments slowly tearing as the opposing sides of youth and aging pull away under my feet, but I'm resisting, still hanging on to every last shred of gold.

Luddite lite

It is the early nineteenth century, and a huge fire is roaring in a town square, in the counties of Cheshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire. Amidst the crackling and yelling and jeering, men are throwing pieces of machinery into the flames, giving voice and visual power to their deteriorating standard of living. At the heart of the Industrial Revolution, a group of angered English craftsmen, championed by Ned Ludd, formed a counter-revolution called Luddism. They were fighting for their rights to not be replaced and made obsolete by technology. Their rebellion, peppered with human cost, was contained and eradicated just a few years later.

I've always considered myself a moderate when it comes to technological innovation and progress. The washing machine:good. Nuclear missiles:bad. And I've always been just a tad smug that I haven't succumbed to the legions of cell phone have-ers, i-pod wearers, the car users. Somehow, to me, these intentional exclusions have made a statement, that I refuse to immerse myself in the ocean of the technological frontier. I am, and always have been, content just to get a toe wet.

Only it's not just a toe. I've been in denial. Chocolate covered, smug denial. Because technological dependance has crept into my life without the flashing red lights and warning signals, and made itself at home. I have become hopelessly addicted to my computer. I originally received the computer as a gift, to get me writing. Internet came shortly after, and I set up e.mail more for the novelty than anything else. Slowly, e.mail became a shortcut to communicating with friends when travelling. It managed to maintain the relevancy and timeliness that often got lost in hand written letters. When I returned from my travels, e.mail pretty much replaced the phone. It became a way to still 'talk' to and 'love' my ex-boyfriend without all the irritants of talking to and loving him in person. It became a means of storytelling to my friends, with the added bonus of self-editing. And it had became another, more powerful extension of my voice, a voice at times too soft and timid to be heard.

The crux of my addiction became apparent around Christmas time last year. Amidst a bout of depression, I was sending e.mails fast and furious, not because I had so many things to say, but because I wanted, no, I needed, the response. I'd barely touched my phone, except to check for messages. I would check e.mail about 17 times a day. Even when I knew, in the back of my mind, no one had written me, such was my mania, my need for that fix of attention. I would get irritable and sad when there were no new e.mails. I would get angry at no one in particular; "You don't get it," I'd huff at Yahoo, "Checking e.mail is really just a pit stop on the way to Google." But I had nothing to Google. I wasn't fooling Yahoo, and I wasn't fooling myself. I needed to take a step back, cure myself, find some perspective and balance. Did the Luddites have the right idea? And did they have a website?

What would my life be without technology? It couldn't be all bad. I could teach myself macrame. I could take up the lute. I could make my own tortillas in the stone oven I'd build. I could participate in barn raisings, or write letters with feather pens and squid ink and deliver them on horseback. And yes, I could read books, and, I suppose, stretch my imagination. And really, who doesn't look better in candlelight? But then I remind myself of the rosy side of tech innovations. Waffle irons. Listening to old radio plays like The Shadow. Fish and veggies on the George Forman grill. Coffee makers. The CBC on a cold and wintery day. And keeping in touch, at a moment's notice, with loved ones, by phone, by e.mail. Because at the end of all the technological madness that can swallow us, in between lunacy and Luddism, is simply the constant and fragile human need to feel anchored by someone else. It's to accept that while we may not be able to slow or steady the manic pace of our daily lives, we can use with moderation the tools we've fashioned, technological or not, to stay close, stay decent, stay humane. The Luddites, bless them, fought for this choice and failed. We don't have to.

lights, camera, quiet.

I remember having a fight with my sister once(and only once!) in which she told me I was too finicky and stubborn, that I liked things "just so", to my detriment. I remember blustering and reddening and fighting that idea, but it stuck in my head for many months after. And I think that's because it's true. I am the postergirl for retentiveness.

Nowhere is this more obvious than when I go to see a movie at a theatre. I love everything about movies and the experience of seeing them. Getting caught up in this jumbo-sized fantasy world that may or may not portray real life. The smell of fresh popcorn. The cozy plush seats. The movie magazines you get for free at the ticket booth. Bathtub sized orange pop. And then, when the lights dim, and the opening credits begin, the hush of silence. Or not...

Sometimes, very chatty people go to movies. This is a fact. Now, a little chit-chat, a necessary clarification of plot or character detail here and there, really, not a problem. But then there are the literal observers, the ones so into the movie, they almost become one with it, giving a play-by-play of what's happening, to no one in particular;
"Oh my goodness, and now he's wiping his glasses with the shirt of his wife's lover, and he doesn't even know!"
"Look, there's someone lurking in the shadows, and oh, ohhhh, he's going to attack Al Pacino!"
"Did you see that? Did you see how she just threw that wine in his face? Fantastic. I could never do that."
These people are usually audible no matter where they are sitting in relation to you, so moving seats isn't much of an option. And asking them to not be so emotionally participatory would be mean, so I usually suffer in the silence of repressed frustration.

There are also the popcorn rustlers. There is, to be sure, an unspoken etiquette for eating popcorn during a movie. It's almost choreography with me. Grab a handful, look around quickly for withering looks from between hunched shoulders and eat. Grab another handful, repeat process as necessary. It's no one's fault really, that popcorn comes in such rustle-y paper bags, but a small awareness of the noise it generates is nice. I went to a movie once with my sister, and we sat about two seats away from one of the worst offenders of this activity I'd ever seen. Clearly, she hadn't seen a proper meal in several days, and this big bag of popcorn was the first real sustenance she'd been allowed. There it all was, acute rustling, spittle flying, speed and determination in every movement, an alarming lack of time elapsing between each re-grab. She even rifled through the creases at the bottom of the bag for errant kernals that had escaped her hunger-charged hands. My sister and I exchanged looks of disbelief and wonder. We were in the presence of a professional.

There are some endearing noise infractions, though. I don't want to sound like a complete grump. I do kind of warm up inside when the bad guy gets his dues, and the audience, so elated and feeling so served by the tidy and poetic justice only a movie can deliver, start clapping. The retentive me wants to shush them(they can't really hear you in there...) but I try to keep it to myself. I'm also warmed by the collective audience responses, laughs at the funny bits, sharp intakes of breath at the scary bits, lumps in the throat that we pass off as coughs at the sad bits. We're processing the same emotions at the same time, which is a unifying experience.

For me, the silence in a movie theatre, the embrace of darkness, the larger-than-life screen, this is the magic used to make us suspend real life and disbelief and be pulled in. And it's a bit of a curse that my suspension is as fragile as it is. I really don't want to be the shush-er. I don't want to be the turn-around-and-glare person. I don't want to be the inwardly screaming quietnik I seem to be. I know my intense need for total escape makes me a volatile movie companion. I have a ways to go before I inhabit a place of careless abandon and surrender. But maybe that's where the real magic of the movies begins...

of mice and women

It's six-ish in the morning. I actually awoke at five, and attempted a different blog, but it featured on the heavy side with genocide and political activism, and I decided that was just too heavy, both for five in the morning, (why would I get out of bed? The world is a mess!) and for my first post. And so, I'm going to write about the reason I got up so early. And it's not nearly as heavy as geopolitical strife.

I live alone, in a fabulous two room basement apartment. No, really, I'm not being sarcastic, it's fabulous for a basement! Anyways, when I first moved in last summer, I discovered that the illusory element of living alone below ground level is that you are never truly alone. My first visitors came in the form of ants. Now, I'm not talking about a few sprinkled here and there in various corners of the house. I'm talking colonies. Primarily, I was alarmed, started liberally applying boric acid to their headquarters, put the garbage out nightly, and hoped for the best. No dice. I began appealing to them, asking them nicely to avoid the parameters of my house, maybe they would like the next door neighbours' house better, so much more room?, more garbage readily available for sorting through? Still, they persisted. I scolded, yelled, began attacking masses of them with toilet paper wads, but there seemed to be an endless supply of them replenishing those lost to the bathroom tissue massacres that were occuring daily. All I could do was pray for winter, when the armies would cease and leave me alone.

And sure enough, winter came, and the ants disappeared. Solitary living resumed, and while I craved a pet of some kind, preferably a dog, maybe a Shepherd-Husky mix, I knew it was for the best not having one. And then, something else came along. It started as a quickly scurrying object across my kitchen floor. I shrieked, much like women do in the movies, which I always thought I was above, and went on with my day. Then, it became rustling into the night. Upon the sound of plastic bags being foraged through, I found my now lax daily garbage removal was rearing consequences worse than ants. I decided there was no other way but to confront the fact that I had a mouse. Maybe several. Having learned with the ants that there is no real way to reckon with a pest, I decided the Zen thing would be to accept the mouse and establish some ground rules. Upon discovering the mouse at my feet one night as I sat at my computer, we decided, mainly I decided, that we could happily co-exist so long as we were never in the same room at the same time. The mouse would have to try leaving less turd deposits under my kitchen sink, and would not be allowed to rustle through the garbage past one at night.

It's one thing to think you have control over a mouse. It's entirely another when you realize the mouse has severe behavioural problems, and simply will not respect authority. We are frequently in the same room at the same time, despite my hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and aggressive-assertive voice of discouragement. The turd deposits continue to multiply, regardless of my now regular efforts to Fantastik them away. And as for giving me peace after one at night, well, who am I fooling? Try leaving a kernel(really, just one!) of microwaved popcorn in a metal bowl on top of the stove. Just try it, and see if you don't jump out of your skin at three in the morning when it crashes to the floor because somebody just had to eat.

I have forcibly named the mouse Herbert, and have deluded myself I have a willing pet. He, in turn, has convinced both of us that he is the real owner of the apartment, despite my paying the rent, and pretty much establishes when we go to sleep and when we wake up. It's an imperfect relationship, for sure. But then I tell myself, all relationships have their hiccups. I can't help wishing it were summer again though. Those ants sure were quieter.