Phil and Ope

I've been thinking a lot these days about hard luck and dumb luck and lack of luck. I've been thinking about God, and how I sometimes wished I believed in one, because I think God could make sense out of most of the pain and hard luck we find ourselves fused to. Ask anyone, or just trust me, unemployment/lack of money, caring for an ill relative, battling yet another round of depression and having difficulty finding any sense of direction in life really incurs a bit of wear and tear on the old heart. It scuffs your sanity a little.

Lately, I've been a tangle of endless tears and raw, exposed nerves. I've become the most overly emotional person I could dream up. I am moved, sometimes deeply, watching Oprah, her generosity touches me(go, sister.) I get angry, really grindingly angry at the guests on Dr. Phil who provoke his no-nonsense commentary, I find myself inwardly cheering when he calls someone arrogant or selfish to their face(such honesty! such integrity! such bluntness!) I get weepy listening to one of my favourite bands, Explosions in the Sky, so much so that sometimes, I have to turn them off because the words of the book I'm reading start swimming and blurring and I can't warm the shivers on my arms.

And I fall in love, harder and faster than anyone I know.

It don't take much to warm me to you. Look me in the eyes and ask me how my day's going. Blush or stammer a bit(show me there are more of us out there.) Make me laugh, it only takes one good laugh, I know, I'm easy that way. Love dogs better than cats. Love music more than talking academic about music. Have beautiful hands. Look like you're keeping a really good secret. Be just a little sweet, no matter how many hard edges you've accumulated.

While I presently have many love interests(with such slight criterium, how could I not have an army of infatuations?), my latest love is a first for me. I've fallen for someone famous. This doesn't happen to me. I consider myself immune to the carefully manufactured and groomed charms of celebrity types. I'm fairly pragmatic when it comes to love, I don't usually allow myself much time to moon over some poor sod who doesn't appreciate me, or who is wrong, wrong, wrong for me in any relevant way. I like believing there's a perpetual supply of gentle, real men to keep company with. What's the point of wanting someone who you only want to change? Or wanting someone you'll never meet? And yet, there's a big, slobbery romantic in me, wanting to squash all my boring logic like a bug.

I met my current love, David Gordon Green, on the dvd commentary of one of his movies(hahaha it's like we were on a date or something!) I liked his voice right off the bat. He's a writer/director, and has this lovely and slight southern drawl. Even more delightful are those sharp bursts of prose issued in that slight drawl, a man who speaks like he writes or writes like he speaks. And what he speaks and writes and sees is the fragility and resilience of human beings and the environments they occupy. He sees beauty in things decrepit, rusted and worn down. He sees the reason in slowing down a moment, way, way down, and taking it in before you blink it into another moment. I proceeded to rent all his movies, and listen to all the commentaries, and in the span of a week and a half, I felt like I had an idea about what maybe 1/100th of this fellow was about.(even within my grandest delusions, I know what I know and what I don't know) And that fraction was enough to throw myself into a series of make-believe scenarios that alternate between being excruciatingly embarrassing and thoroughly enjoyable.

"So, tell me," Oprah asks, "how did you meet?" David and I are sitting on one of her plush couches, a studio full of breath-holding women(and a few captive men) awaiting what is inevitably going to be some kind of romantic response;
"Well," I start, and David jumps in"She wrote this screenplay and sent it to me. My agent was like, 'David, you have to read this.' And I fell in love with her words. I had to meet her." The way he says it, with such sincerity, makes it sound like he had no choice. I am blushing and trembling a little, there is a collective murmur among the audience. We're holding hands. I pipe up; "I just knew, Oprah, from the first time I heard him speak on the dvd, that I'd found something, someone real." Oprah looks at the audience. "Can y'all believe this? It's like the movies!" We all have a good laugh at this. Her teeth are very white.

"Listen," Dr. Phil says, "you have to stop feeding these unhealthy fantasies. They're inhibiting your ability to create real ideas about relationships." Tears are welling in my eyes, damnit, I've put on liquid eyeliner for the show, which will run in ugly, black streams if I don't steady my wobbly chin. Focus on the moustache. Look for crumbs in the moustache. "But Dr. Phil, I don't want to abandon hope. It's all I've got." He looks at the audience and back at me. "You have to realize life isn't like it is in the movies. This isn't a movie, and you have to stop enabling yourself to live with a poorly planned life map. C'mon now. You have to get real." Everyone nods solemnly at me.

I know. I know!

I know already that I have to find a job, that I have to find some way to keep myself from falling away at the seams, that life isn't fair. I know there's a Second and Third World who are hungrier than I'll ever be, that good people get sick just like not-so-good people. That places like Guantanamo Bay exist, as does child porn, spousal abuse, drug addiction. Sometimes birds just fall out of their nests. And I don't know why. I don't have a God to explain it, and luck is just too arbitrary to base a faith on.

So maybe my current state of hyper-emoting is a coping mechanism, a way of dealing with the senselessness that pervades daily life. My being touched, angry, weepy, is a release. And my love of being in love with love, (Hollywood style, on an indie budget) is a relic of childhood that I'm holding on to like a ratty toy, to remind me of more innocent days. Whatever it is, is it so bad? Is it unhealthy to feel everything so vividly, to hope so ferociously, to play pretend so boundlessly? Because I need to right now, to support and distract me from the storm cloud that follows me like a shadow overhead, threatening eruption. I'm entering new and scary territory in my life right now. I've become a person who knows better, but doesn't really care. And I tell myself that as long as I've got friends who get me, music to sound out my moods, and the hope of David Gordon Green, I'll muddle my way through lofty pipedreams and harder days to come.

It doesn't get more real than this.

the quiet art of breath-taking

Car horns honk. Dogs bark at hissing cats. An ambulance is going somewhere in the distance. Downtown streets ebb and flow with industry. The radio of everyday life churns out lo-fi conversation. There is an astonishing lack of silence. My ears twitch with every sound. A tortoise and a hare race inside me.

On any given day, I am overcome by my inability to stand still. I am afflicted with the scourge of productivitis, a condition most city-dwellers are prone to. The symptoms are numerous and as common as dirt. Anxiety, depression, the punishing ass-kicking we like to think of as "self-motivation." The constant need to be producing something of value, whether it be a thought, a piece of art, a successful relationship, an eye-catching outfit. I don't know how I got it, they say you can't get it from sitting on public toilet seats, and I wash my hands all the time. And there isn't any cure, except for that children's strength, banana-flavoured relaxation which is lacking in adult effectiveness. It's currently unavailable to the general public, due to sky-high production costs.

I'm glad my condition has a name, even if it's only me who's given it one. It makes it easier to tell myself it's something I've contracted, not something I inherently am. It frightens me that I don't know how to relax anymore. I used to be so good at it. I could just sit in my room and listen to music and stare out the window, and everything was simple and sweet. I often try to re-enact that sweet simplicity, but the failure almost hurts. Like it or not, I am the enemy and hindrance to my free time, imposing structure to my sloth.

When did loafing become so loathesome?

It's a vicious cycle. We go to school in the hopes that knowledge will cure us of a mediocre existence. We work to afford our schooling, our apartments, our food, our phone bills and credit cards, work to afford the vices that will allow us to forget the often mind-numbing work we engage in to afford all this living and learning. All around me, people are going somewhere, in infinate streams, attached to cell phones or discmans' or leashes with dogs on the ends of them. I feel rushed, rushed to keep up with my grown up friends who have real jobs or go to real schools or live with real partners, not the pretend kinds I fill my imaginary life with. I've convinced myself that if I move swiftly and stay busy enough, I'll rocket myself forward into my future life and self, which I've convinced myself will be infinately better than my present one.

This city goes too fast for me sometimes. It reminds me of being a little kid, being afraid to get on the escalator, watching the steps go up and up and waiting for the right step to jump on. Some people spend their whole lives waiting for the right time, the right person, the right step. It's not their fault. It's not that they're afraid of taking a risk, it's that they're afraid of making the wrong choice. Because mistakes, while greatly educational, initially set you back, and who has time to go backwards these days? The concept of a smoothly paved progressive society is fraught with man-made potholes. If you aren't functioning in perpetual(and forward) motion, you are falling behind, falling away from the sense of purpose that awaits you. If you do stand still and unproductive, the world will just go by without you, and you'll fall off the edge into obscurity.

Peace and quiet is one thing we can't make sexy. It's new age and corny. It's too stale, it's too granola, it's for hacks who can't take the pressure. You find it in the self-help section of the bookstore, right between Yanni and yoga. It's tea instead of wine. Knitting instead of rock-climbing. Matlock instead of Kill Bill. It scares me because I feel like I'm not supposed to want it till I'm old, till I'm done chasing the meaning of my life. Like everyone in this with me, I'm supposed to sign up for lack of sleep and constant mental activity. I'm supposed to be over-stimulated at underwhelming social gatherings. But I think it gets a raw deal, inner calm. It's not surrender or the onset of becoming soured milk, no longer relevant to society. Nor is it a constant or monochromatic state. It's just a way to redefine what is critical and what can wait. And most of it can wait. But I know that even as I write this, it's not realistic of plausible. You can't ask your boss and co-workers, your lovers and friends, or even yourself, to quiet down to the pace of growing grass.

I daydream about pressing the slow motion button on time and the tempo of city life, going to a park and just listening to the creaking chains of the swingsets as kids pump their short legs with the belief that if they try hard enough, they can touch the treetops with their feet. I don't like the smell of roses, but I will stop in the street to smell the freshness in the air after a rainfall, or the wafts of chocolate from the Cadbury's factory on College West. I'll resist the take-out coffee, much as I love its sophistication, I'd prefer to sit in Cafe Brasilliano with my over-caffeination and a friend. I won't wear a watch, I'm sorry, I'll probably be about ten minutes late, always. I'll apologize genuinely and try harder next time, but I still won't wear a watch. I'll never see the value in contributing to the huffings and puffings of exasperation on a delayed subway car. We'll get there when we get there, we can't breathe our way there faster, or bend laws of physics with our impatience. I'm done with this cold, mad rush. I'm not going to race the hare anymore.

I think I'd like to take the tortoise out for a beer or two instead.

punch in, punch out

There are few things in this life that rival the sweetness of chocolate, the intoxication of new love, the delerium of red wine drunk in just the right amounts. But of the few things that do rival them, sorting through the junk mail of decision making, and gaining the certainty that you have chosen the right course of action is at the top of my list. I made one of these choices recently, and fatigue, stress, financial hardship notwithstanding, quitting the latest in a string of horrible jobs has left me glowing with gratification.

Today was my last day waitressing. Ever. I mean it. If I have to waitress ever again, I shall go mad.
If I ever have to decant wine infront of table, sweating out the ceremony of wine propriety,
If I ever have to fold my hands behind my back in true and subconcious servility,
If I ever have the listen to my well-intentioned jokes plummet flat onto a table occupied by humourless, stone-faced bumpkins,
If I ever have to be flagged down, whistled for, hollered at, or summoned with any less courtesy than would be used to beckon a cab...

I shall go mad.

You know, I usually feel a bit sad at endings, even if they are much needed and hard-won. I remember the good times at that restaurant, like understanding, even through the brokenest of English, the kindness and warmth of the plump Ukrainian cooks. Or the few minutes of conversation with patrons who understand that you have a beating heart beneath your apron, and it beats for people and ideas and a better future, just like theirs do. Those rare and fleeting assurances of competance when you see a room full of tables, all fed and serviced, filling the space with that lovely din of conversation and human engagement, and you can say to yourself, "I had a hand in this."

But today, there was no saddness, no remorse, no twinges of "Maybe I could stay on, it's not so bad." No, the party ended, and I should have got my coat on a long time ago. Today, I was at the beck and humiliating call of the owner, as he and his business friends commandeered a table, and me, in the middle of the brunch rush. I was condescended to, and waylaid by more tasks than I could handle. My arms quivered as I carried too-heavy plates and hungered for a moment to silence my own grumbling belly that hadn't seen a morsel since I woke. Instead, I gorged myself on delicious fantasies of dropping the plates and walking out, just like that. Of storming the owner's table and telling him I thought he was a complete jerk(insert various four- and offensively lettered words in the place of jerk) infront of his haughty friends. I counted down the minutes to the end of my shift with glowering impatience, minutes filled with the same question asked of myself, over and over again;

Why do most jobs end in such acrimonious divorce?

I've had approximately 29 jobs in my twelve years of working life so far. Most of them don't last past the first week, because I just know when I'm going to passionately hate something about the place. My seasoned eyes have seen it all, including sexual harrassment, and passive aggressive management, like punative scheduling and condescension, all masked in the cowardly guise of professionalism. Every possible and absurd assertion of authority has been used to put me and my fellow peons in our place. It's been a unique and invaluable education for me. Because I've learned an awful lot about the dynamics and diplomacies of minimum wage hierarchies, and just how terribly awry people go when given the slightest bit of power to rule. And it's gotten me thinking that I don't know how much I believe in the necessity of a chain of command.

Most people have a distinct personality(although I've met some people who are definately lacking in one), a personality that determines whether they are self-driven or need to be given direction. In any workplace, there are leaders and there are people who don't really give a darn. And you know something? They tend to balance each other out. Left to their own devices, and given the credit due and deserved that they are able enough to expedite food orders or ring in sales on a cash register, most people will rise to the occasion of competence. We don't need to be bossed around. We don't need to be told what to do. We simply need to be asked. Politely.

We are a society obssessed with democratic process. And with so little democracy used effectively in our political arena, the only real structure we have to create and excersise it in is our workforce. But it's missing there too!(Democracy-the political Polkaroo?) It's all about absolute power and the stingy distribution of its fruits. Why is it so hard for business owners to realize their staff is the bottom line, not net profits? That appreciating loyalty, accepting input and offering a sense of importance to their staff naturally breeds productivity.That regardless of who does what task, we are all just people, and that actually makes us equals. Without staff, all you have is an expensive space and an inanimate product that can't really sell itself. Without any graciousness or adherence to workers rights, all you have is a parade of strangers who will fill the space of the previous warm body infront of the till. Sure, capitalism has thrived on a disposable and ever-replenishing workforce.

But what damage has it done to our social morale?

I wanted to be magnanimous on my last day. I'd even planned on thanking the owner for the opportunity there(!?!) knowing full well how acidly my lips would issue such a lie. But I didn't do that. I bore the rest of my shift with as much class as I could muster, and when it was time to leave, I left. No sentimentality, no lengthy good bye speeches. I just took my tips and walked out the door, leaving yet another space to be filled. Some coins jingled in my pocket, and as I got further and further away from the restaurant, I knew I was getting closer to things that mattered, like my future. A place that offered no guarantee of escape from difficult bosses, demanding clientele, or moments of servility lived out of necessity. But it would be a place of my choosing, a place where debates on the unsolidity of poached eggs, or the techniques of good martini-making would never have to be endured again.

And so I let the bridges burn behind me.