Osmosis has always bothered me

Moving blog sites

2009-08-06T03:00:00.002-04:00

I moved everything else -- might as well upgrade the blog quarters too. Have migrated all of my old posts from here to:

http://cateinbc.wordpress.com/

(Wave when you show up?)

The ferry in the moonlight

2009-08-03T15:52:00.002-04:00

I had a really magical weekend, with the longest first date ever. Very much about letting what was in front of us unfold.

The plan was for me to pick M up at the ferry late afternoon, to have a walk and some food, and then for me to drive him back for he las crossing.

(damn, my key I use mos is NO WORKING -- I spilled coffee bu hough i was okay

compuer OFF

Recursive random

2009-08-03T15:33:00.005-04:00

I have one reader on this blog (that I'm aware of) that I haven't had any contact with in some other context. I like this. It's about the level of OUT THERE ness i'm comfortable with ;-). Thanks for delurking, Donigan.

So this is going to be random in response to your comments on my random.

A country nobody ever paid attention to before ... try Slovakia; lived there for seven years in the 90s, and everyone thought I was either in Slovenia, Yugoslavia, or somewhere in the Baltic or the Balkans. Oddly, Bratislava is about 25 miles from Vienna, on the same river. You could try there.

7 years? Interesting. I love this mystical mythical hidden country idea. Although the guy I had the longest-first-date-with-ever on the weekend grew up in Moldavia. Definition by what it is not (not romania, not ukraine). Like my friend from Montenegro.

I think there might be more DOGS in slovenia than in Iceland. And dogs are not the friends of cyclist.

What is a slut in the Victorian sense?

A bad housekeeper. A woman of questionable virtue because DIRTY.

Isn't internet dating kind of dangerous? What's wrong with readings, cafes, and nice bars?

It's pretty isomorphic -- it's what people do now, so it's what you do to meet a pool of single people. It's how I met F, and my friend Shay, and other people whom I dated brieflyYou get a good sense of who a person is from how they communicate online or on the phone before you meet them, and for the most part, you meet them in public. . I realize as I write that that I've violated my own "only in public" principle for the last two dates, by picking them up at the ferry, but we'd talked on the phone and I had their professional credentials.

It's always interesting to me that it has this reputation of "danger" -- IME, no more so than someone you meet in real life. When I think about it, I had more scary experiences with drunk people I knew in my late teens/early 20s than with people I've come to know online in one way or another.

As for readings and the like, see upcoming post on the poet I met at a reading a few months ago.

What is a CMM community?

"CMM" is the shorthand for the communication theory I work with -- coordinated management of meaning. The work that my mentor (the one who is sick) started. The community is the gang of us who were taught by him and who are carrying on his work.

Random random random

2009-07-31T22:54:00.002-04:00

1. Can I just say how annoyed I am that Iceland is so much in the news because of the economic collapse, all when I was quietly plotting to go off to a country nobody ever paid any attention to ever before?

2. I bought my first pair of gardening gloves ever today. I still have no clue what it means to do yard maintenance, but my little yard is a jungle. Also, there are dandelion fluffs in my kitchen.

3. There seems to be a tall ship out in Semiahmoo Bay.

4. I can't figure out how to make my camera do what I want it to do, so I can't capture any meaningful colour in sunsets. Is it churlish to think that the very nice camera F gave me for my birthday isn't the one I would prefer?

5. I've been hanging my organic white cotton sheets on the line, and they smell AMAZING. Unfortunately, they also now have some sort of clothesline schmutz on them. Does it make me a slut in the Victorian sense to put them on my bed anyway?

6. I've been on (counting) five internet first dates since I moved here. One lunatic whose profile I should have read more critically before I drove to town to meet him, one philosophy prof who will become a friend, one pissy former physicist I thought might be interesting but who didn't deal at ALL well with my trying to change subsequent plans, one guy who was promising but became clingy rilly rilly fast, and one guy I like but who has revealed to me that yes, it is WAY possible for someone to be far more driven by the carnal than I am. A girl could get discouraged. What on earth does tomorrow, with the Russian guitar-maker, hold?

7. In all of this, as I sit knitting a sweater that's at my edge of knitting competence, thinking about the work with the CMM community and so much else I have in front of me, I'm realizing I pretty much have everything I need. It's a remarkably sweet spot.

Ducklings (and #300)

2009-07-28T13:29:00.002-04:00

My friend Paula asked me if I'd started to establish community out here. Not really, unless you count my shouting "SHUT UP" at the ceaselessly yapping dog behind me yesterday as a way of connecting to the neighbours. I do feel like I have enough people in the region to be able to scare up someone to do something with if my need to be alone wanes, but for the moment, the combination of recovering from such a busy time and the amount of connectivity I have via phone/wifi pretty much fills all of the space I have right now.

I'm trying to make sense of all of the different strands of work, and in some ways, it feels like I am really living two or three lives, even more than when I was doing my phd and working. A pile of Toronto-based client work, an enormous amount of energy right now in the CMM sphere, and then this untended BC-based project. Emails slurping in constantly, with new leaps in the conversation before even I -- multitasking queen of the universe -- can tend to them.

I had an experience about 12 years ago that's kind of a metaphor for how I feel about my work these days... I had gone to Regina for a work meeting, and I had a long stretch of empty time before my flight left. There is not really a whole lot to do in Regina on a spring day ("you could go to the Mountie museum," suggested the visitor person), so I chose to go walk around the provincial legislature building. (Experiencing it geekily as a shrine to Tommy Douglas).

So there I was, walking around the sparkling white leg building, through winding roads with little lakes and trees, and I came across this little family of squawking ducklings. They'd run out of this lake/pond and hopped down a fairly high curb, and couldn't get back up. They kept hurtling themselves against it but couldn't hop up, couldn't get back to the water.

So of course I decided I needed to help. I scootched down to try to pick one of them up... and he slithered away. Hand clench -- slither. Clutch - slither. The little ducklings were hopping all around, squawking, as I repeatedly tried to grab them and found the edge of feathers and then empty air.

I was starting to get frustrated and worried (and I looked like a crazy person, hopping all around), and another woman walked up. She instantly assessed what I was trying to do, bent down and scooped up five of them at once.

:-|

I fluttered around behind her, finally caught one more, and we returned them to the pond and their oblivious mother.

Yesterday, I felt like the competent duckling-grabber... today, not so much.

(And PS -- this is blog post #300... possibly the most consistent thing I've ever done, writing-wise. And now that I don't have someone in my immediate life to process my days with, sometimes a really useful place to work out what I'm trying to do. Waving at my few consistent readers -- appreciate all of you ;-)).

Grace II

2009-07-27T16:12:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a day of Travel Unpleasantness. I was traveling back from TO to BC, and everything minor that could go wrong did. I left in a torrential downpour, and my cab navigated sheets of water pouring off the gardiner and axel-high floods on the lakeshore. The first plane was broken, then there was a gate change, gnarly children, delays. I ended up with a squishy middle seat next to a trembling vodka-sucking man because a family with tiny children had been split up and I gave the mom and baby my seat. My little seatback tv didn't work. I lost my debit card, at a time that my bank account holds ALL MY WORLDLY goods, in the form of the proceeds from my loft sale. My online community was having a meltdown, a kind of aftermath of an intense-supporting-someone time that sort of ... dissolved... in a kind of unsatisfactory way.

And. I had a transforming day. I was working up quite a head of irritability when we were sitting on the hot tarmac waiting for fuel, and I decided that instead of aimlessly flicking through podcasts and knitting grumpily, I should read a chapter that KP had written for our book, on CMM as a spiritual practice.

The piece is magnificent, and it instantly elevated me. K was exploring our transforming communication work as "spiritual" practice, through a very personal reflection of identifying moments of grace through the aftermath of BP's cancer diagnosis. It shunted me immediately to my higher self-concept as "person who seeks complexity and can therefore metabolize complications easily," and I was able to relax into the rest of the trip... and toast my arrival with some ahi tuna and a glass of chardonnay down at the waterfront.

I'm happy to be back here, and things seem so much more possible.

Yearning

2009-07-25T22:12:00.002-04:00

Last day in TO for a while. It was a busy errand day (waxing/polishing/haircut/colour/coffee with kat/late lunch with B) kind of day, punctuated by torrential rain, navigated mostly on my bike, until B took pity on me and drove me home.

Then it was a puttery early evening, laundry, packing, cleaning my wee place so I can leave it for 5 weeks. And while I was cleaning and poking about, Josh Ritter came on my itunes. All of the songs from Animal Years, which I so associate with my sojourn in portland three and a half years ago, sitting in the coffee crutch coffee shop beavering away on my human development knowledge area, trying to make meaning of my shifts in identity.

There was such a YEARNING in that music, especially Here at the Right Time. It fixed itself on F, but in some ways, the free floating anxiety I've had as long as I can remember has been counterpointed by a free-floating yearning. I felt it again today, in this music, and couldn't even figure out what I was yearning FOR. I remember once buying a card that had a fragment of a poem on it -- I think sappho -- I yearn and I seek (google is a help here: kai` poðh'w kai` ma'omai -- I yearn and I seek). I think I bought this years ago, while I was still with B; thought about sending it when I was adoring K; ended up, I think, sending it to someone I had a mad online flirtation with that didn't sustain into actual meeting. But it's something I've been carrying for so long that I know it doesn't really have a lot to do with F. There are things we did together that I keenly feel the absence of, and aspects of who we were together that I'll always miss, but the real heart of it is losing the *possibility* of intimacy... and today, I think I'm sad that I've lost sight of myself in a way as a hopeful person about that.

Renee pointed this out, and I think in some ways it's true -- building myself the perfect transitional life where I try to balance and bridge my grounded, open west coast self with my dynamic, busy, successful TO self, where I plan trips to africa and iceland, co-edit books and position myself as part of a broad theoretical community -- all of these are things I want, AND they are tropes for a life structure to essentially compartmentalize and fragment intimacy, to close off the likelihood of meeting someone whose day to day can fold around mine. I can't quite figure out if this is a substitution that I'm not truly comfortable with, or whether it's genuinely grabbing a brass ring of claiming full life. And of course, it's both. Some days the ersatz nature of it has a stronger aftertaste than anything else. Which, maybe, means it's time to go back to BC.

Pages

2009-07-23T21:01:00.008-04:00

Nearing the end of my first sojourn in TO in my new place, and I really do love this perch up in the sky, this 15th floor nest with the amazing sunsets.

I had dinner with Shay the other night, and I brought her up here to see it, and she crowed about the cosiness. It is cosy. I like it. It's pretty tiny, but it doesn't have that sense of echoing, untapped vastness that my loft did. And I don't think I'll ever want to live in a place ever again that doesn't have access to the outside -- even the little balcony here makes a world of difference.

I left my loft in good shape, with flowers for the incoming girls, as I posted before.

I feel a tiny bit wistful about it, but I've really taken to this condo life. I like having a concierge, I like feeling far away from the ground and its many noises, but still being in touching distance of shops, NICE restaurants, plush gelato, good theatre, should I want it. I like the pool and the gym and the sauna, even if I don't use them. I like having 15 flights of stairs to walk up to try to force off a tiny bit of the plumpness that's taken over in the high moving, high stress time.

There are a lot of milestones here as I finish up my move and hie myself off out west for august. I went to Pages today, for the last time, I think. It's closing at the end of August. It's funny -- it was never my favourite bookstore, exactly, but it always made me feel *smarter*. I bought stuff there that I aspired to read, that made me think, rather than tripe.

And over the past 25 years, I've bought an endless supply of notebooks there. I always loved these Clairefontaine ones with the plaidish covers -- again, talismans of hope that I'd write something, do something, make something meaningful, worth recording. Tracey was the one who introduced me to Pages and to these notebooks, and it's a funny little synchronicity that so many of the journals and notebooks I threw away last week in my first purge of all of that stuff were these books.

It doesn't make me wistful, exactly -- although I don't know who else would be such a meticulous buyer of cultural theory, the tables of books that made me think and aspire. But it does feel like another closing point, another click pointing me to the recognition that any aspirations I have aren't really nested here, anymore. Like the realization that I didn't have a single qualm tossing my high school yearbooks down the chute, or unloading a whole bunch of these notebooks. They were me then, moment in time that don't mean much in the preservation. I know what I'm drawing on and taking with me, and holding onto them is more of a weight than an anchor.

I did buy one thing today that I hope will push me forward -- an uncategorizable book called The Importance of Being Iceland. A book that has the inexplicable symbol on the cover. My hare-brained plan to hie myself off there next year needs some kind of shape, and maybe I really need to start to learn something about it. Read in bed for a while instead of yacking online.

Here with you

2009-07-18T18:23:00.003-04:00

Surreally, I find myself in Kansas City yet again, talking my way through workshops and other conversations about the future of the communication theory I work in with my compadres, at the tail end of my school's national summer session.

Tucked up in one of the Westin truly heavenly beds, mid-afternoon, instead of running. Listening to one Laurie Anderson's Here with you, a short piece that slows me down and stretches time for me. I'm really really tired after these weeks of moving and emotion of so many different species, but elevated at the same time by the conversations. Months and years of accumulated stories, word in word with one of the people with whom I can truly be the Cate I most aspire to, trying to map a path for the next few months that lets me enact this scholar and world-changing self.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the fact that I am a "serious" person. I don't know why I feel so compelled to label myself that way, but maybe it's something about being intentional about carving out a purposeful life. There's more to be revealed there.

3.5 years

2009-07-17T13:12:00.001-04:00

At YYZ once more, bizarrely bleary eyed, considering that it’s nearly 1pm. I really need to improve my sleep hygiene with these time zone issues – stayed up waaaaaay too late talking to Mr. Victoria and then watching the last three episodes of season 1 of Damages.

My loft sale closes today, and even as I’m conscious that there are two young women having a big emotional moment when they unlock that door for the first time, I’m feeling pretty detached from the whole thing. Maybe it’s the effect of the endless bloody tedious steps of this move – I was still tossing and organizing and making decisions about stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday (what the EFF could still be there after all of these moves? Books to donate, a fridge and freezer crammed full of stuff, expensive Tupperware filled with rice & flour, a few things under the bathroom sink, the cd rack bolted to the wall that B decided she wanted, etc.). Or maybe it’s just that the loft really was a transitional zone between my divorce and my future life, and it was time to move on.

This space did bracket my relationship with F, as embedded with possibilities and hopes in the front end, scene of dusty sleepless nights and those fleeting moments of half-asleep recognition that things with F were never even sewn tightly enough together to be frayed, knowing the inevitable in that hypnogogic zone of freefall.

Lots of facing of self, finding of feet in the slap slap on the cork floors, encountering simultaneously the Cate who wanted to live in a pretty unfettered way and realizing how much the chaos and noise of the market agitated me. Facing self as a time-compressed person against Kat’s creative all night explorations.

The best aspect of those 3.5 years was Kat, in fact – loving reminder to slow the hell down and notice things, enjoy my quirks, let in the music (and the Indian Jinx-be-gone potion). Also finding Jess, the hairdresser who really found my hair. The worst – well, the facing of all of the angst, although it was also the scene of facing it down and learning to hold it more loosely, with more humour. Really entering my phd and owning it and all it could mean.

I did a final sweep last night of the place, leaving a few eccentric items behind that I hope won’t annoy the new girls – a couple of mops, some lightbulbs, mango gelato and packaged smoked salmon in the freezer. A box of latex gloves that I acquired from a paramedic friend who had a vision of me as somewhat more inclined to random hookups than I am. (Her vicarious hopes, I guess). I also left some flowers and a friendly note wishing them well – though my gut is that buying an open concept loft as a young couple (especially one with two damn much outside noise) is probably a Mistake. (Cynic, I am).

So that scene is faded, and I have my perch in the sky with the inky north west sunsets, and my cottage by the sea, and a pretty strong sense of how I’m navigating the world solo. Missing F from time to time – especially in TO – but every moment of felt loss is infused with immediate reminders of the painful, always-chafing bits. Realizing my time with him and my time in this space left me with a sense of myself as a serious person with lots to do, but also such a strong need to intimately connect, be playful, seize it all.

Not a bad thing to take away from those three and a half years in that space.

YVR -- YYZ -- MCI -- YYZ -- YVR

2009-07-13T10:35:00.003-04:00

At airport, heading back to TO. Thinking about the paradox of my life, general and overall happiness and contentment mixed with immediate crankiness. High auditory sensitivity because of hormones, lack of sleep, and wanting to pinch the guy whose hiking boots are going SCHLUMP SCHLUMP SCHLUMP, while reveling a little bit in the iphone-captured photo of my windy, chilly seawall walk last night. I'm going to miss my little house.

Sometimes it feels

2009-07-10T14:50:00.002-04:00

as though so much of what I've collected in my life led me to this little house. I don't even remember acquiring this -- I found it in a box of photos -- and it's a bit twee for anywhere else I've ever lived. But it fits this corner perfectly.

Dusk

2009-07-07T00:58:00.002-04:00

I've been trying to walk or run the WR seawall every day. Am finding a rhythm where, on the evenings I'm home, I go out around 830 for an hour or so. On a cooler non-holiday night, the seawall is almost empty, the tide is high, the sky pink. I really feel calmer and more peaceful than I ever remember.

Cautionary icons

2009-07-06T20:16:00.004-04:00

I’m not sure why I’ve been so non-posty since I got here. I’m happy, so not feeling all reflecty-angsty, but I’ve also been relatively solo, so not full of Amusing Stories. Just me, liking my little house, liking what it does for me, relaxed and feeling like life is ripe. Duck’s back, water, about most things.

It is odd living in a town that feels like I’m visiting it for so many reasons. WR is very white, and the average demographic is downright elderly. I venture out into the town itself to buy food, to buy gelato and eat it on the seawall, to use the landscape as my own sprinting/breathing/striding/riding platform. There’s a tall hill behind my house that I can march purposely up, strengthening legs, and a seawall to run along when it’s not thronged with moseyers. In some ways, the town and the people blur for me, and it’s not that different from living in the country – I orient myself to my view of the water, my sweet house, the hills or road under my feet or tires, google maps to figure out how to get elsewhere, my people in the computer.

One of the effects of this has been to test my mettle on what I can do on my own. There’s been a lot of Assembling required in this move, flat ikea boxes that pop up into bookshelves, bedroom furniture, a little table to trap my keys and glasses at the door so I don’t lose them for good. Too many of the instructions for my furniture started out with a little drawing of the sad man with the aching back and broken pieces of wood around him, much happier when he has a little friend to help him out. Not hard to find symbolism in that.

Nor hard to find symbolism in one of those pieces being the building of my own bed, after I got home from a pleasant but uninspiring online date the other night. Determination, stacks of books, a lot of swearing, especially when I dropped the box spring into the room at large, taking out my alarm clock permanently. But I got it together, along with the dresser and nightstand, my ridiculous snow-white duvet cover,

inordinately proud of myself for figuring out the things that in my previous life have belonged to my competent brother in law, or butch and handy ex. Just me, creating the space that is ineffably soothing, ineffably promising.

Fireworks

2009-07-02T01:27:00.002-04:00

I had a puttery canada day, after having french toast and bacon on my deck. Recreating the most perfect breakfast I ever had anywhere, in Queenstown New Zealand in 1996. Then some work, and an abortive bike ride (didn't realize until I was 5 miles out that I'd forgotten my helmet), then more work, then a really miserable run (every step a plod, leavened only by concentrating on the month's old Canada Reads discussions that highlighted The Book of Negroes, which I just read and was utterly immersed in). Then, after shaking the peaches of the tree of plenty of fish, took myself out for dinner on the deck of my local seafood shack. Was gifted with a sweet server named Lizzie who encouraged me to stay until the fireworks. So I had a second glass of wine and did.

And thought about my dad, who loved fireworks, along with amusement parks and freaks, and F, who didn't let us break up just before the holidays partly because he didn't want to think about watching the New Year's Eve fireworks off the space needle by himself. (Not, without ME, mind you, but by himself). And instead of feeling wistful, I was just noting. People of my past, me on my own, decent and unspectacular fireworks, people in couples and families, and me, just fine. My dinner, my engrossing Ian McEwan novel, the sweet young server. The residue of the pink sky over the water. All just fine. Maybe for the first time ever.

To be honest

2009-06-25T21:23:00.002-04:00

I'm happy. Despite the fatigue, the yappy dog, and the swamp-moss mold dripping from the shelves in my fetid fridge filled with bacterially exploded salmon (nice treat to come back to), I really love being in BC. I cannot state sharply enough how much my chest fills when I see the sea as a part of everyday life.

I'm having a kayak lesson in the morning with some dude from the internet, and I took great joy in being all Organized and Competent and putting my racks on the car myself. If I can load the boat on my own... well, that will be a whole new level.

I'll let Billy Collins speak for me

2009-06-25T21:22:00.002-04:00

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Billy Collins

Maybe it's the weather

2009-06-20T11:57:00.002-04:00

But I'm finding that my little way-up-high perch in Toronto is giving me the same kind of fresh aspect and sense of possibilities that I had in my borrowed space in pdx 3 years ago. No hills on the edges, but discovering a new neighbourhood is feeling good. I do miss the scruffy uncertainty of the market -- the guy chasing another guy down the street yelling "he's a peeping tom!", the unexpected interpretive dance in the street behind Kat as she sang On the Highwire at Graffiti's, the bird lady with her odd little tiny-wheeled bicycle and careful costumes, the flakes of coffee beans settling in your hair when Moonbean was roasting. Here it's a little sterile, a lot yuppie, very full of couples. But being this high above gives me a sense of breathing space I didn't have from the 4th floor.

Very conscious that doing the things that are hard *always* gives me energy in the end -- so really not understanding why I handle the stress of doing it so very very badly. Renee commented that I was as tense about going to Africa as I was about this move, and that turned out to be magnificent. Now to somehow be heedful of that.

Off to a family wedding, feeling a little bereft to be dressing up without someone to twirl for. Beginning to think about the concept of going on a date again. Not as hopeful about that as I might have been three years ago -- but edging into it.

The horse you're on

2009-06-12T20:46:00.003-04:00

We had the third session of our course today, and just like last time, a participant said something to me I had such a hard time processing. I couldn't even remember this woman's name, and she came up to me at the break and said, "I enjoy you so much -- and I wanted to tell you, you remind me of -- or rather, my daughter reminds me of you." Then she proceeded to tell me about her 10 year old daughter, and how unusual and bright and connected and *energetic* she was, how she drew the best energy from what was around her. Her name is Rachel, this daughter, and L said that she recently said to her, "mom, you have to ride the horse you're riding. Fight the duel you're dueling."

I found this delightful... and it also smacked me like a paradox. Several participants in this course have given me this kind of feedback, this "you make everything seem possible" kind of feedback. In really amazing, astonishing terms. And yet, I feel like my way of collaborating with my colleagues has been strangled at times, I feel tired so often and not particularly energized or insightful, and I feel like I've wandered through my weeks feeling bleak and bereft. So often on the verge of tears, or beyond frustrated, unable to find the rhythm with the people I'm supposed to be close to.

It's such a weird paradox, and echoes so much in my life -- that I have these full, loving, rich, powerful relationships with people who are at arms' length, but that people in my intimate space get my full, prickly, scratchy, tiresome, tiring self. Especially right now, when I'm playing out the complaints and pains of this move that would normally be inside the partner space on so many people. When I played out the devaluing I was feeling with F, the knotted dissatisfaction in being angry when I wasn't getting what I needed with "safer" people. I don't know how to bring these things together.

I am trying to hear the wisdom offered by this 10 year old. To ride the horse I'm riding. To remind myself of the joy of this move, not the fatigue and endless, ENDLESS difficulty of logistics, not to feel exasperated and angry when people don't see the rawness of it. To be grateful for those who do, and to surpass it. To revel in the opportunity of a year of shivasana, instead of feeling resentful and angry that this is so different than my pdx sojourn three years ago, when I left two casual lovers behind in TO, was full of anticipation about my phd work, and had the opening up of the connection with F flickering at me. I have somehow absorbed a story that there isn't much ahead of me... and I need to look at the horse that's moving and really grab this for the adventure that it is.

I think it just hit me

2009-06-07T10:15:00.004-04:00

that locals will expect me to be, well, local. I'm on my way back to TO, and I had a set-to with the shuttle woman. The phone woman told me 6:15, and she came at 6:00 and was grumpy about it, then she didn't take credit cards, or an out of province cheque. All of my stress over the last couple of moving/not sleeping days bubbled out.

Yesterday was hard. Receiving furniture, trying to unpack as much as possible, F delivering my kayak and other stuff, such tension and sadness between us, not knowing how to say anything that wouldn't just lead to mis-steps. Work, travels, family and a strangled goodbye. Then D&F visiting, warmth and casual presence. Then more unpacking, and calling F to try to have the conversation I'd hoped for. And being able to have it, shifting the sadness from wound to the seaweed at the edge of the tidezone, liminal and forlorn.

Before bed, finishing unpacking the kitchen, hanging one picture in the bedroom, trying to do another above the fireplace, but realizing it was really time to stop when I hit concrete with my drill and was just making a mess. Staggered into bed.

Today, stressed, time-zoned, no energy for going back to TO and all of its work gabble. Need a day of sleep. Tuesday?

Planes. A path that will become familiar, I think. I don't even know yet if I am supposed to transfer my car reg to BC, but if so, I think I'll get a vanity plate. YVR*YYZ. And a local chequing account.

Saltwater Random

2009-06-05T21:53:00.003-04:00

I'm here, heading into my third night. I'm simultaneously grounded and floaty since I got here, noticing things in an unlinked way, not feeling very shape-ful of writing. So, random.

1. The first thing I did when I got here was to unload my car. The second was to walk down to the water and take a picture of my feet on the edge. And yet, it only occurred to me this afternoon that this water I'm looking at when I wake up, when I go to sleep, is saltwater. Inland girl indeed.

2. The most delightful present F ever gave me was a swiss watch he picked up on impulse in the Geneva airport. It suited me, he was thinking of me, it's made me happy for more than 2 years. Today, just before he comes to do the dreaded exchange-of-stuff ritual, it stopped.

3. I think that bump of land I see through the haze across from me is Saturna. Or Mayne. Not sure. I think I can see the south tip of Galiano, my old friend, as well.

4. I will never, ever want for fish and chips. I went for a walk along Marine drive today, and there were at least 20 shops.

5. I've been reading this book, called A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman. She's not really my type, and she's of a much different life-shaped-by-the-needs-of-marriage-and-kids-never-felt-passion genre, but it's a good book to signal my own year by the sea. Kind of creates the possibility that being pretty much solo for four full seasons can be rich.

6. That vanished, blown up plane is haunting my dreams.

7. I was feeling ebullient until I had 3 hours of work phone calls today. And my furniture came but couldn't make it up the street so has to be parceled out. Then I felt all flattened. Not sure if it's because now I'm *here* and not traveling, or because of the prospect of seeing F tomorrow and all that stirs up, or not having my own shampoo, or the weird dissonance of being in two places at once and not having a rhythm yet. Just noticing.

8. Not sure why I thought I live a life where an organic snow white cotton duvet cover makes any sense at all, but I truly love the way it looks in my wee, multi-windowed sage and white bedroom.

9. I can see the sunset from my bed. Note to self: add box spring to bed order so bed is high enough.

10. Yes, White Rock is full of septuagenarians and older. I have never seen so many "Veteran" license plates in one place. Clearly the saratoga of the north, divided between young women on marine drive in bikinis and flip flops and white haired ladies with narrow shoulders valiantly pushing their rolling walkers.

There's a feeling you get

2009-06-03T10:09:00.004-04:00

When Linda and I did a little road trip down the california coast from the bay area to santa barbara a couple of years ago, she had this amazing ability to slow time down. "Tell me all the fun things we did," she'd ask, as we drove along. And we'd replay: first we stopped at that place with the bridge and took pictures, then we stopped at Andrew Molera beach and walked along..." Etc. It was cementing and gratifying, reliving the moments in recursive waves as we were creating more.

That's what yesterday felt like for me -- just about every moment memorable, and the in-between moments sweet savoring of what went just before.

It was one of my favourite days ever. I packed up in banff, went for french toast, had a little chat with the waiter about the best place to stop for a short hike. Took back the pants I'd bought the day before because a snap had pulled out and they promised to repair and mail. Drove off with the sunroof open, intending to go back to Louise and do the around-the-lake hike. Instead, on impulse, I pulled off the transcanada onto the Bow Valley parkway, which also said "to lake louise," and found myself in a gorgeous canyon. Paused for a wapiti on the side of the road, rolled along more slowly, savoring the peaks and the trees. Loved my car some more. Then again, on impulse, pulled off at what I thought was a lookout -- Castleview Lookout I think it was called -- and then realized it was a short, perfect hike. 3.7 km up, through the perfect blend of forest and openness, rocky snowy ranges off to the west, a soaring "castle" of rock above. Glorious sun.

I paused for a bit at the top, ate a nutty bar thingy, and laid in the sun. When I'd arrived, a couple of other hikers had just climbed down to a lower ledge. I was taken with the idea of scrambling down a bit, though I had a moment of trepidation about doing it on my own. I was itching to get my feet into the rocks, to feel the hand grip. I looked over the edge, saw that there were two ledges, and realized that if I fell the worst that would happen would be some scrapes and bruises. So I lowered myself over, scrambled down about 15 feet, admired the different view, then pulled myself back up. Short taste of bliss, promise to self that the mountain hiking I love isn't dependent on anyone else.

Down skipping, sweaty and off to Louise for lunch. Pause to try to assist a rueful cyclist with a shredded tire -- not a speck of space in my car, alas, and no service on the i-phone. Louise, bookstore, lunch, car keys left in bookstore and returned by frantic bookseller before I noticed they were gone.

Then, onto the pass. Truly the most breathtaking driving I've ever done. Car perfect, nimble, responsive, awe at the blend of engineering and the stunning, stunning mountains. Curves hugged, all passes perfect, fast enough to feel the road but always in control. Going across a bridge (Kicking Horse River, maybe?) I literally welled up with a moment of awe -- and giggled out loud simultaneously.

There's a lot of construction on the transcanada between Lake Louise and Salmon Arm, and there was a fair bit of stopping. But I drove with the sunroof and windows open most of the way, music, sometimes Kat's amazing cd, construction dust coming in with the warm air, perfectly happy.

The last bit of the drive to kamloops was tiring -- sore from the hike, weary -- but it was joyful to discover how glorious the interior is. There's an untouched vocabulary for me -- what exactly is each region? where does the okanagan start? what are the names of those mountains? what's that river? is that a salmon cannery? Realizing that "belvedere castle" is just french for "castle lookout."

Last night, a crappy but sufficient Howard Johnson's in Kamloops. Today, my new home.

Grace

2009-06-02T12:22:00.004-04:00

I've been kind of obsessed with the idea of grace lately. I have this very high consciousness that I am not very graceful. Not physically -- I trip, spill, break wineglasses, I'm always finding mysterious bruises on my body -- and not emotionally. I feel things strongly and I squall, I overflow my sides, I confront, I agitate. I never just quietly muse on why I'm feeling something so strongly, it bursts out in a big Ruth Fisher-type blurt, and then I get more insight into it and am able to calm down. Because of this, I've become a good repairer -- and I need to be in relationships with people who are willing to withstand the moments of agitation and then to repair.

I hate this in myself. I don't use this word lightly. I put a lot of energy into wanting to be more graceful, to have more poise, to not show reaction in every line. In some ways, I've learned this in work -- but maybe I'm just much more familiar with the things that come up in most of my work situations, can tuck them into meaningful contexts more readily. I have a fair bit of poise when I'm in front of a group, and I have a certain kind of amused self-deprecation for the moments when it's not smooth. But I've certainly been triggered a lot in the early part of this year in some work situations, some places where the detachment I usually practice has been shifted.

This all feels particularly poignant right now, because my own personal avatar of grace -- my mentor and guide, bp -- is ill. He's like a constellation of grace, a complex, familiar, trustworthy enabler of presence and poise. I was talking about this with Pamela the other day -- we talk about grace a lot, and she said something that gave me pause. She thinks that I am graceful, in that I keep "showing up" to what's there. It's an interesting reframing -- grace as presence and openness, not perfect poise. The conversation really entwined for me with the work I've been doing with the nurses in one of the toronto hospitals -- where one of the things they surfaced is that the best of nursing is "staying when you want to go."

I haven't always stayed when I wanted to go -- not even last week when I got so upset with my not-listening friends for reasons that I can't even really explain now. But it's really resonating for me as a frame, as a way to hold grace as a possibility for myself.

I was meditating on this while I was hiking yesterday. I had been warned that the trail that I was going to do might have snow on it, but I'd decided to try it anyway, to just be careful. I've hiked mountain trails that had lurking snow before, and mostly it's just wet.

Yesterday was a bit different -- it was a pretty short trail -- about 3.5 km each way, switchbacks up a short mountain -- but it started out very steep, and the snow became deep quickly. For the most part I could hover on top without sinking in, so I kept going.

I was really conscious of my thought process as I slogged along. First, the usual resentment when a trail starts so steeply -- remembering the much more gradual long entries to the Cuillin on Skye, where your body adjusts to the pack and the movement before there's real climbing. And a bit of a nagging question about whether it really was safe to hike alone in the snow, especially in grumpy bear late spring time. And then a big tension about whether turning around would be because it truly wasn't safe, and should I waste this opportunity, or was I being stupid and eastern and ignoring genuine danger, or was I being stupid and eastern to even think it was real danger, or would I be turning around just because it was unpleasant?

As I stepped into the wet snow, the phrase "staying when you want to go" clicked in for me. And I realized that it IS in the doing of the difficult that I find the grace in myself. One thing that F recognized and valued in me -- that I do things that I find hard -- and thinking about how this frame had created "affordances," to use the annoying theoretical term. That because he did witness this about me, it freed me to imagine things like moving west without a real plan, and learning to fix my bike so I can ride alone through iceland. For a few minutes, as I felt this, I experienced deep grief. Panting with the effort of moving upward through the snow, suffused with sadness about losing someone who saw this and fostered this in me. And then, for a moment, watching myself stumbling, falling, post-holing and getting wet, sliding on my butt to get my stuck leg out, I saw this as grace. This sprawling kitten-on-the-ice upward hike *was* grace, it was finding in myself the meaning and drive for it. Upward because I wanted to be above the trees, wanted to see a peak, wanted to feel the air. Upward for that moment that made the drive across the plains, the agita of leaving behind community, the misshapen fear worth it. Where I am going, the sense that there is always something more ahead.

This is another thing P and I talked about -- the mid-life waves of deflation when you think you might have had your bursts of creativity, of new love, of creating possibilities, when you worry that there might not be more. I have had a lot of... deflated anxiety about this, particularly around Romance. Thinking that it might be "too late" to co-create life with someone. Not exactly because of age, but because of an awareness of the fullness of what's been lived, and not being sure how this can mesh with someone else's fullness. The smaller pool of available people when the ones ahead are sliding into assured old age together and the ones behind are still really looking for that "this is it" relationship.

As I stumbled up the hill, I felt real exhilaration. Rhythm in the arrhythmia, trust that my feet would hold me. And, I knew the moment where I needed to turn around, an open swell with snow at least 4 feet deep, where I post-holed up to my thighs 4 steps in a row. The moment where I knew, yeah, even enthusiasm isn't going to carry me forward here, and I really could end up with a broken leg and become bear bait.

So I went down, noted what I'm sure was a bear print in the snow, skipped and tripped down the part where the snow thinned. Went up the little extra trail to the gorgeous view, where I had 15 minutes alone on a platform looking at the lake. Grace.

When my people came west

2009-06-01T22:55:00.003-04:00

they didn't come any further than this, and they only stayed for a couple of summers. My mom was a chambermaid at the Banff Springs Hotel for two summers when she was in college; my sister has a fantastic picture of her and her friend Rosemary (they called each other "Sis") in very early 60s trenchcoats and careful curls, hitchhiking their way to Banff.

I had dinner at the hotel tonight, in pilgrimage. It was mediocre and expensive, as I expected, though the duck confit appetizer was good, and I was surrounded by seniors on coach trips. (Of course, I'm still kinda on eastern time, so I was eating mighty early). But I enjoyed every minute of it.

It was a good day. After spending a really nice evening with my remarkable cousin in Calgary, I kind of took the day off, drove just 90 minutes, wandered banff picking up things like a much-needed new wallet and a pair of hiking pants, then went for a snowy hike in Lake Louise. Will write separately of the hike -- but realized, when I had a chance to slow down, that this trip has been amazingly restorative. I'm loving my country, and my car, and the sense of driving too fast toward the mountains, my friend Kat's voice serenading me and out the open sunroof.

Also

2009-06-01T22:53:00.002-04:00

according to my cousin, those oil thingies are called "pump jacks," and they're used for extracting whatever can be got from an aging well. I see a metaphor in this.

Addendum:

2009-05-31T19:18:00.001-04:00

Sodium sulfate is mainly used for the manufacture of detergents and in the Kraft process of paper pulping. About two-thirds of the world's production is from mirabilite, the natural mineral form of the decahydrate, and the remainder from by-products of chemical processes such as hydrochloric acid production.

First glimpse

2009-05-31T18:53:00.004-04:00

of the rockies, between strathmore and calgary, just a faint shadow through the clouds. I thought it would be a "short" day today, but i still logged 714 km, and I'm not at my cousin's just yet -- pit stop in a starbucks to try to finish the nagging unfinished piece of work that is today's version of the big Unfinished credits that have followed me throughout my life. (There's always one thing I have to push to its limits; in this case, it's a report on some focus groups we did at one of the hospitals).

Renee asked me yesterday what I think about when I drive. It's not very profound. I think about driving, and the little friendly competition the A4 with BC plates and I had where we both hovered at 160 km/h throughout western saskatchewan, and why the guys on harleys had to block both lanes just to be contrary outside calgary, and how the landscape in western SK and eastern AB off the transcanada looks so prosperous, and what exactly those driller thingies that look like this:

are called. (Oil well pump, google image tells me).

And what they are mining near Chaplin, SK, that looks like snow:

(Sodium sulphate, apparently, whatever that's used for).

And I think about the month's worth of Sunday Edition podcasts that drifted through the car, and whether I should stop and try to buy a phone for my new place at Staples in Swift Current, and whether they sell wine in grocery stores in AB, and whether the Safeway in MooseJaw has a starbucks (it does), and whether my tummy hurts because of the eggs or the bread in my breakfast panini.

And of course, I think about my life, and the cyclists on the transcanada (all heading east; 2 sets of m/f couples and one solo man with a little trailer), and what I will have to do to get ready for a real pilgrimage on my bike, and all of the books I've read about women traveling solo on bikes, from Dervla Murphy to Josie Dew. Thinking about how the travel problem-solving even at the simplest level -- where to get a coffee -- will be so magnified, and wondering what I can mine to get the nerve.

I'm tired of driving, so tomorrow will be a short drive to Banff. I booked a room for tomorrow night there, and will go for a hike tomorrow afternoon. The mountains, finally.

There are no buffalo

2009-05-30T23:11:00.004-04:00

in north dakota anymore, but I did stop in Buffalo, ND to get gas. I left Fargo with a too-hot americano in hand and didn't really pay attention to the gas gauge; by the time I did, it was inching down, and as soon as Fargo was three sips behind me, it was pretty much farmland on both sides of the road. I developed that itchy worry about how long I could keep driving with the quarter tank, trying to calculate distances to likely nodes of services with the shifting "your tank will take you this far" number on my dashboard. It's such a weird little tension when driving, the desire to keep going and not to get off the road, wanting to push it, and the surging anxiety about the Unknown and possible empty miles.

So I pulled off at an exit that had the little gas pump icon, and followed it down a flat winding road, to a completely empty, dusty town. I spotted some people loading folding chairs onto a truck and asked them where the gas station was. I'd missed it completely -- just a couple of pumps, one diesel, one not, with no sign at all, deep ruts. Friendly woman, non-premium fuel that I tossed into the audi recklessly.

A drive this long is so intense and intimate, such a sway between Big Expansive Thoughts about the Big Expansive Landscape and all of the people in them, and the intense moments where you get locked into a tractor beam of relationship with the big wide truck in front of you that is stuck behind a small car, with not-quite-enough room to get between them. This becomes the Total Focus for what seems like an indefinite, forever period of time. And then, you pass, and suddenly you're in the landscape again. Moments where the google-approved border crossing turns out to be a Bad Idea because of a static long truck lineup, and setting off to look for another maybe-border unmarked on the map seems both just sensible and anxiety provoking.

I didn't expect to find North Dakota so stunning -- yes, the flat plains that look remarkably like where I grew up, especially around the cottage, the familiar memory of running in blazing open-sky heat, where the one tree 2 km down the road was a sought after oasis for the 5 seconds of shade as I passed under. This part was familiar, but the flow of rolling hills, green green green was surprising, somehow. High plains, stunning. Beside the road, high water still, sloughs that are probably not always full, the residue of the only-dimly-noticed floods of last month. The sparkling blue of inland lakes in the west that is so different from Ontario's dark green-blue, or the grey of the greats.

So many stories hinted at -- the class years gouged into the hills near Kenmare (state champs in 68!), the empty shells of farmhouses, the first oil drill I noticed as I was nearing the border. I stopped in the town of Kenmare, lured by the promise of the Historic Mill! Sunny saturday afternoon, completely empty town square. The choo choo cafe closed down, another empty store next to it, one woman carrying a take-out container across the square, a couple of rough looking red-tanned guys muttering about how it was too nice a day to work heading into the windowless Beer Bob's bar.

As soon as I crossed into Saskatchewan, the landscape was radically different -- people doing saturday things in pickups, recreation areas, a different kind of farmland, dustier, populated. Dusty not-green golf courses with holes on crazy lumps of land, golf carts perched on top. Driving more slowly, the opened up throttle on the empty land of ND far behind me, just trying to stay alert enough to pass sensibly, grateful for the zoom of the german engine but perhaps a little too scottish in my recklessness.

The day, to moose jaw, 924 km altogether, and a tatty hotel because the slightly more cheerful ones were full or available only to smokers, spying on the Vanier Grad of overheated parents in suits, girls in Fancy Prom-type gowns, one accessorized by a weeks old baby. Dairy queen chocolate dipped cone, sleep. Momentary reflection on how there is no time to reflect when you're busy driving and noticing. Wondering where I'm going to.

No Cream Cheese

2009-05-29T22:51:00.002-04:00

I don't notice my blood sugar while I'm driving until it's too late, sometimes. I waited too long for lunch today, and pulled off just before St. Paul to a Chipotle. I realized I looked deranged when I kept saying "no cream cheese" to my burrito maker when I was trying to say "no cheese or sour cream" -- and then couldn't figure out which of the spouts contained iced tea. (To be fair, it was the unlabeled samovar-like thing that would have held *water* in Canada).

It was 850 km worth of almost-prairie today, all straight road, sunny blue clouds punctuated by an occasional sudden storm, pickups and cars with boat trailers, small sparkling lakes. Big blonde people in the Chili's in Fargo where I ate dinner.

I had an email from F noting that a long drive gives you decompression time with no obligations, no need to interact in any way you don't want to. I think I need that... and I think my life really doesn't lend itself to that. I was listening to a piece on CBC the other day about how with the current array of technology, you can't lose yourself in a foreign city the way we did even five years ago -- the stream of tweets and fbook and wifi means that you are as hooked into other people as anywhere else. I've kind of arranged this trip on purpose to be relational -- and it's got an accidental but perfect symmetry where my stays started with my childhood home, then the familiar bed at P's, then the familiar-but-new space of my first real-life meeting with the miraculous Amy. Then tonight, a never-before seen town (though of course, it looks like every other edge of a mid-size american city, though the full double rainbow in the parking lot of the Target was pretty unique to the northern mid-west). A funnel from the known to the new. And, a need to respond to an email about work, and one about a requisite signature for my rented place in TO, and a call about community response to bp's illness, and a nagging realization that I haven't responded to stuff about the orphans. Hard to lose myself when I have destinations, no time to just roll free, the wifi hook.

I think that tomorrow and sunday I'll just undo it all and try for that decompression. Being with the people who care about me at the beginning of this trip was invaluable... and now I think I need to just drive until I'm done, and not talk. Hurt and hope are still washing over me as I go, punctuated with license plate bingo, gratitude, the voice of david sedaris, the two or three songs iconic of this trip so far: AC Newman's Ten or Twelve, Arcade Fire's Keep the Car Running, Alison Kraus & Robert Plant's Gone Gone Gone.

One warm line

2009-05-27T22:24:00.002-04:00

I'm in chicago, being thoroughly taken care of by my dear friend pamela, who just made me a bowl of buttery salty popcorn and left me to read for a while. So far on this trip I've slept in already familiar beds, tracing a one known line. 857 km is barely a dent in the map. But I did cover a stretch of michigan I don't remember seeing before, scrubby with intense cloudbursts and many lurking speedcops. Today was mostly listening to david sedaris, being a little dreamy, driving in as relaxed a way as you can when the cargo is shifting uneasily behind you and you're wondering if the bike is puncturing a painting and the clouds are opening up violently and unexpectedly. I realize I still find toll roads weirdly exotic, attached to the kind of gleeful excitement I felt when I first started driving the NYS thruway to in the Pursuit of Romance.

Threaded through the day of mundane drive is an undercurrent of sorrow about bp's health. P showed me a dvd interview of her mom one of her students did shortly before her mom died, and we cycled again through the "so vibrant one minute, gone six months later" sense of shock. I was thinking that this past few months is the first time I think I've really been conscious of aging. Not for any tangible or "rational" reason, but just a sensation that there are only so many five year chunks in one's life, and I may have edged toward having fewer left than behind me. The thwarted interlude with the married poet was another chink in this sense -- the idea that after a certain point, the potential for new connections and sustained intimacy becomes thinner. And then if you find someone you become truly enmeshed with... well, the possible narratives that could fan out have the horrible potential to look like bp's -- life that becomes truly joyful, then dashed to the ground by a turncoat body.

Despite this undertow, I *am* feeling increasingly hopeful as I head west. The chokingly humid run with beth this morning reminded me of what I want to leave behind -- something cloying, something sticky, the churn of leftover stories -- and what I want to run toward.

Day 1

2009-05-26T23:24:00.003-04:00

My sister told me that any road trip needs to begin with a song played loudly, and that your journey should take shape around it. I decided to goofily play Canada's Really Big as I ping-ponged my way out of the recklessly parked cars in the market. For a few minutes, I contemplated rewriting the plan and actually staying completely within Canada instead of my half-and-half itinerary, just for the romantic satisfaction of rounding the lake and threading across the prairies. But I opted for the friends-as-stops plan as written, and pointed myself toward the QEW.

It doesn't feel Significant yet, especially the first 55 km that I traced so many times going to rochester, before the turn off in Hamilton. The familiarity of the 401 wasn't overshadowed by the shiny new stores on Manning road (more coffee, a bottle of wine for dinner).

Visited my mom briefly, then to B&J's where I did a conference call on my BC project before my mother came for dinner. They gifted me with a new burr coffee grinder as a housewarming present, which was bloody nice -- and still the distance isn't real. 387 km out of 4922 -- barely a divot in the map. Starting to find a rhythm of audiobooks, new music and the radio. And realizing just how much my car likes to urge itself forward in 6th. So far avoided the many speedtraps, but I can't imagine this trend continuing through the revenue-thirsty interstates.

License plates spotted: Manitoba, Quebec, NY, NJ, OH, MI, MO, CO, MN.

Scratchy

2009-05-25T08:35:00.003-04:00

F's term for people bickering and at odds is "scratchy." And I seem to be scratchy with everyone in my world at all these days. It's trite to talk about the stress of moving, but it's real -- and here I am again, on the brink of some adventure, and instead of feeling graceful and brave about it, I've got my mouth open in a big yowl of anxiety and fret and sullen stompiness that I am alone in feeling this.

I have a slurry of emotions about this move and its magnitude, and somehow every moment of loss and fear that I've had has encrusted itself to this moment. And I have that dark inversion happening where I can't see the bright spots, can't stay focused on that image of the goat cheese and arugula salads and the ocean, can't hold it in the centre. I'm just agitated, sad, worried and -- oddly enough -- feeling abandoned, despite the fact that this loony move is my choice.

I think part of it is just the disorientation of watching three strangers drive off with all my stuff, and being experienced enough to know that the disgorging will mean weeks of not knowing where anything is, wandering around holding a single spoon and feeling its existential, dislocated angst. And part of it is a sort of constant inner dialogue about realizing I'm on my own and that the people I've imagined spending my life with are off on their own rides, just as beset as I am in different ways, but far away.

I'm also really conscious that the intensity of my physical presence when I'm scratchy can be so hard to digest that the people who are best able to support me are the ones at arm's length -- either the ones I talk to in small doses (thanks, Kat ;-)) or the ones at the streamlined end of a data line.

In real terms, it's been a extremely overwhelming week. Ian's funeral, and the waves of people who call me by a name I don't even recognize as my own anymore. Then the strange little interlude with the other Ian, the poet, and the sudden choking off of the effusive interest, fantasy burst before it even formed off the end of the bubble pipe. Then of course, the news about bp, which suffuses me with inarticulable sorrow and a kind of panic at losing my touchstone to grace. Trying to articulate my untethered feeling to my here-community, and finding myself so out of sync, a blast of angry agitation that is so much about feeling alone. Then the absurdity of believing that I could be light-hearted with someone, find a balm in the physical, with my young courier boy, when I'm feeling like this -- and our sunday afternoon date turning into "I've met someone else." And, ironically, his showing himself able to stay and talk about the intimacy of fear and death -- more digestible small bursts of me.

Me, scratchy, preaching so eloquently about embracing the uncertain and emergent to the learners in my course, drowning in so much abstract anxiety about what's in front that I can't pause to form any kind of appealing story of possibility. Pause, breathe.

One more

2009-05-22T11:22:00.002-04:00

At the funeral the other day, Carol Anne comment that she didn't want to cry, because it wasn't "her place." Well, I could argue that -- she was Ian's caregiver, she's not close to her own parents, she's been part of that family for a long time. But I get the impulse, the desire to not put yourself in the centre of someone else's grief.

I'm feeling like that today. I got the news that bp is sick, has what is likely advanced bone cancer, unknown primary. I'm trying not to second guess prognosis, or to claim the grief and numbness. But I'm bitterly sad and worried, for him and his family and for me. His concepts have reshaped how I see myself, and how I aspire to engage with the world. He's not just a friend and mentor, but a meaning-maker in the best sense. A master of generative living. I feel an atavistic sense that if he isn't there as an avatar of generative presence, I will be less.

Anxiety

2009-05-22T07:26:00.003-04:00

I have been reading Patricia Pearson's excellent and clever book about anxiety. It's illuminating. I'd come to realize in the past few years that much of what I'd thought of as "fear of X" in my life (insert any number of concepts here) was more of a free-floating anxiety. Among other gut-crackling observations, Pearson writes about phobias (like, fear of peas) as objects that can become totems for *all* of our fears. The woman who runs away from peas has found a convenient container for everything she can't handle.

When I was at Ian's funeral the other day, I was reflecting on how the ceremony of farewell to someone -- even sparely Catholic -- has taken on the power to be about all the accumulated loss in the world for me. About the person, yes, but also about generalized, blank, untethering loss. Of people, of potential. The more iconic the rituals, the more wrenching. On Tuesday, I was fairly placid -- until Gillian, after painstakingly pulling flowers out of the arrangement on the casket as directed, briefly fell into disintegrating sorrow. Then, plunged into all the loss and sadness I've had.

I have those moments as I'm packing and finding books or clothes that evoke stories, nodes of intimacy offered or grasped, still at bedtime when there is a gap where there used to be night-time calls with F I for almost the entire time I lived here. It's not the calls themselves, so much -- so often they were scratchy or unsatisfying -- it's the ritual of bidding goodnight to someone who cares about me as I turn my body over to the edgy, unpredictable dark of the night.

During all of my time with B, we had a constant conversation about the things I was afraid of, that she helped me avoid and manage. Unlocked doors, people vomiting, the turkey that harboured killer bacteria, being alone, fire, heights, people out of control, the maniac who would jump out of the bushes at women's only events, driving too fast, that the stranger offering us a ride on his sailboat in new zealand was going to kill us, clients wanting too much from me, thuggish boys who would beat us up, friends and their untold anxieties that played out in social weirdness. All dating back to my nightly prayers as a little girl that the bathtub wouldn't overflow (I thought the house would fill with water and I would drown), that the attic above me wouldn't burst into flame and crash me into a firey death. Pearson describes the spinning, the churn, the playing over and over of the same scripts that trap and paralyse and push your relationship with fear into the centre of any social dynamic.

It was really freeing for me to start recognizing that it wasn't the specifics I was afraid of, but that I always carried an abundance of anxiety that could fix itself to anything. A very small regime of drugs threw a muffling blanket over the constant threat of metaphorical flame. Now I can greet the anxiety as a somewhat reasonable character -- oh, I'm anxious, okay. Interesting. Rather than spin agonize repeat.

In this move, I'm starting to recognize sadness as having the same free-floating properties. Yes, I'm specifically sad about the loss of potential with F, sad about moving away from B, sad about regrets and moments I've had in my life where I haven't lived into my best self, where I've been self-absorbed and uncompromising in ways that freeze possibilities. I lift the sadness off a shelf with a fleece that triggers a memory of climbing on Skye, the drawings of Trixie the goat that B had made for me, a faded polaroid that falls out of a book of J&S&B topless on hanlan's point (where I stayed on the sand reading while they got on a stranger's boat). But I am learning to fondle the sadness a bit, shape it, put it away, recognize it as a reminder to settle into, value, feed the connections with the people and possibilities that actually surround me.

2009-05-21T18:34:00.003-04:00

I just shoved a copy of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into an empty wine box, box #28 or so in the endless parade of "does this come to BC or stay here?" decisions I've had to make about practically everything I own. I've only sketched out the vaguest notion of what this life I'm going to have in BC will be -- the one where I might dip into Wittgenstein, cook with mindfully selected goat cheese and arugula, light candles scented with faux sea air. My life here, crammed into my 550 square feet hovering above the city, is a little clearer -- fast, money-earny, bursting with people and stories, cheap sushi on the grass in front of UHN with a client talking about care models, coffee thrown down the gullet.

The books at hand evoking the time in the eyrie in Portland, fusing words to F for the first time. Another sigh, another piece of tape RPPPPPPPPPPED across the top.

West is just a question posed, a hint of an echo of a desire. A suburb on the sea, not of anything in particular, just a house in which to be and write and find. A blank, with shadows of people I'm linked to on the edges.

I'm multi-phrenic at the best of times, but in the past days it's been Work Write Talk Knit Renee Pack Finish Blankie Pack Liz Pull out knitting Pack Drive Arrange Drink beer with B Work Pack Drink Vodka and Watermelon Ice on date with GB Ice Knee Pack Talk to Sister Pack. Bashed up against a funeral and three different sets of encounters with people I haven't seen for two decades. A reunion shooting itself at me one bb at a time. Lots to ponder there, torrents of different possible stories lived, unlived, untold, unexpected, foreseen, unseen. A possibility held out in the form of the enamoured poet from the pub the night I sold my loft, cross-purposes revealed when his ardour turned out to be of the cake having and eating variety. I'm not opposed to the cake-mouth-stuffing of course, but as with Neil the surreptitious foot fetishist, I like to know which part of me is being eyed lasciviously before agreeing to try to bend in that direction.

Life. Trying to grab onto just one piece of yarn that's mine.

Bossy

2009-05-18T07:56:00.001-04:00

Renee told me to post on my blog so she can test the RSS feed.

We've had such a good weekend.

The end.

Wistful

2009-05-17T00:02:00.003-04:00

My cousin's boyfriend did a FB status update about being bored. I don't know if I've ever been bored. Restless, impatient, frustrated, sleepy -- but not bored. I do do wistful though. And there is nothing more wistful than remembering back 17 years to a humid august night at the Michigan womyn's music festival, a field of women teary-eyed as Ferron sang the quintessential wistful dyke breakup song. Flash forward, dinner at my ex's house-that-used-to-be-mine, with my online friend who also used to be a lesbian but isn't any more, Ferron at my kitchen table because the woman who lived in my ex's basement after we split up brought her because her friends, the documentary film-makers, made a film about her. Talking to my dyke friends about what to wear on my first date with some man I met at a pub. Life don't clickety clack down a straight line track indeed.

I've been faithful

2009-05-07T23:51:00.002-04:00

to the wee diary book for a week now, and I like the practice. But what I notice is that I can't think of what to write, and then I start to write and then POOF the spaces are filled up. And no backspacing.

My car is all nimble, and in it and with it I'm all nimble. I went to ikea today to get some outside furniture, certain that it would disappear seasonally if I waited. I wasn't sure if the chaise would fit in my car, and in fact, in the box, it didn't. But taking B's creative persistence about these things, and what F taught me about tying things down so they don't flap about, I ended up removing the chaise from the box, levering it and propping it up at an angle with two other boxes, and securing it with my kayak strap to the front passenger seat so it didn't whack my head off. And then I proceeded to shove six folding chairs, a folding table and several armloads of towels, sheets, pillows, a duvet etc. into the space. Then ably hopped up and reaffixed the bike rack to the roof, because it would have become a trajectory in that mess.

When I got home, first I ran off to give K a cheque for my new place I'm renting. Then I steeled myself with some fruit berry candies and managed to wrassle all of the furniture upstairs, hyperactive elevator doors be damned.

In the bath, I was reading Heather Malick, whose vitriol can run away with itself but who is often caustically funny. This is what I wanted to fit in the wee diary:

Trust me to enshallow my love. But I fell in love with France because of the sunlight hitting the Seine in a certain way as I sat at a café drinking table wine. As usual, I qualified my love and this is why I am not what they call a "fun" person. Perhaps the sun is glinting off the corpses of the two hundred Algerians tied up and dumped in the Seine to drwon in the riots of 1961, I thought. But I still fell in love.

Victoria and Nancy-Ann

2009-05-04T23:02:00.002-04:00

Two women named Victoria and Nancy-Ann have bought my place. I am guessing these are not the names they use in the world. What a weird mix of euphoria, delight that it’s two women, relief that I can move on (and that I made a modest profit on the whole thing) – and sadness and wistfulness. Walking home from the pub, having a burger and one too many glasses of wine with B, totally happy -- then totally weepy and sad.

Seems inevitable, me with my complicated feelings. (The other day, Alan-in-Moonbean said to me “you know, you light up a room – you have that spark… and then you realize how the wheels are turning and you think, “that is one complicated woman”). Yeah, yeah. Always with the ebullience and the wistfulness.

But, that’s me. Celebrating selling my place by eating hamburgers with my ex at the pub I’ve only discovered in the last year, getting chatted up by a guy named Ian (what the hell IS my demographic, anyway?), fretting about reading in too many different and stupid places about how women “become invisible” in their 40s, trusting that the universe turns up what you need when you know how to ask for it. Trusting that the stance of abundance is the right one.

Example: I did this jiggery pokery trade with L for the lease on my car, content merely to not have the car on my plate anymore – and then she reflects on it and gives me an extra cheque. I decide what I’m comfortable with at the bottom line for my place, and the first offer is exactly that. I end up with $38K above what I paid for it 3 years ago, which is not too bloody bad for this economy.

Oh, and I love my car. But that will have to wait for some non-burbling time.

5 years

2009-05-01T15:36:00.002-04:00

I was wandering around my neighbourhood today killing time while more viewers (probably #20 or so) looked at my place and decided not to fall in love with it, and I went into this quirky little store in the market that's kind of a bookstore, kind of a cooking-stuff store. I had the notion that I might buy something for my new kitchen. Instead I picked up this 5 year diary.

It's tiny -- doesn't give you much room for any day -- but I like the idea of the flow of days over time. I was thinking about how different I am today than I was 5 years ago, and all that's unexpected about my life right now. I was wondering of course what May 1, 2014 would look like. I can't imagine.

I've never been great at the every-day-discipline stuff, but I think 3 lines -- a gutenberg-era twitter space -- should be doable. Not quite sure *what* to capture, though. Food? Dreams? (Let's not even GO there, given the horrifyingly explicit electra dream I had last night involving my father and a flowered bathing cap). Sensations? One dominant thought?

Now I just need a really good PEN.

Rain run reset

2009-04-28T14:48:00.004-04:00

Today I left my loft in viewer shape, did a focus group in a hospital @ 730 am, took my car for service (summer tires and vacuum, in prep for handing it over to Liz), took cab home in pouring rain, made phonecalls for car insurance and to book a flight for Renee to visit me in May. Hovered over my workspace to not leave even a fingerprint and designed and did slides for a meeting tomorrow, crammed myself into the pandemic anxiety of the crowded streetcar in chinatown , ran off to my tax person (owe too much), went to bank to get certified cheque for Audi, and am heading back to the hospital for another group.

Oh yeah. Then I have a date type thing. Distractions, possibilities. Hum. Unless of course Suzie's anxieties are valid and he's a Craigslist Killer. In which case... bye!

Myself at this station

2009-04-25T23:42:00.003-04:00

Once when i got off the phone with my sister, F commented that I had a sort of nest of people who cared about me that he lacked. It was during one of the not infrequent weekends where the space between us seemed to conjure up violent and sudden storms, spring on the prairies -- and he dipped into a fairly rare moment of a kind of regret, noting the way I seemed to pass from hand to hand among warm configurations of people.

I think I've always known that, but deep in the heart of yearning for a lover, the emotional impression of people outside that centre is a pretty thin watermark. But in the last couple of weeks, I've really felt those hands in a new way. Suddenly I trust the constellations around me, feel anchored in them in a way I don't know if I ever have before.

When B and I broke up, I stumbled through an orbit that felt more like the breathless gravity of a black hole. The people around me were really holding me up -- D, Suzie, B, my online community, J&S, R, M -- the many people who gravely and patiently listened to me howl with angst, with fear, with deep sorrow, nodded and encouraged as I patched life together. Then, I gulped at them, wanted to feel like there was something mutual going on, but I was voracious and endlessly needy. That certainly got thinner, but it continued to stretch itself out as I strived to find my feet in work, meaning, writing.

Ending a nearly 3 year relationship with someone you've never lived with is obviously a massively different thing than stumbling in tears out of a 14 year relationship your life is scaffolded around. But even so, I'm bruised, I'm sad, I'm a little lonely. But my world, my night sky? It's complex and unbelievably profound. Multiple constellations, each one signaling love, caring, endurance. Beams of light in silico from my people across the continent, the ocean. Warm chaotic life around tables, food, music, arms around me. Dinner and narratives and hilarity and new lives. Just... all there, all in orbit, keeping me in gravitational pull.

If I flick back through this blog 3 years, I realize that I nested a lot of emerging identities in the push/pull with F. The passion pulled into being first by a Leonard Cohen song years before I met F that formed the underthrum. The StraightCate persona who could navigate and hold the cultural warmth of the dyke community and the hand-in-hand couple across a table, heels of hot boots tucked neatly under. The academic with purpose, drive. Work that comes from someplace bigger. And I think what I've realized is that I found a way to live into those stories that was enabled in the dance with F -- but not shaped by or limited to him. Recognizing that the emotional self of me isn't separate from those parts of me.

This week has been wearing. I flurried my way through decluttering, getting my place into the crisp template of desirable locale. LIsted it. Hoped to sell quickly, resigned myself wobbling hope and disappointment through my fingers like trying to carry too many wineglasses by their stems with every viewing. Fled the place while people tried to imagine themselves here. Planned the business life with D & J. Worked. Hit walls of fatigue. Felt the whiplash shock as every night at bed I faced again the complete disappearance of the person I'd processed my days with for 3 years. Found sleep, imaginative dreams. Launched new stories, a co-edited book, kayak lessons.Felt loved.

Pics

2009-04-21T21:45:00.002-04:00

The slightly creepy, smoke-smelling guy with the excellent clothes who came to photograph my loft today left his reading glasses on my bed. He was the sort of fag who, at dinner parties, would definitely fall into some of the worst misogynistic comments about women and their Parts. He made comments about being scared of women, in a sort of mocking moue. I did not enjoy finding his glasses camouflaged on my duvet cover.

However, he took some excellent shots, and now my place is listed for the whole damn world to see.

I'll miss my cork floors and the smick smick noise they make under my bare feets.

Mango Gelato

2009-04-21T15:21:00.005-04:00

When I was in BC last week, I think I was simultaneously clenched and open. I think it was kind of like that moment of paralysis that happens when you're scrambling on kind of scary rocks -- where you hang too tightly onto the ledge above you and have to force your fingers off painstakingly one by one, even as you know that as you step down that welled up sense of fear will just vanish. That paradox where I knew how damned sad I was, agitated with emotion, but still able to slow myself down to walk along the seawall (is it a seawall?) and eat a mango gelato.

I'm still hovering in that space a little bit, sped up emotion like having a birth induced. All happening faster, contractions more intense, eagerness to see that baby shot through with waves of pain. In this case, the baby seems to be full package life adventure. Since I got home late thursday night, dragging sadness and metallic exhaustion behind me, I've managed to visit with my sister, get a new iphone, accidentally buy a new car, deal with the recursive loop of problems in Uganda, toss an endless supply of unneeded stuff out of my place (from jigsaw puzzles to paper to clothes), meet with my real estate agent twice, get my place in shape for listing, have it photographed and listed, hang out with my slightly chaotic and sweetly loving chosen family (bosoms indeed), buy some outdoor furniture for my new place, decide NOT to buy a new place in TO but to rent... and do some much-needed work. Phew. My eyes are truly glazing over, but it's not manic energy -- just, putting the pieces in place for what comes next.

I'm heading out to buy some yarn to finish the blankie for paula's almost-here baby, and then to meet D at the gym -- and really, my bed is beckoning, despite the fact that it's 3:36 pm. But it's all okay. Really reminded of the amazing, supportive and loving people in my life with whom I'm pretty much able to be my best self, in all its complicated glory.

Pdx

2009-04-16T16:35:00.007-04:00

The last time I was in the portland airport in any conscious way was nearly three years ago. I was enamoured of the free wifi, listening to someone playing the piano, drinking a good coffee. It all felt so civilized, a kind of symbolic space that came to represent "the west" between me and F. He and I hadn't met in person yet, but we were fast-dancing in email, and as I sat on that round bench right over there, I opened one of the emails from him that had me so excited about our potential meeting. A vision of a shared narrative on mountaintops, sharing work, sharing flesh, sharing life.

Today, as I bolt back to Toronto in a little tumult of waylaid plans (L had strep, now there is something wrong with her back, so K and I aren't going to Sonoma after all), and missing the phone that I left in a rental car and lost forever yesterday, I'm wistful. I feel like I want to compress the time continuum, find my way back to that era of open-lunged hopefulness, remeet the playmate I thought I could have and do it right. And just as I feel that, just as quickly, I feel the ironic detachment in that opening -- F termed the shared narrative a "dangerous folly," the belief that two fiercely single-minded people could carve a life together. And, I wanted it... desperately. The big-ness of the leap of crossing borders, attaching myself to a man larger than my life so far.

He was some kind of crucible for me. I refracted against his sides to hack my way through my dissertation, to recrafting myself as a phd. In his encouragement, in his open engagement with my ideas, in the edges that I disagreed so strongly with. At the beginning, the disagreement cowed me -- made me angry and frustrated that I couldn't express myself, couldn't translate. It taught me how much I needed to do that -- and taught me a lot about what happens to me when I'm frustrated.

I was frustrated a lot in this relationship. (And lord knows, so was he). I have the uncomfortable ability to look at my interactions from multiple angles -- from inside me where the small voice is constantly explaining, accounting, justifying some of the moments that defined us as a pair, but also being so clear that I am capable of behaving as badly as a person can behave. Epithets hurled, once an actual small pot of hair gel that miraculously bounced out of the bathtub with a trajectory that smashed up and knocked down a framed picture. Shattered glass in the bathtub, my sense of civility shattered on the floor. Hectoring insistence on being in the centre when he needed space. Mistrust borne out of our jagged beginning, chiseling away at every story to find the weak spot. Impulses simultaneously understood and reviled, even as I was enacting them.

I see myself in my fullness -- from his point of view -- volatile, relentless, self-absorbed. And I see myself weighing all of that, shading it, finding more even tones, distance from the emotion, probing at my own past with an awl to disrupt long-carved patterns.

In this relationship, I simultaneously saw myself as demanding, needs unmet, insistent -- and continually finding ways to let go of my rehearsed, long-scripted expectations as I realized that so many of them were stale, outgrown. Shifts sometimes subtle, sometimes too late, sometimes more in my own breathing space than enacted between us.

Against this backdrop, so many magical moments that embodied that imagined narrative -- hand in hand up a scary mountain, flesh on flesh above life, howling with laughter in bed at his mother's impression of his brother's ex, drawing pictures of what my work could be on a placemat. Hand in hand wistfulness at hope of new work for him. In these moments, and their wake that let me set out for uganda, ride off on my roadbike, accomplish the phd, lift weights, weigh my strengths in his wake, arise ripe and desirable ... a huge part of me still wishes those moments could be strung together to make a whole.

I ran along the willamette this morning, a run between bridges I've now done enough that it's one of "my" runs. One of my rhythms was the chorus of "what will I say at my graduation" that I mentally wrote for the 6.5 years of my phd. Made me so aware of the role of these shaping narratives -- it's in the yearning and reaching for them that we get momentum. When it actually came time to stand on the stage, I still hadn't found the right words -- was rewriting as I sat on stage, forgot to thank several important people, uttered nothing profound. But the practice for that perfect moment was what got me to it. Just like the writing of the narrative of the shared mountaintops with F, on a two-generations-ago now i-book right over there at pdx, was the practice of enacting the belief in love, the belief in growth, the belief in hope and intimacy and connectedness.

Last fall, when I went to germany, I had a narrative that I was going to rent an Audi A3 and drive as fast as I wanted to on the autobahn as I traced over my childhood myths. When I landed in frankfurt, I ended up with the crappiest of german cars, an Opel with a saggy clutch and feeble power. I spent a few moments feeling dejected, and then I just... adapted. It wasn't what I wanted, but the imagined story got me to germany, through the important encounter with my childhood town. My time with F was that epic for me... sliding forward on a narrative that we only ever lived in haiku-length moments, but conveying me into a space where I can see so much more than I did before, can write myself with the same confidence that my niece writes out words phonetically.

This is my new place in White Rock.

Leased for a year, shaped by and holding someone else's hopes, open now for me to write. The emerging narrative is still subtle and vague -- find my writing voice that's been on hold for a year, ride, hike, find some people who could constitute community. Runs along the water. A red mosaic tile bistro table on the deck. Myself, entering anew.

2009-04-13T16:31:00.002-04:00

pffffft

blowing off the dust

When I traveled to santa barbara for the first time, for the orientation week for my phd, I took the bus from LAX to santa barbara. It was March, and brilliant sunny, and for part of the ride I had the pacific on one side and fields, green with something unrecognizable, on the other. I toyed with a little metaphor in my learning plan about those fields, that I knew something was growing but couldn't tell what the crop was yet.

On that first ride, in the half empty, lumbering and slow bus, I listened to Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball on my portable cd player. Mournful, wrapping my sense in slow motion. The green, the diamond sea pacific, the sun, the bus driver, the woman I'd met at the bus stop who never quite became a friend. Hope.

Three years ago, I came back to my empty loft after being in portland for a month. Played Josh Ritter -- tell me I got here at the right time. No cds anymore. I padded around barefoot, eating raspberry gelato out of the container, filled with the possibility of the man I'd been crafting an imagined future with, tapping into my keyboard in the wide bed in the eeyrie in portland.

A week later, he was wrapped around me, and the song rang in my ear. He warned me then that he thought we'd have trouble with each other's music. He listened so hard, wanted to hear me share myself. So much that didn't fit, so many false starts -- and so much that locked in as though we'd been born to wrap around each other.

Life in orbit for three years, shot through with hope and intense emotion and coffee stains. Airplanes, sheets, beaches, tears, disappointment. Finishing the phd, swinging my own wrecking ball.

Today I sit in the airport -- how many times does this make? -- waiting to fly west to finish our breakup. The raspberry gelato taste still on my tongue, no new soundtrack. Still wanting to grab at hope. Stains under my eyes. Feeling like I learn every lesson one relationship too late.

RED

2009-01-16T08:45:00.003-05:00

So I have this two year old ipod nano,
one of the RED ones. 8 gigs. Works fine, though I broke the little carrying case for it. I use it on planes, while knitting, in the car, while walking.

Yesterday I had it on the table in a coffee shop at a meeting I was having in one of my hospitals. A woman I don't know well from my client group came up and started chatting with us. She's in her early 50s, great red hair, dresses memorably. She noticed the ipod, and started to tell a story, almost against her will. Her husband died last year. She had a red ipod, just like this one, that her team had given her. She loves red, it was special, but she's not a music person. She didn't even load it. When john got sick, she loaded it with his music. It was how he coped. Music was important to him, the red ipod carried him through the last months.

At the end, he was doing palliative care at home. There was a problem with the bed company. One night, they did a delivery at 1 a.m. The bed didn't fit together. She had John up in the middle of the night. She loves red, she doesn't mean to be telling this story like this, it's just that the ipod reminded her.

The next day, there were three bed companies there all at once, trying to sort out the problem. The ipod was on the dressing table. One of the men stole it. A palliative bed delivery guy stole a dying man's ipod.

After John died, she used his aeromiles to buy a new ipod. It was like his final gift to her. But the RED line was done. The new one is turquoise, and she's never even loaded it.

She hadn't even seen a red ipod since then. Mine just reminded her. She's sorry.

So I hand her my ipod. "I think you should have this."

"No, no no." She's embarrassed. "I really didn't mean to tell that story."

"Seriously, I'll bring it to you on Wed, at the meeting. you bring me the turquoise one. We'll switch."

She nods, changes the subject. We talk business.

I go home, fall asleep wondering if I want her turquoise one or if I should buy the new one with the video window. Will it work with my car adaptor? I let the sadness simmer at my edges. I sleep fitfully.

This morning, I'm rushing around. I notice out of the corner of my brain that I've left my ipod in the bathroom, for some reason. I grab my brush, which tangles in the earbud wires... and drop the RED ipod in the (not yet flushed) toilet.

Polysemy and Fatness

2009-01-15T22:09:00.008-05:00

One of the basic premises of the kind of communication theory I study is that because of the polysemous nature of language (i.e., words not only have different dictionary meanings, they have different meanings in different contexts), the "transmission" model of communications (you think a thought and use language to transmit it to me) is not actually what happens at all. We coordinate meaning together, in interaction.

I have never had such a good example of this as in the email I got from our Ugandan director today:

I hope you are fine and you have grown fat these days. Here everything is OK. The place is carm and Edward is sick he no longer makes noise.

Way to underline the sense of waddle that accompanies January in Toronto, completely with long johns under jeans that are already a mite too tight.

Ah, Freeman. (The other day he reassured me that the children remain Big and Gay).

At least things are carm there.

Knitblog

2009-01-11T20:11:00.002-05:00

I have this new knitblog I'm supposed to be doing in two voices with Ali. (Cate and Ali knit? Geddit?) But she's pretty quiet so far.

ANyway, I like having the knitting specific place. I blogged about this infernal shawl.

http://cateandaliknit.blogspot.com/

It has come to my attention

2009-01-11T20:10:00.003-05:00

that, contrary to what I claimed in my previous post, I in fact turned 43 on my last birthday, not 44.

Thank you. That is all.

Reflective Meme -- Thanks to Liz

2009-01-06T21:56:00.003-05:00

The original one of these in Liz's blog had like 500 points... but I'll peg away until I have to boot the computer out of bed...

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?

(Why is my first impulse sexual? Must be the moon).

Went to Africa. Most profound thing I've ever done.

Oh, and stood on a stage as a full-fledged phd.

Acquired a road bike.

Worked in the US under a TN visa.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions?

I don't think I had any resolutions last year. And yet the year popped with achievements. I think there's a lesson there.

3. Did someone close to you give birth? Did anyone close to you die?
No. and No.

So that's a wash for population change....

5. What countries did you visit?

US (umpteen times), Scotland, England, Denmark, Germany, Uganda. (Am I missing any?) Landed in Schiphol but stayed sky-side, so I don't think it counts.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

More impetus to exercise.

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Learning to be less tied up in knots. A concatenation of many good things.

8. What was your biggest failure?

I don't really think in terms of failure. There were a few WTF client moments.

9. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing serious.

10. What was the best thing you bought?

My bike, hands down. Makes me alive. Followed up by my plane ticket to Uganda.

11. Whose behavior merited celebration?

The people of America. The amazing people who swept me with emotional curling brooms to finishing my dissertation, and then who surrounded me when I presented it. So many people.

12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

The people who cheered on Sarah Palin.

13. Where did most of your money go?

Airlines.

14. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Now I'm thinking about sex again.

My bike.

Finding out we got a grant I was the lead writer on.

Meeting the kids in Kasese.

Climbing mountains in Scotland.

The AMAZING AND DELIGHTFUL capsule hotel in schiphol I slept in on the way back from Uganda.

Hanging out with my nieces.

15. What song will always remind you of 2008?

I guess that annoying Coldplay song. (Hi Liz!)

Also, the theme song from Dr. Who.

16. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? Marginally fatter
iii. richer or poorer? About the same, financially. Lifewise, richer.

17. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Again with the naughty thoughts.

I did a lot this year. Worked out more.

18. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Weeping. (First half of the year, mostly)

19. How did you spend Christmas?

On an airplane, mostly, next to a woman with a wee sweet baby named Gianna. Bracketed by xmas morning with my nieces and late night cheese and wine with F, his daughter and her mom.

20. Any one-night stands?

Not unless you count the deep lust I have for that capsule hotel in Schiphol.

21. What was your favorite TV program?

Torchwood. (I think this was the only thing I watched on broadcast tv, but I did like discovering Dexter on dvd).

22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

The woman who wrote this book: My miserable lonely lesbian pregnancy. I wanted to punch her in the mouth the whole time I was reading it.

23. What was the best book you read?

Hm, surely there was something. I think the fact that this is question #23 means that I want to just grab what's on my bedside. Which happens to be A short walk in the hindu kush, which is actually really good.

Actually, I think the best book was A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. Read it under the mosquito net by headlamp in Kasese, and I could smell the sweat. Harrowing and brilliant.

Last year I would have said Fun Home, hands down. But I don't think there was anything that actually came out this year that had the same impact on me.

I read a fair bit, but it was very in-one-eye-and-out-the-other.

24. What was your greatest musical discovery?

It was a very music-less year. Maybe learning a teensy bit about blues.

25. What did you want and get?

Road bike. Trip to germany. Trip to Uganda. Less inner turmoil. Lots of joy with F. Affirmation with many many important friends. Yarn.

26. What did you want and not get?

An i-phone. And it turns out I'm pretty happy about the decision not to carry email around with me. Though I think it drives Danny nuts.

27. Favorite film of this year?

For the life of me I can't remember seeing any films. I think we went to see In Bruges, because it happened to be on when we had time to go to a film. But it wasn't a film-going year. I saw Rachel Getting Married and liked it, but then I like those overly navel-gazey things. I have a list, but I don't know when I'll make them happen.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

Turned 44. Went for bbq and blues. Wondered why my mother didn't call me.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Hm. My year was pretty satisfying. There are a couple of people I wish had more peace in their lives. I wish I had a bit more resolution on this long-distance-relationship thing.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

Fleece.

31. What kept you sane?

Anafranil. Zinfandel. A steadying touch in the morning. My bicycle. Listening to people. My online friends. My real-life friends. My real-life friends I see online a lot. Knitting. Sleeping. Conversations with good people on airplanes.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Well, is there any answer other than Obama?

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

I think slowly starting to understand a little bit more about post-colonialism and what makes Africa the complex, complicated, breathtaking place it is.

34. Who do you miss?

I miss working on my dissertation. And Jeff from the Pittsford Pub.

35. Who was the best new person you met?

That man on the plane between Amsterdam and Entebbe who told me the story of taking his 6 year old daughter with him to vote on Nov 4 and then flying to DC so she could be there that night.

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

Hanky Panky underpants are as good as thongs.

Some random bob

2009-01-05T22:10:00.005-05:00

I think I blew my blog wad on the kasese blog... and I'm also feeling like this space was good for diverting the demons while I was divorcing, disserting, dissecting every damn emotion I had. But it never had much of a personality, and the voice is so... intra-me. So I've been thinking I need another voice to stretch and another space, one that pushes me to keep the scholar part in the scholar practitioner fantasy as well as pushes me to explore a bit.

While I'm pondering that, some random.

1. A resolution for 2009: wean the computer out of my bed. I don't know when I picked up the habit of co-sleeping with my computer (well, I know when -- as soon as I was no longer sleeping with a woman who forbade it as strictly as she forbade the wet destruction of library books when I dragged them into the shower), but it's supplanted books too much of the time as I topple to sleep. And sure, nothing really wrong with reading a year's worth of Ask the Pilot columns before sleeping (it really just makes my shiny macbook a Big Kindle, I guess), but it seems wrong to fall asleep with $2000 worth of metal on my chest, a hum of anxiety about ElectroMagneticWaves or some such nonsense. I seem to have succeeded, more or less, in prying the need for continual email out of my psyche, in letting my treo self-destruct and not replacing it -- I should be able to shift this too.

2. I knit a dalek. For a xmas gift for F. I was stupidly delighted by it. I'm so weird sometimes.

I got it from this pattern:

Extermiknit!. Which was not too bad, though a bit hard to follow because no charts, and a few errors here or there. But the MAIN issue was the SCALE. Doesn't the picture on that site look like it's a wee cuddly thing, like maybe the size of one of those giant microbes??. Nope. That sucker is the size of a human baby. Stuffed with old tights, some of my sister's old jammies, and black beans. F likes it.

3. For NY's, we were in seattle. The next day we drove north a bit, to a park near Anacortes, and walked out on the beach and looked at birds. I took my camera out of my case to capture a wintry loon (the camera, I note, that I bought after I lost my other camera TWICE in Scotland), handed the case to F and promptly dropped it in the water.

I was kind of content to let it join the sea, but I couldn't quite be certain that there was nothing in the little pocket. So after peering under the dock for a while to try to gauge the tide, we went back to F's truck and ate some sandwiches, then went back. By now, it was following a little course that hugged the (very high) dock, and much closer to shore.

We had the idea to lasso it, but of course had no rope. (For some reason F had removed what looked like a serial killer kit out of the back of his truck -- he was driving around ropes and crampons and an ice axe for a while, for no apparent reason). But there WAS bullwhip kelp, so I roped me up about 15 feet of it, and F took the position of a careful curler on the dock (HURRRRRRY, I yelled, but he didn't get it, not being a canadian) and tried to sweeeeeeeep the case to shore.

He was making steady progress when we caught the attention of a little family on the beach. A harley riding couple, their daughter, her friend. Mr. Harley couldn't resist jumping into the action, and he began hurling rocks at it. Under the theory that if he could hit the spot right behind it, he'd create a little ripple that moved it cloooooser to shore.

So this went on for a while, F sweeping with the bullwhip kelp from the dock, Mr. Harley hurling rocks, us womenfolk encouraging the men in their Hunt. The wee camera case ($15 at Staples, I'll point out) bobbed closer and closer. Sweep, SPLASH, bob. Sweep, SPLASH, bob. "You go bob," yelled out Mrs. Harley, in fact, though when I said, "thank you Bob!" he said, "my name's Ken -- she calls everyone Bob."Bob," he said.

So it came really close, teasing the footing posts or whatever they're called, and I reached in... and stepped in... and the tide kept scooting it just out of reach... and then suddenly, it was 10 feet away again.

"I'm goin' in," said Bob. And he did. Rolled up his pants and rolled into the icy water, impervious. Rescued it with casual aplomb.

Then his daughter took our picture, and they told us about a neat little B&B they had stayed at nearby, and we wished each other a happy new year.

And F went home and washed the seagull shit off his goretex.

Happy 2009!

Make Two

2008-11-19T12:20:00.005-05:00

I made a toque:

First cabling project, and I only screwed up the top, a little bit, though I never quite got the hang of "knowing" where a cable should go -- it was a feat of memory and a friendly fashion student at the event I was at on the weekend who was a knitter and had a tapestry needle in her bag.

It's Brooklyn Tweed's habitat hat, and the cables on the top on the sample are crisper than mine. But it was fun and it's CUTE.

The yarn is Green Mountain Mohair, colour Jasper. Same yarn I made L's scarf with in the spring. And I really want to make a sweater out of this yarn.

And I also made a new blog for my Africa trip:

findingkasese.travellerspoint.com.

Subscribe. I leave on Saturday.

My Espresso-ed Self

2008-11-17T16:07:00.004-05:00

A few years ago, I did an intensive little training session in ethnography, where our task was to deeply observe a place for a couple of days and to produce fieldnotes and interpretive comments about our observations. We were in DC -- Alexandria, to be precise-- and one of the women in my group, a white American who lives an expat life in Mexico, picked starbucks.

There were a lot of interesting assumptions in her approach -- she's so granola, so anti-globalization, so about localized action, that she took it for granted that all of the rest of use would be as prickly about the creeping fingers of this chain as she was. She was shocked when I said I loved starbucks, loved its predictability, its operational excellence (they are the only coffee shop that quickly and perfectly makes my two shot with room americano without any fuss). Anne still likes me, but I think I still confuse her.

That was about 5 years ago, and here I am, back in the starbucks on Mt. Hope in rochester where a good chunk of my dissertation was written. And I slot right back in -- the staff remember what I like, write my name on my cup, give me a plate for my blueberry coffee cake instead of putting it in a bag. The same older woman who seems to have had some kind of stroke is here as every morning, reading something complicated even as she struggles with speech, the same clusters of verbosely signing deaf people arrive on schedule in the afternoon.

I was talking to Liz the other day about all the travel I do. It makes her agitated just thinking about it -- her homebody self can't abide the notion of not knowing where she'll be in a week, missing her things, her bed. I was musing that really, mostly, it doesn't phase me. I seem to have made transition a place. Some of that is about the journey, the movement, being part of the story -- I guess when you're trying to frame your life as being about possibilities, moving around can be part of it.

There other routines and rituals that show up in travel that echo the rituals of homespace -- podcasts and knitting on planes, podcasts and aussie red licorice in the car, coffee shops as time out of time spaces to work in. And that, for me, is where the affinity for starbucks comes in. It's predictable, I can work here, people are friendly but leave me alone, and I know what I'm getting. (I recognize that this is kind of ironically exact to the stereotypical reasons why americans might choose a holiday inn in Phuket instead of a local beach hut, but hey, I'm just musing here).

The thing is, this transitional life is, I think, a blend between trying to find the predictable grooves so that I can be productive, write things, earn a living, no matter where I am, and the space for discovery and improv. It shifts, but a coffee shop where I know I can work, where I know what kind of wifi it is, and I know what to expect is kind of key. I've had some amazing discoveries of coffee shops outSIDE the starbucks zone, of course -- especially in portland -- but also some that are too noisy, too filled with hissing steam, too much live music, too many people on dates or yammering loudly. Predictable ambience is kind of important when your life hovers in the air.

Ken Gergen (the external for my dissertation and the source of a lot of my theory) wrote an excellent book about the emergent sense of multiplicity that we are all living right now, called The Saturated Self. One of the principles in the book is that we have created the ability to live in more than one place at a time -- that we can be on the phone with Uganda in a coffee shop in Rochester, NY, and we are "in" both places simultaneously. Our management of this multiplicity is one of the most profound psychological shifts of the contemporary world. What I'm beginning to realize is that part of that management is the subtle coordination of life to contain predictable strains and patterns. Coherence and fragmentation, in balance.

Aphorisms

2008-11-10T16:34:00.007-05:00

"She doesn't have the sense god gave a goose."

That phrase popped out of my mouth today at lunch with D, and I realized I've turned into a Spewer of Corny Aphorisms. It's been a crazy frantic week, with lots of flying, worlds turned upside down, my american friends suddenly clanging with idealism (such a nice shift from the handwriting of the past 8 years), official notice that I've Finally Completed EVERYTHING! to do with the phd (and the legal right to browbeat people into calling me doctor and to dazzle border guards with documents)...

While I was flying back from Seattle yesterday, I was teaching myself to cable on a complicated little hat and thinking about knitblogging. How the best knitbloggers have life at the core but through the medium of knitting, and some are way too much about their cats and dogs, and some completely transcend the knitblogging... but I was thinking about how knitblogging or writing about flyfishing or political jabber can just camouflage the stories of more jagged life. There I was, cabling and counting and watching depressing HBO shows on the little tv, and wondering how much knitting and knitblogging can become the blanket thrown over the stories you could stifle.

Lots going on in my life, mostly good for me, but some trials for people I care about, and lots of questions about What Next? for me that seem to be kicked under the chairs of the airport lounges that are becoming too familiar. Lots of scaffolds going up and coming down without any real construction, like the fact that I'm supposed to be in Uganda two weeks from today but the backing and forthing and opting out among my colleagues because of the unrest in Congo. My feeling is that going would probably be fine, and I was very geared up in my Adventurous Self, and wanting to do something meaningful with our kids, but it seems like the wrong time now, and I'm frustrated that I might never get to go.

So, Cabling. Aphorisms, learning to knit something new. Next diversion.

Manticores and Tsetse Flies

2008-10-26T18:16:00.007-04:00

My friend Jeff made this image for me, when he was thinking about the trip to Uganda I'm planning for the end of November. Kind of a resonant doodle. It's interesting to me that this is what emerged for him... something about one of the ways he sees me. It really sort of wrenches at me... evokes thoughts about the ways that we want to be seen, the gaps between what we feel we can really live into and how other people might see us.

It's been a really emotionally overladen few months. Some intense joy, and some energy for doing things after more or less finishing my phd (still just finalizing some tedious proofreader type changes) that is simultaneously about a Great Unblocking and a bit of manic snatching at all sorts of possibilities. Mostly all of this coalesces around different travels, and the travels as a kind of enactment of different versions of where I want to really shape myself.

I never really blogged very much about my trip to Europe -- I doodled while I was there, but didn't write much about the meaning I was making of it. It was too... active... in some ways. I think the basic narrative is that I went to Germany partly to face some demons, my trip through the cave of Jung, as remembered through the writing of Robertson Davies. Facing self and my manticore.

I think the trip was about my own myth-making, a desire to grab the pen, stop annotating old stories and start writing new versions. There was a lot about the two years we spent in Germany that was "formative" in all senses of the word -- my parents' marriage broke up, and I learned about anger and a kind of humiliating sense of exposure, of Wrongness, somehow. A sense that at 9, I was radiating a kind of misery that the small community around us didn't know how to handle, a kind of misery that I sort of tucked around me like a sleeping bag and never really learned to be buoyant about.

So many core stories in that time, and so many of them continually looping back through my life. I conceived of this jaunt after having a powerful conversation with my friend P about where we develop the rifts of free-floating anxiety in the soft jelly of our brains, give it words that become the shorthand for every other fear we have. "Abandonment, invisibility, not being taken care of" -- all of these fears that we learned when we were kids to be hyper-vigilant for, and never learned how to let that flag down. Preemptive pushing at the walls in some futile attempt to avert -- which of course, paradoxically, just exhausts the people we love. An endless loop.

So I decided that visiting The Scene might free some of this. And in many ways -- it did. The fact that I couldn't "feel" the memory of place, or recognize the site of where I lived except as if from a dream or a novel -- this was really freeing. This was the building I lived in -- and while I could recognize it, I had the street number wrong all these years, and I didn't ... feel it. Certainly didn't have the sensations that I thought I might, the whimpering on my parents' bed while a babysitter tried uselessly to address my broken wrist by wrapping it in gauze. (Kind of shocked when I think about it, that my parents -- and other people's -- would go away for days to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia and leave us with 16 and 17 year olds who didn't have cars or any phones!)

It was a good thing to do, this trip, even if I didn't have any epic kinds of revelations. The dimness of the memories really shouted at me -- THESE STORIES DON'T HAVE TO BE THE DEFINING ONES! Which is, I guess, a revelation of sorts -- even if not all that poetic.

I think, though, more than this, the trip underlined for me that all of this rewriting, claiming desired self, living into what I want to live into -- is actually an ACTIVE process of rewriting. There are reminders, and milestones, and frames, and metaphors -- stories like "I went to germany because I don't want to keep reliving some of those 9 year old self stories anymore" -- and those are good things. But the insights and the frames don't change things unless you keep them active.

I had a crappy week last week, for a bunch of reasons -- a road trip with F that should have been kind of magical was instead ragged and tiring for both of us, partly because I let my old anxiety stories be completely foregrounded, couldn't pull forward some of the other ones I'm writing. The familiar misery that comes out of anxiety dominated, and then I looped into the kind of remorse that just keeps me fixated on the thing that upset me in the first place. Not a good pattern. No magic to the insight -- just recognition that there is always a need to keep writing, actively create. I was just talking about this with my younger sister S -- that growing up is a process of actively learning and stretching and making decisions -- that it's not, to borrow an image from Carolyn Knapp, like sticking a turkey in the oven and watching it emerge roasted without any more effort.

When I step back, all of this travel IS about a new self I'm crafting, the baby steps toward living the kind of adventurous life that I've armchair-envied reading endless books about women riding their bicycles around the world solo for years. The Uganda trip is part of that -- there are some things that are kind of worrying about it (ranging from the obvious discomforts of travel in a land filled with car crashes and malaria to concern about making it productive for the work with the kids, to hoping that the history with the founder of the orphanage, who is no longer involved, doesn't lead to some Drama). But I'm also trying to grab at the adventure, trying to add a trip to Bwindi National Park to track gorillas, trying to not just go along for the ride.

I've been reading one of Jane Goodall's books about her work with chimpanzees in Tanzania, and I'm just blown away by her casual comments like "my blood became immune to the poison of the tsetse fly, and I no longer swelled up with every bite." So much "soldiering on" encompassed in that tiny statement. I take it to heart, and vow to keep trying to be that person who no longer swells up with every bite.

Those Europeans Know Something

2008-10-26T18:12:00.003-04:00

Last xmas I was trying to find some german moisturizer that F's ex likes, as a little gift when I was going to her place just after xmas. I couldn't locate it online or anywhere in Toronto, but when I was in Germany last month, it was everywhere in every corner Apotheke. I bought her a body cream (as desired, apparently) and bought myself a face cream. And I am completely, utterly in love. I don't want to turn into a person who has to go to Europe to buy toiletries (my sister claims she has to go to Paris to buy bras and argentina to buy... I dunno, can't remember), but this is totally worth it. Silky, sinks in immediately, leaves my skin soft and seems to really address the redness that I always get at this time of year. I have become an Eubos Evangelist. I'm not proud, but there it is.

It's like a gift from heaven

2008-10-16T18:07:00.001-04:00

ThanksKatsGiving

2008-10-13T18:43:00.002-04:00

I was trying to explain to F this weekend about why thanksgiving is my favourite holiday -- and how I think many people I know feel this way. Canadian thanksgiving is about two things -- harvest and gratitude. There's no religious link (except, I guess, among the people for whom all gratitude has a spiritual element), and there are no gifts. And the second monday in October, when Canadians do thanksgiving, is always a gorgeous gorgeous weekend -- whether that gorgeousness is PerfectEarlyFall with crunching leaves and the waking tang of cool, or like this weekend, out of sync warmth and sun that reminds us of our weather at its best.

I had a good weekend, with quiet decompressing time with F (we can't fit our schedules together very well these days), and then dinner with my chosen family -- B and her smart funny lovely gf A (or Tank), and D&D, my most rooted friend (long-ago lover) and his partner. I made the best turkey I've ever made (dressing cooked separately, turkey stuffed with onions, garlic and herbs, rubbed with olive oil and more herbs, then covered in olive-oil soaked cheesecloth, basted liberally with chicken stock). And was really happy to have my people in my beautiful loft. None of them is much given to making Pronouncements about gratitude (mocking me gently for mine, more like it), but I think they were appreciative too.

So I'm very very grateful for everyone who was in the room last night, and for the time and space to notice the pink of the sky right now, and for the many doors opening in front of me since finishing my phd. And for finding myself much less stressed, much more present. And.

More than that. I wanted to blog about someone else I'm grateful for. My neighbour and friend, another Katherine-of-many-variant-names. Her most recent blog post is about thanksgiving and her fervour for it, so it's a propos, I think. But more than that, I wanted to just... acknowledge her a little.

First, she's the best neighbour ever. She left a note on my car when I first moved in, praising my smartcar and noting that its puny size meant that maybe she could fit her scooter in my spot. She offered to pay, I said no -- but other than lending her some space I wasn't using anyway, I have given her NOTHING in comparison to what she's given me since I moved in. She does all the standard good neighbour stuff -- looks after plants and mail when I'm away, checks that I've turned off the iron, helps me when I can't figure out where the fuck that beep is coming from.

But more than that, her PRESENCE in my life is just a gift. She's generous, warmer than a good pair of hut booties, , wry, and joyful. She connects herself to people everywhere she goes. She's unbelievably resourceful and creative -- the only person I know who can resuscitate a dead ipod, keep a slightly crotchety old Honda 250 running with flair, stuck vintage suitcases on her hallway wall to create a cunning way place to store undies and socks -- and can make soup out of a hunk of garlic.

As if all of this general GOODNESS wasn't enough, Kat is also unbelievably talented. She's a designer who has written some cool stuff about greening the cab industry, a fabric artist, a ceramic artist with a piece featured in Toronto Life this month, a dj and... a singer-songwriter. When I first met her, she was singing a lot of covers, in dinner clubs and sometimes small bars. But over the past two years, her voice has just... soared, expanded, blossomed, ripened -- whatever the term for "wow, this person is something special." Now she's writing her own songs, and working on a CD, and she's just... sublime. I heard her sing about a month ago and was impressed; I heard her again the other night (when she hosted a thanksgiving potluck and a gig) -- and maybe it was my state of mind, and maybe it was her singing in the awkward audience of her family (hee, her mom needed to leave partway through her set and asked her to find some part of the potluck while she was on stage and she just made it work, making everyone laugh), with a piano that had no F -- but this time she seared my guts. A song about her friend Christina, who died too early, has replayed itself for me since then... along with a song about Canadian and culture that's all too vivid with the current election... just, ringing, true, lovely.

I am cooler because I know Kat. And I'm grateful for her.

Escalation

2008-10-08T14:20:00.013-04:00

I officially have a Bag Problem. Anyone who's ever been intimate with me for more than 7 minutes figures this out pretty quickly. It's not the sort of shrill girly bag/shoe fetish that is tediously replayed in SATC and the kind of chick lit novels with kitten heels or stilettos on their pink covers -- it's not about brands, or look, or status. And I can't quite wrap my head around the idea of "wearing" a bag, which is how the people in stores talk when I'm caressing a new contender. But I am constantly scanning for the perfect bag, the bag that will hold everything I need and nothing more, transform me into someone at once Prepared and Organized and Uber-funky. ArtsyGirlGuideConsultant.

I keep my bags on a sort of bag banana tree in my kitchen/office. A quick glance at this ever-expanding bunch makes it pretty damn clear that if the search for the perfect bag is the search for the iconic talisman of my desired identity, I'm pretty confused. There's the teeny yellow pockety bag
that is too flimsy to hold even my wallet, but which has a funky little inset on it,and the recently added purple Village bag from Roots. I bought this one in Westboro in Ottawa, abandoning my sister trying on yoga tops at Lululemon (her own yummy mummy identity, I guess :-)) -- and it's a bit ... momish. It's perfectly practical, and I have this hope that the purple is distinct enough from the more classic tribe brown leather to go beyond GirlGuide... but I doubt it.

The bag thing isn't just about handbags and purses and all that sort of thing. It's also workbags:

And even more intensely, travel bags:

Sometimes this need for the perfect bag comes together in a crazy trifecta, like my purchase of the new MEC pulley mid-size travel bag, a small brown Roots purse and a tan soft leather tote bag for my trip to Italy.

I know what happens when I feel this compulsion. I see a bag, and I instantly get this sensation of things slotting into place, like I like to fondly imagine the hadron collider whacking together with the perfect magnetic attraction. I envision the perfect lipstick, the perfect pen (let's not even explore how long I can play with a wall of pens in an office store), my phone, my juggle of keys, my computer, my knitting -- everything all nestled perfectly into the perfect spot. It's a mythic story about being Whole and Ready -- and yet, Interesting, Creative, Impulsive.

This bag thing can get expensive, and the bag banana tree is actually a bit of a reproach. I mean, I still grab my rust-coloured mandarina duck bag I bought in Florence when it's the perfect size and colour for what I'm wearing (and I realize that my need for colour doesn't exactly align with my need for "the bag that suits every occasion and locale") -- but when the bags start to retreat into a layer or two below the surface, they kind of fade from my consciousness.

So right now, I'm staring at the bags, and making a connection. I've been agonizing about whether or not to sell my loft. The notion is to buy a smaller place here, so I have lower carrying costs, a smaller base, and can have a pivot point for a life that includes some work here, some work in Seattle and Vancouver, some possibly elsewhere. But it's really hard to figure out the right formula -- do I find a place first and then sell, on the assumption that it's going to be difficult to find a small place that suits me? Do I sell first in this market? Do I hold off on all of this until I'm really clear about my visa situation, what work I *can* do outside of TO? Right now I'm sort of in this weird space where I've racked up more than enough work in TO for the next six months, but I'm still working toward a more dispersed future. Different irons are roasting in different fires, but nothing is certain yet, except that F is moving to Seattle, and that's pretty much where I want to be too.

In all of this agonizing, I realized that there is a link between my quest for the perfect bag and this notion that there is the perfect small condo out there that will be the perfect pied a terre, where I can lead a life with everything in the right closet and the right office and I can always hop on a plane with only a carryon for two weeks. I'm afraid my bag problem is escalating, and that I have the notion that if I only had the perfect condo, my life would be perfectly organized.

I'm worried about this development. I can't keep buying condos until I'm miraculously a different, perfectly organized person.

Free wheeling

2008-10-07T20:34:00.003-04:00

I mentioned that the Danes were riding those lovely big euro-bicycles all around Copenhagen? (Mostly these big sturdy ones -- but I saw one guy with a bike that he folded up to the size of a laptop and bring it into a sushi restaurant for lunch).

BIke parking areas like this one in front of the train station were everywhere -- just writhing hives of bikes. But look closely... and almost none of them are locked. And the ones that are? Aren't locked TO anything, just have a wee little chain around the front wheel so no one rides them off.

This is the most foreign part to me. And I see it completely differently after reading this clever piece in Toronto Life last month about Igor Kenk, the crazy bike thief, that suggested that he was actually *hoarding* bikes in prep for some dystopic future where they'd be the new capital. In that context, I couldn't help but see these free-wheeling bikes in Copenhagen as some pre-lapsarian world of optimism.

When I wasn't busy feeling stumpy and SHORT and not-blonde, that is.

Mega Penis

2008-10-02T16:06:00.002-04:00

The phrase book I had for germany -- the Rick Steeves one -- likes to mix it up a little. Doctor, I have a problem with my eye/my hip/my wife. This hotel room is too small/has bugs/has too many prostitutes.

F and I had fun parsing this with the few german phrases I know -- Das Freundenmachen ist zu schmutzig. (This prostitute is too dirty!). Ich moche ein bessere freundenmachen. (I would like a better prostitute). Etc.

I did NOT, however, learn how to say "this hotel has too many prostitutes in Danish.

And actually, this hotel does. It shares a building and a street corner with a LIVE! NON-STOP! SEX SHOW! FIlled with TOPLESS LADIES! (And, judging by my peek inside, insidiously drunk young men).

I went for a stroll and discovered you can buy MEGA PENIS! and that there is a BOYS! convenience store. Also a lot of kebab houses, a few nice-looking bars and cafés and a SPUNK BAR, which, I'm guessing, is not a place to celebrate Sarah Palin and other sprightly women, but for nice boys to meet each other for a hot chocolate or something.

Even in my new italian boots I feel pretty staid.

10 random things about this trip

2008-10-02T10:34:00.002-04:00

1. There are stores in heidelberg that sell nothing but gummi bears. The people in them speak less english than people in other stores. I bought gummi bears for family members and ate a whole bag of them.

2. When you are in copenhagen and you notice that you've dropped a stitch on a sock you've been knitting for a week and are in the home stretch of, and you leave the canalside coffee shop in disgust, you turn the corner and there is a magical yarn shop that will sell you the crochet hook to fix it. If you knew how to fix it.

3. No magical Freitag Bag store appears, however, which is probably good, given the indulgences in a Swedish leather jacket and Italian boots.

4. The Danes are as bicycle-y as the Dutch. But, stylish, with their big wheeled black bicycles with wee baskets, blond hair, and perfect scarves. Not really the right place when you're a short north american who feels particularly stumpy these days. See #3 re compensatory spending.

5. I still can't figure out why it took me half an hour to get gas yesterday on the autobahn. Teutonic efficiency broken down. Everyone pumped the gas, then abandoned their cars for loooooong stretches while they went in to pay. However, I did manage to perfectly name the pump I got the gas from, and the zwanzig euros that it cost, with perfect southern german intonation.

6. I can't decide if it's better or not better to have wifi when you're traveling alone. I don't know if I'd be more or less homesick if I wasn't getting email and facebook updates.

7. I've become completely polyknitterous, and can't finish anything. I've developed some kind of serious perfectionism. I was about 6 rows away from finishing sleeve #1 on Cece, and had to be talked off the ledge of ripping it out because I didn't like the way the increases had landed. (A case where wifi good). I am soclose to finishing a bee-yootiful socks-that-rock sock #1 for B's bday and I discovered the aforementioned dropped stitch. I picked up some heavy wool in Heidelberg I've been knitting a pretty ugly scarf out of that may never be finished. And I've toted around the pink yarn for Lulu's wallaby since I left home. I'm sad about the sock :-(.

8. The Danes seem to all speak English. And they're damned friendly. And the sushi is GOOD.

9. I walked and walked and walked and walked around today, but forgot my camera in the hotel room. (Which turned out to be slightly nicer than yesterday's, but only because I asked nicely for a non-smoking room after I saw the room they'd assigned me -- with a narrower bed than the one my 4 year old niece sleeps in and reeking of despairing single-bed inhabiting smoker-ness).

10. When you are a bag addict, and you see in your guidebook that there is a store called The Last Bag that sells only one kind of satchel that is the same Perfect Design that they've been selling since 1956, you get all excited, and you think, maybe this IS my bag, maybe this is the last bag I'll ever need to buy, maybe this is the bag that all those other bags were getting me ready for! But then you realize it just won't fit your stupid too-big macbook and some knitting, even if you only carry one sock around at a time, and the big cable adapter thingy for the macbook, and maybe some gummi bears, and some pens. So then you're back to #3, the elusive Freitag bag that you realize with a sigh you're going to have to buy in CANADA, because of that stupid magnetic force repelling you from Stuttgart yesterday.

So you eat more gummi bears on your bed and rest your feet before going out to eat some Fisk of some kind.

What people eat in the airport in Frankfurt

2008-10-02T02:48:00.002-04:00

at 8:00 a.m.:

potato chips (crisps, since they're english)
tankards of beer
chocolate

Currently carrying in wallet: five different currencies. Who knew that the Danes don't use the euro?

Off to copenhagen.

gummi sheep

2008-10-01T15:04:00.003-04:00

I started my morning with a VERY windy run along the path of the little river that I used to ride my bike along when I was 8, and had the only visceral recognition of landscape when I came across the community gardens I remember riding my bike along. An elderly couple was picking up apples off the ground, and I also had a little frison of recognition of this couple, who called out something german and agreeable to me, presumably about the folly of running in the windy rain.

Then I poked around the town a bit, and tried to find the Schloss Favorite, which I most vividly recall for the big slipper you had to put on to schlep across the floors... that and the swan that tried to pull me into the pond, and the mating frogs my mother told me were "copulating" but I heard as "kuppenheiming," which was the name of the town. Confused me for years. But, I was lost today in a housing estate, and found myself on the road to Hugelsheim... which, though now twinned with Cold Lake Alberta, was kind of recognizable, including the church that I had my confirmation in. (The church of one of my monumental moments of confusion -- the bishop asked me my name, and I didn't know if I was supposed to say my "real" name or my confirmation name, so I said my real name, and was confirmed Catherine Elizabeth Catherine, instead of Margaret. One of the many epic moments of anxiety in my young life).

Then, drove around what was the base, and which is now a small airport and a hodgepodge of recycled buildings. The hangers covered in camouflage grass are a museum, and there's a BMW test track, and a weird tattoo studio with sculptures out front. The only truly recognizable building is the arena, which is now a curling club and eishaus. That tripped me up a bit, though -- suddenly had a vivid recall of black cat gum, of my sister inching her way across the ice on her 3 year old blades and then dropping the plaque for her instructor. A lot held in that space, 8 year old soldiering-on and parental distintegration.

After the base, I headed off toward Stuttgart... I had some notion of finding a place for lunch, and maybe buying a Freitag bag... but here were roadwerks, and roadwerks, and the charm of being on the autobahn wore thin even in german. I was in a tunnel, then I was spinning around a ring road, and as I was searching for the ausfahrt I was supposed to take, PLUNK I was spun outside the north of stuttgart. I contemplated turning around, but didn't have much heart for that choked up tunnel or the tailback that had been facing the other way... so I pulled over, figured out where I was on the map and set off for my ultimate destination, the airport hotel near frankfurt. I had some notion that I'd find the hotel then set off for some food.

Five hours after setting out, I finally found the hotel. It was a day of being lost, and not charmed. Was glad I didn't set out for some place further, because it took me about 5 hours to cover approximately 150 km. Tailbacks and confusion, basically, and having to steel myself to enter the PennyMarkt and utter caveman german to try to find my hotel, after spinning restlessly on the speed of low blood sugar around the wrong town for an hour.

Finally found the hotel... and it's basically an upscale prison. Not a single note of luxury -- a single murphy bed, one flat pillow, no headboard! There were, however, gummi sheep on the pillow:

After a day spent LOST on various autobahns, spinning around stuttgart and environs like there was a magnetic force field keeping me out, and then a dinner where I quaffed two glasses of wine and gobbled a lot of schweine, the gummi sheep made me laugh out loud. Repeatedly.

Jamais Vu

2008-09-30T15:30:00.006-04:00

I'm in the town I lived in for two years when I was a kid, and I'm having an odd little jamais vu. I know I've been here, and I found the apartment building we lived in no problem, but almost nothing even taps an echo at me. I even had the number of our building wrong -- for years I thought it was 12 Nelkenstrasse, but it turns out to be 14, along with a 14/1 in the form of a little annex on the side which, along with a "new" fourth floor, stretched our tiny building of 5 apartments to 11. The back yard looks smaller, but unlike the cliché of "returning to one's roots," that's because it actually IS.

The bridge over the tiny river the Murg and the path along its banks are the most familiar, but even walking the streets and finding things I knew must be there -- a church a few blocks down, a park across from the church -- doesn't bring the pavement back under my feet. And the town square, which has clearly been there a few centuries beyond the 34 years ago I was last here? The only bells ringing are in the spire, not in my memory.

My inner narrative about the time here is SO vivid -- the most formative of my life -- that it's harshly jarring to realize that I can't find the physical space remotely resonant. Says so much about how the way we re-create our narratives, feed them, strengthen them, is an act of interpretation. If there's such a fuzzy space between the volumes of stories that I "KNOW" happened here, but re-inhabiting this space doesn't make it all flood back -- says so much about how much memory resides in its own time and context, and doesn't have to be a hard edge around how we interpret our histories, string together the coherent narratives of our life. Weirdly, weirdly freeing.

Rastatt is a good contrast from Heidelberg -- almost none of the old bavarian charm -- just a small utilitarian town with lots of quiet staid houses and small apt. buildings, reasonably prosperous from the mercedes plant. All shops organized around sensible offerings, lots of hair cutting places, kebap houses and travel agencies specializing in turkey, so I guess I know who works on the plant. Although, the old town that I don't remember is pretty charming square anchored by an old church and a huge schloss in the style of versailles that now houses the museum of german liberty.

No pics, because I forgot my camera cable and can't for some reason rig up the bluetooth McGyver to my phone that's worked in the past. Just chewing on this, as I walked through the town in the grey drizzle all day.

The one thing I do know? On the autobahn today, even in the crappy Opel rental, it was very clear that I developed my ideas of how to drive in Germany. In my element pushing the car to 160 km/hr, actually chortling about the brilliance of the way the germans drive fast and sort themselves perfectly into the right lanes. Auto ballet.

PS. Seriously. How could I FORGET this???

Also.

2008-09-29T14:36:00.003-04:00

I'm in Heidelberg, in the incessantly romantic old town. And those charming church bells that ring every 15 minutes, just metres from my Romantically Encased sleepyhead? I sure hope they stop at 10 pm.

This is my hotel, built in 1592 or some such nonsense.

Happily, it now boasts fluffy white crisp duvets and lots of hot water.

It's very hard to blog

2008-09-29T14:30:00.001-04:00

WHEN ALL THE COMMANDS ARE IN DEUTSCHE!!!

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Nachdem dieser Vorgang abgeschlossen ist, können Sie sich mit der E-Mail-Adresse für Ihr Google-Konto und Ihrem Passwort bei Blogger anmelden.

Dr C, party of one

2008-09-28T17:49:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, Renee commented that I seemed to be revisiting a lot of long-ago stories in my blog, lately. I guess that's part of what we do when we're in the middle of some kind of transition -- scan our pasts to kind of recreate the coherent thread, look at the most resonant bits from a different angle and suddenly see a new constellation.

I'm at the airport heading for my crazy trip to Europe for the week, this indulgent little pilgrimage to the part of germany I lived in when I was a kid. I can't quite articulate what moves me to do this, exactly, except it's something about drawing a line under some stories and patterns from my history that still have too strong a watermark, and about going back to the place where I was pretty strongly formed just as I'm trying to shape the next life. I don't expect some kind of Exorcising of Demons -- it's not that dramatic -- more like circling back through space that's as echoing as being in interaction with people I've known for decades.

This eve-of-the-journey is a demarcation between three days in south florida for a conference with my colleagues J&D and my little spree into germany by myself. The florida conference was a cool tonic -- the time before I left was pretty overheated on a number of fronts, and it was a pure joy to be able to just absorb and listen and talk and muse at this conference. I knit a sock through most of it -- cast it on in the opening plenary and finished the gusset decreases on the plane -- and the sock became kind of iconic, even making it into the final conference slide show.

The knitting gave me a chance to feel my way through that space, a possible offshoot tribe of my fielding world. I had the honour of being named an Associate of the Institute, and now I'm plotting about collaborations, and workshops, and writings and links. But for now, just good to open doors, and reflect hard on how happy I am with the person I seem to be able to be post-doc. So many threads, all of them red and potentially powerful. Feeling space to keep growing into.

No pics of the conference (or the sock), since my dialogue with technology has been a bit monologic and profane this week. My phone has been turning itself off and draining the battery, there was almost no wifi where we were (even the phones didn't work), and I forgot my camera cable. But I'm tickled by the juxtaposition of current-future-me bobbing in the ocean in Sarasota and (badly) salsa dancing with social constructionists on Saturday and landing in Heidelberg and pelting down the autobahn on Monday. So more when time.

Suns and no tummies

2008-09-21T16:13:00.003-04:00

It's been a mostly worky weekend, though I managed to go for what will probably end up being the last long bike ride of the year yesterday -- 32 miles through a perfect September day in upstate new york, until I was abruptly stopped by a Bridge Out detour and a quick phone call to F to pick me up at some difficult-to-describe place. All sunny though, embodied by the drawing my niece did this week.

Pondering lots of possible futures right now, and having many conversations with immigration lawyers and the like.Very much in the "any path could lead to becoming a slightly different version of me" zone... but it's all pretty cool. I keep waiting for the expected anvil of post-doc depression to drop, but so far, even though I've been crazy busy, it's all been pretty energizing.

A week from today I leave on my weird little pilgrimage to germany, to re-stomp the steps of those two formative years in my childhood...I'm trying to marshal a way to articulate why this is so important for me to do now, and what I want to get out of it. More to come, I guess.

2008-09-19T11:53:00.002-04:00

F's house is on the market, and the real estate agent has been running around hiding things she thinks might somehow detract from people's interest in the house. I came in on wednesday and found that this postcard had been taken off the wall above my desk and hidden under a pile of papers:

Now, I am pretty good at understanding other people's points of view, but seriously? This particular nude would be offensive to someone? Presumably the same people who are flocking to buy Sarah Palin's glasses.

The thing is, it's a pretty unconventional house -- so I can't match up the agent's notion that the same people who would buy this house instead of any number of pretty how town suburban houses festooned with Harvest! Outdoor Home Decor would be offended by this image. And then I really, really hope that they don't paw too deeply in my underwear drawer.

Fiats

2008-09-15T23:14:00.006-04:00

I started three different posts today, but my PMS ADD took over here as with everything else in my life (I have four knitting projects sprawled across my kitchen countertop, and nibbled at 5 pieces of different work today without accomplishing anything). But I have some vague nothing that keeping my finger on this blog (like the way you press a shoelace to hold it while you're tying the bow) is somehow a way to hold together all the flapping laces. All this traveling, plotting, exploring, trying to figure out how to make the next life happen. But I had all this impulse today that amounted to nothing.

So enough to say that I had a really lovely weekend with my family in Ottawa, particularly with my nieces, who are at a delightful stage. It was a pretty low key weekend -- a nice brunch at M's, lots of playing and dancing with the girls, good talks with E, monitoring my other sister's recently lasered eyeballs for signs of alien invasion. Last night we had a birthday party "for EVERYONE," complete with ice cream cake, balloons, and candles, and I grinned all the way to the airport in loopy's 1969 cinquecento.

It was a good weekend, but getting back monday morning and knowing I'm leaving in 48 hours again apparently serves the same function as jet lag, where I just want to lie down quietly and knit the cuff of my sweater AGAIN, after ripping it out for the third time.

I found the picture

2008-09-12T22:34:00.002-04:00

from the walk I was talking about in the sand dollar post. And notice that, contrary to my recollection, that sand dollar wasn't even intact. And I look like such a YOUNG LITTLE BUNNY! Gah! Not even 7 years ago. Time, ebbing, etc.

Running on the Beach

2008-09-10T18:22:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure how these will show up, but the horses through the fog on the beach on Saturday were just magical. (Why is fog *always* magical, except when you're driving in it?)

I'm wishing I were riding my horse on the beach -- and I don't even particularly like horses. Was just doing inventory of the projects on my plate right now.

- two BIG multi-month programs to do development work with teams and groups in two different hospitals, just starting, with D
- one BIG multi-month program on my own, in a different hospital, in partnership with a client
- 2 papers I have to lead the writing on that we've all ignored for MONTHS about work we did last year; in a group that can never get its shit together (unpaid, the joy is in the publishing)
- a course we're developing that is still in an ambiguous state; paid lower-than-usual rate
- possibility of a research project with a university out west that won't pay me nearly enough but will be a grand networking thing
- trying to develop a grant proposal and attract funding in collaboration with someone from new england that I have to basically develop from scratch, including finding a research site, preferrably in seattle
- one day thing that I'm getting paid very little for that I agreed to do as a favour and which is taking up WAY too much of my time, scheduled for friday
- another 2 possible grants to develop also related to the health care work; development is unpaid;
- overseeing the implementation of a multi-site coordinated care project that we got a grant for months ago, in one of the previously mentioned hospitals

Hm. I think that's it. Why does it seem so overwhelming?

Oh yeah, the orphans. Might go to Uganda in November.

Where's my horse?

Waves

2008-09-09T13:56:00.006-04:00

(of a different kind).

Just before she left for Ireland, Aine and I met for breakfast, and she reminded (told?) me of a passage in The Waves that she said my work evoked for her. It fit my work so well that I made it the epigraph for the final section of my dissertation:

“Had I been born,” said Bernard, “not knowing that one word follows another I might have been, who knows, perhaps anything. As it is, finding sequences everywhere, I cannot bear the pressure of solitude. When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke around me I am in darkness – I am nothing….I only come into existence when the plumber, or the horse-dealer, or whoever it maybe, says something which sets me alight.”

Of course, it's all about punctuation -- when you pull the frame back further, Bernard is actually lamenting this, feeling insubstantial. My work is about how being set alight by others' words is how we make ourselves. But the images... so perfect.

I found a book for a thank you for P last week in a rummage through a well-appointed, tidy used bookstore in seattle, a very tactile little collection of essays by jeanette winterson, Art [Objects]. Through one of those synchronous moments, she has a passage about the Waves that also thrust itself under my skin, concluding with Woolf's words:

"Lines and colours almost persuade me that I too can be heroic."

Waves of all kinds, the sea, concurrence, ripples backward and forward. The right moment. Puffins spotted on the beach on the weekend.

Sand dollars

2008-09-09T11:19:00.002-04:00

My orientation to my school program was a week in Santa Barbara in March 02. It was my first experience of SoCal, and I sat on the beach, scrawling in my journal that I felt AWAKE for the first time in memory.

At the end of that week, I met up with an online friend who lived in the bay area, and we drove up the coast to Pismo Beach to meet another online friend. We went for a loooooooong walk. The wind on my face and the cool sand under my bare feet seemed to be tapping out a new language for me -- the pacific, and connections, and unuttered possibilities.

I have a picture of me from that walk, somewhere -- probably 3 hard drives ago -- clutching an intact sand dollar I picked up on pismo. I'm wearing a pale blue, very california, Life is Good tshirt with a yoga logo and "stay centred" on it that I'd bought that week in SB. I look... delighted. And I'm holding the sand dollar loosely, unaware of how fragile it is, and how it would crumble by the time I got it home.

That shirt also turned out to have a paradoxical quality to it -- it became iconic for me, mutating into a night shirt when it got tattered, and then a cleaning rag, about six months ago. An admonition that I never quite heeded. The walk on the beach was a thread into a relationship that cracked open what I took for granted about my life, cracking that I needed so much that I got a bit blind to who it bruised. Not so centred, but so critical.

I spent last week in Seattle, exploring possibilities for the next life, mailing off the final version of my dissertation in tandem with J, making it an act of mutuality that nicely encapsulated how this process has unfolded. Mostly me, but with such an assortment of companions who showed up and filled in the colours at so many important junctions.

I can't see the way through to what comes next... there's no set narrative in any way. I want -- I need -- to be by the ocean and the mountains. It's how I need to spend the next part of my life. But it's not moving for a job, or a relationship, or for pure adventure. It's trying to find a way to translate the pull of the pacific that made me feel so awake 6 and a half years ago in a frame for a life. With a lover and work and ideas all threaded in, me at the centre.

F and I went for long walk on an open ocean beach on saturday -- I'm not even sure which one, really -- I was driving, not navigating. It was initially a thin substitute for a mountain hike we'd hoped for but had to scuttle because of a virus he had. But it turned out to be the wind and fog and sand I needed. And this time, I found two perfectly intact sand dollars, and managed to get them home in one piece.

Anti-climax

2008-09-06T11:46:00.001-04:00

Congratulations Cate! Your tuition charges were stopped as of 08/31/2008.

Your tuition “stop date” was based on the date that the final version of your dissertation arrived at Fielding, ready for the proofreader, unless you had other outstanding requirements. If the latter is true, your tuition “stop date” was based on the completion and approval of your last academic requirement.

You may call yourself "Dr." as soon as the four bindery-ready copies of your dissertation arrive at Fielding. At that time, your degree will be awarded automatically and you will receive a postal letter verifying your legal name for the diploma and notifying you of your official degree date. The diploma will take approximately ten to twelve weeks to reach you after we have ordered it. We place our orders on a monthly basis.
***

Finished dissertation, submitted it, traveled to seattle, pondered many futures, had sublime kensington moment watching Kat sing, pondered relationships and an impending trip to uganda. Yet, no blogging. Am, however, DONE.

I came home ...

2008-08-10T22:47:00.003-04:00

...and fell into a stupor. Managed to sleepwalk through friday, winching myself awake for an afternoon meeting and a nice dinner with Liz, but then saturday I just lapsed into a coma. Slept 13 hours, woke occasionally to eat popcorn and watch half of season 3 of weeds. Today I cleaned my loft from stem to le creuset teakettle, which I put in the d/w to de-stickify, did a million loads of laundry and generally tried to to think about the Next Phase of My Life. Ate a good dinner. Went for a late walk.

People sauntering with leftovers from restaurants, spadina car rumble, woman talking in mandarin into a cellphone around her neck as she rides her unlit bicycle down baldwin. Had an idyllic moment of "oh I love toronto in august in the dark after rain." and remembered the summer of 1988, when it was torridly steamy and we had no rain for weeks and weeks. Finally the clouds burst and J and I just ran outside, plants flicked to life. We started walking down st. clair, in our bare feet, and walked blocks and blocks. My first summer here, full of yearning and desire. The charm of the apt. I rented to share with Age, who ended up changing her mind. Tracy Chapman on the turntable and J's taut tiny stomach as she pulled up her tank top when we rolled on the floor together.

All of this flickering past, stemming against the questions about what next, damp toronto night. Then, EEK as a rat skitters past and I skitter inside.

Why I should never wear white

2008-08-07T14:28:00.002-04:00

when I travel:

This return journey qualifies as one of the weirder travel screwups I've ever done. First, booked my flight out of Eagle, not Aspen, because the Snowmass website said there were shuttles from Eagle. Shuttle turns out to cost $340. So I hired a rental car, got a ride to Aspen airport, picked it up early (because that's when the ride was), thought I'd stop for lunch or something. The drive across I-70 was unbelievably glorious (is this roaring forks valley, maybe? Dwarfing cliffs on both sides). Got here in this teeeeeeeny tiny airport ludicrously early. Returned car, then discovered that a) there was no one working at United counter; b) couldn't check in my bag until 2.5 hours from then; c) no coffee or food outside security; d) couldn't enter security with my bag.

Sat grumpily in chair for an hour, then Mr United showed up. Took bag, waitlisted me on earlier flight. Went through security. Where I am literally the ONLY passenger here in this entire airport. Friendly people serving bad coffee and soggy bagels.

Earlier flight canceled, so I'm busy spilling coffee on my only clean shirt and hoping to make it home sometime today. The hills just out of reach of these windows are mighty fine, though.

All of this was worth it

2008-08-06T14:49:00.008-04:00

“All of this was worth it just for the chance to see Cate in high heels,” said Barnett when he introduced me at the start of my Final Oral Review. I looked more elegant than I think people usually do for traditional dissertation defenses, but nothing about the way my school does things is conventional. Our FORs are framed as “celebrations” of our work, and I dressed accordingly – but our committee is still arrayed at the front, and the presentation of the work is formal, followed by questions that put you through your paces.

As I flicked onto the first slide, my throat tightened and I had a swell of emotion. I acknowledged the privilege that I had since this was Barnett’s last FOR as chair, and we met eyes that briefly welled up. I surveyed the people in the room and felt a kind of surprise to realize that there was no one in the room I didn’t know and care about – from the unlikely crew of my ex and my best friend of 25 years and my mother and sister whot had traveled from Toronto and Windsor and Ottawa, to Pamela and Carol from Chicago, Nick, and the broader Fielding community. People who’d been beside me in various stages of my trek through this degree, trek through multiple identities and rewritings of self. A landscape of self-revelation, despair, hope, discovery, tears and falling-on-the-ground laughter.

The first statement I made was about the roots of my dissertation, locating it back to the first summer session I’d been at when I met Barnett and he pronounced “I no longer spend time with people who construct me in ways I don’t want to be constructed.” In repeating that provocation, I shorthanded myself into my discovery of CMM, enwrapping in social construction theory, spreading out into explorations of identity, of the social construction of emotion, of the linguistic turn in epistemology of self. And alongside the theory, was completely tangled into the reflexivity of self-construction. All held in an instant, the questions, the shapings of who I can be, the hope for living into the story of who I want to be and the meaning of my work.

My second slide was a hard fought attempt to capture the highlights of my work in four points, the first two the location in the broader theoretical conversation, and the second two my contributions. 1) When we talk and interact with each other, we are shaping who we are and who the other person is, as well as what we can do together. Therefore HOW we talk and interact is extremely important. 2) By talking about what we do in interaction as potentially “generative,” we pay attention to the possibilities we are making together. 3) When we allow our differences to be a constructive part of our interaction, we enhance who we are and what we can do. I call this “relational generativity.” 4) We call our ideas of who we are “identity stories.” When we use our identity stories and other resources in the most generative way in our conversations, we are acting in what I call a “relationally eloquent” way.

As I presented that slide, I got more confident, and slid my way through my explication of the theoretical roots – relational self, generativity, social construction communications – my definitions of relational generativity and relational eloquence, and illustrations of identity practices, relationally eloquent moves and types of generative consequentiality. I had four of my long-suffering friends enact two conversations from my study as a starting point, and I focused on my “index couple” as the main illustrations. I played some soundfiles from their conversations, and showed how each conversation set up a possibility for the next one.

I was grounded and sturdy as I spoke, but oh-so-conscious of not wanting to talk endlessly, of wanting to make this more of a dialogue. I’d felt a lot of pressure earlier in the week to KEEP IT SHORT, and this had been daunting even as it made sense. Distilling all of this had felt impossible, and I felt like I was missing so much… but I’d found a groove that captured enough of it. I kept checking in with Linda to see how my time was, and I kept catching the eyes of people. My committee, my family, Pamela and Carol and Sara and Jane and Jeff and Linda and Kathy… everyone so very present, so with me.

I finally wound up, saying clearly that I’d missed much and would be happy to deal with anything in questions. I concluded with a comment about what I think of as the paradox of my work – that I spend all of this time looking for observable structures of something that’s both structure and mystery, learnable and chemical. Then I stopped.

The photos from the afternoon show me trying to sit down as Barnett stood up, not having absorbed the presence of mind to remember that now I stood up in front of everyone and responded to questions. I think there was applause, and I remember savoring it a bit, but mostly feeling like I was now more vulnerable than ever. Heart rate accelerating.

Barnett offered the first question I think, to Lita, who commented about my own “relational eloquence” in dealing with the committee. I made a self-deprecating comment about that, and people laughed, and the tone changed from formal to me in conversation with my group. She asked about my methodology – the importance of the interviews – and about where I now saw the originating conversation of relational responsibility. I responded… and then I think Frank started talking.

Frank was oddly subdued, sort of mumbling into his beard – Keith asked him to speak up – and I can’t remember everything he asked, except that he made some shockingly superlative comments about my capacity for complexity, and about not wanting me to graduate and leave, and that this might be the first FOR he cried in. He asked me an excellent question about the origins of identity. I don’t know if I answered it that well, saying something about finding passions that defined us by accidentally running into other people who had those passions – like mountaineering. He also asked about what was a resource that wasn’t an identity story, a provocative tangle that I have answers for but still don’t feel satisfied with.

I know Barnett and Linda and Anne asked questions or made comments – I think Anne asked me what surprised me the most – and her question dovetailed with Nick’s, when he asked me about the relationship between my work and literature. I talked about what I felt as the passion for my participants, for what I’d come to see as the incredible courage and vulnerability that it takes to live in intimacy, to create ourselves and each other every day, to try to do that well. I talked about how I’d once thought that poetry and literature were the real artistry of that, but that now I saw that as polished and mannered, and that it’s the fumblings and the half-starts and hopes of real people in real talk that stirs me, that makes me feel humbled and powerful.

That conversation interpolated again a question that Carol asked me – maybe the first one outside my committee. I think she asked what doing this work had done to me personally, how my own sense of self had changed. It was in this moment that I found myself in the most intimate space of my life, here in this room full of people. I faltered and welled up, caught, and said “doing all of this work about generative possibilities, about alternatives that are better choices – this makes you tremendously aware of every time you could have done something better.” I paused, tearing up, and most of the people in the room teared up together.

When I’ve been in therapy, on and off, I’ve had a continual theme of wanting to be able, in a relationship, to be both strong and vulnerable. In this FOR, I was both of those things – I found the liminal space between work and personal where both fuse, where the meaning of my work is tangled around the meaning of my life and who I want to be. I want to be the person wearing the black comrags dress that outlines me elegantly, who has the clear voice and confidence in the theoretical work she’s presenting, who is simultaneously conscious of the vulnerability of the people who shared her stories and able to weld those stories into patterns and theory that can have meaning outside that context. This is the purpose of my work, and I found it in that moment. And I found the powerful vulnerability of being able to let myself honestly, openly admit the faltering self I also am, the near-despair of recognizing the power of making non-generative choices, the profound responsibility of carrying that recognition, the vulnerable humanness of it. Feeling seen most profoundly for the first time in my life, through the fused prism of self and work and self-work.

Whirl

2008-08-06T13:28:00.003-04:00

I'm in snowmass, CO, recovering at altitude from the overheated landscape of my kansas city grad. I'll post about the experience of my Final Oral in a little while -- it was, in many ways, the most emotionally intense experience of my life. But for now, I'll just bask in the drier, cooler temps and the glee of pedaling up to the "maroon bells" peaks yesterday. Very hard ride -- about 34+ miles altogether, with about 2800 ft of ascent -- but exhilarating and perfect. Was so tired at the end I walked my bike up the last steep 100 metres.

I had a freewheeling descent down about 1800 ft over about 6 miles from the top -- barely touched my brakes on the less than perfect rental, and didn't pedal for about 15 minutes -- and the dive was perfectly freeing and simultaneously brought me back down from the highs of the last few days. Had a few "what now?" moments last night, trying to figure out how to carve out the next life. So much bolstering of love from so many people, so much grounding in what I can do... and so many openings that feel like they'll require squeezing through.

But I can pedal up a mountain, and I have a phd. (Well, as soon as I finish the final revisions and get the doc to a proofreader). And, more than anything, I feel like I was in conversation with amazing people who heard me. I am lucky.

Bog people

2008-07-26T12:03:00.008-04:00

I'm in the very last moments of the finishing time, the part that if this was a dream I'd wake up with the red hot sensation that I have to go present my work AND I HAVEN'T PREPARED.

And I'm not ready. I've had some time over the last couple of days, and just canNOT concentrate. More than monkey mind, twitter, hummingbird mind. I'm in this weird social vacuum, where F is off kayaking with Eldest Daughter, and just about everyone I hang out with in town is away doing something debauched or cottagey or friend-supportive... and I'm reliving the tailing days of my first MA, 19 years later.

Then, I'd moved back to Windsor to live with my mom for one term (after being on my own for several years) to finish up some course work after my foray into the astonishingly underpaid world of academic publishing hadn't exactly been congenial to writing a thesis I wasn't all that into anyway. Another example of shoveling the bulk of my production into the butt-end of a degree. I was in the middle of an unsettled love affair, and my lover had moved back to TO for the summer.

So I was housesitting, for a month for a prof in my dept. Theoretically, I was cat-sitting. And... the house was vile. VILE. There were stories of how they'd once had 9 cats and had a Room filled with newspaper that served as a litter box. Now there were only two threadbare cats, but the scent of the soggy past clung, and the bathtub was so filthy I didn't even want to have a shower in it. Cat hair everywhere, including on the dusty collection of medieval instruments in the living room. Lutes and dust mite larvae.

The cats were a little resentful of my presence (litotes). None of the doors in the house would close firmly -- thick paint, bunchy carpets, warped wood -- and the older cat in particular -- Charlie -- would hurl himself against the bedroom door at night until he'd launch himself onto the bed. There I'd be, asleep, then there I'd be, hurled into the nightmare of hissing, drooling, angry cat. I developed asthma I didn't know I had.

Theoretically, the cats would "go out in the back yard and come back when you clap your hands and call out "kitty kitty round up." They never came back. Mostly, I found myself under the porch, trying to grab this elderly but agile cat by his giant cat feet. They were, of course, fully clawed and teethed, these cats. And I was fully gouged, track marks of bad judgment in arranging my life.

Against all of this, I was supposed to be writing my final paper. It was on Seamus Heaney, and it had something to do with the poems about the bog people (I was fascinated by the preservation through centuries, the stories that rose to the surface based on the simplest artifact, like the iron age murder weapon), but I can't for the life of me remember what I actually wrote about. I knew that I couldn't make myself focus on it. I tried the kitchen table (eyed by the cats I kept "forgetting" to give their 7 daily vitamins shoved down their throats in pats of butter), I tried my usually trusty library, I tried the back yard. I finally ended up writing this damned paper in pencil on long narrow-ruled paper in a creepy doughnut shop. When I finished, I toted it back to the House of Spores jubilantly... then set up my typewriter and realized that somehow I'd smudged out half the writing with my sweaty little hands.

I managed to decode and make stuff up, and trotted off to hand in the paper to Tom. And the day I did that, I came back to find Charlie... bald. Bald and forlorn. The other cat (much less memorable) had licked the hair off his head. I didn't know much about cats, but I knew enough to find the vet's number Colin had left me, who said "bring him in."

That simple command, of course, required me to go into the CELLAR of this reeking, dusty cottage and retrieve an ancient, heavy cat carrier that looked like a lobster trap and was festooned with sharp pokey bits. And to ... FORCE this ball of demon-cat into it.

When I left Charlie at the vet, I located a previously unknown well of callousness. SO LONG SUCKER rang through my head, and even when the vet called the next day and said he'd done a biopsy but thought Charlie had a malignant tumour and I should let his people know -- I didn't. Care. That cat did not merit my sympathy.

But there I was, left with... a vacuum of time. No more bog people, no more death-dance with charlie, just the subdued other cat who generally left me alone. And the weird completion of a degree with no go-forward plan, a tenuous love affair with someone in another city, friends all out of town, no job and no real home base. I wanted to celebrate, but there was no one to play with. And I was still trapped in this fusty, filthy house until Charlie's People could get back from england.

I needed space to let what was next emerge... and I turned to the mindless kind of obsession that I gravitate to when I'm anxious. A complicated jigsaw puzzle of an escher image. So for two days, I leaned over the (greasy) table in that (grimy) kitchen in that (dusty) house and put together a complicated puzzle of birds turning into fish (or the other way around) and listened to the CBC. There was an ideas program about Mazo de la Roche that I was fascinated by, not having realized that the melodrama of the Jalna series had been mirrored in her life.

So I made the puzzle, and the people came home, and I collected by $200 or whatever for cat-sitting and packed up my Hyundai Pony and drove off to find the next part of my life. Coughed the cat hair out of my throat and never saw charlie again.

This is all alive right now because... I'm in this same space. So weird to realize this. My own mostly dust-free loft (notwithstanding the decaying plants), but a people-free weekend, and an obsession with knitting a complicated sweater instead of carving into the meat of my presentation (which is NEXT FRIDAY, PEOPLE!!!), staying up late reading blogs about ranch wives, letting the frets about what the hell to do with the next part of my life hiss and drool at me in the middle of the night. Not exercising, eating popcorn for dinner. I can't quite locate the equivalent of that sketchy doughnut shop for the last push on my presentation, on the revisions to my diss. Afraid, maybe, to hand in that paper and find that I'm no closer to a life in tandem, in the right place, with the right work, than I was in 1989. Me, bog person, preserved.

The paradox of sox

2008-07-18T11:14:00.005-04:00

At one of the first national sessions I went to for my school program, there was a woman sort of drifting from one seminar or event to another who wasn't taking notes, and who didn't have the same air of *anxiety* that wafted off the new students. Instead, she was carrying a big fluffy pile of knitting -- some reddish fuzzy yarn. At that point, I hadn't touched a needle or crochet hook in at least a decade -- but something about the way that she wielded this knitting so casually, her chin set in a posture of curiosity without need, that sparked a burst of envy in me. She was in the conversations but not avidly Trying to Learn.

It was an aspect that I yearned for -- not a reductionist "being done the program" stance, but the presence of mind to participate without the jittery need to Get As Much As Possible from it. Sara did her Final Oral that week, and the undercurrent of contentment that she carried the knitting with matched the calm pleasure she presented her work with.

I must have tucked away that image of Sara's knitting until it popped out about six months ago. I bought my sister yarn and needles for christmas, and paused for a minute in the store. When I was in portland, I kept seeing yarn stores and having an unmistakable yearning to go in, buy some needles and yarn, make a simple scarf. I finally did it a couple of weeks later, and now, I'm making relatively fancy socks.

I'll be done these before I go to Kansas City in 10 days for my own Final Oral and graduation (provided I don't have some other ridiculous screw up -- the first sock was perfect but I had to completely frog the second one and start over because of Inattention and Stupidness -- the Life Lessons of Knitting), but I will certainly be toting something around on needles as I drift from seminar to seminar. The mini narrative of that fluff of knitting in sara's lap obviously became an emblem for me of how I wanted to do this final student week -- engaged and not anxious, navigating complexity, poised.

I'm not quite done the rewrites (how tired is everyone around me of hearing this??). Got a lot of feedback this week I need to absorb, assimilate, distill. Turn the mucky blend of how I can now talk about my work into a single malt. But the paradox of the socks -- what looked like a distraction was actually a frame for getting me to a poised finish.

Floating

2008-07-06T11:02:00.006-04:00

I've been reading other people's blogs a fair bit lately and realized with a sigh that this blog has never had a niche, a shape -- it hops around from flippant asides to Deep Thoughts to sheer neglect for months and months. Much like every journal I've ever had.

One blog I read has evolved in a fascinating way from a pure knitting blog to little postcards of her life in portland with her baby and husband and burgeoning garden, although, as a writer, she's very clear that this is neither her serious writing nor her real life. Yet, it's an engaging keyhole. In some ways I think I wanted this blog to be that -- but like everything else that I do in my life, it's about surges and mercurial shifts. But that's me, and so that's what comes out of my fingers.

I think I've never been very good at focusing on just one thing -- like right this minute, what I want to write about includes the blister on my leg that I got on my ex's mentee's Honda Rebel exhaust on friday (which reminds me of a scar on F's arm, and thinking about how our lovers and friends come to us marked, and then my cousin Liz, who burned herself on a moped exhaust in Asia), the turbulence of thoughts about possibly moving and what that means, my observations about how other people make decisions like condo buying, fear, anxiety, history, independence, coffee (more coffee), why I take on more work than I can do, how on earth am I going to really shape my post-doc life, why am I feeling so resentful of my well-meaning committee, Aine and her amazing warmth, how it is I become friends, how much I am loving becoming friends with L, what is it I look like from the outside, and of course, the core core stuff I'm trying to grapple with.

Instead, I focus on the feeling when I lift my road bike up. Pure joy. The lightness of power inherent in it -- knowing I can fuse with it and ride 30, 50, 100 miles. I feel like I rise up when I heft it, and I'm instantly transported into someone who moves, someone strong. Sky ocean strong blue, light and perfect.

I believe that this bike gives me more joy than any material thing I've ever had in my life. Not my hot boots,,

not my first ipod, the perfect bra, not my favourite piece of art ,

not even my first running shoes (which come a close second).

A lick of honey on my soul.

Fragments

2008-06-19T21:13:00.004-04:00

I was talking to a client I haven't seen for a while today, and I told him that my graduation date is August 2. He said "wow, I can't believe you're almost done -- it's the only thing that's been consistent for you as long as I've known you." He tagged right into the core, there -- I think the identity story of student has has shaped almost everything for so long that everything is loosened now. Being a student gives me a reason to spend half my time not working on client stuff, flitting back and forth across the border, framing myself as learning and therefore not Finished (and maybe not fully accountable for things?). Framing myself as distinct.

I'm so close to finishing, and people keep asking me if I feel good and I just feel... numb. It's all tangled up with loss, and not having a shaped sense of who I can be WITH a phd, and how it could have meaning for who I could become. I started this process because I wanted to expand ... something. And I don't know if I feel expanded... just... more multiple. Do I feel I've "become a phd"? My life has certainly shifted -- but most of the time now I feel more articulate in explaining what I do so badly.

I think I've lost the habit -- if I ever had it -- of being happy. I have so many shiny pieces --I have a lover who makes my blood rush faster and who is complex, makes me stretch further. I've had multiple clients from my past show up this week saying "I need your wisdom." I have more than a lifetime's worth of friends who delight in and love me and give me so much. I have a woman in my life who was my lover for 14 years and who awes me with her ability to reshape that love. I can climb mountains, and ride bicycles far and fast. I have work partners who are unbelievably strong and meshed with what I need -- and who can tell me that they love me, who finish my thoughts when I fumble, who make me laugh. I am finishing a phd that I worked hard for and I think is a GOOD piece of work -- and can build on it. And I don't know how to fuse all of these pieces together into a mosaic of stained glass and light.

My thesis chair quoted this Raymond Carver poem to me a little while ago, and it stuck:

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

I don't lack for love. I need to learn to feel beloved.

Often comments on husband's strength and masculinity.

2008-06-16T21:18:00.001-04:00

As a 1930s wife, I am
Poor

Take the test!

Flowing and drawn

2008-06-01T14:01:00.002-04:00

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
-- Elizabeth Bishop

**

Still rewriting, realizing I've elevated this massive document to another level but now the second half isn't coherent with the elevation I've done... no time to fully rewrite, so contemplating a somewhat schizophrenic version where I think I understand my work now better than is reflected in the written document. I guess that's better than some alternatives.

Panic slowly subsiding, but still feeling drawn, a little tongue-burnt, wondering why I can't do all of this without such intense emotion.

Back to the writing.

Bruxism

2008-05-27T19:21:00.003-04:00

Teeth clenching. I've been doing that for at least 3 or 4 years, culminating in biting one of my own molars right off when Kat offered me watermelon gum while I was contemplating buying Jinx BeGone Potion in one of the rickety little stores in our neighbourhood at xmas. Now I'm in the middle of tedious dental work and I am still. clenching, literally and metaphorically.

Finally got all of the feedback from my committee, and trying to assimilate it all and integrate it in a meaningful way to do a revision to my Giant Document is just... hard. Some of it is conflicting, and I can't settle on a context. Some of it is in the realm of "do this to please my committee," some of it is "what do I absolutely have to do to get to the FOR stage," some of it is "how will my Famous Guy external read this, how do I improve it for him?" -- and some of it is, "this is my WORK, this is what matters, and I don't know how to assess it."

And I'm deep in another angstful round of "what exactly happens NEXT." Swirling emotions, displacement onto sock knitting and fretting and roasting chickens, as I move words around and bite off my own teeth.

Pedaling

2008-05-06T09:41:00.003-04:00

I had all of this bloggifying to do but it keeps slipping out of my attention. (Like Scarlett O'Hara and a new bonnet, when figures just fall slap out of her head).

FInished a draft of my dissertation, sent it off, and had elation/deflation. Which was convenient in some ways, because I could channel my angst into finishing up the final course paper I was co-writing with Linda, about paradox and generativity and reflexivity.

It's been a really suspended place, this time of waiting for my committee to give me feedback, so close to being done, and so far away from it. Got my first feedback yesterday, from the member of my committee who gives extremely thorough and comprehensive responses to *pieces* -- but I don't have a strong sense of the overall picture from her. It's hard to describe, the flattening of hearing "yes, this 275 page tome is incredibly complex and good, and here are 9 pages of things I didn't understand." And each of those things is a key concept. I don't know how to wade back into these reeds and make anything of it. So I wait for the other two, to triangulate some focus for me. It's sort of weirdly desperate, being so close to being done something that's gone on for 6.5 years, having produced this massive piece of work, but feeling like I'm still swimming and can see the land but keep trying to find the bottom with my feet.

So, diversions. Got a magnificent new road bike -- a Specialized Ruby Comp -- far more bike than I deserve, and not only do I adore it, but I fine it changes the landscape here for me completely. Now this isn't just a flattening suburb, but an expanse of ridable hills and perfect roads.

I've also been knitting my fool head off, and am almostdone my very first sock. It's a bit saggy in the ankle, but it's sock-shaped and I'm very delighted with it. Pics to follow.

And that's it. I ride, I knit, I poke away at leftover bits of work and client stuff, and I grope for the rocks under my feet.

Drafts and Redrafts

2008-04-14T11:22:00.005-04:00

Here's what I've been working on:

and this:

Write write write knit knit knit. I actually knit that part of the hat TWICE. Two drafts, as it were. The first time, it was way too small. Apparently, I have Gauge Issues. I'm so glad that this knitting resurgence is revealing a whole new set of potential issues for me. Anyway, the hat is still too small for F, but I think it will fit me, and it's really lovely. The yarn is this really gorgeous merino/baby alpaca/silk from The Fibre Company and it's just beautiful to work with. So soft. But it turns out I'm an anxious, tight-assed little knitter (surprise!), and I need to practice being LOOSE. So I started trying to make a scarf in this complicated lace pattern but made a mistake and couldn't figure out how to fix it. So ripped the whole thing out.

It's all about write/knit, rewrite/reknit. And some of it is beautiful (like the hat is becoming, and how I feel about my methodology section) and some of it is still a scrawly tangled mess. My goal is a full redraft of the dissertation by the end of the week. But I'm not going to get there if I don't head for the library NOW.

Fantasmagorical

2008-04-10T10:35:00.006-04:00

My friend Linda did her Final Oral Review of her dissertation on Tuesday, and she did a FANTASTIC job. We celebrated by, of all things, going to DIsney on Monday. I have some predictable things to say about that (reinforcing the status quo, particularly the notion of middle America as the centre of the universe, blah blah blah) but she was so happy to be there that I couldn't be a total curmudgeon about it.

Here we are in a teacup. L is wearing mouse ears that say Class of 2008 and Dr. Herlastname on the back.

Now back into my own serious rewrite.

Sheepish

2008-04-04T09:05:00.003-04:00

I knit a scarf. Actually, I knit two scarves. First I made this scarf, but in different colours, which reacquainted me with knitting in ribs. It was for F. Unfortunately the only picture I have of it is him wearing it as we crawled around crazy ice formations at the lake a couple of weeks ago -- and he's shy about having his picture posted on my blog.

Then I made this scarf, which taught me basket weave.

I like it. In between all of this knitting and obsessive reading of knitting blogs, I have been writing my ass off, doing some gnashing of teeth, and trying to see the clear threadline. I finished a more or less draft of my diss, and got good feedback on it, and have some rewriting and tightening and locating to do. I am off to Anaheim on sunday, though, for Linda's FOR, so have been doing sketching and not really writing until I get back. Will spend time celebrating Linda's achievements... and ... we're going to disneyland. Really.

I'll report back from the other side of the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Braindead wordcount

2008-03-14T21:17:00.002-04:00

I'm at the point where I can't even watch dvds I haven't seen before -- tracking who all the characters are in Rome or season 1 of Buffy -- which I've never watched and had season 1 sitting on my shelf for a year now, since Renee sent it to me for my birthday last year -- seems like Too Much Effort. Still striving to get something that is ALMOST a draft of this bloody dissertation to bp by the end of this weekend. Will still be short the lit review chapter that I have to spend a couple of days on and the discussion chapter, but the bulk of the writing and christmas pudding of an analysis will be done.

Current wordcount:

chap 1: 2940
chap 2: (lit review)
chap 3: 5300
chap 4: 10907
chap 5: 16337
chap 6: 18301
chap 7: 1205
chap 8: (discussion)
chap 9: (conclusion)

seems like a lot of bloody words. Have to finish chapter 7 tomorrow, review the bits all done with feedback to date, and send it off to my chair. Then write the other bits.

Yeah, that's it.

You know, when I was in the library this morning I had all these brilliant blogging thoughts, but can't begin to remember now what I was even thinking about. This is very draining and I'm a complete and utter klutz -- I cut my knuckle opening a bottle of cheap merlot, and my ass still hurts where I slipped on my clean floor on wednesday night. But I took a few hours off yesterday afternoon and went here:

http://www.bodyblitzspa.com/

It was BLISSFUL. I did the water circuit thing for more than an hour, and steamed and soaked and salted and sweated and showered and steamed, then I had a "body bake" where a nice quiet compliant woman covered me in "glacial seaweed mud" (such bullshit -- um, where is this seaweed-ridden glacier?) and baked me under hot lights and hosed me off like a beached fish. It was amazing.

I'm usually not great at completely giving myself up to this sort of thing, but I just let my brain drain away yesterday -- it was completely, utterly worth it.

Levity

2008-03-06T19:43:00.003-05:00

I said to Matt yesterday that I have zero capacity to respond with humour to something I think is Deadly Serious. I am totally irreverent and flippant with my friends, and danny and I regularly fall apart laughing when we're doing work together -- but I'm missing some critical gene that allows me to laugh at myself when I'm Upset. I think cultivating a sense of frivolity in the face of Earnestness would be a very good thing to aim at, if I were to ever have a Resolution time.

So... today, feeling much better -- cleaned my entire flat, changed sheets, flipped futon, etc, felt orderly and managed to write a few good pages with some more pending after dinner. And, trying to be much less Serious about it all.

Ali sent me this link about a crazy bride who had a life-sized wedding cake version of herself. Pure excess. (For some reason I can't copy a shot of the photo). Reminded me of something I was reading a couple of years ago -- I think it was the book by Anne Kingston called The Meaning of Wife. She theorized that weddings have got bigger and bigger because we have a shared cultural story about the idea of "bride" but not so much about what a "wife" is -- so there is this blowout fantasy of the wedding to counterbalance the more contested idea of what comes after. Interesting angle.

(It might have been a different book -- have read a lot of social theory about marriage in the past few years -- maybe CInderella Dreams?>.

Sensory deprivation

2008-03-05T11:51:00.002-05:00

I appreciated Kat's comments on my post last night, so much. I do have good and wise friends, and it's reassuring to know that this process isn't mine alone. Less crazy making.

I was talking to Pamela, who's two years out on this, and remember her going through something similar. She's very wise, and she gave me the perfect metaphor. This part, she said, is like being in a sensory deprivation tank with no reference points for who you are and where this fits. Sensory deprivation of identity. It fit, and was comforting.

Then we talked a lot about how to get through it, and she was talking about listening to something about taking care of yourself, and how to comfort yourself, and then sort of had this moment of recognition of what she was saying, and blurted, "I hate inner child stuff so I hate inner mother stuff, but this was actually helpful."

It made me laugh. And now trying to find the thread again. Stress all around, for F as well as me, and we're not fitting together well in this. Makes it all so much more raw.

dropped long ago

2008-03-04T22:15:00.002-05:00

This really is the hardest thing I've ever done. I have a magnet on my fridge that has a little stick figure turning the corner and the caption "clyde was about to come face to face with the ball he had dropped long ago." This dissertation right now feels like that ball, like I've dropped a bucket of marbles on the floor and they're rolling around, fitting themselves into corners I'll never locate, sticking themselves into grooves in the wood I'll never fit my fingers into.

I didn't expect the sense of emotional overwroughtness that comes with the kind of paralysis I'm feeling right now. Writing and writing and feeling like I've completely lost the plot, and being so completely on edge that I can barely fight my way through the panic. No idea what I'm trying to say, and a level above that, no idea why I'm doing this at ALL in the first place. WTF has this process been about, where is it taking me?

And through it all, awareness that this level of emotionalism is totally out of proportion with the "real" stuff people are dealing with in their lives, that this is just me with a very first world problem, and that the caterwauling, squalling and sense of panic about it are completely unseemly. I feel simultaneously like a clichéd drama queen and some kind of sea creature with no muscle, no bone, nothing but a raw and exposed nervous system.

It's really just a chapter, among several chapters, in a long paper that a dozen people at the most will read. The ultimate demonstration of student prowess, of capability worthy of admission to some realm I'm not actually that interested in. I wanted it to mean more, and finding this void here is... overwhelming. And so lonely.

Stickiness

2008-03-01T09:01:00.002-05:00

So last night we went out for dinner, and we were getting ready for bed and I went into the kitchen, wearing only underpants, to get a glass of water. I opened the fridge and felt... something... on my foot. I looked down, and this SHRIEK just escaped me. There was a sticky trap WITH A DEAD MOUSE ON IT stuck to my FOOT.

I flailed about trying to get it off and I kicked my foot up and hit the bottom of the refrigerator door... and nearly broke my toe. It's all mangled and blue. And the mouse was still STUCK to me. It was very primal.

After much palaver, I got it off and scrubbed my foot madly, and we went to bed, all giggling about it. Then this morning I woke up and we were cuddling and talking and suddenly I remembered and shrieked again. I basically broke my toe on a dead mouse. I am such a klutz.

Nomadic Life

2008-02-19T15:05:00.003-05:00

My friend A is having this affair right now with a young Berber guy who lives in Morocco, and she keeps texting me from the tops of camels. It sounds so very exotic (except for all the sand everywhere), but I'm not much enjoying this nomadic life right now.

I was supposed to be in denver at an academic conference, but at the airport on sunday, I was feeling crappier and crappier. Flu-ish. There were delays and stuff, and I had the chance to get bumped and get my ticket refunded. So I took it, and spent the last day and a half in bed, more or less. Knitting and whinging.

I'm just feeling... demoralized. I realized last night that F and I are going to have about 3 nights together over a month after this weekend. I feel like crap with a pounding achy headache all over my body. I can't make my brain work, I'm panicked about my deadline. And Linda said our panel was a bust at the conference. In that sense, my instincts were right, but it raises so many questions about how to find our niche when I'm actually done this frickin' phd. The interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner part of this means we have no natural home. Sometimes I'm tired of having no real base in EVERYTHING I do.

Just... blech. Trying to salvage something out of the day, but it's very hard to maintain the energy, not to succumb to the tightly wound ball of whining, panicking, some weird, untethered resentment and anxiety. Wondering whether home is even the right metaphor for what it is I seem to be lacking.

Ex-pat Life II

2008-02-14T14:05:00.004-05:00

My, I'm prolific today ;-). Procrastination 101, plus Heating-engineer-in-the-house.

So further to my little blog yesterday about the expat life thing. I think I am feeling a bit unsettled by the orbiting nature of my life. It's predictable -- the harder I find the writing, the more untethered I feel.

So last night F and I were re-watching the final episode of Season 3 of the new Who, the one where captain jack and the doctor are held prisoner by the Master, who has taken over the earth with the highly destructive paradox humankind from the end of the universe, who kill because it's fun? And even when they vanquish the Master, after Martha walks the earth for a year instilling hope and a collective surge of DOCTOR energy all at the same time? Which works because the doctor has telepathically linked himself with the archangel network?

(Hee, I just LOVE trying to recap the plots of sci fi shows -- "so the original creatures from the origin of the universe? They're like these SPIDER PEOPLE living at the centre of the earth?")

So anyway. Once the Doctor and Martha and Captain Jack have vanquished the Master, the Doctor cradles him in his arms and says "I only have one thing to say to you and you have to listen. I FORGIVE YOU."

Because more than anything, the doctor yearns to connect with this sole living example of his species, the Timelords -- and even though the Master is pretty much the embodiment of evil, the Doctor burns to not be an orphan anymore, and believes that if he keeps the Master in the TARDIS, he'll feel whole again?

So after that, I had this dream that just translated this plot and my own sense of dislocation so simply. I dreamed I was working with a guy who had a condition like severe autism, where he couldn't connect with anyone. I somehow managed to find a way for him to communicate with me, and he was so happy. I then took him to meet someone else like him, and it was the first person he'd ever been able to really connect with in his life. He was completely joyful, and they were talking to each other in signs and words I didn't understand. Then I took him home again and he DIED ON THE PLANE ON THE WAY HOME.

So I'm a little dislocated. Not unbearably so, and I do know I'll feel better when I have this draft behind me. But. Still. Makes me think that my six word memoir is more something like:

Always in margins. Usually on edge.

Back home in the suburbs

2008-02-14T13:38:00.002-05:00

Again, trapped at home in roc while shower guy was supposed to come back with the door, and the heating guy was supposed to come and bleed the pipes. Instead, shower door guy calls first thing to tell me the custom door is AWOL, no idea where or when it will arrive, and Eliot the relatively hot plumber guy announces that there's a CO leak in the basement and the boiler needs replacing. "I kinda fixed the seals, but you guys get yourselves a CO detector and put it above the boiler until you replace it -- RG&E would red tag it, but hey, just crack a window."

They're tough out here in the suburbs of western new york.

So I need to remind F to get another CO detector on the way home.

M IMed me that he was going to buy his wife flowers. "Get her a CO detector," I said, " Nothing says I love you like a CO detector." "Yeah," he said. "I love you like a deadly odorless gas."