Haberdashery

At our cottage when I was growing up, we had a closet full of old games from the 50s and 60s -- Head of the Class, some complicated game I can't recall that involved a sort of bingo twirler and little button thingies, DoodleBug, many many card games, of course -- and this bizarrely compelling game called "Park and Shop." I think it was the enculturation companion to Mystery Date -- the players had shopping lists, and there was a small town shopping grid with tobacconists, haberdashers, green grocers, butcher, etc, and the object was to plan your most efficient shopping route and get back home with your car full of shopping.


This game is blurred in my childhood memory with a PSA for seatbelt use that ran when I was about 5 featuring a woman saying "I don't like to wear a seatbelt when I go shopping because it wrinkles my dress." Then there was a Scary Flash and crashing noise and, presumably, she was dead, struck down by her Vanity.

I was obsessed with Park and Shop for several years -- I found the archaic shop names charming (I was sure that the tobacconist smelled so good, and the green-grocer was chock full of shiny ripe lettuces and fat apples), and the object was so simple. There were, I'm sure Obstacles -- red lights, detours, forgotten items -- but the scope was comfortingly simple and narrow. I think I liked it for the same reason I liked memoirs about people with huge families -- thriving-on-love-and-little-money stories of having 8 or 12 siblings.

I obviously imprinted on Park and Shop, because anytime I have to mentally plan a bunch of errands, I find myself imagining the board layout, where there were, I think 3 haberdashers, 2 tobacconists -- trying to plan my route that retraces the fewest steps.

I had a real park and shop day today -- there were a mittful of tedious backed up errands I couldn't put off any longer. Renew car registration (one year or two? two years is more efficient, but will I really still be living here a year from now?), which involved me going first to where the Service Ontario kiosk USED to be (Mowat Block), and plopping all my stuff down on a credit union ATM and not realizing it was the wrong thing until I'd pulled out all my documents. Cracking up security guard sent me back to College Park, where I'd just BEEN. Get photo health card (finally). Go to bank to deposit cheques. Get prescription filled -- which involved 4 pharmacies before I found one that had it. Meeting at one hospital, and another meeting at another hospital. All circumnavigating the same 2 km radius stretching from here to yonge/college, but retracing my steps repeatedly.

Am set up, now, though -- renewed out of country health insurance, paid GST, paid bills, did RSP contribution, etc. And now can't possibly justify another day without writing.

I had a real burst last weekend until Monday, then lost momentum. I have another 3 or 4 day stretch starting tomorrow, and it's hibernation mode again. Then I'll know where I really am.

Field notes

In some way, this blog is becoming more like field notes than anything else. There's something about the potentially public nature of it that pushes me to be a bit more articulate (maybe?) than the scrawl of notes that I make on post-its and in my word file called "field notes" that's a highly inconsistent set of observations.

One thing that's really circling for me -- I was thinking about linda's work, and how infused it is with her deep relationship with linguistics -- how comfortable she is with the architectonics of the analysis, how focused she is on wanting to be precise with her terminology. And *my* analysis, otoh, is much more rooted in my early training in literary analysis -- I analyse the stories and how they're put together, and I'm a lot more imprecise with terms, and have to keep going back to my little lists of practices that I've made over time to know how to name what's happening. I get a little thrill when I recall a term like "constrastive sets" and know that it's the right term, but I'm not nearly as much at ease with the perspicacious distinctions between terms as she is -- and, I really get into the narrative aspects of what I'm analysing. Literary texts and conversations between couples become exactly the same thing for me. I think my early steeping in the kind of new school criticism that whacked the idea of "intentional fallacy" into my head set me up to really *get* the social constructionist psychological position -- what the author MEANT is irrelevant; what HAPPENS is what counts. Same thing in our social interaction.

The other thing I was thinking about is how when I wrote my two proposals, somehow I made the assumption that CMM (Barnett's theory/approach) was more of an afterthought -- I think somehow I thought, yeah, yeah, it's part of it, but not the core. And I realize, in doing this, I don't really know any other way of doing this analysis other than CMM -- apparently, unbeknownst to me, it snuck into my framing in such a way that it IS the way I view communication. The entire analysis of my work rests on being able to map stories of relationship and self-concept through CMM heuristics, and to trace what happens in conversation through CMMish contextual hierarchies and forces. Funny how it entered my veins when I wasn't paying attention and I could no more do this work now without that frame than I could do it without using English.

Acknowledgments

I did something a little out of order yesterday -- when I was having trouble writing, I wrote a draft of my acknowledgments page for my diss. I guess that's the equivalent of the therapy/life coach thing of making you write what you want people to say about you at your funeral -- creating some prefigurative force that requires me to now enact this thing I'm already mentally thanking people for.

It did have the effect on me of reminding me of how many people have been a deep part of making me who I am through this whole experience. I feel pretty surrounded by rich relationships. I feel lucky.

A day of smears

I ate a lindt chocolate last night in bed while watching a dvd of Weeds, and I noticed that some of it seemed to have fallen off somewhere. It wasn't until I woke in a revoltingly chocolate smeared bed this morning that I realized um, I guess that was in my white sheets. I was relieved to realize what it actually WAS, let me tell you.

Then I went off for my annual physical. Any day that includes a pap smear before coffee is not likely to rank as Highly Memorable... though dumping half a blender full of vibrantly purple blueberry smoothie across my countertop, floor and into my silverware and random crap drawers was pretty vivid.

So I ended up spending the early afternoon dozing on the couch, with a headache from my mostly unproductive marathon yesterday at the computer, and woke up staring sort of bleakly out at the sky that really... just a smear of white grey. One of my invisible friends the other day declared that everyone she knew who'd moved to Seattle had left within a couple of years because they couldn't deal with the rain and the grey. Those people have clearly not endured a Toronto january. From my window right now, late afternoon, the sky is a uniform white-grey, colour-blurred with the steam from the ugly ventilation shaft directly across the street, the cheap siding on the little rooftop stairwell on that same building, the snow falling limply, depressed and enervated. Just looking at this sky sucks the energy out of me -- whereas the same late afternoon malaise in Portland had hints of light and a certain kind of vibrancy. I guess we experience it all so differently, but I keep sighing involuntarily just looking outside.

So today, not so productive. Yesterday I did have a bit of a breakthrough, coming up with an organizing principle that seems to be working for me -- but it didn't lead to an explosion of writing, which I was sort of hoping for. I peck away. Simultaneously look forward to my plans for dinner tonight with S and her elusive girlfriend I'd begun to think inhabits another dimension -- and feeling guilty for not producing pages and pages and pages of brilliant insightful analysis.

I paste. I paste.

Stubborn and stuck

Wednesday and Thursday were write-offs from a writing point of view -- lots of distractions and client meetings. So I've been trying to get back into this today, and it's just so hard. Can't figure out at all how to deal with my analysis -- what kind of story I'm trying to tell, how to use the data, how to organize it. How do I get from the mental slurry of jumbled post-its to any kind of meaningful narrative?

GAH. GAH.

Say! What a lot of fish there are!

Earlier in the day I was thinking I should use this blog to work out some useful question that David P, a fellow student, asked me today about my dissertation. It was a really astute question: what happens to your research if you take the term relational out of relational generativity?

I answered him, kinda glibly, and then thought about it for the rest of the day. It really isn't about "how do we have generative conversations," even though that's kind of the way I've ended up shortening the description of what I'm doing to that well-meaning but so naive question "what's your dissertation about?" that comes from the dentist right before she wants to look in your mouth. (It's just as well I have a pat answer, because it doesn't look so good to just let your mouth gape open in the tradition of slack-jawed idiots everywhere).

Anyway, it IS about generative conversations, but the relational part is key. And I realized I can't really TRULY articulate it, yet. Is it about "the role of identity practices in constructing generative interaction?" Or is it about "how do generative interactions relate to our construction of self and other?" Can it be both? I can't quite puzzle through the implications of this. I keep grabbing at this image of binary stars, and know that it's in there somewhere, but I have a horrible feeling that this distinction I just noted is the thing that would sharpen what I'm doing. And until I can really get that, I'm sort of sprawling through this analysis.

I didn't really get very much done today. The morning was filled up with stuff (Age was still here, and I had an 8:00 - 9:30 conference call for a client project, and then I took A to the train, and talked to another client, and decided my rampaging obesity MUST be checked a bit and spun for half an hour, and had a phone call with the aforementioned David. Then I truly tried to hunker down, but only managed to write about 400 words, spinning my wheels, until I had to leave for the dentist.

The dentist was, thankfully, a kindly experience -- at my request, she gave me a temporary solution to the necessary crown, letting me do it after the dissertation work is done and I'm earning real money again. AND she didn't charge me anything for today.

Then I walked home and didn't fall on the ice, and was happy with the crisp air. Got some lime leaf chicken and tried to focus again... and ended up making notes to deepen that analysis I haven't really managed to synthesize into writing yet, fleshed out my record of references for how I arrived at my daisy models of my alpha couple. Not "dwelling in the data" as much as prodding the edges of it a little dolefully.

And now, 8:30 and I can only think in the cadences of Dr. Seuss. So...

Today is gone. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.
Every day,
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.

Keeping it honest

When I'm at this not-a-laptop (don't get me started on bloody apple who claim to no longer MAKE "laptops" when you phone them to complain about the overheating and whatnot), it's easy to use this blog (and every other nook and cranny of the interweb) as a powerful site of procrastination... so with this enormous deadline, I'm going to try to use it to keep myself honest. No one else will really give a fig about this but me, but at least if I have to document what I *did* every day for the next 6 weeks, there's some kind of rein on any wandering I might do.

So today was partly about getting back in the groove after not touching my stuff all weekend (driving back from roc, errands for F to fondle a new Pentax, an eclectic and past-our-bedtime dance party, picking up Age at the airport and having an evening with her, etc. etc. Unpacking. So now I'm back in TO, and at 7:16 pm, still in my sweats I pulled on when I got up this morning, while Age snoozes off her food poisoning lunch on the couch.

So what'd I actually DO, other than some client work, booking my flight to Denver, paying a few bills, etc? Well, I moved bits of paper around, and finally figured out how to write the intro to my discussion chapter. God knows I don't *exactly* know what I'm saying yet, but I need to start getting some things on paper and building it a bit at a time. So I wrote the description of the structure of the chapter, and detailed my analytical model and the role of the contexts of self and relationship stories, and how I'm using the hierarchy model and the daisy model. And then I wrote the section on the stories of self and relationship for my "alpha" participants.

Oh, and I found some articles and a master list of terms I'd put together that I didn't have with me in roc. That was actually kinda helpful.

Total word count: 2324. None of them quartz-brilliant, but the gabbro of my dissertation -- the sturdy sticky rock of the scottish mountains.

Not BAD output... sedimenting slowly accumulating into some new form.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies

So one of the heuristics I use in my work is this thing called a "daisy model," where we put all of the different stories at play in a little daisy and then shade the ones that are foregrounded in a particular episode. (Was that Charlie Brown grown up speak?) So I'm making all these little powerpoint daisies all the livelong day as I am immersed in my analysis.

And I keep channeling that catchy late 60s movie based on the Jean Kerr book, where the original Yummy Mummy Doris Day was reshuffled from New York City to the suburbs, where she ended up prancing around her yard with a ukulele with her 3 rapscallion boys singing the oh-so-earwormy Please Don't Eat the Daisies.

Perhaps I've gone bonkers, here in the suburbs, grinding away while Ron the plumber painstakingly installs a shower, day after day. I just want to know when I get to get all glammed up and smoke a cigarette with David Niven.

Beware

the ides of march. Caesar aside, that's the date I walked away from my committee meeting with for the first full draft of my dissertation. That left me a little discombulated, to say the least. It's tight for someone who likes to work in fits and starts, and has the possibility of a couple of good trips I'll have to say no to. And it makes me ache with anxiety that I won't do a good enough job. But... I've also been in this program one seventh of my life. I think it's time to get the damned phd and make the next phase happen.

But head-down hardly begins to describe what I'll have to do for the next two months.

Eek.

(Oh, and I'm in roc, btw, for those keeping track at home).

Santa Barbara

I'm in santa barbara, for my annual national session for school -- and my what-should-be-final committee meeting tomorrow. Anxious about timing and writing momentum, but pausing to be so grateful that I get to come here. The view from our balcony, just now.

bridges

Downtown Portland has the Willamette river running through it, and is subsequently criss-crossed with bridges. Generally, I like bridges. One of my favourite places this year -- anytime, really -- was the ponte vecchio in Florence. I kept dragging F back to it, and even though it was a bit touristy and full of the obvious twee musicians, strolling couples, trap-py shops, I loved it.



The bridges in Portland are different from that, obviously, this sort of paradoxical blend of the romantic and downright creepy. There are all these really pedestrian friendly trails *along* the river, and when I run on them it's usually me and other steady breathy folks in water-proof breathable fibres, but there's also an underworld to the bridges, dank little temporary settlements, people Lurking, people toting all of their belongings. Like the ravines in toronto, but less pastoral. Running along the trails, you usually encounter at least one person doing something odd and sketchy, like culling... something... out of the river. And the east side of the river in particular is completely ridged with warehouses, razor wire, bleak stretches without people.

So the river's a draw, and bits of it are all gentrified with restaurants and fancy pedestrian bridges, but there's also an undertow of menace.

I went off to buy new running shoes yesterday, and it turned into a bit of a sketchy adventure. I'm on the west side of the river, and the running shoe store is on the east. I marched across the bridge closest to here, the one I usually run across, but once I got to the other side, I felt kind of creeped out. The light was dim and grey, and while there were a few stalwart cyclists (all of them with bare ankles, despite the chill), there was no one else walking. And I had to kind of walk across an expressway ramp to get off it, and it didn't feel nice.



So after I bought my shoes, I thought I'd go to another bridge to come back, one further north. I asked the woman at the store if I could walk across the Morrison bridge, the one there. She sort of half-heartedly said yes, but it was hard to get on. She was sort of vague, but I found the pedestrian bit, but then I rejected it halfway across when it required me to go down under the road onto a winding out-of-sight staircase on which I could see a lurking sketchy man.

So I walked back to the main road, and about a km to the next bridge -- which featured the rare sight of the drawbridge up and many "SIDE WALK CLOSED" signs. I tried to get down to the river to the pedestrian bridge I knew was there, but found myself in all these dark deserted parking lots, so I scampered back up to the main road.

Now, it was near dark, and I was a bit jumpy. I went further north and asked a guy and he said he didn't think there was a pedestrian way across this (4th) bridge. So I went *another* km or so to the trusty bridge I knew, but gratefully found, the MAX (tram) system, and got myself on. Then I gave a lurking fellow $1 when he asked in karmic relief.

So I rode home on the brightly lit tram, listening to a dykey woman yammer on a cellphone about alligators and giving 50% effort to something, and two other women compliment each other's coats. I was reminded of the way that Madeleine L'Engle described the tesseracts of time travel in her novels, something about the fabirc of time folding over on itself so that everything happened at the same time and yet separately. The tesseracts of the city, criss-crossed in bridges.

And you know what else?

It really freaks me out a bit how facebook makes you dream about people you haven't seen for 20 years, and really have no need to see ever again.

I took a road trip the other night with someone I literally would be perfectly happy to never lay eyes on again. It's like acid flashbacks, but there along with my americano in the morning.

And yet, I can't pry myself away from it.

Contrapuntal

I think Kat and Matt are the only ones who actually read this poor dessicated blog, ever, but I did promise Kat I would do an update or two so she'd know where I was. So, here. Hi!

I'm in portland, OR. Back in the same coffee shop I spent so much time in during my little "emotional shivasana" time back in May/June 06. That was the time when I really sparked with F, really knew that there might be something between us -- so being back here has an inevitable aura of reflection about it.

So much distance traveled in those 18 months. And here I am, still working to finish this phd. My only real goal for 08. If I can put aside all of the angst about money (I feel like I've picked up my bank account and dumped it into the pacific in the past couple of months), and the what ifs what ifs what ifs about what might happen with me and F in the next year, re jobs, possibilities, hopes. Just, living inside the heads of my project participants.

F and I had a really lovely drive up the coast, from Malibu to Portland, between xmas and new year's. The start was perfect, to me -- his ex incredibly welcoming, his 6 y.o. breathtaking. So confident and innocent and hopeful and happy and strong. I feel privileged to have her even on the edge of my life.

The time here has been less perfect -- lots of jibber jabber about trying to get the heat started, the leak from the ceiling in the bedroom irritating, a topsy turvey set of plans for the weekend because of the storm in CA. I was supposed to be flying to the bay area right about now, to meet Linda, and then to drive down the coast to santa barbara for school. We had an idyllic time in Big Sur last year, and I was hoping to repeat it; F and I drove the same roads last week, but too much of it was in darkness, and I was hoping for a few moments on a beach. But I've gotten conservative in my traveling -- I have no desire to be trapped in a crappy hotel by a mudslide, much as I love Linda, and I opted to stay here and fly directly to SB on monday. So now, back into my work.

This week has been funny for work -- wrenched my way into my analysis, but it's not exactly ticking along. There's a little too much of the "this is kind of a holiday" feel about this, along with all of the distractions of gas companies, wanting to exercise, whinging about my bad knee, etc. So now, back into the words of other couples.

Just a few of the noises of the past week that represent this west coast trip...

Knock knock knock on the wall of the big sur lodge, interrupting the reconnecting time between me and F, after an amazing dinner at nepenthe. Same dude woke me up with his wall-penetrating snoring at 5:00 a.m. Tried to figure out what kind of person feels compelled to be *quite* so sex-negative; couldn't imagine. Imagined him fat and full of sleep apnea. Felt better.

Plonka plip plop splot into the bucket in the corner of my bedroom in this flat, as the wind caterwauls around the 8th floor glass walls. This flat, in microcosm; gorgeous, techno and unlived in, and untended. And tortuous as a splot all night long.

Clomp clomp clomp. Our boots on the metal stairs between the upper and lower levels, as we tried to figure out that damned heat. A woman from downstairs, quivering with earnestness, asking F to Please Be Quieter Because I'm Trying to Work. Me on phone, him explaining, asking for her advice about the heat. I get off phone and she persists in repeating her Indignant Request. I hiss at her, like a cat. Not much making friends, here.

The wind, lonely howls. I might as well be on the edge of an outcrop, facing into the bleak ocean. Grateful for the warmth of the duvet, thinking how much more I miss having someone there with me when there IS a someone I want to be with. When I was here before, and single-ish, I was content to be alone in this bed. Now, I miss my big human hot water bottle, warmth made flesh.

And now, to work.

Spot the moment of festive cheer

So I'm at Spot, my favourite café in roc, trying to extend the flow of my day in the library. Finally energized by my writing, feeling like something meaningful is actually being made.



I've been quite offhand about the holidays this year. I put some white lights up around the windows in my flat, and sent out a few -- very few -- cards with little penguins on. B and I had a shared moment of sadness about the boxes of decorations in her basement that are the postscripts of the lasagne-and-tree-trimming parties we had for years. Touchstones of a community. But overall, I'm good with F's resolute focus on new year's as the holiday to mark. I like the shift of the year, and it feels good to let go of the accumulation of jagged raggedness that christmas represented for years -- all the shuttling between families, never a chance to be peacefully at home. The pent up angst of the year spurting out in all the close proximities. It feels right to make new rituals, and I'm excited about the trip we're planning on the west coast between xmas and new year's. The right coast.

And yet, here at spot, the Seasonal Music I much despise mercifully muted, an instrumental version of Partridge in a Pear Tree catches at my ankles. So fused to my memories of my dad, fiercely insisting that the extended family pause to sing along. The dramatic -- if tuneless -- intonation on Five Golden Rings. Missing that moment of optimistic intensity. A moment of yearning.

And then back to a warbling, despised Ella version of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and it passes. Time stretched, rift opened, sewed firmly shut again.

Suspension

Self-referential and annoying though this is, I think a little self-conscious meta-bloggery might get me through this sort of fuzzy-headed block I have about my dissertation. What I've been doing since September: collecting "data" and assembling my basic argument. Data, in this case, means asking long-suffering couples to record their private conversations and then to submit themselves to an interview with me.

I finally finished all of that last week, and now I'm supposed to be in the infamous "writing" phase. It's tough. I feel like I've kind of lost sight of what it is I'm trying to say, and the lightest flicker of a distraction can send me off the path. Like, there's a new book related to my topic,and I tried to get it, and it seems to be unavailable, and so this creates some kind of synapse gap in my ability to think about the topic. I *do* work in bursts, but the bursts aren't firing quickly enough for the time pressure I'm under.

So. That's where it is. I'm kind of floaty, and I feel like I keep head-butting into a big foamy block like those things football players slam their shoulders into in practice. Move forward -- SLAM. Fall to the ground on my ass. Hop up. SLAM. Distraction by scrabulous mania, holiday gifts, travel booking, navel-gazing about my relationship, checking BBOD to see if they're finally broadcasting the vital two episodes of Torchwood we missed, intense conversations with those among my compatriots who are near a computer and equally divertible during the day.

That's me, now. Floating and angstful. Now, back to waiting for UPS to arrive.

Beth's Chestnut Story

(This is beth's voice).

Well ....

I was in university and was grocery shopping with Dan. WE happened upon some chestnuts and I squealed in delight, having eaten them often from the street vendor in TO. So I bought some.

We went back to Dan & James' place. I remember them all doing normal things whilst I waited on my chestnuts in the oven (I didn't know how to cook them): Dan was on the phone, James was fiddling, Bill was reading... So, I figure I should check on the chestnuts, but didn't know how I'd tell when they were done.

I removed one from the oven and popped it into my mouth and bit it open. It exploded. There was a loud bang.

I remember vividly Dan, saying to whomever he was speaking to, "Oh my God! A chestnut blew up in the stove!" and dropping the phone and running to the oven and opening the door. He didn't notice me standing there, leaning forward, chestnut dripping from my mouth, until I began loudly grunting, "Oh oh heeew! Oh oh heew! Hewp me!"

My tongue was shattered to bits, all flesh and skin hanging. They had no ice, so James tried to give me a frozen chicken leg to suck on until we could get some. I still retained a spec of dignity and flatly refused, though I kept my tongue stuck in a glass of water whilst Dan drove me across the street to the donut shop, where they gave me a cup of ice, then to the emergency room.

This was back in the days when there was a woman/nurse sitting at the typewriter at a window in the ER. Becauth I couldn't thpeak becauth of the ithe on my tongue, Dan began to explain that a chestnut exploded in my mouth. He barely got the words out of his mouth when he completely lost it, just collapsed with the kind of laughter that comes usually when one hasn't slept in days and is completely on the verge of hysteria. He was weeping with laughter, and as he managed to finish the story of what happened to me?

The lady collapsed, completely and embarrassedly and with complete abandon, hysterically laughing over her typewriter. At one point, I remember she
managed to catch her breath, and she looked up at me and spit out, "I'm ss--ss--ss-orry!" then collapsed again, unable to speak, shaking across the top of her typewriter.

Eventually, someone took me to the examining room. Whilst I waited, my tongue stuck in a cup of ice, I heard shrieks of laughter erupting outside the door. Finally, a small, bright Chinese doctor came in, fighting to keep his composure while the corners of his mouth twitched. As he attempted to examine my tongue, he lost it. I remember him saying, "I just don't know what to do....I mean, I could *try* to bandage it..." then he collapsed.

The next day, my tongue hurt so badly I could barely talk. I went to meet Michael D before our class. As I told him what happened and he began to visualize the story, he completely collapsed. Across the table, gasping for air, pounding his fists, unable to speak. In other words, I was beginning to learn, the usual.

At one point, he managed to catch his breath, take in a deep gasp, and spit out, "I'll bet your deadly with a baked potato" before collapsing again, across the table, and practically onto the floor.

To this day, he swears he tells the story to everyone.

Smacked into posting

"In truth, it is a lonely life." Hm. Miranda said that on SATC when she was pretending to be a stewardess. But I guess it's the life of my blog too. Sma

Updates? Dissertation angst. I wrote 2678 words yesterday, finishing up the section on the methodology of the analysis and part of my intro. Exciting, eh? Some of it I like -- just whispers of it. The rest of it, blergh. Maybe I'll ask B if I can post her chestnut story, because reading it is the most amusing thing that's happened to me in days.

Another thing that makes life joyful? A man you love bringing you coffee in bed. Made perfectly right.

More later.

What would jesus do?

Blog-o-mind

I've been reading about Emergence (for a paper, of course), and Stephen Johnson has a thought-provoking examination of whether the internet could actually become self-organizing, a kind of conscious mind. His conclusion is no (the higher order patterns that do emerge come from the users, not the net itself) but his exploration is pretty compelling.

In that vein, I was reading Kat's blog and thinking I'd link to it, and wondering if the blogs could just eventually start linking themselves. Here. I'll nudge the pattern forward. Link to Kat's blog. She's a brilliant photographer. I loved the image she captured I'm posting -- her blog has some really eyebrow-cocking images of the city.

Grace

I spent labour day weekend climbing Mt. Katahdin in Maine with F, his daughter and her boyfriend.


It was a really good mountain, and the four of us made an easy little team, despite the cold virus we lobbed around the car like a wobbly balloon. On the hike, I was unbelievably ungraceful -- twisted my ankle, fell on my ass once, hobbled over on my twisted ankle as I passed someone who had stood aside to let us go ahead and grabbed at his.. paunch... for balance. But the mishaps were minor and there was real flow to the time -- about 8 hours up and down, 10.5 miles covered, about 4200 feet of ascent/descent.

Meeting J completed the collection of F's constellation of family that started when I met her brother my birthday weekend in February in Manhattan, but which really amplified this summer. I also met her mother (F's first significant ex), which made the grand total four exes, four offspring and two parents.

Seeing your Significant Other in so many contexts really fills out dimensions that can only be hinted at through stories. Ken Gergen talks about the concept of the "inner others" that we're always in dialogue with in any present conversation -- the actual people of our pasts, the discourses we're engaged with. Meeting the people who represent some of F's "inner others" is like being handed a pack of coloured filters for stage lighting -- the shadings are so much brighter, multi-variate, explanatory. I imagine it's the same thing for me when F sees me with my family, with A.

Meeting J really struck a chord with the "inner other" of my dad. Always present, watching J's relationship with F is like stowing away in some alternate universe. Rose and the doctor in the London where her father hadn't died. J is the same age as I was when my dad died -- who was 3 years younger than F is now. It's comforting, somehow, watching F and J engage with each other in the way that my best imagination would have had written for me and Tony, if he hadn't been ill, if my 20s had been less carved over by identity angst and my inability to just be confident in who I was -- with myself, with him.

J has a rare kind of grace. She's the kind of person that I learn things about myself from just by watching how she is in the world. And watching F with her is a little twist of bitterly dark chocolate, a rich rush of intense savour that slows down the tongue. Possibilities unmet, constantly unfurled new strands of life.