The many faces of Remembrance Day. Here, where there was no war, just commerce and volunteering for service overseas, it is a very sombre week, everyone wears poppies and it is full of ceremonies remembering all the soldiers who fought in WW1 and WW2 (and others of course). (it is also a big drunk for many). It was a defining issue for the young country of Canada.
Over in many of the countries of the mother continent, whose ass got saved, it's either a normal day or if you're on FB, it's Spinal Tap day.
In Ireland, at the trial of some IRA men who murdered british soldiers out collecting a pizza, it was mentioned multiple times that the families were wearing poppies. (Of course they were, it was November and they were at the trial of their murdered BA soldier sons).
This year, the Occupy Nova Scotia crew were camped at the cenotaph. After some negotiations, they packed up and left for a few days to allow the Remembrance Day ceremonies to take place, despite a lot of the veterans saying that they fought so people could protest and they didn't need to move.....
Now we will see whether the Occupy protesters will get back into the site....that will be the true measure of what the poppy stands for.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Why I'm not a badass
So occasionally, Himself and myself have conversations about whether I should be a badass or not.
It usually goes along the lines of:
ME: I did some enormous favour for someone today at work and they didn't even say thank you.
HIMSELF: Well, why did you do that?
ME: Hangs head... I dunno. I guess I thought it would be nice.
HIMSELF: Well why are you home moaning about it.
ME: Hangs head... I dunno. I guess I thought they would be nice.
This evening, we were having a major life-changing type conversation along the lines of 'if we're just going to be nice, then maybe we should not work for people and work for ourselves', which is kinda where we're heading right now due to being sick of working for deh man. I was getting a lecture about not taking any more shit from people. Himself was unloading the dishwasher when he was lecturing me, which meant it was serious, as usually he doesn't multi-task.
Then I noticed the dog was pawing at the spice cupboard and opened the door and found a mouse nest.
Then I realised that some of the spice bags were gnawed and empty:
- the pine nuts
- the almonds
- the filiberts
- the walnuts
- the brazil nuts
- etc.
- and the rosemary.
All gone.
Himself set a trap with some trail mix and dental floss.
I was very upset.
After dinner, we were sitting watching tv when suddenly
- SNA-AAP, CRASH.
I ran in.
It was a pregnant female.
I got it out of the trap and laid it gently on top of some straw in the strawberry patch.
I dunno. Maybe she'll live.
We stood on the deck for a moment, savouring the lack of rain.
I can't win at work, I said. I can't even kill a friggin' mouse.
We have to kill the mice, Himself said. We'll be inundated.
On an intellectual level, I know all this.
Tonight I apologised to my husband for being the biggest woos in the world. And he said it was okay.
So I guess it's okay.
I'll just go and check now, see if she made it.
It usually goes along the lines of:
ME: I did some enormous favour for someone today at work and they didn't even say thank you.
HIMSELF: Well, why did you do that?
ME: Hangs head... I dunno. I guess I thought it would be nice.
HIMSELF: Well why are you home moaning about it.
ME: Hangs head... I dunno. I guess I thought they would be nice.
This evening, we were having a major life-changing type conversation along the lines of 'if we're just going to be nice, then maybe we should not work for people and work for ourselves', which is kinda where we're heading right now due to being sick of working for deh man. I was getting a lecture about not taking any more shit from people. Himself was unloading the dishwasher when he was lecturing me, which meant it was serious, as usually he doesn't multi-task.
Then I noticed the dog was pawing at the spice cupboard and opened the door and found a mouse nest.
Then I realised that some of the spice bags were gnawed and empty:
- the pine nuts
- the almonds
- the filiberts
- the walnuts
- the brazil nuts
- etc.
- and the rosemary.
All gone.
Himself set a trap with some trail mix and dental floss.
I was very upset.
After dinner, we were sitting watching tv when suddenly
- SNA-AAP, CRASH.
I ran in.
It was a pregnant female.
I got it out of the trap and laid it gently on top of some straw in the strawberry patch.
I dunno. Maybe she'll live.
We stood on the deck for a moment, savouring the lack of rain.
I can't win at work, I said. I can't even kill a friggin' mouse.
We have to kill the mice, Himself said. We'll be inundated.
On an intellectual level, I know all this.
Tonight I apologised to my husband for being the biggest woos in the world. And he said it was okay.
So I guess it's okay.
I'll just go and check now, see if she made it.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
It's Paddy, not Patty
I hate St. Patrick's Day. I always have.
Please don't think because you have turned up to work in a green sweater that I will be happy for me.
I am happy for you.
I am homesick also.
I am also embarrassed that the most Irish of days is about drinking.
I am also annoyed that it's about him.
That guy who ruined a perfectly good matriarchy.
Still, I only ranted at one person today.
I guess after six of them (St Patrick's Day in Nova Scotia), I am mellowing slightly.
If you really care about me on Paddy's Day, just give me the friggin' day off.
'Night.
Please don't think because you have turned up to work in a green sweater that I will be happy for me.
I am happy for you.
I am homesick also.
I am also embarrassed that the most Irish of days is about drinking.
I am also annoyed that it's about him.
That guy who ruined a perfectly good matriarchy.
Still, I only ranted at one person today.
I guess after six of them (St Patrick's Day in Nova Scotia), I am mellowing slightly.
If you really care about me on Paddy's Day, just give me the friggin' day off.
'Night.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
To Libya with love
We see the carnage on Twitter. We want it to stop. As Western Europeans/ North Americans, we reach for the tools to do that. Call on Obama. Email the EU Commission. March on the embassy. Campaign to motivate NATO.
I am reading Amin Maalouf's "The Crusades through Arab Eyes". It is as gut-wrenching as the photos I am clicking through on Twitter. Disembowellment. Siege. Starvation.
The theme that Maalouf, ever the watchful eye for Arab dissension, returns to again and again, is the inability of the tribes to band together to fight off the Franj.
A thousand years later, and the Franj are still raping half a continent of all its resources, secure in the knowledge that the strong man in Arab politics rules by divide and conquer. And in between those two positions is where the money is made.
Coming from Ireland, I know what that does to a country's soul.
The crusades may have been about the 'holy place' for a simple man, a second son, tramping through the desert in the hot sun, but further up the food chain there was money to be made. As always.
So here's the thing.
Maybe we should do nothing except try to stop the modern day Crusaders - Blair and his cronies - from heading in to mop up the spoils. Maybe that's our job. Maybe our job is to encircle this nascent democracy and protect it from our own with all our might.
Maybe this is a fight that is a long time in coming. Maybe it has to be, like that time when you spent all night trying to prevent two friends from brawling in a bar and then realised, they really really really wanted to kick the shit out of each other. Because that is the only way they are ever going to sort out whatever it is that keeps them apart.
Bone crunching on bone. If it were us, it would be a Coen Brothers movie.
But it's not us.
It's real.
I don't know. I just know that I was on the winning side in 1096 and a thousand years later, as a woman, I am still not allowed be a minister in a catholic church. Or get divorced. I am still the ludicrous object of a million ridiculous poems and songs of a type of courtly love that could only be invented by ten thousand monks on the march across the middle east in a drought.
If Justin Bieber was alive in 1096, he would have been a Crusader.
We are at a strange point in our history when we are calling on a black man in a white house to sort out a fight that has been a thousand years in the making. If I was Obama, I would be making the point that both Libyans (and Egyptians, and Tunisians) and Europeans spent most of the last millennium making money off the trade in slaves of people just like him.
Why on earth should he step in?
Me, I would wonder where the Arab brothers are right now.
I am reading Amin Maalouf's "The Crusades through Arab Eyes". It is as gut-wrenching as the photos I am clicking through on Twitter. Disembowellment. Siege. Starvation.
The theme that Maalouf, ever the watchful eye for Arab dissension, returns to again and again, is the inability of the tribes to band together to fight off the Franj.
A thousand years later, and the Franj are still raping half a continent of all its resources, secure in the knowledge that the strong man in Arab politics rules by divide and conquer. And in between those two positions is where the money is made.
Coming from Ireland, I know what that does to a country's soul.
The crusades may have been about the 'holy place' for a simple man, a second son, tramping through the desert in the hot sun, but further up the food chain there was money to be made. As always.
So here's the thing.
Maybe we should do nothing except try to stop the modern day Crusaders - Blair and his cronies - from heading in to mop up the spoils. Maybe that's our job. Maybe our job is to encircle this nascent democracy and protect it from our own with all our might.
Maybe this is a fight that is a long time in coming. Maybe it has to be, like that time when you spent all night trying to prevent two friends from brawling in a bar and then realised, they really really really wanted to kick the shit out of each other. Because that is the only way they are ever going to sort out whatever it is that keeps them apart.
Bone crunching on bone. If it were us, it would be a Coen Brothers movie.
But it's not us.
It's real.
I don't know. I just know that I was on the winning side in 1096 and a thousand years later, as a woman, I am still not allowed be a minister in a catholic church. Or get divorced. I am still the ludicrous object of a million ridiculous poems and songs of a type of courtly love that could only be invented by ten thousand monks on the march across the middle east in a drought.
If Justin Bieber was alive in 1096, he would have been a Crusader.
We are at a strange point in our history when we are calling on a black man in a white house to sort out a fight that has been a thousand years in the making. If I was Obama, I would be making the point that both Libyans (and Egyptians, and Tunisians) and Europeans spent most of the last millennium making money off the trade in slaves of people just like him.
Why on earth should he step in?
Me, I would wonder where the Arab brothers are right now.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
If February were a blog post...
Almost half-way through February. It's starting to sag though, the positive attitude.
February is very difficult in Canada. January, you have had Christmas vacation and a bit of a rest and you are just getting started with the real snow and the cold. There's a sense of settling in for a spell of it, the winter projects kick in, the NHL gets interesting, and when it's fit to go out, there's sledding, and skating, and ski-joring or ski-ing or whatever it is you do to stay one step away from catatonic.
Also, there's still February - April to get through, so you don't want to over-think anything.
The end of January is a bit of a milestone though! Cheers you right up for a minute.
And February is a short month. The positive attitude gets a surge. In the second week of February, the days stretch perceptibly at each end, so I am now driving to and from work in the dawn/ dusk, as opposed to the pitch black of January. I can see the ice and snow on the road. I feel less scared. The cold makes for some pretty spectacular dawns.
Easy, peasy...
So here's the thing.
Round about the tenth of the month, you remember that February is not a short month.
In fact it is not a month at all.
February is in fact the moment in time when the long-suffering son-in-law of the meanest, coldest-assed, tightest-fisted, mascara-dripping bitch who ever produced a spoilt blonde turns away from the nagging to stoke the fire, but instead picks up the poker and hefts it.
If February was a scene in a movie it would be the Tommy Lee Jones soliliquy at the end of no Country for Lost Men.
If February was a book, it would be written by Franz Kafka.
If February was a song, Joy Division would have recorded it.
February is when the light is so harsh that every line on your face, every grey hair on your head is screaming 'LOOK AT ME EVRYONE, LOOKAT MEEEE'.
February is when the Caribbean music on your iTunes makes you cry instead of dance.
February is when your body has had enough of minus 28 and just wants to sleep all day and eat all night. But you have to haul it to and from an office with forced air heating that makes your skin crawl.
I was on the phone with a federal colleague the other day, and I couldn't find my words in a week of not being able to find my words (not good in a week with an interview) and I said 'I'm sorry, i can't find my words, I have February Brain' and she said "THAT'S EXACTLY WhAT IT IS!!!!!!!!!!! I haVe it Too"
And that's the real problem. We all have it at the same time, so life is a little grumpy right now.
Thankfully the Canada Games are on now, so the kids are off school for two weeks. The disgustingly positive people have all gotten extra days off to volunteer. The disgustingly selfish people are taking advantage of cheap trips to the Caribbean.
And the rest of us....
Hopefully there will be enough people gone out of the office that we can all hide in our offices, watch people having revolutions in countries where you can actually stand on the street for more than five minutes at a time.... and ignore each other in peace for the rest of the month.
Nearly only five weeks to the Equinox.
Eight weeks to the fishing season!!
Stay warm everyone.
 |
| Frozen branch near Terminal Beach, 2011 |
Also, there's still February - April to get through, so you don't want to over-think anything.
The end of January is a bit of a milestone though! Cheers you right up for a minute.
And February is a short month. The positive attitude gets a surge. In the second week of February, the days stretch perceptibly at each end, so I am now driving to and from work in the dawn/ dusk, as opposed to the pitch black of January. I can see the ice and snow on the road. I feel less scared. The cold makes for some pretty spectacular dawns.
Easy, peasy...
So here's the thing.
Round about the tenth of the month, you remember that February is not a short month.
In fact it is not a month at all.
February is in fact the moment in time when the long-suffering son-in-law of the meanest, coldest-assed, tightest-fisted, mascara-dripping bitch who ever produced a spoilt blonde turns away from the nagging to stoke the fire, but instead picks up the poker and hefts it.
If February was a scene in a movie it would be the Tommy Lee Jones soliliquy at the end of no Country for Lost Men.
If February was a book, it would be written by Franz Kafka.
If February was a song, Joy Division would have recorded it.
February is when the light is so harsh that every line on your face, every grey hair on your head is screaming 'LOOK AT ME EVRYONE, LOOKAT MEEEE'.
February is when the Caribbean music on your iTunes makes you cry instead of dance.
February is when your body has had enough of minus 28 and just wants to sleep all day and eat all night. But you have to haul it to and from an office with forced air heating that makes your skin crawl.
I was on the phone with a federal colleague the other day, and I couldn't find my words in a week of not being able to find my words (not good in a week with an interview) and I said 'I'm sorry, i can't find my words, I have February Brain' and she said "THAT'S EXACTLY WhAT IT IS!!!!!!!!!!! I haVe it Too"
And that's the real problem. We all have it at the same time, so life is a little grumpy right now.
Thankfully the Canada Games are on now, so the kids are off school for two weeks. The disgustingly positive people have all gotten extra days off to volunteer. The disgustingly selfish people are taking advantage of cheap trips to the Caribbean.
And the rest of us....
Hopefully there will be enough people gone out of the office that we can all hide in our offices, watch people having revolutions in countries where you can actually stand on the street for more than five minutes at a time.... and ignore each other in peace for the rest of the month.
Nearly only five weeks to the Equinox.
Eight weeks to the fishing season!!
Stay warm everyone.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Rerun of Dear Dublin
I found this on a blog I contributed to in July, 2009. Almost eighteen months ago!!
It is strange to me that it is still relevant.
Maybe the hiatus, the fear, can be lifted soon and we can all move on.
Dear Dublin,
My grey, brooding, dirty, old forever town. The country bus spewed me out one Sunday night and never found me again. Trinity’s grey walls encircled me. Enough books in Berkeley’s library, even for me.
Unlike him and old Ed Burke, we founded our enlightenment in the soft afternoon glow of a stained glass pub window. Talkin’ to an auld fella. About poetry. Or painting. Or maybe politics.
There was a lot of politics in Ireland back then.
Artists critiquing their rival’s work on the walls in Grogans. Writers bitching in the Fleet. Folk songs and revolution in the Cobblestone. Everyone piled in on top of each other in O’Donohues after a good funeral, roaring and shouting over creamy heads.
Come on now ladies and gentlemen! Drink up! Have ye no homes to go to!
One night, a crowd of new fellas appeared at the doorway of the snug where I was warming up in Doheny and Nesbitt’s, waving a wad around.
Enough talking lads, there’s money to be made…. let’s get to work.
We all peeled off, got ourselves one of them brand new, shiny, knowledge economy jobs.
The boys stopped shooting each other up north.
We ran riot on the Nasdaq.
Bono got bored with us and went global. Never mind, every band in the world came to play and we were all on the guest list.
Standing around in our Jimmy Choos all sexy and citified, texting each other the next instalment of our very own show – Celtic Tigers.
Starring a horde of red-freckled-beer-bellied, Armani-drenched Paddies, hoovering up Mediterranean resorts and coke in equal quantities; lining up in the drizzle to drink Russian vodka in a Manhattan martini bar served by a French sommelier with a Polish accent.
Or was it Ukrainian vodka in an Italian martini bar from a Latvian economist?
One time for sure, it was Mongolian vodka in a tapas bar served by Yale students over trying to make a buck.
That was a good episode.
After a while, I came to be a little tired of all the new talk. Of yak leather sofas and Southern Cape cellars and ‘will we helicopter to the races’ and ‘how many apartments in Portugal now, Mick?’
So I went looking for an auld fella.
I tried the Palace. I tried the Fleet. I even held my nose and stuck my head into stinky old Grogans.
Not an auld fella to be had anywhere.
Down on the quays trying to hail a cab, I found one asleep under a construction crane and shook him awake. It was cold and he didn’t want to talk about poetry. But for old time’s sake he asked me to buy him a drink.
Get an effin’ job, I ses to him, walking away with my nose buried in my Nokia.
Which is how I came to bump into the ghost of Paddy Kavanagh.
King of the Auld Fellas.
Queenie, he sighed, don’t you remember what I taught you?
To my shame I could not find the words, so the canal-bank trees whispered them to me.
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when the sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
My eyes started brimming. Paddy took pity on me. Which everyone would tell you was unusual for him, miserable aul’ fella that he was. Queenie, he said,
Your soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven
Next day I packed my bags and left you forever, Dublin. I flew out over the cranes and the trucks and the Disney Guinness and the apartment blocks, my heart bleeding down on them in a cold empty drizzle.
If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.
We forgot ourselves, didn’t we …
Time passes.
I hear the lads with the wads are missing. And the wads have disappeared. And everyone’s blaming somebody else.
I went home to see were you alright, my dirty old forever town. Together we breathed in the hops from the brewery and walked in the mizzle along the spine of the city: the Garden of Remembrance to the GPO, across the bridge past Trinity’s grey gate. Up Dame St. to Christchurch and beyond into the Liberties, where no one ever had a wad that was big enough to go missing.
I met an auld fella I knew.
Jaysus, Queenie, is it really you?
I heard you got eaten by a bear.
Not me, Brother Rabbit.
Not me.
It is strange to me that it is still relevant.
Maybe the hiatus, the fear, can be lifted soon and we can all move on.
Dear Dublin,
My grey, brooding, dirty, old forever town. The country bus spewed me out one Sunday night and never found me again. Trinity’s grey walls encircled me. Enough books in Berkeley’s library, even for me.
Unlike him and old Ed Burke, we founded our enlightenment in the soft afternoon glow of a stained glass pub window. Talkin’ to an auld fella. About poetry. Or painting. Or maybe politics.
There was a lot of politics in Ireland back then.
Artists critiquing their rival’s work on the walls in Grogans. Writers bitching in the Fleet. Folk songs and revolution in the Cobblestone. Everyone piled in on top of each other in O’Donohues after a good funeral, roaring and shouting over creamy heads.
Come on now ladies and gentlemen! Drink up! Have ye no homes to go to!
One night, a crowd of new fellas appeared at the doorway of the snug where I was warming up in Doheny and Nesbitt’s, waving a wad around.
Enough talking lads, there’s money to be made…. let’s get to work.
We all peeled off, got ourselves one of them brand new, shiny, knowledge economy jobs.
The boys stopped shooting each other up north.
We ran riot on the Nasdaq.
Bono got bored with us and went global. Never mind, every band in the world came to play and we were all on the guest list.
Standing around in our Jimmy Choos all sexy and citified, texting each other the next instalment of our very own show – Celtic Tigers.
Starring a horde of red-freckled-beer-bellied, Armani-drenched Paddies, hoovering up Mediterranean resorts and coke in equal quantities; lining up in the drizzle to drink Russian vodka in a Manhattan martini bar served by a French sommelier with a Polish accent.
Or was it Ukrainian vodka in an Italian martini bar from a Latvian economist?
One time for sure, it was Mongolian vodka in a tapas bar served by Yale students over trying to make a buck.
That was a good episode.
After a while, I came to be a little tired of all the new talk. Of yak leather sofas and Southern Cape cellars and ‘will we helicopter to the races’ and ‘how many apartments in Portugal now, Mick?’
So I went looking for an auld fella.
I tried the Palace. I tried the Fleet. I even held my nose and stuck my head into stinky old Grogans.
Not an auld fella to be had anywhere.
Down on the quays trying to hail a cab, I found one asleep under a construction crane and shook him awake. It was cold and he didn’t want to talk about poetry. But for old time’s sake he asked me to buy him a drink.
Get an effin’ job, I ses to him, walking away with my nose buried in my Nokia.
Which is how I came to bump into the ghost of Paddy Kavanagh.
King of the Auld Fellas.
Queenie, he sighed, don’t you remember what I taught you?
To my shame I could not find the words, so the canal-bank trees whispered them to me.
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when the sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
My eyes started brimming. Paddy took pity on me. Which everyone would tell you was unusual for him, miserable aul’ fella that he was. Queenie, he said,
Your soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven
Next day I packed my bags and left you forever, Dublin. I flew out over the cranes and the trucks and the Disney Guinness and the apartment blocks, my heart bleeding down on them in a cold empty drizzle.
If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.
We forgot ourselves, didn’t we …
Time passes.
I hear the lads with the wads are missing. And the wads have disappeared. And everyone’s blaming somebody else.
I went home to see were you alright, my dirty old forever town. Together we breathed in the hops from the brewery and walked in the mizzle along the spine of the city: the Garden of Remembrance to the GPO, across the bridge past Trinity’s grey gate. Up Dame St. to Christchurch and beyond into the Liberties, where no one ever had a wad that was big enough to go missing.
I met an auld fella I knew.
Jaysus, Queenie, is it really you?
I heard you got eaten by a bear.
Not me, Brother Rabbit.
Not me.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Mothered by a warm breeze
Tired and flat and hiccupy after an enervating week and too much emotion, I managed to force myself to put the cleaning rag down and sit out on the deck in the darkness for ten minutes.
I was rewarded by a warm breeze cooling me off, playing a soft melody on the pewter wind chimes. And crickets.
Thank you August.
I will not have a meltdown and spoil what's left of you.
Because you won't let me, will you.
I was rewarded by a warm breeze cooling me off, playing a soft melody on the pewter wind chimes. And crickets.
Thank you August.
I will not have a meltdown and spoil what's left of you.
Because you won't let me, will you.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
On adding to the moisture of the greenhouse
Would you believe I had crafted a 1700 word essay on this subject before the keyboard gods decided my fingers were too long yet again and I hit some random key and arbitrarily deleted the entire thing, including photos?
No, I figured you wouldn't.
But it's nearly true. The lie is I didn't craft, I just spilled, which is what I always do on the blog.
But it was 1700 words and it was pretty good I thought. I had even started reading it back and removing the rambling repitition.
But I guess it was probably maudlin, so the universe kicked it out for probably good reasons.
I fucking hate the universe right now.
No, I figured you wouldn't.
But it's nearly true. The lie is I didn't craft, I just spilled, which is what I always do on the blog.
But it was 1700 words and it was pretty good I thought. I had even started reading it back and removing the rambling repitition.
But I guess it was probably maudlin, so the universe kicked it out for probably good reasons.
I fucking hate the universe right now.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Yes, it's all really funny till someone gets hurt
 |
| Smart ass anti-baby comedy sketches inc. |
What really sucked about my day (and it was a sucky day) was that my friends got turned down for adoption after YEARS of filling out stupid forms and undergoing stupid tests.
None of us could believe it.
Himself couldn't believe it. And he doesn't even know them.
When you think of all the babies in the world that are hurtin' and starvin' and lonely and scared and your friends want to raise one, and there's some asshole somewhere says they can't.... that sucks, man.
YUP.
Me, I had spent an hour or so last night looking at footage of George Carlin and Bill Hicks on YouTube, including their 'why would you bring a child into the world' sketches (see the link under the picture), which always make me laugh because it's exactly how I feel about the whole children business. But last night, while I was watching the video I happened to think of those same friends and how determined they were to have a child despite all the hurdles. And I felt a little surge of happiness because finally it seemed they were on the back straight to their dream.
And then they get SHAFTED by some bureaucrat today.
This is a trip down the rabbit hole on so many levels.
On the first level, there is the macro argument. There are millions of children in the world who need love and parenting. There are people who want to parent. It should be possible to match them up.
Except it seems to be nigh on impossible, such are the levels of perfection that prospective adopters must reach. Not just in Ireland. I have friends here in Canada jumping through similar hoops. But at least you can be a bit eccentric and still have a chance.
In Ireland, you have to be perfect. Heterosexual. Married. Conformist. Boring.
Normal.
But that is necessary, they say, in order for children to be safe. We must make sure that the people in charge of them are not psychopathic or perverted or dangerous to the child in any way.
R.E.S.I.D.E.N.T.I.A.L. S.C.H.O.O.L.S.
....yes, old schtick... it's because of that that the rules are so strict now.
Hmm. Tell that to the Nigerian children who are accused of witchcraft and abandoned by their communities, usually on the authority of the caring US and Canadian Pentacostal missionaries working in those villages. I don't see the combined adoption personnel of the world working themselves up into a frenzy of tongues about that issue.
Yes I know hard cases make bad law. I don't friggin care.
But let's pull the lens in a bit.
Ireland's Health Service Executive. Responsible for adoption procedures and for looking after children in care.
Here's a snippet I found on the Internet:
So how do we fix this?
Do we prejudge everyone?
Or do we take a benchmark of real parents and apply those standards to prospective ones?
I don't know. Any argument on this will be battered with the child protection argument.
Maybe we should start with the word compassion. In all its imperfections.
Compassion for bad parents.
Compassion for non-parents.
Compassion for would-be parents.
Compassion for parents that are a little different to us in whatever way.
Compassion for non-parents that are wildly different in every way.
Compassion for fantastic parents having a bad day.
Compassion for children who need parents.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
The Lawrencetown worm massacre
It rained all day today which was good because the garden needed it, but bad because I didn't have my brain in gear and so left my umbrella in the car. So did everyone else on the bus apparently, because when the rain burst onto the bus windows as we trundled over the bridge, everyone looked up from their book or paper and mouthed 'shit' simultaneously.
Then ran for cover when we had to get off a minute later.
But it's stopped now and my flip flops are drying out and so is the lawn.
From the window right now I can see eleven American Robins on the lawn. I think that's a record for our house. The poor worms that live beneath the grass are being massacred as I watch.
Hoppity hop hop hop - stop.
Head cocked.
Listen.
Pounce.
Another poor little worm gets hauled out of the clay by its neck, then pecked to death before the robin flies off to a tree to eat it.
I am waiting for one of the robins to encounter the two snakes that live on the front lawn. I wonder who would win that contest.
Then ran for cover when we had to get off a minute later.
But it's stopped now and my flip flops are drying out and so is the lawn.
 |
| Turdus Migratorius (American Robin) |
Hoppity hop hop hop - stop.
Head cocked.
Listen.
Pounce.
Another poor little worm gets hauled out of the clay by its neck, then pecked to death before the robin flies off to a tree to eat it.
I am waiting for one of the robins to encounter the two snakes that live on the front lawn. I wonder who would win that contest.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
On Reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello
I have been reading Coetzee again.
Elizabeth Costello this time.
As usual, I have only the faintest idea what the novel is about.
It takes me a while with Coetzee usually.
In this case, he introduces the story, such as it is, with an attempt to distance the reader from the story a la the deconstructionist trends of the eighties and nineties. After doing that, he then presents a massive novel of ideas. Then he rips a massive shredding rent between the world of literary ideas (as represented by the novel) and the other world of philosophical ideas (as represented by rights) by depicting an elderly Australian novelist -- who achieved fame with her novel of the real 'Marion Bloom' -- midway through her swan song tour of the world. Dipping in and out of the lecture circuit, she insists on talking about vegetarianism and animal rights instead of literature.
In this case, he introduces the story, such as it is, with an attempt to distance the reader from the story a la the deconstructionist trends of the eighties and nineties. After doing that, he then presents a massive novel of ideas. Then he rips a massive shredding rent between the world of literary ideas (as represented by the novel) and the other world of philosophical ideas (as represented by rights) by depicting an elderly Australian novelist -- who achieved fame with her novel of the real 'Marion Bloom' -- midway through her swan song tour of the world. Dipping in and out of the lecture circuit, she insists on talking about vegetarianism and animal rights instead of literature.
She is accompanied by her increasingly bemused physicist son. (Coetzee is a mathematician by trade). Who presumably represents the poor reader.
Because it's Coetzee, it's all very readable and spellbinding, but it is also very annoying to be sitting on the Portland Hills 159 commuter bus at seven in the morning, not very awake, having your mind blown apart by a six page atom bomb of a treatise on how chicken farms are the new Holocaust, and wondering what in the jaysus name is this man trying to tell me right now.
I have decided that Coetzee is getting older (he was in his sixties when he wrote this) and thinking about whether or not there was any point in him having been a writer. I hope I am not wrong, because I will have wasted my time (and more importantly, his) otherwise.
Anyone with an opinion on this novel is invited to share it. Of course, I will have sent it back to the library at that point so it will probably be moot.
This is what the Telegraph (Andrew Marr) said about it:
"In the end, as his heroine confronts death, he has been able to raise the deepest questions through some fictional safeguards - without settling on answers, or defending all the arguments as his. But this is fine, because the attentive reader will have been badly jolted. It is why Coetzee is famous: Elizabeth Costello is no cheap shock. It is a serious one.
The New York Times says this:
Old age is for Coetzee what nausea was for Sartre: our defining condition, the necessary horror that grants us access to a moral existence....... Coetzee's unflinching exploration of this desolate and strangely beautiful terrain represents the cruelest and best use to which literature can be put.
So I guess I am on the right track.
But that is just the purpose of his depiction of the writer Elizabeth Costello. As usual, his protagonist is someone past the height of their powers. However, the ideas she puts forward in a series of lectures are mostly about animals and man's relationship to them. And the suffering that ensues. Usually his books are about the suffering we inflict on one another (humans) through totalitarianism and ideology.
Coetzee is felt by some to be the African Kafka (in a third subsection of the whole compendium of ideas that are not ideas, he has a section in the book which rips the idea of an African writer to shreds, which almost broke my heart... with a final plea to please read Okri who is the only African writer... and throughout the book he gets Costello to talk about Kafka at length).
Coetzee is felt by some to be the African Kafka (in a third subsection of the whole compendium of ideas that are not ideas, he has a section in the book which rips the idea of an African writer to shreds, which almost broke my heart... with a final plea to please read Okri who is the only African writer... and throughout the book he gets Costello to talk about Kafka at length).
Is he trying to write the definitive treatise on himself?
At one point, Coetzee tries to put the two completely disparate themes of the novel together in a lecture by having Costello speak at an Ivy League college and tell them that if she can imagine herself dead, then she can imagine what it's like to be a bat. Or a chimp. Or a chicken. Or a beef steer.
Understanding our own mortality will guide us towards a deeper compassion for life in all its guises kind of thing.
Understanding our own mortality will guide us towards a deeper compassion for life in all its guises kind of thing.
I don't know. I haven't finished and because it is so fantastic, I will probably slow right down to make the most of his artistry and pleasure in tormenting us with ideas.
I also have the distinct sense that he is taking the piss out of Margaret Atwood the whole way through the novel, there's something about Costello that really reminds me of the worst of her....
Whatever. JM Coetzee is probably the greatest writer to have lived while I did. If you haven't read this book, you should, but you should read his earlier stuff first, so you understand where he is coming from. I particularly recommend:
- The Life and Times of Michael K
- The Master of Petersburg
- Disgrace
in that order.
Monday, July 19, 2010
On collecting the manure dividend
I harvested the first of the peas tonight. Which is the first of the vegetables. If you discount the spinach, which I planted in a crappy wet part of the garden to see how an 'above the ground' crop would do. And then really ignored, because even though I could see from the deck it wasn't doing so well, I don't like spinach enough to put the effort in.
I ignored it and ignored it, and then half-heartedly checked on it, and realised the tall ones were in fact dandelions, and then trudged over to the shed for the hoe (which was broken) and then didn't buy a new one, and, well, you get the picture...
So I have a lot of spinach gone to seed, which Bunny likes to nibble on when he's bored of dandelions.
And some peas.
I went out with a bowl, and even though I only had to go through one gate and not the two that led to our garden at home, suddenly I was nine again and it was Sunday after 10 o'clock Mass on a breezy summer day and I was picking peas for the Queen Mum to go with the roast beef dinner.
My fingers touched every pod and there was that old satisfaction when I found one that was bursting with goodness, straining against the pod.
Twist and pull. Just like Paddy showed me.
It was all I could do not to sit on the back door step and shell them immediatey, stuffing most of them in my mouth.
But Himself is working nights down on the waterfront this week, so I will leave them for him to enjoy when he gets home... seeing as he designed and built the special stands they are twined around.
There is nothing that man can't do with some 2 x 4 and a piece of netting.
If he decides he wants to, of course.
After a lot of work, and some sunshine and just enough rain our garden is starting to make progress. The potatoes and corn are very vigorous, so I am hopeful. The pumpkin patch had about a 10 per cent success rate, which is not too bad considering we were making it up as we went along.
We only need enough pumpkins for Hallowe'en anyways... I can't eat the stuff.
We are on our second round of cucumbers as Bunny likes them too.
And the tomatos are succeeding against all the odds. Just when they needed to be tended I took a huff with the garden and ignored it for about two weeks straight. Then got a rush of guilt and watered the bejaysus out of the little seedlings three nights in a row. It appears to have worked, we have about fifty sturdy plants now.
I can't wait until the greenhouse smells of tomatos... it is the best smell in the world. Better than cut grass even.
This year I managed to get a bit of formal gardening done as well. I put in a new small bed, and cleaned up the SEVEN beds we have found around the property.
Holy of holies, it's exhausting though. And back-breaking. I have been to the massage therapist so often this year he's been reading up on gardener's elbow. Basically what happened (I think) was that a woman who used to live here designed and planted all the beds. Then she split up with her husband and they sold the house. Before they left they mulched the beds.
Seven years passed and nobody disturbed them. Then along comes I, all vim and vigour last year and took out all the mulch.
Twenty six years of pent up weedlings saw their opportunity and SPRANG FORTH AND MULTIPLIED.
I am getting there.
It will be manageable in about five years, I reckon.
I've decided to plant lots of Asians so there will be no ground cover underneath. Hydrangeas, rhododendrons, wigelias, that kind of thing.
Starve the little bastards out, you might say.
A garden truly is a lifetime's work.
I ignored it and ignored it, and then half-heartedly checked on it, and realised the tall ones were in fact dandelions, and then trudged over to the shed for the hoe (which was broken) and then didn't buy a new one, and, well, you get the picture...
So I have a lot of spinach gone to seed, which Bunny likes to nibble on when he's bored of dandelions.
And some peas.
I went out with a bowl, and even though I only had to go through one gate and not the two that led to our garden at home, suddenly I was nine again and it was Sunday after 10 o'clock Mass on a breezy summer day and I was picking peas for the Queen Mum to go with the roast beef dinner.
My fingers touched every pod and there was that old satisfaction when I found one that was bursting with goodness, straining against the pod.
Twist and pull. Just like Paddy showed me.
It was all I could do not to sit on the back door step and shell them immediatey, stuffing most of them in my mouth.
But Himself is working nights down on the waterfront this week, so I will leave them for him to enjoy when he gets home... seeing as he designed and built the special stands they are twined around.
There is nothing that man can't do with some 2 x 4 and a piece of netting.
If he decides he wants to, of course.
After a lot of work, and some sunshine and just enough rain our garden is starting to make progress. The potatoes and corn are very vigorous, so I am hopeful. The pumpkin patch had about a 10 per cent success rate, which is not too bad considering we were making it up as we went along.
We only need enough pumpkins for Hallowe'en anyways... I can't eat the stuff.
We are on our second round of cucumbers as Bunny likes them too.
And the tomatos are succeeding against all the odds. Just when they needed to be tended I took a huff with the garden and ignored it for about two weeks straight. Then got a rush of guilt and watered the bejaysus out of the little seedlings three nights in a row. It appears to have worked, we have about fifty sturdy plants now.
I can't wait until the greenhouse smells of tomatos... it is the best smell in the world. Better than cut grass even.
This year I managed to get a bit of formal gardening done as well. I put in a new small bed, and cleaned up the SEVEN beds we have found around the property.
Holy of holies, it's exhausting though. And back-breaking. I have been to the massage therapist so often this year he's been reading up on gardener's elbow. Basically what happened (I think) was that a woman who used to live here designed and planted all the beds. Then she split up with her husband and they sold the house. Before they left they mulched the beds.
Seven years passed and nobody disturbed them. Then along comes I, all vim and vigour last year and took out all the mulch.
Twenty six years of pent up weedlings saw their opportunity and SPRANG FORTH AND MULTIPLIED.
I am getting there.
It will be manageable in about five years, I reckon.
I've decided to plant lots of Asians so there will be no ground cover underneath. Hydrangeas, rhododendrons, wigelias, that kind of thing.
Starve the little bastards out, you might say.
A garden truly is a lifetime's work.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Himself is Home
Himself is home. And not working nights, which is not home, as far as I`m concerned.
Let the normal times begin for the first time since February.
For a while at least!!
Hurrah.
Let the normal times begin for the first time since February.
For a while at least!!
Hurrah.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Hoping for a white hot summer
It’s after eight pm and it’s still thirty degrees. Even though it’s only June.
Everyone is hoping this will be one of those summers. We haven’t had one for a while.
The first summer I was here was one of those summers. Endless. Hot. A constant glare of white light pouring down from a cerulean sky; so white that it washed some of the green out of the landscape, but not too much.
There was a day in August that we spent at Bear Cove and the sun was so white it felt like a wide-as-the-sky laser that burned every bit of physical pain and mental regret in my body right out of it.
It was so bright that day that the sea was pure silver and the spruce trees on the shore were pure black. The stones on the beach were cool under my feet, but they seemed to be made of glass, reflecting the sky back on itself.
It was so bright that from about four feet in front of me, I could only see down a sort of tunnel of light.
The sun did all this to me all day without burning my skin. But it burned every unnecessary thought in my head right out of it for about three months.
And when the sun went down and I started feeling a little chilly, Himself and the other guys there built a bonfire that could be seen from Grand Manaan across the Bay of Fundy.
That day I decided that I needed to live in this place where the heat and light could actually transport me out of my body. And sitting at the fire could centre me again.
Every year since then I have looked forward to that day in August as a kind of mental resurrection, a sloughing off of all the crappy little physical and psychic nagging aches and pains picked up in the course of a year.
Bear Cove is a kind of pilgrimage. Of the type I used to do to Mount Brandon.
I start thinking about it at Easter, when I should be walking Mount Brandon.
Last year we didn’t really get one of those days.
We went to Bear Cove, but we didn’t spend the night there, and Himself was so tired he fell asleep on a rock at eight o’clock. But although I was disappointed at the time, it turned out that we didn’t really need it because we were getting married and that was the day that carried us through the winter this time.
But this year, it’s coming.
It has to. If I don’t have a Bear Cove day this summer, I will not be able to get through next winter.
I would like to bring everyone I know to this place on that day so that they can be psychically lasered too.
You can arrive at that place on that day with a lot of anguish in your heart and leave feeling lighter.
I don’t know if it’s because I have spent a lot of time this year on my own, and I am starting to imagine things, but I am starting to get a little floored by all the anguish I feel coming off people at the moment.
A little flattened. But denser. Not lighter, the way it should be.
We had to go to a funeral today. It was the remembrance ceremony for one of our wedding guests. She slipped away far too early.
The vicar spoke about anguish and about how sometimes people are better off letting go of the burden of it if it is too hard to bear. Being the person I am I sat there getting furious about a provincial healthcare system and a culture that allows people to carry that kind of load by themselves in the first place, and wondering why the family had to pick up a new load of anguish now that will be equally ignored by our society.
Maybe I am just imagining things. But from where I’m sitting I see people who are carrying unbearable loads of sadness, stress or grief, people who are sick and expected to embrace wires and tubes and machines and all kinds of technologies that they would otherwise ignore just to get better, people who seem to have fallen off my map completely, people who are just suffering quietly, apart from the odd comment on FaceBook, people who can’t stop gnawing at their pain no matter what I say.
All kinds of people.
Good people.
I wish we could all go to Bear Cove on the hottest day of August, and lie in the long damp grass there and let the clover tickle our noses, and feel the heat unknot our bodies, and the sun blind us to what we’ve left behind on the mainland. And then when we are all completely transparent and light as a feather, Himself and I would cook a million lobsters and everyone would sit up and eat them with the juices running down their fingers watching the sun go down over the bay and listening to the whales blowing in the cove.
Just as it got dark, we would work together to gather enough wood to light a fire big enough to speak to each of us of those things in our hearts that we only take out and examine once or twice a year. But because we would be all there together in a circle it would never get too quiet.
And at some point someone who had found their centre again would wander down the beach and haul back the whitened bones of a fallen spruce, and we would lever it onto the flames and watch the sparks rise to the moon, carrying all those unspoken words up to whatever the hell it is up there listening to us.
The moon is up and very bright already, although it is still very light out. It’s a half moon tonight. It feels very near, just above my head.
Cancerian, I know. No sense of where I end and you begin. Near my birthday too. Yes, I know I talk a lot of shite when the moon is near.
But if anguish has made a pass at you right about now, you should come with me this time.
And if you can’t, promise me you’ll find your own Bear Cove this summer.
If we get a good summer this year, it will be because we all need one.
It’s nine thirty now and it’s starting to get dark. The bottle of wine has been opened. The peepers are peeping. The birds are calling goodnight to each other. Someone is tooling around the lake in a motorboat, but quietly. The dog is asleep under my chair. My inmyday list is echoing out into the night, that song that reminds me that I am just a speck in the cosmos.
Time to enumerate my blessings once again.
I don’t let myself stop until it’s completely dark. That way I know how lucky I am.
Everyone is hoping this will be one of those summers. We haven’t had one for a while.
The first summer I was here was one of those summers. Endless. Hot. A constant glare of white light pouring down from a cerulean sky; so white that it washed some of the green out of the landscape, but not too much.
There was a day in August that we spent at Bear Cove and the sun was so white it felt like a wide-as-the-sky laser that burned every bit of physical pain and mental regret in my body right out of it.
It was so bright that day that the sea was pure silver and the spruce trees on the shore were pure black. The stones on the beach were cool under my feet, but they seemed to be made of glass, reflecting the sky back on itself.
It was so bright that from about four feet in front of me, I could only see down a sort of tunnel of light.
The sun did all this to me all day without burning my skin. But it burned every unnecessary thought in my head right out of it for about three months.
And when the sun went down and I started feeling a little chilly, Himself and the other guys there built a bonfire that could be seen from Grand Manaan across the Bay of Fundy.
That day I decided that I needed to live in this place where the heat and light could actually transport me out of my body. And sitting at the fire could centre me again.
Every year since then I have looked forward to that day in August as a kind of mental resurrection, a sloughing off of all the crappy little physical and psychic nagging aches and pains picked up in the course of a year.
Bear Cove is a kind of pilgrimage. Of the type I used to do to Mount Brandon.
I start thinking about it at Easter, when I should be walking Mount Brandon.
Last year we didn’t really get one of those days.
We went to Bear Cove, but we didn’t spend the night there, and Himself was so tired he fell asleep on a rock at eight o’clock. But although I was disappointed at the time, it turned out that we didn’t really need it because we were getting married and that was the day that carried us through the winter this time.
But this year, it’s coming.
It has to. If I don’t have a Bear Cove day this summer, I will not be able to get through next winter.
I would like to bring everyone I know to this place on that day so that they can be psychically lasered too.
You can arrive at that place on that day with a lot of anguish in your heart and leave feeling lighter.
I don’t know if it’s because I have spent a lot of time this year on my own, and I am starting to imagine things, but I am starting to get a little floored by all the anguish I feel coming off people at the moment.
A little flattened. But denser. Not lighter, the way it should be.
We had to go to a funeral today. It was the remembrance ceremony for one of our wedding guests. She slipped away far too early.
The vicar spoke about anguish and about how sometimes people are better off letting go of the burden of it if it is too hard to bear. Being the person I am I sat there getting furious about a provincial healthcare system and a culture that allows people to carry that kind of load by themselves in the first place, and wondering why the family had to pick up a new load of anguish now that will be equally ignored by our society.
Maybe I am just imagining things. But from where I’m sitting I see people who are carrying unbearable loads of sadness, stress or grief, people who are sick and expected to embrace wires and tubes and machines and all kinds of technologies that they would otherwise ignore just to get better, people who seem to have fallen off my map completely, people who are just suffering quietly, apart from the odd comment on FaceBook, people who can’t stop gnawing at their pain no matter what I say.
All kinds of people.
Good people.
I wish we could all go to Bear Cove on the hottest day of August, and lie in the long damp grass there and let the clover tickle our noses, and feel the heat unknot our bodies, and the sun blind us to what we’ve left behind on the mainland. And then when we are all completely transparent and light as a feather, Himself and I would cook a million lobsters and everyone would sit up and eat them with the juices running down their fingers watching the sun go down over the bay and listening to the whales blowing in the cove.
Just as it got dark, we would work together to gather enough wood to light a fire big enough to speak to each of us of those things in our hearts that we only take out and examine once or twice a year. But because we would be all there together in a circle it would never get too quiet.
And at some point someone who had found their centre again would wander down the beach and haul back the whitened bones of a fallen spruce, and we would lever it onto the flames and watch the sparks rise to the moon, carrying all those unspoken words up to whatever the hell it is up there listening to us.
The moon is up and very bright already, although it is still very light out. It’s a half moon tonight. It feels very near, just above my head.
Cancerian, I know. No sense of where I end and you begin. Near my birthday too. Yes, I know I talk a lot of shite when the moon is near.
But if anguish has made a pass at you right about now, you should come with me this time.
And if you can’t, promise me you’ll find your own Bear Cove this summer.
If we get a good summer this year, it will be because we all need one.
It’s nine thirty now and it’s starting to get dark. The bottle of wine has been opened. The peepers are peeping. The birds are calling goodnight to each other. Someone is tooling around the lake in a motorboat, but quietly. The dog is asleep under my chair. My inmyday list is echoing out into the night, that song that reminds me that I am just a speck in the cosmos.
Time to enumerate my blessings once again.
I don’t let myself stop until it’s completely dark. That way I know how lucky I am.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Solstice post done much better by Jeanette Winterson
She does it so much better than me. link is under the title.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/13/once-upon-a-life-jeanette-winterson
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/13/once-upon-a-life-jeanette-winterson
Heading towards the solstice... then the darknesss
Friday, May 28, 2010
Old Man Table
I bought the coolest table today.
Well, the little card stuck to it, with the price on it, said it was a table, but it's more like a large potstand. About 3 foot high and 18 inches wide, the dark stained wooden top is balanced on the shoulders of a hunched up old African man, whose face peers out from underneath his load.
East African probably. The legs of the table/potstand are his arms and legs, and the base has his elegantly elongated feet and hands sitting on another circle of hardwood. There are a few cracks where the carving is coming away from the base, but I can live with that. I'm not a 'must be from one lop' purist.
It was sitting out on the street in front of the shop that is my consumer nirvana and which I walk past twice a day every day on the way from and to the bus stop.
Deliberately walk. There are alternative routes.
It wasn't there in the morning.
But I couldn't believe it was still there at 4.30pm on a payday in the middle of downtown.
He must have sold something earlier and put it out around three.
This store is the greatest kitsch shop in the world.
It is the John W. Doull (bookshop of which I write much) of kitsch and I am not going to tell you where it is because you either know what I am talking about and are my competition, or you don't know. In which case you aren't going to be my competition if I can help it.
The owner does a lot of estate sales and has an eye for African and Asian carving.
And seventies furniture.
And traditional Maritime fishing gear.
Which pretty much ticks all of the must have boxes for both me and Himself. And we like nothing better than a good hour long browse in there of a wet Saturday.
You can take your overpriced Agricola 'antique' strip and stick it. Yah!
Anyways, buddy, who's name I misremember deliberately, puts items on the street on sunny days. For to tempt you in. He's really good at it, and you have to swoop. Pronto.
But he torments you with a price list that's dated. So if you wait another three weeks the price will drop. If it's still there.
It's 'non-gambler with latent gambling DNA and a penchant for furniture' heroin. That's what it is.
On Tuesday, he had a fabulous seventies chrome and black leather armchair sitting outside at 9am.
I was on my way to one of those totally pointless civil service meetings that you only go to if you are too broke to buy coffee, or can't find any real work to do, so I couldn't stop.
Being in the need of some coffee.
But it preyed on my mind all morning.
I just fixed the car and I am broke schmoke.
He's good though. Real good. It was a great chair. A classic.
By lunchtime, I had figured out where I'd place it, how I'd pay for it, even how I'd get it home on the bus.
Stick it into the bike holder on the front.
I skipped buying a sandwich (in case it was really expensive) and hurried down, but it was already gone.
To my former hair stylist, apparently.
When I hauled the table in today to pay for it, he looked at me over his glasses and said 'what have YOU got today?'
Old Man Table, I said.
Mmmhhweh... he said.
We have an awkward relationship. We used to get on great, then he spent two hours trying to talk me into buying the most beautiful Burmese teak bookshelf that I have ever seen in my life.
That I still think about.
But it was the week we bought our house. And he wanted a thousand dollars for it. Which it was worth. Plus tax. Which means of course I didn't buy it because we were buying a house.
But I really tried hard to figure out how to buy it. And Himself told me if I wanted it I could buy it, which I love him for. And of course you repay that trust by not buying said object.
But I never really forgave Buddy for putting the yearn in me for it.
And he remembers those two wasted hours.
As we tried to furnish the house we got a few bits from him and made it up somewhat. In the meantime he sold the bookcase in March (just when I was getting back on my financial feet) ON TICK to some woman in a condo and faked innocence when I pointed out that I was not offered tick.
Then I got him on a bad day and sneaked two Zimbabwean stone sculptures off him for less than they were worth.
And told him of course. Because I CANNOT keep my mouth shut to save my life.
Which he didn't appreciate.
And it didn't work out for either of us in the end because now all the Zimbabwean stuff is way over-priced and he's lost his best buyer.
So the mwehh about the table could mean anything.
The fact that he couldn't be arsed finding a bag to put over it for me probably means it's a pile of crock.
But it's okay, I just like the table. And Himself will like it.
Because I didn't have a bag, and the table had sticky outy bits, I had to sit it on my lap on the bus.
A woman looked at it and said: 'I saw that table from across the street!'
Thirty five bucks, I said.
GODDAMN, she said.
We had a lovely chat all the way through Dartmouth about that store and furniture in general and how we love furniture because our mothers went to auctions and how cool it was that they could read the mysterious codes of silver and china marks, and how our gardens were doing and what's the best way to split a hydrangea and how difficult it is to grow snowdrops here and how difficult the soil is in Lawrencetown.
We bored everyone on the bus TO DEATH.
I could see eyes rolling in the heads of people who I have seen smile politely at the really annoying guy who stands in front of the bus door in January handing out the excuse for a newspaper we get for free nowadays.
And at some point I realised that even fifteen years ago I would not have been caught dead with my mother if she sat on a commuter bus somewhere with an African table on her lap discussing her hydrangeas with a stranger.
Not that that would have stopped her of course.
But now I understand how rewarding those activities are, I have a feeling I am going to really enjoy my forties.
More importantly, for sixteen months I have had a space beside the front door that needed something to put stuff on. Keys and mail and gloves.
Maybe a spider plant. Or a geranium.
And now the perfect object has found me.
I love when that happens.
Well, the little card stuck to it, with the price on it, said it was a table, but it's more like a large potstand. About 3 foot high and 18 inches wide, the dark stained wooden top is balanced on the shoulders of a hunched up old African man, whose face peers out from underneath his load.
East African probably. The legs of the table/potstand are his arms and legs, and the base has his elegantly elongated feet and hands sitting on another circle of hardwood. There are a few cracks where the carving is coming away from the base, but I can live with that. I'm not a 'must be from one lop' purist.
It was sitting out on the street in front of the shop that is my consumer nirvana and which I walk past twice a day every day on the way from and to the bus stop.
Deliberately walk. There are alternative routes.
It wasn't there in the morning.
But I couldn't believe it was still there at 4.30pm on a payday in the middle of downtown.
He must have sold something earlier and put it out around three.
This store is the greatest kitsch shop in the world.
It is the John W. Doull (bookshop of which I write much) of kitsch and I am not going to tell you where it is because you either know what I am talking about and are my competition, or you don't know. In which case you aren't going to be my competition if I can help it.
The owner does a lot of estate sales and has an eye for African and Asian carving.
And seventies furniture.
And traditional Maritime fishing gear.
Which pretty much ticks all of the must have boxes for both me and Himself. And we like nothing better than a good hour long browse in there of a wet Saturday.
You can take your overpriced Agricola 'antique' strip and stick it. Yah!
Anyways, buddy, who's name I misremember deliberately, puts items on the street on sunny days. For to tempt you in. He's really good at it, and you have to swoop. Pronto.
But he torments you with a price list that's dated. So if you wait another three weeks the price will drop. If it's still there.
It's 'non-gambler with latent gambling DNA and a penchant for furniture' heroin. That's what it is.
On Tuesday, he had a fabulous seventies chrome and black leather armchair sitting outside at 9am.
I was on my way to one of those totally pointless civil service meetings that you only go to if you are too broke to buy coffee, or can't find any real work to do, so I couldn't stop.
Being in the need of some coffee.
But it preyed on my mind all morning.
I just fixed the car and I am broke schmoke.
He's good though. Real good. It was a great chair. A classic.
By lunchtime, I had figured out where I'd place it, how I'd pay for it, even how I'd get it home on the bus.
Stick it into the bike holder on the front.
I skipped buying a sandwich (in case it was really expensive) and hurried down, but it was already gone.
To my former hair stylist, apparently.
When I hauled the table in today to pay for it, he looked at me over his glasses and said 'what have YOU got today?'
Old Man Table, I said.
Mmmhhweh... he said.
We have an awkward relationship. We used to get on great, then he spent two hours trying to talk me into buying the most beautiful Burmese teak bookshelf that I have ever seen in my life.
That I still think about.
But it was the week we bought our house. And he wanted a thousand dollars for it. Which it was worth. Plus tax. Which means of course I didn't buy it because we were buying a house.
But I really tried hard to figure out how to buy it. And Himself told me if I wanted it I could buy it, which I love him for. And of course you repay that trust by not buying said object.
But I never really forgave Buddy for putting the yearn in me for it.
And he remembers those two wasted hours.
As we tried to furnish the house we got a few bits from him and made it up somewhat. In the meantime he sold the bookcase in March (just when I was getting back on my financial feet) ON TICK to some woman in a condo and faked innocence when I pointed out that I was not offered tick.
Then I got him on a bad day and sneaked two Zimbabwean stone sculptures off him for less than they were worth.
And told him of course. Because I CANNOT keep my mouth shut to save my life.
Which he didn't appreciate.
And it didn't work out for either of us in the end because now all the Zimbabwean stuff is way over-priced and he's lost his best buyer.
So the mwehh about the table could mean anything.
The fact that he couldn't be arsed finding a bag to put over it for me probably means it's a pile of crock.
But it's okay, I just like the table. And Himself will like it.
Because I didn't have a bag, and the table had sticky outy bits, I had to sit it on my lap on the bus.
A woman looked at it and said: 'I saw that table from across the street!'
Thirty five bucks, I said.
GODDAMN, she said.
We had a lovely chat all the way through Dartmouth about that store and furniture in general and how we love furniture because our mothers went to auctions and how cool it was that they could read the mysterious codes of silver and china marks, and how our gardens were doing and what's the best way to split a hydrangea and how difficult it is to grow snowdrops here and how difficult the soil is in Lawrencetown.
We bored everyone on the bus TO DEATH.
I could see eyes rolling in the heads of people who I have seen smile politely at the really annoying guy who stands in front of the bus door in January handing out the excuse for a newspaper we get for free nowadays.
And at some point I realised that even fifteen years ago I would not have been caught dead with my mother if she sat on a commuter bus somewhere with an African table on her lap discussing her hydrangeas with a stranger.
Not that that would have stopped her of course.
But now I understand how rewarding those activities are, I have a feeling I am going to really enjoy my forties.
More importantly, for sixteen months I have had a space beside the front door that needed something to put stuff on. Keys and mail and gloves.
Maybe a spider plant. Or a geranium.
And now the perfect object has found me.
I love when that happens.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
A brief interlude of rain
Tonight it is blowing hard from the north east (I think, Himself is not around to confirm this) and it is raining. Thank goodness.
Thank goodness?
Yes, we have not had any rain for a couple of weeks and my exciting new triple drum gutter rainwater siphoning system is bone dry. So if it hadn't rained tonight, I would have had to spend an hour hauling buckets over to the greenhouse to water the plants.
But it's raining.
So I have the night off.
Himself who is a hydraulics genius, constructed a simple yet ingenious (or genius) water collection and siphoning system using three old barrels we found in the yard, some recycled 2" x 4" (of course), a length of hose and a gutter.
I come home from work, I go to the greenhouse, I lift the hose up and turn a little knob, and hey presto, while the plants are being watered I can have a sit down and a little meditation on the day in the muggy warmth of the cozy framed building we put up last year.
Our first cycle of tomatoes are already up. I am hoping I didn't start everything too early.
Time will tell.
I haven't been blogging for a number of reasons.
Mostly, because my RSI is back and my arms are so sore after a day's work, I can't face the computer again.
But also, we had a beautiful early spring this year, so I have been out in the yard most of the time.
First of all, we had a fabulous March, so we started on our little woodstand. Cutting down the dead wood and clearing out the seedlings to let in some light.
Then we decided that the reason why the garden didn't do so well last year is because it's so shaded, so I started thinning out the tree stand behind the house. Mostly alders and baby spruce.
Then Himself ordered a one tonne truck of horse manure and disappeared off to New Brunswick for a month. Which meant that Queenie had to haul it into position in various spots around the yard.
I got it done just before he got home for a visit last weekend, and didn't he go and order another load!
Not much time for blogging.
Not much to talk about either, unless you want to hear about the difference in consistency between two year old and three year old horse shite.
Or the best way to uproot a baby spruce tree.
Like Socrates, I have retired to my garden.
For a spell.
Thank goodness?
Yes, we have not had any rain for a couple of weeks and my exciting new triple drum gutter rainwater siphoning system is bone dry. So if it hadn't rained tonight, I would have had to spend an hour hauling buckets over to the greenhouse to water the plants.
But it's raining.
So I have the night off.
Himself who is a hydraulics genius, constructed a simple yet ingenious (or genius) water collection and siphoning system using three old barrels we found in the yard, some recycled 2" x 4" (of course), a length of hose and a gutter.
I come home from work, I go to the greenhouse, I lift the hose up and turn a little knob, and hey presto, while the plants are being watered I can have a sit down and a little meditation on the day in the muggy warmth of the cozy framed building we put up last year.
Our first cycle of tomatoes are already up. I am hoping I didn't start everything too early.
Time will tell.
I haven't been blogging for a number of reasons.
Mostly, because my RSI is back and my arms are so sore after a day's work, I can't face the computer again.
But also, we had a beautiful early spring this year, so I have been out in the yard most of the time.
First of all, we had a fabulous March, so we started on our little woodstand. Cutting down the dead wood and clearing out the seedlings to let in some light.
Then we decided that the reason why the garden didn't do so well last year is because it's so shaded, so I started thinning out the tree stand behind the house. Mostly alders and baby spruce.
Then Himself ordered a one tonne truck of horse manure and disappeared off to New Brunswick for a month. Which meant that Queenie had to haul it into position in various spots around the yard.
I got it done just before he got home for a visit last weekend, and didn't he go and order another load!
Not much time for blogging.
Not much to talk about either, unless you want to hear about the difference in consistency between two year old and three year old horse shite.
Or the best way to uproot a baby spruce tree.
Like Socrates, I have retired to my garden.
For a spell.
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