Radial Symmetry

Out of hiding for at least one post.

As some of my sistren have blogged, the Fringe Fest wined and dined some of us bloggers. And gave us free passes to go see a couple of shows. With the hope - the understanding - that we might generate some grassroots interest with our blogs.

Then I stopped blogging.

And I didn't really do anything this week. I am feeling misanthropic and sad. I don't want to be in crowds of people, and by crowds I mean more than 5, and only 5 if I don't have to make small talk with those 4 people; I do not have it in me for small talk. Truthfully, I don't even really want to leave my house all that much, and the fringe stuff is practically on the other side of the canal, which may as well be another country.

But tonight I made a plan with Steve and so we are going to see our friend Ned's play, Oreo. It's supposed to be really good, but you probably don't need me to tell you that, since it won Best in Venue.

A bit of the barn door, this post. But at least I don't feel like I completely cheated.

++

As for blogging: I don't know. As for writing: I don't know.

This happens periodically. I feel like it's all pointless and why do I bother. I feel like stopping. Because what would be the difference? How does me putting one word after another make any fucking difference to anyone? What does it matter?

There are no real answers to those questions. Only faith. You either believe or you don't.

If you're going to keep writing you simply cannot let those questions haunt you so much that you stop.

Maybe I'll be back in a few days. I may come back in a few weeks. I may take the summer off. I may just stop, pull "writer" out of my core identity and learn how to do something useful.

I don't know.

Oy, I've been having an increasingly blue few days. It's come and gone, but I woke up with it this morning and it hasn't let up since. A lot of it, I think, is PMS. It's got that kind of an overworked edge to it. But PMS Blue always has that crackling grain of truth at its centre.

What's it about? Oldish stuff, newish stuff. I spent five days sitting around with no physical activity, and we all know what that does for my mood.

I may spend some time this week picking at it and writing out for you. Or I might not.

I think I might be tired of blogging.

Going by my numbers, which have been falling pretty steadily over the past few months, a good lot of other people might feel the same way.

When I started blogging, it quickly became a very personal, cathartic space for me. Over the past few months, I haven't been able to do that. For a variety of reasons, not all of which I understand.

Several of the days I spent on the couch, I spent reading the Emily series by L.M. Montgomery. I've probably read them a couple dozen times already, and I wanted to read them again for the "book" I'm "working on."

It's been a while since I've read them, maybe 5 years, and what struck me this time was how deeply I absorbed the language and the sensibility and well, Emily. I don't know if I am like her and so that's why they hit me so hard as a kid, or whether I loved her and unconsciously tried to bend myself towards being like that. Not really answerable, I know.

There was one line in it somewhere, tossed out, about how over her life she would experience great joy and great sorrow and how she would allow people to feel those things - to feel okay about the latter - through her.

That sentence was like someone pouring a trickle of cold water down my spine.

When people have asked me why I write under my own name, that's the answer I've given them. When I write about being depressed, when I write about hating myself, or my body, or crying in the grocery store, I don't want to do it as if it needs hiding. We all feel like this and we all feel like no one else does. I have tried to use my life to tell the stories that I want to hear.

Right now, I'm having a hard time sharing what's going on in my head. I think I'm feeling a great deal of shame about some of it: that it's knee-jerk shame doesn't make it any less powerful. Yet. I think of lots of great personal stuff to write about and then I sit down, and it just seems too: hard, stupid, boring. Boring.

I don't know if I can go further, and I don't know if I'm much interested in blogging otherwise.

Chances are I'll pick up again in, oh, 4 days or so, and get right back at it. But if you don't hear from me for a while, that's where I've gone.

Trying to move the rock.

When I woke up at 4 this morning I was lying on my back in the exact center of the bed, my arms flung out straight to the sides, hands limp over the edges. My legs pointed straight down.

Everything was wet. The bed around me was soaked, the top sheet and duvet were on the other side of damp. From the inside, I could feel that my whole body was covered in sweat.

"Thank Christ," I thought. "That's it then. It's broken."

I promptly rolled over into a dry spot and the deepest sleep I've had in a couple weeks.

This flu kicked my ass. My nose is still stuffed up and it'll probably be quite a while before I'm able to clear all the gunk out of my lungs. Maybe a bit too, before I recover from the lack of solid sleep and appetite.

My fridge is a bit of an embarrassment. Not to me, when I'm on my own and not thinking about it. But when I look at other people's fridges, or at my own through someone else's eyes. There is often more compost in it than food.

I say embarrassing because visually, it's a little sad, this giant stainless steel behemoth often containing only a few slices of bread and a variety of alternative milks. But I also half-pride myself on it. Very little gets thrown out of that fridge.

Both my work and my house are close to grocery stores of all kinds. I'm passing them all the time. I don't really need to have an army's worth of food in my larder.

Until, of course, I don't have the energy to make it to the grocery store. At that point, my sketchy pantry becomes a liability.

Luckily, I know lovely people. Shelley's done bits of grocery shopping for me as she's gone to and from the back house, and dropped off quinoa salad and strawberries this morning. Just a couple hours before Mae emailed to ask did I want some of her leftover portabello mushroom soup. Umm, yes please. Steve, Jennifer and Greg have all offered to bring me anything I need.

For the most part, I've been wanting random things.

I mostly don't want to eat, and disturbingly seem to have lost my taste for coffee. When I do want to eat, it's kind of random stuff. A muffin. No, any kind is fine, just a muffin, thank you. Tortilla chips and salsa, procured finally from one of the two wacko convenience stores near my place.* Dinner last night was 1 red pepper, which sounds pathetic but was the only thing I could imagine eating. A lot of toast and peanut butter, until my bread ran out.

Shelley brought me a loaf today though, so now I'm all set.

*When I walked into the first place, I was shocked. There were about 20 bags of chips in there, a few random magazines, and the shelves were two-thirds bare. There were 4 small jars of salsa at nearly $5 a pop. The shelves behind them were completely bare.
"I'm looking for tortilla chips?"
The guy smiled a jolly smile at me.
"Oh, nope! They just came and took those away!"
Uhhhh, okay then. Off to Little India and the woman with the gross fingernails and rheumy eyes.

When I woke up at 5 this morning and my skin was cool, it felt brand new. Like putting your hand on the shady side of a sun-drenched marble column.

How it's gone the last three days: okay/fine in the morning, a little nauseous by noon, the fever settling around 2 or 3. You know how I can tell? By putting my arms akimbo, thumbs around the front, fingers spreading over my back. I don't know why there more than anywhere, but the heat and surface tenderness seem gathered in those spots.

When I turned off the light last night, I worried about falling asleep. I can't say that I fell asleep, but I drifted into and out of a colourful psychadelic dream consciousness for about 4 hours. Every once in a while I'd wake up enough to switch positions, relieve some pressure on whatever aching part of my anatomy was getting it, and sink back into the blossoms of colour pulsing out.

Who knew that fever was the only psychadelic that doesn't make me horribly ill?

Um. Oh. Nevermind.

Though really, it's the other way around in this case.

Today is better than yesterday. Yesterday I walked halfway to the Hartman's before realizing that there was no way I was going to make it there and back. Then I realized, thinking about the long hot shadeless blocks home, that I wasn't sure how I was going to make it back. I sat on the wall outside the beer store for a while, slumped over and looking exactly in place.

Oooh, poor me.

I had high hopes of being better by tonight, planned on being back at work tomorrow. I'm not sure that's going to happen. But I'm sick to death of lying down and sitting, though standing and walking have become their own troublesome burdens.

Excuse me, I have to go lie down again.

This morning I thought I was maybe being a baby for taking the day off. I felt much better than I had yesterday afternoon.

My bones and skin, for instance, had stopped feeling like someone had pumped them full of water and made them very taut and excruciatingly tender. My colour was its normal pink, not the deathly white it had been when Shelley blessedly came over to make me dinner.

At 2 pm, I lay down for a bit of a read and a nap. Lying down made me realize that I felt awful again, that tingle taut feeling was back on my skin, the top of my head was pulsing from my sinuses being so clogged.

Unfortunately, I've lost the knack of napping. Because when you feel shitty, but can't sleep, there's not a fuck of a lot to do.

I emailed a whole bunch of people.

I watched the wind suck and blow the curtains into and out of the window.

I read some interviews with Nairne Holtz online, in prep for my own interview with her tonight.

And my christ, did I wish I could get out of that. Not because I think it will be boring - I really enjoyed her new book, and I think her Canadian Lesbian Literature bibliography is wicked, and I would like to talk to her about both.

I'm feeling bad enough, though, that I've put the calls out to try and reschedule. The overachiever in my brain is saying, suck it up, butcher, just barrel through; the reasonable part of my brain is saying, the bathtub upstairs feels too far away to get into, you. are. sick.. My body is voting for being very very still.

We'll see who wins.

My dad called me this morning. It's a rare occurrence.

I generally talk to my dad on the phone a few times a year. My birthday, his birthday, father's day. Some years, one or the other has left a message and the other has not called back. Some years there might be an extra call or two if some family event is going on. The past year we've upped that to about bi-monthly chats.

He got his father's day gift today, a book that Milan had written about, that I thought would be right up Dad's alley. My father builds race car engines, so deals with physics on a daily basis. He also likes movies. And spending time in the bathroom. So really, this book seemed pretty perfect.

After the thanks and the how's tricks were out of the way, he said "The past couple of weeks have been pretty exhausting." I missed the catch in his voice at first. Racing season started up not long ago, and he's getting older, has been saying with more frequency that racing is a young man's game.

"You know the driver of our car, [redacted]?"

I made a small noise in agreement. Never met the guy, heard a lot about him. He threw my Dad's 60th birthday party, because we are ungrateful children. Over the past several summers, my father has spent nearly every weekend with him, driving all around Southern Ontario and Upstate New York. That's besides the work on the car during the week.

"He committed suicide two weeks ago."

The hitch and break in his voice was clear this time. I nearly dropped the phone.

"Oh Dad. Oh. Dad. I'm so sorry. I am so so sorry to hear that. Are you okay?"

He didn't really answer.

"I gave the eulogy, so there were a couple of sleepless nights before that. He was 35, nice guy,
seemed like he didn't really have a care in the world. Obviously he did."

I almost said something here, about how much it can take out of you to keep that front up, to seem like the person you want other people to see. But that would have cast the long shadow of my history across the conversation; I didn't think he needed that.

But I didn't have much more.

"Oh Dad. I'm so sorry. That's awful. For everyone."

"He was a good kid. The car's at my place now, and we don't know what to do with it. We're going out next week with the other car, but racing's not so much fun now, you know."

The part of my heart where my father lives is treacherous; hard knots of anger and fear starred by sinkholes of wailing mush; the occasional solid ground.

He didn't cry, not quite, but the tears were leaking through his voice. There's something about fathers, at least the kind of father my father is, that precludes this kind of sadness. Or at least the expression of it. The only time I've seen him cry is when his father died more than 20 years ago.

His voice on the phone hit that treacherous ground, softened up at least one of the knots.

"Well, I'd better go."

"Yeah, I should get back to work."

"Love you, Meg."

"Me too, Dad. I love you. Keep well, okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I'll give it a shot."

You know, I'm not even the hugest hard core post-punk garage rock three chord music fan. I like it, sure thing, some of it I love. My go-to music, though, is moodier and more angular.

I didn't have grand hopes for The Gaga Weekend. I thought it was cool that it was going on, and I liked the bands on the bill that I'd seen enough to make me want to see more. Just how much fun it was kind of sideswiped me. Fun enough that I did enough and drank enough that the thought of going to Westfest tonight went completely out of my mind.

It was amazing not so much for the music, or even the company. Though there was Jennifer, of course, who makes music more fun just by being there. There was Steve and Maggy, who danced with us too. Earlier and later, too, there was d.jack. There were some excellent bands, which Jennifer ably described, and some pretty good bands, and even a couple I really didn't like.

The sense of community, though, was amazing.

I loved how those two girls that I'd never talked to before yesterday lost their shit during The Balconies. I loved how about three songs into The Statues, the audience climbed on stage and took over singing from the singer. And how at another point, Davey did the same by himself and then forgot the words. And the jumping and the joy and the people I haven't seen in years who I thought wouldn't be happy to see me but were. And the keyboards sometimes! And all the girls in those bands! And the sloppy fuck you DIY feel of the whole thing. And the sheer force of the volume. It's one of my favourite highs, ever.

In a month, my bare legs won't be such a shock.

For one, bare legs will be normal by mid-July whereas this chilly year, they are not so in mid-June. For two, mine won't still be pasty white, and thereby glowing in the gloaming.

But it is not mid-July, it is mid-June, and my bare legs garnered a fair bit of attention on my walk to the Imperial last night.* Some random looks, a "Hey;" whatever, none of it was anything to get your knickers in a twist about, so I just thought my thoughts and it wasn't hard to do the regular ol' subconscious Rapist Threat Assessment.

And then I crossed the street, Somerset Street at Bay, to cut through Dundonald over to Lyon. The two guys who'd been heading towards me were still ambling along, I clocked that they'd noted me, dismissed them as any kind of threat.

I got to the northwest corner of the park.

"How you doon?"

I heard this over my shoulder, from the white blob just passing out of my peripheral vision. Generally, when men call things out at me I pretend that they must be talking to someone else, even if there isn't anyone else around. Sometimes I want to crack wise back, but mostly I'd rather not engage with the kind of people who turn the word "doing" into one syllable.

Some reason, this time I couldn't do it. There was a slight hitch in my step and I felt all my back muscles twitch simultaneously. I kept going, but I knew they now knew I was ignoring them. Shit fuck. There was gonna be more.

There was.

"Legs that long, you could walk to Europe!"

This time I had my proper ignoring walk on so I just kept going. But the more blocks I walked, the weirder it seemed to me. Anyone could walk to Europe. Or not, you know, since it's across the ocean.

When I got to the Imperial, I nearly collapsed when I hoisted myself up onto the chair across the table from Jennifer.

"What?" she said. "Europe? Europe?!"

"I know," I responded. "Halfway through the park I wanted to turn around and be like, 'Dude, c'mon, they're not webbed. But thanks.'"

We really did collapse then.

*They also garnered a fair bit of attention from the person for whom they'd been prepared. A good story and lots of invited attention! A banner night.

After 6 weeks of hauling my ass to Vanier and back, I can tell you that the most efficient and stress-free mode of transport is bicycle.

Last week, I drove, because the bus was driving me to distraction, and taking forever. Like waiting a half hour, like taking a half hour to get to the Rideau Centre from St. Laurent. So I took the car, even took the highway, totally forgetting that sometimes you have to pay for parking. I was out of the parking lot at about 5:05, and walked into my kitchen at 5:26.

It probably would have been 5:19, if I hadn't stalled out three times trying to cross Percy at Gloucester. Still not so great with the hill starts.

Tonight I left the parking lot at about the same time, after fixing my helmet and getting myself sorted.

5:34.

It took me 8 minutes more to bike home than to drive. Didn't stall once.

The mindfulness is almost done, only two more classes. I could probably be getting a lot more out of it than I am, because I don't do any of the homework they say you should do, for aforementioned reasons.

Not to say that I'm not getting good stuff out of it.

The group leader used the white board for the first time today. She wrote the word STRESS, then under it ASSESSMENT, then under that THREAT. Under that, three words: fight, flight or freeze.

Humans are simple. Faced with a threat, that's basically what we got.

The idea, the one that I'm finding the most useful, is that the fact of that will never change.

With all my therapy and whatnot, I think the underlying expectation has been that I would stop feeling certain ways. Not that my therapists might say that, but that's what I've been wanting. I want to stop feeling whatever when this horrible thing happens. Because it feels bad and I don't like it.

This course is allowing me to know - not just realize or think, but to bodily know - that I won't. I'm likely to be dead before I stop responding to stressful situations by either freezing up or wanting to flee to the wilderness.

But I can stop actually doing it, and I'm slowly gaining the tools to be able to do so.

It's a comfort, and worth all those damn distracting bus rides.

It's been a flurry of action Chez Butch for the last few days. When M-C moved out she, of course, took some of her stuff with her. Leaving delicious gaps in the cupboards waiting to be filled.

Except you can't just move shit around, or, if you're going to be moving shit around, and hey, it's spring anyway, why not clean the cupboards as well as reorganizing them.

Then because you are standing on the counter to clean the top shelf of the cupboard, you will notice how dirty the top tops are. Not only dirty, but greasy dirty. You will be grossed out, and you will have to wash them down before you start anything.

This will make you think of the range hood, and how it must look if the tops of the cupboards look like this. It will turn out to be not so bad as you might think, mostly because you don't turn the fans on much because you don't much like the noise. Which is why the tops of your cupboards are disgusting.

Eventually, you will think it's a good idea to pull everything out from under the sink, because it's poorly organized under there, and why, for god's sake, are you incapable of throwing out a single piece of fabric, let me tell you that not *every* tshirt needs to become a "dust rag," nor do you need 4 "cleaning toothbrushes," and by the way, it is not 1932, and also you can stop hoarding elastics.

In the end, you will end up at bedtime with your dust rags all over the floor, the air stinking of orange degreaser and almost smoking lard, the last load of laundry half put away, and the wet load still in the washer.