Radial Symmetry

[The following email exchange transpired yesterday, with the title above as the subject line.]

Megan
http://jezebel.com/5489959/corey-haim-dead-at-38?skyline=true&s=i

poor the corey who wasn't in stand by me.

Jennifer
Wow. So many 80s teen heartthrobs have just not had great futures. I'm glad that My Boyfriend Wil Wheaton was enough of a nerd to take care of himself.

Megan
John Cusack is holding the middle ground down very nicely. Still alive, not a basket case, but a slightly squandered talent.

Jennifer
It's true. But he's never married which, despite the fact that myself and most of the people I know have also never married, makes me wonder if he's in some way a bit off.

If only High Fidelity had been a better movie without such dismal casting. John would be in a much better position.

Megan
and also seems to have never assaulted an intimate partner. solid middle ground.

Jennifer
even steven

[a couple minutes later]

Jennifer
but where do we place Jerry O'Connell on the continuum?

Megan
hm.

towards wil wheaton: decent and varied career, seemingly happy marriage, extra points for twins.

towards the coreys: not doing nerdy podcasts. super fan of howard stern.

i think we must say of o'connell that he is close but no wil wheaton.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_O%27Connell, btw.)

Jennifer
What about the fact that he's married to a woman who was previously married to John Stamos? I think we need to deduct points for that.

Megan
Oh god, totally.

He's way behind John Cusack now.

Jennifer
Thank goodness for the internet. Otherwise we'd have to wait until we met in person to deal with these pressing issues.

Megan
i know! i'd be a ball of anxiety.

+++

Though what I would add today is that in my books Neil Patrick Harris totally wins because 1) the gay, 2) he likes magic, and 3) sequins. Which may actually be all the same thing, now that I think about it.

Two things totally cracked me up today.

+1+

Shelley is, thank god, back from her vacation. She was on the west coast, visiting a friend of hers. It’s beautiful out there, but obviously, flowers or no flowers, she belongs in Ottawa.

The following exchange happened while we were catching up on the way to Bridgehead. It made me bark with laughter in the barista’s face.

Megan
Oh no, it was an internet date. If it’d been an in-person date, you would have heard about it.

Shelley [with a lar lar grin]
Heard it all the way in Victoria!

Megan
Well, definitely by email, that’s for sure.

[our intrepid heroines enter the place of coffee]

Megan
It’s been a pretty quiet week though. What else. Huh. Um, I think I pulled something in shoulder stand during yoga this morning.

Shelley
That’s what you get for standing on your shoulders before breakfast.

==

Hm. I was worried about that. Without the perfect timing, the pause pause ZING, I feel like it falls a little flat.

My lack of humour-writing skills aside, it was the "before breakfast" part that got me, I think. Like if I’d just had some toast in there…

+2+

Jennifer wrote this to me today - I'll leave you to imagine the context.

"I can see why. You have some things in common with daschunds. You are skinny, cute, and shy in new situations."

While I'm really happy, in this post V-Day world of ours, that it's much easier for many people to say the word vagina with ease, it still troubles me crazy that people don't know what in hell it is.

Take this:

The redux, for those of you who don't want to watch?

Bryce Gruber goes to a spa to get herself vajazzled. That is, she has someone stick crystals in pretty patterns on the skin where her pubic hair used to be. The crystals are on some kind of double-sided tape, and though the results aren't my cup of tea, it seems like just a fine thing to do. Why not, really? People do all sorts of crazy shit, myself included, and if someone wants to pay someone else scads of money to put jewels where their hair was, fill yer boots, is all I can say.

But one thing did freak me out.

As described by the esthetician, vajazzling is where they put "jewels, on the upper part, of...." Here she trails off, looking embarrassed.

Gruber picks up the trail: "The vagina?"

The esthetician nods and looks relieved and repeats in a sing-songy falsetto "The vagina!"

And I thought ouch.

Quick lesson here:

• The vagina is on the inside.
• The vulva is on the outside.

Being on the outside, the vulva comprises lots of different other parts. Our friend the clit, for example. Also, it includes the mons (pubis or veneris, take your pick), which is where, if you let it, most of the pubic hair grows. And where, if you don't, you might have delicate sparkly crystals taped to the exposed skin.

Though I suppose monsazzle doesn't have quite the same ring, now, does it.

The weekend did include some lowlights.

The overtime working?
I did look longingly out at the beautiful Saturday afternoon, but really it was fine.

The sore throat getting worse?
Not great, but it wasn't really bad until early early this morning.*

Spending over an hour sorting the overcooked beans into chili worthy, dip worthy and detritus?
Not the most fun I've ever had. The thrill of categorization wears off quickly, I am here to tell you.

But the rest of it was full of the following great things in no particular order:

- The Plan 99 reading series with Jennifer. We were lucky enough to run into a couple of the Irregulars (we got to watch the Erratic Genius build a house of coasters!), and so talk camera talk, talk blogging talk, talk Ottawa talk and eat good food.** Later on we got to talk writing talk and music talk with Dave O'Meara, who is brilliant at both poetry and table wrangling. And one of the suddenly millions of Daves I know.

- Friday night Grace said "Why does Henry's head smell like chocolate?" and I said "Because I was rubbing my lips on it." And she just said "Oh" like that was an entirely reasonable answer, before I even explained to her about the lipbalm. Henry is their very adorable new baby, by the way. His head is very soft and he smells really good even without a crazy auntie rubbing her lipbalmed lips on him.

- Impromptu date!

- Sunday I did a crazy amount of grocery shopping. Anyone who's been to my house before knows that my fridge is like the main street of a Western just before the villain meets the hero at high noon. It actually makes that Morricone whistling sound sometimes when you open the door and then the cat food tin tumbles into your hand. The massive amount of shopping then lead to a massive amount of cooking. Which lead to the bean incident, but we've already talked about that.

*I feel fine other than the throbbing tonsil, thank you for asking, and I have a doctors appointment tomorrow afternoon.

**Though another thing I am here to tell you is that the Manx menu has suddenly gotten very The-Butcher-Unfriendly. I don't eat wheat and I don't eat dairy and I didn't feel like pork tenderloin or either of the (altered) tofu mains. So. I had the fish tacos*** and just sucked it up when the fish came breaded. Figuratively and literally. It was really tasty.

***Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh.

Atlanta never stood a chance with me.

A weekend in New York, then the rest of the week off to bum around home, then one day back at work and then, 1 day, 3 airports, and 8 travel hours later, skip skip stop cruise to the gate in Atlanta.

Only maybe just a tiny sliver of a smidgen of a chance.

It was cold there. I didn't expect that. I didn't expect it to be warm, per se, I'm not an idiot, I checked the Weather Underground, but the WU didn't tell me how bitey the wind would be. Or how the February sun lacks warmth in Georgia too. I didn't expect the meeting rooms at the W Hotel to be nearly air conditioned. I didn't expect I would be so busy trying to learn and keep up with work I wouldn't make it outside till 5 pm.

Maybe the sun was warm at 2.

I was tired. From being out of my routine and this the third one I was trying to make (let's count: the laze, fuck, rest, walk of New York; the loll and putter of days off at home; the schmancy elegance of my ersatz boutique hotel). I was worn out a bit emotionally from the pendulum swing of New York intensity to my empty house and bed. I just couldn't get it up to explore Atlanta alone.

Maybe Atlanta's a great town. Maybe if I had had it in me to walk far enough. Maybe if I'd wandered aimless. Maybe if I'd cared enough to do anything other than the easiest thing. So I ate at the same restaurant 4 days in a row because I could sit at the bar and eat buttery winter greens and drink a delicious local oatmeal stout. I didn't wander out of my business area neighbourhood because nothing I could find online or in the paper seemed worth the effort.

Strangely, though I didn't love being there, I did love taking photos of it. Its streets and tall buildings make beautiful angles; its surfaces are stone and reflective. Randomly, it seemed.

It's hard to say what the best part of the trip was. It was a blur, a lot of it. People, buildings, people, sun, the food, shadows, beer, wine, the faint smell of gas in our apartment. We stayed on the Upper East Side - a bit tonier in some ways, a bit rougher in others, than the East Village or Brooklyn's Park Slope, the neighbourhoods I've stayed in before.

We walked. We walked and walked. We walked so much my shin seized up and I was limping.

We saw the Met by mistake, we walked the MoMA till our eyes were too full of beautiful things to take in any more.

We cut through a glinting Central Park, blanketed with snow under a blazing sun. A warm spring sun. I tried to wash the taste of the worst breakfast ever out of my mouth with swigs of the worst tea-like substance ever bottled. I bought a smoothie to wash that away. We left the tea chilling in a snow bank near the building where John Lennon was shot, where Yoko Ono lives.

Seeing Yoko Ono perform Monday night - the eve of her 77th birthday - was surely one of the highlights.

She is bananas.

Not in the ululating way, which I far prefer to the lyrics she was singing. The first couple of songs I sat there, listening to what she was singing with my arms and legs folded up as many times as I could make them. I knew my body language was parlaying the fact that the lyrics were making me want to tear something up into tiny little bits. I could feel D.Jack noticing, and I kept trying to unwind my limbs and facial muscles so that at least one of us could have a good time without worrying that the other one wasn't.

But then finally, finally, the music took over. She ululated more and spoke less and the tension I had eased out of my body stayed out. And then Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon came on stage and they played skronky guitar while Yoko wailed about mulberries. And I loved it with everything.

We drank a bottle of really good wine while eating tender noodles. We drank bubbly wine after. We walked up and down Broadway looking for J. And lo, I am here to give you these two tips:

1. there is no 1087 Broadway in Manhattan
2. always check what borough you're supposed to be in, since, maybe, perhaps, there is a club playing raucous riot grrrl covers in the deep depths of Brooklyn instead of pigeons cooing in the park that should rightfully be where the music is

We were tired a lot of the time, tried to fit in naps, or at least rests every day. I always forget how tiring it is just to see things. To soak up the reflection of all the light reflecting off all those buildings, the new faces, tones, voices, the cars, the honking, the honking. How the sheer masses of people in New York, particularly, make my head swim and my brain use up glucose faster than I can produce it.

The problem with stopping for a moment is that you realize how goddamn tired you are.

Possibly too tired to mop the floor.

I'm off to New York City tomorrow, another weekend date with D.Jack. We've been sort of planning this since, I dunno, November maybe?, and for serious planning it for a month.

But only about 15 minutes ago, when I was sweeping up the dirt from sweeping in preparation for mopping, bent down industriously trying to get the last bit of remaindirt, did I think "Holy fuck. This time tomorrow I'll be with D.Jack. In New York."

My body thrilled, a little tremble all through it.

But right now, I'm tired. I've spent the evening cleaning and packing, getting ready to come home to a clean house, which is something I love to do, even if it tires me out to rush it all in at the end because I inevitably fuck around and leave 80% of what I need to do till the night before.

I will interrupt this post to sing the praises of my iPhone. I got one a few weeks ago, after about two months of blithering about it. And pretty much immediately fell in love with it. After price, my main resistance was that I thought it might be more hype than anything else. It's not. It's a beautiful piece of machinery, beautifully and thoughtfully designed.

It is, as Steve pointed out, a bit heavy and bulky for a phone. It is, as I pointed out in return, very very small for a computer.

Which leads me back into the post. I think that I am not going to take my computer to New York.

Now, there are some of you out there that are gasping in shock at such a heretical though. There are others of you who don't understand why I would consider bringing it in the first place. Suffice it to say that I cannot remember the last time I went somewhere for more that 24 hours without bringing my computer with me.

I would say we had a symbiotic relationship except the computer would do fine without me.

The tug of anxiety that I'm feeling about leaving it behind - but what if? what if? - is actually the deciding factor.

Time to cut the cord there.

Or at least transfer it over to a smaller machine.

KC and I whistled on down to the airport to pick Shelley and MC up last night. We brought them warm coats and boots because they'd worn clothes for Cuba.

Driving back home, the four of us, Shelley talked about the approach to Cuba - over the Florida Keys, MC interjected, with that blue blue water - to the green green island surrounded by more of the same. Approaching Canada, what you see is grey. White and grey.

"Dun," I thought, but didn't say.

January was a fucking write-off. My god, that was the most miserable month I've had in a long time. A lot to do with D.Jack suddenly being gone, compounded by the fact that I was both a bit surprised and slightly worried by how big an effect his absence had on me. Compounded by the fact that hello, fucking Ottawa in the darkest month of the year, as dark as December without the memory of fall sun to bear you through.

What did I do? I knit a snake. I watched Mad Men. I ate the never ending containers of leftovers from my freezer. Most weekday mornings, I got up before 7 and did yoga.

I didn't write.

Waking up before 7 makes me irritable.

My anxiety was back too. I lost 5 pounds because that whir whir sits on top of my stomach and takes away my appetite.

I'm a little wiped out by January's vagaries, but now also feel more balanced than I have in a while.

When I left my house this morning at 10, the sun was warm on my cheeks and made my eyes ache.

Early early Monday morning, even before Freya had started her nightly yowls, there was a huge crash from outside. A booming crash that rung out for a while. A loud crash that had my heart pounding and my limbs stiff. It sounded like it was in my house, but since I missed the first part of it, I wasn't sure. And there was nothing more after the echo died down. So I breathed some deep breaths and went back to sleep.

In the morning, I poked around the house a bit, but didn't find anything.

It was garbage night, I said to myself. It was windy. Probably someone's garbage can blew into someone's house.

My neighbour must have been waiting for me last night. Because as soon as I'd flipped open my mailbox, after trudging home through the late afternoon gloom and spitty sky, I heard a throat-clearing harrumph.

"Oh!" I jumped. "Hi! Sorry, didn't see you there."

"Hello. Sorry to scare you. I was wondering if you noticed this." And he pointed between our houses.

There's a narrow gap between our houses. The edges of our roofs almost touch. It's on the other side of my front porch, and it's just pavement and no light, so I never look down there.

I looked. Looked down where he was pointing. At the twisted metal of god knows-

"My brother," he said, "Heard a huge crash around 3 am on Monday"

"3:14," I mumbled. It's what Shelley's clock had said when we compared notes.

"And when I came out in the morning, I saw this. It's the eavestrough, the soffit and the fascia. All the way nearly to the back."

"Oh! The fascia." I nodded and pursed my lips like I knew what he was talking about. The furrow in my brow was genuine, however, because whatever those twisted bits were down there, they were long and they were varied.

"I wondered if you hadn't seen it."

"No. I forget about this side of the house sometimes."

My poor neighbour. He must think we are completely hapless. Our garden was a disaster. Our driveway is a disaster. I haven't once mowed the lawn: my neighbour always breaks early, about when I'm thinking it might be time in a week or two. The house falls apart and we don't notice.

Goddamn. I wrote a very amusing blog post about how J. and I were knitting at the Manx on Monday night, her a Parisienne-esque scarf, me a snake for my nephew, right under Dave Tough's elbow as he played and sang his sweet songs.

And how we both fucked up our knitting, me because I was looking around too much and dropped a stitch, her because my knitting drama was too distracting for the moss stitch. How she joked that Rock And Roll Is No Good For Knitting, and that tickled me very much.

It was funny, goddammit. And touching. And I got to use the phrase "snake inches," as in Because I only had 28 stitches instead of 29, I had to tear out 3 snake inches.

And seeing as how "snake inches" is currently my favourite thing to say, this disappearance is highly disappointing, I'll tell you what.