Radial Symmetry

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.

Representatives from the camps of winter, missing d.jack, PMS, earlier than usual mornings, and likely low iron are banding together to kick my ass.

I spend 10 minutes every morning arguing with myself about getting up. Things that don't usually irritate me are getting under my skin like thin needles. I push through air like it's water. All day.

The resistance is wearing.

Hawkeye* posted a BBC article today, entitled The G-spot 'doesn't appear to exist', say researchers. Always interested in the topic, I clicked through.

Now, I knew I'd be mad.

I was beginning to hope that g-spot as myth was being put to rest. So to read another set of researchers naysaying what the fuck I know is going on in my body, well, there's no way my reaction was going to be calm. But I didn't think I'd be this mad.

The article is uses words like "figment" and phrases like "the idea of a G-spot is subjective" and "encouraged by magazines and sex therapists."

Alright, I thought, maybe it's the media twisting words. So I found the abstract of the article: Genetic and Environmental Influences on Self-reported G-Spots in Women: A Twin Study.

Phew, I thought. Oh aha! I thought. See! I thought. It's about the fallibility of self-report! Not about the mythic- oh.

Here's are a couple of quotes from the abstract. Written by the alleged researchers:

There is an ongoing debate around the existence of the G-spot—an allegedly highly sensitive area on the anterior wall of the human vagina. The existence of the G-spot seems to be widely accepted among women, despite the failure of numerous behavioral, anatomical, and biochemical studies to prove its existence. Heritability has been demonstrated in all other genuine anatomical traits studied so far.

A possible explanation for the lack of heritability may be that women differ in their ability to detect their own (true) G-spots. However, we postulate that the reason for the lack of genetic variation—in contrast to other anatomical and physiological traits studied—is that there is no physiological or physical basis for the G-spot.

Allegedly highly sensitive? And you can fairly hear the acid condescension dripping off that "genuine." Nice bone to throw us there, with that "women [may] differ in their ability to detect their own (true) G-spots" before driving it home that you think we're all too easily swayed by sex therapists and fucking Cosmo to know what's happening when we put our fingers there, yeah, right there.

What is that parenthetical "true" doing there? Can women detect their own (fake) g-spots with statistical ease? Feels to me like it's just there to make sure there isn't even a whiff of having taken the g-spot seriously in the first place.

The level of personal disdain and venom that seeps through the stuffy writing is uncomfortable to read.

I'll throw them a bone and say yeah, there are probably tons of people out there who have really small g-spots that are either really hard or impossible to find. And that among those who have found them, there are probably tons who don't dig the sensation that much; or all the time; or whatever. Individual human anatomy and sexual response are both variable. Shocking.

Hey! Here's a thought.

Why don't you ask women to self-report on their appendices?

I mean my sister, whose appendix almost burst, could most certainly give you details about what it felt like and where it was. But mine's never been irritated in such a way that it's swelled up. So I couldn't tell you what it feels like. Don't think I haven't looked! My lover touches me in that general area all the time! And once I tried pressing really hard where the research says it's supposed to be. Still nothing! I will tell you, then, that I don't have one.

And if I don't have one but she does, then we're probably all making this shit up.

*Props to Hawkeye for posting it and giving me the idea for the title.

This year has been quite something. The big things that have happened have either been supremely excellent or heart-rendingly hard.

Hard or excellent, take your pick, it was a mostly unbloggable year Chez Butch.

Since not long after I started it, this blog became one of my main places for working internal shit out. We've all got that shit, I figure; most of it's not all that different from person to person. Maybe the details, but often not the reasons or root. And most of us feel terribly alone while we're trying to work it out. I wanted to feel less alone myself, and hoped that it would maybe make other people feel the same.

Which works fine if the emotional stuff you're working out are the increasingly weak aftershocks of things one or two decades old.

Peeling back the layers to get at the raw stuff means sharing the details. Without the context, it's just senseless wailing.

If the stuff you're dealing with is unfolding in real time, around you now, it isn't ghosts conjured by your messed up chemistry. It involves the details - and, more importantly, the feelings - of the lives of people you love. Who would, perhaps, choose not to share their lives with the internet.

And so, the hard stuff has been absolutely unbloggable.

It's all to do with family. I started 2009 with a lot of certainty as to what my life was going to look like in the near and distant future. That has shifted significantly and I have no real idea what my life will look like in 12 months, 5 years, a decade.

None of us do, not really, but I always liked to pretend. I clung to the visions I conjured up. I'm not sure that doing so was particularly good for me. This year I have been learning how to open up to what happens a bit better. That hasn't happened without a lot of crying.

The excellent stuff was both very much and only slightly more bloggable.

Chronologically last, I wrote a novel this year, which you've already heard more than enough about. It was a door slamming shut on one phase of my writing life. The next door is open, and I'm taking a breather before stepping through to take a look around at what's in the next room. It's exhilarating and a little terrifying.

Chronologically first, I fell in love. It crept up kind of slowly, which is an emotional first for me. I've tended to not so much fall in love with people as throw myself out of a plane at super high altitude without checking my parachute. I moved in with my band boy ex after we'd been dating for 6 months. Eric and I had our first four dates in four days.

The unspoken plan with D., at least back in May, was that we'd have a fun summer together, full of kisses and larfs, and then he'd head back to London and we would drift quietly and amicably back to being acquaintances. Except he didn't and we most definitely didn't. He stayed and I though that was excellent.

Normally I'd have been blogging it the whole way along, as I have with the other people I've dated in the past 4 or 5 years. This time, I wanted the space to feel all my feelings, to not pin them down or push them along the most narratable path. Those feelings continue to grow and I continue to want to give them free rein.

2010 might also be nigh unbloggable. It's hard to say. The stuff that started this year will still be playing out through the next.

We'll see how much I want to write about it.

Down to the wire, we are. My co-workers are dropping into their holidays like flies into sugar water. I'm enjoying the easy small talk that vacation plans afford. I am wholly unenthused about any of it except having next week off.

But I'm ready, nonetheless. After some cursing in an LCBO parking lot, I finished my shopping on Saturday. And seeing as how I neither bake nor decorate for the holidays, I was prepared for that quite a while ago.

I leave for Stouffville in a couple days, flying into Toronto for the first time, ever, instead of driving. My time until then is pretty packed: the annual xmas pedicure, with ST and The Tourist; soup to slurp; a scarf to finish knitting; presents to wrap; White Christmas with J.; the Chandeliers and beer at Babylon; Christmas Eve brunchy eggs and bacon with D.Jack; prezzies with the KGRF.

And then it will take me two hours to get back to a town that is not my home town, but the closest thing I've got going, and that's including the 45 minute drive back east from the airport. My dad got a cell phone special, just so I could call him when I landed.

I did something today that should be making me really happy but is leaving me feeling more mixed: I booked tickets to go to London, Ontario at the end of January.

Why, you may well be asking, should anyone be happy about buying tickets to anywhere in Ontario at the end of January?

The answer, of course, is love. I'll be flying to that fair city in the dead of fracking winter to visit D.Jack. And when I get there, you can be very certain that I'm going to be very happy about the getting there.

But the going that precedes the getting? Oh, not so happy about that, not at all.

I've been putting off buying the tickets and putting off buying the tickets. Tomorrow maybe, or I'll just wait for [issathing]. My hesitancy was throwing me off a bit.

Why wasn't I on booking that visit like white on rice?

It hit me this evening, not so long ago. Because it's also making me sad. I think one could properly say that today I have been moping. I pulled it together for a coffee with Steve, but other than that, I have been Eeyoring around the house and all along my route of chores.

Of course, it's fine. It's only for a few months, and now we have plans to see each other in January and in February. It's not like I'm lacking for stuff to do of an evening and the internet - our main method of communication, even when we live close - is always right there.

Notwithstanding: I'll miss him, and sorely.

Though the fact that he is in my life to miss? Some happiness in and of itself, right there.

I have not been outside for more than 5 minutes in the last 24 hours. And that was only to the corner of the house to put out the compost and the garbage.

What I have done, however, is

• make 1 pot of lentils and barley
• make 1 bread pudding
• scrub 2 bathrooms
• mop 3 floors
• read 4 stories
• wash 1,000,000 dishes
• drink 2 cups of coffee
• read 8 blog posts

My house was filthy. Not by 20 year old boy standards or anything. But by my mid-30s anal-retentive lady standards? Ew. I haven't done any real housework since about the first week of November, right around the time I was getting into the thick of the novel.

And that's no big deal, I know, except it was wearing on me and making me feel weird. I like to putter. Making some things clean and putting other things in their right places fills me with a sense of satisfaction and there-ness that I can't get in another way. The laying on of hands, as it were, as if my house and I were both living organisms, symbiotic.

I was already feeling weird, too. Still am, a bit. Uncomfortable in my skin weird, wavery around the edges. A restlessness.

It was very strange to go from writing 2000-5000 words a day to writing none. I feel the withdrawal symptoms off and on: an itching along the insides of my fingers; too many thoughts too fast to write down.

Every time I thought of sitting down to write anything though, my writing muscle balked. Or rather, I pressed on it and realized it was clenched up tight in recoil after being used so hard. It's loosening up slowly now.

And as always, I wish it were getting more flexible faster.

I'm not gone gone, but I am tired.

It's been a week since I've stopped writing, and I haven't really written anything since then - spent most of the week catching up on visits with the people I couldn't see because I was writing most of the time.

I should probably do my dishes, I should probably sweep the floor. I should probably write a more engaged and engaging blog post.

Instead, I will pour myself a scotch, watch some TV on the Internet, and believe for a moment that things just happen when they need to happen.