My mom visited me for a whole week right at the end of May, and that week was full of an amazing number of activities. We went to the movies, trekked all over the city, and shopped like pros. We drank ice wine and very good coffee. We went out for breakfast and sushi. We even attended B.K.'s Knee Surgery/Jordan's in town party, and my mom was a very good sport.

My mom even gave me an unexpected present: a one-way first-class ticket back to Windsor, so I could ride home on the train with her (because Margaret Walschots only travels first class =)) and spend the weekend visiting my family. I hadn't been home since Easter, and happily took her up on her offer. I napped on the train, ate some surprisingly delicious salmon, had my rye-and-coke refilled at will, and looked forward to a quiet weekend around my family.

First of all, I did have a really nice time. I did some quality visiting, got to indulge in my favourite ice-cream at my favourite ice-cream parlour (hurrah for the Waterfront!), and mate much delicious home cooking.

Now that that's established, here is a list of events that took place in the 72 goddamn hours that I was away from home in Toronto:

- My dad and I got into several heated conversations about: nature v. nurture as it applied to the upbringing of serial killers; bullet entry- and exit-wounds; the type of person who's out at 2am anyway (I responded that "I am!" and my dad was scandalized); the purpose, function, and moral standing of Unions; and who ate the last bag of Cadbury mini-eggs someone had stockpiled in a rather poor hiding spot.

- Regarding Unions: Windsor City works are currently on strike (legitimately -- the two-tiered retirement benefits proposal from City Council is complete bullshit) over a retirement/pension benefits issue. This means that none of Windsor's parks or public spaces have been maintained, and garbage has not been collected, for, at the time of my visit, six weeks. This made the sick, crumbling city look even more post-apocalyptic than usual, with the garbage everywhere, knots of angry people gathered under tarps and around the entrances to public places, and weeds growing so tall it looked like nature was already starting to reclaim a space abandoned by humanity.

- While is a local discount grocery store, helping my grandmother do a little shopping, I felt the unmistakable sensation of a hand patting my ass. Wheeling around, I found the STORE MANAGER standing immediately behind me. When our eyes met, before I could begin the tirade I had waiting for him, he raised a hand to his brow, tipped his imaginary hat in an"afternoon, little lady" fashion, winked, and went back to pricing some produce. I exhaled my angry breath and could only shake my head in wonder.

DESPITE THIS, I managed to get a little nostalgic. Not for Windsor, which has long ago become a place that I happily escaped; I will never live there again. However, the time I spent in Amherstburg was nearly idyllic (maybe in contrast?). The weather was beautiful, all the flowers were out, and the breeze coming off the water was so sweet and cool. For a moment, just a moment, I was won over by its simple wholesomeness.

The universe must have heard my nostalgia, and decided that a reminder was in order. A reminder of how I came to loathe my surroundings during the two months I lived there last summer, when I was stranded and separated and clinically depressed. So just as I was thinking about the prettiness and cheap real estate of the town, sitting in the back of my dad's Jag, when the unmistakable throaty growl of a Harley pulled up next to us.

My dad owned a string of motorcycles over the course of his life, and still knows a lot of aging motorcycle dudes. One such dude had come up next to us at a red light, and started waving to my dad, who rolled the window down. The two yelled greetings over their respective engines. Then, Aging Motorcycle Dude spotted me. I was only about 7-11 when I rode about with my dad, but since my hair is blond again right now he recognized me.

"Hey sweetie! Given your dad any grandchildren yet? Got a bun in the oven?"

I was silent, and my dad managed to blurt out something helpful:

"She's working on it!"

Then the light turned green and the Harley roared away.

My Sunday, I was back in Toronto and felt this enormous rush of happiness to be home.

Labels: Clashes with Dominant Culture, Family and Friends, Toronto

I think I might be becoming left handed.

In late October 2007, I was about to go on tour for a month, and my then-husband bought guitar hero to keep him company while I was gone. When I played it for the first time, I felt like I was having a stroke. My hands seemed broken. I could not get the game to work. My brain knew what it wanted to do, but my hands just refused to cooperate. Then, on an impulse, I tried to play on lefty-flip, and suddenly it made sense to me. My hands knew what to do, and I actually got pretty good at it. I chalked it up to another innumerable little odd thing about me and moved on.

In the last couple of months, my hands have started getting weird again. It's not that my right hand is getting dumber, it's just that my left seems to be reaching up, grabbing nerve impulses, and taking over. I've caught myself mousing, opening the front door lock, and eating with my left hand. It's been neat.

Then, a week or so ago, I remembered a conversation. I was in the 2nd grade (I was in a grade 2-3 split), 7 years old, and at a time when things were still very nebulous. I wrote forwards and backwards (my parents often had to hold my notes up to a mirror to read then), I could read upside down...and I wrote using both hands. When one hand got tired, the other would take over. I was learning cursive at the time, and found I had to practice twice as much to make it neat because both hands needed their chance to commit the new shapes of the letters to muscle memory.

And Mrs. Jubenville, a kind Catholic woman a few years shy of retirement, suggested I write exclusively with my right hand. Whenever she saw me using my left hand, she would very gently take my pencil and place it in my right. I learned cursive more quickly. I kept using my left hand a bit longer, when no one could see me, but it was slower than my right and I soon gave up.

I had completely forgotten this had even happened until a couple of weeks ago, when, for a lark, I tried to write using my left hand, and the memory returned. The feeling of wanting to be correct, to do it "right." And while the memory is not violent or traumatic, it carried with it a great sense of loss.

I've been seeing a homeopath, who suggested I start brushing my teeth with my other hand, to give it something to do. I have chosen a notebook and, like a child, practice writing again. the letters are a little shaky and squashed still but it is coming quickly. My right hands holds the paper steady and seems grateful for the break.

I wonder what my left voice will be life. I wonder if there is a whole other half to my life, a buried lunar twin to all my thought, that suddenly wants out. I wonder how my name looks, my signature, when signed left.

Labels: Ancient History, Clashes with Dominant Culture

This past Thanksgiving was the that I've been able to spend with my family in four years. I've missed a lot of holidays, even a couple of Christmases, and there was a wonderful ordinariness of being about to spend a Turkey Day around relatives. This was also the first time I'd managed to come home since I moved at the beginning of September, and it was great to be able to spend time together now that I am officially Feeling Better (sponsored by Big Pharma!). When I was home in the summer, I was actually incapable of really enjoying their company. I was all miserable, all the time. Now, with a little time and a lot of psychotropics to the good, a small shaky happiness sprouting somewhere in the compost of my heart, I was much better company.

My brother's lovely girlfriedn, Kacy, was also in attendance, even though she's just undergone oral surgery and had her jaw wried shut. I had a great deal of fun with my mother, figuring out how to liquify meat (unsuccessfully) and pumpkin pie (successfully!). Since my parents were in a giddy mood, and I seemed unlikely to slip into the Black Abyss My Own Fucking Angst, my parents through that this joyous occasion would be a great opportunity to bring out a couple of family albums and to show Kacy what Michael and I were like as children.

I am usually not very fond of pictures of myself from when I was a child. I have an Ugly Complex, something I have chronicled on this blog before. I am greadually getting better, slowly shifting my mental weight from Ugly into merely Very Fucking Weird territory. Still, looking at pictures of myself from when I was small reminds me of the absolute horror I went through during that time as a quantum magnet for bullying, and taps into my Ugly complex in ways that tend to make me very uncomfortable.

There are two pictures of me, though, that I rather like, and it just so happened that the book my parents brought out contained it. The pictures were taken on my brother's fifth birthday, which would make me seven. My borther and I, along with about ten party guests, are doing some kind of crafty activity in the basement. All the of the other kids are engaged in what they are doing, attacking peices of contruction paper or trying to glue sequins to each other. I am sitting at one end of a small table by myself, my feet propped up, holding a marker as though it were a cigarette in long holder, twirling it between two fingers. In the first picture, I am staring into space, in my own world, as I bring the marker to my lips and pretend to inhale. In the second picture, I have noticed the camera and am the only one staring into it directly, now pretending to blow smoke rings at whoever is behind it (probably my dad).

I love the strangeness of this picture. By seven I already had a rich inner life that often felt more vivid and varied than my real one, and was perfectly content to escape into it anywhere and anytime. Even a child's birthday party could be transmuted into the bustle of a Parisian cafe. I also love the comfortableness I exude in it. I love how perfectly content I am to do my own thing, no matter how it looks to anyone else. My skin might be strange, but it is mine and in those pictures, I own it.

It's only now, only very lately, that I can say I feel that comfortable again. That's not to say I am still not wrestling with my Ugly complex, but even through this fight, I am finding something that feels like peace. It started, oddly enough, when I got rid of the last of my oldest clothes and started to really love just about everything that I wore. I've gotten bolder with my hair, and my new, very pink, very very punky 'do makes me happier than I can express. Yesterday, I caught myself singing aloud on the subway, caring not a whit for who heard me, and then actually startling myself with how comfortable I was in that moment.

I feel like I am seven again, reinventing myself every moment and fearlessly living in my own internal ladnscape. This time around, however, anyone who trties to beat my strangeness out of me is going to have a bit more trouble on their hands.

Labels: Ancient History, Clashes with Dominant Culture

Interior: Day. Public Bathroom.

Adorable Little Girl: look mom, that lady has pink hair!

Extremely Overweight and Grouchy Woman Wearing Very Very Tight Pink Stretchpants: Well, she must be some kinda weirdo.

Labels: Clashes with Dominant Culture