June 24th, 2011

Up to date doings

A few things I am/will be/was up to:

Talking about punctuation in dialogue and John Metcalf’s (excellent) commentary on it, along with Cathy Stonehouse, on The Devil’s Engine on the Biblioasis blog.

I also participated in a discussion of Social Awkwardness Dread hosted by the lovely Jessica Westhead on Open Book Toronto. Hilarious and refreshing to see that so many of us are worried about the same sorts of things.

Upcoming is my story “Waiting for Women” on the wonderful short-story website Joyland around the middle of September, which I am very excited about! Yay!

And to provide some content other than just links, here is a short transcript of a conversation that took place in J’s car yesterday:

R: What’s that?
J: What?
R: There, on that Escalade? Above the name?
J: That’s a sticker. It’s supposed to look like bullet holes.
R: Seriously? They make stickers like that?
J: Yeah.
R: Well, it totally worked on me–I thought it was bullet holes. I am the target market for that sticker.
J: You seriously thought it was bullet holes?
R: Well considering it’s a minivan* and we’re in Scarborough…I was hoping to be wrong though.

*Internet research indicates an Escalade is not a minivan. But it looks like one!

February 28th, 2011

The Bad Driver Chronicles

I was once a fairly awesome driver–I could navigate street-parking in downtown Toronto without getting (too) flustered and drove solo to Ottawa and Massachussets. Not truly champion material, but I was damn good. It didn’t come naturally to me though; I struggled learning to drive and only got my license on the third try. It didn’t help that my driving instructor turned out to be crazy (he mainly played the magnetic fish game and chanted hymns while I drove), so I had to learn to drive from my father. The adage that you should never learn to drive from someone who loves you is true–it’s just too scary for them to let you drive the speed limit. Add to that that my dad is the best driver I know, and can’t really accept that I could be less good than him but still competent, and also at that time he hadn’t been a passenger seat in 20 years (I’m barely exaggerating) and you have basically a year of shouting matches. But he taught me well, and after I was finally able to drive unsupervised, I had jobs that caused me to drive long distances every day, cementing my lessons.

However, there was a period of, oh, the last 10 years, when I’ve only occasionally needed to drive, and rarely had a car available otherwise. And my skills, such as they were, atrophied. It took a long time to get into trouble–like I say, I was actually pretty good, so I had a long way to fall. But I realized this summer, too late, trying to drive through Quebec City on the TransCanada, that I’m not all that good anymore. I still know the rules of the road, and I’m still fairly smooth most of the time. But I’m no longer a good enough driver to deal with bad drivers–and as anyone who’s been on a public thoroughfare knows, one really has to be. If you cut me off and it’s a close call for me not to hit you, I’m so floored that it’s miles before I’m able to pull it together. I don’t know what would happen if this happened twice in close succession.

I also have a huge problem with tailgaters–they scare me to death. I actually tried to look up if tailgating is illegal in Ontario but couldn’t figure it out (but did find out that the only time it is legal for an airplane to take off from a provincial highway is when it had to land there for emergency puroposes). Do you know? Anyway, to me tailgating is following so closely that you would not have sufficient time to stop if the person in front braked suddenly (ie., if a cat ran in the road, a sudden slowdown in traffic, meteor shower). I think people do it to subtly remind me that I am driving too slowly, or perhaps to punish me for doing so.

And I do occasionally drive too slowly. Good drivers and bad drivers alike both speed, but only bad drivers ever drive too slowly for conditions. It’s really really hard to convince one’s reptile brain that when piloting a tonne of hurtling steel amid other tonnes of hurtling steel, the safest thing to do is not to slow down but speed up. Mainly I can force myself, and since I’m not driving alone these days, otherwise my passenger/coach will tell me to pick up the pace. However, when really startled or panicked, yes, I admit it, I’m that idiot going 70km/h in the centre lane on the Gardiner.

I’m sorry! I really am, and it usually only takes me a minute or two to get it together. For the folks behind me who are infuriated by that 70k minute, please just honk or give me the finger or something that does not imperil our lives. Because trust me, giving me a new thing to be afraid of is not going to speed things along!

I’m a little worried that this post makes me sound like a public nuisance and/or a danger, and I’m really not–I’m just not 100% as a driver. I want to be, and am trying to practice, but since there is almost no time that I *need* to drive, and anyway, I don’t have a car, it’s a bit of a slow process. If you have any tips about how to get back in the saddle as a confident driver, how to shake off tailgaters, or even a Toronto driving instructor that teaches not how to drive but how to driver really well, I’m all ears!

June 29th, 2010

Riviere-du-Loup and Charlottetown

Two days worth of driving brought one Toyota Corolla from Ontario to Riviere-du-Loup to Charlottetown. It was an extremely pretty drive. Two things to point out: the sunsets in Riviere-du-Loup are awesome:

Sunset view from the Days Inn, Riviere-du-Loup.

And the drivers in Quebec City are *so mean*. I have never been tailgated with such obvious intent to kill. Nuff said.

This post would be longer, but I am off to tour the Cows Ice Creamery. Ah, vacation!

September 8th, 2008

Eden Mills Recap

Yesterday morning, Kerry Clare and I set off for the Eden Mills Writers Festival, to listen to the readings, buy the books, be short-listed for the Eden Mills Literary Contest (KC’s story “Stillborn Friends”) and to read at the Mill (RR’s story “ContEd”). It didn’t start to rain until we were at the rental car place, and it didn’t start to pour until we hit the 401. I’m actually a fine driver (far better than you’d think if you know me socially, I’d say) but the 401 becomes whitewater in a downpour, and I am not that much *better* than fine. At least white-knuckling the highway took my mind off my terror about doing the reading.

But we didn’t die under the wheels of a semi, and instead arrived in the still-pouring downpour, and sloshed into the, you guessed it, outdoor festival venue. By the time I’d signed in, it was pretty close to my cue to read, but there was of course still time to sneak by the Biblioasis tent and see, for the first time ever, my book.

I knew what it looked like, since I spent three years writing the thing and saw every version of it, and the cover mock-ups, the advanced reading copies, etc. I knew it would be there, since Dan (Wells, Biblioasis publisher) had promised to bring copies. It really should’ve been a zero-suspense moment, but, um, it was absolutely thrilling. There was *Once*, out in the world, separate from me and all the people who have been working so hard on it–a big stack, looking pretty much perfect, and ready to be taken away and read. Something about the thought that the book is now fully self-contained, that anyone, strangers can read it if they feel like it, is what really hit me at that moment, I think.

Dan put a copy in my hands and hugged me and a photographer took my picture, and someone asked me to sign a copy, and my mentor Leon Rooke suddenly appeared to congratulate me, and I hugged him, and hugged Kerry, and somehow got out from under my umbrella and got wet…

I think, once in a while, something can be exactly as good as you dreamt it would be.

And then I went down to the Mill, which is a lovely setting to read in. There is a hill facing the water, a natural amphitheatre looking out across a tiny inlet to another spit of land where the stage-tent and microphones were set up. Of course, with the downpour ever increasing, all that surrounding water seemed a bit much, and I was rather alarmed crossing the slick-boarded bridge to the stage. But fellow readers Elspeth Cameron and David Chariandy were spell-binding enough to make me forget all the splashing and chill under my umbrella. Almost more amazing than anything was the fact that people stayed to hear me, the last reader. After 40 minutes in the deluge, when I walked to to the podium, perhaps 50 or 60 soggy people peered at me through the curtain of water, waiting patiently to hear what I had to say.

And I didn’t die under the wheels of a semi! Or fall into the water, or make any egregious stumbles in my reading. It was probably the most audible reading I’ve ever given–I’m getting louder! And…and…I read it out of the actual book! Hooray!

Whew. It was all gleeful after that. Stars of the afternoon included Mariko Tamaki, Paul Quarrington, Shari Lapena, Laurence Hill and, of course, Leon Rooke. Another star: the sun! It came out and was lovely warm for most of the afternoonn. My clothes got dry, even my feet. And we were fed dinner in the community centre, served by adorable children so eager in their work that they would sometimes watch you take the final bite of your salad with their hands on the rim of the plate. Hilarious!

And then, after getting briefly stuck in the mud of the parking area, we drove home. I was very very tired and over-stimulated, a state in which it is my preference to drive 20 kilometres under the speed limit. And it is a testament to Kerry Clare’s truly wonderful spirit that she neither attempted to decapitate me with one of our Eden Mills Mix cds (which would’ve been a tragic loss of both me and music), nor closed her eyes and let me get away with disrupting traffic. And we didn’t die under the wheels of a semi, or even ding the rental car, thanks mainly to Kerry’s gentle guidance, and then we were home.

I am very lucky in my friends, and in many things.

My best friend Leslie said / oh she’s just being Miley
RR

February 15th, 2008

Car Accident

On the way home from seeing the always charming and thought-provoking Russell Smith speak, the car I was in got rear-ended. Obviously, it was a very small accident, all parties were uninjured, or I would not be cheerfully typing this post in such a devil-may-care manner. In truth, though we’re all fine, the damage was minor, and I was home an hour later, I’m rather alarmed about the whole event. “I was in a car accident” *sounds* so serious, like “I had a heart attack” or “I got mugged.” Ew.

Plus, and this goes to show what a creature of media I am, I was very freaked out by the fact that vehicles colliding in actuality is nothing like how it is depicted in films, on tv and in books. When I had surgery last year, I was thrilled to find that ORs really look like those on tv, and coming out of anesthesia feels like it’s described in fiction. On the other hand, filmic car accidents seem to have more give and crush, metal bending into metal. In real life, it’s an unyielding feeling, like being whoomped in the back of the head by a brick wall (we were stopped at the time, maybe that’s why). It feels like the end of time, this awful if really short silence before everyone yells, “Are you all right?”

We all were, I can’t emphasize that enough. It’s just another illusion shattered really. Plus a taillight.

I would’ve hit them
RR