September 13th, 2010

Reality: not a good idea

Years ago, I knew some people very distantly–“saw around” is probably closer than “knew”–who struck me as interesting. Then we had a series of interactions, very brief, that made me intensely curious about how they could possibly relate to each other, let alone get along as well as they seemed to. They treated each other (and me) very strangely, and while it was fine to treat me any way they liked, since they never had to talk to me again, I couldn’t imagine how they could stick with each other like that. The whole thing was very very odd.

Afterwards, as we all made good on that opportunity not to speak again, I thought about those folks a lot, and began to try to work out possible reasons for them to have acted as they had. I started filling in motivations and also backgrounds, childhoods, hometowns, central people in their lives, etc. Finally, I came up with a rather plausible world and lives for these acquaintances, whom by that time I had lost track of entirely in the real world. Mind you, I had no notion I was putting together the *right* or even probable background for these people; I just wanted something logical to quiet my mind.

Once I had that logical thing, I realized what it was was a story, of the sort I write, so I wrote it. Through many drafts, it shed almost all of its antecdents in reality , and took on more and more of my imaginings. Finally I published it–and I think it’s one of my favourite pieces–with only a few bits of physical description linking it to the original “characters” who inspired it. I’m quite certain not even they would recognize themselves.

This all took years, because I have an incredibly hard time working from reality: I have to almost entirely digest and regurgitate something in my own way before I can write it. I have to make it my own, which means throwing out 99% of the reality it came from, and just keeping some tiny nugget that makes the connection for me, though it’s likely entirely lost on the reader. So that’s my process, if you are curious, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that, a few weeks ago, owing to the wild randomness of the web and people’s sense of privacy or lack thereof, I found out what was going on all those years ago. Not quite all of it, mind you, and not what anyone thought of me personally (though I can guess), but quite a bit of the emotional background and actual events leading up to that period, enough to pretty much know why it all happened. I also found out, in broad strokes, almost everything that happened to one of the characters in the years since.

I was so wrong. SO wrong, about everything. I am trying to keep this as vague as possible so that no one will ever work out who I mean, but I do have to say: I would never ever have guessed the role of the ukelele in all this. True!

And then I freaked out slightly, and am perhaps still doing so. It’s hard to pin down why. I don’t care that I was wrong, because I never set out to be *right*–I just wanted a story that would satisfy my own desire for logic and closure and narrative. It’s more like in those time-traveller books when a self from the past or future comes along and bothers its present incarnation. I made up these fictional characters to take the place of the real people in my mind–the real people went *away* and were not interested in explaining themselves to me, so I replaced them. And now the really people are *back*, insisting on their real-ness, disrupting the space-time continuum.

I don’t like it.

This is why 90% of my stories are made up out of the whole cloth–less interference. But even when you just take a grain of real-life, it can still mess with your head. I am not a journalist, and don’t owe a moment’s thought to empirical accuracy–fiction writers are all about emotional truth, however it might be told. But it is bad for my brain, not to mention my morale, to have competing versions of my work show up with greater truth claims than I could ever muster.

Oh fellow writers, how do you deal with this?

September 10th, 2010

A fun sort of freakishness

I am very tired and miserable today, so I thought I would cheer myself and possibly my readers by talking about one of my better skills: winning raffles. I don’t know if talking about my gift in this way will cause it to evaporate, but I have been silent too long: I am Rebecca, and I win raffles. Not always, but an awful lot.

It all started when I was 5, with my first-ever raffle ticket. My parents had valiently held out against the Cabbage Patch Kid craze, insisting that no toy that was worth whatever they cost, I think maybe $40 or so. But they did consent to give me a $1 to enter the raffle at the local fair, one of the prizes for which was a Cabbage Patch Premie, pretty much the most adorable thing ever.

“I’m going to win that doll,” I told my mother.

“That’s not the way it works. You just pay for a chance to put your ticket in with a lot of other people’s tickets and they only draw one. You probably won’t win the doll,” said my mother.

I won the doll. Terrible lesson. Or at least, it would have been if I didn’t continue to win stuff.

Mind you, I’m talking about raffles–local fundraisers with prizes donated by the community or door prizes at parties, not lotteries or sweepstakes or anything involving a cruise ship. I think the most any of my prizes has been worth is about $100, and mainlysignificantly less. Plus the largest *cash* prize I’ve ever received was $8. But I’ve gotten some nice stuff, and it’s good for morale to win things. Here, for the sake of my morale, and to prove that my gift is real, is a lifetime list of stuff I’ve won in raffles (more or less chronological):

–Cabbage Patch premie

–stuffed white dog holding Christmas stocking in mouth

–My Little Pony baby seahorse

–black corderoy trucker’s cap with advert for local famer’s co-op on it

–stuffed white bear wearing red scarf

–dinner at Swiss Chalet

–anthology of poetry reviews

–bag of Hallowe’en chocolate

–bath set (there may have been more than one of these; sort of a blur)

–chance to go see Tragically Hip for only $7

–enormous cookie

–gift certificate to bowling alley

–ritzy dinner in French restaurant

–Mac8600 (used)

–$100 gift certificate for Ryerson bookstore

–$20 gift certificate for Amazon.ca

–centrepieces (many; mostly ones I could not carry on the bus and had to leave behind; once famously a tin sandbucket, which I have grown very attached to)

–elaborately frosted chocolate cake

–broadside by Al Purdy about Charle Bukowski

–movie tickets, various, including passes to any cinema, passes to press screenings of new movies, and tickets to a TIFF screening

–hand mirror with matching brush

–illustrated copy of Hamlet

August 10th, 2010

Elvis Costello: Totally Messing with Me

So I am having a complete meltdown tonight because (brace yourself): there are TWO “American without Tears,” which is a song, well, two songs by Elvis Costello. And then I knew, the one I thought was the only one and wrote about in a short story once (as you probably do not recall, it was “Chilly Girl”) is the “other” one, some sort of freak song or “Twilight Version” Costello seems to have recorded the following year and stuck on *Blood and Chocolate* as a bonus track for the version released in the UK. The version it seems people actually *know* was on side 2 of King of America and is completely different lyrics, different instrumentation…

Don’t panic, the scene in “Chilly Girl” makes sense no matter which version you are thinking of, as they have the same time sig and basically the same melody. But nothing else makes sense any more–my brain can’t process this. It’s like finding out your boyfriend has a nice clone you can take to parties if you want. Ok, it’s nothing like that, but it’s still really really weird.

I actually like the “new” version a lot, too, but I guess my roots will forever remain with the Twilight version. And so I leave you with…

December 1965 in Caracas
When Arnie LaFlamme took his piece of the pie
When he packed up the casino chips, the IOU and the abacus
And switched off the jukebox in a “A Fool Such As I”

He was a leg man who was open to offers
But he couldn’t get her off his mind as he passed the tourist office
And as he entertained himself singing just like Sammy Davis Junior
He toyed with a trip to Miami

…

Swoon. Costello is totally a short-story writer in musical form.

August 5th, 2010

Great, just great

My apartment building’s basement, 8:34 this evening (click to enlarge):

Crazy basement note (and rebuttal)

Oh yeah, this won’t end well. I’m actually pretty worried–this is a ramp up on the crazy, even for this building. That’s not paper, by the way; it’s a 2×3 foot piece of bristol board, like you do a science project on in grade three. Worried (but still pleased by use of “signage”–the rebutter has clearly worked in retail!)

July 20th, 2010

Randomality

I have been working on an actual literarily related post that’s really long and complicated and totally not done, and now I don’t have time to work on it. But I also haven’t posted in ages, and that leaves a void in my life, so here’s a few funny things people have said and done in my proximaty lately:

My yoga teacher: “Just let your tongue sort of hang out in the centre of your mouth.”

Well-dressed middle-aged woman at bus stop, after asking me directions to a place she had only a number for, but did not know what street that number was supposed to be on: stuck her finger directly (and far!) up her nose while listening to my baffled reply.

Teenaged girl I eavesdropped on at Starbucks while she was talking to a male friend: (repeatedly) “I know I’m not, like, ugly or anything, but I just don’t think I’m *that* pretty.”

I heart this town. Especially now that is not 10 000 degrees. More soon!

July 1st, 2010

Literary Pilgrimage

I think I might have written about visiting the house that inspired Anne of Green Gables in December, but that was all snow-covered and non-functional for the winter (though still splendid). In summertime, you can tour the house, which was actually originally just the house of some people LM Montgomery knew, that she transformed in her imagination to be the Cuthbert farm. But the descendents of that family donated the house to be an Anne sanctuary, and it has been redone as LM imagined it. And whoever did the decor did a pretty good job of making it coincide with how I pictured it during my approximately 20 readings of the original book. I thought Anne’s bedroom particularly accurate.

Anne's room at Green Gables.

But other spots were less so, and those I just admired but then dismissed. Seeing the house was really cool and interesting from a historical perspective, but as literature, the book remains separate for me. What happens between a reader and the page builds a world, and I found I really couldn’t add anything from some other world (even if it is the “real” one) into the one LM and I created as I read (and reread). I had a lovely time and would be curious to make other literary pilgrimages, but I think curiosity is the total of my feelings on these. Which is an interesting discovery, really.

I might feel differently if the book were nonfiction…if I read any nonfiction.

June 19th, 2010

Pretty Spam

Today I got a note that said:

“which thou dost scatter on every little blade of grass for on the turbid current of his passion which thou dost scatter on every little blade of grass”

That’s it–no advert for a designer watch or attachment of doomful virus. I mean, I don’t love the use of “turbid”, but it’s better than most!

May 19th, 2010

Pivot Farewell

Tonight is a Pivot at the Press Club reading with Jeff Latosik, Sachiko Murakami and Souvankham Thammavongsa.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
8 p.m. at the Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
Hosted by Carey Toane
PWYC ($5 suggested)

Obviously, the readers, venue, and fab Pivot crowd would make this a worthwhile evening, but I also wanted to mention that this is mistress of ceremonies Carey Toane’s last night at the mic. She is off to thrilling new horizons and I am sure there is an exciting sucession plan in place (perhaps we will learn of this tonight??) but I am still sad.

For a year and two-thirds, Carey has booked, advertised, organized and hosted Pivot every other Wednesday and she has done a just incredible job–especially when you consider her own poetry, her Toronto Poetry Vendors project, and a day job, too! If you’ve never had the joy of attending a reading, I can tell you that all ran smoothly and joyfully, and Carey was always funny and warm onstage (and off, for that matter). I can speak from experience to say she made the readers and the audience both feel a part of something special, and she gave some good hugs.

In August 2008, when Alex Boyd, the wonderful host of IV Lounge, announced that that series would end, and that something new would replace it, I was similarly sad. These series have a way of changing and growing in wonderful ways–but things are pretty wonderful the way have been, too!

Thanks for all you’ve done, Carey–we’ll miss you!

April 30th, 2010

Good/bad

Fred just reminded me of our every-five-years-or-so project, 1000 Things We Like (I guess since we’ve done it twice now, it’s thus far 2000 Things We Like and Counting). If you want in on the action, meet me back here in 2012, but in the meantime, this list reflects that today is a fairly well-balanced day, but I wish it were more 1000 Thingsy:

Good: Kashi Raspberry Chocolate Granola Bars

Bad: Realizing the fridge you’ve been storing your lunch in does not work, and is basically a well-sealed cupboard.

Good: Catsitting, and ensuing cheerfully one-sided conversations about weather, snacks, and people who are jerks.

Bad: Looking down during yoga class and realizing your black pants are covered in white kitty fur.

Good: Nice weather.

Bad: Short attention span.

Good: Gorgeous fountain pen in the mail.

Bad: Attempting to listen to instructions on how to fill fountain pen over the phone, shortly followed by realization that one is soon to be covered in ink and/or very embarrassed at a high-end stationers.

Good: K’s birthday.

Bad: K far away in England, unavailable for celebration/cake/hug. In fact, all of the most ardent supports of 1000 Things are unavailable for hugging or any close-at-hand celebrations.

Good: Literary Salon at the glammy-glam Spoke club on Tuesday night.

Bad: Being too old to go out during the week without being sad the next morning.

Good: The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

Bad: Adams still dead.

Good: When I get home, cat will be there.

Bad: Now worry constantly when I am out that cat will eat plants and get sick.

Good: Internet for random useless but friendly and entertaining yammer.

Bad: Useless URLs.

Good: Well, it’d be better with a “b”, in my opinion…

RR

April 28th, 2010

Insane conversation in my hallway just now

From beyond my apartment door: incessant meowing