October 21st, 2007

Snapshot of a Portrait

As I ran through the jewel-toned ravine this morning, a lot of people were out being idyllic (well, me too, I guess, except sweatier). Dogs fetched, couples clung, children raced and shrieked. From a distance, as spotted a toddler half-buried in a pile of ruby leaves, his parents crouching near, his older brother dumping more orange and red on his head. Perfect. As I approached, though, I saw the camera, the zoom lens, the waiting tripod. The brother was not goofing around with the leaves, he was *arranging* them, at the directives of his squinting, head-tilted mother.

Was this an “oh dear” moment? Well, it would’ve been, except that the younger boy, the one in the leaves, was having a ball. He’s 18 months old, he didn’t know he was participating in the manufacture of an idyllic moment to show the neighbours. He was cawing and flapping his arms and attempting chuck leaves back at his bro, who also seemed to be having a pretty good time stage-managing the event. I bet they were getting some great shots.

But were they real or weren’t they?

This was a very thematic run, as I have been reading and thinking and writing very much lately about the trifurcation lines of truth, fiction and lies. I know these are not exactly discrete categories, but they fall along generally accepted lines: If I tell you an anecdote from my life, like the one above, you accept that it is more or less what actually was, through my own unique rose-coloured vision. If you’d been there, you might have noticed different details or had a different take, but the same events would be universally acknowledged. If I tell you a story made up out of my head, you enjoy it or not based on its aesthetic qualities, moral qualities, entertainment value, whatever–but you know you can’t check the facts, you don’t attempt to go there.

The third is the second masquerading as the first. You think I have told you a participatory anecedote, but when you try to get inside it the tent collapses: when you invite me running I have no wind after half a km, when you go to the ravine it is barren of trees. If you’d just known it was fiction, you would’ve read it entirely differently, learned something entirely else.

But exactly is the line? That family might never have played in the tree-fall if they hadn’t wanted the shot, or maybe they’d been about to set off to play when it occured to someone to bring the camera. The picture will show a smile that will be genunine, so that picture will be true, the one in the frame. Maybe the picture I’m arguing with is not the one they took but the one I saw, jogging nearer, thinking the parents were playing with their kids, which they weren’t doing. But who told me to look, who invited me into the frame (to totally destroy my own metaphor)? This story wasn’t being told to me.

Clearly I think too much, and the stories I’m actually supposed to be writing aren’t going too well. I think I’ll take a shower and walk around in the sunshine go see the Free Biscuit-eers–there’s always inspiration around here somewhere.

I took a shadow and I looked inside
RR

July 20th, 2007

The March of Time

I’m having a weird day. I left for my run this morning without my watch. I don’t think I’ve been out of the house without a watch in at least a year, probably more. What I have to show for my vaguely OCD-ish tendencies is a smear of pale on my left wrist, and reputation for being late anyways. I elected not to go back for it, since it takes me about the same amount of time to run 7km whether I pace it out or not. But I kept forgetting, and raising my blank wrist and just seeing my tan line instead. I wondered if running in the sun for an hour would erase said line. Not that I love it so, but it would seem kind of weird, not to be able to track the passage of time or even have evidence that I usually do.

As I ran, as far as know, Eleanor was being euthanized. My parents realized that this was necessary after the vets discovered that her jaw was so fractured that, even with surgery, it might not be possible for her to ever eat unassisted. It was necessary to be merciful, not to drag out her time when there could be no joy in, much as she will be missed.

Some of you have heard this before from me, but I find it comforting: my friend Y. once said that he could always say goodbye to his pets when it came their time because those were relationships without words. Nothing said or unsaid needs to be regretted; unconditional love is timelessly, wordlessly, perfectly understood.

Perhaps that’s why I could have a good run, a perfectly charming literary lunch with Kerry and a reasonable shift at work, all with just a small spark of sadness in the back of my mind. Eleanor will leave a gap in the future, surely, but the important time was the time while she was here.

But I’m still sad.

RR

May 18th, 2007

Victoriana

The world is shiny leafy green bird-ridden and nearly the holiday weekend. I’m at work now, and I work tomorrow, but then I get taken to my favourite beachfront Lake Erie restaurant in the official kickoff to pre-birthday festivities, for both myself and Ms. Victoria. Yay! And the mailbox contained “Awake is the New Sleep” by Ben Lee this morning. And it was as catchy as the title indicates, despite the fact that Mr. Lee seems to thank his guru in the liner notes.

And in the valley today, it was an avian rainbow, with a cardinal, a Baltimore Oriole, too many robins to count and a pair of decidedly loved-up finches. Such brilliance as I trotted along. I think I’m starting to come up to speed for the summer months, although also this morning I baked bread and ate rather a lot of it, which isn’t helping my training. It’s funny, with running or writing or speaking or thinking, I’m never really sure how I’m doing, but when I bake good bread, I know it’s good. I can be absolutely positive, even if other people don’t want to eat any. This morning’s batch? Best ever. In my humble opinion.

The head can be a prison / And these are just conjugal visits

RR

May 11th, 2007

Colour wheel

In addition to myriad fine-motor-skill deficits, my inability to grasp the colour wheel also held me back in elementary school art. Complementary colours seemed a rather random game to me. Mainly I couldn’t draw/paint/sculpt anything that looked like anything, but the colour wheel was factor in those Cs, too.

Really, green and blue *can’t* clash, can they? Shimmery green leaves and brilliant blue sky? Grey-green shadowy water and blue-green sun-lit water? Perfectly complementary. Jaime used to say, “Blue and green should never be seen, except for in the washing machine,” and perhaps as a sartorial choice, the combination lacks something, but in nature…

I’ve been running in the valley again, can you tell? Oh, big clear city! From down there, early in the morning, you can’t even imagine smog. Now my knees hurt, but I don’t care–too perfect.

In other news, I got my meanest rejection letter ever today. I’m sort of jazzed by it. Perhaps because in the SIX MONTHS it took them to respond, I had already made the suggested changes. Perhaps because anything is better than the form letter paper-clipped to a single page from your story because the letter doesn’t even have the story title in it (maybe even worse, the story name the only thing typed in Times New Roman, while the rest of the letter is in Ariel, or vice versa, or whatever typographic slight can be mustered). Perhaps because irritation takes energy and I’m always flattered when editors expend any energy on my work.

Perhaps I am deluding myself. But I’m still in a good mood.

Younger and prettier / but no better off
RR

April 16th, 2007

At the platform’s edge

I feel a bit as if I’m on the eve of my execution just now, for in 22 minutes I must depart for the far reaches of Scarborough, invigilate that pesky exam and then mark all 82 of them over 60 hours in the course of the next five business days. FIVE! Argh. So the party of post-thesis is effectively over in 22 minutes, at least for a while.

But, if I’m truly to be executed, then the Becky Eats even on Saturday night was a suitable last meal, delicious and convivial and about 5 hours long, as all the best meals are. Mmm, creme brulee (I don’t know how to accent on this computer [or any computer]–sorry).

Yesterday’s attempt to be free and frolicsome didn’t exactly pan out, but I did manage my first ever post-surgery run. I concerned that the impact of feet on sidewalk would excessively jolt my healing jaw, but with my new ugly-but-well-cushioned sneakers (white with *shiny* blue patches on the sides–something a London gang-banger’s girlfriend would wear in 1987, I think, but so comfortable) all was serene. And I felt happily healthy, although I spent the rest of the largely inert, reading and (pretending) writing.

Ten more minutes. There is scarcely anyone in the library. Why is no one freaking out except me?

For a year we caught his tears in a jar
RR