March 25th, 2009

Always highlights

On the macro, today sort of sucked, but on the micro, there are always highlights:

1) On the bus, the girl to my left starts to cry. Guy to my right watches with increasing concern, nudges me, makes meaningful eye-contact, then glances over at the girl. He wants me to ask if she’s ok, I guess, which I am loath to do, because I tuned in slightly earlier than he did and caught the cellphone conversation that preceded the tears. The tone of that chat (“He did? The fuck? No! I don’t want–No! Man, I really wish you had told me. Well, fuck that. No, seriously, I can’t listen to you–well, fuck that.”) indicated that these were more tears of rage than sorrow, and that intervention would not be welcome. After few minutes of both me and the guy trying to catch her eye, our girl dries her tears, takes her cellphone out of her bag, and gives somebody hell with nary a quaver to her voice. We the peanut gallery nod approvingly.

2) I have been sending out stories to be considered for publication for two and half years now, always with the same formatting (taught to me by Professor Pyper, which includes my phone number. Never, in creeping up on double-digit submissions, has anyone ever called me…until today. Thanks, echolocation!

3) echolocation‘s back. And my story, “Night Flight,” will be in their spring issue around the end of next month.

4) I swear the following dialogue is true, verbatim, and happened around 12:45 pm today in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.

Me: Did you know that John Cheever was gay?
J: Yeah. Didn’t you see that episode of Seinfeld?

My mind is officially blown.

New York was great / I loved it all
RR

March 9th, 2009

Who are you? Where are you going?

Outside of prose, my artistic experiments almost always deserve the fate they almost always receive, which is never to be seen by anyone but me. An exception to this is my “Identity Mural”: because that thing is up on the door of the Rose-coloured Ranch, more people see it than, say, my sonnets and sketches of eyeballs. And because I’m way too excited when I receive people’s business cards (shout-out: note most recent addition to the mural,a Trainspotting-esque card from Vepo Studios at bottom righ)t, some people who have never even been to the RCR have had cause to wonder what exactly it is. So, here ya go:

This is probably not even properly a mural, because it doesn’t form an image out of all the disparate parts. It’s just a bunch of stuff stuck to a door, really–I told you I should stick to prose. But this thing is something I’m partial to, because it combines three things I like especially: other people, public transit, and my own name. Here’s what’s there:
–business cards of people I have met
–expired ID of my own
–expired Metro passes
–three name tags–one that says, “Who are you?” one that says, “Where are you going?” and one that is blank
–in the centre of it all, the peephole to my front door
–a *lot* of scotch tape–I, like Ramona Quimby, think scotch tape is god

A little random, a little fun. I am fond of my mural, unmurallike as it may be. And trust me, it’s way better than the sonnets.

I’ve got my sights on / and I’m ready to go
RR

March 7th, 2009

Yo Homo

Scene: Half a dozen teenaged boys, black and Hispanic, elaborate coats and sneakers, at a bus shelter one icy afternoon.

Boy in heavy duffle coat, open, white cloth cap with strings dangling beside his face, under a baseball cap
says: Yo, most of the stuff you guys say “yo homo” to isn’t even gay.

General muttering

Cloth Cap: Like, two guys hugging. Two guys can hug! That’s not gay. That’s so not gay.

Visor: That’s sorta gay.

CC: Would you hug your dad? That’s not gay, right? You can hug your dad. I hug my dad all the time. Will, would you hug your dad?

Will (skinny, sweatshirt but no coat): Well, I don’t hug my dad that often. On his birthday, maybe. Or on my birthday.

CC: Why can’t you hug your dad? You love him. I love my dad, I go up to him an’ I give him a hug.

Will: But you probably have that sort of relationship, yo. I love my dad, I just don’t hug him.

CC: But there ain’t nothing gay about it. You can hug your dad, you can hug your friends. Like me and Jason, yo. I see him, I go up and I give him a hug. We’re as close as…as close as anything, man, I give him a hug. Like this (he hugs short boy standing in front of him. Short boy is taken by surprise; almost falls over).

Short: Hey, man. I dunno.

Peanut gallery jeers.

CC: No, you gotta just do it with the one arm, the guy hug.

(tries again; short boy backs away)

CC: It’s not a gay thing.

Short: Nobody said it was, yo.

CC: Yeah, well, nobody better say it’s gay for a guy to hug a guy.

Peanut gallery jeers.

Short: Nobody said it. You brought it up.

(CC tackles short boy. General melee. Bus arrives.)

Now his nurse / some local loser / she’s in charge of the cyanide
RR

February 4th, 2009

Fair & Balanced Reporting

Though I try to show a positive viewpoint of life on Toronto transit, I have to admit that today a man did spit in my hair. Then I went and sat at the other end of the bus (etiquette tip: the *only* right thing to do when someone spits in your hair is go somewhere else; that is not an opening for dialogue). In my new seat, I told myself firmly that I hadn’t been done any harm and it didn’t matter, but I was feeling slightly shaken, as if the naysayers about public life might have scored a point somewhere (and, perhaps, they did).

At the next stop, a man got on and sat down one seat over from me.

(beat)
Man: I gotta say, I really like your stockings.
Me: Oh. Thank you.
Man: I got a three-year-old daughter who loves flowers, and, man, if she saw those, she would say, beautiful.

The score is at least even, I’d say.

May you could spare her
RR

January 18th, 2009

TTC Tribute

It’s hard to believe that the Ottawa Transit Strike is still ongoing, making everyday tasks a nightmare for so much of the population. In Toronto, transit strikes and strike threats are grounds for quick action and, indeed, panic, and I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case everywhere.

I am grateful (almost) every day to live in a city with a more or less wonderful transit system, to be able to go wherever I want to go without a favour, an insurance policy or thousands of dollars of investment in motor vehicle. This was revelatory when I first moved to a big city, and I’m still mildly shocked that I could, if I put enough thought into it, go to the airport or the zoo at 2am on a Thursday without telling anyone or even being conscious en route, all for $2.75. This should be a basic right of city citizens everywhere, and it’s worth getting upset that the citizens in Ottawa now lack those freedoms.

When it’s awful and slushy and cold, it’s about as easy for transit-takers to get around town as when it’s pleasant–not so for car commuters. But certainly, life is less easy for those who operate the vehicles, so between the weather and the sitch in Ottawa, it seems a good time to pay tribute to a random sampling of TTC awesomeness:

–drivers who stop when they see people running
— drivers who give directions, and call you up to the front just before your stop
–drivers who patiently hear out people who don’t make sense and don’t know where they are going, but are very very angry about it
–drivers who smile/make eye-contact/make jokes/just say hi whilst they are navigating through sleet and rush-hour and some woman is screaming about someone stepping on her toe

The TTC often brings out the worst in people, granted, just as being smushed up against strangers often will no matter where you are, but it occasionally brings out some loveliness from strangers I would not encounter otherwise. Life this:
–the man who chased me *off* the bus last night to give me back my forgotten gloves
–the glee with which people leap to give their seats to pregnant ladies and people with canes and crutches (sadly, such a polite city is Toronto is that this does not happen with the elderly, for fear of giving offense to someone who doesn’t consider him/herself elderly. You’d have to be about 150 to get more than a tentative tap and half-thigh raise and questioning shrug.)
–when someone compliments me on my reading material
–when Kerry was trying to explain something to me about a George Michael song opening and I was too dumb to remember the bit, so she sang it, the two old ladies next to her beamed (Kerry has a very good voice).

And now for a list of my very favourite bus and subway routes:
Toronto–7 Bathurst, 25D Don Mills (I never went beyond Steeles, I just like the D), 86 Sheppard (Zoo bus!), 99 Arrow Road, 510 Spadina Streetcar, 352 Lawrence West night bus, and special category prize goes to 122 Graydon Hall, which is technically an awful irregular bus that disappears for half an hour in the least rain, but I love it because I met so many good people whilst cursing it.
Montreal–On STCUM (yes, I know it’s not called that anymore, but that’s really too bad) I particularly enjoyed the 24 Sherbrooke, 80 Parc, and of course the blue line of the Metro.
New York–On the MTA, the A Train seemed particularly nice. I fell asleep on the F Train, which probably indicates a high comfort level.
Boston–To be honest, I never knew what I was doing on the MBTA, but I always got where I was going on those funny about-the-rails tracks, so let’s count it all as a win.
Tokyo–Not there yet, but oh my goodness, how sexy!!!

Soldier on, Ottawa. We transit-takers stand (and ride) with you in our hearts!

My heart only works
RR

January 2nd, 2009

Route 171

When a friend handed over this fascinating article on the TTC’s new route 171, it was with the raised-eyebrow warning, “You aren’t mentioned.”

No one gives a damn about her hair
RR

November 14th, 2008

Toronto is so nice

I have ever been aware of this. The first time I apartment-hunted here, strangers on the streetcar practically collapsed trying to talk me out of living in what they thought were bad neighbourhoods (this story ends with me and my friends in a police stations with several cops trying not to snicker as they cross things off my list). It’s not *exactly* been smooth sailing ever since, but certainly enough random acts of umbrella-sharing, lost-item-finding, and smile-giving have followed my progress here that I hold the whole town in high esteem.

Nevertheless, it is particularly nice when friends come from afar and the city shows itself off to best effect. And not just the museums and galleries, the zoo (oh, the gorillas, oh the leopard babies!!) and the restaurants. TTC, York Region Transit, shop clerks and strangers in the street, dogs on the street–A+ Toronto. Of course, it does help that the friends who visited are pretty amazing, also. A+ Winnipeg, also.

Anyway, so I’ve been gallivanting all week, which is the reason why that blog-everyday-in-November challenge that I was sort of unofficially doing is now no more. Oh well, we’ll pick up where we left off.

The next writerly reading I’m doing is in Windsor, so perhaps I will find a new city to love. I’ve never been to Windsor, but I hear it is far away, so I’m not sure how many Rose-coloured readers can make it. If you can, or just are curious, it’s here:

Thursday, November 27th
Mark Anthony Jarman, Heather Birrell, Russell Smith, Rebecca Rosenblum at a Salon des Refuses event
Art Gallery of Windsor / 401 Riverside Dr. W.
7:00 pm

And since this entry is already pretty random, one more thing: Journey Prize Stories 20 is out now, and looks gorgeous. I haven’t read any of the stories yet except for the already-beloved “Some Light Down” by S. Kennedy Sobol, but if that’s the standard set here, this is a must-read.

It’s not what you say
RR

October 28th, 2008

Rose-coloured Reviews Via 1 Train Service

There are those who are to the manner born, and there are those who are still excited when the waitress gives us two after-dinner mints instead of one. I am firmly in the second category (I love each of my insurance company give-away pens with all my heart, and despair when I snag a pair of stockings after less than 10 wears). Those in the second category are stunned even the modest level of luxury on Via Rail‘s Via 1 class.

I have been devoted to Via since undergrad at McGill necessitated student six-packs, which are such a very good deal. And “comfort class”, as the regular part of the train is known, is just fine–at least if you are of average height and don’t mind bringing a bag lunch. The only people I can think of who would *need* Via 1 are the above-average in size…the business traveller could, I believe, make use of the Via wireless internet just fine from comfort class.

But despite being un*needed*, the comforts above Comfort Class are perfectly delightful and desirable when thrust upon a person (by, say, the travel arrangers at the Ottawa Writers’ Festival). I had been in the Panorama Lounge before, keeping a business-travelling friend company, so I knew what delights lay ahead–a comfortable place to sit (otherwise, you wait standing in a line-up for non-reserved seats on the train) and free drinks, as well as a private bathroom.

But to get all this you have to pick-up your ticket at the general ticket desk, and when I arrived (early, natch) said ticket desk was experiencing a mel-down. Apparently, Wednesday last, Via computers all over the country ceased to function for an hour or so. My departure hour. When a security guard took my ticket voucher, though, I didn’t know it boded ominous and just thought she was being helpful. “This is my first Via 1 trip,” I confided. “I’m very excited to go in the lounge.”

I guess I have seen people less willing to share in my excitement (those insurance pen/breath-mint incidents come to mind) but she was close. But, after we’d stood together a while staring at the ticket agent staring at her unusable computer, a bright spark flickered in the security guard’s grim eyes. “Would you like to go in the lounge *now*? We’ll take care of the ticket for you.” And just like that she got what she wanted (rid of me) and I got what I wanted (free diet Coke at 9:17 am).

I actually thought that all the Toronto porters, guards, agents, etc., were unusually thoughtful that morning, particularly considering what inconveniences they were putting up with. But in truth, they actually didn’t process my ticket voucher at all, just looked my name up on the manifest and assumed all was well, which made for a painless trip out and, on the way back, a horrible half-hour of staring at a teeth-sucking silent ticket agent who couldn’t figure out how to go back in time with his (perfectly functioning) computer and make up a ticket billing for a trip I’d already taken. It could be that the Toronto agents are better-trained than the Ottawa ones, or simply that the Toronto folk shirked responsibility for setting something up for me, but I definitely think the Ottawa guy could’ve been nicer to me and my accompanying lovely festival volunteer in the endless period we spent together.

But ok, after all that, both trips were actually lovely, and pretty much identical. The seats in Via 1 are slightly wider and higher than comfort class, and there’s enough leg room for the limbs of those well above six-feet (or for your laptop case, purse, and discarded boots). Then there are these weird sculpted tusks of pillows on the headrest. I think they are meant to keep your head from tipping onto your neighbour or into the window, but since I *like* to sleep pressed against the window (who knows why?) I wasn’t crazy about it. Actually, though, there’s plenty of room to get around the pillow.

Ok, everything else about this train-ride review is actually a restaurant review. The first train I took left at 9:30 am, and we were offered coffee, tea or juice; followed by pastries; then veggie chips; soda/cocktails; a three-course meal; coffee/tea; truffles, and maybe more cocktails if so desired, before we waddled off at 2:15. Sheesh. I didn’t sample the pastries or the cocktails, but the coffee, soda and veggie chips (called “Yum-yums” but still good) were all delightful. On the return trip, it was 6:15pm to 10:10pm, so we had an additional round of cocktails/soda instead of the pastries.

I crashed out (slouched against the window) just before the lunch service, and my seatmate (as he told me later) and the server debated and then decided against waking me–they held my first course in reserve until I regained consciousness. My seatmate, by the way, was as nice and friendly as could be, while quite obviously making the best of the bad situation that was sitting with me. It wasn’t personal; he just wanted to sit alone, and made no secret of this to the porters and servers that happened by. I felt that he should have been more discreet and pretended that it was his heart’s desire to have to stand up every 1.5 hours so I could pee. However, when he finally did leave (he took someone’s spot after they got off in Fallowfield) I put my feet on his seat.

Both meals were very good, though the lunch was mainly better than the dinner. There was a wide range of main courses, a fish, a chicken and a meat-meat each time, though if you are a veggie you have to order when you buy the ticket (which seems strange, given that it’s 2008 and many random meals just happen to be meatless). Also, the first courses both ways had an animal-origin protein, and there were no choices about that. A seafood salad on cucumbers going out, and sliced beef on rice-edaname salad coming home. I enjoyed the seafood and picked off the beef from the otherwise lovely salad (when I first heard the term “edaname salad” about a year ago, I was puzzled, but now I like them), but it would seem easier just to go the greens and croutons salad route, which I think pleases most of the people most of the time.

I had tilapia with vegetables and tiny little potatoes cut into quarters for the lunch, and slided breaded chicken over linguine and vegetables and a very small amount of red sauce for the supper. Both meals were nice, but just by virtue of the content I liked the fish better (breaded chicken=pointless, in my opinion). I also spent some time trying to decide if the meals, which are served in little ceramic bins about the size of two decks of cards, with everything heaped inside, are the same amount of food one gets in a restaurant all sprawled out on a plate. I think it was, about.

There were services on the Via 1 that I didn’t take advantage of–free newspapers, extra pillows, checked baggage service, possibly things that I didn’t even know about. But the most famous of all, the truffles, I was ready for. How wonderful–I had a chocolate one and a white chocolate one on my respective journeys, and both were full of delight (er, if you definte delight as sugar, cocoa butter and cream).

Also, whatever class you travel, the rhythm of wheels on rails is a delightful lullabye.

I’ve seen them all and man they’re all the same
RR

September 18th, 2008

Rose-coloured Reviews Cresson Ballet Flats

Shoes are a class issue, and they have been ever since the days of Chinese foot-binding; what you do to your feet is a product not only of what you can afford to put on them but what you are going to *do* with your feet. The above article mentions that, “… by the time of the late Qing Dynasty, foot binding had become popular among people of all social classes except among the poorest – who needed to be able-bodied to work the fields.”

Only those who can afford to work less, choose to work seated, or not to work at all, can attend to fashions that render them less than able-bodied. When I worked on my feet, I wore athletic shoes or, when those were forbidden, Docs, which look from a distance like dress shoes. Almost everybody did, and had to–when you move all day every day, everything on your body is in service of that.

When I got an office job, I quickly bought a pair of pretty vinyl-covered cardboard shoes for $15. It didn’t matter the quality, because they looked cute and they spent their days resting quietly under my desk. The luxury of cheap shoes, I call it. Those shoes, ballet flats, turned out to be pretty good despite the cardboard, and I wore them for ages. My current ballet flats are more expensive, better quality and slightly more interesting looking–they are called the Cresson from Naturalizer, home of vaguely sensibly, vaguely stylish shoes. Teacher shoes, I think of them, as teachers have to look professional but do spend their days pacing in front of a chalkboard on a cement floor.

I like cute shoes, but the voice of Uncle Alex from Eight Cousins is always in my head when I evaluate wardrobe: “‘Suppose a mad dog or a runaway horse was after you, could you get out of the way without upsetting…?'” For, office job or not, I do have to walk the city sidewalks in snow and sleet and goose shit (when I moved to Toronto, I really didn’t expect that the geese would overrun the city); I have to climb onto bushes and occasionally over traffic medians in pedestrian-unfriendly parking lots; I have to deal with not horses but certainly dogs and violent stroller-pushers and cracked cement: I don’t have a car.

In Toronto, car vs. no car is not quite as much of a class issue as it would be in Regina, but it really does make you buy shoes in a different way. I’ve not watched that tv show everyone says makes you want to buy $400 shoes you can’t walk in, Sex in the City, but I suspect those women operate in a slightly different tax bracket from me. I guess it could be an issue of equilibrium as much as money, since I have friends who will stroll quite casually in 3-inch heels over those medians and snowbanks. But for every one of those, there’s one digging in her spike heals, and refusing to walk one more step unless it’s into a taxi.

I hate taxis and like to move under my own power, so I like the Cressons. The online add brags about having a “stylish low vamp” (vamp being the leather bit that goes over your toes) but it is actually high enough to give the shoe good purchase on the foot–when there’s the pivot-point of shoe-coverage is too low, the whole thing can flip-flop right off (hence the eponymous shower/beach shoe) when you try to move at speed. The zig-zag strap (a sportified allusion to toe-shoes, I think) also gives the shoe greater staying power, while also looking cute–over short distances, I think I can run nearly as fast in the Cressons as in sneakers. Good for snarky bus drivers, short pedestrian signals, vengful drivers and wild dogs.

The online ad also describes these as having a “1-inch heel” but I totally don’t think they do. The rubber sole is built up slightly at the back, but it’s also built up *around* the back, making a firm support perfect for stomping angrily down the sidewalk (I never do that) or climbing a dirt hill (also an unknown circumstance in my life).

There isn’t major arch support inside, just a little rise on the instep, which is enough for me but might not be for others. But the insole is nicely padded and, bonus, bright red, as is the inside of the leather upper, and there is a tiny bit of red stitching on the outside of the back. I dig that little hint of cool.

I bought these about 6 months ago. I paid $70, and consider them very well worth it, as they are fare and passage to so many places.

Pete almost lost his job until the union stepped in
RR

May 18th, 2008

Hitches

It was me who was late to the meeting place, for myriad stupid reasons, none of them sufficient excuse. I ran up the stairs, and we three went briskly in search of the cab stand. But we ended up at the kiss’n’ride, and so we went to call the special number that would bring us a free taxi. They promised to come, but did not come.

We discussed, after a while, abandoning the free taxi and paying for one, or was it too late to get the bus, or was the whole operation doomed? A girl overheard, and pointed us in the direction of the actual cab stand. We started to make our delusatory way there, in painful shoes, lugging gifts. I became so distracted by my skirt blowing up above my waste that I walked in front of a moving car.

A voice called to us. Did we want a ride? The helpful girl of a moment before had kissed’n’rode with her mother, in a minivan. Strangers in cars are bad news, we knew, but really, what could be safer than mother and daughter in mini-van? They drove us exactly there, brushed off our thanks, turned out to have the same family name as one of my compatriots. We all work in the same industry. Thank you, kind strangers.

“We’re not *very* late,” we posited, running up the drive. It had rained in the morning, but by 4:08 the sun was bright, so we assumed the wedding would go as planned out of doors. We ran three-quarters of the way ’round the building before we realized it wouldn’t.

“Go all the way around!”

“Fence!”

“Go back!”

“Wait, gate. Gate!”

“Go forward.”

We spotted, then, a conservatory window filled with expectant, forward-facing faces. “Oh, *there’s* the wedding!”

“Get down, get down, they’ll see us.”

Creeping through the garden lugging gifts in uncomfortable shoes, we re-emerged at the front of the building and whirled open the front door, to come face-to-face with the bride, on her father’s arm.

Da-dum-dee-dum!

“What are you doing? You’re late!!”

“We’re sorry!”

“It’s all my—”

“Get in there!”

And, as she was walking down the aisle, “You’ll hear about this on Tuesday!”

And now J and K are married, and no two people could have had a more splendid, generous and fun day, despite such errant friends.

It caught on in a flash
RR