August 2nd, 2007

Dispatches from Department of Dumb Ideas

#1–I have installed a hit-count-thingy on this site. My bro thought it would be interesting, but I said, “Nah, I have four readers and I know who they are.” (Hey, guys!) He said, “Maybe people you don’t know read it, too.” And he was right! Or, at least, either that or you four are strangely mobile! Anyway, now I can check on that and see how I’m doing, hit-wise, whenever I feel like wasting time. Not a good temptation to have. But hello, strange new readers, whoever you are. I like you already.
#2–A small child yelled angrily at me in a foreign language from her stroller. A library patron was rude on the phone. I am upset about both these incidents. Clearly I am being silly and thin-skinned, yet I am sad.
#3–I threw a rubber chicken at one of my students because he wasn’t paying attention.
#4–I put chunks of watermelon in a ziploc instead of a tupperware because it would take less space in my bag that way. Now, of course, it is a big sticky smushy mess. Of *course* I’m going to eat it anyway!

Well, there you have it. The day can only improve, though, with a swim, some writing workshoppery, hwae dop bop and *The Simpsons* movie all afoot for later. Yes, yes, Simpsons. I maintain that this is not part of my streak of bad ideas. The trailers are funny, anyway.

He is surrounded by sound
RR

July 27th, 2007

A Good Day

Yesterday was an excellent day for the written word around here. In the morning, I finally sent awwaaaaay a story that has been bugging me. It may not, in fact, have been fine, but it was as fine as I was going to get it, and now it is out of my power to pick at it anymore. Then in the afternoon I met up with Kerry and we did the whole write-and-talk thing. For the more solitary-garret types, this may seem like an unproductive thing to do, but for me, with writers I’m in sync with, it’s quite lovely to have their insights, feedback and general creative auras. Plus Kerry actually solved a knot in the story I was working on, practically handing me the ending. That never happens. Thanks, K!

And then when I got home, the mail had brought me lovely volumes with a squirrel on the cover: the new issue of QWERTY. If you are a non-subscriber and not in New Brunswick, this one might be hard to find, but if you do spot an inland copy, I urge you to grab it. And not *just* because my story “Missing (MF)” appears on page 88. Also because there is a wealth of poetry and prose in here, by names famed and new. QWERTY is put together by the University of New Brunswick’s Creative MA students, whose program closely parallels the one I just completed, and they’ve done some wicked work here. And the squirrel is really cute, even though he’s holding a knife.

I much fear that my planned picnic at the Dream in High Park is about to rained out this evening. I am promised a floor picnic and videos if that occurs, though, so I can’t pout *too* much. Plus the embarrassment of riches listed above.

Ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl
RR

July 26th, 2007

Called On Everything

A Rebecca assessment:

“You’re definitely not shy about expressing your opinion; you just don’t always have one.”

[sound of me thinking]

“You know…that’s a pretty accurate way of summing me up, actually.”

“Blog away.”

“How did you…?”

“Well…”

July 25th, 2007

O-Town, Backstreet, *NSYNC

Yes, I was off for the weekend in O-Town/Ottawa, land of sunny skies and buildings so beautiful they inspire patriotism and even architectural study (well, we’ll see). At least, the canal, the art museum, the parliament buildings and Laurk&Dave’s lawn all looked smashing. And I was put up in splendour at my hosts’ new *house*. For those who haven’t seen it, L&D’s new place really is amazing: curvy staircase, room with a dormer window (mine!) and a china cabinet that *lights up when you touch the hinges*. I want to live there.

Ahem.

Ottawa also contains the lovely Ms. Fred and, in delightful coincidence, KT as well. Fred provided colour commentary on our drive through downtown and KT was even prevailed upon to sit with me on the train back and be charming. And there was Mexican food eaten out of doors and the Renoir exhibit and lots of chattering.

Also a visit to a gym much fancier than mine, where you can plug your earphones into your cardio machine and hear what is playing on any of a bank of televisions. I live in a tv-less bubble, and it is probably tragic how exciting I found all this. I was allegedly not watching the show wherein the family of Nick Carter, former Backstreet Boy, noisily implodes. I kept unplugging my earphone jack and determinedly not watching, only to get sucked back in by the puzzling visuals on the screen. Did you know that Carter’s sisters have a lot of body image problems? That the family has way too many dogs that aren’t properly housebroken? That his teenaged brother is happy to cuddle in bed with his dad? Aren’t you sorry you do now? Nick Carter himself actually did not appear on the episode, having apparently disappeared according to his noticeably unperturbed sisters. The whole thing perturbed *me*, so it was just as well when it was time to go and I was forced to unplug for good. Poor Carters.

I got back on Monday and tried to get back to work as quickly as possibly, but things felt somehow not quite in sync. In general, I feel like I’m quite far behind on my writing, but I couldn’t tell you what engenders this feeling. It’s not like anyone’s yelling at me for missed deadlines or anything. Could it be that I’ve actually reached the point where I’m as addicted to time at my desk as I am to caffeine? Weird. No wonder I couldn’t deal with television.

Anyway, I’m back at it, although if the over-reach in this post title is any indication, it’ll be a while until I’m fully up to speed!

She’s throwing her charm away
RR

July 23rd, 2007

Eleanor the First

From Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1917)…possibly the best-loved book of my childhood…possibly the best-loved book of my mother’s childhood, too. I hope you like it.

“[Aunt Abigail] seemed for the moment to have forgotten all about the new-comer. Elizabeth Ann sat on the wooden chair, her feet hanging (she had been taught that it was not manners to put her feet on the rungs), looking about her with miserable, homesick eyes. What an ugly, low-ceilinged room, with only a couple of horrid kerosene lamps for light; and they didn’t keep any girl, evidently; and they were going to eat right in the kitchen like poor people; and nobody spoke to her or looked ar her or asked her how she had ‘stood the trip’; and here she was, millions of miles from Aunt Frances, without anybody to take care of her. She began to feel the tight place in her throat which, by thinking about hard, she could always turn into tears, and presently her eyes began to water.

Aunt Abigail was not looking at her at all, but she now stopped short in one of her rushes to the table, and set down the butter-plate she was carrying, and said ‘There!’as if she had forgotten something. She stooped – it was perfectly amazing how spry she was – and pulled out from under the stove a half-grown kitten, very sleepy, yawning and stretching, and blinking its eyes. ‘There, Betsy!’ said Aunt Abigail, putting the little yellow and white ball into the child’s lap. ‘There is one of old Whitey’s kittens that didn’t get given away last summer, and she pesters the life out of me. I’ve got so much to do. When I heard you were coming, I thought maybe you would take care of her for me. If you want to, enough to bother to feed her and all, you can have her for your own.’

Elizabeth Ann bent her thin face over the warm, furry, friendly little animal. She could not speak. She had always wanted a kitten, but Aunt Frances and Aunt Harriet and Grace had always been sure that cats brought diptheria and tonsillitis and all sorts of dreadful diseases to delicate little girls. She was afraid to move for fear the little thing wouuld jump down and run away, but as she bent cautiously toward it the necktie of her middy blouse and the kitten in the middle of a yawn struck swiftly at it with a soft paw. Then, still too sleepy to play, it turned its head and began to lick Elizabeth Ann’s hand with a rough little tongue. Perhaps you can imagine how thrilled the little girl was at this! She held her hand perfectly still until the kitten stopped and suddenly began washing its own face, and then she put her hands under it and very awkwardly lifted it up, burying her face in the soft fur. The kitten yawned again, and from the pink-lined mouth came a fresh milky breath. ‘Oh!’ said Elizabeth Ann under her breath. ‘Oh you DARLING!’ The kitten looked at her with bored speculative eyes.

Elizabeth Ann looked up now at Aunt Abigail and said, ‘What is its name, please?’ But the old woman was busy turning over a griddle full of pancakes and did not hear. On the train Elizabeth Ann had resolved not to call these hateful relatives by the same name she had for dear Aunt Frances, but now she forgot that resolution and said, again, “Oh, Aunt Abigail, what is its name?’

Aunt Abigail faced her blankly. ‘Name?’ she asked. ‘Whose…..oh the kitten’s? Goodness,child, I stopped racking my brain for kitten names sixty years ago. Name it yourself. It’s yours.’

Elizabeth Ann had already named it in her own mind, the name she had always thought she WOULD call a kitten by, if she ever had one. It was Eleanor, the prettiest name she knew.

Aunt Abigail pushed a pitcher toward her. ‘There’s the cat’s saucer under the sink. Do you want to give it some milk?’

Elizabeth Ann got down from her chair, poured some milk in to the saucer, and called: “Here, Eleanor! Here, Eleanor!’

Aunt Abigail looked at her sharply out of the corner of her eye and her lips twitched, but her face was quite serious as moments later she carried the last plate of pancakes to the table.”

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

July 19th, 2007

Eleanor and the Horizontal Learning Curve

If you’ve spent time with the senior Rosenblums, or listened to protracted periods of my own nattering, you’ve probably encountered tales of Eleanor. Eleanor is the kitten I begged my parents to adopt shortly before I moved out of the house (it was an almost identical conversation to the one we had when I was five). Of course I abandoned the kitten, as reckless youth will, but she really only ever had eyes for my father and the dog, anyway, so it’s just as well she stayed there. (5000 points if you can get the literary cat for whom she is named–this is a hard one.)

As an adult, Eleanor’s central hobbies are sprinting around and killing stuff in the fields around the house. Apparently there is especially good stuff to kill in the wheat field over the road, for she is consistently tempted by it, despite the fast-moving automobiles and transport trucks that patrol that road. In 2005, she encountered one of those, shattering her tiny pelvis, but leaving her vital organs (heart, lungs, [negligible] brain) intact.

In case you don’t know, you can’t immobilize a cat’s pelvis in a cast. Instead, you must put the entire cat in a very small box so she can’t move. For six weeks. Poor cat. My poor parents: they put the box in their front foyer for six weeks. Unsightly and noisy (Eleanor was well enough to protest her confinement), they thought it too mean to put her in a more out-of-the-way spot. When they were nearby, they turned the box so she could see them. This cheered her only somewhat–it was a depressing six weeks, and on a visit I once found Ellie asleep facedown in her food bowl. Still she emerged intact, sprinting immediately away to go kill stuff.

Having learned, apparently, nothing. For yesterday she got run over by another car. This one hit her head, dislocating her tiny jaw, slashing up her face and (oh god) possibly destroying one eye. The worst part, if you are my folks, is that of course they weren’t around at the point of collision and Ellie was wandering around injured for some time. The driver apparently called animal control (this is a rural agency that deals with, well, animals) who sent out a man to catch and kill our cat!! The first my folks heard of the situation was when they noticed the guy in the driveway, crawling around under their car with a net. When my father enquired, he was told that someone had hit a white cat (Eleanor is mainly orange!) and she had to be caught and put down because there wasn’t “much left in her.”

Lovely. Ellie, of course, bolted (wouldn’t you?) and managed to hide out for over four hours until a neighbour found her in her garden and returned her in a laundry basket. This was late yesterday. Ellie is now in hospital, my parents hopeful, me as well.

What a dumbass cat! I mean, really, cars aren’t subtle, you can see and hear them coming. And she’s such a pretty kitty, and would be considerably less so with only one eye. Of course, I would be grateful if it were only that and nothing worse. Eleanor! I am thinking of you!

Groom’s still waiting at the alter
RR

July 17th, 2007

My composition

Long day, goodish but stressful. Got tired, got hungry, got late. Decided would be the height of gauche and buy a veggie dog to eat on the subway (yeah, yeah, you hate me, I know). Dug in, ate fast and happily, then couldn’t finish. As I was trying to rewrap the napkin to cover up the remains, discovered large bite in napkin.

My current composition: mainly girl, slightly paper product. Huh.

This is the poetry of lesser days
RR

July 16th, 2007

On Voice (and Appropriation)

Jace shouted at me, “Let’s look and see what’s around.”

What it was was just a club–a big old room with lots of tables and chairs getting in the ways of people trying to get to the bars. The bars were all shiny with those sorts of lights that are hidden under the ledge to make it look like the bar is a big old glowing spaceship from the future, instead of just what it was, which was a bar made out of plastic with lots of sweaty guys in polyester shirts trying to by expensive drinks for their cheap-looking dates.

But Jace was always wanting to look around a place. For him, no matter how crummy and boring a place was, he wanted to see it from all the angles. There was no use telling him that from the other side of a room it was still gonna be boring. He had to see it for himself.

Of course I got stuck going with him. For one thing, Jace had the sort of voice that really carried. I mean, whatever he said, you were going to hear him, that big booming voice of his. But if I’d’ve tried to answer, he would’ve just shook his head and put his hand up to his ear like he was deaf. He wouldn’t’ve been faking, neither–my voice just doesn’t carry in a club, specially when there’s a lot of bass in the music. I’m no whisperer, but when there’s bass, forget about it.

So I couldn’t have really argued even if I’d’ve wanted to, but anyways I didn’t really want to, even if I also didn’t want to go look around the club. I wasn’t hardly gonna just sit at the table by my own self and stare at the dancefloor. That’d be gorgeous–one girl alone at a table. Before I’d have known it, teenagers would’ve taken away all the extra chairs and Jace’s chair and probably my chair, also. They’re that tricky, the club kids.

And it wasn’t as if I felt like getting hit on. It’s bad enough when you can hear all the corny pickup lines that guys will try. I don’t even want to tell you some of the ones I’ve heard. Not even dirty or anything, just so corny you could puke. And that’s when you can hear them. A place like that, with the bass and all, and most guys not having a voice like Jace’s, you can’t hear what’s said to you. And so you shake your head and the guy thinks that that’s just an invitation to come a little closer and a little closer, until he’s practically spitting in your ear, and you still can’t hear anything but the goddamn bass.

Which all made it not so bad being hauled around by the hand, Jace yanking me around the edges of the club like goddamn dog on a leash. At least no one tried to talk to me.

***

The Catcher in the Rye was the first book I read where I was aware of voice and narration. Of course, I didn’t call it that–I was 11, and my literary endeavours mainly consisted of reading books and then putting a new sticker on the Reading Chart. I called it an accent, and maintained that just as countries and cities had accents, so did individual people, like Holden Caulfield. And just like the suggestible among us will come out of a film like Gosford Park halfway accented already, so can we pick up these personal accents just by protracted reading immersion. That’s why the easiest voices to identify are also the easiest to ape. Not that my little mimickry above is particularly Salinger-esque in terms of quality–it’s just Holden-esque in terms of voice. I can usually do that with any strong-voiced writer (Hemingway springs to mind, Tom Robbins [heh], Helen Fielding). I actually find I learn a lot from these rip-off exercises–what I’d like to appropriate from their voices, and how they do what they do. To some degree. Sort of.

Anyway, the above is how I’d write if I were J.D. Salinger but also somehow a young woman in Toronto in 2007. It’s a confusing hybrid, I know.

I want you holding flowers on my wedding day
RR

July 11th, 2007

Condiments

Thanks to those who commented, empathetically or otherwise or only in spirit, on the last post. It’s good to know that others are struggling and writing along similar paths, with similar hopes. Heck, it’s good to know people are writing.

Yesterday was a rare thing for me:a non-writing day. Some days I only work for 20 minutes, but I almost always do something. The heat, humidity, lack of hot water in my building, trip to Markham, etc., etc., utterly defeated me. It is tough to get much active done in these, the swamp days of summer.

The upside is that my reading, semi-passive as it is (I know, I know, active engagement of the imagination, but it’s still easier than coming up with the story by myself) is way up. Under normal circumstances, although I am a fairly avid reader, I rarely sit myself down on the couch with a book. Instead, I read throughout the day in all the spare squishy moments that would otherwise be boring. I read on the subway, bus and streetcar, and while waiting for them. While waiting for my endless medical and dental appointments, while standing in line, while on the cross-trainer at the gym. I read during the lulls at the library (many) and the school where I teach (few). And when I’m eating alone and when I can’t fall asleep at night. Sometimes I read on escalators or in elevators, but that usually ends badly (on the wrong floor).

Sometimes I wonder if my incidental way of reading is not respectful enough, or not attentive enough. I get a lot out of what I read, and get a lot read, but I wonder if the calibre of my reading could be upped by sitting in silence on my couch with the book instead of dangling from a strap on the subway, half in the lap of some guy who is sweating through his Pink Floyd t-shirt. I wonder if I am treating books too much like a condiment of life, instead of a full meal.

Maybe it is ok because I love condiments so much? So much that I have been known to eat salsa with a spoon because I don’t much like corn chips? So much that, when people complain that veggie dogs don’t taste as regular hot dogs, I ask, “How do you *know*?” because I put so much ketchup/onion/mustard/bbq sauce/corn relish/pickles on that I can’t taste the actual weiner? And that’s the way I like it.

I am not very good with appropriate proportions. If I like a little of something, I don’t see why more isn’t better, and if I like literature, I’d like to get as much into the day as possible. Truth be told, if I waited until I had an unfettered hour to read, I wouldn’t read much. Better to get 7 minute snatches of Salinger than no Salinger at all.

Except this week, when writing, the gym, socializing, even talking on the phone require far to much sweating to be worth my while. So I sprawl about and read. I am still working through Barthelme’s *60 Stories.* Two stories a day, I find, is about right. Fewer and I lose touch with his unique sense of reality. More and I lose mine. Also lots of *The New Yorker* (I’m finally up to date!).

And I finally finished *Jane Eyre,* which I bitched about losing months ago, found, and then promptly forgot to read. And then I did read it, and was startled to hate it greatly. Or hate *Jane*, anyway. It is a surprising reaction. I’d been so looking forward to it. It’s one of those books, I know, that many girls read when they are 12-13, fall in love with, and then are disappointed with as adults, but I read it first when I was 21! Clearly, I have matured greatly since then, or something, since this time round, I found Jane to be insufferably grasping, condescending, socially ambitious and man-crazy. Really, everyone she encounters, from her cousins to her students to the servants, are too coarse and too far beneath her to even be described. Only Rochester and St. John are interesting, because they are high-born *men*. Ugh. What a bitch.

When I mentioned to my mother that I was starting this book, she remarked, “Isn’t it stupid?” and said that she’s only found it worth reading “twice…maybe three times” whereas truly good books are worth rereading annually (my mother is a bit of a terrifying reader). I tried to argue based on my memory of the novel as a dreamy romantic fantasy-adventure. In a certain mood, perhaps it would still be for me, or someone, but not in my current state of social realism. Now that I’ve done this about-face, I’ll have to call my mother and concede.

Perhaps I try it again in another 5-6 years. This time, my favourite parts of the novel were the only bits I still liked much, and those were the descriptions of the various houses, especially Moor House. Now, though, in light of my new insight into Jane’s materialism, the detailed descriptions of property come in rather a different flavour (bile?) If I were still in school, I would write a paper entitled “Architecture and Avarice in *Jane Eyre*”, of which the title would be the best part and on which I would receive an A-. But thank goodness I’m a graduand, so I won’t. I’ll just reread *The Catcher in the Rye* (I don’t read it annually, but close) now while the library is slow, and on my break and on the train to Don Mills and home again. I’m hoping, by the time I actually get home around 9pm, I’ll have read about half that novel, and that it will be cool enough for me to get to at least the salad course, and write.

Far away in my well-lit door
RR