Kerry Says

Her cotton skirt, thin and rain soaked, slapped wetly against her thighs as she walked. The feeling was both uncomfortable and enjoyable. An accurate definition of sensuality, hers anyway, she thought before determining the side of the road was not the most appropriate place to be thinking such things.

There was something of the amateur-erotic about her present state though. Her T-shirt transparent now and looking like she had poured it on, her hair blown free of its braid, the water streaked mascara and high colour on her cheeks.

“I might as well be soaping up the car with my chest,” she muttered knowing that as she was currently a walking dream for would-be rapists and their defense lawyers, she wouldn’t be hitching a ride back into town.

Turning her back on her traitorous Honda she aimed for home trying to remember which side of the street you were supposed to walk on to best avoid being mowed down by a driver. Not that there was much traffic on the road that night…. or ever in that place. Still she knew that once you’re luck has crested things can go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. And no matter how terrible her night had been so far, dead was worse than wet and wheel-less.

She had to admit that having now been out long enough to be drenched to just this side of waterlogged, her mood was actually improving.

Having surrenderd to a soaking you realize it's not all that bad. It’s not often that your whole body gets to feel something. The real frustration with wet weather, she argued to herself, is the constant battle to stay dry. To defend all limbs and packages and pant legs simultaneously is futile and destined to make you feel a failure. Letting the fat droplets hit her square in the face, she felt invigorated, scrubbed clean. Baptized.

Baptized?

Why was it that whenever her thoughts turned to the sensual, religion was only a thoughtbeat behind?

Thoughtbeat!

She marveled at what a perfectly descriptive word thoughtbeat was and wondered how it could be that it wasn’t even a word at all. How could people explain this mental phenomenon without it? How had she?

Then she swore.

She swore because she had walked into the street sign at the corner of her block. Then she swore again because that kind of thing was always happening to her.

She swore one final time as she realized was already home. That meant she had spent the last three miles and forty minutes lost in her own head and had no recollection of the journey. That kind of thing was always happening too.

She checked herself over determined there was no damage and headed up the drive, the car and the reason she’d been driving it forgotten as she turned her thoughts to large soft towels and larger glasses of wine.

Sad news from the wire this morning about Sir Paul:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1641191.htm

But deep down I knew it couldn't last since he'll always be in love with me Linda.

I really had hoped things would work out. It would have been so much easier for us just to be together. One more thing to cross off life’s to do list. Find a partner? Check.

But he had to keep telling me jokes I’d heard before. A thousand times before.

And he couldn’t stop himself from grabbing the back of my neck when he drove even though he knew I HATED it when people touched my neck. “I’m not grabbing it, I’m rubbing it. …and I’m not people. I’m your man.”

Oh did I mention that he called himself “my man”? All the time he did this. In public.

Alone it was worse since he had the tendency to call himself “my big man”. Not only awful, but woefully overstated.

So that was uncalled for, I know.

But this is a guy who used to take his socks off in the living room at the end of the day then shove them in his pocket.

And the socks...

You know those black ones made out of some poly-rayon-plastic blend? They glistened in the light I swear to God. Shone like asphalt on a sweltering day. Sometimes I just wanted to scream “What did cotton ever do to you?“ But he would have laughed about it.

He laughed about everything. No fight in him. Even as I left he just sat there with a stupid smile on his face while I told him how miserable this life was making me. How miserable he was making me.

He said if I couldn’t be happy with him I’d better go be happy someplace else. And the whole time he’s going on and on wishing me the best all I can do is stare at the wet spot his beet bottle is making on the coffee table. My coffee table.

Couldn’t keep them in the fridge like everyone one else… had to stockpile his beer in the freezer. Nice and frosty and dripping like hell. Do you know how many times he forgot they were in there and they exploded? Do you know how many times our guests had to take their beer with a SPOON?

Anyway so he’s offering me the best graduation speech ever… follow your path, spread your wings. If you love someone set them free... and I’m pissy about the ruined coffee table.

So I’m the bitch right?

Yeah.

Well fine.

He can keep the coffee table.

At five years old he was an ugly child destined to become an ugly adult.

His mother has long been holding out hope that he would grow into the pink and chubby blue-eyed cherub she had always wanted. She had dismissed her first impression of the angry red wrinkly bundle he was at birth with the fairly accurate stereotype that all newborns are odd looking. She told people his pointed head would round as the gap closed and that his body would grown to balance out its somewhat shocking girth.

She told them when his hair finally grew in it would be thick and ringletted like his father’s. She told them children's eyes often change colour and that his dishwater grey ones would deepen to reflect the ocean blue of her own.

She had been telling people these things for quite some time.

But looking at him sitting in the back yard staring back at her through the kitchen window, she realized these miraculous changes would not come to pass and that she was looking at her son. Her funny-looking son.

He was thin and small and pale with the gait of an old arthritic. This was presumably due to the weight of his enormous egg-shaped head, mostly an expanse of forehead making his features seem cramped and undersized. His hair had never fully come in, leaving him with a sparse monk’s tonsure of dirty-blond hair which his mother had been tempted to chalk up to treatments for an illness in the face of strangers’ glances(on more than one occasion).

The realization that she didn’t love her son poured over her like ice water. The sensation was unpleasant, but only mildly so. She would get used to it. She didn’t blame herself for this lack of motherly affection, she blamed him.

It wasn’t just his looks that left her cold she told herself, though she could admit it was a major part of it. It was his attitude about it.

He wasn’t a pleaser this ugly boy. He didn’t try to do things to make her forget, to make it up to her. He didn’t fade into the carpet when people came over. He didn’t stay quite and self-conscious. He wasn’t funny and self-deprecating. He wasn’t ashamed of how he'd turned out. He wasn’t sorry.

And she felt, in the deep dark place that you pretend you don’t have, that he ought to be. And she knew that was why she hated him.

Guess I’m not the only one who thinks the mojito needs a little firing up.

Reinventing the Mojito

(Thank You Timothy McSweeney!)

I have an overwhelming desire for a Mojito. This wouldn’t be all that strange if I enjoyed a Mojito. But I don’t really. I’m not a big fan of mint and frankly I don’t like drinks that require affecting an accent to order confidently. (A main reason why I do not drink the Thé-Keeee-La on a regular basis).

But this week, the idea of a sipping on a crisp, cool, white and green bevy seems an excellent idea indeed. So too the idea of buying flowers daily, and barbecuing EVERYTHING and walking for miles and miles and miles.

Shopping at the local fruit market also holds great appeal. While greenhouses and cross-pollinated bio-infused superseeds have made fresh fruits and vegetables accessible year-round, it’s only in the spring that I lust after asparagus or homemade raspberry pie (preferably both... with something hot off the BBQ... and a mojito).

In the words of the Birds (oh, and Ecclesiastes ): To everything there is a season.

I Do! 

I don’t have anything in particular I want to say today.

But I do have this peculiar need to say SOMETHING.

Sometimes I think it's the act of writing itself that is addictive. Marking up the world's white spaces with tiny symbols is what fulfills us.

Any meaning proffered is just a flukey kind of icing.

This is Dora.




This is Diego.


They are why I want a puppy more than ever. 

The Conservative government has listed the following five top priorities for its time in power on the Government of Canada’s web site. (They are not listed alphabetically so one would assume they are listed in order of importance):

• Accountability
• Lower Taxes
• Crime
• Child Care
• Health Care

What these terms mean to me:

Accountability = Bureaucracy (all those wonderful hoops to jump through)

Lower Taxes = Money

Crime = Punishment

Child Care = Our Future

Health Care = Sustaining Life

So what I understand the top priorities of my federal government to be are:

• Bureaucracy
• Money
• Punishment
• Future
• Life

No... I'm not the least bit concerned.

Words so pleasing to the ear, it’s a wonder that you don’t hear them more often:

• Demitasse
• Melodious
• Conundrum
• Auspicious
• Spectacular
• Cantankerous
• Extraordinary
• Felicity
• Doldrums
• Forgiven

…to the scent of cherry blossoms.

I spent the weekend in Washington surrounded by hundreds of trees with blossoms ranging in colour from pristine white to deep blush pink. The bark of the gnarled trunks and branches shines sliver in the sunlight and glows slightly at dusk.

They are lovely, but it is the smell that I can’t get enough of. The whole of D.C. is blanketed in an aroma soft and subtle and delicious.

I brought home a bottle of perfume that tried to capture the scent and put it on today. But it is false and manufactured with an undertone of alcohol and without the depth that many trees all blossoming in unison provides.

Still I can’t stop smelling my arm at the crook of the elbow where the scent is strongest.

A junkie will take it however she can get it.

Well it’s a Pentax actually.

I’m going to pick it up tonight, then in two days I’m going to use it to shoot Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C. and hopefully come home with something pretty enough to hang on my walls.

I am excited.

I love trips; the packing, the planning, the overspending.

A new city gives you the desire to actively participate. You want to go to the zoo and the museum and the park. You aren’t annoyed by the parades, or the people selling junk on the street. You want you some of that junk. You dress up to go to the mall and the grocery store just so you have a chance to wear each of the way-too-many travel outfits you’ve put together and stuffed in your suitcase.

In two more days I’ll be in the air. Two long and endless days.

What I don’t love?

Waiting

I had one of those mornings. The ones where you get up and you think you detect just the slightest sense of purpose skulking around in the deep dark recesses of your soul.

I cultivated it as best I could. Actually bothered to scrub the schmutz off my feet in the shower, used the blow dryer, wore nice pants. And it seemed to blossom. Yes today was a day I would get something done.

I left the house one coffee to the good and with the anticipation of a sausage McMuffin bolstering me along. I brought along Virginia Woolf for the streetcar ride and managed to get lost in it despite the chatter of morning commuters.

As I entered the last leg of my journey, breakfast in hand, I checked the pulse of my purpose. Still there, stronger even then it had been an hour ago.

But somewhere between the elevator and my desk, it vanished. I don’t know where it went. I don’t know why. But it was gone entirely. Almost instantly I was nonplussed by my fragrant greasy snack and immune to the good news that my computer was functioning properly for the first time in weeks.

Even the crossword hidden deep within my Toronto Star isn’t tempting me.

When you can’t even bother to slack off at work… that my friends is what I call terminally blasé.

A Headline from CBC.ca:

Seal hunt to go ahead, despite protests by Bardot and McCartney

You mean Bridget Bardot doesn’t hold sway over Canadian domestic policy? Shocking.

Oh and Sir Paul:

Less protest, more Martha My Dear 'kay?

When I was in my third year of high school (and certain I new decidedly more than everyone else) I created a series of short stories featuring a character named Bo-Red.

For the record I did not create the character itself. A friend of mine (who also new more than everyone else) created him during a particularly uninspiring English class because she was beyond bored, she was Bo-Red (clever huh?).

He was a stick man with one arm and a huge head who could only be conjured with a red BIC pen by slightly caustic 16-year-olds who felt their time was wasted listening to the words of their elders.

He was conjured a lot.

But it was I who gave him a back story, made him a super hero, created him a woman to love and a nemesis.

In one particularly memorable story, Bo-Red saved Harry Connick Jr. from a lifetime of Vegas sideshow acts after he was tricked into signing a contract by the evil Black Jack (clever huh? Vegas… Black Jack…. Get it? It’s CLEVER).

This one stands out to me because it’s the one I actually submitted for grading in an arrogant and childish fit of “you’re so out of touch old man you won’t even get I’m being (what I think is) Ironic” pique. Earned me an A.

(Channeling arrogance and childishness is a key step in the creative process. Discuss.)

Anyhoo, I mercifully grew up a bit, realized how little I actually knew and school began to interest me again. Bo-Red was relegated to the back passageways of my memory.

But several frustrating days of server shutdowns, invalid pathways and multiple corrupted file copies have left me unable to do anything remotely productive at work. I’m feeling irritated, unfairly put upon, and about five years old.

And ol’ Bo is glowing in my mind’s eye.

Will he make his grand return today? Will the next chapter of his life unfold?

Find me a red BIC pen and we’ll find out.

Of all the terribly tacky traditions North America has foisted on the feast day of St. Patrick, none was as delicious as the Shamrock Shake.

A frosty mint delight, in its heyday the Shamrock Shake was a St. Patrick’s Day must. Though its colouring was slightly putrid and mint is a sorry substitution for chocolate, this was the IRISH shake and we were proud to have it and to call it our own.

It was extra special for this Irish Catholic girl stupid enough to always give up sweets for Lent. You see, giving up fighting with my brother was too difficult, and my HILARIOUS suggestions I give up smoking never went over well with my mother.

No sugar for 40 days in a row… well 6 days at least (everyone knows Sundays don’t count) was tough for this addict… very tough.

Evey year, just when I thought I’d never survive it, came St. Patrick’s Day. A day smack dab in the middle of deprivation in which ethno-cultural obligation meant my parents, and God apparently, looked the other way as I sucked back 12 ounces of sugary goodness.

The Shamrock Shake, a reminder of life’s little overindulgences just when the endless days of sacrifice may have led me to forget.

You were a true hero of hedonism in a puritanical time and I salute you.

And I haven’t forgotten you. Yea, though the cruel masters of the McDonald’s Corporation decided that among all of the high fat, though not particularly high quality, items on their mighty menu, you (along with the McLobster) would have to go, I have not forgotten you.

I searched for you even today in fact, at the McDonald’s at Yonge St. and Queen W. But to no avail.

Good thing too -- It’s freakin’ freezing today.

For those who have never torn their cornea, I don’t recommend it.

For those who have, Yow! No?

I spent most of last week recovering from having my eye split open on a leisurely trip to the nation’s capital.

I will spend a good deal longer recovering from the knowledge that my eye was at one point actually SPLIT OPEN. Ugh.

This happened in the midst of shopping for wedding dresses with a friend. I am her maid of honour and while it's sad I had to abdicate my shopping duties to lay alone in a dark room, it's not all that surprising considering my past actions in positions of honour.

Here’s a sampling:

• Coming down with the Chicken Pox during my first turn as a flower girl (Sorry Janet)
• Coming down with Strep Throat during my first turn as a junior bridesmaid (Sorry Pam)
• Fainting on the altar during my first turn as Godmother (Sorry Clara, and the entire congregation of Emmanuel Lutheran Church)

It’s not that the joy of my friends and family ALWAYS makes me sick, just more often than not.

This time at least I got my trauma over and done with over before the big day….

I hope.

Back in high school (the day as it is oft’ referred) my friend’s uncle used to make her mixed tapes.

Now this was not your “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” lovin’, Molson drinkin’ uncle. This was the only slightly older uncle, the one who was away at university, and lived with his girlfriend, and drank Heineken. This was a cool uncle.

Anyway the tapes… He used to send her collections of songs from time to time in an attempt to wean her off the sugary pop tunes that made her, and all her friends, waste our meager allowances and fill our brains with lyrics like: “I spend my money on lottery, My favourite number is 1 2 3”. (Thank you Calloway)

His tapes were full of songs by Joy Division and the Smiths and the HouseMartins.

I loved these tapes.

Now I can’t tell you I loved them because of the music. At the time, I knew very little about music and had, at 15, only just concluded (thanks my brother’s constant derision and numerous forced listening sessions of Led Zeplin IV) that the New Kids on the Block really did SUCK no matter what all my friends and Much Music seemed to think.

Instead, I loved them for their cases full of cramped male handwriting, because they came by post from the big(er) city, because listening to the music of grown-ups made me feel grown up (because at 15 I thought 21 was grown up.)

Listening to these tapes made me feel like a little kid staying up at the end of a dinner party when the adults start talking about politics, or neighbourhood gossip or other topics they wouldn’t usually speak of in front of the kids. I was mesmerized by the dark lyrics, the angry guitars, and melancholy. I felt myself getting wise listening to those tapes. I felt myself getting older.

There was one tape in particular I remember. I think it was the first one I liked for the music, not the idea of the music. Some of the songs I heard for the first time on that tape are still my favourites today. I can’t remember all of them. (These weren’t the cheezy 60 minute tapes you know. These were the 90 minute Memorex tapes. These were hardcore) but I do remember a few. Go give ‘em a listen won’t you? You’ll be glad you did.

• Annie Get Your Gun – Squeeze
• Sing Your Life – Morrisey
• Birdhouse in your Soul – They Might Be Giants
• Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
• The One I Love – REM
• Something That You Said – The Beautiful South