Cock(roach) Boss

Today began with promise.  I woke up early and clear-headed, ready to go answer phones for WFMU's pledge drive, something I had been looking forward to for a week or so.  I showered and headed out the door with tons of time to spare.  Look at me! Volunteering! Clean and punctual and optimistic and good-sore from exercise!  It was warm in the sun, and the wind whipped my hair into ten kinds of great crazy.

I boarded the PATH train and headed for New Jersey.  I listened to music really loudly and smiled at my reflection, far on the other side of the car.  The Pathvision monitor offered up two way too easy scrambled word puzzles. I rolled my eyes, "m-u-n-d-a-n-e and o-r-d-i-n-a-r-y".  Pffft.  

As the train approached Hoboken, I opened my purse to reapply lip gloss.  Normally, the contents of my purse are: 4 or 5 different kinds of lip product, a tangle of receipts, a few sets of keys, 2 hair elastics, and a few loose almonds.  But I've been trying to pare down.  So today, my purse contained just a handful of receipts, a jar of harissa (don't ask), and a giant cockroach.  A giant, "Girl on Fear Factor Eats This Thing to Pay For Big(ger) Fake Boobs" kind of cockroach.  My first thought was, "Oh God.  That is some Naked Lunch type shit, Jim." 

I quickly zipped my purse back up.  I blinked my eyes about 15 times.  I thought about Naked Lunch some more, and The Metamorphosis, which had actually come up in conversation yesterday.  I wondered if the cockroach would offer me any wisdom.  The Pathvision told me that my horoscope involved being careful about what I spend my money on.  Kanye West's Power came on my iPod.  I stopped looking for messages and meaning.  I had a giant bug in my fucking purse.  End of fucking story.

I opened my purse again.  It was still there, and unmistakably alive.  Its antennae were easily an inch long, and as I stared at the thing, they rotated around in twitchy circles.  I zipped my purse up again.

I fumbled for my camera, knowing that nobody would ever believe this story.  When I opened my purse again, the cockroach was gone.  I got off the train at the next stop without thinking.  I walked in a whipping wind, trying to find an abandoned corner where I could quickly empty out my bag.  

But it was rush hour, and I was in a very cute and tidy corner of New Jersey.  

And so I had to walk awhile before I found a quiet enough stretch to do what I had to do.  Which is how I found myself on Carlo's Bakery Way.  Yes, that Carlo's Bakery.  Which is how I found myself emptying my purse in front of the home of THE CAKE BOSS, wondering what he would say if he stumbled across me on all fours, feet away from his place of business.  "Heh! Yeah! I'm just gonna do my thing with a roach cake!" It was fruitless in the end.  The roach had completely disappeared.  At least to my naked eye.

Oh, but also?  WFMU isn't in Hoboken, and I was cutting it close on time.  I'd jumped off the train before making the transfer that would actually get me to Jersey City.  It's not far, but still.  Sigh.  I zipped up my purse, I jumped in a cab, and hustled over to the radio station.  With a cockroach the size of a big toe in my purse.  I answered some calls, I met some lovely people, I ate a donut.  I kept my purse closed.

When I got back to Manhattan, I emptied it the bag out again.  I could have just stomped all over it to ensure that I killed the bug, but...I didn't want it to die, even though it was a cockroach.  Hopefully, he's out there giving someone else a pretty ridiculous story to tell.  

Blow Your Jellybeans Out Your Ashram

I’m sore all the time.  I’ve fallen apart since wrecking my ankle at the end of November.  The winter was not kind to me.  I was not kind to myself.  I went to yoga yesterday with C.  I was a little nervous for several reasons:

1)    Despite a few months of private lessons and a period of regular practice last year, I’ve fallen off the yoga wagon and into the prickly ditch of inflexible stiffness and cynicism. 
2)    It was Kundalini yoga.  Which, I was warned, involved chanting.
3)    An hour before class, I ate a small bag of sugar-free Jelly Belly jellybeans.  80 or so beans, 160 calories.  Whatever.  Then I read the label.  64% of my daily fibre in one sitting, and a written warning that said jellybeans might cause stomach “discomfort”. The label advised to start with an 8-bean-or-less sampling.  EIGHT BEANS OR LESS. 

I was nervous, I was wearing leggings, and there was chanting in my future, but I went anyway.  Compared to the yoga I’d been used to, it was physically pretty unstrenuous.  Mentally, it was a different story.  

Did I mention that there was chanting?  

There was also dancing on all fours, and 5 minutes of jumping/cross-kicking legs in front while criss-crossing arms above the head.  "I NEED TO FLAG DOWN THE RESCUE PLANE TO GET ME OFF THIS DESERT ISLAND, BUT I ALSO REALLY HAVE TO PEE!".  I slipped in and out of focus, from calm to thinking about dirty things to writing and work and back to being calm again.  And probably back to dirty things again. Who are we kidding?

As we were winding down, the instructor started playing a particularly crappy piece of music.  "Ugh," I thought.  "This blows."  She advised us that we would be listening to the piece of music for 11 minutes, and that it was meant to summon miracles. "Har har," I thought.  "I will need a miracle to get through 11 minutes of this goofy nonsense."  

I sat, cross-legged.  My right hand gently cradled my left hand.  My left thumb rested on top of my right thumb.  I settled the knot of fingers and palms over my heart.  "This meditation is to eliminate fear of the future," the instructor said.  "This meditation is to eliminate the fear of the future that you have largely created yourself.  This meditation is to release you into the promise of a future without fear."

A smile that can only be described as beatific crawled across my face.  I probably looked insane--eyes closed, giant grin, flushed cheeks, wild hair--but i felt radiant and beautiful.  It was kind of awesome.  Sometimes, you're in the right place at the right time, no matter how off your game you feel.

Come and find me.  I'm not afraid.  I'm not afraid of you or jellybeans or anything.  I dare you, life.

i have never relied on the kindness of strangers.

i was so busy trying to convince everybody to trust me that i didn't realize i trusted nobody.

so. november. there you go. good riddance, and i'll miss you. what started off as a dog-walking adventure and punchline to my year-off joke...turned into a life and game-changer. i spent 13 months trying to decide if i would stay in toronto, finally signed a lease, only to--less than two weeks later--wind up with a whole new set of decisions to make. decisions that involve investing in myself, something i'm not particularly good at doing, particularly professionally. my previous professional objectives involved something vague about always being able to afford good cheese and avoiding blended whisky when possible.

november was so crazy that i met paul weller and forgot about it days later. there’s too much. I’m getting swept under. i fear forgetting what i want to remember, while being stuck remembering what i need to forget, if only due to exhaustion and the clusterfuck of existence.

i was in new york for the month, in the end, with only a brief mid-November interlude back in toronto that involved a frantic move in torrential rain and winds gusting 80k/hr.

i went back to new york. i ran. i pondered. i walked. i pondered.

with new determination, the night before i left, i went to (literally) take a victory lap around soho and wound up with a pretty solid ankle sprain.

and THEN, just before midnight, hours before my departure, i locked myself out of my place with no coat and $1 in my pocket. i spent hours in the cold being stoic, waiting for locksmiths to fail, for people not to return my calls. what started off as another lesson in the ongoing series of dangling carrot failures of my life, however, wound up being one of the best, most affirming experiences of the year. sometimes, you meet good people, and sometimes they do great things. someone i barely know, at 2:30 am on a sunday night, paid for my cab to brooklyn, put ice on my ankle, make me laugh when i was at the breaking point, gave me a place to sleep, and paid for me to get back to manhattan the following morning. (so i could get off a bus in the middle of the night and finish moving, which took...27 hours. but that's another story.)

if you'd asked me 6 months ago if i could have trusted strangers, i would have laughed in your face. 6 months ago, i locked the gates and discontinued ferry service to the island.

and then this happened.

and in the 5 days SINCE then, because i let them, in addition to the amazing rallying of my core troops, i have been supported, saved and surprised by several new friends, virtual strangers all. i will be worthy of your investments, old friends and new. i will feed you when you are hungry and take care of you when you are sick, wherever and whenever possible. we are all in this together.

life is too short not to allow this sort of intimacy. everything fails. everything disappoints. everything dies. take the kindness and pleasure as it comes, and don't hold out for things that don't exist.

this is all a little (read: LOT) bullshitty and soft for my taste, but most of my bouts of insomnia are fuelled by horrible things and panic. to not be able to sleep out of sheer gratitude? bears acknowledgement. so thanks, assholes. thanks for winning my trust. you all suck balls. and i love you.

i still love you. i don't love you anymore. i never loved you. i'm falling in love with you. i could never love you. love is a joke.

i'm in new york. again. i'm doing things like wearing swing coats and jackie o. glasses and silver kitten heels while running errands. i'm doing things like jogging 17k in 2 sessions in 3 days, in long johns and flashdance sweatshirts. i'm doing things like mending fences and burning bridges. i'm eating a lot of cottage cheese and drinking bourbon with impossibly attractive friends in hipster hell.

it looks like work lives here for me, and me will live here for work, eventually. i'm terrified.

i like you. i don't like you. i don't like talking about the things we never did. i don't like thinking about the things we did do. you're not who you think you are. you're exactly who i think you are. i'm a late bloomer. i'm an early adopter. i'm an abrupt abandoner.

i've been in new york long enough that the vendors on canal street have stopped trying to sell me things. i haven't been here long enough that i don't find rats adorable.

thanksgiving in america is making me think about the family i don't talk to. it's making me think about the people i love who aren't family who i do talk to. the odds are that if you are reading this, i love you or once loved you, or almost loved you.

make me love you. i have enough to give. make me hate you. i am due for a cull.

tell me to go. tell me to stay. come with me, and go away.

most importantly, ask me questions, because i have no answers.

i'm everything i never thought i was, in a surprisingly good way.

etc.

love,

me

That Thing You Always Were, That Thing You'll Always Be

(i just got back from an extended trip to new york. it was so spectacular that i'm still processing it, but hope to find a way to articulate how great it was soon enough.)

Over the last-night dinner in SoHo (corn dogs from house-made hot dogs and Tecate, in case you were wondering), we had a discussion about the character traits that define us. These traits manifest themselves pretty early on, and they often do not change over time.

I walked very early, as a baby. Like, freaky early. I just stood up one day, stumbled a few steps, then ran. Expertly (albeit in one direction, in laps), for an hour. And then I tried to change direction. And then I fell. Hard. Apparently, I sat in silence for a bit, then howled with rage and embarrassment. I didn't stand again, let alone walk, until much later than is normal. But when I finally did, I never looked back.

That's me. In a nutshell.

I'm still walking.