to be or not to be

in the past two days, i’ve watched two vastly different films that deal in some way with the same concept: fantasy vs. reality.

what is imagined vs. what is real.

and both starred leonardo dicaprio.

yesterday, i went to see Inception, which was smart and intricate and compelling and, much to my surprise, very moving. earlier today, i watched Shutter Island, which was creepy and bleak and unsettling and twisty. and, a couple of times, it, too, elicited tears.

in both films, characters (including our crossover hero) try desperately to hang on to ether. in one film, it’s dreams; in the other, it’s belief.

in both cases, the lines between truth and fiction practically disappear – what seems so undeniably real and true is suddenly exposed as an illusion. and vice versa.

in both cases, that jarring realization – the wake-up call, as it were – causes sadness and despair. the loss of what was conjured in the imagination and the heart is devastating.

in both cases, the question of which life is better – an idyllic, idealized one created in the mind or one, however difficult and painful, that exists in reality – is raised.

and, in both cases, the argument seems to lean towards the former. dreams and delusions and emotional mirages serve as salves for hurt or haunted characters, as much an escape as a source of comfort and peace. for some, it’s a conscious decision to embrace them; for others, that “choice” is a product of insanity.

then again, perhaps the conscious decision to live in fantasy is, in itself, insane. dunno.

as someone who’s had her share of powerful dreams that linger long after i wake, and who’s been known to close her eyes to reality on occasion, i’ve been rolling the films, their stories and their messages over in my brain most of the afternoon and evening.

i hadn’t expected Shutter Island to have anything to do with Inception, thematically, when i popped it into the DVD player today, so discovering both films’ (unexpectedly timely for me) common threads served up food for thought.

and made me wonder what i would do if walking in the shoes of either of leo’s characters.

spun

feelin' fallish

yesterday, my friend lou wrote a blog entry called "feelin' fallish," and included a photo of some apples she had been stewing in the morning. in addition to some cooler temperatures where she lives, those apples made her feel like fall was in the air.

similarly, yesterday, my mom and i set about making another massive batch of the best spicy bean and vegetable soup ever. we made it for the first time in late may, and finally ran out of the leftovers a couple of weeks ago. so, despite the fact that it was in the mid 80s outside out came the soup pot. heaps of vegetables were chopped, four cans of four different kinds of beans were opened, piles of spices were measured out and lots of stirring took place.

and it, like lou and her apples, made my world feel a little more autumnal.

that girl

in many ways, i am still that girl you see to the right.

that photo was taken when i was in grade nine, and it probably would have been snapped about four or five months after the sebastian incident.

that girl was smart and goofy and sensitive. she was creative, and filled with imagination and daydreams and wishes. that girl loved writing and art, movies and TV, animals, and cake.

that girl was also shy and quiet and insecure. she was awkward and uncertain, especially socially, and sometimes she felt invisible and alone and like she didn’t really fit in anywhere. some people thought that girl was weird, some thought she was funny, but only a few really knew her.

that girl was a work in progress. she was in development. unfinished. she was someone who hadn’t yet figured anything out, who wasn’t sure what lay ahead, who felt anxious about her life and who spent a lot of time in her own head.

that girl eventually eschewed the airplane collar and found more effective hair products. her chin finished growing and her eyebrows are now thinner. but, no matter how many years have passed and how many things have happened and how much that girl might have changed on the outside, i don’t think i ever really outgrew her where it matters most.

well, there you go, then

my horoscope for today, courtesy of my page-a-day calendar:

"you are being invited to assess your life's satisfaction quotient. if you aren't comfortable with the whos, wheres and hows, then attention must be paid while everyone is still young."

indeed.

a few random behaviours i don’t understand

i don’t understand people who take their children for a walk, or to the park, or to the beach, and who then spend the entire time talking on a cell phone or texting into a blackberry. i find this especially lame when the child in question is a baby in a stroller. is that what constitutes “quality time”? just being in proximity but being completely oblivious?

ditto people who do this when they walk their dogs. i don’t get it.

actually, i don’t get the fixation with cell phones, in general. they have become a bane on society, as far as i’m concerned, and have not only facilitated but encouraged epic levels of rudeness in people. cell phones for emergencies are one thing; cell phones so you can wander the grocery aisles broadcasting your life to the masses are another.

i don’t understand people who seem incapable of saying “thank you.” or, perhaps, who are, for whatever reason, unwilling to do so. you send someone a gift, or hold open a door, or let someone into traffic ahead of you... and nothing. you write a thoughtful email, or give someone a compliment, or offer congratulations on an achievement... and you hear crickets. what happened to simply being gracious? does “thanks!” really require that much effort?

i don’t understand people who blast their TVs or stereos in multi-unit dwellings. if i can hear you watching Judge Judy from behind my own closed door, IT’S TOO LOUD.

i don’t understand people who refuse to recycle. the ones who dump their plastic bottles or pop cans or newspapers or what have you in the garbage can that’s less than two feet away from the recycling bin.

i don’t understand people who don’t reply to emails. i don’t mean a delayed response, i mean no response.

similarly, people who engage you in an email discussion and then just decide, at some random point in the “conversation,” that they’re not going to bother replying anymore. you’ve asked a question, and you never get an answer. your email goes off into the ether and that’s apparently the end of it in the other person’s opinion.

also, people who ask you how you are in an email, but then have zero reaction when you actually tell them the truth, be it good or bad. know what? if you don’t really want to know, or don’t care, or won’t be able to handle how i am, don’t ask.

in fact, email etiquette as a whole needs an overhaul, in my opinion.

and we haven’t even touched upon spelling.

a bouquet of updates

❃ the weirdo next door had his day in “court” (actually, the housing tribunal, but it’s run like a typical courtroom) today and, based on the super’s post-appearance debrief to me this afternoon, he made a complete nuisance of himself there, as well. the adjudicator (read: judge) apparently had to ask him repeatedly to stop talking, or to stay on topic, or the like. while the eviction petition wasn’t approved today, they’ve all been asked to reappear in a month because the adjudicator wants to hear more from the landlord’s side. the super said she gave the landlord my name, because their lawyer asked for the names of other tenants who are familiar with the weirdo and his weirdness. so, i’m standing by for a call from the management office. unfortunately, he hasn’t actually done anything *to* me, or to irritate me, save for just being weird – he’s always been extremely quiet and scarcely seen. further unfortunately, the creep who moved in with the weirdo isn’t at issue, since it’s not his apartment. so, complaining about him (which i could do easily) is moot.

❃ the new neighbour - the one who hammered on the walls at 3am - was evidently very apologetic when the super spoke to him about his pre-dawn redecorating. he said it was “a bad call” on his part, and he won’t be doing it again. thank goodness. i really wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so i was relieved to hear he wasn’t an asshat about it (e.g., denying that he’d done it, or acting entitled in any way). i'm hoping he keeps his word.

❃ i’ve had three bright-red round bath mats in my bathroom since i moved in. the L shape of the bathroom meant a standard bathmat or runner wouldn’t work, so it was IKEA to the rescue with this trio of perfect little rugs that i could arc towards the sink. i’ve always vacuumed them and shaken them out, but never washed them before. their tags said “machine washable” but i was skeptical – what if i put them in the washer and they just disintegrated or came out all warped? too risky. but, yesterday, i decided it was time to finally bite the bullet and give them a whirl... and i’m thrilled to report they emerged bright and clean. they're back in place now. yay!

❃ in my ongoing decorating overhaul of the apartment, which was spurred by the bathroom replaster-and-repaint work, i’ve discovered a handy trick: instead of buying small prints of famous works of art, just find the images online and print them out using a colour printer! i slept over at my parents’ house last night and, because they have just such a colour printer, stayed up late finding and printing 5”x7” monets, which will be framed shortly and hung in my bedroom later today. (note: but NOT at 3am.)

❃ tomorrow is already film-festival-programme-book day. the day that i head out first thing in the morning to stand in line, procure my free tote bag and (decidedly un-free) programme book, and then hurry home so i can spend the entire day on big red, poring over film options, cross-referencing selections and whittling my picks down to 10. normally, the hand-out begins at 9am. last year, they started (unexpectedly and an hour early) at 8am. this year, the posted time is... wait for it... 7am. presumably to accommodate folks who want to pick up their booty before heading to the office. i cannot, CANNOT believe we’re a week away from september. where did 2010 go?

❃ next august, i’m going to iceland. for real.

a pre-sleep musing

last night, as i tossed and turned, the following thought floated through my brain:

you leave your heart prone to being stepped on when you lay it at the feet of the wrong people.

i'm paraphrasing by now, because i decided not to get out of bed and write down the precise wording when it happened, but there you go.

discuss.

the new neighbour

you know, i wish i lived in the kind of apartment utopia you see in movies or on TV, or read about or hear about – the sort of cool, relaxed, nurturing living environment where neighbours get along, and respect each other and recognize that, say, doing your drug deal in the hallway or blasting your music at full volume isn’t the best way to get folks to like you.

no, instead, i seem to wind up with one dud after another. the folks at hell house were like one freak-show act after the next, and the best neighbours i’ve ever had – the young couple who lived next door to me at my current place, and who were always friendly and quiet – moved out a couple of months ago. given the creep and the weirdo who live on the other side of me, i was really really hoping i might luck out and score another great tenant in the newly vacated unit.

and, when i first met my new neighbour, i had hope.

it was a sweltering hot day in mid-july and i encountered michael as he was carrying small items from outside his door into his apartment. he looked really YOUNG, perhaps 23 at most, tall and lanky, with short, curly light-brown hair. very preppy-ish, in a pastel dress shirt and cargo shorts, and quite amiable.

i commented on the heat, and he joked that he waited for the nicest weather before hauling his things in. i introduced myself and welcomed him to the building, he thanked me and introduced himself back, then shook my hand. i headed out, and i remember thinking, “he seems like a nice young man.”

a few days after he moved in, i realized he may be nice, but he also likes to stay up late some nights. our bedrooms share a wall – on his side, it’s a double closet with two sliding metal doors and wall space on either side; on my side, it’s the only uninterrupted wall and, thus, the one against which i have my bed. more specifically, the head of the bed is right up against that wall. if i had a headboard, that’s where it would be.

so, when he’d come home at, say, 2am and heave open his closet doors then SLAM them shut a second later, or throw what i assume were his shoes into the closet so they’d hit that wall we share, i would hear it all. i cut him some slack, and figured that perhaps he was still in the process of moving in and perhaps hadn’t yet gotten himself fully settled.

then, one night a few weeks ago, i heard hammering on that wall at around 11:30pm. it only lasted a few seconds, and i was actually still awake and watching TV, so i didn’t complain. it startled me, but it ended as soon as it began, and i thought maybe he just quickly nailed in a hook for clothes or something, then realized the hour and, like any considerate neighbour, stopped immediately.

all the walls and floors in the building are poured concrete, so there’s some degree of sound muffling... but not enough to block out bangs, slams, thumps or thuds, or to completely silence people’s voices, blaring music, loud TVs or middle-of-the-night construction work. and certainly not any kind of soundproofing.

last night, just before 3am, i was awakened from a dead sleep by hammering on the shared bedroom wall. right above my head. i sleep with earplugs as it is, but this was so loud and so jarring that it scared the living crap out of me and i FLEW out of bed, heart pounding, trying to wake up enough to figure out what the noise was and where it was coming from. i pulled out my earplugs and quickly realized michael was hammering again... but, this time, it didn’t stop after a few seconds. instead, it kept going.

bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

then a pause.

bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

the concrete actually makes the sound louder on my side than his, and also transmits the sound to the apartments above and below us both.

bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

when it didn’t stop after a minute, i yelled, “KNOCK IT OFF! IT’S 3 A.M.!”

a second of two later, i heard the muffled sound of a male voice mimic what i’d said, so i know someone heard me. and then the hammering continued. i’m also pretty sure michael had a buddy over, because i could hear music faintly from the wall our bathrooms share.

again, this is at THREE IN THE MORNING.

who the hell hammers ANYTHING in an apartment at THREE IN THE MORNING?!

i wasn’t sure what to do. what if this went on for an hour? there’s no way i could sleep – i could hear the hammering loud and clear from my living room, and my heart rate hadn’t yet returned to normal. so, as the hammering peristed, i called the super and left a message on her voicemail.

about two minutes later, the hammering stopped. i wasn’t sure if the super had intervened, or if michael’s emergency pre-dawn home reno had suddenly been completed, but i went back to bed very cautiously. i was so stunned at what was either his utter cluelessness or complete lack of consideration that i couldn’t fall back asleep. i was getting angrier and angrier as i lay there, trying to figure out what i would do in the morning.

turns out, what i did in the morning was call the super again. she said she was going to go and speak to him, and i explained to her that i really hoped he just didn’t realize that he doesn’t, in fact, live in a soundproof box where he can do whatever he likes whenever he likes. she agreed that 3am hammering, or ANY kind of hammering after 11pm, is NOT allowed.

earlier today, as i was walking along the street outside the building, i looked up towards his apartment. i saw that the hammering was a result of michael NAILING a blanket (!) above his bedroom windows to act as a curtain. classy. he’s done a horrible job – the whole thing is lopsided and looks cheap and awful – but i’m really hoping whatever adjustments he might decide to make happen during the day, and that this turns out to be a minor bump on the road to good neighbourly relations.

passing thoughts

iotas

* the bathroom makeover is going well, but still needs time. it's amazing, though, how the transformation of one room then slowly influences the changes in others. today, i started hanging a half-dozen framed photos that have been sitting in my closet for months. and soon... a big risk.

* i shifted around my plans for today and tomorrow to facilitate a number of things, including: procuring a six-pack of gourmet cupcakes for YB's birthday (it's tomorrow), dropping in on some friends while they rehearsed their new show (i ♥ the creative process in action), sleeping over chez mes parents tonight so that, in turn, i can be here to bake cookies (for a saturday event) with mom tomorrow morning.

* earlier this week, i wrote a short article on how to take great holiday photos. it was quick, fun and approved immediately. now i just need 20 more like that. in the next month.

* this coming tuesday (august 24th) is already vickie-picks-her-film-fest-movies day. i absolutely cannot, CANNOT believe it's already september. because that means we're only three months away from december. and christmas. and new year's. ugh.

* emma thompson is wonderful. period.

on: ottawa

* YB and i went to ottawa for three days this past weekend. she was heading up to visit with friends, and i tagged along to tour the city for the very first time. i’ve been all over the united states, and to other provinces in canada, but had never visited the nation’s capital before this past thursday.

* just after checking in to our hotel, i found a pair of bright yellow, wadded-up women’s underwear under one of the beds in our room. i picked it up with a pencil, deposited it in a baggie and took it down to the lobby to present to the front desk clerk. she was very apologetic and asked if we wanted to switch rooms. i said no (we’d scored a top-floor room and weren’t about to give up that prime real estate), but that maybe housekeeping needed to sweep *under* furniture instead of just *around* it, since this would have been a very easy and obvious find had someone simply run a swiffer under the bed.

* ottawa is amazing for walking. we walked everywhere and, usually, for many hours each day. my biggest walk was about three straight hours. no idea how much ground i covered, but it felt like i circumnavigated the entire city.

* said three-hour walk culminated in a gigantic and delicious lunch at the works, where i sat down to enjoy a sopranos burger (tomato, lettuce, pesto, grilled eggplant and melted havarti cheese) with sweet potato fries (click on the photo to behold its full splendor) and a coke, and then a mini (but filling) banana split for dessert (which is shown in the photo i posted on sunday evening). i couldn’t believe i ate it ALL and wasn’t grossly over-full by the time i was done. that’s what a big-ass walk will do, i suppose.

* one evening, as we approached parliament hill, YB and i met a very chatty construction worker on a break from a nearby project. he was older, maybe early 50s, and from montreal and, within the course of about 10 minutes, talked to us about: tourism, ottawa, montreal, toronto, the hockey hall of fame, casa loma, the library of parliament, the weather, fortissimo, mosaika and the fact that the ottawa valley will be hit with another major earthquake before christmas this year. wait. what? seems “the guy” who correctly predicted the quake that hit a couple of months ago has also predicted a larger-magnitude rumbler – “about an 8,” to be precise – to strike within the next four months. so, that was weird.

* byward market is a busy, crowded, overpriced tourist stop that we basically walked through once, just to say we saw it. i’m sure there are gems to be found within its manic hustle and bustle, but it was too hot and too packed for us to bother seeking them out. perhaps we’ll try again if we visit the city in the off-season.

* we’d planned to go on a (free) tour of parliament on saturday evening at 6pm... until we discovered (too late) that the last tour on saturdays is at 4:20pm. alas. next time.

* i found myself unexpectedly moved by each and every war memorial and military tribute. similarly, when trix and i paused to watch some of fortissimo – a showcase taking place on parliament hill and featuring assorted branches of the military – i started getting choked up and had to press on.

* the national gallery of canada was glorious and deserted. it’s a beautiful building, and houses a vast collection of canadian and international pieces from the 16th century to present day, but there was nobody there. most of the time, YB and i were the only people in any given gallery room, and even the much-publicized “pop life” pop-art special exhibit had maybe seven or eight other people wandering through it when we did. the national gallery also provided us with an astoundingly cheap and delicious lunch – we’re used to the exorbitant prices charged at toronto’s AGO, so to have a sandwich for $2.75 (and to have it not be revolting) was an unexpected treat.

* there are a lot of animals to be found in the city, just wandering around. we saw groundhogs, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, cats and even a bat (!), which was being chased along sussex by a crow in an aerial pursuit worthy of a WWII dogfight.

* sadly, there was no cake to be had, save for a couple of slices of homemade lemon poundcake one of YB’s friends sent back to the hotel with her one evening.

on: haitus

the blog has been rather quiet this last week for a few reasons.

for starters, that dream i had last monday night really threw me, emotionally. i was surprised at how deeply i was affected, how easily it shoved me backwards, and how hard it was to shake the melancholy it left in its wake. i was well into my ottawa jaunt before it even started to lift... and, even then, it hung on.

then, as mentioned, i went to ottawa for a few days (which is where i snapped the photo accompanying this post). it was a very quick visit, and my first time in our nation’s capital, so i didn’t bring my laptop. even if i had, i wasn’t really in the mood to write anything.

lately, i’ve also been examining my online life in two specific venues: this blog and facebook. the latter has, over the past several months, become a place where i find myself feeling out of sync, as though i’m somehow an artificial construct there and that many of the connections i think are real are, in fact, more superficial than anything else. i’ve actually hit “deactivate my account” twice in the past week, but haven’t quite managed to follow through to the final confirmation step.

then, in terms of this blog, i’ve been struggling with not always viewing my life (and living it) as fodder for entries. that is, i’ve found myself focusing too much on what i’ll write about a given day instead of just living it and experiencing it without worrying about how i’ll describe it later, and i need to get out of that box. it’s the same thing that can happen as a film reviewer – you start to forget how to just enjoy a movie because you’re so busy analyzing it as it unspools.

so, all this to say, i had stuff on my mind and opted for a short hiatus to see if i could get any of it sorted.

i didn’t, really, but the blogging will now resume anyway...

what you need to know...

... is that i ate this wonderful creation yesterday.
and that i took a blog break for a few reasons.
more later.

“never leave me again”

early this morning, just before 3am, i awoke from the most affecting love dream i’ve ever had. it was so pure and intense and whole that, a few moments after waking and as i lay there going over the dream in my mind, i just started weeping.

and cried for nearly an hour.

it was, in my dreams, my happy ending; a scenario so beautiful and poignant and perfect, seeming so incredibly real and true, that it took my breath away and overwhelmed me with feelings of love and peace and acceptance.

it was unlike any previous love dream i’ve had in that it had a beginning, middle and end. it was so rich in detail and so fully coloured, emotionally, that i remember it all. my subconscious flooded my heart with goodness and light in a way it never has before, and wrote for me a chapter of my life that answered prayers, fulfilled wishes and eased pain. i was held and touched and embraced and forgiven and loved beyond measure. it was the hug dream amplified a hundred times.

what this dream also did that none previous have done on such a deep level of the soul, was make me feel like i matter. i didn’t speak the words in the title of this entry, they were whispered to me.

i’ve spent a good chunk of this year struggling with my own self-worth, and with feelings of being forgotten or abandoned or useless or irrelevant. at times, i’ve felt disposable and more alone than ever before. and, as FtB readers know, those things culminated in me literally crying myself to sleep on my birthday. i’ve fought sadness, sometimes daily, and have tried, with varying degrees of success, not to be consumed by feeling as though i really don’t matter. those thoughts and feelings ebb and flow, but nothing has erased them in as immediate and meaningful, if only imagined and ultimately fleeting, way as this dream did nine hours ago.

i’m not sure why the dream came to me when it did – perhaps it was because my writing retreat loosened some of the tethers in my brain, or because i’d gone to see Eat Pray Love earlier last night and was still processing its messages, or maybe it was, like previous love dreams, simply a psychic salve manifested to soothe wounds, provide comfort and offer healing. even if only in my sleep.

which is why, once the waking reality of my life began to wrench the dream from my desperate grasp, i wept. steadily and from the same depth of my soul that had been touched just seconds earlier. even revisiting the dream for this post has had me crying for the entire time i’ve been writing it.

because, as wonderful as the dream itself was, its bliss was equally matched by the feelings of loss and grief that took hold when it was over.

i was left with a distinct sense of goodbye and, i wiped away tears in the darkness of the pre-dawn, all i wanted to do was crawl back into the warm, loving arms of that dream to keep on dreaming it forever.

parting glances

the zen of the pool brush

one of my duties while housesitting is a daily brushing of the pool.

this involves maneuvering a very long, unwieldy metal pole with a push-broom-like brush on its end back and forth along the entire underwater surface of the pool bottom and walls. the purpose of doing this is to inhibit algae growth, and i’ve managed to get the entire job down to just over 20 minutes, shallow end to deep and back.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

it’s labour-intensive, but i absolutely love it. truly.

for starters, it’s a tangible, visible cleaning task and, as we know, i enjoy cleaning. with each brushstroke, little collections of dirt are dispersed below the water so that, by the time i’m done, the pool looks positively pristine. and, thus, incredibly inviting.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

it’s also a fantastic upper-body workout. after ten days, my biceps look great and i can feel the strength that’s developed in my arms.

best of all, finishing the brush down each day not only gives me a profound sense of satisfaction, but also a wonderfully curious sense of peace.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

because the act of pushing that brush down into the water, across the width of the pool, and then hauling it back up to the surface and towards me has become a hugely meditative activity. so much so that i now save it for the late afternoon, when the construction crew next door has left and when the backyard is, except for the wind through the trees, quiet.

as i work my way around the pool’s perimeter, i fall into a relaxed rhythm and lose myself in this seemingly menial work.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

with each pass, i let go of a bit of the weight i carry, in my head and in my heart. though i do find myself drifting into melancholy as the calming effect of the repetitive motion allows loops of sadness to begin playing in my quiet mind, i can usually refocus on the brush and carry on.

usually.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

i can move around the deck and watch the pool get cleaner and brighter, one stroke at a time.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

i can push and pull and work my muscles and release pent-up emotion or stress or anxiety and lose myself in physicality as the cool water splashes against my arms and the smell of chlorine gently wafts past.

push the brush down.

push the brush across.

pull it back up.

shimmy one foot to the right.

and, every day after i’ve completed the journey and swept the steps last, i put the pole back in its place, stand at the edge of the pool and pause for a few moments just to savour the tranquility.

i will miss it.

thinking out loud: chapters

in previous blog entries, i’ve likened life to all sorts of things. to drops of water being added to a glass, to doors that open and close, to pixels in a photograph, to islands in a vast ocean of experience.

today, i started thinking about chapters.

all the clichéd metaphors and analogies you’d expect to emerge did emerge – chapters standing alone or melting into one another, all the chapters added together creating a complete story, and so on.

i thought about the fact that you can sometimes see a chapter ending almost as soon as it starts. you know from page one exactly what’s to come, but you plod through it anyway to get to the conclusion you telegraphed ages ago. or how, other times, when you least expect it and much to your shock or dismay, the proverbial book can slam shut and a chapter is abruptly over before you were done with it.

i thought about how you get some chapters that you wish would go on forever, with pages and pages of colour and wonder and emotion. and then you occasionally get chapters so tedious and dull, or painful and frightening, or depressing and sad, that you desperately want to speed ahead to the next one because anything has to be an improvement on what you’ve just suffered through.

but as i slowly found myself getting lost in the notion of life as a novel, i suddenly recognized this curious pattern i have of creating metaphors that compartmentalize life. perhaps somewhere in my mind, the idea of a life - my life – split into chunks feels comforting or familiar, since i keep revisiting it over and over again. maybe, somehow, it helps me to understand or to cope... or something.

i started thinking about the drops and doors and pixels and islands, and then the chapters, and my tendency to consistently see life as pieces of a puzzle. (<-- oh look. another one.)

why do i do it?

does it make life easier or more difficult?

does it take a seemingly gigantic thing and break it down into more manageable pieces?

or does it draw too much focus to the trees when i should be keeping my eyes on the forest?

do i do it because it allows for a sense of finiteness – reassuring me that each section has a beginning, middle and end? and does that, in turn, stem from a hope that whatever chunk i might be in now, another one lies ahead and who knows what it might hold? or is it because i need to believe that? but then, if i think too long on the finiteness, and that any given chapter can end at any given time, i'm racked with anxiety and fear... so maybe that's not why, after all.

or is this latest analogy swirling in my brain simply because i’m a writer, and therefore predisposed to looking at the world through a literary lens, making this post just a tired retread of the ones about drops, doors, pixels and islands?

i really have no idea.

sunset at the espresso station

the ulcer

there is an ulcer that’s been growing on the wall of my bathroom for more than three years.

it began as a teeny, tiny fissure in the plaster, likely caused by a less-than-professional patching attempt, either by the former tenants or the maintenance team responsible for repainting prior to me moving in. either way, it was an innocuous little crack, but i spotted it immediately. “i should fix this,” i thought. i knew its location – in spray range of the showerhead – meant it would start to get bigger before long.

and it did.

day by day, week by week, month by month, that once insignificant flaw began to grow. very subtly, very slightly, it grew. at first, the crack got a little wider, then a little longer. then, as moisture found its way underneath, the paint on top started to curl back. again, just a bit at first, but each shower and every bath aided in the ulcer’s growth and the wall’s decay. “i should really fix this,” i thought.

eventually, sesame seed-sized specks of crumbling plaster started dropping into the bathtub. then, somewhat larger chunks, maybe the size of sunflower seeds. and, as the paint continued to peel itself off, i saw how many layers were underneath. all the different colours that the walls had been over the years – teal blue, apricot, beige, darker beige, white. “wow,” i would think. “i need to fix this.”

but i did not, and the ulcer kept expanding.

it started to creep lengthwise along the top of the bathtub tiles one millimeter at a time, so that, after a while, new fissures were spawned on connecting sections of wall and those, too, launched expansion projects as soon as they felt the wet touch of water. and, once more, i thought to myself, “i really should fix this before it gets any bigger.”

time and again, i would look at the blossoming blister and think about what needed to be done to arrest its development and repair the wall. some scraping, some plastering, some painting and some caulking was all there was to it. simple. but i just kept letting it slide. i justified my own inaction and apathy in all sorts of entirely legitimate and truthful ways and, as i put off to tomorrow what should have been done yesterday, the ulcer progressed. and, this spring, once the top layers of paint had fully shriveled and lifted away to expose the plaster underneath, the erosion accelerated.

then, earlier this summer, i suddenly and rather dramatically realized what a terribly perfect metaphor for my life this ulcer had become. i had a very obvious, broken thing screaming out to be fixed but i was not fixing it. i was letting it get worse, letting it flourish, letting it consume... and just watching it all happen.

“that’s enough,” i thought. “i have to fix this.”

in that instant, i decided it was time for me to do something to stop the ulcer’s progression, thwart its relentless destruction, and repair what it had already eaten away. i knew precisely how i would tackle the work, i just wasn’t sure when.

then, this housesitting opportunity fell in my lap.

and, on the day i packed my bag to come here, i finally took a trowel to the rot and started to clean out the open wound so that, at long last, the fix can begin.