Friday, July 27, 2007

really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree

I finally told GDJ that we're moving to Vancouver. I had delayed talking about this with him because I was afraid he wouldn't want to employ me anymore, not that it should make any difference when I'm working from home where home is anyway, but I was concerned that it might make me a less desirable employee since I'd be unable to attend meetings with his clients that live and work here.

Instead, he seemed pleased that we were heading West because, according to him, the company is expanding in that direction and having someone out there who is familiar with the company and the business could work really well. He wasn't ready to talk about contracts and deals and any of that yet, this being new information, but it sounded positive. I guess he'll talk to his business partners and get back to me. I like the idea of being able to bring in a full paycheque right from day one. No matter how I enjoy the idea of being taken care of, there's something that my mother instilled in me that rejects it and requires that I earn my own way through the world.

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I realised a few weeks ago that the book I have imagined one day gathering enough self-discipline to write, has already been written by Julian Dibbell - and with more authority and panache than I can ever hope to manage. Perhaps my more sloppier writing style will work to my benefit; maybe it means there is still room for another book on the subject in the world, since it will be so different. Accessible, mayhaps, to the mentally handicapped, unlike Dibbell's work.


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I lost my temper with a stranger the other day. I was out walking with the dogs in the neighbourhood when we were suddenly attacked by an off-leash dog whose owner showed strangely little interest in helping to resolve the problem. While his dog chased my dogs around in circles, causing them to wrap their leashes around and around my knees, he stood calmly on the other side of the street calling his dog halfheartedly as though he didn't expect his dog to listen to him. Unsurprisingly, it didn't.

My dogs were frightened and panicky and barking their little heads off as they tried to escape, and I was helpless to do much of anything, being tied up as firmly as I was. I tried to reach for the other dog's collar to hold him off, but couldn't get a grip on it. And wasn't even able to pick up my own pups to keep them safe. The whole thing was terrifying for all of us and when the man across the street finally decided he'd better come over and retrieve his dog, he had the nerve to snarl at me something about his dog being harmless as though we were being stupid for reacting in fear. How am I, or the pups, to know if a strange dog is friendly or not?

I confess that I responded angrily. I shouted at him, and called him a name, in fact, because I was brimming over with so much adrenaline that I was tempted me to follow this man back to his house and kick in his front windows. I didn't, but I really wanted to.

After the man retreated back into his house with the dog (shouting at the dog as he went, as though it was the dog's fault it wasn't leashed, rather than his) I calmed down and felt thoroughly astonished with myself. I am, honestly, a person who rarely loses my temper, rarely shouts, and never curses at strangers.

There is only one other time in my life I can remember speaking to a stranger that way, and that was when a man approached me in a bus station and said something chummy to me about how us white folk needed to stick together in this part of town where everyone was wearing a turban. Only that time when I cursed, I did so very calmly, and invited him to F-off in the same tone of voice I would use to ask the for the time.

The other voice, this demon-voice, that emerged when I responded to the Dog Man was brand new. There is no Lisa, only Zuul.




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