The book is nearly ready to launch.  I am proud of my mum for being able to do this courageous thing, as I do not think I could ever bring myself to dredge up all that pain the way she has.  She is a different kind of person than I am; stronger, braver.  But she takes us along for the ride.  So here we go.


*

a couple of things that interfere with sleep

Union is ramping up to go on strike again.  Sometimes I wish I had chosen a private sector career, and while I'm changing careers, it might as well be the kind of career where I can wear headphones all day and only take them off when I engage in spirited ping pong tournaments with my co-workers.


*


Last night we were awoken at 2am by the sound of a car alarm, and opened the front door to discover an abandoned vehicle on fire on our front lawn.  Exciting.


*

existential therapy (is it a talking mountain?)

all right in a limited sort of way

I think I should like to bite you.  Not hard enough to draw blood, not like Mike Tyson, but I should like to bite you hard enough that it hurts, so much so that you will not forget it, not ever.  I would bite you slowly so it might be interpreted, initially, as a sexual overture, but increasing pressure until it becomes uncomfortable, and then painful.  Until you felt alarmed.  And then go one second longer than that moment, long enough to give you a burst of panic, a shot of adrenaline.

That is how I would like you to remember me if you think of me again, as pushing past those warm places where love bites tickle and into the slightly scary place where you momentarily lose faith in my intentions, and then question your own ability to understand the world when you wonder if I meant to hurt you.  Of course I never meant to hurt you, you jackass.  It's just that love hurts sometimes.


*

fear and loathing

J is taking driving lessons, expensive driving lessons, which does not, as I had hoped, release me from the responsibility of taking her out driving and helping her to hone her newly acquired skills.  I dislike this intensely.

It is absurd for me to critique anyone's driving.  I am an inconsistent driver.  With the right music playing, the right weather outside the open window, and the right day behind me, I drive like I own the world, passing people, taking chances, and appearing as confident as if I knew what I was doing.  Deep in thought, however, I might back up into the garage door or a parked car.

Driving with J frightens me.  She takes her lessons in an automatic car, but mine is standard, and it is my task to teach her to drive standard.  I am a lazy standard driver anyway, riding the clutch rather than downshifting, and articulating what I am doing is nearly impossible.  J looks down at the gearshift rather than at the road when she changes gears.  She makes the car chug terrifyingly when she shifts.  She slows down to nearly a dead stop in the middle of the road before she can make a left turn.  And she travels through narrow gateways moving much too fast.


*

Unfortunately, I have noticed that my passport has expired.  Fortunately I noticed this prior to trying to board a plane to Europe next month.  Tomorrow I am going to race to the passport office after work and hope that they can take care of me quickly.  Stupid.

*

Christy Clark is not just bad at her job.  She is a horrible human being.


*

fifth pound

I met a chickadee who had only one eye.  One eye was normal, the other was an empty space, socket, where the eye should have been.  Long healed and causing no problem.  He landed on my hand long enough to pick a peanut from the seed mix, long enough to show me his scar.  I said, Are you okay?  And he said, Of course; what do you mean?  Wild things do not feel sorry for themselves.


*


My mother's book is going to be published in April.  The forward has been written by a famous person.  Not famous like People Magazine famous, but famous in the world of counselling psychology.  Famous enough that it will make a big difference to how many copies of it are sold.  Famous enough that it alarms me a little, because my life is in this book too.  Not just theirs.  No matter how much I tried to disentangle myself.


*

chickadee dee dee

flying light

I woke up with your breath, ragged against my neck.  It never leaves me satisfied, what happens in my dreams.  It just leaves me ravenous and aching, and frankly, angry.  The thing about this kind of affair is that it can never end as it has never really begun.


*

Tim

It was his hands that I noticed first.  I like hands that are not perfect, hands that look a little rough.  I especially liked watching him write, the lightness of which this rough hand might be capable.  I wanted to touch his hand, but I did not.  I wanted to outline his hand with my fingertips.  I wanted to touch his fingers to my bottom lip.  My thoughts about his hands were all I knew of him for the first year.

In the second year I learned he drank coffee.  He was one of those types that carried a travel mug clipped to his backpack, long before travel mugs were an everyday, everyone, kind of thing.  Back when it was a waving flag that meant you were a friend of the earth.  I liked his addiction.

The third year I learned his name.  He told me had noticed me a lot.   I wondered how this was possible as he had always seemed oblivious of me.  After that it became okay to sit beside him instead of a few rows back.  And up close I could see his hands better.

The fourth year I learned he was a better actor than I expected.  And he was quirky.  Maybe even a little bit odd.  In a good way.

Year five, I learned that his hands were rough, and soft.  He told me had always wanted to kiss me, and his kiss was the kind that lacks something utterly unknowable.  In that crowded space his emptiness spilled over onto me a little and choked me.  I drove him home when he became too intoxicated to drive.  His father seemed unnecessarily grateful.

Year six his brain began to implode.  I learned he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.  He got into a car accident and abandoned his car on the roadside.  He showed up at the bar immediately afterward and ordered a beer, and made sculptures on the table out of pebbles and gum wrappers and bits of broken glass while he waited for his drink, which was not meant to be mixed with lithium.  It turns out they do not have nachos in the psychiatric ward.

His father came looking for him that night, but by then he had fled.  None of us could have convinced him to stay.  His father stayed instead.  He sat at my table and told me about his divorce.  And about how he had tried to help his son keep a job.  And how mental illness ran in their family.  And how lonely he was without his wife.  And I looked at his father's rough hands on the rough wood table, the same hands as Tim's, tracing the names that had been carved there, and still wearing his wedding ring.



*

I just started seeing the light of day

Yesterday morning and this morning my next door neighbour began operating a power saw at 7:30am. It does not really impact me because I get up earlier than that anyway, but I am surprised that he feels it is acceptable to make so much noise before the sun has even fully risen.  He must be able to imagine that there are people nearby who are still in bed and unimpressed to be woken in this manner.  I do not like humans very much for the most part.


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