“All the world’s a stage and all the men and women, merely players.“
I used to do Shakespeare when I was a kid.
The players have definitely been all over the stage lately. I ran into Tom on St. Laurent yesterday afternoon. My first reaction was “oh, crap”. Nothing personal, it’s just that I have no idea now how the encounter is supposed to go; how is each person expecting the other to behave. Pure baloney of the kind I haven’t eaten in 13 years. I just walked up to him, as he floated around a group of young girls, and said “hi, how’s it going”. There were no Quebec kisses or Latin American pecks, or a single light touch. The concept of people not touching each other is bizarre to me, not just in this situation but always. It reminds me of the movie Crash (not the Cronenberg one) and I heart Huckabees (“there’s glass between us”). It makes life seem unreal.
I spent the evening watching possibly my favourite novel’s miniseries –Shogun- with Alex. It came out on tv in 1980, and I must have watched it, because my parents always say how when I was about 5 (1980) I used to say I could speak Japanese and when prompted to do so would say “Hai!” But I’m not sure. There’s also a version of this story where I had a Japanese teacher in one of my classes. In 1980-1981 I liked punks, I asked Santa Claus for a red miniskirt and the Joan Jett album and I got both (score!). I never got the black leather miniskirt I asked for though. My mother said, “little girls don’t wear black” which is BS because I owned a black velvet dress with a white lace collar.
Anyway. Court-NEY is coming to Montreal. I thought it was a quick visit but he plans to stick it out all winter, which is bizarre considering he’s said he can’t stand Montreal winter. On top of it, he plans to record another CD this winter. I told him that would be one depressing CD. “We’ll see”, he said, and I agree. Anyway, he’s arriving tonight and staying on my popular inflatable guestbed for the weekend. I’m so glad he’s back! Maybe a bunch of us can get together and convince him this is still the place to be.
Tonight is the all girl dinner with my mother and 5 or 6 of my good girlfriends, at the Taj downtown. A fancypants Indian restaurant for my mother, the great fan of all things Indian. In 1980-1981 my best friends were an Indian brother and sister duo. They were hilarious and I was always sure, after that, that Indians had the best sense of humour.
Thursday is payday, which means: tickets to Osheaga and possibly reserving my room for Emily’s wedding in October. Friday my mother and I get in another rented car and take off for the cool side of Cape Cod. Horseshoe crabs and crawfish, here we come.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Who were you in 1980?
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4 comments:
isabel? how can that possibly be bizarre to you? you made it pretty clear to me earlier why there should be no contact. what do you want from me? i would've liked to have talked to you, but had to watch you leave instead. and fyi, one of the girls dated steve for a bit, and somehow now her cat is living at our place (it's a total shithead) the other two were just walking with her. please don't assume i know what's going on, my reaction will be to your reaction will be to my reaction. and the insinuation that i am a player could be doubled onto you, you know: you watched an 8 hour movie with your Al-ex. ergo, you boinked. he's much more mother-presentable a man than i anyway. glad you two sorted it all out, it was pretty plain he liked you all along. now... see where presumptions'll get us?
i am writing this as a lazy email, but publish it if you want. i get the feeling a lot of your post was meant for me to read. pleasepleaseplease, there is no 'supposed to'.. that only leads to misunderstandings like these..
and I remember when you were born back in 75...
alright, so it appears i have some explaining to do..
isabel and i are ex-lovers. we were together for 9 months. we have different versions of how it went and different mechanisms of trying to get over it. for her, the ending was abrupt, for me, a taper. we do agree on one thing though, and that is that we don't like to air our undies in public. we've both broken this rule too, with various -typically despondency inducing- results.
well, it appears it takes longer for some to learn than others... after a longish discussion on the MSN involving me going 'i can't believe you posted it' a lot, isabel wants me to eat the pie i baked, so i thought i'd whip up some cream for it too.
first, let me disclaim by saying i didn't think she'd post it. she called my bluff (savvy chick that). it was a first-response, hot behind the ears type reaction. i was hurt and needed a noise making session that i was apparently too stupid not to put in an email or wait until i could it question rationally.
here, i don't really care what anyone else thinks of me. this is a discussion between the Iz and I. she believes i've gotten paranoid. meanwhile, i believe her imagery was distorted and implicative of certain passive judgements she has of me. i sound like a jerk when i say this, but i think it's largely got to do with seeing myself in print on her blog for the first time in a while mixed with seeing myself as a stranger on her blog. we've kinda resolved this (she maintains my conjecture was pure fantasy, and while i agree, i had no idea it were fantasy and actually even reinforced its tenure on reality by responding emotionally). we both have (somewhat contemporary) anecdotes of this sort (and might be the surest way to fulfill our own prophecies: eg. me trying to demonstrate how presumptive she was being was presumptive of me...).
which leads me to try and counter the illustration i provided of presumptuousness... Alex is a gentle dude that I only really ever met once and an ex of Iz's, albeit of some time ago. i bear him no illwill whatsoever, unfortunately i chose to use the situation they were in last night to show what ommited information might do to the eye of the beholder.
since the Iz is haughtily principled, it hasn't allowed her to see a few things of how i've been feeling. while i don't necessarily disagree with her on her wishes to put some time between us to review whether we can later become friends, this conflicts with my wishes of all the advantages us remaining friends would have: to talk about it, us, our mismatches, to help each other, to apprehend ourselves as we are right now (who else can do this for you?) and help each other realize who we want to be.. there are few in this world i know as well as her. and a pretty large chunk of my life still remains open where i feel she might need help. everytime she denies this, it feels quite painful, as we have been using different measures. i have not been able to close the book as neatly as she. when i come across some view of hers that sees me as alien, it impacts my view of her, which is of my familiar. not as my lover, but as someone i will always admire and trust.
this has been a cause for much of our disagreement of late, neither of us understanding (empathetically) what the other needs. i am wary of myself coming to conclusions in general, and it seems like i've hit one (if only a 'time-out' for a pending reappraisal). so, i am sorry for those of you i stupidly involved, but it wasn't really meant to be published (and it definitely not meant to be about you).. the comments were just the quickest way to express my delusion and disappointment.
i hope my feeling bad about this doesn't make it worse. this pie tasted like shit.
tom
this blog is finaly getting exciting...more drama please!!
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