Great Expectations

I don't really feel like doing this anymore. Everything is fine, great, but I'm just not really in the mood to keep posting things for the sake of posting something. It's not really very interesting, and the original purpose of this blog was to communicate with friends and, well, now they should be on Facebook. In any case, I won't be gone for anyone who is close to me.

Maybe I'll come up with something eventually. Feel free to keep me in your feed, but don't count on it. I can't think of a better to way to shut this down then to be meaningless and apparently cryptic one more time.

`Dear Pip,' said Biddy, `you are sure you don't fret for her?'

`O no -- I think not, Biddy.'

`Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her ?'

`My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy, all gone by!'

Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words, that I secretly intended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone, for her sake.

Credo

Il était une fois... a close friend told me "your problem is that you're a romantic". Ah yes, both assertions in that sentence are correct. I am a romantic and it is a problem.

Je m'baladais sur l'avenue le coeur ouvert à l'inconnu
J'avais envie de dire bonjour à n'importe qui
N'importe qui et ce fut toi, je t'ai dit n'importe quoi
Il suffisait de te parler, pour t'apprivoiser

Aux Champs-Elysées, aux Champs-Elysées
Au soleil, sous la pluie, à midi ou à minuit
Il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux Champs-Elysées

Tu m'as dit "J'ai rendez-vous dans un sous-sol avec des fous
Qui vivent la guitare à la main, du soir au matin"
Alors je t'ai accompagnée, on a chanté, on a dansé
Et l'on n'a même pas pensé à s'embrasser

Hier soir deux inconnus et ce matin sur l'avenue
Deux amoureux tout étourdis par la longue nuit
Et de l'Étoile à la Concorde, un orchestre à mille cordes
Tous les oiseaux du point du jour chantent l'amour

-Joe Dassin, Les Champs Elysées

My body is a cage

The word "cromagnon" often conjures up the image of my history teacher at Sacred Heart, Mrs. Filipovich. Her skin taut against her tiny skull, hair tied in a neat ponytail at the bottom of her nape in a black ribbon... in my mind she's always wearing some shade of grey or black. There was just something about the way she said the word, with a bit of a French accent: "cromagnon" instead of crow-mag-nin.

If I were living with my ancestors in Western Europe about 15 thousand years ago, I think I would be dead by my age. I'm 32, but I'm a genetic disaster of a 32 year old. My eyesight was detected to be going bad by the time I was 10, but I'm sure I remember seeing blurry long before that. At 22, an observant doctor was the first to notice a sad but quirky fact: my left leg is a full centimetre shorter than my right leg. Incidentally, my right eye is a little better off than my left eye (0.25). And, I have had cavities. Lots of cavities. All the teeth that you can't see in a photo of me smiling have fillings. And one particularly sad tooth was the recipient of a root canal at least 5 years ago.

This tooth is why I'm writing today. Funny how teeth and eyes, such tiny things, can overpower our senses when something's wrong with them. I remember the agony and impotence I felt last summer in L.A. when I somehow scratched my cornea and was practically blind for a few hours. I went back to my hotel room and I cried out of pure misery and loneliness. I think that if I had been in Europe during the Ice Age when that happened, I would have curled up in the forest and let a bear eat me alive. Luckily, no bears came into my hotel room and my family and friends came to the rescue. Also, the scratch was due to my contact lense and they didn't have those tens of thousands of years ago. But I would have been blind as a bat anyway. Without glasses, I can't see clearly beyond 15 centimetres. Seriously.

And teeth! Teeth are huge. In Chile there was a program started by the last president's wife to help poor (and "poor") women get their smiles fixed, "Sonrisa de Mujer". The objective was to raise their self-esteem as well as their job opportunities. That's how huge teeth are.

Last Thursday as I ate some salted corn & flax chips (on special!), I heard the crack. I knew it was bad. I had cracked that tooth before, which is about when I had the root canal done, but oh.. I didn't know it could get worse. I will back up a bit. I have two marvelous dentists: one in Montreal and one in Santiago. The one in Santiago did my root canal. The one in Montreal praised it and said "but now it's time you got a crown on that tooth". My health insurance said "hahaha. good luck paying for that, don't count on us". So I made several appointments with my Chilean destist for next month, when I'm travelling there on vacation. A tooth-motivated vacation. Anyway, a month away from the intended crown thing and crack!

What would you do? Ignore it, of course! But it hurt. By Sunday it hurt so much, I wanted to accept Andre's offer to rip it out with pliers. I dosed on Advil, which kind of gives you an indication of how exaggerated I am. It wasn't *that* painful, I suppose. But I could feel the cracks between the outer shell of my original tooth (since circa 1984) and whatever Mr. Dentist had put on the inside. Are you grossed out? I couldn't stop touching it.

Anyway. I called up Ms. Dentist this morning and said "please look at it. I need to know if I can hold on a month -at least- like this". This afternoon Ms. Dentist told me it was a good thing I went to see her. The tooth was broken, good as gone, and could get infected if left alone. She STABBED me in my palate with a needle so painful I had to use up all my grown-up self-control to stop from swatting her arm away. I was curled up in the chair, not screaming but making the high pitched sound of my inner fight against pain. "eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" Then I started laughing; she must have given me drugs.

What she did next is almost inconceivable to me still, even though I've looked up there with a mirror and I know it to be fact: she took out half my tooth. She just removed it. I saw it, too. My tooth, that has been in my mouth for over 20 years, broken, a piece of junk in her latex-gloved hand. She said I had options: an implant, a bridge, surgery... horrors, just horrors. I wish a tiger would eat me now.

Ecología

Ahhh, tanto tiempo. Me dieron ganas de escribirles un post en castellano y además hablar de algo que sí me interesa en el último tiempo: la ecología. Bueno. Eso es mentira. Me interesa hace mucho tiempo. Recuerdo haber pasado unas vacaciones en la biblioteca del museo de historia natural de Cape Cod, Massachussets, "robando" fotocopias de un libro acerca del medio ambiente y cómo salvarlo. Debo haber tenido unos 10 años. El libro era de los 70s, lo sé por sus dibujos, aún claros en mi mente.

En todo caso, el punto es que hoy siento un renovado interés en lo que yo puedo hacer para minimizar mi impacto sobre el planeta. Hasta ahora he hecho cosas como:

-Reciclar. hay un programa municipal acá que acepta papel, plástico (salvo el 6), vidrio y metal. en un almacén aceptan las bandejas de plumavit así que las guardo para reciclarlas ahí.

-Compostaje, otro programa local. me inscribí, me dieron las llaves del sitio y voy una o dos veces por semana durante el verano con mi colección de recortes de verduras, a depositarlos en una enorme caja de madera con los recortes de otras personas. en la primavera, nos repartimos la tierra - el compost- que se forma a partir de todo eso.

-Detergente biodegradable. Para los platos, la ropa y al menos una parte de los que uso en el baño. Mi compañera de trabajo que es brasilera dice que aquí usamos muchos químicos para limpiar mientras que en sudamérica un poco de jabón y agua y yastá! Me encantan los productos de limpieza, lo admito. Ahora estoy vuelta loca con una marca llamada Method.

-Reduciendo la cantidad de bolsas plásticas que uso. Por ejemplo, llevando mis propias bolsas de tela (o fabricadas con plástico reciclado!) al supermercado. Y las bolsas plásticas que sí acumulo las reciclo, obvio.

Pero hay cosas que sé que no hago suficiente:

-Comprar comida producida localmente, para que su viaje hasta mis manos haya costado menos bencina, ergo contaminación.
-Comprar comida orgánica, para que en su producción no se hayan usado químicos, pesticidas, etc.
-Intercambiar más productos químicos y cuya producción crea subproductos dañinos al medioambiente por otros más sanos. Lo hice esta semana cuando se acabó mi shampoo Pantene. Compré uno biodegradable, natural. Pero tanto maquillaje!
-Menos envoltorios! Si te fijas, todo está envuelto! Individualmente, incluso. Es absurdo, y lo que no reciclo... bueno, ahí va, llenando el tarro de la basura y yendo a llenar un basural al lado de la casa de alguien, cayendo al agua que alguien usa para regar, evaporándose en el aire de todos.

¿Qué haces y qué planeas hacer?

Word of the Day: Pleonastic

I came across it in a translation forum I use when I'm stuck.

Pleonasm:

1.	the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy.

2.	an instance of this, as free gift or true fact.

3.	a redundant word or expression.

It reminded me of an earlier post re: tautology.

American Streamlined Design

At the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Until this Sunday, October 28. Free Admission.

They applied the principals of aerodynamics to household objects, beginning with tools and appliances. They created a look, mostly in the 30s and 40s, that just would not let go of its grip on our collective psyche. There's something that remains "modern" about these designs, even almost 80 years later. We have made the materials lighter and more sophisticated (not so much steel and bakelite anymore) but we have not really created a "look" that says "future" quite so loudly. Is it better to live in the future ("future is now") or to live in a time when the future is brightly illuminated ahead of you?


“Modern design entered the American home not through the front door, but by way of the kitchen, bathroom and garage.” -Walter Dorwin Teague, Design This Day

Oui, c'est moi!

I wish I could write poetry. I would write a piece about my multi-blooming Candy Wind hibiscus and how she is me.

I *heart* Interpol

Here's the video I took at Osheaga 2007. I thought my camera had sound capture at the time, silly, silly me.

...they hadn't wanted it

Before Time Altered Them

They were full of sadness at their parting.
They hadn't wanted it: circumstances made it necessary.
The need to earn a living forced one of them
to go far away -New York or Canada.
The love they felt wasn't, of course, what it once had been;
the attraction between them had gradually diminished,
the attraction had diminished a great deal.
But to be separated, that wasn't what they wanted.
It was circumstances. Or maybe Fate
appeared as an artist and decided to part them now,
before their feeling died out completely, before Time altered
them
the one seeming to remain for the other always what he was,
the good-looking young man of twenty-four.

Constantine P. Cavafy

[In the years after my parents' divorce, I found this poem, bookmarked by my mother in a translation of Kavafi poems. It still makes me cry to read it. I am afraid of pain, but I am more afraid of ignoring its existence.]

I went to my first ever march on Saturday. Somehow I manage to have the best friends ever, including but not limited to, Brian and Andre, who went with me to join the hippies for a bit, hoping perhaps for a little molotov cocktail action. No such luck. It was a silent march, so quiet along Sherbrooke on a rainy Saturday that Brian decided he *wanted* to chant. The organizers shouted a couple in English and French once we reached "Norman Bethune Park", ie the sliver of dirt on the corner of de Maisonneuve and Guy. I was wondering: is it weird that Norman Bethune was so tied into China when we're discussing their unispired lack of action vis a vis Burma? Just a thought.

It felt good to do something that can be qualified as solidarity. But I am no fan of what seems like "professional activism". Someone Brian knows, who he calls "an extreme vegan" (ie eating honey is "obviously" immoral) was a busy bee these days, going from this "demo" to another about the next controversial topic du jour. Not my thing. I guess it is this type of person who must be in charge of sending emails entitled "protest went great!" Is this, like, "tried your recipe, it went great!"? Or "had that date last night; it went great!"? Woohoo. I don't know. Not my thing. I'm still really glad I went, and I'm thrilled Brian and Andre were there too. Some people are just awesome.

An article in WIRED about `open source politics` and the group on FB through which I found out about the protest.

click on the image

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone. - George Washington

What is the difference between an outpouring of compassion for people displaced and killed by a tsunami and this?

Rapa Nui

Mamá & Axel with the moais... not, not a giant bottle of pisco, kids.

I learnt that each of the big heads was meant to look like the dead person it represented. Axel also told me he was able to ride his bike for 4 hours (he enjoys marathonic trips) without seeing a single human on Easter Island.

MyohMy

"China hopes that all parties in Myanmar exercise restraint and properly handle the current issue so as to ensure the situation there does not escalate and get complicated," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Thursday. (From an Associated Press wire)

I have news for Ms. Yu: it’s already complicated.

Have you heard what’s happening in Myanmar? I hear it every morning on the radio news, like a slow, persistent, deathly drumbeat. I bet these monks are in it for the long haul. If you’re a Buddhist monk, I would guess you’re not too concerned about whether it’s you getting beaten to death or the next guy, and that’s how you win a battle, I think. Individualization of soldiers annoys me, because I feel it undermines the concept of a united front, where each man is everyman. Samurai, Spartan, whatnot. Didn’t they do it this way? I don’t know much, but I hope these monks and their compatriots win. From what I gather, they have nothing to lose.

[the photo is of the Japanese photographer, Kenji Nagai, 52, who died after being shot while trying to photograph the events]

We all need to feel secure, we're so middle class

Tautology

From the book Armed Gunmen, True Facts and Other Ridiculous Nonsense (comments by Mental Floss.com)

• “False pretense”
If pretense is “the act of alleging falsely,” as Dictionary.com asserts, then wouldn’t a false pretense be … true?

• “Advance warning”
A warning delivered after the fact is known, I believe, as “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

• “Convicted felon”
If we’re guilty until proven innocent, there shouldn’t be too many convictionless felons running around.

• “Surviving widow”
Kallan defines it thusly: “The last woman standing in an all-widow game of Russian roulette.”

• “Fall down”
Gravity tends to make this modifier unnecessary.

• “All throughout”
More pervasive than occasionally throughout.

• “Close proximity”
As opposed to a distant proximity?

• “Sum total”
This really gets the point across … and then sum.

• “Shared dialogue”
When was the last time you heard a shared monologue?

• “Mass exodus”
When everyone leaves church at the same time? And speaking of church …

• “Holy Bible”
I’m so tired of these unholy Bibles.

I need a housewife

What I am looking for is someone to:

*clean my apartment
*make small home repairs (see post re: my broken curtain)
*run errands

More about me:

*I'm out of the house a lot, don't have time to sit around waiting for a load of laundry to get done in the building's basement before anyone steals my basket (again)
*I like to eat healthy, simple things but can barely get around to purchasing them at the supermarket, much less preparing them into lunches
*Life is chaos, things break, my list of items in need of repair or change is growing and I'm not doing anything about it. Can you help?

Ideal housewives are:

*Equally opportunity employer
*Harassment free environment
*Fair pay, fair labour conditions
*Must enjoy taking care of *moi* and *mes needs* and thrive on praise

What am I doing here?

*

Spandex, lamé, headbands, short shorts, athletic socks, grinding up the dancefloor, crowd-surfing to DJs who plays squeaky sounds, DJs who mash up samples and call it groundbreaking, some drug I can’t even tell you’re on, teenagers, kids who look like teenagers… what am I doing here?

Maybe it’s because I’ve been to “too many” dance shows lately. Maybe the planets aligned differently this summer and I’m suddenly no longer the same person I used to be. I like to dance. I like to dance a lot. My preferred style of dancing is called “jumping up and down and shaking” (jumping down is an interesting concept but we can talk about that another day) and I have been doing it freely and wildly since, oh, 1993. Before that, I danced but it was comme il faut. I was all awkward circle dancing at the Loyola gym, or waiting for some boy who turned out to be gay to make out with me to Roxette. I looked around at how the other girls danced and I just couldn’t do it like them. Thank God for Britpop. Thank God for Damon Albarn releasing the hoppy dance craze. Thank God for wicked fast drum beats and pounding electronica. Thank God for Franz Ferdinand and Interpol and every other nerd-jerky kind of music that finally was in sync with what I’d had in my body the whole time. No more of this sinewy, cool chic dancing. Dance, dance, dance to the radio.

And then, I don’t know. People started saying the kids at the places I like to dance at are too young. I said I ignore them. And then, suddenly, at the MSTRKRFT show at the SAT on September 1, I suddenly saw them. I had seen them before and suddenly I *saw* them: the dayglo tube dresses, everything cheesy about the 80s, tap dancing, gyrating, we-just-got-out-of-8th-grade-gym-class kids. So what am *I* still doing here? I swear that night I could feel the gap between me and the rest of the crowd stretching wider right before my eyes. I can barely listen to these people chatter, much less commune with them on a sweaty dancefloor. I am on the verge of not understanding a thing about them anymore. I am old. I am a hasbeen. And I don’t even care what they think.

When I was 17 I used to go dancing at this club with a particular boy and his friends, and I remember how we used to be shocked if anyone as old as 25 came in. What were they doing there, it was so weird!

Ultimately, I don’t think age has everything to do with it. I had friends who were never into the debauchery of dance, drugs and delirium, no matter how young they were. And I know there are people who will never want to leave that environment, no matter how old they get. It’s not them; it’s me. Scratched record, something skipped. I opened my eyes and I saw that I was in a foreign country that used to be mine. I decided I wanted to leave. But not before Justice on October 19 (!)
* if you can tell me who this is, you are a young shooting star.

inneresting fax

* I haven't posted anything here since August.

* Most people visit my blog on Wednesdays, and the most popular keyword used to find it is... halloween (??) followed by nancy kerrigan, which is really the same thing since what they find on my old site when they google those words is a picture of me and Button dressed up as tonya harding and nancy kerrigan one halloween. I am probably not helping to reduce these hits by writing about them now...

* The top 3 blogs sending visitors my way are Bubi's, It's All Grey to Me, and Amy's. Thanks, ladies!

* I write more when I am living less, I suppose. Now I can only think of things like this to say: my curtains broke; I like the dog park on Dr. Penfield for lunch; my kitchen stinks due to leaving a rotting blob of couscous and chickpeas out and I can't wait for trash day; my hibiscus is multi-blooming and I love it; I have a new used tv; I got notification that my new laptop has arrived in the mail; I think the fighting couple was relocated to the first floor of the building but it's only a hunch. I know everyone always wants to know what's up with them...

How I spent my summer(s)

Two summers ago I dated three guys in quick succession. I knew they were all wrong for me. A) great on paper B) a great idealization and C) a great conversation that ended the very second we became a couple, as correctly predicted by him.

Last summer, two of the characters from the year before played starring roles in the Polanski directed version of my life. Murky waters. The third had only a cameo role. Thank God.

This summer, I have learnt about karma, retribution, deceit, and -ultimately- how your adversaries can become your allies by taking the dead weight you've been carrying around off your hands. At first, it's unpleasant but when you realize the major favour being done for you, it's hoorah!

Sarah came over on the day my fridge horoscope (a magnetic calendar with a new message for each day) said the following:

To get what you want, it helps greatly to know exactly what that is. What you want is defined by your real desire, not what you think you'll probably get.

Apt words for our activity that night -besides drinking mojitos-, creating a list of my so-called dealbreakers. I ended up with six, which Sarah thinks is too many, but I had to fight her on it. Dealbreakers are things you will not accept in an FLP (as Sarah calls them), and therefore we converted my list into a contract, which begins thus:

I, Isabel Brinck, hereby solemnly swear that I will not pursue a relationship with anyone who:


and then the points we came up with follow. I could have copied the list here, but it's kind of too personal, I think. Plus, you don't really need to know unless you are a) one of my assigned veto-empowered friends who may axe any undesirable candidates or b) a candidate.

Most of my list is made up of the-worst-of-the-worst of what I've already experienced. If I read it that way, it's pretty pathetic. But going back to the adversary-cum-ally, if I realize that I have been thankfully released from all of these things, than hallelujah, I *love* this list!

Ex Concu

Aqui una entrevista con mi ex-concubina, Consuelo Edwards:

http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias_v2/site/artic/20070823/pags/20070823184413.html

If you want to have a look, that up there is a link to an interview in a Chilean newspaper of my ex-roommate, the ex-teen pop star.

• Taxes on a ticket supposedly bought entirely with Aeroplan miles: $129

Airport shuttle back home the same day as your flight because it was cancelled due to "temperature difference between Montreal and NY": $14

2 nights of hotel obtained on Priceline, even though you only stayed one because you neglected to pay $5 cancellation insurance: $342

Fee for changing your flight from NY-Toronto-Montreal to the logical NY-Montreal (even though this option wasn't available when you booked your flight): $50.

30 hours with Carmen: worth every penny

photos are available on my Flickr

Grief without Tragedy

Tragedy: an accident; the sudden loss of a young life; a violent death.

My grief without tragedy is like a slow boil, with occasional overflows. I walk slowly, talk slowly, too absorbed in my own thoughts to even realize how absorbed in my own thoughts I am. Sometimes I have no thoughts, and I just stare at things, as though they were talking to me. I am the opposite of anxious.

People approach me with care; others with caution, unfamiliar with death and afraid, perhaps, of saying the wrong thing. Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing. I enjoy an invitation to talk. I can talk about someone who loved me who's gone; about how this places me irrevocably in adulthood; how there's no one left to take care of me and shouldn't I be taking care of someone? I can talk about other things too, not just loss. I enjoy hearing others' good news. I even enjoy hearing others' suffering and tragedy, because it just means we're all still human.

This weekend I am making a trip to New York City - not my annual pilgrammage but a special visit to be with my cousin Carmen. The picture is of my mother, on the left, and hers.

Lots of love from heaven

Hoy, 12 de agosto de 2007, alrededor de las 3 de la tarde, murió mi querida abuelita María en la casa de mi mamá en Santiago. Esto es sólo para avisarles a quienes leen este blog porque me tienen cierto cariño y amistad. Yo sé que varios de ustedes la conocieron en persona y espero que la recuerden hoy con dulzura.

***

Today, August 12, 2007, at around 3pm, my dear grandmother -or as I called her, abuelita María- passed away in my mother's house in Santiago. I'm posting this for those people who read this blog because of their friendship and affection for me, who I want to share this with.

A la derecha/On the right

Sooo Sarita

En lo que es ya prácticamente una tradición familiar, le copié esta foto al blog de mi hermano.

Everyone, please meet the one and only, intrepid traveller, fashionably fabulous, supermom and career woman, a whiz with words, morally unambiguous, sorceress of the blackest humour, the generous Lioness herself: my mom, Sarita! (applause)

The only thing she was never able to achieve was to make her kids as nice as she is. Well, maybe Axel is nice. Mwuhahaha!

eponymous anonymous

This was meant to be a comment but I'm making it a post because I have a notice to make public at the end of it:

Damn, I hate anonymous comments. At least use an "other" name, people, so you can be identified as a unique being or something. Argh.

Public notice: I won't block anonymous comments because doing so means all commenters must be registered with Blogger and my parents both use the "other" option (neither registered nor anonymous). But I WILL delete all your anonymous comments. If you don't fill out an "other" name, you're going into the wastepaper basket. Yes, I am in a bad mood. Sorry, annoying spy-girls are calling me to find out if my ex lover is really dead. Go away!

One more time!

This is pretty much how it felt at the Bell Centre on Tuesday night. I have never seen EVERYONE standing -no, dancing- for the entire duration of a concert at that venue before. Daft Punk rocked the house. Best light show ever. Click on photos to see photographers' Flickr streams. Read ukokbylk's post, appropriately titled "That Was Retarded". Do I need to remind you that I don't condone any of the illegal activities described in said post? Not at my age, anyway. I was wearing earplugs, c'mon.

Life Cycles

Part II of Abuelita Marita, here is something I bet is at least *a little* unique to my family: having a mass in my mother's apartment to celebrate my grandmother's 96th birthday.

***

My last trip with Laser has come to an end. Although I already posted the complete lyrics to "Your ex-lover is dead" by Stars on this blog, it's on the repeat button in my head, so here is just the end of it once more:

There's one thing I want to say so I'll be brave

You were what I wanted

I gave what I gave

I'm not sorry I met you

I'm not sorry it's over

I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.

I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.

Have a good "rest of your life".

Things I did this weekend for the first time in the my life

* drove a BMW
* drove a motorboat
* participated in a sailing race
* jumped off the boathouse roof into the lake (see picture above)
* jumped off a high rocky ledge into the lake (see picture below)
* saw a hummingbird up close
* painted a dock

Vive le lac d'écorces!

Abuelita Marita

Tomorrow is my grandmother's 96th birthday. She's been very ill for the past year or so, with a rapidly advancing case of senile dementia. This, after an incredibly vivacious, outgoing, life-loving, 95 other years.

My favourite thing about my grandmother is that, if you asked her, she would say the happiest day of her life was not the classic: not her wedding and not the births of any of her four children. "No, abuelita?" Meh... no. It was her first communion, and she can tell you *everything* they served to eat that day. It was around 1918.

My grandmother, abuelita is what I call her, has enjoyed a love affair with food for most of her life. Any memory -trips to Spain, vacations, special occasions- is linked mostly to what she ate, and you could never go anywhere with her -when she was still capable of moving around by herself- without stopping for some pastries.

Once I told her I liked fried chicken and french fries. I must have been 11. From then on, and until I became vegetarian, she always had homemade fried chicken and real french fries especially for me when I visited. And I could never go to her house without being offered, actually *pressed* to accept, something to eat. If you accepted a glass of wine, tuna salad and bread, you were in for a surprise when that turned out to be the appetizer and there were still two more courses plus coffee and dessert left! Everyone knows I'm not much of an eater, but how can you say no to this kind of love?

This is sort of the cute side to her, but more importantly, I never felt I had had much of an emotional education until I really got to know her. I have obviously known my grandmother my entire life. My mother took me to Chile when I was 2 weeks old and I visited about every 3 years. But until my 20s, she just seemed so different from us, my nuclear family, that I could only see her caring as meddling and out-of-place. We were cold, dysfunctional, broken and silent. She was talkative, demanding, opinionated, fulls of compulsory hugs and kisses. We were stripped bare and she was ornate.

I started talking to her, just the two of us, mostly listening. I discovered I loved listening to her. Her stories and their related opinions (about morality, the demise of family values, the leftist conspiracy, the benefits of authoritarian rule, the importance of marrying young and having babies) were not about me. I think this is what made it easier for me to listen without judging or becoming defensive than if, say, I felt she had some power over me, like my parents would. I had never given her any power, so we were free to relate to each other as independent souls, but I did end up giving her power, because I fell in love with her.

I noticed that our eyes were the same. I have memorized the wrinkles on her chubby hands, the chipped red nail polish, the costume jewellery rings. I should interrupt myself here and explain that when I fall in love, it is invariably with the so-called ugly parts of a person. I'm not interested in perfection, it's disturbing. I like the cracks. In her case, I'm familiar with the rolled up knee-high stockings, the worn out pumps, the way you can see her scalp through her thin perm. I recognize the way she pulls herself out of a chair, how she looks for someone to support her weight. She wipes the bread crumbs off the table like a bad habit. She spills food on her chest and stains her dresses. She would kill me if she read this.

When I broke up with my fiancé, though, I knew I could tell her the truth about why I could not get back together with him, ever. I knew I could trust her with this painful information I had. You don't want to hide pain from a woman who's lost a grown child and a husband; who was born in a city of 300,000 people and now lives in the same city with 6 million other people. I learned what perspective is when she told me about a boyfriend she had who was killed in some war. She said it like it was no longer important, in the grander scheme of her life. An anecdote of things long past. She gained my trust when I decided to move out of my mother's apartment against all Chilean societal convention, and although she disagreed with the decision she agreed to support me in it. She always enquired about my happiness and insisted I make it a priority. She told me the secret to her own happiness was "accepting what you're given in life" and I try to live that way.

Besides her eyes, which I haven't seen in almost three years, I noticed something else I inherited from her. We can cry over anything at the drop of a hat. (If you didn't know this about me, you can thank my mother for all lessons in stoic self-control). We are emotional beings, thrown into an unfair world that will leave us behind if we don't run along side it, and so we run, and we don't ask too many questions, we just run, sometimes we cry, and we make sure as many of our loved ones are somewhere near us as possible.

Horoscopic Therapy

This is what our friend Rob Brezny suggests for me this week (I should cultivate the attitude described in the following poem):

A Modern Version of the Way the Rosary Was Once Said Throughout Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages
by Dara Wier

I'm not sewing velvet patches on a woolen blanket,
not putting silver buttons back where they belong,
not sweeping or folding, not in my right mind,
not knowing what I owe or to whom I should
bow down or thank or praise, no neither am
I putting aside, not storing up good deeds
I'll need when I need bailing out, not putting
my house in order, no, not preparing
to meet my maker, no, nor do I wish to settle
old scores, no not keeping wolves at bay,
and I'm not disturbing antbeds, not in touch
with fine madness, no, I'm not skipping rocks,
not counting how long it takes a ship's wake
to subside, nor waiting for the big one
to wash ashore and overwhelm its itty bitty
ancestors, no, I'm not trying to fathom a stew
of rotten flowers and rainwater I'm not pouring
from a vase at the left-hand backcorner of a
freshly white-washed tomb, no, I'm not getting
ready for company, not biting my tongue, though
a little bit of chafing can feel good, not baring
my soul, I'm not hiding under the kitchen table
not wanting to listen anymore, not lost in a
camphor-reeking satchel inside a chiffarobe,
not stretching under a bed on a cool linoleum
floor, no, I'm not sitting on top of a mule
surveying the sun and the moon, nor am I watching
strands of hot sugar fall into cool water, no
I'm not climbing into a fig tree to be close
to mockingbirds and out of the way of hoopsnakes,
and I'm not falling asleep next to a crate of melons,
nor am I staying awake in case I might miss something,
no, I'm not staring forever into a fire,
nor walking through a rainstorm into a cypress
grove, no, and I'm not waiting for lightning
to strike, no, and I'm not pulling aside a
curtain so I can't see a man with a raccoon
looking over his shoulder or a woman holding
a cup of steaming coffee or hear what's passing
between them, or see a man at the end of a day
taking off his shoes, or a boy dressed in clerical
clothes dispensing frankincense, or a hand
shifting into reverse, or a hand turning numbers
to get into a safe, no I'm not sitting on top
of a mule surveying the sun and the moon.

Girls!

Surprise!!

So... came home at 2 am to this: no bathroom! The positive side is that it's clear they're building me a new bathroom. But, surprise! And it's not done yet. Good thing my neighbour, who is a star at watering my plants, was up and I used her loo. We talked for about an hour and I hit the sack at 3am. Then this happened:

5:50am : stupid downstairs neighbours back at it. Usual inner turmoil initiated in my head.

6:45am: called the cops. Screw it. Screw you. Shut up or get out, I've had it. The cops came right away, and would you believe these kids wouldn't open the door? Anyway, that made them shut up. I spoke to the administrator today and she says they are probably going to kick them out, not surprisingly. While I was gone, the girl above me, that's 2 floors above them, called the cops too.

7:45am: knock on the door, keys in the lock... it's the guy to fix my bathroom! "Sorry, I didn't think you were coming home until later today" "No, came home last night very late, please come back later". I knew I should have been more specific...

8:45am: knock on the door. "I'm busy!!!!!" I yelled. When he was gone I put up a sign saying "I came home at 2am, was woken up by my neighbours in #5 at 6am. Please come back after noon at the earliest. Thank you" [note from the Editor: translated from the bad French. Is it "ils m'on reveillée" or "ils m'ont reveillée"?]

Sometime before I got up at 11am, Mr. Fixit started working on the apartment upstairs, but compared to everything else, this was as pleasing to me as the sound of my dad snoring. I know this is weird, most people don't like snoring, but I have always found it a somewhat comforting noise. Most of the time.

Epilogue: I was given the key to an empty apartment I'm allowed to use for bathroom purposes. I'm even encouraged to leave my toileteries there since I have the key. Estimated time of job being done: 3 days. Any bets?

What a girl wants

As I sat in my Italian Fango Mud Bath at the Mermaid Spa in Sebastapol for the second half hour of my “treatment”, I had to admit that the only way to describe this intense self-pleasure was: love. Taking a bath in a commercial establishment, for US$65 an hour, at first may seem weird. I know it did to every man I told my plans to, including the Hertz reservations guy at the San Jose Marriott. And honestly, it even seemed a bit off to me when I initially sank in the tub and wondered why this was so different from doing it at home, given that I have no kids, pets or significant others to interrupt my me-time anyway.

At home when I take a tub, or anywhere besides the Mermaid Spa when I’ve prepared myself a hot bath, I’m usually not in it for more than 15 or 20 minutes, tops. I suppose I get bored, fidgety, and anxious to move on to the next thing, even when I have a book. Here, I had paid to give myself one full hour of pleasure, whether I enjoyed it or not. For the first half hour, I have to say, I was kind of looking forward to the woman walking in and telling me it was half over. I had been left in a room with a beautiful deep tub, candles, a glass of flavoured water, an apricot face scrub, a washcloth and a bucket of ice water to cool myself off with. Being the insufferable stoic that I am, I immediately told myself I wouldn’t be needing the ice water. Ha. Hahaha. HAHAHA. I was trying so hard to relax the way I imagined one should. Lying just so, as though when the woman came back I would be judged on how correctly I was relaxing. That’s so me.

After she did knock –and did not give me an approving or disapproving look, one way or the other- and the second half hour began, that’s when I really got into it. I threw the whole “ought to” idea of relaxation out the non-existent window and just gave in to whatever I wanted to do. I took pictures of myself (see my Flickr account for one), I sat up, I rolled over. I turned on the jets. I lay incredibly still and watched the reflection of the ceiling lamp until I felt I might not exist at all. I soaked the washcloth in ice water and just left it on my head. I was a mess. I was one, big, happy as love mess. It was amazing. And when the woman came back to tell me the hour was up, I couldn’t help but respond “noooo…”. I would have stayed in that tub forever. The only reason I accepted to get out was because she promised to end my hour with a foot rub and my feet were simply too tempted to pass it up. They were laughing, they were so happy.

Other highlights of Napa’s Weekend of Indulgence; finally getting a chance to tan by the hotel pool and sit in the wicked hot Jacuzzi; drink 3 glasses of champagne –sorry, sparkling wine- atop a French-style castle overlooking endless vineyards; rolling over the countryside in a Spyder convertible; eating bread and cheese in the park in Sonoma; and buying a floppy, colourful sunhat in a boutique full of beautiful things. Not to mention, spending the time with Elvira, the most awesomest travel companion.

Work to Indulge

Two of these kids are doing the same thing
Two of these kids are one and the same

Josh (far left) and I quit our jobs. We have different reasons and we're going different ways, but I thought I should say that now. He's gone and I'm leaving after my next show, in New Orleans at the end of July.

I got a really fabulous job thanks to a friend of my parents. Out of the blue; I didn't think I could really get it, but I did. And the best part was all the support I got from friends and family. Who knew? I'm like one of those Tibetan sand drawings: you tell me how much you love me, and soon after I've let the wind wipe that away and I'm wondering all over again. Lovely, isn't it? :)

Anyway. I am beating this Mercury retrogade like Toshiro Mifune.

After an unnecessary and stressful ordeal during the first days onsite here in San Jose, I made a Sarita-worthy decision (Sarita's my mom) and received a lot of welcome support and help from my co-workers. You guys are awesome! Things went smoothly from then on. In an unrelated decision, I finally got to put into practice the idea that shifts and decent hours make for better overall moods and dispositions. Worked for me!

So now I'm getting ready to pick up a rental, drive across the Golden Gate bridge, and lounge by an authentic California pool until my best friend from high school, Elvira, shows up tomorrow afternoon in her... convertible! Yeah! We reserved one hour fancy-schmancy mud baths at the Mermaid Spa. On Saturday we will create our own version of the movie Sideways. I guess I can repeat my favourite line:

Miles: [while tasting wine] It tastes like the back of a fucking L.A. school bus. Now they probably didn't de-stem, hoping for some semblance of concentration, crushed it up with leaves and mice, and then wound up with this rancid tar and turpentine bullshit. Fuckin' Raid.
Jack: Tastes pretty good to me.

That's us. We're Jack. We took a one week vacation in San Francisco in 2004 and it was great. It went pretty much like this:

"Hey, what do you feel like doing now?"
"Hm, I was sort of thinking of this, what do you think?"
"Sounds good to me!"

I'll see you when I get back.

update 06/21/07

Such a weird Summer, I can just feel it in my bones. Is Summer the weirdest season of all? How come so much important stuff happens in Summer?

Anyway: guy downstairs moved out apparently, not without first *stealing* all of his (ex?) girlfriend's stuff. She had a handful of cops listening to her cry on Tuesday. Mostly about her shoes. Then she called him and accused him of sending "that bitch" over to do the stealing. I don't think he denied that. I was hoping she had finally washed that man right out of her hair, but she caved and said she'd give him "whatever" he wanted as long as he returned all her stuff ASAP. She told him to come over that night; that she'd be "waiting". That made me sad for her. I guess breaking up really is hard to do, even when you're in a corrupted relationship between an idiot and an asshole. Was that too harsh? I do feel sorry for them, but man...

Canada Post messed up my passport delivery. They mailed it to me but didn't notify me of it's delivery, so I never knew and eventually they declared it "undeliverable" and sent it back to Passport Canada. It was still in transit on Tuesday, so I had to change my flight and rent a car to drive to Burlington. I'm liking Burlington. The border was a breeze, with only me and an elderly customs agent who was as friendly as you'd expect a Vermonter to be. Way better than New York! And the Burlington airport is small and efficient, with no line-ups or hassle. You should have seen how amiable the security was. And I'm sure they all do their jobs just as well as mean-faced people in airports everywhere else.

I'm in San Jose, California, waiting to set up my registration area. My tech is lost in transit. He missed his flight, and I'm not going to give any details here because that wouldn't be fair. It just got me thinking: what would happen if the tech never showed up? What if the tech died on the way to the meeting? Anyway...

There is no pool in our hotel. I'm wondering what kind of a California hotel doesn't have a pool? My top-floor room does have an iPod docking station, a 16:9 flat screen tv, a Melitta One:One coffee/tea maker, and sleeping aids like eye mask, ear plugs and a soothing CD soundtrack. I don't need this. I wake up in the middle of the night on a regular basis. I obviously don't want to miss ONE SECOND of this crazy Summer.

The violence of summer

“Why do we keep shrieking when we mean soft things? We should be whispering all the time.”

-Magnetic Fields, 100.000 Fireflies

The couple that lives downstairs from me is infiltrating the rest of my life, both waking and asleep. They continue to have yelling matches, throwing competitions, and God-knows what other forms of violence at any hour of the day or night. On Saturday morning, they woke me up at 8. Monday morning I got a 4am wake-up call. But it could be two in the afternoon for all they care.

I’m somewhere past the point of this being about my annoyance with their total lack of concern for the people around them. I’m becoming worried that one or both of them is going to get hurt, and I don’t just mean emotionally. I heard her yell “you can’t even throw things right!” one time. And this weekend there was a hallway shout out about a knife. There’s also a lot of swearing involved. Don’t ask me why they don’t just break up, because I wonder that ALL the time.

Because of them, I’ve become sensitive to the other violence around me, on the streets, everywhere. Sunday night, as I walked out of Eduardo’s Italian Restaurant, I saw someone shove a drunk young man so that he toppled into the street, like a pile of newspapers. “Are we joking?” I said, shocked. I couldn’t help but say it out loud. The two girls standing with the pusher guy giggled and made weak disapproving comments. They all thought it was hilarious.

Earlier that day in Carre Saint Louis, the bums were swarming over the beautiful ladies, serenading them and otherwise trying to start up conversations. The man in the photo with Amy was so beat up, his knee was protruding at a strange angle. I think he was missing his front teeth. He was trying to play guitar with her, but he would lose his train of thought in the middle of a sentence and somehow seemed to require her to do or say what he wanted. To me, he seemed to have the exact sense of self-centered entitlement that drunk men at bars and dance clubs have. As though all women should be available to listen to them and dance with them, because that’s what they want, and if the woman isn’t interested, she’s a bitch. Amy seemed alright with him, though. Sometimes I'm too protective.


“There’s a plane flying over my head, so you may not be able to hear everything I’m saying right now”, the man said to Amy. I wanted to point out to him that it was flying over all our heads, not just his.

Is it clear that I don’t think of aggressiveness exclusively in physical terms? People who invade your space and expect things from you make me feel just as threatened. Loud people. People who leave anonymous personal insults on blogs. People who accuse you. People who make underhanded comments. People who break your heart and then act like they had nothing to do with it. People who become instantly defensive and retaliatory.

I definitely acknowledge having acted in the all the above ways at times. If you think I make your life difficult now, you should have met me when I was 16. I have my own history of violence, and I guess that made me more reactive than others. I learned to protect myself (and others) in my own way, but I suppose the fear is latent in me, that somehow, someday, the violence will come back and I’ll be powerless against it. The downstairs couple is reminding me of that constantly, in a very uncomfortable way. I'm no hippie; I believe violence has a place in fiction and in real life, but I was sort of hoping that we could all do our best to try to make it easy instead of hard.

Impatient re: Patience

I can feel the earth begin to move
I hear my needle hit the groove
And spiral through another day
I hear my song begin to say
Kiss me where the sun don't shine
The past was yours
But the future's mine
You're all out of time

-She Bangs the Drums, Stone Roses

I have never been a patient person. Somewhere along the way it became very obvious to me that there is no reason on earth why I shouldn’t have what I want when I want it. It’s not that I was particularly spoiled. On the contrary, I have just spent a lot of my time being frustrated, I guess. I never got to disappear in a pool of coloured plastic balls (still a fantasy); I never got one of those plastic cars with the yellow plastic roof I wanted; my mother wouldn’t buy me a black leather mini-skirt no matter how much I promised that I would *only* wear it for Halloween (yeah, right); a gazillion people have passed by my life for varying amounts of time and I never got what I wanted from them. Kind of sucks.

So sometime during my university years I did a little reading on Buddhism, and that seemed like an interesting way to calm those urges. And sometime after those years, I took up yoga and that seemed to calm me down a lot. A man who read my birth chart recommended I “sweat” (yoga being an acceptable method) and live by the sea. I haven’t managed the second yet.

My dad says I’m too rigid; that I expect people to be a certain way (ie exactly how I want them to be) and if they’re not I don’t bend. I probably got mad when he said that. My brother and I have chatted about how demanding we are with others, particularly the people we date. We laugh about how ridiculously picky and hopeless we are. I sometimes wonder which of us is really worse. I have certain un-stated quotas of how much attention has to be paid to me (re: answer my emails, call me, make me feel like a priority). My brother is so stern that if someone, say, cuts him off in traffic, he’ll follow the car and somehow –don’t ask me how- he’ll try to “teach them their lesson”. I have a list of people I wish I could teach a lesson to. It keeps growing too.

Today, for instance, I’m blaming my impatience partially on my downstairs neighbours. They’re new, and I’ll bet they have woken me up 50% of the nights they’ve been living below me. They’re either fighting or having sex, usually one followed by the other (and not in the order you’d expect, either). The walls in my apartment are so thin, I can quote parts of their arguments and I can say for a fact that when they screw, it’s over faster than when they argue. Whenever they wake me, I begin drafting a letter in my head that I’ll slip under their door to “teach them a lesson”.

I’m impatient at work when my deadline is coming up and other parts of the project are behind. I try to calm down that anxiety by rationalizing that it can still get done on time… that venting will not help… that it’s not anyone in particular’s fault.

But no matter how much rationalizing and slow breathing I do, no matter how much I control my impulse to throw a huge fit, I can't stop the impatience inside. I’m impatient with people who block the sidewalk and walk too slow. I’m impatient with people who actually drag their feet when they walk. I’m impatient with people who decide it’s time to count their coins when they get to the cash. I’m impatient with people who hold the elevator for other people who are taking forever. I’m impatient with people who can’t make up their minds when it’s time to. I’m impatient with small dogs. I’m impatient with people who don’t get back to me. I’m impatient with friends who obsess about anything that’s not interesting to me. I’m impatient with cashiers and servers who “ignore” me (that’s how I see it anyway). I’m impatient with the week, because it’s not the weekend. I’m impatient with websites where I can’t find the answers to my questions. I’m impatient with people who tell me what’s wrong with me. I’m impatient with strangers’ babies who make a lot of noise for no reason. I'm impatient with people who yell, honk or play the car radio really loud. I’m impatient with noise in general.

Regular yoga, reminding myself that people are not obliged to behave in the Isabel-approved way (but wouldn’t that be great?) and some forms of mental distraction are helpful. But like U2 said, some days are better than others. Sometimes I am just sooo tired of being patient, and that’s when I know it counts the most.

Un Tour la Nuit

photo par Robert Saucier

Hoy fue le Tour de L'Île de Montreal. Literalmente es la vuelta a la isla. Para los que siempre se olvidan: Montreal es una isla, anclada en el río San Lorenzo. La isla mide 30 kilómetros de largo y 12 de ancho. Una vez al año treinta mil ciclistas de todo nivel la recorren en masa, y de fiesta. Son 50 kilómetros. Eso fue hoy, pero el viernes fue la versión mini, de noche: Un Tour la Nuit. Esa fue la versión que vi: doce mil ciclistas recorriendo 20 kilómetros, con luces, gorros extravagantes, tocando bocinas, aún más fiesta que el recorrido de día, seguramente.

Los vi bajar la calle Berri, una bastante empinada que -en la parte donde yo estaba caminando- tiene un paso bajo nivel en pendiente. Ahí gritaban todos: wuuuuu! bip! bip!

Yo iba con tres amigas camino al Théâtre L'Olympia en el barrio gay a ver a la cantante canadiense Feist, cuyo concierto estaba agotado. Conseguí entradas por suerte. Tontamente no las había comprado la semana antes, y aquí, muchas veces si no atinas, perdiste.

Algo como encontrarse con le Tour de L'Île es tan Montreal que quise compartirlo acá en castellano para los que están lejos. Es tan Montreal porque de junio a septiembre esta ciudad "está de fiesta", con un festival tras otro. De hecho, mis amigas y yo veníamos precisamente del St-Viateur Street Fest en el barrio de Mile End. Cierran esta calle, ponen un escenario y los comerciantes sacan sus parrillas a la vereda. Música en vivo, sangría, salchichas, bagels, gente del barrio, niños con las caras pintadas, cerveza en bolsas de papel.

Todo eso fue el viernes. El sábado caminé (camino al 90% de mis destinos) al nuevo departamento de mi amiga Geraldine, una francesa que conocí a través de mis otros amigos franceses Benoit y Crystèle. Seguramente Ge está tratando de traducir este post al francés ahora mismo. En su "housewarming", como se le dice en inglés a las inauguraciones de casas, se hablaba inglés y francés. Los europeos se reían del barbeque ("barbok" parece que era el slang francés para la parrilla) tan norteamericano y las sillas "de capitán" como le llaman aquí a estas plegables con respaldo y brazos de género que todo el mundo lleva a ver la competencia de fuegos artificiales (otro festival que se viene) y que había en su patio.

Me fui de la fiesta, que estaba buenísima, a otro traidicional pasatiempo canadiense: donde un amigo a ver -en pantalla plana y gigante- el tercer tiempo del partido de hockey entre Ottawa y Anaheim (California, qué absurdo, ¿no?). Estamos en los Playoffs, a máximo 4 partidos de saber quién se gana la copa Stanley. Los malditos y violentos californianos van ganando 2-1 la serie. Un paso flash por una fiesta en el patio común de 8 departamentos, otras largas caminatas de ida y vuelta de la discotec, y una parada a comer bagels antes de dormir fueron el fin de mi fin de semana. Y recién estamos a comienzos de junio, o dios.

There's a Limit to Your Love

Wow. It's been a while. I've been here. I've been around. I've read other people's blogs (all up to date) and maintained my Facebook habit. But you know when you're just out *there*, enjoying every little thing, so that you don't even want to come in and type on the computer? I have junkie's remorse, for sure, but it's just not powerful enough to rein me in.

Anyway, I have wanted to share some music with everyone, but I know it's a bit of a pain for some to open this page when I upload an mp3. Instead, I thought about copying the lyrics to a song from one of the newest albums in my collection, Feist's "Reminder". I hesitated because I'm often guilty of sending coded messages... or not so coded, but this is just a song whose lyrics I read in the liner notes before I even bought the CD and I just thought they were perfect.

The Limit To Your Love - Feist

Clouds part
Just to give us a little sun

There's a limit to your love
Like a waterfall in slow motion
Like a map with no ocean
There's a limit to your love

There's a limit to your love
So carelessly there
Is it truth or dare?
There's a limit to your care

I love I love I love
This dream of going upstream
I love I love I loveThe trouble that you give me
I know I know I know
That only I can save me
I'll go I'll go I'll go
Right down the road

There's a limit to your love
Like a waterfall in slow motion
Like a map with no ocean
There's a limit to your love
Your love your love your love

I can't read your smile
It should be written on your face
I'm piecing it together
There's something out of place
Oh

I love I love I love
This dream of going upstreamI love I love I love
All the trouble that you give me
I know I know I know
That only I can save me
I'll go I'll go I'll go
Out on the road

Because there is no limit
There's no limit
No limit no limit no limit to my love

Go to www.listentofeist.com to hear some of her new and old songs.

Recommendations

One of these is for Canadian residents and the other is for Montreal residents.

When applying for a new passport: I cannot emphasize enough how much it will benefit you to fill out the application online. You may feel a bit daunted when you arrive at the passport office to find a line just to get in the elevator and a sign saying something like "1:30 hour wait upstairs" but if you did everything else right (like your guarantor's part, and any additional forms you need to fill based on your situation), your online application will get you in an extremely accelarated "line" (numbers, really). It's gult-free line-cutting and you will love it.

When buying jeans: go to Jeans, Jeans, Jeans, on St. Viateur and de Gaspé in Mile End. They have men's and women's. I cannot emphasize enough how good the service is there. You may have no idea what you want and be shopping-averse, but they will get you into a pair of hot jeans that you'll love. The staff won't be pushy and they won't be judgemental. They'll do your hem in 3 minutes, for free. Best of all, the jeans are cheap! I tried on pairs from all kinds of brands, including Guess and Seven and none of them were over $70. [note to men and women who don't shop for jeans: a woman's pair of low-end design jeans can easily cost $200]. But best, best, best of all: the button on mine was a little loose and came off after a week. I took them back and got a new pair, hemmed, no hassle, and an apology. I love them! You'll love them!

Thecthy Boy

El domingo en la noche fui con dos amigas a Metropolis a ver la banda francesa Air. No fue de nuestros recitales favoritos... un poco frios ellos, pero asi han sido siempre. Una de las cosas que me gusta ver cuando voy a un concierto de musica en vivo es *como* produjeron el sonido. O sea, me gusta ver el guitarreo, o a la cantante de fondo, a todos los musicos, etc. Pero el duo Air es tan egocentrico que ellos estaban, vestidos de blanco con sus pantaloncitos apretados, iluminados mientras que los demas musicos estaban en la oscuridad. Y segun la Cecilia habia un monton de sonido pregrabado.

Pero el punto para mi no era complemente ese. Air fue y sera para mi una de las bandas, junto con Coldplay, que marco una epoca para mi y mis amigos, en ese departamento de Ramon Carnicer donde todo se armo y se desarmo en el cambio de siglo. Escuchando "Sexy Boy" (que el domingo se oyo como "thecthy boy" por los parlantes) y Carlos jurando que se trataba de el. Si alguna vez termino por escribir esa novela, va a ser de esos anyos, de ese departamento y de esa gente, escuchando esa musica y creyendo que todo se trataba de nosotros.

***

Hay un comentario en mi ultimo post (Good luck/bad luck) acerca de un libro que parece que salio recientemente sobre el vuelo del 29 de febrero de 1996 de la aerolinea peruana Faucett, en el que murio mi gran amiga Sole Novales. El autor del comentario me encontro por un sitio en Internet donde hace todos esos anyos atras escribi una pequena despedida a la Sole. Me sorprendio recibir un mensaje con el nombre de ella.

Me acuerdo con cierta frecuencia de la Sole, por esto o lo otro, pero justo ayer le hable de ella a una amiga que esta pasando por un momento dificil. Y esta manana saque mi ropa de primavera-verano de la maleta donde la guardo en invierno y me encontre con la camisa verda de la Sole que es lo unico suyo que tengo y que uso en homenaje. Me gusta usar cosas de otros como recuerdo, como los bluyines de Juan Luis o el polar que me dio la Gaby cuando me vine a Canada. Es tener a la gente un poco mas cerca. Incluso aquella que nunca volveremos a ver.

Good luck/Bad luck

Technically, I don’t believe in luck. I don’t believe in magic, destiny, things being a “sign” or “for a reason” in some grander scheme. I believe the saying is “shit happens”. Of course, once it does, I do think it’s appropriate to put it into some context in your life to either gain knowledge or make yourself feel better.

So what happened was: I was on a flight from San Antonio to Montreal yesterday at noon. We got on the plane, but couldn’t take off due to mechanical issues that they expected to resolve within 10-15 minutes. Apparently, because the plane couldn’t be started, there couldn’t be any air on it, so it began to get very hot in there. Also, I was sitting next to a mother with a baby who was probably on her last flight before she is obliged to sit in her own seat. The warmer it got, the more the baby shrieked. Eventually the crew allowed the passengers to deplane, I think they call it, but asked that people stay close by because we could be leaving at any moment. I chose to stay on the sauna-plane where I figured there was more peace and quiet than in the terminal. One of the flight attendants passed around glasses of water. I closed my eyes and acted like I do in any warm, humid weather situation: trying to move as little as possible and soak in it. I fanned myself with the emergency landing procedures.

Sometime later the other passengers returned and we were told we’d finally be able to take off. We were pushed back onto the tarmac. We waited. The baby started to get tired and irritated and screamed and threw her arms and head and body around while her mom tried to keep her in her lap. Then… the engines went off. Obviously, we weren’t going anywhere soon.

The plane returned to the gate and everyone was told to get off since we would need at least half an hour to fix this valve thing. Three hours had passed since our intended departure time. Inside the terminal, I couldn’t get an Internet connection. I was already not too happy to be traveling alone, but this situation just made me feel even more isolated. I didn’t bring my cell phone and when I thought about getting a calling card, I didn’t know who to call, or how they would contact me back. Lonely. I think I’m reconsidering my whole fun-with-being-alone attitude. Sometimes other people are a really comforting presence. After wandering around the terminal looking for an Internet connection and studying the payphones, while trying not to take too long in case our flight re-boarded, I sat down next to a man who turned out to be an exhibitor at the convention I was working at. He was very friendly, but in a good way, haha. I mean, he was pleasant and not too nosy or annoying. He was considerate enough to tell me that it was ok if I wanted to just be alone (in my frustration, I guess) but it was actually a relief to have someone take my mind off the whole situation. His attitude was understanding (he was in the same boat, after all) but relaxed. He lent me his Blackberry and we shared the information we overheard. We had a laugh at all the people that get really hopping mad at the agents and don’t get what they want anyway. Turned out, Mr. Exhibitor also does yoga twice a week. We thought if only we could find a drop-in class we would feel a lot better.

Eventually the flight was cancelled and after standing in a couple of lines, I was put on an early morning flight on another airline. I said goodbye to Mr. Exhibitor and went back to my gang in San Antonio and had a fun and turbulent night out. All I had to eat that day was a banana and half a slice of pizza. Why is it that abnormal circumstances can make bodily functions like hunger just disappear? I also knew I wouldn’t be tired for my flight today, even if I slept only 4 and a half hours (memories of FIGO, anyone?).

Well. Today’s ordeal was quite different. As I was getting ready to leave the hotel room I realized I lost my passport and had no idea where I left it. I assumed it was somewhere in the airport since I remember taking it out at security and I probably had to show it to some agent at some point. As it turns out, no one at this airport has my passport and it’s just nowhere to be found. Equals: I lost my passport, and therefore cannot fly into Canada. Yeah, seriously.

On the positive side, I managed to find a wireless Internet connection (I may still be alone but at least I’m connected to the outside world now) and was able to look up our government’s emergency number. To be honest, they weren’t a big help. I had already come up with a plan of my own, changing my flight to Burlington from where I hope to drive home. The government agent, however, could only suggest contacting the Canadian Consulate in Dallas (ie Monday) and waiting in Texas one week until I could get a new passport issued. Yeah, thanks, I think flying to the border and driving will work out better, don’t you?

Thanks to the Internet connection, I was also able to reserve a rental car in Burlington and confirm with my supervisor that those expenses will be paid for by the company. Thanks to the magic of credit cards, I don’t have to worry about where the money is coming from. Thanks to my new mp3 player, I can entertain and soothe my troubled soul.

My soul did a little bursting in front of a ticket agent here at the airport, when I wasn’t sure she would be able to change my flight to Burlington. I had felt the tears coming before, after confirming with the check-in agents, the airport police and TSA that no one had my passport, and had told myself not to cry, but I just couldn’t keep it in when I had to explain to this woman why I *really* needed to be in Burlington. The weight of “I’ve lost my passport and can’t fly home without it; please help me” really hit me over the head.

At one point I sank pretty low and was wondering why this was happening. Those are the times I seriously wish I didn’t even exist, but ultimately my belief is that it isn’t happening for any reason at all. It just is and best to focus on situation-management than feeling sorry for myself.

I keep thinking how lucky I am that the requirement for passports at land crossings isn’t in effect yet. So does that count as good luck? Or bad luck? And does it really affect the fact that I’ll be on the long road home for about 19 hours today? And doesn’t that travel time sound all too familiar (see my earlier account of my trip with Karine to Denver). Is the travel industry improving their service or is it worsening? Do I want to keep doing this?

So this is where LaRonde comes from...

See photos of this woman's trip with her seniors' club to Expo 67.

Blast From the Past: a drama

Over Christmas I kind of went gaga over a boy. I met him in New York, at a Christmas party. He reminded me of a mix between Tobey Maguire and a really beloved friend of mine in Chile. The guy was also Chilean, which is pretty unusual for me, since I don’t meet many of them here. Anyway, we really hit it off and after the party he asked for my number to go on a date while I was in the city. I was seeing Hot French Guy back in Montreal and was in Holy Smokes New York, so my attitude was very relaxed and positive. I probably laughed when I gave him my number.

Anyway, a couple of days later he called and we set up that date. The date was pretty amazing. It was just dinner and drinks, but it was sooo fun. Maybe it was because he was Chilean but talking with him felt like home. Like we were really speaking the same language, metaphorically. He made me feel great and I swooned. I was so sad I wouldn’t see him again after I left the city. And did I mention he had a girlfriend? Anyway, I got on the bus a few days later and texted my goodbye. He texted back, he didn’t want to think we wouldn’t see each other again. Later we began emailing, hurrah! Emails came and went several times a day and we spoke on the phone on weekends. Shortly after I returned he told me he broke up with his girlfriend. My ever present desire to live in the big apple started increasing. If I didn’t need a work visa, I would have moved right then and there. He gave me advice and information on visas. It was January and I wanted a new life on the spot.

But then something changed. His emails were delayed. They petered out, as I put it at the time. Something was definitely up. I knew he was extremely busy but when you know, you know. And I knew. My next trip to New York was coming up and I needed to know what page we were on. I texted him: what happened? He emailed back immediately: “so sorry I haven’t written. My life is a mess. I got back together with my ex. She’s actually living with me. I know it sounds weird, but I kind of feel like I owe it to her.” I wrote back “I won’t lie. I’m disappointed by what you’re saying. I think sometimes you have to sort stuff out by yourself and this is one of those times. I’ll be in New York next week but I would prefer not to see you.” Him: “It will be hard to know you’re in the city and not see you, but I understand. I’m in a bad place right now.I don't know how this happened.” Me: “Well, this was always dramatic, but it used to be fun drama and now it’s not. Who knows? If you don’t marry the girl (joke) maybe I’ll see you again sometime in the future.” That was the end of our communication. I had wanted to keep it open-ended, because you never do know, but I definitely knew that it was over. I am strongly against people who act like their lives just “happen” to them and that’s what this latest development sounded like to me. Plus, I had just had possibly the biggest dose of drama a human can withstand the year before and didn't want to get sucked into this.

Anyway, life goes on. At first, and for a while, I was really disappointed. I had believed, I had felt someone else believed too, and then they walked away. It was a bit difficult to deal with, but then an early dose of Spring in the form of Drama-Free Kaybeer swung open a door and the past was forgotten. New York would remain one of my favourite travel destinations, the flash romance a quirky thing of the past, etc.

Until the other night, when the blast from the past called. I was asleep and confused. He said he had dreamt about me and had the impulse to call. I was still confused, but acted friendly. This, I guess, is what frightens me. There are certain people who somehow have access to these secret buttons in me that make me do things like be friendly even though what I want to say is “What the hell is the matter with you? Who do you think you are?? Get out of my life and don’t ever show your face here again!”

Overall, I feel like the blast from the past is a reminder of something I already knew: that after a couple of years of almost non-stop drama, I acknowledge I bring it on myself a lot but if I have a real alternative, I want nothing to do with it ever again.