my tragic right hip

We had a semi-busy weekend, on Saturday we went to see Body Worlds 2 at the Science Centre. The RRBF loved every minute of it; he couldn’t get enough. I was not so taken with the exhibit because I couldn’t get over the fact that the specimens, if you could call them that, were once living, breathing people. There were even some parts I just couldn’t look at all, but I am glad we went, if only to get to hold a human brain in your hands. I mean, when do you get to do that?

We got home around 3 PM and I collapsed on the couch. My sinuses were so sore from the stupid disease that I passed out and was in bed by about 9.30 PM. So much for going to a poetry reading with Kate.

Then on Sunday we drove up to Peterborough to see my aunt and uncle so he could bottle up the giant jug of wine our neighbours gave him. We now have over twenty bottles of homemade wine that’ll probably last the entire year because I don’t drink it.

Then I had class last night. They critiqued another one of my stories, which is always good, but so hard to sit through. It’s funny how I can be so objective for someone else’s work, knowing that my comments are genuine in their intentions to make the piece of writing better, but I can’t do that with my own work. I’m mortified when people talk about my writing. I’m frightened to death of what people think. I’m convinced it’s a piece of crap and why am I even bothering. I’m disappointed that my imagination doesn’t work better. I’m angry that everything I write comes out like one big, giant cliche. The list of self-doubt goes on until I can’t stand it anymore and I’m sitting there in class thinking, “Why am I doing this to myself? I’ll never be a writer.”

In the end, it sort of feels like a boxing ring: left hook comes from classmate A, “show don’t tell”; ragdoll puts up a good block; the bout continues when classmate b throws combination punch, a left jab, straight right, left hook, “it feels like you’re including everything, you need to make some decisions about the story so it reads better”; ragdoll feints, throws a limp uppercut, and then dances back towards her corner; classmate c punches into the ring and weaves around, making it incredibly hard to catch her; ragdoll is down for the count, and it’s a win by knockout for classmate d!

We were talking a lot about the story until I finally said, “Can we stop there, it’s all a bit too much.” And then we moved onto the next match, so the next person could line up for a long ten rounds of betterment.

Bah!

Now that I’m back taking Septra, it’s the trifecta of meds I’m used to in terms of the treatment of the disease. For the next two weeks anyway, I’ll be on imuran, Septra and prednisone (until it’s totally weaned off). So, of course, my body is getting used to another combination of pills, my mind is resisting taking them and my soul is very tired today.

But we had a lovely holiday luncheon at work. Which is kind of funny considering how subdued and, well, decorous the party was considering the holiday festivities at my last job usually ended up with a visit to the strip club. Honestly. I’m not even kidding.

Oh, it’s burning question you all are asking isn’t it? Well, I’ll be at the Taddle Creek launch, celebrating my poem along with the other contributors, at Supermarket in Kensington Market. If you’re free, come out! If not, go buy a copy!

Only Annie Proulx has a gift like this:

“At first glance Jack seemed fair enough, with his curly hair and quick laugh, but for a small man he carried some weight in the haunch and his smile disclosed buckteeth, not pronounced enough to let him eat popcorn out of the neck of a jug, but noticeable.”

From the story that inspired Brokeback Mountain.

Somehow the teeth got lost in translation, seems Jake didn’t feel a prosthetic set were really necessary.

I’ve been reading Galveston by Paul Quarrington, which I’ve been enjoying. Two of the characters are sitting around talking when one explains that they don’t have memory, an idea of how their life played out chronologically, but memories, and he has trouble putting them all order. And that’s kind of what my memory is like too, I think.

One of the scenes (can you call it that if it actually happened to you?) that sticks in my mind or has been stuck there now for twenty-five years, is of the morning my father came into my room to tell me that John Lennon had been shot. It was early because I wasn’t awake yet, and I was young, nine years old, my room still decorated in blue butterflies, not yet sleeping on the waterbed he would buy me when I was a teenager. My dad came into my room and said, “John Lennon is dead.” And then he went and looked out the window. I don’t know what I said, but I remember that it was very important news at the time.

My father would have been somewhere close to the age I am now, but I never think of him in that way. Never compare his chronology to my own like I do with my absent mother. He grew up listening to the Beatles, felt akin to their songs, their lyrics, which trickled down to me, who grew up with him. And now a quarter century has past since that morning, and I can give no reasonable explanation as to why it’s there, tucked away in my brain, why other things have been lost or forgotten, or why this sticks—I just don’t know. But maybe I don’t have to know. Maybe I can just remember, maybe that’s the point.

April

Months late, I dive into my New Year’s resolutions.
Promptly giving up sugar, caffeine, cigarettes, you.

Days, moments, seconds, minutes, hours pass
But even when I’m tired of will power, I manage

To hold back the cravings and call out a victory
Stomping angrily on budding grass and happy birds

I smoke in my sleep, visit past lives, then drink too much
And spend the next day penitent, doing spring cleaning.

Promptly giving up sugar, caffeine, cigarettes and you,
For the second time in as many weeks.

So, I saw the fancypants disease doctor yesterday, which was good. They’re stopping the prednisone because my bloodwork is so good (yay kidneys getting better!). But the super-extreme exhaustion is still there. So the answer is more tests and more drugs. I’ll be starting Septra for the next three months. It should help with the sinus stuff from the disease. More side effects, I can’t wait.

Last night in my creative writing class, my teacher said something that struck me. We were talking about creating characters that a reader hates and whether or not that would work in story. For the most part, it’s hard to read a book or a short story when you absolutely despise the main character, simply because you don’t care, and then you don’t bother—there’s no emotional investment. After we talked for a while about how to approach it, the teacher said, “Because everyone likes themselves,” meaning no one outwardly hates themselves, so why would they be so hateful in a story.

But I thought that was such a funny thing to say, coming from such a different place where someone does actually like themselves. It’s a concept I’ve been struggling with for years. I’ve always hated myself, hated things about myself, thought I was a bad person, thought bad things happened to me because I was a bad person, worried about how other people must hate me too and had a hard time even taking the palest of compliments. I guess he was trying to say, that even people that the reader hates wouldn’t necessarily hate themselves, so you need to find an element that they can relate to, to make them more human.

The example he used was Travis Bickle, from Taxi Driver. He’s a totally despicable person, but you don’t hate him, and you don’t really know why. I chimed in that maybe it’s because you see him fall in love, and that gives him an edge of humanity, something that makes him not just pure evil. It was an interesting discussion. I’m still thinking about it today, and maybe trying not to hate myself just that little bit less so all my characters don’t come out as fuct up as I am…

I finished Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Around the World in 80 Days. Funnily enough, I don’t have a lot to say about either of them, but might later on…

I will say, however, that I am consistently amazed at the types of books that have become “classics.”

So the RRBF’s show went very well last night. The theatre was almost full and the show went off without a hitch. They sounded amazing and it was nice to see everyone give them a standing ovation at the end. Even my perennially grumpy father loved the show—and that’s saying something.

I’m super tired today though, and am still working on my last abridgment. I’m in the home stretch. But I’m kind of glad that when I’m finished this book we’ll have a bit of a break before everything goes crazy for the holidays. And there’s just one more Fembots show of the year, next Friday in Brantford, which means my RRBF will have a bit of a break too.