my tragic right hip

I loved The Book of Joe so much that I sped right up and read Jonathan Tropper’s latest novel Everything Changes in twenty-four hours — not straight, but pretty darn close (minus the time spent at the Suburban Fund Raiser, of course).

It’s another really swiftly crafted novel that buzzes along like a film but still feels like the work of a master fiction crafstman. This time, it’s the story of a thirty-two-year-old man, Zack King, who has the world by the, ahem, balls. He’s got a beautiful fiance (but he’s in love with another woman); he’s got a good job (that he hates, being the middleman and all); and he’s got a great apartment (that he shares with his millionaire friend who simply hasn’t recovered from the death of their best friend). When his father returns after being away for the better part of his adult life, Zack’s own life starts to unravel. And with Tropper’s ability to weave excellent characters into larger than life the book is really impossible to put down.

I finished John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce this past week. It’s an interesting non-fiction book that tells the story of a magical golden tree that grew in Haida Gwaii, that is until a slightly crazed man chopped it down in protest. The book itself is solid, it’s written in the style of Touching the Void or Jon Krakhauer’s Into the Wild.

Once Grant Hadwin chopped down the tree, he disappeared. His story, intermixed with the story of how logging evolved in Canada and how it all fits with the current situation with the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, makes for a read that feels unsettled, especially when you start thinking about the trees that are logged every day and how our natural resources are being depleted at an astonishing speed.

The story itself didn’t stay with me as long as thinking about the trees did, or has. It made me think of the things I use everyday (paper towels, computer paper, newspaper, books, notebooks, paper bags) and how they all have to come from somewhere and then go somewhere when I’m finished with them. How will the Earth survive the billions and billions of people like me who simply don’t think about what they use every day and how it affects the very world we live in?

I started looking at every single paper towel I used to wipe my hands dry after using the bathroom at work and decided I’d let them air dry. I decided I was going to try to make my work paperless as much as humanly possible and use both sides of each page I printed. I decided that I would use everything I bought and think carefully about where I shop (Kensington Market this weekend, at the health food store). In the end, I really am going to try to be more committed about leaving a smaller footstep. Let’s see if I actually get there.

My stepmother had a fundraiser for her local branch of [Insert name of bland non-urban suburb here]” Crime Supporters. It was a completely surreal evening. Totally fun in a completely surreal sort of way. We drank way too much because what the hell else is there to do at the crazy suburban arena where I grew up watching my brother’s hockey games, eating stale popcorn and never wanting to learn how to play ringette. Thank goodness girls are playing hockey these days.

To make the evening even more strange, I ran into one of my best girlfriend’s from high school. We haven’t spoken in at least ten years. She’s got three kids and her husband sort of looks like John C. Reilly, but he works in Waste Management, and she has no idea what he does. In her own words, “I don’t really ask.” They’ve got three kids, which is also strange because she was the most f**ked up girl I ever knew. Her own mother used to lock her in her room for days and, at one point, she poured Draino or something equally harsh into her mother’s tea because she was so sick of how she treated her. Makes you hope that she’s learned from her mistakes and that she’s a better mother than the one that raised her.

She often came to school completely loaded and would do the strangest things. Sleep with the boys I loved, mess around with my cousin, pretend she was pregnant — and once let a bunch of people in my house to have a party when my dad and brother were up north and I was at camp.

But now she lives [insert the name of a bland suburb here] and seems to have turned her life around. Her dad, who was a lovely man, died about eight months ago from liver cancer, which is quite sad. Funny how you remember people you once knew in a certain way and can’t really conceive of them not walking the Earth any longer.

All in all it was the stuff Adam Sandler films are made of. A totally rude MC making obscene cracks about people’s breasts as they came up to win door prizes. My Rock and Roll Boyfriend drinking 1.5 bottles of wine and me dancing with someone I’ve known my whole life and his crazy wife to a really bad funked up version of one of my favourite Bob Marley songs. Where you just have to cackle as the sweet couples are dancing around you like it’s a wedding reception and there are women wearing ball gowns they bought at the mall that night just for this special occasion.

The hip, it works! Went on my first bike ride of the season this afternoon and it was glorious. It didn’t hurt (well, it hurt my barely-used muscles) and I didn’t forget how everything works. And I bought myself a shiny new red helmet to celebrate.

Ah, spring!

I’ve just spent the past hour listening to poets read their work. The power of the internet to bring the voice of Yeats, Williams, Thomas, Eliot, Walcott, Plath and Ginsberg to my ears long after even the possibility existed for me to hear them read in person.

In particular, I was moved by Anna Akmatova’s “In Memory of M.B.” and Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California.” Not to mention actually hearing Dylan Thomas read one of my favourite poems, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” a poem I copied to write my own poem, “Johnny Cash II.”

But I think the poem I loved the most was Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”

It’s so wonderful to hear the words in the voice that was meant to speak them, the voice that created them, the voice that must have come alive in their heads. Such a reminder that poetry is such a vocal art, that so much gets lost sometimes in the translation to the page — that so much is gained when it’s alive and in the world, echoing just beside you. Ah, the wonders of the modern world.

The meds are taking quite the toll on me these days. That’s the strange thing about the disease, how I don’t necessarily feel its presence, other than being a bit rundown, but I am utterly at the mercy of its treatment. The doctor doubled my dose of CellCept, which means my stomach is having a really hard time, seeing as the main side effect is nausea, upset and, ahem, loose bowels. I can’t even begin to describe how ill I feel, like a mixture of extreme seasickness and that awful hangover you get from drinking too much cheap wine. Mix in the loaded fatigue from the disease and I’m barely functioning, let alone enjoying my life.

And the shame is that there’s lots to enjoy right now. The weather’s finally picked up. My tragic hip is functioning well, so I can walk again, which is quite a blessing considering the last two years of hellish pain. Oh, and it means I’ll be able to get on my bike soon too. The Rock and Roll Boyfriend has steady work for the first time in many, many years, so I’m not worried about getting the bills paid or losing the house. I’m writing a lot more and taking a class I enjoy, and reading voraciously, but I’m doing it all under a haze of extreme nausea clinging to the hope that this miracle drug will kick the disease on its ass and I won’t lose my kidneys or drown in my own blood when my lungs start hemorrhaging.

There’s a cause and effect to everything in life, and that’s something that you’re never more acutely aware of than when you’re taking any kind of medication. There’s irony in the fact that what’s supposed to make you well makes you just as sick as what it’s supposedly fighting.

The Rock and Roll Boyfriend played a good show last Thursday night. Of course, that was the tail end of my week from hell in terms of not sleeping at all, so I wasn’t all that thrilled to be in a crowded club listening to loud music, but I’m glad I went.

They opened for Greg MacPherson, who I love, who had his record release party for his lastest album, Night Flares. Instead of his usual one-man-with-guitar-all-alone-on-stage deal, Greg had a whole band, and I kind of liked it, all loud and raunchy like drunk sex.

The Boyfriend and the band played most of the new songs from their upcoming album, and it was a nice change to see him playing his own stuff again. Not that I don’t like it when he plays with The Weakerthans, but I do like to see him in his element as well.

Book your calendars now — they’re playing with The Deadly Snakes at North by Northeast on June 9th. But don’t ask me about the guest list, because they never have them at those damn festival shows. I think even I have to pay. Where’s the fun in being a Rock and Roll Girlfriend if I have to pay?

I saw the specialist today about the disease. Because the symptoms of the disease are flu-like, he thinks that I haven’t been getting sick because of an infection, but because the disease is grumbling. Which is strange because that’s not the usual way the disease attacks, sort of slowly and over long periods of time; no, it’s usually swift and sure like a snowstorm in January. He’s decided to double my meds to see if that’ll kick it back into submission, which means yet another adjustment period to the new dosage.

“Fun with Meds!” That’ll be my version of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Instead of honking a horn on a cool bike, I’ll be examining the myriad different types of nausea and explaining complex medical terms to kids. Anyone want to call TVO for a development deal?

So, my assignment this week is to write five lines in pentameter. Yes, hold your breath while I try and figure that one out. Okay, you might as well breath because there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to do it. I can’t write in pentameter. I can barely write a poem in free form half the time.

So far, I’ve come up with one line: “The cab came in along the FDR.” It’s been echoing around in my brain for the last three weeks. Fingers crossed that I actually come up with four more before tomorrow’s class.

There’s nothing I love more than a good South African piece of fiction. It’s a strange thing to say, I know, but Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor, with its shades of Coetzee, reads like an exquisite piece of literary art. The parallels to Coetzee’s work are well documented. Almost every reviewer brings it up as a point from which to discuss Galgut’s work.

The story of an older, almost-divorced doctor who works at a nearly abandoned hospital in a former township, The Good Doctor examines the idea of moral ambiguity almost perfectly. Presenting us with a character we can neither love nor hate, we inevitably find ourselves deeply engaged by him anyway. As a young, upstart (…inky pup! I always think, damn you Shakespeare in Love) doctor wends his way both into the life of the protagonist, Frank, and into the routine of the hospital, his whole world changes.

While there is no outward conflict between the two men, there is a deep sense that things will never be the same; it’s a subtle change that time brings, one that comes with a strange subsection of events that have both a cause and an effect, but are so indicative of something post-colonial that it’s refreshingly disturbing to read. Highly recommend it on a rainy day where you were already feeling bad about reading the frightening stats in your newspaper (for example: one in four adults in Zimbabwe have HIV. The US uses 25% of the world’s oil resources, etc) and want a deep, interesting novel to keep you company for a while.