my tragic right hip

I am completely fascinated by the subject matter of The Friends of Meager Fortune, David Adams Richards’s latest novel. It’s about New Brunswick loggers right before their industry evolves from man to machine powered. The story revolves around Jameson family, who own one of the three logging companies in town, the two sons, Will and Owen, are being raised by their widowed mother Mary. Early on in the story, great tragedy that happens is foretold by a prophecy Mary receives that the Jameson dynasty would be destroyed by the rash actions of the second son (Owen) despite the great reputation of the first (Will).

The story of Will’s life and subsequent death, along with how his brother Owen, who is ill-fit to run the business but has good intentions, makes up the bulk of the first part of the story. Backdrop to this is the cut itself, the time that teams of honest, hard working spend atop Good Friday Mountain, the most dangerous cut in the in the history of area’s logging. Then, there’s a love triangle between Reggie, Will’s best friend and the company’s Push (a sort of camp manager for the loggers), his wife Camellia and Owen that comprises the impetus for a lot of what propels people into action within the story.

There are problems with the novel though. And despite how much I wanted to like it, and how much I did like it, I found it slightly verbose. There’s an element of foretelling that starts to get frustrating after a while, when you’ve heard the same details about the same characters repeated ad nasueum, which serves no purpose to the underlying story. The telling and re-telling has an almost magical element, kind of like how great stories develop in terms of an oral tradition. But it just didn’t quite work for me.

The story itself is epic and tragic, the stuff of great literature, and it’s a tale that deserves to be told. I’m fascinated by the idea of lumberjacks, especially those on the verge of extinction and what that does, by its nature, to the idea of a story. But on the whole, this novel is too dense for its own good, and could use a bit of lightening up to get it moving faster because it’s a great tale.

After I finished reading the book, I spent a night out with my father-in-law, who was a lumberjack in New Brunswick just as industrialization was changing the industry forever. I liked reading it for this personal aspect; it gave me a level of understanding about what his life might have been like. He was just fourteen when he went into the bush and when he came out, just like the characters in the novel, the entire world had changed.

Despite the difficulty in getting to Winnipeg, we really did have a grand old time at the wedding on Saturday. And one of the best reasons? My super-fly tragic hip turned two over the weekend—which is a milestone in terms of my health.

Then, it all came crashing down as I caught the mortal illness from my RRHB. Sunday night, as we were watching The Wire at a friend’s house, I became very, very ill. And there’s nothing worse than having the runs at someone else’s house; I’m mortally embarrassed by bowel movements as it is, lord, I can’t even bear typing it.

Anyway, the same crap happened on our return flight where, because I didn’t pre-buy the seat selection, we were going to get bumped. I started to cry. The gate attendant took pity and bumped us up to Executive Class. I shivered and huddled my way through the flight and crept into bed the minute we got home.

My body still isn’t right, which means I’ll miss dance class.

I totally miss the fine print and don’t pay the extra $25 for confirmed seats. We get bumped. That in itself isn’t so bad, we got a voucher and had to waste 3 hours at the airport, which is annoying but not brutal…except for the fact that my RRHB is deathly ill. He woke up this morning throwing up and feverish so waiting around the airport was not something he wanted to do. He was so ill that he slept on the floor the whole time. He couldn’t even sit in the chair.

Now we’re cloistered in our hotel room and have just had some room service. I’ve been making up my bad wife-ed-ness all day. It’s hard to watch someone you love suffer.

Can someone explain to me why this Canadian Encyclopedia entry (the only one of its kind I might add) about Calgary doesn’t really tell me anything other than the musical history of the city?

Had I wanted to know the history of music in Calgary, I would have searched for said topic. But truly, who cares? Shut up Canadian Encyclopedia. You suck.

Last night’s episode of Rescue Me on Showcase was so overwhelming that I’m not sure I can accurately reflect my thoughts, but I’ll try anyway. For months, I’d unwittingly read the spoilers about how Tommy rapes his wife during a particularly heated moment.

But knowing it’s coming and seeing it on the television are two totally different things. My RRHB likes Rescue Me a great deal, if only because, as he says, it reminds him of my family (personally, I don’t see the resemblance, but whatever); and I like it too. I mean, it’s right up there with Brotherhood, another show that hits me in the guts and pulls tight, especially this week’s episode, and The Wire as my one of my current favourites, but it’s a show that I find deeply conflicted.

Any maybe that’s what fuels the fire in terms of keeping the show current and in the public eye, this sense of pushing the boundaries in terms of a true ‘bad’ boy, one that you love to hate, in the Tommy character, but it always makes me question the idea of representing such violence against women (and he’s a violent person, don’t get me wrong, so you kind of expect it, but still…) on television.

Mainly, did he have to walk out of the house with a smirk on his face? What did that mean? How am I supposed to interpret that? And Janet sort of brushing the whole thing off as she holds her shirt together after seemingly enjoying it after Tommy got himself going, what does that mean? She actually liked being beaten up and the forced to have sex with her ex-husband? All in all I kind of think it went a bit too far but maybe I’m just being a prude.

But I think if you’re going to represent men in that way, in that stereotypical way, where they overpower the women in their lives with violence after they do something you don’t agree with, or sleep with someone you don’t want them to sleep with, you should at least pull together some sense of understanding on the part of the audience. Then again, maybe we’re not supposed to sympathize with Tommy at all, with his “crazy chick” ranting and wife-beating ways. I’ll still watch the show and perhaps in the end that’s all that matters.

Oh, and I’m loving The Wire. Aren’t you?

Right now my Faux-Vo is totally packed to the gills with TV I need to watch: the WB sign off, new Law and Orders, Men in Trees (I know, but it’s a girlie show, I kind of like it, even if I know it’s totally trite and manipulative), and too much more to mention. AND, a lot of the new shows haven’t even started yet.

I did, however, manage to watch Studio 60 and felt kind of meh about it. I adored Matthew Perry though. He rocked the small screen every moment he was there and you can’t deny Sorkin writes good, if a bit hefty, dialogue. But I was never a West Wing fan so I’m not sure how long I’ll hang on to that one.

So with all the TV, the two abridgings I have due, my page a day challenge that I’m keeping up and all the reading, not to mention dance class, my eyes are blurry and bloodshot on a good day.

Plus, I’m feeling totally discombobulated because usually the RRHB is away this time of year and I settle in for a good dose of band widowdom before the winter sets in. Does someone want to book them some gigs so I can catch up on all the TV I need to watch?

I read The Custodian of Paradise, Wayne Johnston’s companion novel to The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, in a flash this weekend for an interview I did at work this week (today, in fact). The novel tells the story of Sheilagh Fielding, the larger than life, both figuratively and literally (as she stands six-foot-three) character from Johnston’s Colony, as she tells her side of the story, the side we didn’t read in the aforementioned novel.

Wayne Johnston is a favourite of mine. The fall where I read the paperback copy of Colony was the first year that my RRHB and I were living together. It was a tough year, not because of that, but because of all the stuff we waded through, much of our own making, to get into our apartment (feuding friends, feuding ex-partners, crazy fall-out from the last time the disease flared, etc) and the book was a breath of fresh air; Joey Smallwood doing for me at that moment what Owen Meany had done for me in Banff, lifted me up and out of my doldrums and pushed me right back in my imagination.

The Custodian of Paradise, while not a broad, sweeping historical novel, sort of did the same thing. Although I don’t recommend reading it like I did, pushing it down in a timeframe because you want to prepare for your interview, but rather savouring it like a good bottle of wine you’re drinking as the sun sets at the cottage. It’s an interior story, Sheilagh’s story, told mainly through her own writing, her newspaper articles, her journals, her letters, which makes it thoroughly intense in terms of emotional investment.

And it’s a sad story, but triumphant in that Sheilagh’s a survivor: she rides the wave of her mother’s abandonment, triumphs against her father’s dismissal of her (he refuses to believe that he’s hers), suffers a truly heartbreaking heartbreak, and is forced to give up her children. But through it all, you can see Sheilagh’s delicate nature balanced with her skillful wit and her sharp tongue. It’s this contrast that makes the book so engaging; and it’s a rare accomplishment for a man (and I know, I’m sorry for the gender bias) to write a female protagonist where, not once, I questioned her own innate feminity and/or characterization (see Updike for any proof of how to get this wrong, wrong).

All in all, it’s my favourite to win the Giller this year, but I’m not taking any bets as to what’ll actually happen.

Why I would make a terrible housewife:

1. I never check the pockets, of ANYTHING, hence as I just threw my RRHB’s work clothes into the washing machine, I also washed his totally expensive phone. Yes, it went in the wash. Do you think it’ll survive after it dries? I don’t.

Bad, bad wife.

When I was at the kidney doctor’s the other day, when he said, “How do you feel?” I replied that I felt great, except for feeling old. He was very serious for a minute and wanted to know if I felt old because I was unwell or if I was half-joking. Of course, I’m half-joking, but I do honestly feel super old these days. On the streetcar ride home I tried to think of all the reasons why I feel so old, particularly this year:

1. Because I’ve had the disease for over 15 years. That’s almost 20 years of going through medical problems. 20 years is a long, long time.

2. I can no longer listen to pop radio. Now, I listen to the CBC in the car. Oddly, when growing up, as other parents listened to the CBC in their cars, mine always listened to pop radio. I am convinced it’s because my parents were still so young when they had me. They didn’t have the chance to grow out of it, to some extent.

3. I have no idea who the majority of the people are who won MTV Video Awards. No clue.

4. I bought a dress from Anne Klein to wear to a wedding.

5. I carry a purse. All. The. Time. I don’t even own a non-work related knapsack.

6. My hair is grey, very, very grey.

7. I have very little patience for public transit despite being incredibly concerned about climate change.

8. Speaking of which, I found myself having a crush, for a nano-second, on Peter MacKay. And then I saw the pictures of him with Condoleeza Rice and decided that it was very, very wrong to have a crush on Peter MacKay.

9. When I meet new people they are always very shocked when they hear my age and almost always say, “You don’t look [insert your age here].” My tried and true response is always, “But I sure feel it.”

10. I have almost decided I will no longer wear my rock and roll t-shirts. Almost. But that begs the question, what will I wear instead? I have very few (read: none), non rock and roll t-shirts.

See, OLD.

This frightens me. Who buys a Nickelback album, truly? Who walks in to the store, slams it down on the counter and says to themselves, “I just bought a classic in the making”? It’s been on the charts in the top 10 in the States for a year. That’s 365 days people. And I can understand the inability to get away from them in Canada because every single bloody radio station other than the CBC plays them at least 4 times an hour, but in the States they have a choice. There’s no CanCon. There’s nothing forcing anyone to actually listen to Chad Kroger’s absolutely banal lyrics. Why? Why? Why?

So, I’ve been writing my pages (I’m up to 173) and feeling sorry for myself, which means I listen to sad songs over and over again.

Right now, “Wide Turn” by Greg MacPherson, before, “Hope There’s Someone” by Antony and the Johnsons, before that, “Wild and Tangled” by Oh Susanna.

Now you.