Tag: Memories

Reading the empty spaces

Friends.

There is some majorly wacked-out stuff going down all over the globe these days.

From the most horrific, to the most mundane, it’s bizarro world out there.

I’m not really sure what to think of it all.

However, of one thing I am sure.

This morning I learned that Ray Bradbury has died. He was 91.

And I am devastated.

In terms of books, I am not one to mince words.

If I like an author, I will make it known. If I don’t like an author, well, I won’t waste my time.

And I love Bradbury.

(I refuse to use this verb in past tense. Just because he died doesn’t mean I am magically going to stop celebrating his works.)

I love him.

His writings are of such majesty that they brings tears to my eyes, and gooseflesh to my arms, and warmth to my cheeks.

They bring me pain and strength and desire and need – to my head, to my hands, to my heart, to my feet.

…

I’ll never forget the first time I read Fahrenheit 451.

I was in grade eleven and I had just finished reading Catcher in the Rye. Reading these two books back-to-back exploded my brain so hard it’s amazing that I managed to speak in complete sentences for the remainder of the year.

I wanted to know more.

I wanted to know everything.

I re-read 451 for the first time in the summer of 2007. This time around I took it slowly, reading each chapter and then pausing – taking time to digest the words, the ideas, dissect my growing feeling of unease, of understanding how this fictional world was so alike the one I inhabited – flesh, bones, blood, mind, and heart.

It unnerved me.

And I wanted to know more.

I wanted to know everything.

After this, I read The Martian Chronicles. Sandwiched in between Asimov’s I Robot series and Heinlein’s The Moon is a Dark Mistress, I learned about the Earthmen, and Those Summer Nights; The Settlers and The Green Morning.

“Ylla” (like so many of the book’s other stories) moved me in such a way that I have a hard time communicating them through my typed words.

Everything seems too silly, too trite.

He made a world that I wanted to visit. Wanted to dream about.

All of his worlds – I wanted to know them.

Know everything.

My favourite Bradbury work is Something Wicked This Way Comes.

This book is probably the most terrifying, most beautiful book I have ever read.

Will ever read.

Often times, when I am feeling overwhelmed, or lost, I will pick up Mr. M’s and my dog eared copy and re-read the following passage:

“Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes in the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokeberry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain. Shared and once again shared experience.”

I will think about good and evil.

About youth.

About age.

I will think about the American Dream, and its evolution. I construct a world that I imagine Bradbury inhabited as he created his work. I deconstruct the world I inhabit when I read his work.

His books make me nostalgic for a time and place I have never known.

For a time and place I will never know.

I have nothing in common with Charles Holloway, and yet I feel for him. I yearn for him.

I am him.

If you have never had the chance, please, take the time and read this book. It is magic.

…

Bradbury was a literary giant, unmatched by most, in a league of few.

I sincerely hope that individuals, young and old alike will continue to read his works.

Lest we all become firemen.

Lest we all become consumed by fire.

It’s all okay in the UK

To round out a week full of travel-centric blog posts, I would like to share with you all a brief snap shot of Mr. M’s and my first few days in the magical city of Brum.

We lived in Birmingham for four months in 2009. I was on research leave for my MA, and M, being a Swiss citizen, was working as a language teacher at a community school, teaching ESL to young Afghani asylum seekers.

Here is a journal entry I wrote at 12:55 am because I couldn’t sleep due to my excitement yes, but also because I had an irrational fear that my landlady’s estranged husband (who also lived in the house) would murder us in our sleep:

I cannot even begin to communicate the hilarity that is M’s and my life here in Birmingham. We are enamoured with the city and its many eccentric but loveable inhabitants, impressed with its Balti and other culinary delights, frustrated with our “washing machine”, flabbergasted at the extremely cheap grocery prices, and proud of the fact that we turned an absolute dive into something that vaguely resembles a home.

Home sweet Brummy home!

Our travel to the city was a gong show and a half, what with the airline deciding to add stops in both Calgary and Dublin at the last minute, and then charging most passengers between four and nine hundred dollars at check-in because their luggage was overweight.

There was more than a little anger brewing at the Fly Globe Span counters (worst airline in the world – copyright 2009)  let me tell you. Luckily, I am a neurotic and anxiety-ridden individual and had already checked the allowances online, so we were in the clear.

Once we arrived in London we decided to take the bus to B town (or Brum, or Birmingham if you’re not into the whole Brevity thing) and not the train, which was a HUGE mistake, albeit much cheaper than the alternative.

The ride ended up taking about four and a half bloody hours.

I spent the time dozing under a pile of jackets because the air conditioning was set to arctic chill MAX, and I apparently have ZERO ability to cope with the cold, while M befriended a six hundred year old man who somehow didn’t succumb to the drop in temperature and die in his seat.

(I should have asked what his secret was.)

Anywho, we managed to finally get to our hotel (the glorious Etap Hotel, that may or may not moonlight as an elderly homosexual pick up joint) and fall into bed.

The next day we set out in search of a place to live and a cell phone plan. Once this (the plan) was procured, we needed to get our Canadian phone unlocked, which led to our first introduction to the Birmingham market, which we LOVE. We’re sure it’s the place where we’ll get most of our fruit and veg and any odd bits that we need.

Market! Well, just down the hill at least.

We then set off for the library in hopes of getting internet access to only learn that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY ZERO FREE WIRELESS IN ENGLAND SERIOUSLY THE INTERNET IS NO WHERE TO BE FOUND.

Why no internet UK? 

Eventually we managed to find a connection and slowly began to contact potential landlords.

M was a bit flabbergasted when it came to actually talking to people on the phone and he kept telling me (while the person was still on the line, yammering away), “I can’t understand anything these people are saying!”

The Brummy accent folks, is truly something to behold.

When one woman asked him if he was a student he responded with “okay” to which she just said “okay?”

Believe me when I say the laugh attack that I had been suppressing since our arrival in the city was unleashed with full force.

The first guy we met was a complete jerk. He showed up twenty-five minutes late, did not say hello, and then mumbled that it was “six months minimum” before just walking back up to his car!

What an arsehole.

After this encounter, we were lucky enough to meet Sue – our now landlord. (Though we did have to walk over 10km in order to get to her place.)

No word of a lie though, the place was a total crap box when we arrived. However, we’ve cleaned like maniacs, and M has put up a ton of paintings that Sue gave us, a coat and towel rack, the bed has new bedding ,and we’ve been given a small tv with tons of vhs tapes.

After a day committed to making our home, well, livable, we bussed to Moseley – a very radtastic area of the city – for dinner and drinks. Once again I was reminded about how much I still hate beer, but seriously the chips here are MAGNIFICENT.

Curry and chips!

Also, this is completely off topic, but if one more person calls me “love” I am seriously going to have to have a sit down, because it DESTROYS me.

Further, I have also now come to realize that “You okay?” doesn’t mean “Are you damaged?” but is more of an expression of helpfulness. This is very good to know because people say this to me A LOT.

Man. This is going to be quite an adventure.

I cannot wait to see where we’ll end up.

Notes from the underground

I live with a man to whom I have pledged my troth, until the sun supernovas, the stars fade away.

During the first month of our courtship, I flew away to Nova Scotia for two weeks, and during this time we wrote to each every day; back and forth we went, feverish, all firing synapses and tricky fingers – and often times very late at night (or early in the morning), so our typos, like our emotions, were plentiful.

I would love to share with you something he wrote to me – something that will forever make me laugh, something that will forever live in my heart.

An excerpt – Monday, August 25, 2003, 00:17:34:

As the evening progressed I began to feel more and more that I was part of some macabre Dostoevskian dinner party, wherein a carnivalesque ambiance lies so heavily upon the evening that I expect at any moment to have one of us drop down dead, or for Inspector Porfiry to burst through the door and proclaim me a student and a criminal in equal measure. 

Finally we began to watch the Anniversary Party with director’s commentary.  This was good because it allowed a dimming of lights so the rest of the party could no loner sit around awkwardly as my face watched my mind build and destroy lines of compassion and comradeship, leaving me on a sober island alone, being the only member of the melodramatic depressed monkey stock. 

Finally I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and announced I was retiring for the evening. 

Many sad farewells were exchanged, and then my door was closed and at last the misanthrope was safe, and glad that his room was devoid of mirrors and the curtains were pulled.  Then I turned off the one light by my bed, and sat, and in the darkness.

I wrote, since I could not speak, and my fingers were the tongues of my mind, and true for once for they were too long steeped in the deception of my company.

Last Night:
Because I spent an hour untwisting my phone cord, so I could lie where you lay that first night though miles apart; your heat a weir around my slippery heart; electric pulses shaping the darkness with the phosphorescent paintings of your words.  And today I am order in my sock drawer, pairing and pressing, thinking of the arch of your strong feet trembling beneath my touch.  You make me believe in a symmetrical world beyond my usual preoccupation with chaos; the gyre widens not forever – the hawk will tire, and bank, and glide in a descending inscription to the face of the world.  To live forever in the heights of my mind is a beauteous peril, and folly.  It is the loose loam between my toes, the touch of another, a lover, you who unquakes my weakness and fear of uncertainty.

Tonight I will sleep deeply; I may not dream.

But when I wake, I live a life of magical reality – this man and I, sewn up in a sea of soliloquies and stardust; tulips and tea.

The nose-less sphinx, straight roman roads under pumice and ash – I could have been a statue if I hadn’t met you.

I wish you all beauty and brilliance, this windswept day, and always.

 

It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down

So not this past weekend, but the weekend before, forty-nine robbers came knocking at my door.

Um.

No.

That didn’t happen. (But does anyone else remember that rhyme? I did some mean double-dutch to that bad boy all throughout my grade two year – you know, when I wasn’t chowing down on eggos and drinking Labatt Blue that is.)

I asked them what they wanted, and this is what they said – Spanish lady go like this! Spanish lady do the twist! Spanish lady touch the ground! Spanish lady turn around! Spanish lady jump once more! Spanish lady out the door! [at this point you had to run out of the rope circle. This was always the hardest part of double-dutch. It’s crazy difficult to run in or out of the circle with two ropes going! Also, why Spanish lady? I HAVE NO CLUE.]

But I digress.

Two weekends ago, I over did it a little bit with the training. M and I ran a long run, filled with hills and sprints, before ending up at the circuit track at Queen’s park. The monkey bars were slick with rain, and as I worked my was across I slipped halfway and twinged something in my right bicep.

Of course, because I cannot ever leave well enough alone, the next day I ran a seven kilometer “recovery” run.

By the end I was completely and utterly knackered.

This is my “I am exhausted face”. Separate incidents though.

Things hurt. Things that don’t normally ever hurt, HURT A LOT.

I was done.

So for the next five days I didn’t do anything – no running, training, weight lifting, or core work.

I even went for a 30 minute massage on Monday after work.

And it was pretty awesome. I got to come home, cook food, write, read, watch Damages (if you are not watching this show YOU MUST SERIOUSLY START NOW), and hang out with Ms. Nymeria and Mr. M.

Date night. Yowza!

In all honesty, it was actually a little shocking how much extra time I had in the evenings, not lugging myself to the gym two or three nights after work – especially on the days when I would usually be rushing to the gym, rushing back home, rushing into the shower, and then rushing out the door for my volunteer commitments.

I’m certainly not going to give up my regular scheduled program (because at the root of it, I really like it) – but it’s good to know that when push comes to shove, and my body is telling me to rest up, I can, and I will.

And I did.

After five days however, I was revved up, ready to run.

This past Saturday I was practically giddy as I got ready to get out of the door and out into the sunshine.

And let me tell you, that week of rest did my body a world of good.

I had an absolutely stellar run, and I killed it on the circuit.

The loop at Queen’s park is about 2.5 km, and very hilly. I ran it three times. In between each lap I would head to the circuit where I would do one set of monkey bars (I felt like I really was a monkey – I made it across each time no problem. I could not believe it!), twenty push-ups, and ten box jumps.

At the end of my run, I did three sets of sprints – 1 minute as fast as I could.

And as I made my way home, I felt as though I was flying.

Over the last few hundred meters back to my house, a couple of tears leaked out of the far corner of my left eye.

Not from exhaustion, but from exhilaration.

I was on fire.

(Maybe that’s why I was crying – to put out the flames.)

I do, however, have some pretty brutal blisters on my hands from those accursed monkey bars. Check it:

Oucherama.

Urg.

Just in case you needed a second look.

But even sore hands couldn’t keep me still for long.

The next day, Sunday, I set out once more, and my legs propelled me through another absolutely smashing run. The sun’s rays burned bright, but not too hot – the green of the park’s trees, so lush and ethereal, while the sky burned a white opal, sapphire blue.

It’s moments like that were I truly believe that my body is capable of anything.

As long as I listen to it, it will tell me when it’s ready.

And goodness knows, beware to anyone standing in our way.

 …

Post script – I just received one of the most hilarious and completely incoherent spam comments of all time. It reads: Good afternoon fellow , probably fire a torpedo from grace is increasingly cumbersome due to the restricted set of telephone operators.

“Firing a torpedo from grace” is now what I’m calling my tough mudder training. Boo yeah.

Smoking, or non?

I did a lot of crazy stuff as a kid.

(This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you.)

In grade two, Ms. Nolan (full disclosure: I LOVED HER) asked us to bring in props for our “class store.” We were going to learn how to add and subtract integers through the purchase of goods on sale in our shop.

The student buying the products would have to add up the price of their groceries, while the cashier would have to calculate the correct change owed.

As a class, we were darned excited about this math unit.

Now, other kids brought in cereal boxes, soup cans (that had been – responsibly – cleaned and dried), kraft dinner packages, and egg cartons.

And what, you may be asking yourselves, did young Ethel bring to the project?

A jumbo box of Eggo waffles and an (empty, thank goodness) twelve-pack of Labatt Blue.

That’s class with a K right there folks.

For all you non-Canucks out there, LB is a kind of beer. And a pretty bad beer at that. (Actually, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t even exist anymore.)

Ms. Nolan must have been pretty flabbergasted, especially because our grade four buddies had come down to help us set up shop (literally) and bunch of them were play-acting drunk, slurring their words and taking pretend swigs from the bottles.

Needless to say, most of my props went home with me that day.

Though the Eggos stayed.

Flash-forward to grade five. We had a student teacher named Michael, who was wonderful and completely lovely.

He was patient and soft-spoken, was always excited and dressed really well.

(In my memory he’s about fifty-nine, but in reality the guy couldn’t have been older than twenty-six.)

And as a class, we used to make him sweat like long-tailed cat in a room filled with rocking chairs.

And I, I was a chief culprit of this stress (though not of my own volition or intention.)

Like I said, I just did weird stuff!

Case in point:

One of the assignments he got us involved with was a cross-Canada anti-smoking campaign, which was also a competition to see who, out of all the elementary students across the country, could create the best anti-smoking poster and catch phrase.

In order to participate, you had to finish the sentence: “If you smoke – …”

I’ll never forget the winner from the previous year, because my ten year old self thought it was absolutely freaking brilliant, and the poster looked like it had been drawn by a professional artist.

The winning poster read:

If you smoke, you’ll be hooked!

The accompanying picture was that of a really sad killer whale being fish-hooked by an evil (and obviously soulless) smoking henchman.

Aha, I thought to myself. This was what we had to live up to!

So what did I pull together you might ask? Did all my hard work ensure my victory?

Well, I’ll let you decide for yourself.

My slogan was: If you smoke, you’re just a butt!

Genius, right?

I mean, who would want to do anything that reminded them of bums? No one, that’s who!

My poster, while a little avant-garde, was sure to wow the judges.

This is (a recreation of) what I drew:

That’s a border of cigarette butts by the way.

Needless to say, I think Michael may have had a heart attack when he saw this.

He kindly let me know that there was no way, not for all the tea in China, that he was letting me send in a poster that depicted a bare ass smoking a cigarette.

I fought back hard.

Couldn’t he see how much effort I had put into it? Yes he could, he told me. Couldn’t he see where I was coming from? Yes he could, he told me. Didn’t he like my border of cigarette butts? Yes he did, he told me. Didn’t he think that the thought of putting your mouth on a bum would make kids not want to ever smoke a single cigarette in their entire life? Yes he did, he told me.

At this point I remember his face getting really red – not from anger I’m sure – but more from the fact that if he didn’t laugh soon, his entire head would explode.

In the end, I received an A on the project and I got to keep my slogan, but I had to go home that night and make a new poster.

So this was the one I sent into the competition:

(The stars are the cigarette butts – I was too lazy to draw them out again.)

Needless to say, I didn’t win.

But hey, it wasn’t a total wash. In fact, looking on the bright side, I don’t smoke, and if I ever hear someone say that a person has a “smoking ass” – well – only I know the real truth of the matter.

But like I said, crazy stuff guys.

CRAZY STUFF.