Sunday, June 29, 2008

...too much gaiety...

I feel like I don't need this blog anymore. Whatever it was accomplishing in the last four years, it no longer seems to do - if my perpetual absence is any indication. This may be the permanent goodbye until September when I will be starting something new, and will be alone, and will need to bring words out of myself to keep from going crazy. I will let you know when. In a few days, maybe a week or two, I will take this one down.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

...here I go...

I wish I had adopted this as my motto earlier in my time with the store: "If you can smell them before you see them, they are probably suspicious".

True say.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

...love on the highest level is no joke...

I don't have any of the usual stomach knots for either the guy I am seeing or the one who is seeing me. I like them so much and sometimes my body remembers this too and does flips and thrills, but otherwise everything is calm. Imagine my surprise, then, when, not expecting to see him, and not realizing my senses were still capable of short-circuiting all at once, I had an embarrassingly unsettling reaction to someone else, someone who doesn't really see me at all. An awakening in 10 seconds.

Phil says: Each time you feel confident of the way to move ahead, someone or something casts doubt on your plans. Trust your good intuition

Intution: direct perception of truth, fact, etc. independent of any reasoning process; an immediate apprehension.

In other words, the kicked-in-the-gut sensation that hit me when the skies opened and the sun shone down (hello to melodrama, and the feeling of being 15 again), illuminating what my dreams and the absense of my own better judgment have been telling me for months: I wish I had been ten years older ten years ago, but still in this place.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

...belatedly...

It occurs to me that I never did talk about the very important somebody I was to meet last Monday. It was Baba Wawa, and she was not very nice. I could expand on this and fill up enough moments to equal a 13-hour day, but that was the most important thing to come out of those 13 hours - I met her, and she was not very nice.

Monday, June 09, 2008

...active weather report...

They called a tornado watch for the GTA, including Vaughan and Richmond Hill (between the two of which I live, in the "village of Thornhill"), and now I cannot sleep. Where is a cellar when you need one? I have batteries but no bottled water. My parents are asleep upstairs and I am tempted to wake them and have them move to the basement to hole up behind cushions while I read aloud from David Copperfield to pass the time... is that what one does during a tornado?

I have to do laundry. Should one do laundry during active storms? Won't the water in the machine draw the lightning, or something? Like when they tell you not to swim during a storm? Oh god, and what if I need to shower?

I am a little drunk.

Possibly not the best thing to be during a tornado.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

...things to think on...

Note to self (for when, naturally, older and richer): buy all the New York Review of Books Classics.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

...everything leads to here...

I just made a devastating combination - nostalgia and my Visa card. I've spent years casually browsing used bookstores for Elizabeth Bernard's "Satin Slippers" series. It's a series of 12 books I read and adored in middle school and I harbour dreams of one day giving them to my budding ballerina daughter. This week I spent some time on abebooks and found them there, all 11 copies I needed (I found the first volume in a Toronto store not too long ago), whipped out my Visa and bought them then and there. abebooks is wonderful, it finds you all the books you need at whichever store has them, lets you order them from the site and behind the scenes arranges the orders with all of the independent booksellers involved. The first book arrived today and I read it in a thrilling hour over lunch in my kitchen. I can't wait for the rest of them.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

...first full-dress encounter...

This morning, my entire family sat around the kitchen table, heads crowded around my computer, waiting for my aunt and uncle on the other end to respond to my "ichat" request. Another minute, and their faces came on to the screen. We shouted and chatted, everyone trying to get their words in (the telephone is more civilised, in that respect). The thrilling novelty of speaking to people across the ocean and seeing their faces before you almost made us forget the pain of knowing they had to move back to Iran.

Pain and something else, some universal sense of failure that we all took in and made part of ourselves. Somehow we couldn't find a way to help them stay in this country, 25 years after they started the project. After learning the language, becoming citizens, making their lives here, raising their families here; in the end Canada didn't make it work for them, and they went home.

Home? This is home, isn't it? After a quarter century and two generations of family, this is home. How is this possible? Is it really so tenuous as all that?

If it is, then home is in the connections. Not where we end up but how we reach other. Early-morning crowded encounters and shouted catching-up. Getting through the inconsequential everyday, seven days of things that don't mean as much as they used to, until the next Sunday and seeing you again.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

...tambores...

I deleted the entire message I posted here earlier because I was wrong. I can't analyse or think about it anymore, but it is not what I thought it was. It's better.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

...rampant idolatry...

Tonight I went into work thinking I was only going to meet someone interesting and potentially fascinating, and at the very least Very Important. Cherie Blair, at her speaking event and book signing at our store, was sincere and warm and fun and intelligent, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I will not lie though - the best part of my evening happened completely incidentally.

After the speaking segment, I walked around the audience filling names onto post-its so she could personalize books to individuals. As I asked one gentleman for his name, I heard his voice above me answer "Phil Booth". My head snapped up and I found myself looking at a tall gentleman with Einstein-lite gray hair. He looked exactly as I thought he would. I said, "by any chance, you don't write the horoscopes for the Toronto Star do you?", to which he answered "yes I do". I laughed, jittered, and told him that I read him every day.

He wanted to know if he could ask Cherie Blair what time she was born - I told him of course, but suggested he let her know what his profession was first. Security was high, and there were some crazies around. He did, later, and she told him. Best moment ever.

Sometimes I wonder if celebrities hear these kinds of "I read you everyday" stories and think they are exagerrations. Phil Booth, if you should come upon this, this is no exaggeration. Every. Day. You all should know: how many times have I reported to you what is contained in my stars?

For Javod, because I promised him cryptic news: on Monday I am meeting someone else Very Important, at her hotel and then later at another speaking/signing event. I can't tell you yet who it is because it would give away the fun, but think evening interviews, great hair, a tell-all book, two very public feuds and 13 world leaders.