Friday, December 24, 2004

dear callendar maker, please erase 24 and 25 from your callendar

-if i could skip a few days these next two would be them-
thats pretty much all i will say right now. and its 9:41am.
ah. ahahahah. ahhh...?

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

an interreflection pause:


Garden of Ruby
Originally uploaded by efatima.
a light bite out of my book-meal of sustenance for the day:
Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown.

Tally: 3 cities, 4 forms of transportation used, friends on the other end of free phone calls, 1 book read, 12 hours of sleep for the first time in a month… no large revelations or outbursts. Gold star over here.


Phases -or- dream sequence/when I went back to cull the pages that I had poured over with such devotion earlier in the day, I couldn’t find the ones that struck me most any more, and it just seems that the whole book will have to do.

Here is a selection of q’s I choose for now.
Context optional. (I’m using artistic license and a dash of escapism)

(to keep it interesting and coherent here are Possible reading suggestions: read phases 1 through three repetitively until it has meaning. Or read the book (again).

Context in art is arguably created by the “reader/receiver” any way. art is life/is art…so, go make something of it.)

1. In times like this, intellectual analysis does no damn good…123

2. Enchanted…141

3. Something tells me I have to stay in this ugly city for awhile. 151

Sometimes I feel like I live in the late 50’s or maybe 60’s; that I actually am living in a house with an avocado-green refrigerator, and yellow linoleum floor. That I’m married and a secretary, and have plastic flowers in the flower boxes outside my window. That the child sitting at the table is mine. (insert caveat. If this is your life, and it makes you happy, good for you. The Nuclear world awaits your participation. I on the other hand would like to imagine that I am reaching for a strap-on as I bolt for the Exit….)

You may now bite down on your pillow and take a moment to release anxiety with me.
AH.

There are moments also where I wonder where in the hell my teen years went and why I didn’t rebel just a little more. Cut out Just a little, change more to period. Continue: Now I’m older. It doesn’t 'look' as good, but it is starting to itch. Again. I need to cause some ruckus. The image of the avocado green fridge (and I love avocados) will be enough to incite my rebellion, maybe.

In the mean time, for all of you who have heard my “about my future” monologue, I thank you. It is a process that requires much ironing out, and while you might have felt that the discussion was repassing over the same crease of indecision, in fact it was always an new one, but I just couldn’t express the minute adjustments that were occurring with in the frame work of a circular-seeming conversation.

-What the hell am i going to do with my life? Tell me what to do?
-I cant. It wouldn’t mean anything if I told you. You got to tell you.
-It’s so hard.
-For Christ’s sake, its always hard no matter who you are…it’s the hardest decision every individual has to make in their life, probably.
p.175

As s. suggests, perhaps if we can't figure out what we want to do, by eliminating all the undesirable options we will be closer to what we do in fact want.

Lets eliminate the avocado-green fridge and thank the printing presses for publishing books that are better than yelling at family members out of repressed frustration, and projected suffocation (I am actually doing quite well here despite the tone of this sentence. The fridge imagery does make me a bit edgy though. No one talks about what kind of fridge i'll get around here mind you, since its just expected… though I suppose a beige one won't be too scandalous…what I paint on it how ever... (nope if this makes little sense dont worry, i let the analogy get away with me...just for old-times sake.)

“…And for a future I didn’t want a split-level home with a station wagon, pastel refrigerator, and a houseful of blond children to walk into the pages of McCall’s magazine and a husband or any man for that matter.”

really.

“ I wanted to go my own way and maybe find some love here and there. Love, but not the now and forever kind with chains around your vagina and a short circuit in your brain. I’d rather be alone.” (p.88)

Ok “love” is a whole other kettle of fish.
I wonder if I believe in love like I (don’t) believe in labels.
And…if 'all you need is love'…when would I have an excuse to eat chocolate?

I have all my priorities straight.

Hahahah.
Hahahhahhahah.
Ha.
(ill leave the last clisheed quip to you. It's subtle, I know.)

Ps. I’m home.


Yep. My cough matches my humour: dry.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Northward migration--lift off


IMG_5894
Originally uploaded by pbinder.
Sunday was December 12th. It marked exactly my fourmonth anniversary in France. on Monday night three of the four language assistants came over and helped me finish the food inmy fridge, and chilled, and listened to music, and talked. While were are all very different, and i still feel kind of disconnected, it is a dynamic that i am alright with. I mean, after all, they did my dishes and cleaned my kitchen because they knew i was leaving the next day! I finished packing and sent them off. Monday was the 13th of december, the 3 month anniversary of my arrival into my house, and the eve of my leaving for my brief return home. Teachesr looked at me kindly, and i saw in thier eyes the reflection of my dark circles of sleeplessness and fatigue. My performances were much more subtle, they laughted at my french in thier happy vacation card. I left for my hollidays two days before they did. they can laugh. Monday and tuesday were burned through with winter songs (Let it snow)in 8 classes, and marked a progressive decline in my vocal strength as a cold started to sneek its way in. Monday was a Nuit Blanche #1. It also marked the begining of my run to paris that would take me flying into the arms of my lovedones my missed ones my dearones marked on every heartbeat, counting seconds minutes and every moment of a hurried cellphone call--have a safe trip i love you take care a bientot,and thank you-- five delayed hours in Washington (making for Nuit Blanche #2) and the remaining 1.5 hour flight and the 30 minute taxi that took me through the snow and street lamp lit scenery to the soundtrack of a conversation about syrian and persian food, until i found myself passing bernard and stopped on the street that has my foot prints, a piece of r's pants, and a fair amount of sweat and burned rubber and lost bustickets and tentative winter slips....finally I am left in the snow before the now familiar green door, and the bay window across the street that house piece of me flying into arms of loved ones.
i exist! ;)
how i have missed you.
Im home.

Lyon


Lyon
Originally uploaded by Bertrand.
During my last week in Annemasse I must have been a Portrait of A Disheveling Individual. I shocked every class, not just the first class of the day as usual, by fixing my hair as i entered removing my hat; when my clip broke, when my clip dissapeared, and finally suffered the consequences of not-brushing-hair interacting with the politics of no hejabs in schools-- meaning my instinct to put on my hood to hide my mass of uncombed hair was paused in mid hood-ing, forcing me to embrace my 'look' as i turned towards the board to present exactly what i had worked so akwardly to conceal just moments before. Sigh. Next term im wroking from plays and stories and the book the government of canada finally sent me that includes a fantastic introduction to contemporary Inuit culture for kids. i ll even brush my hair.

I finally made it to Lyon on the 11th of December to catch the last night of the Festival of Lights. It also meant I had to skip H's birthday party (i had prepared by cooking a homemade lunch on friday- h's reall birthday). I refuse to suffocate myself. is that selfish? We're all selfish. its called taking care of yourself. its allowed. So i went to Lyon at 4 pm after a rapid tea with the old english assistant and having finally finished my reference letter-writer packeges. I did this because i could not stand the idea of staying in, kind of like the journey to Geneva. The journey was all that much sweeter knowing that all too easily i may have trapped myself in Annemasse because of poor time planning. I went not knowing if i would only be there for 2.5 hours (the time between when my trian arrived and when the last train would leave... or if I would finally make contact with family friends and maybe stay the night. I stayed the night, releived myself of friends of famiily in Lyon-seeing guilt, and slept and ate well. In between the eating and sleeping was a walk through the historical World Heritage Site that is the city of Lyon, and a walking lesson in the history of the city, which I think i may become obsessed with. Lets begin with setpping out of the metro station into the litstreetst of down town. It was cold but the lights erase my memory of the cold. Lyon was enchanting. The streets were filled with people, in clubs on the street in restaurants. Each street in the core gave off onto another lit cobblestone street, and opened up into squares with fountains, or even a ferris wheel. Every inch of the city wafts of human history-which is partially thanks to my guides M and S. The streets gave out into darkened streets that lined the canal and its blue lighting set against the black water and grey/blue night. There was a display of floating lanters on one part of the river. I think it was the Rhone. The same Rhone that flows from Geneva down down down....to lyon past the Crox rousse, where the silk weavers used to live and weave. The only location where slikworms were allowed to be keept and silk spun was in the CR hilltop neighbourhood- now the houses have 9 foot ceilings that tell of thier looms that stretched so high in the weaving days. The city itself reflects this old industry, with over 3oo secret passages that were used to transport the slilk so that they w ould nto be damaged by rain, or snow or humidity. These same intricate passages were so well known by locals but so confusing to strangers that the French Resistance (headquartered in Lyon) used the passages to successfully out hide and escape the occupying forces when the city was captured by the Nazi's. The old city has three churches that once were the local places of worship untill each grew so large that they knit into one anohter, and finally thier commuinities spilled onto the newwer part of the city that is now mapped as Lyon. The Rhone, like the Seine is huge, wide and beautiful. The bridges are wide and new, having been blasted as the occupying forces lef the city, knowing thier defeat was iminent. The old part of Lyon which reaches back into the middle ages, is (if i remember correctly) situated on a "pres-q'ile" at the end of which the Rhone and the Saone meet -- they are said to be two converging ribbons of green and brown-- where they go and what they become once they merge, im not sure...(side note: Labrador is marked on one of my classroom maps as a Presq'ile, too). Other windeing cobble stone streets spill out onto paved road areas, where the smell of spiced wine still follows us, and there before us is a square that is only somewhat lit. During the french revolution the upper class/nobility wasw beheaded here. During the Occupation executions were also heald on the square. Across this square is a building witha black-bulbous roof- like something from teh 1800s (Im guessing) --it is similar to the appartment buidings near the Passy metro station in paris-- it was the hotel where St. Ex. wrote Le Petit Prince. beyond the quiet pine tree sellilng station and the peruvian musicians surrounded by a frosty breathed crowd and amplifiers, was, at the other end of the somwhat lit square, a fully lit chanukiah. It is the fisrt sign of channukah I have seen. I am drawn towards the crowd, but wary, and in the end skirt the edges, trying to catch a breath of channukah, warmed to see this festival of lights I was missing. The 8th, the day the fefstival started here, was also this year the first day of Channukah. There is no one here to share that with. it is the first chanukkah in years that Ihave not celebrated with you. like Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur, these markers that were so tentatively set as markers on my adult life are only hesitant finger-print-smudges on my callendar this year. Another little piece of myself floating in the mould.
I drank spiced wine and ate chageignes, and finally fell asleep. I felt like I was comming down with a cold. Sunday I returned to annemasse afeter a day-time trot through the old city and a brief photo session at the two roman anphi-thiatres. Lyon was an ancient Roman city. The amphi-theatres are like the ones in rome, and their acoustic engineering still works. my thoughts spill out onto the stage that feels like home. like a piece of myhistory. another piece in the mould. In evetiably our walk back down and away from these ancient stones what they represent brings me to another out-loud-pondering of my future with S, who insisted so kindly on accompanying me out around the city. I was introduced to a follow you passion arguement. what is my passion? argh. Im boared of the conversation. I am going to bore myself into a choice, just for relief from banging this proverbial skull against the proverbial wall, again, and again, and again. it is like a dull drone.
I rush back on the train to try and make it for dinner with the family I live behind. They are having a Raclette (potatoes and melted cheese, a specialty of the region hahahah.). The train is late because they are on strike, but searchign for a 'composte'' poste to bite my ticket and legitimize my birthday-escape-doing-what-I-want-on-my-time-with-my-money-yeah!- ticket, i bumped into A with a new fasion mullet haircut, heading back to annemass too, and also waiting for the delayed 3pm train. I bumped into a friend on a train platform in another city on my way home to annemasse. im still stunned. No wild dance parties out here just yet, but bumping into friends randomly will be added to my list of things to accomplish and will then satisfyingly be crossed out as a marker of home....

Sunday, December 05, 2004

A story about old Geneva and a bike. pardon some incoherence


bic
Originally uploaded by uaeadorable.
i want to meet the person taking the photos of Geneva. This one captures some of my evening yesterday. i scrambled awake in the latter part of 9am, after having gone to bed at 4am. I have had 2 four am sleeps in the last two days and they are two of the healthiest ones ive spent: friday night i cornerd myself and started finally producing some doccumentation that might draw some scholarship eyes, or at least will help my reference letter writers comment on my "whole applicant" self. This takes effort. Although the exercise of writing about your "accomplishments" and being able to write "with distinction" after "october 2004 Undergraduate, Arts, McGill University" or how ever i formatted it,can be a healthy recap on four years of intens high speed blured living. i wonder i f i can impress some UNhigh commison for Human Rights employee that this makes me a good candidate to be exploited to do research in english in Geneva...

my major outing of the evening was a drive into the mountains at dusk to tutor a Terminal (last year of highschool) student in English in his parents home, which is an old converted barn. I really had to reatrain myelf from calling out Horses! and cows! and being overly awed by the clouds draped-ove- the-upper-tree-line phenomena. This is rolly-hill alps-basin land around the back of the Salev mountain. sigh. THe evening was economically fruitful, and also provided me with useful information about the local alpine club, which is apparently down the street from my house. I havent found it yet, but i think its a good idea to add it to (cough; cough) one of my priority goal lists. The quiet evening of cidre poiree and cheese following my dinner of chickpeas and some vegetables was capped off by a 3-lost-loves-in-one-location phone call. I napped around midnight so i could make it, almost m issed it but am so glad i didn't. its so startling to realize how many facets you have to yourself and how old voices bring back parts of yourself in a way that hanging out alone or with new-maybe-friends just doesn't. Its the same feeling that comes from a letter in the mail or an email that isnt about logistics, or catching sight of something familiar in a blog, sometimes even finding yourself there too.

Due to friday lateness, saturday began late too- my bum is getting tired and i still have to buy a ticket to paris so i can get to montreal,so im going to be brief- A was having a birthday party. So i stayed in town. I was feeling restless. Cant call c everytime i feel restless, or miss the closest of my loves, even though its usually a sure fire way to return to a healthy mental state; laughter is important, so are people who know you well enough to know the resonances in what you say... or dont say. [unrelated side note: it can be scary too (especailly when you've griown more comfortable hiding out just under the wires-- Enough anonymity among painfully new relationships and miss understandings because of this very essential missing element (the i sometimes see more than you think element) is enough for me to be ok with people (specifically those i really have no intention of letting out of my life) knowing more about me than i like to think they do. ceeding control over all things, taking control of small things.]

THIs brings me to a joyful 2 hours: after spending the day inside; and having not gone to a little town in germany to see a real christmas market that strasbourg is also famous for- becaus it was As b-day party and if it was my birthday in a new place id want my new aquaintance-friends to show up too. IN the mean time part of my rational for staying in town was to go to the escalade- an event that is now a race in 3 parts; but which actually comemorates the boiled soup throwing by the citizens of geneva when they were invaded by the savoyards and conquered for a few months. THE three stages are a race by children, one by profesional athletes from all over the world; and a costumed run. THat i would have stayed home all day only to miss the event would have left me severely pissed with myself, not to mention too embarassed to talk to my collegues to whom i;d announced my escalade viewing intention.

here is where the bike comes in: it is my freedom when the busses run every hour and stop a 8pm. WIth the mislead intention to arrive a few hours early at A's house, who lives next to a border corssing, and then take a tram or bus in, i found myself infront of a darkened house with no one home (A hadnt arrived yet) and armed with information that enlightened me to the fact that the tram is only accessible from the Mossulla crossing. on the french side this douaine (customs stop) is 30 minutes away by bike, on the swis side it is 15. After a few trips towards my bike, the phone booth, mty bike, the border guards; my bike; the bus stop, finally i had enough information and confirmation by a local passerby who gave me direct biking instructions to geneva prpoper. go past the border; turn right at the Feu (lights) go straight and then youll hit the tram lines, follow them unti ll you hit geneva. yep yep yep it worked and in 45 minutes or less i stumbled upon a lit centre: the pedestrian street ih avent see at night yet, and cheering crowds- and honking and laughter. I may have been the source of the laughter memory; because i sang most of the way there very happy with myself for not only making it to geneva on my bike but also for having enough time to do so; and finally even more joyous to see the city so festive; and again to be drawn up the crowd lined hill into the old city to watch fish tanks and cross countryskiers and Commentary on the search for weaposn of mass distruction and the war; along with aids ribbons runnign next to bunnyrabbits and babystrollers converted into ships. I laughed so hard. it was one of my favourtie alone moments. Geneva's character is reflectd in the juxtaposition of croweded streets with still enough space to pass; al be it a little akwardly with my lovely bike: the streets were dark but the photo is a good sense of how this part of the city looks. it is particularly memorable because i kept looking for places to stash my bike ( i still dont have an anti-vol/an anti-theft:lock) and so my eyes were drawn to the street cracks where walls and cobblestone meet so that i could find a grate to make it look like my bike was locked up. in teh end i didnt find a place to not-lock it up and so made my way through the crowds past the calvinist church in the gently lit streets trying not to trip and fall; biting my lip and widening my eyes every time my bikepedal got jabbed into the back of my calf, soothing myself with the sight of the old buildings and the different languages that flowed aroudn me. Turning off away from the crowd lined street, statisfied with the energy and success of my bike ride and desperately wanting roasted chataignes (chestnuts), I found a passage in the old city behind what is now a university or museum. i made my way down a quiet set of stairs lit by yellow lights, and found myself heading back towards the street i had made my way up earlier, though the runners and the people lining the streets were fewer. I was enchanted by the the sight of costumed figures crossing on the other side of the archway i was heading towards--and on my quiet yellow-lamp light and beige-stone side of the wall i hung out a self-consciously mischevious "if these arches could talk" on the papery line of baraided memoryandtime--[in a way to hang in the threads of time so that when you stumble on these sights, the memory like a thin spiderweb filament caught on your cheek, will tug at the corners of your lips and crinkle the corners of your eyse as you hear an echo with warm love-filled teasing laughter.] I was very satisfied to be alone soaking up the old stones and thier reflected yellow light but it would have been lovely to share with familiars. I did buy the chestnuts, to the tunes of latin music in a telethon stall on the street; and the sound of the people behind me speaking a latinamerican spanish; If i hadnt had to head back to make it to the party, i would have invited them out for a drink. One more reason to walk with no expectations down a festive international centre.

The party was food filled, and smoke of various sorts filled. i arrived on time. Most importantly i didnt feel too akward. the two dark rum, lime and sugar drinks and a little orange vodka after a brief lesson on the basics of wine appreciation (for real; and i laughted the whole time because it was too clished, and the three of us involved all knew it was; except they were both very enthusiastic)may have helped. I may have exposed my non hegemonic dominant attraction trends in conversatin with some of my "future ex colocs" (roomates i dont have--from the House). We'll see what that means. MA was trying to set me up with a pottery kid from her atelier. I knew it! This is what made getting a ride home from geneva the other night very akward, and now my suspicions are confirmed . jerks ;). THough neither of us could remember his name.lol. and thats ok: see the chicken see it runnnnnn. i should have joined the race; i wouldnt even need a costume.

Why being attracted to people scares the shit out of me and so i have thousands of mechanisms that leave me paralyzed in the middle of my kitchen some mornings or just speachless unskilled in the task of dealing with it is un known to me.
i also like dancing in the kitchen to my radio. even if the music is 80s bad or rap lyrics that i just barely stand; or torch mucis i just barely stand. good lighting; heat and some dancing is akin to singing on a bike ride. It reminded me of riding a bike with a basket and a bell. and of a midnight bikeride by a kight in woolen mittens. And woolen mittensmake me think of you; and the girl with the bike and the scarf and the long jacket and teh glasses and no hat reminded me of you; and made for a moment of suspended joy at being able to now ride with out holding the handle bars-- for short distances-- and i dropped into missing you, again.

It is like getting bike gears to work properly; adjusting both sides until you can love and miss and live all at the same time with out loosing your balance.

love
always,
me.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

I slept through the first snow!!!!!!
key to that phrase is that I slept. Thank god.

when i woke up i looked out to think it had rained; and then saw the melting white set against the deep grey and the greens of the terrace and garden which my front windows look out onto.

The other key to that phrase is that i woke up and got out of bed.
(cheer track)

I did a theatre workshop for 15-16 year olds today. We started later than planned because today is December 1st and it is international Aids awareness day and most of them were at a conference about it. Another good reason to interrupt a lesson i might be teaching. All in all I think it went well, and more importantly i had fun.

I need to sleep some more but i think i will reward myself this evening with pear cider and cheese from the same region, (yes i went to the cheese store) Normandy. It has been waiting since yesterday. I must do something so that i can reward myself. see how im motivating myself. also known as healthy distraction; and cheeper than phone cards and i need to learn to live alone. i even like it a lot. ive always liked it in the past. actually i dont know.
yep its all that clear.

It is sunny out but i am only able to see that through the drawn curtains in this here computer lab at the school: The story behind the computer lab curtains also includes security being called and me being the only one in the school late at night chattig away in the warmth of a this room instead of shivering through another conversation with a loved one in the much used phone booth. Why in the world dont they make non mettalic phone booths? now my phone conversations are cut short not only by the money left on my card but my jaw locking shut from shivering and my toes burning from the cold.

Needless to say the curtains here are still closed after my clandestine attempt to benefit from access to the school master key. The consierge advises me just to keep the lights off next time. Good to know.

You can see the Alps today, snow capped and all. Not Mt Blanc though it is covered by clouds.

if i describe what i see, maybe eventually ill beable to describe where im at if that is anywhere, im doubting of course. surely soon ill find a cause todefine myself by. Then ill be interesting and give biting commentary and rivetting accounts about life,
in the mean time
i send these postcards in words from Annemasse.