my perfect lunch

so i've recently determined that i'm going to try and eat better - you know the drill, more whole grains, less fat, more veggies and legumes. and to complement this oh-so-responsible new dietary stance, i've started taking multivitamins (but did you know you can get things called calcium chews, that are kinda like tootsie rolls, but they've got mineral goodness in them? really! it's true). and today, i finally hauled my ever-widening rear end into pool for a bit of a swim. whole new me, i tell you!

but then i got home, and i was HUNGRY. and this week, the grocery angel (also known as my dearly beloved) had delivered to my house the ingredients (by express request) for my perfect lunch:



wonder bread - white. cheese - american kraft. ketchup - heinz.
damn the resolutions. those can wait. this lunch made my day.


rufus wainwright - cigarettes and chocolate milk

post-overnight

on my bike on my way home this morning from last night's midnight shift, city streets empty save for a few souls who might be waking, might be heading home. the city smells different when the asphalt is cleared of people. i'm not a morning person but i do like being up for the night's end, for that 5 minute fadeout as streetlights become redundant. i don't know if it's the light or my own fatigue, but the world seems somehow more innocent, more primitive, more hopeful in the bleary light of 6 am than it ever does when it's fully awake.


and because i'm clearly a little bleary-eyed and sentimental myself this morning, a little early tom waits



ps. a little word of the day i was gifted with last night: pukeatrocious. i think this could be my new favourite.

the squid or the kale?

one of the perks of being underemployed and overschooled is the freedom to watch daytime television. it's a perk i don't often take advantage of since i tend to prefer the serendipitous meanderings of cyberspace to the stuff that seems to show up on my digital tv box. but yesterday i tuned in while i was eating lunch and was rewarded by a discovery channel show on the humboldt squid.

now i'd never heard of the humboldt squid before, but apparently they're known as vicious predators - a sort of lower order (not to mention smaller sized) kraken. even so, they're pretty big puppies - some can grow to a length of 6 feet, and weigh a hundred pounds or more. they travel in schools of a thousand animals plus, and feed crazily, since they only have a year to live, and they clearly have a lot of growth to accomplish in that time. the thing is, they've been associated with attacks on fishers - and on each other - in what sounds like a sort of sharks-gone-mad sort of way, so they tend to be quite feared, and then of course destroyed with the wrath we reserve for those things that show us up as vulnerable.

the purpose of this documentary, though, was to recast the humboldt as a gentle giant that only attacks when provoked (for example, by the fishers that are thinning their ranks in a rather barbarous fashion). otherwise, the squid show a remarkable level of playfulness, curiosity, peaceability, problem-solving ability, cooperative behaviour, and communicativeness. in short, the humboldt, cast in the right light, might look a lot like us.

i suppose it's kind of naive on my part to be moved by this. i remember years ago hearing a quirks and quarks show about the play behaviour of octopuses (octopi?) and thinking that i really had to reconsider my selective pescevegetarian stance (i did, though not the way i had intended... instead of dropping the pesce part, i dropped the vegetarian part).

i'm not entirely sure what i'm musing about here - only that it really does seem alarming how divorced most of us have become from the means of our food-getting. and how, in becoming so, we've also moved away from an understanding of other animals as sensate, let alone cognate. i know i'm guilty of this kind of thinking, if only as justification for my weakness for the 25 cent chicken wing... which makes me feel pretty crummy. not to mention cheap.

and while i love the stuff i stumble on on the discovery channel, it almost always presents what is for me, moreso than it is for my friend jen, who posted in a similar vein yesterday, a struggle with the moral quicksand that underlies my gustatory carnal pleasures. so thank you, discovery channel. thank you, humboldt squid. even if i don't end up riding the vegetarian bandwagon again, i'm glad of the reminder of the agreement implicit in my love of sushi, in that whopper i crave at least once a month, in that brilliant lamb tibs at the queen of sheba. sigh. i expect i'll be flailing around in the quicksand-space for a time to come yet...


the beatles - octopus's garden

and i wasn't sure they would ever get along...

so much for fighting like cats and dogs.

9w1 and you?

grey, wet, and freaking cold here in toronto today. it feels like november in vancouver. a morning spent shivering in the dog park, then bathing the resultant filthy beast. i feel like i should mention vonnegut's passing, if only to admit that i've never read anything he wrote. but now that that's done, i'm fresh out of thought. and whenever that happens, i figure i may as well go fatalist - and what better way to go than via the enneagram. since k first mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, and my friend j just sent me a link to an even better online version, i've been obsessing (read - wasting valuable study time) about it.

so instead of yammering emptily on today, i'll let the fine folks at eclecticenergies.com amuse you all for the afternoon (well, anyone who hasn't already done the test), and challenge you to take the enneagram test. then tell me what you are.


jenny lewis with the watson twins - the charging sky

interior

it's about the turn inwards, the way the mind detaches, becomes still, watchful. it comes on like thunder, a rumble under the breath, the downward shift of the barometer. it suffuses, fog-like, diffuse, rising up from inside, spreading outwards the way frostbite travels inwards. it's a numbness, an enoughness, a too-muchness. it's elusive, this old travelling companion, slippery like light off a chrome surface, or maybe more like that halo that frames - no, bleeds into - your target when you shoot right into the light. you'd think after all the time we've been together, all the terrain we've covered, i might anticipate it with a little more accuracy. but it's always a surprise guest, the one that slips in with the invited, the one upon whom it would be rude to close the door. "come on in," i always end up saying. "come on in and make yourself at home."


ryan adams - damn, sam (i love a woman that rains)

googlestalgia

i've gone on here before about getting lost in cyberworld. i slip into it easily - skipping my way through other people's cyberworlds, hyperlink to hyperlink. but every now and then, i stumble on bits of my old life. current photos of ex-lovers, old friends, the people i've lost reminding me of the person i've been. and for all those ancient hurts and dusty grainy remembrances, for all the times i've thought "i'm sorry" and the times i've thought "fuck off" and the times i've justified/forgotten/buried the things i found hardest to accept, i can't get past the nugget of affection. that is why we came together, and sometimes it's why we came apart. but it's still there, somewhere, under the avalanche of future that buried it.

cheers to you, clm. you look well, and happy. i hope you are.


norah jones - those sweet words

god in the details

so yesterday was passover, this weekend easter. on my way home from the dog park this morning, ann, the eldest of a brood of four homeschoolers whom i know only through my cordial relations with the owners of a doodle named basil, wished me a happy easter. i returned the wish, though with the realization that i know pretty much nothing about easter. i mean, of course i know the basic story - it's hard to grow up in this country without grasping at least that - but i don't know anything about easter, in much the same way that i don't know anything about christmas either.

j is always amazed by this. over the winter break, i revealed to her that the only time i had ever been to church was to listen to or play music. church doesn't simply doesn't signify to me in the same way as it signifies to her. i often wonder what i missed by growing up without it... would my world look different? my mind? does faith allow or encourage a way of approaching "fact" in some fundamentally other way?

in a somehow related way, i talked to e about passover this morning too. if i know little about jesus and easter, i know even less about passover. so she told me the story, and we talked about the relationship of belief to tradition to... well, belief. and we both noted how, in growing up with a lack of god in our lives, we find the ability to believe (which seems more to me to be about the ability to suspend disbelief) almost unbridgeably foreign. and it's not that i don't want to believe; it's more, truly, that i can't. like there was some critical period in development that related to developing the ability to believe - truly believe - in god. and i missed it. and some days i wonder if in missing that, i missed out on some important way of seeing the world. and then on other days, i think maybe that the god i wasn't raised with just took another form for me - maybe it lives in science, in thought-space, in relation-space, in my own reluctance to dig too deep, and in the idea that anything is possible and we couldn't, or maybe shouldn't, work too hard at understanding. maybe it's just that my non-god doesn't wear human-like clothing. but in the end, i suppose it's just as ineffable as any religious deity, and just as powerful.


ry cooder - i think it's going to work out fine

high fidelity

when i saw the movie, i was so taken by john cusack's character. the obsessive tape making, the effort to get it just right. i remember making those tapes when i was a teenager... it was such a fine art. or so i thought at the time.

first there would be a list: all the songs that came into my head, that conveyed the mood i was trying to get at, that i wanted to share with whoever i might be sharing the tape with. then came the shuffle: play the song list in my head, imagine the breaks between and the effect of one ending leading into the opening chords of the next track, rearranging accordingly. then finetuning: where on the tape was the sideflip going to occur? was that appropriate? would it work there? rearrange again, accordingly. then the final pass - last chance to change a certain song. remember, this is going to be permanent. this is going to *say* something about you. and finally, the naming. what to call this mix? and the sides? will side A and side B suffice, or does it need something more clever, something more personal? and the finishing touches - the case. get the right pen - something that won't smudge. all caps or all lower case? definitely not cursive, but should there be two colours of ink? so much work went into those old tapes, so much of self, so many attempts at becoming a self.

a few years ago, when i replaced the last tape deck in my life with a cd player, i got rid of all those old tapes. i still think of them sometimes, though. and miss them.


Mixed Tapes

They almost ask for musical backing, some feelings,
or even to be sung, but since life (you know this)
isn't opera, and your all-too-spoken arias
are prey to mundane upstaging, missteps
of the tongue, you pick tracks of singers scattered
in time, and temper -- yet bound by the way
they overheard your heart, and pinched
its unformed lines -- and you record them
in skewed new orders:
.......................Nick Drake opening for Nina Simone,
John Prine in bed with Edith Piaf,
and later, languid and alone, tragic smoker
under a Gatsby-green light, on a summertime pier....
No, you choose the name.

You know how clichés, the same
you'd never leave in a poem, that would shame you
breathed into a mouthpiece, are disguised
somehow -- or are they renewed, justified
by the right tune? Still missing you.
Keep kissing you.
Maybe that's what a tune is for. Maybe
it's why you burn mixed disks, make tapes
in hi-fi, normal bias - 60 to 90 minutes
is best; no rushed declarations of love.
You'll sit up with a bottle of something red,
a tape deck, and this clichéd, constant
aching, to reclaim lines you mean so deeply
they must be your own.


With this kiss my life begins.


You're not alone, anymore.

-- Steven Heighton, from The Address Book


Nick Drake - From the Morning

it'll grow back...

when flanner was a pup, there was a woman in the park who was adamant that she was the spitting image of falkor, the flying luckdragon from the neverending story. i had a vague recollection of seeing the film when i was a kid, but couldn't quite picture the character in question. then j and i rented the movie to get an idea of what exactly boca's person (naturally, we only know the woman by her dog's name - this is the way it goes in dog-park world) was talking about. i was amused; could see the root of the comparison. but falkor is this really weird looking dog-dragon with a big poofy head and skinny little flipper leg-wing-y things. my dog doesn't look like that. or didn't - until yesterday when we brought the poor neglected mat-ridden creature in for her spring groom.

flanner, circa end of february:




flanner, this morning:




falkor, the luckdragon:




i get it now.


jane siberry - everything reminds me of my dog

organ music

on wednesday we talked about getting back to the body. "what does your heart, what does your stomach feel about that," she asked me, "if your head stops interpreting, stops interrupting?"

i've been sitting with that for a while now, off and on, for the last day or so. what does it feel like - what is the lived experience - of inhabiting the body? those of us whose heads do all the talking, who are deft with a turn of phrase, who use language like a scalpel and pretend like the very act of dissection arrives at the truth of the matter, might have trouble with this kind of question. how to arrest the language of the mind, let go of the clever weave of mental and emotional that knits up the explanatory scarf? i guess a body could get strangled with a scarf like that, and yet be none the wiser.

and it's funny that we can find ourselves chasing down - with the blind urgency of ambition - all those things that we find lacking in ourselves. a subconscious drive to completion. suffice to say that i'm finding the irony - or is it a lesson? - inherent in my pursuit of a career in medicine (for what career could be more literally about the body than that?) revealing.

so on her couch, in her basement office that is beginning to smell a bit like home or some semblance thereof, i dug in and listened hard for the sound of the body stripped of mind. and if it's talking, i'm not hearing much. but i'm willing to keep trying. it seems important. as j so often says, and i say perhaps not enough, i *am* teachable...


ani difranco - work your way out

it's how the light gets in

in the stuff i've been reading for psych lately, there's a lot on neurotransmitters - on the balance of dopamine or serotonin in those all important gaps between neurons. too much and the mind tips into overdrive - rage, euphoria, hallucination. too little and it sinks into the muck of depression, the flatline of disaffect. the input signals and the output signals so shaped by the weather in the all-important space, that critical synaptic cleft, between them.

and maybe it's a metaphorical stretch, but just today i'm feeling caught in the synapse with nary a weathervane around.


leonard cohen - anthem

after enlightenment, the laundry

to be honest, i have no idea how it went. it felt good. i felt in control and surprisingly un-nervous by the time the interviews actually started. but it's a weird subjective space, with no feedback, and encounters too brief to get an overall sense of how i played. so now i guess i just sit back and wait. until may 15. which at the moment feels like a long time, but i'm thinking that once i get through the next week (2 exams, 1 paper) the time'll pretty much fly by.

what has been brought home in this past nervous month, though, is how good it is to be loved, and to be told so. i feel incredibly fortunate to have people in my life who hold up, who care, who rally, and who listen. so for all my grand prepared ramblings about the humanity implicit in doctoring, this is the humanity i know - my friends, my family, the random people in the dog park who send good wishes my way even though they don't even know me.

thank you. i hope i can return the favour.


natalie merchant - life is sweet

and we're off!

catch y'all on the flip. thanks for all your good thoughts.


be good tanyas - light enough to travel

the morning after

it occurred to me last night as i was wrestling sleep down for the count that my evening song post might have been construed to mean that i was drawing an analogy to myself as JC. i swear, that's not what i meant.

of course, since it was a post on subliminality, who can be sure? he was, after all, just a man... and i've had so many men before in many different ways; he's just one more... oh wait. that's a different song. :)


wilco - jesus, etc

subliminal

there's an ann tyler book, i think, in which there's a character who gives up his secrets by whistling or humming tunes that articulate the unspoken thoughts in his head.

i find this happens to me a lot. and this evening, this is what's in mine. maybe i do want to take care of myself after all.

unbecoming

Unfinished Landscape with a Dog

Not much of a dog yet,
that smudge in the distance, beyond the reach

of focus. It's just an impressionist
gesture, a guess. From the edge of the clearing, the farmhouse
materializes, settles

into wall & stone. The water,
making the surface

of the stream, makes
reflections. So why shouldn't the dog

accept limits, become

a figure? Is it like the girl who sits
in the hall closet and says she's not
hiding? She's inside --

listening without the burden
of sight, letting locations

release hold. Out of body,
they seem lighter: her parents' voices no longer

hooked to their mouths. They seem
cleaner. Even the electric can opener;
the sounds of children

that rise from the yard, and fall; the opening
window, these are no longer

effects, things expected
of a subject and verb. The world anyhow is too
straightforward.

Maybe the dog
does not want to be a dog, does not want
to be turned into landscape

but to remain in the beginning, placeless:

with the wind opening, the wind
a vowel, and the stars and waters
that flash, recoil, and retch

unnamed as yet, unformed, unfound.

-- Kate Northrup


emmylou harris - hickory wind

is this a good sign?

mr breszny's prediction this week:

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Writing in *American Scientist,* professor of neuroscience Irving Biederman says that human beings are literally addicted to learning new ideas. At the moment when we grasp a concept we've been grappling with, our brains experience a rush of a natural opium-like chemical, boosting our pleasure levels. I suggest that you take advantage of this fact to get really high in the coming week, Aquarius. Your ability to master challenging new information is at a peak, which means your access to natural opiates will be abundant.

i wonder if i can work it so those natural opiates kick in on saturday and last until after my exams on tuesday....

and since i seem to be on a "post music from way way way way back in your distant past" kick, i figure i may as well keep doing so. if i could have, i would have put up an old cover version of this song by a long-defunct newfoundland band called the dervishes. nick rockel, older brother to childhood friends of ours, did this totally deadpan baritone version which was just brilliant. but that's lost to analog world, so this one will have to do...


katrina and the waves - i'm walking on sunshine

budget conscience

so the harperites delivered their second minority government budget yesterday. aside from the whoosh of pompously hot air blowing through chicago as a result of the conrad black trial, it's about all the news there is in the canadian papers this morning. and i'm finding it troubling.

i'm not troubled by it for the reasons that i expected to be troubled - my left-of-centre leanings are almost never in step with the conservatives, so i'm accustomed to disagreeing with their positions. truth be told, my face adopts an almost expectant sneer whenever stephen harper's name is mentioned, and my hackles seem to have a pavlovian relationship to any reference to conservative policy. but this budget bothers me in another sort of way. it bothers me precisely because there's little in there for me to disagree with.

sure i recognize it's probably gonna be an election year. yes i see the tokenist spending being promised. but tax credits for the purchase of hybrid vehicles? tax penalties for the purchase of gas guzzlers? 300 million for cervical cancer research and vaccine? i'm hard-pressed to argue against this kind of spending.

i know the media optics are key, and i get that you could park a fleet of those gas-guzzling tax-penalized vehicles in the shadow of the environmental pollution caused by industry, which was not targeted by the same gun. and there is still no national daycare program, or coherent transit strategy, or anything to address poverty in first nations communities. indeed, coherent strategy doesn't seem to be a lynchpin of this budget, unless you count "get the votes" as a solid plan (it's for sure a motivation).

but my problem is this: the budget has, at the very least, *something* to it that i consider progressive. flaherty has delivered a set of promises that at least seem to have its heart in the right place. it doesn't go far enough by any measure, and there's obvious room for improvement, but it is a start. and as far as i can tell (and admittedly, that's not much) it does no great harm. what i don't know what to do with is this mistrust i have of the conservative government. as they're in a minority government position, i'm suspicious of their motives. the party has arisen from the ashes of a movement that has shown itself to be rabidly socially right-wing in some instances, and the current prime minister has shown himself to be adept at keeping his members hushed up (for example, since when did stockwell day become the exemplar of the discrete cabinet minister????) so i can't be sure how much of that social conservatism is still seething quietly under that friendly, inclusion-seeking surface.

and here's the nugget - i don't *want* to like them. but i'm opposed, at a very deep level, to disliking on the basis of prejudice rather than on true observation. but on the other hand, is it simply wilful - or worse, complicit and stupid - to take that proverbial gift horse and avoid looking it in the mouth? is there a way to do both?


sinead o'connor - black boys on mopeds

human kindness, overflowing

my friend esther (thanks e!) gave me this nina simone dualdisc - that would be the audiovisual equivalent of the 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner - for my birthday. problem was, the wrong disc was inside - a straight-up audio copy of the essential nina simone. which is all on its own a great album, but i'm looking forward to exchanging it for the intended one, so i can see all the dvd stuff, and check out this new technology (though maybe it's not so new and i'm just out of the loop...)

but i played the disc that came with anyhow - though i do already have a copy - and ever since, i've been keeping time to her voice. as i said to e, that woman could sing a grocery list and make me weep. the undercurrent of memory, of sadness, of been-there-done-that-and-still-we-keep-on that flows beneath, even as her voice dances, smiles, desires, harangues, grieves. and makes me want to do the same.


nina simone - i think it's going to rain today