Now that I am a little older and find myself in a position read the tortured, earnest prose of younger writers, I would like to formally apologize to everyone to whom I have said in the past, “Read this and tell me what you think.”

I would also like to apologize in advance to my future self who, I’m sure, is in for more moments of mortification. Please understand that I really don’t think my writing is terrible. 

But I am willing to accept that will change.

Sincerely,
g. 

I shouldn’t be posting from work. I shouldn’t be posting at all when I feel like this. But it can’t be helped. I am having one of those moments when I feel absolutely desperate – like nothing is right or will ever be, like there is nothing to look forward to or even back on to make me feel better. I don’t even have the luxury of torment. At this moment I see a life littered only with petty annoyance and falling expectation.

Obviously, the last was some measure of hyperbole – lest some reader start down the “you don’t know what it is to suffer people are sick and dying and starving and oppressed” road. I don’t want torment in answer to whatever this is – but it pains me I can feel so very badly without some quantifiable reason. 

Sometimes, when I get this way, I tell myself, “Self, everyone has days like this.” If the internet has taught me anything (jury’s out) it would be that there isn’t an emotion, a thought, an experience I can have that hasn’t been felt, thought or experienced a million times before. No special snowflakes, we. But today! Today this hopelessness rushes over me – my chest is tight, my eyes constantly full of tears – and I wonder. What if this really is madness?

I need some kind of break from this – and I begin to care very little how I might achieve it.

our living room

It’s been raining all morning, grey and windy. I was sitting here at my desk when, suddenly, the sun came on like a lightbulb. It streamed in the window so unexpectedly – so instantaneously – I actually jumped a little. I thought it was a huge truck pulling into the driveway. 

This past week has been all action. We finally gathered all our errant bits of furniture and finished the living room. It’s so beautiful I can hardly believe it. And I went home for a visit and it was my birthday. My darling husband-to-be baked me an almost-homemade Betty Crocker cake twice because the first one wasn’t perfect enough. His mother gave me a small sewing machine. There’s a certain amount of pressure there, but I’m still excited to see if I can figure it out. So things around here are very nice. 

But even nice is a bit tiring. I need solitude – both actual and perceived – to be quite content. I admit I miss my old apartment for its top-floor silence – and because it was mine alone. I wonder if there will ever come a time when sharing a space doesn’t feel like too much compromise. I feel like, if anything (godforbidandknockonwood) ever happened I wouldn’t do this again. Though I could be wrong; it’s a lesson I don’t seem to learn.

Maybe that’s why I’m reluctant to have children. They’re just more people with whom I’d have to share my house. Ha.

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Tilda Swinton by Craig McDean

It was my birthday yesterday. 39. Jesus.

The living room is finally done – or at least as done as these things get. We have a few little things left to sort out, and I’m sure we’ll make small changes as we go, but the furniture is in and everything looks lovely. Now it’s on to planning the wedding thingy.

Rachel and my sister and I went looking for dresses again yesterday. (Well, again for me.) This time I decided to go “high end” and look through the selection at the very chi-chi Holt Renfrew disappointment department store. Not only was the selection drab and uninspired, if it wasn’t for the price tags I would have thought we were shopping at H&M. Everything was jersey or unlined, there were loose threads everywhere. I picked up one lovely blouse to find the $450 tag hanging just under a label that read “Made in China.” Are you f***ing kidding me? 

I’m not stupid. I work in and around fashion and I have known for quite some time that “designer” is no longer a marker of quality, but only of brand. God bless optimistic shoppers, but “you get what you pay for” is a phrase that belongs in sample stitchery, more aptly replaced with P. T. Barnum’s thoughts on the propagation of suckers. Still, I would have hoped that the cogs in Bernard Arnault‘s Style Borg would have the decency to assemble their sweatshop fare in less notorious locations; they could at least pretend, for the sake of our dignity, they weren’t selling cheap goods as luxury at a million percent mark-up.  

So it looks like we’re back to vintage. Or I’ll just wear something I already have.

The latter is looking better every minute. 
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saucy ankles, c. 1920s

Someone found a bylaw that prohibits sauntering on the subway. Sauntering and lingering, to be exact. I’m really more of a strutter, anyway, or a strider. With the right boots, I might mosey. On a bad day, I have been known to slink. 

Last night, my editor called me in a panic. She’d been unable to get the editor’s letter written for the next issue and it had to be to the printer by midnight. She sent me what she had and asked me to rewrite, reorganize, whatever I had to do to get it done. We’ve really only instituted the editor’s letter in the last few issues – the last one was a joint effort. It looks like this one is, too. It took me about four hours. At only 370 words, it became very apparent that writing for print is much more nerve wracking than writing here. Add to that I was writing (at my editor’s request) about the recent Toronto Slut Walk – an issue I hadn’t really given much thought.

If you hadn’t heard, the Slut Walk was organized as protest to a statement made by a Toronto police officer. While giving a talk about personal safety to a room full of female law students, he said that women should “avoid dressing like sluts in order to not be victimized.” I hope we can all agree it was a pretty unfortunate thing to say. But outrage isn’t really my thing, so while lots of our staffers were up in arms, I didn’t get too excited. I have no doubt the cop felt he was doing these women a favour by being “honest” and obviously he wasn’t much of a thinker. But last night I had to really think about it – and it’s shitty.

First, fuck you for suggesting that sexual assault is about sex. I mean, we’ve all agreed that’s a fallacy, right? Or else women in hijab would be safe, and women in their homes, and children and grannies. Those provocative grannies! If a shop owner was being interviewed after a robbery, an investigator wouldn’t ask him why he had such nice things in his store. (And don’t even suggest the whole “if you leave your car unlocked” scenario. First and foremost, a human being is not a car and, secondly, “unlocked” is not “permission to take.”) Fuck you for suggesting that I am responsible for someone else’s criminal behaviour. Full stop. 

I was shocked to read, after the walk, that a columnist in a major paper actually said something like “the last thing you want to do is antagonize the people tasked with protecting you.” Because why, exactly? Is there some threat of officers refusing to uphold the law if you annoy them? Fuck you, too, for suggesting my safety is contingent on my being polite.

And then there’s the whole notion that “slut” has a single definition everyone understands. How do you dress like a slut? Is it a short skirt? What if it’s paired with flat shoes – does that still count? What if I wear baggy clothes, but with high heels? What if my clothes are tight, but they cover all of me? One doesn’t have to look very far to realize that, like “beautiful” or “ugly” or “good advice,” slut is a pretty subjective concept. And you know, fuck you, officer, for your arrogance in suggesting it’s not. 

So I got mad and the letter got done. 

But I do hate to do things at the last minute like that – no fact checking, no copy editor. I had to send the copy straight to the Art Director to drop into the layout and off it went. I woke up at 4 AM in a white panic. I realized that I wrote “thousands of women organized” which makes no sense. Rather, I should have written “thousands of women participated in.” Ah well.

I guess I should let it go and sashay to work.

g. 

a fast picture snapped at the store
that red chiffon detail – swoon 

My best friend showed up at my office at 3:42. “Get your stuff. Let’s go.” I’d planned to work until about 6:00 pm, but she was adamant. I went to my manager’s office to see how she felt about it. Her response? “It’s Friday. Bye.” So I turned off my computer and we left, and spent the next three hours going from one vintage store to the next, looking for a dress in which I might like to get married.

I decided from the start that I didn’t want a traditional floor-length meringue, but just something short and elegant, like a vintage day suit or dress. In my head I picture a soft, grey brushed cotton wiggle dress, but when you’re shopping second-hand, you can’t really be too specific. I’m keeping the door of inspiration wide open.

On that note, I tried on this red satin cocktail dress that was absurdly beautiful. How could a thing so modest be so very, very sexy? One of the only restrictions I’d given myself was that I didn’t want to get married in white, black or red (I feel like the last is too brazen for me), but for that dress I started to think I could change my mind. It was a bit big, though. Alterations on something so structurally detailed are bound to run a couple of hundred. And red satin might be a tough thing to pull off in a day ceremony. But good lord. 

Otherwise, no luck. 

Today is internship interviews all day. Every person who applies has to fill out a list of questions to submit along with their resumes and various work samples. I was amazed and flattered to read several applicants had listed my own columns as their favourites in the publication. It gave me a strange thrill to see myself referred to by last name – just like a real writer. 

Good thing they can’t see this. Heh.
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photo by Ellen von Unwerth for Russian Vogue

Okay. What.

Sunny Jim was accepted to teacher’s college. I’m happy about it, I guess. I am for his sake. I have doubts about whether or not it’s the right fit. I just can’t picture him as a teacher. It makes me feel awful – I’m his fiancée, after all, and I should be more supportive. But I can’t help it, I think it’s a mistake. I worry that he’ll get through school and get a job and, on the other side of a mass of student debt, he’ll realize it’s not where he wants to be. Then what?

To be completely honest, he should be in a trade. He likes to work with his hands (and to have something to show at the end of a day) and he’s not so crazy about people. I’m positive if he could spend the whole day building cabinets, he’d be completely content. I tried to get him to sign up for a carpentry course this past year (significantly cheaper than teacher’s college and, to my mind, much more useful). He balked at the last minute. He won’t say it, but he either thinks it’s beneath him (subconsciously, of course) or he’s afraid he’d be inept or both. 

But at least it’s a direction. Making a decision was a big step. His inability to settle on something was starting to f*ck with his notion of Self and his ability to see his – and our – future, which is starting to loom large, as they say. Aimless drifting is better suited to younger men (practically and psychologically). 

Either way, I’m stuck in this dead-end-but-well-paid office job for another year at least – assuming they continue to renew my contracts and, with an attitude like this, there’s no reason to think they would. The former is torture, the latter terrifying. I’m mildly resentful about being in this situation at all. Is that unconscionably selfish?

Gah, I don’t know what I think. I am the dictionary definition of ambivalence.  

g.

photo by Frank Horvat

“Do me a favour: If you ever get married, elope.” These wise words were spoken to me by my father when I was still in elementary school. I’m fairly confident he was kidding (in that he was totally serious but wouldn’t force the issue if it wasn’t what I wanted) but I couldn’t agree more.

The wedding I always dreamed of consisted of a day dress and a bunch of flowers in a government office, the reception, a cocktail in a hotel bar. Maybe there would be dancing later if we could find somewhere to go. Family was optional; whoever could make it on short notice was welcome (since I planned not to make any plans). It would be chic, elegant, quick. I would look back on that day and remember that once, just once, I had done something beautiful and impulsive. It’s the way I always wanted to be – to see myself. I hate that I’m so cautious. Finally, this thing that tied me to another would be the thing that made me free.

Or not.

I love weddings – I really do. I think they are optimistic and lovely and when I get an invitation I always go (food notwithstanding). But my attraction to them is strictly arm’s length. The performance involved the opposite of what I find romantic. I’ve seen too many people at their wit’s end with preparation, too many people at the end of their “special day” exhausted. The spectacle that runs them ragged is for their family and friends. Years later, all that’s left are some pictures (is that really what Aunt Celia was wearing?) an abiding aversion to Chicken Cordon Bleu and a story about the toast where someone accidentally used a curse word. I love my family and my friends, but I don’t give a shit if they want chicken or fish. I’ll buy them dinner some other time.

Now we come to our secondary problem. I have some pretty serious performance anxiety. It used to be stage fright, but over the years it’s drifted into the realm of phobia. Now I would deign to call it crippling. I remember a few months ago, I went to a lecture about something or other. There were about 25 attendees (at the outside) and I knew about half of them. We were sitting around a table, boardroom style. It was absolutely friendly and casual. At some point during the lecture, I had a question I thought I might ask during the discussion period after the talk. But the moment the thought crossed my mind, the panic crept in. Within a matter of five minutes, my hands were shaking and sweating, my blood sugar levels were on the floor. Even though I was sitting down I was terrified I would pass out.

It’s what happens any time I have to do anything in front of other people. Especially if I have too much time to think about it beforehand.

So now it turns out that the one who has all kinds of expectation about a “wedding” isn’t me. (You know, boys and their weddings.) And he’s adamant he wants something, some sort of event. I love him and really, if it was just about preference I’d give in immediately. But this is my wedding, too, and my memory, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to look back and remember it as the day I blacked out or threw up in front of the people I love.

I just want to feel competent and beautiful and happy. But I can’t seem to explain that properly and we just end up getting into some huge fight.

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from Wings of Desire, design by Alexander McQueen

I’ve spent the last two hours searching images for my collection and my other blog. I’m not sure it qualifies as a hobby, exactly, but it’s one of my favourite diversions. It’s kind of amazing how much thought I put into what I post and in what order. But I have always been overly cautious since Every Move I Make Necessarily Must Have Dire Consequences. 

I can’t explain from where this fear appeared. Obviously it had something to do with my parents, who were big on Following Through. But when I think back on my childhood, I really didn’t do much to inspire punishment. I never considered they’d not make good on a threat and so I rarely tested them. (Though when I did, they would say I was impossible in my insolence.)

In retrospect, the repercussions to bad behaviour were minimal (wait in the car, get grounded). If I’d been more adventurous I would have soon found rebellion was more fun than its result was a distress. Ultimately, I was hampered by an inability to balance my anticipation. I never could stop myself from playing out every negative scenario to its tragic end: what if I fail this math test and get grounded and the day after I get grounded Maureen invites me to a party and at that party is the perfect boy who will make me acceptable but because I don’t study now I can’t go and he ends up going steady with Kathy instead and she lives a perfect life and I die under a bridge. And if that’s the case then it’s probably better to just go along.

It’s why my life has taken such a haphazard path. I hate making decisions and so make as few a humanly possible. What if I’m wrong? Stupid? Reckless? Rather I drift, catching the currents of other lives until I’m forced to break away (as usurpers always are). Splash, struggle, flail, then on to the next. It’s interesting, but I don’t recommend it. It turns out Not Making Choices is actually a choice and saddled with ramifications of its own.

It’s also why the world of still images suits me very well. It contains and requires no action and I am free to contemplate, cache or discard. It’s a decision made and land-locked.

To hell with all that pesky, unpredictable movement.

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Sunny Jim’s uncle is scheduled for surgery in about a month. It’s necessary and it will help him, but they have to go in through his nose. It’s very possible that when it’s over, it may have altered his sense of smell – if he has one at all. 

In our collection of senses, sight and sound are the big players. They guide us and keep us safe; without one or the other we have to make drastic changes in the way we live our lives. Indeed, we have to relearn the world completely – and publicly, since there is no way to hide the loss from those who still have these senses intact. But losing your sense of smell is a much more subtle deprivation. You’ll still be able to live your life as though nothing has happened. Maybe you’ll have to pay more attention to the expiration date on dairy, or be more conscientious about taking out the garbage. It would probably be wise to cook on a lower heat and put on extra deodorant. But you’ll still go to work and run your errands and everything will be the same.

Only flatter.

Right now I’m sitting in my den. I don’t really smell anything – but what if I really didn’t?

There is a cup of coffee in front of me, between my forearms as I type. Making it was, as it always is, an exercise in anticipation: the sharp, dark, rich smell of the grounds and the fragrant steam rising to meet me as I pour the first cup. The carafe always dribbles a little and there is a hiss and the smell of burnt coffee when I put it back on the hotplate. Now the contents of my cup are lukewarm, but even though I can’t pick out the smell anymore, I know it’s there. 

The desk I’m working on is a big, hardwood thing. I bought it in my first year of university for $20 and without much thought. It was what I could afford. It has moved with me to two cities and six apartments and it gets compliments from everyone. The outside of it has absorbed the smells of everywhere it’s been – incense, pets, spilled wine and food. But when I open the drawers (as I do every morning to get my glasses or a pen) it still smells exactly as it did the day I brought it home – like wood and ink and xerox copies. (Do you remember xerox? God, what a heavenly smell.)

I am flanked by a giant bookcase and a whack of records; both exude the musty smell of libraries and garage sales – as does the carpet beneath me, which was in Sunny Jim’s mother’s basement for a few years. The cat, currently draped across the seat of a chair like a discarded sweater, leaves his warm, animal scent all over the house. My cedar chest has the inside of a freshly sharpened pencil and the pile of boots at the door are tangy leather and sweat. The air around me is Morning Me: warm skin, sleep, and yesterday’s shampoo as my braids come undone. The air outside is spring rain and thawing ground and though I won’t really pay attention until I step outside to meet it, it creeps in around our windows and doors.

And all of these things just are – until they are not.

I have started to make a list of things that, if I were in this man’s position, I would want to smell :

top soil
peaches
the perfumes my mother wore when I was little (Jovan, 4711)
Sunny Jim’s pillow
lilies
cucumber
a stable
cumin
permanent markers
cut grass
cooked red cabbage with cloves
the lake
my favourite perfume (24 Fauberg)
a perfume counter in a department store 
road tar
pork roast
the cat
rosemary
cigarette smoke
a Christmas tree
an old book
a thunderstorm
a lumberyard
garden roses
my father’s shirts
gasoline
 

What have I forgotten?
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