everyone is a creature

You two come to pick me up at 8 o'clock and I crawl into the backseat of the newest, fastest, smoothest car I have ever been in and we cruise down the road looking for a place to happen. Listening to Don Henley's Boys of Summer and we only know just that one line, "I can see you..." but we are psyched to hear the song and to be driving in such a smooth ride in the evening when it is becoming springtime and we have nothing on the go. You, you are like a mixture of two of my uncles, one when your face is serious, the other when it crinkles into a smile. We park that baby and emerge into the busy, modern streets where everyone clutches shopping bags and has a funny look about them. Us three are like sore thumbs and we duck into one of those Irish pubs and begin our guzzling. We are stuffed to the brim with food and we are downing beers even though they hurt. Let us find out a little bit about you. Dock worker, no hobbies, well maybe moose hunting (and you didn't get a moose the last time because you didn't feel like it). You still have some frozen moose meat in your freezer, you gave some to your landlord and you gotta use up the rest real soon before six months has gone by. The band begins with the Pan flutist and the smiling fiddler and the other. I am too quiet to make my request (until two beers later) and it's I'se the B'y! You appease me and I know all of the words from my grade five choir practices. Bouncing our knees to this whimsical music and the searchlight outside keeps time with it. Looking at everything on the walls when you two are outside and the paper jammed into a light socket, rolled up but unravelling like a rose and then the executive men at the table next to us are trying to hook us in but we just laugh and point out the facts about everything, thinking how great it would be to get paid to be an observer who just points things out, when that sometimes seems like our only calling. Later, you leave us there to see Cookie the trainwreck on a shipwreck on a planewreck, and you make sure we are settled with one last beer and we are never ready to call it a night and so we stay and the music doesn't end either, so we keep bouncing our limbs and taking it in. The fellow who resembles a young Steve Martin is taken with my teeth and his friend thinks I look like Miley Cyrus, trying to convince everyone with a pocketsized image on his phone. They are here for the playoffs, and don't I know that you always wear suits during the playoffs? and okay sure you can buy us some beers but that's just because we are broke and we don't want to see the end yet, but that bar does close eventually. Let us go next door and so we enter down into the dingy disco where maybe five people are dancing real close and dirty on the floor. I feel like I am in a circus mad house and yeah you're right, it's probably better upstairs and yeah I dropped a beer but no I don't really need another, in fact I really ought to be going home. It seems the only time that I practice my French these days is when I am drunk and heading home, charming all of the Haitian cabbies, and dear Moozimah, you are the greatest greeter with your tumble roll over soft belly offering and oh my! Threethirtya.m. and it's going to be a hazy day. The sunniest morning arrives promptly and I am hobbling through the streets, feeling that loopiness but also feeling wonderful and humming 'where is my mind?' and looking at the sky and taking in the man on the corner. He is like a smurf, with his bright blue tshirt stretched over his giant Santa Clause belly and he has one of those jolly round faces, framed by the wildest beard I've seen in weeks. Also, the young woman sitting on the sidewalk, sandals kicked off and picking at her toe, an open can of Old Milwaukee on the ground beside her. The daisy chain of tiny children, tethered together and speaking French as they are guided along by the leashholder through these dirty sidewalks. Oh my goodness, gracious, goshness! Everyone is a creature.

an old man is snoring

Rainy day Monday sitting in the usual public space to be on the internet for a little while. As always, feeling surrounded by funny things. The guy who just sat down in the window seat opens up his laptop and the background is a life sized photograph of himself, wearing exactly what he is currently wearing. I wonder if he just took the picture before he came in here? Or he's just wearing his fave outfit + hat? Dunno. I feel like I say this all the time, but sometimes I feel like I forget how to be on the internet. I need some internet coaching from my friends who are internet savvy. Advice about useful sites to look at, entertaining things, relevant news information maybe? I feel like I spend an hour catching up on my friends blogs and week old facebook things and then I have exhausted my interests, but surely the internet is wider than that... I don't know how to find funny things or anything that seems worth passing on and so I feel like I'm not fully participating in the whole "web"aspect of the internet. Ahh, I dunno. Some mildly interesting TED talks and photographs of strange looking sea creatures and the end is almost upon me. Now the window seated man is playing some internet chess. I am feeling some Ontario nostalgia and am really looking forward to going home for a visit. Been talking to Callie on the phone and can't get over her burst in vocabulary and general coherency, and Hunter too, with his "Hmmmm... I know!s"and little babbling bursts. Excited about several future things, including some milder weather and my increasing mobility and figuring out what I'm going to do with myself. Been feeling crafty and getting back into my quiltmaking, I want to start some more projects and try to accomplish more in my excessive spare time. At the same time, it's pretty lovely, having nothing to do. Okay rain, let's get reacquainted.

easy monday, fine and dandy

Deep sleeping and strange dreaming. We are driving together, you the passenger like you always were, me swerving and having trouble, like I always do when I am driving while asleep. I start to pull over, you ask me why and I try to explain that my vision has suddenly become the size of a playing card, held an arm's length away. Like looking at a tiny screen from a distance, rectangular tunnel vision and trying to navigate a windy road. Later, in your big country house we are sitting around with our elbows up on tables, propping up our chins. I am showing you the beeswax beards that I have made for us, "here, you put the candles in these little holes and the whole thing will get warm and malleable and that's when you plaster it onto your face..." Later on, hobbling through sunny streets with showerless wild hair and filthy sunglasses. The bar is closed to the earlycomers and so we find ourselves inside a dive called Bistro de Paris, drinking gigantic five dollar mugs of nameless beer and eavesdropping on the other seven patrons. The men's bathroom door has a window and so I can see the back of every man peeing, see which ones go into the stall or wash their hands. The gambling corner lit up by digital slot machines, where that man is spending all kinds of money, swaying in to press the button so rhythmically like a dance, hoping for five cherries in a row. It aches to see those crispy fives get devoured when we have a loaned $40 to our names, between us. Thinking of Joni, thinking "hey, honey, you got lots of cash, bring us round a bottle and we'll have some laughs" but nope that gamblin' man's just doing his thing and we still have 29 dollars to blow so I guess that's that. Then back across the road to the matinee show of those fine country singer friends. A few more pints and now it's only eveningtime just beginning, can't be the end but we are flat out of money. But we don't want to see the end! So nevermind the end, we are coming over for your specialty rice and spinach! Depanneur deliberations and one big bottle of beer with our last nickels and dimes, but it turns out that you don't even drink and soon enough we have switched to tea (verbena and sage, steeped just right). Taking in your beauty of a voice with your haunting songs, and singing Lhasa and harmonizing and cutting up the garlic and onions like a family and enjoying that meal and sing, sing us some Leonard Cohen, but oh no! You get a phone call from down the hall to keep it down and we laugh our heads off at that and move into the room for a few more songs, marvelling at the words we remember and our voices come together and my, how a good sing song is sometimes all I ever need. When the end has come I take the steps to hobble home and it's lovely to be out when the city is so dark and quiet and empty. I am walking the way I want to, and ignoring the leering cabdrivers and kicking a can and listening to Mama Wolf and home to bed, to bed to sleep. In the morning the weather is trying so hard to be springtime and it's lovely to sit and to listen to songs and to stand up straight with my guitar. Belting out these country songs with real lungfulls of air and real room to breathe and toughened fingertips and increasing confidence, at least in the presence of my one cat audience. Afternoon has found it's way here with that same ease that a regular Monday tends to. Minty tea and tuning out the strangers, but never really. Reminiscing about all kinds of funny moments and feeling lucky in life lately because I get to feel so free and to laugh so constantly and know nothing about the future and that's dandy and fine.

mingus take me away

Sitting at the Grade Bibliothèque public computer listening to Charles Mingus and I have tuned out the immediate world. I keep glancing out the window though, because there is some very nice light shining down today and I feel some weird anxiety about being in here. My lack of home internet has made me feel some occasional funniness about checking things on here, in public. I am sure no one's looking over my shoulder, at least not directly. But still, even just trying to write openly and honestly is hard! I think about the amount of time that I spend spying on strangers, glancing at what they're checking out on youtube (Michael Jackson death conspiracy videos, soap operas, etc.) and I wonder if anyone is spying on me. I dunno, I don't care.
I feel zonked out today. I have been missing my full mobility and craving long walks. The weather has been finicky, but has been looking a little more like spring and that smell of melting things and old garbage makes me feel giddy. Funny how music like this can transform a whole situation. It reminds me of my Taid and then I remembered that I took a reference from someone earlier today who had a voice just like his, and then I remembered that it was his birthday two weeks ago and I didn't even think about him on that day. I guess he would have been ninety-seven? What's up with time and how it can make you feel so funny? And what's that supposed to mean, feeling funny? Well, I can't say. I am working on decluttering my brain and maybe in the process I will be able to work on becoming more articulate with my thoughts. I feel like lately I go through my days just giggling and feeling funny about everything and never really establishing why.

whiskertickled

I woke up this morning because I felt something very soft and gentle tickling the tip of my nose. I opened my eyes to see gigantic cat eyes staring into mine, mitts up on the edge of the bed, our faces inches away from each other's. Whiskertickled awake at 8:40am by that sly girl Mooz, but what was she looking for? I asked her twice, but she just flicked her eyes and ruffled her mane and yawned so big I could see down her esophagus.

smiling strangers

If ever I find myself having some negative thoughts about strangers, or feel my attitude start to turn a little sour, I will have to remind myself to remember something. There are so many kind-hearted people all around, and a sure-fire way to spot them in the crowd is to hobble around on crutches. Everywhere I have ''walked'' for the past six days, I have been faced with smiles, sympathy-eyes, offers of assistance, doors held open, arms held out, looks of concern, coffee delivery and endless words like ''j'espère que tu n'a pas loin a traverser'' or ''I once busted my knee up too, and I know how much crutches suck''. I feel like even though it's precarious to crutch through the slush, there are enough people watching me and waiting to see what is going to happen, that I'll somehow be caught if I fall (again). Or at least helped up or something. People are sweet.
Today was the first day that I caught my positive attitude fading, because I was getting so sweaty in my struggling and I kept remembering how good it feels to walk home from work listening to music and enjoying the fading daylight and just having a spring in my step, and getting so frustrated because I can't do that. It's an incredible thing to have legs that work, which you can push extra hard to make them strong and flexible. It's amazing to be able to jump up to grab something, or to sit cross-legged or to put on your own socks. Or just forget that your legs just do work for you and you don't even have to think about it. I guess it's good to try to think about that stuff when you have it to appreciate, and I know that I do that too. I think about it especially now though, that I have a bit of a challenge to overcome. It's really not that bad and there are many good things coming from it. My upper body is exercising in ways it hasn't since July, I have been sleeping so soundly by the night nighttime rolls around and I am lying down and I automatically get a spot whenever I take transit. But it's the best being the object of all this smiling and so thanks to all of those people for all of that kindness, it's really reassuring.

tea with eva b.

got lost a little while in the stacks and piles of things bringing my inner taurus packrat out kicking and grabbing and no i can't even wear earrings but i want those dangling things and probably i will never wear that but gosh it's so pretty and i guess i am pretty much flat broke but still i guess it's okay to get just this and this and okay this too. the tea was free. walking home then swinging that bag of loot i find myself dancing a bit at every red lit corner and smiling at every stranger and then home mooz is a purrbag and i am eating pickles and rolling around ideas about summer and the future is wide open and time time time is not even going as fast as it usually feels but feels just right...