Bright Lights, Big City

Hurrah for the municipal leadership of LaPeche who has once again trumped its own idiocy with the installation and activation of 20 some streetlamps in the village centre and lit them up in a flourescent blaze that would blind an already blind driver right off the road.  Piercing beams of halogen hit me right at eye level as I turned onto the main drag one evening last week in a bright lights big city assault on our little paradise lost.  What I assume was an attempt at quaint, old England style lamp posts to add a warm glow to our dark winter nights in the village square has failed miserably.  Now gone, not only the night sky, the moonlit view of the water, and twinkle, twinkle, little star, but with it any driver`s ability to spot a pedestian, dog, or other moving creature who might step casually off the sidewalk and into the flow of traffic.  Gone also to the average pedestiran is the ability to `see anything at all`, as one villager said to me recently, so overwhelmingly bright and tightly spaced together are these quaint blemishes on our decreasingly rural landscape.

Oh sure, failing the yellow spray paint brigade that could dampen it down with a series of well aimed spritzes at bare glass (hint hint), we will get used to it.  Turtles won`t.  They will creep off elsewhere to compete for safe haven as big city mentality, and hence, action, claims more and more of their wetland, dark sky, and quiet country roads.  In our quest to `beautify`and `civilize` have we humans forgotten the value of natural rhythms of light and dark, night and day?  Have we scrapped the romance of a low lit night stroll holding hands, or a quiet snowy walk home from the bar?  Walk down any dark road if you can find one, you will be suprised what tones of grey emerge out of the darkness, and what your non-visual senses will pick up on as they open to another kind of seeing;  and experience the activation of our natural motion detectors that don`t react with a terrified blast of police spotlight on anything that stirs.

It is my fantasy that citizens will put pressure on the powers-that-be to turn down the (light) noise on Main Street.  Its simply not necessary or appropriate to light up downtown Wakefield like Times Square. Even the Styrorail plant`s outdoor night lighting is more demure than our new lamp posts!  For over a decade light pollution has been a well known part of public discourse in planning and environmental circles.  Meanwhile our municipalities gun their engines for a rip-roar up new asphalt, lit up waterfronts, new condo developments, industrial zones and the like, and incredibly, turn a blind eye to the blinding light they are proposing.  If you can handle the resulting circadean madness, more power (sic) to you.  The rest of us may eventually have to crawl into the mud for a decent night`s sleep.

Brainicide and other Pre-Menstrual Dangers

Hello, dear reader.  Yet another communique from PMS land (see post from June, 2011, "The Angels Singing"-- http://www.horaksnacks.blogspot.ca/2011/06/angels-singing.html).  Warning, this post may contain violent language and scary imagery.  And kids, don't do this at home...


What is Brainicide?
Brainicide is a kind of uncontrollable self-mutilation that happens in your head, with negative talk of all kinds surfacing simultaneously from every moment of self doubt and poor self esteem you have ever had.  It can build in a slow crescendo or erupt suddenly without warning into your neurological synapses.  It hammers at you as mercilessly as a TV crime series:  violent, bloody, relentless;  next episode, next episode, next episode... it self perpetuates and is hard to interrupt.  Next episode "I will neeeeever be loved"; next episode, "I will neeeever find someone"; next episode, "I'm so faaaat and ooooold"; next episode, "I'm soooo loooonely!"; next episode, "Oh why, god? (dramatic sigh)"; next episode, "I'm soooo STUCK!"; next episode, "Move over asshole!  (Man I'm such a hater...) next episode, Blah, Blah, Blah!!!  The guy is being tortured, the girl is running for her life, there are kids being beaten in the back alley, cats being boiled for sport;  Brainicide is vicious, and cruel, and shows no restraint, remorse or release (you gotta watch the break out of jail shows for that...).  One must clench ones teeth and somehow live through it.
Brainicide masks itself as normal life thinking, which is its main weapon.  But if you name it for its psychotic self it has a little less destructive power.  Maybe put off some decisions, reschedule a hard conversation with that friend/colleague/dater/client... don't subject yourself to much expectation during a Brainicide bout and try not to commit any 'cide of any other kind including suicide, homicide, pesticide, cyanide... Don't blame anyone for Brainicide: not yourself, not him or her, not god, not the dog, not the kids, especially not the kids.  Brainicide exists because hell exists, because evil exists and one only has to keep patient terrorized brain vigil until it passes on to other phases, which it inevitably does.  As for mitigating remedies, lots of protein, staying warm, exercise if you can manage it, and screaming and crying in moments of private release will all help.  You've got to parent yourself through this shit-- whatever your Brainicide be, this is the time for maturity, wisdom, and faith.  So call it forth, trust and yield to Brainicide's nasty medicine to a reasonable degree, and hope to god your head will not explode.

Peace.

Bad seeds, good apples

A few weeks ago, in an early burst of spring cleaning, a most interesting item rose to the surface:  a zip-lock bag of semilla de marijuana, donated to me in a jestfull moment at a "Bakefield" (ie, Wakefield, stoned) garage sale last summer, or maybe the one before it.  Despite repeated yet fleeting ruminations over the years of supplementing my piano-paltry income with an illegal grow-op, I have yet to stoop so low, or so risque.  After all public image is a factor for a piano teacher.  So I have thought it best not.

Plus, my relationship in principle to the wacky weed has grown to be a contentious one at best.  Whether this is for actual reasons or just to be different in a sea of stoners is up for grabs, as usual.  But the power of planting hormones overtook me.  So I lovingly embedded my garage sale seeds in little round pots of black earth and placed them neatly on the sunniest windowsill.  Maybe I had grown harsh and snotty in my I-don't-agree-with-you-John-Akpata anti-marijuana polemic, and this horticultural experiment would soften my soap box wee(d)totaller vigilance through a slow sprouting mother-offspring love relationship that watching something grow inevitably inspires.

Bad Seeds?

There is something very exciting about planting those very first seeds during an April cold snap, when you are chilled to the bone and tired of all things winter.  Whether they are tomatoes or onions, cucumbers or strawberries, or marijuana seeds, these pots of dirt become promises you want to believe in.  They are a gesture of faith and hope at the trailing edge of a long Canadian cold, and you become that desperate soul who checks for inbox messages from god in the form of green shoots more times per day than you would like to admit.  It doesn't matter if those pots of dirt survive to hit the tongs of your fork as a juicy red tomato, or if they dry up and get thrown in the compost.  They serve to get us through.

Mine didn't make it.  They never sprouted.  Bad seeds I guess. 

Good Apples?

Luckily I was distracted by another wave of horicultural urge while visiting my father's apple orchard on the family farm in New York.  He has been an apple grower for decades now, and most of his prize trees were created by grafting from other ones that bore prize winning fruit.  Over a half century he has nurtured a diverse orchard of fruit bearing trees into existence, that all started with some sticks and a tar can.  Its a very slow process, requireing a different sort of approach to time and totally different interpretation of patience.

            So I clipped some twigs from my favorite Horak apple tree and smuggled them across the border in a wet paper towel.  A few days later, I climbed up the stepladder with a tube of silicone and did my very first grafts onto the scrubby crabapple tree in the yard, no knowing exactly what I was doing, but hoping the delicate cambrian layers would touch, and the silicone would provide an adequate seal for the grafts to take.  Three weeks later I am happy to report, the twigs are not dead.  We're having a spring heat wave and the crabtree is pushing out its leaves in a hormonal explosion.  I have tossed the dried up marijuana pots and am focusing on the apple twigs.  By far I prefer a good apple to a bad seed.

Meanwhile, my sister writes from Florida.  She just dug a huge bunch of unexpected potatoes out of her compost pile.  Some things spring to life on their own, unplanned, in a most joyous harvest 'sin trabajo'.  Others take patience, intention, and work.  And still others well, they just won't grow.  So let go!  And keep planting.  And let nature do the rest.

Yo' the Man, I'm the Man

I am becoming the man I didn't marry.  "Stop saying that," protests a male friend, apparently noticing my breasts more than my tongue in cheek.  "But it's true," I say.  Look at me:  dog-tired feet up on table, ripped and muddy jean shorts and smelly T-shirt, favorite well worn work boot odor wafting up from below, swilling a beer before 2pm.  I swear, I am as woman as they come, but lately I've been mindfully, aggressively, obstinately chinking away at the gender mystique barrier like pro-capitalist German's at the Berlin wall, and I'm as sore as an athlete.  Its a big job and as I'm still living with the Phantom Man, its gotta be me, or the job ain't gettin' done.

My first junction box!  Booyah!

What is the 'Gender Mystique Barrier' of which I speak?  Back in the '70's we had Friedan's 'Feminine Mystique', Gloria Steinem, the Equal Right's Amendment, some very nice tea, and much more to ponder.  Four decades later, I can solidly claim that there is nothing that mystical about the 'feminine', except perhaps that it's based on money, or leisure, or man-power (literally), that I don't have.  Afternoons sipping mint juleps with the other desperate housewives while admiring each others' pedicures, complaining about our husbands and bragging about our above-average children is not an experience I've had the privilege to enjoy.  My toes are not that clean, nor do I have much time and energy for fashion, except the Reno-Depot kind.  But mostly, the problem with the feminine is that its not practical.  It doesn't get the trench dug, the wood stacked, or the shelving installed.

First attempt at framing-- requires attention to detail.  Shit!

Yet it is expected of us.  Without it we are sexless spinsters wearing pleated pants and sentenced to eternal loneliness and abandonment by normal society.  My more cat-like sisters have figured out how to play coy and helpless as some kind of currency on the gender market, as a sort of feminine crowbar with a plunging neckline, but I am just too bow wow for all that.  Yet my gender socialization holds me in its talons despite my willingness to forgo the manicure and says, "well ma'am, you just can't do that."  What is it exactly that I can't do?  That part is not entirely clear although it most often involves wiring or levers or some kind of power tool that is only available on the man market, transactions made in the back room of the bar, or behind the garage, when we ladies are not looking.  But wait, who said that I can't do that?  Was it my father?  My brother?  The guy at the hardware store?  Well, sometimes it is and for some strange reason, I believe them.  There is nothing worse than a trip to the man-store to hammer in my gender insecurity.  Hours and hours I wander around, looking for supplies, interviewing staff and customers, trying to make decisions, totally ineffectively and at great cost.

A very nice monkey

But a few months of observation, layers of dirt and cash out later and I am slowly learning, a monkey could do most of this stuff.  A few of the right tools, some common sense, and a bit of background with legos and tinker toys are enough to qualify anyone, including me.  You wouldn't believe some of the mistakes the monkeys make.  Hot water in the toilet?  Vapor barrier-- whoops, we forgot!  I love and appreciate my monkeys but from now on, I'm doin' it myself. 

Tweet Tweet

I got an iPhone yesterday, why am I capitalizing the P?  It wants me to tweet.  I don't want to tweet.  Maybe I should tweet!  Everyone else is tweeting.  How did tweet become a verb?  Can I make up a verb?  I want new verbs like I want new foods.  But I don't know if I want this gadget in my life.  First of all it has no geography.  No buttons.  I like buttons, you can find them in the dark.  The fake buttons on the iphone are too small for my fat, square, guitar player fingers.  Hey this thing is a racist, it presupposes pointy slender fingertips.  Well maybe not a racist.  But you know.

It wants me to make a lot of decisions about how it controls my life.  Buzz, superBuzz, or MegaBuzz.  Expresso with that ma'am?  Buzz when I get a text, a call, an email?  I can't get any of this shit to work anyway.  How do I put it on fucking silent, just tell me that!  So far the iPhone is making me very grouchy!  Do they have one that gives massages?  I'm in.

I have 14 days to decide if I want to march down this road with all the other tweets I mean twits, and if I have enough wherewithall to guide this tool towards making my life easier and better, not let it guide me to having my head face down in the little gadget all the time.  I remember boycotting Facebook for about 5 yrs.  Since caving, it has led to some positive events.  A rideshare.  An event I didn't know about.  Some little box typing communication with someone I actually really know and like who I wouldn't otherwise be 'talking' to.  Discovering how we are all linked through chains of acquaintance.  Stalking my favorite local celebrity.  Planning a hit on a local politician.  But I digress.

The point is as everyone says to get technology to help us, not control us.  So where is the silent button on this thingee?

Extreme Love

I know this woman.
She is all tenderness, and tendony, inside.
She makes pie.
wonderful, delicious love-pie, that she loves
because she loves, 'cause she's alive and
She loves pie.
Well, who doesn't?

She loves the pie and she loves the people who buy her pie.
But she hates the pie too.
She hates the hot, dirty kitchen (which she loves, because she do)
and she hates all the days gone by
sweating up to her elbows in blueberry goo.

And she says that she hates it but this is what she does.
She makes pie (and sushi) and loves it, because.

I visit her in her kitchen, where she rolls it all while bitchin'
and her six cats prowl around the margins
of her skinny, beefy-muscle, pie-making mama vibe.

She picks up road kill animals
and makes puppets from them because
she can't stand to see them die
on the side
And I used to think this was gross.
I mean, this girl's got a baby deer corpse on marionette cords
hanging just next to her bed from the ceiling
and to my mind
this i just some sick semi-taxidermy action gone astray--
"But... its because I love them so much," she says.
She say.

And now I get it.
This is just Extreme Love.
Love so convicted, it hauls back the dead
and strange as it may seem, they hang from a thread
beckoning with their hollow skin
and dead eyes.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen
she's pounding out more pies
working out the kinks in the dough with a roller
rolling up rawness in a sea-weed stroller

She wants a child yesterday,
so hopefully, tomorrow.
She wrestles with her discontent while
delicately shifting ingredients
in some new and tangy recipe.
Why does it go this way, she asks,
does it have to be?

With tears in her eyes now, she stifles a guffaw
and her flat bellied laugh spills all over the floor
'cause her neighbor just burst in from the back in a bra
and he's SO high... on something strange...

like fungus, or deer poo, or vegetable brain.
She has to sit down now, she's laughing so hard
and its time for that beer that makes it more bearable--
there's 30 pies finished, so nothing's that terrible.

I love her.
Like, Extreme Love love her.
Like, toss 30 excellent pies into the dumpster, love her
or fling-your-body-in-front-of-a-train to stop her
like
Haul ass cross-country in a three wheeled Ferrari
to put your arms around her in a crisis.
But she does not ask me to do any of this.

Because she's practical, not strategic.
She's tactical, and tactile, and heck, I'm allergic--
to the six cats, that is, not to her
so she rolls herself into them and falls asleep as they purr.

The next morning she's up early, and at it again
pounding her dough-flesh into raw pastry good-ness
that she imagines will bring joy into other peoples' lives...

The woman's got dreams

Meanwhile, there's pies.

I Hate Americans

Oh Canada! July 1st is nearly here and Oh Boy! Kate and Willy are coming! (Now... who is it, Canada, that you think is ridiculous?) Maybe now that the Canadian dollar has trumped the US dollar by 4 cents we can finally stop hating Americans.

I was an American once. It wasn't so bad. For years and years I held on defiantly to that title from this side of the border, just to get in your faces, until a recent dunk across into the US made me realize I've actually grown uncomfortable with wide open vowels and large toilet paper. Oh I'm not saying that I'm Canadian, exactly, although I do carry both passports. But I have to admit, I have developed a somewhat Canadian sensibility in many affairs over my 13 years in residence. In other regards I remain definitively Yanquoise/Nouvelle Yorkaise-- daring, innovative, bold; welcoming to a disarming degree (if you're Canadian) direct, entrepeneurial. But my NY schtick has had a strong northern filter slapped on it; ie, I'm more in control of my cultural default settings.

Speaking of default settings, lets talk about hate. I mean, more specifically, lets talk about anti-americanism.

Now, your average Canadian will not openly admit... well... uh... anything really. Europeans, on the other hand, will tell you straight out that they hate Americans and then they will tell you why. Some of their explanations will make sense. In fact you may agree with them, and return to America as an anti-american American, (as I did, years ago) which is probably a positive thing in a nation of people awash in a lack of self-awareness and self-reflection. But Canadian hatred of Americans is different. Its friendlier. Its couched as humor, or sarcasm. Good wholesome beer-hall hahaha, can't you take a joke? Its in-bred. Its passive aggressive, and its completely socially acceptable. Its default, man. It isn't intelligent, or insightful or politically astute. Its knee-jerk, its mainstream and its elementary. Its bullied-kid-turned-JD Salinger gang of boys. Freaks out for vengeance. Luckily it is backed by very little fire-power, comparatively. But its culturally lethal, nonetheless.

Now what is bizarre as an American (who is no longer an American) is the bipolar experience of being hated and adored. In my individual experience, being American has earned me strange brownie points with other immigrants-- members of many groups who have been broadly disenfranchised, endangered and displaced by US politic and policy in either direct or indirect ways. "Oh!", they exclaim, brightly. "you're from The States!" they glow, putting their arm around me, pulling me in a little closer. "You will come to my family, for dinner. You will stay as long as you like. You can live with us!" I love these people. But why? Why are they not dripping with anti american hatred? Maybe it is the 'we are in this together' immigrant experience, bonding in the face of the relatively cold and insular Canadian cultural climate. Or maybe they want to associate with my US citizenship and the perceived privilege and opportunity it might afford. Or more likely, they recognize the difference between a government and its people, many of them having witnessed and experienced corruption in their own governments at home. Perhaps, for some reason, they just plain like me. Or maybe, they are just being very very polite, and are secretly seething below the surface.

As for you Canadians, I being kind-of one of you now, it is kind of understandable. Canadians take for granted a government that mostly does represent them. It is hard for them to imagine a dichotomy. They are outraged by the fluke election where a party sweeps into power without popular, majority support, whereas, I am always dumbstruck and bewildered by any dynamic groundswell of the people that manages to impact the actions and policies of any government. Its really about privilege, and sense of entitlement from a semi socially liberal democracy that has the comfort of the social welfare net in the background of Canadian lives. Its the 'well, you can always go on welfare' mindset that gets everyone of the accountability hook, instead of the do or die cry of 'give me liberty or give me death'. With the rate of unemployment and homelessness down south these days, death wins out more often than not for a lot of people. And no, we do not all share the views of our government. In fact, there are 30 million 'progressive' Americans whose political views and lifestyles reside somewhere in between the NDP an the Greens, with an added dash of innovation and communitarianism. That is almost the entire population of Canada! Put that in your snide and smoke it.

So don't teach your kids to hate Americans. Look to form alliances, liase across borders, celebrate the contributions from both sides, and open your minds. Me? Oh I can hate Americans on a bad day, if I want to, because I am one. Well, I was one. Well, anyway. You get the point. And go ahead, Oh Canada, have a grass fed hamburger and enjoy your extra day off. But stop wishing me a Happy 4th of July and then sneering behind my back. I don't do patriotic holidays anyway. Because national borders, insofar as they divide us, pit us against each other, and sic us on each other like a bunch of rabid boozed up soccer/football/hockey fans, are not all that much to celebrate, if you ask me.