Forking Union Station!
Tuesday, June 28, 2005 , 3:21 AM
I flew to Canada today. Patrick was sweet and took time away from work and got up early to take me to Glasgow airport.
I had battery power galore, so I watched a movie on my Pocket PC (some grim Scottish thing, as opposed to the Hollywood pap they were showing on-screen), then, having just finished Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, I looked through the e-books I had on a storage card to see what else I could read.
FORK.
A few weeks ago, my friend Kirsten sent me a backup of the book she’s working on, her second set of travel memoirs. She sent me the file because everyone else who was keeping a copy for her was in the same thunderstorm- and tornado-filled part of Ontario she lives in.
I was a bad boy and I converted it to an e-book, ’cause I wanted to read it. I opened it this afternoon, and wasriveted. Is it a good book? I couldn’t tell you. I was too transfixed by getting to read a book about friends of mine. And one section of it is about a trip I took with her and her husband. It was even better than those books they tried to sell on television when I was a kid, with the child’s name stuck into the text at regular intervals.
It was cool to read about Kis’s other trips, which was like getting to hang out with her and her husband Malc by proxy. Great, too, that someone captured on the page the experiences we shared on that cycling trip across Arizona.
Strange, too, to have someone reanimate in text a crush — or whatever you call a one-way love — for someone. Just nights ago I had a dream about my best friend from university, in which I was filled again with that emotion I had for him, like being helplessly stoned when needing to operate heavy machinery. In both these cases, my normal, now-self would think about these fellas and feel nothing and not understand the compulsion. You’d think that was that then, but I find it funny that the dream and this fact-story could make me go “Oh yeah…”
~
It’s sweltering here. Cosgrove wasn’t sure which day I was arriving (I’m sure that had to do with my not being clear last time we talked online about it), so I waited at Union Station for a long time this afternoon. I didn’t mind, ’cause I had FORK to read, but I must admit that I started wondering if I needed to come up with a Plan B. But no, Cos appeared in post-work garb, with a hug, and we were right back in our in-person bestfriendship (it’s always there in some form, usually online chats about whatever’s going on).
Did I mention it’s sweltering? I’m sitting in the room in Mark and Eric’s place that used to be “the office”. Mark is surfing, looking at what he calls “house porn”, since they’re looking to sell their place soon and make a move. Eric’s down the hallway, and we can’t hear anything he’s saying because the double fan in the window here is acting as a perfect white noise generator.
Union Station will actually be familiar to any of my friends from Scotland who’ve been to the cinema: there’s an advert that plays, showing this group of (I guess they’re supposed to be) sexy young people running through a train station, trying to get to Prague. Once bundled on a train, the conductor passes through calling out “Barcelona, Barcelona”, and the people on-board look confused, then raise their glasses of [the product that I won’t endorse further here; bad enough to pay six quid for a movie, only to be forced to watch the ad in the first place] to toast Barcelona. Of course, getting to eitherPrague or Barcelona from a train station on Toronto’s Front Street would be quite a trick.
~
Off to drink some water and melt in front of the telly with Cosgrove for a bit.
Tomorrow, a day with my editor!
A moving story.
Thursday, June 23, 2005 , 1:21 PM
We got the flat!
Last Song of the Night Tram.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005 , 6:10 PM
I Google well.
Search for “Hamish MacDonald”, and I’m there. In fact, that’s how my friend Kirsten Koza found me, years after we’d drifted out of touch with each other.
Oh, sure, judging from the Google results you’d get the impression that I was a fine artist, that I was the otherHamish MacDonald who’s also a writer in Scotland, and you might also wonder why I hadn’t told you about my successful career as an Australian paralympics competitor. (I also didn’t write Mussolini and Italian Fascism, nor am I a business consultant in Toyko.)
BUT…
When you search for the book Last Song of the Night Tram, by Robert Douglas, I now show up in the results because I mentioned it in this blog, and their no-longer secret-searching methods picked up the words.
SO… I feel responsible for finishing what I started to say about it that day.
Let me put it this way: On Saturday, after viewing the flat and hanging out with Dave and Geoff for a few hours, I went to the bar at the Cameo cinema, plopped myself in a chair in a corner, and read. Geoff joined me a while later, and we sat there, reading together. It was such a nice, calm, civil thing to do. It was slow time, something we’re supposed to be good at in Europe, but I’m not sure if that really applies to the UK.
As I reached the end of the book, I couldn’t stop crying. An era in the author’s recounted life was drawing to a close, but by that point it felt so familiar, so precious, that I was heartbroken. He couldn’t get those childhood days back, because events closed a door and forced him to move on. I couldn’t go back, because those days had never been mine. And yet, if I’d ever felt before that somehow that era belonged to me, the feeling was redoubled by poring over the beautiful, simple vignettes of daily tenement life in postwar Glasgow.
Maybe it won’t win any awards because of this simplicity. But cleverness can be empty, self-serving. The kind of love with which the author describes these days, especially in the way he portrays his mother — that’s worth something, something more than a plot-twist or any other oblique literary trick. He didn’t try to make his mother into a saint, but by God you love her by the end of the book. That’s an awfully nice gift to her memory.
I wish I could do the same for my parents, both of whom deserve it.
Corn and tartan.
Monday, June 20, 2005 , 11:38 PM
The scariest thing about moving: I can’t justify taking my broken down old microwave, ’cause only the 1, 2, 3, 4, “Start”, and “Clear” buttons work. Popcorn cooks perfectly at 4:33. There’s a microwave built-in at the new flat (again, this is all assuming we get it), and I won’t know how to cook popcorn in it!
~
I wrote my bro’ about this, ’cause I’m very happy to have found it: I’ve discovered “The Tartan Podcast”, a collection of modern Scottish music compiled into a show that’s podcast three times a week by a friendly host with the nicest Glaswegian accent. (I’ve realised that this is the accent that I love; it is to my ears what caramel is on my tongue. I wonder if this is some sort of genetic memory, or just an “Old Country” fetish.)
I’m happy for the influx of fresh songs I happen to enjoy, because I usually have a hard time finding new music. I also like the idea that I’m listening to something local, and that the featured artists want me to download it. It’s “podsafe”, as the host calls it. (Or Windows Mobile Device safe, if, like me, you happen to belong to the other religion by virtue of the objects you use.)
Here’s the URL:
tartanpodcast.co.uk
The spirit of 45 Albion Road.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 , 11:11 PM
Geoff and I looked at flats today. One was very nicely done-up, a little north of Queen Street on — I think it was Hanover (or whatever it’s called up there). It was nice, but something — hard to say what — was missing for me. It was a bit too white, too light pine, too mirrory. I couldn’t picture myself sitting down comfortably in it, not without keeping my hands firmly knit together on my lap while sitting up very straight.
The second one was directly across from St Giles’ Cathedral — stunning spot but, oh… Every foot of wall space was covered in posters. The walls oozed the smell of cigarettes and pot. The beds were tumbled and the floors lined with pants. The hob was baked in boiled-over pastasomething. The pull-chain in the toilet was secured with two bulldog clips, and the shower was like a plastic telephone booth. Yup: students.
The best place — someplace Geoff, Dave, and I saw at the weekend — may be ours after all. The landlord seems amenable to accommodating our various lease agreements, so we may get it for the date we wanted.
This place is huge. Three of us could live there and barely get to know each other better. The kitchen reminded me of the cafe at The Strategic Coach. It’s the kind of gorgeous space that sitcom characters live in (even though they’re unemployed), wearing their nice clothes and sporting perfect haircuts. Dave said that whenever he walked past the window (he’s been living on the ground floor of this building), the model-like tenants always seemed to be drinking wine and enjoying themselves. It’s that kind of place.
Walking through it, realising I could afford to live there, made me wonder what that would do to my sense of “How Hamish’s life is going”. Walking around the flat, trying to keep it all in my head (A bathroom each?), I felt my spirits lift: “I deserve this,” I thought.
Sure, there’s a certain romance to the “writer’s garret”, though to be fair, my wee granny flat is not that. But the tenement I live in has gone to the dogs in the past year, with noise seeping through the walls at all hours, and the hallways becoming a tip for bin-bags full of smelly remnants leaking onto the concrete, fag-ends flicked for someone else (WHO?!) to pick up, bus tickets crumpled and dropped, and now cotton ear-buds. Blyeech!
I realise now that Mrs Simpson, that little elderly lady, twisted like an old tree hit several times by lightning-strokes, was the living heart of this building, the last of the original tenants. She’s gone, moved away, and so has something else about the place. It’s been a good home these past years, but it’s time to go.
Scottish spring.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005 , 8:21 PM
While my employer-friends were here, and right up until yesterday, the sky was grey and the air was tinged with cold that felt like it had come up off the sea. Today, though, everything’s different.
I took a dozen little things out of the pockets of my winter jacket this morning and left the house for the first time without my heavy coat. “But what if the weather changes?” my internalised mother asked. I didn’t care. I’d decided it was spring, dammit, and set off into town.
I worked at the library until suppertime, then went to the Forest Cafe, where I had beans on toast for a pound-sixty (can’t beat that), and checked my e-mail on their wireless connection. I’d received a rush-job from The Coach, so I dropped what I was working on and had fun writing a one-page ad from scratch while trying not to goggle at a handsome young French staff-member.
I walked home along the Regent Road, looking out at the big green isoscoles triangle that is Arthur’s Seat. The air was more than just mild, it was almost… sweet. It felt like the dozen summers of childhood. Everything was easy and uncomplicated. I stopped in the park, sat on a bench, and started reading Night Song of the Last Tram: A Glasgow Childhood, by Robert Douglas. It was the perfect thing to read, casting me back to wartime Glasgow, which holds a special place in my imagination for no reason I can describe.
I left the park, even though there was still plenty of light — for the rest of the summer it’ll stay light until quite late — and went to the Regent Pub. I ordered a pint of heavy and read some more of my book.
After that, I walked down the Easter Road, which is lined by the black points of church spires and tenements prickling all the way down to the Firth of Forth. The sun was lowering, giving off a honey light that painted everything in sentimental watercolours. I stopped into the ScotMid to pick up some groceries, where a man with a white brush-cut and white stubble staggered and argued around a tall, thin black security guard. One was a foreigner yet politely doing his piece, while the other was a local disturbing the order of things. The exchange had something to do with a bottle he wanted or hadn’t paid for.
“This is a very difficult time in my life,” said the drunk to those of us in the queue. “I suffer from alcoholism, so I need this bottle of cider, or…” But he couldn’t tell us what would happen if he didn’t get it. I bought my celery, potatoes, butter, and porridge, and left the scene to work itself out.
On the way home, I passed talking mothers with their children in tow, people going into the chippy, couples walking, friends drinking behind the window of a pub. The clothes were modern, some of the buildings and all of the cars updated, but nothing substantial seemed any different to the life I’d just been reading about in the book.
The perils of jaywalking.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005 , 11:59 PM
In the past two weeks, I’ve seen two people get hit by cars. The first time it was a guy, and this weekend it was a young woman. In both cases, the ‘victim’ quite willingly ran out into traffic with their friends, drunk and laughing, until they got clipped by a car (which drove off).
The lad’s friend went berserk and started punching dents in the side panel of the car that dared to be there when his mate jumped in front of it. The boy who was struck seemed to be okay — saved by the grace of drunken limpness. The girl didn’t do so well: her friends stood around, clutching themselves, fingers to lips, until an ambulance came and took her away.
I don’t know why I mention this. It’s just odd to witness this twice in such close succession. Funny how one minute you can be having fun, then the next something dreadfully serious can happen. Of course, the likelihood of this increases exponentially when you’re pissed out of your head.
Myself, I had a good weekend with my friends. Friday was supper with the gang, then (many) drinks at Medina, where we sat in one of their little underground cubbies having a chat that culminated in us inventing likely futures for each other. Saturday was “Burly” at The Arches — fun because I was with my mates, but the music was rubbish again, and the crowd are not my people. I’m not muscley, hairy, tattooed, leather-bound, or bald, nor am I attracted to that type. This means I can just relax and have agenda-less fun for its own sake — or I would do, except for the rubbish music, noise, heat, etc. I think I’m going to strike this event off my calendar.
~
I was supposed to have a second date with someone on Thursday. His excuse for cancelling (too busy right now with things) actually didn’t sound like an excuse, because I feel the same way. This would be a bad time to start anything, since I’m off to Canada soon for a month. I’m flipping between indifference about this and trying to feel indifferent about it. More of the former, though, ’cause I haven’t got a lot of mental space for things at the moment. My biggest concern is being useful to my advocacy partner before I go, though I’ve said that I’m happy to keep being his advocate when I get back.
I’m not producing anything creative outside of work, which also feels odd. Instead, I’ve been reading a lot. Tonight I finished Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief. That was slow going. Lots of flashbacks, and the whole thing felt like going through a family genealogy with someone — of their family, not yours. Some beautiful images, and lots of apposite “Scots going to Canada” material, though, which is what kept me with it.
<
p>I like stories that:
- follow one character.
- unfold along a straight timeline.
- have light and serious moments — not all just silly setups or endless dour consequences. The latter sort of reading just feels like spending my spare time being punished. Forgive me for being relatively well-adjusted and not having anything in common with junkies, members of abusive families, people who consistently make bad relationship choices, and any combination thereof — even though these books seem to be the type that win awards.
- are held together by a unifying sequence of events (not like a scrapbook of random images).
I’m finally giving myself permission: It’s okay to like this kind of story, and it’s okay to write this kind of story.
Rice erroneous.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005 , 4:22 PM
Despite my strict instructions to the contrary, bothCosgrove and Patrick wrote me to tell me how to cook rice — namely, “just boil it”.
I’m now freed from the extra packaging and processedness of boil-in-the-bag rice! Hazzah!
I’m having the same thing tonight as I did last night, because it was so good:
— rice
— tahini
— lemon juice
— shredded carrot
— chopped onion
— shoyu
But tonight I’ve added parsley to it, too.
~
My mum e-mailed me today to tell me that my cousin Joey died last night. He had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis — an as-yet irreversible and fatal disease that destroys nerve cells. Joey was married and had three young children, which makes this especially difficult.
My most vivid memory of him is from childhood, when my family went to Cape Breton to visit my dad’s brother Max and his family. Joey is one of Max’s four children, my cousins.
On this particular visit, one of Joey’s sisters was doing something with a Barbie doll that annoyed him, so he grabbed it from her and ran toward the house. A trail of us kids followed him, not knowing what he was up to. Inside, he opened one of the lids of the coal-burning stove, like an black iron pancake with a handle, and threw Barbie in. Her long blonde hair shrivelled, blackened, and shrank while she kept smiling. Then her body went into contortions in the heat. She hula danced to death.
The little cousin whose doll it was cried, and so did I — from laughter. I knew it was awful and cruel, but it was the funniest thing I’d seen in my life.
I don’t like this business of motor-neuron diseases in my family. At the moment, though, my thoughts are more taken up with Joey’s family and Max’s family.
<
p>Goodbye, Joey.
<
p>
