Change is scary (especially when it’s a reminder that everything is actually always in flux).
I tend to freak out at first, the my self-righting mechanism kicks in — which has just happened, so I’m fine. Things’ll work out, whatever that looks like. Historical precedent in my life says that each progression is even better than what went before.
Sorry for being vague; I have the liberty here to share my inner state but not the details.
My first week here was easy and fun. I was healthy, I was visiting with people at work and during social time, things were falling together spontaneously and easily…
Then I got sick. I wasn’t sleeping properly and caught the office cold everybody has.
My friends’ dog ate my handmade greeting cards.
Toronto was hit by a major snowstorm and everything was cancelled.
Riding the TTC streetcars and subway lines across town started giving me panic attacks.
The hardness of Toronto’s water has made my torso react as if someone splashed me with acid.
And this morning I had a conversation with my editor that represents either a transition or an ending, depending on how my brain spins it from one minute to the next. One thing is decided: I won’t be travelling to Toronto anymore for work.
P.S. Apologies if I’ve not been very communicative. Sending e-mails here involves connecting to UK mobile roaming data services, which costs a lot.
I’m in a little coffeeshop on Roncesvalles, a long street with streetcars rumbling up and down on the far west side where Toronto tumbles off into the highway and Lake Ontario.
Waves of cool urban life splash westward; this area is the latest, it seems, to be inspired with the breath of reinvigoration that eventually gives way to the halitosis of commercial gentrification. Still, Toronto retains a character all its own, with the little post-war houses and pockets of local and indie culture amid the glass and steel towers.
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For any Finitude readers, I stole this evening to slip back into the world of the book. Who knows? I may get Chapter Twelve finished and out before the holidays are over. I’m imagining eighteen chapters altogether, so we’re getting close to the end.
I’ve been working hard here, really enjoying the company of the great souls I have the pleasure to work with. The community around Strategic Coach is such that I can talk about the weirdest of my weird notions with them and they don’t bat an eye. In fact, they usually respond with a book recommendation.
I had to bail out of today’s workshop because I had too much writing work to do. I managed to get everything done and distract lots of people from their work so we could chat. It’s good I don’t work in an office. In fact, this afternoon I had to leave and go to a nearby coffeeshop to get an article written — after which I went back to wreak more social havoc. There are too many people I like there; what can I do?
Outside of work, some great spontaneous plans have fallen together, like veggie dinners with Margaux, watching movies on the couch with Alvaro, or watching Lisa’s band rehearse at home for their concert next week. And last night turned into a reunion of the old Algonquin Park winter camping gang at the Alias:Wavefront offices, where our old Coach-mate Bill now works. (They make the software most film and videogame production companies use to create their CG images.) We used one of their enormo-projectors and watched Full Metal Jacket — life-sized,with sensurround audio, pizza, and beer. Real boy-stuff.
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I’m eating too much. Ah well. As Patrick pointed out in an e-mail, “That gives you a project for the new year, and you like that.”
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An awful lot of my friends here are married and now having children. Sometimes I feel I’m falling behind. Enviable freedom and independence? Or just lonely, headed for sad irrelevance?
Yikes, best not dwell there.
This is one of my favourite views in Edinburgh.
It’s +13C here today. They’re getting snowstorms in Toronto and Charlottetown. Ah well.
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Planes, my experience tells me, are bad for people. Not the elevation to impossible heights, not being moved from one place to an unwalkably far away one. No, it’s the darned air in those things that utterly vanquishes me.
I don’t know if it’s that they don’t circulate it enough, or people are just poxy, but the last few times I’ve made trans-Atlantic flights, I’ve wound up losing my first few days in Canada to a cold. I drag myself to work, then drag my carcass home (my friend Lisa‘s home) to collapse and sleep like Tutankhamen.
This time I want it to be different. I’ve got my ginseng, vitamin C, and echinacea, and I’m dosing myself in advance. Do you have a favourite preventative? Please tell me!
Yeah, I’m writing a novel about climate change, and I’m flying overseas. The irony is not lost on me. I’ve bought carbon credits, but I know that’s lame. I’m not sure how to do this one.
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I don’t want anything for Christmas. I don’t know who said it, but this expression sums up my feeling: “I want for nothing. I need nothing. I am complete.”
No malls, no trying to buy everyone the same amount, no $CDN bargains. I want to come back lighter, uplifted even, not heavier.
I’ve got a lot of great people in my life, and that’s what I’ll be celebrating in a thing-less way at the end of this year. If you’re reading this, thanks for being part of my tribe.
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I feel impossibly sleepy. It’s 4 in the afternon and the light is growing dim.
This morning I had a dream that I had a pet mouse or vole or something like that — just a little scrap of fur skittering around. I loved it. Then I woke up, and… no vole. I miss my vole.
I had an appointment with my dentist this morning. Once more, she waved me out of her office, because there’s nothing wrong with my teeth. She did warn me, though, that my gums had receded in places because I was obviously brushing too hard.
I guess my first clue should have been when my toothbrush snapped this morning.
Oh, wicked! The game design program at George Brown College has created a Half-Life:2 mod based on the downtown core of Toronto.
I’ve just installed this thing, and I can’t wait to go blow people up on the subway. If you’ve been on the TTC, you know the urge.
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Buy Nothing Day is upon us — today in the US and Canada, tomorrow here in The Rest of the World. Coincidentally, I’ve just started reading What Would Jesus Buy? Fabulous Prayers in the Face of the Shopocalypse by Reverend Billy.
I’ve been reading about Reverend Billy for a while. He’s a (non-religious) performance artist who stages anti-consumerist “revival” demonstrations in American chain stores, and I expected this book to be a clever, consciousness-raising joke about consumerism. What I wasn’t expecting was prose so good it’s poetry. There, right in the first chapter, was a ‘sermon’ that echoed exactly the theme of my book — “eros versus telos”. Only the Reverend phrased it as “Love is the force that knows that life will survive if life is loved.”
You see, Life on this Earth isn’t separate from any social justice struggle. It’s too late in the game to separate these things. Issues will not be isolated from each other when the Earth is extinguished. When you look into the eyes of the person standing next to you and realize that this is the last breath you yourself will be taking because the world has, in fact, JUST ENDED, then all these issues are one. In that last gasp all the progressive Issues are simply Love, and all the advertisements are simply Love mocked to death.
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I awoke this morning feeling much-renewed after a weekend spent alternating between shivers and sweats. All the aches were gone, and I lay in bed for a while revelling in feeling normal. I looked forward to jumping out of bed, getting washed, getting back out into the world of the living, and doing my work. Most of all… I wanted an omelette!
I’ll chalk the latter up to my weekly call with my folks, in which my father often gives a description of whatever great meal he’s tackling next (he’s a wonderful cook). His verbal portrait of Saturday’s breakfast — particularly as it was contrasted with my usual breakfast of nothing at all — stuck in my head. So today, with my appetite returned, I wanted my omelette!
After an hour of walking around town, and with noon approaching, it was clear I wasn’t going to get it. So I settled for the closest approximation and went to Snax, a little hole-in-the-wall place tucked behind Princes Street, bought two morning rolls with fried eggs in them, and ate them as I walked across the North Bridge.
Eating these rolls is tricky, because there’s always one bite that makes the yolk burst out the side of the thing. I forgot about that with the first one and got a mess all over my left hand, but with the second roll I slowed down and ate it while leaning on the stone wall outside the Scotsman Hotel, looking out over Princes Street Gardens, where the Christmas market is being built again. I managed a controlled detonation on the second sandwich.
(I’m realising as I write this that I’m falling into the trap I recently pointed out to a writer-friend: using lots of specific place-names that won’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t been to the place I’m talking about.)
I dropped byWord Power Bookshop to re-stock them with my book, and spent the afternoon doing my weekly planning in a couple of local cafes. Even though the world through the windows was grey and rainy, I was very happy to see it from that perspective.
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