March on...
a younger toots (jan 23)
a guest appearance brought to you by the mEp :
UNIVAC Chicks t-shirts anyone?
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feb 26 9.20am 2002 montreal
here she is!
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feb 25 7.30am 2002 montreal
________________________________with a huff; and a thanks be to God that i have had the strength to organize my life in such a way as to have time to sit here in the early morn listening to windham hill for a full hour before i leave for work, my thoughts sweep towards the past with this music, and i'm in life-summing mode - all of a sudden - after writing only last night before sleep, on paper, that 'poots is on hold' while baby toots grows inside her - it seems this music or something else, has brought me back.
treatises could be writ here on why music, any music, calls to mind and heart places so far gone in time and in spirit. why some conjures freer times yet not in such a heartfelt way, why some conjures sunnier times - like this does, sunny in life experience and growth.
los angeles was a dream; unreal as a vacation; unexperienced, really. i didn't know what it was until it was over; and i didn't enjoy it at all, until recently. and now, i can sit here with this music and reminisce about a sunshine filled dream that actually, really happened. it's a gift beyond words and i am still learning to treasure it. just as a hint, right now i can smell the lavendar up the coast; i am walking the walkway in laguna beach; i'm on top of the canyons, i'm shopping at erewhon; i'm driving up sepulveda; i'm chatting across balconies to Stella; i'm eating lunch on the beach with shannon; i'm singing with Jewel in the car; i'm hiking at big bear. it's all words here.and that is really all i sat to write; reliving the past through music is not something i ever thought would dull with time but that the memories are sweeter than childhood, that is the real surprise.
and all it's really all about is having cherished memories that ripen and evolve. somehow, in a secret sort of way, i was taught this and believe that it is one of the great secrets and truths of happiness.so here i am, says poots; me and little toots, growing, changing, evolving together. so many days there is nothing that can stand in our way. that is the only gift that i ever ask for, yet when achieved, bestows upon us so many more unexpected paths to take.
take your paths as they come;
embracing them
one by wonderful one.
coming soon, toots electronic debut!
feb 20 7.08am 2002 montreal
what does a poot do when she's not being a poot?________________________________
she's taking care of the toot and tidying the nest.
some thoughts are still old; worn away like the old yellow boxes in the RBC commercial, and some are new. it's a mixture of knowns and unknowns now - the knowns are nice - and it's easier to prioritize the pile. like there is a missing pile of worries that somehow have been opted out, unselected, not that they were at the forefront before. and yet, that's it, it's like a returning to all the things i knew for sure as a child; all the things that don't matter and all the things that do: that feeling of being absolutely positive that some of those stupid things that the jones's do really are stupid and not having any incling of a shadow of a doubt about it. these are some of the knowns, along with a comforting sense that in this country and in my family and friends - thanks be to God, - there's a preciousness, a sense of importance and preservation that is deemed upon someone with child that just blankets the whole experience in positivity.as for the unknowns, well i'm quite convinced that they too will become knowns in time. in time.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --in life, in daytime, documents writ; and sent over the ocean electronically might produce 14,400 hours of work. this is like building again, over months, and comes with it a timely sense of achievement for me - recognized or not - a small mastery of which i plan to be truly proud. it's making the huge beast work, and work in our direction. i won't say no more.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --and olympic feats - big and small - are marking these events in time, drawings on the cave walls of this unbelievable phase of growth - with faster! higher! stronger! - and office discussions surrounding what is a sport and what is not. watching young people and their dreams at this time is yet another comfort; another sign of life in the dead of winter. watching, waiting, hoping.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
and perhaps my sleeping dreams have replaced any daily need to vent into this box, as i am vividly tossed around in places and with people i do not know in these months, waking always with a sense that i have new friends and dance partners of all colours and sexes and sizes - who i spend time with in new, and intimate ways. all i can say is, if toots is at the root of this, i'm in for quite a ride.
feb 08 7.08am 2002 montreal
dreams cake-tastings - a particular kind of cake - with ju-jubes in it; and the last batch of women sitting around the sitting room with their cakes had Jewish versions of the same. i don't much ilke ju-jubes and i tasted most of the cakes out of dream-acting only. in the last batch, there were three that i liked.other dreams which will go unwrit here;
two separate baby dreams to which i attach no significance.protein counting leaves me under-grammed and still sleepy.
i'm off to join the ranks of pill poppers for a test.a lovely energizing conversation with the pony-tailed one;
there is a spirit inside of himself that smiles at me.silence underneath me - gazing aimlessly - all the thoughts i had to place here have flown with breezes out the windows of my bedroom; office; and car. i have nothing real to tell you now - it's the quiet time - midwinter freeze has begun and hibernation would be welcome for most. but we will sit in our wintry traffic piles and order goods over the internet.
java sets my heart beating fast;
itchy shins;
up and down i go.
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January 30 7.39am 2002 montreali'm well, i'm rested, i'm distracted, i'm busy, i'm excited, i'm still employed, i'm back. a poots-tretch and corresponding toots-tretch, fine wines lay on their sides longer now.
getting common thoughts onto paper was, at once, an easy task;
though now, romantic thoughts abound, they remain crusted; fixed, rigid.
the shelves are higher and there are no chairs around.the calendar, fixed on december, solidly reminds me of a not-so-distant sojourn; already forgotten and buried; with only one remaining justice.
the CBC notwithstanding; i cannot find silence here, i cannot go deeper,
i am unable to formulate what i need to. it's not a sad thing; it's not anything; it's a state of the union; it's a typical pootly address - a scratching on the cave walls, for the sake of the mark.i embrace this city once again, it's cricks and it's cracks, it's highs and lows,
i miss the longer days wandering st. laurent street, and now i'll add to that, unlikely midnight to 3am dancing on monkland. 8.00 am now.family surrounds me now, like walls of steel.
January 17 2002
i quote:
The Bayley's were eccentric - "out of center" -- in their complimentary brilliance. But they were also famously eccentric in their temperment and habits, and if you're an American, you don't know the type. They are the kind of people who like being ill and getting old, who prefer winter to summer and autumn to spring (yearning for 'gray days without sun'). They want rain, gloom, isolation, silence. "We had no TV of course," writes Bayley, commalessly, and the reluctant acquisition of a radio feels like a surrender to the coarsest modernity. The Bayleys were further cocooned and united, it has to be said, by their commitment to extreme squalor.
At their place even the soap is dirty. "Single shoes (and single socks) lie about the house as it deposited by a flash flood..Dried out capless plastic pens crunch underfoot." An infestation of rats is found to be "congenial, even stimulating". Everywhere they go they have to hurdle great heaps of books, unwashed clothes, old newspapers, dusty wine bottles. The plates are stained, the glasses "smeary". The bath, so seldom used, is now unusable: the mattress is "soggy"; the sheets are never changed. And we shall draw a veil over their underwear. On one occasion a large, recently purchased meat pie "disappeared" in the kitchen. It was never found. The kitchen ate it. End quote.
-from "Remembering a Life", by Martin Amis
Talk Magazine Dec2001/Jan2002
Director Richard Eyres's new film, Iris, is unstinting look at the great English novelist Iris Murdoch, her tragic battle against Alzheimer's disease, and her husband John Bayley's transcendent love.
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January 16 2002i'm well i'm ill, i don't know which.
it's like not knowing up from down;
spiraling upward and downward at the same time.
out! out! evil demons of stupidity.the Frenchman is honest; he speaks from the heart, from where all true thoughts come. no provocation required to hold his heart in your hand; can you imagine a more beautiful world?
his words remind me what life is, in a time and place where it seems a bit lost. there is a real division between work at a certain level, and real life - this distinction which we blur for ourselves - becomes blurrier still - and then i crave again the world that was the tiny kitchens in the student apartments where sitting on the counter with a beer was a definition of life as i saw it. that world includes the softness of life; thoughts that bounced around a smaller place;
surrounded by curious people, industrious people, where there was no box to think outside of.
that's the world i seek again, in these fragmentary moments where i can see over the crest, helped afloat by one honest, heartfelt comment from a practical stranger. strangers don't seem so strange when they are like that.
poot award for today goes to luckypups for his beautiful entry of january 11.
January 13 2002 conclusive?
for whatever reason, it's still all about how quickly you come to conclusions. no matter what you're working with, no matter what the hypotheses, belief systems, framework, ideologies, or depth of requiring a conclusion: or the quality or relevance of the conclusions themselves for that matter; the only thing that really matters at all, is how quickly you are able to arrive there.
i see child prodigies as people who have some very quickly to conclusions; and eternal soul-seekers as those who may never. conclusions are more important to some of us than others; but no matter their weight, some of us still take our time with them. i see myself as someone who was busy bouncing off walls, people, life, any kind of activity that had insignificant, molecular-like movement to it, when i could have been forming conclusions. i was always under the assumption that the more interactions, the more results. not so, little grasshopper!
conclusions that are done and undone are ok too. there's nothing wrong with relearning, and nothing wrong with mistaken conclusions. no one's perfect. but mostly the conclusions that i've done and undone were about the world around me; and not about myself. when a real conclusion comes, one that moves me forward; it's usually pretty permanent. i'm 36. i think i've made about three of those in my lifetime, and most of them in the past 5 years.
i often watch people who appear to have made all their conclusions. some are living a farce; but some of them, i have to contend, with even the simplest of sets of conclusions, are perfectly content. i assume that they have used less variables in their equations, and therefore require much simpler conclusions. they are perfectly happy, and the only one it bothers, is me. but i'm getting there, i'm getting there. just a few more pages in the mEp, and i'll have it all sorted out.
January 12 2002
in case you don't know any who do, people can change. not always in leaps and bounds, sometimes in cricks and cracks. it's not so bad getting older - part of being younger is not having the ability to understand that. and understanding what youth is wasted on the young really means. so much energy, pent up frustrations, but pent up from what? the stress of birth? how many wars would there be if we were all old. how important is that balance, i wonder and i wander.
i'm older now, and i know it's true because i like it. perhaps being just older is part of the enjoyment. i've changed. i think about what not to say before i don't say it. and that, on the years of advice from my spouse. imagine that. i try to eat earlier, i'm trying to more organized. i can't juggle a million things in my head anymore. the krebbs cycle is fading. but the most important of all, the older-ness trait that i am most proud of, is the ability, not only the ability, but the desire, to be alone again.
i spent alot of quality alone time in the early days, the formative years. there was the grey clock radio that belonged to my sister; and the beige index card box that i stamped with the date and time every time i sat down to write. Dan Wilmott's voice carried over the airwaves, and those were all i needed, for entertainment, for solace, for peace of mind.
after highschool and university, came the need for socializing years - normal, you might say, unless they extend longer than you feel they should. i had a guilty conscience about it until i decided not to. my closest friend, who still lives alone, always tried to teach me that it's important to spend time alone. i couldn't do it anymore - death fears, i suppose. didn't see the purpose. didn't know what to do with myself. hadn't read a novel since college. for an edumacated person, i know that's pathetic.
and now, with age, those tables have oddly reversed. it's not the purpose, but the need. it's running with the rats for more than 20 years now; and only ending up feeling ratty. it's re-learning what i knew as a child; how much is inside of me, versus how much i get from they.
it's watching, and wondering, where it is i want to be. and knowing that doing alone, won't get me there. it's just as exciting as being 12.
hungarian frozen trabant
thanks to Jennifer in Budapest.
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January 11 2002REAs minus detax make for a better dressed poot.
i'm better at killing time than i think i am.
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January 10 2002i happen to be in cucumber mode;
they happen to be 65 SEK per kilo.
7.28 in GMT+1 leaves little poots sipping some bad spanish wine in a coffee mug. things are compressed now; it's inexplicable how finite things can be pleasing. many conturnations in the little brain / of work and uncertainties in a field someone else decided to call my own. i'm quite certain they are being adequately fooled, which leaves only myself to convince. again, and again, i'm watching battles be chosen; or not;
and often, settling comfortably into my poot boots reading documents and settling the problems that i know to be within my control.there's friends near and far, well wishing and connecting in new ways, new and regular ways, new and special ways just to say 'thinking of you'. did i do something different, did the past few years of growing finally pay off in some kind of maturity contest, as years of collecting friends results in a subset of adults around me who would actually listen and care. if i was the type to let anything out. if i had more.
there's a car and a house. a real husband, live, just like the commercials. ok, a sense of 'i'm not famous yet' washes through me every couple of weeks; but something quells it. a sense of 'i'm just little old me, just another ordinary citizen paying her taxes and folding underwear; it comes to me from my 12 year old mind and would kill me if i would let it. but something else pats me on the back and tells me 'it's OK'. some kind of internal observation that makes me famous in my own mind, i suppose, along with extra icing that i think i'm a pretty good person.
and so goes the soliloquy of january 10th, 2002.
2 more weeks. 2 more weeks.
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January 7 2002december passed as all things must.
