I lost the rest of March
April
 

March 11 2002                 dinner with donna

it's child-like, my desire to order up a fancy drink. paying attention to the small things, having the time for the details. i imagine that that is what the first year will be like.

piles of scribblings in post-RRSP-pre-tax time; i'm watching markets, counting assets. practical matters preoccupy pregnant persons; bending over, getting to food on time, new running shoes, drinking and expelling water; these are on the outskirts of watching money piles and trying to keep up with old friends. it's a whole pile of practical.

it's a focused, yet peaceful time. there's an end result you cannot plan. there's more spare minutes around. big things seem smaller. this small thing is bigger :-).

and finally, the last of the european photos...
Budapest - the market - the city - the views - the Palace
Copenhagen
and all of the European Photos
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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March 08 2002 - International Woman's Day

i wonder how many of us watch clips from the seventies, and with barbie-doll like fascination marvel at the integrity of a simpler time. when the world trade centers were built, people had a framework. the women and men in the picture were women and men. those roles meant something, meant that the women didn't clap as hard as the men, for one - but we all know that i didn't boot up this machine before 7AM to tell you that. no, it's about something that is so difficult to put into words that you and i have probably never even read about it. i'm not talking about the framework that kept women at home or tolerated racism.  and for the record, i'm also not talking about  the fact that "a wedding dress is supposed to have a high neckline and long sleeves" (quoting a family friend there).

i'm talking about the invisible driving force that gave people honour; integrity; that made them keep their word; that made them dignified if they could be, that helped them believe in authority; in stopping at red lights; in paying their taxes; in praying to God: all the mysterious forces that surrounded a generation yet unmolded by the powers of television and media, yet stripped of the dignity that made them care whether or not they followed the rules of the road, wasted someone else's money, or brought cookies to the neighbour.   and the operative words here are 'made them care'. it's the caring that's gone, the caring in the small things, the knowing that all the small shitty moves you do in a day add up. the belief that somehow, it does matter whether or not you stop at a stop sign, no matter if you get caught or not.

is it  the maturation of the 'me' generation? the fall of the church? a distorted sense of power in a society where we are seemingly given all, but truly have none? did these things have to disappear as we destroyed barriers? am i seeing, voyeurism style, something that as a citizen of the year 2002, i shouldn't be able to? or do people accept the loss of these things readily, as necessary change and throwing away 'the old'?

not me. i long for those moments, i dream of them. i marvel that i watch them on video and have this perverse view of a time that otherwise only comes to me when i hear 'Honey' on the radio or speak to older people for any length of time. i fear this media controlled world; i loathe that all purchases must have a brand tag or a store associated with them (see baby boards where all purchases for unborn babies are preceded with a store name)

don't get me wrong; i wouldn't give up my female-won freedom, nor my car for the world; i understand that i like sketchers running shoes because someone marketed them to me; and i don't count three full seconds after stopping at every stop sign.

i'm not anti-material, in any way shape or form.
i'm simply anti-knowing these things, and anti-caring to the point that you believe that what you do in your world doesn't affect the rest of us, primarily because what i do, truly doesn't affect you. even if i'm consider enough to let you in in traffic.
that's the true tragedy of it.

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and woman's day wouldn't be complete without visits to my female periodontist; my female investment advisor; and an evening of Afghanistani food at a benefit for women in Afghanistan.
 

____________________________________________________________________
March 06 2002
 

"...morning comes and i awake;
the flutter of the dove begins
and life again, greets the new born day
Oh lovely one, oh friend so gently
your cry suggests it's time to go
upon the voyage to the land of lasting peace
The night is Oh, so long and cold
and I have known the emptiness
that comes from selfishness and insincerity
The dove is peace and lasting happiness
The dove is peace and lasting happiness"

i'm cosy in cosy diamond pants and a cosy waffled undershirt;
the java in the piggy mug stayed warmer; til the end.
longer wake-ups in the mornings now, technical decisions today
weigh heavily on my plans for the upcoming month-days.

poots and toots are now quite obviously toots and poots,
as there's nowhere but outward for toots to go
and a smaller person waddles sooner than a taller.

jan.23  - - feb.21 - - keep these dates in mind

a cornucopia of what i would like to call 'children' swarmed through
the even better-than American-style movie theatre/laser games/bumper cars
plaza thingy last night; spring break means they're allowed extra play time.
like well-networked ants, they're each busily in their own worlds; scheming
and protecting their own, building who they are, defining themselves in special
gear; and completely, but believe you me i know it, completely oblivious to
the statements they are making to me.

what have i been left with of that time in my life? how much of me has it shaped,
really? consciously, i've left it out, being such a grossly self-centered time,
i'm not someone who can afford to readily re-live it. i spend enough time with
myself to leave it alone; i don't need it denting my world, i have fought to counter-
balance it. selfishness comes too naturally for me. and there, perhaps that in itself
is why i feel as though it hasn't shaped me; spending much time to become not that
person, although that person was eight-hundred percent happy with who she was...
and i'm happy for that and won't throw that out any nearby window.

and i couldn't take my eyes off them, the way they ignore me and anyone like me,
- multiplied many times now that i am i and toots - ! -
is truly one of the most fascinating people-watching experiences of all...

_________________________________________________________________________
and to the handsome yet corny man who tried to pick up a pregnant woman
in the darkness of the theatre...you seem like a nice person, but the sixteen-year-old
girls outside wearing spray-painted-on jeans and funny things tied around their
heads were far more intriguing to me ... _______________________________________________

March 03 2002
 

shhh... it's sunday, and my peace of mind is close at hand.
an eastern shanook (there's no such thing silly) has wrapped
us up this morning, and i'm one of the first to know as poots
and toots venture outside the big blue door to grab the morning
paper. imagine, for seventeen dollars a month you can still
have the news delivered right to your door, every morning,
without fail. pages and pages of it, no wires, no muss,
no dial-up busy signals. still amazes me every time i bend
to pick it up. and now toots bends with me and the two of us
together are a bit less steady on our feet as we do.

there was a major disturbance in a personal relationship
between myself and an aquaintance (i've re-worded that
relationship since the disturbance, you see) over service
fees. yes, it's truly amazing the things we can have done
for us for incredibly small amounts of money by modern-day
standards: five dollars (Canadian, I might add) gets local currency
converted and out of your personal account and into your hand from most
major banking machines across Europe; eight dollars gets
groceries ordered via the Internet from a shelf and through your
front door; four-fifty (and again, i stress, Canadian) gets maternity
tights delivered to your front door in 2 business days from Sears.
we all put our own value on a dollar. some of us have more dollars
than others, different needs and priorities.  and granted, chocolate bars
still only cost 85 cents - negative inflation if you consider that when i
was 17, they were close to 50c. that teeth-whitening gum went from
a dollar seventy-nine (nice try boys) to a dollar thirty-something recently,
and kleenex and toilet paper also seem to be getting cheaper and cheaper
the older i get. so my argument to compare service charges to the price of
daily purchases gets weak, and perhaps the idea of comparing the two is
not relevant in the first place. but let's face it, we're mostly fed up of
running around to all the places we would like to go in any given day,
and saving time versus eating candy seems like a fair trade to me. but
i'm not everyone; and not everyone gets to europe and has known the
difference between trying to find a post office in Milan and retrieving
kroner with my Royal Bank card in Stockholm; but everyone has their
rights, and to each his own. and there's still a difference between a service
fee and being bowled over with no choice.

what if they closed all the stores and you had no choice but to pay 8 dollars to have your groceries delivered? what if you showed up at the store, with full intention to walk in and buy your groceries, only to find a sign on the door that said "go to
the internet and pay 8 dollars" to have your food delivered, just because
some large corporation had a monopoly on selling groceries from the
internet? what if you showed up at your local corner-store and HE had the  same sign on HIS door because this large corporation wouldn't let him sell beer and cigarettes from his store anymore, but forced him to close his doors and charge you EIGHT dollars to buy a pack of smokes on the Internet? ok, so it's Canadian dollars.

these kinds of things have happened in other industries; and no matter
how much money i've spent on getting my hair done at a fancy salon or
having my underwear delivered; i'm not going to pay large corporations
that bowl over local artists by forcing people to pay service fees that
are completely disproportionate to the price of the tickets.

sure  i feel guilty.
maybe i'm wrong. maybe i am.
but that's my story. i'm sorry for that.
toots and i are just going to enjoy a peaceful Sunday now.

_____________________________________________
buzzings aren't always buzzings - as opportunities become
older just as we do...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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