Tornlake

What do YOU propose?

So there's this thesis I'm supposed to be writing, and it's hard.

I'm also supposed to be writing a thesis proposal. In fact, it should have been written by now, and though I've made several attempts, they all come out sounding contrived.

Take this little excerpt from one of my recent attempts, for example:

"...like a tree that sheds its leaves in the fall so it can store energy to push them out again in the spring, these losses carry with them the potential for something new and perhaps greater than what has come before. "

Oh. I just retched in my mouth a little.

The problem is that I should be explaining in brief what some of the unifying themes in my collection of stories are, but I'm just not at the point where I can even identify them for myself. I can articulate some of the themes explored in individual stories, but not what the overarching ones might be.

My friend and I were discussing creative process over drinks last night (hot apple cider with brandy -- highly recommended), and I found myself explaining to her that what I came up with in a given piece of writing was as much a surprise to me as anyone. These stories are no different. They are largely mysterious to me, and only with copious and painstaking editing do their true shapes, themes, meanings and arcs reveal themselves.

I think it's much the same with this collection as a whole -- not until I can see how these stories (some of them unfinished) fit together in a kind of pastiche will I see why they fit together at all.

I wonder if I can just submit the URL for this blog as my proposal, it's as good as any I've come up with thus far. Tells you a lot about my so-called talent, doesn't it?

Hope

I've been feeling great these past two days. Despite this grey sky, which threatens to topple me into a pit of apathy, I'm succeeding in feeling my own agency. The inauguration has quite a bit to do with this good mood. I'm certainly excited about the historical significance of the event and all that it means, and I am happy to have Obama in office, greatful that one of his first orders of business is to close Guantanamo Bay, and hopeful that his administration will usher in an era of international cooperation to replace the current climate of hostility and violence. 

But mostly, I'm in awe of what he inspires in people. I've never seen a politician evoke such hope, and hope is the beginning of everything. Without it, we can accomplish nothing. If we can hold on to it, especially in the face of a slumping economy, war, poverty, environmental degradation and the vices of our species, there truly is no limit to what we can do and change.

Obama is just a man. He cannot fix everything that is wrong in his country, let alone the world. We have to do that. The American people, the Canadan people, people all over the world -- we can fix the problems that are increasingly affecting us all, regardless of race, religion or economic status. Obama said this in his inauguration speech. It is up to us. If we want change we have to work for it. We have to sacrifice. We have to pull together.  

If you looked at the rapt faces huddled together against the cold in the Mall in Washington on Tuesday, or if you looked around you at the people watching history being made on television, or even if you asked your cab driver whether today wasn't a truly good day, you could see that some part of them was being awakened. They were not cringing from Obama's words. They were soaking them in, and, if they were anything like me, they were more ready then perhaps they've ever been to listen to their 'better angels.'

If a black man can become president of the United States of America, anything is possible. This is what people are saying. I say, the fact that a black man just became president of the United States of America is proof that in our world, everything has been possible for longer than just two days. What is truly wonderful, is that I am genuinely unsurprised that Obama is the US President. I'm ecstatic, I'm moved, but I'm not surprised. 

I've been lucky enough to grow up among people of many different races and religions. The fact that any one of the kids from 'visible minority' groups that I shared my childhood and adolescence with, and that I see outnumbering me on the streets of Toronto each time I go out to buy a bag of milk, could become the Prime Minister of Canada is a given. I've never thought about it. 

For people of my generation who have grown up in Toronto in the 80s and 90s, the events of this week have shown us that what we consider normal was not normal before our lifetimes. This is a good thing, because we know we must guard the progress that has been and is still being made. We must make sure the world continues to eliminate the word 'impossible' from its vocabulary, so that our children see nothing amazing in the fact that our Prime Minister is a Chinese-Canadian woman.

It doesn't hurt, I swear

This isn't exactly what acupuncture looks like. The pins are smaller (only a tad bigger than a human hair), and I don't have quite this many in my face at one time. I also have them in my upper back, arms, feet and upper chest. This week, Yun says I look a 'little less puffy'. Good news, friends, good news.

Other good news: I just started a new part-time job, slinging naan and paneer at Indus Junction. It's a great restaurant, with healthy, fresh Indian food, unique flavour twists, and, ahem, very friendly staff. So come on down and give me a generous tip.

There was a time when I thought I'd never wait tables again. This was about five years ago, after I spent a hellish summer living in a mold-infested cabin, working 12 hour days in the 500 person dining room at a resort in Muskoka. The pay was crap, the tips were double-crap, though the clientele was lovely (they just didn't realize $50 for a week's worth of meals -- breakfast, lunch and dinner -- amounted to about a 2% tip).

I recently learned that the owner's old dog also used to bite children.

Prior to that experience, I had a great six month stint at a noodle house in Kingston during my second year of university. The tips were good, the food was good, the staff was fun, and I got to watch the Kingston Santa Clause parade from the floor to ceiling window one afternoon.

There isn't much of a pattern to all the jobs I've had over the years. But it's fun to think of the different roles I've occupied, people I've met and experiences I've had. A random sampling:

- Being fake puked on by a coworker while practicing CPR during the training for new lifeguards at Bronte Creek Provincial Park Pool. It was chocolate Timbit.

- Teaching a severely autistic child to swim at Oakland's in Oakville. By the end of the session, I could not (no, physically could not) get him out of the pool.

- Sawing, stringing, and tying down Christmas trees to the tops of impossibly high SUVs at Bulow's Garden Centre in Oakville.

- Potting roses in a torrential downpour in the back field of Bulow's Garden Centre. I actually loved this job, contrary to what you might think.

- Enduring cat-calls from men who could be my father for 40% tips at the old Sharkey's in Oakville. I actually hated this job.

- Selling adds in an environmental magazine to Shell and Imperial Oil.

- Collecting statistics on the number of women and visible minorities on the boards of public Canadian corporations.

- Collecting statistics on the number of times the word 'sustainability' is mentioned in the course descriptions from business programs at Canadian universities. I'm serious.

- Staying up till 3 am putting name cards in their plastic cases for an electronics dealer show for Samsung.

- And currently: telling kids that even though pot is 'natural', so is arssenic.

The Lost Hours

In a city as big as T.O., it's rare to feel like you're the only one around. Early Sunday mornings are quiet, even the buses and streetcars sound hushed, and you can hear birds singing on busy streets like College where the traffic drowns them out at other times of the day.

I have Wednesday and Friday off for writing now, and last Wednesday I went for a run in the afternoon. Those lost hours between one and three or three-thirty, when most people are at work or school, are also very quiet. I ran in the melting slush through the narrow streets of Dufferin Grove, past grand houses whose stoops were speckled with salt, and through Trinity Bellwoods Park, misty and wet. The park is usually busy with dog walkers, joggers, kids playing soccer and people simply passing through from Queen to Dundas or the other way around. But as I circled the quarry, slopping through the melting snow, I could only hear my laboured breath and the far-off hissing of cars on Queen.

When I was a kid I loved having to leave school for dentist or doctor's appointments. Not only because I'd get to miss some class, but because I got to move in the world outside the schoolyard during the day, to see what everyone else did while I was learning my times tables. Oakville seemed like a different town, and I felt like a outsider among the moms with their strollers and the business men on business lunches, the sun high in the sky and daytime talk shows on the car radio. Even Tim Horton's was different. For one, there were a lot of old people there, and they were eating their donuts off plates and drinking coffee from real ceramic mugs!

I got that same feeling running last week -- it was a little extravagant, a little transgressive. Like I was skipping school or work, calling in sick to enjoy the grey winter day all alone in this grey winter city. I smiled at the people I passed and they smiled back. There were few enough of us that it made sense to greet each other instead of training our gazes ahead and passing on by. Maybe they were thinking the same thing I was -- lucky us. We're all alone, and together. And we have the whole afternoon.

Sniffles

I haven't mentioned it in much detail here as of yet, but I've been struggling with some major sinus issues over the past twelve months. I've been off and on antibiotics, feeling generally tired and a bit surly, and I haven't been able to keep up my break-neck speed without complaint as per usual.

For those of you who don't know what sinusitis feels like, it's rather like walking around with a brick attached to your face. And you're puffy.

I visited an Ear Nose and Throat specialist twice, who had me in his office all of five minutes each time, and didn't bother to try to figure out what was at the root of this problem beyond asking whether or not I smoked weed. He wore one of those metal discs on a strap around his head that you see in cartoons of doctors, had a moustache like a walrus, and an expression that varied between Mr. Bean's turned down mouth and nose and everyone's eighty-year-old grandfather's 'i'm listening' expression.

He told me I could have surgery. Or I could not. He didn't really care, and, get this, it was UP TO ME. So helpful.

I figure before I break down and have my sinuses cauterized and my nose broken and reset, I'd try to find some alternative therapies that might help free the so-called 'blockage' that exists in my sinus cavities. My landlord suggested acupuncture, which worked for him in the past. So I hit the yellow pages and came up with the Rapson Pain Clinic on Parliament, which is run by Linda Rapson, who has specialized in alternative pain management for decades. Rapson was one of the first doctors in this country to embrace acupuncture as a compliment to western medicine.

When I phoned the clinic, the receptionist informed me in a thick Scottish brogue that the clinic's Chinese Acupuncturist and Herbalist, Yun Ye, was very experienced in treating sinusitis and could see me that week.

Yun Ye is a confident man. He felt my pulse for a good three minutes and declared I had weak lungs, a slightly weak heart as a result, very strong kidneys, a very strong liver and a very strong pancreas. Which makes sense because I've had chronic asthma since I was a toddler.

He asked me for my full medical history, a list of medications I was on, what I ate, what I shat, whether I was a hotter or colder person in general, and whether I was thirsty very often (I am, as it happens). It was the most thorough questioning I'd ever had by a medical professional.

I've had acupuncture before for muscular injuries, and it worked wonders. I imagine it may be able to loosen my sinus blockage, but I'm going to take it one session at a time. Yun Ye says he can not only cure my sinuses, but cure my asthma as well if I keep coming to him. I'm not so sure.

That first appointment he stuck 16 acupuncture needles in me -- a bunch in my face, a few on my forearms, and a bunch in my upper back, including right at the base of my skull, which was very tender and, none too coincidentally, connected to my lungs. The other needles didn't hurt. In fact, I felt strangely relaxed. I felt a warm, pressure-filled feeling beneath the needles, like energy was gathering under my skin. I'm not sure yet, but I think the brick on my face felt just a little lighter for the rest of that day.

So I'm willing to give this acupuncture thing a college try. But I may pour the 'lung tonic' and 'immunobooster' serums Yun Ye told me would advance the healing process down the drain. Because they cost next to nothing, and because the MD in the clinic assured me they were perfectly safe, even in combination with my other medications, I took them home with me. They taste worse than anything I have ever put in my mouth. But, centuries of Chinese medicine is based on the properties of amazing plants and a philosophy that attributes any chronic illness to an imbalance of energy in the body's 'meridians' or 'energy corridors' (corrected through acupuncture), and Chinese people live a really long time. I think I should give the whole treatment the benefit of the doubt for now.

The idea of holistic treatment makes a lot of sense to me, because I know my asthma, sinusitis and allergies are all connected by, or perhaps caused by, the same things. When I have more money (some day!) I plan on visiting an osteopath, nutritionist and maybe a naturopath to see what they have to say. The amount of medication I take for my asthma makes me feel like I'm eighty. I shudder to think what it will be like when I am eighty if I don't somehow cut back on them.

I'll keep you posted on my progress, for those of you who suffer from a similar illness and are wondering what else besides more drugs or surgery might be out there for you. Rest assured that I am open to the new ideas this kind of approach brings with it, but I remain a skeptic that will only be fully convinced of Chinese acupuncture and herb treatment's effectiveness by an improvement in my own condition.

As Yun Ye, who'd kindly pointed out the 'puffiness' of my face at the beginning of my appointment, blithely tapped needles into my cheeks, I asked him if they'd leave any marks. He said, "Sure, sure. You'll look better after." I'm counting on it, Yun, I'm counting on it!

PS I'm also using the Neil-Med Sinus Rinse irrigation system, which is just as gross as it sounds, but does help. Check it out here.

What to Expect

This is a photo of my street from last year, but it has already looked like this twice in December. In the back of my apartment there are wooden steps I have to take to get to the garbage and green bins. What used to be four distinct steps is now a treacherous incline plane of frozen snow and ice that I slipped down last week, tossing empty cans and boxes into the air like dangerous confetti.

Undone in 2009

Happy 2009 friends. Was it not just last year that we celebrated the millenium? It seems like yesterday. I believe I rang that one in by getting drunk with my 17-year-old girlfriends and participating in some heavily choreographed Grease lip-syncing.

Nope. Not joking.

I could write a big long post reflecting on my life in the past year -- successes, failures, heart-aches, philosophies -- but I seem perpetually in media res these days. Nothing is finished: not my degree, or my thesis, or my household projects (I have curtains and a curtain rod lying behind the couch that I meant to put up in September), or my job, or my life plan. Which, on second thought, I hope will never be finished.

But here are a few things I hope will happen in 2009, made up right now, on the spot:

- I'd like to be published in a reputable literary magazine. I should probably start actually submitting work to someone.
- I'd like to take up dancing again. Any kind. Because I'll need some serious stress relief from working on my thesis, which
- I'd like to finish by July.
- I'd like to make enough money to buy nice shampoo. Right now I always have to settle for whatever is on sale. And it usually sucks. In other words,
- I'd like to get a new job, at some point, in some interesting field, somewhere, with comprehensive health benefits, because
- I'd like to unclog my sinuses. Strange resolution you might say, but trust me, it takes determination and a willingness to try anything, including poking needles in my face (otherwise known as acupuncture).
- I'd like to travel somewhere in Canada and somewhere outside Canada.
- I'd like to do something I've never done before, whether that means rock climbing or riding on a motorcycle or eating bugs (cooked ones) or house sitting in Europe or making a quilt ...
- I'd like to play my flute more and start some lessons again, which is dependent on points four and five happening.
- I'd like to spend more time with my nieces and nephews. I need role models who can teach me how to live in the moment.
- I'd like to take more pictures, and post some to this blog...wait. I'm going to start that one RIGHT NOW.