What would be a Reading Response Journal if I was a kid in high school.

From where I sit under this blanket on the couch at 2 a.m., I am directly in front of my bookshelves. Reading the titles, I find that I can remember details from probably less than half. Is this the fault of my shit memory, or the fault of the authors? Those worlds inside their heads were important enough for them to write down, important enough for them to believe in, important enough to get published.

I mostly remember the emotions attached to the books, which I guess is something. I liked this one. I should probably get rid of that one; I thought it was dull. Some of them are brilliant. I remember those. 

I could stop buying new books and just start re-reading the old ones and my memory would be none the wiser. So why read at all, if I can't remember what I've read? (Because words are like breath, like blood.) 

There is one shelf devoted to books that remain as yet unread. I try not to go over the one shelf, because I am a reader, not a collector. The collection is just the incidental evidence, the reminder, the proof. To merely have is nothing; to have read is everything.  

I have a smattering of novels that I've picked up along the way, the kind of avant-garde post-modern novels that make me furious, whether because I'm either too stupid to understand or they are so academically pretentious, I can't tell. I resisted literary theory in university. The signifiers and the memes meant nothing to me, the Derridas and the Lacans and the Heideggers. I am a formalist and a reader-response theorist at heart: tell me a story, make it good, make me care. I can appreciate form and structure and craft and intent, but without heart, a story is no damn good. 

The book I am currently reading is called I Love Dick. Such a brilliant title! I had such high hopes. I picked it up in a little independent book store in Toronto, and I really should have known better: the publisher is Semiotex(e) Native Agents by The MIT Press, and one of the blurbs on the back uses the phrase "forged a manifesto for a new kind of feminism." File this under I'm-too-stupid or it's-so-pretentious. 

But while I am sort of hating the process of reading this particular novel, it is having an indirectly positive impact on me. I feel like maybe I have an unforged feminist manifesto simmering away somewhere inside me, under the skin and in my subconscious (which is where unforged feminist manifestos lurk before they screech and claw their way out onto the page, obviously). 

Is this the kind of bullshit book I will eventually write? The kind of forgettable but infuriating-at-the-same-time, pretentious, overly-allusive novel I hate? Is it possible to write a feminist manifesto that doesn't make me want to puke? Can I be the one to write such a beast? 

At nearly 3 a.m., the immediate answer is no. But you never fucking know, do you? Until that (unlikely but still possible) day, ah well, and riot on.  

 

  

   

Breathe in. Hold your breath. ... Relax.

You have tiny veins, she tells me.

I am strapped down and tucked in, ears plugged and panic bulb in hand.

The machine buzzes and clicks, whirs and beeps, chugs and rat-a-tat-tats, and I wonder if all this noise is entirely necessary or if it is maybe just there for ambience, as my hydrogen protons align and radio frequencies pulse and magnets cycle on and off.

Breathe in, says a robotic female voice. Hold your breath. ... Relax.

Breathe in. Hold your breath. ... Relax.

Someone has taped pictures to the roof of the machine, to distract us from all that noise, to keep our brains occupied, to keep us from panicking. The one directly above me is labeled "Junk drawer 2": needles and pins and paper clips, a couple of dice, the filament of a lightbulb, tiny locks, a plastic spoon, pennies and buttons and keys, elastic bands, a pair of scissors, a single jack, a piece of track from an electric train set, a tiny skeleton in black.

Breathe in. Hold your breath. ... Relax.

My eye is drawn to that last. Who has a tiny black skeleton in their junk drawer? How much death have these magnets seen? How much malignancy? How many growths and nodules and cysts?

The picture farther down, the one I can't really see without tilting my head, which I am not supposed to do, is labeled "Monsters Inc. 2." Someone has drawn a collage of creepy purple monsters to vaguely resemble Disney Pixar creatures.

Breathe in. Hold your breath. ... Relax.

I find monsters an odd choice; they are hardly comforting. Someone's black humour? The same someone who inserted a tiny skeleton into the junk drawer?

Okay, I'm going to put the dye in now, he says, injecting something into the needle in my arm.

Will it make me feel like I'm peeing my pants? I ask. The CT dye a couple of weeks ago made me feel like I was peeing my pants.

Different dye, he tells me. You won't feel like you're peeing your pants. How do you feel?

I'm fine.

Good. If you were going to have a reaction, you'd have had it by now.

And back in I go.

Something by Richard Scarry would be better, I think, as the machine begins its noises anew.

Breathe in. Hold your breath. ... Relax.

We could spend our time in this chamber finding Goldbug. Or possibly Waldo. Even Waldo would be better than skeletons and monsters.

I breathe in, I hold my breath, I relax. Strangely, I find myself dozing off.

Eventually the whirring and clacking stop and a muffled voice above me tells me we're all done here. She takes the needle out of my arm and he unstraps me from the table. I remove the earplugs.

We'll have the results in about a week, she says. I want to ask them what they see, but I know I'll have to wait.

Breathe in. Hold my breath. ...  

Fire it up, boys!

Fire it up, boys! Make it steam and sizzle and spit. Stoke that flame, watch her blister and burn, choke and cough, turn to ashes and spill out of your fist like so many wasted nights and worthless pennies, only to be reborn and fly away somewhere out of reach.

January

I am mourning a loss.

The only problem is that I'm not sure exactly what it is that I've lost. Youth? Time? You?

On this planet in space, are we hurtling or drifting? Can we simultaneously hurtle and drift? (But, oh, let's not think too deeply about our place in the universe, not alone in the middle of the night in the dead of winter with the weight of imminent decay threatening to crush us like a gnat under my thumb.)

With all those organs crammed in there, all that bone, all that blood, how can there be such an emptiness? It's like looking at someone across the pillow and having them seem a million miles away.

I want to sleep like a cat, curled up into myself.

I want to force the moment to its climax. (I want to eat a peach.)

But instead I will watch the dull orange glow of the dying light bulb above my head fade, and mourn my shadowy loss.

 








    

Fuck the status quo.

While lying in bed tonight, I was thinking about traditions (and also styles of baseboard, but that isn't particularly relevant to the issue at hand), and I came to the conclusion that just because something is always done doesn't mean that it is wise, or useful, or good.

Take the big three: Christmas, Easter, and Valentine's Day, and then throw in weddings for good measure. People feel enormous amounts of pressure and spend enormous amounts of money for no reason other than the fact that there are certain things that are done (and therefore expected) on these days. The exchange of one $25 gift card for another, the flora struck down in its prime, the bland chicken dinners in return for the buying of toasters: none of these things make any sense to me, so I choose not to participate, or at least to participate as little as possible.

As a topical aside, a certain amount of Christmas gift giving is unavoidable when one's family members love the holiday. I do send cards, which is wildly hypocritical of me, I know. This year I refrained from digging the Christmas cone (my sparkly silver conical version of a tree) out from under the stairs, although I did place the Santa Grinch (a green-faced cloth Santa figurine that my mother gave me one year, which I love for his oddness) on display. But that is as much Christmas tradition as I will concede.

I think people should never do anything if the only reason for the behaviour is that they feel socially obligated to. There is too much passive acquiescence and not enough thoughtful rebellion in this world.

Cut down a tree and throw some shiny stuff on it in March if you like the look of pine trees covered in shiny stuff so much--people will probably think you've gone mental. Go mental, I say! Don't put up a tree at Christmas. (Hell, don't even put out the Christmas cone!)

Throw a party to celebrate summer because people don't get outside enough and the warm weather only lasts for so long.

Hang out with someone instead of buying them something (time is so much more valuable than things), but if you see something you know someone you care about will really like or could really use, buy it for them, just because it's Tuesday.

Don't get married--marriage was only useful when fathers needed to pass their daughter-objects on to another man and men needed to ensure a legitimate heir in order to maintain their property.

Splurge on some really good chocolate in a month other than February, April, or December.

Tell the people you love that you love them because you want to, not because you feel you have to.

Do what feels right for you (unless what feels right includes pedophilia or murder) and don't worry about what society will think of you. The less you care, the less powerful society becomes, and the more powerful YOU become in turn.

To sum up, because it is after 4 a.m. and my eyes are heavy and my brain is winding down, I urge you all to go bravely forward into this black wintry night, and fuck the status quo whenever you can, because it needs a good hard fucking, don't you agree?  


   

Organized religion is the goddamn worst.

I do not come from a religious background. My spiritual leanings lie decidedly in the agnostic camp. I think reincarnation is a nice idea, but find the goal of enlightenment incomprehensible, because what happens once we've self-actualized and the cycle ends? Does our consciousness just dissolve into the universe like Jello powder into boiling water? I also find it pretty unlikely that anything like your anthropomorphized god exists, and, if on the off chance some sort of grand creator actually is responsible for the existence of the universe, I am also fairly certain that it doesn't concern itself with the thoughts and actions of such lowly creatures as human beings on this insignificant hunk of rock spinning lazily in space.

I do, however, believe that we do not know all there is to know about the world and our reason for being, and that one day it might be possible to scientifically prove the existence of the soul. I can't help but believe that I have one, that this particular spark (to crib a metaphor from every philosopher ever) belongs to me and me alone, and that my particular particles somehow make me a part of something bigger. (A really intricate Jello mold?)  

Yesterday I had the distinctly tragic experience of attending a Catholic funeral in all its pomp and glory. (As an aside, the circumstances of the death still have me reeling, and if I think about it for too long - like, oh, say, two seconds - I get really, really angry and really, really sad. The hypocrisy of the Catholic church infuriates me, but that is a blog for another time, a time when the wound is not as fresh and I can express my thoughts without becoming overwhelmed by emotion.)

Revulsion for the Catholic church aside, I found the experience to be rather interesting from an anthropological point of view. All the sitting and standing and singing reminded me of kindergarten. There are colourful pictures to look at on the walls, and you get snacks if you are a good child of God. (Are the believers filled with the joy of the holy spirit when they consume the "blood" and "body" of old J.C., or do they simply enjoy the tasty little treat as they (humbly) sashay their way down the post-eucharist runway?) There is comfort in the repetition of the rituals and the words, the way small children ask to be told the same stories over and over again, and comfort in the priest's soothing voice, lulling the children to sleep, pacifying their grief, smoothing over their indignation and their fear.  

I rather enjoyed the heady perfume of the incense the priest used as a symbolic way of consecrating the air, the bible, the corpse in the casket in front of us, despite being pretty sure that incense was the medieval way to offset the stink of the unwashed masses before the advent of aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrate and Colgate, and therefore also feeling sort of insulted. I also enjoyed the acoustics and the choir of school children, although I think the hymns need an update and the hymn writers could probably use a rhyming dictionary and maybe a refresher course in melody. (Man, do those things drag.)

What goes through the minds of the faithful when they are asked to pray? Do they really give serious consideration to Christ and the promise of everlasting life, or do they remember to add fabric softener to the grocery list? And what's up with that inane practice of shaking your neighbour's hand? (I refused on lack of religious principle, although I felt like sort of a dick afterwards. I will respectfully sit and stand and sit and stand and sit and stand again, because I am in your house of worship and people I love are grief-stricken and shattered, but I will not otherwise participate in your cultish bleating and blind obeisance.)

Catholicism seems to me to be full of archaic customs and oversimplified sentiments that speak to that childish part of ourselves, that part that is afraid of the world and wants to be comforted and protected and assured that there are no monsters under the bed, if only we believe hard enough.

As much as I would like to believe otherwise, life in all probability is a complete accident, and therefore irrelevant except to those around us whose lives we impact because we all share in this extraordinary happenstance. So hide your head beneath the covers if you must, tuck those feet in and turn on the nightlight, bow your head in humility and recite the Lord's Prayer and beg to be forgiven for sins that mankind, not God, has created to keep you in line. 

But know that I think you are a moron and a coward with no trust in your own ability to behave with decency and respect to the people with whom you share this earthly world. Think of how much blood has been spilled and how much wealth has been spent glorifying gods throughout the ages when the Golden Rule is the only principle anyone really needs. Organized religion is the goddamn worst.   

Sad

I wish that all the people who were sad, all the people who had bad things happen to them that were out of their control, or all the people who just felt sad because of goofy chemical imbalances in their brains, and felt overwhelmed and ashamed of their sadness, understood, even through their sadness, that there were still people who loved them even though they were sad, people who would listen to them and not judge them and try to help them be a little less sad.

Because when sad people become so hopeless that they take their own lives to stop the sadness, the world becomes a sadder place, and the world is sad enough already.

So it is our duty as human beings sharing this planet with other human beings to try to make it a little less sad whenever we can. Tell the people you love that you love them, even when it's hard. Don't hold grudges, because years will go by and you'll eventually realize how much you miss that person. Help those in need whenever possible, through money or time or emotional support or whatever you have to give. Forgive people their trespasses, because they're just slogging through the best way they can. And be kind to each other, because life is not always kind. Thanks.