Barefoot Ponderings

Why don’t you go grab a refreshing beverage before you sit down to read this, because I can tell it is going to be a long one.

Everything is all connected, and for better or worse, where you’re at is so much the product of where you’ve been. Whith this in mind, I’m going to work backwards through my life a little bit, up to the point I last checked in here.

Today I am really, really happy. I’m wearing some brand new pants. Ordinarily that would be good, but it’s great right now because I got splashed head to toe by a bus that I boarded only seconds later, at the stop just outside Value Village where I had just purchased said pants. I didn’t mind too much because being splashed can only happen when the weather is lovely, and it is, and it also made a baby on the bus laugh very heartily, which can only be a good thing anyway, and I happened to be on my way to the pool (and shower), and now had a clean pair of pants with me.

I think I was happy to begin with today, because yesterday I spent a lot of time making gifts for people out of scrap fabric from Arts Junktion, and listened to Vampire Weekend a lot, and wore my onesie pajamas. Vampire Weekend was making me happy for obvious reasons, and because a couple songs are now burned into a special place in my heart. I, days earlier, finished the final pages of “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” while listening to the album, and found that the words and feelings of the songs were aligning in a goosebumpily way with how the ending of the book was making me feel, and the moment was one of the kind that you can’t explain with words to anyone, but just experience in a real (maybe an extremely loud and incredibly close) way. I will come back to that, if I figure out how to. Making presents was making me happybecause I think they will make some of you happy, and because making them keeps my mind and hands working on the same thing at the same time, which almost never happens in life, since we’re almost never doing exactly what we want to or think we should be doing, or else sometimes we are, but we haven’t caught onto the fact yet. That’s why art makes people happy sometimes, I think, and why it lets people be very sad in a way that’s ok, I think. Also, making nice things out of stuff that would have been hucked if Arts Junktion hadn’t saved it, made me happy, for obvious reasons.

Arts Junktion is a place not unlike the Reuse Centre in Edmonton, and you likely know that the Reuse Centre makes me very happy. I was lamenting the fact that no such place existed in Winnipeg, until a few weeks ago I was wandering about, and I met Gord. I was in Goodwill looking at a painting and then Gord came up and started talking to me about the painting, which I didn’t really like, but I said I did, because he liked it and he seemed nice and I didn’t want to be rude. And then we walked all throughout Goodwill (and it is a big one, with three two enormous floors) commenting on all the paintings, and after maybe an hour, we were still talking outside Goodwill. I think we started telling each other interesting things about our lives, and it was the most exciting and necessary experience I’d had in a while, because I think I had been craving a spontaneous and honest conversation with a stranger for some time now, and one had not come my way until then. I’m not going to tell you what we talked about, and maybe that is not fair since you are reading faithfully through all of this, but in a way, it is just between Gord and I, and I will just tell you that it changed some things for me, for the better. I said I had to go home and he said he was going to this place where you could get free art supplies a block away and would I want to come, and I said if it was that close I would come for a minute. And then he tried to lead me into this creepy back alley and I went a little balistic for a minute and asked him why the fuck he thought I would follow him into an alley that lead nowhere, and I started walking away, very upset. But then he came back, and he asked if I would go with him if we went on the sidewalk, around the block, not through the alley. And I got mad at him again, but I went, because then I could see the sign, and that he really was only using the alley as a short cut, and the whole way there I told him it was really stupid of him to try and take girls into alleys, and then we laughed because he said that he supposed it was too. Anyway, that is how I discovered Arts Junktion, and I feel that maybe sometime I will run into Gord there again, which would make me happy.

I think I had been craving a spontaneous conversation with a stranger because I had realized that everyone I love used to be a stranger, and that I am always unknowingly teetering on the brink between not knowing strangers and then loving them. That made me really, really happy, and I think I had been thinking about all of that because of some sort of new friends I have been making a school, who I know will be important to me later, and I had been trying to take snap shots in my mind of the moments in time when the teetering between not loving and loving them met one another. And, obviously, I had been thinking about loving people because I had just come back from Alberta from Christmas break. Being with just about everybody that I needed to be with in those few weeks was really good, and gave me something to measure my life in Winnipeg up against, in a new way. I think I had been wishing for more people to love, and then when I had that and remembered how good it was, I knew that I had to work harder on having people here to love, and that realization made me really, really happy, because there are undoubtedly a lot of loveable people here.

And to properly set the background for having fate bring interesting things into your life, Rubin Carter came to my school! I wanted to ask him a question, but then I got too shy and also we were running out of time, and I regret it now, but it’s ok. If you don’t know who he is, I think you should watch “The Hurricane” or maybe just google him or something if you don’t have time. One night me and Dave were playing cards on my bed and I had my itunes on shuffle and “The Hurricane” (the song, not the movie) by Bob Dylan came on, and I said I liked the song but didn’t know what it was about. Dave said it was about this guy named Rubin Carter and that there was a movie and we should rent it. So then a couple days later we rented it, and I became obsessed with Rubin Carter, and how the reasons he is alive and fre today are tangled up very much in coincedence, like the situation that lead to me hearing about his story in the first place. So then, in my obsession with Rubin Carter, I was walking around campus only a couple days after that, wondering if he was too old to still be alive or not, and then I saw a gigantic poster of his face, saying that he was coming to school the next week! So I saw him, and it was very cool, and his hands are maybe big enough to palm my entire head.

So, I think that’s probably enough for now. Of course there are lots of other things I could write about, like how I got a bad steam burn on my hand that is never going to heal and keeps bleeding all over the place in an embarassing way, or how much “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” answered questions I didn’t realize that I had yet, but I don’t really know how to explain to you all, so I won’t try to right now, or how I am becoming a way better swimmer and don’t have to wear the embarrassing florescent belt like the seniors in aquasize anymore, or even how I have, as of late, been making amazing salad dressings with ingredients I hadn’t thought to mix before. But I should quit, and will, and will let you get on with your lives. If you actually read through all of that, thanks. If not, I can see why. As usual, I haven’t spell checked it, and so I hope you waded through this alright.

The end.

Sometimes you’ve got to adapt your behaviour to the social context in which you find yourself at a particular moment in time. You know, little things, like how you mind slip in a wee cuss word when in the company of certain people, but keep it pretty G-rated around others. It’s not that you’re not being yourself, you’re just choosing to expose different aspects of yourself to make it work. I don’t know if it’s an attempt at authenticity or continuity, or something far less valiant and more related to the general dissonance between where I usually am in my mind and where I am in my body, but I sometimes marvel at my incredibly slow transitions between social contexts.

What brought this on, was my spilling a third of a cup of coffee on the walk from picking it up at the counter in a yuppie little coffee shop, to my table, 15 meters away (oh, on an unrelated note, I’m using meters these days, rather than feet. It was inspired by the GPS system we used in the summer when we were out here looking for apartments, when I realized I have poor distance-in-meters estimation skills. I figure I’ll get a really good handle on that, then hit the weight-in-kilograms thing hard, since that’s the real struggle. But, I digress…). I sat there for several minutes before realizing that I’d done it.

At The Mustard Seed, everybody dribbles coffee. People bash into each other, or have shaky hands, have missing fingers, gesture with their hands as they tell stories, might be in a hurry to get in line for clothes or something, might be sick or weak, might be completely preoccupied mentally and not realize they’ve spilled, or might not give a hoot if they did spill. And it’s awesome (not for Tom, who cleans the floors, but he’s trooper). As much as it’s not socially appropriate in almost any other situation, you can spill coffee at the Seed to your little heart’s content.

There’s not much of a point to this story, per se. I guess I’m just thinking about being back there soon, spilling coffee and eating stale cookies and being myself, and just lovin’ it.

AND, speaking of continuity, my favourite pen died today. Hey Sarah, if you read this, it was a pen you lent me at that Calvin conference. I secretly never gave it back to you because I really liked how the ink came out, and it seemed like it was almost out of ink anyway. But, it was a real Hanukah pen, and the ink has lasted what, 3 or 4 years, and finally bit the biscuit today. I guess I owe you a pen….

AND, speaking of getting out of here, I think it’s high time. Dave’s been gone for a number of days already, and I have been hunkered down in my apartment “studying” and watching movies and writing mail. I haven’t interacted with anyone other than Jayda hardly at all for 6 days. It has been awesome, but I just caught myself causally saying “Jayda, I don’t stick my face in your bowl of tuna, would you please not drink my coffee? That was rude.” Suffice to say, I will be VERY happy to interact with all of you when I see you.

All I can say right now, is that sometimes your desire to throw a sack of hammers at the girl who talks loudly on her phone in the library computer room, is tempered by the boy with his face 2 inches from the screen, who seems to have just discovered google earth.

The shenanigans of the boy in front of me (who likes to use the washroom frequently and walk out while the toilet is still flushing, indicating his disregard for hand washing), sitting next to the girl who has sanitized her hands three times since I came in, is delightfully distracting. If stats has taught me anything, its that there seems to be correlation, and potentially causation in their two behaviours.

Using public computers is not good for my productivity, but great for my quality of life.

Ah, well things are lookin’ up since I was here last. They always do. I get by with a little help from my friends, haha.

The following thoughts and experiences have contributed to the week’s improvement:

One. There are some computers in the library reserved for people who only want to use them for 10 minutes or less. You have to stand in front of them, and there are four of them, side by side. I was standing at one in the middle of the line when, very suddenly, I was overcome and nearly defeatd by the flatulence of an anonymous neighbour. Aweful. Go-to-the-hospital-and-have-that-checked-out aweful. “Don’t be rude,” I mentally coach myself. “Don’t make a stink about it,” I mentally quip. “Ha, good one, you,” I mentally affirm. The fellow using the computer next to me glanced my direction briefly, then looked down before I could make eye contact with him. I looked at his screen, and to my amusement he had typed “pretty foul, eh???”. I discretely typed back “um, yes. Terrible.” He responded with a “:)” and walked away, smiling. I figure he could have been the culprit, could have suspected that I was the culprit, though too polite to suggest it, or could have been just another innocent by-stander. In any case cudos, stranger who I now desire a friendship with.

Two. A classmate and I spent a few minutes talking after class today, and he shared his “5 Simple Rules of Understang Human Nature” with me. Though a dismal view of our species, he does implicate himself, and does provide room for hope. In a cheeky way, too, he is on to something, and made me laugh.

Rule #1: Some people are stupid.

Rule #2: Some people are bastards.

Rule #3: Some people are stupid bastards.

Rule #4: Sometimes you are the stupid bastard.

Rule #5: Sometimes people surprise you.

Three. WHY does everybody love eggnog? It. Is. Everywhere, and if I had three wishes from a genie, I might honestly wish either for eggnog to cease existing, or alternately to just start liking it. I feel defective for not liking it, but at the same time, GET AHOLD OF YOURSELVES AND STOP DRINKING EGGS. Kay, done. Sorry.

Four. My mother is the most tender-hearted, gentle, gracious person on the face of the earth, and has been capable of forgiveness and love far beyond anything I have dreamed of embracing in my own heart. I have a love/awe/respect for her that I cannot verbalize completely, or even understand, and every year at Christmas time I hurt her a little bit with my holiday cynicism. Embracing “nice” things becomes almost impossible for me when I see loopholes for those same things to be a negative experience for others. I mean, I’m hesitant to ascribe positive value to events/objects/processes/systems/groups etc. that others may have experienced as hurtful, oppressive, or excluding. It’s a curse, in a way, because it can be taken so far as to actively damage a relationship as a precaution to avoid potentially damaging another relationship, if that makes sense. Anyway, I’ve already done it a little bit this year, but this morning on the bus I gave myself a good talking to, and have vowed that from December 17 through January 4, I will allow my mother to absolutely relish her tree and lights and cookies and gifts and carols, as a way of extending her deep, wide love to those around her. I will recognize that it is a healing time of the year for her, I will accept that, and I will allow her to bestow that upon me, in order to accomplish it for herself.

Hey, remember that week when I had pink eye and my appartment caved in, and my dog died? That’s what I’ll be saying about this past week years from now.

On the positive side, it seems like Dr. rush-and-get-out-of-here was right in his diagnosis of my eyes. The drops are working and the rash is almost gone. It’s still irritating though, and it makes me mad because I’m sure he doesn’t give any more attention to patients with potentially more serious ailments than mine. But as Dave pointed out, there are reasons why some doctors end up in walk-in clinics, and not other settings. No slight to walk-in clinic doctors… just most of the ones I’ve met. That was Monday.

Wednesday was the day my face was at its most hideous stage of rash development, and also the day my bedroom ceiling started dripping. Then leaking. Then gushing. My landlord had a look, said there must be a leak in the suite above mine, and that she’d have to give 24 hours notice before a plumber could enter that suite. So 24 hours later, after multiple buckets of rusty water had soaked my carpet, the saturated plaster had fallen off my ceiling, and a sizeable hole had formed where the foundation used to be, the plumber fixed the leak. He patched the hole and emptied the bucket, and she left a role of paper towel in my room… I’m sleeping in the living room, and am fairly repulsed by my carpet (more repulsed than I was before), and am generally not sure what to do. I hate confrontation, and am hoping it doesn not come to that. Sigh.

That was Thursday. That was also the night my mom called and told me that they had to put my dog down. He was old and blind and had diabetes, so it wasn’t a surprise. I’m just really sad about it though, because he was such a good dog who slept in my bed for ten years with me, and even when he was blind he would wag his tail whenever I talked to him. Even my dad said he couldn’t be in there when they gave him his needle. So yes, it was a sad day.

I’m not complaining, it was just a long week. Nicer things included hearing a half hour of my brother’s Family Guy impressions on the phone, getting a good mark on a little paper I was worried about, and going on a day trip to Oak Hammock Marsh with Dave, which is where Duck’s unlimited has their head offices, and a cool interpretive centre in a giant wetland. I know that time will fly now, and in about three weeks Jayda and I will be one a plane home for a while!

Oh, PS. If you have called me and I never called you back, this is why. Haha. I will, promise!

1. Why do people say “to and fro,” but also “back and forth”? It would make more sense to say “forth and back.”

2. I have to choose a field of study for my practicum. They all seem to want Child and Family Services, which is great, because I sure do not. I don’t know what to pick though. A great thing about The Mustard Seed was being able to see the intersection of housing, addictions, Aboriginal, women’s, employment, criminal justice and mental health issues. It was at an individual, group, family, and community level. There was counseling, relationship building, and advocacy. It’s jeans and t-shirts, coffee and stale cookies with people. I really loved all of it, and I don’t know exactly how to choose this next step. Thoughts?

3. I seem to have pink eye. Which is irritating by nature, but also because of the doctor I went to see about it. Here’s the run-down:

Dr: What brings you here today?

Jamie: I have this rash all around my eyes and it’s really itchy. It’s been getting worse for maybe 2 weeks.

Dr (shines light in eyes): So, what kind of work do you do?

Jamie: I’m a social work student.

Dr: Oh, you’re about to get very busy. All those people, “Wah, wah, give me some money. They’ll come crying to you.”

Jamie: Um…

Dr (writing illegible prescription): You have pink eye. Take this to the pharmacy. Come back in a week if it didn’t work. Bye bye. (Walks out)…

4. My student loan was finally approved! Giant sigh of relief.

5. Leanne and Jenny visited! Doug and Leslie visited! I am going home in like 3 weeks!

6. Jayda +new toy infused with catnip = very, very awesome.

Any of you who read celebrity gossip might recognize this girl. 

I should definitely not be blogging right now, because I am really swamped with homework this weekend. There are a few completely unrelated questions swirling around in my head though, and blogging them might just help to get them out of there so I can focus on what I’m supposed to be thinking about.

1) Can lip balm go rotten? I have a little metal container of Bert’s Bees lip balm that I bought in about grade 11. I went to use some the other day and it tasted really sour and weird.

2) What’s in mothballs to make them smell like that? I have been smelling mothballs in all kinds of places lately. The bus smells like mothballs sometimes, as does one part of the basement of my building, as does one of the bathrooms at school. The best explanation I have right now is that someone living in my basement is very paranoid about moths, and that they occasionally take my same bus and pee in my same bathroom. I don’t think that is true though.

3) With more serious implications than the above, do you think that real social democracy is even possible in Canada? I mean, I’ve probably spent the last ten years believing in it and voting for it and writing the occasional letter espousing its value. I’ve spent the last year since being home from Iceland dorkily obsessing over Scandinavian social policy and wavering back and forth between being completely jealous of it and wondering about what all its negative implications must be. I’m taking a really interesting policy class this semester and some of the readings have made me start to wonder if its all a big pipe dream for a place like Canada. With Scandinavian countries taking up comparatively tiny amounts of space, having comparatively uniform populations, having had governments and constitutions for a lot longer than Canada, and just being less diverse economically, culturally, religiously, etc on a whole, it seems like socialism just has a better shot at working. I mean, is it too diverse here for it to work? A far greater number of ethnic, cultural, religious, special interest, economic, business and linguistic groups want legislation, funds, recognition and rights. And I wish they all had them, you know, but given the number of groups, and the fact that we’ve had a conservative mindset for so long now, could it ever happen? Don’t think I’m bailing, I’m just scratching my head a little.

4) And moving on, is it wrong to steal dirt? If there is a whole lot of dirt in front of the legislature because they just worked up the flower beds, and a broke university student walks by it every day and needs a little for repotting her plants, would it be stealing to take a little scoop of it? It’s just a little bit, and its been paid for by the public and they put too much of a mound on there anyway. But its not intended to be taken, and if everyone took some, it would be gone. It’s also just ironic that I want to steal someone else’s dirt next to a state of Louis Riel, if you know what I mean. Ya, that’s stealing, isn’t it?…

5) Finally, I know very little about ADD or ADHD or other diagnoses of kids who have trouble sitting still. But Dave and I were watching some of our favourite childhood shows on youtube last night. Babar, The Friendly Giant, Mr. Dress-up, and Fred Penner. We both laughed about how slooooowly they moved along. At the lullaby-like music plinking in the background. At calm, kind, unscripted banter between the fellas and their puppets. “No wonder kids can’t sit still anymore” was our mutual reaction. The seizure inducing flashing and violent action of little boys’ shows, and the sexualization of children and promotion of cliquey, materialistic, superficial lifestyle in little girls’ shows is a whole other ball game compared to the shows of our childhood. Kids eat more empty carbohydrates, get less exercise, and watch more f these types of shows on the whole, and do you think its messing them up?

Good, got that all taken care of, haha. Now to my book…

Thanksgiving was awesome. Dave’s mom and dad came to Winnipeg for the weekend, and we walked and talked through Winnipeg’s first snow of the season, played games, and ate. It was a first for Dave and I to be in charge of hosting, planning and preparing a holiday meal, and was so much fun! We made mashed potatoes with cream cheese and chives, stuffing, rainbow carrots, leeks with a white sauce, pear, spinach and almond salad, cream of mushroom and wild rice soup, roasted chicken and gravy (care of Dave) and pumpkin pie with whipped cream (care of moi)! With lots of wine to wash it all down, it was one of the greatest days we’ve had since being here.

I feel remarkably settled here, and have a bit of a routine. I get up early and drink lots of coffee, I swim, read, cook, read some more, cook some more, and hang out with Dave and Jayda. I’m going to start walking dogs at the SPCA next week. I go to church on Sundays, and I think I will start to get a little more involved there too. However, I still view this as a temporary settlement. It is probably a little unhealthy, but between my responsibilities to school work and the number of deep, amazing relationships I am trying to sustain with the people I love back home, I am really not too interested in cultivating a social life here at this point. I define my time by the letters I write and receive, the visitors who have come and whom I know are coming soon, the situations that are too funny or frustrating or profound not to share with someone who is not here to experience it with me, and the trips I will make home, like at Christmas. Sometimes I think I should try harder to be more present here in deeper ways. Mostly though, I feel like the relationships I have back home are so rich and deep, built on so much history, emotion, dedication, struggle and love, that nothing that could be built here could ever be like them. I feel a loyalty to those relationships that transcends distance and change, and will resist losing them however possible. I’ve never felt lonely here, only far away, and I think that is an important distinction. There is a place and there are people that I am gravitationally pulled to. Many people never experience that, and I don’t know how I have either. I just know its there and that I want to keep it.

I would be interested to hear from you who have moved away. How you have felt. How you have approached your new homes and how you have held your old ones.

And you who are still there. How do you hold onto those who leave? By their leaving, how have they changed things for you?

As many of you know, I can’t really swim. As a kid I had problems with my ear drums, and wasn’t allowed to put my head under water. I also sink like a stone, so its a tricky combo. I took some swimming lessons, but dropped out after red level because of the ear thing. I always felt like a loser because I can’t swim well, and especially after Iceland, I kind of dreamed of starting my days off with a swim. So, today I used my new pool membership for the first time, and it was freaking awesome!

Speaking of feeling like a loser, picture, if you will: my glaringly white body entering into the pool. It’s the shallow end, and its divided into six very wide lanes. One is empty, so I get in there. I don my new goggles and ear plugs, and practice putting my head below the surface. When I’m feeling ready to go, I begin dog paddling my way to the other end of the lane. It is very far away. I crap out part way through, flail momentarily, grab the lane divider, but then stand up, remembering I am in 4 foot deep water. Shit. I look around, and I don’t think anybody saw. Good. I dog paddle the rest of the way there, happily grabbing the edge. I take a very long rest, as to avoid repeating the trauma of the first lap, and then take off dog paddling my way along. I make it in one shot, and must have a look of triumph on my face, judging by the smile given to me from the woman in the lane next to mine, who might have though I was handicapped.

Then I realize they have a glorious, glorious room full of flotation devices. Realizing that I already look ridiculous, I strap on a fluorescent orange foam belt. This time when I take off on my dog paddling journey, I glide like a smiling, goggled, lunatic all the way there! Inspired by my new found mobility, I decide its time to put my head under. I start to use the front crawl fr the first time since I was… 9?… silently thank the life guard and the universe for making the lanes as wide as they are, keeping others away from my probably thrashing commotion of limbs, and successfully complete lap # 3, sans dog paddle!

I did twenty laps that way, and by the end realized two things: 1) other people are also using the flutter boards and belts, and 2) nobody is paying any attention to anybody else. After I showered and changed and left the pool, I was greeted with a crisp fall mid morning. I felt so awake, so relaxed, and so full of accomplishment. It was a small thing, but somehow a very big thing. It reminded me that it is good to laugh at yourself sometimes, and that you never get better at anything without just doing it. I think I will go back tomorrow, and I think I will love it again!