Sometimes the simple act of living is an exhaustion of all the resources you possess. Too bad there isn't exactly an option - the other choice is a bit grim.
Fear not! Big news, coming soon. Stay tuned.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
A Change is Gonna Come
When you move to a new city, finding a new salon is the most daunting task of all. Your hair is so intimately linked to your identity, and upon finding yourself in a new place, it is something you feel a burning need to alternately hold on to and radically change. These are trying times for you and your hair.
I was seized with the strangely persistent urge to cut my hair as soon as we arrived in the city. Strangely persistent because I have been growing my hair out now for several years.
When my sister and I were young, we were the kids with pixies and mushroom cuts and cute little bobs with bangs. My mother thought - and rightly so - that two tomboys with long hair would spell nothing but trouble. My long suffering father would plead, let it grow!, but we rarely did.
I decided to go for long hair when I was in my third year of university. The boyfriend at that time requested it, saying it looked more feminine. By the time it grew to chin-length, the relationship was over. But the allure of twisting strands between my fingers and twirling them like the girls I admired in high school was too great. I let it grow.
And grow and grow. I went for trims three times a year and dyed it a different color whenever I found myself bored with it. I found a stylist who magically coaxed curls out of my formerly baby-fine straightness. And then I moved.
Bringing us back to my persistent urge to cut. I suspect it was borne of the stress of moving. New city, new surroundings, uncertain job prospects, and all for the first time since .... ever, really. I decided a haircut would only bring tears and regret if done too soon after such a monumentous event. Don't do it, I ordered myself. Just wait a while.
But it has continued to gnaw at me, until this afternoon, when I found myself wandering into salons left and right, inquiring about appointments available. Right now. It had to happen, and I wasn't going home until it did. And after several hours, I was sitting in a chair at the New Look salon, a woman named Rita washing my hair for me.
The shampoo and conditioner smelled like honey and almonds, and having my hair washed reminded me of my sister. Now a hairstylist herself, she was the one who would help with all my teenage hair adventures. I can picture scenes of the two of us bent over the bathtub, me squeezing my eyes shut tight while she rinsed out leftover dye from my latest incarnation.
It wasn’t until I was in the chair that Rita asked what I wanted.
“Same cut, just a trim?” She said, comb in hand to begin the laborious process of detangling. This was my out - last chance to play it safe.
“Actually,” I began, as my hands went up to my wet hair, “I was thinking about a change.”
Her eyes met mine in the mirror and she smiled.
And that’s all it took.
Half an hour later, I walked out looking like a new person, and feeling like the queen of brave moves. Sometimes, it can be that easy. I didn’t even have to squeeze my eyes shut. Although I did have to look twice in the mirror when it was all over. I remember this girl. And I’m glad she’s back.
I was seized with the strangely persistent urge to cut my hair as soon as we arrived in the city. Strangely persistent because I have been growing my hair out now for several years.
When my sister and I were young, we were the kids with pixies and mushroom cuts and cute little bobs with bangs. My mother thought - and rightly so - that two tomboys with long hair would spell nothing but trouble. My long suffering father would plead, let it grow!, but we rarely did.
I decided to go for long hair when I was in my third year of university. The boyfriend at that time requested it, saying it looked more feminine. By the time it grew to chin-length, the relationship was over. But the allure of twisting strands between my fingers and twirling them like the girls I admired in high school was too great. I let it grow.
And grow and grow. I went for trims three times a year and dyed it a different color whenever I found myself bored with it. I found a stylist who magically coaxed curls out of my formerly baby-fine straightness. And then I moved.
Bringing us back to my persistent urge to cut. I suspect it was borne of the stress of moving. New city, new surroundings, uncertain job prospects, and all for the first time since .... ever, really. I decided a haircut would only bring tears and regret if done too soon after such a monumentous event. Don't do it, I ordered myself. Just wait a while.
But it has continued to gnaw at me, until this afternoon, when I found myself wandering into salons left and right, inquiring about appointments available. Right now. It had to happen, and I wasn't going home until it did. And after several hours, I was sitting in a chair at the New Look salon, a woman named Rita washing my hair for me.
The shampoo and conditioner smelled like honey and almonds, and having my hair washed reminded me of my sister. Now a hairstylist herself, she was the one who would help with all my teenage hair adventures. I can picture scenes of the two of us bent over the bathtub, me squeezing my eyes shut tight while she rinsed out leftover dye from my latest incarnation.
It wasn’t until I was in the chair that Rita asked what I wanted.
“Same cut, just a trim?” She said, comb in hand to begin the laborious process of detangling. This was my out - last chance to play it safe.
“Actually,” I began, as my hands went up to my wet hair, “I was thinking about a change.”
Her eyes met mine in the mirror and she smiled.
And that’s all it took.
Half an hour later, I walked out looking like a new person, and feeling like the queen of brave moves. Sometimes, it can be that easy. I didn’t even have to squeeze my eyes shut. Although I did have to look twice in the mirror when it was all over. I remember this girl. And I’m glad she’s back.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Talking in Codes
Behold the mix tape: the ultimate tool of subtle communication. Using the music of others, you can record your own special message for posterity. I mixed tapes for crushes, boyfriends, and co-ed car trips. Each felt deeply significant and emotionally naked. As I passed the tape to the intended recipient, I had the thrilling fear of being found out. He will hear this tape, I thought, and know exactly how I feel about him. He will understand exactly what I am trying to say with this cryptic yet meaningful selection of music and lyrics. He will immediately grab his coat and run from his house to my door. Failing that, he will pick up the phone and call.
In reality, it never worked out that way. Or if my message was obvious, it was ignored. But each time I mixed a tape, I had the fear. The fear of laying myself bare and being rejected. Wasn’t I being rejected if the message was ignored? This misses the point. The beauty of indirect communication - of the mix tape or the book quote, or the e-mail, or whatever - is that if there is no response, you can delude yourself into believing that the person just didn’t get it. And that isn’t rejection. That is oblivion.
Of course no one wants to be rejected. Putting yourself on the line emotionally is a terrifying thing. It takes confidence and maturity which few people have in equal and sufficient measure. Including me. So for the better part of my short life, I have chosen to communicate indirectly with the objects of my affection.
The most harrowing of the mix tape experiences was with my father’s best friend’s son. He was 14 or 15 that summer when he came to stay with his father down the road, bringing his surly teenage attitude and a collection of U2 and oldies that made him seem worldly wise and mature. I was smitten instantly and thoroughly. I must have been 11 or 12. I begged him to make me tapes of the music he listened to constantly. Then I spent hours analyzing every song. I found hidden messages woven in and out of the lyrics, even the order of songs. I pined the way you can when all you know about love comes from the books you’ve read and the movies you’ve seen.
A few weeks later Mark told my best friend and I that he was dating Casha, a girl his age who had been our babysitter in the not-so-distant past. Suddenly the line was drawn clearly. I was the kid sister, not the girl of his dreams. The hurt was so deep to my pre-teen ego that I reacted with anger for the remainder of the summer. It took years before I could communicate with him in a semi-normal way. Each time I saw him I thought of the embarrassment of the mix tapes, and imagined him laughing at my childish attempts to win his affection.
Mix tapes gave way to cds, cds became instant messages on ICQ. There was even one memorable bus courtship via graphing calculator, which is a funny story for another day. I still kept journals filled with earnest love letters that never found their way to envelopes or mailboxes. I wrote out all of the things I couldn’t muster the courage to say. A cynic might suggest that’s the reason I went into journalism in the end: I was always more comfortable observing from a safe distance and recording it with words. My very own personal record of history.
By university I had resorted to e-mail to convey my deepest feelings. I agonized over wording, punctuation, and length. I took great pains to spare myself from immediate rejection. If you type out how you feel, it can always be denied, or denounced as a momentary lapse of judgment or the result of too much wine. I know that seems completely illogical, and it is. You can never truly take it back. But far better to put distance between yourself and your feelings, I thought, than to lay it on the line and risk immediate and decisive rejection.
My penchant for obtuse and subtle messages landed me in plenty of unfortunate romances. I wandered through my undergraduate years aimlessly. I looked for the brightest hope in every man I dated. I slow danced in dorm rooms, answered the apartment door late at night as if I’d been expecting visitors, checked my e-mail in crowded libraries. I looked high and low for an undeniable flash of instant connection. And then I discovered finally and cruelly that when you think you’ve found it, the indirect route is not the one to take.
I wallowed in the failure of my former tactics for the better part of a semester. I presumed the opportunity lost forever and mourned it accordingly: with rambling journal entries and overly analytic girl talk. I thought I would die of embarrassment because I had to see him so regularly. And every time I did, I kicked myself for being so stupid.
Eventually, though, you think you have recovered from these things. Months pass. You meet someone new and wonderful. You find the hint of lightning and begin to believe that perfect romance does not exist, that this is in fact what you have been looking for all along.
The truth is you can never really know if you’ve made the right choice. You can only know with some degree of certainty that you have made the best choice for you, for now. And if you get a chance to alter the course of your previous decisions, it is by turns horrible and illuminating.
The only thing worse than a missed opportunity is to miss it a second time, when you know better. You have to take it as it comes and lay it on the line, or spend the rest of your life trying to forget your cowardice. Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.
In reality, it never worked out that way. Or if my message was obvious, it was ignored. But each time I mixed a tape, I had the fear. The fear of laying myself bare and being rejected. Wasn’t I being rejected if the message was ignored? This misses the point. The beauty of indirect communication - of the mix tape or the book quote, or the e-mail, or whatever - is that if there is no response, you can delude yourself into believing that the person just didn’t get it. And that isn’t rejection. That is oblivion.
Of course no one wants to be rejected. Putting yourself on the line emotionally is a terrifying thing. It takes confidence and maturity which few people have in equal and sufficient measure. Including me. So for the better part of my short life, I have chosen to communicate indirectly with the objects of my affection.
The most harrowing of the mix tape experiences was with my father’s best friend’s son. He was 14 or 15 that summer when he came to stay with his father down the road, bringing his surly teenage attitude and a collection of U2 and oldies that made him seem worldly wise and mature. I was smitten instantly and thoroughly. I must have been 11 or 12. I begged him to make me tapes of the music he listened to constantly. Then I spent hours analyzing every song. I found hidden messages woven in and out of the lyrics, even the order of songs. I pined the way you can when all you know about love comes from the books you’ve read and the movies you’ve seen.
A few weeks later Mark told my best friend and I that he was dating Casha, a girl his age who had been our babysitter in the not-so-distant past. Suddenly the line was drawn clearly. I was the kid sister, not the girl of his dreams. The hurt was so deep to my pre-teen ego that I reacted with anger for the remainder of the summer. It took years before I could communicate with him in a semi-normal way. Each time I saw him I thought of the embarrassment of the mix tapes, and imagined him laughing at my childish attempts to win his affection.
Mix tapes gave way to cds, cds became instant messages on ICQ. There was even one memorable bus courtship via graphing calculator, which is a funny story for another day. I still kept journals filled with earnest love letters that never found their way to envelopes or mailboxes. I wrote out all of the things I couldn’t muster the courage to say. A cynic might suggest that’s the reason I went into journalism in the end: I was always more comfortable observing from a safe distance and recording it with words. My very own personal record of history.
By university I had resorted to e-mail to convey my deepest feelings. I agonized over wording, punctuation, and length. I took great pains to spare myself from immediate rejection. If you type out how you feel, it can always be denied, or denounced as a momentary lapse of judgment or the result of too much wine. I know that seems completely illogical, and it is. You can never truly take it back. But far better to put distance between yourself and your feelings, I thought, than to lay it on the line and risk immediate and decisive rejection.
My penchant for obtuse and subtle messages landed me in plenty of unfortunate romances. I wandered through my undergraduate years aimlessly. I looked for the brightest hope in every man I dated. I slow danced in dorm rooms, answered the apartment door late at night as if I’d been expecting visitors, checked my e-mail in crowded libraries. I looked high and low for an undeniable flash of instant connection. And then I discovered finally and cruelly that when you think you’ve found it, the indirect route is not the one to take.
I wallowed in the failure of my former tactics for the better part of a semester. I presumed the opportunity lost forever and mourned it accordingly: with rambling journal entries and overly analytic girl talk. I thought I would die of embarrassment because I had to see him so regularly. And every time I did, I kicked myself for being so stupid.
Eventually, though, you think you have recovered from these things. Months pass. You meet someone new and wonderful. You find the hint of lightning and begin to believe that perfect romance does not exist, that this is in fact what you have been looking for all along.
The truth is you can never really know if you’ve made the right choice. You can only know with some degree of certainty that you have made the best choice for you, for now. And if you get a chance to alter the course of your previous decisions, it is by turns horrible and illuminating.
The only thing worse than a missed opportunity is to miss it a second time, when you know better. You have to take it as it comes and lay it on the line, or spend the rest of your life trying to forget your cowardice. Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
On the run
If you run, you’ve probably had someone ask you... what are you running from? An old joke, and not particularly funny. Especially not funny if you are, in fact, running from something.
I used to think I couldn’t run. Couldn’t learn, didn’t want to, why bother? I cited a variety of reasons for my unwillingness to pick up speed. My legs are short and ill-suited to running. The bouncing is too hard on my chest. I swallowed a bug. Anything to avoid it.The truth is, running was hard for me to do. And sometimes it’s easier to avoid the hard thing than it is to deal with it.
Flashback to high school gym class. Everyone is awkward but I imagine that I am the most uncomfortable in my cotton t-shirt and gym shorts. The mile run test is the bane of my existence. The teacher directs us out past the soccer field beside the school, to a small wooded trail where the bad kids go to smoke cigarettes at lunchtime. Run through this trail, out to the road, and back to the parking lot, he tells us. Then he saunters off, a hulk of a man who only runs after a football if there’s no one else to do it for him. Minutes after the start, our feet pounding the soggy ground, I’m left behind, huffing and puffing, lungs burning, face red from embarrassment and exertion. And each year, this is where I vow that I will never run as a grown-up.
Years later, then, it is a cruel irony to find that I am dating a runner. Not just any runner, either. A competitive varsity athlete. My usual excuses are to no avail. I tell him I’m perfectly happy with yoga. One day he gives me a beginner’s running book. I tell him I’d rather swim. He asks if I’d like to go for a run with him for company. The jig, as they say, is up.
Finally one quiet morning, I pull on my sneakers and tie them tight. It’s as if each tug on the laces is another moment to change my mind and go back to bed. Except I don’t. I look at the book, check my stopwatch, and head out onto the road. For days and days and weeks and weeks I repeat this ritual, and each time it feels a little easier. Then it starts to feel good.
Looking back I think I just didn’t understand that good feeling - the wind against your face and the rhythmic sound of panting breath and pounding feet. The feeling of power in your legs and the vibration in your thighs as you propel yourself forward, away.
I admit that I have been a fair weather runner. In the winter I hunkered down in cycling classrooms and on elliptical machines, hiding from the frosty air and pedaling frantically for nowhere. My spring began with the painful reclamation of the running rhythm. I thought that maybe I’d rather stick to my indoor cycling and just run occasionally, when I felt like it. Maybe once a week, for about 5 kilometres. That would be enough to maintain.
But lately, the urge to run has been so strong that it terrifies me. Also, I want to run alone. I flatly refuse invitations of companionship. I pace the apartment in agitation, staring out the window as if I expect a hoard of people clad in short shorts and running shoes to arrive and drag me out of the house. I pull on my own shorts and tank top even though my legs are exhausted from walking all day. I hobble out the door and up the street, keeping pace with whatever song is playing through my earphones. I listen to my breath and squint my eyes to avoid the blowing dust. I run until my lungs burn and my legs are unsteady. I run down street after street until I forget where I am. I run up hills that cause me to shriek silently at the pain. I run until I feel my lungs will explode. I hold my knees, gasping for air, and then start again. I think of nothing but the motion of my body. I force myself to go home after half an hour, throw myself down on the grass in the backyard and stare at the sky, wishing I had the energy to keep running. I stretch my legs and rub my shins, willing them to carry me back to the street.
And now I understand the question so much better. Because I think my compulsive urge to run is psychically rooted in the fight or flight response. At the moment I choose flight, like a cornered animal keen on self-preservation. The run is a daily battle to bend my limitations to my will. When the body fails, the mind pushes on. So lately, even when I haven’t been running, I’ve been running.
Defeated at last, I hobble back into the apartment, and placate my anxious mind with a hot shower. I’ll try again tomorrow. And the day after. As long as it takes for this feeling to pass.
Monday, July 23, 2007
On Venus changing direction
Ah, the humanity.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Up in Flames
On the day that we drove to the new apartment, I held the map and suggested routes. This was more than slightly ridiculous, as my main criteria for choosing a street was the size of the font its name was typed in in my street atlas.
We were already late for meeting the landlord. I took a deep breath and contained the rage that only the perpetually punctual can feel when trapped by circumstances into certain tardiness. Traffic had slowed to a crawl, and I could not see anything blocking the road ahead.
Until we got to the intersection. There, on the right hand side, was a truck on fire. Not just a few flames, either. The red-orange shot up from the hood of the SUV, licking and weaving. My mouth dropped open as we passed by, too fast to answer all the questions that came to mind. Later we drove by in the opposite direction, but the truck was gone. The bumper remained, charred and alien on the sidewalk in front of the B-B-Q sign of the restaurant on the corner.
We were already late for meeting the landlord. I took a deep breath and contained the rage that only the perpetually punctual can feel when trapped by circumstances into certain tardiness. Traffic had slowed to a crawl, and I could not see anything blocking the road ahead.
Until we got to the intersection. There, on the right hand side, was a truck on fire. Not just a few flames, either. The red-orange shot up from the hood of the SUV, licking and weaving. My mouth dropped open as we passed by, too fast to answer all the questions that came to mind. Later we drove by in the opposite direction, but the truck was gone. The bumper remained, charred and alien on the sidewalk in front of the B-B-Q sign of the restaurant on the corner.
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