hmm, i've been reading (what's new?) this really hilarious book called 'dress your family in corduroy and denim' by david sedaris. i mean, seriously, it's too funny to even be read in public. i'd be afraid to be taken as a complete nutcase. it is an amalgamation of stories that happen in just about any average regular family but are told in such a cynical and sarcastic way that it is simply brilliant. while reading this, though, i started thinking about how it would be possible for my brother and i to write similar stories about our parents. not that our parents are in any way special or anything, but maybe it is precisely the way in which they are like every other parents that make them interesting.

but then, at one point i started questioning the actual purpose of documenting those stories years later and, probably, about the much larger aim of writing in general. the famous 'so what' question that our research methods prompted us with and the 'who's your audience' that our teaching writing prof would instantly pop out.

but, really, who is my audience? as far as i know, i've been religiously typing away almost on a daily basis for years and i can not provide an answer that could justify either the time spent or the space consumed by those ions sent adrift in this sea of information. i sometimes scribble down notes as i'm about to go to bed about stuff i need to write about - it always seems brilliant at the time when these ideas come up - but what is all the briliantness in the world worth if you never really share it with anyone.

is writing always meant to be shared? should it be seen as a personal process? i'm sure it means different things to different people and you could argue that there is no right answer to these questions... but i always wonder how different of a person i would be had i not read this book or that book. had the author not decided to make his / her writing public. and maybe there are thousands of books out there that i ought to read but have yet to be published or translated in a language i can pretend to understand for a minute or two.

-----

i've read this beautiful poem by Souvankham Thammavongsa and i think it ought to be shared - oh boy, i think i answering my own question in the blurb above!

A Tangerine

is an orange
deferred

It fits into you
but a palm
must open, fingers close

It will never grow
awkard
with limbs heavy, skin think

It will stay
like this,
small, deferred
and will ask
why
it has not yet filled out

You will have
no answers
will only pack
two
in a brown paper bag;
one, for yourself
and the other
an offering
not yet made

if you think that you have bad karma, think of the guy living down my street who was trying to move out of his 2nd storey apartment, with his steps covered with ice. and the sky keeps on pouring icing rain on him!

my grandmother has been 'forgetting things' or at least that is what my father and his siblings call it. my brother and i, on the other hand, have done our little bit of research and think she is suferring from a light form of dementia or maybe the onset of alzheimer's. she repeats stuff and mixes up people, worries about not sending us a card and a check on our birthday and asks us constantly about it. stuff like that.

she has been afraid of leaving her apartment, lately, asking the staff at her residence to bring her food up instead of eating it downstairs with the other residents. she's only come out twice this year, once when i came back from china and my dad announced before she had time to phone back to cancel that he was on his way to pick her up. the second time was for christmas.

she was sitting on the couch, looking happy to be there mostly, a bit tired with the 20+ people crowd and the kids running around with video games and hockey sticks, but happy. we asked my little cousin to distribute the presents. she's one and half years old so needless to say it took forever ("no, not that aunt, the one with the red hair") but was endlessly amusing. at one point, of course, there was only my little counsin's gifts left to be opened so someone asked my grandmother to hold on to the gift until the kid was done opening the other one. my grandma, in her usual confused state, started opening the present and looked very surprise when she saw that someone had given her a doll. she made a face and said with great suprise: "a doll!" it was priceless!

we eventually explained to her that the doll was meant as a gift to c., the little cousin, and she seemed to get it. she played with the doll the rest of the evening, though, impressed by what you could do with doll these days. "my, would you look at that! her eyes close when you lay her down. and you can even give her the bottle," she said cheerfully.

next year, grandma, i'm ditching the microwaves, VCRs and all those other funny machines that you don't really use all that much. i'm getting you a doll.

i've just finished reading a book i had been carrying around for the past weeks, both because i had a bunch of non-fiction stuff to read and because i thought i ought to take my time to savour it.

and now i am mourning. i mean, maybe this just happens to me but i'm not entirely sure. you know sometimes how you finish a good book and you find yourself thumbing back through it for a moment? and then you realize that you'd feel like reading it again for the first time, making sure to get it all in. after that, usually i feel a bit silly and decide to put the book back on the shelf and find myself wondering whether i should start a new one or what. sometimes i do, when the book i've just finished wasn't so meaningful, but today i decided to observe what i've come to call book loyalty. i've remained faithful and loyal to the memory of these last few pages, until, well until i can't take it anymore and head back to the bookshelves again.

as for tonight, well, i have a copy of Courrier International - geopolitical news and commentary. sure to put me in the right mood for some well deserved zzzzz.

christmas this year turned out to be all about sharing those wonderful yet sometimes awkward moments that surface when you spend a bit too much time with relatives that you are really meant to see just a few times a year.

my cousin m. started up a discussion tonight about how he was against gay marriage, but all for giving more money to the army. let's just say it was my time to nod and smile. fred, on the other hand, got up and went to get a drink of water. smart boy.

my father, later on, apparently struck up a conversation with fred about the movie broke back moutain. "you know the one with the two effeminates?" he asked. lovely. just lovely.

driving back home with fred, i told him how lucky i felt i was for having him as a brother. how easy it was for me to be at peace with who i am because i felt like i could open up to him. and it is absolutely true. i don't believe i would be anywhere close to where i am right now had he not been so open, proactive even. gosh, he even gave me ani difranco cds way back! so i put the blame on him for introducing me to the world of folk music and cute girls with guitars.

hope you guys had a lovely time and left the politics and the questioning aside. not using your brain is good every now and then. merry whatever-you'd-like.

i finally got to sleep in today, for the first time in weeks literally. it was wonderful. made pain dore and cafe au lait. strummed the guitar. read a bit.

we went to my father's yesterday because my sister is in town and we usually do our own little party and a bigger party with the M's on the 25th. my sister's husband was talking about how his sister is currently going through a depression, triggered by the fact that her and her husband are trying to build a new house. she wants the *perfect house and it is quite literally driving her nuts. no matter how much you strive for perfection, it seems, you can never quite get it, you know?

i remember reading about this experiment they did with "normal" people and "depressive" people. i really mean to use these terms loosely, because i was never quite clear to me how these label came about and how they have evolve through time, but that's a whole different topic. anyways, they had the two groups of people play different types of games and asked them to guess their chances of winning. roll a dice. pick a card. head or tails, that kind of thing. well, apparently, it turned out that the clinically depressed group most often guessed right. 1 out of 6. 1 out of 52. 1 out of 2. the "normal" group seem to over-estimate its chances at winning by a good 20 percent, which means that they were the ones who had a distorted perception of reality. they were essentially dellusional.

there is this interesting poem, somewhat connected to this topic. again, poetic genius, this time by alix olson.

[popcorn and laughter]

The man in the corner
is singing Amazing Grace
Looking out the window like he don’t belong in this place
He’s singing “america, america, home of the free”,
Catches me staring, says
"That’s what they told me, man".
I hear Wall Street screaming,
I hear the number three train screeching
I hear too many hearts pushed together and beating
Like all the piles of polished fruit on Fourteenth Street.
You see, I never noticed I had stains
until he asked for a discount
So, I almost missed out on
Loving you. Who said
"Perfection’s imitation, that’s why it’s called a deal,
See, real things have scratches and
I’m looking for real."
You paid full price, never asked for change til I gave it,
You said "baby, save it. You’ll need it for something harder than me
You said "I’m easy, I think scars are sexy."
And most times you make sense of things I think are crazy
And that’s not why I love you
But it helps.
Like the man in the corner singing Amazing Grace
Looking out the window like he don’t belong in this place,
You say "maybe in his head, he’s Godzilla
And he’s saving all the naked girls.
Or maybe he’s Fred Astaire
and he’s got some Ginger that he twirls"
You say "we’ve all got these hidden lives
That’s why crazy folk got shining eyes. See,
We take our lies and hold them up as true.
They take what’s inside and let it shine through.
And truth,
Is kind of crazy"
Like how we’ve got this history trying to lose itself,
Prove its self-worth like a theorum.
Well, it don’t take a mathematician to see
you can’t bully circles
Into two straight lines.
You can’t make equal signs
Out of things that ain’t equal.
So if this is the end,
I’m demanding a Sequel.
I want better actors, and better themes,
And directors that care about Behind the Scenes.
And if you can’t deliver no Happy Ever After,
At least give me my sad parts with some
Popcorn and some laughter,
I’m looking for popcorn and laughter.
Like the man in the corner, he’s laughing this
Jack Daniels laugh
Like when the world’s so huge, head thrown back
Jaw-dropped, not-notice-slow-spittle laugh
Of desperate quiet.
And the subway doors open and close,
Someone’s coat is stuck somewhere down the line
People are rushing, switching trains to make better time.
We all take different routes to the same somewhere,
You gotta grit your teeth and say ‘see you there’.
I said "see you there", he said "yeah"
I said "I wonder if I’ll ever love a man again like this"
He said "yeah"
I said "I wonder if I’ll miss this"
Now, I’ve missed my stop.
Might as well ride all night long,
Pay the man in the corner to keep singing
His Salvation Song,
And maybe I’ll ask him for a swig of his gin, maybe I’ll
Keep listening, maybe I’ll
Join in.
Cause if I’ve gotta watch this MTV Generation,
Stocked up and bonded to this Wall Street Nation,
If I can’t change this crazy, static station,
I’m gonna watch it with
Popcorn and laughter.

okay. i'm in need of inspiration, or actually, maybe not so much inspiration as diversifying the sort of poems i read.

this is where *you come in the picture. send me poems, names of poets or whatever else may come to your mind that you think i ought to read.

call me ridiculous, but i can't help but think that from now on the days (and the sunlight) will start to get longer again.

revival.

i am human and i'm losing my focus.

j. i know you don't read this - i probably would not write this if you did - but i need to say it nonetheless: i will not be the recipient of your anger.

the folds of my brain are not deep enough for hurtful words to lodge themselves in. and my skin too soft to let anything stick for more than a few seconds. i want you to be happy, happier than you are.

----
quote of the day (sponsored by the poetic genious of ember swift):

I want to re-design this gloomy room in you with style
you said that I am like a splinter of sunshine spinning off still lake waters
like a slice of light getting under one's skin
well there is light to be found in all things ruined and shattered
here is your nagging reminder singing through the air
that sometimes the brightest light comes from the darkest room we find ourselves in

hmm... i need to revise this. sleep often offers some great insight.

i think this week was about getting together and sharing, not always in the most appropriate ways and moments feelings, grudges and personal vendettas that had otherwise been burried far far away, yet not deep enough to avoid them resurfacing at one point or another.

in other words, no matter how much snow falls from the sky and how deep you dig, things will reappear again. maybe in the spring, maybe sooner.

yesterday was all about that. it was about booze-fuelled arguements. about colleagues mixing the personal and the professional, and exposing that for everyone to see. it was the realization that no matter how much we're a close knit team, there is so much that we still to work things through.

i've chosen to stay out of this - literally, out of the arguments and the drinking - because that is really the only position i feel comfortable in. but i really must wonder why people can only be honest and upfront about their feelings when the excuse of 'i had too much to drink' is available.

because i don't like to wake up the next day with more things to solve, and to burry, than i had the morning before.

---

the city is covered with over a foot of delicious whiteness. i think i need to go to mont-royal (that's the only mountain i have!) and make snow angels.

first year's master seminar with Doctor G. she's asking us to introduce ourselves. i'm sitting there, hoping that my brain will produce something clever enough when my time comes.

S. is sitting across the room and she introduces herself. i can't recall precisely what she said, or what any of us said for that matter, but i remember thinking at that point 'i must go talk to that girl.' i can't remember if i actually went to talk to her that night. knowing myself i probably waited it out for a couple of days, i'm rarely one to make the first move, but we did get to talk to each other eventually.

in my latest conversation with S. we were asking ourselves why we connect with certain people and not with others. how that sometimes seems to be established from the start. how you run into some people, sometimes, and you *know* that you will connect. how some people remind you, through what they say or how they act, of people you've once connected with and you immiediately feel compelled to talk to them. sometimes finding out they share something of that person, sometimes not.

and how disappointing it is when you are in a situation where you *should* connect with people but eventually come to the conclusion that you just can't. that you can't hear them or that they can't hear you. that true dialogue is, maybe not impossible, but highly improbable.

---

i had a discussion yesterday where i felt particularly misunderstood. because people figure i might have something to say about that topic. the truth is : i . really . do . not .

i've rarely ever used the label quebecois to refer to myself and felt satisfied with it. in fact, i am unsure i could ever find a label to associate with and am suspicious of people who do chose to cling to them.

there is a schism between what my heart and my mind know and i chose to let it be. i chose to accept this dissonance because it allows me to be critical. it allows me the intellectual liberty of playing devil's advocate. it allows me to have roots in many places at once.

the human mind has a tendency to want to categorize things, though. it's easier to think of the world as an infinite combination of binaries. yes. no. black. white. anything else just blurs the picture, really.

and yesterday, discussing my political leanings with h. i was just reminded of that. i was prematurely stuck in a category i did not belong to.

stuck in a box. yes or no.

well you know, honey, i'd rather see us breaking out of these boundaries. escaping these boxes that we are asked to fit it. i'd rather stop analyzing my relationships with people by refering to a history that has come and gone, and grown completly irrelevant to my reality. about how this very city used to be divided along an imaginary linguistic and cultural line. i'd rather think of how it has grown more and more mixed in the past 50 years.

but if you must ask me which box i'd rather put my faith in.

i'd just rather check both.

the word of the day: simplicity

in fact, that should be the word of the day, every day.

simplicity as in i'm going to bed with a cup of warm milk and a good book. as in i don't want to hear about lesbian drama, coworkers being laid-off before christmas and the number reports to be written before the end of the month to make this business profitable.

i just want everyone, including myself, to smile and nod in unison.

i just want a cup of warm milk, half soy - half not, and a good book.

i forgot to mention that my brother, with all his best intentions, had bought a deer pie for us for dinner. we somehow managed to undercook it, though it was supposed to be pre-cooked.

the thought of eating it really disgusted me, although i did not want to be rude and make my own dinner. we ever so rarely get to eat together. but as i was eating, i kept thinking 'i am eating bambi.'

so, it should be no surprise that i woke up this morning, after spending the night dreaming of deer hopping around grasslands.

moral of the story: do not eat bambi.

if there is one thing i will miss when i will move away from here is the sound of the heavy machinery used to clear the snow. i know, what a strange thing to miss.

the building across from me is bright and blinking with christmas lights. i can't decide whether i find it pretty or repulsive. on the one hand i appreciate the effort people put into creating the holiday spirit, but i can't help but think about all the electricity we are using up for something so mundane. i wonder, also, if anyone has ever suffered from an epileptic seizure after staring at those blinking - motion christmas lights for too long.

----

this makes me think of this lovely little poem by leonard cohen which is really not about that at all but i will post it nonetheless

I wonder how many people
in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when I look out
at buildings
I swear I see a face
in every window
looking back at me,
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back
to their Desks
and write this down.

now, if i had any sense of wisdom - the wisdom i am often told i possess - i would have understood by now what my limits are and how to appropriately communicate them.



it's funny how your life sends you through the same loops twice on random occasions. and then you are brought to realize how little / lot you have changed. and maybe that lack of change is not necessarily a bad thing, you know, because you are finally getting to be more grounded, more in touch with your real self. but then that also allows you to identify your limitations more clearly, which is again not a bad thing in itself.

sometimes i wish i could care less. i honestly wish i could. i remember thinking years ago how assholes really had it a lot easier sometimes because they never had to worry about falling short of other people's expectations. people would just assume that they would and excuse them when they did. i quickly came to the conclusion that i would never find inner peace in that role, though. that the temporary discomfort i experience when i compromise myself for whatever pseudo-caring objective i have is nothing compared to the alienation that people who do not care experience on a daily basis.

----

from my desk, i can look out the window and see sharp little snowflakes falling from the sky. not those big slow ones that twirl and stick together before hitting the ground, but the smaller harder ones pushed around in all directions by a strong northern wind. the ground will soon be covered with beautiful whiteness. a beautiful white canvas for us to decide what to paint on. a fresh sheet of paper for kind words to be carved in until another storm comes to cover them.

speaking of collecting, i've been piling up little pieces of paper of awesome quotes spoken by friends and family alike. here it goes:

Geneviève, on november 25th, 2005 was expressing her bewilderment at people who play air guitar. she was doubting the satisfaction people could really derive out of it until other people forced her to admit to the following: "I understand people who play air guitar, because i myself play air triangle... but that's because I have triangle experience."

Heide, sweet Heide, on november 29th, 2005. we were driving down the highway, slowly enough to notice every possible details about the cars around us. there was a sign on one of the cars' window that said: www.ecoutetoncorps.com... we were all wondering what that meant, really, until you provided us with this enlighted quote: "Regarde la femme à côté, j'pense qu'elle écoute pas bien son corps." the woman in the car was, indeed, a little bit on the heavy side but none of us could have put it in such a nice way.

Betty, oh dear, Betty. you had been back in Montreal for only a few days that you were already putting us on the spot. one morning over breakfast you proceeded in telling me about how i needed to find myself a banana (that is, a girl who is yellow on the outside and white on the inside as you later explained).
Betty: Toi, j'me disais que ce que tu aurais besoin, c'est d'une banane.
Fred: Tiens (donne une banane à Jacinthe) une banane!
Betty: Non, mais pas ton genre de banane à toi Fred!
(rires)
Betty: Ah! Tiens, pendant que j'y pense Fred, y'a de la saucisse vietnamienne dans le frigo.
Fred: Ce que tu me dis c'est que j'ai besoin d'une saucisse vietnamienne, hein?

same day, at night, guitar jam at Marcy's, where some of us were 'jamming' with little or no success. i was looking at my numb fingertips remembering this story i had read about cutting jalapeno. about how if you touch the seeds, your fingers burn for days. words of (not so) wisdom: "Right now, i'm having a jalapeno moment."

more quotes to come. i find they come out faster than i can take them down.

i found a note left by a former lover while sorting through boxes the other day. i was clearing out stuff, really, sorting through what ought to follow me around for years to come and what ought to take the direction of the closest recycling center. i'm a keeper, you should know. i keep ticket stubs and subway maps and notes scribbled on napkins by friends over coffee. too much. i keep too much. so, in my 'voluntary simplicity' frame of mind, i sorted through my boxes in the closet and found the note. my lover was a poet, before she moved to canada. she wrote beautiful pieces that i could not understand at the time. she'd patiently teach them to me, word by word. she'd take beautiful watercolors and write down words for me, with their meaning spelt out on the back. anyways, i found a note written in her well-trained calligraphy:

海内存知己 hai nei cun zhi ji. meaning 'within the 4 seas exists an understanding' though, the dictionary tell us, we really want to use the term cosmopolite or cosmopolitan in english or french.

there is something incredibly poetic about mandarin chinese. about how all those little boxes and lines (because even after studying it for 3 years, they remain boxes and lines to me) translate abstract concepts into concrete objects. 4 seas. understanding.

i've been thinking a lot lately about the permanence of things. the permanence of relationships, to be more precise. about the people you meet and the people you've met and the impact they've had on you. on the way you speak, the way you dress, the way you think and the way you get up in the morning and clumsly find your way to the bathroom. the people you hug as if it was going to be the last time everytime. and the people you hug as if you were going to see them a week later though the whens and hows of your next meeting are still unsure. the people whose impact on you, you only come to measure long after their image has vanished from your memory and their pictures are stored away in boxes deep in your closet.

i remember meeting people whose culture and life experience varied greatly from mine, but from the first time we talked to each other we found a space for that understanding to happen. for those 4 seas to flow into each other.

i've been fortunate enough these past few years to meet so many of these people. these members of my self-created family. older sisters and younger sisters whose presence make me so much richer in so many ways. and writing with one of them lately(that's what we have to resort to when having coffee together requires boarding a plane) , essentially about that. about how we create these families and care about them. and about how our real families sometimes do not provide us with the understanding that our friends from the 4 seas share with us when we're lucky enough to be standing together in the same time zone.