On Sleep

In my final semester at McGill, I somehow managed to nearly completely invert my circadian rhythm, and in the process discovered the horrid but fascinating world of Canadian network late-night programming: reruns, test patterns, infomercials, and soft-core pornography (listed in order of entertainment value). Such was the misery of that period that, since then, I have been a model of regular sleep. I could doze through the apocolypse, I am convinced, as long as it took place between 10:30 pm and 6:30 am. Between those times, I can and will attempt to be social, but you may notice me becoming increasingly bug-eyed and incoherent. I have trouble forming complete sentences on less than 8 hours sleep. It's not pretty.

Somehow, this rigid but acceptable pattern has been thrown for a loop with the coming of spring. There just seems to be too much light--like a six-year-old, I wake up at five with my brain screaming, "It's day! I hear birds and joggers! Let's get on with it, we're missing stuff!!" My body answers, like a grouchy adult, that it does not wish to get up and jog or do anything, because the long and gorgeous evenings are prompting me to stay up long past my bedtime every night. Even if I'm only writing (I'm usually writing), I like to watch the protracted sunset out the window. It seems to go on for hours.

The above two paragraphs are really only to say that I am very tired, and am a poor candidate for polar expeditions. But it sure is lovely in the world, these days. Even when exhausted.

Put your weight against the door / Kick-drum on the basement floor
RR

Mid-year review and world report

I usually take the opportunity of my approximately mid-year birthday to look over my new year's resolutions and see which are proceeding apace, which I'm falling down on, and which were actually stupid ideas. I'll spare you the itemized list, but it seems I'm basically doing ok, except for the fact that I resolved to spend an hour a week (not much!) on current events. Anybody seen me do that? Um, no.

This is pathetic, obviously. There's such a thing as a daily newspaper, and it's not just for fish. I'll read a six-hundred page novel, but if it's real, something in my brain just quiets down. This is not an attractive quality, I know.

You, Rose-coloured readers, are encouraged to encourage me, but I am going to take responsibility for this irresponsibility as a global citizen. I'm off to CBC.ca after this report, I swear.

In other news, my weekend was made up of the sort frivolity that regularly distracts me from the serious issues of the day. In other words, it was a really nice weekend. Hanging out in my new (rose-coloured) swimsuit with the gang at a summer bbq, seeing the inner workings and sanctums of Coachhouse Books at Doors Open Toronto, eating Italian food, encouraging my thriving students (those little whippersnappers are *so smart*) and having good conversations near and far. Needless to say, I got little work done, which is bad, but when the sun is shining and life is so entertaining, it's hard to care.

It's the pause that refreshes / in the corridors of power
RR

Summerish variety pack

Summer is coming on in Toronto, which means many places are refrigerated inside. This morning, I left the house bare-armed and bare-legged for the first time this year, and momentarily reveled in the air on my limbs. Then I got on the bus and started to shiver. My war with air-conditioning is decidedly lopsided, since I am out of step with most of the rest of the population, temperature-wise. I had dinner on a patio last night, and with the aid of tights and a cardigan, was able to last until well past dark, but indoor deep-freezes are harder to counter.

Enough with the kvetching; I had *dinner* on a *patio* last night. I'm going to a *BBQ* on Saturday! It is summer and life is sweet. Oh, and my birthday on Wednesday was lovely as well, thanks to all well-wishers. I ran and read and wrote and dined: these are a few of my favourite things.

Oh, and this starts out as a complaint, but then improves: I have more or less mastered the 15-pound dumbbells at the gym, but can scarcely twitch at the 20s, and was fuming of the lack of 17-pound dumbbells, at Hart House or possibly in the world. My solution was to do one set of pathetic half-raises with the 20s and then switch to 15s, and hope somehow (by osmosis?) I eventually get strong enough to do the 20s, preferably before one of the big boys of the weight room notices me and comments, "Um, you know you're not actually lifting those, right?" The good bit? I just feel so *jocky,* having a problem with free weights, when all my other problems concern words.

With regard to that, this is going to be a CanLit summer, because another word problem is that I haven't read near enough of the nearby literature. There will be exceptions, natch--already, I can foresee that I *must* read Then We Came to the End very soon or go mad with wanting to. But, yes, the bulk of my reading time with go towards my countrymen and -women. Onward, at this very moment, actually, to Clark Blaise, who has been precise and potent and deeply disturbing so far. I've been missing a great deal, clearly, and I intend to rectify that.

Get gotten
RR

What is Good

Once, in I believe the fall of 2002, I and a few similarly tinted friends created the list of "1000 Things We Like," perhaps number 1001 being how easy it was (and number 1002 being that there is enough strange synchronicity in our circle that more than one person suggested "little staplers"). The world is overflowing with very good things. This weekend alone, were I still working on the list, I would've added,

1) Waterfront winds
2) Marshmallow-mandarin orange salad
3) Unexpected fireworks displays seen out the car window, over the school around the corner, at the house across the street, even three feet in front of me as I walked home last night (ok, that one was a little alarming)
4) The Ben Report--my brother phoned yesterday from Tel Aviv to report that he is fine. He swam in the Dead Sea and played chess with soliders (not simultaneously). He is en route to Cairo, if you're following this.
5) Cranberry-based birthday confections
6) Free perfume
7) The new issue of The New Quarterly (#102), filled with a slow wry heart-break in Annabel Lyon's novella *Palaces,* a sad hilarious snapshot of fabulousness in Russell Smith's story "Confidence" and, well, just tonnes and tonnes of good stuff. And, um, a story by me. No, I can't believe it either.
8) Teenaged punks who do their vocabulary homework just because I begged them to for months. No, I can't believe it either.

Life is good. I guess there's nothing to do but get on with it. Back to work.

You're such a lovely audience / We'd like to take you home with us
RR

Victoriana

The world is shiny leafy green bird-ridden and nearly the holiday weekend. I'm at work now, and I work tomorrow, but then I get taken to my favourite beachfront Lake Erie restaurant in the official kickoff to pre-birthday festivities, for both myself and Ms. Victoria. Yay! And the mailbox contained "Awake is the New Sleep" by Ben Lee this morning. And it was as catchy as the title indicates, despite the fact that Mr. Lee seems to thank his guru in the liner notes.

And in the valley today, it was an avian rainbow, with a cardinal, a Baltimore Oriole, too many robins to count and a pair of decidedly loved-up finches. Such brilliance as I trotted along. I think I'm starting to come up to speed for the summer months, although also this morning I baked bread and ate rather a lot of it, which isn't helping my training. It's funny, with running or writing or speaking or thinking, I'm never really sure how I'm doing, but when I bake good bread, I know it's good. I can be absolutely positive, even if other people don't want to eat any. This morning's batch? Best ever. In my humble opinion.

The head can be a prison / And these are just conjugal visits

RR

Think about it (II)

Encourage (v.)--to engender courage within.
Horizontal (adj.)--parallel to the horizon.

I've been using those words all my life, correctly, and I never truly knew what they meant. You know who taught me? The kids and their vocabulary lists.

Smarter every day.

Every day is like Sunday
RR

Maternality

I had occasion to hear my own singing voice this weekend, which is pretty rare. Normally I won't sing unless the radio, karaeoke machine, or other voices are loud enough to drown me out. Friday night, however, I was babysitting for the divine Miss M., and she was sort of flipping out. Literally, actually--apparently she likes to flip back and forth in her crib to tire herself out at bedtime, but I didn't know that and thought it meant she was angry. So I pinned her in my lap and sang, in my offkey warble, what I could remember of the good old multiverse lullabies. Sadly, I was only able to remember up until "cow" for "When I First Came to This Land" and only up to the band of angels for "Sweet Chariot." And yet Miss M. was a wonderfully receptive audience, considering that she was a cranky baby, and I am a tuneless singer. Her head actually started to go heavy on my chest at one point, but when I tried to look to see if her eyes were closed, of course I woke her. Argh. Eventually I put her back in her crib and she fell asleep on her own.

A fun way to kick off the weekend of maternality, especially for one as unmaternal as myself. Those were, after all, the songs my mominator used to sing to me. In return, I made my mom some brunch (my dad, too). The food turned out pretty good, I think, but the housekeeping standards around my place have gotten pretty lax. I allocated only an hour pre-brunch to clean and, wouldn't you know it, the phone rang just as I was contemplating getting out the mop. I only just managed to absorb the phone call and get food on the table. The nice thing about my mom is that she will always insist that she doesn't notice any flaws in my person, personality or property, but after they left, I realized there were toothpaste spatters on the bathroom mirror. I'm pretty sure she noticed. But probably didn't judge. Moms are nice. Really, it'd probably be only her and Miss M. who would ever enjoy my singing.

It was a band of angels / comin' after me / Comin' for to carry me home
RR

Colour wheel

In addition to myriad fine-motor-skill deficits, my inability to grasp the colour wheel also held me back in elementary school art. Complementary colours seemed a rather random game to me. Mainly I couldn't draw/paint/sculpt anything that looked like anything, but the colour wheel was factor in those Cs, too.

Really, green and blue *can't* clash, can they? Shimmery green leaves and brilliant blue sky? Grey-green shadowy water and blue-green sun-lit water? Perfectly complementary. Jaime used to say, "Blue and green should never be seen, except for in the washing machine," and perhaps as a sartorial choice, the combination lacks something, but in nature...

I've been running in the valley again, can you tell? Oh, big clear city! From down there, early in the morning, you can't even imagine smog. Now my knees hurt, but I don't care--too perfect.

In other news, I got my meanest rejection letter ever today. I'm sort of jazzed by it. Perhaps because in the SIX MONTHS it took them to respond, I had already made the suggested changes. Perhaps because anything is better than the form letter paper-clipped to a single page from your story because the letter doesn't even have the story title in it (maybe even worse, the story name the only thing typed in Times New Roman, while the rest of the letter is in Ariel, or vice versa, or whatever typographic slight can be mustered). Perhaps because irritation takes energy and I'm always flattered when editors expend any energy on my work.

Perhaps I am deluding myself. But I'm still in a good mood.

Younger and prettier / but no better off
RR

Peevish

I really enjoy the term "pet peeve." It implies that, while the human race essentially agrees on what sucks, each person can only live with extreme awareness of a limited number of irritations. It makes annoyance with trivia seem less morally unsound--we know war is worse than splinters, but sometimes we have to focus on the little, amusing irritants to get through the day. Or maybe I'm just looking for excuses.

People occasionally start to vent to me and then stop and say, "Oh, I really can't complain." But one certainly *can* and--judiciously, conscientiously, with consideration for one's audience--one should. Once it's out, perhaps it won't bother you so much. Thereby I am posting below my up-to-the-minute top ten (they are actually not ranked, despite my need to number things) pet peeves, things that don't matter but bother me anyway. Please feel free and encouraged to post yours, too--I'll sympathize, if not empathize.

10. Accidentally tapping fork tines against any of the many hard surfaces in my mouth.

9. Days when I don't get any mail.

8. When people don't "walk left, stand right" on escalators.

7. Itchy tags, especially on hats and bras.

6. Papercuts.

5. Air-conditioning.

4. Stickiness.

3. People talking on cell phones in public bathrooms.

2. All manner of TTC malfeasance: standing in front of doors, not moving to the back of the bus, letting your dog lick the allergic who are trapped on the bus with you, etc.

1. When people say, "I'm the sort of person that..." This is, in my opinion, the worst tautological idiocy; if you do it/buy it/like it/eat it, you define the sort of person that does so, don't you? I guess you could be making some counter-to-type point, ie. "I'm the sort of girl who likes to wear a button-down blouse under a pullover, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the slackwater stylings of Fall Out Boy and their ilk." But even then, doesn't "I like to wear a button-down...but..." sound just as good?

I wasn't ranking these peeves, but maybe I hate this one the most, for no good reason. Just...why do people say that? Is it pretentiousness? What could they be pretending to? I think it's just silly rhetorical padding, but it makes me insane. There is no "sort" of person who throws pasta at the wall to see if it is done, people just do it! It's unextrapolatable!

Ahem. If you were thinking of listing this rant as one of *your* peeves, I'm way ahead of you. Shutting up now.

We do it in the dark / with smiles on our faces
RR

Ugh

I woke around 3am having somehow escaped from my pillows and rolled facedown onto the mattress. Not a huge problem for most people, I guess, but I am still not fully healed from the jaw surgery I had in January, and putting the full weight of my skull on my jaw hurts like a mofo. I staggered to get the super-strength painkillers I'm supposed to not need anymore, and collapsed back into bed, supine. However, when the alarm went off three hours later, I was prone once more! Why? Are there magnets in my face that are attracted to the mattress springs? Am I having burrowing dreams that I don't remember?

I feel as though I've been punched in the face, and I just took the last of my carry-along painkillers. Argh. Only 10 more hours until I go home.

I just want to tell you what I know / and catch you when the current lets you go
RR

Influenza

When I was very young, I read indiscriminately--Christopher Pike, Louisa May Alcott, J. D. Salinger, Joanna Spyri, Francine Pascal, whatever you handed me. This is not terribly different from how I read now. However, the stuff one reads when one is very young is far more likely to become deeply embedded one's literary consciousness, and resurface again and again, perhaps especially if one takes to writing for oneself. Or perhaps it's just me.

Anyway, my literary foundations are equal measures literature and tripe. Sometimes when I read my own writing, I can hear faint echoes of things I thought were brilliant when I was ten. Some I still do admire--it's hard to shake that early hero-worship. And it's really really hard to convince myself that I'm not John Updike, or that it's not at least worth trying to be.

Anyway, an influence far more viral, though less venerated, than Updike is Sassy magazine. At least, it was in the years between 1990, when I discovered it at Hy & Zel's (don't tell me you don't remember "the supermarket drugstore") and 1994, when it was purchased by the Peterson Publishing company rapidly transformed into Teen's "If boys don't like you, what's the point?" twin.

But until then, great days. The fact that I was in grade school, a member of the Fido Dido fanclub, buying magazines at Hy&Zel's because of Sunday shopping laws, and growing prize-winning squash for the fair did not seem to me to be in conflict with the Sassy ethos of Doc Martens, dyed hair and alternative music. CGBG sounded good to me, and so did Manic Panic, vegan, Olympia, indie, and all those other nice words they used.

It was the words that got me; they do it every time. I never really got the bands they promoted, the clothes, the makeup, (though I did get myself some Manic Panic at one point--chaos ensued). I liked the magazine for the way it seemed to be written as a girls club where all the writers wrote primarily for each other as audience. Readers like me, who didn't live in New York and didn't know underground from inground, were welcomed to the readership like partygoers being ushered into the room.

Linguistic jokes, like using "rilly rilly" to be emphatic about something silly, "alterna" as the just-a-bit-better adjective to alternative, "yo" as emphasis...I loved being in on those jokes (note that those are things I still do--worrying?). I also started writing, for the high school paper, as editor of the yearbook, in letters, emails, um, this blog, as if I were part of a large and unruly staff of writers. Ever since I made my first PA announcement from "We here at Yearbook Central" I have liked that tone. So much so that when the magazine first altered and then (swiftly) folded, I didn't know what to aspire to. Would my "staffer" status eternally be imaginary?

Apparently so. I think Sassy did change women's magazines--it made them self-conscious, more willing to use the first person pronoun in articles, to refer to writers' lives, complexions and sexual experiments, to make the content about the character as Sassy did. But the love for the reader gradually leeched out of it, and made those articles just little exercises in self-empowerment--"oh, I'm so embarrassed about it, let me tell you, and tell you, and tell you." As I say too often, self-consciousness is the new ego. If you constantly talk about how embarrassed/inadequate/confused you are, you are still talking about yourself. Not that I see anything wrong with that--is Rose-coloured an unself-conscious venture? Hardly. But I really did think there was something community-building about Sassy, and I loved that. The idea of writing in concert, not necessarily sharing every opinion but sharing a voice, is quite alluring to me. It probably wasn't as great as I imagined--I was, after all, a hick kid, and anybody who didn't have to take the school bus every day had some mystique to me. But I still rilly do think about Christina and Margie and Jane and Mike and Diane--when I put on the Docs I got when I was 23, or the Hole cd from when I was 21, or a lot of eyeliner, anytime.

And I still want to be John Updike.

I'll tell you about the Manic Panic sometime.

I'm floating in and out of disco
RR

Did they make prom weekend earlier this year?

Or are stretch SUV limos just suddenly all the rage? Just wondering.

How can you know you're right / If you're not nervous anymore?
RR

Eek! I mean, Yay! I mean, Whir?

No, it's not a Marvel Comics dustup, it's me trying to convey my joy at the news that my story "Chilly Girl," originally published by Exile Quarterly has been short-listed for the 2007 Journey Prize.I'm a little overstimulated. It's an honour to have been nominated by Exile, (that's a cliche, but a true cliche, so I guess it doesn't matter), but if you get short-listed you get to be in the Journey Prize Anthology, which is just so cool. Anyway, if you are curious, the anthology will be out in November, the finalists will be announced in February next, and the winner in March.

Now I am trying to write a short piece to accompany the story, offering some insight onto the work and/or why/how I wrote it. I have shockingly little to say. Good thing today's mail brought the freebie cds I ordered in an attempt to understand the students I teach. I am relieved to note that I like Fallout Boy just fine, so that must mean I am not ancient quite yet...right? Right. But so far, they have failed to inspire me to write anything worthwhile. I guess I still have til the end of May. Before that, brilliance...

Cast a spell over the west
RR

Smarter every day

If you recall last week and the On Breadth posting (hmmm, how d'ya link back to old posts? I guess you can scroll down til I figure it out, right?), this is the followup that I promised. There was tonnes of interest, both here and on Facebook (I returned from Scarborough to find 30+ posts there.) In the end, there weren't too many who were for undergrad super-specialization, but the idea of forced intro lectures (Rocks for Jocks, anyone?) appealed to nigh on none.

There was also a strong contingent for taking high-level courses in what you truly love and have aptitude for, and learning about less-consuming interests on your own, because who says you need an academic credit to care about and understand art, say, or horticulture, or whatever floats your boat. True that--autodidacts are as smart as anyone else, and save a lot on tuition.

It was all way better phrased by others, but that's my summation. And now more about me:

I'm an auditory learner! Thrilled to know that, aren't you? What that means is that my learning style works best when information is offered verbally, with a chance to absorb, query and confirm in interaction with the teacher. In other words, I am a classroom learner! According to a corporate seminar that I took, only about 3% of the population is actually predisposed to learn in this way (the irony of telling us in a classroom that most of us couldn't learn well in a classroom was lost on nearly everyone involved) (please take statistics I offer from vague memories of corporate seminars three years ago with a grain of salt). I'm sure anyone can guess that people who learn best through visuals, text, experience, etc. make up most of the rest of the population.

Lucky me? Absolutely. I got a lot out of those breadth requirements, stats, Art of Listening (why else would I know the dirty secrets of Bolero?), all of it. I do try to recognize, though, that despite the amazing coincidence between my way of learning and the main way offered in society, it is not necessarily the best way. I can be a little unquestioning if something comes to me via a "source of authority." In fact, a lot gets by me if you just say it with confidence. Nothing I hate more than listening raptly to a whole explanation of new medical technology or why an author is a hack, then finding out that the speaker only saw half a documentary, or read the review and not the book. It's really hard to deprogram myself once I've already accepted the info as fact.

This voice of authority thing, though, is I think what keeps people beating their heads on the walls of the academe when their strengths lie elsewhere. Much as I love it here, it's really not the best way, or the only way. I've seen people waste a lot of energy, talent and self-esteem trying to write academic papers on topics they'd be far more brilliant at approaching in some other way. Some people I know who can write brilliant poetry can't analyze poetry, and just because you can fix a machine doesn't mean you have memorized the component parts of all machines.

Wow, it'd be great if I had a point to boil it all down to right around now, wouldn't it? Something about how I think "universities as the universal and exclusive path to intelligence, joy and success" is really limiting, I think. Also something about complaining about how much you hate the ivory tower from within the ivory tower is silly, too. Maybe I'm feeling sad because I'm graduating, but I sort of think I was lucky to have the opportunity to do something that suited me so well the last two years. Problems with the system, lord yes, but, heck, no one forced me to do it. And it was really a good time, there, for a while.

My life has not changed noticeably since last week, when I was still technically a student, but it feels different...less learning-y. I took a bunch of books out of the library, and pledged to write in companionable silence with Em tomorrow, so I plan on feeling better shortly.

Everybody knows / these are rock-hard times
RR