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Monday, August 29, 2005
Dave and Yuri, who are the best friends to have when you're moving into a new city, left me after helping me clean the apartment all night, and bade me farewell at the door saying, "Have a good night in your new home!" Though I'm very happy with the apartment, and the good wishes, I would think a good night entailed also some sleep, preferably before 3 am -- which, if I did the math right, would be 6 am Toronto time. As my body should still be accustomed to the time difference in the east, my brain's refusal to fall asleep made little to no sense.It reminded me of Ottawa this summer, where I spent the first night wide awake. I wasn't even stressed or deep in thought; I simply couldn't fall asleep. At 5 am, seeing the annoyingly chirpy rays of morning seep through the plastic blinds, I decided that laying in bed was useless because if my body had any intention of sleeping, it had missed the boat five hours ago. I remembered how my stepdad suggested that my insomnia might be from bottled up energy that needs to be spent through daily exercise, and so I decided to put on my runners. As I jogged passed strident and tacky buses in the matutinal splendour of downtown Ottawa, I couldn't help asking myself what, exactly, was I doing. My body must have been so confused: I'm never up at five in the morning and I never run, so what had so possessed me to do both of these things now? I ended the insanity with doing fifty push-ups in the parking lot because, since I was doing things completely out of my character anyway, I figured I might as well. It's too bad that this exercise regimen only lasted that first morning and was quickly substituted with eating lots of poutine. I found that sleep can also be incurred with eating large amounts of fat. This habit got to such a point that at our final concert, the musicians I was playing with all thought my pants were getting too tight. At least, that's what I assume it means when they told me, "It looks like your butt is eating your pants." My butt does many things, but I draw the line at it eating anything. Though it hadn't bothered me before, it started gnawing away at my conscience. (The comment, not my butt.) But there was nothing to be done because it was the day of the performance; in fact, it was only as my fellow musicians were walking behind me while on our way to the National Arts Centre that they volunteered the insightful quip. I'll have you know that I don't easily succumb to banter like this, but there's a point when not buying new pants is denying something. Something like an unanimous vote. You know something is true when the token "Nice Girl" -- the kind who plants trees, fosters injured park squirrels, and travels the North Pole saving seals -- shushes your friends, and says things that totally doesn't make you feel better because she's basically agreeing with everyone else. For instance, when she assumed that the pants I was wearing were borrowed -- which followed the careful reasoning that only someone who had no other choice would be wearing them. "Um, no. They're mine." "Oh." A moment of silence. Maybe she should stick to saving the world. So I decided that during the concert, I would never show my backside to the audience. Coming out to play was no problem. But, after the last note of the performance, while the others in my quintet were walking gracefully off stage, I resorted to shuffling uncomfortably, insisting on walking sideways like some sort of self-conscious crab, an awkward arthopod anthropoid. I decided then that the first project on my return home was to buy a pair of pants. One of my girl friends takes, from my careful estimate, the combined durations of Titanic, Waterworld and a Wagner Ring Cycle just to pick out socks. (And it's just as exciting.) But when I go shopping, it takes me five minutes. See, whenever I buy pants, it's an emergency. Like, there'd be no other way around it. I walk into the store with pants so unsightly at its seams that I'm either coming out with pants or in my underwear. After the ostracizing ordeal in Ottawa, I went to buy pants and the clerk at Tip Top Tailors remarked that it was the fastest sale she's ever done. Maybe I don't have a tough enough auditioning process for pants, but I was pretty much ready to buy anything on the terms that they be black and that they be pants. I guess I'm pretty predictable. Just not when it comes to push-ups. Friday, August 26, 2005
This is just a message to the faithful who keep clicking on Irrefragable:It's going to be a little difficult for me to post anything for the next few days because, as it turns out, I might not be getting internet in my apartment. As a result, all email-checking and writing for the site will have to be done in this computer lab at my school, which closes at 5 pm every night. You can see how this isn't conducive to Anyway, the new apartment is really nice and I'm very happy with it. More on that later, but it's been only one night and I've already broken my bed. Not to worry, though: It's nothing that sleeping on the floor doesn't fix. I'll write more soon after the weekend. In the meantime, there's plenty to do. Like, maybe -- (eyes darting from side to side) -- buying a CD. Recent sales have gone to Alexandra Lee and Marie-France Boisvert. Many thanks to them and to you for all the clicks. Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Email of the WeekSubject: None Yo man your poetry is gay. Sincerly, Andrew M., Altanta - Go Braves! Andrew, thank you for your comment. I will not make fun of your spelling error. People are starting to tell me that it's too cheap and convenient a rebuttal to nit-pick on your language while side-stepping the actual topic. And it seems the topic you've chosen is a colourful one. Being a Braves fan, I'm sure you know how strange a game baseball is. In addition to the confusing tradition of congratulatory tush-slapping by teammates, baseball has, at the core of its play, the exchange between pitcher and catcher: The catcher gives a variety of coded hand signals between his legs, and the pitcher either shakes or nods his head depending on whether he likes the type of pitch requested by the catcher. Much of the game is spent with this focus and, essentially, what we end up watching is the perpetual interchange between two men, one of whom is spending the entire time staring intently at another man's crotch. At this point, you have to ask yourself whether or not this bothers you. If it doesn't -- because, maybe, it's an effective way of communicating a message with subtlety -- neither should my poetry. 
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