If your dog is a canine vacuum, avoid mushrooms. This is easier said than done, here on the wet coast in autumn, but it’s still important to keep in mind. Also, consider pet health insurance, because trips to the vet are expensive and it make take a costly test or three to confirm that poison is the cause of your dog’s distress.
Mo’s doing okay, though still staying at the hospital until this evening at the earliest. I am relieved, though feeling fragile. Also, even more exhausted than a few days ago. We’ve canceled the open house/puppy warming that we’d planned for tomorrow night, because it looks like none of us will want to do much beyond cuddle on the couch.
i woke up feeling like shit, and decided that going to school would not improve things. it turns out that staying home hasn’t been much better, but at least i can control my surroundings somewhat. also, it’s much nicer here, because oats and i spent saturday cleaning and organizing the house: i actually have a desk now, the bathroom isn’t icky, and the kitchen table is no longer covered in junk.
unfortunately, we’re dog-sitting again, and though i love dogs in general and have nothing personal against our latest visiting friend, he’s big and young and carries himself like a fucking mack truck. in fact, let’s make his blog name mack, because he’s moving in down the street and will no doubt become a regular fixture in our lives. anyway, mo’s about 1/6th of mack’s size, but that doesn’t stop them from wrestling and playing like a couple of… well, puppies. they are so engrossed in each other that most of mo’s discipline goes out the window, and mack’s not much better. the barking is driving me bonkers, and they won’t quit on their own. for my own sanity, i just forced a time-out, by shutting mo in his room and mack in the kitchen. now i’m going to take some drugs, and drink some tea, and possibly some gin as well.
boring blogger gets dog and becomes even more boring, by blogging only about said dog and posting boring photos of the circles under her eyes. once i get some sleep, i might consider how to not be boring.
it’s long past my bedtime and i know i should be sleeping, seeing as i have a long day at work tomorrow followed by a long evening of the dreaded holiday staff party… but i’m on the very last page of michael tolliver lives by armistead maupin (one of the books i picked up secondhand in ottawa @ after stonewall) and as much as i’ve been enjoying it, something hasn’t been sitting quite right and i feel the urgent need to work it out.
so, here’s my figuring. the characteristics of the people in this novel are described thusly:
- page 1 – Stranger: close to (michael’s) age, “not bad-looking, in a beat-up, Bruce Willis-y sort of way”
- page 6 – Barney: forty-eight, muscle daddy, has a “big white marble ass”
- page 7 – Ben: blond, brown eyes
- page 8 – Anna: eighty-five, wears a turban, has “snowy hair”
- page 30 – Brian: sixty-one, cleft chin, white “sandpaper” beard
- page 32 – Shawna: twenty-two, black hair, dark-red lipstick, wears harlequin glasses
- page 45 – Jake: ~thirty, short, stocky, grey eyes, bearded
- page 79 – Bed and Breakfast owners: “a pair of retired Italian queens from Queens”
- page 80 – Lenore: ~fifty-five, girlish, petite, “careful hair”
- page 80 – Sumter: seven, delicate, “doe-eyed”
- page 91 – Irwin: has a comb-over, rugged
- page 92 – Nursing home receptionist: “a balding Middle Eastern man”
- page 98 – Alice: “meticulous” blue hair, blue skin tone due to illness
- page 113 – Patreese: “a solid-looking black bear nearing fifty”
- page 119 – Pot-smokers outside bar: ~forty-five, highlighted hair, fake tans
- page 142 – Waitress at Denny’s: “hefty young gum-chewing black woman”
okay, i’m bored of this, and even just above proves my point: the only characters whom maupin describes in a racialized manner are people of colour. no one is ever explicitly described as being White, with the possible exception of Barney, whose ass is described in a way that seems to imply he is caucasian (though he might not be). this is a classic example of the way in which whiteness is considered to be the status quo, the standard, the assumed-state-of-being-unless-otherwise-indicated. by only using racialized terms to describe the bed and breakfast owners, the nursing home receptionist, patreese, and the waitress at denny’s, maupin has indicated them to be “the other” because it makes them stand in stark contrast to all the characters whose descriptions focus on clothing, hair, and other features that are non-race-dependent (though, of course, are still indicative and important).
stuff like this makes me cringe.
especially when it’s in a very popular queer novel… and especially when it’s mixed in with some self-conscious attempts at decrying racism. when seeing the “balding Middle Eastern” nursing home receptionist for the first time, our protagonist responds:
I noticed the bumper stickers on his file cabinet- PROUD AMERICAN and SUPPORT OUR TROOPS -strategically positioned for the benefit of anxious visitors. Poor bastard, I thought. Guantanamo Bay must seem awfully close.
is it cuz i’m an educated white canadian, relatively far removed from common mindsets of the united states, that this seems like a pretty weird response to noticing some unknown person working at their job? here are my other questions:
- how does michael tolliver know this dude is “middle eastern”?
- how does he know that those stickers are there for the benefit of visitors? (maybe the guy is a soldier, or comes from a military family!)
- why would michael tolliver assume that visitors would be anxious? (are all visitors racist ignoramuses who jump to conclusions about complete strangers?)
this sort of shallow thoughtless pitying of a person of colour is… well, plain offensive, actually.
…ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED BY THIS PHRASE:
Outside Mama’s room we held a brief powwow…
to be clear, no one in this novel has been indentified as indigenous: the “we” in the above phrase are all people who have been constructed as part of maupin’s assumed-white posse. so, in case you were wondering, these characters did not actually take part in a “…a specific type of event where both Native American and non-Native American people meet to dance, sing, socialize, and honor American Indian culture” ; they made a plan for their morning and that was all. this is not an appropriate use of the term “powwow”. it just isn’t.
there’s more, but i haven’t got the energy right now.
i’ve loved the tales of the city series since i was in high school. i think armistead maupin is a pretty good writer and i’ve loved being transported to his version of san francisco in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. the insights into the AIDS epidemic and the angsty lessons about love and romance were always fascinating to me, even if the characters seemed a little too white/healthy to be real, because at least there was queer content. my criticism of this final wrap-up novel is proof that it matters to me, because if i didn’t care, i’d just write the book off and not even bother blogging about it. but i can’t do that, cuz dammit: i was looking forward to this book and i’m too disappointed now to let it go quietly. why, armistead, why?
i guess i can take down the NaBloPoMo thingy on the left sidebar, seeing as november is now over and thus National Blog Posting Month has come to an end.
le sigh.
well, i guess i shouldn’t beat myself up over it, cuz my attempt to do 30 posts in 30 days wasn’t an epic failure.
not epic, no.
but… really, i don’t deserve much of a gold star or anything, do i? i managed to pull off 19 posts, which is 63.33%. blech. ah well. i blog because i want to share my writing, but without getting marks as i have when i’ve shared it @ skool… so, fuck it.
next time, i oughta set out a list of goals before i start a project such as this. in fact, i’m going to pretend i did! looking at it that way, i’m pretty pleased with myself. i feel as though i used this month very well, thank you very much:
- i only moved to this URL for all my blogging needs back at the start of october, and despite the import of my archives, it was still feeling a bit bare and unsettled. you know, like when you move to a really great new apartment and you’ve painted the walls and added all your favourite old furniture and crap, but it still doesn’t feel quite like home? participation in nablopomo provided me with a chance to get past that awkward stage, by forcing me to post a lot of writing on this blog. now i feel like i belong here. it’s nice.
- in the past, i’ve spent far too much time lazily reading the blogs of strangers, instead of writing my own. during nablopomo, i didn’t have that luxury… if i read something interesting on someone else’s blog, i’d run over here and write about my thoughts instead of just thinking them. yessirree, i was training myself to produce a product! oh gawd, when i think of it that way, i’m appalled. ick. still, it was fun to have a goal.
- also, some of my thoughts were only half-baked, and i didn’t always have time to finish them (though i’d meant to before the end of the month… dammit!). so, i have a nice store of drafts to work on for later posting, during slow times.
- i work at a computer all day. often, it drives me crazy. nablopomo forced me to be more focused in my non-work computer time, so that i didn’t end up spaced out over the screen for hours longer than i needed to. during november, i actually built up a nice bike, cooked a ton of food, spent a lot of time with friends, rearranged some of my apartment, read a bunch of books, and did a lot of sewing: in short, a solid list of computer-free accomplishments.
- the groups on the nablopomo website brought me together with a lot of other great writers, whose blogs i now read semi-regularly. also, i got all curious about other bloggers who share my interests, so i spent a bunch of time searching through the blogging community and found even more folks whose writing i enjoy. in particular, i’m thinking of nikki, amanda, mizducky, mae callen, kyle, and violet… yeah, even though you don’t know me, y’all get shout-outs, cuz i think yer pretty damn cool.
- for the most part, i’ve been a big lurker: i read peoples’ blogs, but never added a comment. now, i’m all like w00t! par-tay! er. well, maybe not quite. still, i tend to write comments a lot more than i did in the past… mostly cuz i now know how bloody boring it is when no one. ever. comments. (this is not a thinly-veiled plea for your attention, i swear! i actually get a lot of f2f commentary and that’s usually enough for me to feel the love)
happy december, everyone. i have one more day here in toronto, and will be flying to the west coast early on wednesday morning. this has been the worst trip to ontario i’ve ever had; i love the city and my friends here but insomnia kicked my ass, and i’ve barely been present at all this past week. apologies to those of you i missed! next year? or… you could come visit me?
i’m so happy november’s over, and am dead thrilled to be going home.
Filed under: Family Member, Friend, Homebody, Insomniac, Nostalgic, Queer
the clock has only hit midnight, but i feel like it’s about 5 am. i’ve been having trouble sleeping, to the point that even when i eventually drift off, i wake up again within hours and lie there, stressed about work/plans/the fact that i am not asleep. mornings, i am up and about by 9 am at the latest, driven in part by the noise of my family. we are a noisy people.
it’s totally fucking me up.
i’m struggling with visiting all my friends and family here in toronto because i’m so out of it, and that makes me feel even more stressed. it’s a cycle, fed by my huge issues with what i see as me “letting people down”. i just need to get over myself, but that can be damn hard when you’re a zombie.
also, let’s be honest: it’s damn hard when you’re used to living alone in a large space on a quiet street in a small city with a mild climate, and habitually are able to control your routine/environment/interactions. i’m eating too little fresh/home-canned fruit, this house is too dry and hot, and these people are all too loud. how could i have come from this place???
le sigh.
cue the violins; exhaustion makes me melodramatic.
minutes ago, i went digging through my dad and stepmom’s medicine cabinet, looking for a headache remedy. i found painkillers with a drowsiness warning, and took two.
~~~
in other news, today i got a manicure. ha! no, really. i’m serious. i was hanging out with my 18-year-old sister in london, where she’s at school, and we had a couple hours to kill. she made some ignorant/obnoxious remarks about a panhandler, and i called her on it rather harshly, and then felt bad (though she deserved it). i offered to get her a drink at st@rbucks (surprise surprise, she’s a HUGE fan) in order to buy her love, and one thing led to another, until we were at the nail salon at the shopping plaza next to the bucky’s.
it was okay. i decided that i was having An Experience.
my nails/hands are rough and ragged, my friends… winter makes the skin crack, and i confess that i nervously pick at the tips and edges of my nails. also, i’m always cutting/bruising/staining my hands with tools/bike parts/art stuff/grease. so it looks kinda funny, to have rough skin and short imperfect nails with tidy cuticles and glossy pinkish polish. i don’t think it would be worth it for me to do such a thing on a regular basis, but i suppose that if one had nice hands of which one took great care, it would be an investment…?
besides which, my kid sister was pleased, especially because she’d gotten me to do something that i’d never done before. to be clear, there was also a hint of gloating on her part, that was definitely linked to her ability to conform to gender/class/sexuality expectations in ways that i simply *don’t*. it is what she uses against me now: at some point, she realized that i am not the norm, and it changed our relationship. my opinions don’t count for nearly as much as they did before she learned that the hair on my underarms would be unacceptable to her friends.
i remember the day she was born.
ah well… she will change too as she ages, and we will see what happens.
in the meantime, i will be glad that i did not completely freak out and she did not get in a snit after we left the nail place, when she made a vaguely racist remark with regards to the manicurists being asian. instead i deflected into a conversation about the universal dangers of fumes in unventilated workplaces, from nail salons to swimming pools to stained glass studios. she is a lifeguard and knows the effects of chlorine: score one point for attempting to bring home our connections to those we construct as The Other!
Filed under: Insomniac
another sleepless night, despite the soporific tea. i had been feeling better, much better than i had been on friday… and then i felt waaaaaaay too much, and am now very down again.
these things called feelings: be careful, or they’ll knock ya on yer arse.
so let’s talk about the good things: i made pizza for dinner tonight, which was more effort than i’d put into food in quite a while. yay, me! also, i worked from home, and that always put me in a good mood. as well, i’m taking the next 7 days off from work, because i need a holiday, even if it consists of reading scifi and drinking tea in bed.
which reminds me: i need a bed. also, a couch. also, a bedside table or something similar. anyone got any spare furniture? i’m also looking for a sewing machine…
[photo: the gorge in august... esquimalt, bc]
it’s half past three in the morning, and i’m having trouble sleeping. i *was* asleep, from the decent hour of 11 pm until about 1/2 hour ago… but then i was woken by banging and screaming coming from the apartment of my downstairs neighbours. the noise seemed to worry the dog too, because he began pacing, and the two of us listened for awhile in the dark as i tried to decide whether or not to call the cops.
earlier this evening, or yesterday evening now, i composed and distributed a letter to the residents of the other six apartments in this run-down old house. in it, i told them how i learned from the new landscapers (folks the landlords hired, but who happen to be friends of mine – what a funny town for connections!) that the building will be put up for sale in the next couple of months. i told them how the place is too expensive for any new owner to maintain as a rental, and i’m scared it’ll be bought by a developer and converted into character condos that’ll be sold for a ridiculous sum of money. i told them that if they’re interested, we could have a meeting with someone from the roofs and roots housing co-op, who could potentially buy the place to keep it as affordable, non-profit housing. that way, we wouldn’t have to risk higher rents, or losing our homes.
becoming a co-op would be a lot of work for us, the tenants in this building… but the incentive is huge: we’re all low-income and a few of us have dogs, and the current housing market in this city would eat us alive. when faced with the stress of a new landlord or possible eviction, it makes sense to do what we can to get control over our current housing situation. however, tonight i wonder if that’s enough. what kind of housing co-op could we be, if we feel compelled to call the cops on one another on a regular basis? i was talking with a co-worker about this yesterday, and she suggested that maybe a co-op could be what brings us together, what stops the violence in our house. at the time i laughed and felt optimistic: sure, i thought. a sense of community can be a powerful thing.
but do you know what else can be powerful? the primal fear that’s triggered when i’m woken up in the middle of the night by screaming and intermittent thudding noises. when i realized how fast my heart was beating, i decided that i needed to do something. domestic disputes in that apartment are pretty common, but a couple weeks ago there was an incident that had me dialing 911: apparently, the girlfriend of the tenant is addicted to drugs and she stabbed him, prompting members of his family to arrive and kick her out of the apartment. tonight, all i could think was that if it was same thing all over again, but she hurt him worse this time, i’ll be hard-pressed to accept my lack of action. so i called the cops, told them what was going on, explained why it worried me. they sent over two officers, who spoke with me after they’d been downstairs. they confirmed that it was the girlfriend again, but she’d left, so everything should be quiet for the rest of the night.
quiet for the rest of the night, but what about tomorrow? i can’t stick with the small picture, am thinking about the larger context. i’d like to take for granted that i could have an uninterrupted sleep each night. instead of worrying about my neighbours killing each other, i want to be challenged by our common task of maintaining our home. the optimism that i felt when i wrote that letter this evening is all but gone, replaced by aching eyes and a sense that this is not the time or place for a grassroots housing initiative. i don’t think we can get there from here.
[photo: random sight in an alley in downtown winnipeg, december 2007]
