Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

In Which She Muses About Ballet

Wandering through one of my favourite second-hand bookstores here in Oakville, I found a copy of Karen Kain’s Movement Never Lies: An Autobiography for only twenty dollars. Needless to say, although I walked away from it virtuously, I stopped by again later in the afternoon to take it home with me. Karen Kain was a goddess to me when I was a child. I’d borrowed this autobiography from a friend of my mother’s when it was released a few years ago, but when I saw it on the shelf, I knew I had to own my own copy.

I danced for seven years as a child. I wasn’t obsessed with the ballerina stereotype, the way some girls are; it might have had something to do with how much I disliked the colour pink. No, what I loved was the physical expression of dance. I could use my body, my awkward clay, my shy hands, to tell a story. I forgot that I was shy when I danced. I could be graceful, and un-self-conscious, and light.

It didn’t hurt that I was naturally very flexible. Exercises that others had to fight to achieve were second-nature for me. Music, too, was a part of me without effort; others had to struggle to internalise music in order to fuel the dancing, but music has always been a language I have been able to hear and understand without difficulty. I was not, as you might guess, a favourite of my dancemates, just as I wasn’t popular among children in regular classes – too quick, too smart, too easy.

My mother took me to see a ballet at Place Des Arts as often as she could, usually once a season. I have had the excellent fortune to have seen the Kirov ballet do Cinderella; I saw the National Ballet of Canada do their celebrated Giselle and Romeo and Juliet, among several other ballets. We saw a lot of theatre, too. My mother has always been very determined that I would be exposed to the same kinds of culture that she had been exposed to as a child. Her father would always take the children to see the new Rogers and Hammerstein musical as it came through town, and one of my mother�s fondest memories was going into the city to see Romeo and Juliet with her older sister. She passed that appreciation of art on to me, and I expanded into opera as well, which I adore.

I began dancing at six. After a year, the National Ballet School recruiters were coming through town, and my teacher requested that I be allowed to audition. At the time I didn’t understand what an acceptance into the National Ballet training program would entail. Yes, I would be able to train to be a dancer; no, I truly had no concept of the discipline, the homesickness, the pain, the chances of failure, the depression. My mother, knowing perfectly well the horrors that children go through at ballet school, refused to allow the audition. I was disappointed, of course, but at seven, these losses come and go, and are easily forgotten.

I danced until I was just about thirteen. At thirteen, we were considered old enough and formed to a level where we could begin pointe work. This is what every woman who has ever imagined herself in place of a ballet dancer moving gracefully across the stage dreams of: the elegant long line of leg and arm, the ethereal illusion of floating, of weightlessness created by balancing on her toes. A woman en pointe possesses an ultimate secret femininity. Part of me yearned for that; part of me yearned for the slow, controlled moves that pointe work requires. Another part of me eagerly anticipated harder work: exercises, developing a new centre of gravity, working different muscles. Going en pointe was a rite of passage from child to adult.

I would have kept on dancing but for the fact that my teacher sat me down and explained that although the next step was to move on to dancing en pointe, there would not be enough students to fill the class. I and my sole remaining classmate would have to be put back a year, repeat what we had just learned, and then go en pointe two years from now with a full group.

I was crushed, and affronted, and insulted. Repeat a year when I had been so successful? Be held back to dance with people a year younger? Did she not understand what going en pointe meant to me? Had I not paid my dues, put in seven years of work to reach this moment?

Being a few weeks shy of thirteen, however, and still shy, I felt my eyes sting with tears and said little. And I just didn’t go back in the fall.

I regret it immensely now, and I have for about a decade. At thirty-one, you can see that a year – a single year of evening classes once or twice a week – forty-odd hours of extra work is nothing. At thirteen, though, it’s a lifetime.

I tried to go back when I was twenty-three. I called a dance school and they invited me to an evening class to try it out before I registered. I was terrified, but I went. The teacher was wonderful, and had I tried a class early in the session I might have registered with them and still be dancing today. The class I audited, however, was near the end of the term, and the dozen women in the group all knew the sequences the teacher was calling out. I tripped; I stumbled. I couldn’t recognise what the teacher was calling for next. I got in people’s ways. At the end of the class I avoided the women as they cooled down, skulked into the changing room to pick up my bag, pulled my coat on over my dance clothes without changing, and slipped out, my eyes burning again with tears.

And again, I never went back.

So re-reading Movement Never Lies makes me think about a lot of things. I wonder what might have happened if that audition had gone through. I look at Karen Kain’s life and although at times it was glamorous, like any kind of theatre, the effortless and natural illusion presented to the audience covers a community clinging to sanity by the skin of its teeth, performing despite sprains, back spasms, bitter and violent fights with a co-star, touring conditions that would horrify rats, and the artificial society that never quite fits into the real world. I deeply admire any man or woman who has the physical strength and mental and emotional endurance to commit to a life of dance. Had I kept on dancing, my knee and back problems might never have existed � or I might have been crippled by them. The Might-Have-Been game shoes no horses (to mix metaphors); I do my best not to play it. Dance formed my body and my love of theatre, and for that, I’m thankful.

Seven years of dance when you’re in such a formative stage leaves its mark; it is a part of me now that I could not shed if I so desired. I am complimented on my movements, both on-stage and off. I am usually quite aware of my body and how it is reaching, stretching. It is now natural for me to stand just so, legs turned out, usually with one foot slightly in front, heel of one nestles into the arch of the other. Arm movements always lead with the hand, thumb underneath the palm. My pelvis is tucked underneath my torso � and if I catch myself not doing it, I correct myself without thinking. I rarely stand face on to anyone or anything; three-quarter front was drilled into me as being more aesthetically pleasing. If I’m sitting, I sit on an angle, or at the very least turn my head slightly. And when a man I dated for a time welcomed me into his circle of friends, the sign of acceptance was being given a mock Native American name.

He named me Walks With Grace.

Losing Literacy

My poor book club witnessed a wide range of my emotions last night, from despair through righteous fury in our discussion of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 last night. We talked for quite a while about a society that is losing its ability to read (one theory that arose was connected to scientific tests being done which are suggesting that the physical act of reading text is an increasing effort for the evolving human brain, as opposed to pictograms or other forms of communication, which was quite interesting). Naturally, that led to talking about the educational system repeatedly dropping its standards. Education is expensive; failing a student means you have to pay for a year of that student’s education twice; and heaven forbid we discourage their efforts by negative reinforcement. No, no, we must empower them instead by passing them despite their lack of skills necessary to acquiring the next set of skills, which in turn undermines the next level, and so forth. Why is it a crime to do this with faulty screws on an assembly line of, say, airplane engines, but not with the human mind in an educational system?

Today I discovered an article in the Times Online (that’s the UK times, not the NY Times) that addresses the same problem. The author of the piece had agreed to teach a journalism course, and began by asking the students which news programmes they watched. They couldn’t answer. Nor could they name newspapers that they read regularly. These were journalism students, who should be studying the medium to which they aspire. Or, if not studying, then at least aware of, exposed to. One assumes that they must have heard about journalism somewhere!

Was it not reasonable to expect undergraduates who had signed up for a three-year media degree (encompassing subjects ranging from print journalism and website design to video production and broadcast news) to have more than a passing interest in the news agenda?

Apparently, yes.

�Many of the students I teach have basic language and writing problems which have not been addressed at school or by the university,� says a lecturer in broadcast journalism at another university.

Foreign students paying to attend media courses are being misled by universities, says the departmental head, who is obliged to take a significant percentage of them each year. �In my view, universities that take students who don�t speak English to a good standard are taking money under false pretences,� he says.

Foreign students? At least they have the excuse of a language barrier. How about the local students who can’t write an essay, because they’ve never been taught how, in all their years of schooling?

An interesting point came up in the discussion last night. Once education became compulsory, it began communicating ideas and analytical methods to more people than ever before. Suddenly there were more educated people, bending class boundaries, flooding professional career positions. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, educational standards have been lowered alarmingly, perhaps in response to that flood of educated persons. Is society top-heavy with thinkers, who can so easily become agitators? The paranoid side of me which reads too much science fiction and dystopic novels wonders if the lowest common denominator has become the measuring stick for us all in order to keep better control over society. The point was made last night that time and again in various societies, the intelligensia has become the ruling class, and anyone of promise is usually plucked out of the masses to either be locked away, terminated, or to become part of the system of government. Which means, as soon as a government educates its citizens, they are in immediate danger. (And you may choose who I mean by �they� � the government, or the people it has educated. Or both.)

Bleak.

It returns to the question which crops up every once in a while: what purpose do artists serve? The philosophers, the writers, the painters – what function do they serve in society? Granted, yes, entertainment is one of their functions, but by no means their primary one. Artists are the conscience of a culture; they question, they compare, they cast issues in a different light, they challenge and they overturn… so long as they are free to do so.

Creative writers enjoyed great prestige in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union because of literature’s unique role as a sounding board for deeper political and social issues. Vladimir Lenin believed that literature and art could be exploited for ideological and political as well as educational purposes. As a result, the party rapidly established control over print and electronic media, book publishing and distribution, bookstores and libraries, and it created or abolished newspapers and periodicals at will. – from the Library of Congress’ Russian Archives: Attacks on Intelligensia: Censorship

With the intelligensia on your side, your regime will be quickly accepted. Having artists on staff (or the patrons who fund that art on your side) to uphold the current status quo is a clever move. It leaves the artist open to accusations of not producing “real” art, however – art produced freely and without allegiance. Defining that state is problematic, as artists throughout the ages are usually at the mercy of some sort of patron, or at least those clients for whom s/he produces work. Ideally, however, freed of the capitalist imperative (ha ha ha), an artist has the right � perhaps even the duty � to respond to the ideas of the day, to discuss, to question, and to push the envelope ever further. Building a better mousetrap may have gotten us to where we are today technologically, but it has been the philosophers who have made us, morally and ethically, the thinking and feeling human beings we are presently. (Interestingly enough, they used to be one and the same. Leonardo da Vinci, anyone?)

So where are today’s artists? The one who are to serve as our moral compasses? Probably at the bottom of a slush pile in a publisher’s office. Turned away from a film production company because their idea “just wouldn’t sell”. Check out this rant on the current state of art prostituting for the state entitled No Baudelaires in Babylon: Tom Bradley’s Comments at the Paris Sorbonne International Conference on Electronic Literature. Wicked and grating and not for the faint of heart.

Perhaps my frustration stems from the apparent devaluing of the intellectual aspect of our culture in favour of speed and efficiency. There must be some way the two can co-exist instead of one triumphing at the expense of the other. Maybe I�m too idealistic (as I was accused of being by one of my thesis examiners), but I believe that the solution lies in an equal attention to mind, body and soul. Capitalism doesn�t have to exist in an intellectual and aesthetic vacuum. I freely admit that new methods of communication and entertainment can have value; I just don�t think they should be replacing the older methods. Such a replacement limits access to the valuable older works (be they film, text, or musical), thereby cutting off generations from their heritage. Everyone should have access to the works of the world, modern and ancient, whether they want it or not. The option should exist.

See what happens? Give me free time and I get restless and start rabble-rousing, exhorting people to think. Next thing you know, I�ll vanish � for my own good, of course, and to keep the rest of you nice and safe�

Musical Voyeurism

And here I thought my migraines and backaches would be history once I stopped working. Apparently I live a rich fantasy life.

I’m lying in my bedroom working on my laptop. Usually I have music on, but right now there’s a saxophonist wandering through some pieces nearby. This is the sax player who completely enthralled me by playing “My Favourite Things” for twenty minutes last summer, arresting my motion as I swung into the bedroom with the intent to quickly grab a book.

There’s something particularly special about overhearing someone playing an instrument. Making music is such an intimate practice that listening in is a bit voyeuristic, in a way. Music has a different life if you’re aware that you have an audience; it becomes performance rather than an act of love, and while performance can be done lovingly it inevitably acquires a different dimension. Some might argue that it’s a necessary dimension – the old tree falling in a forest paradox. While performance adds spice to music, much the way an audience adds an essential element to a piece of theatre, I think that an audience of one – namely, the musician – can serve a more immediate purpose. The act of making music entails pulling emotion out of one’s soul and interpreting it through an instrument. That act of interpretation fulfils a desire within the musician whether anyone else is there or not – possibly in a purer fashion if they are alone, since there is no need to groom that emotion to present it to someone else. It’s music for the love of it, proven so by the fact that no audience is required.

Writing can be like that too. I know plenty of people who write to satisfy something inside them who, once a body of work is accomplished, quietly tuck it away somewhere. They feel no need to share the product; it was the act of putting thought to paper that satisfied some urge. I know others, of course, who seek to communicate to/with others via written word, and who have published, or who at the very least pass the writing on to someone else. The point is, the act can be done for the sake of the act itself.

I envy my saxophonist neighbour. Not just his (her?) talent and his technique, but his/her comfort in practicing with open windows. I cringe at the thought of anyone hearing me practice, to such an extent that my husband created a miniature practice room for me in our huge front hall closet in our last apartment. It was just big enough for me to sit in and have full bow arm extension in both directions, soundproofed with styrofoam and carpeting and yet I still was convinced that people could hear me. This terror of being overheard originates partially from my innate shyness, and partially from my first two years as a cellist in an apartment over a crusty elderly woman who complained if my cats ran up and down the hall.You can imagine her reaction when I practiced scales, or when a friend came over with her violin to play duets. Loud banging on my floor shattered whatever shreds of self-confidence I was struggling to establish, at a time when I was trying to figure out who I was, how to express myself as an individual, how to deal with being an adult learner with all the inhibitions that implies, and how to survive with my parents newly removed from the province. Reactions formed so early on have persisted throughout my eight years of cello-playing, which is one of the reasons why I love listening to this saxophone. Someone somewhere not only is comfortable enough to play without caring who hears, or who might complain, even if the same music is played for twenty minutes. The knowledge that someone that close to me (geographically, if not personally) is inspiring.

So, too, is my astonishing ability to play as much Bach as I have discovered I am capable of playing. A year ago, I was crushed at how poorly I played pieces I performed with capable technique when I was still studying with a teacher. Ten months of struggling in orchestra has restored much of the technique I’d thought lost. Which, of course, is one of the reasons I joined. That… and the ability to practice with less self-consciousness, as does that saxophone player nearby who will likely never know how happy s/he makes me, or what a wonderful example s/he sets me.

On Shakespeare And Words

The latest issue of The Economist reviews a book called Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion by David and Ben Crystal, and the review begins thusly: “Although welcome as a magnificent tool, this doorstop compendium prompts an alarming question: has Shakespeare become a foreign language to us?”

I’m wildly vacillating between two extremes. On one hand, sure, modern English-speaking people don’t know enough about their own language to understand a lot of Shakespeare, which is lamentable. On the other, you don’t need to understand every word to understand the meaning. That’s why Shakespeare’s tucked into that little slot that’s marked “Genius”.

On the other other hand (let’s move down to feet, shall we?) I anticipate this new book with glee, word-lover that I am. One of the reasons I relish Shakespeare is because he uses so many different words. His vocabulary is delightfully varied, and if he didn’t have a word for something, he made it up. A goodly portion of our modern lexicon is derived from Shakespeare’s oeuvre.

Without further ado, check the review out. I hate the fact that people feel the need for a glossary to understand what someone is saying, when if they just listened and watched they’d get the gist of it, but even a glossary is preferable to rewriting a perfectly good piece of theatre. That, in my mind, is punishable by death. My back goes up every time someone suggests rewriting a line in a Savoy opera “because modern audiences don’t know the phrase”. Tough. The piece of theatre is a piece of history. Constantly updating it means you will lose the heart of it. Look at what happened to the Bible. Sure, King James brought the Bible to more people who hadn’t had previous access to it, but he rewrote and twisted meanings left, right and centre. (Incidentally, yes, that’s the same King James for whom Macbeth was written. He really had a thing about witches, didn’t he?) Rather than pandering (look! A Shakespearean word!) to the lowest common denominator, why not educate them instead by leaving the challenging reference as is and the LCD rising as a result?

Please note that by updating I don’t mean changing the setting, or performing the work in different costume. I think Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet was brilliant, transmitting the truth of the piece to modern audiences while preserving the language – excellent proof that one doesn’t need to rewrite something to tell a story originally written in Elizabeth I’s reign. Luhrmann’s work made the point (and “o, excellent well” at that) that proved something which more high school English teachers should know by now: Shakespeare is meant to be watched, at the very least heard aloud, and not read. Updating, for me, means changing words, phrases, into what a modern interpeter thinks would be equivalent. It resembles translation in that a translator cannot translate word for word; s/he must search out equivalent idiom and translate meaning. I find it ludicrous that people think Shakespeare (let alone William Schwenk Gilbert) requires translation. Older texts such as works in Middle English? Well, we’re now getting to the point where our language has shifted so much over the last millennium that yes, an extensive glossary or a side-by-side translation is required for the lay reader when approaching works dating from 1240 CE like King Horn. Chaucer (d. 1400 CE) is iffy; but again, if read aloud, his works such as the mainstay Canterbury Tales make much more sense. Shakespeare is a mere four hundred years old. Language has not shifted so far in four centuries that a translation is required.

Is Shakespeare truly becoming more obscure, though?

It is sometimes assumed that it is only a question of time before Shakespeare becomes inaccessible. But does time come into it? As early as 1679, John Dryden was complaining that �the tongue is so much refined since Shakespeare’s time that many of his words are scarce intelligible, and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions that it is as affected as it is obscure.� Shakespeare’s 17th- and 18th-century adaptors blithely clarified him. In 1664, when William Davenant adapted �Macbeth�, the hero was made to say that his bloody hands would �add a tincture to/The sea.� Not until 1744 when Garrick, in part, restored the original, was Shakespeare’s �multitudinous seas incarnadine� heard again on stage. In fact, time may have helped. Modernism has made us more patient with obscurity. We rate suggestion more than clarity. When, for example, the horrified Claudio in �Measure for Measure� imagines himself dead and lying �in cold obstruction�, we relish the strange blockish mouthful before turning to the notes. -from The Economist review Fardels By Any Other Name

Indeed. Our society has this queer dual drive to honour the past (“it must be good, because it is old”, also known as nostalgia), and to remake everything in a contemporaneous fashion, bringing things up to speed to be as cutting-edge as possible. We outgrow and outstrip our own accomplishments of a mere decade ago; it’s little wonder that much of modern society considers four-hundred-year-old theatre no longer accessible. It requires time, and patience, and the willingness to luxuriate in language, something that many people have forgotten how to do in this microwave- and Internet-dominated world.

What has also killed Shakespeare in the twentieth-century is bad, bad theatre. Dreadful interpretations. Actors still being trained to strike a pose and declaim, as opposed to speaking the emotion implicit in the script. Poorly done theatre in an age where TV and movies distribute a permanent product to billions of people in almost no time at all has had an adverse affect on how historical theatre is perceived. A fleeting, brilliant piece of live theatre has more power and depth to it, yet because it is fleeting less people are exposed to it, changed by it. Twentieth and twenty-first century media has made possible the sharing of exquisitely crafted art, but it has also made possible the sharing of so much crap. Unfortunately, there’s more of the latter, overwhelming the art by sheer numbers.

Is there hope? You bet. So long as the world doesn’t decide to go the way of Ray Bradbury’s dystopic utopia in Fahrenheit 451 and destroy literature because each author says something different, thereby dividing the people who cannot rest peacefully is they do not all share the same unchallenged opinion. Personally, I’m hoping for a renaissance in the arts sometime soon. Then again, I’m one of those who thinks holding a tangible, bound book in my hands is infinitely preferable to scrolling through an e-book. Someday, I’ll probably become outdated too, and need to be brought up to speed – contemporised, for the lack of a better term. Until then, however, I’ll honour original works in their original forms as best I can.

On Being Canadian

I’m certain that others of my generation have the same problem I do. You know, the one where you start singing our national anthem in one language and slip into another somewhere? And you don’t realise you’re doing it until you get stuck on one line?

Maybe it’s just here in Quebec. Or maybe it’s from sea to shining sea, since all of us used to watch Hockey Night in Canada and the anthems are always sung bilingually.

Isn’t that a lovely phrase? “From sea to shining sea” is my favourite way to describe our nation. We start at the East (because it’s where the sun rises, silly) and travel through red soil, farmland, fishing villages, farmland, mountains, farmland, prairie, mountains, fishing villages, and the sea once more as the sun sets in the West. Thousands and thousands of kilometers of a grab bag of geography. Going from South to North, we travel through, what is it, three climates? More? (I mean, do we seperate tundra from sub-tundra or whatever it is?) And Montreal encapsulates all of them, from sub-tropic to sub-arctic. Go us!

Looking at the stupidity going on in the rest of the world, I can confidently say that I’d choose to live in Canada every time. Our commitment to education, research and development, peace-keeping, religious and racial tolerance, farming and umpteen other disciplines makes us one of the leaders in the cultural and scientific world. I don’t know whether to be annoyed that the rest of the world hasn’t figured out how terrific we are (wake up!) or relieved (we’re still safe!).

Overall, we’re a terrific country. We’re lucky to live here. And we have kick-ass Olympic hockey teams. So hoist that Maple Leaf high; wear your red and white proudly; sing our anthem at the top of your voice when you’re at whatever celebration you’re at today. In whatever language. Heck, switch back and forth. The rest of us will be doing it too.

Pet Peeves

If Kate asked me again what my three biggest pet peeves were, I’d have to rewrite my answer. Among those three peeves would be being taken for granted.

I detest being taken for granted. It’s rude, it’s not taking someone else’s feelings into account, and it’s using someone else.

I was put into a position this weekend where someone asked me to do something at the last minute. It wasn’t a big thing, and I know perfectly well I was expected to say yes; I don’t think it even crossed the questioner’s mind that I’d refuse. I also know perfectly well that we always have a choice, etcetera etcetera; one can always say no. However, I was asked in front of other people, and to say no would have looked petty.

I hate being in a position like that. To me, that’s taking someone for granted.

Every once in a while I work on radio dramas, and I love it. One of my contacts has a habit of calling me and asking if I’m available a couple of days before a potential performance. Same thing: simple courtesy goes a long way. Asking me to rearrange my schedule so I can fit rehearsals and a performance into it without a couple of days’ notice is not only presumptuous, it’s downright discourteous. The kicker here is that I love to do radio dramas, especially with this contact, and it puts my whole week off if I have to turn him down due to other scheduled events that can’t be shifted or cancelled. He’s always disappointed too. There’s a simple solution: call me earlier. Let me know ahead of time. Assuming I’m free does both of us a disservice.

To me, being taken for granted means I’m not being considered as a real person. One of the things that frustrates me about society today is that no one seems aware that other individuals exist outside their own personal sphere. People who cut you off on the road, who stop suddenly on a crowded sidewalk, who blast their music in cars, who smoke in bus shelters – not a single one of them understands that their actions affect others around them. They’re unable to understand that everyone is an individual, that we all work together. One of my husband’s frequent comments while driving is, “Wow, it must be nice to be so important” when another driver drifts into our lane, or cuts across three lanes of traffic to get to an exit, or pulls out of a parking space without looking to see if anyone’s coming down the lane. That saying encapsulates exactly how I feel about being taken for granted.

The Grand Poobah posted an entry a couple of weeks ago about something very similar to what I’m frustrated about. I put a lot of effort into being certain that I’m not inconveniencing anyone, to be polite, to think of others, which is probably why I snap every once in a while when I feel I haven’t been offered the same consideration. Sure, I’m only human, which means that I mess up every once in a while, trip over myself, crash and burn in a particular situation; I’m not perfect. So often, though, I get fed up. Why do I bother? So few others do.

I know why I do, though. It’s the same reason that Hobbes does. Because we’re decent people. Because we have that queer ability to place ourselves in someone else’s shoes and see how our actions will be interpreted. It’s a disability at times, but overall, however, I think it gives us a really good look at the human condition. I treat others – strangers and friends – the way I would like to be treated. So when people don’t extend me the same courtesy, well, after enough of being walked over, I snap. Unfortunately, sometimes I snap in the presence of someone who has no clue why, because the irritation and unfairness of it all tends to pile up until that proverbial straw on the camel’s spine enters the picture.

Yes, I do often wish I weren’t so damned principled. It would make life a lot easier if I were one of those people who didn’t care.

I don’t post song lyrics because journals should be about your own words, but this sums things up nicely:

Wouldn’t it be great if no one ever got offended
Wouldn’t it be great to say what’s really on your mind
I’ve always said all the rules are made for bending
And if I let my hair down would that be such a crime?

I wanna be consequence free
I wanna be where nothing needs to matter
I wanna be consequence free
Just say – na na na, na na na na na na

I could really use to lose my Catholic conscience
‘Cause I’m getting sick of feeling guilty all the time
I won’t abuse it, yeah I’ve got the best intentions
For a little bit of anarchy, but not the hurting kind

I couldn’t sleep at all last night ’cause I had so much on my mind –
I’d like to leave it all behind, but you know it’s not that easy
Oh for just one night

Wouldn’t it be great if the band just never ended
We could stay out late, and we would never hear last call
We wouldn’t need to worry ’bout approval or permission
We could slip off the edge, never worry about the fall

-Great Big Sea, Consequence Free

From now on, I say no when I feel like it.

The Spinal Issue

This back thing is just strange.

I don’t normally complain about physical pain. It’s a thing I have. People don’t need to know about what’s going on with my body; they can’t do a thing about it, so why bother them? I actually don’t complain about much, I think, in comparison with most people I’ve met. I swallow it and bear it. I don’t go home from work or call in sick unless I can’t stand up. Heck, I don’t even take aspirin for a headache.

This back thing, though…

I honestly don’t know what to make of it. It’s not something obvious, like pulling it lifting heavy stuff, or being in a car accident, or something I can point at and say, “Ah! This was the cause! Must fix!” Instead, it’s invisible. It just hurts.

Okay, if you’re a medical professional, and you look at my spine, you can see the double curve that self-correcting scoliosis creates. (Such a pleasantly misleading term, that; self-correcting makes it sound like it’s fixed, no longer a problem, have fun!) Everyday people, though, can’t. So I feel a bit awkward on a bus when people are standing and I’m sitting; normally I’d get up and offer my seat to someone. Nowadays, I know darn well that if I stand on the bus with one hand clinging to a pole, I’ll be in severe pain by the time I hit the metro. So there I sit, looking like a perfectly normal woman, taking up a space that someone older or heavily laden could be sitting in.

Perfectly normal, except… I can’t stand for too long. I can’t sit for too long. I can’t use the pillows I used to use. I can’t sit through a movie without discomfort. Driving has me in tears after half an hour.

Every once in a while, I wonder what I did wrong. You know – did I slouch while reading in bed too often, was it my curling style, did the posture I developed in six years of ballet training actually force my spine into an unnatural position? Both my GP and my osteopath tell me that it wasn’t anything I did or didn’t do; they say I was born with the mild spinal curve, then naturally grew the opposite curve further down the spine to compensate for it. Still, though, I wonder… usually around the time I have to pop a couple of Secret Weapons.

The fact that I’m taking pain-killers at all is a huge tip-off that I’m admitting something’s wrong. Every once in a while at work I look at a colleague (who experiences periodic back pain) and say, “My back hurts.” He looks at me helplessly and says, “I know.” The fact that I’m actually saying it out loud is a huge admission on my part. The knowledge that he can’t do anything about it should stop me; it’s not his responsibility, he can’t help me, and both of us know it, so I really should not do it. It’s just… it feels so good to be able to say it out loud to someone. It helps, a little. Don’t ask me why.

I keep coming back to the “what did I do?” concept. I suppose it’s normal for most of Western society, seeing that we operate within a reward/punishment social system all our lives. If you do good things, you get good stuff. If you do something bad, you get back pain that tortures you while you look perfectly normal to others.

My time limit on ergonomic kneely chair has been reached. Now I have to go lie flat on the living room floor and stare at the ceiling until it’s time to go teach.

But I’m not bitter.