Monthly Archives: March 2002

You Know You’re In A Canadian Movie When

Men With Brooms was a riot. I highly recommend it. If you do not have a sense of humour, or have qualms about your Canadian identity, do not see it. You won’t get it.

The credits faded in and out on the black screen. There was a loon call. I murmured to my seat-mates, “Well, I know I�m in a Canadian movie — there’s a loon crying.”

Then the deep patriotic male chorus started singing about the land of the silver bush to visuals of rushing water and wind through the trees, and the hoarse calls of beaver and the wail of a bagpipe. If the audience hadn’t known by the loon that it was a Canadian movie, they had to have figured it out by then. Not that it mattered; I was crying with laughter already.

Only our row was laughing in the whole theatre. We must have all been curlers or something. Or patriotic. With a wicked sense of humour.

CURRENT READING:

Well, Men With Brooms, actually, because I had to buy something that wasn’t a fashion magazine at the tiny bookstore near Zellers while I was waiting for my husband to come back and pick me up from my haircut (took him over an hour). Contains a couple of scenes cut from the movie that explain later scenes, and classic descriptions of Canada like, “an endless stretch of blacktop heading deeper and deeper into a land that comprised nothing but rocks, trees, lakes, rocks, trees, lakes, rocks, oops there’s a moose, trees, lakes, rocks and more rocks.” (p.196) And then there’s the opening paragraph, which goes like this:

“Once upon a time, there was a very cold country full of rocks. One particular province of this country, known as the Province of Ontario in the Dominion of Canada, was simply chock full of cold and rocks. The rocks, being rocks, didn’t mind the cold. They just carried on, being rocks, until someone (an immigrant from a not-quite-so-cold but just as full of rocks place called Scotland) disturbed their peace.

“Canada has never been quite the same.” (p.1)

10858753

It’s one of those mornings where I have so much tumbling through my mind that I can’t fix on any single emotion, so I feel vaguely like an emotion-o-scope and a bit panicky.

We have a beautiful home. I’m not boasting, I’m just making an observation. I was walking through the hall to get socks and it hit me: we have a truly relaxing and comforting home environment. Part of that beauty comes from the collective soul that has grown from the mishmash of stuff we own — the books, the plants, the candlesticks, the musical instruments, the art — that somehow works together without any advance planning on our part. It’s just simply beautiful.

Then I was hit with a wave of guilt. How can I be so unhappy sometimes when I have such a beautiful shell to cocoon in?

Then that wave overflowed into the rest of my life. How can I be so unhappy when people would kill to have my job? When women tell me that they wish they’d met my husband first and does he have a brother or would I object to cloning? When I’ve had the opportunity to complete not one but two university degrees? When people repeatedly offer me help, love and support, and keep trying to make lunch dates, coffee dates, pub dates?

Why do I (inexplicably, insanely) try to push all of that away? Why do I still feel that guilt? Why can’t I just be happy?

In other news, I cut my hair yesterday and that was traumatic too. I have a love/hate relationship with my crowning glory. It’s naturally curly, which can be good (as you straight-haired persons know) and evil (as all of you ringlet-cursed persons know). I hate spending time on how I look, so I usually just stick my head under the tap, comb it out, run a tiny bit of conditioner through it with my fingers and leave. Going to the hairdresser is awful. I hate it because they always condescend to me. They pick up a lock of my hair with the tips of their fingers, give me that artificial hairdresser smile in the mirror and ask when the last time I had my hair trimmed. Well, months ago, because every hairdresser I go to in the city makes me feel like a worm for not devoting at least half an hour a day to styling. Besides, in my opinion, paying someone to cut your hair every six weeks is like buying new socks: for some reason I always feel that they should last longer than they do, and that there are other more pressing things that my money needs to address.

I adore long hair. My goal is to have flowing Pre-Raphaelite locks cascading down my back. I constantly struggle to hold that goal in balance with the “if you trim your hair it will grow faster” concept. On top of that, I have on a couple of occasions been so angry at someone or something that I have gone to a salon and told them to cut it all off, only to go home, look in the mirror and burst into tears. It’s never the same again. I carry all that with me every time I walk into a salon, that anger, that anguish, that inferior I-am-a-worm feeling, the inevitable mute stubbornness that rises in response to the worm thing. I dislike hair appointments immensely. On top of it all, I have to rub salt into the wound by paying someone for the experience.

Which is why I have to sort of sneak up on myself and just do it. There’s a salon in Oakville that I love, but I only visit my parents about four times a year and usually during holiday weekends, so they’re either closed or booked. I try a different salon here every time, in an attempt to discover a place or at least a hairdresser I get along with. Last year I finally one who just cuts my hair, no pomp, no fuss, no guilt: the little shop attached to the Zellers near my old apartment. I love them. I get no lectures, no fluff about how if my hair was cut in layers it would curl more (no, it just frizzes more because there’s no more weight to keep it down), no false friendliness. You can’t even get an appointment — you just show up, they write your name down, and you wait. I’ve known that my hair needed a trim for about a month, but we just happened to be in the mall yesterday and I said, well, I’ll just get my hair cut, then. So I did. In, out within ten minutes, no one got hurt. A straightforward pageboy kind of cut. Not that you can tell, with all these infernal curls.

When I was little, my mother used to wash my hair for me, then sit me up on a stool in our kitchen with my dressing gown on and a blanket wrapped around me to keep me warm, spray No More Tears on my thick wavy (read tangly) hair, comb it through, then trim the ends for me. I loved it (except for the tangly part) for the I’m-taken-care-of feeling it gave me. I didn’t like the washing of the hair so much, so Mum came up with this pretend hair-washing creature called Beavie who used to hide in the suds and play in my hair, to make me laugh.

I don’t know why I’m so teary. I warned you — I’m all over the place emotionally today. I miss my parents. I want to know why I’m not happy with such a wonderful life.

Success!

I am returned victorious, with my shield, not on it!

Still flushed with triumph, I am home after teaching my very first public class. I was calm, I was balanced, I was well-prepared (having put in a few hours of work over the past couple of weeks planning it out, and having drawn up a detailed lesson plan today), and it went like clockwork. Two of my registrants didn’t show, but I put that down to freezing rain and the fact that they had to drive in from out of town. The three people who did attend were dynamic, interested, had excellent senses of humour, and very supportive, knowing that this was my first official class. I have rarely felt so assured of being successful – usually I find some reason to defer the certainty of having done a job well and to the best of my ability. I feel proud and pleased that everyone enjoyed themselves – I gave good solid information, in a clear fashion, and answered questions intelligently. I hit my two-hour mark with a fifteen minute break and didn’t have to rush or cut anything out, or stretch my material in a vain effort to fill time. Positive responses and feedback all around. I feel… like a teacher. Like I communicated something of value and everyone (including me) came away with something new, or a different way of thinking about something. Like I’ve finally given something back to all those people who have ever taught me something.

I’m feeling pretty darned good.

(The claddagh ring is still on my finger, though.)

Oops

So I was sorting through some rings for a customer, and saw a pretty little claddagh ring. “Ooh,” I said to myself, “That’s a pretty little claddagh ring.” Now, I have tiny fingers (my wedding band is size 3 3/4!) and I rarely see rings that fit me. This one was size 4, so I said, “Ooh, I’ll just slip it on,” because while I don’t wear a lot of jewelry I have this odd need to try on everything we sell. It was a bit snug over the knuckle, but it went on all right.

Now, however, it does not come off. I feel slightly foolish.

At least the heart’s pointing the right way…

Testing The Waters

Five for five in the Roll Up The Rim to Lose! Woo-hoo!

I’m teaching my first real live workshop tonight: Designing Rituals. I was supposed to do a different one last week, but with no students, it kind of falls flat. I got a dry run when a friend offered to let me adapt that class to fit into her Saturday night program, and it was interesting, but any discussion of ethics succeeds better when there are several people to debate instead of two students who agree all the time. The student teacher ratio of one to one might have been a little imposing, too.

Wish me luck!

Cello Bits

I finally got the URL for the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra web site last night, so you can check that out. There are still some terrific pictures that have yet to go up – namely the formal “black” photo taken at our last concert in December, and the informal casual dress photo taken last November at one of our rehearsals.

I noticed again last night that the fingers on my left hand are getting black again from working on the fingerboard of my cello. While I’d love to assume that it’s due to my impassioned playing, I rather think that it’s the stain on the fingerboard starting to come off. It’s only a student cello after all. Although the last time I was at Shar in Toronto getting my strings changed, they looked at it and told me that it was a rather high quality student model – apparently it’s not plywood, its solid carved wood. When my stand-mate tried it a couple of weeks ago he exclaimed over how easy it was to get sound out of it, so I guess that dreamy, mellow, 350 year old cello I tried during the same trip to Shar which made me sound like Amanda Forsythe still isn’t a necessary replacement. Ah well.

Today is the official Drink Much In Honour Of Rob day – to Hurley’s we will go!

Significant Events

Two significant events took place yesterday:

1 – I finally had my appointment with the osteopath – hurrah! I felt so comfortable, even though a little voice in my mind kept saying, “This is a sports clinic, look at all these real sports people being treated, you’re just a tense cellist with a little curve to her spine”. My appointment lasted two hours (which made the stiff charge worth it) and there was noticeable improvement which surprised even the osteopath. It’s a wonderful treatment that involves gentle extension of the spine, loosening of the muscles adjoining the vertebrae, stretches, and so forth – less aggressive than a chiropractor. She took a whole forty minutes and talked to me about my life, my headaches, dizziness (in my case all probably connected to spinal problems – wow) and when she asked if I were active, I told her no, but curling competitively for six years as a teen probably didn’t help my back much. Turns out her brother was my first skip. Small, small world, especially when you grew up in the West Island. Unfortunately, she’s so busy that my next appointment isn’t until April! I’m on her cancellation list, though, and I’ll grab whatever comes up, even if I have to get to work late. To avoid this problem of discontinuity, I planned ahead by scheduled three more appointments scattered evenly through April and the beginning of May. Ha.

2 – Last night marked my triumphant return to the Nebula Book Club! Now in its third year, this is an intellectual and social exercise that I’ve been deprived of while I was doggedly practicing the cachucha for The Gondoliers. Now I’m back, and wow, last night really reminded me of how much I’d missed it.

Actually, there was a third significant event: I actually saw an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer that I’d seen before, thereby ending my three-month streak of discovery. It means I’m getting to the point where I started watching it semi-regularly the first time Space started the reruns. There are still tons of episodes I haven’t seen in the third season, but now I’ve got a relatively complete score-card for all the other seasons (except for the newest season, of which I’ve seen all of three episodes). I love this show – campy, yes, and very 90’s teen, but it’s well-written, has terrific characterization, and a sense of humour. Oh, an an over-arching storyline – always impressive. Other than The West Wing, it’s the only show I follow.

CURRENT READING:

When you weren’t looking, I read How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen, a short but poignant examination of what access to books and literacy in general brings people. I’m currently in the middle of Kushiel’s Dart, a rather sensual debut novel by Jacqueline Carey about the training of a courtesan-spy. I’m enjoying the first-person courtly style in which the narrator tells the story (odd, because I often have no patience in artificially elegant writing styles) as well as the varied interpretations of the ideal of love this book raises. It’s really not the type of book I usually like, so I’m quite taken aback to realise that I’m probably going to buy it in hardcover while it’s still available, and the sequel when it’s published in a couple of months too.