irish passport
Where is my Irish passport? Where is it??? It’s been since February! The fucking Irish! It’s been since February 16, to be precise, and the website still says there’s ‘no information’ on my tracking number. “Please allow 4 to infinity weeks for processing.”
But I just know everyone in the Eire passport office is fucking around, thumbs up their arses, 3 hour lunch breaks at the pub, leaving work at 2 PM to either bring solace and doughnuts to their sick invalid mothers or pick their kids up from “reclaim Gaelic heritage” bullshit harp lessons at Mrs. McVittle’s farmhouse.
Why am I even so keen for this booklet? I never go anydamnwhere! My Canadian passport is vacant of stamps! What the hell will I do with an Irish version? Well, this is the thing. I am owed that damned Irish passport. I am 50% painstaking bullshit irish and a 100% citizen of that nonsense realm, all the way. Give it to me oh faeries in the bog, irish mists, good-for-nothing kinsmen useless shits! My father was a god-damned Irishman, never converted to Canadian, hated this country in fact, pussy that he was. The daisies are blowing over his pauper plot there in the home country, which he always longed for staring out the window chuffing his duMauriers and humming sad rebel songs like every displaced sad man everywhere who doesn’t know about reality but is perfectly attuned to the context of olden tymes primarily because they are dead dead dead and thus can be bent to one’s will. Never stepping foot into the world outside his own linoleum kitchen because it was colder and less welcoming and for surely he would be called out on his stupid, kittenish irish view of the world. Agorophobic housebound man was he. Give me my passport, “European Economic Union”, in the offchance I wish to perpetuate the mental and circumstantial poverty of my forebearers in your damp and melancholy and infinitely inspiring climes; I am owed it.
606 km
head house
I am lazy. I am in-the-bones lazy. It’s so comfortable in my head I can live here forever and maybe I will, laptop buzzing quietly at my side, a thousand half-stories, coffee getting cold near me because the second cup is just never as good, my eyes fixed out our living room window with the ugly view of old refrigerators and weedy lawn and the hummingbird feeder that sparkles like a red teardrop which no hummingbirds condescend to eat out of.
When I sit alone in the luxury of laziness, doing nothing, owing no-one anything, the world opens inside my head like Russian nesting dolls. I live in here; there is a clean-swept clearing in my skull distinct from the bones and pasty stuff.
There is a house in there built stone by shingle at the back of my mind while up front I face the world, smile sometimes, go about my questionable duties, cash the small paychecks and eat the doctored food.
It’s a dirty house , made with rough boards and decorated with faded newspaper clippings and the photos that come with picture frames in the dollar store, a couch pulled in from the alleyway; there is no electricity so I have to take advantage of the ambient light.
The windows have been chipped into the wood with a dull axe not up to the task.
The views are intermittent and different from every angle.
To the east, a haunted green land that never gets any closer no matter how I squint, but I know there are wet forests, bald smooth hills overlooking an ocean even impossibly further away. There are 2 man-eating monsters and 2 hidden emeralds the size of your fist.
To the west there is a dirty rainbow falling over a cliff.
To the north, a grim slough full of preening rats and a sunken boat and the sun never illuminating more than the first two inches of the water.
To the…south, I see a cityscape of vintage corporate logos mushed like plasticine into blobs of colourful shouting nonsense, towering over smoky freeways and hot concrete, vaguely promising things worth vying for, paying 2.99 for, or laying out everything on the table, and the odours that float in those chinked windows from that direction are delicious and wistful with just a whiff of warm decay that might be mistaken for sugar candy if you inhale in very shallow sips…
not so smoothie
My friend is in the hospital for tests. After 3 days she is finally allowed to eat. “What can I bring you?” I ask. My friend has a very controlled diet. She has all sorts of sensitivities and whatever the kitchen sends up on their horrible plastic trays will inevitably not cut it.
“Smoothie,” she croaks. ”One of the kick ass kinds they have at Gorilla Foods.”
On my way over after work I lock up my bike and go down the steps into the faux-jungle ambience of this vegan, raw food restaurant.
Plants and tree trunks decorate the interior, which is dim but clean. Dreadlocked kids are making food in slow motion, gently smearing dehydrated nutcrackers with nutbutters; balancing each small, attractive portion of food with sprouts, leathered fruit, and strange healthful sauces. Not to play on a cliche but it is a fact that in this basement eatery everyone looks well-to-do, in an Earthy kind of way. Skin glows, linen pants rustle, eyes gleam virtuously. The food here is very delicious, very exquisite, but is never enough to fill my non-Primal stomach which has been punched out of shape by processed foods and years of overindulgence matched by equally ridiculous bouts of deprivation. So I don’t eat here, usually. Vanny loves it though. Your strawberry zinger is coming, my friend!
There are 6 people in front of me in the line and they order the raw food pizza, a couple of fresh juices, a seaweed salad with nutbread, the faux-fudge nutbutter mousse.
Somehow I wait 34 minutes for my smoothie to be plonked down on the counter, in a little biodegradable to-go cup.
Hot and fidgety in the line-up, I’m focused on the annoyance of waiting while ignoring the dilemma of just how I will carry this smoothie on my bike. I have forgotten my water bottle at home, so I can’t just transfer the smoothie into it, which would be efficient if a little lacking in presentation.
I nestle the to-go container in the corner of my basket, and try to wedge it into place with my U-lock. I set off slowly.
I make it 4 blocks, not even enough time to re-evaluate the wisdom of this decision, when I hit a slight pothole and the smoothie bursts out of its container and somersaults in the air. I’m doused with pink fluid.
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” I scream, to the horror or amusement of everyone waiting to cross the street. I grab the compostable cup desperately, hoping that there is still some smoothie left inside. A scant inch. After waiting 34 g.d. minutes!!! I toss the soggy cup furiously into my basket and pedal away, hyperventilating. How come I can’t come through as a friend with this one, simple task?? Now what will Vanny eat? She is extremely sensitive to food at the best of times, with a list of forbidden ingredients a mile long: carageenan, dairy, sodium of any kind, etc; in her recovery state I can’t exactly just show up with a Tim Horton’s Froot Whirlio or something. And that Gorilla Food smoothie was 8 fucking smackaroonies, which is now slimed all over my bike as well. It is very slippery but rapidly becomes sticky.
At the next intersection when it is my turn to roll, my hand slips off the wet handlebar with a cartoonish “vvvoooot.” Me and the bike slam sideways into the road.
The cars stop, fortunately.
Teary-eyed, I limp to the curb. Traffic resumes indignantly.
Now I am battered and bruised and sticky, and empty-handed. This is getting complicated. The worst part is I won’t even be able to relay to Vanny my horrible smoothie experience, because you can’t barge into a hospital room and talk about your own troubles in getting there.
I lock up my bike by St. Paul’s hospital and limp dejectedly through the neighborhood, my t-shirt stiffening with zinger. I have road rash on my elbow. I am worried about the smoothie leaking into my generator hub. Eventually I find a cafe that makes smoothies with just fresh fruit, no fucking around, and I hurry back to the hospital, about an hour later than I’d forecast, imagining my friend parched and hungry. But it doesn’t matter; my pal can’t eat yet because her final test has been delayed until the morning.
We go into the TV lounge and watch M*A*S*H* for a while.
what yes means
My first thought on the day of accepting R’s proposal was ‘of course’ – followed immediately by the thought (very very quietly way down at the bottom of happiness): ‘Now I can never be a private person again.’
I can live with that thought because I can win over it. I can always be myself; I can be better than that.
I am happy, and better yet, assured about life in a mysterious way since that day.
Wearing a ring reminds me of this. Both what life together must be, what ‘yes’ means, and how by necessity it means saying yes to myself too. Accepting a big responsibility.
I like this tradition of wearing a ring. Now I realize how many small moments of my day are ones of frustration, loneliness, or sorrow – and it has been immeasurably comforting to have this ring, which promises so much, and is a beautiful quality thing that cuts through the fog I often notice, a sort of veil that distorts life.
It is always a challenge in a partnership to ‘bat for both sides’ so to speak – to be good for them, and good for oneself. Ironically, I feel more assured about myself, personally, in the weeks since we have decided to spend our lives together. That notion cannot pass without a disclaimer, it seems. But I have to go on that belief of ‘forever’ in order to say yes, my mind about this factor was made up all in less than a second, a wish hand-in-hand with a promise.
about boxing
A couple of months ago I joined a boxing gym and still, whenever I walk in, I am quietly gratified by the feeling of comfort that floods through me, as if a new fluid is being injected to supplement the blood. I am not accustomed to the feeling of being at home; I reject the sensation of immersion in all physical activities outside of - suitably - swimming. So much of boxing is not-boxing; a tremendous portion is cardiovascular. Jump rope, running, a bitch of a thing called burpees. And another big component is mirror-watching, which at first I thought would be acutely embarrassing but it actually makes perfect sense and feels natural and acclimatizes me to viewing my body as a new sort of tool. Go slow go slow. So many days spent throwing punches in slow motion, just to make sure the feet hips chest shoulders all follow through. The mirror is necessary to study one’s posture, what one’s hands are doing, what the feet are up to. Balance is a major thing, pressure distributed lightly across both feet. It’s mentally exhausting, moreso as a beginner, trying to juggle all the different things the body is supposed to be doing. The brain, feet, hips are as vital as the hands, this is not a sport for morons. ”Like playing chess with one’s fists” as my friend put it. I wouldn’t know about that as I haven’t sparred yet, still am several months of practice and a good dose of desire away from that stage. But it rings true.
workaday lives
Last week the Bike Snob came to town on a promotional thing for his new book, and R and I and several others had a few beers with him after his book signing. I was distracted and basically uncaring because that day R and I had “gotten engaged” and I was starry-eyed, and the rest of humanity was just an inconvenience that barely registered upon my floaty-headed myopia. But R did grab a promotional fender-thing that pleases me, even though I have fenders, because it says AYHSMB on it. Periphally I did register that here I was, o wasn’t it interesting, talking to a “writer”, ie. someone who obviously makes money from his writing or at least gets funneled around by his publisher to the more bike-y cities of N. America to promote himself. But to be honest I had more fun talking to the representative from Raincoast books who was also at the table, and also drinking the same weird ale as I was, and who was otherwise very workaday and accomodating and witty and fun, though frequently lamenting she did not usually stay out so late on a week day (it was 9pm). I wondered at the time if this signified an utter alienation from the intelligentsia portion of the world while reinforcing my connection to the bluecollar dirtyhands aspects of it. Because while Mr. Snob seemed perfectly fine, I didn’t give two shits about hearing about his writing travails, but I instinctively related more to the travails of the hardworking distributor lady, who works 10 hour days and juggled millions of minor details and who carries a catalogue of authours and their recent works in her bike-helmeted head, and who also (subtly, but I saw it) grabbed the check for Mr Snob at the conclusion of the evening, producing a worn-looking company credit card.
