lean in real close…
Some of you may know that I once blogged every day for one whole year.
Well, I’m trying it again, but this time with great company.
Please check out our new blog: 365 Attempts (At Life) – The Group Project
It follows 7 creative Montrealers, each writing once a week, over the course of 1 year.
Hope you tune in!
Tanya
And my head told my heart
“Let love grow”
But my heart told my head
“This time no” – Mumford & Sons
There’s this guy at the pool that I see sometimes, if I’m lucky. My friend described him correctly: “Beautiful. A lean, tanned, Argentinian Adonis”. He’s tall. Has a particularly chiseled face. Brown skin. Short salt and peppered hair. With enough whiskers on his face to age him just right. He’s quite the exciting feast on the eyes, walking in and setting his towel down. He takes a quick dip and then sits there in his navy blue bermuda trunks, hands around his legs while talking to his entourage, wet skin glistening.
If he so much as sneezes in my direction, I blush and get tingly all over. But, today, he’s the last person I feel like seeing two towels over when I’m feeling bloated in my bikini. Especially when I have to get up to go to pee and he is sitting in such close proximity that he will definitely see me get up and walk by.
First world, single girl, summer-by-the-pool problems.
What’s interesting about my crush on this guy is that a while ago a friend made the monumental mistake of showing me his profile on facebook (aka the social media site that ruined the world for all eternity).
You see, last summer, when I’d see him at the pool sitting by me with his feet in the water, my insides responding to the heat he emanated, I concocted a whole backstory to this guy’s life. His profession most certainly entailed him building stuff. He was some type of builder or welder. And then one time a friend said, “Oh I know him. He’s a single dad. Has a daughter.” So I decided he was an elementary school teacher. Who took his kid out for ice cream on weekends and read her stories before bed every night. And made her giggle uncontrollably when he put on the pink tiara to play tea time with her.
Maybe it was the hot sun beating down on the top of my head for too long. Maybe it was my hopeful romanticism that needed to believe this guy was a man’s man. To believe that an Adonis with that face, body and smile living in my city was the new Michael Landon on Little House on the Prairie. And that after a whole summer of seeing me at the pool a few towels over, the days I wasn’t bloated, he would be intrigued by my ordinary, easy smiling ways and feel compelled to come talk to me, and ask me out on a date. And, yeah, maybe I could sweep under the rug that for a single dad he sure showed up at this hipster pool every other day without his daughter. That’s just details. She was probably in a fancy artistic summer camp all day that he was working three manly jobs to afford to pay for.
And then, at the end of summer, it happened. The facebook profile find. And it wasn’t the same as when Kind Tut’s tomb was discovered, but I felt cursed just the same.
My builder-welder-school- teacher was actually a photographer. My Argentinian Adonis (with the hot foreign accent ) is Jewish Canadian (no accent). And he had lots of model-type-look-serious-into-the-lens-of-the-camera-while-wearing-sunglasses profile pictures. Lots of those. I think he models professionally, quite honestly. No photos of him chopping wood. None of him with goggles and a gas torch welding the final pieces of a bridge. None. There was one photo of him with his kid. And I didn’t see any evidence of a tea party or a tiara. Just saying.
He’s probably a good guy. I know nothing of him in actual offline life, really. Except that maybe he needs to figure out facebook privacy settings. It’s not fair to assume stuff about a person based on their facebook profile. Even one as easily assumable as his. My point here is that I had designed him to be what I wanted him to be. As we do with celebrities. As we do with any person we are instantly attracted to and know nothing about. We are funny creatures, us humans. Our imaginations keep our lust alive.
And even though I know he’s not the guy I imagined him to be, my crush version is the one I hold on to when he shows up at the pool today. I still think to myself: Poor guy. He just finished cutting down trees. Let the tired man swim. And distract him for the love of God, I have to walk past him and go to the washroom.
I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours. – Bob Dylan
When you step away from your expectations and really take a good look at them, it’s amazing how little they look like what you expected. The set-up, the build-up, the launch. It’s all so different from what you could have ever imagined. People fall short. Time moves too quickly past opportunity. Life happens as it does and pinpricks the fantasy just enough for the air to start to leak out. And you don’t even realize because you’re riding your expectations higher. Like a hot air balloon. You fire it up. And you fire it up some more.
How high can they take you really? These expectations. You can’t hold on to a promise that no one ever promised you. You shouldn’t lean a ladder up against a tall, tall building to get to a window that doesn’t want to open. You can’t expect it to want to open just because you did. What you can do, is decide that the effort it takes to perch your ladder there is worth the view at the top. Cause a locked window is a locked window. And a leaky hot air balloon isn’t all that smart to ride in. Either way, you’re risking a fall.
Expect to know better next time, and you still might have a lesson to learn.
I come down from the misty mountain
I got lost on the human highway - Neil Young
Sitting in my car at a red light I see the sea of drivers beside me lower their heads to their laps at the exact same time.
To look at their cell phones.
Sitting in bars, I see vacant looks on patrons, their faces lit by a white glow all busily communicating with words or pictures on a screen.
A screen on their cell phone.
No matter who is with them.
The person messaging on your cell phone will trump real life person right there beside you.
People are biking and texting.
Walking and texting.
Eating and texting.
Phones are always about two inches away.
Frequently checked.
Frequently frequented.
Reducing us to digital social caricature versions of ourselves.
Something is getting lost.
Something big.
Something human.
All this instant access to the world at our fingertips is causing us to miss the intricate beauty of the people and places in the world around us.
The most connected planet of our lifetime has become the most impersonal planet of our lifetime.
Less phone-calls, more words on a screen.
Less visits, more online chats.
We’ve all fallen prey to the novelty of it.
Myself included.
I just hope it wears off.
I just hope we can go back to real life.
You can’t un-think a thought. It’s either there or not. – Feist
I’m getting older.
A month from today is my 35th birthday.
I’m a grown woman.
Why do these three statements feel like tiny little bombs exploding inside me?
I lead a good life.
Roof over my head.
Family and friends that love me.
And yet this missing intangible does its yearly sneak attack as my birthday comes ‘round.
I know what it is.
And I recently got a good taste of how it could be.
It was like an array of delicious tapas prepared just the way I like it.
The coming together of the right ingredients.
A highly enjoyable feast.
I savoured every single bite.
And what’s funny is, at the time, I wasn’t even hungry.
I kind of showed up to the restaurant without any expectations.
But when the bill came signalling dinner was over – well, I was sad.
I could have gone for more.
It turns out it was a limited time offer.
And now I’m left digesting something that the chef has taken off the menu altogether.
At 35 you’d think that disappointments would be easier to handle.
You’d think that I’d be grateful for having at least tasted something amazing.
I am.
Grateful.
But I’m still hungry.
Dammit.
If I’ve learned anything in my 35 years… it’s that it is very hard not to listen to my stomach.
Everything is everything.
What is meant to be, will be.
After Winter, must come Spring.
Change, it comes eventually. - Lauryn Hill
I used to be a scaredy pants flyer. But that’ll happen when you’re seven-year’s old and rushed off a plane in Portugal because of a bomb threat. Yep. That happened. Went down the yellow slide and everything. And even though we eventually found out that it was a hoax, the image of what could have happened stayed uncomfortably lodged in my seven-year old brain for (not-so) safe keeping.
After that, the anticipation of vacationing in a colorful new scenery was always eclipsed by the looming plane ride that I imagined would surely hold my final hours. In my late teens, I’d even go so far as to leave a note to loved ones partially hidden in my bedroom… in case I didn’t make it back home. As you can see, I always did.
Oh the drama of a bumpy flight. I always envied the people who could sleep through turbulence. Or the ones chuckling at the inflight movie while I was reciting a rosary of Hail Mary’s hands gripping the seat handles. Didn’t they know we were all about to die?!
So much wasted energy on an irrational fear of something beyond my control.
That’s why I felt the need to write about this. On a recent flight to Toronto, on a plane slightly smaller than usual, I looked down at the cotton candy clouds and speckles of green and brown land and felt a feeling so foreign at 30,000 feet. I felt enveloped in…(wait for it)… Peace.
Peace! I felt above all my worries, all my trivial day-to-day work and money stresses, above recent emotional disappointments by some people I care about. And I felt this innate desire to just trust and have some faith in Life. My life.
It doesn’t matter at 30,000 feet. Up there I’m part of the bigger scheme of things. I’m part of the miracle that being in the sky brings.
And if doesn’t matter up there, maybe I should not make it matter so much back down on the ground. Ok, so there’s turbulence in life. Some of it beyond our control. But why make yourself sick and worry about it?
Why not hold onto a little more peace instead?
Why not hold onto the loveliness of going somewhere new?
Everything is falling into place. -Mario Vazquez
I am a flurry of activity.
Always two places at once, the queen of multi-tasking.
Even now – I’m writing this, chewing gum and breathing!
Bananas!
How do I do it all, you ask?
Badly.
I do it badly.
Lately, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.
Even my sleeping, dreaming life contains parts of my day replayed in different variations.
Which one is real?
Which one actually happened?
Well yesterday, while vacuuming, practicing my singing, cooking and running to answer my cell phone, my foot got tangled with the electrical cord and down I fell.
First against the door-frame and then onto the floor with a grunt and heavy thud.
Such a strange sensation.
Falling.
I haven’t in a really long time.
And so I stayed there, eyes closed in my fallen position.
Winded.
Stopped.
I could feel the bruises beginning to take shape.
I had a sense of relief that:
a) although I couldn’t breathe, I was still conscious.
b) I finally had a dumb reason to let out some pent up emotion.
You see, a day earlier my ego got bruised.
Someone pushed me off balance emotionally.
Gently and with a smile.
My heart was free falling but none of the feelings had a place to land.
Until a god forsaken vacuum cord chose for me.
After the air came back into my lungs, I cried.
I cried until I realized that I was on the floor crying because my vacuum tripped me.
Then I laughed.
I laughed like the cuckoo, klutzy, heart-on-sleeve girl that I am.
Bruises heal.
Slowly, but eventually, they heal.
And it’s not the fall that matters most.
It’s the attitude you take when it’s time to get up.
You’re about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse kicking contest. -Rowan Atkison
I’m a relatively smart girl. Relatively. But I have been sitting here staring at a roll of scotch tape for the last 5 minutes trying not have a coronary.
The task began simply enough, somebody (smarter than me) in my office had folded a piece of the tape over so that the next person needing it would have easier access. With one hand I hold the box I need to seal and in the other I stretch out a piece of tape. A couple of inches and the damn thing starts to twist.
I attempt to carefully unfold it but all the manoeuvring causes a good portion of tape to unroll and stick onto itself. I can feel a scream starting to work its way into my lungs and close my eyes to find the happy yoga place in my body.
There will be no screaming. Namaste. Namaste.
My fingers work nimbly to no avail. I resign to start over, bringing it to my mouth and use my teeth to break off the mangled piece. Nothing happens. Just a horrible flicking noise.
Oh my God. I feel my teeth. Are you kidding me? My gums are bleeding.
Incisor throbbing, I fumble through my office drawer for scissors.
Namas-fucking-ste Namas-fucking-ste.
My pulse quickens, my eyes narrow as I position the scissors to cut off the evil, pulverized piece of tape. I hear it snicker at me in the way that only evil tape can snicker.
%^%@#%#$%*^*&^^%$$#$!!!
In one clean slice, I victoriously sever the twisted bit from the roll. Smiling and satisfied with myself until…
Shit.
The cleanly cut piece has perfectly stuck onto the roll without a trace of indentation. Transparent. Just one big, unforgiving infinity hell trap. Fire rages through my eyeballs. I spend the next 7 minutes scratching, clawing and stabbing the tape with my fingernails and scissors, hoping to find a way to get a sliver of tape to seal this damn cardboard box. Instead, itty-bitty useless strings of tape shred off and leap to their deaths like suicide bombers. Mocking me.
After throwing the whole roll across the room (and then into the garbage) I have come to the conclusion that when faced with a sticky situation, it might be better to have someone relatively smarter handle the fucking tape.
Horse racing is animated roulette. – Roger Kahn.
Do you know how much you can take?
Do you know yourself enough to know your limits?
Do you know what your threshold is?
Do you know how far into the pain you can go before you lose yourself?
Do you know how far into the delirious pleasure you can swim before you drown?
Can you be honest with yourself about the truth of a situation?
Because truth and honesty run parallel, they don’t converge.
And you have to be able to stand back and really know yourself to figure out your own truth.
When the moment comes, will you be ready to be honest about it?
I can tell you, right now, that it’s easier to lie.
I look around me and all I see are dangling carrots.
And…they’re not as out of reach as they used to be.
I can pluck them whenever I want.
They are just ordinary carrots.
Everyone has a set.
Everyone is poised with their arms out just far enough.
Because we can all reach them.
If we really wanted to.
But we know there’s a reason why they are held above our heads.
To keep us striving.
To keep us in line.
To keep us hungry.
And deep inside we know that a little taste might just turn us off carrots.
We know so much more about ourselves than we want to admit.
We like mystery in the confines of the mundane routine.
Even though we understand routine in its very nature holds little surprise.
We want what we can’t have.
We want it even when we know it’s not good for us.
We want to feel it all.
So I come back to my original question: Do you know how much you can take?
Do you know what carrots taste like?
The trouble with being a good sport is that you have to lose to prove it. - Croft M. Pentz
I was just inundated by own weaknesses calling out for my attention.
Bejeweled-Blitz-Diamond-Dash-Farmville-Fortune-Cookie-spam-on-my-effing-facebook-newsfeed inundated for Christi’s sake.
Yeah, I said Christi.
Poor thing.
She’s the girl one typo away from getting all of Christ’s electronic prayer mail (that exists).
I need to take Christi out drinking.
Now there’s a girl who understands me.
