Archives for June, 2007

If you want to know what I’m studying and where I want to see myself in five years, what I think of university education and international politics, all you have to do is sit somewhere near me on the TTC.

Certainly the woman sitting two seats behind us hears all this.

She got on at the same station as me, pulled a fat book out of her bag, and stretched out comfortably across the empty seats. I studied her shoes for a good five minutes after I sat down and then promptly forgot about her, opening my own book.

It’s a collection of stories by Morley Callaghan. Having finished a melodramatic story about a jealous husband, I am now reading “A Cap for Steve,” a story that I know I’ve read at least once before. It’s a good story and it’s good that I’m re-reading it.

One of the drawbacks of having and following reading lists is that books are prioritised by unfamiliarity and academic weight, in that order. The bookshelves at home are filled with books I’ve read and forgotten, but I feel too rushed with the need to patch up my academic holes in time for this thing called Grad School to be re-reading things.
Obviously, I’m taking this whole reading list thing the wrong way, reducing learning to a series of checkmarks, opening up the potential for irresponsible namedropping in the future.
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My left eye feels battered by the time we arrive. Even my eyelashes hurt. But I’d decided I wouldn’t be turning up the window and so the wind rushed into my face for an hour and a half.

And now the house, so clear and open, soothes me. Standing at the front entrance, the first one at the door, I can see straight through to the back patio and the upturned dirt all around. The light sweeps in on summer breezes, brushing between my fingers and through my tangled eyelashes.

Maybe it’s the curtainless windows, the smooth countertops and the light-filled rooms, but I am unusually at ease in this newness. The wood glows softly, the marble glints only a little, and the carpets are still soft to the touch. I decide later that it is the soil that surrounds the house that puts these markers of emptiness in perspective. The walls could have felt hollow to my touch, not just thin. The stone could have been heavy and preachy, not merely fanciful. The rooms might have been heavy with silence, but all I saw was the transparent spaces of things to come.
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For about a month now, Google Reader has stopped counting the posts I have yet to read. Unlike the kid in the WB cartoon I saw years and years (and years) ago who thought himself smart for being able to get to 101 and his father a genius for reaching all the way to 102, Google Reader cannot count past 100. And so, for about a month now, I have had 100+ posts to catch up on.

Yes, there is a sense of obligation involved here. You best believe that I am going to read every one of those posts and if, by the time I am done, I have melted into a pair of lidless eyeballs rolling around and picking up lint and dust off my keyboard, so be it. This is what I will do for good reading.

For in addition to being good writers (I like to think that it takes a certain amount of pizazz to get into my Reader – what this is says about me is true, all true), they are also pretty prolific (I tried so hard not to alliterate then, you don’t even know. I alliterate far too much. It was funky the first few times, back in grade seven, when we began the Poetry section of English lit. But now it’s just disturbing). So today, which I spent not only indoors – all day, I haven’t stayed at home for an entire day in a long time – but also in my room – which I haven’t done in an even longer time – I decided to catch up on the blogworld. Because while my feelings about such things as Facebook and MSN may be conflicted, I am never anything less than impressed at the sheer amount of excellence to be found out there in the Internets.
Impressed and goddamn jealous.
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The world is quieter today. I mean this literally. The city hasn’t softened for me, but it sounds like it. I can’t hear my own footsteps, the familiar slap of slippers against pavement, gravel, marble. The music from the coffee-counter seems to be coming from a distance, providing the illusion of a soundtrack, slight and wavering. People talk silently into their cellphones, smiling and shrugging into the friendly mouthpieces. The sound of public machinery hard at work mutes itself for me today, recedes into the background. Water no longer gushes from taps. People shout curses with admirable restraint.

But I can hear the silence of the blood in my ears. A subdued throbbing overlaid by a one-note twanging, gentle and ever-present. I can hear my tongue in my mouth and my teeth clicking together. It’s as though a space around me has been cordonned off and the sounds that reach me from the outside travel to me from a distance, sometimes losing themselves across the way. The sounds that I hear most clearly, almost of words as I form them, come from within, so it’s as though I’ve created this space of waiting in me, in my head. A heaviness, yes, but also a feeling of sombre openness, not waiting to be filled, but to receive things.

Today was the day I first used this new peace I have carved out, mostly without grace, for myself. Continue reading this entry »