So much me in one little morning

Dale of the Passion came into this blog back in the winter by saying something nice about it, and then became a fixture in the links that I visit obsessively by making me laugh whenever he cares to and using punctuation in the economical yet expressive way I love. Yesterday he was kind enough to pay me attention on a Thursday with a series of searching questions, so now he's become a fixture in my heart.

Here's the result of the sit-down:

1. Your blog comes in a wide variety of flavours Mistress La Spliffe. Book and movie reviews, the general stuff of life, your dreams and so on. If all your favourite magazines started asking for writing contributions, where would we be reading you next?

The only magazine in my heart is the Economist. I love it to the bones even when it makes me angry with its heartless right-wingery. It has just the right amount of commas and adjectives, I don't feel targeted by its advertisements since they're for the rich, and its obituaries are astounding. On Thursday afternoons I'll check Economist.com again and again to see if they've posted the print version yet so I can skip straight to the obituary.

And that's something else I like about it: it's available in full online, and it has good web-only features. It hasn't run scared from the Internet like most of the print industry has.

2. You recently mentioned that you feel psychoanalysis (and health care) should be free and available to everyone as a basic human right. I agree but how much do you feel that having your blog helps negate the need for formalized therapy?

15%, because 85% of a blog, or at least this blog (despite the spelling mistakes and superfluous words), is much more edited than what a good analyst can drag out of people. And all that editing probably just backs up lots of one's neuroses, in the end.

Your blog is a little different, though, as it's the only one I've read that turns memories from your life and childhood into engaging stories that obviously go somewhere in your own head, so I'd imagine you're working something important out for yourself while you're making us laugh.

3. A while back, you gave me a recommendation on a book I really enjoyed: 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'. What should I read next?

For you in particular I'd recommend When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro. I love everything I've read of his, and I'd recommend his whole body of work with few reservations (Never Let Me Go is too sad for some moods, for example, and The Unconsoled is probably only appropriate for people who like both David Lynch films and small print).

But I think you'd get a particular kick out of When We Were Orphans. As you know, Paul Auster has not floated my boat and I was particularly annoyed by City of Glass. But When We Were Orphans shares some themes with City of Glass and pulls off some of the stunts I think Auster was trying. There's a similar feeling, though When We Were Orphans reads like a lot more work and thought went into it.

For you, I'd also recommend a novella/short story called (I think) Maitre Muissard's Bequest by Patrick Süskind, the guy who wrote Perfume. I found MMB in a slim Penguin pocket book a couple of years ago but now I think you can only find it as part of the compilation Three Stories and a Reflection, if you can find it at all. Although it's different from the Reluctant Fundamentalist in every apparent way, it has a similar driving tension sort of spinning you down towards the ending - although MMB is way scarier. It's a real headfuck.

4. You're making your home far far away from Toronto now and I feel cheated only have stumbled across your blog just as you were leaving town. Was it something I said? Where have you enjoyed living most?

You made it too easy for me to leave by being available in blog form, which I can get here. If you were only available by mail order, for example, I might have stayed in Toronto to cut down on the postage bills.

I've found something to love about all the places I've lived in, so the one I'm in at the time is usually my favourite (and my least favourite, since I find lots of stuff to hate, too). The most paradisaical place, though, was a city called Pinerolo nestled in the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy. It was beautiful enough, but also ugly enough to be untouched by tourists. Wonderful food, nice people, low rent but well enough connected to major cities - just lovely.

Unfortunately I was young and foolish during my time there, and spent a mere half-year shitting where I lived with the dedication of an undiapered copraphiliac before I had to sneak out of town with all my possessions at first light on a February morning.

5. Do you have an expression that you find yourself overusing? I especially want to hear it if it's a swear word.

People say I use the word 'cunt' too much. That probably won't stop, because I enjoy the way it makes people flinch, like a tampon commercial. Also, last night the F-word and I were chatting about England, and he called the Duke and Duchess of Kent the Duke and Duchess of Cunt, and I called the Archbishop of Canterbury the Archbishop of Cunterbury, and oh, how we laughed.

I also say 'take it easy, portugeezy' too much.

Being interviewed is so much fun that now I'm determined to spread the joy. Anyone else who wants a series of questions has only to ask.

Well well well you're feeling fine

Last night I had a dream I was giving birth to my daughter late at night on November 24th, which the erudite among you know is the day before my birthday. It was a charming dream but in the same sort of soft focus infantile cast as my occasional 'I've just murdered someone, oh shit' dreams - me as a short, pale, glabrous (Germaine Greer taught me that word yesterday, I'm reading The Female Eunuch) streak, with hair like I had in grade five. Anyways, it was a telling dream full of symbolism and stuff, and it made me miss psychoanalysis some, but not enough to do it over the phone and at a higher hourly tariff, as my analyst suggested when I left Canada.

Also, I'm not sure finding someone here and continuing would be a wholly worthwhile investment, as, and I don't know if I've mentioned this, I think I've decided I don't want to be an analyst. Too hard, and the intrusion of the money factor into the dynamic is something I think I'd always have a difficult time with. Psychoanalysis feels like it should be a basic human right somehow, like health care should be, not a commodity you can sell for so much an hour. Like, in Switzerland, euthanasia is legal, which is fine and no doubt necessary for some people who go where for but the grace of God we don't. But it costs Euro 3,500, which is more than many cosmetic surgery procedures.

There's some sort of wrongness to all this I can't get over. But I think it comes down to the fact that I don't want people to make money off other people's sincere quests to end their own pain. It also comes down to the fact that, having rejected the poss of becoming an analyst, I'm now looking for a new post-corporate profession and am open to suggestions from the floor.

Started up in the Sally Ann

So at the wedding, the young bride was much more of a Rolling Stones type girl than a Beatles one, although we did almost an album's worth of John Lennon singing 50's standards in 1975 (loved it). And it really reminded me how great the Rolling Stones were in the 60's. Every one of those standards are the best songs to dance to ever. That's what I noticed night-of. You can even smoke reefer in time to "Satisfaction". It really made me miss Shake-a-Tail in Toronto and I think I'll time my next visit to that city to make sure I make it there, although I guess a more pro-active thing to do would be to find a night like that here.

Anyhoo, what I noticed yesterday when I was shopping in the Belgian version of Sally Ann was that "Let's Spend the Night Together", which was playing over the PA system, is a really horny song. Duh, yes, I know. But even today it remains a very, very horny song relative to the current industry climate which makes desperate efforts to produce very, very horny songs. "Let's Spend the Night Together" simply makes me want to fuck. Dance, and then fuck.

And as I was thinking about how I suddenly wanted to fuck in the middle of the Belgian Sally Ann, I reflected about what it must have been like in 1967 when young girls were hearing that for the first time - in a musical climate which wasn't all hyper-sexual and the pop charts certainly weren't saturated with singers shouting that they'd give you as much cunnilingus as you could handle (because you know the words 'I'll satisfy your every need' coming out of a big ugly mouth like Mick Jagger's only mean one thing). I don't have much seventies-born-pseudo-nostalgia for the sixties. But I have moments of wishing I had a time machine just to see the impact of little things like that.

Small and constant pleasures

So much to say, so little time. Suffice it to say: the sun is out and while I have to go to work, at least I get to go there on my faithful darling Specialized mountain bike which has just been tuned up. AND last night I found a new vendor for farm-fresh goat milk. So much joy in one little morning.

Cold reality

It was fucking brilliant in Carcassone - the wedding, the hot hot hot hot sunny weather, the everything. Fantabulous. It was hard to leave - not that I mind going back to my job so awfully much - more that I knew I'd be heading back into the fucking, fucking cold. I nearly burst into tears when I was shivering outside the train station for a taxi last night. I was giving myself three years here, but - you know - it's fucking cold. No more promises.

Anyways, tomorrow I'll pull out a story about one of the things that happened; today I must get back to looking like I'm paying attention.