Oddities

Yesterday was odd. Odd enough that I won't resist the urge to gradually make this blog more and more like a journal - I left work totally unsettled because of it all.

The day started with walking to work through the absolutely silent streets of Ascension Day, a public holiday here. That was odd enough because the streets are generally jam packed to a stupid degree with back-ups from fender benders or from some twat trying to parallel park on a badly placed dime. Too much money, too many big cars. I could hear the birds all the way to the office and seemed to see a lot of things I'm too busy avoiding being hit by a car to see generally.

When I was walking down my erstwhile business class but presently abandoned avenue, I was accosted by a man who looked to be tidy but fairly fresh off a Congolese boat, the Congo being landlocked I know, but there you are. I saw him smiling ingratiatingly as he approached me, and in those few seconds I decided I knew the neighborhood well enough to give directions, that I had enough change to be panhandled, that I had a repertoire of ripostes to invitations to join religions and sexual situations, and that I remembered the lower-body skeletal manipulation movements that would let me fight off anything aggressive.

But then he said, in a childish voice and using a familiar address but with perfectly correct French, "I'd like to say that it would be nice to be friends, if you want."

I was shocked and quickly went on a cold autopilot, assuming there was a sexual aspect to all of it; made a dismissive sound and went to my office. Then I proceeded to feel awful about it the rest of the day.

It's statistically probable I was right to assume it was the beginning of a pass, but the least I could have done was ask him how I could have been his friend. F-word pointed out there was a fair chance the answer would have been disgusting. But I was ready to be disgusted - I assumed I'd be disgusted - and maybe I wouldn't have been disgusted, so it couldn't have hurt to ask. Maybe he was too embarrassed to just ask for the euro or two I would have given him if he'd asked flat out.

Or worse: maybe he really did need some sort of help that I could possibly have given and I've got to a point where I just don't give strangers that kind of help anymore because my perception of the human race is so low, which sucks for him, and sucks for me, because it means I'm at least a little bit disgusted all the time now. I don't know what to do about that, but I think it means I should volunteer within a structure with people who need help, since the rest of the world shouldn't have to pay for me being disgusted with it.

Anyways, once I got to the office the day kept getting stranger, but I'll have to write about that tomorrow because now it's time to go to the office again.

I happily disgust me

Guess who has free Internet at home? And a HIGHER paycheque than she'd been told in the interview? And a job she's getting to like? And a boy who is the one she likes best? Things, big and small, are just so fucking lovely at the moment that I can't help but be paranoid they'll stop - that I'll be hit by a car or suffer an embolism mid-song. I should probably relax; no doubt I'll fuck it up before long without any need for paranoia.

That sentence had a tree-falling-in-the-forest-making-a-sound feel.

Anyways, I'm visiting home in a little while. It won't be a big trip, hardly big enough to make any effort to change my internal clock (that fucking cockwank of a school where I worked gave me my Early Waking Powers ultra-fast), but I'll see my family and with any luck a good number of friends too; even if Toronto goes ballsy with all the running around and trying to bond with the children I'll see lots and lots of people at Sugarplum's wedding.

My generation is in the wedding period of socialization, seems like - we get this, and then we get baby showers and stuff, and eventually funerals, I suppose. Sorry, but being in a good mood always makes me morbid. And I think that socialization in itself is the best reason in the world to get married; weddings are more fun than funerals, at least for the people who aren't suffering through all the preparation. It's age old social glue, whether one does it in a mayor's office or not.

Like Nicholas Sarkozy's wife, who he met when he was marrying her to another man. I stand by everything I wrote in my last blog entry, but I'm also getting discomfiting love butterflies for that snide little troll, which I'm shocked to realize I've had on and off since an interviewer asked him if he ever imagined being president while he looked in the mirror shaving in the morning, and he just said "Pas seulement quand je me rase." I don't know if it's a question of sexuality shifting with age, but I'm starting to have a fetish for off-the-cuff, simple, yet smart-ass and loaded statements. At least, I think that's what all this is about. Or else this is just what happens when I don't see my analyst for a couple of months.

Liking things more

Predictably, I like my job way more now that I've got used to being in an office again and have scraped together the balls to start pursuing people for stories. I was having a three-day blockage (hmm) about the audacity of it all; it goes against every fibre of my Calabrian three-monkeys convictions to call strangers and ask them to tell me things about their business. Especially since all the tips my predecessor left were for Russians, and I find Russians intimidating. But then I realized time would pass slllllooooowwwly until I was fired if I didn't start doing things, and now I do it, and it's not bad - they need the publicity as much as we want to give it and the worst they can do to me isn't much.

Saw "Dick in a Box'" for the first time last night. I wonder how many cockbrains actually did that on their ladies' special occasions immediately afterwards.

Speaking of cockbrains, have you heard about this past election in France - the one that has been all about change, an end to stagnation, while featuring both parties who have been stagnating filthily along since the establishment of whatever fucking millionth republic the French have rioted their way to now?

Sarkozy and Royal could present themselves in whatever shiny white suits and snarly toff poses they liked, but only a huge pack of idiots could have forgotten the people behind them were exactly the same as those behind their revolting predecessors, and that Sarkozy only started representing a change from his political godfather and mentor, Chirac, when he made a strategic party power grab too early. Luckily for Sarkozy and Royal, the huge pack of idiots turned out in droves over the French elections.

I try to remember that the French electoral system isn't as representative as it seems from being so complicated, and that it's madness to expect Corsicans, Parisians, Bretons, Alsatians and such like to create a functioning centralized government together. But when 85% of the population turns out for a vote for change and this shit is the best they can do, it makes me think they just keep on getting the government they deserve.

I like Belgium so much better it's not even human.

Wahhhh

Predictably, the first weekend I have that involves a fair amount of laxity in the stress department I've got wildly sick - that clever body of mine saving it all up for when I have the leisure to huddle in the executive suite for a day or two, and when the F-word is feeling indulgent enough to get groceries and DVDs. It's not so pleasant - running a temperature and having all this new industry jargon swimming endlessly through my dozy brain, and occasional moments of semi-clarity when I go into a deep, deep rebellion at my own plan of spending the last years of my twenties working in an office.

I feel like a big impostor there, which is strange because by yesterday I was pretty comfortable with most of the things I'll have to do. And it's not as though the other employees seem off - certainly more 'authentic', whatever that means, than people who were gung-ho about the television business. I don't know. I guess I haven't completely dealt with the fact that I'm going to be working hard and working full time just at the time in my life when I'm realizing that avoiding that was the whole point of the human race having an Industrial Revolution and female emancipation.

Anyways. We don't live in a post-industrial paradise yet and I have to make my money someday. And I'm doing it in a beautiful city, from a beautiful apartment, and getting good money working in a seemingly good office to do it. I don't give myself much more than three years before I start popping babies or just say fuck it and go to shrink school, but even that sounds like a jail sentence. Maybe two years would be enough . . . or maybe they'll sack me next week. We'll see.

Quickie

New apartment is beautiful and signed for and things are great but stressful.

Drought still in progress and it has started to annoy and disturb me. Holocaust denial is a crime in a whole whackload of countries, climate change denial should be too . . . such a law would serve a much more practical purpose than spending public money prosecuting silly pisspot 'academics' whose girlfriends had dumped them for Jewish men, or whatever.

This is the land of random, surreal beauty and I don't think the EU would work based anywhere besides the bizarre fantasy place.

It's all about the French

The new job starts in an hour and a half. Excited and happy, and very very happy to be in Brussels. We spent the weekend looking at apartments and pounding the pavement to see For Rent signs in appropriate neighborhoods, and holy FUCK, people here are nice. In the south I thought people were so nice (outside of the cockhead administrators of my ex-school, but more on that later) because they were country folk, but so many absolute strangers have volunteered their help here, so many absolute strangers have put themselves out of their way to advise or direct us, without us even asking . . .

In France, Belgians had a reputation for being dumb - like people from Newfoundland in Canada. I think that's because they're about ten times nicer than the French, pound for pound, even with the huge influx of expats in Brussels matching up to the huge influx of tourists in Paris. This niceness must baffle the French so much that they assume they're stupid. Even though childcare, the health service, and pensions here continue to work after a fashion, and even though half of France's cultural icons from the last century (weak though some, like Johnny Hallyday, appear to my critical faculties) are of Belgian descent.

Anyways. Time to memorize industry jargon.

Hee

I got the job! So excited! Salary negotiations start tomorrow, so I'm trying to curb it a bit . . . but the long and short of it is that I'm well on my way to entering the middle class, which means my parents can stop feeling pained when they explain why I fucked off to Europe to their circle.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

By the way, does anyone else feel like Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" is about breaking up with a girl because you can't get her to come? It's the first thing that popped into my head when I heard it. That, and a sincere wish someone, anyone else was singing it, but as I feel that way anytime I hear a song being sung by Bob Dylan I'm pretty sure it's accurate.

Faaaaack

Such. Long. Stupid. Days. This place fucking sucks. I can't even begin to tell you. Interestingly, it's the first place I've liked my manager and hated the job, which tells you a bit about how fucking crap the job is. Absolutely exploitative, because it's live-in. Gahhhhhh.

Anyways, at the moment I've got nothing else to say, except that change she is a-coming.

Uhm . . .

Has someone told them what Achilles spent the Iliad doing? The people who name cars and military operations seem to be operating at the same intellectual level as the idiots who get paid to persuade us to spread "Icy Fire" or "Dusty Fucking Sunsets" on our lips.

Twitters and flowers

I had an interview for a nice position that would also pay nicely last Friday from a company that's been considering me for awhile, and they told me I'd hear from them this week. My heart has never fluttered over a job so much, not just because it's a lovely job but because it would suddenly pop me into an income and professional bracket I've never even touched on before.

What would I do with all that money? Probably nothing - save it for analyst school, real estate, kiddies, whatever - but the nothing is the whole point in a way. I won't have to do anything with it. I won't be obliged to spend it. I won't be obliged to go into debt. Ai-ee. Solvency. Long term solvency. And not in the sense of solvent abuse or anything either. Economic choice. Dear oh dear. As you may imagine, I'm all in a bloody twitter and will be until I hear one way or the other.

In the meantime, here's some pictures of local flowers and beetles:

Dreamtime

Heavens to Murgatroyd - a whole week sans blogging. Sorry. It was so busy, with hours and hours and hours of teaching and one frenzied day of interviews on Friday in Brussels. But Belgium busy isn't like Toronto busy. In Toronto when I was busy, it felt like time was being flushed down a powerful toilet. Here, it continues to float by. I've only been here two weeks. It feels like forever - and not in a bad way. In a kid way, like when five minutes seems like a reasonable amount of time to be told that you can play outside before dinner, and (sadly for me) a 1.40 hour class seems like a fucking eternity. The teaching is fun, though. I'd forgotten. Teenagers are fun to teach, in small groups that my superior lungs can yell down at least.

Some travel this weekend when the workload/busy load let off a bit - travel, hah - we went to a tajine place 45 minutes away where I had the most delicious shrimp tajine thing I've ever even heard of, and today we went to Bastogne - big groups of teachers. Nice. Sunny. Warm. Pretty. This is a rich and pleasant country.

So bizarre to think that in this well-regulated, rather adorable province, just 60 years ago conscripted men were blowing each other's brains out in droves - this is Battle of the Bulge Land - now, as the hackneyed but no less brilliant pun goes, the only bulges being battled are from all the pastries, chocolate and charchuterie. War is an inexcusably perverse abomination. People would do well to remember that better than they do.

Finished Artist of the Floating World - bloody brilliant. Neglect to read at the peril of your eyes' well-being.

Let's spy on the grown-ups

When one travels, one likes people more easily. That's always been my experience and it's my experience here, now, as a teacher who I've only known for a week leaves the school and I find it breaks my heart a little. There's an aspect to meeting people in transit that lets you tap into that childish, open part of yourself - when you went to some stupid function with your parents as a five year old, for example - and suddenly some other kid who'd been dragged along becomes your best friend and you have a lovely time in the end.

I lived in Toronto for two and a half years without particularly experiencing this - all the people I was close to there I'd known in one capacity or another for a long time - expect for one girl who was on her way to Costa Rica. And yet looking back there are at least two people who I can say, if I'd met them in a situation where we knew our time to get to know each other was limited, we'd probably have had that sudden best friend thing. I'd forgotten all about it before I left. But it still had something to do with my decision to uproot myself, I see that now. I enjoy a sense of urgency in getting to know people. I enjoy the feeling of thinking 'our time is limited, so this person and I should know each other without reservations' - something that's always true but only appreciated when it's slapping you in the face.

No other news for you today. Thank god, I finished The Unconsoled and can put it behind me forever (I do reccommend it, though, if you can set aside the time and brain space for it - like eating reefer or dropping acid, it's something you should clear your calendar for). Now I'm into The Artist of the Floating World or some such, and it's much clearer in my head; the fascist participation in the theme reminds me of The Remains of the Day, but from a different angle - a really different angle - I love Ishiguro so much for his ability to have unique and believable narrative voices. It's uncanny. Now that I think about it he reminds me of Joseph Conrad in that way, but maybe I'm just all "wowee, their first languages weren't English and they're still all neat-o."

By the way, here are some in-depth reviews I did, for The Reluctant Fundamentalist and David Golder - not my finest efforts but had a bit of an Ishiguro jizz in one of those, too.

Console me

The past few weeks of my life have caught up with me in the form of a nasty throat and a floating exhausted feeling, and I suppose it's as well they caught up with me this weekend as next week I'm getting clobbered with 42 hours, half of them with kids. Wheeeee! Easter and all that - parents don't want the munchkins around and I suppose childhood education, like everything else in this country, is some sort of tax write-off.

The money will be good but the exhaustion won't, particularly as I have an interview coming up with The Office. And with some other schools, that won't make me work with children. Detesting brats aside, I'm just not ready for those sorts of liability issues; I've jusssst managed the fundamentals of blowing my own nose so I'm not ready for a classroom full of other people's snot, even if they are midgets.

My floating exhausted feeling has been exacerbated by the fact I've been rushing through Ishiguro's The Unconsoled. The young South African who leant it to me - I like him so I'll call him Shaggy, as in the cartoon, not the singer - gave it up after a hundred pages or so and I can see why. It's annoying, intensely annoying . . . makes my mood bad/floaty like Benjamin Biolay's Négatif, which I finally bought the other day, even though I forgot to give Mr. N's copy back. However, it's also a perfect rendition of one of those marathon dreams, a sort of feverish, circular dream that goes on and on, and so touching I cry a little in places. But I have to rush through it, hopefully finish it today, because as I wrote it puts me in a strange mood I have no time for right now.

Soon I'll start putting up pictures

And while I'm in an area of great natural beauty and just spent the day in Brussels, which is as beautiful as you would expect any city built on the blood, bones, tears and gold of 20 million Congolese to be, the pictures I'm most excited about putting up are of my new Campers sandals. I had to throw the old ones out just before I left because they were stinky and coming apart after four years of nearly constant wear, and it broke my heart. My new "Helena Alta Bombay Negros" have mended my heart. Voilà.

I have seen some movies on planes recently, coincidentally all starting with "The," and would like to quickly produce mini-reviews before they all fade from my consciousness:

1. The Prestige. Well enough acted, though I remain unconvinced Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman aren't both made out of particularly attractive pieces of driftwood- the ladies, Michael Caine, and a David Bowie cameo made up for it. Great twists from Christopher Nolan, who did Memento and whose twists I enjoy.

2. The Departed. Not much good to say, outside of it being better than Gangs of New York and The Age of Innocence. A spectacularly well-cast bit of formulaic fluff that can only be explained as coming from the director of Mean Streets on the basis of cocaine's deleterious properties. And there wasn't nearly enough fucking Mark Wahlberg.

3. The Queen. I would have enjoyed it wholeheartedly if I didn't have an internal conviction it was a House of Blair/House of Windsor snowjob production timed to help us ignore all the Labour scandals and the fact Diana's brakes were greased. Helen Mirren was a treat.

Surprise surprise

Book swapping with other teachers. Got some fresh Ishiguro to keep me going. Forgot what all this horse trading was like - I've brought a gracious fuckload of books with me as I was anticipating being in the middle of nowhere, far from English language bookstores and all, and more are being shipped to me. But I guess I hadn't calculated on actually liking anyone here outside of the F-word, let alone go into book swapping. Silly. They all seem lovely so far and the loveliest one of all did me two Ishiguro for one Byatt - wheeeeee! Prepare yourself for a new slew of nicknames for the people here, anyways.

Besides all the sex there's something monastic about being here - possibly because the food is unpalatable and I'm far from all naughty temptation. F-word is chafing at the bit already but I like it very much so far. More decisions about priorities in the future, I suppose. In the meantime, we have a lovely big flat on campus, no expenditures, money coming in, and springtime, bitches.

Landed on feet

Very very nice here. Trip sucked. Hell hath a name and it is Shilpol aeroport, but it's lovely at the school. Pictures will follow shortly, and you'll jizz. Spring here. More later.

Sketchy memories

I've been stoned in three cities in three days! Haven't done that since I was 23 or something, and never done that in Canada. Have I? No.

Let alone in the three biggest cities. Today I'm in Montreal. In Lady's head I think this place is a sketch factory, and she's probably right, but from now on any and all sketch I see will be compared to Vancouver's downtown east, where Elvis's girlfriend works at a kind of shelter. The particular corner in my mind was two users to the square metre, yelling things like "when you die I'll dance on your grave," suggesting just enough hateful, frenetic energy to dance macabre but not enough to kill the person being yelled at. Sketch factor actually exceeded the front grounds of the central train station in Milan after 22 hundred hours, and that's saying a gracious fuckload.

I wasn't scared in Vancouver's downtown east, probably not because of any astonishing powers of optimistic empathy overwhelming my class prejudices and paranoias but because I was with Elvis, who I still worship as a near god. Nonetheless it was very strange and sad indeed, and very sad when Elvis told me I shouldn't have locked the car door when we parked - better to just let the users in without breaking any windows, have a look around at what there was to steal, and leave again when they saw all the nothing.

Follow the white crocheting hook

So I'm in Vancouver and having a lovely time. If I wasn't moving to Europe I'd move here, and if Europe craps out I'm moving here. Elvis and Co. are being fantastic and it's breathtakingly beautiful. Also learning to crochet by making a pink hat. At first it was frustrating and I had no idea what I was doing, but after hours of counting ones and twos and ones and ones and ones, I looked at my handiwork and realized I could see the Matrix.

This and that and IT'S MY LAST DAY AT WORK!!!!!

I was going on about reincarnation the other day, and thinking about Archy and Mehitabel a little later, and wondering - do you suppose there'd be some sort of indication to someone getting reincarnated a lot as a carnivore? Scarier, maybe? I don't know.

My brain hurts from doing stuff and I have a backlog of hours and hours on my review material. At least it's all read - more or less. Miss T still has my Story of French. I'll review that after I leave. The rest before. Just got The Reluctant Fundamentalist and that looks good. The best thing about this reviewing, besides the free books, is that it's brought me back into reading new novels, even if the novels I've looked at have thus far been shitty to a man. Maybe shitty is a bit strong.

Well, maybe it's not. I can feel myself getting crotchedy about new fiction - I can't remember the last time a new fiction novel has blown my socks off, Ishiguro excepted, and Suskind too if you imagine his fiction is still new, and waiting for those in paperback was always fine with me. I guess hardcover new release books have the sort of marketing behind them that should definitely not be paid attention to. Like that Martin Amis crap, for example. I should not have listened to the hype and wasted some hours of my life on it. Oh well. It was a pretty quick read.

Speaking of new . . . or something . . . yesterday at work I was a bad girl who watched the series premiere of The Riches. It was fine. Pilot/premiere episodes are usually pretty crappy as they try to get all that character exposition out there and this one was less crappy than most of them are. It will have to get a little more involved because right now I don't feel like anything is offering me layers to poke through. Very fond of Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard, though, who were fine.

I'm always saying goodbye to some Korean.

It's official now. The plane tickets, cancellation of my Internet and electricity, packing, goodbye dinner, last visit from parents, giving notice, signing new contract, and finding someone to take care of my cat* were somehow not enough to make it official. But last night I said goodbye to my Korean student, and now I know I'm leaving. He's a wonderful boy, dead jealous that I'm moving to Europe, AND he invited me out for a slap-up Korean meal tonight - nothing more awesome - but I simply have no bloody time because I'm LEAVING. Anyways, it's strange, because when I left Paris it was such a blur of exams and insane busy-ness that, then too, it was only saying goodbye to all the Korean expats I was teaching that gave me the sense I was actually leaving. Koreans have basically kept me out of the poorhouse. I love them.

*But I'm still looking, people, as it stands she has to go to Montreal and I'll have to buy her drugs to make the journey bearable, and frankly I've got an emotional problem with encouraging the ketamine industry - bunch of club kids thinking they're not quite stupid enough yet so they'll eat cat drugs - Jeebus Fuck! When the stupid fucking baby boomers were young, the social establishment tried to stop them from stupefying themselves, and I think ours encourages it. The stupider the rabble, the more shit you can sell them and the less they vote. Television is even worse. Grrrrrr!

On that note, I've got a serious problem with the new Daylight Savings time too - take away one hour of contemplative (or just sleeping) sunny time in the morning to add one in the evening we can spend shopping, doing business, or staring at flickering screens?!?!? You know what, fuck you. I shop plenty, do lots of business, and am subjected to far too much intrusive product placement even though I don't watch conventional television, and I refuse to adjust my fucking schedule to do more. Fuck this shit. I'm moving to Europe. Hah.