ed_rex

You know what's scary? That moment when you realize you've grabbed the handle of a copper pan just out of a 500 degree (Farenheit) oven, just before you start to feel the burn.

I let it go awfully fast, so that only my fore-finger and, to a lesser extent, my thumb, sizzled. But even so, I knew it was going to hurt. I went immediately to the freezer and pulled out a bag of frozen corn and held it tight for some minutes, even as we ate.

The conversation, as it will, turned to the wound, which pulsed with pain every time I took it away from the icy kernels. I wondered if I could try analgesic I'd bought for a sore tooth a couple of months ago, and Raven wondered whether there was some sort of natural remedy I might try.

And that question turned on the proverbial light-bulb: Aloe!.

Raven has been carrying for an aloe plant longer than I've known her, and so she made her way upstairs and snipped off a bit for me to try.

And ladies and gentlemen and fair folk (hmm ... does that last term work?), let me tell you, it worked like a fucking wonder. The sap went on cool and soothed the burns instantly. Within an hour, the pain had vanished almost entirely. This morning, the dead skin is dry to the touch, but it doesn't hurt.

Kids! If you don't have an aloe plant in the house, get one! They don't take a lot of care. As Raven pointed out last night, it doesn't like a lot of water and she never fertilizes it, and yet it grows and it grows and it grows. Just keep it away from frost. And when you need it, snip a little off and apply liberally until the pain goes away.

The pocket is political

Women’s pockets were private spaces they carried into the public with increasing freedom, and during a revolutionary time, this freedom was very, very frightening. The less women could carry, the less freedom they had. Take away pockets happily hidden under garments, and you limit women’s ability to navigate public spaces, to carry seditious (or merely amorous) writing, or to travel unaccompanied.

Normally this is the sort of thing I would just post a link to on the faceplace or the twit, but the person I am almost certain would find this interesting (if they haven't already seen it) has withdrawn from the hurly-gurly of Zuckerealm, if only temporarily.

And so, I commend to your attention the surprising history of pockets and why — if you're a woman — your clothes probably don't have any. None usuful, at least.

The Politics of Pockets.

Yoinked from sabotabby's LJ.

( And cut for the protection of your friends' page. )

44. What song do you want played at your funeral?

I want more than one, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to include this one:

When I was a kid, a teenager (and beyond, in fact), I played the guitar and I hitch-hiked quite a lot. As a grubby-looking, long-haired guy, that latter activity meant I spent a lot of time standing by the side of the road, day-dreaming. And a recurring day-dream was that I would master the guitar to the point where I might find myself someday sharing a stage with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, noodling away like a 'head from the Haight.

Obviously, it never happened. I didn't have the drive to become a good guitarist nor, I suspect, did (or do) I have the innate talent. Sometimes biology is destiny.

But last night, I happened on a video of a very recent concert by Dead & Company, a band made up of former members of the Grateful Dead and others, younger players.

I don't expect many (or even, probably, any) of you to watch the video — it's more than 3 hours long, but who knows? Maybe someone's trippin' ...

Anyway, listening to it and (sometimes) watching it and it hit me: John Mayer, the lead guitarist (whose name but not work rings a bell with me), though 12 years my junior, is doing something I fantasized I might do on those long, dusty days with my thumb out waiting for a ride.

No wonder he bounces. No wonder he looks so happy. He's jamming with the Dead, man!

Dead & Company is a nostalgia act, sure, but there's still some creative life in the old bones, if only through the input of young(ish) blood. The Rolling Stones could take a lesson.

silverflight8 gave me the letter M.

Something I hate: Mortality. See "Someone I know", below.

Something I love: That's easier. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, a series of novels that puts the E back int eh word epic. And more, a story that is forever noting a reader's expectations, then giving them something very different. Robinson kills three of his most charismatic players in the first volume and has the heir apparent simply ignore his "destiny" in the subsequent two. And what's not to like about a series that features middle-aged (and then old women among its prime movers, as well as not one, but two, constitutional conventions as part of its action?

Somewhere I've been: Montebello. A very small town on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River/Rivière des Outaouais, about halfway between Ottawa and Montreal. It features a hotel that is (I think) the world's largest log cabin, and is a 10 or 15 minute drive from Parc Omega, a drive-through animal "safari" in which moose demand carrots at your window, wolves loll about only metres away and wild boar engage in public sex acts without so much as a by-your-leave. Great snow-showing, too.

Somewhere I'd like to go: Manzanillo, Cuba. Why? Because it starts with the letter M and 9 days was not nearly long enough a visit to that country.

Someone I know: Maria. Well, I don't know her well, but we went out once for a pint, to talk books and publishing two or three years ago. She's a Serious Christian and it turned out we didn't share much in common philosophically or aesthetically, but what made it memorable for me was that (a) she was an attractive woman who was (b) roughly my age and (c) a fucking grandmother. See "Something I Hate", above.

A film I like: My Own Private Idaho, which is in part a really ideosyncratic modern-dress re-telling of Shakespeare's Henry IV diptych, with Prince Hal as a narcoleptic rent-boy. I showed it to an ex-girlfriend whose response — "That's the dumbest movie I ever saw!" — probably set the stage for that relationship's demise.

A book I like: The Motion of Light In Water, Samuel R. Delany's 1980s memoir of "sex and science fiction writing in the East Village, 1957-1965." Part literary memoir, part social history, part personal recollections of a sexual life that, by now (according to the author himself) includes sexual encounters with something on the order of 50,000 (yes, 50K) different (almost all) men. Fascinating on all kinds of levels and, of course, brilliantly-written.

A (actress in a) television show I like: Tatiana Maslany. Because she plays something like 8 different characters on Orphan Black, and Orphan Black's 4th series starts tomorrow night, and she's brilliant and I am hoping against hope that the writers know where they're going with what is so far a brilliant show. Another Battlestar Galactica will break my heart.

Comment if you want to get a letter too! (You can cheat too, if you want to.)

ETA: I am shocked, appalled, and kind of disgusted that, given the letter M, I was unable to remember just how much (a lot) I love the work of Hayao Miyazaki. *Young Geoffrey hangs his head in shame*

It was a small flight crew, all male: two pilots and a single flight attendant.

The Captain was a tall man, and beefy, the First Officer maybe a decade younger, not so tall and quite thin. The Flight Attendant was bald-headed and a blocky face, a bit like a super-hero. He too was at least 10 years younger than the big Captain.

Now, one thing that surprised me a bit about flight crews is that they don't work anything like, say, the crew of the starship Enterprise; they don't work together for extended periods of time. In fact, this crew of three gave me two separate pick-up times for tomorrow. One day together as a team, then Crew Sched. shuffled them around like so many cards in a deck.

So quite often, if a crew got along during the day and they aren't too tired, I will be privy to the people either getting re-acquainted after a long absence or getting to know each other for the first time.

Today, it was clearly the latter.

The first man to break the ice was the First Officer, who spoke with an accent I couldn't place. One second I thought he might be from somewhere in the Indian sub-continent, the next I wondered if he was originally from Australia. No matter. "You know I just read about an interesting study," he began. And continued, after getting some encouraging sounds from his colleagues, "It seems they've discovered a food that makes 99 percent of women completely lose interest in sex."

"What is it?"

"Wedding cake," he said, to appreciate chuckles and a brief spate of pretty standard "observations" on the differences between men and women. Eg, "Men want the woman they marry to never change, and are always disappointed; women want to change the men they marry — and are always disappointed!"

The jokes more or less came to a conclusion when the Captain allowed as how he has now been married for 23 years. "I missed my chance to murder her," he observed sardonically.

But that remark somehow led the conversation to go from hackneyed jokes to talk about marriage and relationships in general. It turned out that all three men were married and that all of them had kids. And the jokes gave way to talk about how hard it can be to maintain a relationship, that it takes work not to drift apart from the person you married.

The Captain said that he and his wife, acting on the example of a pair of her relatives, have made a point of making the time to spend an hour a day with each other, sole purpose: to talk. ("We'll usually have a drink — once in a while two — but the point is to pay attention to each other.") He went on observe that touch is important as well and said that they went out of their way to be tacticle with each other, to make a point of brushing their hands together patting one another on the back in passing, even if they are otherwise occupied in their own activities. This, from the guy who'd started by making jokes about murder.

The others agreed and offered their own strategies and examples. And from there, the talk turned to kids and grand-kids and before I knew, the cell-phones were out and pictures and videos of roundheads were being passed around for mutual admiration.

All this in a drive lasting barely more than 15 minutes. It was one of the cutest 15 minutes I've ever experienced as a driver. And from such an unlikely beginning!

Those of you who also know me on Facebook might remember me posting some while ago that I was facing about a month's wages worth of dental work. Said sad news came as a shock to me, since I have always been able to make the honest claim that "I've never had a cavity."

No longer true, but in fact, the bulk of the work (and the uninsured costs) came from "pocketing" in the gums around my upper rear molars, especially. The gums were getting so loose that my bloody teeth not only hurt, they were starting to get a little loose. (Some of you may also remember that loose teeth are among the horrors of my subconscious life.)

So. A two cleaning sessions and two laser sessions to get at pretty extensive calculus "growing" beneath my gums, my new dentist is optimistic that she's fixed the problem. And so am I.

And so it was that, this morning, I prepared myself to head once again to her office, this time for my very first filling. le sigh ...

If you live in East-Central North America, you'll know it's been god-awful and eerily hot so far this September. July-hot, and never-mind the autumnal shadows of the lowering sun. Sweat-like-a-pig weather, especially if — like me — you have a 12+ kilometre cycle to work, and you play soccer under the blazing sun on Sundays.

But the weather-casters have been promising an end to the torrid temperatures and this morning start nice and cloudy, presaging a beginning of the end. Or so I thought until I opened our front door and stepped ... into a blast of blinding sunshine that contained the promise of yet another sweltering day.

I didn't quite shake my fist at the sky, but I did look up and curse. "Fuck off, Mr. Sun!" said I, adding, "Nobody likes you!" I then turned, locked our front door, hefted my twin back-packs, loaded with laptop and lunch, a change of clothes, some reading matter and my notebook computer (among other things; no, I don't commute light) and made my way to our garage, whence I'd left my wheels in the "bike cage."

I swear to god, I was under roof no more than 120 second, but when I wheeled my bicycle out to the street, Mr. Sun was nowhere to be seen. From the grey skies fell not light, but rain. So if any of you Ottawa folks got caught by it at around 10:15 Wednesday morning, it was my fault.

All of which is preamble to the weirdness that "began" my rather long day.

Despite the rain, which was continuous but light, I arrived at my dentist's (near Billings Bridge, maybe a three or four km ride) just a little damp, not dripping as would have been the case on Tuesday, when it was dry but o! so fucking hot. And I soon found myself on my back, looking up at a ceiling whose dials were painted to look like clouds scudding fast against a blue sky, while my dentist and her hygienist applied gauze and a topical anaesthetic in preparation for the scrapping to come.

Now it so happens that people notice that I ride a bicycle, what with the helmet and casual clothing. And they tend to be impressed when I tell them that I work at the airport. To the uninitiated, it seems a long way. It also happens that there is a labour dispute at the airport. The airport taxi drivers have been locked-out for more than a month now, with no end in sight. And, as I was about to learn from my hygienist, there was some kind of violence on Tuesday. (I'd been working, but the excitement happened sometime while I was on the road between Ottawa and Dorval.)

And somehow, as I lay there, half my mouth nearly immobile, we got into it. The hygienist (let's call her Maggie, just for fun) let me know that the drivers' position was hopeless and so they should give in. And also that she didn't get a raise every year, so why should the taxi drivers? (No, that didn't make any sense. The taxi drivers were refusing to pass on a 400% increase in "dispatch fees" to their customers, arguing that it was both a greedy cash-grab on the part of their employer and the airport, and a self-destructive move on the part of their employer when Uber is making all kinds of inroads on the business But I digress.)

I tried to argue the drivers' case, but she was having none of it and, in any case, we were straying more and more into (what I see as) a modern defeatist tendency to just shrug and say, "that's the way things are now" and recommend capitulation. Which drives me a little crazy.

In any case, we were both getting increasing heated when I suddenly had had enough. "Look," I said, "I really don't want to talk about this now. I haven't had my coffee, or breakfast, and I can't feel the right side of my face. You think I'm wrong, I think you're wrong and I'm not in the mood to keep arguing about it."

But she wasn't about to concede the point. "I'm not arguing," she said. "Everybody has a right to their opinion."

"Of course you're arguing," I countered. "You're telling me the cabbies should give up their struggle, that's your position!"

And with that, or maybe after another back-and-forth or two, she insisted she'd taken no position and how dare I tell her what she thought, then tore off her right glove and hurled it to the floor before storming out of the room.

I stared, agog and bemused (and also, I admit, angry), at the door through which she'd stormed.

Moments later, oblivious, my dentist returned and asked how my mouth was feeling.

"I guess okay," I said (mumbled; remember, I could really only feel half of my face) and added, "but I'm afraid your hygienist and I kind of had a fight."

"What? A fight?"

"Er, yes. About politics." I laughed a little. "I'm afraid she's really angry at me."

"How did this happen? I was only gone for two minutes!"

How indeed? I haven't often been involved with something that escalated that quickly.

I very nearly cancelled the appointment. "She's really angry with me," I said again, "I'm not sure I want her poking things in my mouth." But after a little one-on-one, I was convinced that she was (a) a professional and (b) only going to be doing suction and (c) my mouth was already frozen. "All right," I said, "we might as well get on with it."

The procedure itself was painless, and quick. I didn't enjoy hearing the drill as she cleaned out the decay, but it didn't hurt and didn't take long. Fifteen minutes later I was on my bike and heading south. Indeed, the only physical problem I had was when I tried to eat some breakfast (a sandwhich from Tim Horton's god help me) but had to stop when I realized I was, quite possibly, starting to eat part of my lip along with the sandwich.

But I'm afraid no real apologies were exchanged before I left the clinic, no hands shaken or smiles traded. I've got a cleaning schedule three months down the line, but I'm not going to go unless I've been assured that someone else will be prodding my gums and scrapping my teeth.

Funny thing about my state of mind following my my recent sports injury: I wasn't unhappy or upset about it. Quite the opposite. Sunday afternoon and evening found my smiling and laughing, despite the fact I could barely hobble up or down the stairs and that settling onto the toilet was a task that took me about 75 seconds to perform.

Despite it all, I realized I was happy. I felt as if I'd won a lottery, not like I was in a significant amount of pain.

And looking back at my recent self, I realized that I've been really quite happy a lot more than I used to be. Credit for some of it goes to the presence of Raven in my life, no doubt, but I don't think that's all of it. It seems almost as if I've entered into another, less angsty phase of life; though I risk jinxing myself, it feels like a new normal. Is this really what fifty feels like?

Meanwhile, due to the overwhelming deluge* of concern and curiosity about my recent sports injury, I am also happy to report that things seem to be healing apace.

By happy, I mean really happy. Never mind soccer, on Sunday I was worried I might miss one or more days of work — always problematic when you're on-call and don't have any paid sick-leave. But before yesterday was done, I was able to make my way downstairs in normal fashion, one leg after the other. Going up was harder, but I was able to do it, though I winced a lot when I put weight on my right foot and started to lift (in fact, sometimes I just limped up).

This morning, I find myself able to veritably bounce down the stairs and going up hurts considerably less than it did. And I'll be going into the office in a couple of hours and have virtually no concerns about spending four or five hours behind the wheel of a van. Bending down to pick something off of the floor still requires some acrobatics with my right leg, but I don't think I'll have any trouble lifting luggage into the back of the vehicle.

I think I will miss this Sunday's game, but more because Raven — who has had a brutal month-and-a-half at her office — is in serious need of a road-trip, and I've agreed to doing a weekend in Montreal with her.

All of which is to say, It could have been a hell of a lot worse.

*Overwhelming deluge being here defined as a number > or < than 1.

"You are so strong!"

I came down with a cold last weekend, a nasty throat infection that left me sore and raspy and without much energy. Too weak to enjoy the increasingly clement whether that's been creeping up on Ottawa this week — until today.

Throat still a little sore today, I nevertheless felt well enough this afternoon to head for the airport by bicycle instead of bus — nevermind the rain clouds that chased me the whole 12 kilometre ride. (The sky began to weep about 10 minutes after I locked up my machine.)

Despite the layoff, I pretty quickly fell into a good groove. Maybe a little too good because, a couple of kilometres shy of the Ottawa International Airport, my front tire bit gravel and I had to work to keep my balance on the rough.

Disconcerting, but I kept control and soon glanced back behind me for the merge back onto the pavement.

There were no cars in sight, but there was another cyclist, coming up fast. But not so fast as to keep me from signalling my intent to get back onto the pavement. Once on blacktop, I pushed hard to regain speed in hopes of not my pursuer too much before they had a chance to pass.

We were closing upon the off-ramp to Uplands Drive. I toed the line of the main road and so did my trailer. When we reached the point where the ramp fully split, I pulled right and and waved the other bicyclist — a woman, I saw now — passed me in full training regalia: tight bike shorts and top, arms and (especially) legs bulging with an athlete's muscles.

She returned my wave with a smile and startled me mightily, saying, "You are so strong!"

"What do you mean?" I shouted as she nosed ahead, "You're passing me!"

"Sure," she said, looking back at me, "but your bike isn't stripped-down!"

And as she settled in before me, I realized it was true.

Her bike consisted of a frame, wheels and a plastic water-bottle strapped its main pillar. Mine? Well first, I was wearing work-boots and long pants, along with not-at-all aerodynamic safety-vest. My bike is saddled with fenders and a 70-kilogram capacity carrier, to which are attached two metal paniers. Those, in turn, were laden with a bags containing a couple of magazines, my (very small) laptop computer, a notebook, two litres of water (in stainless steel bottles), a change of clothes and a few other random odds and ends. Not to mention, that the bike is more than fifty years old and made of steel, not some lightweight modern alloy.

And I wondered: was she in training? Was it a real athlete who had admired my strength? Without really intending to, I found myself pushing harder; she had been pulling away, but I kept pace, maybe five metres behind, the same competitive instinct taking hold that saw me, a couple of winters ago, straining to keep up with some guy who'd passed me on a bike hauling a child-carrier trailer (sans child), even though I was only going to work.

A kilometre or so on, she took the right ramp to the airport's departure level, while I went left. Arrivals, where my office lurks at the far end of the terminal. We waved to each other and went our separate ways.

The funny thing is (and I really hope all this doesn't sound like bragging, because that's not my intent; I save that for Facebook) I really don't feel "strong", let alone "so strong."

What I feel is a middle-aged, is ex-smoker, is (yes) too fat. Sure, I play soccer with kids 20 and 30 years my junior, and maybe — objectively — I'm not doing too bad at resisting the hideous depredations of Father Time, but I am (or think I am) usually one of the worst players when I take to the pitch, belly jiggling more than I'd like it to when I "bounce across the field".

Reason tells me I'm doing pretty well, I guess, in comparison to most other 50 year-old men, but in my mind's eye I ought to be Batman. Or at least, Guy Lafleur in his prime.

No, not Guy Lafleur in his prime; rather, I am comparing myself to Batman or Lafleur. And so, always come up on the losing side of the equation.

So thank you, unknown cyclist. You looked like you were in serious training, and your words made me feel pretty good, even if also a little confused. And they helped to remind me that I really am grateful (as I think I've said here before — I've definitely said it elsewhere) that I'm doing as well as I am. As an ex-smoker and long-time heavy drinker, I marvel with more than a little humility to be able to do the things — cycling, soccer, even — recently — jogging for a block or two or three just for the hell of it (or to catch a bus) — but I still can't shake that picture of myself as the second-cousin to the class Fat Kid, as the nerdy (and chubby) teenager too shy to tell a girl he liked her.

And how stupid is that? Truth is, in the five or six(ish) years since I met Raven, quit smoking and (not at all coincidentally) cut way down on my drinking, I've gotten into the best shape of my adult life, whether or not my belly still jiggles a bit when I hound an opposing player the length of the pitch. Why is it so hard to shake the pictures of ourselves that develop in our youth?

Well, maybe for the same reason that the first reaction of nearly every old person who spies a long-lost acquaintance is to wonder why that old person looks so damned familiar.

I dunno. What do you see when you look in the mirror? Yourself as you are, as you once were, or some gross distortion of one or the other (or both)?

I'm writing this entry (or at least, will have started it) at YOW, the Ottawa International Airport. I am not here to work but rather, to await the return of my sweetie, home soon after almost three weeks over-seas.

Three weeks: not an insignificant amount of time. Close enough to 6% of a year, if you want to put it in perspective.

And temporal perspective is something that's been hitting me a lot lately. More or less since I turned 50, come to think of it.

Unlike any previous milestone, this one gives me pause. I suspect the physical deteriorations of my parents, and a favourite aunt's early-stage dementia has something to do with it, but so to does the sheer extent of my own existence.

To put it another way: If three weeks is not an insignificant length of time, than 50 years is a fuck-load of it.

It's not just a lot of time in terms of a human life. Think about it. The first half of the 20th centure — 50 years — saw not one but two World Wars and a Great Depression, not to mention the widespread adoption of technologies like the automobile, the airplane and the televison, but also the invention of entirely new art forms: film, comics, jazz, rock-and-roll.

My own half-century is even more spectacular. Space-flight. Computers. The internet. Fifty years ago, homosexual acts were criminal acts, and a husband could not, in law, rape his wife.

All of which is to say: though I don't feel old (or even, much older), I've rather suddenly become all to aware of the passage of my time. Of goals and dreams unacomplished, of mistakes made. Of the sudden tangible reality of my own mortality.

I have become aware of death in a way I never was before. Or rather, of my death.

It's not that I am afraid of dying. I'm an atheist. Death holds no terrors for me. Rather, it's that I feel ... disturbed at the prospect of just how little time I have left. Let's face it: the odds that I have another 50 years ahead of me — never mind 50 good years — are not in my favour.

I dunno, really. There really isn't much point to all these words, other than a sudden desire to articulate what has been inchoate sensation, this realization that time is running short, if not quite (yet) running out.

I hope it proves to be a spur of some sort, something to goad me into making better use of my time than I have in the past. I do still feel as if I have the talent and brains to make something at least somewhat memorable of my life.

But by god, I guess I'd better get cracking!

Right. Speaking of time, Raven's plane will be landing in about five minutes. Time to wrap this up; time to pack away my miraculous portable computer, time to stagger downstairs and wait to hold her in my arms once again.

Life may be short but, as my mother has taken to saying, lately it has also been good.