Geddy Lee: Unwitting patron saint of airport joy

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Just returned from spending 2 weeks in the Ecuadorian jungle with my excellent baby sister.

And oh, there are stories. Great stories. Because everybody likes snakes, right? Okay fine. But everybody loves baby monkeys. Including snakes, who like them… AS LUNCH! Har har har! Food chain humour. No? Moving on…

It’s possible that a trip which starts poorly can end well. But it is so much more enjoyable to me – as I am old and boring – when you have a trip which starts well and then continues to go well and then ends well. Like, say, how enjoyable it is to begin your trip at the airport with an auspicious sign.

Or auspicious individual.

Like Geddy. Fucking. Lee.*

Lemme a’splain.

I am at the airport at the ridiculously early appointed hour. The plane I’m catching is probably still on the ground in Atlanta, the baggage loaders taking a coffee break because why not, they have plenty of time. But when that plane arrives in Toronto I will be ready for it.

I pass without incident through US border control. For the first time in a long while, they don’t ask why my husband is not traveling with me. Which is good, because each time they ask, my knee-jerk cheekiness worsens. (“Guys, we have a situation. There is a fully-grown married woman travelling without her husband here. I know. I tried asking her but she just said something about it not being 1938 and then she showed me a permission slip he signed.”)

Then on past border control to baggage drop. I never ever travel with checked luggage, ever. But the little most excellent sister is working her butt off in the jungle without peanut butter and maple syrup and this cannot go on. So I am bringing a bag full of provisions. And pants. I wait behind the guy in front of me, who was just redirected to this conveyor, seems a little lost, and has quite a few bags to put on the belt. No worries. I’m in no rush.

I’m in no rush. But (you had to see this coming), HE SURE IS. The realization process in my brain goes something like this:

“Man I hate airports, they didn’t used to suck like this, it used to be an adventure and it was special not hostile okay, remember, I love my sister I love my sister do do do that guy has pretty distinctive hair I wonder if WHOOOOOLLY FUCK THAT IS GEDDY LEE IS IT GEDDY LEE I THINK IT’S GEDDY LEE YES IT IS MOST DEFINITELY GEDDY LEE GEDDY LEE GEDDY LEE”

Hubby and I will sometimes talk about celebrity culture. It’s a big old messy mixed bag. For the most part, I’m not into it. But I have tried to empathize with what motivates people to stand across the street from a hotel all day during TIFF to try and catch 10 seconds of sightline to someone who once pretended to be someone else while someone recorded it. And I circle back to the people who create things and think thoughts and say words I respect. The John Hodgmans and Joss Whedons. It’s a short list, but it’s there in my brain. A little list of people I would like to thank for being in the world and, by doing what they do the way they do it, making it more awesomer for all of us.

Two of the three members of Rush are on that list.

Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson just seem like decent talented hardworking dudes. And I respect that Neil Peart prefers not to interact with his fans. That’s not confusing and it doesn’t offend me in the least. It’s why he’s not on the list, even as I take up drums. You just keep doing what you’re doing buddy.

But, along with the little short list, it is in my brain that in It Might Get Loud, Alex Lifeson did say that if a fan “wants an autograph or a hug or something” that that is a-okay. I feel like he’s authorized my request for hug when I see him on the street. Maybe just a high-five. Whatever he’s feeling like. I’m flexible.

Geddy also said he was fine with being approached by fans. But that he’d had to reconcile himself to the idea. That it was a choice to let it bother him or not, and that he’s fine with it now. “No big deal” I believe he said.

And yet.

I stand in line behind him as he loads his luggage onto the conveyor belt. And even though he’s on that very short list of people I’d assumed if I ever encountered I would definitely say “hey, just wanted to say that I think you’re fantastic”, it doesn’t… seem right.

Because it’s an airport. Because airports, even to the famous and accomplished, are just that side of hostile to humanity. Because no one wants to linger in security. Because he’s just trying to live his life. Because maybe someone saying “hey, you’re fantastic” is always welcome (especially somewhere hostile to humanity). But just as possible, he’d rather just get through here as quickly as he can. Just like the rest of us. His magical bass playing hands might not be human, but the rest of him is.

And, unless I’m wrong (which happens), I think he has that look. That slightly closed look of someone who is used to being approached, and is just sort of hoping that they aren’t going to be approached right now. Not unfriendly. Not mean. Just a bit heads down. An unspoken body language request to let him just be a dude on his way to a plane.

I end up with plenty of time to second-guess my decision to just enjoy the encounter as one-sided and let him be. We’re moving in the same clump, and I end up behind him twice more.

I am waved over for the hand wiping test thing they do now. I believe it is to test for explosives, so I’m not going to think too hard about what ensures I’m “randomly” selected every time. Geddy is not selected, but the woman administering my test says something totally unintelligible to him about how it is random and he can keep moving. He does not hear her, and steps in to have it repeated. I take the liberty of explaining that it’s random, and she said he can keep going. And so I have spoken to Geddy Lee. To explain that the hand wiping explosive testing I’m currently being subjected to by airport security doesn’t apply to him. Just how you imagined that conversation would go.

Then I go over to the plebian line for security screening, only to be redirected to the Nexus line, where I wait behind Geddy Fucking Lee. Again. I wait to put my shoes in a bucket behind Geddy Fucking Lee’s shoes. And then I pass through to reassemble myself behind Geddy Fucking Lee.

And then off he goes. Whisked through a “this secret part of the airport probably sucks considerably less” super sekkrit door.

I am not alone in recognizing him. Or, it seems, in deciding not to say anything about it (oh Canadians you adorable bastards). As soon as Geddy is out of sight, the security agent turns to the guy beside her and Rush gushes: “Do you know a band called Rush?” Him: “Huh?” Her: “RUSH! That was Geddy Lee!!”

The guy beside her did not know Rush, but, as so often happens among teh ladies, our mutual love of Rush brought us together (boom stereotypes, boom). My contained enthusiasm and surprise and happiness finally bubbles out and I gush that I know a band called Rush, and how seeing Geddy Lee just made my whole day. Her: “Mine too!”

A little bit of humanity in pre-flight. It’s not the same as getting to tell Geddy Lee he’s fantastic, but I’ll take it. Maybe next time…

*Apologies to Mr. Lee, but I am physically incapable of referring to him any way other than “Geddy Fucking Lee”. Because he is Geddy. Fucking. Lee.

Posted in: life stuff, music

Snot for sharing

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I hate being sick.

Hate it.

Hate it hate it hate it. Double stamped it. BAH.

I’m sick right now. GAAAABLLLUUUURGGHHHHHWHEEEZEANGRYFACE!

I am bad at being sick. Worse even, as I get older. Because I enjoy autonomy. And decision-making. And choices. And doing things. And being sick is the opposite of that.

Being sick is boring. As a not-7 year old, I know what happens. There is no novelty in a sick day. In gingerale or jello. (Which I didn’t actually get when I was 7 and sick. I got raw garlic and salt water and vinegar. Hold your jealous applause.) No novelty in being on the couch or not being able to breath properly. I don’t want soup, I want to be healthy.

I am lucky. I don’t get sick often. I don’t have any little disease vectors (<-children) and I mostly don’t work in offices (<-contagion cesspools). And I fight it. Hard.

But at some point, by the sling and arrow of some outrageous bug, I fall. Like a giant mammoth, stuck up pincushion-style with wounds of phlegm and fatigue and ache.

So, finally, I lie here, on my mammoth side, with my mammoth trunk full of mammoth snot and I wait for extinction. Drip. Drip. Drip.

I get it from my father.

My father was terrible at being sick. Terrible.

Terrible.

How terrible? Well, when they went to do his heart surgery, scar tissue showed that he’d had not one, not two, but probably a few minor heart attacks. That he had just… powered through.

He was pretty sure he remembered at least one of these happening. At a work function. But it was a work function with many doctors in attendance, so he basically decided to ignore it.

Role. Model.

He was sick more often than he would have admitted (like, all the time), and he was working too hard (like, all the time), and incredibly overextended (like, all the time).

He took all the drugs and none of the rest. In one “great” story, while the participants were doing an exercise, he went to an empty conference room and lay down under a table for awhile.

…

I submit that if you are lying down, under a table, in a hotel conference room, to try and get 5 minutes of sleep in your work day, when you are already on the maximum dosages of extra strength drugs, then you should go. the. fuck. home. This is not a grey area. As my lovely husband says (and I throw this back at him when he (often) pushes himself too hard):

“It’s just not that important. It’s not like you’re maintaining life support machines by hand.”

But… but… but… the meeting! due dates! reports! emails!

“NO.”

Don’t go and infect other people. Stupid snotty jerkfaces do that. Push through it? PFFFT! If science has taught us anything (I love you science!), there is no pushing through it. There is, however, prolonging it by wearing yourself out. Oooooooo… dumb.

I am finally (<-why the frack does this take so long) learning that I am at no risk of developing sloth. It is just not in me to cop out too early or drag it out too long. Hit the sick panic button too soon. Choose less life over more. Embrace and revel in lethargy and weakness. But it’s the fear of this that keeps me ignoring the runny eye. The hacking cough. The snot. (Oh god so much snot).

But no. I will learn this lesson from my dad. If you’re sick, be sick. Be sick, and then get better. If you find you’re getting sick a lot, look at it. What is broken? What can I fix? But don’t ignore it, and don’t pretend I’m not sick this time.

Don’t be a mammoth.

 

 

Posted in: corpus, dad (Bryan Hayday), life stuff, ponderings

My (great) aunt, Kim Herbener

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My aunt Kim Herbener passed away early last Thursday morning. She was 57.

She lived only a few blocks away from me, and was the first of my mum’s siblings that I had a separate adult relationship with. Meeting for lunch or coffee or brunch just to get together and talk about… all the things. There is already a dull ache of missing her. A Kim-sized hole beside my dad-sized one.

In November 2011, over a bowl of oatmeal at my dining room table, she told me that her cancer was back, and had metastasized to her liver. We knew it was terminal. As much as you never know exactly how much time you have left, we knew there was not much of it.

Kim Herbener

Kim, in China after high school graduation

This past year were trips to the hospital for a port and for chemo, the healthiest lunches I could find, and many cups of tea. Early on we had a few really interesting discussions about life and death. Closer to the end, when she was finding comfort in religion and spirituality, I lost the thread a bit. But we still made the time to be together. And just about everyone likes getting flowers, whether you pray or not.

This is the speech I gave at the Monday evening visitation — just one of three speeches from the 11 nieces and nephews who are left behind, and will miss her.

::::Auntie Kim::::

Now I say this with a tonne of love. And also respect: Kim was weird. I say and mean it with love and respect because it’s Kim’s weirdness that made her a cool aunt and person.

For the Hayday nieces and nephew, Kim was the one who — at Christmas and birthdays — could be counted on to never give you the “straight” gift. (And as our proudly out aunt we were proud of for being out, that was just not her purview anyways.) As kids, we’d often receive ROM gift shop replicas and… things. Things that would need explanation. So you’d open your present, and then you’d open the accompanying note that talked you through it. Replica scarab beetles from an Egyptian tomb (on every 7 year old’s wish list). Music makers (if in doubt, assume whatever gift you’ve opened is something that makes music). But we also always kept them, for years and years, surviving many toy purges — because nothing fascinates little kids like the totally unknown. Well played Auntie Kim.

But the gifts always had a story that connected you to it in her mind. Always thought out and thoughtful. There was a reason behind whatever she chose. And they were gifts that were intended to encourage you, to show you that she sees you or some part of you. That she thinks you’re musical, artistic, insightful, thoughtful or kind and she thinks that’s great.

I think of gifts because she was always giving. Not only things. But support and love and an ear and hugs. Hug first, talk second. There and ready with the love and support when her niece and her nephew were coming out themselves. Or leaving the last bloom off her tree on my patio for me when my dad died.

She was and went ahead of her time. She was biking everywhere when Toronto had even fewer bike lanes than today. Doing yoga well before every twenty year old was an “instructor”. She was an unselfconscious off to the side trailblazer — because she was open and interested in life.  And game to give just about anything a try.

She was in love with the world. Even or especially the most mundane details. All the “hows” and the “whys” — that’s where Kim lived. She thought things over, considered the angles and gave you space to do the same. Every young little niece or nephew black and white mind can use a bit more grey in it, and an aunt who gives you a replica scarab beetle sure is bringing the grey.

She was the aunt with the whale bones. “Benedict” the giant scary painting of a head (who will live on forever in my brother Matt’s nightmares). The “Watch your head!” sign in her basement. The gypsy kings. The jangley bracelets. The somewhat unnerving colour shifting transitions lenses. A mug with a duck figure baked into the bottom. Sprouts. Pack lunches. A particularly angular way of writing the letter K. The ROM. The street she lived on.

It is sad to live on past someone you love. When they go and you are now in a world where they are not. They leave, and you love them even more. I will never walk past her street without thinking of Kim. True when she was alive, and truer now that she’s gone. Only now I won’t send her a quick message to see how she’s doing, or try to arrange for last minute cup of tea. Though I will raise a glass of tea to her in mind. And living only a couple of blocks over from her place, I’m going to burn through a lot of mental tea.

There were so many ways that we were nothing like each other. (How I tried to explain just what exactly I don’t see in interpretative … anything). But what was fantastic and a big cosmic score for all of her many nieces and nephews was that she made space for each of us to be us, and to know that whatever that was, she wanted to be a part of it. For each of us to have a different relationship with her (Erica, for instance, to cover the arty things that sail right past my analytic brain. Sarah to go shoot pool in the village.). She loved hearing when you were doing something new, and always wanted to hear updates on the things that were old.

When you die, there are beautiful things in the world that you have to leave. And sometimes some of the beautiful things leave before you do. Kim was a tall beautiful passionate enthusiastic darkly funny woman with a usually calm demeanor but also a fire in her belly, a sharp mind, kind words, and an open door.

But by the end, Kim was ready. She was calm and felt peace and she had a denser richer life than many people who get twice as many years to work with.

What would Kim have wanted for her nieces and nephews? I think, probably, something like what Maurice Sendak said before he died: “I wish you all good things. Live your life live your life live your life.”

Kim Herbener

Kim Herbener

Posted in: corpus, life stuff, not everyone's family, ponderings

Hi Me, it’s me.

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Hey you.

So, I hear you have your motorcycle test booked for tomorrow. I also hear that while you thought you had your head sorted out about it, I have it on good authority that your belly was still churning like a cement mixer. Which means you were probably not actually sorted out about it (how’re those pangs down your arm treating you?).

Future Me, here are some notes from the eye of the belly storm. Three things that actually made a difference in calming our ass down.

1. Treats!

You are very good at giving yourself a little reward after success. But you never give yourself a consolation prize. (No, berating yourself is not a “prize”. Moron.)

What that means is you head into things with a prize in mind, just hoping that it will work out. But you let the sentence trail. You say “Okay, here goes, and if this doesn’t go well then…”

That ellipsis there? That gets us into trouble. Because when things don’t go well, through our own result, or just some random circumstance, we are left as a pile of goo. Because all we had “planned” for if it didn’t turn out was how incredibly sad we were going to be.

FAIL.

Think of something you really, genuinely, want. What would be amazing. What would you like so much, that if you can only have it if you “fail”, you might find yourself kinda hoping that you do fail, so much do you want this treat (*cough*facial!*cough*). Make it better than your “everything went great!” reward. Got it? Good. That is the thing you get if it doesn’t work out. WIN!

2. Do something else.

Have you lost perspective? Have you built this thing up into The Thing of All Importance. No? … Are you lying?

Yes you are. You are so worried and so nervous. Because you have to get 100%. If you don’t get 100%, we have it on pretty good authority that the world will end and you will be useless.

Oh. No. Wait.

Actually, we had that on bad authority. For a very long time. We have since replaced that with good authority that the world will, in fact, go on. You will live to try another day. Having to do something more than once is not failure. Failure actually does lead to learning. You do many things, you have accomplished much, and you are not, by any stretch of any imagination, useless.

Trying to do something hard or new or unusual that you aren’t perfect at right away is much more valuable than the thing you never have to work for but are “naturally” good at.

Got it? Good.

Now. Go do something that has nothing to do with what you’re stressed about. If it’s work, go for a run. If it’s exercise, bake. If it’s mountain biking, read a book. Go to opposite land! Your life is bigger than any one thing. No one thing is that important. They’re all moving forward. Some faster, some slower. You’re working out your skills in lots of areas. There is balance. It is all good. Try, learn, fail, fight, win.

3. This too shall pass.

Being predisposed against religion means that sometimes good idea babies are lost to retrograde authoritarian bathwater. Like the phrase: “This too shall pass”. Perhaps the only sentiment that means something to me/Me, even after detentacling Catholicism from my brain. (Yeah yeah, don’t steal, be nice to people, etc. I still hold to those, they got a free pass under “duh”.)

“This too shall pass” is a good and useful truth. It’s about change. All change. A person doesn’t look at an adorable kitten and say “this too shall pass” (unless they’re a person who wears a lot of black eyeliner). Though it’s equally applicable. Everything changes and everything ends. Good and bad. Stressful, frivolous, flippant or significant.

That includes motorcycle tests. One way or the other, it will be over. You will go on. More decisions will be made. Tests can be retaken (for free even). You will still be you. You will figure it out. This too shall pass.

 

I know sometimes we can be a bit balls at managing our stress. We’re getting better though, teamie. Give yourself credit for that. While you’re at it, give yourself credit for everything. You are so quick to focus on what you haven’t done yet, or the “lost” 5%. Stop that. Enjoy your accomplishments. Enjoy where you’ve got to. It’s a good damn place.

Oh, and also? At 30, you took one of your dreams and made it happen. Studied, tested, passed, registered, studied, tested, passed, purchased, practiced, improved. Were told you’re doing great and at exactly the right spot to pass this next test. New skills, the very best kind. Still alive? Then there is still time.

And if you don’t pass tomorrow, on your very first try, that facial is still going to feel so damn good.

Posted in: life stuff, motorcycle, ponderings

The Happy Ending

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“The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.

…

This death to the logic and the emotional commitments of our chance moment in the world of space and time, this recognition of, and shift of our emphasis to, the universal life that throbs and celebrates its victory in the very kiss of our own annihilation…

…the fairy tale of happiness ever after cannot be taken seriously; it belongs to the never-never land of childhood, which is protected from the realities that will become terribly known soon enough; just as the myth of heaven ever after is for the old, whose lives are behind them and whose hearts have to be readied for the last portal of the transit into night…

The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest — as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars. Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible.”

~Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Posted in: books, life stuff, ponderings

I am not bored.

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“Boredom arises from the loss of meaning, which in turn comes in part from a failure of religio or connectedness with one another and with our past. This book is a modest plea for the realization that absolutely nothing is intrinsically boring, least of all the everyday, ordinary things. These, today, are after all what even we are prepared to admit we have in common. We have recently discovered in ourselves a determination to consider nothing to be beneath consideration, and a willingness to question passionately matters which used to be thought too basic for words. I think the reason for this is that we are fighting back with an altogether healthy urge to recapture ancient but pitifully neglected, thoroughly human responses such as participatory attention, receptivity and appreciation. We have learned well the lessons about the stupidities of superstition, of misplaced, because ignorant, wonder. It is time now to think about whether we have leaped from the trivial to the vacant. Boredom is an irritable condition, and an exceedingly dangerous one when it is accompanied by enormous destructive power.”

~ Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner

p.s. Matt, I have your book… ; )

Posted in: books, food and drink, life stuff, ponderings

Math!

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Last night, Hubby and I were lying in bed chatting. I know, it seems harmless. The problem is that Hubby and I really like talking to each other. So about half the time we’re lying in bed chatting, we are dooming ourselves to a next day filled with Badness and Fatigue.

Because, as mentioned, we are chatting. Where chatting does not equal falling asleep, winding down, or preparing for restfulness. It equals alert intrigued swapping and building of ideas and opinions and theories and memories. It is the anti-sleep, and can mean a pile of 2am “okay, no really we need to fall asleep… … … … so would it work if you took the value for…”

And we’re off again.

And again.

(And again.)

Last night, we were discussing math. One thread specifically on what math looks like in your head. When you’re trying to solve a problem, what do you “see”?

Which is when I confirmed what I suspected, which is that, when solving a math problem, there is no better place to be than inside my husband’s head. He may sometimes live amongst stacks of magazines, and keep a pile of shorts beside the bed like a feral animal (who wears pants), but when it comes to problem solving, there is no tidier place than my husband’s brain.

His description:

“Well, when I see numbers, they’re organized on a line in stacked blocks of 10. There are special markers for where the powers of 2 are. And of course A-F is overlaid for hex #s. Those all go left to right. Then there are the negative numbers, they run to the left, and down. Except if I’m working with negatives, then I reverse it.

Everything is colour coded too, but you can’t see the colours because they’re in your head. But it’s there.”

He then proceeded to rattle off offhand the powers of 2 from 0 to the 17th power. Hazard/Job perk of being a programmer.

While I enjoy doing mental math, when I see numbers in my head, they bear a closer resemblance to how they appear on Sesame Street. You know. Like they were rendered by someone on acid. They’re sort of floaty, sometimes with a background pattern.
Sesame Street Number 3

Hubby’s a fan of this. (My representation of numbers, not acid.) When I described my mental math process, he said it sounds like I do math very symbolically, higher on theory, lower on rote. But I tend to get the right answers when I do math in my head, which I guess is a point in support of the Sesame Street Acid Trip Method.

However.

When it comes to division, it turns out that he is a dirty hippy anarchist. He may be all sequenced spitshine for most functions, but division? He’s a mess. When I divide in my head, I do long division. AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL. My mental long-division is done with a sharpened number 2 pencil and I would be happy to turn in my work with my answer.

When Husband does division, apparently he just tends to guesstimate multiply, 9 times out of 10.

You think you know someone.

“Close enough.”

I guess I found his pile of shorts.

Posted in: life stuff, the EF

Wont Fix

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I have money. I have a house. I have things in the house that you should be able to use money to fix.

Not so.

A shortlist of some of the things:
* hot water on demand unit
* air handler
* potlights
* location of cold air return vent
* reskimming of popcorn ceilings

Each one of these has had at least one contractor just:
* not show up
* not reply to email(s)
* not reply to voicemail(s)
* not reply to inquiries using the webform on their site

In the more extreme cases, like the HVAC system, we’re now officially up to 5 or 6 (or more) contractors who have dropped the ball. Including one (Belyea Bros) who did a direct mail drop (“Having trouble with your hot water [people living on this street]?”), sent a guy out, gave us a quote and a huge pile of reassurance… and then we never heard (or heard back from) them again. Oh, no, I’m wrong. We did get another flyer from them.

We finally sucked it up yesterday and just had Direct Energy replace our broken hot water on demand system with a new one. Still a rental, but a newer model, for more money a month. Whatever, we thought, we just need to make some progress here.

This morning I turned on the tap… cold water only. Brand spanking new machine? “Error 25E”. Call an authorized service centre.

I did. They were supposed to be here between 1 and 5pm today.

It’s 5pm here now.

I’d have a bad case of the stabbies right now, if a little piece of my soul hadn’t just died. Or maybe it’s just not working because it’s dirty from not being able to shower all day. I should call an authorized service centre.

Posted in: houses, life stuff, mah rage