My sister reviews movies.

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At some point, my immediate family went from being totally in the same boat on movies, to everyone abandoning ship to the life rafts and setting off in cardinally opposite directions.

My siblings and I can now comfortably acknowledge this with each other, and the shorthand is usually a reference to our father’s increasingly appalling taste in movies. Movie suggestions are often caveated by a reference to one of my dad’s later-day favourites: “Well, you might like it, but … My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.

But even when we don’t agree, I still enjoy hearing what my big brother and little sister (LS) are watching and liking.

And, unsurprisingly, the little sister who works in the jungle really just watches movies for the creatures… Plot, shmot.

Little Sister: “For 1st night of new year: popcorn, pjs and pelicula.”

Me: “Whatcha going to watch?”

LS: “It is looking like Planet Earth or Life of Pi. Might be Life of Pi, because David makes me sleepy and being alone with tigers in boats less so…”

Me: “I don’t understand Life of Pi. Is it good? Everything I’ve read about it makes me feel a little stabby, but that may be because the furry tiger inside me who is supposed to teach me lessons about life and love and spirituality died long ago because I only fed him the bitter fish of pessimism and hypercriticality. Then I made a coat out of his skin because practical.”

LS: “I have no idea. We spent like 200 days at sea and I passed out. [My girlfriend] won’t tell me the ending, but apparantly the irritating Canadian now believes in god because I saw that part. Visually it was quite well done. It is hard to win me on content. I liked Avatar when I saw it last week. Though it was also over the top. I like the animals.”

My sister’s movie reviews are my favouritest movie reviews. Though they, and maybe large chunks of her life, could probably be summed up as “I like the animals“.

ABRAZOS HERMANITA! May your animal movies be plentiful. 🙂

Posted in: funnies, not everyone's family, ponderings

But you can buy the movie for $5

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I was thinking today about some of the people who are gone, and some of what they said about being gone, before they left.

Went looking for footage of David Rakoff, wondering if he could still dance with no feeling in one of his arms, whose death preceded that of the rest of his body.

I found this:

npr

Thoughts on loss and death, stock parts in everyone’s humanity, are stuck in a traffic jam at the border.

Posted in: life stuff, ponderings

What’s wrong with Coke’s calorie-washing campaign

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Before watching a YouTube video about Something Very Important today (I think it might have been a cute porcupine), I was treated to an ad for Coke.

More specifically, an ad by Coke, about Coke, and for Coke… about how great Coke is.

This one really bothered me. Because it is more insidious than most. The logic is more twisted and so the message more dangerous.

I described it to the husband, trying, by describing it and raging out blindly for a bit, to pin down exactly what about it made me just so… angry.

Him: “So… basically it’s like ‘Yay! We’re beating you with a smaller stick!”

Nailed it.

Coke waxes PR and BS about all the changes they’ve voluntarily made (emphasis theirs) and about how every calorie counts — a message delivered just before they show some kids packing sandwiches in their lunches. (Careful of those sandwiches kids, they’ll rot your teeth and make you fat).

“All calories count, no matter where they come from”.

Did Coke have a teenager with an eating disorder write their campaign?

“Food companies no longer fear the calorie-counting message…the emphasis on calories allows food companies to take the focus of consumers away from the ingredients, processing methods, and the overall quality of their foods.”

“All calories count, no matter where they come from” is simplistic and dangerous nonsense.

To look only at calories is to be blind to the sweeteners and additives and deeply, deeply unfoodlike products that make up Coke’s food products.

And let’s be clear, Coke does not make any products which are good for you.

There is no message Coke can put out about how they are part of the solution. By existing, Coke is part of the problem. A big part. The best Coke can do is be less of the problem. You don’t go to a cigarette company for advice on fighting lung cancer.

Granted, adults (those who are not addicted to Coke’s many hyper-sugar saturated liquid candy crack drinks) can decide to make a time and place for eating – or drinking – garbage. But that doesn’t make it not garbage.

And that doesn’t make it not terribly suspect to suggest that swapping super sugary sugar drinks for super sugary juice drinks in vending machines in schools — a lucrative activity for Coke, those machines ain’t donated — merits a gold damn star.

“We call it ‘weight washing’. And it’s a bit of a worry when you see these large corporations get involved in public health,” she says. “They’re not public health experts. They’re in the business of making money and selling product.”

“They always focus on physical activity to draw attention away from the contribution of their products to overweight and obesity. What we’d really like to see is Coca Cola selling less sugary drinks, getting them out of schools and sports centres… and we’d like to see them not marketing to teenagers.”

I don’t buy it, Coke. The message or the product.

Thanks to the Center for Science in the Public Interest for cutting through Coke’s warm blanket of PR with their truth scissors:

Posted in: food and drink, ponderings

The Sedaris Problem

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Let’s call it “The Sedaris Problem”.

Can you write about your family?

What does it mean to write your story, if you cut all the family parts out? What is lost? Is it even possible? Do you wait until everyone involved is dead? Is that actually any better, or is that just like talking about them behind (or 6 feet above…) their back?

Mine is the sort of family where when you casually mention an anecdote at a dinner party, other guests sometimes drop cutlery. Something you grew up with or around (or still do) is greeted by incredulous “wait, WHAT?” Get my siblings in the room at the same time, and our joint memories and experiences get jaws a’droppin’. It’s been a hell of a ride.

It is important to me to not be a monster. I’ve never been on board with the “but if it’s a really great story” cop out. I don’t believe in religion, but I do believe in a good idea. There’s merit to the principle of “treat others as you would want to be treated”. I try not to tell stories I wouldn’t tell – the way I’m telling them – in front of the people involved. I rebuke myself (a little) when I do. But what about telling those stories on “paper”?

I’ve had the fortunately rare-ish experience of losing two of the family members and confidantes I was closest to within 2 years of each other. Both unexpected. Each tragic in a different way.

It’s a shitty club, and you don’t want to be a member.

If I can callously brush to the side what their deaths meant for them, I can consider what it has meant for me. It’s pretty simple: It messed me up.

It has led to a lot of questions. It fundamentally changed who I am, and shaken to the bedrock how I feel about life. For the past two years, it has sucked a lot of the light and hope away. Or at least blacked it out.

Kumail Nanjiani said it much funnier and about something quite different when he said  “during that movie, I’m pretty sure I lost the ability to smell rain.”

I went to the double feature.

This blog has been quiet because most of what’s preoccupied me the last couple of years has been about this “journey” (<-barf). Because the stories and experiences sometimes involve other people, I have been unsteady on how much I can write. If I had ever been successful at keeping a journal, perhaps I should have written it there. But journals have never worked for me.

Pushing the big thoughts and discussions into secret books and locked drawers seems to miss out on learning from each other. Humans struggle each by themselves, and whatever they learned from their struggle is inadvertently hoarded and lost — with the best of intentions, but with unfortunate results. Why don’t we talk about the things that really matter? So perhaps I should try. Mostly for myself, but if someone reads something they’ve felt or experienced, so much the better. We read to know we are not alone. We write to remind ourselves of what we’ve learned. (Or at least I do, as I have the long-term memory of a mole rat).

I strongly regret not having captured more of how everything went as it happened. If you grow up with some messed up things, instant repression can be a powerful instinct. But fortunately(?), when the hurt is this big, it stays with you for a while.

Loss and death are big inescapable truths, which happen to absolutely everyone. And which we barely talk about. Despite its perfect inevitability, in our lockstep cultural balking at death, we still treat death as an “if” not a “when”. We are all of us mortal. We all have our time. We all lose people. We all end.

If we don’t explore the big things, the big questions that we/I wrestle with in our head, doesn’t that leave us just talking about so much nothing? All the world is a polite dinner party with strangers. We never move forward. We don’t learn from each other. The discussable world is cut away until we talk about nothing that matters. But I want to move forward. I want to learn. I want to figure it out. That seems rather the whole point of existence.

(Not all the time mind you. Sometimes, you just need to watch cat .gifs.)

I think it is possible to do both — to respect the cast of characters, but also to dig into some of the big hurts and joys and look around. I hope to try. If I’m wrong, well… I’ve been wrong before.

A few principles I think serve as guides along the way of tackling the “Sedaris” challenge: Don’t write other people without empathy. Most people most of the time are not acting out of malice. You don’t have to excuse callous behaviour, but it’s worth trying to understand. Don’t write out of spite. Don’t betray confidences. Be cognizant of your own motivations. Write nothing you wouldn’t say in front of the people involved. Have a sense of humour about yourself and others. Be forgiving, but not complacent.

And remember that, in someone else’s story, it might be you who is the villain.

Posted in: dad (Bryan Hayday), ponderings

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

Iceberg lettuce: The honey badger of produce

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Iceberg lettuce is junk food. If you’re about to eat iceberg lettuce, you might as well reach for a candy bar instead. Comparably low nutritional value. In Dante’s food pyramid, they’re both in the ninth circle of sinner foods. Dinner for thieves and unbaptized babies.

This is how I thought of iceberg lettuce. This is how I was raised to think of iceberg lettuce. Kind of like eating garbage. Its delightful crunchiness belied its wanton and hedonistic provenance. You’re eating iceberg lettuce when you could be eating spinach leaves? Or red leaf lettuce? Or even a Boston bib or Romaine?

Slut.

Only here’s what I have discovered: Iceberg lettuce is aaaamazing. Not for its own caloric or health (non)value, but as a conduit. An enabler of vegetables. The wheels on the mass transit of bounty. A vehicle for other, more healthful vegetables.

Where I would have zero salads, because gorramit I just can’t keep up with the stupid short life cycles and high maintenance needs of organic leafy munchables, iceberg lettuce understands me. It understands that I need to chuck it in the fridge and kinda forget about it until I need it. Iceberg lettuce doesn’t mind neglect. Iceberg lettuce don’t give a damn.

And then, when it’s lunch or peckish time, BAM! you just pull out your iceberg lettuce and add all your actually good vegetables to it. Maybe even some of those higher maintenance greens if they’re still alive (and not limply draped about your fridge like so many delicate ladies on their fainting couches). Load that shit up. Chop up 5 different kinds of veggies, slap ’em in with the iceberg (which is still clean and crunchy and ready for service… because it is undead), and voila! Salad.

And guess what? You just ate 5 more veggies than zero. All thanks to iceberg lettuce. Iceberg lettuce giving you a locker room slap on the butt and saying: “I got this one Hon. You just go grab some bell peppers and dressing.”

In conclusion: Question everything, and take allies wherever you can find them.

 

Posted in: food and drink, 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