Ok, So You Want to Talk?

For two weeks of 2012, I fell out of this world and into another one. This was no fantasy novel, though. My new world wasn’t conducive to adventure; instead it was a perpetual waiting room, quarantined from time, like being in an existential play but hey, it was real life.

This was my life in the psych ward of a major city hospital.

We weren’t barred from interacting with the outside world. There were 24 hour cable news channels on the TV, and a desktop computer. They gave me my phone back eventually. But why bother to try and contact anyone? The outside world didn’t offer much for me. Our breakfast, lunch, and dinners would have come at the same time, on the same plastic dishes. My world would have still been circumscribed to a building floor. I told my job I was sick and the hospital wouldn’t let me leave, I told my family the rest of the truth, but otherwise I was checked out of the real world for two weeks.

I have kept very little from that time. Even the memories are beginning to go. I can’t remember the name of the form that the hospital kept me on, or the colours of the wristbands and how they related to privileges on the ward. Until I started writing this, I had forgotten the minor-key crush I had developed on someone there, out of what I can only assume was a combination of desperation and boredom. The memories I do have seem mostly funny now: trying to spear a slice of pork tenderloin with my fork because they wouldn’t let me have a knife; completing puzzle after puzzle in the break room; covering for someone I knew was smoking in the “reflection room” out of loyalty.

The physical evidence is even slighter. I threw out the paperwork, so now it’s just my hospital card and a mask. That mask isn’t metaphorical. It was just one of the many activities offered by the hospital so we could, I suppose, busy ourselves into sanity. I made something vaguely inspired by Cthulhu. It seemed appropriate, inside of a modern-day madhouse, to make a mask of a being who causes madness.

With a collection of memories and objects like this to remind me, it’s easy to forget it all. And yet, here comes #BellLetsTalk Day, to remind me every year that I’m more than just a headcase; I’m also a marketing tool!

So, let’s talk about #BellLetsTalk. I’ll start: I hate it. I hate that it dominates our national conversation for one day, causing my newsfeed to become bloated with endless retweets of trite sayings and quotes photoshopped onto Instagrammed photos. I hate that Bell wasted four letters of the official hashtag pushing its brand forward. And I hate that I have to justify my hatred. This year, I noticed more tweets than ever criticizing those who would criticize this day, often along these lines:

I'm sure that for each cynical tweet criticizing #BellLetsTalk, the tweeters are donating generously out of their own pockets. Right?
— Peter Moorhouse (@PeterMoorhouse) January 28, 2015

I dislike this kind of argument. In seeking to derail criticism, it turns what is just one type of support (in this case, financial) into the standard of engagement. Instead of responding to what someone is saying, it questions their commitment to even say it. So, in the interests of confounding these critics (and to regain the moral high ground of this piece) I donated $15.00 today. That’s not a lot, but I would have had to tweet #BellLetsTalk 300 times before Bell would pay out a similar sum.

Still, there are those I can’t ignore, or undercut with a donation; they are the people like me. The ones whose experiences were just like mine, or even worse, and who still like #BellLetsTalk. Many of them have powerful stories of how this day has helped them, that seeing all of those tweets and shares made them realize that they were not alone. I can’t criticize that, but I-the personal, highly subjective I- I still hate #BellLetsTalk.

I hate it for more than the corporate cynicism of Bell, a stronger cynicism than even the harshest anti-hashtag sentiment could contain. #BellLetsTalk reminds me of how angry I was, and remain, over this time. First: I did talk. Hours before I walked into an ER, I tried to talk with a friend about what I was going through. Instead of hearing that I was suffering from too little happiness, she seemed to hear that I had too much desire, that I wanted too much.

She wasn’t the only one I talked to either. Reactions differed. Sometimes people would change the subject and deflect it to something more manageable. My family, my lovely and supportive family, would just become exhausted by the obsessive mantras of my depression. I’m an ugly, stupid failure, I would say, disgusting, repulsive, unlovable. Uglystupiddisgusting. Unlovablerepulsivefailure. And on and on, until I could hear how tired they were on their end of the phone. Remembering all of this sometimes makes me angry; but sometimes it makes me feel grateful, for whatever these people tried to give me before I exhausted their energy and sympathy. A more honest version of #BellLetsTalk would also talk about how difficult these conversations can be for all parties.

And, finally: I am angriest at #BellLetsTalk for reminding me, with every hashtagged tweet in my timeline, of who I am now. That I don’t feel solidarity with the person muttering on the bus, but guilt and shame that I'll back away from them like everyone else.  #BellLetsTalk reminds me that I’m not a person who can find strength or creativity in this experience. Mad Pride marches will pass me by, because my madness almost killed me. And it probes into that place where I keep all the rage for what I lost. Going to the hospital probably saved me, but it changed me. I was tempered into something stronger, but at the cost of the ambitions and the spark belonging to the girl who checked herself in. I don't miss her misery. But I sometimes miss her.

So. Who wants to talk about that?

Domestic Tuesday: Bad Hat, Okay Beer

Remember the last time I checked in on my handiwork, and worried that my big red hat was turning into a big red bag? Well, I was right to worry:

This blurry photo is the only evidence I could bring myself to keep of Clifford the Big Red Hat. He's the perfect thing for those "Bad Face Days" we all have.

It doesn't matter how many times I knit a myself a muumuu instead of a pullover, or an oven mitt instead of a mitten. I'll never learn my lesson: KNIT A FRICKING GAUGE SWATCH!

Clifford-sized failures require high-ABV beers to forget, which is why I was probably doomed to be disappointed in this week's beer pick, Duggan's Sorachi Lager (no picture, unfortunately.) It's only 4%, and the package tells me it's a light beer, so I shouldn't shock anyone with the revelation that it's hardly a taste explosion. I had bought a six pack after going to Duggan's new brewpub with some friends. Both their Parkdale Bomber and Hefeweizen were quite good, but this one was just fine. Not bad, just alright, a light beer with a little bit of lemon thanks to the namesake hops. I think that I would enjoy it far more on a patio than in the depths of winter, and wearing a sundress instead of an alpaca face cozy.

Then again, almost everything would be better that way.

Books by the Numbers: How I Read My Way through 2014

You know how some football players put a sticker on their helmet for every sack they get? Well, if there was a reader equivalent-- I imagine it being quirky buttons on a Walrus tote bag --I would have 51 of them for 2014.

A selection of the books I read in 2014.

But my book kill count is just one number in my reading life. I thought I would look at other ways the books I read could be classified and counted; partly out of boredom, partly out of curiosity, but mostly because of an open spreadsheet on my computer with GoodReads on another tab.

Before quantifying these books, I would have described my reading life as "that of a lonely British man in the 1960s, quietly drinking a weak cup of tea." In particular terms, that would be mostly English (both in origin and language) and mostly male, with the works largely published before 1960. This year though I made a particular effort to read more works by women. Would this be the year an out and proud feminist (i.e. me) finally reached gender parity in her books?

Unfortunately, no. Only 22 of the books I read were by women, for a 43% XX rating. Though I'm doing well by my country--for every UK book, I read over 2.85 books from Canada. However, I remain firmly rooted in the Anglosphere. 80% of my books were from Canada, the UK, Ireland or the USA, but only two of these were translated from another language, French. Looking at the whole list, only 11 were originally published in another language.

I looked at genre (mostly literary fiction, probably because that genre is the miscellaneous drawer of the publishing world), and I looked at publisher. I found out that I read more books released in the same calendar year that I started reading them this year than ever before. And then I tried to quantify the racial diversity of the authors I read, before getting a real-word lesson in the fact that oh, hey, race is a social construct when I was debating how to classify an author based on a tweet of his I read once. Still, whatever White is, my list is That.

And so I've concluded that my reading list is a little more like me (white, female, Canadian) than I expected, but not as unlike me as I would have hoped, leaving me to wonder how that could change in 2015.

I could give myself targets. But I once made a list of 50 books I could read in the coming year, where I tried to collect as many books that were Canadian, written by women, and by racialized/people/of colour. The goal was to count it and find 25 books in each category; most of them needed to be all three for it to work and still leave room for the odd NYRB selection. Shamefully, only about ten things from that list were ever read. My reading habits can be pushed, but I found that I can't be quite that programmatic. My brain balks at the rules, and decides it wants to read something about shark attacks instead. Still, it's worth trying some sort of intention.

And then I should honestly answer the question of why it needed to be set at all.

Domestic Tuesday: Bright Socks Meet Festive Lager

Greetings from 2015! I dusted off an abandoned knitting project in December, because you should greet the new year with bright socks and a full heart.

Or, in my case, bright socks and a surly disposition. Now I'm on to a hat, from the first St. Denis pamphlet. I bought the booklet back when the yarn was released, and forgot to knit anything from it until two years after that yarn was discontinued. Fortunately, a friend returned from Ecuador with some alpaca yarn during that time. Yarn crisis averted thanks to international trade. It will be a Snow Star Hat in red.

 

I have a sneaking suspicion it's tending towards goofiness, and I'll just wind up looking like Toad from Mario when it's finished though.

Will I be able to drown my sorrows in beer? My fridge has been a little bare when it comes to Ontario beer, but here's Railway City's Festive Cranberry Lager, unseasonably enjoyed after the holidays. I apologize for the fruity lager. Throw a whole kitchen's worth of spices, fruit and herbs into my ale; whatever, that seems reasonable. But I've always assumed that lagers would be pure and golden (in spite of historical and personal evidence to the contrary.)  So I was initially suspicious of this beer. I figured it would be like drinking cranberry juice that had started to ferment a little in the fridge. Not that I've ever experienced that directly, I swear. It wasn't that obnoxious, though--more like a shot of cranberry after a standard lager. Perhaps better suited to the summer than a more festive season though.

I will not, however, apologize for the glass. My grandmother was giving away my grandfather's barware collection. Since my Mom banned her 27-year-old daughter from taking home the "Bottom's Up" mug, complete with swinging ceramic butt ("That's gross!")m or the one with straight-up seventies peen on the side ("You're a LADY!") I settled for the Playboy goblets. And I'll always say a silent "bottoms up" to my grandpa when I use them. 

Domestic Thursday: Rye Beer and a Christmas Tree

My evening classes are finished for the semester, so I celebrated with some beer.

Not this beer, though. My celebratory drink was a tulip glass full of Trappistes Rochefort 10, which knocked me out for the night. This was from a few days before, but I have only had time to write about it now.

Forked River is a new-ish brewery from London, Ontario. This is their Riptide Rye Pale, which at first I found to be as pleasant, but also as discreet, as its very tasteful label. However, the more I drank, the more I liked it. It doesn't slap you with hops, but there's a pleasing roundness, with a bit of spice from the rye to keep you drinking. By the end of the bottle, I was a fan. Oh Riptide. If I could take back my initial middling Untappd review, I would. Let's be friends forever.

And, in non-beer news, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas 'round the apartment.

I feel like a December is incomplete without a Christmas tree in my place, turning the whole apartment into a giant fire hazard. I don't know why--I'm not even religious. I had to fight for this tree too. Dan hates Christmas and all of its related ephemera (decorations, cards, music, holiday specials, eggnog); with the exception of cookies. I out-stubborned him though, and this glorious tree--more asymmetrical than my haircut circa 2008--was sourced from the Kitchen Table, Forest Hill's Finest (and only, in the Village) Food Shop.

I guess I was sort of crafty in frugally fashioning the tree topper out of glitter glue and aluminum foil, but let's be honest. That's some sub-kindergarten artistry right there.

I also didn't notice until later that the colourway has a certain mustard and ketchup vibe to it. Oh well. Season's/Condiment's Greetings to all of you.

Domestic Monday: Cakes and Ale Edition

Everyone copes with stress in different ways; I happen to bake out my feelings. Why? Because baking has rules. You follow them, and order (cookies, muffins, cakes) is produced from chaos. This is unlike cooking, where chaos appears whenever it pleases.

Last Sunday I baked honey spice madeleines. Hazard a guess at my emotional state.

If you guessed fraught, you're correct! This caused me to make a few mistakes while baking. I used salted instead of unsalted butter. I chilled the batter in the fridge instead of letting it relax room temperature. I filled the madeleine pans too high.

Magically, they turned out just fine, and I probably have this beast of a cookbook to thank for that miracle. In the Sweet Kitchen is about the size of a bible, with a suggested retail price of $60, except I found it at a book sale for $3. It's out of print now, but if you find a secondhand copy, buy it. Half of the book is foolproof recipes for elegant yet satisfying desserts, while the other half covers baking theory and pantry essentials. You could also use it as an emergency step stool in a pinch--it's kind of a brick.

As for the beer, I decided to head out of the province this week. Or rather, BC came to me. Through whatever mysterious process the LCBO uses to stock its shelves (Why are there suddenly six kinds of Mikkeller beer?), Phillips beer is back on the shelves. Or at least the Amnesiac Double IPA is. As you would expect, the hops aren't shy in this beer (tastes of citrus, pine and pineapple) but there's still enough maltiness (toasty!) that it didn't make me pucker. Oh BC. I miss you. I'll come visit, and I'll bring madeleines.

Book Pile for November 20, 2014

1. Something I Will Read: Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, on this Kobo. Or maybe some SciFi. I haven't picked my e-reader up in weeks (I tend to go through print-only phases) and it's probably time to make sure this still works.
2. Something I Am Reading: Mark Avery's A Message from Martha. It's about extinction, the "Martha" coming from the name of the last passenger pigeon.
3. Non-Fiction I Recently Read: Emily Horne and Tim Maly's The Inspection House: An Impertinent Guide to Modern Surveillance
4. Fiction I Recently Read: Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's All the Broken Things

Canada Reads Thinkpieces

1. A Book I Did Not Like
The last time I paid much attention to Canada Reads was back in 2011. I was still living in BC, in an apartment that didn't have Internet, or a real oven. Listening made me feel connected to the east I had left, at least until some of the panelists started saying asinine things about graphic novels.

So it made me feel connected for all of an episode. Yes, this was the season where Jeff Lemire's Essex County was a contender, at least until Ali Velshi reminded us all that it's not "Canada Looks at Pictures." Well, okay then. Apparently, it's "Canada Reads Deeply Unfunny Funny Books" instead.

Yes, I finally got around to reading the eventual winner, The Best Laid Plans, except I did so three years too late. I should have waited longer, preferably forever. By chapter two, I had started to hate the narrator, by midpoint the book, and by the end I mostly just loathed myself for being able just to put the book down and walk away. The hero (one Angus McLintock) lurches from unlikely political triumph to triumph, layering the Scottish tics on so thick he basically ends up as Scrooge McDuck with an MP's office. While Angus has too much personality (he plays chess, is a stickler for proper grammar, builds hovercraft etc etc) the narrator has none. At least that's an improvement over the narrator's love interest. All she gets to do is talk about Canada's Senate (bad) and have elided sex with the narrator (presumably worse). When it comes to earnest Canadian content, my personal hell would probably be to listen to this on audiobook while my eyes are propped open, Clockwork Orange-style, to watch Murdoch Mysteries on loop. Gah!

2. A Person I Don't Like Now
Because I am a generous, sharing sort, I then complained loudly about a four-year-old book to anyone who would listen. Since this period coincided with the ongoing  Jian Ghomeshi story, the conversation would often shift to the ex-Canada Reads host.

"Martha," my brother told me, "you should really take down that comic."

My brother was referring to this comic, which was a half-joke on autobiographical indie comics, and a half-joke on myself. If you don't want to subject yourself to my art, it chronicles my failed attempt to talk books with CBC's Shelagh Rogers, and how that ended many dreams including that of producing the next CBC host, Banff Hunter-Ghomeshi.

Yes, there was a time that I found Jian to be sort of attractive, instead of just a fucked-up abuser enabled by the CBC and our prevalent rape culture. I'm not going to pretend that it didn't happen. And though I can say that I soured on him about two years after reading that comic, it wasn't because of the rumours. It also says something about how common they must have been if even I, the least connected person in Toronto, heard something eventually. I had just grown to dislike his interviews, and so when I heard that he liked younger women, and was far too creepy in pursuing him, I wasn't even concerned. Instead, I shrugged, like "Can you expect more from a man with that much cultural capital?" Of course I should have been, and I should have expected nothing more or less than the basic requirement of consent.

3. What I Read Now
That's all I have to say about Jian Ghomeshi, not because there isn't more to it, but because so much of it has already been covered in so many ways. Why women don't report, how our conversation about that in the strict terms of stigma ignores other factors, why people believed him, what the CBC knew, what they hid, the political economy of the situation, and even the ethics of his lawyers. I collected many of these articles for my friend in a spreadsheet on Friday, so she could use them in an article for her legal clinic. The spreadsheet contained dates, titles, authors, publications and key topics. I had to stop when I reached fifty entries. It was only a few hours of work, and more articles could have easily been found.

As a feminist, I had already been reading about many of these issues, but without the specifics of Jian. That may be why I feel so burned out right now. At least it's made people talk about sexual asault and reporting, I tell myself; at least more people now say the word "rape" when they talk about Bill Cosby. Even the prospect of a Ghomeshi-free Canada Reads is promising. But I still worry about the others that are still out there, and if we'll talk and write about them the same way when we find out.

Pillow Blog: Assorted Pieces of Canadian Culture That Almost Make Me Patriotic

In the tradition of the Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, here's a Pillow Blog: an observational list on some subject or another. 

1. Léolo: This movie is everything Canadian cinema should be, but rarely is: big, bold, a little grotesque. Instead we usually get reel after reel of earnestness. With each year that passes since Jean-Claude Lauzon's untimely death, I worry a little more about Léolo's legacy - give it a viewing and save me from this anxiety.
2. Beautiful Losers: Leonard Cohen, as walking, croaking, bagel-buying myth can rub me the wrong way, probably because the fact of his talent is so evident. It's annoying. Anyway, I read Beautiful Losers decades after it was published, when I was still only 19, and still knew it was cooler than I could ever hope to be.
3. Pas de Deux: Perhaps some of Norman McLaren's other work is more groundbreaking, but Pas de Deux is arresting in its beauty. Somehow through the repetition of ballet dancers and their bodies do you find their form and purity.
4. "Raven and the First Men," Bill Reid: There's something about including a piece of indigenous art on a list that includes both "Canadian" and "patriotic" in the title that makes me stop; it makes those words sound hollow. As they should, I think. Perhaps what I'm listing here are the things, made within the borders that set out a concept called Canada, that make me feel honoured to share that space with them.
5. Canadian Heritage Minutes: Here's a tonal shift from my last entry. And let's talk about earnestness! Still, as commercials for Canadian history, CHMs have taught the subject as well as most middle school teachers can manage, or at least those I encountered at the Upper Grand District School Board. The Sam Steele one is indisputably the best.
6. Joni Mitchell: I listen to "Both Sides Now" and open one can of beer. Then "River" and I'm drinking two. If I make it to "A Case of You," I'll be finished all six that night, so don't disturb me before 11am tomorrow.

Domestic Sunday: Turkey Day Edition

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving! I hope your dinner chart looked much like mine: 33% turkey, 33% stuffing, 24% mashed potatoes, 10% carrots, and then all the gravy you want poured all over that. With the gravy, that's more than 100%, but Thanksgiving is about the two G's - gratitude and gluttony - so why not give 110% to your food?

In the ensuing tryptophan haze (urban myth), I nearly forgot that I had planned to bring back Domestic Whateverday to the blog on Sunday. Perhaps barely Monday morning still counts?

Unfortunately, the domestic craft portion of the post is not all that inspiring. In fact, it's a bag of fabric:

The plan is for this to become a new quilt for my new apartment. That was also my plan when I moved into the new apartment. At the end of June.

While that photo may not be that inspiring, I assure you that I've done something over the past three months. Behold:

Why, that's like six finished squares, and a few more than are halfway there! I only need to sew about 75 more, sew those together into the quilt top, get the batting and the backing, quilt all that together, and...

Whoah ho ho, it's beer! Let's move on to the other domestic part of Domestic Sunday, the brew. This is the Country Bumpkin from Niagara Oast House Brewers. It's probably much lighter than it appears in the photo, which was taken inside of a King Street bar that has its dimmer switch perpetually set to "smoky 17th century coffeehouse", ie, dark. This disconcerts me in the same way that a casino's censure of natural light bewilders a gambler, so that I probably spend more money than I should, and then act like a cave salamander when I finally head out into the bright and irritating light of day.

Or so any "working lunch" there usually goes. At least this time I kept to one pint. I picked the Country Bumpkin because October is the time for pumpkin beer. Pumpkin beers seem to be coming under increasing criticism from beer folks, and I resent that, because they're often delicious. I also resent the distinct note of sexism I've started picking up, alongside the notes of clove and cinnamon in the beer. Even supporters will feebly celebrate pumpkin ale as, essentially, gateway craft beer for the ladies.

Yes, some pumpkin beers do taste a little too sweet, going heavily enough on the spice that they start to taste less like a beer, and more like a carbonated Pumpkin Spice Latte. And so people will extend their stereotypes of PSL drinkers to beer. But screw 'em. More beer for me, and even a dudely hophead should have few issues with the Country Bumpkin. It was low on the carbonation, and the expected pie spices were supported by the hint of something vegetal. It's worth checking out, both as a decent beer, and as a fine introduction to the style.