...My grandmother is a terrible driver....

As she gets older its because she can't see past her windshield... but she has always been a bad driver. It's a running joke in my family that she has a magic force field around her car. I think its because she has always driven a lexus. No one wants to hit a Lexus.

But she's always been a bad driver. And as much as it scares me I love her for it, because my Grammy is most herself when she's cruising.

It's hard to imagine. But driving is one of the only times I think she feels a real independence. She becomes full of purpose, destination, activity. She offers me candy, water, new books, a challah. She caters to your every need. All the while singing along to am radio.

And when I am not clutching the dash or wincing at the sight of crossing pedestrians, I sing with her.

My favourite distraction is when she talks about the neighbourhood she grew up in - My great-grandfather bought a little house on Rusholme. She was born there, raised there. She got dressed in her wedding dress in that house. Its such a part of her. I live on the third floor of a house up the street from it. Its so pretty. With these tall bushes out in front.

There is this one great photo I've seen, of my Grammy standing outside that house, with her sister Toby.

But even more than that picture I feel like I know it because of the way she talks about it. And sometimes when I walk down the street to the streetcar I think about how its so much the same as it must have been then. The houses are all old. The trees are so old they must have been tall even in the 40s.

Its so great to hear about the Boyd gang who stuck up the bank that is now the Starbucks at the corner of dovercourt and college with bandanas tied over there faces. It really happened, although probably not in the black an white silent film way it does when I picture it.

I hear a lot of little tidbits that from Grammy.

Like here's a great one. Right next to where the Royal Theatre on college, where the OMNI radio office is. That used to be a chicken yard. Where burds would run around. And you would point to the one you wanted. And they would kill it for you. I have always wondered whether it cost extra to have it plucked.

I wish I could see it. Sometimes I try to imagine it. Its a good way to calm oneself when hurtling through a red light.

I can't see it though. Her world. Not really. Because the trees are older. 50 years older. And there's a starbucks and a multicultural radio station. And the internet and feminism, and facebook and Arab Spring and pop psychology. And I just have all that in my development. It must be so strange to see something over the course of 80 years. What is everything to me is just such a small part of her experience. she sees things as what they were, they way they aren't anymore, but were, to her.

She comes from a world where what was right was to come second, to put my needs behind others. To see it as a badge of honour, a matter of pride, to make sure I could put myself second and never let anyone want for anything, or underappreciate what I had.

I do love her for it. I continue have to shake of the feeling its my duty to "free" her from it. Show her what its like to indulge your indulgences, fill your cravings and say exactly what the fuck you are feeling whenever the fuck you are feeling it. Its really not - my job - that is.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I have a little to learn in the self-restraint department. I don't disagree with them.

I just wish we could meet in the middle somewhere's. There is something to be said for modesty, but sometimes you can't beat following your gut, and just givin'er. But I guess she does have her moments of that to. Like I said.... she's never more free than when she is in the car. So I guess I will just shut up and ride. Even if I have to bite my tongue.

I will shut my eyes, hope that she gets a conservative tester at the DMV next time, let ol Blue eyes soothe me and try to imagine how much you would have to pay me to pluck chickens as an after school job.

... Future with a capital F....

Once again, William Gibson has found the words.

From his blog (bolding is my own, to stress my favourite bits):


"The Future, capital-F, be it crystalline city on the hill or radioactive post-nuclear wasteland, is gone. Ahead of us, there is merely…more stuff. Events. Some tending to the crystalline, some to the wasteland-y. Stuff: the mixed bag of the quotidian.


Please don’t mistake this for one of those “after us, the deluge” moments on my part. I’ve always found those appalling, and most particularly when uttered by aging futurists, who of all people should know better. This newfound state of No Future is, in my opinion, a very good thing. It indicates a kind of maturity, an understanding that every future is someone else’s past, every present someone else’s future. Upon arriving in the capital-F Future, we discover it, invariably, to be the lower-case now."

... the jukebox conundrum...

last friday I was faced witha jukebox... and I froze... it isn't that I don't love music, know music... but in the moment... I couldn't remember a SINGLE song that I liked... not one... so I ended up picking "A Little Less Conversation" by Elvis Presley... the Oceans 11 remix.... Not that that isn't a fun song... I like it...

But if jukebox choices are to truly represent you... as Nick Hornby says... its what you like, not what you ARE like... than it isn't the song I would choose to communicate my self to the world....

And then I threw my back out... So I spent a lot of time on my back with a heating pad, staring at the ceiling with nothing to do but listen to Classic Rock on 181.fm The Eagle on my internet stereo thingamajig...

so I made a list of SONGS THAT ARE AWESOME... there was 1 rule. I had to hear the song played... If I heard it, and it was awesome... I wrote it down. For those who care to judge me by my musical taste but cannot decipher my upside down scrawl - Here's the list:

Don't Think Twice - Bob Dylan

Can I Get a Witness - Marvin Gaye

Do It Again - Steely Dan

Changes - David Bowie

Keep On Rocking Me Baby - Steve Miller Band

Tiny Dancer - Elton John

In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar

Sweet Melissa - Allman Bros

Everyday People - Sly and the family Stone

Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen

Beast Of Burden - Rolling Stones

Any Way You Want it - Journey

Midnight Rambler - Rolling Stones

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

Saturday Night's Alright - Elton John (nearly disqualified for its recent high frequency repetitious presence in my life currently... but it still kinda kicks)

Copperhead Road - Steve Earle

The Break Up Song (They Don't Write 'Em) - Greg Kihn Band

Teenage Wasteland - The Who (Nearly disqualified for its relationship to CSI Miami and my nemesis David Caruso... but it kinda kicks)

Mother - Pink Floyd

Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

...Jane Austen on the art of woo....

...i may be on my way to becoming one of those crazy Austen-ites.... I have never really read any before. I saw Jane Eyre as a play at Shaw Festival once... oh, and i heckled proudly at the TIFF Gala screening of the Jane Austen Book Club (neglecting, of course, to actually read the book for my own book club)...

But I just started Pride and Prejudice, because I have had, of late, one of those cosmic twisters which has put the Jane Austen on my doorstep, (kinda like the Wicked Witch of the East for Dorothy)... my roommate seems to own and love all things Austen, and I trust her literary tastes... It seems to be some sort of Jane Austen-a-thon month on TV, there have been four different Austen flicks on TV in the last week... And as constant as ever is my love for all things Brit....

Anyway, I think I love her for all the same reasons everyone else does... I love the headstrong free will of her protagonists, but the civility and gentility of the society in which they operate... Everyone wants to be an 'individual' but there is something so novel and fun about the thought of being an individual in a society that is not overrun with the MTV credo of being different, yet the same.

Its the same way everyone loves Anne of Green Gables...

Anyway, I knew it was solidified when I read the following:

"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy

"Of a fine, stout Healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely"

-Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice

It reminds me of a certain something I said about WATT in a recent post... Just with a lot more civility, and a lot fewer references to the actual act of coitus...

Now to get four cats, a really expensive teapot and a lot of new cardigans... this Austenite is BORN!

.... best way i have found to support a charity today!...

If you buy this duvet cover, screen-printed to resemble cardboard boxes, the proceeds go to support a dutch homeless shelter....

Now thats thinking outside the box....

I realize most of the people who read this are located a little west of the atlantic and probably are worried about the homeless problem at home.... Well, for all you Noprth American Stylistas/Philanthropists.... go here to get the duvet, help out some dutch people, then go here to make a donation to the United Way...


oh, yeah, I am scouring the interweb for new duvet covers to go with my kickass new apartment... description coming soon, as are the horror stories from my search!

...Into the Mystic....

... So I have been missing in action the last week and a bit... I have been in Mexico with the fam, spending the week in Playa del Carmen at the beautiful casa passalacqua... Its been amazing, good times, great sun, fun with the fam, too much tequila...

but one thing has been bothering me... (well a few things actually, travelling with the Amazings is pretty tough on an average girl....) but the thing about Playa is that it is pretty Disneyfied... but today we took a little Mexican bus Adventure out to Paa Mul... a little RV Park and Dive Spot off the highway just south of Playa.... and its the kind of vacation spot i dream about... not built up, just a resto, a rv parking lot, a bunch of thatch cabins on the beach and a lot of coastline.... best day in a while, totally worth the crazy sunburn we all returned with....

I do not want to go home, not even a little bit... its a million degrees below zero in Toronto, and i just want to stay here... more blogging about mexico when i get back to the T-dot.... anything to relive the glory while huddled in the freezing white North....