The Buddhist Death Workshop

I invited a friend to attend the death workshop with me, but he said, "I'm not ready to deal with death right now, but thanks for the invitation." So I went by myself, and the room was PACKED with people of all ages. The session was led by a cheerful Buddhist nun with a buzz cut who laughed heartily while talking casually about death and assuring us that she was not trying to scare the hell out of us by using the d-word. So, here's a summary of the workshop.

1) We are all going to die (in case you didn't know that).
2) We don't know when we're going to die.
3) The thing to strive for is to die happy with as much dharma as you can muster, which means you have to start working on it right now. The goal is to go out gracefully, however it is you go. I'm not totally clear on the whole dharma thing...
4) Embracing change is apparently key. Death is just a really really noticeable example of change. But, we are all dying and changing everyday. The Buddhist nun said that we suffer when try to stop change or attach to things and people tenaciously, thinking we can stop change.

Things I've been doing instead of blogging

1) Looking for a place to live -- without success.
2) Writing -- serious writing as opposed to a trashy little story.
3) Watching hockey. Yes, I am a Habs fan. Sorry about that to all of you Sens people.
4) Crafting wildly. Making merch for Astronaut Love Triangle. More on this later....
5) There is no fifth thing.
6) Wondering how I'm going to have time to blog when I get really busy again.
7) Getting excited about the quilting workshop I'm going to do with famous quilter Jennifer Beckley.
8) Celebrating my birthday and embracing getting older.
9) Attending a Buddhist workshop on death. Very very interesting. More on this later.
10) Drinking all the alcohol people gave me for my birthday. Thanks everyone!

Bakelite: Part VIII

“Dan, what on earth did she post?” asked Carol. Dan paused. Carol could hear the rasp of her own breathing which made her self-conscious, even with someone as familiar as Dan. The more she waited for her ex-husband to talk, the more she felt her chest tightening again. “Della is not what she seems,” said Dan. Yes, well that’s obvious, Carol thought, still waiting. Dan started again, “Listen, Care. I need you to promise me something. Will you promise not to look at Della’s blog until I get there?” Carol was stunned. “Come on, Dan. Is it that bad? I’m not a Faberge egg. I can handle this. Why are you being so overprotective? It’s late…. You can’t come over here now.” Dan was silent again. “Care, please, trust on me this. I think we need to look at this thing together.”

Distractions lately

1) Spring cleaning.
2) My crush.
3) Sewing projects.
4) Spring energy. Isn't it great?
5) There is no fifth thing.

Two t-shirts I saw today...

On this day of biking, Polish bazaar-shopping, perogie-eating, expresso-drinking, and sunbathing, I spotted two interesting t-shirts with questionable messages:

1) T-shirt #1: "Sex without love is just exercise". That depends on how much you exert yourself. It might not be exercise at all. It might just be...sex. And, sex with love can be exercise or not, too, no?

2) T-shirt #2: "An awkward morning is better than a boring evening". Hmmmm. It depends on how awkward. Really really terribly awkward can be pretty bad, no? And sometimes a boring evening is just what the doctor ordered.

The Thinker

Why does she talk to me in that stupid way? "Who's your mommy?? Who's your mommy"! Good grief. I can't even look at her when she does this weird needy cat-woman thing. I'm going to kill that little bird out there. Then, I'm going roll in it. Then, I'm going to have a nap in the sun.

New Pillow

This is my latest crafty creation. I'm happy with it. It's kind of a mauve cord material with patchwork. The pink floral thing is a tablecloth that I decided to cut up. It was really too much pink to eat off of...

10 Food Tips I Learned from my Exes

I never learned how to cook from mother (which I guess is how a lot of people my age learn). My mother was good at many things, but she has never been a real force dans la cuisine. So, I have mostly learned about cooking from my exes. Thank you, exes! Here are some things I've learned:

1) When in doubt, start by chopping an onion and cooking it in olive oil. Always a good start. If you put the onion in the fridge, it won't make you cry when you chop it.

2) Cut things away from yourself. Use chopping blocks. Don't cut things in the air....

3) Add nuts to things: stirfrys, chili, salads, you name it.

4) You don't need to add more salt if you are using something like soy sauce; it's salty enough!

5) Don't be intimidated by large cuts of meats, or a big fish. They are the easiest things to cook.

6) Experiment with different grains. There is a whole world out there beyond potatoes and Minute rice.

7) Invest in a state-of-the-art vegetable peeler. It will make your life better.

8) Eat lots of fruits and vegetables; they are really good for you! Really focus on the fruits in the morning. You will feel better.

9) Make a lot of food, so that you will have leftovers. You can bring your leftovers to work and save money.

10) It's O.K. to eat in front of the T.V. if hockey playoffs are on.

Bakelite: Part VII

Della’s husband’s lack of life insurance also proved to be a bummer. According to Della, after three months of grieving she realized she needed to find some way to make a living. An Ottawa cousin who owned a grocery store in Little Italy offered her a job in the deli so she could be close to loving family and get her financial footing. This was what brought Della to Ottawa, and it was in this charming Italian grocery store that Carol and Della met.

Carol remembered the moment like it was yesterday. She was buying bocconcini for a special birthday dinner for Dan. Della towered over her from behind a glass deli counter, and the two of them giggled like high school girls when Della said, “mmmmm….yum….balls.” This led to a conversation in which Della told Carol the sad story about her husband’s passing, about being new in town, about not having any friends, about the unfriendliness of Ottawans. That day Carol gave Della her phone number and invited her for dinner.

Dan didn't appreciate having an unexpected guest over for his birthday. And he really didn't like it when Della requested to speak with Carol privately after dinner. Carol led her into the den where she kept her Bakelite collection. "What is it?" Carol asked. "Are you ok?" Della was suddenly in tears and sobbing. Carol put a hand on Della's shoulder, pushing her dark curly hair to the back. She didn't know this woman well enough to put her arms around her. "Can I help?" Carol asked. Della spoke between sobs, "It's my cousin....He doesn't want me anymore...He says I need to find something else...It's my fault...I fucked it up...I fucked him by mistake." Della said all of this with tears streaming down her dimpled cheeks. "You slept with your cousin? Your first cousin?" Carol asked, trying not to show shock or surprise on her face. "Yes, but it's not what you think...Now he thinks I'm some kind of homewrecker... and he's spooked...he's afraid I'm going to tell his wife...which I wouldn't....Oh Carol, you don't know how hard it is to lose a husband." Carol didn't know what to say that would be of comfort at this moment. In her uneasiness, she reached for a plastic butterscotch bangle from her rack of bracelets, and, pressed it into Della's hand: "I want you to have this, Della. You have been through a lot." Della put the bangle on her wrist and twirled it around in her fingers. "I love it!" she said, her eyes streaked with mascara. "It's so smooth...and plastic!"

"It's a genuine Bakelite", Carol said softly. "If you rub it with your thumb and sniff, it should smell like formaldehyde and burnt human hair. That's how you know it's real." Della followed Carol's instructions and nodded. "Burnt human hair!" she said, and the two women laughed together. Della's face became serious again, "You are a real sweetheart, Carol. Somehow I knew you would understand me.... But now I really need a kleenex because I'm full of snot." The women laughed together again. It was like they were old friends.

Food break

Here are a few food things I've discovered lately. The change in weather has made me hungry.

1) Turnips: throw a turnip into your boiled potatoes and then mash them all together with salt and butter and you will have something good. I recommend buying a smaller turnip. They are much easier to cut.

2) Brussels Sprouts: they used to make me gag as a child. An ex of mine showed me that you don't have to boil them; you can cut up the little babies and stir fry them. I add ginger (get a jar of the pre-chopped stuff) and a bit of honey and they are delicious. A future posting: cooking tips I learned from my exes....

3) Pickled Eggplant: a lunch with Woodsy at an Italian place got me onto these things. They are ADDICTIVE, an appetite stimulant, and can accompany any meal. Just thinking about pickled eggplant makes me salivate.

Bakelite: Part VI

Carol and Della started their blogs around the same time. Carol remembered the day, the moment, they decided to blog. They were sitting on the brown leather couch in her living room, drinking coffee after dinner and talking together energetically about their ideas. Carol had already been reading plenty of knitting blogs and figured she was ready to start one of her own. After all, she was designing her own baby blankets and sweaters now, and she loved the idea of sharing her patterns with others. "I can also tell my readership where to shop. I know where to find the cheapest and most gorgeous baby alpaca wool in all of Ontario!" said Carol, flushed with excitement. "And your Bakelite collection, don't forget about that, sweetie! You could sell those little suckers," added Della. Della viewed blogging as a way to get rich. "I want to be the next Dooce!” proclaimed Della. “Whatever it takes, Care-baby, I’m going to create a life that will be excellent to blog, so that people will want to read me every day… to see what happened.” Della was the dramatic friend. The fun friend. The outrageous friend. The friend Carol lived vicariously through at times. It seemed somehow that Della had always been in her life when, in fact, it hadn't been that long. Della had only moved to Ottawa from Calgary two years earlier. Her husband, her high school sweetheart, had died unexpectedly. “It was a bummer,” Della told Carol the first time they met.

Bakelite: Part V

(*If you haven't read the first parts of this story, start here).

Carol decided to approach the incident by restoring normalcy to her home. She prepared a pot roast for dinner. She and Roy ate silently on the same brown leather couch on which the incident took place, facing the flat screen TV and flipping between the Kentucky Derby and the Weather Channel. The family cat, Ginger, collapsed between them and fell into deep slumber. Neither knew or really cared anything about horses or horse-racing, but the Derby was something they had always watched together as a family when Dan lived there, so it seemed right. After dinner, Roy’s skinny, pasty-faced little computer nerd friend, Sterling, arrived, and they retreated to Roy’s room to play games. Little boys playing games, Carol thought. This thought reassured her. Carol stayed on the couch with her cat and her knitting and began to feel like she could breathe again.

Later that evening, Carol prepared a bath with lavender and eucalyptus oils to soothe her body and clear her lungs before bed. The water was still running and she was standing naked in her bathroom when the phone rang. She quickly wrapped herself in a pink terrycloth robe, turned off the water and opened the door. The ringing had stopped and she could hear Roy voice: “I know. I know….Don’t worry. Everything’s cool here….O.K…..I didn’t do anything…… Well, yeah, I have.…but everyone does…..what does that have to do with?…But it didn’t…..Relax, would you, Dad!” Upon sighting his mother’s worried face peeking out the bathroom door, he spoke louder. “Ok, then. Thanks, Dad. Here’s Mom.” Roy handed the cordless to his mother and headed back to his room.

“Hey Dan. What’s going on?” Carol said, shivering and wishing she were in the bath. Dan sighed loudly into the phone. “Just enquiring a bit about his porn consumption. A lot of kids are, you know, little porn freaks now, looking at all kinds of weird internet shit that you and I never saw…I just wonder if he saw Della as some kind of, you know, porn-scenario-in-the-making.” Carol answered with surprise, “I thought you thought it was more of a move on Della’s part…Isn’t she the one who initiated the thing? Anyway, being all aggressive with him isn’t really helpful, is it? Why don’t you talk to him about it in a normal, man-to-man talk kind of way?” Dan sighed again and was silent, which was not like him. “What is up with you, Dan? Why do I get the feeling you have your knickers in a knot about something?” Carol was always good at getting her ex-husband to open up. “Care. I need to talk to you about something else…It’s Della’s blog… You haven’t seen it, have you?” his voice sounded shaky now. Carol could feel herself getting out of breath again, but answered slowly and carefully, “No. I hardly read the thing at the best of times…even though she’s linked to my blog, of course. Tonight I’ve been just trying not to think about Della at all, ok?” Dan hesitated for a second, then said, “Ok. Ok. Listen, Della says some things on her blog that might upset you. Which is why I’m calling.”

Commercial break...

The Bakelite story will continue. But first, a commercial break. Conch Shell is promoting the merits of bamboo stalks in your home.
Here is what she has to say:
"They are cheap. You can buy them for $2 a stalk at Loblaws."
"They'll live for about 2-3 years in water with little care and no soil. Toss in a few rocks for effect."
"They give you home a feng-shui look, suggesting the spiritual and philosophical leanings of the homeowners."
When I asked Conch Shell if bamboo stalks would be good home staging "fluff", she gave an unequivocal, "YES!"

Bakelite IV

At this point Carol was pretty much completely out of words and energy. She walked away from her son to her room for a little cry, which didn’t happen, so she picked up the phone to call Dan. Her ex was no moral compass, but she needed to talk to a semi-sane adult, to just get this thing out. Dan was with a client when she called, but said he could excuse himself for a couple of minutes. He listened to his ex-wife recount what she saw when she walked in the door: Della and Roy on the couch together in some kind of abnormal position. Della’s shirt half off. Roy’s hand in the shirt. Della wearing one of her Bakelites. “There’s really no limit to who Della will pull her tits out for,” said Dan, trying to reassure her. “She’s a freak and a fuck-up. A country bumpkin, really. She probably needed material for her trashy little blog which she imagines to be some kind of get-rich scheme. Forget about it, Care.” Carol whispered loudly into the phone, “But that’s our boy…He’s only 16. And a young 16-year old at that. Just a kid, a little gamer, a computer nerd, really.” Finally, Dan sighed and said, “Whoa whoa whao, Care…So what? Our kid got to see what a set of saggy old 50-year old tits looks like…Just let it go, hon.” Carol corrected him, “Della’s 45”, and then suddenly they were both laughing at they weren’t sure what. He had to go, he told her. She invited him for supper. “I got something going on,” he said, which was code for out with a woman. They said their goodbyes. He asked if she was ok. Yes, she was ok. Really? Yes. Really. He said he would have a talk to Roy next time. Good idea. She hung up, located her handbag, dug out her puffer and sucked on it deeply.

Bakelite III

“Sorry about that, Mom” said Roy, slowly trying to move in the direction of his bedroom. “We didn’t do anything really,” he added, looking away, embarrassed. His profile showed a chinless, chubby lad whose young skin appeared pulled down by gravity. “What was she doing here anyway?” Carol asked. “She was waiting here for you, actually…You were late, I guess. She said something about you helping her with her resume.” said Roy, squinting and still not looking directly at his mother. Right. Carol remembered. She was supposed to help this woman, her friend, get a job. Right.

Bakelite cont'd

Della wrenched the bangle off her wrist and placed it gently on the glass coffee table in front of her. “I didn’t steal it. I just wanted to try it on because it is adorable...and you have gobs of them...all lined up in there, your den, or whatever you call that room,” Della prattled on, pointing and gesturing a little more dramatically than usual as she made her way towards the foyer where she cinched her body into a short pink trenchcoat and stuffed her large feet into a pair of black, pointy boots. “That’s my Bakelite collection that I care about very much, thank you very much.” was Carol’s delayed retort. She felt ridiculous immediately after saying it. Finally, Della made her exit and Carol’s gaze turned to her son.

Bakelite

“Get your paws off my boy, Della.” If Carol had been a cowgirl, she would lassoed Della and wrangled her right down to the carpet. Della looked up surprised, no trace of embarassment, just the familiar face of offended innocence, dimples and all: “Lighten up, Care. I’m just showing him the ropes a bit here,” she said, buttoning her blouse. “Get out of my living room, you little predator. Cow!” Carol wanted to sound as strong as her words, but she needed her puffer. Della widened her eyes at Carol as if to communicate 'Not in front of the children'. Then, she turned to Roy beside her on the couch and layed a silver-ringed hand to his flabby pink cheek. “Sorry about that, sweetie,” Della said cheerfully. It was in this gesture that Carol saw the flash of a red plastic bangle on Della’s wrist. “And you stole one of my Bakelites while you were at it! Is there anything else that you would like to fuck with while you’re here?” Carol’s high nasal voice was no match for the intensity of her words, and she was conscious of this. She just felt an overwhelming exhaustion as she stood there in her living room, trying to understand this bizarre scene before her.

"Inventing a life for dialogue"

Just read an inspiring New Yorker article about how writer Richard Price uses dialogue. If you are a writer trying to write fiction, I highly recommend giving this a read. I've always had trouble figuring out how to do dialogue. My solution is just to write in the first person. Reading this helped me see other possibilities. When I sat down to write today, I felt less constrained by the dialogue problem. Here are a couple of little extracts of dialogue I wrote this afternoon:

“Lighten up, Care. I’m just showing him the ropes a bit here” she said, buttoning her blouse. “Get out of my house, you little predator. Cow!” Carol wanted to sound as strong as her words, but her voice cracked.

“There’s really no limit to who Della will pull her tits out for,” said Dan, reassuring her. “She’s a freak and a fuck-up. A country bumpkin, really. Look at where she comes from. Forget about it, Care.”

A Hypochondriac Meditating

I'm chilled a bit. Hope I'm not getting another cold. And my back hurts. Shit. Maybe I should have opted for the chair today. I really have to get back to see my acupunture guy. I'm completely blocked up. Or, yoga maybe. But, I haven't found a yoga class that I'm totally comfortable with here. I need Mark Laham. Breathe. Distractions out. Fresh air in. Distractions out in a cloud of black smoke. Gone. I'm feeling a little twitch in my cheek. Shit. I wonder if I'm having a little stroke or something. Or, it could be Bell's Palsy which I guess wouldn't be the end of the world. Or, could be a brain tumour, I guess. Or, just the beginnings of a brain tumour. My aunt had one, so it's not like we don't have brain tumours in the family. Distractions out. Breathe. Sit up straight. Or, it could just be a stroke. That would suck having your face all paralysed after a stroke. Stuck in an expression you can't control. Affecting your speech, even. I guess meditation would help me deal with this kind of thing. Distractions out. Fresh air in. My arms feel heavy, too, today. Maybe I have heart disease.

Doing Art

One more tip for surviving the eternal winter: do art. Do any kind of art that works for you. If you feel you lack "talent", call yourself a "concept artist". Form an alternative band. Sew. Knit. Write. Dance. Paint. Flirt.