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Bliss

A friend recently pointed me towards Ommwriter and I might now be in love. We’ll see how far this relationship progresses, but my first couple of encounters with the program have been pleasant and productive.

I love writing, but I don’t consider myself a real writer. I only like to wish that I were. There’s the fact that I don’t write very often; and the even more troubling fact that I haven’t written any fiction since that series of short stories about boredom that I wrote during Grade 10 Math. My poetry portfolio contains a whole two entries from my adult life (both of which appear on this blog somewhere). The others are contemporary to the boredom series and are mostly about hating school and my parents. But, there’s a more technical problem that always makes me think I could never be a real writer. Almost every writer I know prefers to handwrite. They sit in pubs, or in parks, or even at their desks, and write the old-school way, with a pen on paper. Me, I can’t handwrite. Literally, can’t. I haven’t handwritten anything in such a long time that I’ve forgotten how. When stuck writing with an actual pen, I print – deliberately, slowly, and usually outside of the lines, like a small child. I usually last for about half a page before my hand cramps up and I quit. I’ve heard people say that handwriting slows them down enough to really think about what they want to say. I experience the extreme of that – I print so slowly that I forget what I’m saying before I get halfway through it.

Typing probably makes me a little wordier. I bet half of what I put on the page only appears because my hands are moving so much faster than my brain can filter. I’m okay with that. I’d rather tap out wordy nonsense than frustratedly scribble all over my notebook before throwing it away. But maybe typing isn’t the problem for writers. It wasn’t until I tried Ommwriter that I discovered how much a word processor can detract from the writing process. Even the pull-down menus at the top of the screen change the relationship a writer has to the page in front of them. It’s never a blank page. A blank page might be ‘full of possibilities,’ but the not-so-blank page of a word processor contains even more – fixing, saving, reverting, cutting, pasting, moving, formatting… A whole lot of ways in which we can doubt our instincts further and edit ourselves more. Maybe what inspires my writer friends is less the pen and more the integrity or innocence of the palette.

Ommwriter might represent the perfect combination to meet my needs – technologically-assisted writing on an otherwise clear, quiet page. I have to admit, the default background of barren trees on a snowy landscape, with a Yoga-class soundtrack, made me just want to copy out all the “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey” that I could remember. But once I switched to the blank, off-white page, and silenced the music, I found myself in writerly bliss.

Plotting

We all know that history can’t be objective, right? Every story is told from a particular vantage point, with its own interests, perspectives, and agendas. But even though I know this, I find it easy to slip into complacency sometimes and just take what I am told at face value. I like to believe, at these times, that I am at least taking my history from credible sources. Then again, the other day I marvelled at learning that Jane Seymour died of post-childbirth complications and didn’t, as I had always assumed, have her head chopped off. I learned this on the Showtime show The Tudors. I didn’t even look for another source. Turns out I’m not always the critical thinker I’d like to be. Anyway, enough about me.

I like those moments when history’s problems make themselves evident. Take Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, for example. For some inexplicable reason, Guy Fawkes has been on my mind at several different occasions this year. I always assumed that the Gunpowder Plot was meant as an attack on the institutions of the English Parliament and Monarchy. Well, after a bit of lazy research, I learned that it was actually an assassination attempt on King James I of England (VI of Scotland), his family, and his inner circle of Protestant lords. As it happens, Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were Catholic rebels. Yet the story becomes even more interesting when taken from another perspective. In the BBC series “A History of Scotland,” Neil Oliver claims that the Gunpowder Plot was a special attempt on King James’ life because he was Scottish, not simply because he was Protestant. Oliver makes the whole thing sound like a plan to thwart the “Scottish takeover of England.” Apparently, Fawkes’ co-conspirators were even found to have a hit-list of Scottish nobles living in London – although I haven’t found any other mention of this. So was the Gunpowder Plot an attack on an institution, an attack on Protestants, or an attack on the Scots? Or was it all of these things?

I used to think that Guy Fawkes Day was a celebration of the Gunpowder Plot, which never made sense to me. Surprisingly, I even asked some British people and they couldn’t really tell me what it was about. Finally, a relative in London explained that Guy Fawkes Day and the burning of the effigies is a celebration of the foiling of the plot and the execution of the rebels. So it makes more sense to me now why the English celebrate it. And even more so that the Scottish do. After all, no matter what the actual motivations of the plotters, it seems widely accepted that the target was James – the Scottish King and champion of the Scottish religion.

I had the good fortune of stopping in to The Guy Fawkes Inn for a drink this past Fall, while visiting York. It is reputedly the building in which he was born – but as with all history, that might not be true. Another building around the corner sports a similar plaque. The Inn was dark, lit only by tall, dripping candles. The windows were thin, the rooms drafty, and, as with many Tudor-era buildings, the walls looked like they might cave in at any minute. The beers were fantastic and the atmosphere eerie – the kind of place you might quietly gather to plot something terrible.

the Guy Fawkes Inn, York UK

Always a Procrastinator

I always end up in the same places. Refer here.

Small Cars Only

One of my favourite things about 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon is what a stickler she is for rules. When I saw the episode where she buys out a hot dog stand just to prevent a queue-jumper from being served, I laughed myself right off the couch. I can relate to this aspect of Liz Lemon. I too have a mostly irrational reverence for rules, even in cases where I understand how insignificant they are in the bigger picture. Like, when my roommate inevitably asks me what would be the most appropriate time to ask for an extension on his upcoming paper deadline, I am always screaming NEVER!!!! on the inside. I fully recognize that it is difficult to produce intellectual work to a deadline, and that is one of the many shortcomings of the academic system; and I also recognize that those dates are in place so that professors have enough time to finish their marking before grades have to be submitted. Nonetheless, my true objection isn’t rational; I object on a visceral level to missing deadlines simply because they’re deadlines and they’re meant to be followed.

My biggest pet peeve is when people park big cars in “small car only” parking spots. I get it, there’s nowhere else to park. But I don’t have any sympathy – either walk a few blocks or trade your big truck in for something smaller. When people park big cars in small car spots, I am overcome with the urge to kick them. Don’t they get that the small cars’ doors don’t have enough room to open beside them, if they even fit into the spot in the first place? The rule is in place for a reason, even if it’s not an earth-shattering one. I came to a parkade one night after a lovely time at the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra to find an extremely irate man pacing around my car. I had parked right in the middle of my “small car only” spot, meanwhile blocking him access to the driver’s side door of his big-ass SUV. I did it deliberately. When he yelled at me I self-righteously berated him for breaking the rules. I had to get out of there fast.

I’m probably going to meet my end at the hands of an angry SUV-driving redneck who just can’t handle my having haughtily told him his inconvenience was his own damn fault. That seems like an embarassing and pointless way to go, but I still maintain that those are the rules.

“Domestic Goddess”

I had a friend visit recently who was completely baffled by the way I eat. It wasn’t the raw ingredients or even the finished products that she was unfamiliar with, but the fact that I actually cook most meals from scratch. Then one morning, while we were eating the omelettes I had made for breakfast, she complimented my socks and asked where I bought them. When I told her I made them she was shocked. Who the hell knows how to make their own socks?! Who would even want to?! She then called me a “domestic goddess.”

This gave me pause. As a woman in the twenty-first century, it is impossible to hear that phrase and not wonder, even for just a moment, if there is an insult embedded in there somewhere. Or if it’s even a compliment at all. And then comes the bigger pause. When did knowing how to feed and clothe yourself become worthy of “goddess” status? Are we truly that alienated from our basic needs? I’ll readily admit – if modern civilization collapsed today, I probably wouldn’t last any longer than anyone else. Sure, I know how to make socks, but I certainly don’t know how to shear a sheep or spin wool. Maybe I would last until all the yarn shops had been fully looted, but then I’d have to move South like everyone else. And hell, I might know how to make bread, but I certainly don’t know how to grow wheat or grind flour. So I don’t think of myself as being more self-sufficient or as having a more authentic home life. What I do feel is that I am practicing an art. The art of “women’s work,” for lack of a less inflammatory description. This art takes everyday practices that are for the most part devalued and turns them into opportunities to create something new and beautiful, even if the result is only ephemeral, like a meal.

This might seem like a throwback, and I might be setting myself up for attack by decades of feminist progress, but I actually like domestic work. Or at least, I like my version of it. I sometimes fantasize about just not working. I am happiest when I am at home cooking, knitting, mending, even sometimes cleaning. I gain great satisfaction from having an orderly but comfortable home, and even greater satisfaction from having made it that way myself. But let’s face it – my domestic oasis is pretty far from the everyday reality of modern life. With all the mod-cons having invaded the home so completely, managing a household can be just as alienating as working in a factory or being a cog in a major corporation. Not to demonize progress – some of those conveniences have indeed had positive effects. But the landscape of the home has certainly changed and become more mechanized. Style has given way to efficiency. And if I were, in fact, a stay-at-home mom, my domestic life would not be nearly so leisurely as it is now. It wouldn’t be art, it would be work. Hard work. On the flip side though, I don’t really want to submit to the double burden either – work all day at some shitty job then work all the rest of the time at home. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not longing for some lost domestic ideal. “Women’s work” has never been ideal. What I long for is probably impossible unless one is independently wealthy. To live the everyday with style, as an art, and to gain access to the carefully guarded tradition of finding pleasure and power in the mundane.

Grumpy

I wrote a post yesterday complaining about something that made me angry and I got a nasty comment basically calling me a bitch and telling me that, with all this war and suffering in the world, I should be grateful that I’m okay and that I have friends at all. I deleted the comment. Then I deleted the post. Maybe I am a petty bitch and that’s not the person I want to be, so I was embarassed. At the same time, don’t I have a right to complain about some things? My complaints were in response to actions that I felt were fundamentally disrespectful and inconsiderate. So should I never get upset when people are inconsiderate towards me? Should I just let it roll off my back every time? If I have a reaction does it necessarily mean that I don’t care about war and suffering or that I’m not grateful for all the gifts I have in my life?

The Hangover

I promised a friend of mine on Friday, then again on Saturday, that I would write a post about something entertaining I had said. Maybe because I was drunk both Friday and Saturday when I talked to him, I can’t remember what that entertaining thing was. Oops.

Sad But So True

“Deciding What to Wear”, courtesy of PhD Comics.

Exhibit A

I don’t mind doing laundry but I hate putting it away after.