5x365: Tansy

It was in applying for my first lifeguarding job that I met Tansy. Having very little work experience at the time and therefore very few people to use as references, I decided upon Steve, one of my lifeguarding instructors.

At the end of his NLS Pool class he had given out his phone number to everyone who had passed and told us all that we could use him as a reference. It was in that class where in a rush of adrenalin and without a partner I lifted a 170lb guy out of the pool and dragged him a distance of about six metres before I got any help. It surprised everyone, and impressed Steve because for the most part though my first aid is really good, my physical performance was just barely above the minimum acceptable standard.

I figured that he would be good for a reference so I decided to be polite and call him to let him know that I was going to give his number out. But instead of him, I got the voicemail for a woman named Tansy. I decided that perhaps I had the wrong number and decided to try again, but got the same voicemail message, with no mention of Steve.

I called the number several times over the next couple of days until my persistence paid off and Tansy answered the phone...

...at which point I figured all my persistence was a mistake.

From the moment she picked up I could feel the anger/envy/loathing/bitchiness radiating from the speaker. Eek! It took me a while to convince her that I was a student of his and all I wanted was a job reference, honest, before she finally gave me his new number.

I got the reference, and I got the job. I can only imagine what I accidentally stepped into.

On being me

Sometimes I catch myself saying verbatim something I wrote in my blog earlier and then there's a moment of panic in which I think oh shit, what if they recognize me from my blog? but then I remember that no one really reads this blog anyways, at least not people I know in person.

At one point in time I gave the address to my friends and a couple read for a while but gradually they stopped, and haven't for at least two years now. Just as well.

But still, I find myself wondering about that and sometimes I find myself making a conscious decision to not link to certain people that I know in real life even though I know they have blogs, and they don't know that I do. At least, I think they don't. I don't know why I do this.

Actually, I do. I think it comes down to the fact that I inhabit a lot of really different circles, and none of those circles really overlap much.

One of my profs at one point in time got us to do an exercise in which we had to list all the people we consider to be really close friends and then draw lines between the ones who know each other. Needless to say I drew very few lines.

The point of the exercise was that the more all your close friends knew each other, the more closed your social circle was and the less you had to adapt to different social situations or something to that effect. The fact that I drew no lines means that I'm constantly changing hats, playing different roles, having to make use of more diverse kinds of cultural knowledge and customs, and I'm more intelligent than average (he said that, not me).

I'm not sure about the intelligent part, but the rest makes sense. I always get the feeling like I have my toes dipped everywhere, but I don't feel like I fully belong anywhere, and I don't feel like I'm the same person at all from context to context. That's why it's weird when my friends meet each other, and why for the most part, letting my friends meet my other friends is really not a good idea because it never seems to work out.

A lot of times when I cross the boundaries of whatever is "me" in one context, it's surprising or people don't want to hear. Maybe that's why I'm a tad hesitant at the thought of outing myself. I think the bloggers who have friended me on facebook have a pretty unique perspective there, whether they're aware of it or not, because I'm far more conscious of what I do and say there, how it looks, and how the audience to my actions is a mishmash of people from so many farflung circles.

I'd like to think that I'd gladly trade it all for belonging somewhere, but I probably wouldn't, and for some reason I don't think it's really an option anyways.

Needed diversions

To get away from my papers I met Alison and Balbs for tea at Steeps today. I'm always surprised at the variety there. There's a huge rack of aluminum tins with loosleaf teas that you can open and smell before deciding which one you want. I always go through at least half of them. It's amazing how many variations on the dried-plants-you-stick-in-hot-water theme there is.

The other thing that I like about the place is that you get your own personal French press teapot and then you can choose which kind of teacup you want. I was in a delicate, flowery china cup and saucer mood today.

At the back of the bus on the way home three people started singing, two men doing a harmony and a woman singing a melody over them. Nice and soulful.

I came across the word "puerile" in a book I was reading and I think it was probably the first time I've ever come across that word before. My little brain jumped for joy and spat out puer, pueri, declension II, masuline, little boy, which made me smile inwardly with Latin love.

Then, walking home from the busstop, I passed a man who was singing aloud, which made me beam from ear to ear. I hopped the last half block home.

Sometimes it only takes little things.

4x365: Anthony

Try as I might, he's the only person I can remember from my earliest years of daycare. He was pretty young - still in diapers and I always thought he smelled funny. His skin was deep olive. His hair was a carpet of dense fuzz.

Another memory of the same vintage was of picking around the sliced fruit at snack time to try and find the banana chunks that were buried at the bottom. We weren't supposed to do that but I brought that banana with me from home and I'd be damned if I had to eat apple chunks instead.

3x365: Vietnamese poet at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden, c. 1993

He could tell you all about
the woman that lives in that plant.
Sometimes you can hear her
cry when rainwater rolls down
her leaves.

He explains, smiles toothlessly,
spotted hands clasped in a
silent prayer.

And sometimes you can hear
her lover answer from the other
side of the garden. Destined to
remain separate, they whisper
nothings into the rain.

My Christmas shopping is almost done.

I'm really glad I took the time to take some pictures of the snow because as of last night it's all gone. All night and day it's been full on pineapple express and I've been inside most of the day for fear that I will drown.

Not that that's a bad thing. School's over, except for two papers that I have to finish, so I don't have to go outside today.

I'm doing some Christmas shopping on ebay today. My mom collects vintage rhinestone jewelry by a designer named Gustav Sherman. It's good quality stuff, but because it's Canadian, it's not overly well known. You can tell the difference, though. It's far shinier than a lot of stuff that looks similar.

It started with my dad. Secretly he likes really sparkly jewelry but he can't wear it so he started to give it to mom. I'm not sure if she liked it all or not. Then one day we were in Deluxe Junk and saw their collection of Sherman, and that's where it all changed. We ended up with a fern leaf brooch, which began to grow on her. Beside it, all the other jewelry she had looked really tacky, so we went looking for more.

Eventually she got into it, and contacted a man who at the time was writing a book on Sherman, and now she's got an autographed copy.

Dad wants to get her some more pins but he isn't really all that ebay savvy so he gave me a budget with instructions to spend it wisely. I've been having some pretty good luck on today, and now suddenly I'm feeling the urge to get some for myself. It's horribly contageous.

When stuff starts arriving, maybe I'll post some pictures of it.

2x365: Caster

He named himself after a kind of sugar he saw advertised on a billboard on his way to boarding school in Johannesburg, but forgot to tell his parents. When his father went to visit him, there was no one under that name enrolled. It was eventually sorted out, but the name stuck. When I was three years old I figured he was just painted an odd colour and scratched him to see if the black would come off but it didn't. I kind of feel bad about that.

I have yet another mystery to solve

I woke up a little earlier than usual this morning to format my paper and write up a bibliography for it. When it comes to papers I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I like the pressure of having to finish things just before they're due, and the rush of having to grab my assignments out of the printer quite literally as I'm running out the door.

I think by now everyone knows where this is going and that's exactly where it's going but not quite how you think.

I went to print the paper out approximately four minutes before I had to leave to catch my bus and everything was going fine until page six, which jammed and threw a wrench into everything.

My home printer's never jammed before so I wasn't quite sure how to fix it. The giant printers you find in offices jam all the time, but they have tons of doors and things you can open to try and find the problem, and it's usually pretty obvious where to look. Not so with my printer. I was stuck.

I decided to google it, and lo and behold, I learned that there is a secret trap door in the back of the printer which makes clearing paper jams really easy. Crisis averted.

Almost. I started printing again and it jammed immediately and this is where it gets a little weird.

When I opened up the back door, I found crumpled paper and a pair of fingernail clippers. I don't know how they got in there, but once I'd gotten them out the printer went back to working just fine.

I distinctly remember losing them a couple of weeks ago. It was like they had vanished into thin air.

I'm finding that these lost-and-found mysteries are starting to become a regular occurrence with me. Library books mysteriously get checked out in my name without me remembering, keys show up in kleenex boxes, and now nail clippers inside my printer. What's next?

1X365: The Circles Man

Schmutzie and The Palinode are doing it with some pretty cool results so I thought I'd try my hand at x365, a project where you make 365 posts about 365 people you know, have met or have influenced you in some way. Today I bring you the circles man.

The circles man circles. That's what he does. Every day for as long as I've been living in my neighbourhood he's walked up and down the street, the same five over-long blocks. It's always the south side of the street, never the north. I'm not sure how many times he does it per day, but he's out a lot.

When the circles man gets to a corner, he stops, then turns a tight circle, before continuing on in the same direction. When he decides to turn around to go back, he circles twice.

Sometimes he asks me where I'm going, or what book I'm carrying. His accent wanders and I can't place it. "If you get much smarter," he says, "you won't want to talk to me anymore," but I tell him that will never happen.

Hello December

December to me means advent calendars.

Am I too old for this? Probably. I don't ask for them. My mom gives one to me because she can't give one to one child and not the other. She gives one to my sister because I'm older than her and I've gotten more, so she can't cut her off otherwise it wouldn't be fair.

The same goes for the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.

But seeing as cheap chocolate tends to make me break out in hives, it has to be something good. This year it's Lindt, and I already think it was a delicious choice.

I'm not sure what advent calendars have to do with Jesus and frankly I don't care. Religion's never been a part of Christmas for me.

As much as I hate the rabid consumerism of it, I do like the frivolous excesses we go to in December. I think it's because we never had money in August and September to do back to school shopping, so Christmas for me always meant finally getting new shoes and clothes.

Christmas meant long nights cutting stones and polishing silver, getting fifty dollars for sitting at the craft fair table because I never ever got an allowance. It meant gathering up all the scrap metal from underneath the porch, the stuff we'd scrounged from alleys, peoples' garbage or wherever to sell to the scrap dealer, so you could buy presents.

It meant doing everything to frivolous excess just because you could: gaudy blown glass ornaments, hung three to a branch, tinsel, glass reindeer and bears and huge glass balls in the windows. An orgy of giftgiving, consumption on a ridiculous scale, because it's only once a year.