Category Archives: Best of Blue Yon Belly

It's, like, some kind of essay on feminism and self-indulgence

15 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Big words, Reincarnation, Words

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So, with the recent release of the movie, it appears that the fashionable thing to do at the moment is to snipe about Eat, Pray, Love. It’s faux feminism wrapped in deceptive, inaccessible privilege. It’s more bullshit self-actualization, the Oprah-fication of everything. And, snidely, with a slight hiss, it’s self-indulgent.
Now, listen. Whatever blows your hair back. What you like, you like, and what I like, I like — chacun á son goût. Really. I happened to love the book. I thought it was well written and that Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s voice was intelligent and witty and warm. I didn’t quite love the last third of the book as much as the first two parts, but, you know, it was still a book where I found phrases and words that would make me pause and roll them around on my tongue just for the pleasure of it, like a deep, red wine. Elizabeth Gilbert is a writer. And I will tuck my feet under me and curl up on the couch and pore over a VCR manual if it’s well written, if it has words that are chosen and spun and delicious and golden.

So if you didn’t happen to like it because you didn’t happen to like it, then that’s fine by me. But what’s making me cranky — well there are two things making me cranky. The first is the whole faux feminism, privileged, yadda, yadda business. These things always make me kind of weary. Why can’t successful women be feminists? Does money take away that right? Do you think Elizabeth Gilbert would have been able to walk away from her marriage, decide to travel and write and do what she really wants with her life instead of having babies if she wasn’t a fucking feminist? Is there some gold standard of feminism that I’m not aware of?

As for Ms. Gilbert’s international and emotional journey being one that most women can’t aspire to, well, nope it’s not. (Nor does she really sell it that way. It’s just, simply, her journey.) I certainly wouldn’t be able to decide to take a year off to travel should my life hit the skids. But, then, it wasn’t really a year off, was it? She was able to take the trip because she had a book deal. I don’t know from experience, but I hear writing a book is hard. Really hard. A shit ton of work. So, in other words, it wasn’t a year off. She was travelling, sure, and living life, but she was also working — doing what she does to make a living. “Working” has a slightly different ring to it than swanning around Italy just because you’re spoiled and you can, doesn’t it? Certainly, her version of working for a living is almost immeasurably more interesting than mine or, I’m sure, most women, but I’m not sure why her success in this regard isn’t considered inspiring and instead revokes her status as a feminist. I thought that was the point of feminism — we can do what we want, and we can do it well.

So, listen. Those last few paragraphs were really just because I get all twitchy when women accuse other women of not doing feminism correctly. “You’re not conforming to the tacitly understood scripts of non-conformity! Here’s my academic argument as to why you, as a woman, are not good enough. Let me lash out at you in the name of feminism to defend…other women!” So, you might be surprised to learn that, in fact, the whole point of this here post is not about feminism but is instead to muse about how freaking weird we here in North America are about pleasure. [Here, let me insert a thesis apropos of nothing and in complete betrayal of the entire introduction! This type of thing is, I'm sure, why people like Elizabeth Gilbert are internationally successful authors and why I am a middling editor at Random Non-descript Non-profit.]

So, uh, to back up a bit, this slightly out-of-character post isn’t because I’m just so damn passionate about Eat, Pray, Love. I mean, I liked it and all, and clearly the feminist comments irk the hell out of me, but it’s not some personal mission or anything to get everyone to like this particular book. However, the inevitable comments about the book being “self-indulgent” do hit me a little closer to home. You see, I happened to read the book while we were biking across Canada, which makes it sort of inextricable for me in my mind from our bike trip. It wasn’t just the timing, though, it also has to do with the parallels — we went on our epic, life-changing journey after I had chosen to walk away from my own shitty, soul-eating situation (in my case a truly wretched job) in search of something better, bigger, more alive. Biking across Canada was…awesome. It was fun, it was terribly hard, it was feet dangling off of docks and sunshine and birds startled into flight and the crush of muscles pulling you up a hill and the wind racing next to you on the way down. It was without a question the best thing I’ve ever done with my life, and I grew stronger in every way imaginable. In fact, not a day goes by when my core isn’t nurtured by all the things I learned cycling under the big wide sky. I am kinder, wiser, and more compassionate, with a well of forgiveness that sprung up in me after I had time and silence, peace and thoughtfulness.

And that trip — that incandescent trip — gets lumped in the self-indulgent yuppie pile.

And, yeah, okay, sure it does. We heard it before we left, we heard it during, we heard it after. For all the people who were excited or inspired, there would be one or two who would cut their eyes at us and talk about our adventure with thinly veiled hostility. Before we left, there were vague rumours and speculation floating around, largely to do with how we were financing the time off work. While we were on the road we were asked again and again who we were riding for, what cause were we supporting. One woman, who had approached us in a roadside restaurant in rural Ontario somewhere, actually turned on her heel and walked away from us in disgust when she found out we weren’t riding for charity, that all of our work was just for our own pleasure.

How we financed the trip actually turns out to be relevant to my point, so I’ll tell you how we financed it: we saved. We saved every penny we could for two years. This didn’t stop us from making our usual charitable contributions [ahem, random lady in Ontario], or from contributing to our regular savings plans. So it wasn’t easy. We made do, we went without, we lived small. We made dozens of little sacrifices on a daily basis (which I go into below), not the least of which was me sticking out my job, even though it was completely toxic. That part? The part with all the careful planning and hard work? That part felt pretty much the opposite of self-indulgent.

Now, suppose we didn’t want to take that trip. Suppose it had just never crossed our minds, for whatever reason. Suppose instead of having a goal that we were working towards we were just sort of…going along. And in just sort of going along we didn’t have to make the choice to live in a 500 square-foot, one bedroom apartment and instead we lived somewhere in the suburbs, in a McMansion even. Because we could. And suppose that in living in the suburbs we had to get a car, maybe even two, instead of biking and taking transit like we chose (and choose) to do. And instead of making our meals from scratch and brown bagging our lunches we chose to grab takeout and fast food, ignoring the health and environmental implications — no time to cook on account of the long commute, you see. And instead of training for our bike trip, we parked ourselves in front of the TV, and became part of whichever demographic it is that’s keeping crappy reality television afloat. All of those things are, arguably, pretty self-indulgent aren’t they? They aren’t thoughtful, conscious, compassionate, or generous choices. Yet they’re also, arguably, pretty normal, pretty standard fare here in North America. So normal that, in fact, had we made any or all of those choices, no one would have spat the word “self-indulgent” at us, probably because it wouldn’t have occurred to them to notice us at all.

So it would seem that if you make a conscious choice to be self-indulgent, which is really just another way of saying if you make a conscious choice to take pleasure in your life, then that brand of self-indulgence is unacceptable. But if your self-indulgence happens to fit within the norm and is neither a choice nor especially pleasurable, then that’s okay. No one will sneer at you in parking lots or hiss about your finances behind your back. We seem to be, as a society, uncomfortable with pleasure. We grouse constantly about all the things that everyone shouldn’t be doing, we have fits about all the people who shouldn’t be fucking or enjoying fucking, we fixate on all the things we shouldn’t eat…and we forget about all the things we could be doing, whether it’s enjoying eating or fucking or sitting on the end of a dock with our face turned up to the August sun.

I will say this about my self-indulgent trip: it made me a better person. That time and that peace wouldn’t have been possible if I had been working, keeping up with all the mundane demands of being an adult. And without that time, the compassion and forgiveness that I can offer the world now simply wouldn’t have happened. Or it would have taken years and years for me to find it among all the noise. So, yes, Ms. Gilbert’s travelling for a year in response to a nasty divorce is maybe a little frivolous from the outside looking in, but I can tell you from experience that the work involved in getting to a place where you can take true pleasure in your life is anything but. We’re not obliged to suffer or abstain. It’s okay to enjoy life even when other people can’t. We are blessed, really, to live the silly, frivolous lives that we do. And it’s easy to forget to be grateful for the silly, frivolous life that you have if you’re not taking pleasure in it. There is, in the end, more humility and grace in gratefulness, in truly appreciating how lucky you are to have a job, a couch, a TV, abundant food, choices.

I'm nobody, who are you?

04 Friday Jun 2010

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Reincarnation, Small words, Sparkle, Words

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There’s a moment, in the mornings, that I just love, although I’m not sure why. I’m generally miserable in the mornings — tired, cranky, completely out of sorts, needing my own space — and the crowded commuter trains, with everyone jammed up into everyone else’s space and the smells and the awkward jostling, it compounds my misery, makes it petulant and personal. I get off the train with a huge crowd in the heart of downtown and we all stream out towards the escalators, this bobbing crowd of trench coats and umbrellas and briefcases, and suddenly I’m buoyant. I like the way we wordlessly and without pause sort ourselves into right and left on the escalators, standers and walkers, as though these traits are innate (I’m a walker). I like the sound of high heels echoing on the sidewalk after the escalator spits us out into the city. I like the city in the morning, the crazy guy feeding the pigeons, the kids hawking free dailies, the man setting up his flower cart. They’re there every morning and so are we, the nameless hundreds dispersing to glittering office towers. We have our coffees and our lunches and we’re about to go in to do whatever it is we do, but first we have to wait together for the light to change.

This Is Life

18 Sunday Apr 2010

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Reincarnation, Small words, Sparkle, Words

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I’ve been taking a beginner’s ballet class for adults. This is, in fact, something I’ve dabbled in off and on for a few years now, which you would think would result in some notable improvement or progress towards grace, but no. Ballet is, I suspect, akin to learning a new language: something that, as a kid, you can pick up almost thoughtlessly but, as an adult, you will stutter through awkwardly and, despite the sincerity of your intentions, this awkwardness will likely go on almost interminably. The crux of this — of dancing well or speaking a new language — is the need for abandon, the need to say the wrong thing or take a huge misstep and keep going anyway, possibly with renewed zeal. Abandon, zeal, hunger for learning, these are things kids come by naturally and we ridiculous adults shy away from as though something so delicious and intoxicating must be harmful to the health at its core. Heaven forbid we suffer foolishness after the age of 16!

So of all the beginner’s ballet classes for adults, this latest one is my favourite. Never have you seen a more motley crew of ballerinas: short, tall, chubby, gangling, middle-aged and sagging, knees popping during pliés, arabesques that barely creak themselves off the ground, thighs that jiggle distractingly during piqués. But through it all we’ve a teacher happily urging us on, celebrating with us that one little victory, that one perfect moment where the music lifts itself out of the background and into your body and your arm floats out just so, or your steps glide and skip just as they should.

Last class we took on grand jetés and, well, oh my. Some women lurched grimly across the room, with the set, determined faces that people have when they are getting through some difficult and daunting trial. Others flung themselves across the floor, with flagrant disregard to the music or the teacher’s instructions, and simply jumped with as much gusto as they could muster, seemingly with the hope that enthusiasm could stand in for technique or grace (which I dare say it can). One woman was quite helpless with laughter the whole time and her jetés, which started off well enough, derailed into something that for all the world looked like a particularly spindly pair of scissors being catapulted across the room. And then the biggest, most delightful surprise of all: a rather squat woman who just floated over the floor, leaping high into the air with astonishing grace, seeming to hang, suspended in the air, for a delicious second or two before flitting back down. We all loved that! And, emboldened by her success, we all renewed our own efforts.

This class ended just as every class does, with a proper reverence, in which most of us are sweating, red-faced, and happy as we lilt through our curtsies. And then our teacher turns and says quietly and firmly “Love your body,” and just then we all do.

The Rising

05 Wednesday Nov 2008

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Reincarnation, Sparkle

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I have a memory of being about nine or ten, sitting in the kitchen of the old house and curling my feet towards the heat register as my mom talked about how she would never forget the moment she heard that JFK had been assassinated, how the nuns and her classmates had simply gotten down on their knees to pray because no one knew what else to do. She told me how everyone in her generation had their own memory of the JFK assassination, that some moments were like that—something that no one can forget where they were, what they were wearing, what they were doing in the seconds before history unfolded right before them.

I was in the emergency room of the Leduc hospital the first time war was declared on Iraq. I had a violent ear infection that had come on suddenly and was laying across the bucket chairs, trying to ignore the way the room spun when I opened my eyes. The news blared somberly from a television mounted on the wall and a heavy, disbelieving silence clung to the room.

I was in the living room of the house I shared with my college roommates, three of us crowded onto the futon, breathlessly watching the dead heat in the Oui/Non vote, a single bead of sweat making its way down my arm when the results were finally announced.

I was early for work, planning to get caught up on a project, and surprised the only other person in the office. He was watching a news feed on his computer and he turned around to me, stricken, wide-eyed, and said, simply, “Holy fuck.” Over his shoulder the second tower crumpled into a dark heap of ashes while a reporter shrieked “Oh my God! Oh my God!” over and over. I felt the air punch out of the room, the world draining out from under my feet.

I was at home, sitting next to Kieran, his hand on my back, when a black man was elected president of the United States, when the entire nation burst into life again, when Jesse Jackson’s tear stained face flashed up on the screen and the enormity of the moment rose up out of the cheering crowd.

Aloud Sweater

22 Sunday Jun 2008

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Reincarnation, Sparkle

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For My Grandpa, Whom I Love:

The Christmas of 1998, my grandpa gave me a sweater. He was rather pleased with himself about the sweater because he’d picked it out himself, which, for a widower of 80 shopping for his 22-year-old-granddaughter is, I’m sure, no small feat. The sweater was incredibly loud, a striped affair that crammed a great number of colours into its oscillating palette. This was what my grandpa was most proud of—all the colours. The girl at The Bay had been helping him find something, he explained, but everything she picked was so plain. And then he saw the striped sweater and, over the protests of the shop clerk, picked it because, as he told the confused girl, It would be perfect for Charlie. (My grandpa, by the way, always called me Charlie—it was just one of those inexplicable quirks of enduring affection.) As I pulled the sweater out of its box and contemplated it, my grandpa said with a laugh, Why wear just one colour when you can wear all of them at once?

(At this point it must be noted that one of my grandpa’s other inexplicable quirks was that he was a great lover of loud clothes. He had quite a splashy heyday in the 70s and was able to extend this heyday for several decades due to the resilience of polyester. My grandpa was nothing if not frugal and forthright in his preferences.)

Due mostly to the fact that it fit incredibly well (but also because I loved the idea that wearing all of the colours at once was perfect for me) the loud sweater my grandpa picked for me, against many odds, worked.

One month later, my grandpa was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. And four months later, I made a point of wearing the sweater one day when I went to visit my grandpa, even though it was a little too warm for a turtleneck at that point in the season. That same day, after a small group of my family clustered around my grandpa, eating fried chicken and pie in his living room and listening to his latest shenanigans*, after I returned to my apartment and my studying, two hot, fat tears fell onto my text books and smeared the words. I knew. It was the last time. That’s the other thing I remember about that sweater.

Out of intense sentimentality, I kept the sweater for the last ten years. I moved it to Vancouver, Montréal, back to Edmonton, and back to Vancouver again. Each year, it got buried a little deeper in my closet, but every time I stuffed a bag full of clothes for the GoodWill, I hesitated at that sweater. I was worried that I would forget that my grandpa wanted me to wear all the colours at once. That he called me Charlie, even when speaking about me to faceless shop clerks.

I worked up the nerve to give away the sweater today. I suppose if I had been thinking, I would have just taken a picture of me wearing the sweater so that I could remember what it meant, but when I reached for it in the back of the closet, the moment seemed to call for the same approach that one uses when swallowing a nasty-tasting cough syrup: close your eyes and get it over with as quickly as possible before you lose your nerve.

These are the words instead: It was never the particular jumble of colours on the sweater, just that my grandpa once picked out a sweater for me all by himself and he picked one that he loved because he loved me.

I know now that my grandpa was onto something. Be loud. Be yourself. If you have an opinion, say it. Wear it. Do it with your head held high and no one will question that you’re entitled to it. Like eggs? Eat your eggs with defiant gusto even when the rest of the nation becomes squeamish about cholesterol. Love your grand-kid? Call her Charlie. She’ll know what it means. Bellow encouragement at her little league games and heckle the ump over calls you don’t like as though the World Series is on the line. Why not? She’ll never forget. Besides, the only things more important than baseball are family and hockey. Amen.

Love,

Charlie

——————————————–

*In his final weeks, my grandpa, a stastistician by profession, had crafted a passionate petition that relied heavily on statistics and careful wording to garner support for the ban of dihydrogen monoxide on the basis that it is one of the key components of acid rain. My grandpa took great pleasure in the fact that his oncologist was convinced to sign the petition. If you’re right now mulling over the potential threat of dihyrogen monoxide to the environment and your health and you sense someone gloating, I can assure you that’s my grandpa from the beyond, taking delight once again in his own peculiar brand of playful cheekiness and beligerance.

Saying Goodbye to The Man

10 Wednesday Oct 2007

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Reincarnation

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The thing is, I don’t have a job right now. Well, technically, I do. I’m on leave from my old job while I see what the Vancouver job market has to offer, which gives me the odd luxury of being picky despite my encroaching poverty. For once, I’m assessing the job market in terms of what potential employers have to offer me. No benefits package? Pbbbfftt! I’m still covered by my old benefits, so I think I’ll pass. A significant cut in pay? Uh, let me think about that: NO. I must say, it feels rather grown up. Although, in the interest of honesty, it should be noted that I hadn’t thought of things this strategically when I arranged for the leave and instead did so in response to a debilitating bout of existential panic.

So, I’m looking for work. I’m checking out my options. And I won’t be bending over for The Man, thank you very much. So. In celebration of my new found unwillingness to bend over, I’ve made a list: Top Five Worst Jobs of My Life.

5. Canada Safeway Cashier: This job paid minimum wage, offered no benefits, and had a ridiculous company-wide policy of not giving staff more than 18 hours a week. This put my monthly salary at $360 before taxes and union fees. Yes, union fees. I don’t know what kind of union negotiates a maximum of 18 hours a week, but I’m guessing a union that’s failing miserably and/or corrupt. But the real sticking point with this job was how seriously they expected you to take your cashiering. We were asked to study the produce codes outside of work, to come into work half an hour early to tour the produce section, and randomly administered written exams on the codes every week. If you didn’t get at least 80% on that damn exam, you were taken aside and given a stern lecture and a warning to improve. We were all given a “Top Banana” pin that we were required to wear on our uniform (a POLYESTER DRESS with PUFFED SLEEVES). If you got 100% on your produce code exam, you got a fruit or vegetable charm to hang from your Top Banana pin. OH HAPPY DAY.

4. Dairy Queen Counter Girl: This job was like a scene out of Mean Girls. Part of the problem was that this wasn’t the Dairy Queen from my hometown, but was from a neighbouring town, so all the other girls knew each other and weren’t especially interested in making me feel included. Specifically, they took delight in excluding me. I once got locked in the walk-in freezer for over an hour and either no one noticed I was missing or cared that I was missing. I actually suspect they knew I was locked in the freezer and wanted to be cruel. Eventually, I gave up on knocking and yelling for help and dejectedly sat on a milk crate, shivering and refusing to cry while I waited to be released.

3. The Art Store Job: For this job, I answered phones and took catalogue orders for an art supply store. This entailed dealing with flaky artists over the phone all the livelong day: “Oh, hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeee. I’m doing this frog project? Papier maché frogs? It’s going to be, like, a FOREST of papier maché frogs. No. A CITY OF FROGS. It’s a STATEMENT. About society. And frogs. Purple frogs! PUCE FROGS! What do you have in a puce acrylic? No, oil! No, water colour! Wait, what kind of paint do you use with papier maché? Oh you know what? I just remembered I don’t have any money.”

2: Office Depot Cashier: Depressingly, I had my university degree at this point, which rubbed a certain amount of salt into my wounded idealism and naïve expectations of the world. Office Depot seemed to have a special breed of obnoxious, snotty customers who were quite insistent that you know how busy and important they were and that it was because of their incredible stature in the business world that they were buying a leather desk chair. I was informed of my stupidity on numerous occasions. Never when I had done anything stupid, mind you, but when some pompous ass wasn’t getting his/her own way. For example:

Customer: What’s taking so long?!? What are you, STUPID? Are you RETARDED? I MAKE $100 AN HOUR. I DON’T HAVE TIME TO WAIT FOR PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

Me: I make $7.50 an hour.

Customer: …SO?!?

Me: They don’t pay me enough to give a tiny rat’s ass about you.

Customer: [blinks]

I did get in trouble for this, although my manager was pretty forgiving due to the fact that I was one of the only people who could answer the phones AND ring in orders at the same time. See? I didn’t go to university for nothing!

1. Joey Tomatoes Waitress: Joey Tomatoes is the Italian cousin in the Earls chain of restaurants. Those from Western Canada will be familiar with the Earls franchise and its notoriety for exploiting underage girls by way of not quite officially requiring them to wear skimpy outfits. After my first day, my smarmy boss took me aside and urged me to wear a shirt that was more “formfitting.” (I ignored his suggestion.) He also liked to remind the girls pouring beers to “give good head.”

Beyond a willingness to be exploited for your looks (typically borne of a complete lack of other options), “Earlitude” was of the utmost importance. We all dashed around in our formfitting shirts, grinning like sharks and bleating “Hiiieee! It’s so great to SEE you! How are YOU today?” to anything that moved. In order to create the illusion of a fun-loving atmosphere, every time someone ordered the jambalaya, you had to yell “Jam-BA-LAAAAAAYYYYAAAAA!” for all the restaurant to hear. And all the other waitresses would roar back, “JAMBALAAAAAYYYAA!” This was generally terrifying for customers, and you would have to nervously twitter while you waited for them to stop clutching at their heart so you could take their drink order.

Customer birthdays were equally horrible. You would have to really ham it up before giving them their complimentary cake: “It’s your BIRTHDAY?!? Welllllll, you know what we do around here on BIRTHDAYS!” And then we’d all have to gather around in some happy-clappy circle and sing a song. In a fake Italian accent. “Whatsa madda you? [HEY!] You lost anodda year? [HEY!]” And so on.

This job came to an abrupt and fiery end and is the closest I’ve ever come to being fired. In fact, on the morning of my last day, I left believing that I had been fired. I mean, the smarmy manager had actually tried to fire me because of my “bad Earlitude.” You see, Skeezy McSmarmypants had “heard that I never went to any of the staff parties and after work get togethers” and “it just didn’t seem like I was a going to work out.” I was sick of him, sick of the restaurant and the stupid yelling and singing, and really just bone tired. I mean, I was working two other jobs in order to survive. I didn’t have time for after hours Earlitude. Something snapped and I just lit into his ass. Dude was stunned when I stood up to him and his jaw kind of slowly unhinged and we stood staring at each other for a long moment before he started stammering that he’d think about giving me a second chance. I turned on my heel and stormed out, mostly because I didn’t want Skeezy McSmarmypants to see that I was about to cry. Although my standing up to him was evidence of my developing backbone, the whole incident deeply upset my people pleaser nature. I went home, cried on my roommate’s bed for a while, then gathered my spirits and went out and got myself a new job: “Customer Service Representative” for Blockbuster Video. The future looked bright indeed.

My Old Job: An Obituary/Tribute Essay

03 Saturday Feb 2007

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Reincarnation

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Since I have secured a new job and subsequently had a heart-to-heart with my boss wherein I had to honestly explain why I was unwilling to stay in my current position a minute longer than the requisite two weeks (“Well…truth be told, yesterday when I was away from my desk, it was because I had to go cry hysterically in private”), I feel it’s fair game for me to say that my work environment was toxic. That my disappearing for an hour to sob in the privacy of a bathroom stall was not regarded as unusual and was, instead, greeted with a commiserating and empathetic “I know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to do the same,” from my boss is a pretty good indicator. And while I would love to sink my teeth into this topic, delving deeper is probably ill advised. Suffice it to say, the last year has been hell on Earth for everyone involved and I am not the only one who suffered a meltdown (three out of a team of six).

Anyway, even if there are work spies reading this,* that my particular area was deemed toxic by employees and employer alike is not news to anybody. In the past few months, in an attempt to address the situation, our group has been sent to several “team building” workshops put on by various and sundry motivational speakers, none of whom did anything to challenge my perception that corporate workshop facilitators are manic lunatics from the same alien race as Tom Cruise.

The first workshop was a full two days, conducted by a woman who looked like a parody of a Russian figure skating coach: brassy dye job, blue eyeshadow, stripes of blush over leathery smoker’s skin, and both days she wore 80s era outfits with hefty shoulder pads and some kind of animal print. Her frumpy appearance was incongruous with her boundless energy and her habit of clapping and exclaiming with rabid glee, “Yaaay! Good for YOU [insert name], GOOD SHARING!” every time someone responded to one of her questions. She also responded to each personal revelation by oversharing information from her own life so that by the end of the first hour, we knew that her father never loved her, she had gone through a bitter divorce in the early 90s, and had, at one point, declared bankruptcy and lost her condo only to rebound by making, “scads of money” and marrying a man who knows how to “push her buttons.”

The purpose of this particular workshop was to get our “colours done.” Somebody somewhere has broken down the 6 billion some odd personalities of the world into four colours: blues (empathetic, sensitive), golds (organized/Type A), oranges (adventurous, outgoing), and greens (logical, analytical). The goal of the workshop was for us to use our individual colours to weave a “plaid.”

I am pretty sure this type of thing is designed specifically to torment people like me who are compulsive people pleasers suffering from a conflicting congenital cynicism.

Highlights of this workshop included: Watching a video of the fish throwing people at Pike Place Market and preparing a presentation on how having fun increases productivity; me getting a stern lecture on how I couldn’t be both blue and orange, nor an extrovert and an introvert, and having to pick one of each**; my co-worker being forced to don a tiara and wave a glittery “blue fairy” plastic wand and give us examples of how her “blue” personality is a gift (sadly, readers, I tell you this with no hyperbole whatsoever); and a dramatic demonstration wherein Oversharing Figure Skating Lady broke a single stick across her purple leopard print clad knee, but when she bundled the sticks and tied them with blue, orange, green, and gold yarn, the sticks could not be broken.

If I’m honest with myself, I must admit that most of my contempt for this workshop stems from being publicly rebuked for having equal portions of seemingly conflicting personality types.

The other workshop of note was the Laughter Workshop. Yes. A workshop to teach us how to laugh. I actually liked this facilitator because he was so good-hearted and well-intentioned that he was oblivious to how his unbridled enthusiasm was often overwhelming for many of us. You have to feel at once sorry for and touched by a man who wears a happy face tie and clown nose and bounds into a room full of hateful co-workers to force them to laugh together. You know, in the same way you at once love and are anxious about a joyful labradoodle with muddy paws who’s been set loose on a cocktail party.

Anyway, I say forced to laugh because that’s what it was. First we had a five-minute warm-up, where we had to clutch at our stomachs, saying/pretend laughing “Ha-ha-ha” (in a tenor), “Hee-hee-hee” (in a falsetto), and “HO-HO-HO” (in a booming bass), and finish each round of fake laughing by waving our hands in the air, jumping up and down, and shouting “Yaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy!” This was followed by several different laughing exercises that included having to waddle around the room like penguins and tittering, pretending we were chickens and “Bok-bok-bok” laughing, and grabbing our bellies so that we could feel them shaking like bowls full of jelly when we chortled “Ho-ho-ho!” like Santa Claus. The exercises culminated in knee slapping and a crescendo of “Ah-ha-ha-ha! AH-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAA! BWAH-HA-HA!!!” laughing.

Of all the things I could say at this point, I will instead say “Goodbye old job.”

————————–

*I am not being paranoid when I refer to “work spies,” as the public service actually has a department whose duties include reading e-mails and the like, which I found out when I had lunch the other day with one of that department’s employees.

While we’re on the subject, Dear Work Spies: That time I Googled “Pete Burns pussy lips,” I was not being pervy, but was instead trying to see Pete Burns’ botched lip implants and the resulting pus-filled blisters and only realized how “pus-sy” and “pussy” lips are interchangeable after my unfortunate search results appeared. Please remove any resulting red flags off of my account.

**Note that Oversharing Figure Skating Lading was not a trained psychologist. Also note that I filled out the questionnaires honestly and that’s how my results came out. This sort of blurring the lines is, apparently, unacceptable in Four Colour World. (I chose blue and introvert, for the record.)

Because God is Punishing Me for My Vanity

23 Saturday Sep 2006

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Reincarnation

≈ 10 Comments

If you want to undo years of self-development and devolve back into a level of self-consciousness not experienced since you were in junior high (spurring inevitable questions about just how much self-esteem you’ve truly developed over the last fifteen or so years), I suggest wearing an eye patch. It is really hard to feel just-the-way-you-are pretty when you’re wearing an eye patch. Almost as bad as the eye patch itself is the fact that eye patches don’t really breathe and you get one really sweaty eye. So if it is actually possible to feel sexy despite the jarring presence of what is typically a prop used in Halloween costumes, the unexpected addition of eye sweat will totally kill any lingering nubility. The final insult in the whole eye patch experience is the elastic, which digs into your face and causes unsightly red marks across your forehead.

After my appointment with the ophthalmologist on Thursday, I was freed from the eye patch. I very much looked forward to appearing normal—just a lady, with just eyes—on the bus ride home. Let’s face it: when you’re on the bus where it’s highly likely that a stranger is going to encroach upon your personal space, you’re in a heightened state of self-preservation and find yourself performing discreet psychiatric assessments of your fellow passengers so as to position yourself nearest the passengers who will not freak you out. Basically, we’re all seeking that ideal passenger who does not have B.O., who is not clinically insane, and who will extend the courtesy of blandly ignoring you should they sit next to you. Therefore, if you’re going to go for someone looking as normal as possible, you’re likely to shy away from someone sporting an eye patch. Just in case.

My appearing normal once again on the public transit system had one more pit stop that I hadn’t taken into consideration. In order to see if my retina was detached or detaching or whatever, the doctor had to dilate my pupils and administered drops that did so rather aggressively. These drops were, like, industrial strength or something. I’ve had them before, but this? This was nutty. My eyes became less so organs through which I see and more so vehicles through which unrefined blobs of sense data assaulted my brain. The world became a sea of askew rays of coloured light through which I had to navigate my body. And I had one train ride, a TRANSFER from the train to the bus (which involved navigating a series of escalators), the bus ride itself, and the four-block walk from the bus stop to the safety of my apartment.

Naturally, I made a spectacle of myself in what I thought would be my triumphant, eye-patch free return to the public eye. I went careening down the aisle of the train, tripped over someone’s foot, and crashed into my seat, sort of half belly flopping onto it. I then corrected the belly flop by standing again and trying to perform the natural seating motions. Only I completely overestimated the height at which the seat stood and went into a free fall, so that my ass made a loud smacking sound when it finally connected with the chair. People looked on with concern. And then they noticed the pupils the size of frying pans, the way my eyes spiraled about in a desperate bid to focus, the alarming way I couldn’t quite place a grasp on the world around me. And then I would sense it, their primal fear: “Oh, God. Don’t let that junkie chick who’s fucked up on God knows what sit next to me.” They all thought it. I know they did. That’s what I would think. I felt their collective relief when I managed to get off the train (after wildly stabbing my finger into the air multiple times in my attempt to press the button that opens the door, only successfully disembarking because someone got up from their seat and wordlessly pressed the button for me).

The bus ride was slightly less humiliating. I didn’t try to sit, so as to avoid a repeat performance of the train-sitting debacle. However, I did have to ask the bus driver (in a voice that I couldn’t prevent from sounding harried and desperate) which bus I was on, and there was a tiny pause while she sized me up before answering me in a voice that was at once tired (she has seen so many junkies and weirdos in her day) and authoritative (indicating, I suppose, that she could see I was on something and would deal with me if she had to).

It took hours for the drops to wear off. Once I was able to see again, though, I, of course, took a picture of my crazy alien, junkie eyes with Photo Booth because I am obsessed with Photo Booth.

Now I ask you, if you saw this woman thrashing about on the train and caught a glimpse of those eyes, what would you think? (Click to enlarge. [The picture, not my pupils, silly.])

Just Like That

14 Monday Aug 2006

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Reincarnation, Small words, Sparkle

≈ 4 Comments

I don’t remember the date, but I do remember that it was in March 2001. March in Vancouver. Still rainy, still dark, but Spring—already flowers, poking through the grass, decorating window boxes. I went to a house party with my friend and her fiancé and she and I found ourselves sitting on the kitchen counter, sharing a bottle of wine, and embroiled in an intense conversation. Had we chosen to sit somewhere else, to join the people dancing in the living room or smoking in the basement, or the small group of women in standing in a circle in the corner, the rest of my story would have been different. Because next door, my husband, who I hadn’t yet met, was debating whether to come to the party. He and one of his roommates walked out onto their front lawn to see if they could see into the party and they saw me and my friend in the window—her downy, white blonde head tilted towards my head of raven hair. They decided it might be worth coming to the party after all. A few minutes later I looked up because the man who would become my husband had walked straight to the kitchen, straight to the girls sitting in the window, and stood, waiting for me to notice him.

I don’t remember the date, but I do remember that it was in November 2003. November in Montréal. Thin grey light, taught cold air. It was just a day, just any day. The brief period of stasis between midterms and finals. I wasn’t in a rush for anything, was just heading home from classes, with plans only to drop off my book bag before nipping out to buy cat litter. Only he was home, not working. He had left for work earlier in the morning, but now he was at home, cooking brunch.

“What are you doing home?” I asked from the hallway, not taking my coat off, still planning to run my errand.

“I just thought I would come home early today and ask you to marry me.” Just like that.

A brie, red pepper omelet sizzled in the pan. Champagne and orange juice, already poured and waiting on the coffee table. The moment dangled and raced.

“Just let me take off my mitts,” I mumbled, fumbling with the heavy wool.

And then he was on one knee, holding towards me a small robin’s-egg-blue box that was wrapped with a brown ribbon.

“Yes,” I said, simply, and took the box in my mittened hand.

August 13, 2005, we were married.

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Ugly Photo Meme

18 Sunday Jun 2006

Posted by in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Memes, Photos, Reincarnation, Sparkle

≈ 5 Comments

It took me a little while, but I’m finally participating in the Ugly Photo Meme, conceived by Shannon and Anne and bravely realized by Schnozz.

I will preface this by saying I am not photogenic. Not. Photogenic. I usually look nothing like me in my photos and more like a) A man with a wig on who vaguely resembles me b) A puffy, porcine stranger who vaguely resembles me, or c) In the case of my passport photo and my first driver’s license, a crazed lunatic who vaguely resembles me. In the case of the former, everyone who has seen it says I look like Charlize Theron…in Monster. In the case of the latter, so astounding was this photo (in which I not only looked like a man with a wig on, but a man who also happened to be missing a chromosome who just escaped from prison by way of eating the guards) that when some kids snagged it and started making fun of it and my Biology teacher intervened, he cut himself off when he caught a glimpse of the photo and had to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle a guffaw.

So here is the Ugliest Photo of Me, chosen because I fit all three of my ugly photo categories: I look a little like a puffy, porcine, tranny bride and definitely like a crazed lunatic. I am clearly letting out a hag cackle, while my husband visibly wonders what he’s gotten himself into and a frightened groomsman looks on:

Cackling Bride
Photo courtesy of Lilypad Photo Arts

To contrast and compare, this is what happens when I’m not overly animate:

Zombie

I look like a zombie monster that hasn’t eaten any brains in a while. Don’t make any sudden moves…

Here is my stunning “just-woke-up” photo, wherein a swamp creature masquerading as my hair is devouring me alive. As a bonus, I am slightly hungover and have that weird mooneye thing going on instead of the usual raccoon eyes.

Swamp Creature

And, finally, redemption. Two photos of me looking relatively like myself and neither like a science fiction creature nor a homicidal maniac. [Ed note: I hate to be heavy-handed with the wedding photos, but we have, literally, thousands more wedding photos than any other kind of photos and I guess there was just a larger pool to draw from.]

Bride

Engagement
Photo courtesy of Lilypad Photo Arts

For my own category, I have chosen “Worst Holiday Photo Ever.” First, in Ireland, where I have a combination of jet lag and sheer exhaustion conspiring against me. This is what I look like when I’ve had three hours of sleep in three days: my face swells to twice its natural size and I am incapable of smiling.

Grim

And here I am in New York at Bryant Park looking like a demented lawn creature and also a little like Gollum. This photo was also a candidate for “Worst Forehead Shadows Ever” and “Worst Bobby Pin Placement Ever” (and can somebody please tell me why it looks like I have scales?!?).

Gnome

OK–You’re it!

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