midnight ramble

This summer I'm taking a creative writing class (for "fun"). We have to hand in a 500 word assignment every week for review and workshopping (i.e. tearing apart) by the entire class. I'm nervous about handing in the first one tonight. Maybe if it turns out OK I'll post it here. In the meantime I'm trying to get into the habit of writing things when I think of them and working the old creative brain muscles.

here is a thing I wrote at midnight last night while all in a huff, after the below-mentioned incident and before a dying, beeping smoke detector hauled me out of bed again. Remind me to buy some double As. Your feedback (from anyone who happens to read this) is always appreciated.

getting even with the neighbours

Right now I'm thinking about the stupid shopping cart the neighbours keep on the porch, leaning up against the railing. The whole stupid porch looks shitty, between the two bikes they never use, my bike (mine is fine, though) and the green bin we never use but they use but they never put out that gets knocked over by raccoons 6 times a week. I try to leave it there, compost spilling everywhere, to make a point but they're never here so eventually either Patrick or our landlord cleans it up. I'm thinking, why not just pitch the stupid shopping cart out into the street? Or at least put it on the bench on a lawn a couple of doors down. The bench is for all to use - it has a plaque in memory of "Honest" Ed Mirvish that says so - which means that everyone on the street uses it as the dumping ground for all the leftovers post-spring cleaning and garage sale. When I first moved onto this street I thought all the junk on the bench belonged to the neighbours in that one house. It was March so spring cleaning was a reasonable explanation, but week after week I began to imagine that they lived, hoarder-style, in cramped quarters piled floor to ceiling with back issues of National Geographic. 

So Monday night I'm lying in bed. It's so hot out that I've decided to sleep naked for maybe the fifth time in my life. The neighbours have been pissing me off all night by tying up the laundry machine, having come into town for that specific purpose (doing laundry, not pissing me off, though they've very efficiently managed both). Of course it's my fault that I haven't done laundry in two weeks, but I have as much right to the machines as they do. Every time I go down to the laundry room to find yet another load started, I tell myself that I'll get even in the morning, when I plan to run the dishwasher at 8am so they won't have any water pressure for their showers. Incredibly passive-aggressive but very fitting, I thought. Anyway, so I'm lying in bed when I hear one of them come down the stairs. Any falling asleep I was doing is halted as my attention focuses on whether or not it'll happen, and it does: the fucking porch light is switched on. The 100 watt fluorescent that shines right into my room, despite the blind. This is my oldest gripe with the neighbours. Tuesday morning is garbage day, so every once in a while, whenever they're home and always after I've gone to bed, someone decides to take out the garbage and turns on the porch light. I don't mind them turning it on, but they never fucking turn it off. How rude is that? You just turned it on one minute ago. Did you forget about it? They can see that all our lights are off. The fact that they always have to turn it off means that someone else is always turning it off. Why would it need to stay on after they put out their garbage? I lie awake listening for them to go back upstairs, which they do, without turning the light off, as usual. I briefly consider running outside with a broom stick and smashing the porch light as a more permanent solution to this problem, and consider whether or not I would later be able to explain that as a measured response to the situation. Instead I storm out of bed, doubly put out that I have to find something to wear, and out into the hallway to slap the light off. Turning back, I realize that in my rage I've locked myself out. I could wake up Patrick downstairs but I can also deal with this by shoving open the second door to the apartment, the one that leads straight into my bedroom, that I keep unlocked with a heavy dresser behind it for these occasions. When it's worth shoving a door and knocking a few things over to get back in. I've done this at least 5 or 6 times since moving here. I blame the fact that we haven't yet hung up a key holder for my frequently forgetting my keys. I shove and jiggle the dresser through the door and work my way in and lie down again, flinging my kimono to the laundry pile beside the bed. The porch light flicks back on. What the fuck. I grab my robe again, annoyed that my attempt at an even 8 hours is ruined and angry at how annoyed I am. The neighbour is across the street with another bag. I wait for him to return and politely ask him to turn off the porch light when he's done. He assures me that he'll be done in 10 minutes or so. I think about that for a second, then head back to bed. This time I'd left the door unlocked. I try to lie down and relax again but my right big toe is throbbing. I caught it under the corner of the dresser while breaking into my bedroom. I try to ignore it and breathe slowly, but a quick prod with my other foot makes me sit up again. Fuck: I'm bleeding, and all over the bedsheets, too.  I have to sit up for a minute and just feel sorry for myself at this point. Then off to the bathroom to find a bandaid. I decide there's not much I can do right now in the way of cleaning either the wound or the sheets - better leave it til tomorrow (one of my life's mantras). I head back to bed and stare out the window, waiting for the porch light to go off. I see one neighbour throw a bag into their car. Fuck again, are they leaving? He meant they were leaving in 10 minutes. The other neighbour comes down the stairs, turning the porch light off on her way out. I watch them load the last of their clean laundry into the car, start up, and drive off.

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things my boyfriend doesn't believe in

- umbrellas
- lip balm
- yoga
- helmets
- rice cookers

previously:
- proper winter outerwear (since converted)

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hahaha oops.

So I sort of took off to Costa Rica for a while and then started a new job. My book project was even shorter lived than I had imagined it would be. There is just no accounting for my attention span these days.

Anyway, I did get in a couple more books before taking off. Here's what's up:

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

This was enjoyable to read and fit nicely within the one-week timeframe. I may have been pushing it towards the end, but at least for the first half or so I actually found it so enjoyable, in that nice combination of easy-to-read-but-still-feels-smart, that I preferred it to television (even television!) I would say it’s worth some of the hype but not all of it. The general comments on the hipster yuppie lifestyle (organic markets, rustic cuisine, renovated industrial spaces) sort of made me die inside, though…after all, this book was written 10 years ago. How embarrassing not only to be that way, but to be so far behind the curve.

Room by Emma Donoghue
I sat down to read this one Sunday afternoon and basically didn’t get up until I’d finished reading it that evening. It’s not that it’s that good – it’s pretty good – but that I was just desperate to finish it because the storyline was so horrifying that I needed to see the end of it. If you don’t know anything about this book before reading it then you’re probably in a better starting position than I was (and also apparently living under a rock). I feel that it’s best when you come to it with no expectations. I was concerned that it’s a little gimmicky, in a way that could be considered exploitative, but I think Emma Donoghue handles it pretty well.


Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

This is absolutely not a one-week read. Although it requires some dedication, I would also not recommend rushing through it. Also, anyone who complains to me that they just ‘can’t get into it’ will get absolutely no sympathy from me. I don’t believe that books need to be difficult in order to be good, but I also don’t think that being ‘easy to read’ is necessarily a good thing either. I think this one is worth the effort. It’s interesting, beautiful, and well done. Finish it.

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Week... 3: Rabbit, Run

I am taking some obvious liberties with these 'weeks' but that is fine with me.

So here are some thoughts on the novel Rabbit, Run by John Updike. I started off not liking this book very much for two reasons. The first is that it begins with the title character, Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, suddenly becoming fed up with his life and and leaving his pregnant wife and son one evening for an impromptu road trip. He decides he wants to drive to the west coast and see the ocean (they're in Pennsylvania). I thought that if this was going to be a self-indulgent road trip book then I was definitely going to hate it. But it isn't. Unlike On the Road and other books like it that sort of make you fall out of love with America, I feel like Rabbit, Run looks at what happens when one man becomes unsatisfied with the mediocrity of his life and the effect it has on the people around him. The second thing I didn't like was the incredible amount of description, mainly because it made it hard for me to read quickly. But the book is so well-written that I eventually got over my desire to get through it quickly and I got to enjoy John Updike's style of giving beautiful descriptions to mundane items.

I also got annoyed because one of the female characters, Ruth (whom I also most identified with), is always described (often in great detail) as being a little bit fat. More than a little bit. At one point her actual weight is given and it is the same as MY weight, so I took issue with that. But given that it happened early in the book and that John Updike is dead now, I have decided to forgive it. I also had a funny moment when the character of Reverend Eccles was introduced because I realized, a few pages later, that the church I went to while growing up was on Eccles Street. Funny also because I felt that Eccles was maybe the only funny character in a book that was, overall, not funny. Mostly sad. But also good. 

Next week: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. More books about America, oh god.

P.S. in case you are interested, I am currently #364 out of 1606 for the book Room at the Toronto Public Library. So exciting.

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very interesting.

Look at what I just figured out:

Bruce, circa 1978 / Darkness

Jess Mariano, circa my teenage years.

I know, it's pretty obvious but only just occurred to me now.

I miss Jess.

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fail.

OK, so I admit to a small amount of failure here. I am still reading Rabbit, Run. In my defense...it's 250 pages and I'm unemployed. What? Alright, I don't know. I've been busy. I know my millions of readers are disappointed. Mea culpa. I'll be done by next Monday.

In other news, I've been fascinated by the progress of my requests at the Toronto Public Library. Our April book club book is Room by Emma Donogue, you know the one that won all the awards last year. So I started in at request number 1500 or so in January and I am currently down to 545 of 1651. Amazing progress. I check this thing every morning, sometimes multiple times a day, just to see my number move down and figure out if I'll get it in time to read it for book club (I figure I need it by the last week of March) or if I will be forced to buy the thing. Fascinating. I recommend you engage in a library race of your own, maybe with the next Oprah's book club selection or something. Franzen?

P.S. Big love for the TPL, you guys are the best. No matter what city council says.

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Week 2: Red Harvest

So I'm about a week late with this, even though I did finish the book on time last week. Oops. I guess I am just not used to posting this often.

I enjoyed this one and would recommend it. I guess it wouldn't appeal to everyone but it's a quick read and worth the effort. If you're a fan of noir fiction or hardboiled main characters or at least old-fashioned slang and a lot of descriptions of prohibition-era mixed drinks, then I think you'd probably enjoy it. If you enjoy all four then you've probably already read this book. I guess the title refers to the fact that just about every main character except the very main one (the nameless Continental Op detective) meets a violent death. But in spite of the violence, it's not so very gory. This has a lot to do with the attitude of the main character and the novel itself, which is unsentimental and almost relaxed, even during shootouts or when waking up beside dead bodies.

I like the way this novel is written. Not a lot is said (by either the characters or the author), but that casual, cynical, unsentimental, and also often very funny (in a black humour kind of way) attitude comes across really well. Hammett spends a lot of time describing other people but not describing the main character, except in relation to others (like when he is sizing someone up for a fight). I guess that's part of the point too, a nameless and somewhat shapeless (40ish, average height, not quite trim) main character who could be just about anyone except for his excellent abilities as a detective (or "dick", in the parlance). He manages to stay alive, almost by accident (it would have to be accident with all the violence and danger around him), and is able to put facts together into story-lines that make sense logically but otherwise would have no reason to be put together simply by existing. But oh well. Considering it's a detective novel, I guess I can believe that the detective in it has remarkable detective powers. Especially since it's the only thing that's remarkable about him at all. This is clearly a book for boys but not in a way that I find annoying.

Next week (which will be more like later this week): Rabbit, Run by John Updike.

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