Special to Ex-Montrealers

It's taken about twenty years for the city to finally begin overhauling the the crumbling macrame knot deathtrap known as the Parc Ex interchange, but look up from it to the west before you crash and you can see it took but a few hours notice for municipal workers to change something we all cherish, heathens and Christians alike: the huge Vegas-like cross on top of the mountain. How prescient of me to have opened my old pope blog with a Prince lyric. As soon as the world became popeless, the cross turned PURPLE. I'm enjoying it like a comet cuz it will be back to yellow by the end of the week.

Also to those of you who have loved and been lost to Montreal, I am sorry to report that the city's trend towards blandifying its funkiest (and I do mean funky in all senses of the word) decor continues. What is this, Toronto?? I guess in this sense, kind of. An unfortunate by-product of a city on a huge economic upswing seems to be that all sorts of beloved quirky old buildings, interiors, and signs bearing witness to all the different eras of an old city get made over with all the originality and panache of a Comfort Inn.

Of special sadness to me is the loss of weird signs from the sixties. One example: remember the sign of Florateria at the corner of Pine and St. Urbain--the shop that was started by two of the Dionne quints? Black background with big and small boxy white script unlike any other? Gone. (Though the green and orange slat awning remains...for now.) The worst of it is, this sign, like most of the other losses, has been replaced not only with something really boring, but something that isn't even trendy. What's the point of changing a great old sign like that if you're not even going to cash in by attracting trendy customers?? At least in Toronto cool old things get turned into homogenous but fairly good-looking things (industrial minimalism with bounced coloured light, anyone?) In Montreal cool old things get turned into something your grandma would have liked circa 1988. Look what they did to deli Reubens. Another nice sign about to disappear: the huge south-facing label of the old brick Southam Press building on Bleury. It's now obscured by yet another banner announcing EVEN MORE new condos.

Think of any fascinatingly crusty old underused building or unexpected little green and muraled vacant lot you used to be fond of. I garauntee you it has been or is currently being turned into a condo development.

If you care about anything but aesthetics, this is not all bad. Many great historical facades may end up being preserved precisely because many people are living and working behind them again. More people choosing to live in the city is also good for inspiring little spin-off service businesses and overall civic vitality, and really, really good in terms of discouraging people from wasting lots of gas and municipal tax money in catering to inefficient suburban/commuter living. I just wish not all of this new housing was geared to high-earners whom you will still never see walking around the neighbourhood vivifying public space. Though in this small city almost everything an able body could need is within walking distance, the luxury condo yuppies still drive to the dry cleaners. My recently hyper-developed quartier has a thousand new residential units yet still looks like a ghost town at at sreet level.

New Yorkers get it. I hope Montrealers someday will, too.

Very Punny

An unfortunate aspect of being attracted to people for whom abstract thought comes easily is the tendency for such people to be unable to resist sharing with you their many horrible puns. These guys will often insist that their talent for aligning dissimilar mental associations by exploiting similarities in linguistic forms results in a high-minded, meritorious form of humour. I usually disagree. What's the difference between showing off over drinks by pointing up the fact you know how to rhyme two words with very disparate meanings, and showing off over drinks by trying to get into a headstand on the bar? The headstand has a hope of making me laugh.

Not all puns are created equal, however. If, in playing with forms, you can come up with a well-situated pun--one dropped into a phrase or conversation in such a way that it elegantly conjures up with equal force two or more uncomfortably juxtaposed sets of associations that are each equally relevant to the larger conversation--then you've got a winner on your hands. Location, location, location. It is everything.

Jesse came up with a good pun today.

I had been thinking about how completely my attraction to women was obliterated for years after my girlfriend fell in love with and left me for one of our friends. Now I occasionally find myself fantasizing about sex with women, but still almost never without recourse to some kind of imagined threesome scenario including a male lover. Today I was laughingly sharing with Jesse my realization that, after living most of my twenties as an out lesbian might, several years later, my sexual subjectivity can now be best described as 'bi-curious'. I feel much more 'bi-curious' these days than bi. I don't want to be naked in bed with a woman all alone! Women are terrifying! They can really, really (no, really!) hurt me with their figurative and literal social proximity.

Jesse suggested, "Maybe you're bi-furious."

Score one for the punsters!

I certainly was furious about being left, but I nominate this term as a replacement for 'biphobic'. I think the main reason so many monosexuals get all riled about bisexuality is because it is synonymous with "defection" in their minds. They are afraid of and angry with people who cannot or refuse to constrain themselves inside binarily-opposed categories of sexuality that do not adequately account for their desire or experiences. Because of (usually) erroneous assumptions about what they need to be happy in a relationship, bisexuals are people that are easier to imagine leaving you one day. Nevermind that in fact we're just as often the ones who get left. When I get left, I'm just furious. If you choose to blame my bisexuality for my leaving you, you're bi-furious.

Stop Sign, or, Don't Read Semiotics When You're Stoned

These days I'm very much enjoying my friend Viviane K. Namaste's book, Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. It's jogging my brain, inspiring me, and helping me more deeply understand the philosophical underpinnings of the reflexive poststructuralist methodology of the sociological study she has designed to investigate what barriers exist to certain local populations (bisexual-identified women, swingers, and men who have sex with men and women without identifying as bi) accessing health care services. I'm on the advisory committee for this project. More about that later.

I'd had a lovely joint and a snack this afternoon when I sat down at a sunny table for a read. I stayed there until I got to this passage in V's larger exploration of metaphor as a socially-constitutive rhetorical device quite distinct in its operations and effects from mere comparisons or substitutions. She quotes philosopher Max Black (p.97):

"We are supposed to be puzzled as to how some expression (M) , used metaphorically, can function in place of some literal expression (L) that is held to be an approximate synonym; and the answer is that what M stands for (in its literal use) is similar to what L stands for. But how informative is this? There is some temptation to think of similarities as "objectively given," so that a question of the form "Is A like B in respect of P?" has a definite and predetermined answer. If this were so, similes might be governed by rules as strict as those controlling the statements of physics. But likeness always admits of degrees, so that a truly "objective" question would need to take some such form as "Is A more like B than C on such and such a scale of degrees of P?" Yet, in proportion as we approach such forms, metaphorical statements lose their effectiveness and their point."

Two clear-headed readings later, I can follow up on the implications of this quote, but in trying to do so yesterday while high, I got living proof of (temporarily, I hope) having lost my effectiveness and point. I put V's book back in my bag and went out to buy a Star magazine and a jumbo Snickers.

Glass, Shit, and Dirt

Spring has sprung here in Montreal! It's a gloriously sunny revelation of dog turds, broken bottles, and grit whirlwinds in the road. Filthy icebergs still fill parking lot corners while girls are showing off their legs in the newly-warm light. It's very nice, if a bit hard on the cyclists and asthmatics. I can't wait until it rains some more and turns the mountain green. There will be hundreds of different shades of leaves and blades in the beginning. I like to walk trails up and over the top of the mountain to sit in a glade or by Beaver Lake on my downtown lunchbreaks. Sun dappling green green grass. Les Piknics Electroniks vont recommencer bientot, aussi. Summer here, with the terrasses, heat, depanneur beer and popsicles, rowdy Quebecois and ex-pats, is without peer. It almost makes clawing your way through a Montreal winter worth it. Almost.

In Praise of Nothing

I'm pretty new to 12-step meetings. I've probably attended about ten altogether. Last week I returned to my favourite group after having been away for eight months. For that time I didn't think it necessary for me to go but, after having recently read Healing the Shame That Binds You (a tremendously helpful book by John Bradshaw), I thought it would be really good for me to get back into Al-Anon.

Bradshaw emphasizes the importance of exteriorizing one's toxic shame (an affliction suffered by all codependents) by sharing one's experience of it with trusted and supportive others. We who feel it have a tendency to isolate ourselves and to 'act it out' in very hurtful and inappropriate ways unless we give ourselves permission to be open about our struggles and imperfection and mindfully share our vulnerability with others. With their emphasis on rigourous honesty, reflection, acceptance, and sharing without interference with or from others, among many other very positive things, participating 12-step groups is very highly recommended as one way to go about healing excruciating and immobilizing shame.

As a recovering codependent, I have a lot of inter- and intra-personal habits that have gotten me into trouble with others and myself--habits that at times can help make some of my relationships more painful or unpleasantly complicated than they might otherwise be.

I've often been rewarded (with props AND unwanted psychological burdens) for being an interpersonal 'fixer'--someone who hesitates not at a bit before leaping into action (usually uninvited) whenever something uncomfortable is happening among the people who surround me. I am slowly learning that other peoples' disharmony need not cause me to be terrified or to feel responsible for helping resolve their problems. I am also beginnning to appreciate how arrogant, faithless, and potentially destructive it can be to jump into a 'peacemaking' or advice-giving role, especially if no one has asked directly for my input.

Right before last week's first meeting in a while, I had been wrestling with myself as to whether I should encourage some family members to bring a conflict between them out in the open--a passive-aggressive debacle that has been simmering like a cabbage and brocolli brew under my nose and intermittently troubling me for decades. I really didn't know which tack to take-- instigate a confrontation, or totally avoid these people when they're together, and thereby miss out on some important family gatherings.

My Al-Anon group is so big that we usually have to break into two smaller groups in two rooms separated by a closed door during the 'sharing' part of the meeting so that everyone can have a chance to speak. I had learned from experience that one member, someone who has been badly hurt in life, tends to get so vehement and angry during his 'shares' that he really agitates me.

Last week, as usual, I made sure to choose the room he would not be in. As I sat by the door, already straining to hear a member of my group over the whoosh of air ducts, this man's bellowing from the other room became so loud that I couldn't. I became very irritated and filled with dislike for this guy. I wondered what I should do. Should I poke my head into the other half of the meeting and ask him to please quiet down? This would be a very unusual thing to do--something I would expect this longtime member to meet with a great deal of hostility, especially wound up as he was. Making no comment on other peoples' sharing is a foundational aspect of participation in meetings.

But what about my right to be able to participate in the meeting by being able to hear what others in my group were saying? Surely I couldn't be the only one who was bothered by his loudness. Would taking this risk do anything useful, or would it just bring me even more discomfort? I decided it was in my best interest to remind myself that his turn would probably soon be over, and to just try my best not to let myself be further distracted by my irritation with him.

When the two halves rejoined at the end of the meeting to hold hands in a circle for the closing ritual, I thought, "There's no freakin way I'm holding HIS hand", and placed myself across the room from him.

Once we'd all said the serenity prayer together, our hands dropped and the room erupted into a bunch of lively conversations--like a good cocktail party, erm, without the cocktails. Not knowing anyone, I felt awkward and shy, so, rather than striking up or joining a conversation, I busied myself with taking down and putting away some of the program books and posters. In order to retrieve my coat from the opposite side of the crowd before leaving, whom should I have to sidle my way past but this guy who had so offended me. As I did, feeling all bristly, he happened to greet another member next to me with warm (normal volume) enthusiasm. I took note.

Tonight, when it was time for the group to split in two, I thought, "You want some surprises, you want to be more open...why not stay in the same group with this guy and see what happens?" Out of about seven meetings with this guy, this happened to be the only one in which he remained calm during his share. Not only that, but he impressed me with his intelligence and articulation. I could tell he appreciated what I had to say, too, because he looked in my eyes and nodded with recognition a few times as I was speaking.

At the end of meeting when it was time to get in a circle, there was no one in the space between the two of us. Being still somewhat unfamiliar with the rituals, I took his hand a bit early. I almost dropped it when I realized it wasn't quite time to do that, but it felt okay there, so I just gently but firmly held it. He didn't pull away from me, either.

That was all pretty damn cool, no thanks to any 'proactivity' or stage directions from me, and I look forward to next Wednesday night.

As to my family problem, I now have my answer. It's enough simply to say once and in the moment that a behaviour is bothering me and to humbly ask someone to stop doing something that hurts me or makes me uncomfortable and leave it at that. If that doesn't prompt more desirable behaviour, I always have the option of removing myself rather than uselessly trying to change someone else. That way I preserve my well-being and the possibility that I can return to the scene later if I want to see what else can happen, without rancour or implicitly disrespecting anyone's right to make their own choices.

Sometimes it's even more helpful and interesting for me in the long run to do nothing at all.

You can be the President, and I can be the...

How extra kinky are those Princely lyrics these days?? They always made me laugh, but jeez...

I was watching news coverage of the Vatican vigils a few days ago and I must admit I felt a bit like I was in the middle of a psychotic break. Not an unfamiliar feeling whenever I watch the news, really, but that night I could not make sense of anything coming out of anybody's mouth for a full half hour. So many mixed metaphors, so little religious education I've had..."He's stood with his God and now he's going to meet Him." "He has always prayed for us; now it's time for us to pray for him." Were the faithful worried he'd need a little help getting past the golden rope? If so, just what juicy transgressions had JP filed away under his big hat? Had they just forgotten to pray for him before? What was going on?

A few people have tried to relieve me of some of my vast ignorance about these matters. Apparently this pope mightily distinguished himself by coming out against communism and helping it collapse under his disapproval. Now that the Soviet Bloc's in chips it seems we have more overt corruption and instability in so many of the most impoverished and vulnerable places, not to mention a greater proliferation of bloodthirsty repressive regimes than in a long time, but perhaps on balance the world's no more or less to hell in a handbasket than it was before in terms of human suffering. Dolled-up fascist threats or more cloaked ones, which are worse, I don't know. One way or another, there's no denying it was a remarkably worldly and principled rhetorical contribution he made in that regard. If only his defense of moldy anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-gay, and anti-women-in-the-priesthood sentiments had been less spirited. I think I DO know something of how much massive suffering he could have helped avert had he been more down to earth.

He is now. All the cardinals are in lockdown with his corpse, and the suspense is great. Did you, too, hear that according to tradition, someone in high places is supposed to knock on his head with a silver hammer about now, but they won't this time? Why is that? Are they worried with all the cameras lurking around that his ear will fall off in an untimely manner? I also heard several electromagnetic scans were taken of his body. To make sure all the God has gotten out? I have so many questions.

Did anyone else get a kick out of seeing the film footage of John Paul as a championship skier in younger days? He was supposed to be one to watch out for on the soccer field, too. As someone drily observed, you'd have to be pretty competitive to get the keys to that office. We'll soon see who's next.

Where Credit is Due You

I'm going to cannonball into Narcissus's pool most of the time in these posts, but I have so many clever and funny friends and acquaintances that I will not be able to resist (after careful consideration of what's worth stealing) quoting some of their comments from time to time. Be assured I'm going to think very carefully about how to guard everyone else's anonymity when I do this, so please don't be too nervous. The only people from my life who know about this blog are far away from me and each other, so I don't anticipate any indiscreet blunders, BUT if you happen to recognize an idea or phrase in here you want to lay claim to, send me an e-mail, and I'll be delighted to attach your name to it as requested. Of course I'll be delighted--it'll mean one other person ever read this besides me!

Lockless Diary

I enjoyed reading my friend Thirza's amazing blog so much (see 'fit of pique', also on blogger), I decided to start my own.

Since I already annoy all my loved ones by talking in full paragraphs, why not actually post these and save everyone some phone bills?

I'm an ESL teacher who is endlessly fascinated by verbal construction. Reading someone after only having spoken with them can be a revelation. Writing allows us a freedom and breadth of expression that the space-time continuum does not often permit conversation.

I want interested friends and family far away to be able to access something of my meandering mind if they want to, even if we cannot get in touch directly at a given moment. This way, if you ask me how I am and I say nothing but, "I'm OK. How are you?", and you happen to want more, you can check here and judge for yourself if that's true!