Stew

Somewhat to my surprise, more than two people are tapping my bspot from time to time, so I thought after that last rather sad and pathetic entry a couple of weeks ago I'd better write SOMETHING to let everyone know I haven't abandoned this thing. I've just been busy with love, juggling my five part-time jobs, and figuring out what to set my longterm sights on career-wise and how to prepare for entry this winter into McGill's BA of Social Work program (the most promising option for eventual work consolidation so far.)

Spilling my guts last time spurred me into action: though I needed money, too, a day later I decided I needed to do some heavy lifting around my house more and refused a day at PSL so I could reacquaint myself with where I live. That Friday was also the day a beloved one was coming to visit so I had to make sure that at least all the things she would have to touch would be clean!

No startling revelations from the piles yet--I've just begun to scratch the surface--but if my bathroom magazine pile is any indication, the oldest strata of mess in some places goes back to at least 2000. There is so, so much left to throw out, though the garbagemens' backs may have done so already.

The timing of this wee turnaround was perfect because my house was filled with love all last week, further inspiring me to try to do at least an hour of housework a day during the week, and a couple more on the weekends.

Shmariko (Mariko, formerly known as Shawna) meant to come for just a weekend, but had such a blast visiting me, Montreal, and some other friends, that she ended up staying with me a week.

I had such a wonderful nesty time with her. She helped me set up my DVD player and new tv, shared a new obsession with 'The L Word', made us some inspired meals (a touch of curry and cinnamon in a busting lasagna; a portobello mushroom cream roasted garlic chicken coriander tomato ricotta and ? pasta sauce...getting fatter all the time), talked with me a lot, lay around reading and listening to great music, cut my hair, left loving surprise post-it messages for me all around the house, freaked me out by playing her banjo when I wasn't looking (GOD, they're loud and terrifying!) and spooned with me every night. It was fucking fantastic. Having her here really lifted my spirits and transformed how I relate to this place. I sat in different places and enjoyed new views of my home. The living room is full of such blazing light in the morning--something I have rarely bothered to enjoy without someone else to drink coffee with me in there.

Now the other love of my life, Jesse, is coming for a four-day stay on Thursday night. How I wish he could stay much longer.

The full sink is calling. More later.

Involuntary Muscles

Open call to friends: please come stay with me! Not in the next couple of weeks, though, because my place is currently clogged with enormous amounts of embarrassing junkI don't want you to see. You may think, oh c'mon, I'm no neat freak, how bad can it be? You really don't want to know. Suffice it to say, my cat is running out of floor space to navigate and some of these things are off-gassing as their organic compounds transform, OK? Let's rephrase that: please come stay with me after giving me two weeks' notice!

There is only one other apartment I have ever seen that even comes close to so loudly declaring stuckness and despair. I once knew an eccentric guy whose small apartment was so full of years and years' worth of hoarded documents that his living space consisted merely of pulpy corridors leading to the fridge and the bed. Very soon after moving out of there, he came out of the closet. Perhaps he had wanted to come out and be gay a long time before but simply lost his way to the door.

Friends have been hearing about the horrors of my apartment for quite a while, but believe me, it has only in the last few months reached its nadir. Its dilapidated state is so advanced that a corner of me is almost in awe of its monumental awfulness. It is the place of someone who for quite some time has not wanted to admit to living here. I have been so sad and so divided inside myself for so long that I didn't want to get into the boring rhythyms of normal housekeeping and their confluence with life's larger cycles. I've been ambivalent about being alive. I was afraid. I didn't want to be rooted anywhere. I didn't want to be a properly self-interested animal, making a nice place to curl up and sleep at night. I didn't want to be on a regular schedule. Then I would have to live up to regularly dealing with hundreds of external unpleasantnesses that would no sooner be dealt with than be replaced with other, possibly more protracted, ones.

In my agonized frame of mind, this seemed too much to bear. I wanted to be somewhere else, always somewhere else. Oh no, not for me to keep the dust and material chaos at bay. It's a losing battle that never ends, so why pick a fight?

I really knew I was in trouble when I realized this negative anticipation was causing me to procrastinate sleep! I knew I would blink then wake up still having to take care of all those hateful dirty dishes.

Now I'm starting to get that if you're not pretty much constantly struggling against entropy, you're not really alive. Without time's cycles of drudge and occasional delight, how can we tell it? How can we tell the stories upon which our lives depend? If you're not here to sweep up, push up, step up, and organize your spice rack, then what the hell are you doing on this planet? We are everywhere living corporeality whether we like it or not. It is what we are: divine thoughts made flesh: chemical concerts fighting infection: the absurdity of lust: Einstein taking a fulsome crap.

Interestingly, throughout the many dark days and months of the last few years, I never had any trouble keeping on top of my personal hygiene and peripatetic coverings. I think most acquaintances and even friends would be shocked by the contrast between the carefully chosen colours and textures of my dress, and the piles on top of piles on top of the I-don't-even-remember-what-the-fuck's-in-there all over my apartment. I think it's very telling that I kept up my outward appearance while living like a beggar in my own home. I kept the terribleness I felt INSIDE. I quite literally tried to barricade inside my private lair parts of me I couldn't bring myself to love.

Now they want to stretch out. They want to play. They don't want to be lonely anymore.

A very dear one is coming to visit from out of town this weekend. I believe her when she says she'd love me no matter what. It's time I began to learn how to extend that fecund generosity to myself. Love is work sometimes.

For each cleaning session I'll write a little something here about some newly unearthed, forgotten item that most stirs me into remembering who and where I've been. It will be an archaeology of the heart. Or ridiculous. One by one I'll look at all my things and say goodbye to most of them. Let the work-in-progress show itself.

Maybe I'll find enough quarters to buy some fresh paint.

The Deadline

I need to remind myself, limits are productive. I am dealing with a mixed bag of them, some obviously positive, some less apparently so. On the good side, I have until October 2006 to spend $5 000 of government program money on education. Very lucky me. On the other side, I received a bit of disappointing news this week. I finally got hold of a live human in McGill's department of Educational and Counselling Psychology where I had hoped I might begin an MA in Counselling Psychology next fall. She told me a minimal requirement for applying is an honours Psychology BA. Instead I have a not-so-honourable Specialization BA in Communication Studies. Back to the drawing board, learning all the time.

Next possibility in line to check out: a special 14-month McGill BSW program that would begin a year from now. This would prepare me to work as a social worker and set me up for some subsequent training in psychotherapy. Over the course of my career I would like at different times to work as a therapist, mediator, interpersonal communications/conflict resolutions trainer and writer. But how exactly to connect the dots? This remains to be seen. I need to explore and meditate much further. Right in front of me to do: entry into some pre-requisite undergrad courses, like intro to statistics; some new volunteer work (which I have no idea about yet); and improvement of my French.

If by mid-fall it seems dicey that I'll be able to get into the BSW program in time to meet my spending deadline, I may just take my upgraded French skills and apply for January admission into Concordia's Translation MA program, as well (a much less ambitious undertaking), moving up a flexible means to make an okay living doing something else I love, and postponing achievement of the goals above until I am no longer struggling so hard financially.

I am still very mixed up as to whether I should stay in Montreal and pursue these things along with completion of my advisory committee involvement in the Polyvalence project regarding non-gay/non-straight peoples' access to local healthcare services, or move to Toronto in the fall and head off on another path altogether, being with Jesse and my family, making a life of work with writing and continued ESL teaching. There's a lot of mystery for me to act within as I try to sort these things out.

My grandma is driving me a bit nuts during this nothing-is-certain process. Lord love her, she is the only through and through sensible person in my family, always most interested in what bus I took to see her, how my friends from the distant past are faring, whether I am warm, fed, and have enough money. She lives to see that the basics of subsistence are all looked after. Though we are opposites in terms of what we prefer to think about, she and I have always had a remarkably warm and profound bond. She has always loved me intensely while trying to be understanding of my ethereal ways.

Now she is 93, unable to take in much new information, and more exclusively running her brain along certain key grooves. She's the one who mostly drives our conversations in predictable directions now, and what she all the time wants to know is: "Are you in school yet?!" Last time we talked she said, "Oh I probably shouldn't say this but I want you to be settled (ie. 'good' job track, with extra points if you marry) before I die!"

This made me laugh because she's effectively told me that when I finally do get onto some kind of abundantly fruitful adult track, she'll be able to relax enough to die! And make no mistake, if anyone was ever iron-willed enough to decide exactly when to kick on off out of this world, it would be Mary Minnion.

If that's what she wants to hold out for then let go, that's all right with me in the big view. I know she and I will have to let each other go relatively soon. I know I need to move on no matter what everyone else is living or dying for. Full life requires we make and respect our deadlines.