Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

A Picture's Worth...

I didn't write about it, but here's a link to the pictures of my trip to Alaska with James & Zondra.

That should be enough photos to cover up my lack of words for the trip.

I didn't have that many words this summer, not after bottling them all up about Mom's cancer diagnosis and the subsequent caretaking of her. Sometimes I just can't go there, writing can be a vulnerable thing for me.

posted by: coldwish at 05:53 | link | comments (4) |
alaska/denali 2008

Repost: The McCain and My Ass Encounter

Okay, folks, I've never done this before, reposted a previous post in order to make a point, but there ya go, John McCain, is now a presidential candidate, and apparently an ass man.

So here it is.

_____________________

Ice Styles of the Rich & Famous

“the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell”

I couldn’t resist. I had to do it. I had to get my confrontation in while he was in town. His father disgusted me beyond belief with his right wing corruption. He is saddled with the same name: John Sununu. He said he likes to say  “I got my father’s intellect but luckily my mother’s personality.” McCain said of his father, whispered in my ear, “I didn’t like him. His father was a real pain in the ass to deal with.” He also mentioned something about Sununu’s mother being a really impossible woman.

My first interaction was all charm and flirtation on my part, I couldn’t quite bring myself to attack him immediately on his regrettable Republican politics. It had been hard enough to get his attention, he was zoomed in on a beaker and talking science talk. A graduate of MIT, it made sense he’d be a geek that way too. But still, the reception had been presented as a chance for them to meet with their constituents, and I and the fellow next to me both had tags reading New Hampshire on them. Constituents. Also known as voters? As in pay attention to me now or I’ll vote your ass out of office? The beaker? Not so much a voter. But no, I had had already heard that he was the master of the disinterested social encounter and the quick dismissal or pass down. His body language was such, when approached by an actual constituent with a concern or a question, that he immediately leaned his body back and crossed his arms in front of him. So my NH companion had already been dismissed, eliminated from the conversation. Sununu had no interest in us.

I stood there a good five minutes, feet away from him, not even on the periphery of his vision, but within a foot of the beaker upon whom he was so focused, in front of Sununu. Eventually, I stood there so long he could not ignore me any longer. So he read my tag, and did the smile handshake greet me by name thing. Luckily I had decided to place my name tag on my left arm, as opposed to on one of my breasts. I do not need a man, let alone a politician, spending several hours reading my left breast just to remind himself of my name. No need to encourage bad behaviour, or excuse it. It also made it much more obvious when they had scanned my name, as their eyes had to travel further away from my face than normal.

He talked about all the souvenirs he was bringing home for his children, and within a few sentences had looked behind me and grabbed my elbow, turned me around and was introducing me to John McCain. What could I say? Had he noticed I was headed for a question? If so, I wasn’t aware of it. Was the polite banter fading and the dark clouds of my liberalism were beginning to show?  What the fuck? But bang! There I was shaking hands with an incredibly frail-looking but charming as usual John McCain.

But y’know? I’d already met him. I was from NH fer cryin’ out loud. We’ve all bloody met him and every other presidential candidate of all parties at Town Meetings and Speeches. These guys crawl all over NH for TWO YEARS before an election. So I reintroduced myself and McCain stumped for Sununu. Yeah. Thanks dude. But, short as he was, pale as he was, unhealthy-looking as he was, he still had a certain je ne sais quoi about him.  Not quite of that Clintonian je ne sais quoi that caused a shiver to run down the spine of most women who met him, and caused most men to grin like fools. But good enough to compete as a politician. That’s why he was a national politician, and Sununu not. McCain has it. The smile, the wit, the attentiveness. He’s also got integrity and honesty and the willingness to change his mind and learn from his errors, if not apologize for them.

We talked about Dover, my mother’s home town. Of course, he’d been there dozens of times. We get them all.  But he was all about Sununu, and I wasn’t interested. At least not in Sununu.

He got pulled away, passed me off and I was back to the party floating politico-less, passed off passed down by both men.

So I went and found Senator Susan Collins of Maine. There I found several other NH constituents surrounding her (having been sloughed off by Sununu too) charmed, fascinated, and laughing. Collins had fallen in love with Antarctica and was excitedly telling us about her adventures to the Dry Valleys (the ventifacts blew her away) and the South Pole. She had been affected by the altitude of the Pole, and during a speech welcoming them she had noticed blue spots floating on the Big Red parka in front of her. She thought it was odd, looked off to the side and noticed that the same blue spots were floating on her neighbour’s face. So she stepped back out of the crown where the flight nurse noticed her and took her blood pressure. She was fine, just altitude sickness. But she was bound and determined, largely because she is one of only two women in the delegation, not to be the one to faint.  I can understand that.

When she finally wound down her stories, blissfully excited by her trip, none of us were anything but envious of Mainers, and enchanted by her complete & utter FNGness. She was pulled away and we stood there looking at each other.

“OK, so we all move to Maine.”

Damn right. We were having Senator envy of our neighbouring state.

We dispersed, many of us Ice folk hovering lustfully by the food, possibly the night’s biggest draw. I heard about blueberries, saw none. Saw someone walking away with a cherry and the broadest grin on her face, saying “Look! A cherry! I have a cherry!” I had a strawberry. They had smoked salmon, too, which was my biggest vulnerability. Last year smoked salmon used to be a regular Sunday Brunch item, but this year I’ve seen it MAYBE 3 times since Winfly. Brunch has been my least favourite meal as a result of that absence. So I nearly fell over imagining the leftovers from this event.  Scoped it out carefully, but was not yet so bold, so early in the evening as to go behind the galley curtain and fetch plastic wrap and wrap it up in front of non-Ice strangers and politicians.

Not before I’d had my say with my damn Senator. Slippery little fucker.

Finally cornered him as he tried to slide by me again, but his mistake, he paused to acknowledge me and he was caught. He asked me if I had enjoyed meeting McCain, and I said certainly yes of course but I had come here as HIS constituent and I wanted to speak with him. He laughed and made some self-derogatory remark about being afraid to bore me, but I didn’t let him get away with that and made quite clear to him he wasn’t to do it again. I was HIS constituent and I had met McCain before. But as a NH resident I wanted his attention. I think I startled him somewhat, because I was being very charming but also very direct. He perhaps was also somewhat shamed into remaining there with me for a few more moments.

We talked about Dover, and the resurgence of the downtown area with the new restaurants after such a hard decade. He mentioned people in Dover he admires (Jack Buckley of Dover Housing) and a few members of the Avis Goodwin Health Center (where I once worked) Board of Directors, and the owner of Red Shoe Barn. But perhaps that was just his smarmy politic nature, mentioning names to make a listener feel commonality. Because I cannot imagine him giving any more face time to them than to me unless they had money for him.

Another NH resident started the political discussion and lobbed him a question about the education system. He tapdanced authoritatively but not very clearly, touching on the base of NH Republicanism which is "government interference." Everything he said was about not legislating change, not imposing change. I have to think, why not? The private sector has proved no more successful (if you refer to success as anything other than private profit) than the government, and in fact with less oversight by the government there is less need to be beholden to the people they serve.

But I digress.

When Sununu wound down I asked him about the high cost of prescription medication and the lack of affordable health care, specially for the working poor. He began the entire thing with, “Well, of course I don’t believe in socialized medicine.” At which point I damn well should have stopped him and asked Why The Fuck Not? But I let him go and He Waffled. He slipped & slithered & tapped & wobbled and in that inimitably inarticulately pointless but intelligent sounding way of politicians had absolutely no answer for me. Trying to get him back on point was like herding cats. He’d feint that way and I’d have to pull him back, he’d bring out a statistic that smacked of lies and I’d have to correct him (he backed down when I did, which I respect). He was blowing smoke out of his ass and I wasn’t amused. I told him to take a good look at some of the efforts Maine has made and he HAD NO IDEA what I was talking about. I told him to talk to Susan Collins about that, after all, they had a long flight back. He said he would.

I bearded the lion, and he stood still for it. My discussion was watched by the other NH constituents and they all recognized that his body language was not that of a man who was enjoying himself. Crossed arms, leaning away from me, unsmiling. I think he was shocked to be contradicted. I have watched so many politicians asked hard questions where the questioner would then fall silent as if the politician were somehow an expert on the subject. I was not there to listen to him hold forth as if he knew better, I was there to engage him as I would any other person with whom I may disagree on a subject. I was looking for a conversation, not a canned speech. I wanted to have an impact on him somehow, without having to throw a drink in his face.

As I stood there engaging my senator, I felt an arm go around my waist familiarly, a slim body about my height snug up against me and a head pop onto my shoulder next to mine to speak privately closely in my ear. I was a bit startled, and assumed in the split second before I heard that voice, that this had to be a woman to be so close to me, to be holding me so, one who knew me well, or perhaps a slightly drunk man taking liberties. But the quiet voice in my ear, the head on my shoulder touching my face, the hand all the way around my waist squeezing me just above my hip was that of Senator John McCain, once more saying how much he loved this man Sununu. Then he slid by behind me after a last squeeze of my waist, his hand falling somewhat to pass across one ass cheek, perhaps accidentally. Gracious me. He said goodnight and moved on. On his way out the door.

Perhaps I should have placed my name tag on my ass instead.

I left that night having done what I could to get my voice heard, but with many questions unanswered, or unspoken. Time was short and my prey was slippery. I wanted to ask Sununu and McCain and Collins why we pay state and federal taxes on our wages down here, while not being covered by the rights of employees in respect to overtime and many other things we lack. I wanted to ask Sununu about so many things, I had been tasked with asking him on behalf of those people who did not have the access I had. I was lucky to be there. Though this was a reception for constituents it was full to bursting with management folks and beakers and even the Kiwi priest. After all, it was still politics, wasn’t it.

At the end of the night, the best part, the politicians had left, and we Ice people were still hanging around. In a land of rationed alcohol, beer and wine will certainly keep us together at the free bar. The food trays, after they were moved off the table, were swarmed; bearing plastic wrap, tinfoil, paper plates we descended like skuas. We were there for the food. Even our illustrious station manager, Eric, was found putting together a take away plate with hunger and freshie need glowing on his face.

Today at lunch I saw Sununu, he recognized me and nodded, eating lunch with Collins. He yelled over two tables to me “Susan is telling me all about it.”

They have flown. They are gone. We are shut of them for the season.

And I’m not absolutely sure if I really really had my ass touched by John McCain.(edit 2008: That's a crock of shit, he DID have his hand on my ass.)

*shrug*

“the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell”
  --the song of Mehitabel (the cat) by Don Marquis

posted by: coldwish at 06:35 | link | comments |
between 2008, housing 2005-06

Ice Links Updated

I have removed blogs that are no longer being updated (except a few special ones), or are being updated, but the blogger is no longer on Ice. I have added some new blogs for current Ice bloggers.

If you hear of any others out there, let me know and I'll add it to the list.

posted by: coldwish at 15:20 | link | comments |
between 2008

Top Ten Things I Learned This Summer

10. I could do Alaska, but not Anchorage. Denali rocks.

9. I want to live in an insulated yurt, with a composting toilet, a well, and tankless water heater. Wireless internet would also be grand. In Cape Breton.

8. I can get sea sick under the right circumstances on the right ship.

7. How to sex herring, and dogfish.

6. I miss Montreal, I miss Montreal bagels, I miss Montreal friends, I miss Montreal at night, I miss the Montreal music scene. But the internet is a marvellous thing and I no longer have to live there. But I do need to improve my visiting frequency.

5. I'm pretty damn sexy for a 43 year old. Enough so, even sans kids, that I seem to have blossomed into a MILF. Where did THAT come from? But then again, I just attended my 25th High School Reunion.

4. Sometimes you CAN go home, other times it's just not right. It helps if you are in a good place in your life. It helps even more if there is the right incentive.

3. Hospitals suck. The health care system in the US bites ass. Thank goodness my mother had insurance. She's alive. My father didn't. He's dead.

2. I'm a healthier person with more self esteem the more I challenge myself to do the things I fear.

1. I'm in love with my niece. Madly, unspeakably, amazingly in love. Even if I can't figure out how to change her diaper, get her to sleep or hold her upright like a baby, not a cat. I'm learning.

posted by: coldwish at 18:00 | link | comments (2) |
between 2008

Ice Date: October 13th, 2008.

'Nuff said.

*****

My Itinerary:

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Flight  AA 1247

Depart: Logan Intl Arpt (BOS) BOSTON Terminal  B               12:20
Arrive: O'Hare Intl Arpt (ORD) CHICAGO Terminal  3            13:59
Flying Time:    2:39

Flight  AA 789 

Depart: O'Hare Intl Arpt (ORD) CHICAGO Terminal  3           15:40
Arrive: Denver Intl Arpt (DEN)                                                17:15
Flying Time:    2:35


HOTEL:  Staybridge Suites - Denver    2  Nights
 
Check In:       Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Check Out:      Thursday, October 09, 2008

7820 Park Meadows Drive
Littleton, Co  80124
303-649-1010  Call me there.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Flight  AA 1519
 
Depart: Denver Intl Arpt (DEN)                                           17:45
Arrive: Los Angeles Intl Arpt (LAX)  Terminal  4                  19:10
Flying Time:    2:25

Flight  7337  

Flight Operated By:     QANTAS AIRWAYS LIMITED
Depart: Los Angeles Intl Arpt (LAX) Terminal  4              20:45  Thurs, Oct. 09, 2008
                                   
                    LOSE OCTOBER 10TH, 2008 OVER PACIFIC (date line)

Arrive: Auckland Arpt (AKL) Terminal  I                          06:05  Sat., Oct. 11, 2008
Flying Time:    12:40
Non Smoking Aisle Seat
Asian Vegetarian Meal

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Flight  7387
Operated By:     JETCONNECT
Depart: Auckland Arpt (AKL) Terminal  D                               09:00
Arrive: Christchurch Arpt (CHC)Terminal  M                          10:20
Flying Time:    1:20

Arrive in Christchurch NZ and stay at either Thomas's or the Y on Hereford St. Raytheon is doing it differently this year, instead of handing us a per diem in advance and booking our space in a Chch hotel/backpackers, they are booking and PAYING direct for the rooms themselves. We are restricted to very few locations we can stay, now. Luckily, I am able to choose Thomas's, since that is by far my preference.

Unfortunately, though, that means I can no longer make extra cash by booking myself for NZ$25/night in a bunk room and pocketing the difference. Which was always sweet. I spent most of the extra pocket cash on Cadbury Mint Chip bars: which apparently are no longer being produced, so there's that moment of depression and savings in a nutshell.

I will console myself with Nestle Coffee Crisps from Canada. They freeze very well.

posted by: coldwish at 12:42 | link | comments |
, between 2008

Greeting The Sun

And the sea lay down quiet and calm on the steam home from the George’s Bank. Smooth curves and gentle billows of glassy water reflected back the three quarter’s full moon on its path back to the boat, a wide glittery swathe on the darkest blue waters. Three men stood on the fantail, two smokers ritually facing the one man working the nets. I, in my own ritual, faced the moon as it swept silvery across the depths to the edge of the boat and the gentle wake we kicked up.

This had been a difficult cruise, on the Delaware II out of Woods Hole. We ran into Hanna, I was on the nightshift, and the entire boat began with a 48-hour hangover handicap from drinking in the Leeside in Woods Hole the night before getting underway. The Delaware is known as the “Dancing Delaware” for its propensity to sit funny on the smallest of waves, and I felt it pretty strongly. In 16 foot seas on the Albatross I was stout and hale, laughing in the face of the waves as they slapped me down during my photo opportunity with the mean grey seas in the background. But I laughed. I loved the trip, I worked hard and met great people.

However, this time,  by the time we reached our third day out and we were maybe 5 foot seas, I was vomiting regularly. Note to self: orange juice burns the throat as it comes back up. I was not as miserable as I had been dry-heaving into a sickbag for three straight hours of the 3 ½ hour ferry ride on The Cat from Bar Harbor, ME to Yarmouth, NS. Along with 85% of the passengers; the ride was like a Monty Python sketch with people vomiting copiously everywhere. The seas were maybe 3 feet at best. But The Cat is an evil boat, unnatural in its relationship to the sea.

The Delaware has a strange relationship with the sea , too. The Albatross IV is a trawler of 187 feet, with a width of 83ft: the Delaware is considerably smaller at 155 feet long and 30 feet wide. Perhaps it is the length, maybe the width. Perhaps it is the surfeit of smokers. I think the latter definitely became a trigger for me once I started feeling uneasy in the ocean troughs. The Delaware’s air system pulls its fresh air from the fantail, and the fantail is where all the smokers go. So I could be sitting well inside the boat and still would have the smoke wafting through and charging up all my nauseous drool glands and making me woof my cookies, and my popcorn, and my noodles, and my sautéed onions, and my…well, you get the picture. I think I vomited so hard at one point I forced a noodle out my nose. Such fun. I made sure to drink a lot of water, so everything came up a bit easier, and my throat did not get as raw.

But it was no where near the misery of The Cat. I was given some meds by the XO Mark, a few pills of meclazine. That calmed the nausea down immensely, but holy shit, either I’m a complete lightweight when it comes to medications/drugs/alcohol (which, really, I am) or that stuff packs a punch. Knocked me out cold for two hours after taking it, and I struggled to remain compos mentis and upright and sexing herring with a sharp knife the remainder of the night. By the end of the night, any lull in the proceedings, and I was leaning against the lab equipment with a knife in one hand and a gutted herring in the other, head bobbed down to my chest and eyes shut.

The smell of fish does not get to me. The smell of diesel does. By the time I was past my sea sickness (about 36 hours total) and had struggled out of the effects of the meclazine--ok, has no one else experienced the side effect of astoundingly sulfurous farts and shits in response to this medication? Goodness, but a dozen stuffed eggs couldn’t raise that kind of an intestinal response out of me!—and had headed to bed for the day, I was exhausted. But around noon the ship had to do its weekly backup generator run. The exhaust of fresh smokey kerosene-smell vented right into my lightless, porthole-less under-decks bunkroom.  The moment I stood up to investigate what seemed to me a dangerous smell, I vomited into the sink. Then struggled out to the fantail where the smell was no better. Eventually I was collected by a concerned crew member and taken to the bridge, where the smell was not so immediate. I fell asleep standing leaning over the rail in the sunshine. By the time I crawled back into my bunk, it was ALARM BELLS and announcements of a fire drill within 15-30 minutes of my head hitting the pillow. I stumbled back on deck muttering one syllable repeatedly in response to every inquiry: “Fuck.” With the occasionally interspersed “Motherfuck” for variety.

I’d like to blame it on the influence of drugs.

But no, I was simply disgruntled and sleepy as fuck.

But regardless of the disorganization, the sea sickness, and the rude awakenings, this has turned out to be another quality trip to sea. All of the negatives are balanced easily by the sunsets and sunrises. In my last trip aboard the Albatross, I had the Noon to Midnight shift, and caught only sunsets. Words from my seagoing brother about ocean sunrises, and smooth oily waters heralding the day, were powerful but on that shift not enough to motivate me to wake in the middle of my night to see it. I was working damn hard on my 12 hour watch, and couldn’t interrupt the sleep. But this shift aboard the Delaware, from 1800h to 0600h netted me the glory of both sunsets and sunrises for the entire trip.

I have watched the sun go down over the ocean countless times in my life, but watching the sun come back--along with a boatload of seasoned sailors and crew members greeting its inevitable but no less precious return--in awe and pleasure, is a great gift.  The dark sky and sea are indistinguishable at first, just black and black. Then a wildly inappropriate orange glow starts creating a line on one horizon, delineating the sea from the sky and showing us once more distance and depth, bringing us back out of the isolated, insulated by darkness, boat we are at night. The glow increases and bleeds across the horizon wider and wider, the red of fire, the orange of Buddha. But the sun is still far away from rising, we still have the reflected light of it to lighten the horizon and sky from intense gratitude to gentle pastels. The ocean pales to blue as the sky pales peach and pink and yellow. Once past the pastel stage the sun starts approaching the actual horizon, and unhindered by clouds, the ripe orange glow of it hints of where it will come up. We are back to bright. Eyes all turn to seek the rise, the actual crack in the sky/sea line through which this blaze of orange charges upward. It is no calm creep up over the horizon, we go from a tiny blink of sun to the full sun in what seems like seconds, and the quiet grinning glee with which we greet it overcomes our common sense. We would all blind ourselves staring straight at the sun. I blink and I have a multitude of suns on my eyelids, burning holes. The boat rocks, so the sun imprints multiples of itself on my retinas, like a child’s daisy of suns.

And this, with the daily return of the sun. Imagine the yearly, once yearly, return of the sun, after a six month stint of darkness and twilight. Imagine how stunned and grateful one would be for the rare sunrise of ONCE a YEAR, as at the South Pole. The mind boggles. For despite our knowledge of the sun’s rhythmic rising and falling every 24 hours, we greet its daily return eagerly on board ship.

But I also greet the moon, and the darkness, with the soothing calm joy that darkness brings me. We all have our rituals on board; so many of which involve the rotation of the sun in and out of our lives.

But I am glad to be almost home. I will recover my land legs in a few days, with the occasional random inner lurch that can have me falling out of a perfectly stationary kitchen chair. I always hope one of these illusionary tilted fundament moments doesn’t come on while I am driving.

In a few weeks, perhaps three, I will be back to the Ice. I am ready for it, emotionally. I spent a lot of my summer escaping, travelling hither and yon: Alaska, Nova Scotia, Montreal, the Atlantic Ocean twice, after a spring spent caring for my mother. Thankfully, she is well. In fact, better with one lung and no tumour than she has been for the last few years. It is a relief to us all.

But now it’s time for me to travel to the end of the earth, as far away from here as I can get without leaving the planet. To another endless flat horizon I yearn to move into, toward which I tilt in glee.

posted by: coldwish at 15:04 | link | comments (3) |
between 2008, woods hole 2008

In Which The Nostalgic Author Turns In An Anti-American Rant

I'm learning more about how much I dislike cities, yet miss the good ones. If I were to live here again, I'd be a very isolated person in the middle of a crowd. I'd be overwhelmed by the nightlife, the choices of gigs, movies, performances, museums, but I would be afraid to go out of my apartment, because there are people are out there. Everything is available. But everything is people. We all know how I feel about people. Don't. Like. Them.

And after how many days here my Japanese has come back full force. Not my French, no, that would be too handy. But my Japanese. I walk into a Metro to buy a ticket and I stand dumb in front of the ticket seller, unable to come up with the simplest phrase "Un billet, s'il vous plait" until the person in front of me says it. I hear French all around me and I understand much of it, but still Japanese is more natural to me now, even after 16 years. So what blurts from me when asked the time is some odd combination of languages, or just dead silence and fear of what I might say and what the response will be, beyond confusion, irritation and a possible, aggressive, verbal, screaming attack like I received so many years ago one night in downtown Montreal.

I brush by crowds of smoking strangers on the crowded street outside a bar, and they say "Scuse". Me, I mutter "Sumimasen" and get all self-conscious and refuse to excuse myself at all at the next person I bump into. I am frozen again, silent in my fear, feeling monolingual when I know I am not.

I would rather be inside the bar, in the crowd, in the loud, where the air is fresh, than outside on the street inhaling all the cigarette smoke. Bars and restaurants have banned smoking, and the streets are a slalom of avoiding smokers. I zig, I zag, I plan my route down St Laurent by the thick clusters and clumps of happy smokers, outside int he glorious night time cool after a hot hot day of sun and sweat and discomfort. They almost ruin the night for me. I, too, walk the streets at night in cool contentedness, having suffered the egregious heat of two days in a row. At night, the streets are less demanding of me. I do not need to seek shade, or keep moving to create my own cooling wind, hating the stoplights pause and the flush of red-faced sweat that attends it. At night, the stores are closed but the window displays are lit up brightly, and I am in my own private cool museum of style, colour, remarkable shapes and things I would not buy even if I had the money. It is a peaceful way of doingt he city. Fewer people to dodge, fewer people hurrying past me when I want to stop. There is time and space at night. If I lived in Montreal again, I would be a night owl in the summers. Mornings would escape me in a fugue of exhaustion and sleep, afternoons I would greet sceptically, disgruntled with my sudden wakefulness, but as the sun went down I would come alive and the city would return to me, my private playground of streets and lights and noises.

I do miss Montreal. Intensely. It is a delicious city of freedoms and memories, and good friends. I have reconnected with many of them, those still living here. Some have not changed, they are the same, live the same as they did in 1985-87 when I lived here. Although I cannot imagine that life, still living the punk life, all these years, it comforts me to see that it's possible in Montreal. If I had chosen that life, it would be mine now and I would be able to sustain it easily. Cobbling together jobs and money-earning schemes to support the focus of my life as a gig-going, record-buying, festival-visiting, member of a group of musicians, artists and friends with wide open minds.

But, now, as an American, I don't have that choice. Canada is not where I return home anymore, and how fearfully heartbreaking that is to me. It is my home, where my heart resides, where my memories come home to roost, where I was formed as who I am, where I learned my critical-thinking, global-yearning, sceptical hopes and dreams. I am not the provincial, navel-gazing, selfish, ignorant American who does not understand her or her country's role in the world, who was shocked to the core by 9/11, who did not understand the historical and militaristic significance of our arrogant actions to cause us to be the target of such hatred and fear.

I grew up in a beautiful country of beautiful people, one where the rest of the world is part of us, where what happens in another country has an impact on us. I did not expect, nor appreciate, the loss of that international visibility, until I moved to the US and suddenly the rest of the world disappeared from view unless the US was doing something to it, or an American was impacted. America is a blind, self-loving, self-satisfied country that does not understand why so many people fear it so terribly. Americans don't realize how vivid that fear is even within them, in the lack of generosity, and honesty and trust shown to complete strangers. They sit on piles of their belongings defending them against neighbours and invaders and strangers, not realizing how they are owned and defined by their things.

So, when I am in Canada, I am indeed home. A casual, friendly, worldly home, where only the rare person doesn't know that Antarctica is Down There not Up There. But I can't come home here. I can only visit.

But, still, I would not live in Montreal again. Cities are no longer what I need. What I need is more space between people, privacy and time to myself. I need peace, not the screamed drunken anger and screeching brakes and loud music, skateboards and laughter that drifts through the open summer windows hoping to suck some little cool into the stuffy apartment. I don't want to meet old friends at a cafe where if I sit by the window I am constantly fending off the beggars and the crazy, I don't want my conversations eavesdropped upon by neighbouring tables. I don't want everything I do to cost money. I don't want to be paralysed by so much choice.

Then, at the same time, I am envious to busting at the seams with the plugged-in nature of many of my friends. They have to make so little effort to see the obscure little foreign film whose review they just read, to hear the new band at the front of a new genre of music, blowing audiences away with live wire energy. The libraries, the museums, the magazine stores, the food stores, the restaurants. The Montreal bagels, the bagel to define bagels.

I am lucky in my friends. I am lucky in my life now. I have got a life of great freedom and adventure, a life I could barely have dreamed for myself when I lived in Montreal so many years ago. And I do it, despite having an American passport, and living in that benighted country. But in my heart and mind, I am a Canadian. And this feels like home.

Even if sometimes, I don't want to go home.

posted by: coldwish at 07:05 | link | comments (2) |
between 2008, montreal 2008

Seatless in Seattle

In early July I was in Seattle for a few days to explore the city. I landed in the new library downtown. I wrote this in a madly scribbled rush of words once I found it and put my bags down. It has been edited a little for spelling and clarity.

My first impressions are Wow! Holy Crap! and Double Wow!  It is a labyrinth of brushed steel and odd levels, open metal bookcases bookended by clouded lucite panels, ceilingless rooms and banks of black flat screen computers on long black tables. This is modern architecture gone mad or even awry.

I take broad metal stairs up into a second floor of meeting rooms, everything the colour red, a fresh-spilt blood red: walls, floor, ceiling. Everything wet red and I can feel my blood boil and my face flush in response as I wander the curved halls around. Inside fresh arteries, only the floor flat to walk on. I am stunned into motionlessness when a door opens in this blood world and out steps a human from the glowing explosion of lime green radiation, an elevator. I enjoy this floor, improbably. It makes me smile, even though I am here needing to pee and not finding the blood red door with the blood red handle in the curved blood red walls under the wavy blood red ceiling.

I go up another floor via a narrow, steep lime green lucite walled escalator past more books and magazines and people clacking madly away, lined up all neat and geometric in front of their screens like a scene from Doctor Who, minds gone away from bodies. All this I see but no way off the escalator to access the magazines, the books, the heart of the library. The floors are not flat, the bookshelves are housed in angled levels, once I reach the top I have to angle my way down in long rectangular how-the-hell-do-I-get-out spirals. I am looking for a place to sit, to relax, to curl up with a book or doze off with a magazine but I am trapped in a sharp-edged Miro sculpture or bright colours and no heart.

The seats I do find are red--or eggplant purple or grey-black--and made of sharp-edged hard foam, like the Red Cross symbol in 3D with four seats each. I hope they are more comfortable than they look. When I  finally re-ascend up this atrium with slanted walls of pale blue-grey I-beams and diamond shaped windows, and the white ceiling is quilted in large duvet-like squares, a padded room for the rising insanity. There is a recessed light in the centre of each white fabric square like a button in a cushion sewn in too tight.

I sit. The seats are hard, rubber-lined foam and corners. Four seats available to each cross and no one willing to sit so close to strangers, backs to them, less than a foot apart. They are not conducive to curling up with a book, but it fits the library. I don't like it. I have just come from SEATAC Airport, and there is more accommodating and welcoming than this monument to the "future". This thing of Seattle pride.

I contrast this place with two libraries I have known, among many: the Dover Public Library, my hometown oasis, and the Denver Public Library--a modern playground of multi-hued abstract blocks from the outside but packed with fresh light and warm champagne-coloured wood. As modern, but a place where one can secrete oneself among the stacks with light and airy comfort and warmth and hear the whispers of collected knowledge and fantasy and wisdom float over you like a printed massage. I would move to Denver solely for its library, so welcoming and soothing is it. I could happily spend harsh winter days ensconced in the Denver Library, reading the hours away.

Dover is a town library in an old brick building, with its free WiiFii, an atrium with comfy chairs seated beneath lush green indoor trees and tall windows, exposed brick walls, magazine racks and carpeted floors much worn. On a short-lighted winter Sunday, cold and wet, spent shoring one's strength for the week ahead, this library is like bathing in intelligent sunny friendship. This small library is a retreat to the past without retreating from the future technology that has overwhelmed the information age. Some winters past I have owed my sanity to the Dover Public Library, as small as it is, with its personal feel and its personable staff.

But the Seattle Public Library is not a place of rest or relaxation, it is offensive to my soft edges, jutting harshly against my senses. Even the library silence rings mechanically in my ears, a simple library patron cough or the turning of a page echoes lonely and sharply in the ugly space. It magnifies it, exacerbates the silence into loneliness, isolation from books, a competitive territorial space of rules and regulations, listed by the dozen on all the walls. Do Not Do This. Must Not Do That. Never Do This. Or Else.

People here look like they do in bus terminals and the worst airports during a Thanksgiving weekend storm, uncomfortable, defensive and impatient. This is how a space can create or disrupt with architecture. This space is a monument, a marvel, but not wholesome in any way. I wander around again, with my camera, taking abstract pictures of the abstract beauty that disrupts the peace of being surrounded by books. On film, it is a remarkable place, endlessly photographable and absorbing. But do not look to read or sit or relax here. Wander it like you have stumbled into an alien distorted Escher print ("Relativity" a1953 lithograph) with shocks of colour, wander it like a tourist agog and about to leave soon.

I am afraid to use the toilets. I don't know what weird colour experience I'll have there that will set my heart pounding.

They turn out to be blank pale blue industrial toilets, unintegrated into the design sense of the building. I am disappointed, I expected purple toilet seats in a black tile clad room with a plaid of brushed steel dropped ceiling exposing pipes and other primary-coloured essentials to building function.


I bet it's designed to keep out the homeless, Seattle is rife with them. Parks, streets and green areas are littered with long piles of dirty clothes in which are sleeping people with hard lives and sad scowls when woken.

In a temporary, privileged way, waiting for my couchsurfing.com host to get off work, I was homeless when I visited. I waited hours in the library, a place I assumed would be a sanctuary, but when I settled in with a graphic novel at a hard black metal desk in a hard black metal chair, and my face fell forward onto my reading material in exhaustion, I was soon woken by a peremptory rapping next to my face and a sharp rebuke for sleeping in the library.

I had to move on.

posted by: coldwish at 16:06 | link | comments |
between 2008, seattle 2008

The Cradle Will Sway

There are times at sea when sleep is easier than others.  For the most part I find the swaying and rocking of the ship to be incredibly soporific, soothing, easily lulling me in moments of calm between tows into a groggy sated state. But when I go to bed, and climb into my aft facing top bunk, everything changes. Largely because the bed is simply too narrow for me. I cannot lie on my side and fling my arms out straight in front of me without clanging boney wrists and knuckles against metal walls. Add to this the rolling of the ship when we go braodside to the swells, and I am constantly uncomfortable. I have extra pillows by my hips on either side to brace myself from hitting hard, to cushion the rolling of my body, but there is nothing in the world that can make me sleep through the feeling that the boat is about to topple over, flinging me out of my bunk to a watery grave, when we really roll.

Yet on the biggest seas we've had thus far, with the lurching and shuddering and lolling and bouncing we did, I was not as easily woken. Sure it was a long night and a hard sleep, but I adjusted and grabbed the winks I needed. Somehow with the oily calm waters and flat low swells we've had these last few nights, it has become too easy for me to sleep harder, so the rare broadside swell and roll that tilts me further than norm, shoots me out of bed with the slightly panicked feeling I am about to tumble over with the ship.

That feeling is reminiscent of a recurring nghtmare of mine, post-Japan, about earthquakes. Since my first earthquake in Japan, that knocked me to my knees on the 6th floor of the building I was in--mid-step the floor shifted and my knees buckled--I have had the occasional dream that I was atop a skyscraper in Tokyo (explain that to me, why do earthquake prone nations insist on building so high?), on a viewing platform or some such 360 degree viewing area, and an earthquake has struck. In my dream the building bends like rubber, upright and planted firmly but bending over to touch its own toes. I always imagine that I will jump before we hit and somehow save myself the crash. I awake before then.

That then is the physical sensation of the deeper swells for me when it is calm and they are unusual and I am asleep in my top bunk.

Yesterday as we were steaming to our next station out near the Hague Line (the line that divides Canadian and American territorial waters) I parked myself in a folding chair on deck, reading and watching the ocean, as peaceful as it gets on the ocean. I had my feet up on the rail and barely made it a few chapters into my mystery before the irresistable pull of the rocking sent me into a crooked neck, mouth-gaping stupor of a nap. For several hours. Being a redhead, I was not just out there skin exposed as some fools would, I was covered in a blanket.

It is not being exhausted, though we work 12 hour watches, so much as the restful sway and loll and swing of the sea. I have a history of falling asleep in water. I float well. It could be the two frontal flotation devices I sport, but more likely it's just a general layer of fatty tissue all over. I have been known to lie back in the warm sea waters, hands clasped behind my head, and in the rocking of the waves, fall asleep soundly and contentedly. My head, my breasts and my toes above water. The lifeguards at one beach in Japan threatened to tether me to the rocky point, or the entrance buoy, so many times did they have to swim out to wake me up as I floated out of sight behind the headland of their protected coved beach.

Men have more muscle than mI do, and every moment afloat for them is an effort. My version of treading water barely involves my feet at all. I stand upright in water, shoulders above, hands fluttering a bit like a mild Charleston dance. For hours. No effort.

I love the sea. I feel at home on it.

posted by: coldwish at 04:23 | link | comments (1) |
woods hole 2008

Release the Dogs!

Yesterday was the day of the dog. Fish that is. From noon to midnight my shift brought in more dogfish than anything else, though haddock was a close second on some hauls. We had one net so chock a block full of dogfish that the boom couldn't lift it high enough for the crew to release the net, in addition to the fear that if they were able to do that the interior fine netting would be torn on all the spines. So, instead of putting everything in the catcher (the sorting table) they slowly pealed back the net enough for us to get in there and remove some of the dogs and unblock it, so they could peel back the netting inside, and dropped that load on deck. Waist high in wiggling sandpaper skinned spiny dogfish. And we didn't want them. So it was a full 30 minutes of 7 people, wading into these dogs, grabbing them by their tails and flinging them ass over teakettle back into the sea. Screw working them up (measuring, sexing, weighing), it was all dogs, and dogs not being a commercially fished species in the Atlantic US, it didn't matter how many we had. Because there were too many.

Sexing a dogfish is easy though. The males are quite clearly male, with these two pinkish white dog penis-looking things extruding from their anal area. These are known as claspers. The female simply have two fan-like fins that cover the area like veils. Hideous looking, the boys are. One could have nightmares. There are always more males than females in a trawl, but the females are bigger.

Other fish have the same external claspers as the dogfish, most obvious among them being the skates.

My favourite fish remains the vibrating, growling drag queen of the sea; the longhorn sculpin. I love to handle these. They look menacing in their tiny thorny way, big mouths on broad heads tapering to narrow tails, horns and fins and things sticking up all over the place. Handle them and they growl subsonicly from head to tail, it feels like a vibrating pager. I smile every time.

Sculpins are closely rivalled by the sea ravens, similar shaped but with more outrageous pectoral fins. They don't vibrate.

The oddest fish by a mile thus far has to be the lumpfish. This is an upright fish with a tiny mouth, that is shaped like a peaked speed bikers helmet with ridges. It does not flop, it does not wiggle or squirm, as most fish in our nets do. It can't. It just sits there like a lump on whatever plane its been left, most likely its flat belly. The oddest thing about this fish is that it is SOLID. You can thump on it, tapping around it, and nary a soft spot is found. It feels like solid cartilege, and is as heavy as a block of cement.

Some fish are simply named funny; like the fourbearded rockling. A simple little fish-like fish with four beards, two on its chin and two that dangle from its upper lip.

Then there's the microwave the other watch pulled up (full of dogfish of course), and the 30 foot roll of clear pastic linoleum. We are working on the remainder of the kitchen in subsequent tows.

Can I just say that haddock STINK!? No, really, for such a delicciously sweet-fleshed fish to eat, the fish itself is the most rank thing we pull up. They crap all over the place with this greeny brown stuff, and smell like rotten fish rolled in pigshit. You just know canine diogs everywhere would LOVE to roll in a load of these fish. Now with every bite of haddock I try not to recall that smell.

posted by: coldwish at 04:11 | link | comments |
woods hole 2008