Owls

It’s difficult to know how to restart the blog. When I last posted, I was out of the hospital after my transplant but still in Edmonton for the requisite three months of physio. I think it’s obvious that I eventually left the hospital and got on with my life but so much has happened since that time it feels like a lifetime ago.

The past two years have been interesting. So much has happened that it would be impossible to encompass it all in a single blog post. Ok, it would be possible but horribly, horribly long. In short, I bought a car, moved out, did some volunteer work, sisters got married (not to each other), became an aunt, made some friends, lost some friends, buried some friends.

I remembered a moment in my first year of university when things felt so insurmountably hard that I just wished that I could go in to some sort of coma and go about my life and wake up 10 years in the future when I really had to together. If that had actually come to fruition, I would have been totally pissed at what I saw when I woke up.

All these years later, I still don’t feel like I have it together. Sometimes I feel like I suffer from a lack of inertia and other times I wish that life would just slow down so that I can keep up. I have moments when I feel like a blank canvas ready for a delicious new adventure but then suddenly realize the burdens I drag behind.

I’ve had the kind of year that really makes me regret running over that gypsy woman with my car. The exact inventory list of misadventures is of no importance. It’s a random series of personal loss, minor tragedy, and medical instability. It’s a series of events, which are perfectly manageable when doled out one at a time but the consistent pattern of misfortune makes me wonder what it is that I am karmically paying for.

The totality of it all is so stupendously ridiculous that you just have to laugh. Other theories involve me unknowingly stealing something from a grave or one of my enemies fashioning a voodoo doll in my image from my discarded pubic hair.

Of course, I hesitate in even mentioning my misfortunes out of fear that my adversaries might draw fuel from it and delight in my misery. Don’t furrow your brow at me; everyone has enemies, for what is life without a few nemeses to keep things spicy.

Last week, I was leaving my parent’s house in Airdrie and as I walked to my car, I looked up at the exact moment when an owl had taken flight from a neighbour’s tree on to a nearby roof. I watched it for a while and called out a witness just to ensure that this rare and unexpected sight wasn’t a figment of my imagination. I watched the owl watch me and hoped that it was sign of the end of my wretched luck and better things coming my way. I had also just finished reading The Alchemist a few hours earlier and my brain was swimming with poetic thoughts about your own personal legend and following life’s omen’s as they come.

So I went home and looked it up on the Internets, only to find that in many cultures, owls are harbingers of doom.

A friend of mine, while delighting in my tales of tragedy (because it is just damn funny after a while) put things in a new perspective for me. She reminded me that even Death in tarot cards isn’t literal but can just indicate change and that I should just own it and my the owl my spirit guide.

I think, ultimately, that is what life has taught me; I can handle the shit life chooses to dole out, what is going to happen it going to happen. It is up to me to embrace the mess, explore the lessons it is teaching me and find the humour in it to make my life story more entertaining.

I Got Glasses!

“Hey Marty, are those new glasses?”

“Yeah, I just got ‘em for school. Don't you think they make me look smarter?”

 “Nah, you can still see yah face!”

I was a huge fan of Grease the musical growing up. Well, I suppose moreso Grease the Movie as I have never actually seen the Broadway play or heard any version other than the 1978 movie cast recording featuring the pre-Sceintology John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

As a child, I listened to the record constantly and idolized the angelic loveliness of Sandy. At one point, I even wanted to change my name to match hers but settled for using it as my pseudonym when playing Sega. When I re-watched the movie as a teenager, I realized what a wiener Sandy was and I knew I was Team Rizzo for life. Stockard Channing may have been miscast, playing a teenager at the age of 33 but to me, she was just pure badass.

I remember reading how old she was at the time of casting and thinking, holy fuck, that’s old. Now I’m a year shy of being able to play a rebelliously slutty ‘50s teenager myself and despite that they say about 30s being the new whatevers, sometimes I’m starting to feel fucking old myself.

For example, did I mention that I was recently diagnosed with early-stage cataracts? It’s totally normal they say, it is the most commonly performed surgery in North American (as they whisper under their breaths, in old people…). For me, they developed because of the post-transplant pill cocktail that keeps me good and immune-suppressed. I guess that stuff can really start to mess with your body after a while.

So now I am the proud owner of my first pair of glasses. Vision starts to go in your old age, ya know. It’s an interesting thing, trying to pick out an accessory that you will be forced to wear on a daily basis. Aside from the functional benefit of better vision, the pressure is on to pick a pair of frames that speak to your personality and in time, become a defining part of your image.

For me, I have a strange long face and facial features that don’t lend themselves well to being highlighted so finding the right pair was a bit of a challenge. There is something about trying on hundred pairs of glasses to emphasize the genetic betrayals that were passed on to you. I found myself with a box of 10 pairs of essentially the same frames and my sister and I pared it down to the eventual winner.

Now I have glasses. It’s a difficult thing to get used to. I feel like I’m wearing sunglasses indoors all the time so I’m unintentionally sending out a douchy vibe. The arms make me feel like things are creeping up on me, I feel like a Poindexter when I have to push them up. And now, they are a part of me and I just have to fucking deal.

It’s weird.

A Writer Writes.

A writer writes because that is it’s nature.

I have been known to describe myself and allow myself to be described as a writer from time to time yet here sits my precious blog, untouched going on for more than two years.

I kind of feel like someone who walks around openly proclaiming to be a champion hot dog eater, but when prompted as to their personal record, responds with “Fuck, gross! Do you know what’s in those things? I wouldn’t put that shit in my mouth.” (In my mind, faux-professional eaters have filthy, filthy mouths.)

I feel incredibly bad that I abandoned my word-baby mid-story, a story that is probably the defining tale of my life. My excuse was that I just got busy living and forgot about it but in reality, I think it is daunting and hard to openly document such personal things.

That is kind of a ridiculous mind-frame in this day and age. Some people do it so easily. In the social media age, documenting has become such a filthy and loathsome habit. There was a time when you had to file all of that shit away in a scrapbook that would sit on a shelf until someone volunteered to be entertained by your life’s adventures. Now, it’s just right there, up in your face all the time; every fucking cup of coffee you drink, any meal you had, every mundane thing your child/animal does that you find adorable but everyone else could give a piss about, right there documented on a daily basis in hopes of a virtual thumbs up.

Regardless, I am vowing to embrace the narcissism and do better with my blog. Starting today. Maybe I will continue on with the story I abandoned, maybe I will write some ridiculous thought. The important part is that I do something with that ‘gift’ people keep telling me I have and make a contribution to world of Internet monotony.