'Only in silent shadows and dreams...'

Thank God for the St Bernard, I may never have made it otherwise.

While I've been recovering and waiting for the frostbite to heal, I've been hanging out on Encarta. I love it. It's a highly convenient way to deposit useless facts into my memory banks and waste even more time in procrastination than an average session on Facebook.

Tonight I only went on it to look up Wallace Stevens. I've been reading a poem of his called Sunday Morning. It reminds me of feminism in a strange way, the female voice. Read it and you might see what I mean. Here's a bit of it.

Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.

Does that remind you of Virginia Woolf or Sylvia Plath, even a little? More in meaning than in style. Then again, it could just be me.

I'm wildly hormonal today, it makes me jump erratically from subject to subject. Though I'm sure no one's noticed.

I've moved in with my partner.

This is exciting, dangerous stuff, like bungee jumping without the rope and only an outrageous amount of faith to bounce you back. Living with James makes me notice the nuances of my own insanity. I'm fascinated with the world as James sees it, yet sometimes catching a glimpse of how I appear through his eyes (as I see him seeing me, if you follow my skewed vision) is terrifying. It makes me want to shepherd him to safety and the arms of someone more normal. Well partly. I know such women exist, I just don't want to give him over to any of them. Is that wildly selfish?

But back to Encarta.

Did you know that the term Big Bang was originally coined by Fred Hoyle, who used it as a term of derision for a theory that wasn't even his and that he didn't actually even believe in himself? He actually had a rival theory of his own. But the name he gave to his rival's idea became the name that actually stuck. That must have been annoying.

Moreover, did you know that 'hind' is actually another name for a female deer? Admittedly, it probably wouldn't have been as catchy in the Sound of Music, and wouldn't have worked as a musical mnemonic, but it might have been more interesting.

I got all of this from looking up Wallace Stevens. Well, technically from the journey the poem Sunday Morning took me on (I told you that you should read it).

And did you know that Jove, as in 'By Jove!' was another name for the god Jupiter?

See. A little poetry is good for your general knowledge.

Sarah's feeling for snow

There's a snow storm in Toronto.

Life in Canadia is exciting this way.

Everything is covered in snow, as you might expect, but I have never seen snow like this in my life. The snow rises and rises, making deceptive surfaces that wait for people to fall into them, mistaking air and water for something more solid. I trace the strata as it climbs, watch the wind lift the whiteness, and deposit it in deep drifts against windows, against doors.

The snow falls in circles, sweeping arcs of pure, white silence, drifting to the ground and making the world a cleaner, brighter, muted place. It sweeps from the rooftops in tiny grains, like sand, like dust.

I've had dreams like this.

Just staring at the snow from the safety of the house - no one dares venture beyond the front door for long, we can't tell where the stairs to the street are anymore and if you guess wrong and fall into a drift, you won't be found for days - leaves me dazed, dreaming and disoriented.

A small amount of people are still driving, but very, very slowly. From the balcony of Howard's room, I just saw a landrover towing three sleds covered in children slowly along the backstreets, the children screaming with joy. I wanted to be among them and maybe twenty years younger than I am.

Eskimo impersonators, wrapped in clothes so thick they waddle, not walk, take manual snow ploughs to their drives in a futile fight against the drifts.

The snow separates me from home, from the familiar. It reels my mind into a more intuitive frame, a different way of seeing, where my interior senses become more important than my physical senses - sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing. Instead I feel more. Thoughts - usually built of words - become emotions that swirl, like the clouds of snow beyond the window, around my heart.

Snow comes in such silence, strips the modern world of its supremacy over us; the snow takes me further away. Nothing about this landscape is familiar.


Snow, by Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink rose against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes --
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands--
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Cold in Canadia

Picture above is courtesy of Brian Swetek over at Time to Talk.org. You'll have to Google it because I'm on a Mac and nothing is the same anymore.

So, I've arrived in Mississauga, popular suburb of Canadia and official home of the strip mall. My friend Simon, who is also here calls them strip malls. I'm not even sure what a strip mall is, but I like the sound of it.

I am travelling with my friend Kate, who stepped in to accompany me at the last minute due to my incredible fear of flying. It wasn't too bad on the first flight. I clutched my little Buddha in my hand and thought of hugs and kisses. I tell myself in these moments that everyone gets as nervous at flying as I do, but I know this isn't actually true. You can tell by the look on people's faces. Some people are just chilling out, reading, doing sudoku - I'm quietly confident that these people are not fixing their gaze and silently screaming, 'We're going too fast, we're going too fast, nothing on earth should be going this fast, my ears are exploding, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" Or maybe they're just convering it well.

Kate said that I seem to deal with the fear pretty well, and this was probably the calmest I've ever been on a flight, but even so, my most comfort comes from just acclimatizing myself to the fact that I'm about to fall out of the sky/crash into another plane/pass out during a spin-dizzy descent following a bird hitting the pilot's windscreen, which doesn't seem to me the most positive way of dealing with fear. Stil, as Miss Sally says, you gotta make it work for you.

It is damn cold in Canadia. Minus 20. There's snow and everything. On the night we flew in, Howard, Simon, Kate and I end up in a restaurant, Moxie's, drinking pinot griogio and laughing a lot before heading back to the house in Mississauga, where we had a snowball at about one in the morning. We're already friends with the neighbours, as you can imagine.

My friend Glenn tried to convince on the night before we left that temperatures this low would freeze our eyeballs. I laughed this one clean off the football pitch of ideas.

"Do you not think we would hear a bit more about that if it were true, Glenn?" I ask, "Do you not think they'd put something in the tourist guides - 'Please bring goggles on your trip if you are travelling to Toronto in winter, as your eyeballs may freeze in their sockets, causing you considerable pain, certain inconvenience and permanent blindness.'"

"It's true," he insists, displaying that incredible Capricorn trait of ignoring you and contradicting you all at the same time.

"Google it," I command. I no longer believe anything that google can't generate at least fifty thousand hits for.

He draws a blank and is kind enough to mumble something about it being a mistake. Glenn is rarely wrong and I know this hurts him. As one of his closest friends, that's all I need and I kindly let it go.

It is bloody cold here though, and I had forgotten that Canadia, like the USA has not learnt yet to put a door on cubicles in public toilets that actually fills the gap made for it. I wrote about this on the Stateside blog last year, but had forgotten. Why leave an inch wide gap around the toilet door? No one outside wants to see me urinating (I'm assuming, and fervently hoping) and I don't want to watch people queuing while I urinate. It's too unEnglish for words. Except these ones, obviously.

My friend Rodders just chastised me on facebook for leaving without saying goodbye, and I need to apologise to more than just her for this, I have abandoned almost everyone without a goodbye as it was all so last minute. I'm only here for a week, so fear ye not, England. We fly back on Thursday night and arrive on Friday, so I will return in time for a cool Yule.

I know it's sappish, but I don't care. I miss you all, of course I do, but I miss James a lot. I've told him this already via email, but I can't tell him too many times or he'll I think I'm overly emotional crazy (I'm certain he hasn't really noticed this aspect fo my personality yet, so don't mention it if you see him, pretend like I'm secure and well-adjusted and for God's sake don't mention the therapy years). He's travelled loads and for long periods of time and he says he never misses anyone. So if you see him, make out like I'm totally stiff-upper lipping it. He doesn't read the blog, so it can just be our little secret......

My weirdness is more benign

Stephen, one of our favourite Peace Cafe Irregulars comes in with some copies of New Scientist, which causes my inner geek to dance the Happy Geek.

"Usual?" I ask him, feeling a little like Carla from Cheers.

He nods and takes a seat. I join him and we sit companionably at the table.

"Who's been in today?" he asks.

I name one our regulars.

"He was in most of the day, sat in the back on his laptop." This is not literally true.

"He was so quiet out back, I kept forgetting he was there."

"Was he watching the golf?" Stephen asks.

"Golf?"

"Yeah, he likes to watch the golf on his laptop. That's usually what he's doing."

"Ohhhhh," I exhale, with new understanding, "I always assumed he was looking at porn!"

Stephen laughs. He has a genuine, loud laugh that always makes me feel about three times funnier than I actually am.

"You thought he was sat in the back, watching porn, and you thought this was ok?" he giggles at me, "He could be sat out there wanking, and that's ok?"

I protest.

"I never said he was wanking! Nor did I imply it was ok to sit in the back and look at porn. But working here is not like working in the libraries, where you had to keep a really close eye on what people were doing."

"I've heard bad things about libraries," he agrees.

"You would not believe it," I confirm, "It is my strongly held belief that there are people who only get their rocks off by wanking in public libraries."

The woman at the table behind us, sat scribbling in a notebook (by which I mean she was sat on a chair, not in a notebook), starts to giggle uncontrollably. In hindsight, I'm hoping she wasn't writing a review, because I don't think James will congratulate me for that one.

"There must be a name for that," I muse, "For people who get off on wanking in the library."

I Google search 'person who wanks in libraries' while we continue talking.

I don't find a specific term for this particular preference, but I do find a website with a discussion forum on wanking. Brilliant. Someone has posted a satire on an article on the health benefits of walking, but have undertaken the detailed and hilarious task (for which I have immense admiration) of replacing the word 'walk' with 'wank'. Priceless. This contains such precious gems as:

Regular wanking, like all ‘aerobic’ exercise, can have a dramatic effect on cardiorespiratory fitness or ‘aerobic power’. Regular exercise carried out three times a week for 30 minutes or more at the right intensity will result in increases of aerobic power (Davison & Grant 1993)

The intensity of wanking for fitness benefits varies according to the age and fitness of the individual, but generally, ‘brisk is best’.

A simple way to work out how briskly you should wank is to aim to wank “fast without overexertion”. You should just about be able to hold a conversation while you are wanking - the ‘talk test’.

I show it to Stephen, who tires of it after a few sentences.

"It's kind of based on just one joke, isn't it?" he points out.

I am still laughing at it. "I know! Brilliant!"

Incidentally, if you do an image search for 'person who wanks in libraries' (I can only assure you that I did it by accident while about to search for an image of a library), one of the results is a picture of Arnold Schwarzeneger.

In other news, I have a blog question:

Would you go out with someone who slept in a coffin?

Feline Sexual Predators in the Expensive Sector

'Eyes without a Face' by glitterdarkstar, from deviantart

It's Saturday, I'm in a bit of a funk, worried about a friend in another country. It sucks to be so far away from someone you love sometimes, and I'm not good at feeling helpless and impotent. Although, maybe there are people out there that are good at it. Are there?

I go to the Chief's to take him out for coffee. He's still cleaning the detritus left over from the office party the night before. I could say something here about him still being in stripy pyjamas as he cleans, but that would be a breach of privacy. Not that he'd know about it. The Chief isn't reading the Daily anymore. He says that I betrayed my readership by disappearing from the face of the planet and abandoning them to virtual silence.

While the Chief cleans, I wander upstairs to find Harry, who can always be found under the bed. Harry is the Chief's cat. Actually, I'm not sure Harry can acccurately be described as anyone's cat (cats don't really belong to anyone but themselves, do they?). True to form, he is lying under the bed looking at me with a mixture of curiosity and disdain.

"Harry! Come on then! Come on then!" I call, not like an invitation to a fight, but like an invitation to come out and allow me to harass him for a while. He concurs.

Harry is a strange feline, the Chief calls him a non-cat. His affection comes in stages. First he drools on you a lot. He's a natural born dribbler. Usually, I give up at this stage, for obvious reasons. I like cats, but rarely enjoy taking a dip in their saliva.

Today, though, I am feeling distant and unsure. I'm happy for Harry's company. I lie down on James' bed and Harry jumps up to join me (don't tell James, he doesn't let Harry on the bed). I stare balefully through the window (which is also a jar) at a windy, raining, very English autumn day. Harry drools happily all over my sleeve as I stroke him. We stay like this for awhile.

I am thinking about my distant friend. I am thinking about how helpless I feel, and even though I know worrying solves nothing, I have never discovered the ability to switch off the part of my mind that, when something bad happens to someone I live, worries and worries and worries about them. I wish he was here, and then I could take over and busy around until everything was ok again. It occurs to me that maybe worrying is more about me than it is about my friend.

Then Harry bites my arm.

"Ow!!! Harry!" I squeal, in an entirely girlish manner that makes me feel more than a little ashamed as the sound emerges from my mouth.

It's not that he bit me hard or anything, but Harry has very sharp teeth and even a light bite is enough to get you to notice. Then I saw something else. Harry had stopped drooling. Which is how I discovered stage 2 of affection from Harry. Biting.

Harry bit my arms, my head (which left a lot of saliva in my hair - not cool) and even my leg. I announced a very firm 'No!' however, when he moved towards my chest, though. No frickin' way, dog. Or cat.

At this stage, I got a little nervous about Harry's biting fetish, and, feeling cat saliva trickling over my scalp, I got up to try to sort out my hair. Harry sat on the bed as I stood up and turned my back to him. I was fussing with my hair, when suddenly I felt a pair of teeth sink firmly into my right buttock. The girlish squeal long-gone, I emitted an actual yelp of genuine surprise, followed by a round of loud laughter.

"Harry, you actually just bit my butt, dude!" I squawked at him, and I could have sworn that cat was laughing.

The Chief appeared in the doorway.

"Who have you been talking to?" he asked quizzically glancing around the room.

"Harry." I tell him, as if it were obvious. He was the only other, er, cat there.

The Chief glanced at Harry then at me.

"Shall we go?" was all he said.

An evening at Kyo's

I'm in a fudge at the end of today and curled up on my couch listening to sombre sounds on my stereo when James calls.

"I want to cheer you up," he tells me, "Meet me at Kyo's, we're all going to play you songs until you're happy again.

I go to Kyo's. Obviously.

Dr Dan and Kyo play guitars, Dr Dan sings and James plays the  didgeridoo (I know, there is  no way to announce this without comedy, but more of this later).

Dr Dan has a beautiful voice and the three instruments work beautifully together. It reminds me of being 19 and hanging out with Glenn and Howard while they played guitars and sang. I miss that.

Kyo suddenly burps, and laughs with a half-shamed, half-amused face.

I burst out laughing at his expression.

"Sorry!" he giggles, "There's a frog in the village!"

James starts singing arbitrarily down his didgeridoo. There is actually no way to stop this sentence being funny. Actually, there is no way to stop any sentence with the word didgeridoo in it being funny. Except possibly that one.

My brother once slept with this girl (and I mean that literally - once, not slept) who, after the passion was spent, as t'were, got out of bed and announced to him, "Let me show you something."

Cool, my brother thought.

Then she got out a didgeridoo and started playing it. Straight after sex. Imagine.

When my brother told me this story, the day after, I laughed so hard I actually bruised my own ribs. He's going to be tickled when he finds out I posted this story on the internet. Siblings, huh?

"We're didgeridooing in Dan's face!" announces James as I write. Dan is on the phone to his girlfriend and the boys are distracting their conversation mercilessly.

"Write that in your diary!" he continues.

Stranger than Fiction

Sometimes I feel like I attract strange happenings.

Surely not, I hear you cry. Sarah, you are just too well adjusted.

I know, but nonetheless....

Last week, in the toilet at The Ministry, by the sinks, was a wrinkled old carrier bag bearing a label that said:

Lady's bra -- found in corridor.

This raised a lot of questions for me. Firstly the qualification of 'lady's' in the first place - as opposed to a man's bra? But then my neurons really started to fire backwards. What do they mean? Found in corridor? How would a lady's bra (I can't help it, I will now forever refer to bras as 'lady's bras' as though there were another kind. I may even correct strangers if they say bra without it) get in the corridor? How would you lose that?

Now, it was after hours, and on my way to the lady's (toilet, not bra), I climbed the echoey (is that a word? It is now - taking my own advice to invent words at whim) stairwell and I thought I heard the gentle moans of sexual activity somewhere above. But I assumed I was imagining it.

But maybe that was where the bra came from. Maybe, it was whipped off during a passionate act of illicit congress, it fell down the centre of the stairwell, where it lodged on someone's bag. As a mail trolley went past, perhaps it snagged on the bra, still attached to the bag, and carried it away into the corridor, where as the lift doors opened, it fell to the ground and lay abandoned until a kindly civil servant carried it to the ladies, and deposited it in an old bag, for modesty's sake, in case the owner claimed it.

Maybe.

I told James and Kit Kat about this last week, along with accompanying hypothesis about how it was found. They stared at me doubtfully.

"Hey, I've got an idea!" James suddenly announced, "You should take in a bra next Wednesday, and every Wednesday after that. It would drive people crazy and start all sorts of rumours...."

"Yeah!" I enthused, embracing the weirdness with little resistance, "I could go to charity shops and buy loads of bras of different colours and sizes - it would be like the phantom over the shoulder boulder holder deserter!"

There was a long silence. I never know when to quit.

Well, I didn't get the chance to perpetuate the jug juggler oddness around the Ministry, because today, someone else beat me to it.

Exactly a week later. Same toilet. Same time of day. This time, in the cubicle, unsheathed by a carrier bag, old or otherwise, was a big old pair of black pants.

Pants. Actual pants. Someone's pants. I did not dare to check if they had been worn. Dear reader, I did not want to know nearly enough to even attempt it.

So, did someone else have the same idea? To bring in underwear every Wednesday? Dump your drawers Wednesdays? Unpeel your underwear day? What is happening to my life?

I know truth is stranger than fiction, but I swear to God, I am not making this shit up. My life is beginning to feel like the Truman Show. Is this a test?