Knitting Ferocious Spiders

It is true that individuals spend an inordinate amount of time spouting off about the people they don't like; at least, in this culture, at this time. Amongst my friends, this activity is sometimes out of hand. Beyond the disparaging comments leveled at individuals, which (admittedly) there has been an attempt to curb and discourage lately, to varying degrees of success, there are also the wide-ranging generalizations brought to bear against social groups and minorities. This, perhaps, sounds worse than it is. As we make up a fairly multicultural, mixed-gender, inter-generational, poly-sexual-oriented clique, most of the bases are covered: the "post-modern, self-referential, ironic social commentary" (as it has been coined) has been a hallmark of the last few years, but it's run its course, and we're attempting to put that puppy to bed, as it just doesn't seem to be as funny anymore. As easy as it has been for me to sit around the patio table with a nice, cool...

In keeping with this summer's theme of bicycle related mishaps , last week I was riding home from work when I was egged. Egged for fuck's sake. There I was, just mosying along around midnight, minding my own little world from the safety of the bike lane, and out rushes past this black car, pulling up along side me just long enough for: whack, whack, WHACK! Three impacts along my side; then the gutteral staccatto of young male laughter before they gunned their way off down Harbord. I've decided I don't like being egged. You'd think, after all the abuse I suffered growing up, that it would have occured to at least one of the malignent geniuses torturing me as a child to give it a try, but no, this was a first. I do have to hand it to the Drive By Eggers, they were a good aim, hitting a moving target from a moving vehicle. Practiced, one might say. Thanks to physics (ah, handy physics), my shock did not result in my catapalting into the sidewalk and breaking my arm. C...

It took a bottle of white wine to get in the door. Well, it took drinking a bottle of white wine to get myself past the threshold; performance anxiety was at an all-time high. Even then, adrenaline was keeping me from feeling terribly drunk. Actually, I didn't feel drunk at all; but I wasn't terrified. I have been on stage before: plays, musicals back in school, and I've performed a couple of instruments in front of a crowd, but it's been a while. I have suffered from stage fright as long as I can remember, but I have the knack of finding clarity in the centre of panic. Once my foot sets foot on the platform and I'm out in the open, it's the eye of the storm, and my peripheral emotions switch off. I focus. At least, I have in the past. As I said, it'd been a while. I feared that the coping mechanism may have atrophied through lack of use. Use it or lose it. But I love to dance, and even though I am by no means trained, I am practiced. I have danced nights aw...

The actual phone message was angry. So angry in fact that for a moment hearing it, I thought I may have actually stolen something while under the effects of a voodoo induced trance. Something like an entire liquor order. Or a manager's car. "I won't be needing you at the waterfront anymore; or any of the other restaurants; ever. We're done. " A good, punctate receiver click never really gets old, does it? I had been eating sushi on a Friday afternoon, en route back to the new apartment. I'd splurged, thinking that it would be a nice thing to treat myself to, as motivation to make it through the upcoming scheduled 4 days of solid horror. The lacquered boat had just arrived: cool, colourful tiles of fresh fish glistened. As I listened to the message my stomach knotted. Goodbye, little fish. The other details of the message were at best, vague. Besides the actual firing, there was no content. "I have some very loyal people who have worked for me a long time ...

When I left the charming, soft, delicious restaurant I went to work for a woman who owns a series of eaterys (of Italian variety) scattered about the city, as a bartender. I was installed into a rather sketchy corporate model, given my employee handbook, a new black apron (at my expense), and a very bare training on the wheres and wherenots of the bar where I would be working... where I wouldn't be working very long, I was assured. I had been hired not to work at this particular location, you see. No, not there, but rather at the new location currently under construction. To be throwing open its doors any day now. Voila! I did not fall off the turnip jalopy that recently. I have been working in restaurants for a long time. Nothing ever happens soon . If someone says "soon", what they mean is "I can't jinx whatever I want to happen by saying that it won't happen anytime later than yesterday". In reality, "soon" is often "inconceivably late...

Well. If we are so bound to change, time to ante up. Mustardseed and I are going abroad. It was that morning, that sunrise, that really solidified it. I have been plotting an extended trip to New Zealand for about a year now. I had given myself a time-frame to leave by early 2006, but it was a vague plan, without too many specifics nailed down; more like fish floating about in a tank. Then Mustardseed started to think about it as well. By the lake, ensorceled by quite a different perspective, the world seemed very close. The Southern Hemisphere was only a short trip across the water. We have been caught in the sticky strands of Toronto, both of us, for quite a while now. We've started to feel a little wound up. Time to go away, so we can come back. Changed. Time to find somewhere else to spin my designs. After all, 10 years is a long time to spend anywhere, and I have not been able to get out of this city, since I got myself into it, quite as often as I would like. Money and distan...

Back at the end of June, Mustardseed and I walked out to Cherry Beach from the Courthouse in downtown Toronto. We had seen Pride weekend through; made it without passing out from heatstroke or heartache; celebrated three days with little break to distinguish night from morning. The heat was tremendous, the alcohol copious, and adventures were many and varied; ah, festival. We walked the way out and down to the Beach because it's hard to know when it's really over, and after stimulating the body for so long (both honestly and artificially) it starts to take on its own momentum, and a sunrise is never a thing you can waste your time on. It is time, all by itself, rising. It was also the dawn of Mustardseed's birthday. Making it down to the sand, settling into a peeling, well used park-bench, we communed with the pixies (with a little help from they're magic powder), and watched the word turn form silver, to grey, to a perfect, crystalline aquamarine blue, dappled gold. We...