Friday, December 4, 2009

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)


I just learned that Shaved Fish was released a month before I was born. So I guess it's no wonder that John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" feels like it's been with me all my life.

There was a time before it felt like Christmas music was an enormous part of my life; before I could spend hours debating the best version of "Jingle Bells." (I still don't have a definitive answer to this, although Crash Test Dummies and Barenaked Ladies are both surprisingly good contenders.) But there was never a time that Christmas music was not a part of my life. It just used to be less like a favourite t-shirt and more like a dependably warm but unremarkable afghan.

There are a few exceptional songs, though, that stood out, for whatever reason, and that don't have to do with my life After Christmas Music but that resonate with me so much because of my exposure to them as a kid, surrounded by my family. 'Cause family is ultimately what Christmas is about.

I used to play this song every year, pulling out the cassette and placing it in the big black dual cassette player/record player/radio that was our stereo for as long as I can remember. Every Christmas morning, it was the song that I wanted to hear. I know I used to do this, because I remember remembering this. But when I think about this song, I'm not transported back to my home on Edgevalley drive, where I spent 11 Christmases, but to the house on Stoneham, where I only spent one.

Mom said to me once, "I was so proud of that house." She was talking about the way that things go, and about how sometimes you can be prepared to embrace what you get because you get what you need, and that's all that you were asking for anyway, and then be so ecstatically, wonderfully surprised by the fantastically rich, double chocolate cream cheese icing on the cake. She told me she didn't think she'd ever meet anyone, that it wasn't in her plan. She just wanted to be able to afford a modest home for herself and her kids and to have her independence. And she got it. The icing is a whole other story. A really great one.

My parents separated during the summer after my second year of university, that first time around, that time I dropped out, not really knowing why I was there in the first place except that it - university - seemed to be the thing to do. Their separation was hard on my dad. Really, really hard. It was hard on all of us in different ways, but for Mom it was also incredibly freeing.

I loved my Dad a lot, but he sure did stress me out. He was angry, incredibly self-involved, unpredictable. I suffered from the worst tension headaches as a teenager, and I'm convinced their virtual abandonment was not so incidentally related to my father's absence. [Let me say here, for the record: My Dad's changed a whole lot. And my Dad is a million times happier now than he was then. And although he had a rough go of it for a number of years I doubt that he regrets much of it because of how he can appreciate what he has now, largely because of it.]

The year I lived on Stoneham I worked at Chapters. It was great. Sometimes I think it was the best year of my life. I've never read so many books. I was surrounded by family, and friends from high school, and new friends I made at the bookstore. I felt like I belonged there, with my new bookstore friends; I've never felt so secure within an extended social group. Nearly every night we'd gather at Hemingway's, the bar across the street, after work to talk about ourselves and books and where we were going. I felt well-liked, and confident, for the most part. I had all this disposable income. And I felt hopeful. I don't know why, with all of that awesome stuff around me, I got it into my head that I should be somewhere else, but maybe it is exactly for that reason: It is very difficult to make a major life change when you don't feel supported or good about yourself. I decided to move to Halifax, a city I'd never even seen.

My favourite thing about that year, though, was getting to spend it with my mom. I got to see her happy and herself. It was like an enormous weight had been lifted off of her shoulders, and she knew that she was going to be okay. We had a lot of fun, spending time together as adults; having coffee together in the morning, watching and laughing about "Days of Our Lives" on occasional, lucky free afternoons. And we really talked. She helped my fragile, twenty-year-old heart when it got bruised. She picked my up from Katherine's house all the way in Rexdale! And she always kept the porch light on for me.

Shaved Fish is my Dad's cassette, but it got left behind, like lots of his stuff. My mom probably still has it in the same drawer in that enourmous black cassette holder that's always been there, except somewhere else.

On Christmas, on Stoneham, I remember running downstairs in the morning, fast-forwarding side b to the very last song and hitting "play." I felt like a kid and I still feel like a kid to hear it. It is mine and dad's and mom's and home no matter, wherever, I go. And that year, it felt especially joyful. Happy Christmas. War is Over.


Happy Christmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
A new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
(War is Over, if you want it, war is over now)
For weak and for strong
The rich and the poor ones
The road is so long
So happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
(War is over, if you want it, war is over now)
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
And we hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over, if you want it
War is over now

Merry Christmas

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Ballad of the Devil's Backbone Tavern



Several years ago I came to the sad conclusion that I probably wasn't really a writer. I mean, it's something I'll always do. I'll always write little songs and stories, but I don't actually have what it really, really takes. Confidence, nerve, and above all: Commitment. I won't quit my day job, and there aren't enough hours to do it any other way. I won't be miserable. I mean, I still work in a bookstore; not a government office. And I would be miserable and not quite myself if I wasn't compelled to embrace the bursts of inspiration that arrive happily and unbidden. Nothing is more satisfying than saying it how I mean to.

But there are brave souls in this world who have the confidence, nerve and commitment that I lack. And I would be far worse off if I didn't have them to read and to listen to. I can't even imagine the person I would be.

I have a lot of friends who make music in Halifax, and most of them do this in their spare time. Like a hobby, I guess I mean. Songwriting seems of a different order than most "hobbies" but maybe I only think this because I don't feel compelled to play hockey or knit sweaters the way I feel compelled to write songs. Maybe it's actually all the same. For those of us who don't abandon our day jobs.

But there are those few people who make it their livelihoods, and I can't give them enough respect for that. Like the two fantastic people who rolled into town last night to play a show at the Seahorse Tavern Not nearly enough people were there. Or, at least, there to see them.

The first time I saw Paul MacLeod and Lucas Stagg perform, I was working the door at Ginger's Tavern. I knew nothing about them, but judging a show by its poster, I already suspected it would be good.

Ginger's did not have a regular or walk-in crowd, and being one of many venues in a city that supports so many locally revered band and their fan bases, crowds were always hard to come by for a couple of unknowns from Ontario. But Paul MacLeod shouldn't have been an unknown. His impressive resume includes collaborations with members of Rheostatics, an album produced by Hawksley Workman, and a long stint as a member of The Skydiggers. It still amazes me that I had no idea who he was.

I liked them both so much before they even picked up their guitars. Both Lucas and Paul are genuine, interesting, entertaining people and conversationalists, who always maintain their positive outlooks and their curiosity about new people and places. I went downstairs and tried to convince friends and regulars to shell out the measly five dollar cover charge, eventually finding only two recruits. But being the professionals that they are, they nevertheless played their hearts out to the three paying members of their audience, and to myself at the door and Myndi at the bar. It could have been - should have been? - a disheartening experience for them, but they were obviously having a blast. Their tiny audience sure was appreciative.

I came really close to drinking that night. It was one of the two most tempting evenings I spent around alcohol since I quit, and I can remember so clearly my inner struggle. Because it was about - as was the other occasion - the best things about drinking. The way that it can - in early stages at least - foster community and comaraderie, make conversation easier, looser, the way beer can be both relaxing and celebratory. And it was about music and bars and I don't know that that romantising I do will ever quit. But I had a great time anyway, and without the regret that would surely have followed.

They came back a few months later and played three shows in town. I went out to their shows at Gus' and the Seahorse alone, but I convinced a few of my friends to come out to the matinee at the Carleton. Because, I suspect, that show was the free one. And I can't really begrudge people for that. It's hard to get excited about performers you've never heard before. So it's a leap of faith to see someone new, and despite recommendations, money is always an issue, and besides, there are always other, safer, shows going on.

But I kind of worried they'd never come back. A selfish worry, because I like hearing them play so much, and I like hanging out with them, too.

A few days ago their car broke down a couple of hours outside of Montreal, leaving them stranded, with expensive repairs to take care of, and forcing them to miss a couple of their shows. My anxious self would not have done well in this situation. I don't pretend to know Lucas or Paul particularly well, and surely they have moments or days where they consider packing it in for a greater level of security or stability. But it seems to me that more often than not, they consider themselves very fortunate to be able to do what it is they love to do. I would think it would be hard, to come out this way every few months, across such long expanses of highway and trees and sparsely populated communities, to play for only marginally larger audiences each time. But I guess that is how it's done. And I guess it is infinitely better than most things that people do to get by.

I should have probably used a song by Paul MacLeod or Lucas Stagg for this entry, but Todd Snider - he says it all right here, way better than I just did.


Ballad of the Devil's Backbone Tavern - Todd Snider

Old Miss Virgy tended bar at this shack out in the hills
It never made her any money, boys, but paid off all of her bills
Now she must have been 80 years old but her heart was warm
And her beer was cold
She gave away more than she ever sold
Smiling all the time

I used to sing off in the corner every Friday night
To a loud crowd of cowboys, bikers and bar room fights
They were drinking beer, carrying on, not a one of them listening to one of my songs
But old Miss Virgy sang along
She said she knew 'em all by heart

And then one night after closing she poured me another beer
She said "Come on over and sit down you little shit
I got something you need to hear"
She said "Life ain't easy getting through, everybody's gonna make things tough on you
But I can tell you right now if you dig what you do, they will never get you down"

She said life's too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
Too short not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate
I meet a lot of men who haggle and finagle all the time
Trying to save a nickel or make a dime
Not me, no sireee, I ain't got the time

Now I ain't seen Ol' Virgy in must have been about ten years
I've been bumming around this country singing my songs for tips and beers
Now the nights are long
The driving's tough
Hotels stink, and the pay sucks
But I can't dig what I do enough, so it never gets be down

I say life's too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
Too short not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate
I meet a lot of men who haggle and finagle all the time
Trying to save a nickel or make a dime
Not me, no sireee, I ain't got the time

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Son of a Rudderless Boat


I just got back from Ontario. I always leave that province with a little bit more inspiration, a heart that's a little fuller, and some more direction than I had when I arrived. After the sun came down somewhere in eastern Quebec, I tried to help keep the drivers - my father, his wife Susan - awake and motivated by talking and asking questions. We talked a lot, Dad and I, about leaving there to live here. We bitched about the cold, materialist certainty of grey, brick-buildinged Toronto, but we also talked about the smaller places in Ontario and in Toronto itself. Home in all of its personal enormity, as well as possibility in the immediate familiarity of towns and cities and neighbourhoods we could live, if we had to, for some crazy reason, leave this coast. The people we miss because they make us miss them so, because they love us and we love them so.

My dad parroted the old cliche, "Blood is thicker than water." But you know, you get older, it's true.

Watching people get old from afar is weird. Missing the years in between exploring the woods, climbing rock piles on sturdy legs, taking the boat out on the bay, and the slow and cautious, precious steps in smaller rooms than ever imagined.

I am so lucky to have had a relationship with all four of my grandparents. Certainly luckier than most. Even my grandmother - my active, playful grandmother - who died of cancer far too young, at 61, when I was 12 or 13, is someone of whom I have countless fond, funny, sweet memories. And maybe it is only because her absence allows me to romanticise our relationship, but that was probably around the time I stopped feeling particularly close with any of my parents' parents. I suspect it's more likely, though, that being a teenager had as much to do with that. And then moving three provinces away when I was in my early twenties.

Sean and I used to do this thing, when we were together, when one of us got back from a trip somewhere, where the returning person would be asked to state his or her favourite moment. And I know I should, you would think I would, say: Ted and Hayley's wedding, of course. Ted and Hayley's wedding was beautiful, perfect, a darn good time in every way imaginable. But I've got to give the Favourite Moment Award to the only time I cried during my trip to Ontario.

I have and always have had a different relationship with my mother's parents than I do with my father's parents. Neither relationship is more or less significant, just different, because of who they are and who I am.

For a lot of years I don't think I felt at all close to Granddad, my father's father. Neither he nor my father are the best at keeping in touch, and I saw far less of him after his wife passed away. And besides, Grandma and Grandpa - my mother's parents - had the cottage. We'd spend week-ends and even weeks at a time there, with them, every summer. But I really don't think it's just circumstance and proximity. It's my Granddad, too, and I think I have finally pinpointed it. Granddad talks to everyone, young and old, without reserve, without censorship, with criticism and intelligence and honesty. And in turn, I feel that I can speak to him that way. That I would not have to be polite if it were at the expense of being genuine.

My mom's parents, on the other hand, are people I sure as shit wouldn't swear or smoke around. Which is not to say they're especially proper or anything. But when Granddad, a few days ago, requested that I play that song with the line about masturbating, I happily obliged, before imagining Grandma and Grandpa's horror-stricken expressions should I perform the same song for them. Never in a million years.

Grandpa took me fishing on Georgian Bay, taught be how to bait a hook years before I became a vegetarian and had the only fight I remember having with him, which is likely why it seems so particularly painful when I conjure the incident up in my head. Fighting with my grandfather about his going fishing, on the front deck that he built. Self-righteous tree-hugging teenager I was then.

Grandma held me up the window at their condominium in Brantford to watch the trains go by, read me books, sang me songs. She was always singing. Her voice has this integral, soothing, sing-song quality even, so that when I imagine her voice it always sounds like a tune, and which my mother has undoubtedly inherited. These two Sellar women, they have always made me feel safe.

No one knows what people will take from them. They just put themselves out there the best they know how. There are incidents I remember so vividly as speaking so clearly of their individual characters, and all the while they are and were carrying their own histories and relatives who began long, long before I did. It is probably in their sons and daughters that I know them best.

In Burlington, Ontario, my mother and I had a brief visit with Grandma and Grandpa at the retirement building they now reside in, until they or someone else determines that they are no longer capable of residing there alone, without assistance. That time is coming soon. Grandpa moves slowly, Grandma can't remember to take her medication. They don't want to let go, and who can blame them? The visit was less personal than it might have been, because my mother and I brought along an old friend of theirs, who had moved his travel plans around so that he might spend the afternoon with Frank and Jean Sellar before leaving for China. Gerry, this friend, lives in England, and hadn't seen them in twenty years. In the meantime, he had lost his mother (who lived to be 97!), his wife, and, tragically, his youngest son. At 70, Gerry is a good fifteen years younger than my grandparents, but must nevertheless be feeling his age in ways that he didn't a decade ago.

"China!" Grandpa exclaimed. "Aren't you tired?"

"Frank," he said, "Of course I'm tired. But I want to keep going, for as long as I can. Because I know all too well that one day I'll have to stop."

Granddad was in the hospital for two months earlier this year. He was fainting all the time, and no one could figure out how to stop this from happening, and no one wanted him to leave the doctor's constant care. Except for Granddad, who figured that if he was going to die, he would much prefer dying in the comfort of his own home, being able to see Dog Lake from his bedroom window. He and his wife Anna live at the end of a series of unpaved roads, a half hour drive from Kingston, Ontario. Granddad is lucky to be able to afford this financially, and to have a healthy, willing, and able wife to assist him.

He is still fainting all the time. It is such a terrifying struggle to help him down the stairs, even on the lifts that have been installed there, as I witnessed on Friday, when the four of us finally did help him downstairs and into the living room for the first time in two weeks.

But he doesn't seem old at all.

A few months ago, I wrote a song about my grandmother's death. More about my grandfather, really. Outside of the condominium they lived in in Mississauga was a small house that was always locked. Granddad and I would take walks around the grounds - the garden, the fish pond, until we would finally come to that house, and peer into the windows, imagining what it was used for, or who lived there. The first and only time I ever went inside was for the reception that followed my grandmother's funeral, and I sure wished it had remained a mystery.

The song came up in conversation with Anna when she, Dad, Susan and I were sitting around the kitchen table on Friday morning. "You should tell your grandfather about it," she said. And I really, really wanted to, but I just didn't know how appropriate it would be. "It's sad," I said.

And so, "It's sad," I said to Granddad, as I took out my guitar, upstairs in his room, just a few hours before I was to leave this province and these people that I am made of.

But some things are sad. Lots of things are sad. I couldn't get through the song without crying, but I couldn't stop either. Granddad was tearing up. And Anna, too. She was Grandma's best friend. And she is Granddad's wife. And no one, no matter how much they are loved, and needed here on this earth, gets to live forever that way.

It was a moment. I'm so glad I could let my grandfather know how much I love him, and that I could see how much he loves me. And if I have to say good-bye, I'm glad I could say that too.

And then he asked me to play the masturbating song.

Dad and Susan and I outwitted a tornado in Ontario, beat a hurricane in Nova Scotia, driving all night. We told stories about ourselves. My father's voice is so much like his father's.

We opened windows and played cds to stay awake when we ran out of questions, or one or two of us passengers began to fade.

We listened to Kev Corbett's brand new album, "Son of a Rudderless Boat." We heard "The Driving Song," taking the same route, as though it was written for us. And we listened to "Son of a Rudderless Boat," and with new ears I felt light and lucky, and so happy that it was my father up there in front of me, driving me home, persevering, saving us from the storm. "Row hard, in this rudderless boat," I was thinking, as the sun began to rise somewhere in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia.


**I didn't format the lyrics like I usually do, not because I'm lazy, but because I asked Kev to send then to me so that I didn't have to listen over and over and over again and type them out myself (because I'm lazy), and he was happy to oblige, and I like they way they looked, in paragraph form, so I kept them that way.**


Son of a Rudderless Boat - Kev Corbett

Grampa sailed a dory; he fished upon the sea. And though he knew what he was for, he didn’t know just what to be. He lost his arm at a logging camp. And up ‘til he died, he still chopped his own wood. He told me a story ‘bout going out with a new guy in the boat and when they got out on the water new guy just sat there and choked, so back inshore later on Gramp says, b’y, you can haul that fish yourself. We’re all scared out on that water, but next time you can swim, or you can help. He said, gotta work hard, gotta pray hard and just try to keep it strong and if you want to work with me man, gotta pull that weight along ’cause by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Ghost, by the angels and the saints and by the heavenly host, by the fields of grass that bore me, and the sea that awaits I know I got no control, but I will fear no earthly fate. From the ocean we did come, and to her we shall return. She puts the fire out in us when our souls cease to burn and so to find true love and tend it is your only hope. Just give up the ghost, man. You’re a son of a rudderless boat.

My father tried his hand out as a fisher of men It was at least one job for a papish boy from the steel plant back then but he jumped that ship, I guess, left his robes upon the ground and I, for one, am glad he did, musta seen this gig comin’ round. He’s a student of his time, a renaissance guy to be sure. He lets me hoist myself, but my ears ring with his words: Son, I pray that you grow to be a very gentle man with Respect for those ‘round you and respect for the land ‘cause life don’t owe you another 10 seconds, you already got today but I believe it comes around if you treat the World that way and everything you need to know you learn from watching others fall but you’ll rejoice in their successes if you really heed the call. You’ll choose the high or the low road when life has you by the throat. It’s a choice we all get to make. We’re all sons and daughters of a rudderless boat.

I’m learning to love the Winter. Spring ain’t too far away.

So my paddle hits the water and I’m off among the trees. And I’m just lucky to be here, living like this in times like these I feel the weight of the whole world in all the choices that I make under the gazes of our mothers, and environmental stakes. By my unborn children, by the lepers in the streets, by the world already drowning in pools around our feet, may we come to patch this leaky boat that we’re all here sinking in and stop making up some right to throw the weaker ones in. By the earth and air and fire and water lapping at the shores all our spirits are the same and all our hands are on the oars. May we come to fix this tired old world before we drown in smoke. I’ll do my part. Row hard, in this rudderless boat.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Love This Town





Joel Plaskett is a pretty flawed songwriter. He's written lyrics that make me blush, cringe, and shake my head. He needs an editor. His friends should have told him about how lame it is to rhyme "extraordinary" with "ordinary," and not to have included this couplet in the chorus of one of his songs. One of his biggest hits, as it would turn out. It's not even a rhyme when it's the same word! And come on, Joel, you don't have to deconstruct the word "extraordinary" for us! Give your fans a little more credit!

But then again, I kind of think this sloppiness is endearing. Cute. Genuine. And I somehow let it go, with him. I don't think I'd let anyone else in the world get away with the stuff I let Joel Plaskett get away with. He's one of my favourites, and I think he's one of the best. In spite of.

I tell a lot of people, when asked, that I moved to Halifax because of Sloan. Which is the short answer. Sloan and most of the other groups who made up the scene that had been touted as the "next Seattle," and which I'd romanticized in high school, had broken up or moved to bigger centres. Bands like Eric's Trip, Leonard Conan, and jale. But Joel Plaskett's band, Thrush Hermit - I got to be here for the end of them.

The very first time I saw Thrush Hermit play was in Toronto, at an early Edgefest being held at Ontario Place. Their whole set consisted of Steve Miller Band covers. It was awfully unexpected and hilarious and fun. The next and only other time I saw them was for one of their last performances, at the earliest incarnation of the Marquee, about a year after I moved here.

Joel, he keeps high school close and, well, I do too. I don't know what it's about. Not having kids? Not having grown-up responsibilities to keep my self-indulgence at bay? Or maybe I'm not that special, and it really is a universal thing he's tapping into. Maybe so many of us are so wistful about our pasts, our "glory days" as New Jersey's Plaskett might say it.

Another thing I love is his consideration of place. It wasn't long after my friend Tim copied his Smeared cd onto a cassette for me that Sloan were high tailing it out of here. It's not just in this one song that Plaskett asserts the importance of remaining in Halifax/Dartmouth despite the city's small size. ("All my friends, where did they go?"/"To Montreal, Toronto.")

When Joel Plaskett played "Love This Town" last night, he changed the last verse. He gave Kelowna a break after Kelowna gave him one. He said he "wasn't afraid to change [his] tune."

It's been more than a decade since Sloan recorded an album that impressed me, even a little. Plaskett, he makes me shake my head sometimes and then two minutes later he makes me want to call an old friend from high school, or else walk these friendly, familiar Halifax streets.

I can't think of a better or more appropriate location at which to watch Canada Day fireworks than in Dartmouth, at Alderney Landing, listening to Joel Plaskett play his songs about this place.

Canada: it's a fine country. I'm glad I live here because it means I don't have to go through customs when I want to see my mom or the mountains or the prairies. But it was a sense of civic pride, not national pride, that I felt on Canada Day, looking up at that stage, and then across the harbour. It's not about why I came, but how I came. And it's about why I stay, most of all.

***

I have several half-finished blog entries. I've got to get something out. So I'm just getting this out there, knowing I hit some sloppy notes but also knowing I got it right in some places, and I think, considering, that this action is fitting.

Joel Plaskett opened up for great big Paul McCartney last week-end, in little old Halifax, and a field full of impassioned music lovers sang along to this tune, nearly drowning him out. I hope Paul was listening.

Love This Town - Joel Plaskett

Listen up kid
It’s not what you think
Staying up too late
Had a little too much to drink
Walked home across the bridge
When the Marquee shut down
There’s a reason that I love this town

Nobody cares how much money you have
If you’ve got enough to get in a cab
There’ll be drinks on the house if your house burns down
There’s a reason that I love this town

I saw your band in the early days
We all understand why you moved away
We’ll hold a grudge anyway

I shot the shit with Miniature Tim
If he needs a tune, then I’ll write one for him
We like the same books and we like the same sounds
There’s a reason that I love this town

I played a show
In Kelowna last year
They said pick it up Joel
We’re dying in here
Picture one hand clapping
And picture half that sound
There’s a reason that I hate that town

If you saw my band in the early days
Then you’ll understand why we moved away
But you’ll hold a grudge anyway
Because it’s fun

Davey and me
Face down in our soup
In some French restaurant
Outside Riviere Du Loup
Last night out on tour
We burned the place to the ground
There’s a reason that I love this town
There’s a reason that I love this town
There’s a reason that I love this town

Thursday, April 9, 2009

At The Airport


I used to say that my friend Andrea Lindsay and her boyfriend-turned-husband Guilhem were my favourite couple in the history of ever. There was all kinds of romantic about the way they defied the odds and their geographies and managed to remain together. But it wasn't just that. It was the way they were together; the way they amused one another. The way they matched each others wits and always looked to be having the best time they'd ever had.

Andrea was my roommate during my second year of university. She slept on the couch in our living room because our other, mostly absentee, roommate Kim wanted to maintain some kind of claim to her bedroom. It was clearly a front; a way in which to insist to her mother, who often visited, that she was not in fact living with her horrible boyfriend Josh. I was lonely in September, with Kim mostly away, and with Anne, my only other real friend in Sudbury, still living on campus and not venturing far from it. Andrea's own experience living in a large house populated with girls I'd known from residence was also isolating. Sudbury was a hard place for us and our somewhat snobbish southern Ontario airs. We became fast friends, intuitively, and figuring out, in November, a way for us to live together for the remainder of the school year was, despite typical roommate issues, no small saving grace.

Andrea was at Laurentian University for two reasons: because she could major in vocal music there and, I think even more so, because they had an exchange program with a university in France, where her boyfriend lived. Their meeting was seemingly both fated and brief. Guilhem had been a French exchange student at the high school Andrea went to for her OAC year, although he had attended the school the previous year and before Andrea had transferred into it. In the meantime she had gotten to know Guilhem's old friends, and they were introduced when he came to visit the following year. I think they knew each other for about a week before he returned to France, but they stayed in touch and made a commitment to one another, taking such a brilliant leap of faith. I can't even imagine.

Laurentian University got rid of its exchange program and Andrea left Sudbury to finish her education in her home town of Guelph. For years, Guilhem and Andrea flew back and forth to see one another over holidays and summer vacations. I first met him during the summer following our year in Sudbury, when I spent a week-end with them in Guelph. And I understood immediately how there are things that are worth that amount of trouble. Andrea's an exceptionally clever and funny person. She's engaging and silly and just plain hilarious and it was hard to imagine how she would find an equal; someone who could light up a room and draw your ears and eyes so easily and earnestly. Guilhem is perfect; every bit as quirky and smart and open. It was the absolute opposite of being a struggle to make conversation with him. And every one of the handful of occasions on which I've found myself in his presence - and on his couch - it has felt like he too is an old friend.

Guilhem has since immigrated to Canada. The two of them have been married and living together in Montreal for years now, and I think I will be devastated if they ever break up!

I said that I used to say they were my favourite couple ever, and that's because I've decided that I feel ready to pass the torch onto another brilliant couple whose relationship I actually get to observe as more than a very occasional house guest on my way through Quebec.

My brother Ted and his finance Hayley are the new champions. Their relationship, while certainly not filled with the kinds of obstacles confronted by Andrea and Guilhem, is also pretty unique among the many couples I've gotten to know. They are honest to God high school sweethearts whom I'm pretty sure have never even been on a date, never even kissed another person in their whole lives. I used to think it was weird, that surely they both must want to experience other relationships, or even to have some more time to explore their own interests as single people. But that probably just stems from some sub-conscious jealousy about how they managed to get so lucky so young.

I've been fortunate to have Ted and Hayley here in Halifax for the past twenty months, while they both attended school out here. I haven't made the best use of this opportunity, I suppose, and I am a bit regretful about the times we should have spent together. They're both leaving in less than three weeks, to go back to Ontario, where they will surely reside, together, forever. But the times we did have were wonderful. I feel so grateful for the opportunity to have gotten to know Hayley as well as I have. I used to think she was shy but I don't anymore. I love seeing them together. I love that my brother is with the kind of person who would totally be glad to have me sleep on her couch, and with whom I could converse for hours, hardly noticing the time at all. She's smart and curious and easily entertained, and no one amuses her more than my brother. Is that the ticket? Being able to amuse one another for the rest of your lives? If that's marriage it sounds like a whole lot of fun.

Ted and Hayley are getting married this coming August, and they're searching for a first dance song. Why they don't just dance to their song, Queen's "Your My Best Friend" is beyond me, but I suppose that in their otherwise fairly untraditional wedding they would at least like a somewhat traditional - at least slow - song to which to have that dance. So of course I volunteered my time and my music collection and spent last night making a cd of potential first dance songs.

It was way harder than I thought it would be. Of course I couldn't include most of my favourite love songs, which are usually either a little bit dark or else of the nostalgia variety. And even happy love songs that describe situations or characters so far removed from Ted and Hayley's experience had to be eliminated. Which means all of those thanks-for-saving-me-from-all-the-crappy-things-that-happened-before-I-met-you songs were out. And really, that doesn't leave a lot. I did come up with enough to compile a cd for them, and one of the songs I included was Old Man Luedecke's "At The Airport."

I have such a clear and embarrassing memory of seeing Old Man Luedecke play a show at Ginger's just after Sean and I broke up. I mean, the events of that evening aren't all that clear. I don't remember if it was immediately after, or if it was two weeks later, after my return from a much needed week with my Mom, in Ontario. I'm not totally sure that Sean was there too but I believe he was. I know it was while we were still living together on Allan street. I know I had to go back there that night. I remember sitting up close to the stage, and that the venue was fairly empty, and it was like Chris Luedecke was singing directly to me. Which must have been very uncomfortable for him because I was bawling my eyes out and completely wasted. My very clear memory is of how concerned he seemed about me. The room seemed so small and I felt so alone and terrible and lost and his concerned expression was a small but remarkable comfort. I must have stopped crying, but I stayed, and I listened to every song. He is, after all, the kind of authentic folk singer it is difficult to turn away from.

Now, I don't know Chris Luedecke very well, but he has always struck me as being a worrier. In fact, I am pretty sure that at some point during every conversation I have ever had with him he has expressed concern about something he felt he should be doing or had not done properly. I could win medals in Worrying Events were they to be introduced, and I hope they never are, because I obviously don't need another thing to worry about. I'm extremely confident in my ability to freak out about inconsequential things. But I think Chris Luedecke would make for a pretty mean competitor. I think a part of having that kind of constitution involves having a difficult time with acts of faith. Not that faith is impossible, but it is rare and, for me at least, almost always counter-intuitively second-guessed. So it makes me really happy and hopeful that a guy like Chris can write some of the songs that he does.

I like to think that I'm open to the possibility of wonder and whimsy and - yes - true love, even as I get older and more distrustful and more isolated and self-involved. It's refreshing to hear love songs that are just about love; not obstacles or regret or fear or character building. It's a bold kind of honesty that I defensively shrink from with explanations and apologies.

Oh, Ted and Hayley are lucky, and I think they should dance like robots to Queen not even if it might make them laugh during that very special moment, but absolutely positively because it will.


At The Airport - Old Man Luedecke

Oh the static of our phone calls,
Coming down like brick walls.
And you're so beautiful I can barely see you.
It's like we've never touched,
Our kisses long but rushed
And your cheeks have never seemed so serene.

At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there that cannot be believed.
At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there whose memory never leaves.

And in the baggage line,
I'm in another time,
But mostly all we can really say is "Hey."
But I get to take you home
Where we can be alone,
It's better than any Christmas Day.

At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there that cannot be believed.
At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there whose memory never leaves.

Oh the static of our phone calls,
Coming down like brick walls.
And you're so beautiful I can barely see you.
It's like we've never touched,
Our kisses long but rushed
And your cheeks have never seemed so serene.

At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there that cannot be believed.
At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there whose memory never leaves.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Left and Leaving




I have such a heavy heart these days. If I think about it too much my eyes tear up and I have to find a corner to hide in. And I can't avoid it; I stand on that street to smoke, I walk down it to get to and from. I think about places I could go to eat my lunch, places I could sit and read when my work day is done. I wonder where or if I will meet my friends. A lyric from another Weakerthans song hits me over and over: "A spectre's haunting Albert street." If anyone loves a city like I love Halifax, it is John K. Samson (Winnipeg). And Barrington street, like Albert street, is haunted by the things that it has been. Worst of all, there is nothing I can do.

The block of Barrington street between Prince and Sackville streets is my turf. It is my neighbourhood more than any neighbourhood I have ever paid rent to live in. And of course it is not the buildings but the people within them who create community, and when the buildings are left vacant, there is nothing to foster that community, is there? Brick and wood are assigned the characteristics of the people who inhabit them, and it is such a tragedy to look through tears in paper covering glass, to reveal empty spaces that used to be filled.

I first got to know Barrington street in the fall of 1997, when I worked at United Bookstore. The manager of United Bookstore, Dave, is still one of my favourite people in the city, and we still see one another nearly every day, for brief moments that never cease to brighten my day for our easy familarity; his relentless and fond teasing. We talk about music and books and people we both know. When I first moved here and only knew a handful of people, he invited me to spend holidays with his family. He told me stories about his own history in Halifax, a transplanted Torontonian himself. He still tells people about how he taught me how to change a light bulb. United Bookstore does not only sell books. They also sell junk food and cigarettes and bus tickets, so there were customers we would see every day; friendly faces from the offices upstairs in the Roy Building, who became part of the scenery; part of the community that I was also a part of, of people who spend their days in down-town Halifax.

When I moved back to Halifax in 2001, after my brief return to Toronto, I spent a couple of months waiting for Sean, my then-boyfriend, to join me here. He sent me a series of mix tapes during this period, that each included at least one song from The Weakerthans' recent album, Left and Leaving and at least one song from Sarah Harmer's recent You Were Here. It's remarkably coincidental that both album titles so explicitly refer to space and time. And if it isn't intentional, both records nevertheless feel like concept albums, exploring the respective speakers' personal spaces. I always placed You Were Here alongside of my relationship with Sean, from the basement apartment he inhabited on Woodbine Avenue in Toronto (the apartment that always smelled of bleach, as described in "Basement Apartment") to the eventual knowledge of his infidelity ("Coffee Stain") , and all of the good stuff that came between and after; like it was written for us. And while You Were Here seemed to have a lot to say about my interior life, Left and Leaving spoke to my surroundings and my ideas of "home." These songs were wonderful gifts, through the mail, from the town where I was born, to the town where I chose to live.

It is funny, because I have always had the strangest relationship with Left and Leaving. Sometimes, I swear it is the best album ever written. And on other occasions I am so irritated by its intentional cleverness. All last week, I kept singing those songs to myself.

The Barrington street location of Sam the Record Man closed its doors on February 20, 2007. I worked there for a couple of years. Sean hired me, several months after we broke up, and I maintain that it was the best possible thing for our relationship. It helped me slide into a friendship, our relationship changed necessarily by our new boss-employee relationship, and by seeing each other, all the time, in this brand new context. The store's closure was sudden and shocking, but I could hardly say entirely unexpected. Everyone who worked there knew it was pretty amazing that we all still had jobs. Record stores were on the brink of disappearing. It was a hard blow for everyone who cared about music. The building was a landmark, and everyone who grew up in Halifax seemed to have recollections of purchasing favourite albums there or seeing local bands performing in-stores. For a week my co-workers and I put merchandise in boxes and boxes on trucks and congregated, afterwards, next-door at the Granite Brewery to grieve over pints of Peculiar. If we were not all friends, exactly, we were all familiar, and of course nothing was ever going to be the same again. We would see one another infrequently. We would miss and be missed, and it was so sad, saying good-bye.

There are things about working on Barrington street that seem inconsequential but that are actually enormous. Buying cigarettes from Dave; buying my coffee from one of several people whose first names I know, at Just Us! coffee roasters; the deaf man rumoured to have been a former boxer, who asks for change at the corner of Prince and Barrington, who tells all the women he loves them, and jokingly threatens to fight all of the men. And until its closure one week ago, there was the Granite Brewery/Ginger's, where I not only worked the door in exchange for beer on many nights when there were performances upstairs, but which I also relied on to be a meeting place or at least a place where I could spend my lunch breaks in warm company, with coffee and a book.

There is another entry for the Granite, and surely one for Sam's, because they are too big on their own. But they are also inseparable from my experience of Barrington street. I was introduced to a lot of friends in that bar, and I got to know a lot of other friends more intimately there. It was wonderful to walk into the bar and see staff from United Bookstore, Sam the Record Man, Just Us!, Neptune Theatre, and JWD (where I now work), all enjoying the personal relationships they had with that space, and watching relationships develop with one another. Of course the alcohol helped foster much of the camaraderie, but I haven't had a drink in over seven months, and I still feel like a piece of my heart is being ripped out and trampled on.

I love my job. I work in the coolest used bookstore in the history of ever. But I worry about my security there, about the security of that street and the small businesses that make my neighbourhood what it is. I worry about the paper-covered windows; the buildings that stand vacant for months and years.

And I don't know what to do with myself. I feel aimless. I know I can call people on the phone, but it isn't the same. I miss the organic nature of the community that the Granite Brewery allowed. The best things about this city are vanishing. I miss my friends already, and I feel like my home is slipping away.


Left and Leaving - The Weakerthans

My city's still breathing (but barely it's true)
Through buildings gone missing like teeth.
The sidewalks are watching me think about you,
Sparkled with broken glass.
I'm back with scars to show.
Back with the streets I know
Will never take me anywhere but here.
The stain in the carpet, this drink in my hand,
The strangers whose faces I know.
We meet here for our dress-rehearsal to say " I wanted it this way"
Wait for the year to drown.
Spring forward, fall back down.
I'm trying not to wonder where you are.
All this time lingers, undefined.
Someone choose who's left and who's leaving.
Memory will rust and erode into lists of all that you gave me:
a blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest,
the best parts of Lonely, duct-tape and soldered wires,
new words for old desires,
and every birthday card I threw away.
I wait in 4/4 time.
Count yellow highway lines
That you're relying on to lead you home.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Galbraith Street



Like the speaker in this song, I've lived in many homes on many streets, and said several sad good-byes. But Van Dusen Blvd: None compared to the good-byes I said there.

When I was nine years old, my parents purchased a much bigger house in a much more upscale neighbourhood and residing there, as I did, until I was twenty, Edgevalley drive of course felt like home, but when I think of my childhood, it is to the red brick home on that dead-end street that I immediately return.

225 Van Dusen Blvd. was the middle house on a dead-end street, nestled in between the Tracado's and the Chalk's homes and across the street from the Lundy's. Delta Tracado lived on the corner of another dead-end street, and when I crawled through the hole in the wooden picket fence that divided our properties I was only a few steps away from the mountain deposited by the snowplow, out of which we would make fortresses and ammunition. Behind the pile of snow and the imposing fence was a factory that we only imagined. The factory at the end of Van Dusen, alternately, was easily visible through the wire fence, and it clearly belonged to Canadian Tire. It must have been noisy living where we did, but I never recall the noise of trucks and work as a nuisance; more as the natural soundtrack to the chaos of childhood.

We had a backyard big enough for a small metal swing set and gymnastics routines and the forts that my brother Geoff and my neighbours and I would make out of found cardboard boxes, usually acquired from the forbidden factory property. Geoff and I have enduring memories of the acquisition of said boxes. I remember how Delta and I would taunt him relentlessly. I remember asking him to sneak through a hole in the fence to retrieve a cardboard box I had spotted, only to turn around and tell my mother that he was disobeying her by trespassing onto the factory property. One time, Delta and I hid him in her basement insisting that the cops were looking for him and the property he'd stolen. We made him be quiet and fearful for hours while we laughed at his expense. On one occasion I even made him wait up until the wee hours of the morning to attempt to retrieve the soccer ball he'd kicked over the fence in our backyard during the daylight hours. I told him that it was the only time of day during which the guards were on their breaks.

But often, Geoff and I were on the same team. Such was the case with the ball tree we planted in Sarah Lundy's yard. The tennis ball miraculously sprouted beach balls and soccer balls while she was asleep at night. We were all friends when we skated on the rink the Lundy's would make in their backyard. I remember pushing one another across the ice in big plastic garbage bins.

Delta's house always smelled exotic. Her parents had accents and the Portuguese food they cooked made her house smell different from my own. And they had plastic covering their furniture! I don't know how that fit into their perceived foreignness, but it certainly was different from my own home.

My father would take Geoff and I for walks, across Islington avenue, to the very end of Van Dusen Blvd. and to Mimico Creek. Often, he called these "quests," and he created characters we would encounter along the way. Or we would walk in the other direction, through the industrial landscape, often collecting bits of discarded plastic that we called "sparklies."

Cats were a big part of living there. Xerxes was my companion for my entire life up until that point, and he even made it to Edgevalley Drive with the rest of the family. But there was also Sparky, the stray cat who disappeared as mysteriously as he'd appeared. For years Geoff and I wrote letters to Sparky and threw them out onto the lawn, hoping he'd receive them and return to our home. Instead, several new strays would appear in Sparky's place. My mom had a particularly soft spot for the cat with one green eye and one blue eye, whom we alternately called both "Whitey" and "Dirt Pit."

The garage at the end of our gravel driveway was painted two very uncomplimentary shades of green. (When I walked by the house a couple of years ago I was shocked to see that the garage still retained that colour scheme!) Delta and I plugged my portable cassette player into the outlet there and we made up gymnastics routines to Madonna's Like A Virgin and performed these for my parents. I never mastered the back flip. I can still feel the pain of landing flat on my back on the hard ground.

I remember walking to Islington school across busy streets, holding my brother's hand, past the subway station and the Ship Centre, up the metal stairs to Cordova Ave. I felt an immeasurable sense of pride and responsibility. We walked past the insurance building that my father had made me fearful of by insisting that if I went on their property they would paint me green. (I'm sure you've forgotten, Dad, but I never did!) Past Kenway Park, where once a year the employees of the Bell telephone building would have a family party that the neighbourhood kids got to attend.

There are so many other things. There were so many other kids.

My brother Ted was too young to have any real memories of Van Dusen, but I'm so glad that Geoff can still recall some of them. That is the best thing about siblings - having someone with whom you can share that perspective. Nobody else will ever know me like that.



Galbraith Street - Ron Sexsmith

I woke up on Galbraith Street
Where the houses stood like twins
Oh and even though the door's been closed
I can find a way to get back in

For in daydreams my mind returns
Like a ghost upon the hill
As I knock upon old doors again
And find my friends all live there still

So many good times to speak of in a life
But none compared to the good times I had there

The world looks so much brighter when
You believe in every word
Now I'm holding on to all those years
Like a tear before it falls unheard

So many goodbyes to speak of in a life
But none compared to the goodbyes I said there

The sun went down on Galbraith Street
I saw it from my childhood bed
As the red and gold brick houses stood
Underneath a crimson sky that bled

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Carey


It's the summer of 1999. Joni Mitchell's Blue is playing on the tiny record player that sits atop of Karen's refrigerator in her apartment on Summer street. She and her two roommates have turned their living room into a third bedroom to save money, to all live together, so the tiny kitchen is where they congregate; where they entertain friends when they come over. And the kitchen is tiny, and usually cluttered with dirty dishes that they are usually warring about.

The weather is perfect. Just outside the kitchen door, we smoke cigarettes on the fire escape with Karen's neighbours and friends and we look down and across at the graveyard while Kitty's meows compete with Joni Mitchell's voice and the sunlight to try and figure first in this memory of this perfect summer day.

Everybody Karen was friends with was a student then. Everybody except me. But I would finish work at two in the afternoon and have free time like students and I was student-age, so I reaped some of the benefits of living within this young city, this enormous student ghetto, without actually having to write essays or study for exams or owe the government tens of thousands of dollars.

I was friends, then, with a ridiculous number of people who suffered from mental illness and/or substance abuse in very pronounced ways that were very new to me and also, I must sheepishly admit, very exciting. I was also friends with a lot of hippies. Like, serious hippies. The kinds who live off the land in places called things like Gandhi Farm. (Honest. To. God.)

Karen and her friends, maybe because they were in school and had that focus, were a lot more stable than most of the other people I was hanging around with then. And believe me, they weren't that stable. Karen would have gotten along wonderfully with most of my friends from Toronto, but I know she thought that Butterfly and Kenova and Skylark were all pretty weird, and I don't think she quite trusted any of them.

Karen stole my boyfriend from me, is how we met. Some months later she approached me at a party we were both at and invited me out for a "coffee" at the Grad House. I went because I was totally curious, and knowing Karen now, I am sure her own curiosity is what initiated her request. We drank beer instead, and the rest is history. A very significant chunk of my history with Halifax and its people can be traced back to that meeting.

I really liked Karen - immediately, intuitively - from the first time I met her through our common ex, in the slightly glorified rooming house they were both staying in above Bob & Lori's Food Emporium. But it took me a long time to really trust her.

She was such a King's student. (For non-Haligonians: King's College is a university in Halifax that's affiliated with Dalhousie. Its Foundation Year program is one of those Great Books things, and all first year students skim very quickly through many of the texts considered canonical in the western world. A lot of King's students come from private schools, and a lot of them come from Ontario. They seem to like to talk really loudly about how smart they are. A lot of them dress like hippies and have the kind of naive sense of social justice that is borne out of having lived a very privileged and entitled life. To be fair, they are also, usually, eighteen years old.) Karen would throw around a lot of big names in a way that struck me as being kind of obnoxious and intentionally intimidating. It also made me feel incredibly insecure.

But Karen was no hippie. And she was no entitled private school kid. And she was not easy. I know she struggled with a lot of personal issues. And she did some pretty unconventional and interesting things, like taking a semester off to go live in Yellowknife, NWT. Stuff like that surprised me about Karen. We spent one Valentine's Day at a strip bar (The Lighthouse, RIP). In fact, for a month or two we hung out there once a week, 'cause we thought it was a pretty funny thing for us to be doing, until it just got depressing.

Karen was also a gossip, and maybe that made me hesitant to trust her. She was fascinated with other people's lives and wanted to know everything.

But all of these concerns, every last one, are ones that I have about myself.

I think that, a lot of the time, I felt kind of together and responsible around my really messed up friends, and I think I sometimes felt like kind of an aimless fuck-up around Karen.

Mostly, though, Karen was remarkably easy to be around. We liked the same albums and books. We laughed at the same things. The same kind of curiosity about people that made her talk made her remarkably easy to talk to. Her education and intellectual curiosity inspired me to further my own education. So many hours over beer or coffee, conversation into the wee hours of the morning, and it's hard to imagine how we fill these hours in other places with other people we didn't used to know then, but so it goes.

The building Karen lived in on Summer street was torn down several years ago. They left the facade up, but it just makes the building look so shallow; it's depressing. I know the building was creaky and old and expensive or impossible to repair but who wants to live in a building without character, or quirks, or history? Not me.

A couple of months ago Karen came back to Halifax for a visit, from her home in Japan, and she brought her new husband and these weird Ramen noodle-flavoured caramels. We didn't have much time together, because there is never enough of that - time - but what we had was perfect. I could count on my fingers the number of people I trust completely as friends, as constants, and Karen is certainly among them. It was like those years in between didn't matter, or were inconsequential, to the fact of this unlikely, unavoidable friendship.


Carey - Joni Mitchell

The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldn't sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here Carey
But it's really not my home
My fingernails are filthy, I got beach tar on my feet
And I miss my clean white linen and my fancy french cologne

Oh Carey get out your cane
And I'll put on some silver
Oh you're a mean old daddy, but I like you fine

Come on down to the mermaid cafe and I will buy you a bottle of wine
And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down
Let's have a round for these freaks and these soldiers
A round for these friends of mine
Let's have another round for the bright red devil
Who keeps me in this tourist town

Come on, Carey, get out your cane
I'll put on some silver
Oh you're a mean old daddy, but I like you

Maybe I'll go to Amsterdam
Or maybe I'll go to Rome
And rent me a grand piano and put some flowers round my room
But lets not talk about fare-thee-welis now
The night is a starry dome.
And they're playin that scratchy rock and roll
Beneath the matalla moon

Come on, Carey, get out your cane
And I'll put on some silver
You're a mean old daddy, but I like you

The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldnt sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here
But, it's really not my home
Maybe it's been too long a time
Since I was scramblin down in the street
Now they got me used to that clean white linen
And that fancy french cologne

Oh Carey, get out your cane
I'll put on my finest silver
We'll go to the mermaid cafe
Have fun tonight
I said, oh, youre a mean old daddy, but you're out of sight

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Bad As They Seem

The absolute worst month of my life was spent living in a tiny trailer in Barrie, Ontario. I had just graduated from high school and September and university and freedom were so close I could practically touch them. But practically was not actually, and this scheme concocted by myself and my friend Kathleen looked like it just might work.

Kathleen's family had a cottage in Barrie. It's a weird place to have a cottage. My understanding is that when the cottage was built, it was still very much on the outskirts of Barrie, and that any neighbours were far afield and fellow cottagers. But by the time I was introduced to Kathleen's cottage, it looked like a fairly rustic but basically ordinary house on an ordinary suburban street. It was just a couple of blocks away from the lake, but it was equally close to the Loblaws. We didn't spend much time in the cottage, though, except to make use of its indoor plumbing. The cottage was used not only by Kathleen's immediate family but by aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents as well, so our residence thereabouts was conditional on not actually staying in the cottage. We lived in the trailer out back.

I had always thought it would be cool to live in a trailer. I really don't anymore. The trailer Kathleen and I shared was especially tiny; one of those little metal boxes where the one bed folds down to become the kitchen table, and the other bed turns into the sofa. The tiny refrigerator worked, and we kept out food there, but when we wanted to make meals we had to transport the ingredients into the cottage itself. The toilet didn't work, either. Nor did the sink. The trailer was really only practical for sleeping in.

My mom later confessed that she never would have allowed me to move to Barrie if she'd actually thought we'd be able to find jobs there. But we had; both of us were hired to work at Taco Bell, where we suffered all the degradation that accompanies working in a fast food restaurant. We additionally suffered a sexist manager who didn't let girls work the deep fryer; instead both Kathleen and I were on the front line - taking orders and cleaning the plastic tables.

I honestly don't remember much anymore about the month we spent in Barrie. Little incidents are recalled like snapshots. That time we had a "party" and invited some people we worked with over to drink beer and listen to music. A dozen of my cds were stolen that night. There was the oasis-like evening Kathleen and I spent singing Christmas carols in the public bathroom down by the lake.

Kathleen claimed to have food poisoning, and she took a week off work. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now, but I don't know much about Kathleen, and I really didn't then, either. A few years ago a friend of mine made a comment - completely unrelated - about someone else whose closest friends all seemed to live far away. "Well of course she thinks they're her best friends," this person observed, "It's so easy to be friends with someone you never see." I'd never thought about that before, but it immediately made me think of Kathleen. Her two best friends were childhood friends. Neither of them knew much about the actual events of her life. One of them, Kathleen confessed, would have been horrified to know about some of the things she had done. One of these friends lived in Barrie, but the two of them didn't see each other at all that month. Of course it hurt her heart. And there were other things going on with Kathleen, as well. She was miserable, uncommunicative, probably clinically depressed.

But I wasn't old enough or experienced enough to know how to deal with Kathleen's allusions or depression or secrecy, and she wasn't comfortable enough to be honest with me. That little tin box just felt like resentment and the ghost of a friendship.

The way we left things makes a good story, but there was nothing good about the experience we kind of shared. And I got off comparatively easy. If Kathleen is anything like who she was when she was eighteen I'm sure she's haunted still by things I've never known.

We had a stupid fight. I have no idea what it was about, but having had enough of Kathleen's bitterness and coldness and negativity I finally told her to "Fuck off," to which she responded, "Don't ever tell me to fuck off in my trailer." I was bawling my eyes out as I telephoned my mom at two o'clock in the morning and asked her to come pick us up. We kind of made up as we sat there waiting for the sight of my mom's headlights. Or at least we reached an understanding about how some things are just insurmountable. I really loved Kathleen, but we weren't ever really friends.

All month long, I listened to Hayden's little indie cassette in my yellow Sony sports walkman; taking the bus to work, walking to and from the grocery store. I obviously can't blame the dirgey tone of that album for my misery, but it sure didn't help. And yet, it was perfect. I just wanted to wallow, and Hayden did it for me, that's for sure.


Bad as they Seem - Hayden

Girl of my dreams...
Things are as bad as they seem
She is only sixteen
That's why she's only a dream
Woman of my dreams...
Lives right down my street
Has a daughter who's sixteen
That's why she's only a dream

What do I do this for?
Got to get out some more
Go down to the grocery store
Meet someone I'll adore
Someone who'll make me laugh
Someone to be my better half
Keep me warm under the sack
Share with me my midnight snack

Job of my dreams...
Things are as bad as they seem
Working where I did at fourteen
Making less pay it seems

Chorus

House of my dreams...
Things are as bad as they seem
My parents' house I'll stay for free
Until I'm at least fourty-three