Good form

I was taking extra long strokes for my swim today. Just concentrating on form. I’ve always done that. I’ve always swum my best when I just think about form and don’t think about the importance of trying hard and going fast. That stuff will fall in place if you let it. I was thinking that’s all there is to it, to writing, staying on the inside of the form of your experience, being creative with that.

If you were a caveman you might be the one in your group to tell the stories for the clan. It would be okay for you to have a need to express yourself creatively. It wouldn’t be purposeless. Like, when I was in grade two some of the other kids were reading so fast. Denise Pillon, who liked to put a section of her hair in her mouth and suck it making me wish I had long hair and could do that too, read so fast. The words coming out of her sounded so sharp, so articulate. What was important to me, what I felt not only distinguished me from the rest of the class but was a value I would uphold even if it meant I was only going to get to be in group two for the average readers and not group one for good readers, was reading with expression!

So there would be a purpose for my stories in that small caveman group, for my need to be the way I was. But then the world got bigger.

About half way through my swim workout my lane got eliminated. There’s this water aerobics group that comes in and I think the way it works is if it’s a large group they put them in the big pool where us swimmers swim our lengths, squeezing us into less lane space. And when it’s a smaller group they go in the training pool with the adjustable bottom.

I didn’t like how the water aerobics group pressed up against our lane, the mass of their bodies causing the lane rope to push in, giving us even less room within our more crowded lane to accommodate each others’ strokes. Even though the windows of the pool are to the south and the water aerobics people are to the east, they still feel like a heavy cloud, blocking out the light. Like a dark cloud of locusts from a story of a far away land.

Monday morning

We had snow last night. Not much. I was looking at it through Jacob’s window, after opening the blind to let the light in to help him wake up, on the neighbour’s roofs. But I thought it was just frost. Then when I was in the kitchen I looked out the front door and saw some sprinkles on the car and across the street in the part that’s just dirt of Magda’s garden, around her cedar bushes. I said, “Look Jacob, we had snow.”

Going outside to get in the car Jacob said the snow looked like the little Styrofoam bits that come in packaging. It looked fake.

I liked that he said that.

Two fire trucks blocked Yonge Street just before where you turn off to the street Jacob’s school is on. It must have just happened because traffic wasn’t too backed up yet but no one was getting past. The trucks were red. Their lights were flashing. You could see them up ahead.

I pulled over to the left hand turn lane and got off the street. I felt smart doing that. Not everybody has such good traffic-jam avoiding skills. Larry does. But come on, he’s a guy. Different standards apply. I drove around the traffic obstruction and got Jacob to school on time.

Jacob's homework

Jacob is doing a univocal poem for his grade five English class. He’s only allowed to use one vowel for the entire poem. He was going to do “I” but I thought it was too hard. I told him to do “O.” For “O” you can use Yoko Ono. Except I had to tell him who that is. You could use the John of John Lennon and almost the Lennon.

Jacob’s really into cooking lately. We were watching the hockey game last night but it was a pretty boring game. So Jacob was in the kitchen mixing the spices for the next time we make spaghetti. Next time instead of taking the spices from the different spice containers and putting them in a little at a time, you just use the pre-mixed spices he’s already created.

He thought it was a great idea.

Jacob’s univocal poem isn’t making any sense. I told him it might help if he tried to write around a theme. Unfortunately there’re not many “O” words about hockey. That’s his idea. He wants to write it about hockey the same way he wrote his last poem, a fourteen line poem with fourteen syllables in each line, about hockey.

Jacob likes to scoot out of his work before it’s entirely done. He’s driving me a little crazy. I’m telling him to do the poem on his own but now I’m helping him.

Last week his teacher told him he thinks his mother (me) is helping him too much with his homework. It’s impossible not to that at his school, an Arts School where the kids end up having to do oodles of the regular curriculum at home with their parents showing them how and what to do and then maybe influencing them too heavily.

The problem is I get these excellent ideas when I’m helping him and then I tell them and then he agrees. So we put them down. Or I coach him to bring out some of his excellent perceptions only I don’t think the other parents are quite so creative at getting their kids to express the perceptions that are in their heads.

It was very upsetting to hear the teacher thought I was doing that even though the teacher didn’t say it directly to me and what is that all about. Jacob thinks I’m going to hear about it at the parent-teacher interview in two weeks, so be prepared.

Jacob’s univocal poem with my assistance:

The Eclipse of the Moon

World blots
Wolf howls to
Cow hops onto
No logos
Yoko Ono longs for John

Comparing pain, fiction and nonfiction

The thing you never could do living with Larry’s mom and dad was compare pain. That was why they were so much better than you in every way if you were him and always would be. Their pain was the deepest pain ever.

Imagine being born into that. What would it be like?

Should I say it? Would it be intrusive?

….very painful.

**

I was just reading about a symposium at the University of Texas featuring Norman Mailer. They were talking about Mailer's novel, The Executioner's Song, which he had written with the assistance of Gay Talese and Lawrence Schiller.

Unfortunately I was reading it on the Daily Texan Online serving the University of Texas at Austin since 1900 with the flashing advertisements on the side intensely detracting from my reading pleasure.

They were talking about fiction verses nonfiction. I liked this paragraph the most, “The important question is whether there is a difference between fiction and nonfiction and to what degree it matters, Talese said."That's what Norman asks, 'Does it matter?' and I don't think it really does," Talese said.”

It’s not the great Norman Mailer’s opinion, and I mean ‘great’ in no pejorative way, no siree. I've changed. But all the same it stands up so nicely and comfortably and securely and gentlemanly to the challenge of the question of the questioner.

Talese says, “... and I don’t think it really does.”

And, little me, I agree! I agree.

Stepson

The great problem of Elijah who would never ask me to call him that when he was changing over to it, then resent me because I don’t. Full name is Elijah but was always called Eli. Like an eel followed by a lie. I used to call him Squiggly when he was a young boy, for a while. He liked it.

Talks in that big loud authoritative voice in the back seat of the car he always talks in, making it hard to face the road, telling his grandmother he’s signed up to go to Afghanistan in the reserves next winter. Hasn’t told us yet. She’s devastated. He says he’s surprised. One of the main things he does with that voice is make it sound very mature and responsible. His surprise is dignified.

He likes drama and to be the center of attention. It’s his nature. I don’t think he knows it though.

He always feels left out like it’s your fault. Pause. But how is it I’m responsible he’s such a surly angry shit to be around. Larry used to always blame Eli’s mother which is true but tries not to do that any more because it’s also not true. It’s a bad habit.

Finally going to see a therapist. We begged him. Larry did. He doesn’t take anything I say seriously. He’s usually too preoccupied putting up a big cold front for several million reasons in his head. There’re some things we just can’t help you with. My coaching job. You need to go outside of family.

It makes us sick to be around his constant blaming. We’re home sick today. But really we’re just sick. Post-nasal drip. Blech. It’s not his fault.

He’s so hard to be around. He’s getting better; I think the therapist is helping.

Things can get worse for a while when they’re getting better.

New envelopes

It’s hard to write when you’re in the process of submitting your manuscript. That’s the problem.

I drove up to JC Appliance Ltd today to buy new parts for the blender after I dropped Jacob off at school but they didn’t open until 9 so I sat in the car reading Anna Karenina. I’m still at the start. I haven’t met Anna yet.

Since JC Appliance Ltd is right beside a Staples I went in there too to buy some new regular size envelopes, #10 size, because I’m almost out from sending out so many query letters and self addressed stamped envelopes.

I decided to splurge and get the more expensive ones with the adhesive you just pull off when you’re ready to send instead of using the pink foam soaker thing that’s always too wet for activating the glue when I’m at the post office. I also bought a new stapler; it’s pink too - a girly pink, and some whiteout. I wouldn’t want to run out of whiteout one day.

I always hate it when people might be seeing what I want. I don’t like being so vulnerable to their being against me for wanting it. I asked the girl at the Staples if she knew of where a post office was nearby. There was one over at York University. There was one up Highway 7 way. There was one near Bathurst and Steeles.

Forget about the one near the university. The parking’s crazy in there. And about heading way up to Highway 7. She wasn’t sure where exactly the one at Bathurst and Steeles was. She wanted to think, “Maybe in the Drug Store?” It’s so nice when people who aren’t really sure of a thing let you know.

I couldn’t find it. So I went to my regular postal outlet, the one I was wanting to be hiding from and the woman who always sees me there sending off my query letters and manuscript requests served me like she always does and was really nice and not the least bit judgmental-seeming just like she always is.

Even though I’ll probably be afraid to go back to the post office again next time, afraid of being seen, I still tell myself when it’s happening, when I’m sealing closed the envelopes with the too wet round pink foam thing that wets the envelopes in the wrong places, smudges the ink, leaks on the counter then spreads onto my sleeves, “pay attention to how the world around supports you even in the smallest ways.” I just need to learn to let it be.