By God, the old man could handle a spade.

I woke up today to see that Seamus Heaney had died last night in Dublin.

He's a poet I and most Irish people of my generation will associate strongly with school. In fact, I think he may have been the only living poet on the whole English curriculum. He was never my favourite (Bishop and Plath shared that spot, and there was also a fascination with Gerard Manley Hopkins but mostly only due to the whole repressed homosexual thing... the class where our teacher talked about how one line of his could be interpreted to mean anal masturbation with a crucifix was particularly entertaining) but there was something very familiar and home-like about him. Even since primary school, we had been taught how important he was, that he was a Nobel laureate and that was kind of a big deal, a point of Irish pride. He was someone who reminded you that our great reputation for writers (which struggles for air sometimes amongst our other less impressive reputations) wasn't necessarily dead and buried.

I'm no great reader of Heaney. I knew a handful of his poems, and that's about it. Of course, Mid-term Break was the big one for us. Maybe the first time a poem made me cry, and I'm probably not alone. A little boy in our school was killed on the road outside, his older brother just a little younger than me, and it was read at the funeral, or the school service, I can't remember which.

And then later it was Digging, and Bogland, and though back then the sentiments never truly struck me, I remember feeling like I could smell those poems, smell those words. He always chose such pungent words!

You know you're getting older when you hear someone died at age 74 and think "but that's so young.. sort of." At least he got his recognition in his lifetime, and that's something.

return of the mack

I've been back in Toronto a month and finally found the Canadian equivalent of Blu Tak enabling me to stick my little pieces of flair all over the walls -postcards and doodles and bits of memorabilia, so my room FINALLY feels like my real room now.

It's been a month and I don't have a job but I have a phone, a bank account, a bike (with a basket) and a social insurance number.

It's been a month full of weekends and long weekends and weekdays that might as well be weekends and these have been filled with laughter and trips to the LCBO and staring at the sky from Trinity Bellwoods park and late night stops at Smoke's Poutinerie.

It's been a month of reunions with old friends and new unions with new friends and first dates and skype calls back home.

There have been rooftop shows and pool-hopping and island jaunts and bikerides and railroad-bridge adventures and romance and that time I nearly fainted (don't ask..).

I could really use a job though.

#ToasterStrudels #Heisenberg #BreakingFast

#ToasterStrudels #RealMature

Bruise pristine.

Yesterday I took the ferry to the island with a couple of new friends. We biked around in the sunshine, lay a blanket down on the beach, and spent the day drinking a eating mango-cilantro salad.
In the evening, we biked home but not before making a short pitstop to pool-hop at Alexandria park. I guess I knocked my knee while clambering over the metal fence, because I woke up with this bad boy this morning.

Capsize

“Billy, she's a beaut!”

“Thanks!” Billy grinned as his older brother slapped him heartily on the back. They stood on the dock admiring the little boat, bobbing up and down in the water.

“Come aboard,” Billy invited Don, extending a hand. “I've got to show you her sexy little engine.”

Don couldn't care less about boats or engines. They were Billy's thing, always had been since they were kids. But this was the first time in a long time he had seen his little brother excited about anything, and he was more than happy to indulge him. So he nodded enthusiastically as Billy listed off the specs, and gave a low whistle like he was impressed when Billy announced the speed she could hit, though knots meant nothing to him.

He figured his attempt to feign interest was poorer than he thought, because after ten minutes of the charade, Billy's face seemed to fall.

“Aren't you gonna offer a guy a drink?” Dan chided.

“Of course, of course,” and Billy hustled him into the cabin, rooting through some cupboards before producing two glasses and a bottle of bourbon. He poured generously.

“We'll have to get the boys around sometime soon. Christen her properly, you know? Take her down the river, a real fishing trip. Maybe take Dad's old guitar with us, what do you say?”

Don swallowed a mouthful and nodded but said nothing. It was a nice idea but it would never happen. The “boys” he referred to were only boys of summers long gone. They were men now. Johnny's wife had just had their second kid, Lucas was working in the city and usually only home for a week around Thanksgiving and Ed Wirth was moving to Ohio for a woman. There would be no fishing trip to celebrate Billy's acquisition of a small boat.

“Of course,” Don added with a smirk “This boat has a lot more potential than just getting drunk with a bunch of hairy, stinking dudes. Girls will love it. You always hear about how much pussy sailors get!”

Billy gave a half smile but looked away and muttered that he didn't think so.

Don laughed, and slammed his glass on the table.

“I'm telling you Billy Boy, this boat's gonna see more action than the audience at a Steven Segal double bill!”

Billy wasn't amused. “Ah, c'mon, stop... Hey, how's mom doing?”

And that was it. Don had pushed too hard and now the rest of the evening would be spent discussing family stuff and the superbowl.

Around midnight, Don hugged his brother goodbye. Billy decided he might as well sleep on the boat, it was late, he was too drunk to drive home anyway, told Don he should stay too. Don knew he should, and maybe if he'd been sober he'd have stayed, just to be nice. But he was drunk and the thought of staying in that lonely little cabin with his brother and playing boyscouts was depressing, so he dug his hands in his pockets and started to stumble home. It was still warm enough and there were stars. He wondered if Jill was asleep, and wished she was waiting in his bed for him to cuddle up to. Maybe he could call round to her place.. nah, it was late, she'd think he just wanted to get laid. He did want to get laid, of course, but that wasn't the only reason he wanted to see her. Nah, he'd leave it. He could see her tomorrow. He wondered if Billy felt like this every night. How it must feel, knowing that no, you won't see her tomorrow. That poor fucking bastard.

For a second, when Billy woke, he didn't know where he was. White sheets... white sheets... why are these sheets white? Then he remembered he'd slept on the boat, got up and stood out on the deck. It wasn't until then, a whole minute after waking, that he thought of Rebecca. He was used to waking up on the blue sheets she had picked out, being disappointed not to feel her body next to his, seeing her photograph on his night stand. But this moring, for an entire minute, Rebecca didn't exist. He had never known her, loved her, lost her. Until, standing on the deck he smelled that harbourside smell she had always commented on, and he'd thought of her, and his heart sank.

For she's a jolly good fellow.

Oh man, a friend just posted a clip of Disney's Fantasia on facebook, and it brought back some traumatising memories I thought I'd share!

It's nearly my eighth birthday. I'm not a kid anymore. Previous birthdays involved tea-parties with my mom and my dolls, mostly just my dolls. I really loved dolls. But not this year, I'm eight and I'm ready to have a real birthday party, with real friends! Or at least real kids my age. It's going to be a normal party, we're going to do the things normal kids do, there will be rice krispie buns and we'll watch movies and everyone will leave thinking "Amanda is so cool and normal!".

Being normal is important when you're eight.

So I invited about ten kids from my class, including two boys, which was kind of a big deal. Gerard was my on-off boyfriend all through primary school (I'm pretty sure we held hands once) and Podge had big brown eyes and the biggest mushroom-step haircut in the class, like woah.

So everyone comes, and they give me sparkly note pads and glitter glue pens and squishy bracelets, you know the typical neon fare for a birthday in the early nineties (apart from one girl who gave me this really unusual but pretty silk flower in a glass vase filled with water.. kind of like this. Which I liked so much I bought a similar one for a girl's birthday the following year who looked at it in disgust and said "Why are you giving me a grave ornament?")

Anyway, all is going well and then it's time for the movie. My mom had rented a video earlier, and when I asked what she'd gotten I hadn't heard of it, but she assured me she asked the clerk for something for a birthday and I figured it must just be a new release. What followed was the most embarrassing twenty minutes of my life at that stage. 

Have you ever seen Fantasia?!

 It's fucking weird as shit. All I really remember is that it was weird and creepy and there were no words, and there were hippos dancing in tutus and I couldn't decide if I thought it was for babies, or for grown ups (high grown ups) but it was definitely not appropriate viewing for a normal eight year old's birthday. Normal kids had normal moms who rented normal movies like Hook or the Goonies or the Neverending Story 2: The Next Chapter. What kind of bullshit was this?!  Oh god, and everyone was like  "Uh... what is this, Amanda?" and I'm all "Um... I think it gets better", thinking "It HAS to get better!" until I eventually  begged my mom to let me turn it off despite her telling me I was being silly and ungrateful and everyone probably wanted to see the end. No, mom, nobody wants to see the end!
 And that was the day I decided never to even try be cool ever again. I think it was the first time I truly experienced embarrassment. If I ever have a kid I will be force-screening Fantasia at it's eighth birthday for character building purposes, and for kicks.


UPDATE!
I found a couple old photographs from that particular birthday the other week, so I thought I'd add one. I'm in the pink and purple ensemble.