Almost imperceptible witticisms

Crowdfunding and anxiety

caile — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 01:26:33 GMT

So I've been trying to promote a crowdfunding campaign for a community event. It's not going too well. I mean, it's probably at least as good as a bake sale. But watching the numbers not tick up is driving me bonkers. I can feel my muscles tensing up to the point where I'm basically just a ball of anxiety. I didn't realize how many people were going to look and then not contribute! It does not help that some friends launched a campaign the day before me and raised $4000 in the time it took me to raise $180. I don't know.

Night thoughts

caile — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 08:36:51 GMT

When you smile for real, you're so beautiful it's like a heart stopping and the zap of electricity that makes it beat again, too.

Week 7: No True Scotsman

caile — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 17:00:13 GMT

You have to understand, in Cape Breton we don’t used hyphenated identities. There are no French-Canadians in Cape Breton. There are plenty of people whose first language is French. They’re just not French-Canadian. That’d mean they were from Quebec. In Cape Breton, they’re just the French. We’ve got the French, the Scottish, the Mi’kmaq, the Dutch, the Irish... what am I missing? Oh, right, the English! We’ve got a couple two or three of them, too. Just a handful. But nobody who calls themself Canadian.

I thought this was completely normal and right, up until I went to university.

So there I was, a sweet little innocent abroad in the world, telling people I’m Scottish. And they’d say:

- What do you mean, you’re Scottish? You don’t say Och Aye. You don’t eat haggis. You’ve never mentioned your sleekit wee beastie. And look, you were born in Canada, right?

- Yes.

- And your parents were born in Canada, right?

- Barbara and Scott, yes, that’s right.

- And were your grandparents born in Canada?

- Yes, Francis and Corrine, Johhny and Jessie, all born in Canada.

- Well, maybe your great-grandparents were born in Scotland and that’s why you say your Scottish?

- Well... no, Rory and Sarah, Veronica and Angus, Mathilda and Angus, Catherine and John Angus, all born in Canada. Keep going, I can go back eight generations until you get to the ones who came from Scotland.

And then we’d just be at an impasse. Staring at each other.

- Well, why in the name of all that’s holy do you think you’re Scottish? You’re not Scottish.

- What do you mean I’m not Scottish?

What am I if not Scottish? Anybody’d have to concede there are some points that suggest I am. Red hair- well, reddish. I own a kilt. I’ve taken bagpipe lessons. I’ve danced a highland fling in my day. I've tasted a deep fried Mars bar. I know the words to Flower of Scotland, when will we see your likes again? That fought against him, proud Edward’s army, and sent him homewards to thiiiiiiink again. I speak Gaelic. I've picked ticks off a sheep. I'm fey and proud and as good as anyone.

I’m a MacDonald. It wasn’t until I travelled outside of Nova Scotia that I realized how much of a joke that was. In Mabou, where I grew up, approximately 20 per cent of my high school class were MacDonalds. Even in Halifax it was a fairly common name. Elsewhere though... I was quite surprised when people faces lit up when I said my name. They’d get this big grin and they’d start to laugh. “MacDonalds!” They’d say. “Like the restaurant!” I realized that from their perspective, I was essentially introducing myself like this: "Hello, how do you do? My name is Joyce Burger-King."

The thing is, we don’t have fast food restaurants in Mabou. It’s a 45 minute drive to the nearest Tim Horton’s, for Christ’s sake, and that’s on the other side of the Causeway. So the restaurant was so remote from my mind. And then I felt ashamed. Thanks, Mcdonalds, for making my name an international laughing stock and synonymous with crap food and crap jobs. That’s just super. Thanks. On the plus side people everywhere can pronounce my name, so there’s that.

Still all that stuff is not evidence that I’m Scottish. It’s just a collection of stereotypes. And here’s the thing - I’m not Scottish. I mean, obviously I’m not a citizen of the nation of Scotland. I'm a Canadian. It says so right on my passport. But ethnically, I'm a Gael. And Gaelic identity is so tied to romantic notions of Scotland that when I talk about my cultural identity I confuse everyone right into thinking that I am Scottish. (It happened a few weeks ago in this very competition.)

But I always wear something under my kilt, so I suppose I am no true Scotsman after all.

Week 6: step on a crack

caile — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 19:43:49 GMT

I should have known much earlier. The time he got up after sex and started buffing his nails; I should have known then. Or the day he informed me that he sure missed my breasts. Or the night he told me to leave his house at 2 a.m. because he was tired of me.

Go now, he said. I'm tired. I'm tired of you.

I laughed.

Why are you laughing? It's true.

I know, I said. That's why I'm laughing.

It's a compulsion. I know I'll hate being with him and I'll feel bad afterwards, but I can't stop. I'm thinking of him now: his precisely-parted dark hair that I love to mess up, his snub nose, his brown eyes behind designer lenses, the heart-breaking dimple in his right cheek, his oddly slender wrists, his broad, soft belly. The way he fakes a smile, the way he really smiles. The way he expects me to do what he says as a matter of course, here, drink the rest of this beer, and then, when I don't, diffidently, you don't have to if you don't want to.

I know I don't have to. I don't have to do any of this. Don't have to ask him how his day was, don't have to riffle his hair, don't have to kiss him on the shoulder casually, don't have to put on heels, don't have to write him letters, don't have to let him take me home. Don't have to pretend this could be something good.

It's a compulsion. Like jumping over the cracks in crumbling pavement. Once you start you can't stop doing it, hopping from one asphalt island to another, until the whole ground is a tracery of cracks and there's nowhere safe to step.

If I could just fix this, and I know I can't, but if I could just fix this, if I could make him love me, it would prove I deserve to be loved.

Week 4:Nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent

caile — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 20:47:07 GMT

Whiners. Malcontents. Brain-dead. Hillbillies. Hypocrites. Stuck in the past. Bitter. Stupid. Ridiculous. Nonsensical. Squabblers. Daft. Insular. Paranoid. Petty. Foolish. Complainers. Grumpy buggers. Irrelevant.

I've heard all these words used to describe my people in the past few months. In public places. In comments on local, provincial, national news stories.

Colonization is an insidious process. Outright insults and assumptions of inferiority creep inside your head until you yourself believe that your culture is inferior.

My people are not the Scots, not the Highlanders, not the Celts. We are the Gaels.

It began... well, how it began is for historians to guess at. In 1380 John of Fordun wrote: "The highlanders and people of the islands, on the other hand, are a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine, ease-loving, clever and quick to learn, comely in person, but unsightly in dress, hostile to the English people and language, and, owing to the diversity of speech, even to their own nation, and exceedingly cruel." In 1586 William Camden described my people as wild and barbarous (or possibly vampires): "They drank the bloud out of wounds of the slain: they establish themselves, by drinking one anothers bloud..." In 1609 the government required my people to send their eldest children to far away English-speaking schools, if they were to inherit their fathers' cattle. This was to combat "ignorance and incivilitie". There have been government dictates preventing my people from offering hospitality in their homes, from sheltering our musicians and poets, from wearing our own clothing, from carrying weapons and from speaking our language in schools. There have been government-sponsored efforts to plant English-speaking colonists on our lands.

These things undermine confidence.

In 1884 the Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland found that "The language and lore of the Highlanders being treated with despite has tended to crush their self-respect and repress their self-reliance without which no people can advance. When a man was convinced that his language was a barbarism, his lore as filthy rags, and that the only good thing about him -his land- was, because of his general worthlessness, to go to a man of another race and another tongue, what remained that he fight for?"

And eventually our chiefs became "civilised", and they forgot that the people belong to the land, and we were spun away to colonize other lands. To remake ourselves in the image of our oppressors.

A hundred years ago there were 50,000 Gaelic speakers in my province alone. Now there's scarcely more than 50,000 in the whole world.

If you can teach the people that English is superior, eventually they'll clamour to learn it. To leave behind the stupid insular brain-dead hillbillies.

See how it works?

It began again last October, when the board of our tiny Gaelic educational institution announced that it has received a Royal designation from the Queen.

I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. The Crown and honour don't go together, for us. There is no honour in becoming the English. Being English is all very well for the English, but I've had to struggle to learn my own language. What does the Crown care about that? I wasn't the only one who felt this way. Letters to the editor were sent, petitions were circulated, meetings were called. The people made it clear that they opposed this renaming.

The name change was quietly dropped.

My people fought. Our language is beautiful, our lore is rich and deep.

The only irony is that I am writing this in English.

'S e cànan mo chridhe a tha seo, cànan cho binn ri smeòrach a'seinn air barr nan geug.
(This here is the language of my heart, a language as melodious as a thrush singing on the tip of a branch.)

Week 3: In Another Castle

caile — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 01:13:38 GMT

I don't get the big deal about long hair.

I mean, it's nice, but I have been swimming in the ocean on 27 days in a row, starting on report card day and going up to today, and last night I got sick of my hair looking like coconut husks and wool rovings held together by Elmer's glue, so I chopped it all off with my mom's special scissors over the bathroom sink, and then mom yelled at me for leaving hair in the drain.

And this morning, Mrs. MacPherson looks like she would like to yell at me, too, but she can't 'cause I'm not her kid.

"Short hair is not becoming to a princess, Lizzy," she says, pointing to the black-and-white photo of me in this week's Weekly Log, where I float among the dozen other girls in tiaras and sashes. We all have hair streaming over our shoulders

Mrs. MacPherson runs the annual Gathering Week princess pageant. She has long hair. It rises high and stiff from her forehead and scraggles in a bleached blonde mass down her wide back. She frowns at me now as I riffle a hand through my cropped locks. They're so smooth and light.

"Are you taking this pageant seriously?" snaps Mrs. MacPherson.

"Yes, ma'am," I say, eyeing my reflection in a commemorative tray on the mantelpiece. I like the way my hair stands up now that it's so short. I look like Sonic the Hedgehog, a little bit.

The only reason I am in this pageant is because Ashleigh and Kelsey Dawn, my two best friends, begged me to come in it so we could all ride together on the hood of Ashleigh's older brother Rory's '79 Camaro in the Gathering Week parade. Except then Ashleigh got mad at me because she said I was being flirty with Darren Nickerson, who has the longest, darkest, thickest eyelashes of any boy at our school. Just because I was his lab partner in Biology last year. So now they're not talking to me, and I am definitely off the Camaro, and I don't even want to do this stupid pageant, except mom says I have to because she asked her boss to sponsor me, so now I am stuck being the Stone's Pharmacy Pageant Princess, which means I have to help out by running the fish pond at the Fire Fighter's Fun Day. It's just my bad luck that I have to pick up the prizes from Mrs. MacPherson.

I grab the box of prizes and slam out through the screen door. Late July heat shimmers up from the pavement and I can feel sweat rolling down the small of my back as I haul ass down to the fire hall. Ashleigh and Kelsey Dawn are already there, manning the straw draw. Kelsey Dawn whispers something when I come in and Ashleigh laughs loudly. Maybe they aren't my best friends anymore.

The afternoon passes in a blur of attaching plastic toys to strings so the little kids can pull them over the barrier. They exclaim in delight over popguns and bubble wands. I wish I could be so easily pleased.

At home, I wolf down my mac and cheese, stopping only to ask the question that's burning into my soul.

"Mom," I say, all fake casual, "Did you find anybody today?" I cross my fingers on both hands under the table, in hope.

"Sorry, honey," she says.

"Mooo-om!" I yell. "I have to have a classic car! I can't just walk in the parade!"

"Why not?" she says. "Princess power! You were the one who begged to be in this pageant, Lizzy. I thought it was a wasteful relic of 1950s misogony, but you insisted."

"Fine," I say, snatching up my raffia beach bag as I flounce out of the trailer. I run almost all the way down to the beach, stopping only for a stitch in my side. I change into my suit in the outdoor changing stalls and run right into the calm sea. The Atlantic is not warm, exactly, but it's warm enough that I don't gasp like I did at the beginning of July. As soon as the clear brown water is waist deep, I duck-dive under. My hair no longer floats like an anenome or drips down into my eyes when I surface. I love swimming in the evening light but eventually my hands start to get pruney and I have to come out.

I don't want to go home. Instead I stalk down the beach in the opposite direction from the way I would have gone last summer. Ashleigh and Kelsey Dawn will be down at the volleyball net, hoping for Darren Nickerson to pass by.

Instead I head down the long part of the beach, with the red cliffs bulging overhead. This side of the beach is sparsely populated. It's lonely. I blink. Stupid salt stinging in my eyes.

Some stupid kid has built and abandoned a sandcastle, precise bucketfuls of sand forming eroded towers topped by sticks and shells. I kick at one and it slides satisfyingly down. I jump on the castle, kicking it, pulverizing it, destroying it. My breath comes out in unsteady sobs and I have no curtain of hair to hide behind.

"Hey, are you okay?" asks a voice.

If my life were a fairy tale or even a teen novel with "snogging" in the title, the person asking would be velvet-eyed Darren Nickerson. But it isn't. It's Ashleigh's older brother Rory, who is practically actually a grown up at 19. He has a beard and buys his own beer and spends most of his time tinkering with the Camaro which I am not riding on in the parade tomorrow.

"Ashleigh said I can't go on the Camaro," I burst out before I can stop myself.

"Does she?" he says, blinking. "How come, Lizzy -Lizzy, right? I thought you two were thick as thieves."

I shrug, but then somehow as we walk back up the beach I end up telling him the whole embarrassing story, about how I let Darren Nickerson copy my biology homework all year, and how Ashleigh got mad and called me a two-faced queef and how I called her a pin-headed smunt and then we stopped talking to each other.

"Hmmm," says Rory, with a crease forming between his eyes. "I'll fix it. The car thing. Don't worry."

"You will?" I say, gaping.

"Yeah."

"Gee, thanks!" And I race off to get home before dark. The Camaro hums out of the parking lot and passes me in a red flash.

The next morning is a jumble of getting into the green dress I wore to junior prom, the white gloves, sash and tiara that every princess will be wearing. My short dark hair looks super cute under the silver tiara and I'm not surrounded by a cloud of hairspray like everyone.

Around 11 mom drops me off in the Co-op parking lot, where the parade will start. Princesses are crowding into the shade beside fire trucks as balloon-festooned flatbeds manouvre into position. Every so often a classic car pulls up and a girl in a gown rushes over to chat to the driver. I look around anxiously.

When Rory pulls up in the Camaro, Ashleigh and Kelsey Dawn are in the seats. I feel sick. He's probably forgotten. But he flashes me a thumbs-up sign. Ashleigh gets out of the car and slams the door. Rory pulls away, leaving her in a cloud of dust.

I crane my neck. All the other princesses are gone. The cop car that's leading the parade starts up its siren and inches out onto Main Street. Traffic is about to shut down for the duration.

One last car pulls into the parking lot. Or, not just a car, no: a work of art, a thing of beauty. A post-war Rolls Royce in muted green and silver. The driver jumps out, He's an older man who's still kind of hot, with grey hair at his temples.

"Lizzy?" he calls. "Ashleigh? Rory asked me to take the two of you in the parade."

I glare at Ashleigh but there is no way I am not riding on this car. It even matches my outfit. I scramble up on one side of the hood, while Ashleigh does the same on the other side. Neither of us says a word. The car rumbles into place near the end of the parade.

I sit with my back very straight and wave to all the little kids as we roll along. I wish I had candy to throw to them. The dads whistle at the Rolls. I can see Mrs. MacPherson in front of the Post Office, beaming fit to burst. I look over at Ashleigh, wondering whether to try to make her laugh with a comment about that, but her whole face is white. She's gripping the car with both hands.

"Hey, are you okay?" I say.

"Too high up," mutters Ashleigh, and then I remember the time she panicked at the top of the big slide on the playground. I had to talk her down. The hood of the Rolls is a lot higher than the hood of the Camaro.

"Look at Mrs. MacPherson over there, " I say, "She's styled her hair with wallpaper paste again, it seems... Oh, there's the Mayor, he's as dressed up as an undertaker.."

I kep up a soft running commentary through the whole snail-paced journey to the arena, at the other end of the parade route. Ashleigh snorts a few times, and then laughs outright.

The Rolls jolts to a stop. I stop, too.

"Liz," says Ashleigh, "I'm sorry about calling you a... you know."

"Me, too," I say. "I'm sorry. Besides, I don't even like that person anymore."

"He has weird long fingers," Ashleigh agrees. "Ben Dwyer is much cuter. He asked me to play volleyball with him on Monday..."

We thank our driver and hoist up our skirts and sweep off to look for Kelsey Dawn. It's all settled. Darren Nickerson can't come between us. Besides, I think I might have a crush on an older guy. Beards are kind of cute.

Week 2: The Missing Stair

caile — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 22:07:09 GMT

It's best not to want anything from the kitchen when my father is cooking. He slams the cupboard doors and clangs the pots and stomps on the brown linoleum flowers underfoot. He fills up the whole room with a fug of irritability. If you go to the sink, it's bound to be just when he needs water. If you open the fridge, he'll trip over you. Wherever you stand, you'll surely be exactly where he's looking for the cheese grater. He'll growl at you as you scurry away.

To be fair, in our house, there's no consensus on where the cheese grater is kept. It might be on the counter by the cookie jar or it might be in the warming oven or in the upper pantry cupboard or in the lower pantry cupboard or in the cupboard under the lazy susan along with the onions and the molasses and the vinegar. Looking for it is irritating. But my father's mood goes beyond that. He's cranky whether or not there's cheese in a recipe.

On this particular night, he's frying haddock, with mashed potatoes and yellow beans on the side. My sister Emily comes into the kitchen just as the food is being dished out onto mismatched plates. I don't feel like fish, she says, I'll make something.

Fine, my father grits out as he slaps down a spoon into the smooth potatoes. Fine, don't eat it.

There's a flash of suppressed rage that lingers like the smell of burning electrical wires that you get when your computer's power cord burns. A spark and an acrid scent. Anger is like that, in our house.

My father storms out of the kitchen and down the stairs, just as the rest of us sit down to supper. My sisters and I look at each other across his abandoned mound of mashed potatoes.

I just wanted a sandwich instead of fish, says Emily.

It's okay, says Joanne, he's always cranky when he's hungry.

Call him back, says my mother.

I say nothing, but I think about how it's always been this way. My father igniting in anger for reasons no one can understand or predict. A misplaced can of corned beef, a toy left on the floor where he'll step on it, a daughter who disagrees: sometimes this rolls off him and sometimes it provokes him to snap and roar and sulk. Anger is an uncertain thing to live with, when you never know the triggers.

If you don't eat the fish, you don't appreciate his work. If you don't appreciate his work, you don't love him.

I think about myself and my sisters, how we struggle with workplace anxiety and abusive exes and social phobias and dreary depressions. None of us function quite right.

As a boy his own father beat him with a leather belt. In anger, not just as a stern disciplinarian following the parenting wisdom of that by-gone age. In anger. In turn he never laid a blow on any of his daughters. Instead he taught us how to snare rabbits and hunt for shed snake skins, how to shoot a bow and arrow, how to throw a punch properly, how to count the rings of a tree to tell its age.

He can't teach us how to untangle the mess each generation makes of the next.

Week 1: Jayus

caile — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 03:59:34 GMT

The thing about jokes is, they're context dependent. Like, there's this story I tell that goes like this: A certain fellow, let's call him Donald, went to a dance one night, in the summer presumably, when the night is warm and big black junebugs clack through the air like flying prunes, as unloved but not as high in fibre, and fireflies and drags on roll-your-own cigarettes and the stars overhead all flicker in the dark.

And Donald brought a bottle; this was in the days before beers in the trunk of the car, but anyway maybe he went in and got heated up dancing some sets or maybe he stood outside and drank straight from a 40 of Johnny Walker with his back against the rough whitewashed shingles on the hall. And by the time the dance was over he had a pretty good sgleo on. And he decided he'd take a shortcut home, rather than going by the road, so he walked through the graveyard.

As it happened, there had been a death in the community recently, and just that afternoon men had come down with their shovels and made a place to lay the corpse. This too is part of grief and dealing with grief: shirtsleeves rolled up and sweating on a summer afternoon, the scent of clay, dirty hands and the knowledge that you've done all you can to provide a final resting place for your friend, your wife, your father, your neighbour. There was an open grave.

Donald, being drunk, fell into the hole, and, being drunk, passed out in the hole.

In the morning he woke, cold seeping into his bones and a taste like ashes and sweat in his mouth. He pulled himself up and looked around. It was just at the break of day, with the sun lapping the horizon with a pinkish glow, but not yet risen. Mist that would later burn off in the sun's heat still wreathed the only thing Donald could see: headstones.

He said to himself, "If this is the Day of Judgement, I must be the first one up!"

I told this joke to a crowd of tourists once, and got only the sort of tension-breaking laughter you get when no one understands why you appear to think you've arrived at the punchline of the joke, because this is the nature of jokes: tension building tension building punchline release of tension laughter. And if the punchline, which in this case depends on the audience having a familiarity with biblical end of the world theories of bodily resurrection, which you just might not have top-of-mind at the exact moment when I am telling this joke, if the punchline falls flat then people will laugh anyway. Because that in itself is a joke. The punchline is there is no punchline.

Week 0: Introduction

caile — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 23:00:00 GMT

I have just come home after 3 days of teaching at a March Break camp for kids. I am tired and sleep-deprived to the point of silliness but my heart is full. I was also part of the organizing team, so my day began whenever I came down for breakfast and ended when the kids went to bed at 10, leaving me time to slip off for some socializing with the other instructors.

Most of the tears this weekend were tears of laughter. I was teaching Gaelic language, storytelling and drama. My students worked up skits on how Chucuillin got his name and the horse with the yellow blaze and the man who trapped death in a sack. They got round-eyed at a story about a corspe rising and stumbling through the wake-house calling, "I'm coming after you! I'm coming after you!" which turned out to be the right level of scary: not so much that anyone got the screaming heebie jeebies but enough that nobody used the four letter l word that I don't allow in my classes. They learned to count to ten: aon dha tri ceithir coig sia seachd ochd naoi deich.

Outside of classes, they danced the macarena a lot. Did you know the macarena would stand the test of time? I mean, these kids weren't even born when it was originally a craze. They played ninja and practiced their stepdancing and got homesick on the second night and then didn't want to go home the next day. They became best friends in 24 hours or less.

The instructors played a number in the variety concert where everyone got on an instrument they don't play: the fiddle teachers on the guitar and the piano, the piano teachers on the chanter and the small pipes, the piping teacher and the guitar teacher on the fiddles, and me on the harp just for fun. The we sloped off to play catchphrase, at some point deciding that the losing team would have to wear their clothes inside out to breakfast the next morning, which they did like troupers with pockets like flags flying. But not me, because my team won. This event amazed the kids. Adults play games, too.

I love to spend time with people who love the things I love.

Want to hear a joke?
Okay.
Ask me if I'm a grapefruit.
Are you a grapefruit?
Nope!

The real LJ Idol, accept no substitutes

caile — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 22:28:21 GMT

I am in like a pin in a pincushion. Sign-ups here.

If

caile — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 04:11:11 GMT

Say there's a failing I'd like to reform
I try to be clever when I could try to be kind
I come off cold when I'd like to be warm
Failure to connect's what I usually find
And I use words like the palm of the hand
Of a filmic dame who's been suddenly kissed
Sparring in syllables I never planned
Every joke like landing a fist

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Summer never ends, right?

caile — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 01:30:58 GMT

I can't even tell you all the things that have happened. Awesome students who make me notice new things. Spontaneous roadtrips. Becoming roadies for a Scottish band. Skinny dipping. Bonfires. Volunteer catering a friend's wedding. Queen or beaver. Dances. Catchphrase. Sex on the beach interrupted by a sudden thunderstorm. In jokes that I'm in on. Replacing all the tea bags in the office with cotton balls to prank our piper, and then having our CEO go to make tea first. My first gig. Storytelling. Summer stars. New friends. Shots that taste like bubblegum. Loving teaching Gaelic. Naps. Late nights.

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The walls

caile — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:47:25 GMT

This morning I got up and I had energy, for the first time in ages. I felt good for no reason and I made a to-do list and I did a bunch of the things on it and I went for a walk in the sunshine and I felt happy. Just happy!

The past few weeks have been a blur of sleep and sadness and weird dizziness and a soft, futureless, pastless cocoon. Which is to say, I haven't been thinking about what I am going to do next.

My sisters made me talk about it yesterday though. My most pressing problem is that I haven't got anywhere to live at the end of the month. My mom said I could come home if I need to, but there actually is not room. And my sisters were like, no, don't do that. They made me a list of outside the box options and it included "Buddhist monastery" and "Celtic roundhouse" so it did at least make me laugh. When I try to think of a real solution it just causes an anxiety spiral.

Whatever, I guess I'll read up on wattle and daub construction.

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Love song (or at least a song about looking for love)

caile — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:07:30 GMT

Oh hey, here's a video I made recently for my cousin Val, in which I am super dorky and sing a song about love and technology:

Yeah. The lyrics are:

It's complicated, dating in this modern age
he defriended me on facebook, I guess we have broke up
but he texted me to say it would be okay
if I wanted to meet him for a hatefuck

Well, I had a friend and I could not pretend
my feels for him were less than what they are tho
but he was horrified, looked at me and cried
"I think of you just like a kind of girlbro"

There's plenty of fish in the sea and maybe there is one for me
so I signed up for a gentleman correspondent
but as time went on and messages came along
I grew more and more despondent

it's "show me your tits" and unsolicited
attachments of naked cock pictures
this may just sound strange, but can we arrange
for the internet to have some sort of strictures

And I know it's tough, looking out for love
sometimes I fear it's passing like a train
when you lean against the sill and everything feels still
as if Earth is moving past your window pane

when you lean against the sill and everything feels still
til you jolt and judder into life again

(as always, lyrics are not entirely based on my life! Not entirely.)

oh headdesk

caile — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:49:18 GMT

So, those Canadians who downed a plane in Bermuda because the whole damn family was trying to smoke? Yeah, from my hometown. So I posted on facebook that it's an embarrassing day to be a Mabouer, and my uncle commented to say, uh, that's our cousin... Yep. The woman is my Dad's first cousin. The next person who says I don't understand the feels involved in having a trashy family is gettin a puck to the mouth.

I am so behind on work today because I spent an hour shovelling out my car and so was late, and my boots did not stand the test (oh mink oil, how you've failed me) and my feet and legs are slightly wet and the window next to my desk is stuck open and I am so cold SO COLD and all I want is a hot shower, a cry and a cuddle with someone who makes me laugh. Instead I've got eight hours of work ahead of me and no dry clothes to change into. I guess I can have the hot shower and the cry tonight, but the cuddle is out of the question. Ugh.

Goal setting

caile — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:24:38 GMT

I am doing kathrynrose's goal setting workshop. This is today's assignment: "Now we sit back and fantasize a little. You have a magic wand, a fairy godmother, a crystal ball or enchanted mirror that shows the future you, successful in every way. How far into the future is up to you, but I recommend at least five years. Look at how amazing you are! The fates have smiled at every turn. Life is good; you've never been happier. You're doing exactly what you've been wanting to do. You look great; you feel fantastic! If these past few years have been a race, you are in the winner's circle. Flowers and flashbulbs and festivities surround you.

Linger in this image. Take a good look around -- at yourself, at your home, at your entire life. What do you see? What do you look like? Who are you with? What are you doing? Where do you live? What new things do you know?"

It's not even a year since the days when I couldn't think about this, because I couldn't see a future. Today I'm ready to be honest with myself about my dreams. Not in public though.

Anyone who is interested in joining in can find the series here.

Writing heroes

caile — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:53:48 GMT

I bought Shane Koyczan's album after realizing he wrote this song, but I haven't listened to all of it yet. I keep trying but I can't make it all the way through. It's too good. It's too raw. His writing tears out my heart.

"Our heads bent towards each other like flowers in the small hours of the morning, while light wandered in like a warning that time is passing and you right along with it, bit by bit every day.And all I could say is if I could I would write you some way out of this, but my gift is useless. And you said no. Write me a poem to make me happy."

caile — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:07:08 GMT

My thoughts on ikebana after seeing an arrangement made at a recent workshop: if I wanted something six feet tall and ugly in my life, I'd be on okcupid.

Home game: The stage

caile — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 15:31:21 GMT

We are an amateur theatre troupe, but we perform in a 500-seat theatre with a full fly tower. We could fit a circus rig in here. We could, but we won't. What we will do is make people laugh, make them laugh and laugh until their eyes leak tears, until they walk out with their faces sore from laughing so hard.

We are an amateur theatre troupe, but we try not to be amateurish. We read scripts in the basement at the local newspaper office, after hours, hashing out what we want to do and what our audience wants to see. We rehearse upstairs at the municipal recycling depot, in a room where there's always a faint odour of dirty bottles and a closet full of composters shaped like giant Darth Vader helmets. We pace in the hallways, muttering lines. We muff our entrances and miss our cues and mess up our lines and mug so much the director has to tell us to dial it down a notch. It seems hopeless, and there's always a moment where we think the show is going to fall apart. And then it clicks, and suddenly he nails that monologue, holding us spellbound even though we've heard it a thousand times already, and she gets across the pathos under the humour in her character, and I really go for it in the slapstick moments, bruises on my ass be damned. And it works.

The months of rehearsals, rolling in uncaffienated on Saturday mornings, staying late on Tuesday nights, lead us to this. The set gets built in a hurry. We only have two days in the space. There's a flurry of hammers and plywood and foam sculpting and paint. Who's got gold curtains? The arm's fallen off the dummy again. Does the volunteer fire department own a Santa suit we could borrow? Why do we do this?

We do this for the moment, backstage, when the curtain goes up. I stand a little too close to him in the darkness, elbows touching surreptitiously. Then the audience laughs for the first time, they get it, and we smile at each other, adrenalin surging. I step away to become my character, ready to go on and earn my own laughter. The stage is better than any drug I've ever tried, better than anything you can do with your clothes on and a lot of what you can do with them off.

We do this for how it feels when it works, for the energy we'll have when we come off stage on opening night, for the sheer joyful high of it. Even when it goes wrong and the audience laughs at a dreadful thirty second pause where no one can remember what happens next. We'll hug backstage on closing night, already thinking about the next production.

Are you hooked? I asked him after his first show, the one where we kissed endlessly and awkwardly for the director, long before we kissed for real, are you hooked? Yes, he said, I'm hooked.

______________________________________________________________________________________

caile is going to dress rehearsal tonight. She is sessile and unprofessional, but she has been inspired by many of whipchick's entries about life on the road as a performer.

Home game: Break the Mode

caile — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:02:34 GMT

Tal paused to wipe the dust from his face, smearing his linen shirt sleeve. A hanky, that's what he needed. He remembered the old cowboys carrying them, a flash of red in a back pocket, one boot up on the rails, when he'd been a steer roping boy back at the Chippewa Cree Rodeo.

He picked up his finest brush and reached up to sweep more dust off the inscription. The shapes of the symbols didn't look familiar in any of the languages he knew: English, Cree, French, Sanskrit, Egyptian (both hieroglyphic and demotic), Greek, Latin, Michif. But why would they? The creatures who'd carved them hadn't even been human.

The portable tritium lights filled the space with a greenish glow. Tal squirmed along slowly, letting the heat from the stones under his back seep into his bones. The team had taken to calling this place the tomb. A natural conclusion, with its underground pictoglyphs that called to mind endless holovid remakes of The Mummy, but in truth they had no idea what this place had been used for. Not no clue. Tal had plenty of clues, but he hadn't been able to put them together in a way that made sense, yet. He wished they'd had a better sense of what these aliens had looked like physically.

He scanned the indentations as he moved along, not really analyzing them. Analysis would have to wait until he got back to the ship. But he was paying attention. There, he thought, that shape, like a bird in marsh grass, repeated. And again, here and here. In English, a solver of newspaper crytoquotes would guess that symbol for "the." He'd been better at crytoquotes than steer roping. But not all languages had a definitive article.

He let his fingers drift up to trace the shape. The lines felt smoother than he'd expected, incised rather than chiselled into the stone. Done with acid rather than tools? Redwing blackbirds flashed through his mind, hopping from stem to stem in the barrens. The symbol lit up with a soft blue glow.

"Oh, shit," said Tal. Glowing was never a good sign. Interplanetary archaeology was a hazardous field. Poking around in the mysterious remains of alien civilizations had led to a few incidents. That thing on Darvos V, officially they said it was all down to pockets of hallucinogenic gas, but you heard things in hushed voices at conferences. And the Morden debacle. And Tiffany Gallant had grown an exoskeleton after picking up something in the Alniyat mission, he knew that one was true because he'd run into her at an alumni event once, after.

He grabbed his kit and scrabbled away from the inscription. The light spread from symbol to symbol, seeming almost to leak from one to another. He pulled out his camera. It was too late to worry about the hazards of archaeology now. And anyway Tiffany had said having an exoskeleton was quite useful in some ways. Putting the viewfinder to his eye showed the machine was notched up to the thermographic setting and-

Tal jumped up, hitting his head on the low ceiling. He rapidly snapped pictures of the shapes that showed up in the camera's grid, a mass of globular blobs drifting between him and the exit shaft. Cold sweat beaded along his arms as he worked. There was no way out. The shapes floated closer. He tore the camera away from his face. Nothing. His eyes saw nothing except the eerie light from the pictoglyphs mixed with his portable lamplight. Nothing was swarming him. He could walk right out.

He raised the camera again. There was one shape right in front of him now, close enough to touch. He balled up his free hand and held it stiffly by his side. He heard a high pitched whine, felt the close air sucked from his lungs and fell with a whump.

He lay, unable to move, with his eyes closed, for a while. The stuffy dustiness was gone from his nose. He would almost swear he could hear birdsong, probably from the little birds circling his head like in an ancient cartoon. No, cahcahkaniw, a high slurred whistle, terrr-eeeee. He opened his eyes.

The swampy ground under him squelched as he shifted. He saw a flash of red as the blackbird flew away. He sat up gingerly. This was definitely not the tomb or the team's base camp on Ruchba III. He stared at the horizen for a moment, taking in the blue sky with a few high white cirrus clouds. This wasn't anywhere on that yellow-skied planet. In fact, he'd lay money that this was the slough out back of his uncle's place in Box Elder.

He lay back and began to laugh. That inscription must say "Thank you for choosing Air Transmat", he thought. Unless I'm dead, and the afterlife is a lot like Rocky Boy.

Slept Through a Landslide

caile — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 17:23:50 GMT

Not long ago I was approached by Halifax rap legend Jesse Dangerously about writing something for a zine he’s making to accompany his latest single, Slept Through a Landslide. I said yes right away, because that’s what you do when someone asks you to write for their rap zine. Seriously. The song is a rap remix of Krista Muir’s Tired Angels. The song and the zine are about failure, so my story is about how it feels to fail at something you really, really wanted, when you’ve seen failure coming for so long it’s almost a relief when it arrives.

The song with zine will be launched on August 24th at Fan Expo in Toronto. It’ll also be available eventually at Strange Adventures in Halifax or online at Jesse Dangerously’s bandcamp and etsy shops. The song alone is available now at http://dangerously.bandcamp.com/album/slept-through-a-landslide-tired-angels-remix

This is super exciting for me! Jesse D is one of my favourite rappers (check out his other stuff, he’s brill) and Krista Muir is great as well (I saw her play as Lederhosen Lucil once, such a fun show.) The zine is going to be full of writing and art inspired by the song. This song is part of a whole big remix project Jesse Dangerously is working on that I will certainly be keeping an eye on. Check it out!

Home game: Visiting hours

caile — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 17:59:10 GMT

I frown at the scrawled note. 146 Bayville Road, 4 p.m. today, it reads, and then something that looks like... corny. Corny? Is that an assessment of my headline writing skills? Damn my editor's cryptic notes anyway. Why can't we talk about assignments on the phone like normal reporters? But I know it's because we're North America's only newspaper staffed entirely by the phone call avoidant. Which is good, because otherwise I couldn't work there.

Still, the notes leave me scrambling to figure out the situation on occasion. Once I went to something that said candlelight vigil, 8 p.m. thinking that it was going to be the service that palliative care holds for all the people who've died on its watch in the past year, and it turned out to be a candlelight vigil for bereaved parents commemorating their dead children so they could get throught the Christmas season. I was the only one there who had never lost a child. I interviewed people right before they bawled and then I said to the woman in charge, right, I will do this story again next year but give me your phone number and we'll talk about it the week before, because I think it's more important for the bereaved to know its going to happen than for people who aren't bereaved to know that it has happened.

Bayville Road is this little dirt road back of town that I've never been on before. Thank Christ for iphones and google maps. A few years ago people used to give me directions like turn left where the liquor store used to be. Right, where it used to be before I moved here? Sometimes I wonder how safe it is, going to these middle of nowhere places to meet strangers, nothing but a trail of cryptic notes to mark where I've gone.

146 isn't a house at all. It's a neat little wharf, with several fishing boats and pleasure cruisers tied up at it. I didn't know this was here. How come I didn't know this was here?

There are several cars parked on the grass. I pull mine in at the end and jump out, shouldering my purse and my camera bag. I stroll over to the wharf, hoping someone will recognize me.

There's a woman in a golf visor sitting on a rock. She is slathering sunscreen on her arms.

"Are you looking for Corny?" she calls out.

"You know what, I think I am," I say.

"He's down on the boat," she says, jerking her head towards a green and white fishing vessel.

"Thanks," I say as I trot down the grey gangway.

Corny is revealed to be a slight man with prominent teeth. I ask what we're doing here today and he says we're going over to the island. I thought it was off limits to visitors. Not today, apparently. The owners have invited their mainland neighbours to join them for a party.

I think it's the fact that they own an island that causes resentment. They're not from here (well, it would be worse if they were, people from here don't own islands) and they own a beautiful island that we can see but never go to. Except we are going there. A crowd of people climb aboard, including a three piece band and all their gear.

The crossing is calm, though the boat is full of excitement. At the dock on the island, we all jump down and make our way to land. There's only one road on the island, leading from the dock up to the lighthouse. People set off in little groups. I walk alone, observing, letting the smell of wild roses and bayberries soothe me. There's a steep hill and the end and I'm panting embarrassingly when I reach the clearing at the top. There's a red and white lighthouse at the far end, the keeper's snug house, a shed. This is a summer place now.

The lighthouse is open and I go halfway up before my fear of heights kicks in and I realize if I go to the top I may have to live there forever. I love fresnel lamps but not that much. I give my camera to an acquaintance and she takes pictures from the top while I wait anxiously below. I interview the owners, chat with a man whose dad lived here in a fishing shack during long ago summers. This was always a summer place.

Tomorrow I will write my story about this, and the day after it will be in the paper. This really happened.

Home game: dedication

caile — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 18:37:32 GMT

After school Cassy got into a spat with her big sister Claire. Cassy wanted to go outside and make mudpies since it was finally warm enough, but Claire had her nose stuck in a chapter book and didn’t want to go. Cassy hung onto the arm of her chair, pleading, but Claire didn’t even look up.

“Fine!” yelled Cassy finally. “I’ll go by myself!”
She ran downstairs and jammed her feet into her new red rubber boots. The screen door slammed satisfyingly behind her.

There were chickadees hopping along the bare branches of the bushes in the yard. It was warm and the few remaining patches of snow were melting fast, leaving the ground wet. Cassy jumped into a small puddle with both feet. It made a splash, but it didn’t help Cassy feel less cross. Mud pies were no fun alone.

Cassy took the little trail down to the beach. She could look for washed-up treasures on the sand, she decided. There was always sparkling beach glass and twisted drift wood in a million different shapes.

She marched down the beach. There was a dark shape on the sand, near the water. Cassy thought to looked like a dog, but when she got closer she saw that it wasn’t. It was a young seal. Cassy stopped and stood still.

The seal had big black eyes and soft white fur. It was fat and lovely. Cassy watched as it stock up its nose, rocking slightly as it sniffed the air. It dug its claws into the sand as it moved slowly from side to side.

Cassy edged closer. The young seal looked at her. She looked back. Cassy squatted down to get closer to the animal.
“You’re a nice seal,” she said. “I wish you could play with me. You wouldn’t want to read stupid books, would you? We could run all down the beach and in the summer we could swim. You’d be good at that. I wish I could take you home.”

The seal watched her with dark, knowing eyes. It tossed its head and barked once. Then its fur seemed to shiver and ripple. It shook and shuddered. Cassy blinked and all of a sudden the seal wasn’t a seal at all, but a young girl wrapped in a sealskin dress.
“Wow!” said Cassy.
The seal girl looked at her with the same big black eyes. She opened her mouth and made a soft bawling noise. Her mouth snapped shut.
“Wow,” said Cassy again. “Um, would you like to play?”
The seal girl only looked at her silently.
“Okay,” said Cassy.

She reached out and touched the seal girl’s hand. It was warm and soft, like a new baby. The girl flinched away, but soon came back, curiously patting Cassy’s arm. Cassy stood up and pulled the seal girl to her feet. She stood unsteadily, balancing with both arms spread out. She took a tiny step and nearly toppled over. Cassy had to grab her arm to support her.
She quickly got the hang of it. The two girls thudered down the beach, hand in hand. Seagulls hopping on the sand flew up in alarm as they passed by.

“Let’s go make mud pies,” said Cassy.
She led the seal girl up the path to her home. The best place for mud was in the ditch that ran through the back yard, behind the house. The clay there could be scooped out and squished wonderfully. Cassy used both hands to scrape some up. She showed the seal girl how to mould it into mud pies.
The seal girl flopped down on her belly in the ditch. She smacked her hands into the mud and made a soft noise of frustration.
“Not like that,” said Cassy, giggling. She took the seal girl’s hands to guide her fingers.

They built mud pies together happily, until Cassy heard her mom calling her in for supper.
“You better go back to the beach now,” said Cassy.
The seal girl looked at her.
“Don’t you remember the way? Alright, I’ll take you there,” said Cassy, as her mom yelled out the door again. “After supper. Okay, I guess you’ll have to come inside. Don’t be scared.”
She banged open the screen door and pulled of her boots in the porch. The seal girl had muddy bare feet. Cassy showed her how to wipe them on the mat. She led the seal girl into the kitchen.

Mom was there, stirring a pot with a wooden spoon in one hand and writing a list on a notepad with a pencil in the other. The seal girl perked up, sniffing at the smell of delicious fish chowder.
“There you are, Cassy,” said Mom. “Who’s your little friend?”
“This is... Seala,” said Cassy.
“Nice to meet you, Sheila,” said Mom, her eyes on her piece of paper.
Cassy showed the seal girl how to wash her hands in the sink. They sat at the table. Claire came downstairs.

Mom spooned the chowder into their bowls. The seal girl sniffed at it, then stuck her whole face into the bowl, lapping at the liquid. Mom froze.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“We better go get washed up,” said Cassy, desperately wondering how she could stop anyone from asking more questions. “We’re all muddy.”
She dragged the seal girl upstairs and into the bathroom. She shut the door tight. Her heart was pounding.
“Okay,” she said. “You really are muddy.”

She turned on the tap in the tub. The seal girl’s face lit up at the sight of the water. She climbed right into the bathtub, not caring that her muddy fur dress was getting soaked.
“Now what?” said Cassy.
She jumped as the bathroom door opened. Claire slipped inside and shut the door behind her. She looked at the dark-eyed girl in the tub.
“Who are you?” said Claire.
The seal girl stared at her, but said nothing.
“She doesn’t talk,” said Cassy.
“I told Mom she’s a foreign exchange student who just arrived,” said Claire. “But who is she really?”
“I found her on the beach,” said Cassy.
“Was she lost?” said Claire. “Maybe we should call the police.”
“No,” said Cassy. “She wasn’t lost. At least, we can’t call anybody. She wasn’t a girl, she was a seal!”
“Don’t make up stories,” said Claire, crossing her arms and tapping her foot. “It’s not nice.”
“I’m not fibbing!” said Cassy. “It’s true!”
Both sisters looked at the girl in the tub. She was splashing softly. She opened her mouth and wailed lowly, a forlorn little noise.

“Well,” said Claire. “Do you swear it’s true? Cross your heart and hope to die?”
Cassy solemnly swiped her and across her chest.
“Okay,” said Claire. “We have got to get her out of here.”
Each sister grabbed an arm and pulled the seal girl out of the tub.
They hurried through the house. Claire yelled out to their mother as they passed the kitchen.
“Be back in a bit!”
The three girls ran down the trail to the beach. Cassy led the way back to the spot where the transformation.
“I think it was here,” she said.
She let go of the seal girl’s arm. So did Claire.
The girl looked around. She took a few steps forward, hesitating before wading into the cold sea. She shook herself all over. Nothing happened. Cassy watched in horror as she tried again, and failed. The girl raised her arms, reaching out in the direction of the island, and bawled. Then she started to cry.

“It’s okay!” said Cassy. “Come back here.”
She waved at the seal girl, who turned toward her voice and stepped carefully out of the water.
“What are we going to do?” asked Cassy.
“I have an idea,” replied Claire, staring out at the island.
The sisters snuck the seal girl back into the house, building her a nest of clothes on the closet floor. The only hairy moment was when Mom came in to tuck them in.

“Why does it smell of fish in here?” she said, sniffing. “Tomorrow you girls are going to help me give this room a good clean.”

She kissed them goodnight, turned out the light and shut the door. Cassy felt too nervous to sleep, but she closed her eyes anyway. Would Claire’s alarm clock wake them up in time? Would the seal girl be able to change back? Would...
The next thing Cassy knew, Claire was shaking her arm.
“Hey,” she hissed. “Hey, wake up!”

Cassy sat up abruptly and rubbed sleep out of her eyes. She remembered what they had to do today. She flung the blanket back and jumped out onto the cool floor. She dressed in a hurry, throwing on several layers. She debated brushing her teeth, but decided it would be too loud. She crept down the stairs. Claire was in the kitchen making peanut butter and bologna sandwiches. They were wrapped in tinfoil. Cassy jammed two into the pockets of her coat. She started to put on her red boots but Claire stopped her. She pointed upstairs.

The sisters climbed sock-footed up the stairs and back into their bedroom. Claire pulled open the closet door. The seal girl was curled up inside. She lifted her head and blinked sleepily. Cassy held out a hand. The girl shut her eyes and snuggled down in her nest of clothes. Cassy and Claire looked at each other in wild desperation.

Cassy pulled out a sandwich and unwrapped it. She waved it toward the closet. The seal girl’s eyes popped open again. She watched the sandwich moving and licked her lips. She crawled forward.
“Good girl,” whispered Cassy.

The seal girl pushed herself up. Cassy led her down the stairs and out into the porch, where the sisters paused momentarily to put on their boots. Then they went outside. Claire caught the screen door so it wouldn’t bang and wake up their mom. That would spoil everything.

The sky was dark, with a few peachy-rose streaks where dawn was coming. The streetlights were still lit. The three girls marched down the main street. Seagulls perched on sagging roofs turned to look at them as the walked through the empty village. The air was cool and Cassy felt wide awake. They walked past the closed-up ice cream barn, past the Co-op, past the park with its fire-damaged gazebo, past the house with all the toys in its windows. They went all the way across town to Beach Road Number 1. They could see the boats below. Claire led the way down the hill. They cut through the golf course, scrabbling down the dunes to the wharf. There was a boat pulled up on some old oil drums. Claire crouched behind it and Cassy and the seal girl followed suit.
“Whew,” said Claire. “The Ida Joy is still here.”

The green and white fishing boat was tied up at the wharf, while most of the boats were already heading out. The Ida Joy was Uncle Donnie’s boat really, but he had broken his leg when he slipped on some ice outside the Legion. “It wasn’t there when I went in,” he’d said. Cassy hadn’t understood why all the adults had laughed at that. But it meant their cousin Nolan was in charge of the Ida Joy. He was a grown-up person who was at least 19. And he liked to sleep in.

Nobody was around. Claire sprinted for the boat and jumped down.
“Come on,” she called softly.
Cassy took the seal girl by the hand and led her over to the edge of the wharf. There was a gap where the grey water showed below. She swallowed hard.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Come on,” said Claire again. “Look, that’s Nolan’s truck coming down the hill!”

Cassy swung her face around and glimpsed the beat-up pick-up crawling like a red ant down the beach road. She tugged the seal girl with her as she jumped. They fell heavily on the deck. Cassy’s knee was skinned. She touched the spot of blood with her thumb and then licked it. It tasted like pennies.

They crouched under a tarp as the sleepy hands came aboard, lighting their morning cigarettes and roaring with laughter. The engine finally came to life and the boat chugged out of the sheltered harbour, out toward the island. Cassy and Claire knew that was where the seals lived. Uncle Donnie had taken them out last summer and Daddy had pointed out the King Seal sunning himself on a rock.

Cassy schooched across the deck until she was next to Claire, who was peeping out a gap in the tarp.
"Are we almost there?" she whispered.
Claire frowned and put a finger on her lips. The boat rocked on. Finally the engine cut and the boys started hauling up traps. Claire nodded. They crept cautiously out from under the tarp, but the hands were all busy on the other side of the boat.

The seal girl looked around, brightening when she saw the island. She clambered over the side and plunged into the sea without looking back. Cassy held her breath, clutching at Claire's hand. A slick seal head broke the surface of the water. She flipped a flipper at the boat, then twisted bonelessly under the the water, racing toward the seal colony.

The two sisters looked at each other, smiling. They were going to get in trouble, but it would be worth it.

Home game: Explode

caile — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:55:44 GMT

Ghost of a chance

On Saturday I spin around
restless as a poltergeist
that moves the radio dial
from station into static
so we can listen to
traces of the big bang
oh, call it a creation
if it makes you feel ok
but it's cosmic radiation
when I stand a little closer
the signal comes in better
til I'm close enough to touch
with my hands, then I ground,
close the circuit, then I ground
to a halt, afraid of breathing
loud enough for you to hear
I don't believe in ghosts
that tumble through the walls
that linger any longer
than feelings I'm relieving
that I can't put into words
but everyone knows
snail trail of ectoplasm
how it sounds when I explode

Translation of a Pushkin poem into Gaelic, roughly

caile — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:34:12 GMT

Bha gaol agam oribh, aig aon am,
tha eibhleag fhathast ann, ma dh'fhaodte,
a'losgadh a-staigh 'san anam agam,
ach na gabh drug mu dheidhinn a-nis.
Chaneil suim agam ann a bhi cuir
trioblaid oribh. Bha mo ghaol oribh
gun guth, gun duil, ged
nach robh misneach agam, no nuair
a bha mi a'sabaid le farmad.
Bha mo ghaol oribh ann an doigh
cho caoimhneil, cho caoin,
agus tha mi'n docahas
gum bi Dhia a'thoir gaol mar sin
dhuibh a-ribhist.

Almost imperceptible witticisms

Crowdfunding and anxiety

Night thoughts

Week 7: No True Scotsman

Week 6: step on a crack

Week 4:Nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent

Week 3: In Another Castle

Week 2: The Missing Stair

Week 1: Jayus

Week 0: Introduction

The real LJ Idol, accept no substitutes

If

Summer never ends, right?

The walls

Love song (or at least a song about looking for love)

oh *headdesk*

Goal setting

Writing heroes

Home game: The stage

Home game: Break the Mode

Slept Through a Landslide

Home game: Visiting hours

Home game: dedication

Home game: Explode

Translation of a Pushkin poem into Gaelic, roughly

oh headdesk