Room: First Fumblings

I am pushing and cracking and crinkling and ripping. Underneath what
I'm trying to accomplish is this tearing that doesn't seem to extract
from the day's proceedings. I don't feel like doing anything . . . and
I'm not depressed. I surface, bob and bob, and show to the few lonely
October beach-combers that I'm drowning. I then sink and swim on the
sea bottom. I'm not dead yet.

There are tattered blue recycling cans littering the front lawn. I see
this as a threat. These blue cans, symbols of regrouping and
sensitivity to the Earth are being used as crude softball markers on a
university front lawn. People who do things like this are being too
familiar with their wastefulness; they are almost cruelly using the
receptacles that keep their garbage off the streets as trash. A sin, to
begin with. I don't sit ideally at my window sill pretending to feign
an interest in their games. That is child's play. I have better things
to do. I start to make my bed, but still suck at it. It lays crumpled.
I write the words "pushing," "cracking," "crinkling," and "rippling" on
a page, and crumple it up. This a theme, this a plan, this so
planned.

I don't do anything today, or anything later. I call a few friends and
talk about funny songs I heard, or how life is treating them in their
bubble . . . or perhaps what I ate that day, for the twentieth time
bragging about the good pasta I ate or the macaroni salad concoctions I
blame for stomach sickness. I suffer, and it's because I just don't
anymore.

Tuesday I go to class. I sit and suffer, enjoying the movie about
immigrants but ignoring the sub-titles. I don't need these glasses.
They make my face look fat, and we can't have that&;#8230; I go for
coffee by myself and smile at the gay guys (as I see them). I wonder
how many guys I smiled at in my lifetime were really gay? Am I slipping
or am I dead on, my calculations classy and bright . . . There has to
be a scene of my dreams that I can design or locate. But how do I
advertise? Am I too sleek? I am chained?

When I detach and blast away, I notice something about Tuesday that I
found unnerving. I was so depressed and down-trodden. It hit me, and
crackled. Straight males all around me make me feel elitist and small;
they shout and bellow and I feel undistinguished and so, so petite.
Eating my pizza in an effort to get fat is useless. No one
notices.

When I was young, and it was fashionable to be young, I used to go to
the beach with my parents, sister, and grandmother, and walk along the
long wooden path to the sandy knolls. My childhood was always about
walking. We were either walking somewhere or coming back. The "in
between" was never as exciting as it should have been. We'd sit on the
beach for a couple hours. If I was feeling especially brave, I'd join
my sister for a tease in the cold ocean, but otherwise I stayed on the
blanket, humouring my grandmother as I listened to her tell the same
stories again and again. I loved her. It was embarrassing, in contrast,
to have to lie and say I went to the Yukon over the summer (to be
interesting) as a response to the exciting sojourns to Disney World and
New Hampshire I heard about from my friends. To be a homebody was at
that point pathetic. It's only good to be settled and what I call
"introspective" if you're artsy and have established yourself as such.
I think early birds can register at sixteen. Otherwise, a child you'll
stay.

It's Sunday. I close my window, and get comfortable. I'm writing a
novel, and I think I'm dying. This week must bring more, otherwise I
shall shed and be too weak to clean up after myself. I'll eat every
foodstuff I've hoarded and only leave the room to use the washroom.
I'll quit.

Do I quit? What IS quitting?

Wednesday. A journal or a memoir? I feel like I'm writing about my life
in these detached segments because I'm dying. I don't know why. I
realize that right now, in this twisted invisible wreckage, if I wanted
to do so many things, I could not. I have 17 or so friends here. 2 or 3
are to be trusted. They are lovely. The others will get Christmas cards
if they're lucky. My friends are in Halifax now, having moved there for
a variety of reasons (University topping the list&;#8230;). They
still want me, but I made this choice and I've got to make it through
the year, pass these courses, and save for my ticket to Ireland. What I
find especially central to why I'm writing this colloquial mess is the
fact that

I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE THINKS OF MY PLIGHT OF SORTS

Ha, ha. It's not really a plight. I can't compare it to homelessness or
those stereotypically starving in Africa. It is a minimized sort of
pathetic personal state of crisis centered around my total unerring
feeling of indifference. I just don't care how small people see my
state. I won't respond to:

"Shut up," "Calm down, honey," "Get out," "Get off your ass," or even
"It's okay."

I would love someone or something outstanding to come along and undress
my sense of bad style. I look like such a prep and would rather do what
I did before. Where can I order some guts and ditch these pop monsters?
Is it too late?

What a simple world full of simple joys and simple people. Hehe.

I shall now regale you with another delicious childhood tale to add
substance to this work so the real intellectuals will enjoy it. I am so
smart . . . in grade twelve I graduated with honors and distinction,
sporting a tickle of tinsel on my wrist as an afterthought and reminder
of my fabulous tinsel EC flamer costume at the prom. People saw. Did
they know what to think? Yes, no one's stupid. They cared too. Yay.
Whatever. Three days until turkey presents itself as queen of the food
chain.

Turkey as a kid was super. I was a conscious pig, feasting with a
voracious appetite on every spot of stuffing I could locate, even taste
testing the dressing my Mom and Nanny Jean would make co-operatively.
Mom and Nanny's dressings were equally superior, but my childhood
fascination with my Nanny's cooking proved her dressing to be secretly
superior. My intuitive Mom was hurt, but my current understanding of
the foodstuff's equality leads to open lines of communication regarding
good food and it's virtue. Hats off to turkey . . . the meat of
champs.

This year turkey tasted incredibly different. It was meaty and not
special. I feel so queer. And it is with this that I go to bed.. The
family fades as I undress and hope I never wake. For I spoke, and it
melted. And no one came . . . I slept in a turkey suit.