People are very interested in cats on leashes. We often bring Petey to the park and we always put him on a leash because there are big dogs running around and lots of cars whizzing by on two streets surrounding. But people are so fascinated with it and they always come and talk to us, saying it's the first time they've ever seen a cat on a leash. Petey doesn't love it, but he likes being outside.
The Pepe Carvalho detective novel series is my new favorite. The detective creation by the late Spanish writer Manuel Velasquez Montalban, is a really interesting gumshoe who wrestles with intellectual and philosophical quandries. In Buenos Aires Quintet, Cavalho is in Argentina investigating the disappearance of Raul who has some shady relationship with the Argentine government of the late 90s. His stories have a real "Kafka-esque" feel to them (doesn't everyone say that about writers who leave out practical mundane details?) in that you have such a limited view point and sense that most of the action takes place off-stage.
Chili needs cumin. I've been making chili for years, but last month we were at Dougie's and tasted some of his chili. It was different than mine and when we compared recipes, I realized that I never used cumin. After the park yesterday, I came home and made a big batch of chili and cornbread and added cumin this time: SO GOOD!
Taking a day off is a necessity. Since I freelance, I tend to just work all the time but lately Masa's been putting his foot down (in his own way), insisting I take Sundays off and do no work. It really does help getting away from this computer for a day and on Mondays I am more than ready to get back to work! I wonder if I will ever have enough work stability to be able to take two days off?!
We have strange TV habits. We only watch about five tv shows with any regularity and the only networks we watch are TLC, A&E, and PBS. I love "The First 48" and "Cold Case Files." (Oh, and "Intervention.") Masa loves "Flip This House" and "What Not to Wear." I often watch "Nova" or "American Experience" or "American Masters" if the topic is interesting to me. But that's it! Those are about the only shows we ever watch on tv and almost never watch the US networks. I wonder why...and we never plan on watching anything. It's just that we keep the tv on if those shows come on. I hear that certain shows are worth watching ("The Wire," "Entourage") but I have no idea when they are even on. Oh, and we don't have HBO.
I love Montreal when it's not winter. All winter long, I am daydreaming about leaving, hating being stuck inside all the time. People tend to be anti-social (ourselves included) so since I work at home it's easy to feel isolated. But lately with the great weather, we are loving this city and don't want to go anywhere else. Meeting up with friends, hanging out in the park, just walking down Laurier or Mont-Royal on a sunny Saturday is a thrill, bustling with people and animals and snippets of conversation. But in January, this town SUCKS.
So these friends of ours, Catherine & Ian, just bought their own place, a HOUSE. With a yard and everything. Now, anyone who is familiar with Montreal will know how rare detached houses are on the island (well, it's not actually detached, I guess), unless you want to live way out in Beaconsfield or some other suburban nowhere. We were all insanely jealous: the house is in an "up and coming" area just five minutes from downtown and they got the place for a song: it's HUGE, built in the 1880s, but renovated nicely, on a quiet street with a nice backyard that has flowers and a patio and two huge trees...
They had a small party last night to celebrate and show off their new home. Since Masa and I are kind of starting to look to buy our own place, we were thrilled that such things were possible: not that we need an entire house. We are pretty much stuck on the idea of the Plateau, though; there are definitely other parts of Montreal that are fine, but this feels like the right neighborhood for us. Too bad a decent two bedroom condo in this area can easily cost $500,000. And a HOUSE on the Plateau? Easily $800,000 to a million bucks. Grrrrr. Too much for us!
So we might look in Point-St-Charles, where Ian and Catherine got their place. Or settle for a one bedroom. So a one bedroom in a neighborhood we love or a possible house in a neighborhood that has still to find its footing a bit south of downtown. Mmmmm.
Some people have all the luck!
Professional marketers are sure getting creative!! Strapped airlines who are struggling to survive are coming up with some interesting ways to cut costs and increase revenue (don't even get me started on these crazy US airline mergers which seem self-serving and a real bane for customers). I realize airlines are in it to make money so I can understand the need to survive at any cost. But do they really believe their customers are just downright stupid?
Air Canada has started a new "travel assistance" program. What this means is that for a fee (they are vague about it but say "for the cost of a single cab ride to the airport") when I book my flight, I can choose their optional travel assistance package which will "protect" me in case of delay, cancellation by giving me "priority" in rebooking my flight, getting into a hotel room if necessary, or rerouting my flight on another airline.
So let me get this straight: if I'm flying on Air Canada and Air Canada has a delay: I can PAY THEM to sort out the problem for me? If they overbook a flight and bump me? They will reroute me or rebook me IF I PAY THEM. If one of their planes has a malfunction because of poor servicing and they have to cancel my flight, they will put me in a hotel room overnight IF I PAY THEM. I can see how that's gonna work in the event of a major delay: all the customers who paid Air Canada for this ridiculous travel assistance policy will be helped while everyone else will just be stuck? Huh?
I don't have a problem with Air Canada (though big Canadian companies generally are greedy bastards and very short-sighted: terrible customer service, WAY more expensive than in the US, and no concept of cultivating "long term customers," wanting their money now now now). Air Canada is usually better than most US airlines and their international flights are way better than United, Continental or American (I HATE Northwest). It's true that they are more expensive because there is less competition and when I fly out west, it's usually cheaper to fly on a US airline (unless Air Canada is running a special). But that's fine. I use airmiles and get lots of perks for it. And the better service generally makes up for it being a bit more expensive.
But this really bugs me: the program, the fact that it's so blatantly targeted at people who don't have a CLUE. Imagine buying an extra insurance policy with Ford so that if your Ford breaks down because of a design flaw, the will fix it for free! I'm not talking about a warranty but an actual extra policy you pay for which means they will simply back up their own product if their own product fails.
Crazy crazy crazy. What's next, dear marketers?
I finished this book in the bath tonight that I loved. I was battling with myself the last three days: wanting to read it, but not wanting it to end.
Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton is 20 years old and records a time in Argentina's history that most would rather forget. It recounts the disappearances, the murders, the pain and oppression of the country's "Dirty War." It's a novel, most definitely not a "history," but at its core is a story of an ordinary Argentine who is both blessed and cursed: cursed in that his wife (and later, his daughter) is "disappeared," but blessed in that he has detailed visions about the fates of the thousands of others who have disappeared.
It's a story about imagining (as the title suggests), about the inability we all have to tell our own stories adequately. Carlos can see what happens to strangers: their torture and torturers, the details of their kidnappings, of their deaths or escapes or, rarely, their releases. But he can't see what has happened to his own wife or daughter. It's his story that escapes him. And the novel is layered with "tellings". He tells relatives about their missing son or daughter, though they are plagued by this knowledge and don't know how to incorporate this telling into their lives and the fact that they must live without their loved one. Carlos' story is told by the narrator, Martin, whose own story is shrouded and vague. In Imagining Argentina, the very country has trouble telling its own story.
This notion of "the disappeared" has always been something of a minor obsession of mine. I remember being a teenager and reading a few books about this time in Argentine history, terrified at the notion that someone could just vanish in the middle of the night, taken away by government soldiers, never to be heard from again. And to live with that space in your life: that your uncle or brother or wife or son may be suffering unspeakably in some basement that you may even drive past every day on your way to work. It's something that a country can't overcome easily, no matter how much they struggle. And it's still feels like a painful wound that hasn't healed, or at least I got that sense when we were there: stories in the paper, the mothers who still march at Plaza de Mayo in remembrance, the occasional person who still occasionally is disappeared.
From the mid-1970s until 1983, perhaps as many as 30,000 people disappeared during Argentina's dirty war. Up to 400,000 were imprisoned, many tortured. Of course, many countries suffered during this time: China's Cultural Revolution (which lasted roughly about the same time frame, though a few years earlier) didn't cause people to disappear but it turned families and schools and cities against each other. I heard so many stories of loved ones put into prison or killed or sent away for some imaginary crimes. A grandfather put into prison for drinking decadent western whiskey. A mother murdered for coming from a rich family. An uncle who went crazy when his students turned against him. This time in China's history feels "real" to me because I can put a human face on it and as I sit here, I can think of 4 specific individuals I know whose lives were directly affected by the tumultuous happenings. That's why "telling" is so important, not only for people to understand, but for people to be able to remember.
I was thinking about this afternoon when I heard this documentary about the 40th anniversary of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The hearings that were held in 1970 (a few years later) in order to establish what happened, why it happened and who was responsible seem to strike resonant chords which much that has been happening in Iraq. All those stories told about the My Lai massacre, all those soldiers who recounted their stories, all those officials hearing details of massacres and rapes, etc.etc. Yet, somewhere along the line in the last 40 years we stopped telling that story. And we forgot. I wonder how many people today even know what the My Lai massacre was.
Argentina's "Dirty War" was always a bit far removed since I don't have any close friends who are Argentine to ask. But after reading this book, I feel a bit closer to "feeling it." Not the same thing, I realize, but that's why I love reading: it inches you towards something you can never experience and helps you understand it in a specific way. And the fact that this novel, Imagining Argentina, is written by an American only underscores its message: only someone on the periphery, someone once removed from the emotion, can truly "tell" a story. I don't know if that's true here, too, but it's an interesting dimension to this novel about "tellings."
And it's in telling and retelling stories like Argentina's "Dirty War" that we know not to repeat those mistakes, to know the "warning signs" when a society begins slipping into reactionary chaos.
What was your first car?
I've owned two cars in my life.
My first car was a 1977 Volvo 242 in mint green. Man, I loved that car. My first boyfriend, Jerry, and I bought that car in like 1990 for $1,200, which felt like a fortune for a 19 year old kid on his own. We owned that car for a year, selling it (for $1,100) just before we moved from Boise to Oregon (briefly). It was a great car: in excellent condition and it ran really well.
Then, my last year of university, I bought a 1979 Toyota Corolla. I didn't have that car for too long because I was a poor college student and couldn't afford to drive it and since I was in school working two jobs, I had no time to go anywhere anyway and I lived on campus. I sold it to a waitress I worked with at a cafe in Pocatello (who later went to jail for dealing cocaine, or so I heard).
And I've not had a car of my own since. Sometimes when I see an ad on TV for some sale they are having on some model of car, I consider buying one. But only briefly: where we live, having a car would be a total pain (parking is impossible and expensive) and there is just no need for it with the metro station literally 5 minutes away. And renting a car is a piece of cake...in my daydream life, we'd have a house in the country, have dinner parties every Sunday afternoon with wine and exotic foods and music, friends would come from all over the area regularly and we'd have this car:
Totally not practical for a Montreal winter! Sometimes I consider whether buying a Vespa would be smart: easy to park and great to get around the Plateau. Unfortunately, with the weather in these parts, we'd only be able to use it half the year!
It's 1.30am. I'm reading (an excellent) book in bed. Suddenly: BOOM. CRASH. Masa and I both jump up and run to the window to see a car has crashed into a parked Suzuki right across the street from our place. There are cop cars everywhere and police with flashlights spread into the night in all directions.
It seems that the police were chasing some kids in a Hyundai, the kids turned onto our street (the wrong way on a one way), crashed head-on into our neighbor's car, then bolted, leaving both cars steaming and destroyed. Neighbors wake up and wander around to get a look, the police yell at the people above us who from their 3rd floor balcony can apparently see where the kids ran off to, firetrucks and police photographers arrive, newspaper photographers. The guy whose car was crashed up comes out onto his balcony and is not pleased. He comes out into the street in his bathrobe and takes videos of all the damage. Quite a spectacle!
By 2.30, they were still out there and the firemen were trying to de-attach the cars, one from the other. I fell back asleep. This morning both cars are gone and only a big pile of broken glass and plastic on the pavement.
This is a good neighborhood! Damn it!
before. in february or march.
and last week.
thank GOD it's over!
is this Argentine Tango show that I found podcasting.
I'm not really into the "dance" of the Tango (I like watching it, but I am not coordinated enough to do it), but I like the music a lot: it's upbeat at times, melancholy frequently, and I can work with it playing since it doesn't distract me. The site has mainly traditional Tango music, occasional poems (about Tango or Argentina or Buenos Aires), information about the historical changes and development that Tango has gone through and features about famous Tango musicians.
It's such relaxing music while I work...here is a bad video I took last fall in Buenos Aires of two people tango-ing in Dorrego Square.
Great film! Very early Kurosawa (1949), so he's not quite moved into the style that he would later make his mark with, but the themes are very much his: consumer culture, the àpres-guerre identity, new vs. old generation (a well-established Ozu theme as well), but more than this: Stray Dog is an exploration of existential identity in a world that has nearly collapsed socially. About the choices we are all forced to make in order to survive, particularly in a hostile environment. It's like a film-noir from the Hollywood 40s with all the existential dread of Camus and Sartre, the realism of early Russian cinema.
The movie centers around a missing gun, that of Murakami (played by Kurosawa favorite, Toshiro Mifune), whose weapon is lifted by a pickpocket on a crowded bus. He is a rookie cop and losing his gun means a demotion. More than this, though, Murakami blames himself when his gun is used for a string of crimes where people are injured or killed, by a criminal whose past is eerily similar to Murakami's own (both former soldiers, both poor, both having suffered after their return to Japan): the film ultimately explores the criminal in a humane way, showing that living a life of crime has less to do with simply being a "bad person" than simply making wrong choices. Murakami's obssession leads to a quest: to recover his gun before more people are hurt by its reckless use.
What I love personally about this era of Japanese filmmaking is all that is not said: about the war, about the social conditions, about the backstory that each character is trapped by and trying to overcome. How does a society carry on after their entire city has been firebombed and hundreds of thousands of neighbors, friends, relatives killed? How does a society absorb soldiers that have returned from war when society knows that these soldiers have committed terrible atrocities against innocents?
Interesting tidbit: the title of the movie is Stray Dog and it starts with a title sequence that has a dog panting fiercely, a real close up that lasts quite a long time. Apparently some woman in the US, a member of the SPCA attempted to sue Kurosawa since she argued that Japanese were barbarians and the only way they could have gotten a dog to pant like that was to inject it with rabies. Kurosawa had to send a signed deposition, stating that they had gotten the dog to pant by riding a bike around for a while with the dog tied to it, then let it rest and filmed it panting. Kurosawa reportedly said that the only time he ever wished that Japan had won the war was having to suffer this indignity.
I think the rut I have been going through simply has to do with feeling like my career is going nowhere. But yesterday several things happened which made me feel much better.
First, a company I used to work for called me up and talked to me about a job in Shanghai. No, I'm not moving (yet), but it's a big company with lots of room for advancement and just knowing I could work for them again cheered me up immensely. And it's doing writing and editing for them full time. Mixed feelings about working for a company again in an office, but at least it's choice! They want someone in June and that just won't work for us now. So I passed politely. But still felt good knowing I had another option. And no doors shut should we decide to go back to China in the near future.
Then another publishing project fell into my lap. It's not a done deal yet, but it looks very promising and came about because of that breakfast I went to in New York a while back. The good thing about this project is that it involves a new set of skills which is encouraging: I start to feel stale doing the same type of jobs over and over. And freelancing means that you have to force yourself to do new things or you just get stuck: stuck in terms of skill, in terms of income, in terms of day to day monotony.
Then it struck me that the rut I've been feeling was not about place or anything but career. I hadn't worked through it that fully but just these two not-yet-events encouraged me a good deal. It reminds me of that scene in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series where Mona tells Mouse that it's impossible to have a good relationship, a good job, and a good apartment all at the same time. You might have one, or two, but you can never have all three at once. I guess I feel that this time, when other areas of my life seem to be going well, I should focus more on my career.
On a Latin America reading kick lately: finshed that excellent collection of short stories by Argentine, Mexican, and Brazilian writers, then started reading Mario Vargas Llosa's Who Killed Palomino Molero, a kind of murder mystery set in 1950s Peru. I expect to be on an Argentine and Mexican reading kick for a while, thanks to our trip in the fall and an excellent series of podcasts on Writer's & Company about Mexican writers: Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Fuentes, Paco Ignacio Taibo and others.
Woke up at 3am last night, my head swimming with ideas, concepts, nonsense. So much so that I couldn't sleep again until 5. I stood at the window thinking about cognitive dissonance theory, nationalist manufacturing, Sherlock Holmes, Monocle magazine, studying Spanish, and the possibility of doing a new graduate degree.
As I stood there in my underwear, looking out at the street (it was dark; no one could see me!) I thought of something Nora Ephron wrote: "The reason you're waking up in the middle of the night is the second glass of wine." Ah, so that's it. It's not that any of these late night ideas are particularly profound (generally anything but). I just shouldn't have had that beer at 10.30!
Mmmm. This is turning into a very strange spring.
