Humor is Essential for February

Humor is Essential for February

February is the shortest month with the longest days
the temperature plummets along with my mood
dark like the dirty snow collected everywhere
in crusty, unsightly lumps waiting for the sun of spring
to finally emerge from its endless slumber
and bring life back to this depressing tundra
and my cold, listless bones

Driving to the grocery store
my son yammering away in the back seat
about sour gumballs and Spiderman
I make an emergency stop
on the bumpy, brown-snow shoulder
and promptly vomit down the front of my wool coat
while soaking my jeans with pee
my post-baby bladder no match
for the icky undulations of my diaphragm

Oh February!  Month of romantic disappointment and winter illness
with my birthday thrown in for good measure
I sit here soaking urine and acid-drenched carrot mush
into my Golf’s black upholstery
and I can’t help but laugh
as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band twangs
“keep on the sunny side of life”
out my crappy, warbling speakers

Chin up, young one
you have a long way to go yet

© Jenn Carson 2012

Please do not reproduce without permission from the author.

Lola: A Ghost Story

Jessie is a young Filipino Canadian returning to his family's hometown for his grandmother Lola's funeral.  Although he feels a strong spiritual connection to Lola, he secretly believes she once tried to drown him, and that her "visions" were perhaps the workings of a dark, evil mind.  The reason Jessie feels this way is because he too sees ghosts and demons, including his dead cousin JonJon.

While the premise of a boy who sees ghosts is nothing new, the interesting Filipino cultural lore makes up for any originality the story is lacking.  Readers get to learn about different (but equally scary!) stories about The Kapre (cigar smoking ogre who eats children), The Manananggal (vampire woman who sticks her tongue in a pregnant woman's bellybutton to suck the heart of the baby out of her womb), and The Tiyanak (an evil baby that hides in the woods and seduces people with its pitiful cries).

Although not for everyone, and liable to give some young readers nightmares due to the storyline, the cheerfully drawn pictures are cartoonish enough not to leave a lasting impression on sensitive minds (this isn't exactly The Sandman).  Worth a borrow at the library for a fun Sunday afternoon read.

oooooh....Fashion.

I am not a fashionable person.  If, by fashionable, we mean someone who keeps up with current cultural trends and clothing styles.  I am not by any means an "early adopter."  I've never owned a cell phone.  I don't have cable or satellite or Netflix or a TV that doesn't run on cathode ray.  I listen to CDs and vinyl and don't have an MP3 player.  I am proud to say I have never worn a pair of Uggs or Crocs.  I couldn't tell you what colour is hot this season.  I've never watched an episode of Sex and the City.  I think those shorty jumpsuits everyone was wearing last year looked like something I romped around in when I was wearing diapers.  I know women want to look young, but...toddleresque?  Then again, I still wear clothes I owned in high school...well over a decade ago.

So, that said, why the HELL do I read so many books about fashion and couture?  Because I have an ongoing and lifelong obsession with clothing.  Mostly, its shape, its construction.  Raised by a grandmother seamstress who made a lot of my apparel, I have been fascinated ever since with the design and drape and texture of garments.  Watch me walk through a clothing store and I could care less what everyone is wearing or what is most popular, I'm touching the fabric, looking at seams, collars, darts, watching it hang.  As a child, I would sneak down to my grandparents' basement to watch Fashion Television in secret, blushing at the occasional nipple or bum cheek and terrified I would be caught looking at "garbage."  I would spend hours and hours dressing my Barbies and drawing outfits for them and "sewing" them new ones from Nan's scrap bag.

I now can sew for real, but I spend most of my time making pedestrian things like pyjamas and sundresses, napkins and place mats.  There is not a lot of time in my life for couture.  But a girl can dream, can't she?  Which is why the bedside floor is always covered with beautiful hardbacks, begging for a ruffle.  Here's what I'm currently drooling over:

Great picture book and inspiring read.  Goes through a timeline of realistic fashion purchases for those who actively seek vintage garments, either for real-life wear or collecting.  Points out key pieces from each decade and suggestions of how to shop smart for these fragile used goods.

This is not a coffee table book but a resource for the serious fashion researcher.  More encyclopedia than Cosmo.  If you want to read an essay on the folklore of sneakers, this is the book for you.

My all-time fav stutter-inducing picture-perfect book from Taschen, it gives us a tiny but unforgettable peek into the vast Kyoto Fashion Institute's collections.  Your mind will be blown. 

Most of the crazy crap that is churned out of the Japan clothing market either confuses, mystifies or worse, disinterests me.  Mostly, I just don't get it.  Why do 30-year-old women want to dress like creepy babies?  Why do some Japanese men call themselves "Mamba" and go tanning and wear make-up to try to look black and therefore more "hip-hop"?  Why is it all so extreme?  Surely not everyone in Japan under the age of 40 is THAT attention-starved?

Yohji Yamamoto, from the "Wedding" Collection, Spring/Summer 1999

That said, there is a lot of awesome happening right now in the Japanese high-end fashion scene.  I'm thinking of the well-tailored menswear being created by Hiroki Nakamura for visvim or the stunning sculptural formalism of Yohji Yamamoto.  As usual, anything mass-produced for popular culture seems to turn me off, but the real artwork of master creators is enough to make me want to sift through any culture's junk drawer and pull out the gold. 

This book is a real hodge-podge of both high and low end Japanese fashion and is worth a read if you are even slightly interested.

Lastly, a weird one.  My interest in fashion occasionally forays into decorating and architecture, but rarely for long.  This book attempts to take interesting or famous people (often not mutually exclusive) and document their houses, gardens and lifestyles.  Some of it is interesting, but mostly is just leaves me wondering: do people REALLY have THIS much MONEY?  People LIVE like this?  Every day?  It's too depressing.  It's the kind of book that belongs on a coffee table in a yacht, not on the dusty floor next to my unmade bed and pile of snotty kleenex.

Waiting with winter

I'm a fairly healthy person.  Those that have known me since childhood (or have seen my list of surgeries or broken bones) may protest, but I consider myself to be in relatively good health, especially since I work in the school system, have a son in daycare, and am pretty well smothered by germs from every angle.  Sure, I get the occasional cold or flu, the odd headache, an itchy rash or two, but my yoga practice, stellar eating habits, non-smoking, rarely drinking, and need for eight-hours-of-sleep-or-I-am-a-zombie lifestyle are good preventative medicine. 

So, my Achilles heel?  STRESS.  I do too much.  WAY too much.  Some nice friends say I have "good time management skills."  Those that know me better are more inclined to realize that I am just WAY TOO optimistic about how much I can get done in the run of a day.  Work two jobs and go to grad school?  Sure.  Single mum?  No prob.  Read three books by tomorrow?  Lovely.  Knit a hat while I wait at the Dr.'s office?  Well, of course.  Watch a movie while folding laundry and making next year's Christmas presents?  What better way to spend two hours!  Why not do sit-ups while I'm at it? 

The truth is: I am delusional.  I really, truly, heartfully believe that I can accomplish all these things (and MORE!....I should get chickens!  Bake my own bread!  Sew a dress tonight!) and not burn myself out.  And frankly, most of the time, I succeed in pulling the wool over my own eyes (while my poor friends and family watch from a distance waiting for me to run into a brick wall from my blindness).  My confidence in my own abilities sometimes outweighs my own actual, you know...HUMANNESS.  What's that you say?  I'm not Superwoman?  Pish tosh.  My self-righteousness will not even ALLOW me to grace that with a reply.

And then, I get sick.  A first, a little sick.  A cold.  A cough.  A sore throat.  A bladder infection.  A fever.  Intense and prolonged fatigue.  Oh, maybe I cracked some ribs there from coughing too hard for the last two weeks.  Oh, I can still teach yoga class tonight...I'll just "take it easy."  Oh, I guess I should take a couple days off work and rest up.  I can still work on my grad school assignments on the couch and knit a few things and scrub the toilets...gently.  Oh, gosh, my ribs are really really painful and I can't sleep and I can't stop sweating and I vomit when I cough too hard.  Oh, what's that Doctor?  Oh, pneumonia.  That's kinda bad right?  I'm not going to be able to attend ASIST training this week or teach Ashtanga?  Oh, bed rest.  Perfect.  I totally LOVE sitting still.

And so, life wins.  I am human after all, it appears.  Dang. 

Please don't tell anyone.

Pulling.my.plug

Pulling.my.plug

When the black tidal wave crashes night on my skinny heart strings
And I’m sure they’ll snap with the gallows
I slap-dash round the bathtub searching for driftwood
Cursing at anchors and rough granite and grout

Breath
Find the breath

Can’t sink with lungs filled with air
Can’t drown on dry land

© Jenn Carson 2012

Please do not quote or reproduce this work without permission from the author.

Seducing the Demon

It's no secret I like Erica Jong.  Part of the strength of my affection is that she also gives me permission to hate her, as sometimes I do with equal ferocity.  She is brash, selfish, insecure, flippant, tireless.  She takes life by the balls.  Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life was dubbed a "car-wreck" by the Chicago Sun-Times and I think they are confusing the author with the work, a common mistake among critics and everyday readers as well.  The book is superbly well-written.  Sure, it's self-indulgent, sure it gets a little side-tracked, but it fulfills its stated purpose: to expose the writing side of Jong's life (as opposed to her many, many other demons which make cameos along the way).

It is Jong, not her writing, that is the car-wreck.  It's impossible to look away from a life this colourful, dramatic, out-of-control.  You are mesmerised by the broken bodies, dribbling gasoline, the unnecessary trauma.  But, as Jong makes clear, to what an outsider seems like a useless lineage of heartache and foolishness has actually been a necessary learning curve, a coping mechanism, a survival-by-obstacle-course approach to keeping the devil at bay.  "My tendency to dramatise murders ordinary life and ordinary people.  I care more about drama than ordinary people and ordinary life...Don't be a novelist unless you can tolerate this...Novelists love to weep."

This memoir is everything we have come to expect from Jong: brazen, contradictory feminism, blow jobs to wrinkly old publishers in hopes of a first edition of Keats, DUIs, bad choices, big cocks, sweaty backstage kisses, searing honesty.

She talks intimately of her ambivalence towards motherhood, how she wrongly believed real writers weren't mothers, until she had her daughter Molly and realised that a writer learns more about fantasy and reality from children than from books.  Writing is an author's meditation, a chance to make sense of the chaos swirling around us (and within us).  It would seem, in respect to Jong and many other writers, that a dramatic, challenging, exhausting life is necessary in order to come in from the cold, sit down at the table, and record the brutal truth of things (the worst of those brutal truths being that we must deal with the consequences of our actions and reactions).

"Writing is not a hostile act but an act of understanding - even when it's satirical, even when it's bitter.  You only write about the things you care about.  Indifference doesn't need to be put into words."

And I guess that's why I keep coming back to her, even when she infuriates me: she CARES.  About everylittlething.  Writing isn't a vocation like bar tending or bookkeeping.  It's a life.  A full one.