Summer

It's gross.
My house only has two windows, both in the bedrooms. All the rest of the light (and there is lots of it) comes from skylights all through the house. While this is wonderful and fanciful, it also means that sun shines straight into my house ALL day. It gets very very hot in here when the weather is being unreasonable. I'm not sure how hot my house actually is (35? maybe 40?), but I do know that it is just wrong to be in weather this hot.
I have all the windows open and all the doors. The ceiling fan is on high. The sun room door is wide open to prevent a sauna from forming inside my house. The big fan has been rescued from it's basement storage imprisonment to blow hot air around the apartment.
The last two nights I have sworn, on several occasions, that I could hear running water in the kitchen. I have gone out to look, but could not find the source of the sound. It sounds like a distant small fountain somewhere in the house. I was perplexed and curious, and it reminded me of the ping that regularly issued from the kitchen for over a year before I discovered it was a pickle jar in the fridge. Last night I just happened to be walking by the big fan when it whooshed its way past all the cards that are hanging off one of the many banisters in the house. I heard the light tinkle of water as all the tiny metal clips randomly bounced off the wood of the banister. Aha!! That is where the sound is coming from. Now I hear it all the time. Little tinkly metal water.

My garden is loving/hating this weather, depending on the world origin of the species. The tomatillos LOVE it. The bush beans seem unreasonably unhappy about it. The hops refuse to be outside (for some strange reason) and so have been given a nice spot in the sun room. I swear they grow at least a foot a day. By the end of summer I am sure my sun room is going to be crawling with hops vines. I am pretty sure that my scented geranium has been flowering for 3 months straight with no sign of stopping. The first batch of peas is almost ready. My garden is awesome this year. I even have tomatoes!! (an unsuccessful venture in past years).

Me and the sun are not such good friends. We maybe get together occasionally, go out for coffee, catch up. But we are not really into spending lots of time together. As hot as it is in the house, I really don't want to venture outside. Some years I do fine in the heat and sun. Other years not so much. This summer I seem to be sorta in the middle. I can sit in the sun for awhile, but doing anything other than sitting tires me out almost instantly. Especially when it is this hot.
I was saying to someone the other day that I am pretty sure I am the balance to all those people who hate winter and rain. I love winter and rain. You know how when it is sunny outside you want to go outside and soak up the sunshine? I much prefer when I rains because it means I can curl up with something warm. I think people who love the sun and heat are the kind of people who have trouble getting warm, they are cold all the time. I am the opposite. I have trouble staying cold. That is why I love winter, because I actually get to experience being cold.

Hopefully it will pass soon, and we can have a reasonable summer. Not so hot.

Ma

~ma~

Oxford English Dictionary ~ informal term for mother

Sanskrit ~ many things, but...

• do not
• let it not be
• unto me
• without
• me

"millions of years ago"

Japan ~ negative space or pause (aesthetic concept in Japanese art and philosophy)

Pots are formed from clay,

but the empty space between it

is the essence of the pot

(Laozi, 6th century)

Sumerian ~ Land, usually primeval

In my own words ~
the absence of
space
the negative
without
self...

Therefore ~ Brie Ma

Object versus Subject

Object: 1 a material thing that can be seen and touched. 2 a person or thing to which an action or feeling is directed. 3 a goal or purpose.
Objective: 1 not influenced by personal feelings or opinions. 2 not dependent on the mind for existence also Objectivity
Objectify: 1 express (something abstract) in a concrete form. 2 degrade to the status of an object also Objectification

Subject: 1 a person or thing that is being discussed, studied, or dealt with. 2 a branch of knowledge studied or taught. 3 Philosophy a thinking or feeling entity; the conscious mind or ego. (subject to) 1 likely or prone to be affected by (something bad). 2 dependent or conditional upon. 3 under the control or authority of. bring under one’s control or jurisdiction. also Subjection
Subjective: 1 based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. 2 dependent on the mind for existence also Subjectively

(where is subjectify?)

Now, think about how we use these words, in what context, their meanings, and what we are really saying about what is good and bad...
Now, tell me what do you think?

(thanks Oxford English Dictionary)

Useless information I learned from the Olympics

• Women's Freestyle Ski (moguls)- You need to ski straight(??) down and over the moguls instead of back and forth across them to win.
• Men's Freestyle Ski (moguls)- Athletes put duct tape on the knees of their pants so that judges can get a better look at the "absorption".
• Women's 3000 m Speed Skating- Women can be pretty "pushy" (hahahahaha)
• Men's Snowboard Cross- You can be HAD like INCHES from the finish line. FUCK!!
• Women's Snowboard Cross- Canada is only owning a few podiums (this being one of them).
• Women's short track speed skating- Wang Meng is really really super fast. Marianne St-Gelais is super super cute when she wins anything.
• Men's 500 m Speed Skating-With sports wear like that it is impossible to hide your package.
• Women's Biathalon 7.5 k sprint-This is such a weird sport. That's all I learned.
• Men's Half Pipe Snowboarding-Shaun White is DISGUSTING!!!
• Women's Downhill Ski-OUCHY!!! Remind me to never ski that fast.
• Women's Curling-I am more interested in listening to women repeatedly scream "HARD".
• Pairs Figure Skating Long Program-You can win simply by not falling down. Who knew?
• Men's Figure Skating Short Program- Confirmation that Jonny Weir definitely wears a lot of makeup (but he sure is cute).
• Men's Figure Skating Free program- Make sure that the laces on your skates are in good condition. It might cost you a spot on the podium.
• Men's Super-G (skiing)- You have to cross the finish line with at least three pieces of your equipment (so, two poles & one ski, OR two skis & one pole)
• Men's Halfpipe-If your up against Shaun White you might as well just pack up now and go home.
  
• Women's 3000m relay team pursuit-Don't count your gold till the ref's say it's yours.
  
• Men's Curling-you can be a gold winning Olympian when your in your late 40's.
  
• Men's 50K Cross Country-When a guy comes in 5th and is only 1.6 seconds behind the gold winner you should really leave him alone until after he has a good long cry.
  
• Men's Hockey- Canada OWNS!!!
  

What does all this really prove?
That I watched WAY to much of the Olympics!!
...and now that it is over, I can get on with my life.

Is that a promise?

I have been getting Macleans magazine for over five years. They have spent the last three years sending me renewal letters. I ignore them, in hopes that this stupid right wing conservative douche bag of a magazine will stop arriving in my mailbox. However, every week there's another one!! I read it sometimes, so does Chris. Mostly is just makes me angry (especially the "good news/bad news" section). They pile up around the house because I can't bring myself to recylce something that is so close to a book-like-thing.
I haven't actual paid for this magazine. I don't know why they keep sending it to me.
Five years ago I got a Canadian magazine "deal" where I got a bunch of magazines for a year for $15 a month. I got to choose the others, but Macleans was part of the deal. All the other magazines stopped after a year, but Macleans kept coming. Chris thinks they send it to me for free so that I can add to the subscription numbers so they can keep up their add money. I think Chris is probably right.
So, although I got excited to see this "last issue" label on my magazine this week, I'm not holding my breath that they really mean it this time.

Five years ago, today...

Five years ago, on this day, I held my mother in my arms as she breathed her last breath. It seems so long ago, both in time and in experience.
I remember laying my head on her chest after she stopped breathing and watching the shiny metal of a stethoscope being placed in front of my nose. That is a strangely vivid visual memory, even to this day. My first moments in life without her.
I can think of the events of the last 31 days of her life now without getting upset. But sometimes it still hits me. Some small thing will remind me of her suddenly. I might be feeling slightly vulnerable or sad at the moment, and the fact that she is no longer here will hit me like a ton of bricks.
I saw a women in a Volkswagen van yesterday, driving down the road. Chin length straight hair, glasses. It looked so much like her for a moment. I see her like that sometimes, in a passing face. Only for a second, and then she is gone again.
The child in me likes to fantasize about life. For the first couple of years after she died I used to imagine that it has all been a ruse. She was really a spy for some secret government agency and she had to pretend to die so she could go off and have secret missions. I imagined that one day I would walk around a corner and there'd she be. I knew this was ridiculous, it is pretty hard to come back after a coma and weighting only 85 pounds. My adult self would laugh and indulge this tiny five year old living inside me, who just missed her mom.

The thing the hurts the most now is that there are so many people in my life who never knew her. Who never knew who we were to each other. I can tell them she was my mom and that we were close, but I can never explain to them what those simple words mean. The people who are close to me and knew her, they understand. I can look at them and say I lost my mom, and that I miss her, and they understand what that means to me. They understand the complicatedness of what that loss did to me.

People tell me it's sad what happened. That my mom died, that she was young, that she died so fast from cancer. And it's true. It is sad. But it was so much more than that.
Watching her die was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
Waiting for someone to die is like stepping out of the flow of time. Unless you have experienced it you can't imagine how strange it is. There is no time, no future, no past, there is only one more breath from the person lying in that bed.
Looking after her as she lost the ability to do almost anything for herself felt so right, it felt like a full circle, repaying her for my childhood. For feeding me when I couldn't feed myself, for dressing me when I couldn't dress myself, for hugging and snuggling with me when I was sad or in pain. For never putting me down when I was little, even when she went to the bathroom. For letting me dress myself, which included not wearing underwear to school. For being afraid for me and standing back anyway, for letting me do things on my own. For being there for me whenever I needed her.

My mother's death was a catalyst and was truly transformative. My life looks completely different now (fuck, I wear scarves all the time now mom, you'd be so proud). I am pretty sure that my life would look different if she hadn't died, nothing stays the same. But I also know that my life wouldn't be what it is now. Her death altered the flow of my life in a profound way.
In a good way.
Other people have a hard time understanding how my mother's death could have been good for me. I try to tell them about how it felt right for her to leave. It didn't seem tragic to me, she wanted to go, I could feel it. I told her it was ok to go. I tell them how it put everything into perspective (the "you could die tomorrow" phenomena). My whole life suddenly looked different.
I once told someone that my mother dying caused my whole life to fall shattered into thousands of pieces at my feet. But afterwards, after I came out of the daze of grief (and a month of all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) I got to decide what pieces I picked up again. I definitely left some of those pieces lying on the floor. And I know I am better for it.
Even with all that being said...

I still miss you mom.
Love, the egg.

Dinner