thisCassandra

Body Memories

Some treasures from my sense memories:

the depth of eyes;

the smell between shoulder blades;

the taste behind knees;

the sound of breathlessness;

touching clean skin.

Heart of Looking Glass and the Empress of China

Some ways in which today was a brilliant day:

1)   I found my passport, so I am now free to fly and free to leave and free to return, at least until it expires in May 2008;

2)   I was  walking through the Student Union Building on my way from class to work, and there was an environmental fair going on, and the information tables of several of the organizations were giving away samples of organic chocolate, and huge samples. Yay! Chocolate in the morning;

3)    The hospital volunteer services people had a rummage sale today and I bought for $2.00 a 2 CD set called "Planet Pop 70s", featuring original versions of 30 big hits of the 70s. It turned out that the disc one wasn't the correct disc, but disc two was, so I spent the afternoon working and listening to classic 70s tunes, like "Heart of Glass", "Get Down Tonight" and "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing". Coincidentally I got an e-mail from Anna earlier this week in which she talks about listening to the Santa Esmeralda version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", and how much that song reminds her of the past. Same for me with these three songs.

"Heart of Glass" really recalls the early days of the Luv-A-Fair: me (the Empress of China - a title conferred on me by Paul W (renowned videographer) and Ken F (PW's best friend and collaborator - eventual suicide) of the Main Street Gang, they even gave me a crown), My Great Friend Rob H, Anna and Jim, Steven and Marie and John-O, Craig and Adele and Pat, Tracy and Brad, and Greg, and the Main Street Gang, and Adrian, the roller skating waiter.  The Luv-A-Fair was there until a few years ago when it was torn down and condos were built on the site.

Too bad that the disc one isn't there, because it started with "Saturday Night" by the Bay City Rollers (who, my then friend Eileen was convinced, were virgins (!)), went on to "It's a Sunshine Day" by the Brady Bunch, and then through Donny Osmond , the Jackson 5, Boney M, and Terry Jacks to "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight and the Pips. Disc one sounds like it would be a veritable box of assorted delights.

That said, disc two was worth the $2.00 price: from Shaun Cassidy and Eric Carmen through to Gary Wright. Whoa, I'd forgotten most of these songs.

So, to recap: Chocolate in the morning, and 70s disco tunes in the afternoon. Could you find a more brilliant way to make a nasty gray and stormy day better? Maybe you could, but this way was pretty good.

American Express: Membership Has Its Drawbacks

I used to have an American Express card: I used it for a year, and decided that I didn't use it for anything that I couldn't use one of the other cards for, so didn't renew it. This was in March.

In September that same year I received a bill from American Express, with one purchase, $51.92 from Deer Run Golf Course in Peterborough, Ontario. Three things tipped me off that this might be a mistake: one, I hadn't renewed the card when it had expired six months before; two, I have never been to Peterborough; and three, I don't golf anything bigger than mini-golf (you'd be hard pressed to spend $51.92 at mini golf if you didn't have a family of four (which I don't)).

Mrs. Luisa: When I called American Express customer service, Mrs. Luisa with the cold voice answered. I explained the problem, and her first question was "Are you sure this isn't your purchase." Her second question was "Are you sure you've never been to Peterborough." Now I had just told her that it wasn't my purchase and I'd never been to Peterborough, and I find this sort of stubborn stupidity a bit annoying, especially if expressed in a cold voice like Mrs. Luisa's, and I get a bit snotto voce.

Mrs. Luisa was not giving up on trying to prove my intent to defraud American Express of $51.92, and we spent a half an hour or so on the phone, arguing back and forth, Mrs, Luisa repeatedly asking if the charge wasn't mine - "It says t-shirts. Are you sure you didn't buy t-shirts? Maybe it was mail order or a phone order that you don't remember." - and whether or not I had ever been in Peterborough.

She put me on hold and left me there for five or ten minutes, then came back and asked me the same questions. I gave the same answers again, and she said she would look into it. Additionally she said that it was likely that the next statement I would get would be a credit. I believed her.

Mr. Darshan: The next month I received an American Express statement for $51.92 & interest, so I called again and got Mr. Darshan on the line. I explained the situation to Mr. Darshan and he asked me the same questions that Mrs. Luisa had. I gave him the same answers that I had given to his colleague, and he asked me if I was certain. He put me on hold and came back a few minutes later, and asked the same questions again. I argued a bit and then asked Mr. Darshan to look into it and let me know what he found. He said he would, but I never heard from him again.

Mr. Nathaniel: The following month I received another American Express statement for $51.92 & interest & interest. I called again and got Mr. Nathaniel on the line. I explained the situation again and he asked me the same questions that Mrs. Luisa and Mr. Darshan had.  I gave the same answers and he put me on hold. When he came back he told me that he'd found that there was a note on my file that there had been a data entry error, and it was not my charge. He also told me that Mrs. Luisa had written that note.

I reckon it took more than four hours on the phone over those three months to get this one tiny data entry error and the subsequent charges corrected.

American Express. Feel free to leave home without it.

Funny Things Seen, # 1

When I was finishing my degree in English one of my jobs was working in an on-campus t-shirt shop with several other young female university students. There was also Erin, a sweet middle-aged woman from Mexico who could always be depended on to say things in the kindest possible way.

One day a small Middle Eastern man came into the shop. He was perfumed and a bit puffy and pompous and full of self, sort of a small rooster strutting about amongst the hens. He tried to connect with some of us, and was a bit overbearing. At one point he turned around and we saw that coming out of the waistband of his pants was a seven foot long toilet paper tail dragging on the ground.

We tittered about it, which made the guy think we were giggling about his studliness, which made him even puffier and more full of himself. We made Erin tell him that he was dragging the paper, and when she did, he didn't believe her. She just said, "Look for yourself," which he refused to do for the longest time.

When he finally looked, he was, of course, mortified; most people would be mortified to realize that they were dragging one single square of toilet paper on their heel, and this guy was dragging 20 or 30 squares from the back of his pants. He ran out of the shop in a panic and went into the men's washroom. As far as I know he never came out of the washroom, much less into the shop again.

Having suffered the embarassment of coming out of a washroom with the back of my dress tucked into the top of my pantyhose, I can honestly say that dragging a toilet paper tail from the waistband of my pants would have been far more embarassing. Seeing someone else do it is another thing entirely. Things don't get much funnier than other peoples' embarassment.

Hornby Souvenir

Monday afternoon we went to a garage sale in someone's personal amphitheatre where I bought this new-in-box paint-by-number kit. It's the only thing I bought on the island other than food and drink.

Hornby Island has many deer. Jerry Pethick commented (many years ago) that the deer kept on eating the new growth on his apple tree and the tree never got any bigger. The first night we saw deer on the road outside the house. It is somehow appropriate to bring home a deer from Hornby Island.

Tuesday evening I set the alarm so that I could get up early and pack, but I forgot to change the time my alarm was set for. On Wednesday morning the alarm went off at 5:30 am. I got up and packed and it took me about five minutes.

After packing and eating breakfast I went for a walk on Whaling Station Bay where I saw this group of seastars. The colour in the photo is off, but they were a glorious purple which contrasted magnificently with the green of the sea lettuce.

A most excellent combination.

Got Pictures

AnnaMaryse and I met at the Sha-Lin Noodle House on Broadway and ate noodles in soup. After dinner we picked up the red VW beetle parked at City Hall and drove to Richmond.

There is something quite wonderful about being enclosed in a metal and glass and plastic capsule with a long time friend, driving - sometimes too fast, playing good music - sometimes too loud, and having fun - sometimes too much. There is pleasure and joy in having such freedom.

We drove to an art show that David Walker and his studio mates were having at  their studio in Steveston, the old part of Richmond. Steveston is very cute and charming. Neither AnnaMaryse nor I had ever really been there before. I think I’ll go back some day. Maybe I’ll take the momster there for fish and chips.

At the show AnnaMaryse was talking with David and I was looking at some paintings on the wall. They were interesting and I looked at the name of the artist: Rafael L-R, from Cuba. This name was familiar to me but I couldn’t quite place it. I thought and thought and dug, and then I found it: Rafael is the husband of Natasha P-B, who is the daughter of R & Z.

R & Z were friends of Claude who lived in the building  where I had lived with Rob/Bob (my ex). Claude loves to travel and he meets people wherever he goes. He is very outgoing. He has friends all over the world.

When I went to Cuba in summer 2000, I stayed in the Havana apartment of R & Z with them. They were very kind and took good care of me, and R, particularly adopted me as his surrogate daughter (I was there on Father’s Day). They had the enviable truth of having been together for forty years and still being fond of one another (as far as I could tell).

One day Z and I were talking about my (then) recently having left Rob/Bob (my ex), and, of course, I cried. She comforted me with this: "Algun dia vas a encontrar la otra mitad de la naranja", which translates to "Some day you’ll find the other half of the orange", which roughly means "Someday you’ll meet your match." R & Z  had found the other halves of their respective oranges.

The night of our orange conversation I had a dream of desire and attraction to an anonymous friend: He met me at the airport and pulled me onto his lap. I was straddling him and he was kissing my right breast, and I was getting aroused and he pushed me off his lap. I rolled onto the floor and sat up stunned, covering my breasts with my arms and hands. The anonymous friend then said to me, "If we'd continued, we would have had to become lovers."

On my way home I had a stopover in Toronto, and my friend Dave and I had planned a visit. For this reason I wondered if the anonymous friend might be Dave, but it was not, for which I am grateful. His (then) belief in his homosexuality and mine (I had a shaved head about which he commented - Are you going to be a ball player now? - by which he meant Are you a dyke?), not to mention his siding with Rob/Bob (my ex) in the disposition of our shared property, meant that no contact of that kind was likely.

The anonymous friend was quite likely C, the true Cameron, who I had met just prior to leaving for Cuba: he was a photographer who wanted me to take some things to people in Cuba for him. We had met just twice. Our first ENCOUNTER happened a few months after I arrived home from Cuba: it started with his pulling me onto his lap and my sitting astride him and his kissing my right breast. Just like in the dream. He did not push me off his lap - I got up and walked away voluntarily, though confused and conflicted and afraid. But not so afraid that I did not invite him over for dinner the next night.

Our involvement consisted of a four-plus year on-again off-again intimate encounter, an NSA arrangement that kept wandering into relationship territory. Even though we both were single, we tried to be circumspect and discreet; neither he nor I were in any way prepared to enter into a long-term commitment and/or arrangement with one another. For me, and I imagine for him as well, our connection was a great source (or catalyst) of delight and an equally great source (or catalyst) of anguish. I think it is safe to say that it was a difficult situation for each of us. There was attraction and there was desire, waxing and waning. Turbulent desire with a dangerous undercurrent. Desire and danger in equal parts.

I don’t feel it anymore, but for the entire four-plus years there was a mix of emotions every time any of the phones rang: hope and fear that it would be him; disappointment and relief if it was not him; thrill and annoyance if it was him. How to reconcile such conflicted emotions? Well, to be truthful I wasn’t ever able to find a way…

Except for walking past him once and not registering him until I was already past, I haven’t seen him since Oct 2004, and haven’t heard from him since May 2005. The hope and disappointment have ebbed away and there is only relief that he has stopped calling, stopped coming here bearing gifts. No mixture of emotions, just relief that it is over. He and I weren’t so much the other halves of the oranges for one another so much as the other halves of the each others’ lemons. Lemons from which, both of us having vaguely pessimistic tendencies, we were incapable of making lemon-ade worth drinking.

R & Z kept a small-ish turtle, maybe 4 or so inches across, in a plastic dishpan in their washroom. When I could catch the cockroaches that I found on the walls and in the medicine cabinet, I fed them to it. There were many of these little roaches, pesticide filled and pesticide resistant, I’m sure. I think I might have been poisoning the poor turtle with these pesticide-filled roaches, but he seemed to want to eat them anyway. For turtles and for humans, giving them what they desire can be toxic for them.

On the wall at the studio, Natasha’s paintings were hanging right next to Rafael’s, which I did not notice until David pointed them out to me. How odd…Here I was in the studio of someone I work with, looking at the work of someone I knew, and was fairly closely connected to, someone I hadn’t really seen or heard from since the day in 2001 when I was shopping (uncharacteristically) in the IGA where I ran into Natasha and Rafael and, looking past them, saw Z. She was visiting them and I didn’t know; no-one had told me.

Z and I managed one or two visits, then one afternoon she called to tell me she was going back to Havana that evening. I have not heard from her since. I have heard some gossip about family problems and feuds, but nothing of substance. Now, all of the Cuban connections are pretty much severed, and that’s a bit sad, but also okay. I’ve got pictures.

I Lost My Hat...

Somewhere or other. High on a hill it calls to me...

I can't believe that I've already lost my black cap (styled like a tam, shaped like a toque). It isn't in my house. It wasn't in the car. I asked Joe if he's seen it at his house near the top of North Vancouver - he said "No". I just called the Greek restaurant on Upper Lonsdale where we ate dinner and they don't have it either. So where is it?

I don't know...

I got the phone number of the Greek restaurant through Google. In one of the entries, it said that one of the owners of the restaurant was Angelo Angelopoulos. Angelopoulos was the name of the family who owned the house where Rob/Bob (my ex) and Anna (his roommate) and Sean (the other roommate) lived for a year or two. (I more or less lived there too, but not officially). Angelo was the name of the son. I asked the man who answered the phone if my hat had been found - he said "No", and then I asked him if the Angelo Angelopoulos of the restaurant was related to the Angelopoulos family who owned that house on 8th Avenue and he said "Yes" and that he was Angelo.

Angelo and I talked a bit about the house and the people and the time frame. He told me that the house has been torn down and two homes built on the lot.

Other than a name, I have no memory of Angelo, but I remember Mister Angelopoulos. He was an odd little man. He liked to go into the bathroom and admire the counter and sink (one piece pink acrylic with a shell-shaped sink, you've seen one just like it) that he had installed. He would walk around the house with his hands behind his back like a tiny little rooster strutting and nodding his head, raising and lowering the plug, running the water and crowing about how good it was. Surveying his kingdom.

That was 1986, the summer of Expo. It didn't rain all that summer. That summer I worked at the Thunderbird Shop folding and selling t-shirts. That summer living was easy. That summer was a lot of fun.

At the restaurant the company (AnnaMaryse and Joe) and the conversation were excellent, and the lamb was superb. The reminder of that summer was even better. When seen as an exchange for such glory, losing the new black hat seems almost worth it somehow.

Tearing

I was talking on the phone with AnnaMaryse the other night and simultaneously writing a piece of non-fiction about my relationship with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama (there isn’t one). My multi-tasking is no comment on her degree of interest for me or her personal charisma, because while we are talking on the phone, she was simultaneously conducting an e-chat with her boyfriend who was in LA. I told her what I was working on and that it was going to be the next big piece I would publish on thiscassandra. Writing-wise I had reached the point of not getting a ticket for the honorary doctorate ceremony, and AnnaMaryse did a websearch to find the name of Shirin Ebadi, which I couldn’t recall at the time. Then I decided that I wasn’t going to finish writing the piece, because it seemed so trite and pointless.

The next day AnnaMaryse mentioned the Dalai Lama in a comment to someone else's post. Then, in the spirit of cameraderie, I changed my mind and finished writing it, so here it is:

Spring1993 - There was an announcement that His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, would be coming to Vancouver for a weekend in June to do a public talk on Saturday morning and a private meditation on Sunday morning. By 1993 he was on his way to the top of the spiritual/political superstar heap and Vancouver is full of politically aware Buddhists with better connections than mine, so by the time I heard about the weekend, all tickets to the two events were sold or otherwise unavailable. I did not have a ticket and I was sad.

One of my work friends was involved with the Canada Tibet Committee and was volunteering. She and I and a few others had once gone to see the Gyuto Monks chanting at St. Andrew’s Wesley Church on Burrard Street. She’d been to Dharamshala, where His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, houses his government in exile, and had seen these same yellow-hat monks chanting in much smaller spaces than this church, and the effect, she’d said, was quite different, quite spectacular.

Other work friends had tickets and they were all going together. Another friend was filming the visit. Other friends were involved through meditation groups and in other ways. I really wanted to go to the talk, but didn’t know anyone who had a spare ticket. Then a few days before the weekend of the visit, Jane told me that Bodhi had given her a ticket to the Saturday morning talk, and that, even though she didn’t think that Bodhi had more tickets, it might be worth calling him. So I did.

Bodhi, who had brought the Gyuto Monks to chant at St. Andrew’s Wesley, and I chatted a bit, but he had no more tickets - he’d given the last spare away to Jane. He told me that he’d let me know if he heard of any tickets available and signed off. I was hopeful.

When I arrived home from work that day there was a message from Bodhi; not five minutes after ringing off from our call, the phone had rung again. It was Buffalo Bob who, having an extra ticket that he wasn’t using, wondered if Bodhi knew of anybody who wanted or needed one. Bodhi, having just finished talking with me about that very thing, said yes, there was someone. Buffalo Bob dropped the ticket off at Bodhi’s house later that day, and Bodhi called to let me know that there was a ticket if I still wanted it. I still wanted it, so I was glad.

When I went to get the ticket, Bodhi told me that he’d heard from the Canada Tibet Committee that if one were to arrive 45 minutes early for the Sunday morning meditation session, there would be tickets available at the front door, that I should just ask around. He told me how lucky I was, and gave me the ticket for the Saturday talk. I admired the ship’s steering wheel that he’d bought in the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert, then I left. I felt lucky.

The following day was the talk, and I went to Canada Place by myself, an Asian, CBC-intellectual, pseudo-Buddhist, pseudo-hippie chick in a sea of people who resembled some version of me, the Asianism or the CBC intellectualism or the pseudo-Buddhism or the pseudo-hippie chickism. So I didn’t feel so out of place.

I found my work friends but they were sitting in a crowded area near the middle and had just given the last seat near them away, so there was no room for me. By myself I sat quite near the back and listened as His Holiness spoke: "Some of you come here with expectations…I have nothing for you…" I ached with homesickness, of wanting to find a home to be in, and I cried.

The next day I went back to Canada Place with Bodhi’s words running a loop in my head - There will be tickets at the front doors. I entered the lobby and looked around a bit and didn’t see a table or a booth for distributing tickets, so thought I’d ask a volunteer. I went back outside and approached the first volunteer that I saw. I told her the story so far, and asked if she knew anything about tickets being distributed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a ticket and said, "I guess this ticket has your name on it." as she gave it to me. I entered the meditation session and this time did not look for my friends. I just sat by myself in the back of the hall, paid careful attention and cried through my homesickness some more.

In my everyday life I don’t cry much, but I do cry when I am reminded of the depth of my (perceived) differences from the people who share my world with me. In my mind I am a feral creature, raised in the wilderness by wolves or other monsters, and not to be trusted with maintaining the simplest of social conventions or ordeals, and, lacking social grace, belong nowhere in polite society. I watch the fire of belonging from outside of any group or set that I might be interested in belonging to, and connections may start out with excitment and a welcome-of-sorts, but they almost always end up feeling like the wagons have pulled into a circle against me and I do not know how to charm my way in through the line from the wilderness to the charmed area of belonging. Or maybe it’s me circling my wagons against something that I no longer feel any interest in. Either way, I am saddened by the distance that this image of my own personal monstrosity imposes on me, so I cry.

February 2004 - There was an announcement that there would be a conference, in April 2004, called "Ideas, Community, Spirituality & Music", at which the invited speakers would be His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Vaclav Havel (who, due to health problems, was not able to leave his home to come to the conference) and Shirin Ebadi. One of the events during this conference was to be a ceremony at the University of British Columbia (UBC) to confer honorary doctoral degrees to these four humanist.

The tickets to the other conference events were to be sold through Ticket Master, but the tickets for the degree granting ceremony were to be distributed by invitation, except for some that were to be raffled to members of the UBC community (faculty, staff and students) who sent an e-mail requesting to be included in the raffle. I, being UBC staff, sent a hopeful e-mail, but was disappointed a few weeks later when I got an e-mail back from the organizer regretting that the tickets were gone and I had not received one. I thought of buying a ticket to one of the public talks, but didn’t get around to it. I have heard that in the line to buy tickets there were fisticuffs between two Buddhists, the irony of which I find mightily amusing - I imagine them arguing, two Dharma Dudes squabbling over which was the more enlightened, pissing on each other and then resorting to blows. Or maybe one simply jostling the other in the line. Either way...

April 2004 - The Land and Building Services people had hired extra staff, and were busily tidying up the University, which had not looked so beautiful since the Queen’s visit in 2002. I tried to ignore the hoopla but it wasn’t easy; I had no ticket and no connection to the event. There had been other encounters with the Tibetans - my learning that the yellow-hat Gyuto monks coming to chant at the Orpheum through my Jazz Friends brochure, of calling and being the first to buy tickets, of sitting front row centre (Bodhi, volunteering backstage, peered through the curtains and saw me and Brice Canyon there and later found us outside to say, "When I saw you there I said to myself, "Magic, it’s magic that she has those seats""); meeting the monks at Taki’s place; watching them play pinball; and watching the construction and destruction of the Sand Mandala in the Atrium of the Hong Kong Bank - but the Tibetans and my consciousness of their plight drifted in and out of my existence.

Life is busy: like the sand at the end of the Sand Mandala ritual that has been scooped into the ewer, walked to the sea, then poured from the ewer into the sea to confer blessings on the world, the Tibetans glittered brightly in the light and the breeze, but when the breeze dropped them on the sea, they were gone, though the blessings of their glittering light might remain. Bodhi was right, there was magic, there was connection, but it was a mostly unexplored, mostly uncharted magic and connection. It was present, but ephemeral; even though I had often been present I wasn’t really a part of the circle.

Two days before the degree-granting ceremony, I got another e-mail from the organizer telling me that more tickets had been released and that one had my name on it. The morning of the ceremony I went to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts (a gorgeous theatre) and got my ticket and waited with all the others to be allowed in. We waited and waited, and, when the doors opened, I walked up stairway after stairway to the top of the theatre, and found my seat in the very back row.

I sat up there by myself and committed everything I could to memory: the pageantry (pompous); the costumery (colours were deep, rich and glorious, full effect of hats and robes quite medieval); the music (pomp, well played by UBC School of Music students); the number of people on the stage (I think it was populated with the entire Board of Governors and the entire group of vice presidents and the president); the camaraderie between Their Holinesses, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop Tutu. I sat by myself and I watched and listened. I sat by myself in the very back row, and, of course, I cried.

Walking In My Mother's Neighbourhood

A question - posed in a comment about Crowtography II that was posted this morning - regarding my recall of crows in the neighbourhood where I grew up led me down memory lane and along the streets around my mother's house...

My family moved into the house that my mother still lives in forty years ago, and I grew up there. I have no memory of crows in that neighbourhood until one day last May when I was walking with my mother to a cafe that she likes to go to for wonton. We were walking quietly along the north side of the street when Whap - what was that? It felt like I'd been beaned on the back of the head with a bean bag thrown hard. I looked up and saw a crow fly into a tree. There was another crow there too, fluttering around.

"Did you see that?" I asked my mother.

"What?" she said - she's not too observant, never really has been.

"That crow just flew into the back of my head."

"I didn't see anything."

We continued to walk, she, for once, walking faster than I was - I was moving a bit cautiously -  when Whap! I felt it again and I saw the crow fly up into the next tree.

"It did it again!" I said, even more excited.

She still didn't believe me and continued walking, and I followed and then, Whap! There it was again.

This time she saw the crow and she said, "Maybe it doesn't like the colour of your hat."

I didn’t care if it was responding to me or to the hat. Anything hits me on the head three times and I refuse to go further. My mother continued to walk and I stood where I was. The crow went after her, falling out of the sky full speed. I shouted to her to stop and she did and she ducked a little and the crow missed her head. Which is good because it would have knocked her down.

We watched the two crows up in the tree and we looked down the sidewalk and we considered our options and decided to walk on the other side of the street. We crossed the street and the crows followed us and sat in a tree there, but did not attack. They must have had a nest on the north side of the street, or maybe they were just checking out the real estate over there..

So there we were on the south side of the street, pretty much exactly where I'd had the run-in with the dog two months earlier. I had been walking toward the bus-stop and was two houses past the house with the big fishpond in the front yard. Two houses ahead of where I was a big cranky looking dog came out from between the houses into the front yard, looked around and gave me a look.

I froze. Here I was completely alone on a street with a completely unknown, completely unescorted dog who has just given me a look. This was not just any dog, it was one of those Alsation and Doberman crosses that turn out looking like Dobermans except they are brown and brown and heavier and have thick wiry coats, a serious guard dog. Things were not looking so good. What the fuck was I going to do? I didn’t have a clue.

All possible outcomes ran through my head, including the obvious "Oh my god, oh my god, I’m going to become a statistic, I’m going to be mauled to death by a dog on my mother’s street. What can I do? What can I do?" and on it went as I stood watching the dog and waiting for what was to come.

The dog watched me then walked towards me. About twenty feet away from me it started to gallop a bit. My thoughts continued as they had been going since I saw the dog, "What can I do? What can I do?" I had no weapons with me, no Louisville sluggers, no tranquilizer guns, no big slabs of meat that I could use to distract the dog, so it looked to me like I was going to be the big slab of meat that would distract the dog.

I did not think to call for help, because I’d called for help on that street before and nobody came. I was twenty years old, I was walking home from the bus stop at 2 am, and a guy with a knife and bad intentions came out of the lane. He and his knife and his bad intentions jumped me and roughed me up a bit. He knocked me to the ground and kept me there while I struggled and fought and screamed for help. He held his knife to my throat and told me that if I screamed again he would kill me, "Feel that?" he asked. I screamed again. He didn't kill me. He tried to take off my clothing, got to the layer next-to-but-not bare skin, stood up, kicked me in the stomach and ran away. He left me bewildered; I'd been expecting the worst, but I had somehow managed to get out of this very bad situation with bruises and shallow knife cuts and broken glasses.

I believe that his intention was rape, but he did not actually rape me, I don’t know why he did not, but I am grateful. There is no rational reason for his running away - I am small and not very strong, I could not have maintained a struggle for very long, in fact I might already have given up the fight by the time he ran away.

I have thought, sometimes, that what protected me that night was a pendant that my friend Deb had given me, a pewter pentagram that was a cast of the tetragrammaton - the four letters of the name of god - which I was wearing between the outer layer and the inner layer of my clothing. It seemed to me that he ran away after he exposed the tetragrammaton - which some, not I, consider to be a black, black symbol - that his running was a response to the tetragrammaton, but I’ll never know.

I don’t wear that pendant anymore, and even if I did, I doubt that it would work on a dog that was galloping towards me with bad intentions. Anyway, I watched the dog approach and waited for what was coming, and the dog got close then swerved around and ran past me. At this point I understood that the dog was not going to attack me, and I relaxed a bit, and just then I felt the nip to my left calf. I jumped and shouted "Hey!" and turned around in time to see the dog pull away then wheel around and run away into the yard with the big fish pond. The coward.

Again, I got out of a very bad situation with minor injuries. Again, I’ll never know why, but I’ll always be grateful.

I hate walking in my mother's neighbourhood.

Reading Angela's Ashes

I'm about midway through and it has been a splendid experience so far, even though it's bringing up some odd memories of my ventures into Catholicism. My family was Catholic enough to force me to attend mass occasionally, but not Catholic enough to force me to confess or to learn catechism. Well, it was really only one aunt who forced me to attend mass with her and her family whenever I was around them on a Sunday. My spotty church attendance enabled me to miss out on that Catholic guilt that I have heard so much about. Unfortunately I also missed out on an understanding of the ritual and structure of the mass.

I've probably mentioned this before, but it can't hurt to repeat these things: I was sort of sickly as a child - pretty much everything that wasn't clean air and stillness, such as diesel fumes, cigarette smoke, hair spray, perfume, moving through space in a way that was out of the ordinary, would bring on headaches and nausea and motion sickness in me. These things still effect me, but I know what they are and am able to avoid them, or to get away from them if they bother me too much.

The last time I attended mass was the year I was 10, I went with my aunt and her husband and their five kids. We drove there in my uncle's navy blue Galaxy 500 convertible with the top down. We took up an entire pew in St. Francis Xavier Church just east of Chinatown (a block away from where I live now).

It was Easter, and it was a high mass, and there was benediction, and there was incense smoke and smell billowing out of the censures, and I already wasn’t feeling well from having been in a car (even though the top was down). As the smoke got thicker I got sicker, and sicker and sicker, and I was trapped in the pew between two of my cousins, and I watched the censure moving back and forth, and the smoke pouring out, and I tried but could not stop myself: I threw up all over the floor at my feet.

My aunt, appalled that I would perform such a sacrilegious act as throwing up in the house of God, told me to wait outside. Outside the church by myself, I was relieved to be out in the clean air with nothing moving. The bad thing? I was sick and a bit cold. The good thing? My aunt never forced me to attend mass with her again.