thisCassandra

Ever So Brilliant Timing - Mercury Retrograde Revisited

I don't recall if I mentioned this at all, but in the early autumn I was thinking to meet my friends annamaryse & twopiearr in London this month to go see a Bonzo Dog Band show. I was thinking I would go there on the 17th of this month, and I would go to the British Museum, and I would buy funky tights, and I would go to the concert and I would come home on Christmas Eve day. I found a relatively inexpensive flight, but I  had to jam; Dallas gave early notice that he had been accepted to do his exchange term in Glasgow, and so was moving out at the end of the present term, that is sometime between the 15th and the 20th of December. Being a slumlord, I have to be here when my roomers move out and, being a conscientious slumlord, I have to freshen up the rooms before the new roomers arrive, so there's a lot of stuff that I needed to be here to deal with, so decided not to go.

Anna and Rich didn't go either - the concert was postponed until spring and so we're all thinking we may go then.

The last week or so I've been thinking of my Cuban friend Leonardo. He and I met in June 2000 when I was in Havana; I was a money mule and carried some US cash to him from someone here. He and I lost touch about three years ago. The last week or so I've been trying to remember his last name, but I haven't been able to.

Today there was a phone call from my Cuban friend Leonardo, who no longer lives in Cuba. Two years ago he moved to London, and today he found the duffel bag he had his phone number cards in when he made the move. Two in the morning (GMT) he started calling his special people.

If I had gone to London this month I would have been there today, and I would not have got the phone message until after I came home, which would have been very sad. This is perfect, because if I go to the Bonzos concert in London in the spring I'll be able to see my Cuban friend Leonardo who now lives there.

Mercury retrograde again - ever so brilliant.

P-P-Paragraphs

Parties are strange things, I'm pretty shy and if I don't know a lot of the people who are likely to be attending, I don't like attending them by myself. Paul, my fallen friend had invited me to the opening party of The Fall Tattooing and Piercing Parlour and Gallery, and I didn't expect to know anyone much there, as well I expected people to be extreme, hard core, but I wanted to attend, just to see. Even though we hadn't seen one another in quite some time, I asked J Claire, my photography student friend, if she was interested in going  with me, and she was so she did.

Paul is one of the sexiest guys I've met in a long time, totally not my type, but sexy never-the-less. All of his skin that I've seen (not much - just the stuff that isn't covered by regular summer clothing) is covered with tattoos. Paul considers his tattoos to be his art, and a lot of this art is self-done.  Impressive.

Pop culture was the project, so J Claire took some ad hoc portraits of Paul. The one she showed me is good, considering the lighting and the situation. In the portrait, Paul looks calm and wise. He looks like a tattoo elder.

People at the opening party of The Fall Tattooing and Piercing Parlour and Gallery were much less extreme, much more moderate than I expected them to be. I think I was expecting a Jim Rose's Circus Side Show level of outrageousness, not body modification fashionistas. Apparently body modification is the new black...

Pedometers have come to me: the first came from my brother who works in a sporting shoe store. It was good for a few weeks then stopped logging all the steps, logging one or two steps for every ten or so taken. A few months ago the University gave pedometers to the employees who wanted them. The first of these I got randomly reset itself to zero, and the second only logged two or three steps for every ten or twenty taken. I have killed three pedometers: Pedometricide...

Plan drawers have come to me too: seven or eight years ago I had this idea that I would meet an old person who would like me enough to bequeath their metal flat files to me (bet you didn't know I was that mercenary). One afternoon a year or so later I found two five drawer metal flat files (34 x 44) with stand down the back alley from where I then lived. I wasn't strong enough to carry them home, so I didn't take them, but later that day I was sitting at my desk, from which I could see the flat files down the lane, and I saw some Asian men, one with a truck, arguing, obviously about dumping the flat files. I ran out and asked if the fellow would dump the flat files in front of my building, and he said he would do it for $10. I happened to have two fives in my pocket, so we struck a deal, and he delivered the flat files to me.

Pat (Printmaker) and the True Cameron (Photographer) each had urgent need for flat files when I found them, but I did not, so I sold (for cheap) one set to Pat and the other set to the True Cameron. Recently I noticed that in my Art School process I have accumulated a lot of large pieces of paper, and a set of plan drawers/flat files might come in handy, and I started thinking about buying a set. I am a member of a Yahoo Group called Vancouver Freecycle, which I have used to find other people to take some of the good stuff that I want to give away. One day on Freecycle there was a post of a long list of stuff that some people in Coquitlam (deep suburbs) were giving away, and one item was a set of plan drawers. I didn't call, but a few hours later the people posted a list of all the things that had been taken. The plan drawers weren't on it. A day or so afterwards, they posted that everything had been taken except for the plan drawers.

Perfection doesn't come up often, but when it does, it does. Sometime during our evening out at the party, J Claire, who has a van, had invited me along on a road trip to Ikea in Coquitlam on Monday morning. I hoped it might work out, so I contacted the people to ask if the plan drawers were still available. They were, and when I told the woman that I would be at the Ikea in Coquitlam on Monday, she got quite excited. It turns out that she and her husband live just up the hill from the Ikea, and they work at home. How perfect is that? Pretty perfect.

Gift of Wisdom: Lucky in Names

This scroll has been translated for me to mean something like "If you remain alone and contemplative, you will find wisdom," which may or may not be true (I'm in the process of finding out - I'll keep you posted). Regardless, here is the story behind the calligraphy art scroll to the left.

We had Greta H, a master calligrapher, doing a demonstration of her art in the Art History class this morning, and I found myself awed by her skill. At the end of the class she distributed piles of these little (about 6" x 18") scrolls (kind of like fortune cookies) that she'd made for us; hundreds of these fortune scrolls that she'd made up with different sayings on them, and we all lined up to get one.

Earlier in the class, my friend, May (from China) and I had been talking and I showed her how I write the character for my last name (badly), and then I told her my Chinese name and she wrote one of the characters, but didn't know the other. I seldom remember how to write the characters of my Chinese name, and have to copy them from somewhere else. I usually recognize them if I see them written, but not always.

Anyway, when I got up to the front of the line, this fortune scroll was on the top of the pile, so I took it. I looked carefully at it while walking back to my seat, and sort-of-recognized the bottom character as maybe being one of my names, the one that May had written for me earlier in the class. May confirmed for me that it is my name: I'm pretty sure that it is pronounced Hui (but it might be Jun - I can't remember which it is), and it means "wisdom". Jun (or Hui), the other part of the name means "leader" or something like that.

My father gave me my Chinese name, and Chinese speaking people tell me that it is a good name. My mother gave me my Anglo name, and I know it's a good name too. I have had great good fortune in my names. It is something for which I am grateful. So thank you both for the names.

Odd Timing On An Island

Waiting for the ferry to take us from Denman Island to Vancouver Island I looked at the phone and noticed that I'd missed a call, ten minutes earlier, from Craig, who lives on Denman Island. I called him back and he said that he was in Vancouver and had called because he was out at UBC and thought he'd check to see if I was at work.

It's pretty likely that we were driving past his place at exactly the time he called me from outside my workplace, and that the call would not have gone through because there is no cell phone service on his side of the island.

I'm home now and have many stories to tell. Hornby Island is still there and continues to be beautiful in its otherworldly moonscape way.

I ran into Dominique, the daughter of the True Cameron, who works at the coffee/ice cream trailer on Hornby. We spoke and she is well. No snubs there.

The New Era of Erins

My soon-to-be former flatmate, Erin, is moving out on the 1st of April.

My pal Dallas's soon-to-be former flatmate, Erin, has her boyfriend moving in, so Dallas is going to move into my soon-to-be vacant room.

Don't forget that when Erin, my soon-to-be former flatmate was looking at the room, there was another person, a boy named Aren (pronounced the same as Erin), who would have taken it if she had not.

There's something about Erins and that room.

Of the other two rooms, one houses someone whose name and middle initial are Stuart J. and the other houses someone whose middle initial and last name are J. Stewart.

Oh, and there's another name co-incidence here: one of the people who responded to the Craig's List ad used the name D'Anna for her yahoo id. Her name was neither D'Anna nor Anna, her name was L******* and she is the tenant of my friend Pat who happens to live in the apartment I lived in before I moved to thisCastle. My friend Pat did not know that L******* was looking for another place. I was uncomfortable with the situation and decided that that would be a very bad place to start a tenancy agreement of any kind.

There is much oddness in the names of humans around me.

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.

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.

My Unindifferent Universe - Il Cameroni

Sometimes when I think about how things appear to happen around me, I find it difficult to believe that the universe is completely indifferent (as an atheistic universe is usually assumed to be). For example, this thing that I have with specific names, the Roberts, the Annas, the Camerons, there are just too many of them too close to me.

The oddest of these is my relationship to individuals (male) with the name (mostly surname) Cameron. It kind of started when I was in my twenties: in Vancouver there is a publication called the Georgia Straight, which used to be quite political, but has morphed into a free entertainment weekly. Back then in the early eighties, the photo editor's name was C---- Cameron, a photographer who published a lot of rock show shots. The first time I saw his by-line I knew that he would turn out to be important to me. I did not know him, nor did I make any effort to meet him or to approach him (though around 1983 a woman I knew was having an affair with him); the thought of his possible importance was a loose thread in the weave of my life, and occasionally I would wonder about it, but there was life to be led, and I was busy with other things (including a relationship that ended in Summer of 1984).

I started seeing Rob/Bob (my ex) in the Spring of 1986. Around the time he and I started dating, I met R--- Cameron, a lovely green eyed photographer, and I started dating him too. We liked each other a lot, but it didn't work. I got serious with Rob/Bob (my ex), and R--- and I let it drift away. It was not meant to be.

Rob/Bob (my ex) dumped me for the German girl named Anna in the Fall of 1987, and I was pretty broken up. In my grammar class I met S---- Cameron, a lovely young man with whom I had an intense and legendary flirtation. S---- and I might have started dating except that I started seeing another fellow named Robert. It also was not meant to be.

I moved to Montreal in the Summer 1988 and got work on a television series called "Time of Your Life" a teen soap that was the first of the teen soaps. E---- Cameron, one of the crew members took a shine to me and started hanging around my office all the time. His friend Tim told me that he thought I should date E----, but even though I thought that E---- was very cute and I liked him a lot, I wasn't ready to take on someone who was that much younger than I was (ten years). It also was not meant to be.

Rob/Bob (my ex) and I got back together in Fall 1989, and I moved back to Vancouver. We stayed together until Spring 2000, when I moved out on my own. That summer I wanted to go on a trip and decided that Cuba was the place to be. Claude, who lived in the building where Rob/Bob (my ex) still lived, had friends there who would give me guidance and a place to stay. He set the wheels going for me.

One day there was a phone call from Claude who told me there was a photographer who wanted to know if I could take some photos and other things to people in Cuba. I said I would and told Claude it was okay to give this person my number. After I hung up, it occurred to me that this photographer would probably turn out to be C---- Cameron, about whom I had heard nothing since that woman I knew told me about her affair with him.

Anyway, the anonymous photographer did turn out to be C---- Cameron, and we met a few times before I went to Cuba, and a few times after I came back, then in Summer 2000 he and I started seeing one another. Unfortunately our involvement was too disrupting to both our lives, and we weren’t able to hold it together non-stop, and it was mostly off not on for those four years, but it was important nevertheless, and maybe continues to be.

In Fall 2004, I could no longer continue to participate in the dance that C---- and I had been doing together for the preceding four years, and I broke up with him for what I assumed would be the final time. In Spring 2005 he started calling again, but I couldn’t let that disruption back into my life, so refused contact.

Spring 2005 was also when I discovered Craig’s List, and the first time I posted a cranky response to a rant on the Rants and Raves section, I got a direct e-mail response to my cranky response from someone named I-- Cameron.

I-- seemed to be a witty and fun person, and he and I corresponded for some time, and had some fun together. Then when we were getting ready to meet for coffee he told me that his name was Mitchell Robert O----, not I-- Cameron. He was a Faux Cameron. Regardless of his not being a Vrai Cameron, he did turned out to be extremely important to me in his way; his lightness and sparkle helped me to clear C----, the True Cameron, off my horizon. It helped me to feel strong enough to be firm and clear with C----, the True Cameron, and say to him "You have to stop calling me." And he did.

There have been two other less significant Camerons in my life: another photographer named C---- Cameron G--- (there also appears to be a theme of photographers - he and I were seeing one another when we were nineteen); and Cameron H----, my first boss. Apparently the more intense and memorable contacts are with individuals with Cameron as a last name rather than as a given name or a middle name.

I wonder sometimes if the universe has further Cameron plans for me. It isn't too late, there could be others. Who knows that there aren’t to be more of them?  Consider yet more Camerons in my life. The total Cameron count is seven so far. In my life, to date I have had seven men named Cameron of varying significance to me. If you do not think that this is odd, consider this: Cameron is not such a common name and none of these Camerons has been related to any of the others. It's too preposterous. Could such a thing happen in a truly indifferent universe?

Your Presence Is Requested...

I attended the annual Manor Coop Seasonal Celebration last evening, and I must say that I found it more enjoyable (and myself more comfortable) than I did when I lived there. Interesting.

On the way home at 10pm I took the long way, the 99 to Broadway Station then the Downtown bus which drops me off right across Hastings Street (rather than a bus down Main then walking four blocks through the desolate Chinatown streets to home). On the bus I ran into Helene, one of the models from my drawing class (she of the great hair), who was on her way from a Christmas party to a birthday party, trying to have an early night because she had to work all day today from 10 am until midnight.

Anyway earlier in the day the idea of her (and her hair) had wandered into my mind, and I had thought of trying to get in touch with her, and there she was on the bus. We chatted and I thought of asking her out for a coffee, but I did not. I felt a bit shy and self-conscious, as I often do, which probably comes across as disinterest.

Why do I not follow through when the universe tosses a ball at me? Even when I find myself interested in playing the game, I take the ball and fumble...

Anna Thema

So some time back there was a fortune cookie fortune which read: "Old friends long absent are coming back to you." and it turned out to be somewhat true. Soon afterward, Rob/Bob told me that the woman he'd been seeing was Barbara, my best friend from my teens and early twenties whom I no longer see (she and he happen to share the same 12 July birthdate, day but not year), and that he was having some problems with her not being able to let go. After that, I contacted Janis, another friend from those long ago times, to get her comments on all this, and we became friends of sorts again. So those two long absent friends reappeared in my life.

Then there was a phone call at work, a male voice asking if I remembered a woman named Maryse, and it was Avery K, Em's son. Em and I were close friends when we were going to Langara together, and again when I lived in Montreal, by which time there was an Avery. Avery and I chatted for a bit on the phone, and Em and I e-mailed some, and so they came back into my life, but only temporarily.

About two weeks ago I set up a new yahoo mail account: annathema14@..., and a few days later there was an e-mail from Em (whose name is Anna K), telling me that her father had had a heart attack and that she was coming to town.

Then there was a phone message from Anna M, who was one of Rob/Bob's housemates for a year in 1987. She and I hadn't seen each other since 1989.

Anna M and I met for dinner and she told me that her partner's name is Bob and his ex's name is Anna and her husband's name is Bob.

When Anna K (Em) and I met, her boyfriend was Bob.

When Rob/Bob was living with Anna M, he dumped me when he met Anna, an anonymous girl from Germany.

Mitch's middle name is Robert and the name of his true love is Anna, an anonymous woman from Russia.

My mother almost named me Roberta Ann, and if she had I would have had everything necessary to be my own Robert and Anna.

Hmm. Definitely an Anna Thema going on.