reasons to be happy

Yesterday was Ben’s and my 3-year anniversary. I made him supper: salmon tartar, steamed vegetables & salad, and ice cream with fudge brownies for desert. Nothing extraordinary. I also slightly transformed our living room/office into a green (his favourite colour) love shack and there offered him an auditory experience. I had picked up Jeck, Yoshihide and Tétrault’s “Invisible Architecture #1,” a voyage in itself. The night before we went to see Wilde’s The Importance of being Ernest, which was playing at the Saidye Bronfman Centre. I had never seen any of his plays performed. I much enjoyed it.

Today, I feel like I have so much to say, so much of which I don’t feel like sharing here.

What I will say is what I would like to know: what makes people happy? What makes you happy? Where do you find your sense of accomplishment? Is that even a priority of yours? How much of that comes from work, i.e. what pays your rent?

I wish more people read my blog so that I could actually get some answers. In the meanwhile, my question is “out there.” I throw it out into space and hope for a few answers to shower down on me some way or another.

a day in the mall

Last Wednesday, Carmen and I met at the Complex Desjardins. We sat on various benches, going from one place to another to stop by the pharmacy, then buy a hot chocolate, and then simply to sit. We had settled in the food court where I was showing her pictures when this man, who seemed like he was merely walking towards the exit, stopped next to us and says to Carmen, “Excuse me, I just wanted to tell you that you are a very pretty girl.” Needless to say, he interrupted our conversation. We had not looked at him nor had we tried to attract his attention in any way. We were just sitting there minding our own business. Having addressed Carmen, he then glances at me and says, “And you are also a very pretty girl.” We acknowledged him by looking at him, without saying anything and expecting him to go his own way. But he stays there next to us and tells me, “Give me your hand.” (In French, because he was a French Canadian, to give one’s hand connotes a handshake more precisely than it does English.) By then I had had a good look at him. He appeared stained, like a man who isn’t necessarily dirty but looks as if he cannot clean himself of some sort of accumulated filth. The creases of his skin were marked by an unnatural brown. He was thin enough, and his built seemed like that of a tense man, with tight tense muscles wrapped around solid and angular bones. His eyes were round and protruded from his skull. They had an intense look about them. Something about him was off, so I naturally answered no to his request, which he then repeated. I said no a second time. His hand was outstretched towards me, waiting to receive mine. He repeated another time, with a hand gesture punctuating the air and his voice becoming harder, “Give me your hand.” Finally I did, because I felt he was becoming aggressive and did not want Carmen and me to be in any worse a situation. He took it, shook it, and then brought it towards his face as he bowed to me. I tensed up. Maybe he had planned to kiss it, to show that he is the image of some sort of gentleman, but he could surely feel the stiffness of my arm. He brought my hand to his forehead where he rested my ring to his brow for a few seconds. He then let it go and left.

I gave him my hand to get ride of him. I gave in to this shady stranger to avoid a potential reprimand more offending than the original request. Within a few seconds, I negotiated worse case scenarios and acted accordingly. But when the man had left, Carmen assuring me that she watched him go up the escalators and out the building, I became angry. Why did I have to negotiate about what I want to do with my own body? Sure, one can say that the man meant no harm, he simply wanted to compliment two pretty ladies. One can say that I overreacted, that I am overcautious and untrusting, as all city dwellers eventually become. But then again, why should I give my hand to a man I don’t know, who is rude enough to interrupt my conversation and that I don’t instinctively trust? Why must I, as a pretty woman, be put in such position? To give my hand might be harmless, but if I don’t want to, why should I be made to? Why is it that I loose power over my will and my body to assure its safekeeping from the demands of others upon it? Because of his aggressivity, his desire was met, while my will and my body were transgressed. Shouldn’t I have the most rights upon my body? And wasn’t he being rather un-gentlemanly by not respecting my will?

When he left, Carmen said to me that she always becomes defensive in such situations. Through the whole scene she did somewhat look like a cat, crouching back, watchful, and ready to attack. I don’t think men realize what potential threats they can be. A dark night. An alley. A night out boozing when you start talking just a bit too loud and act just a bit too forcefully. A tone of voice. I hand gesture. Mindlessly walking from the bus stop to your apartment in the evening, walking just a bit too close the woman ahead of you. So many times a man might be causing the woman next him to tense up, or look back, or hasten her step. Even the nicest and most harmless man, one completely oblivious to any threat he might pose, can cause caution. A separation of worlds brought on by our bodies. How strange this separation: the men oblivious to it all and the women defensive of each and every one of them. How strange and how lucky they are to be able to walk around at night and speak to strangers without that slight but ever-present fear, somewhat crouching back in case she needs to attack.

me and my IUD

Something quite significant has happened to me recently: I lived through the most painful experience of my life; I had an IUD installed 2 weeks ago.

The reasons of my going down this birth-control route were many: you don’t need to pick it up every month, which is convenient when travelling, on the long-term, it’s economic and, especially, I preferred a more mechanical system than a chemical one, of which the long-term effects doctors cannot seem to come to a consensus.

For years, IUDs were not installed in women who had not had children, such as myself, because the cervix wasn’t considered naturally dilated enough. Now, for some reason, that no longer causes any problems. The procedure is simple enough: first, the doctor freezes the cervix, which involves an uncomfortable prick, much like getting your gums frozen at the dentist’s, with the difference of it being done way up between your legs. This is supposed to make the whole process less painful (so woe on the woman who goes “natural”). After this, I believe a straw like device is inserted through the cervix into the uterus to create a passage for the IUD. The latter is then pushed up into the uterus, its cross-bars are opened to form a T and the straw-device is removed. The doctor must then cut the cord to a suitable length that will permit the IUD to be removed but not be too bothersome during intercourse.

My gyno, a very sweet woman, had warned me that the putting in place of the IUD would feel much like two very big menstrual cramps, one when inserting the straw-thing and the other when the device itself is placed. The term menstrual cramp was not one that sufficiently prepared me for the pain I would experience. It was like a menstrual cramp, but “very big” is an understatement. The pain was magnificently overbearing. Starting from my womb, I felt a menstrual cramp that had exploited, the repercussion of which resonated throughout my body. Cramps in my quads almost paralysed my legs. My head spun as it realized the amplitude of the pain, and the fact that it was not stopping. I didn’t scream. I just cried, repeating over and over again “ça fait ma.” My doctor pressed her hand against my stomach, a welcomed gesture I am not sure was medical or empathetic. She had installed everything as fast as she could, but the cord was left to cut. I was bleeding and didn’t know what to do with my body that could hardly move due to the pain as well as the after-shock of the pain, lying on the medical table tensed and limp at the same time. I asked my doctor to get my boyfriend, who was waiting in the reception area.

Strange thoughts occur to you when you experience such physical pain, like the thought of unfairness that it is always the woman who must suffer so. Or the thought that anything coming in or going out of ‘there’ is unnatural, that a uterus must be left on its own and is always better off when barren. I resolved never giving birth, never getting an abortion and never taking out the IUD, which is as painful though apparently not as long as putting it in. Also, the sublime effect of pain, and how it can never be properly written, as I have not properly written it here. What is pain written and has anybody ever accomplished it? Could I try? Could I have a man be more than sympathetic to it, could I make him understand?

Ben came to the room. With hindsight, he must have left quite useless, the sweet man. After just lying where I was for about ten minutes, it was time for me to make the effort to stand up; there were other patients after me. Ben tried helping me, doing his best supporting me while trying to put on my panties and place a sanitary pad in them, which I am pretty sure he never did before in his life. His efforts, though appreciated, were all wrong and he seriously got on my nerves – which had me guess at what delivering women feel. Who would have thought a few stickers could be so complicated? Meanwhile, I was leaning lower and lower on my doctor’s desk, sweating cold and, apparently, as white as a sheet. With my underpants finally on, I was sat down, my doctor raised my legs unto her desk and gave me a shot of something that was meant to regulate my heart beat or blood flow, one of the two, I can’t remember which. After ten more minutes I painfully made my way to a rest room with a sole reclining chair. By this time, the endorphins kicked in. Hugely sarcastic due to the ever-present pain in my stomach and legs, I confused Ben even more by cracking one joke after another. And it dawned on me that if instead of getting an IUD installed I had just went through labour to produce a baby boy, his name would be Horace. I had never thought of that name before and I don’t particularly like it, but at that moment I would have growled and screeched with a determined stubbornness at anybody who would have opposed it. Horace it would be. Weird.

We eventually had to leave the doctor’s office. The man at the door downstairs was kind and brought out a chair for me to sit on while we waited for the taxi he had called for us. As for the taxi drive home, I could have done without it. Every bump and every sharp stop, of which there were many in this cab, produced a new shock wave from the core of my belly to my limbs. I withheld my tears as I withheld shouting at him to drive more gently, though my shout surely would have exited my lips as a murmur.

This was on a Wednesday. Being over-zealous as I tend to be, I had a gum graft scheduled the next day. I made my way to the dentist’s very slowly, hardly able to walk. It was the third graft I’ve had done so the procedure no longer intimidated me. On the other hand, my body surely would have appreciated a rest from pain, shock and pressure. I did nothing the whole of that week-end except rest.

I share this today because I am presently going through a related experience: my first menstruation since I’ve had my IUD. I am cramped longer than I have ever been. But that’s OK, nothing some Motrin can’t take care of. Yet this is a new experience. My body isn’t reacting as it usually does. And I have these strange pains in my womb. Not just the pressure of a menstrual cramp, like the womb being squeezed. Now, as there is squeezing, I at times feel a sharp pain from the insides, like blades inside of me jutting out. Sharp and acute, within the persistent pressure of a cramp. In my right side, and my cervix maybe? I can’t place it, but my body rolls up around it like a coil, searching heat and for it to stop yet somehow expecting a new pang, defensively. Menstrual pain is tricky. Though I am not used to this kind and have no idea how my body’s contracting will accommodate this new mechanical device, I think I will go for a walk. Would I be old-fashion in thinking that a walk might realign my insides, have things fall into place and become normal again?

from Plautus to M. Bean

Comedy, slap-stick style, hasn’t changed since the time of the Roman Republic. I learned this in last Thursday’s Latin class. It got me thinking that humans, laughing at the same things for the past millenniums, come to appear like fish turning around in a small round aquarium. The human race lives in a bubble, and we keep repeating ourselves, from the patterns of dominant nations (i.e. Rome versus USA) to the minuteness of our humour. If there is someone looking from the outside in on us, how unoriginal we must seem. How elementary and ant-like.

it's cold and it's winter now

It’s 8:30 Saturday morning. It’s turned cold, and the world outside looks isolated and sterile. Light snow is falling to the ground. Small and light snow flakes. The sun has risen but hides behind grey clouds. Everything is beautifully quiet.

I’ve been doing a language exchange with a lovely Mexican stage actress who is in Montreal for the year with her husband. We meet once a week and chitchat, at times in English and at times in Spanish. I find we get along quite well, which is a good coincidence. Yesterday being the first true winter day, we spoke for a while about the weather. I love watching someone discover this place. She asked me what I loved about the winter. I told her of the whiteness but forgot to mention the quiet and sense of peace. I told her of snowstorms, a concept she hasn’t yet encountered. I also told her my idea of the effects of climate on temperament. I have a hypothesis that Quebecers, and maybe to an extent Canadians, are generally temperate in their views (political & social) as a direct result of the climate we live in. It being so extreme, with hot and humid summers and freezing winters, and so uncomfortable, we don’t look for extremes in other parts of our life. We seek a certain level of comfort because we know physically, and maybe without consciously knowing it, how difficult it is to live at one end of the spectrum or the other.

At this, Carmen brought up the fact that here, for the first time, her husband and her look at the weather report before venturing outside. And she questioned weather this constant need to relate one’s physic with the exterior climate changes one’s way of relating to nature, and to what’s exterior to the self. I had never thought of that. For me, watching the weather channel is a given, which I take for granted. She also remarked that she found that the warmer weather in her country might have a negative effect on some, rendering them lazy. “That age old Latin stereotype,” I said, but she believes it to be true for a certain amount of the Mexicans. She says that if one doesn’t need to work hard to eat, just needs to stretch out one’s hand to reach for food, than they don’t take to working hard for that food. This I wouldn’t know, but as she was speaking I was imagining the generations of Québécois mothers in their kitchen working day-in and day-out on preserves to last the winter.