Tunesday : How Soon is Now

How Soon is Now

(Morrissey, S / Marr, J) Performed by The Smiths

I am the son
And the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

I am the son
And the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

There's a club if you'd like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home and you cry
And you want to die

When you say it's gonna happen "now"
Well when exactly do you mean?
See I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

This is the last Tunesday before the girls go back to school (that's technically "back to university", but I'll keep them little in my mind for a bit longer, thank you), and as my intention had been to spend the summer sharing songs that my friends and I loved when I was in university (thirty *cough* years *cough* ago), that set list wouldn't be complete without The Smiths. Yes, this is the obvious choice from the band, and while I have been semi-trying to avoid obvious choices for this project, How Soon is Now was really the only Smiths song that got played at the clubs; pretty much the only one I danced to anyway. (Actually, Meat is Murder got some play, and although we shivered along to lines like "The meat in your mouth as you savour the flavour of MURDER", our response [as meat-eaters all] was kind of ironic; and as that wouldn't honour the intent of the song, I'll stick to the one that I had an honest emotional response to.) And I did respond to this song -- what teenager doesn't yearn to be loved, just like everybody else does?

Last week I was talking about how freaked out I was about a couple of old friends who sent me Facebook friend requests out of the blue, so I think I'll just share a few stories about one of them: Nancy. The first time I wrote about her was here (where I shared her stories about being visited by Little People as a child), and as for our high school days, I wrote about that here, and included Nancy when I wrote about her part in the planning phase of the Europe trip Kevin and I took here; looking back, as peripheral as Nancy essentially was to my life, I may have actually written more about her than anyone else from Lethbridge. Huh. So to briefly recap: On New Year's Eve of Grade Twelve, our little group of friends had a blowup (which was apparently a long time coming, even if I was oblivious to it) and Nancy and I were cast out; suddenly only having each other to hang out with, even if we had never hung out just the two of us before. 

I did have a boyfriend (Doug), and a part time job (at Bonanza), and with school and whatnot, I was busy enough throughout the week. But I must have been lonely and mopey enough on the weekends for my Dad to notice: one day, totally out of nowhere, Dad said, "Why don't you take my car and go get some friends and drive out to Waterton for the day?" The only person I could even think to invite was Nancy, and she was happy to come along. As I wrote before, I always loved going to Waterton -- it's a beautiful National Park in the Rockies, without the crowds or commercialism of Banff or Jasper -- and we did all the usual tourist stuff: driving the slightly terrifying twisty road up to Cameron Lake (where Alberta, BC, and Montana intersect); taking the boat tour that crosses Waterton Lake into Montana; I'm only mostly sure that we went horseback riding; but I do remember specifically that we had lunch in a diner/cafeteria that had a self-serve cooler for beer and soft drinks, and although we were both slightly underage, when we plunked the beer cans down on the counter, the cashier rang them up without batting an eye -- it was so hot outside and we were so exhausted from touristing that I still remember how sweet that lager went down (doubly sweet for being contraband).

As I said before, Nancy and I both took a semester off after high school: me, because I was sick of school, and Nancy, because I think her parents needed her to work. Her Dad was a mechanic in the garage at the university, and at the time, that meant that Nancy and her brothers would get free tuition. Even so, when her older brother had graduated high school, he immediately moved out of the house and went to work somewhere. And when Nancy graduated, she got a job soldering together early generation cell phones; handing over every paycheque to her obese, wheedling mother; gratefully accepting whatever portion of her own money she was allowed to keep for herself. It was while we were both working that Nancy and I started dreaming along with Kevin about backpacking through Europe the next summer, and while at first Nancy was as onboard as any of us, her parents eventually put their collective feet down: they couldn't afford to have Nancy spend her own money like that; it was bad enough that she was planning to start university the following fall. (Obviously, I have no idea how tight money was for Nancy's family, but I'm sure from my tone that it's clear I found this whole situation unfair at the time -- and especially because Nancy's mother didn't work [not outside the home, and looking around at the squalour, not inside either]: she was simply huge, and every time I saw her, she'd be sitting in the same recliner chair, with a plate of snacks at her elbow [or asking Nancy to refresh the snacks at her elbow], and listing off all the chores Nancy would need to have completed before she'd be allowed to go out [feeding her little brother, doing some laundry, giving Mama a kiss on her flabby cheek]. And here's the most important fact about these living conditions: Nancy didn't mind at all. She would happily do anything her mother asked, hand over her paycheques without complaint, fluff up the pillow behind her Mama's back; not dream of going anywhere until her mother was satisfied she could get along [somehow] without Nancy's help. And here's a caveat: I might well have inflated all of this in my memory -- Nancy's mother might not have been that obese or that demanding or that sedentary; but it's sure how I remember it.)

A canonical story from the time: When Kevin and I were preparing to go on our trip, Nancy was a good sport and happily came along on shopping jaunts with me; helping me choose my backpack and bathing suit and various sundries. She came with me to Radio Shack one day when I decided I wanted a travelling foldup clock, and as was always the case at that stupid store, you couldn't just buy some little thing without giving them your name and address and phone number (they said this was for "warranty" purposes, and maybe that made sense for TVs and stereos, but it was a pain in the butt when you just wanted a five dollar alarm clock). The clerk asked my name, and I replied, "Krista with a K", and when he asked for my last name, I simply replied, "Jones" (which I had never needed to spell out for anyone in my life to that point). When he then asked me to spell my last name, Nancy jumped in and said with great impatience and exaggerated airquotes  , "You know, 'Jones', as in everybody has one?" That was apparently all the information the clerk needed because he was, indeed, able to spell my last name from there, and we moved on to the address and whatever and were finally allowed to leave the store in a fit of giggles. What was important was that this was a running joke forever in our gang of friends: "You know, 'Jones', as in everybody has one?" I simply cannot think of Nancy without thinking of that story (even if it doesn't read as hilarious, it was one of those things that grew more and more funny the more it was repeated.)

The following spring, when Nancy was about to turn nineteen, I had this big idea to spoil her with a stunning, adult night out: we'd have a fancy dinner at the Lethbridge Lodge's fine dining room; a night of theater at the University; and conclude the evening at a bar that was having their once-a-month, latenight male stripper event. In order to make it a surprise, I asked Nancy's Mom to pretend that she was going to take Nancy out for dinner (so that my friend would get appropriately dressed up), and then all us girls would swoop into her house, yell "Surprise", and carry on. This was all planned with much love -- if anyone deserved some spoiling it was the supportive and uncomplaining Nancy -- and even her mother was really happy to play along, but here's what I never considered: I don't know if Nancy's mother ever took her anywhere, and when we piled into their house to yell "Surprise" and kidnap Nancy, her face briefly fell before rearranging back into a smile. I think she was actually, completely devastated: we had set Nancy up to believe that she and her Mom were going to have a girls night out -- and how much did Nancy deserve that? -- and Nancy was so delighted to be going out with her Mom, and it turned out to be a prank. On the other hand, her Mom was so ridiculously happy to be included in the ruse -- do I remember tears of joy in her eyes as she waved us on from her recliner? -- that Nancy matched her smile and sportingly joined us for what would turn out to be a truly mediocre evening. 

Dinner was probably fantastic (as it doesn't stand out in my memory, it must have been as good as the restaurant's usual: I think I remember us sharing a bottle of wine, as we were all by this point old enough to be served alcohol and that would have felt "adult"), but the play was pretty dumb: it was called Firebugs and was a totally amateur student production (and the only thing that stands out in my memory, other than overall dissatisfaction, was a Greek Chorus of firefighters marching around the stage, chanting their lines over the principal actors' dialogue. So lame.) Then we whisked Nancy along to the male stripper event (the likes of which none of us had ever seen before) and it was totally lame. In my mind I was thinking of the Chippendales, but when we got to the lounge, it was just one (not terribly tall or hot or even handsome) guy. And instead of performing on a stage, he was alone on the dancefloor, mostly blocked from view by pillars and tables and chairs. His first number was a slow song, and he swayed and swivelled his hips, slowly taking off his clothes until he was in just a g-string. And then he swayed his way over to the few scattered occupied tables, slowly thrusting himself in each of our horrified directions (we had no clue that this was probably where we were supposed to stuff his gaunch with singles, so this was no doubt a lame night for him, too). And because he was the only performer, he had to stretch out the experience by spending the next, also slow, song laying down on the dancefloor, running his hands up and down his own bare body, doing weird yoga-like poses. Laying down, he was totally obscured from our view, and every now and then someone would stand up and look and confirm that he was still rubbing and stretching, but for the most part, we'd be talking and laughing about something else (another reason for why this can't have been a good experience for the guy, either). His third, and final, song was a fast one, and to our absolute horror, he removed his g-string and flopped around the little dancefloor, and worse, flopped around from table to table. There was nothing sexy about this performance from beginning to end, and I was so dismayed by this man's floppy penis as it led him on towards our eye-level chairs, that I placed a shielding hand over my unbelieving eyes, turning away from his bold advance. How would he have worked up the nerve to pull off this sad burlesque? I remember his body was completely hairless.

These are the stories I think of when I remember Nancy; I don't recall much more of our daily interactions (other than remembering her as always friendly and supportive and up for anything); I have no memory of saying goodbye to her when I moved away. As I concluded last week, I don't think that Nancy's Facebook friend request was actually a chummy gesture (as Curtis and I essentially ended our own friendship in an acrimonious divorce in which he got to keep the friends, I can only imagine that he has spent the last twenty years -- to the degree that he would have ever thought about me at all -- shaping my memory into that of a villain) and that's a little sad: I'd like to think there is a universe in which Nancy has a blog where she remembers the good times we shared together, too; I have nothing but love and admiration in my memories of her.

Nancy

Hot Milk

My mother had tried to keep it together for a while. She taught herself how to make salty goat's cheese for my father I remember I remember, warming the milk, adding the yogurt, stirring in the rennet, cutting the curds, doing something with muslin and brine, pickling cheese in jars. She put herbs on the lamb she roasted for him, herbs she had never heard of in Warter, Yorkshire, but when he left she could not pay the bills with herbs and cheese I remember, I do remember, she had to walk out of the kitchen and do something else, I remember she turned the oven off and put her coat on and she opened the front door and there was a wolf waiting for us on the mat but she chased it away and found a job and her lips were not puckered, her eyelashes were not curled when she sat in the library day after day indexing books, but her hair was always perfect and it was held up with one pin.

I've been thinking on Hot Milk since I finished it over a day ago, and it's a strange read to pin down: at once both oddly dreamlike in its treatment of a mother-daughter story and specific in the details that anchor it to modern Europe, it's hard for me to even separate whether it was the brooding atmosphere or the eccentric plot details that are most lingering in my mind. It's not so much that the protagonist Sophia is an unreliable narrator as, at twenty-five and prevented from growing up, she's not yet fully formed: there's frequent gender confusion and sexual fluidity and reversals of family roles, and since Sophia doesn't quite know where she fits into the world, neither does the reader; is she selfless or monstrous? Can a person be both? I don't mean to make this book sound confusing or inaccessible – this odd atmosphere is an earned achievement by author Deborah Levy and Hot Milk is a worthy title on the 2016 Man Booker prize longlist. 

I am in a reckless mood after my bold night of lovemaking under the real stars. I want to sit here with a lover, close, closer, touching. Instead I am here with my mother, who is a sort of career invalid. I am young and might even be the subject of erotic dreams newly minted by Juan, who had said, 'The dream is over', when we first met. And I might be beloved to Ingrid, who is tormenting me.

As the book opens, Sophia and her mother Rose have travelled from England to a dusty seaside town in Spain in order to seek treatment at the nearby Gómez Clinic: Sophia has been taking care of her hypochondriac mother since her father left when she was just five, and now that Rose says she can no longer feel her feet, the pair has remortgaged the family home in order to offer up €50k in the hopes of a last ditch miracle cure. Sophia is an Anthropology student (her PhD is on hold for now as she works as a barista in a gourmet cafe; sleeping in its storeroom during the week; at her mother's house on weekends), and she can't help but evaluate everything she sees in terms of social constructs and kinship systems and other jargony words. When they finally meet Dr Gómez, Rose fears he is a quack: he takes her off her long list of medications for her various complaints (leaving Rose waiting in shivery anticipation for the pains that never come) and seems more interested in Rose's (and Sophia's) mental state than her physical: is this worth blowing Sophia's meagre inheritance?

Meanwhile, the glimpse we get of the women's home life is not a pleasant one: Rose is forever demanding glasses of water (and the water is always “wrong” whether Sophia fetches it from the kettle or the fridge; whether sparkling or still), and despite being able to shuffle along sometimes, Rose insists that her much smaller daughter carry her from house to wheelchair to car. And while this looks totally abusive, Sophia leaves her mother alone most of the time to go swimming in the medusa-infested sea, to meet with various lovers, even to take a trip to Greece to visit her estranged father and his new family: just what is Rose supposed to do with all these empty hours and days? Especially if she claims to prefer staring at a blank wall to even looking out the window at the night sky? Sophia appears to both believe and disbelieve in her mother's incapacitation at the same time, and when even her (new, casual) lover Ingrid refers to Sophia as a monster more than once (is she “beloved” or something more “violent”?), I began to wonder if I wasn't too trusting in taking Sophia at her word: does she play along with the family drama just to delay taking responsibility for her own life? While from her perspective – at least in what she shares with the reader – Sophia seems to have no power in her relationship with Ingrid (or Rose), is she actually the one in charge? 

At night the marble dome of the Gómez Clinic resembled a spectral, solitary breast illuminated by the lights hidden in the surrounding succulents. A maternal lighthouse perched on the mountain, its veined, milky marble thrusting out of the purple sea lavender. A nocturnal breast, serene but sinister under the bright night stars.

This book is full of breasts (full of Hot Milk) and cigars and dreams and other Freudian imagery (when it comes down to it, is Sophia trying to save her mother or [metaphorically] kill her?); it subtly (but often) references Greek mythology; and, more concretely, it references austerity economics and how that is affecting the Greek and Spanish societies. But at its heart, this is a book about mother-daughter relationships and how that dynamic might be subverted by a mother who wants to be babied and a daughter who resists growing up. This was a fascinating and unusual read and I'm glad to have picked it up.

The 2016 Man Booker Prize Longlist

• Paul Beatty - The Sellout
• J.M. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus
• A.L. Kennedy - Serious Sweet
• Deborah Levy - Hot Milk
• Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project
• Ian McGuire - The North Water
• David Means - Hystopia
• Wyl Menmuir - The Many
• Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen
• Virginia Reeves - Work Like Any Other
• Elizabeth Strout - My Name Is Lucy Barton
• David Szalay - All That Man Is
• Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Upon the release of the shortlist (and as my two favourite titles didn't make the cut), this is my ranking for the finalists (signifying my enjoyment of the books, not necessarily which one I think will/should win):

Deborah Levy : Hot Milk 
Ottessa Moshfegh : Eileen 
Paul Beatty : The Sellout 
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing 
Graeme Macrae Burnet : His Bloody Project 
David Szalay : All That Man Is 

Later edit: The Man Booker was won by The Sellout, and although it was not my pick, I'm not dissatisfied by the result.

Flannery

I can just hear the automated phone call now. A child in your household named FLANNERY was absent from fifth period and she walked home all by herself, snuffling and bawling, and it was a very long, lonely, miserable walk.

I think I've read everything by Lisa Moore – I love her – so when I recently checked to see if she had anything coming out, and discovered that she had, indeed, recently released a YA novel entitled Flannery, I had to really think about that: YA is not my favourite genre (I prefer real books, thank you very much), so would this be worth my time? In the end I took a chance, and was I disappointed? Short answer: no. Longer answer: hell no. Long answer: I should never have doubted Moore's talents as a storycrafter; she is an artist in words, and while this book might be classified as YA because of the age of the protagonist and the particular situations she finds herself in, Moore certainly created a real book here. Repeatedly capturing honest human moments (forcing me to repeatedly wipe the tears from my eyes so I could continue reading), Moore didn't write a simpler novel because of her intended audience, and repeatedly, I was aware of the respect she had for this audience. This is a fine and true book about being a teenage girl; both specific to our particular moment and universal in its truths. Loved it.

Flannery Malone is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a feminist/environmentalist/artist/single mother (there is also a younger brother from a different father; neither man is even aware of these children, let alone providing support), and as the book begins, things are going pretty well for her: Flannery is starting grade twelve, her best friend Amber is in most of her classes, and her childhood friend/crush (Tyrone, who moved away but returned to the same high school, and would be totally out of Flannery's league if they hadn't been raised together) has been assigned as her partner to develop a sellable product for their Entrepreneurship class. Tyrone suggests they sell love potions (as a “gag” product, like pet rocks), and a storyline begins that made me worry, “Uh oh, is there gonna be some kind of predictable, accidental magic subplot here?” But, I should have known I could trust Lisa Moore. 'Nuff said about that. Amber is a successful competitive swimmer, and this is Flannery describing the girls in a swimming race:

They are silver arrows they are eels they are licorice they are Lycra they are muscle they are will and will not and want to be and winning, for the first few seconds they are all winning and winning and winning and they are can't and must and will never and don't.

Now, that kind of stream-of-consciousness, listy writing makes me swoon, so I will allow that sometimes this book might be appealing primarily to my own idiosyncratic tastes (but don't worry, it's not all like that). While Flannery is unsuccessfully trying to get Tyrone to participate more in their project, Amber is falling in love with her own partner for the project, Gary: a basketball-playing, band-fronting, drug-using hoodlum who quickly takes over Amber's life – causing her to skip swim practises, lie to her parents, and drop her lifelong bestie. Moore is so specific in the details of Flannery's memories of this waning friendship that it felt perfectly universal; this is what all teenage girls feel for their best friends:

If you want to forget about that summer Miranda took us to Northern Bay Sands and we stayed in the ocean until our lips were blue and our teeth chattered and afterward we had a bonfire and jumped up and down on the bed until we broke the bed frame, and we had to sleep with the bed on a tilt and we kept rolling onto the floor, that's fine with me.

Meanwhile, Flannery's mother Miranda (a perfectly wonderful character who can live a life based on progressive ideals without it feeling either flakey or preachy to the reader) doesn't always have the money to pay the heating bills, or understand the point of boundaries, or even act like the adult in the family most of the time, but when one of her kids is hurting or in danger, Miranda's love is unquestioned and fierce.

So in that moment, yeah – I understand the extent of Miranda's fear, though she tries with all her might to keep it hidden. Miranda is afraid of whether or not there will be enough nutrition in our diets, and she's afraid she's going to accidentally kill Spiky and/or Smooth and that I'll never speak to her again, and she's afraid that her art isn't any damn good at all, because she really believes in that stuff, and it means a lot to her, and she's sacrificing a lot to keep making art, but she's thinking maybe she doesn't have the right to sacrifice so much when she's a mother with two kids to feed.

So basically, Flannery is a coming of age story about a loving and loveable main character who has extraordinary challenges in her love life (if she can't convince Tyrone to do his share of the homework, how will she get him to notice her like that?), and in her social circle (is Amber staying away because she knows Flannery doesn't like Gary, or is it because Gary doesn't like Flannery?), and in her home life (it's hard to be poor and relied upon so heavily). That's what makes this a YA book, but what elevates it is the writing: there's a wonderful chapter where Flannery is remembering the day she knew she was in love with Tyrone. They were nine and at the wedding of Miranda's ex-boyfriend, and Flannery intersperses memories of all of Miranda's boyfriends (leading up to the details of the wedding itself) with a story about Tyrone water-skiing behind his stepfather's boat, and the back and forth between the mundane of the one and the menace of the other (resulting in Flannery acknowledging that until that point her mother had successfully shielded her from the existence of true evil) was simply a masterpiece of writing: this chapter could stand alone as a short story, and yet this particular device was never used again. There's another scene where Flannery is upset, and as Miranda is rocking her, she asks to hear the story of her father one more time. And as first Miranda and then Flannery add the details of the mythical one night stand, they correct each other (usually with Miranda attempting to deromanticise the whole thing), and the back and forth felt so right: yes, it would happen just like that. I loved the image of Flannery getting into bed with her little brother after a dangerous event, curling her body against his back, and then having Miranda enter later and curl herself against the both of them; an embrace and an absolution. I loved the honesty of the snarky things Flannery sometimes couldn't stop herself from saying. I loved that Lisa Moore is never afraid to embrace the Canadianness of her settings: using the proper names for buildings and streets in St. John's without attempting to map it all out for the unfamiliar; not afraid to namedrop Zellers and Tim Hortons and Measha Brueggergosman. And the book is set in our own times in a way that I often complain is absent in books: when a kid gets arrested, it's all over Instagram; boys huddle around their cell phones to evaluate someone's girlfriend's naked pics; there's blogging and texting and Facebook: why don't all authors write about these things we all see every day? Flannery is a real book in every way, and I'm so glad I got over myself and picked it up.

There's a glass case full of chrysalises. Tiny, papery-looking sacs, each carefully pinned to a wooden slat. One papery sac has a hole punched in the bottom. I watch a wing unfold. It's black and white with a strip of fluorescent pink. It unfolds in the way all unfolding things unfold: pup-tents, origami cranes, inflatable rubber dinghies, the rest of your life. Popping out, unbuckling, flinging itself into being, already knowing what it will become. Unable to stop itself and not knowing but thoughtful about each unfolding pucker and undinted, undented, smooth and trembling wing, and yes, yes. This is it.

Tunesday : You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)

You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)

(Percy, M / Burns, P / Coy, S / Lever, T) Performed by Dead or Alive

If I, I get to know your name
Well if I, could trace your private number, baby

All I know is that to me
You look like you're lots of fun
Open up your lovin' arms
I want some, want some

I set my sights on you (and no one else will do)
And I, I've got to have my way now, baby

All I know is that to me
You look like you're having fun
Open up your lovin' arms
Watch out here I come

You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round

I got to be your friend now, baby
And I would like to move in just a little bit closer

All I know is that to me
You look like you're lots of fun
Open up your lovin' arms
Watch out, here I come

You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round

I want your love
I want your love

All I know is that to me
You look like you're lots of fun
Open up your lovin' arms
Watch out, here I come

You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby

Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round

You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round

It shouldn't really be surprising that someone like me -- who loved Adam Ant and Boy George through the earlier Eighties -- would have been 100% primed and ready to love Pete Burns and Dead or Alive when they appeared on the scene; yet something about this band and this song felt even more transgressive than what came before; more naughty; and I loved them all the more for it. What might be more surprising to learn is that I had a signature dance move when I was out with my friends (totally cringe-worthy when I think of it now): whenever the mood gripped me, I'd start "stomping"; hunching forward and spinning around in a circle, my outer foot stomping around, my arms airplaned out. When You Spin Me Round started playing at the clubs, it was like it had been written just for me: I'd jump up from my seat whenever those opening strains would begin, whether anyone else was coming out on the dance floor or not, and I'd ease into the song with our group's usual nonchalant barely-moving dance moves, but when the time was right, I'd go full freak and stomp and spin and generally make an ass of myself. But, man, was I ever having fun.

That's the literal reason for this week's song choice. But wait. There's more. 

When I started this memoir-project blogging thing, I pretty much decided that there were three or four stories that shouldn't be told; these aren't stories of incest or murder or anything that major, but if I get to frame my own history (and by extension, that of my family) I can't see the point of preserving forever those things that would make me (or other members of my family) look bad; and especially since those stories have been lost in the fog of time. In the memoir or biography of a famous person, it would be fair to go and interview old friends and classmates, to correct or corroborate those factoids that the subject's memory might be fuzzy about, but I'm certainly never going to be famous and I think part of the strength of blogging my memories is the fact that they are totally subjective and fuzzy -- I can't guarantee that anything happened just the way I remembered, but I have made an honest effort to unpack what my brain believes happened; with a few considered omissions. So where could I be going with all this?

On Saturday night, totally out of the blue, I got a Facebook friend request from my old pal Nancy. I haven't spoken to her since I left Lethbridge in 1988, and as I have written about her before (as the only female ally who survived my high school years), I'll just reiterate that she was always a lovely person and was totally there for me when I could have felt alone in the world. I stared at the request, and without accepting or declining, I decided to sleep on it: how did she find me, why did she reach out to me, and do I really want to stir up old ghosts by reconnecting with someone from those days? I couldn't answer any of that -- I was mentally spinnin' right round -- but there's no denying that if there's someone I still feel fondness for from that time, it would be Nancy. Then the next morning, there was another friend request: from Curtis. Now, I haven't gotten to this part in my story yet, but although Curtis and I were good friends for many years, it didn't end well: after living with me and Dave for a few years, everything fell apart over the money he owed us, and when Curtis had to leave Edmonton and return to his mother's house, I suppose he hated me for not continuing to put our friendship above my marriage: I was put into a position to choose between Curtis and Dave, and I made the only possible choice. So, Curtis and Nancy both friend requesting me on the same night didn't feel like a coincidence, and I didn't like it.

So next I did the only logical thing: I went to my sock puppet (hopefully untraceable) Facebook account and looked up Nancy's profile (totally private, so I learned nothing) and then Curtis', and what a shock that was: his latest post was from the night before; a group selfie of all our VOMIT friends on what they were calling their 30th reunion. And I mean, they were all there: both Robs, both Michelles, Hillary, Jeff, Kevin, Nancy and Curtis (not Jaybo, but when I linked to his profile, I saw that he [and the handlebar moustache that totally didn't surprise me] lives down in the States and getting back to Alberta for this kind of thing probably wouldn't be easy), and then it all made sense: I must have come up as a topic of conversation; they may even, as a group, have searched for me on Facebook. Cringe. I thought I had all my privacy settings at the maximum, and while nonfriends can't read my posts, they can see most of my photos (which I learned when I searched up myself from the sock puppet account, and while my first instinct was to go through and firm up my security settings -- which I can't figure out how to do -- I'm actually glad that I wasn't immediately able to: if anyone looked again while I was still fresh on their minds, I wouldn't want them to know immediately how much they freaked me out.)

I've been writing nostalgically about this group (and the songs we loved) all summer, but that's mostly because I've been thinking about them in the context of these moments in time: in the time, these were my best friends in the world. But of course things changed. I wrote before about how I wronged Rob. I wrote just last week about how crazy I was in the head at this time: smiling on the outside while disguising a life that didn't feel worth living. By the time I left Lethbridge, I wanted nothing more to do with the ghosts of mistakes that were torturing me; nothing more to do with anyone who might remind me that I'm a person who has done wrong. By the time I left Alberta for good, I put a mental lock on all of it: I was happy to know that I would never accidentally run into to someone who could hurt me with the facts of my own life. 

But up pop two ghosts on Facebook. Nancy, who would have never had a reason to personally dislike me. And Curtis, who in his own mind anyway, did. With all of VOMIT together -- and who knows how often they all get together -- if I came up as a topic of conversation, I can't imagine it was with fond nostalgia: as an outsider (moving into and out of Alberta), I merely passed through their lives, with no continuous effect; I am also frozen in time, defenseless against those (Curtis and Rob) whose last memories of me could frame (and freeze) my entire existence as a hurtful/totally nutso person. What would they have been saying about me? Mocking my stupid stomping dance moves? That would be small potatoes, I suppose, but still hurtful to think about: what to me was about freedom and joy (two states I was desperately craving; in ways none of them ever understood about me) could reasonably be reframed by those who witnessed it as simply evidence of my uncoolness. Rob could have retold what a cold and heartless person I was: letting him firebomb his life to follow me to Edmonton, only to throw him over once I didn't need him anymore. Curtis could do the most damage: not only explaining that I had valued money over friendship, but since he did live with us for years, he'd have the inside scoop about what my life and marriage had been like (and I'll just note that he and Dave got along fine [other than the money in the end], but Curtis could say anything he liked without understanding that this is a happily ever after story). Nancy could go even further back: by now, she might even know why it was that I lost my best friends in high school; I'm sure the details of that can't be flattering to my memory. 

Ultimately, I can only imagine there was something cruel motivating them to look me up on Facebook -- Remember Krista? Oh my God, what a looooser!  I wonder what she's doing now? Let's find her! Look at her stoooopid face!! -- and sending me friend requests is a challenge that I'm not up to accepting. What would be the point? So that someone could tell me that they've assembled all the evidence against me that would prove I really was as worthless as I felt all along? I've wrestled with ghosts and demons and I've put them to bed: at this point, I have no desire to nudge anything back to life.

How strange is life. I've spent months now writing about these people who had been so important to me, and in my memory, they're fixed in time; I have frozen them as avatars of friendship instead of attempting to really flesh them out as people. And that's probably appropriate: this is my project -- unpacking what's in my brain instead of going off on a fact-finding mission -- and I'd rather remember them as they were instead of learning where they ended up. I have no desire to accept friendship requests from people who probably don't think of me in a friendly way; some things, and people, deserve to remain hidden within the fog of time.

You spin me right round, baby

Right round like a record, baby

Right round round round

You spin me right round, baby

Right round like a record, baby

Right round round round

But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past

Before we can argue that something we currently appreciate deserves inclusion in the world of tomorrow, we must build that future world within our mind. This is not easy (even with drugs). But it's not even the hardest part. The hardest part is accepting that we're building something with parts that don't yet exist.

Reading But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past is like being a fly on the wall of Chuck Klosterman's pot-filled dormroom, listening in as he meanderingly muses and ponders the imponderables – Have you ever really looked at your hands, man? – and like our imaginary fly, it's easy to pause and listen; to disengage the critical part of the brain and just let the smoke and ideas wash over you in an indistinguishable fog. Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed this read very much in the moment, but in hindsight, I don't know if it added up to much of anything besides its basic premise: how will those things that are important to today's (mainstream American) society be remembered by the people of the future? Will our scientific beliefs look as quaint (or as downright wrong) as Medieval superstition and Aristotelian geocentricism? Will any of our art survive? As these questions are ultimately unanswerable, the fun of this book is following along as Klosterman decides which questions are worth asking. And there is fun to be had in that.

An early (and favourite of mine) example of how an evolving society reframes even the recent past has to do with the movie The Matrix. In 1999, we were enthralled by its special effects and mindbending sci-fi premise – on its own merits, this movie seemed like an instant classic – but as the current sociopolitical climate of 2016 has allowed the movie's sibling directors to announce their long desired transitions from males to females, the basic concept of The Matrix needs to be reconsidered:

Suddenly, the symbolic meaning of a universe with two worlds – one false and constructed, the other genuine and hidden – takes on an entirely new meaning. The idea of a character choosing between swallowing a blue pill that allows him to remain a false placeholder and a red pill that forces him to confront who he truly is becomes a much different metaphor.

And that's a reframing that took less than fifteen years: no one in 1999 could have imagined our current acceptance of – it might even be more fair to say “celebration” of – transgendered people, so how do you extrapolate that example out into the future? What future social and cultural changes could occur over hundreds or thousands of years that could make our current, supposedly progressive, times look backward or even barbaric? Because these changes are unimaginable – it's too easy to say, “Oh, we probably won't eat animals or wage wars” – the question is unanswerable. This paradox is the crux of the entire book.

When it comes to those truths that we may be “wrong” about, Klosterman divides them into two groups: objective truths (like the force of gravity) and subjective (like what are the great novels of our day). For the former, Klosterman interviewed both Neil deGrasse Tyson (who insists that, although science is continually being advanced, our basic understanding of the universe hasn't changed since Copernicus, and it never will) and Brian Greene (who advocates the Multiverse Theory that would totally upend all of current scientific thought): and ultimately, these two, who are presented to the reader as diametrically opposed, agree that Classical Mechanics, with Einstein's Relativity refinements, describe the universe (or multiverse) too precisely to ever be proven wrong. Of course, Klosterman also descends into a stoner dormroom discussion of simulated reality, and what if we're just all characters in someone else's dream, and what happens to the universe if I'm the dreamer and then I wake up? Yada yada.

As for art, Klosterman makes the case that within very little time, all of rock and roll will be reduced to a footnote. It's interesting to follow along as he tries to decide which one act will eventually stand in as the shorthand for the entire genre (The Beatles? Would the scales tip more towards the side of Elvis' pure showmanship or Dylan's pure poetry? What about Chuck Berry, since even John Lennon once identified him as the quintessence?) Klosterman believes that Roseanne is the television show that accidentally captured the reality of its times (by being neither self-mockingly ridiculous or self-consciously “real”) and will probably endure as emblematic. He makes a long argument that the novelists who will be remembered are the ones we probably haven't even heard of, and because he was echoing my own thoughts in this following quote, and I like it when smart people agree with what I think, I'll share it:

If the meaning of a book can be deduced from a rudimentary description of its palpable plot, the life span of that text is limited to the time of its release. Historically awesome art always means something different from what it superficially appears to suggest – and if future readers can't convince themselves that the ideas they're consuming are less obvious than whatever simple logic indicates, that book will disappear.

Yet, I don't know if I agree that in the future we'll think of rock and roll as we currently do about march music (for which the shorthand “Sousa” can represent the whole genre), or that when we look back and identify Kafka and Melville as unappreciated geniuses, that necessarily means that future generations will only care about those authors from our own time who didn't find widespread success. Klosterman is able to make the following (to me, contradictory if a chapter apart) statements about those people who decide what from the past is remembered: It's nice to think that the weirdos get to decide what matters about the past, since it's the weirdos who care the most and To matter forever, you need to matter to those who don't care. And if that strikes you as sad, be sad. But the world is already changed since the day that we (somehow, collectively) decided that Frank Lloyd Wright can stand in for all of 20th century architecture or that William Shakespeare represents the height of the Elizabethan dramatists: with the advent of the internet, and as we head towards the Singularity and however that will work as a human/internet interface, won't we eventually be able to hold all examples of everything within our minds at the same time? And I don't mean this to sound as though I'm being defensive of the cultural touchstones of my own era: If a passing thought about Elizabethan plays will, in the future, bring an instant understanding of all of the works of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe and Ben Johnson simultaneously, why would the era need to be reduced to just one avatar? It would be impossible to go back and fill in all of the art and thought of the past that might adequately flesh out the various eras, but as for today, if someone in the year 3016 wanted to know what life was like for me, they wouldn't need to say, “Oh, she probably listened to Elvis and watched Roseanne and read Jonathan Frantzen”: for while all those things are true, this imaginary person would have access to an instant understanding of all of the music and television and books of my era, an instant understanding of the works of the official culture critics and their unending stream of print and pixels on pop culture, and for all I know, with instant access to the history of Facebook and Goodreads and all of my other public fora, this person would know exactly what I, myself, consumed and thought about it. But I could be wrong about all that, too.

I liked when Klosterman would draw examples from things I've read (namedropping books like Tenth of December, Super Sad True Love Story, and even Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History); I was pleased to understand the point he was making about how either Infinite Jest or The Road might eventually be considered the quintessential book about 9/11. I can't deny that he went to the experts to search for answers and these interviews were often enlightening. On the other hand, I was less engaged by American-specific what-ifs (Is Malcolm Gladwell correct that the NFL will be gone within 50 years? Is a fanatical adherence to a 200 year old, unchangeable Constitution the roots of America's eventual demise? Was Reagan the worst and Obama the best president in the author's lifetime?), but I do appreciate that I was simply following along as Klosterman explored those ideas that were intriguing to him; and in the end, you don't need to be a pothead in a dormroom to find philosophical questions without answers to be an interesting diversion. 

We spend our lives learning many things, only to discover (again and again) that most of what we've learned is either wrong or irrelevant. A big part of our mind can handle this; a smaller, deeper part cannot. And it's that smaller part that matters more, because that part of our mind is who we really are (whether we like it or not).