3.31.2004
At 6: 30 this morning I had to stand on Agricola Street to wait for my mother. She was lending me her car so I could drive all the way back to Lower Suckville and spend aching hours typing shit up for the zine. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's supposed to be fun.
This guy in a big fucking truck even stopped. I ran away, he drove away, did the circle and came back. Ernie opens his door across the street and yells:
"HE. THINKS. YOU'RE. A. HOOKEEEER!."
"I KNOOOW!."
4:09 PM
According to the Wearable Art Show this is what's in.
1. Bum Ruffles.
2. Metal.
3. Stuffed Puppies
4. Paper collars
4:03 PM
3.24.2004
Sometimes my mother tells me stories. When she’s had a couple of drinks and it’s summer. Outside on the deck, during parties, sending my sister’s friends to the liquor store with 50 bucks, “More of this! It tastes like chocolate! Bring three!” She tells me stories about her youth. She hung out with the Bay boys because they were bad, how they jumped back seats from moving car to moving car, about the party she had where the guy fell through the glass, she dated one boy and dumped him for his twin brother, she was engaged at age 16 to some guy and her father stopped speaking to her for seven months, how she went to Toronto by herself to see the Beatles, how she was the first girl in her town to cut her hair short and wear a sharp military coat. Her mother, my grandmother Helen, taught Mom’s best friend how to bake bread but she refused to teach my mother. “Now Mable makes the best bread and I can’t. Not that I wanted to.”
When they were 17, Mable showed up at my grandparent’s front door. Her clothes were torn, she was crying. Her boyfriend of 8 months had raped her. Mom said Mable went from an A student to a drop out. For most of her life she was married to an abusive man and they once chased each other around the kitchen table, swirling butcher knives at one another; her daughter is a heroin addict. Mom blames all of this on Mable’s rape.
When my grandfather came to the door, Mom said he was pretty mad, like cold blood mad. My grandfather went to get a gun. He went over to the boyfriend’s house, waved the gun at him, threatened to kill him if he ever saw him again and left.
My grandfather was a miner. He liked to play tricks and pranks, like put dead rats in his friend’s lunch pails. My grandmother knew when he was drunk because she could hear him singing “All around the Mulberry Bush” from way down the street. “I would love it if your grandfather could see the way you dress,” said my mother. “ ‘Why is she wearing pit boots?’ he would say. ‘She’s not a fucking miner.’”
My mother told me this story a few years ago when I was having relationship troubles. She said she would pick fights with my father because she was afraid. She would scream and throw the engagement ring at him and say stuff like “It’s over! Get out!” My father would pick up the ring and leave. But he would always come back. He would call her or come over when her temper had settled, she would take the ring back and they would make up.
She did this several times. But on the last time, my father didn’t pick up the ring. He just left. My mother said she thought he’d be back. He didn’t come back. He had given up. They didn’t speak to one another or see one another for 3 months. My mother was too proud and she said they never would have gotten back together, except their friends conspired and they ended up at the same party. My mother said she stopped being afraid and she went up to my father this time. They got back together and she never did it again.
12:23 PM
“I arrived this morning and saw that on the wall,” said my father, and pointed out a big red splotch. When he says ‘arrived’ he means, ‘I put on my shoes.’ He’s French.
“I thought it was blood.”
“Blood! Oh my God, maybe that’s where Dali broke her jaw.”
“It’s not blood.”
“What IS it?”
“It’s jam.”
“Jam! Oh, hahahahhaha.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Ok.”
Last night I chased my cats around with my peanut butter and jam sandwich, yelling “Why do you eat your fur?! Why do you eat your fur!?”
9:51 AM
3.23.2004
My mother just came home from getting her hair done. Dad was sitting in her chair. She set her dinner on the end table and waited for him to get up.
“Ohhhhhh, I haven’t eaten yet, thank-you,” he grabbed the bowl of soup and pretended to eat her soup and looks at her with a big smile on his face.
Mom stood in front of him. “I just want to say one thing,” she said. “I take my pill at 8 o’clock in the morning. By six it’s starting to wear off, so get the fuck out.”
They both giggled and giggled and then Mom asked him to warm up her soup.
“You didn’t check it!” he said. Up the stairs he goes with the soup. “You did that to piss me off!”
Oh boy.
7:08 PM
I walked home from the Cobequid Bus Terminal to my parent’s house and detoured so I could walk along the lake. I was so thirsty I ate snow. And I liked it.
Then I got home and before I knew it there was mud all over my parent's kitchen floor. And then I ate a whole row of crackers and cheese and watched cable. I like TV. I am not some new age Buddhist. All they do is meditate to reach some sort of nothingness. Is that what you call Nirvana? Yuck. I watched Oprah and I think Tracy Lords, the ex-teenage porn star is very pretty and her eyes go a long way and I thought ‘Well, she would make a nice friend.’ Today Stacey said “If one more hippie tells me TV is bad and they don’t watch it, I’m gonna say ‘TV is better than you, at least it reaches millions of people, which is more then you’ll ever do.’”
My father made me grilled cheese and soup.
“DAD!”
“What?”
“You burnt the toast!”
“That’s not burnt.”
“But it’s black and I can smell it!”
“That’s not burnt.”
“DAD!”
“What?”
“The oranges are all rotten! Oh My God! Why?!”
_____________________
Somebody mentioned the “vile” mess at the Hunter Street party, as though it were a bad thing.
Stacey said, “Well, you know, they weren’t offering tea and crumpets.”
5:40 PM
3.17.2004
These are my symptoms:
squirreled hands
diced ankles.
Laked throat.
Whip on the gut.
holes in the head.
knots in the heart.
3:40 AM
3.14.2004
Advice from a friend
"You act like a tough ass, Claudette, and you'll be treated like a tough ass."
"You play hard to get," she said, "and no one will think they can get you."
1:41 PM
3.12.2004
I went to visit Dali yesterday. Her jaw is shaved and wired. She’s on IV, it’s wrapped around her little arm. Her jaw is crooked. As soon as she saw me she showed me her belly. I talked to her and winked at her. When I had to leave she struggled to get up and came to the caged door and let out a mew. So I hid around the corner to watch her. I went back at least three times. She can’t come home until she eats on her own. And she’s not, so I’m worried. I’m bringing her some soft food today and I’ll try to get her to eat.
I can’t go to London now, unless a miracle happens. And the place where I was living in Halifax (rent free, to save for London) is a bust. My friend and her boyfriend broke up and so we’ve found a place to live on Agricola through a woman who’s in charge of a bunch of buildings.
I feel like I’m being forced to make quickie decisions and I feel a little pulled, like people want me to do things I’m not sure I want to do because I haven’t had time to think about it.
____
I was talking to Alex’s mother the other day for a few hours. She’s such a sharp, perceptive woman.
She finds it hard to connect to people and Alex was her best friend. She talked about her two sons. People were drawn to Alex, he didn’t have to work at bringing people close to him. Her other son worked at his relationships, so he developed skills, and now he has a family of close friends he can call at any moment.
Alex found and lost many friends and lovers. He lost two fathers. At his funeral I refused to talk to either of them. Skills. Alex did not have skills. Sometimes it just means letting someone go. Alex’s mother feels if she had learned these skills herself, she could have taught him and he wouldn’t be dead. When I protested, she said, “Oh, but it’s true, isn’t it. I have always felt that you can’t teach your child something until you have learned it yourself.”
I'm not sure if I have great relationship skills or not. I have to think about that.
12:50 PM
3.10.2004
Stacey woke me up at 10 am.
“Your mother’s on the phone. Your cat is sick.” Anything to do with my cats and I’m like a ‘crazy’ person.
“Dali is bleeding from the mouth. We think she broke her tooth.”
My father drove her into the city and picked me up. But when I saw her I knew it was worse. Her bottom jaw juts out, it looks like she has dentures and the glue isn’t working, the whole row of teeth may fall into my hand, and the long pointy tooth on the bottom sticks straight out. The other one is speared through the top part of her mouth. She has a blood bib.
We got to Woodbury. I started to cry as soon as we got in. The vet said he had to put her under and take X-Rays and put her on IV and do blood work. He said her jaw is broken. He said he’ll know more when they see the X-Ray but he may be able to fix her jaw this afternoon. If it’s bad, they may have to send her to the Vet College (in PEI?). The vet said it looks like she jumped, missed and landed on her face. He’s telling me all this and all I can do is nod my head and cry.
Just putting her under and getting X-Rays will cost $500. Obviously, surgery will cost more than a grand. Putting my cat to sleep is not an option. I don’t care how much my parents bug me about it.
I have some money saved for London, including my tax return, about $800, so I can use that. If I was still working, this would be ok, but I’m not.
I sat on Robie St and cried and cried until Ellen saw me and gave me a hug.
1:50 PM
3.08.2004
Well, you know, I always thought, when we were older we would be friends. That time would ease what we’d done. I always thought we would sit together at a table and have tea. Maybe by then I’d know how to bake cookies that weren’t yellow and runny.
When I was 25 I hid some letters in the dresser I’d painted violet when I was a child. I didn’t want to throw them out, they spoke about a cabin in the woods and about my eyes; when you look closely, are actually sunflowers. I couldn’t give them up. Even though I had given up the man who wrote them. I was in love with two men. But one of them needed me more.
Although he seemed ok all day, he was seething. He searched my bedroom and found the letters. He followed me around the house, taunting me. “Liar,” he said. “Liar.” He was right. I had lied and lied.
He ripped up the letters. He spread them all over the bedroom floor. Then he cut his wrists with a razor and bled on them. He wrote a suicide note in lipstick on my mirror and “Fuck You” on the other mirror.
I was afraid and alone and I didn’t know what to do. I called the N.S. I told the nurse my boyfriend was suicidal. She told me to call the cops. She said they would talk to him and see if he should be committed. The cop came and arrested him for some old shoplifting charge he skipped on. He stole 20 bucks worth of food.
I felt like I was going crazy.
“You promised you would take him to get help.”
“See what you’ve done!” he screamed. The cop dragged him off and they were gone.
Two hours later I got a phone call. The dispatcher asked me if it was ok if they brought him back.
I remember it perfectly. The cop had blond hair and a blond moustache. He was in his late 30s. About 5’11.
“Why didn’t you bring him to the hospital?” I said. I guess I was naïve.
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” said the cop.
No, he won’t, No he won’t. Come to my bedroom, let me show you. But I was stuck to the floor and I couldn’t speak.
“This is just a lover’s spat. He’s been drinking,” the cop paused and looked at me weird. “And besides, he told me what you did. I don’t blame him.”
I wanted to rip his eyes out. I wish I had. But I was really, really tired.
It’s his birthday tomorrow. I do believe I am going to get rip roaring drunk.
3:18 PM
3.05.2004
I get to look at this quote everytime I pee at Salvation.
There's a sweetness in clumsy efforts.
Stubborn hope always trumps lazy greed.
Gentle hearts tear vulgar castles down.
Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid.
5:39 PM
3.02.2004
When I was a little girl, I dreamt of monsters. Monsters shuffled down the hallway and bumped into the plaster, adjusting the curtains: monsters tore at the windows of the 7-Eleven, and shattered the walls at French school,
monsters shit in holes and laid razors, like a deck of cards, on the porcelain floor. Monsters hurled themselves through open wooden doors and forged alliances with my enemies.
Monsters ripped at my teeth. Monsters jumped off cliffs, hung themsleves from the rafters in the garage and curled up in the corner of parking lots.
When I was a little girl I dreamt of monsters chasing me. I lived in the most complicated house ever imagined. With narrow stairs in the walls and trap doors. So huge and slender.
12:15 AM
At 6: 30 this morning I had to stand on Agricola Street to wait for my mother. She was lending me her car so I could drive all the way back to Lower Suckville and spend aching hours typing shit up for the zine. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's supposed to be fun.
This guy in a big fucking truck even stopped. I ran away, he drove away, did the circle and came back. Ernie opens his door across the street and yells:
"HE. THINKS. YOU'RE. A. HOOKEEEER!."
"I KNOOOW!."
4:09 PM
According to the Wearable Art Show this is what's in.
1. Bum Ruffles.
2. Metal.
3. Stuffed Puppies
4. Paper collars
4:03 PM
3.24.2004
Sometimes my mother tells me stories. When she’s had a couple of drinks and it’s summer. Outside on the deck, during parties, sending my sister’s friends to the liquor store with 50 bucks, “More of this! It tastes like chocolate! Bring three!” She tells me stories about her youth. She hung out with the Bay boys because they were bad, how they jumped back seats from moving car to moving car, about the party she had where the guy fell through the glass, she dated one boy and dumped him for his twin brother, she was engaged at age 16 to some guy and her father stopped speaking to her for seven months, how she went to Toronto by herself to see the Beatles, how she was the first girl in her town to cut her hair short and wear a sharp military coat. Her mother, my grandmother Helen, taught Mom’s best friend how to bake bread but she refused to teach my mother. “Now Mable makes the best bread and I can’t. Not that I wanted to.”
When they were 17, Mable showed up at my grandparent’s front door. Her clothes were torn, she was crying. Her boyfriend of 8 months had raped her. Mom said Mable went from an A student to a drop out. For most of her life she was married to an abusive man and they once chased each other around the kitchen table, swirling butcher knives at one another; her daughter is a heroin addict. Mom blames all of this on Mable’s rape.
When my grandfather came to the door, Mom said he was pretty mad, like cold blood mad. My grandfather went to get a gun. He went over to the boyfriend’s house, waved the gun at him, threatened to kill him if he ever saw him again and left.
My grandfather was a miner. He liked to play tricks and pranks, like put dead rats in his friend’s lunch pails. My grandmother knew when he was drunk because she could hear him singing “All around the Mulberry Bush” from way down the street. “I would love it if your grandfather could see the way you dress,” said my mother. “ ‘Why is she wearing pit boots?’ he would say. ‘She’s not a fucking miner.’”
My mother told me this story a few years ago when I was having relationship troubles. She said she would pick fights with my father because she was afraid. She would scream and throw the engagement ring at him and say stuff like “It’s over! Get out!” My father would pick up the ring and leave. But he would always come back. He would call her or come over when her temper had settled, she would take the ring back and they would make up.
She did this several times. But on the last time, my father didn’t pick up the ring. He just left. My mother said she thought he’d be back. He didn’t come back. He had given up. They didn’t speak to one another or see one another for 3 months. My mother was too proud and she said they never would have gotten back together, except their friends conspired and they ended up at the same party. My mother said she stopped being afraid and she went up to my father this time. They got back together and she never did it again.
12:23 PM
“I arrived this morning and saw that on the wall,” said my father, and pointed out a big red splotch. When he says ‘arrived’ he means, ‘I put on my shoes.’ He’s French.
“I thought it was blood.”
“Blood! Oh my God, maybe that’s where Dali broke her jaw.”
“It’s not blood.”
“What IS it?”
“It’s jam.”
“Jam! Oh, hahahahhaha.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Ok.”
Last night I chased my cats around with my peanut butter and jam sandwich, yelling “Why do you eat your fur?! Why do you eat your fur!?”
9:51 AM
3.23.2004
My mother just came home from getting her hair done. Dad was sitting in her chair. She set her dinner on the end table and waited for him to get up.
“Ohhhhhh, I haven’t eaten yet, thank-you,” he grabbed the bowl of soup and pretended to eat her soup and looks at her with a big smile on his face.
Mom stood in front of him. “I just want to say one thing,” she said. “I take my pill at 8 o’clock in the morning. By six it’s starting to wear off, so get the fuck out.”
They both giggled and giggled and then Mom asked him to warm up her soup.
“You didn’t check it!” he said. Up the stairs he goes with the soup. “You did that to piss me off!”
Oh boy.
7:08 PM
I walked home from the Cobequid Bus Terminal to my parent’s house and detoured so I could walk along the lake. I was so thirsty I ate snow. And I liked it.
Then I got home and before I knew it there was mud all over my parent's kitchen floor. And then I ate a whole row of crackers and cheese and watched cable. I like TV. I am not some new age Buddhist. All they do is meditate to reach some sort of nothingness. Is that what you call Nirvana? Yuck. I watched Oprah and I think Tracy Lords, the ex-teenage porn star is very pretty and her eyes go a long way and I thought ‘Well, she would make a nice friend.’ Today Stacey said “If one more hippie tells me TV is bad and they don’t watch it, I’m gonna say ‘TV is better than you, at least it reaches millions of people, which is more then you’ll ever do.’”
My father made me grilled cheese and soup.
“DAD!”
“What?”
“You burnt the toast!”
“That’s not burnt.”
“But it’s black and I can smell it!”
“That’s not burnt.”
“DAD!”
“What?”
“The oranges are all rotten! Oh My God! Why?!”
_____________________
Somebody mentioned the “vile” mess at the Hunter Street party, as though it were a bad thing.
Stacey said, “Well, you know, they weren’t offering tea and crumpets.”
5:40 PM
3.17.2004
These are my symptoms:
squirreled hands
diced ankles.
Laked throat.
Whip on the gut.
holes in the head.
knots in the heart.
3:40 AM
3.14.2004
Advice from a friend
"You act like a tough ass, Claudette, and you'll be treated like a tough ass."
"You play hard to get," she said, "and no one will think they can get you."
1:41 PM
3.12.2004
I went to visit Dali yesterday. Her jaw is shaved and wired. She’s on IV, it’s wrapped around her little arm. Her jaw is crooked. As soon as she saw me she showed me her belly. I talked to her and winked at her. When I had to leave she struggled to get up and came to the caged door and let out a mew. So I hid around the corner to watch her. I went back at least three times. She can’t come home until she eats on her own. And she’s not, so I’m worried. I’m bringing her some soft food today and I’ll try to get her to eat.
I can’t go to London now, unless a miracle happens. And the place where I was living in Halifax (rent free, to save for London) is a bust. My friend and her boyfriend broke up and so we’ve found a place to live on Agricola through a woman who’s in charge of a bunch of buildings.
I feel like I’m being forced to make quickie decisions and I feel a little pulled, like people want me to do things I’m not sure I want to do because I haven’t had time to think about it.
____
I was talking to Alex’s mother the other day for a few hours. She’s such a sharp, perceptive woman.
She finds it hard to connect to people and Alex was her best friend. She talked about her two sons. People were drawn to Alex, he didn’t have to work at bringing people close to him. Her other son worked at his relationships, so he developed skills, and now he has a family of close friends he can call at any moment.
Alex found and lost many friends and lovers. He lost two fathers. At his funeral I refused to talk to either of them. Skills. Alex did not have skills. Sometimes it just means letting someone go. Alex’s mother feels if she had learned these skills herself, she could have taught him and he wouldn’t be dead. When I protested, she said, “Oh, but it’s true, isn’t it. I have always felt that you can’t teach your child something until you have learned it yourself.”
I'm not sure if I have great relationship skills or not. I have to think about that.
12:50 PM
3.10.2004
Stacey woke me up at 10 am.
“Your mother’s on the phone. Your cat is sick.” Anything to do with my cats and I’m like a ‘crazy’ person.
“Dali is bleeding from the mouth. We think she broke her tooth.”
My father drove her into the city and picked me up. But when I saw her I knew it was worse. Her bottom jaw juts out, it looks like she has dentures and the glue isn’t working, the whole row of teeth may fall into my hand, and the long pointy tooth on the bottom sticks straight out. The other one is speared through the top part of her mouth. She has a blood bib.
We got to Woodbury. I started to cry as soon as we got in. The vet said he had to put her under and take X-Rays and put her on IV and do blood work. He said her jaw is broken. He said he’ll know more when they see the X-Ray but he may be able to fix her jaw this afternoon. If it’s bad, they may have to send her to the Vet College (in PEI?). The vet said it looks like she jumped, missed and landed on her face. He’s telling me all this and all I can do is nod my head and cry.
Just putting her under and getting X-Rays will cost $500. Obviously, surgery will cost more than a grand. Putting my cat to sleep is not an option. I don’t care how much my parents bug me about it.
I have some money saved for London, including my tax return, about $800, so I can use that. If I was still working, this would be ok, but I’m not.
I sat on Robie St and cried and cried until Ellen saw me and gave me a hug.
1:50 PM
3.08.2004
Well, you know, I always thought, when we were older we would be friends. That time would ease what we’d done. I always thought we would sit together at a table and have tea. Maybe by then I’d know how to bake cookies that weren’t yellow and runny.
When I was 25 I hid some letters in the dresser I’d painted violet when I was a child. I didn’t want to throw them out, they spoke about a cabin in the woods and about my eyes; when you look closely, are actually sunflowers. I couldn’t give them up. Even though I had given up the man who wrote them. I was in love with two men. But one of them needed me more.
Although he seemed ok all day, he was seething. He searched my bedroom and found the letters. He followed me around the house, taunting me. “Liar,” he said. “Liar.” He was right. I had lied and lied.
He ripped up the letters. He spread them all over the bedroom floor. Then he cut his wrists with a razor and bled on them. He wrote a suicide note in lipstick on my mirror and “Fuck You” on the other mirror.
I was afraid and alone and I didn’t know what to do. I called the N.S. I told the nurse my boyfriend was suicidal. She told me to call the cops. She said they would talk to him and see if he should be committed. The cop came and arrested him for some old shoplifting charge he skipped on. He stole 20 bucks worth of food.
I felt like I was going crazy.
“You promised you would take him to get help.”
“See what you’ve done!” he screamed. The cop dragged him off and they were gone.
Two hours later I got a phone call. The dispatcher asked me if it was ok if they brought him back.
I remember it perfectly. The cop had blond hair and a blond moustache. He was in his late 30s. About 5’11.
“Why didn’t you bring him to the hospital?” I said. I guess I was naïve.
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” said the cop.
No, he won’t, No he won’t. Come to my bedroom, let me show you. But I was stuck to the floor and I couldn’t speak.
“This is just a lover’s spat. He’s been drinking,” the cop paused and looked at me weird. “And besides, he told me what you did. I don’t blame him.”
I wanted to rip his eyes out. I wish I had. But I was really, really tired.
It’s his birthday tomorrow. I do believe I am going to get rip roaring drunk.
3:18 PM
3.05.2004
I get to look at this quote everytime I pee at Salvation.
There's a sweetness in clumsy efforts.
Stubborn hope always trumps lazy greed.
Gentle hearts tear vulgar castles down.
Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid.
5:39 PM
3.02.2004
When I was a little girl, I dreamt of monsters. Monsters shuffled down the hallway and bumped into the plaster, adjusting the curtains: monsters tore at the windows of the 7-Eleven, and shattered the walls at French school,
monsters shit in holes and laid razors, like a deck of cards, on the porcelain floor. Monsters hurled themselves through open wooden doors and forged alliances with my enemies.
Monsters ripped at my teeth. Monsters jumped off cliffs, hung themsleves from the rafters in the garage and curled up in the corner of parking lots.
When I was a little girl I dreamt of monsters chasing me. I lived in the most complicated house ever imagined. With narrow stairs in the walls and trap doors. So huge and slender.
12:15 AM
