a wolf angel is not a good angel

It might be freezing cold here, and it might be only September, but I have a fireplace!

My sister is nuts. I know I’ve complained about her a lot, in the long past. She’s also, as symptom of her nuts, abusive. She’s quit with some of the worst ones — say, when she said, proudly, that at least *she* had never wanted to kill herself, I said that hey, at least I had friends and a job and had finished school. It was cruel, but on the other hand, it was effective: she’s dropped that one entirely. I don’t know if I’m proud of it, but I’m relieved about the outcome.

(Irrelevant digressive story follows, then at the end the point I really wanted to make and which I’d like any sort of intelligent words on. I certainly have no ideas. I cannot, for other reasons, stop actually seeing her.)

She still attacks. She told me the other day she really for sure wants to study X now. (Doesn’t matter what X is, though it’s something she’s terrifically unsuited for.) I said that I hoped it worked out well. She badgered and badgered me until I said that, yes, well, she’s had a million really for sures, so it’s nice and all, but I don’t believe it. She said this time is different. Now, I do think she really really means it, but I also think this time isn’t different. I said ok. She badgered some more. I said that she said the same thing every time, so excuse me if I don’t have much faith, maybe she should get a job first.

Badger badger badger. Fine! Fine, I think it’s a job you are not going to be good at, that you don’t have the skills for it (nb: this is true also for me), and that you should just get a job and figure out what you want to do when you can actually support yourself. Then she yells at me.

We both knew where the conversation would lead. I can start out casually saying yes, it’s a fine idea, blah blah blah, but after fifty zillion hearings of ‘but what do you really think?’, I tend to actually say what I really think.

I never am sure: she doesn’t know how she comes across at times, but she does know how to be cruel, and is it deliberate? She never sees her fault in anything.

This was not at all the post I meant to write. But my thoughts about her are so incoherent.

On the one hand, she’s family. On the other hand, she’s abusive. Back to the first hand, she’s really clearly sick and incapable, and is it fair to resent her for being sick and incapable? But on that second hand, she refuses to try anything to change it. But then, isn’t that a symptom of being sick? And on and on and on I go.

My mother informs me that I am expected at my aunt’s house Saturday night at 6 (or 6:30 or whatever, some time). I seethe some because, yet again, no one sees fit to be in touch with *me*, but this isn’t exactly a surprise date which I can reasonably have made other plans for. (During Chanukah, OTOH, I will make plans EVERY SINGLE NIGHT (and reschedule iff I get my own actual invitation (like a phone call or an email)) because hey! I can’t be expected to keep 8 nights free!)

My mother suggests I go there separately, which sounds like a fine plan, because then I can leave separately. Which sounds less fine because I am expected to leave with my crazy sister, which is unfun. On the other hand, if she drives and not me, I can drink (they make strong drinks). On the spare hand which I keep in a drawer it’s not a mixed drink sort of occasion. But in any case, this means I can get there whenever I want.

Some salient rationalisation background: they always invite friends of theirs I dislike, ignoring us for their friends, and they always always come quite late (usually with a coffee — Starbucks or 2nd cup — in hand), and we wait dinner on them, half an hour, an hour.

So: do I go with my good angels and get there around when I was called for? Do I go with my bad angels and get there half an hour late? Or more? Can I claim to have gotten totally lost and forget my cell phone and not have any money on me?

I like Prufrock-the-pirate:

I grow old — I grow old –
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

(This post, unlike the others, should stay piratified.)

I was watching a movie with my sister, and we smelled fire. A barbecue, perhaps? I mentioned it smelled odd, and we didn’t think of it, didn’t notice the house getting slightly smokier until suddenly the power went off. (As it turns out, the lack of power was entirely unrelated to the fire.)

I went outside to see what was happening, saw the air filled with smoke and pink to the north, took the cat for half a walk and the other cat for the second half of the walk, then saw my sister who had had to break into the house after my other sister locked us all out (oops), and we walked towards the fire.

I battled with myself about going. Should I go? Wasn’t it tacky? Morbid? Was I not enjoying myself at someone else’s expense? Yes, I thought, but I kept walking anyhow, listening to fire truck after fire truck come by.

Eventually I got there. It was amazing, hard to believe. The house itself looked normal, but the roof had been changed into flames. I watched for a few minutes, heard that no one was inside, no one hurt, that it was due to something with the wiring. When I was little we had an electrical fire, and this might be my first memory, leaving in the middle of the night. But there was no damage, no roof doubling the height of the house. Watched the people watching the fire, and the people who were standing around, catching up with neighbours, the people who were eating ice cream, the people who’d walked their dogs there and were looking at them sniff each other, alert for a more local danger, the people who’d walked their babies there in huge strollers. The people who drove there and parked on a nearby street. Watched the occasional jet of water, watched the smoke drift up and around me.

I smelled of burning when I got home, and smoke drifted in all night.

I’d like to see what letters have been received responding to Jan Wong’s absolutely horrible article about the recent shootings (post about this in the works), and they’re not available online, and I’m too lazy to go to the library if I don’t have to.

Dialogues : a novel of suspense / by Stephen Spignesi.
Um. Suspense? It was sort of interesting, until the OMG AND IT WAS ALL A DREAM! ending, which I didn’t see coming even though he told you it was all a dream (by way of a short story in the middle of the book where the ending was OMG IT WAS ALL A DREAM!). But it wasn’t suspenseful. 2/10

The continuity girl / by Leah McLaren.
Too predictable. Woman, mid 30s, single, wants kids, quits her job, runs into very attractive man in unexpected place, thinks he’s married, goes does something weird while looking for some sperm but no relationship, finds a jerk and a closeted gay man, then finds that attractive man isn’t married, has a kid with attractive man and gets an awesome job. Beyond that, it was fairly poorly written, very poorly edited, and had odd jumps in the POV for the first few chapters until it settled into one. Plus, too much description of BDSM photography and animal deaths for absolutely no reason. 1/10

Kafka on the shore / by Haruki Murakami ; translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.
Wonderful. Just great. I don’t usually read translations because I know I’m losing something of the original. (Is this insane? Probably.) But this book was lovely and not a little weird. Murakamis other books are on my list (of books to read once I’ve read all the books — 19 — I currently have out). This was the book that calmed me down because it followed a zillion books that I was annoyed or irritated or tired by — but no, they were just not good books. 9/10

The rent collector : a novel / by B. Glen Rotchin.
I sort of love all books set in Montreal (almost all) by default, and my father is sort of a rent collector and right next to Chabanel, and of course Jewish but not observant. I liked it. I didn’t love it, something about it just missed — but very close to good. 7.5/10

The Sunne in Splendour / by Sharon Kay Penman
Yes, I am working my way through all her books. I particularly liked this — more than her others, in part because no overuse of the word “bleakly” — despite my longtime love for the Tudors, it made me rather like the Yorks and regret that they lost. Also I had no real knowledge of this period, so — and I know it’s fictionalised, thanks — it was informative, especially since two books I’ve read (The Eyre Affair, The Handless Maiden) have Richard III subplots, sort of. Maybe it’s just me being sappy, but I did an awful lot of crying during the multitude of deaths. (8.5/10)

Don’t blame Marilyn Manson: Blame the Quebec education department.
The events at Dawson College are getting people to reflect on what was wrong with the shooter. Looking at his picture will generally confirm in the minds of some the old canard about negative influences like heavy metal music and what we should do about them.
In high school, we read Aldous Huxley, Albert Camus and J.D. Salinger, all of whom tried to convince us that life had no ultimate meaning.
CEGEP was more of the same nihilism. And we are surprised when this leads some to the despicable choice of violence to dull the pain.

Oh brave new world, fuck off and die.

After all the jumps and balconies and dollar store plants . . . would it have been worth while to have bitten off the matter with a smile?

Matilda clearly says yes. Next up: does she dare to eat a peach (pie)?

Blondies

1/3c butter
1c brown sugar
1 egg
7/8c flour
1t baking p
1/4c nuts (optional — I don’t use them usually, you could also put in chocolate chips, though that seems totally pointless)
1t vanilla

melt butter, blend in sugar and cool. add egg, combine well. add dry ingredients. add nuts and vanilla. 8×8 pan. 15-20m @ 350

As requested by a bunch of people at Phantom’s.