Rachel Story-Time for Butterfly Man

[Butterfly Man]

and I'm typing this with only one hand

A person wants pain they can see.

I use a mirror.

[Rachel Peters]

I highjacked that bus and flew it to mexico.

This one time, a long time ago, I was waiting for a bus.

I know what you're thinking.
"With an opening sentence like that, this has GOT to be good!!"

I know.
Let me finish.

So, I was waiting for this bus.
I was in a residential part of East Hamilton, and there wasn't a single other soul around. Not even a single other sole. I looked.

So I was waiting for the bus, and I looked around and saw no people or fish or bottoms of shoes. Not even my own. I never look at the bottom of my shoes. It's against my religion.

I had been waiting for quite some time, so my mind was absolutely brimming with self entertainment. I'm good at that. I can get along alone for quite some time before I start turning weird. ...I'm sorry. I meant, "weirder".

I was well into creating dramatic dialogue in my head.
I was Lady Houser Von Hokinson, and the evil Countess, Britney was trying to steal my baby! (I can't really remember what the story was, but I believe it was just about as cool as that.)

It wasn't long before the inevitable moment came when my inside-my-head voice and my outside-my-head voice got cross wired, and I burst out with an enthusiastic, "HI-HO DIGGIDY!!!"

In a full, clear (highly audible) outside voice I exclaimed, "HI-HO DIGGIDY!!!"

(At that moment, I had been thinking about a cartoon called "Cat Dog", in which that was the Dog character's catch phrase. I had picked up the battery powered toy from a Salvation Amy not long before, and that's what it would shout every time you fondled it and squeezed it's appropriate sensory activated parts.)

"HI-HO DIGGIDY!!!"

This was the moment I decided to look around to make SURE that no one (and I was already positive no one was) around.

Note to self: Look first. Shout second.

Directly behind me, actually standing uncomfortably close to my back, was one very frightened woman.
She was unreasonably frightened, in my opinion. Far more than I'm sure I would have been, had someone shouted such a happy exclamation in my presence, to break up the bus-waiting monotony.

I tried to make eye contact to give an understanding, "golly, wasn't that embarrassing?" look to her. Or at the least, an "oops!" glance (the difference between the two glances is subtle, but a simple "oops!" doesn't take nearly as many facial contortions as a "golly, wasn't that embarrassing?")

I really tried hard to make eye contact. This probably made things worse. She wouldn't. She was blatantly avoiding my eyes. Not just with her own eyes, but with her entire head. My glance would turn her way and her entire HEAD would rock away. Like magnetic repulsion.

...Aaaaaawkwaaaaard.

.................................................. .

We waited for the bus together.................
We got on the bus together...................
We traveled the bus together.....................

Ne'er a word came out of my mouth, or hers.

I don't know why I just remembered that story.

I still talk to myself, often, and (I've been told) quite animatedly.

[Rachel Peters]

And That Man's Name Was...

Edited.
Felt weird about that post.
Was boring anyway.
...No time for pronouns.

[Rachel Peters]

rememberies

I can remember being bathed in the kitchen sink.
And I’m not talking about that time last week either.
Mother’s don’t generally do that with older children, so I would assume I was rather young.
…But then again, my Mom isn’t exactly “normal”, so I really couldn’t say how old I might have been.
(She used to act frightening and disciplinary, slapping a wooden spoon against her hand, and tell us she was going to “give us such a lickin’!” …Then she’d chase us down, pin us to the ground and lick us until we squealed so hard we honestly thought we were going to die. …It’s no wonder she was never able to REALLY discipline us after that. She did it to herself, really.)
I definitely have a couple clear memories of events that took place when I was two and how I felt about them, but things begin to get much more vivid at around three and four.
When I was two and a half my parents – a young pastor and a hippy artist – sold all they had and flew us all to Austria. I remember a balloon sculptor on the airplane, making squeaky balloon animals for all the kids on the way there.
Best plane ride EVER. I’m sure as an adult it would have been horribly annoying. Luckily I wasn’t an adult.
My greatest fear in life was wetting my pants. I faced that fear at least once a day.
When I wasn’t crying I was drawing. That sums up kindergarten in Austria.
I only drew a couple dirty pictures, which, if I remember correctly, were drawings of a man with nipples. Who knew that decades later I’d be paying good money to draw that every single day in college.
We spent a lot of time in the nearby Turkish community in Ternitz. The Christians and the Muslims hanging out… you could probably cut the tension in the air with a knife, but somehow it worked out. I liked my Turkish friends from kindergarten. They were different.
We had a very large back yard at our house in Ternitz and some of our Turkish friends asked if they could fatten up their lamb on our grass. So we had a pet lamb. They let me name him. Thus was the beginning of Schafely (which, I believe means “Sheepy”. I was a VERY clever child. Shutup.) A few months later we were thanked with a portion of Shafely chops. I remember laughing about it. "Do we get to eat Shafely today?" ...creepy.
My kindergarten teacher, Tante Beate, would call me a “power house”, but all I remember doing in school was crying and wetting my pants. …Usually I was crying because I had just wet my pants. Sometimes I would cry so hard it would result in wetting my pants. Whatever the path, they usually went hand-in-hand.
She prided herself as being very progressive and bragged about letting me draw and write with my left hand. It was 1983 and it was a big deal.
She once pulled me aside and told me she was going to give me a doll. She had two dolls and gave me a choice between a blonde china doll who looked just like me and a black baby doll. Even at the time I can remember feeling as though it was some sort of test.
I chose that black baby doll and apparently that was a big deal too.
You know how we all talk about preschoolers in front of them, as if they don’t understand that we’re talking about them?
They do.
In that neighbourhood, my baby was the closest I had come yet to knowing a black person. The Turkish kids were just a little brown. I used to think that all tanned Austrians were Turkish. They seemed offended by that. …but you can’t hate a 4 year old. O, how I wish I could get away with that sort of honesty today.
I really loved that baby. In fact, I had a very strong attachment to all my toys. Nostalgia runs very deep in my veins and toys play a very large roll in my memories. We got most of them from “the missionary bag”, which was whatever supporting churches would donate to us. Flea markets also stand out in my memory as a source of treasures. I can recall the handful of toys over three or four Christmas’s that I could tell were actually from a real store, with packaging and everything! Those were gold, man.
I had an Austrian farm set with little plastic animals and I very much treasured it. The pigs and the llama were my favourite. (The llama came from a flea market and was completely disproportionate to the other animals. It was like the Godzilla of my farm set.)
When we flew back to Canada I packed a couple stuffed animals in my suitcase and one baby piglet in my pocket. Looking back years later I realized I could have stuffed my pockets FULL of animals. I always thought I must have just been a huge romantic.
How precious, to take only one little friend.
I asked my Mother about it a few years ago and she pointed out that we were only supposed to be on furlough. We were hoping to raise more money and go back. That one piglet was only supposed to keep me company until we reunited the whole plastic family.
We never made it back. My parents couldn’t handle asking for money. So we settled.
…And there I was, with two stuffed animals and a teeny tiny piglet.
While our family was scrambling for jobs and a place to live, all I could think about for a year (or at least what felt like a year) was all of my friends we left in Austria.
Sucky-Thumb Baby.
My broken barking dog that Mom stepped on once.
Uncle Johnny, the giant, second hand, carnival-style stuffed dog.
They were all close.

(to be continued some other day)

[Rachel Peters]

I was nearly six when we came back to Canada.
We flew from Vienna to BC and then drove to Ontario.
Somewhere along the way I began to sing "happy birthday to me" from the back of the car. I just thought it should be my birthday that day. It felt like a birthday sort of day.
It was followed with lots of chuckles and "you sweet, stupid little child" moments until Mom asked what the date was that day.
Turns out it was my birthday.
We pulled over for strawberries in the middle of one of the prairie provinces and that's where I turned 6.

[Rachel Peters]

Sessions

In time I may very likely regret having posted such vulnerable material, and I haven't even taken time to edit it, but I'll try to not apologize for it. Here we go...

“I think we should start wrapping things up soon. Our ninety minutes is almost over. It’s so hot and humid tonight and… I just noticed you’re wearing socks.”

“…Yeah, I am. Why? …Does that say something about me, psychologically??”

“No, no! It’s just hot out, that's all. …Listen, sometimes a pair of socks is just a pair of socks.”

And that’s when I spat tea out my nose.

I’m learning that I make tremendous leaps from point A to point Z, or at least attempt to, and have little-to-no respect for the process that should get me there.
My earliest recollection of this is being four years old and crying all night (like, frantic, broken-hearted bawling) because I couldn’t figure out what twelve and twelve made. I had gotten all the way up to eleven and eleven, but just knew that I would be a failure in life if I couldn’t figure out twelve and twelve.
I would get “how to draw cartoons” books and consistently skip from the cover to the last page. I really didn’t care for all of the circle and oval crap that filled the pages in between. Just give me Bugs Bunny. I’ll draw Bugs Bunny, and dammit, you’ll be blown away by my seven-year-old self.
They were fairly easy leaps to make when the goal was to get a picture on the teacher’s wall, or get praise from my Mother.
…But I would come near to hating myself if I thought that I might not achieve my goal.
(I’ve noticed that there’s always, without fail, a point during any project I undertake, when I feel that I’m making a steaming pile of bull pucky – that’s usually about 1/3 into the project). So there was always a point, without fail, during each challenge I ever cared about, when I came near to hating myself for my anticipated failure, and had to consciously pull myself back up, reminding myself of all the things I know to be true – character being more important than skill, and blah, blah, blah. Telling myself that my emotions are just playing a trick on me. But as ridiculous as it sounds, it takes a strong, conscious effort.)
Those are the second-to-worst temper tantrums I can remember having, growing up – my drawing tantrums.
(the first worst tantrums aren’t immediately significant to this session. I’ll save them for another day.)
Even through out college this “jump from A to Z” strategy worked pretty well for me.
I could take a look at the competition (the person before me who had achieved the goal I was after) and try to be better. I could often get there, as wobbly as I might be sometimes, balancing on the tip of Z, without the foundation of the process to support me as well as I might otherwise be supported. I was still at the top of my class.
As the goals got achieved, the goals got bigger.
Now I find myself making goals like Oscars and world-wide accolade, and I’m being entirely crushed and horrified when I fall short on the first attempt to achieve these goals. It leaves me feeling as if I haven’t achieved anything at ALL in life. I’ve become so spoiled by life being easy on me, thus far.
It’s even worse with performance related goals. Putting my personality and physical self out on the line with the risk of rejection is so much more… personal. It’s difficult to not let it eat at you or to blame yourself.
Maybe that’s part of the reason I’ve been taking performance so slowly.
This fear of stumbling (in my mind, complete failure) is now stunting me from creating much at all, because I know the goal is so massive that there’s no way I can achieve it on the first try. …Each attempt, no matter how much closer I may be getting, will feel like failure.

It’s as if people told five-year-old Rachel that she can do whatever she wants to do when she grows up, and she believed it and pursued it, and everyone just played along, to humour the baby of the family.
My Youngest Child Syndrome followed me into adulthood, and not only did I not grow out of it, but it became magnified.
Everything I do should be praised and go on the fridge!! Look, Mom! I scribbled! Look, Mom! I’m cute!! *fearless dimples*
Not necessarily out of pride, really. It’s mostly because that’s just the way it’s always been! Why should it change now?
When my sister was in university and about to get married, she went through a time of being very angry and worried for me because I seemed to think I could go around, doing what ever I pleased, and no one was informing me that life just doesn’t work that way.
…For me it did. And for the most part, still does. (At least, professionally. My love life is another session or five, altogether.)

This all reminds me of the first time I went wall climbing. There was no fear of falling, whatsoever. I could let go of the wall and be held up by my ropes (or rather, by the guy on the floor, holding onto my ropes). The next day, with a wonderful false sense of security, I scrambled up a tree, by its bark. I got to the top, the bark snapped and I and fell, flat on my back. It suddenly dawned on me… I am not invincible!
I brace myself for a day when I hit an insurmountable wall in my career goals. Like falling out of the career tree. I’m not sure I’ll know how to handle it without blaming myself. It’ll take a lot more of that conscious effort and logic to pull myself back up. “I am not what I do for a living. I am not what I do for a living. I am NOT what I do for a living …”
When I get to heaven, I highly doubt God is going to care that I didn’t win an Oscar.
How’s my character doing right now? Do I stand up for truth and love and all that good stuff? Do I have any integrity? I am not what I do for a living.

I don’t know if I’m complaining right now or voicing my gratitude for how easy it’s been up until now. Probably a lot of both. I wouldn’t change it for the world… but it’s a tiring way to be. I can’t seem to stop pushing. I can’t seem to rein in my goals, to a reasonable size. Unless I learn to enjoy the process – make “the first step of step 1” the goal.
It’s like I have achievement greed. But the more I grab, the less I can hold onto any one of the things I wanted, and I end up not accomplishing anything.
Wow. That sounded like some sort of bad campfire song. “Love is like a magic penny. If you hold it tight, you don’t got any…”
So I realize that I can’t really BE a vet and an astronaut and a marine biologist and a sheep farmer and a mechanic and an architect and a fire fighter.
…Lucky for me, I only want to be an artist and an animator and a performer and a comic and a director and a musician and a toy inventor and an actress and an entrepreneur and a general genius. Phew! Lucky for me, that’s all.

I need to learn to enjoy the processes in life.
Life IS process. If I skipped from A to Z, I’d be dead. (in Canadian, that sentance rhymes!)
I can’t have a lot of the answers I want, and I need to use the answers I’ve GOT to learn to enjoy the process.

Otherwise, if I haven’t completely impacted and changed the world through my work (and right NOW), I’ve failed. That’s an impossible way to live. That’s an impossible way to create.

This is what I need to figure out.
I don’t know where it comes from.

I fear having children. I don’t want to pass this trait on. They’re heads will explode by the time their twelve.

Have you ever tossed a small child up into the air? You can tell which ones have been dropped before. The ones who haven’t will fling themselves with the motion, even higher into the air, as if they don’t know what pain IS. The ones who have been dropped cling onto you desperately, like a frantic monkey, convinced that this cannot be fun.
I really want to go back to blindly flinging myself into the air – unabashed fun-having.
How do you regain that fearlessness, when you know that being dropped exists?

I hope this is only a season.

[Butterfly Man]

now That's what I'm talkin' about!!!

Niiiice very nice ... best you've shown so far ... we all know 12 and 12 equals 22 ... it just took you some time to figure out you are right ... dropping was never the problem ... it was always how high do I jump?

[Rachel Peters]

Maybe I tried jumping too high indoors and hit my head on the ceiling fan.

...is that what happened to your head?

[Rachel Peters]

So this one time I was walking down the street and I took a big mouth full of coffee and swallowed in a way I've never swallowed before, and will probably never swallow again. My unusual tongue maneuver shoved the whole mouthful of coffee RIGHT out my nose and it streamed down my face and I got the chance to enjoy it a second time.

It was pretty gross.

And I probably looked like a crack head because I was in that part of town.

I met J.J. Sedelmaier last week. That was cool. It was an animation workshop. He was on a panel of studio owners who were discussing Animation in Advertising and I put up my hand to tell a story about how I once had to pitch a commercial to a client who wanted the "J.J. Sedelmaier look". As the project progressed I realized that work was slowing and that this would probably be the pitch to determine whether or not I got laid off from my job or not. In the end, we ended up losing the commercial to... um... J.J. Sedelmaier. Without missing a beat, he pounded the table and shouted out, "THOSE BASTARDS!!" Then I told him I'd be giving him my resume after the workshop was over.
And I totally did.
All my piles of promotional crap. Toys, resume, DVD, another toy that had nothing to do with anything...


This other time I was at some party and the dance floor was packed and I don't really dance. At all. I mean, I'm sure I could, but I only do it to be funny and stupid. And I can only manage that for a few minutes at a time, until I can't think of anything funny to do anymore. The whole dance club thing just isn't my scene. So, I went to the center of the jammed floor and insisted that they clear a circle -- started pushing people back. Then I got on my back, stuck my thumbs in the air and had a friend grab my legs and spin me around until it wasn't really funny anymore. But it was funny to me. Then I got up and disappeared into the crowd. Always leave them wanting more, I say.
I find those parties really awkward to be at. Apparently eye contact means, "Yes sir, I absolutely want to bear your children! Take me, take me now!" So I spend a lot of time staring at the floor. And I don't even dance.


My rabbit, Heckler likes to poop on my bed and I think it's a dominance issue. She's the Alpha rabbit. I don't know how to discipline a rabbit so I just clean it up all the time.


I got two yo-yos in the mail from the Yo-Yo People and it made me very, very happy while I'm sick and jobless and have poop on my bed.


Did you know that the man in the right of this picture
( the picture at end of this post ) apparently married a woman 36 years his younger? That means that no matter how young she was when she married him, if she was an adult at all (like, 20 or something), he looked pretty much like THAT already when she married him. Now that's love. ...because I'm pretty sure Danish animators don't make that much money.
The man on the left of the picture is the one who told me that the man on the right of the picture is married to a woman 36 years younger than him. The man on the left of the picture is married to a woman his own age, but she looks at least 10 years younger. He's got secondary laugh lines. Laugh lines that are caused by his primary laugh lines. I like that very much. He once sent me a self-portrait of himself in an e-mail. It was a thumbprint with his face drawn over top.
Out of all my 'old man' friends, Robert Nelson is by far the youngest.

Why do I find soy milk so very addictive? Something this wondeful can't be good for me. I like it too much. As if my coffee with normal milk isn't addictive enough.
I don't recommend rice milk. It tastes like rice.

I finally went grocery shopping after coming home to remember that I had a jar of olives and half an onion in the fridge. I had already eaten the jar of pickles for dinner before I left and I can't eat enough olives in one sitting to fill my stomach.

I want to go find a human interest show on tv now. Something about some poor sap who got ripped off by the lottery corporations.

[Rachel Peters]

For a while now my inner city Hamilton has been made into a dirty Harlem for a movie. They spent a long time building really decent fronts of buildings in vacant lots downtown that actually look a lot like the buildings that had been torn down to create those lots.
I find that mildly entertaining.

[Rachel Peters]

Hi, Coo!

dumb post.
edited.

[Rachel Peters]

"Aloha". It's not just a greeting, it's a way of life.

The Scriptures tell of one man alone, Elijah, having ever ascended into Heaven without passing through the flames of physical death. …I’ve come to learn this isn’t the case. God has since chosen two p-netters to enter through the gates of Paradise, whilst still draped in their earthly tents.
We call this heaven… “Hawaii”.
The prophets… Butterfly and Martin.
It’s just like God to continue in his pattern of using the unexpected things to carry out his work. Using the imperfect. The flawed. The socially retarded.
I, myself, have come merely to witness a vision of this Heaven, for a short time, before I trek back out to the land of the living, to spread the word of this lush paradise.
I am Peter on the mountain top, foolishly crying, "Rabbi! Rabbi! It is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters!!”
Silly Peter. It’s only a little Transfiguration. pshh.
I, on the other hand, have witnessed the glory that is The Pineapple House!
(Waiting for the bolt of lightning to strike any time now)

I have found the Land of Milk and Honey, my friends.
But instead of milk, it’s avocados the size of your head.
And instead of honey, it’s avocados the size of your head.
The coconut milk is fizzy to the lips, and everything wonderful, fruitful and flavourful falls from the sky. Including chickens, pheasants, pigs and whatever eco system you feel like. Have I mentioned avocados the size of your head? I just picked a few. Go ahead. Have one.
Just don’t pillage (or rape) any of Robert’s avocados or he’ll have his dogs eat you alive.

I’ve almost achieved a discernable tan line and I’ve been eyeing the hammock on the lanai all morning, while suckling on locally grown coffee.

I went snorkeling for the first time yesterday. …Well, sort of. I didn’t use the snorkel. Those things psychologically throw me off. My body doesn’t know whether it should or shouldn’t be able to breath and my lungs go into convulsions.
So I dove with goggles, at Honaunau.

Now THAT was church.

Never before have I been frightened by beauty – in true AWE.
My first dive under sent me scrambling for the surface, thinking, "This isn't right. I shouldn't be seeing this... These sights should be reserved for the Patriarchs alone, not for any of these pasty, ignorant tourists!!"
"STOP LOOKING, EVERBODY!! DROP YOUR HOTDOGS AND CLOSE YOUR EYES!! LEST THE LORD STRIKE YOU DEAD!!!”

A few days earlier Robert took us to swim in the Champaign Pond which is very warm and quite enjoyable, but also left me suspicious that it's just the product of locals peeing in the water and snickering to themselves, giving high-fives every time a tourist jumps in with an, "oooo!" and an "ahhhh".

It was at the Champaign Pond where Martin swam upstream, spawned and died. ...twice.

There has got to be something drastically wrong with this island that no one here knows about. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop… Just quietly waiting… quietly and suspiciously waiting.
…Right down to Martin Ewen’s beautiful, intelligent, strong, incredibly sweet and kind wife...
This island is Backwards Land, where things that shouldn’t be, are.
Something is waiting, I know it, deep under the surface, waiting to burst out and say, “P-HA! SUCKERS!!”

…oh right. It’s called “molten lava”.

Well then, this is a heaven that has a hell bubbling below its surface.

…………wow. That makes me love it all the more.

Now if you don’t mind, I must away, to pillage and rape every last one of Robert’s avocados. tra-la-la!

[Rachel Peters]

Country Site Donuts

I’m downtown in Toronto, wandering aimlessly after having had a meeting with my film’s sound designer. (sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it?)

Hurting from lugging my laptop around on my back, I sit down in a coffee shop called, “Country Site Donuts” (a name that makes me shake my head in disappointment at how the owner must have just given up on life, settling for such a cheep rip-off of “Country Style”. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as the “Donkin’ Donuts” I once saw in Prince Edward Island. At least “Country Site” still made some degree of sense).

As I’m sitting, resting my shoulders and finishing up the last three pages of a book, a lady comes waddling in and motions secretively to the waitress that she wants to speak privately. Privately, but loudly, she says, “Pssst! You can just get me a Coke this time, because I don’t have any money.” She sits down, nods at the waitress and shoos her to ‘snap to it’, repeating several times, “It’s ok. Yeah, I don’t have any money, so shhh. It’s ok.”
It was to be under the table – real covert-like.

After a few more requests for a Coke, I jump up and approach the counter, slapping down a toonie. “How much is that Coke?” I ask, gleefully.

“Genie! This lady is buying you a coke!” says the waitress behind the counter.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, dear dear! You’ve saaaaaaaaaaved my life! Oh you’re an angel in disguise. Oh, you lovely lady. There ARE some nice people in the world! You’ve SAVED my LIFE!!”

If I had known it was a matter of life and death I might have gotten her something more substantial than a sugar beverage, but hey. Glad to be of service.

“Oh, honey. Thank you, thank you… and I’ll have that dutchie too.”
She points to a plump donut.

Me – “…oh. Well… yeah! Ok, sure! How much for the dutchie?” And I slap down another loonie.

Genie boldly continues, “…And I like the look of that muffin too, and an orange juice and…”

Way to milk it, Genie! Good on ya!

Both the waitress and I interrupt her and insist that I don’t have enough money for aaaaaaaanything else. …How the waitress would actually know, I’m not sure, but Genie doesn’t question her.

Because I saved her life, she comes up to me for what I think will be a hug, but turns out to be a 3-year-old style kiss, with lips turned ¾ of the way inside out, and slobberier than anything you’d ever like to touch on another human being. Even though Genie doesn’t seem the type to pick up on social subtleties, I still refrain from wiping my cheek clean after the *shudder* …kiss. My right cheek is practically dripping.

I head back and sit down once more and Genie, taking her coke and donut to-go, dotingly follows me.

“Yep. I know. I saved your life. Really, it’s ok. It’s ok, Genie. No problem.”

Smiles, smiles. Happy happy. Smiles.

Genie – “Now, listen. They don’t feed me at that home. I don’t like it there. They neeevvver ever feed me there.”

Me – “Never??”

Genie – “Never. I can feel the baby kicking because I’m so hungry.”

She pats her poochy belly. She’s got to be at least 60 years old, but it’s hard to tell, exactly. She’s a woman-child and has an air of eternal youth about her. Very few wrinkles or white hairs.

“I can just feel that baby kickin’.
“Now, let me ask you. Are you studying Biology like me?” (Pronounced, “Bee-ology”)

Me – “Nope.”

Despite my one-word answer, I am being very (even overly) attentive. I don’t get this sort of interaction often, so it intrigues me, if only for the purpose of writing it down later. I could easily leave if I wanted to. I’ve finished my coffee.

The waitress leaves the safety of her counter to tell Genie that I need to finish my “homework” (I hate being assumed to be a student), and that Genie should probably leave me in peace.

Genie shoos her away with an,
“Oh, I’m just explaining Beeology to her. It’s ok. Leave me alone.”

I look at the waitress, smile big and mouth the words, “It’s ok.”

“Now let me tell you what I’ve learned about Beeology.” She says with great emphasis on every single word.

“You know your digection system, right?”

She pats her baby belly again.

“Well, in your digection system, you’ve got a tube running this way,”

She runs her finger horizontally across her stomach.

“and a tube running this way.”

She runs her finger vertically down her stomach, drawing an invisible cross.

“Now, if thooooose faaaall out…”

(My attention had been starting to wane, but this sentence quickly perks my ears up again.)

“Now, if thoooooose fall out, they just start to ROT!”

Me – “Really?? Wow.”

“Yep. They just start to rot and everything begins to SMELL! All your parts start to smell and you just start to SMELL! It just smells Horrrrrible.”

“oh no.”

She pats my knee for comfort, so that I won’t be too scared by this news.

“But if you have cells, like these…”

Genie points very carefully and slowly to five specific spots on the top of her head – she tilts her head down so that I can clearly see the five points on her scalp that have “cells”.

“then you’re gonna be aaaaaaaaaaalright.”

I get another pat on the knee.

“Oh, good. …good.” I say.

Then she leans in close, much like in the covert operation on which she embarked, when she first arrived.
She whispers, “How would you like what they did to me? Oh no. I don’t like that one bit. They don’t feed me there. You have to visit me every day, ok? Eeevvvery day.”

I ask her if she had friends at the home to try to get the attention off of me and my sudden responsibility for her wellbeing.
She mentions a name or two and I try to focus on those friends.

“But my father. Oh, what he did to me… Ohhhhhh, what he did to me. How would you like to be tied down… Oh no… How would like that?”

Oh shoot.

I didn’t sign up for this part.
I can’t help but curl up my eyebrows with great concern and be very sad for her, agreeing and nodding that it is horrible, horrible, horrible what her father did to her (whatever it was), hoping that she’ll forget this part in a few seconds and get back Beeology. …for her sake. Just think about Beeology.

A few seconds later,

“On Mondays I get my money and I like to go to Tim Hortons. I don’t suppose you could buy me something at Tim Hortons, could you?”

Me – “Oh…. No, no, no. I just bought you some food and you haven’t eaten it yet!”

(This is my moment to prove to people who know me that I AM capable of saying “no”.)

After more prompts to visit her every single day, I try to close the conversation with hand shakes and “Weeeelll, it was good to meet you, Genie. …yup. You have a good day.” And other not-so-subtleties she refuses to pick up on, until the waitress tells her to go sit at the outside table with her donut.

Did I mention she slobber kissed me about four more times during this conversation? By the second one I found it too traumatic to pretend to be ok, and I began to full-on wipe them off with my sleeve in front of her. I knew she wouldn’t notice or care. If this is what she does to people, I'm confident I'm not the first to wipe it off in her presense.

Not too long after Genie sits down outside, I leave the building and wander some more through the Great and Mighty T-Dot to find an art supply store. I wipe my cheeks in an obsessive compulsive manner for about half an hour. I can still feel a phantom slobber and those cold, clammy, inside-out lips pushed upon my skin.

But all-in-all, I’m glad I met Genie. She knows that I’m “not from around here” so she shouldn’t expect my daily visits, even if she does remember me, which I doubt she will.

Maybe I’ll go back there some day, just to meet her again, for the first time. I’ll try it all over again to learn some more about Beeology.

[FireNix]

Not your last post but 7 ago

How does process rhyme with dead?
But if it does, it does in English aswell as Canadian.
Facebook holds your answer to the last post.
Maybe Facebook holds the answer to everthing, if you look deeply enough.....maybe not....definitely not....I bloody hope not anyhow.
Hope your chalk travels are giving you some answers. Wish I was there withya, my answers just pose more questions and for more photo's.
I need to get out more, this sea air isnt good for me. I miss that sweet, clean city air. Give me the street back.

[Rachel Peters]

take a nap, bloor. it'll look better in the morning.