This City

Winnipeg, winnipeg, winnipeg how is it that you offer me endless amounts of wierdness? Are you inherently weird? Is it my foreign eyes that see you as weird when perhaps you are entirely normal to the natives? Or is it that I attract the weirdness that is only but one of your many components?

My time here has now passed the one month mark and I must say I am not convinced that this is the place for me. Which is nothing less than a sad and somewhat demoralizing thought... I have after all just moved the majority of the contents of my life, my small and seemingly equally confused dog and my very own body, soul and mind to this city with the earnest intent of staying for 4 whole years (in order to complete my program). Granted perhaps I moved with too high hopes. Hopes of friendly communities just waiting to welcome the out of towner, hopes of smaller city quaintness and a refreshing lack of pretension (which there is but what sits in it's place is not exactly appealing to me) and overall a hope that the change would invigorate and inspire me in a way that would not be possible if I continued living in Toronto. As many of you have told me before I am a woman of high expectations and perhaps high expectations are not fair to a city such as Winnipeg... perhaps Winnipeg is a place that one should have moderate or mediocre expectations of? And if this is the case than is it a place where I will be happy?

I am not sure if any of you back home have heard of the recent spade of intensely violent occurrences that have transpired here in Manitoba's capital? Well, I will spare the long list but I think it is worth mentioning that I live but 1 street away from where a man was lit on fire last week. Yes, that's right, he was doused with lighter fluid and then had a match (or maybe a succession of matches) thrown on him which naturally caught on fire, causing 2nd and 3rd degree burns along his whole body. The reasons for this particularly disturbing crime are confusing to me, according to the media it had to do with some kind of revenge as the man lit on fire tried to stop the criminals from stealing a car a week or so back. Sounds like half a story to me but who knows? I thought that I was used to a degree of 'rough around the edges', 'dangerous-esque' living having lived in Kensington market, a block away from a serious crack park and lots of other crazy shit, but I must say the violence that exists in this city gives me the creeps. There is a nastiness and a randomness to it that makes me sad about humanity.

On an entirely different and much lighter note, I have been going to a pottery class at a place called Art City that is near my house and it is a total delight. Art City has existed for like 15 yrs and all of the classes there are entirely free! It draws an amazingly mixed crowd and I have met some really awesome people there. I go on Tuesday nights between 4pm and 8pm and have been working on a ceiling mobile of eye balls, I can't tell if it's going to work out or not, but if it does it will be totally dope (in my humble opinion). It feels crazy to be able to do so much pottery for free but hey, this is one of the real bonus points of the peg... lots of funding goes to super cool shit!! So if your thinking of starting a community initiative or making a movie or getting an ngo going why not move to Winnipeg!!! Come on guys.... please.

Lastly, I am coming home for Thanksgiving. I am very happy about this. But I am also very scared considering that I am not yet feeling so hyped about this move and fear that going home will make it sooooo much harder to come back.

Is it always really hard to move or is this city just not a great fit for me? I ask myself this about a thousand times a day. Also what about the fact that I really moved for the program and the program has met all of my unrealistically high expectations... so should I just put my dislike for the city aside? Also what about those of you who love Winnipeg, could you maybe fill me in on what you love?

MZW

ps. it is freaking freezing here already.

dippity doo

5:30 pm here.

Listening to Nolan Natasha. The incredible trans rapper from Toronto. Remembering Alice and I watching him perform this summer, in awe, tearing up at the bravery/awesomeness of his lyrics and beauty of his presence.

Hitting one of those dips in the day. Will try and remedy it by heading to the Y for a swim. Afterwards there is some collective embroidery art project thingy majigy that I will check out.

Maybe it will help... the mood?

Only 2 days till I am 28, WTF!!! Aging doesn't stop for nothing. I will be attending a rap show for my b-day, entirely in character with the hilarity/aburdity/surreal-ness of my new life. I am already aching thinking about how much I will miss you all.

Class last night was once again mind-blowing.

Aloha from Manitoba!

Hey. It feels like it has been a loooooooooong time since I have hammered out one of these entries. Maybe that means I have been busy? Or maybe it means I have been lazy? Or perhaps it means that nothing has happened at all? Or that so much has happened I don't know where to begin? It is, I think a combination of all of the above. It definitely becomes more intimidating to write when the momentum slows down and I lose a few days in a row-- suddenly everything and nothing becomes a topic worth blogging about. So, given that it has been a little while and I am feeling bogged down in both the details and the vagueness, I think that I will approach this blog systematically or categorically. I will discuss school first, then dad's visit and finally return to the topic of fun and entertainment in this strange and ?exciting? prairie town.

School:

Much, much to say on this front. To begin with, I am happy to share that I am still loving it and think that it is a very good fit indeed. I had a class last Wednesday that was markedly different than the class I reported on earlier, a fact that I can attribute almost entirely to the incredible eccentricity of the professor. A woman with extensive credentials, tremendous charisma and quirks more bizarre than I have yet to encounter in the sphere of academia. The first feature I should mention is her outfit: a matching top and pants made out of a bright hawaiin print fabric. The second notable point was her penchant and belief in stretching, indeed every 10 minutes a stop watch positioned on her desk goes off signaling that we all must get up and invigorate our brains by stretching our limbs. Stretching at ten minute intervals in a graduate level course, fantastic!!! She also fashioned her lecture with diagrams that I am certain only made sense to her (full of all sorts of zig zaggy lines and cryptic coding) insisting that learning occurs better when there are visual aids. However despite her true quirkiness, I must admit she appeared to have a deep grasp of the content of the course and I am super hyped to get into the material. It is a pure theory course and from what I can tell is going to include a ton of new information for me.

Dad Visit:

My incomparably sweet and wonderful father re-routed the tail end of a business trip to come to Winnipeg for one day and two nights. It was such a delight to be around someone who knows me so, so very well-- to speak to someone without my new found negative brain chatter that convinces me that no one I meet likes me or wants to hang out with me! :( ! My dad has to like me, he is my dad!! Ha! No but for real we had a really nice time and actually crammed quite a bit of winnipegging into that one day. We explored the Exchange District which is a pretty nice part of town full of extremely large old, beautiful warehouse type buildings, (as well as some fancier more elaborate gothic type constructions) some of which have been taken over by business. We wandered into some really awesome places... i.e. a massive, massive used book/record store called Red River Books which I plan on returning to when I am in need of my next read. I gleaned some more evidence of this charm that people who love this city refer to, which was reassuring.

Our visit was topped off by going to Rae and Jerry's steak house, a restaurant truly like NO OTHER. It is a place that has literally been frozen in the 60’s. The restaurant is housed in large bungalow type, L shaped building, it’s interior is almost entirely red (REFER to pictures above)—the walls have red paneling on them, the carpet is cherry red, the staff wear red vests, plush red vinel swivel chairs and the incredibly retro font on the menu is a rich red colour. It is in my opinion aesthetically incredible, classy and romantic feeling but also somehow without pretension. The patrons all look fairly casual and at ease as they eat their incredible meals. Dad was particularly enthusiastic about the menu, ordering pickled herring, chopped liver (yes, I do believe it is a Jewish establishment!) and a steak sandwich—we all shared the herring and liver and then had our own meals as well. The food was actually amazing and thoroughly enjoyed by all (as were the Manhattan’s).

As for entertainment/ socializing… I think I will leave that category for now, however I will mention that things seem to be getting better in this department and I have come to develop an appreciation for carpeted bars as well as for the REMARKABLE drinking capacity of the average Winnipeger—a capacity, I have learned (the hard way) that I simply do not have.

Finally, Patrick my other room mate has returned from Europe and I must say he one hilarious dude, so yay, my room mates are awesome. It’s looking up….

Patience Makes the Heart grow Fonder (I know this isn't the real expression)!

Friends and Family,

It has been a little while and I want to reassure that I am in the process of composing a real juicy post but sadly my eyes are drooping as I embark on cleaning it up and getting it out on the world wide web, so I am going to hit the sack and edit it up for you first thing tomorrow morn. Just you wait, just you wait.

Loving You Always,

Myera.

Nice to see you (in my dreams)

I had dream after dream last night that I left Winnipeg and moved back to Toronto. These were vivid and detailed dreams, all the elements were just right-- my friends and family sounded and acted just as my friends and family do and city looked and felt exactely as it does (in my imagination at least). I must have seen you all in those dreams 'cause I swear I went to at least ten dinner parties in the span of my 8 hours of sleep! It was thrilling, I was so happy to see everyone again and to not be bothered with the barrage of insecure thoughts that seem to accompany the experience of meeting new people day in and day out, I felt normal, even my laugh sounded more like my own (if that makes sense...). Everyone looked so beautiful and fun, I remembering just staring at your faces-- taking in every line, shade and feature.

Leaving these dreams for reality was not a pleasant experience. No, I had not returned home but rather woke to find myself smack dab in Winnipeg, the same city I fell asleep in. Facing the task again of embracing a life where there are far, far more unknowns and far less comforts. None the less the drive for coffee neccesarily kicked in and off to the hippie christian cafe I went!!! AHH, what a very strange life this is. Later in the day, I got myself a YMCA membership and was delighted to find the gym/pool housed in one of these big ol' Winnipeg buildings with beautiful architecture that makes you feel important or healthy or something. So tomorrow I will swim and steam in hopes of releasing some of my consistently unrealistic expectations of what life is and should be, i.e fun and dramatic and inspiring, etc.

I know I said I would write about Temple Grandin but I switched books last night (now reading, The Diviners-- a Prairie classic) and have temporarily lost touch with the autism/animal world.

See you in my dreams...

P.S. People here continue to tell me about this 'something' quality that Winnipeg has, a quality that makes itself apparent after you stop missing home... I am still in search of it but promise to report back as soon as it begins to emerge.

feeling good

I am breathing one big extended sigh of relief. Tonight, I had my first class as a Master's student in Couples and Family Counseling and not only did it meet my expectations, it exceeded them by far. I didn't realize how exciting this would feel. I can now believe that I have indeed made the right decision in coming here and it renders the daily tribulations of being a Toronto expat and Winnipeg newbie far less dramatic or meaningful in the GRAND scheme of things. Phew, phew, phew!

What a crazy feeling to be sitting in a class listening to, talking about and anticipating reading about, EXACTLY what I am interested in. The content of my very deepest interests are now the subject at hand, what I care most about in this world is what I am about to learn and think about on a daily basis and among other people with same concerns, the same passions.

The instructor of today's course (whose name is Libby, which is extra symbolic for me as that was my beloved bubbie's name and a name I really love) was striking in more ways than I could hope to articulate all at once. There was however one thing that I found particularly interesting about her instruction, she emphasized focusing on how our bodies responded to the material or the discussions at hand. How we might tense up when we disagreed or felt inadequate in discussion, how things relaxed when the material was more comfortable and to just pay attention to this. And while this might sound trivial or silly, it's actually remarkable in terms of developing an awareness of how we process and respond to reality, to even just notice what our reactions are-- as opposed to just reacting. My body was a- flutter! Waves of excitement mixed with anticipation with nervousness and then most significantly actually feelings of warmth. It is physically warming to be in a room talking about people and therapeutic practice, talking about the importance of maintaining humanity and humility as a practitioner, talking about possibility in the face of actual trauma's, talking about theoretic approaches to interpersonal relations, etc. This is the stuff I have been waiting for and working towards for years and my bodily response was one of relief and happiness.

So yes for now I am in the right place and I am so, so grateful to know it, 'cause these past few weeks have been somewhat agonizing.

There are no further updates on Face and Toad, as Face refuses to come down from Dane's room and therefore has not been interacting with Toad at all. Coincidentally I am reading Temple Grandin's latest book, Animals Make Us Human and learning a tremendous amount about the evolution and psychology of domesticated animals. And I think this may be the topic of tomorrow's blog. I assure it will be interesting! Fascinating actually. And for those of you who have not yet encountered Temple Grandin, she is an autistic lady who is obsessed with animals and who has an uncanny ability to see things from an animals perspective-- she has a PhD in Animal Behavior, which is a crazy and anomalous achievement for someone autistic. Here is a picture of her to peek your interest... she looks like a total dyke (she has amazing butchy/cowboy styles) to me but she claims to be entirely asexual and entirely disinterested in people.

It's raining CATS AND DOGS-- It actually is

Today Face moved back home. Face is Patrick's cat. Patrick is in Europe doing music stuff and his beloved cat was temporarily staying with a friend who had to return him today as she was going out of town. The re-integration of Face to house, house that is now occupied by a woman and a dog, did not go well... to put it mildly. At about 9 am today, the cat (whose name suits him perfectly, he has a big, wide, open face that just stares out at you) was dropped off. About half an hour later Toad and I headed downstairs to meet our new feline house mate and in my not quite conscious haze I didn't think a) that maybe I should pre-plan how this introduction should be made, i.e. Toad probably should have been on a leash, b) that anything could go all that wrong.

The minute Toad's little paws hit the first floor and Face caught sight of him everything went ape-shit. I couldn't even describe exactly what happened because it went really, really fast and it involved furry bodies flying in each and every direction. I am pretty sure that Face literally tried to climb the wall and did at least two back flips while making strange hissing noises that were produced in some deep down part of his body. Toad was frantically trying to respond... dancing between trying to meet the cat and trying to escape the cat. I screamed. Dane looked at the these 2 animals, neither of them his, horrified. And then we went into phase two, the phase that directly follows crisis, the planning phase. So what the hell do we do now?

We haven't exactly passed through phase two yet.... but some developments have occurred. After the furry freak out, Face found a spot for himself on a dining room chair near the back wall and back windows of the house. Toad being the doy yoy that he is again attempted to make friends with this representative from the other species... Face made that weird growly hiss sound and his fur started flying off his body ( I am not kidding, he has been violently shedding his beautiful coat all day-- which is apparently a sure sign of stress in cats). Toad sort of backed off but didn't really seem to absorb the meaning of the poor Face's body language and vocals. Throughout the day, it seems that Face has allowed Toad to get closer and closer, though when the distance between them shrinks significantly Face's back goes way up and the noises start. Dane is of the belief that we should let them play this out on their own and I should not interfere. I don't know cats and he does, so I am letting him make the call on this one-- though I know it likely will result in Toad getting swatted in the face (no pun or whatever intended).

At the moment, the traumatized Toad is nuzzled in his crate so that the traumatized Face can have his run of the house without mr. canine goof ball popping up around every corner. It's a tricky thing that we have done to these cats and dogs, making them live together and share the same role, i.e. pet for humans. It's a role they don't want to share, they don't want to share the love of their owners, they don't want to share the physical space and moreover they don't want to be in a club or a fraternity/sorority with a creature of an entirely different etiological origin and orientation. I sympathize with them, I really do. And at the same time I am in awe at how these creatures take over our lives. Both Dane and myself (along with many other people on the peripheries) whole day was taken by thinking about, strategizing around and emotionally dealing with these two little wackos, it's unreal! My feeling is that it will all work out in time and I am sincerely looking forward to getting to know this intense little (not so little really) cat.

Any tips from those of you have experience with the forced cat/dog family?

X.O. My.

P.S. I made a drink of vodka and pineapple juice and it's delicious.

P.P.S. I am going to see Skratch Bastid tonight which is very exciting as I have heard nothing but good things about him but somehow have never seen him, even though he lives in T.O. My roomies are apparently really good friends with him, so I am being brought along! Fun.

P.P.P.S. Remind me to write about the art show I saw today, video of sex workers talking about their grandmothers, it was great--- there is good art here after all.