One Red Hot Country Mama!

Let’s get back to basics. I used to believe that deep down, people were good and they did things that made sense. But, lately I have been thinking that was naive.

Capitalism prevailed because it understood a very basic part of human nature – that we are all looking out for ourselves. It is a system where people compete against each other, with the winner creating the best product or service. And – I wonder if believing that people are not necessarily good inside is just a better way to go. Having this understanding of people is not based on a hope. It is based on reality – thereby creating a belief system that makes sense.

This question gets to the heart of another moral dilemma – is there evil? I used to close my eyes at the scary parts of movies. I used to give people the benefit of the doubt. But, now I am in the process of a forced-truth process – watching the news, especially with countries with crazy people in charge. I have been studying war and other chaotic times in history. I am reading about environmentalism and social inequalities. I have been thinking about what happens to everyone I know who has become a soldier, a cop or a social worker. That staring into the face of humanity, you start to become very jaded.

Some people I have shared this with have said that “I am saying that people are crap”. But, that is not it. Denying the bad in the world makes you blind to what is really going on. It makes you naive and confused. So – is it very negative to believe this about people – or does it relieve the sadness associated with being so frequently disappointed by them? A belief that people do things that don’t make sense all of the time. That people are confusing. I am not saying that goodness does not exist. It just makes it more amazing when you realize where it is coming from.

The sun on the fruits and vegetables in Chinatown. The oranges stand out like the highlighted portions of a university student’s English notes.

Standing there, looking at the giant mobile of geese. Someone was taking a picture. A person from a smaller town from what I could tell from his hair-cut.

These are a couple of my homework assignments from the writing course I am taking at U of T. We are supposed to go around with home made journals. Some people make them out of bank books, other people just staple a bunch of paper together. It is cute to see the journals come out – they look like the broken toys in Toy Story. We are all recording different things that we see in day-to-day life. What we see, what we say, what we overhear others saying. The theory is that those things can later become great pieces of writing. Every class we read two pages of double-spaced writing to the class – taking the journal exerpts, and also taking inspiration from great authors that we study.

My teacher is an amazing writer named Michael Winter. Never having taken a creative writing course in my life, I was very intimidated by the idea of reading my stuff in public (I guess my decade + of web writing is public, but not the same). Winter, a Newfoundlander  without any sort of ego ax to grind and a very, very creative imagination takes all of the intimidation out of it. There are always feedback sessions, and things that we can improve on, but somehow the feedback is given in such a kind way that it is welcomed. Every week I am seeing my classmates all become better and better writers in their own way. It is actually quite amazing.

It has been a tough winter for me, but my little writing class has been the bright spot.  I have thought a lot about how we learn things. I spent so much time in classes where I was trying to figure out systems and procedures to get good grades with the least effort – but this is different. I don’t want to use the least amount of effort in this class – it is fun to work on the assignments and plan for the next one. It is fun to connect with the other students and hear their inventions. It has awakened something in me – something alive and interesting. Something I lost somewhere among those Accounting courses and working my way through my undergrad Quality Controlling reports at a large multinational consulting firm.

I was afraid that the course would be all about structure and rules and would make me write like a robot, but it wasn’t at all – although I understand from students that do this a lot that that this is an unusually creative creative writing course . I get the feeling that I had beginners luck and found the best possible course on the first try. If you are thinking of taking a course like this… go for it!

I have been thinking lately about aging and beauty. Yes, both men and women obsess about youth and beauty… and always have… but it is amazing how by chance beauty happens to be and how being young and beautiful doesn’t make sense. 

I am in my 30s now, and still get some attention. In fact, I was out on a date recently and some unknown drunk guy actually gave the guy I was with a high five. My date was pretty surprised by that, but to me, it was just the skirt, the heels and the guy was probably doing all kinds of crazy stuff that night – complimentary but no big deal. I’m just an average girl, made above average by dressing up for an evening out. And that night I definitely preferred to be with my kind and thoughtful date who liked me for me than the guy who was giving me the street attention.

So, I don’t have too many insecurities in that area… but still, in my 30s, I have noticed my guy friends’ and colleagues’ fascination with girls in their teens and early 20s and I have a strange nostalgia about that period in my life being over. 

Thinking back to my own experiences at 13-15, I was not at all pretty. Braces, zits, not much form to my body… nothing special whatsoever (so I thought at the time). I remember relying on sense of humor and conversation to make up for it, and even when my friends and I used to cross the Ontario/Quebec border at the too-young-age of 15 to go to the Hull bars, it was always my friends who were getting hit on while they treated me as though I was invisible.

Then suddenly somewhere between 15-16, everything happened at once and I became visible. The braces were gone, I got a new hair style, my zits cleared up I started to get some shape… and suddenly, everywhere I went there were guys whistling at me, wanting to talk to me and watching me. It was bizarre. I started to wear miniskirts (at times they looked like belts) and minishorts – increasing the phenomena. I knew I didn’t really ‘deserve’ to have this attention, it wasn’t an achievement like high marks in school… but it was interesting. I had no idea about the effect I was having on much older men. It was more of a fun thing for attention from guys my own age.

Things kept escalating. When I was about 20, there was one random marriage proposal from an older man I hardly knew and another guy in his late-20s who lived in his car for a few weeks hoping I would join him on a 6-week holiday. I also remember a guy in a BMW who used to follow me around the winter streets of Ottawa asking me to join him for a ride and dinner (which was tempting – you would understand if you have ever been in Ottawa in January).  The whole thing was so strange, and it didn’t really make sense.   

I was in some sort of center of attention, but I felt I didn’t deserve it. It was a very confusing part of my life – I had no idea what I was doing with myself, and I was not confident. I had difficulty in expressing myself verbally, so people would think I was unintelligent due to that and other stereotypes about young women, and it would frustrate me that people were not taking me seriously. I was also frustrated by being poor all the time, and for a long period I could only afford to make pea soup and rice for my dinners… but knew I could choose to go on a date and dine at one of the nicest restaurants in town. And yeah, sometimes I did choose to go out instead of stay in. 

So – back then I longed to be older… to be able to express myself and have my ideas heard, to have financial independence, to have my own car and place and to make some sort of impact. Little did I know that once I attained those things I would long to be younger again… and feel strangely nostalgic for that attention that didn’t make sense.

But loving youth is not something unique to our culture or new. I guess this is the truth about youth and beauty -  men continually long for younger women, older women long to be the younger women again, and younger women don’t really know what the heck is going on… until they get older.

Yeah – I’ve been told I think too much at times… but coming from a family of intellectuals, thinking was the solution most problems. Research, analysis, conclusion, then action was the way to go in not just school but in life as well.  And – to stop thinking was to live in some sort of stupid existence… a blind, unobserving and unexamined life.

So – any problem I had, I would attack it in my favorite way… to think it through, devise a plan, then take action. But thinking can cause as many problems as it solves at times. The inner critic, for example, can create a lot of problems. Same with the desire to analyze people to death instead of just letting them ‘be’. Same with torturing yourself with different potential future outcomes. All thinking. It is funny that the thinking I thought was clarifying my life was actually obscuring it.

So… if you’re still reading this – you were right.

I originally heard the Groucho Marx quote in the title said by Woody Allen. It is funny to imagine Marx striving to be a part of a club, but once he is accepted, he no longer wants anything to do with it. But, I see this tendency everywhere.

I was speaking to a colleague the other day who is very talented at public speaking. She said that her favorite part is making people laugh. And she does successfully… she gets rooms full of people laughing all the time. She says that her favorite thing is to find someone in the audience who won’t crack a smile, and win them over – at least get them to grin a little bit. I wonder… why doesn’t she focus on the people who accept her already instead of the one who doesn’t?

I see the same thing in friendships. For some reason, people are more suspicious of people who are more accepting of them. It takes confidence to go out and get friends, but it takes another type of confidence to accept friendships from others.

Maybe we like a challenge, or the thrill of the chase – but too bad! If we all accepted acceptance a little more, we would probably see more of it!