HerKind.com

Talking with a good friend tonight about the course of my life, its untraditional path, the lack of the kind of stable relationship that most women my age have, the no kids, he suggested to me that I just accept that I am this type of person and stop questioning it, or trying to fight to change my character. He said many writers and creative people are like this. I'm not so sure about that, I know lots of writers who are married with children, but I'll suspend my disbelief for the sake of not feeling so bereft of a "normal" life.

If that's the case, I said, then I better create a masterpiece to make it all worthwhile.

I wasn't even kidding. I've said similar things in relation to my career many times in the past.

It might be a self fulfilling prophecy, or the grand influence of a mother who didn't want me to live the kind of confined life she did, or maybe I just was never in the mood, or right circumstance to do anything other than what I've done.

Who know. I have to figure it out. No, don't figure it out, my friend said, just live it.

Good advice I guess.

In the interest of creating something worthy of my solitary life, I began a project that up until last night was only a rough outline, scratched together in the spring, waiting for inspiration.

Inspiration indeed came - and lest you think I reveal everything in my blog  and that there's nothing left to know about me - I'm actually keeping the trigger to myself. But for the last two nights I've been pounding out words on my keyboard. About 1500 of them, or 4 pretty good pages so far. I don't have a care or expectation of how long it will take me to finish the project or even get it right. Having the freedom, and by freedom I mean TIME and SPACE, to just write is pure joy.

It's fiction - though it may be thinly disguised non fiction, but  my writing has progressed enough that I finally understand that thing many writers have said to me over the years - you're not really writing until you're not afraid to bleed on the page.

I guess it's just the price I have to pay.

Last week I went to try to find my stolen bike, which I hoped would be on display in one of the two warehouses that Toronto Police secured so people could be reunited with their modes of transportation and fun.

I came home empty-handed and heavy hearted. It was like losing it all over again. Big Drag!

Walking among the thousands of bikes, painstakingly alphabetized, I found myself in a kind of awe of this Igor Kenk guy. I mean, you really have to wonder what alternate reality a guy like him lives in. He steals bikes, either gives them back to their rightful owners if they can prove the bike is theirs, or sells them as is, takes them apart for parts, or simply hoards them.

Why?

I don't mean why as in I need a pat answer like, he's involved in drugs or other types of crime. I mean, in the scheme of things, bike stealing is pretty minor.

So, why?

I listened to an audio excerpt of an interview with him saying something like "people might miss their bikes, but noone's thinking about the bike's point of view."  Whaa?

(By the way, this guy also stole the odd stroller - now, that is just beyond the pale, don't you think?)

In any case, they found 700 more bikes today, so back I go to the warehouse in hopes of locating my Canadian Tire special, stolen in it's second season (I wish I could say year, but it's scary enough riding Toronto streets in spring and summer, I can't say I would ever attempt fall, winter) - stolen from right behind my house, where I tied it up every night without incident, until one day last April, on a unseasonably hot night at around 1 am. I actually heard the guy take it - alerted first by my cat who stood up, jumped off my bed and ran to the window.

It's not like I would ever run after the guy. I live alone at the end of a long dark driveway on the periphery of Parkdale! Geesh!

Dear Mr. Bicylce Thief - I work hard for my money and can't afford to replace my bike, my summer has been bereft of the simple joy of riding on the waterfront, nor would I ever think to go to a shady storefront to look for or even try to re-purchase it from you. Did you ever think my bike's point of view is that it liked it's owner just fine?

Today is the birthday of my oldest sister. She would have been 59 years old, which is mighty hard to believe. To me she is frozen at 25, the age she was when she died., or even younger since the very few memories I have of her lie in her earlier life. I didn't know her much at all, being eleven years younger and a child for most of her life.

And I can't really say I know that much about her either, just the usual milestone information and a kind of idyllic remembrance of her that happens when the young die.

This is a photo of us - me about one, and her at 12.

I have always imagined that as adults we would be compatible friends.  It's a thought I like to entertain.

You might never believe this for a person who's had at least two professions that require major use of telephones, but I've always been a little phone shy. As long as I was attached to an organization and calling on its behalf I could call or cold call anyone within the parameters of a work day. But ask me to call to order a pizza and I'd rather you do it. This, by the way, applies to calling family members, friends and acquaintances.

How bizarre.

Thank goodness, then, for the modern technology that means I never have to pick up a phone - with MSN, Google Talk, Gizmo et al, email and Facebook messaging, I can go for days without actually opening my mouth to form a sentence. This is preferable because, as a writer, I can make a much better impression on the page, even over instant messaging. I'm wittier, and likely alot  more succinct. There's no shaking voice to betray nerves, and no gaping holes in sentences because I can't think of the exact right word.

The only kink in this armour is that it contributes greatly to lonliness and isolation. On any given day I can communicate with many and various people in my life. But without the voice to voice connection, or dare I say, face to face, it feels sort of empty.

This, believe it or not, has just begun to occur to me. Or should I say caught up to me. I'm probably not alone in this and I think it might be a cultural phenomenon even.

My generational cohort and older (40 plus) is concerned, for the most part, about keeping up with technology. We have to be in order to stay active in our careers. But I believe even the younger folk would suffer from lack of tactile communication, except that they don't let technology replace real socializing the way we do. Why? Because we're "busy" building our careers, keeping our jobs, raising our families, and the blah, blah, blah of it all.

Life is too damn short!

All spring and summer I've been working from home, trying to ramp up my freelance writing career. To be successful, not only do you need to pick up the phone once in awhile, and much more than I do, but you also have to have confidence enough to keep at it day after day. Both of those require voice connection with people. A) to get work and B) to get necessary moral support from friends and family.

By the way, I'm usually always online and available for people, no matter what - maybe I think that if I'm not I will become redundant, even invisible. But my visibility makes me invisible anyway because you can't blame people for taking you for granted. So what seems like an easy solution to my shyness actually works to distract me from my own life, and prevents me from moving forward. I'll drop anything for anybody, anytime.

Moving forward is my personal hallmark, so you can see my concern.

Well, here's what I've decided. Starting today, except for vital emails, and my only phone which is a cell, I have cut all electronic communication. No more distracting or replacement-for-the-real-thing conversations over IM. I really want to find out what happens to me, for me and with others when I confine myself to old fashioned phone calling, to reach people, to make plans with them, to hear a voice that soothes or makes me laugh.

Now, I have only told one person in my life I'm doing this, so it might take folks some time to catch on. But it's an experiment designed to getting back to basics and seeing how I feel with it. And to get me over my phone phobia, which isn't the best way to conduct a business, or personal life for that matter. To take me away from my hermit-like tendencies. It's too easy to hide my real life behind words designed especially for quick bursts of humour, wit, or emoticons that don't even begin to tell a story.

I saw one of my best friends the other night and she dropped me off at home afterwards saying, "call me." How can I explain to a person I've known for over 20 years, that even that phone call is sometimes hard for me. So hard that I just won't do it. I'm not sure why. It could just be that I got out of the habit of calling and found what I believed was an easier way.

Turns out it's not. At least not right now.

For the time being I've given myself no choice but to call and answer my phone. I'll check in after a couple weeks and let you know what, if anything, I've learned.

This is why I dislike zoos, and in fact, refuse to visit them:

Activist questions zoo safety after lion kills eagle, Canada.com

The thing to know about this incident at The Greater Vancouver Zoo, is that the golden eagle was bred in captivity and the falcon exhibit was being held very close to the lion enclosure when the lion attacked and ate it.

The zoo is saying this is something that happens in nature, but zoos are not natural habitats for the animals that they hold, nor can animals exercise their natural instincts in zoos. So the construct is wrong in the first place and I can only imagine what it does to animals to be so contained. Sure alot of them were rescued, but that really is besides the point to me. I just don't like the idea of zoos, never have, children can learn about animals without visiting a city zoo (even if it has what might be considered an appropriate amount of open space).

As a kid, I visited all the usual animal zoos and exhibits. My dad, a sometime father, thought going to Marine Land or African Lion Safari was a good weekend bonding excursion for us kids. Not so much for me. I hate seeing anything caged or unable to live its own true and natural life. I'm sure my discomfort was mistaken for fear and maybe it was easier to express it that way than to have the guts at a young age to take a stand on such things. Thankfully kids today have more of a voice.

The little girl who's father took the photos of the entire lion/eagle incident was traipsed out in all the media saying how she was sad because the golden eagle was her favourite animal. That's all well and good, and poignant and paper-selling, viewer-friendly stuff. But who's going to explain to her that indeed these things do happen in nature, but that the zoo is hardly nature and that poor bird, born and bred in captivity didn't stand the chance it may have if it had learned, in the wild, how to steer clear of predators.

It's all mixed up in that crazy way of the modern world where things that don't make any sense and that are actually quite cruel, end up being acceptable.