twenty thousand words

"i will never be hip"

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:47:00 +0000

like everyone else does

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:55:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:18:00 +0000

I never went to camp as a kid. I went to a day camp, twice, in the woods north of Brampton: the first time, when I was six, someone stole my sleeping bag on "sleepover day" and I refused to go back for the remainder; the second, when I was ten, my best friend was supposed to accompany me but came down with chicken pox instead. Still, I never went to real camp. I just watched TV all summer. I just watched TV shows about other kids going to camp.

pitter patter

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:16:00 +0000

This past Saturday, watching Broken Social Scene play a free show at Harbourfront, I nodded my head and convinced myself that I had seen them play there before in the summer of '05 (the summer where I was nineteen, the one after all these major life changes had taken place.) I watched Kevin Drew sweat on stage, and I thought to myself: the last time I saw these guys play, I had just gotten through the hardest year of my life. Yeah, I thought. That's right. I had survived some tough shit and made it to the other side, where KD et al were standing on a stage and playing songs just for me, for free. Yeah. Two thousand and five.

Then Brendan Canning grabbed his mic: "the last time we played here was in 2oo4!"

And I thought, fuck, really?

It was five years ago. I had just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I was little more than a month away from moving to Halifax for university. I had accomplished nothing that summer;, nothing more than learning how to stab my skin with needles. My brother took me downtown for the day, and then to this free show at Harbourfront. I was all too familiar with You Forgot It In People, had listened to it plenty of times in our parents' stationwagon while rain ran down the windshield. But this was the first time I had ever heard them play live. And it hit me hard.

At the time, I had no idea that this band would stick around for the next five years of my life. I couldn't have known that their music would be there, playing quietly in the background, through so many crucial moments to come.

I would see them play, again, at the Marquee Club in the Fax, just a few short weeks before it closed down. It was the first time I would use a fake id, but in reality I wouldn't use it: the bouncer would check my friends, but, amazingly, not me. I'd be slightly stoned, a little drunk. I'd lose the others in the crowd and watch the show all alone, feel the trumpets, feel everything.

I would trek through a snowstorm to buy Stars' Set Yourself On Fire the week it came out, and I'd listen to it every goddamn day, even the day later that spring when I'd move away from the Fax forever. I'd sit on a plane and watch the coast disappear.

I would buy the next album when it arrived in the fall of 05. I'd listen to "It's All Gonna Break" after every crush failed, and I'd feel better. "Backyards" was to be playing in the background the night my mom would call to tell me that my dad's secret affair had been revealed and they were divorcing.

I'd sit on someone's bed, watching Half Nelson on his computer, well aware I was making the gravest error, "Shampoo Suicide" everywhere.

I'd learn to love my first name, all thanks to Feist.

I'd fall in love, real love, finally, over a shared appreciation for music and a mutual history of arts & crafts moments.

And then I'd see them again, one cool summer night in a garbage-filled city, from my spot in a crowd thick with assholes. A tall guy behind me would knee me in the back; the hippie girl in front would toss her frizzy hair into my face. I'd be so short that I could barely see. But I would still feel something. They'd go on to play four encores, and I'd feel all of it.

I feel it, still.

that's how i was when i was young

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Mon, 25 May 2009 04:32:00 +0000

Lessons in Growing Up, #1:

Last Friday night I decided to go running, for a couple of reasons: 1. I had nothing else to do, 2. I haven't been able to run for weeks, and it felt about time to break the rules, and 3. I pride myself on being a night runner. Starting from the summer I was 15, I always tend to run at night once the days get hotter. Night running is such an unusual thing, not least of all because it is SHIT TERRIFYING. I've witnessed intense fights, stumbled on couples having sex, been threatened by wildlife, fallen on my face a few times, and interrupted plenty of pot-smoking teenagers. But running at night in the summer also encompasses all the things I love about the sport, at its heart: it's always quiet, you get felt up by a nice breeze, flowers smell better after dusk, and the aloneness doesn't feel lonely at all. Most of all, you're invincible. You're completely covered in dark and yet you're still invincible. As I started out on last Friday's night run, I felt all of it. It wasn't that dark out, and I even decided to dart through the scary woods behind the St Clair West station. Near Bathurst I stopped in a park to tie my shoelaces. Some old fat guy walking a pug waved me over. Nervously, I went. He shook his head as he spoke to me:

"You know, I wasn't going to tell you this, but I have to. A few weeks ago, right in that parking lot over there, I saw a girl get raped. She got raped by a black guy on a bmx bicycle. The police were all here, and it was on CP24--you didn't see it? And, my god, her face, she was so scared. So, you know, you just can't trust people, and you gotta be careful at night, and I just had to tell you, so."

So? I ran home faster than I ever have. Thanks for nothing, pug man.

The Loneliness Of

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:55:00 +0000

I started using my insulin pump a week and a half ago. My nurse (a precocious woman who loves lipstick and looks like a deflated Fran Drescher) clicked the device into place, and that was that. Well, not exactly: I was given strict orders to follow for the next few weeks, in order to get my blood sugars down and insulin rates stabilized. Most of the rules are tough (3 meals a day, no snacks in between [where is that DQ Blizzard I was promised?], tight carbohydrate budget). Some of them truly suck (no alcohol or sleeping in!) But one of them has proved nearly unbearable: no exercise. Until my body works out the kinks with this pump, I am indefinitely barred from putting on my New Balances. No matter how sunny and beautiful the weather is (today), no matter how much my leg muscles twitch from lack of activity (happened today), no matter how much I ache to get out there and start up my half-marathon training again (oh god, today). These running-free days are killing me.

I just finished reading Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I've never really loved his writing style (something lost in the translation, perhaps) and this book is no exception, but it drew enough parallels with my own life to draw me in. I read it while sitting on the train to London. As we sped past creeks and forest floors and backyards, I thought about running. I thought about writing. I thought about running and writing, at once: two things I love, used to love, still care for, need to do, need motivation to start, can't give up. I want to run as fast as a VIA train and write as well as Murakami. That's what I want.

"Most of what I know about writing I've learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate--and how much is too much? ... How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? ...
In any event, I'm happy I haven't stopped running all these years. The reason is, I like the novels I've written. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of novel I'll produce next. Since I'm a writer with limits--an imperfect person living an imperfect, limited life--the fact that I can still feel this way is a real accomplishment. Calling it a miracle might be an exaggeration, but I really do feel this way. And if running every day helps me accomplish this, then I'm very grateful to running. ...
Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life--and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree."

- Murakami, What I Talk About...

hey, yeah, awww

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:05:00 +0000

This time last year, I assumed the hardest part was going to be getting in. Of course. All that paperwork! All those weeks of waiting! Once I got in-- and once I passed that remedial mythology bird course laden with trick questions-- then the water wouldn't be choppy anymore. Then I wouldn't be worried.

Then things wouldn't be so unclear.

Wouldn't it be nice.

It's the April of the first year of my master's program, and I've barely made a scratch. There's certainly no dent. I know that I have a voice, and that I have so much more time to prove myself and make progress, but I can't help but feel this: the more time I put into this pursuit, the less I'm getting out of it. I don't really want to be a grad student slumming away at a part-time coffee shop job. I don't want to be a Torontonian who still secretly hates Toronto. I don't want to be a writer with permanent writer's block.

I want to think that I made the right choice last April, but I'm starting to worry that I can't keepy trying to convince myself anymore. I don't know what to do with myself.

How does one get themselves out of a slump like this? What is this slump, anyway? It isn't the stuff undergraduate hissy-fits are made of. No, it feels bigger than that. It feels like a total confusion of place and time and direction-- maybe none of this is right?

I used to always spend summers at my grandparents' cottage on Lake Huron. They sold it the winter I turned 14, but we all knew that the preceding summer was probably going to be our last and we treated it accordingly. By "we" I mean just me: I was the only other member of the family who showed any attachment to the cottage apart my from grandparents themselves.
Our cottage was a real cottage, (dilapidated, tiny, and wooden) unlike all the suburban-style monoliths that grew in the empty lots down the road over the years. It stunk like mothballs, and rain bled through the walls, and ants got into the sugar pots, and I loved it there. We listened to my dad's Jeff Healey band cassettes and played Scrabble. There was a receding, zebra mussel-infested shoreline behind our property, but we usually just went to the beach area just down the street that was much larger and cleaner. (The time my cousin and I found a bra and panties discarded in the surf there is, sadly, a story for another time.)
If you stood in the middle of this beach and looked straight out at the lake, you could see a rocky island with a single gnarled tree directly in front of you. It wasn't that far out, but as a child I thought it was the most impressive thing I'd ever seen: this bizarre, dead tree, floating on a bed of rocks in the center of the lake.
During that last summer at the cottage, I decided to finally swim out to the island. It didn't take me very long, and I found that the island wasn't even straight out from the beach-- it was located a few hundred metres to the left. It was a disgusting pile of rocks and the tree itself was practically driftwood. I stood on the rocks and touched the dead tree trunk and it wasn't even sunny out. But I did it, right? I got there, and that still matters, doesn't it?

Wouldn't it be nice.

how to scare a baby: #4

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:21:00 +0000

See? I told you it was fucking terrifying. Terrible, and terrifying.
This movie was a dumpy and derivative amalgam of "The Wizard", "Labyrinth", and "The Neverending Story", and it also features some of the scariest things I've ever seen on VHS.

Poor Baumer's probably rolling in his grave.

as Apple Martin is my witness

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:23:00 +0000

Today I caught myself thinking about the late winter/early spring of the year I was in grade 9. I was doing an ISU project on Carl Sagan's Contact for my English class. I decided to try "tv turnoff week", breaking it only once to watch a well-timed airing of the Jodie Foster movie on City. I was listening to a lot of Coldplay's Parachutes. I was training for track season, but the shitty weather meant training mostly indoors: running through the corridors of South Hall after school, tripping over girls in the stairwells putting cornrows into dudes' hair for $5 a pop. I was fifteen, not the edge of twenty-three. I was way more productive in the past than I am in the present.

I have a plan for the future, though. It involves running the Don Valley and the Martin Goodman trail and the Leslie Spit. Early (as early as I can manage) weekend garage sale-ing. Finally writing all that quality fiction that I set out to write this year. Being unsick. Opening my windows more than a crack. Drinking as much wine as my bloodstream can handle. Getting my insulin pump and finally getting myself under control. Okay--perhaps those last two sentences don't exactly jive.

No, everything's not lost.

a simpler time

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:54:00 +0000

dirty secrets

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:23:00 +0000

"Creative non-fiction", I figured, would be the easiest hill to climb. My masters program lasts for two years, consisting of three workshops, two classes, one mentorship, and one thesis (heart attack), and I can't gorge myself on pure fiction the whole time. I'm not allowed to. So, I've got to whet something else, and I figured "CNF" was the best choice. It wouldn't leave a scar. My other options (playwriting or poetry) don't even really count as options: teenage me wrote one poem ever--perhaps, perhaps two--and if you read it, you'd know why*. So, CNF it was.

But what the hell is CNF? During the first class, our writer/leader/preacher gave us a rundown on the wide range of writing styles that qualify, but was quick to footnote that Sedarisisms don't count. (She went on to compare reading his books to watching a stand-up comedy routine; according to her, when you're finished with both, you've had a laugh but the experience isn't memorable or meaningful. She said this with a perfectly straight face, no Sedaris-style sarcasm evident, and my heart dropped.) So, it isn't humour. It also isn't editorial, journalistic, academic, or "too" creative. The great range of CNF shrank quickly. I realized that I was left with only too options: dry, or soaking wet. Either very social, or very personal. Deeply topical, or glorified blogging.

I'm not sure I can do either.

Blogging is one thing (anonymous to a degree), fiction is another (nobody really knows what's real and what's not), but committing intimate details of one's life to paper and then handing those papers out to other people (friends, writers) for them to workshop just feels a little too raw and bloody for me. "Leslie, your life has a pacing problem on page three." "Leslie, your life just wasn't believable enough at the end." "Leslie, your life didn't really grab me from the start." Moreover, what the hell am I supposed to write about that can sustain itself for fifteen lag-free pages? Boy problems, 'betes problems, sad things, happy bits? "Creative non-fiction" is so far proving itself to just be a pseudonym for "grade 7 diary".

I'll stick with fiction, thank you.

* I just found a word document on my computer called "high school writers craft poems variety". Although I don't remember writing them, or if they ever made it off the safety of my hard drive, these two aren't all that shitty. They're actually pretty neat (one even rhymes!) Maybe I'm being too hard on poetry--it might be a gentle giant, after all. Now let us never speak of this again.

Joseph Cornell and The Dirty Little Secret

Box of big nothing

We look inside and wonder

But only you know

The Best Of

Scenery passing in a blear
Closing in on the end, hope drawing near
Feet moving quicker than the beat
Faster farther, never chasing defeat
Breathe, check, turnover, check, going, flight--
...
Stop.
Ground is tougher than might
The player's lost its needle but the album still spins
Pop! Hiss! Silence can't make will thin
Up again- legs meet motion, vinyl starts talking
A little bit warped but never, ever walking

in the land of businessmen

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:11:00 +0000

For the past two months I've been spending many of my early, early mornings toiling away* behind the disinfected counter of a Starbucks located down-down-downtown. "Shilling coffee to stockbrokers", as my Grandpa calls it. Digging deep to make sure I have enough in my bank account to pay my rent, the cable bill, the internet bill, the remainder of my tuition, for groceries, for public transit, for cat food, for the occasional bottle of less-than-a-tenner wine. A veritable Chai Walla.

They pay me to smile. I've seriously burned my hands twice. At the very least, this work provides me with an endless list of easily employable endearments: "double short", "half sweet", "extra hot".

The other day, after a busy and stressful morning rush, I whispered a comment to one of my coworkers-- "they all look the same to me!"-- only to be met with a disapproving glare. "You can't say something like that out loud!" they responded. But, I mean, really: once you've seen one recession-rattled businessman with caffeine sweats wearing a wrinkled grey suit, you've seen them all.

* being yelled at.

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:20:00 +0000

I don't have a lot of things going for me. I mean, I share my birthdate with Steven Weber and Chastity Bono, and my initials match the "Lord Krishna Bank". But there was always that song to redeem me, the one song in the world that I thought used my first name: "Groovin" by The Young Rascals.

One day a few years ago, listening to easy hits while driving my mom's car one weekend at home from university, I realized that I'd misheard the lyrics every time. It wasn't "I feel it comin' closer day by day, life would be ecstasy, you and me and Leslie" (where I always imagined Leslie was the dog or something crashing this couple's romantic Sunday picnic). No. It was "endlessly". Just "endlessly".

I felt like I'd just been dumped.

just like anyone

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:26:00 +0000

I'm constantly flip-flopping with this program. I am certain that it was the right choice for me to make, and at the right time, but I'm still not convinced that I really want to head down the road that they seem to be priming me for: "Pretentious Writer, 20 years away". There are tiny things that tend to sway me one way or the other, and there are thousands of them throughout each day, and I'm constantly choosing one side and then changing my mind, and as a result I still don't know what the fuck to do with myself. I fall asleep spooning the same demon every night.

What the hell do I want?

I have trouble finishing up the final polish on this novel chapter: i don't want to be a writer.

I settle into bed with my laptop at 130am one Sunday night and manage to write a pretty great short story in a little under three hours' time, one day before the deadline: i want to be a writer.

I go to the ATM for some twenties and am rewarded with a bank account balance slip that's less than $1, but more than 0 (it was 51 cents): fuck, i don't want to be a writer.

I see a crazy guy in the woods up at Spadina and St Clair, who is pushing a baby carriage full of urine-soaked Chihuahuas wearing dog collars made out of rope, and attempting to rake up the leaves, to RAKE UP THE LEAVES IN THE WOODS: yeah, i want to be a writer.

I continue to feel completely ostracized from the generally older students who populate my MFA program: I'll never fit in. I'm not pretentious enough. I don't want to be a writer.

I realize that writing is a solitary act, and a lonely life, but also that I'm a solitary person, and a lonely one, and it suits me just fine, and even though I've been doing this since high school, the reality is that I'm still wetting my feet, and I still have a million stories left to tell, and I'm not done yet, so I guess I'll keep going as long as I've got it in me: okay, fine. I'll be a writer.

somebody's patti scialfa

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:20:00 +0000

I'm supposed to be writing an essay right now (that's right, an essay, that beast I fought for the last four years but apparently have yet to slay). I'm also supposed to be writing the third chapter of a "novel" for my fiction workshop (a novel that I conjured up the night before my first class back in September, and a novel that I've been molding out of garbage for weeks, and a novel that will likely stop at the end of chapter three and never see the light of day once this workshop finishes up). I'm also supposed to be running, running always, in prep for that December race I love so much (they give us free egg nog as consolation after the snowy 10.8k, and that's a great deal in my books). I'm also supposed to be managing my budget, budgeting my time, and timing my breaks.

But I don't want to right now. I want to take another break instead.

The Worst Songs Ever, and Why I Love Them Anyway, Jerks

"Sad Eyes" by Bruce Springsteen (from 18 Tracks, 1999)

This is one of the laziest, safest, and most boring songs Springsteen has ever done, off an album that's barely even an album. He sings like a little lady, the arrangement is saccharine, and the lyrics are fortune cookies. But the first time I heard it (on an episode of Dawson's Creek) I knew that I was hooked. Embarrassed to admit it, but hooked. It happened in season 2 of DC, during the awkward but not entirely regrettable Andie+Pacey plot. The late-late nineties. It was an easy time, a hopeful time. It was a time before James Van Der Beek disappeared, and before Joey Potter bowed down at the temple of Xenu, and before anyone had even dreamed of a 90210 remake. It was a time when good things could happen, as long as you believed they could. If you wanted a boy to climb up the trellis outside your bedroom window, declare his love for you after tumbling onto your floor, and then kiss you while holding your face in both hands (Pacey Witter style), then, yeah. It was possible. Everything was possible in 1999.

"Have A Heart" by Bonnie Raitt (from Nick of Time, 1989)

Because my dad used to play this cassette all the time when I was growing up, before I learned how to tell the difference between shitty music and good.

"Only You" by Yaz (or Yazoo, if you prefer. From Upstairs at Eric's, 1982)

I was going to write about that one scene in The Office Christmas Special, you know, those ten heartbreaking minutes at the very end that always send me into projectile weeping, but this really doesn't even need an anecdote. It's a good song, seriously.

No One Says It 'Til It Shows

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:08:00 +0000

I usually don't remember. Every year it comes around, and I never remember to remember. It's been so long, you know? So much has happened to me since-- it's hard to hold onto things suspended in the past.

But, somehow, this year, I heard the song. The song came up, somehow, on a random shuffle. And, for once, I remembered.

When I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen maybe, my favourite song in the world was "Say Yes" by Elliott Smith. I don't know what it meant to me then. Maybe I was sad, and he was sad, and during the two minutes and thirteen seconds of that song we could be sad together. Whatever the case, it meant something big to me. Eight years ago today, he put two big wounds into his chest and that was it. Sure, most of his music was completely depress-o and heartcracking (the image of Richie Tenenbaum, freshly shaven and bleeding rivulets from the wrists, comes to mind), but then there was that song. That song. Some people do great things, and some people kill themselves. Sometimes it's the same person who does both. You're gone, but I still have your song. Thank you for the song.

I'm glad I remembered this year. RIP, XO.

in the backyards, with your friends of late

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:01:00 +0000

There's a storefront on Bloor Street, a little west of Ossington, that has a cat and a scratching post in the window. A cat and a scratching post, and nothing else. In fact, it isn't even a store. It's just a big empty window with a cat in it.

A few days ago, I was walking that sidewalk stretch, as I do a dozen times a week, looking for the cat in the window, but I couldn't find it. The store, the cat, the scratching post: everything had vanished from Bloor. It took me a few minutes to finally figure out what I was looking for. The storefront was completely camoflaged; it had been covered over with a wall of wood for renovations. Okay, so that made sense. But--

what about the cat?

Today, finally, there was a small handwritten note taped to the wood in front of the store:

"THE CAT IS FINE SHE STAYS IN THE HOUSE"

Solid Dude

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:32:00 +0000

"Why I'm Running the New York City Marathon
by Ryan Reynolds

A couple of years ago, I walked uptown to Central Park on one of those perfect November days. The air had a bite to it while the sun shone bright. It was the day of the New York Marathon and I thought it might be fun to watch the runners nearing the finish line. So, I joined the crowd about a half-mile before the race's end at Tavern On The Green. With my arms resting on the cold cordon, I saw an incredible spectacle of people pushed to the very brink of collapse. I expected exhaustion, but what I didn't expect was to see just how much these runners had to EARN their prize. It was emotional. The pain was etched into their faces so deeply, you'd swear they'd spend the next 3 weeks looking like Abe Vigoda. I saw guys coming in to finish with bleeding nipples. Why in the hell were their nipples bleeding? People were crying. People were limping, hobbling, screaming, crawling. But most importantly, people were experiencing a sublime rapture that I couldn't even hope to understand. They were touching something magical no stalk-still mortal simply watching the race could comprehend. These people had accomplished something real. At that moment, with all the energy, inspiration and passion swirling through the crisp autumnal air, I breathed in deeply and decided something: I'd never fucking do that ever, ever. What in the fuck were these idiots thinking? Bleeding nipples. Bleeding. Nipples.

Two years later, by some tragic backwards prophecy, I find myself signed up to run in the New York City Marathon. Every other day I train. I run like a bastard all morning. Not since the discovery of Junior High School has a torture been so effective. Why on earth would I willfully do this? On behalf of my Father, Jim Reynolds, who's spent the last 15 years in a life or death struggle with Parkinson's Disease.

Let it be known at the outset, I am not a runner. I am a running joke. Waking up at 4:30 am and jogging anywhere from 11 to 23 miles has been nothing short of horrifying. Although, I've never given birth to a professional basketball player through one of my tear ducts, I can't imagine a worse way to start the day. Conversely, some people have real problems. I digress...

A year and a half ago, I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Michael J. Fox. Like so many before me, I found it impossible not to be touched by his story of overwhelming strength, passion and relentless commitment to help those afflicted with this insidious disease. The man is inspiration exemplified. Plus, he was in Back To The Future. Which was, well, awesome. In a moment of extremely poor judgment, I offered to do something big for him--I offered to compete in the New York City Marathon. Which was, well... dumb.

While I'll probably never fully understand Michael's struggle, I've had a first hand peek behind the curtain of Parkinson's. I've watched my father -- a strong and proud person who successfully raised 4 arguably insane children - slowly, cruely stripped of his independence. His golden years robbed without explanation. It quite obviously sucks. Witnessing my Dad suffer over the years galvanized my need to step up. On November 2nd, I'll join thousands of other men and women to march in lockstep solidarity toward searing psychic pain and physical humilation.

One of the reasons I chose RUNNING specifically, was because (as Murakami so eloquently put it) my competition is the most formidable foe of all; ME. The person I have to beat is the guy I was last week. The person I was yesterday. Indescribably worse, those affected by Parkinson's wage a similar war in their own bodies every single day. Unlike a marathon, their struggle won't end in a shallow pool of vomit just outside Tavern On The Green while waiting for an ambulance. They continue day in and day out, silently battling away in the most personal of struggles.

Yes. I'm asking for a donation. I don't do this with any degree of levity. I know we're in rough times and there are literally millions of causes worthy of your hard earned cash. It's my hope the story of my father combined with my own goal of becoming the first person in history to sob uncontrollably for 26.2 miles straight, may inspire you to give something too.

Please know that NO DONATION IS TOO SMALL - and certainly, no donation is too large. And If you don't give anything at all, maybe I've primed you for a future donation in someone else's name. For someone else's cause.

If you visit the site below, you'll be directed to my page on the Team Fox Website. Michael's foundation has raised over 100 million dollars in the fight against PD. On my page you can leave a personal note of support or mockery along with your donation.

In the end, no matter how much I mythologize this run, no matter how much I choose to romanticize this campaign against my own will, lungs and ambition... there's always going to be that guy who finished the marathon on a pair of prosthetic legs. And there'll always be my Dad. And Michael. And Millions of others who bounce back off the ropes against all odds. So, I promise I won't congratulate myself too much.

Finally, if you happen to be in New York on November 2nd, come down and watch. Feel free to bring a smile, automated defibrillator, or a fresh set of nipples.

Click here for my Team Fox page

On behalf of Me, my Father, and everyone struggling with Parkinson's, our endless gratitude."

source

i was supposed to be writing the most beautiful poems

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:18:00 +0000

I want:

- to get one (or two or several) of these prints and hang them on my living room walls, next to the more-realistic portraits of raccoons and deer stolen/borrowed from my grandparent's cottage. These are perfect. These are the kind of things I feel I would have made myself back in the eighth grade, had I been more artistically gifted at the time. That was during my "clever funny animals" phase: I used to cut out the heads of wildlife from the pages of my old Owl magazines, and then gluestick them onto the bodies of models in J Crew catalogues. I was way ahead of my time. Oh, wasn't I.

- to reach the day when the CBC's airing of Coronation Street is finally in sync with the BBC. Sadly, I don't think our Canadian shores will ever meet their British ones. Right now, it's early autumn in Canada, and early December on Corrie...early December of LAST YEAR. We are embarrassingly far behind, and, besides, bad things are bound to happen during the upcoming holiday episodes. Bad things always happen in Corrie Christmases; a murder, an affair, a fire at the very least. I just want to feel happy things at the same time the Street feels happy things.

- to get my pump (soon, pancreas, soon).

- to see Okkervil. I have been underwhelmed by the Toronto show calendar so far this fall; there's been little I've been looking forward to except for this, and even then it was only the tiniest spark. But now, I've reconvened: I've been wanting to see this band I love for a few years now-- that sad snowy winter of early '06 was defined for me by Okkervil River and only a few others-- and the chance has never revealed itself until now. So, I'll take the band gladly. I'll take Will Sheff in my arms and hug him until he pukes.

- a good place to run in Toronto. More trees, less creepy European men who whisper "beautiful" in my ear when I pass them on Bloor Street. I want the paths along the river that I wore down in London, I want them here. I want to find a lovely patch of woods, not that muddy rape-path in Forest Hill I stumbled onto last week. I want everything I love about other places to be consolidated in this place.

That's all.

Projectile Weeping

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:04:00 +0000

Last Friday night, David Foster Wallace killed himself at the age of 46. I didn't hear about it until Sunday afternoon, and it took me at least five minutes to fully register the news. Sometimes when famous folk die, us plain people often feel like we've been punched in the gut. It depends on the individual, and the context, but I'm willing to bet that we've all felt it before. It is slightly embarrassing to admit: that a person you've never met, were never going to meet, know next to nothing about, is long gone, and now their loss is plucking at the strings inside your own heart. I mean, it can't be real sadness, right? But, for me, the loss of DFW was a genuine gut-punch.

I read Infinite Jest last summer exclusively during my breaks at work. It took me three weeks and several re-starts and one library renewal to finish, but once I had slogged through to the end I felt the familiar twinge in my stomach: I knew that this book was going to be one of "those books" for me. His language play, his muddle of characters and time periods and content, and his often three-page-long run-on sentences were all difficult to get through, but as payoff the book made me reconsider where I wanted to head with my own writing. It encouraged me to take more risks with style, to think smarter, to try harder. In short, it made me want to be a better writer.

David Foster Wallace had the rare ability to impress and destroy and rebuild and entertain and touch, all in just one sentence. He was less a "writer" and more simply an artist, a builder of intricate webs of words and thoughts. He was one of the best voices of this generation, and I can only hope that other talented wordsmiths will take up his mantle in the years to come. Here's to a truly unique voice, a thousand perfectly penned pages, and a legacy of gut-punches. Rest easy, DFW.

"We're each deeply alone here. It's what we have in common, this aloneness."

big and dirty

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:46:00 +0000

I've been having trouble readjusting this September. Past Septembers have always entailed a jump back into the familiar: that old campus, that dingy transit system, those boys in striped shirts and girls in purple Western hoodies and too-early-in-the-season-Uggs, my roommates, my boys, my big beautiful oak trees. As soon as I got there each fall, and despite the lack of air conditioning in the various apartments I rented, London always felt like home. The city sucks, but it was always my Forest City.

It's been about two weeks, but Toronto isn't my Big Dirty yet.

Although, to be fair, it is pretty damn dirty.

This house of mine looked pretty nice upon first and second viewings, but as soon as I moved in I realized that every interior surface was actually covered in a thin layer of dirt and grime. The floors and the kitchen counter and the bathtub. The walls and the window-sills and the windows. The doorknobs and the baseboards and the front door of the fridge, even. I cleaned and primed and painted and fixed it up for five days straight, and it still doesn't feel like home. A few days ago I finally, finally felt a small flicker of comfort in this place-- something really small, but something noticeable. I'm hoping it'll snowball in time.

School is something else entirely. During the orientation "party" I slowly realized that my one fear about entering this program straight out of undergrad was being confirmed before my eyes: I am the baby. I am the youngest person in the group by at least two years, and even then most of these other people are closer to 30 than I am to 20. Quality in writing is often guaged by the life experiences of the author, and my fact sheet (young, suburban, cynical, straight, redheaded and pale like fucking Anne of Green Gables) isn't doing me any favours. I'm sure most of these people doubt I have the capacity to succeed at this, at this stage in my life. And I'm sure they wouldn't be suprised if I were to admit to them that, yes, I too doubt my potential and worry sometimes that I've started out too early. I haven't written The Great Canadian Novel yet and tucked it away in a drawer, and I haven't been published in literary journals or won large-scale writing contests. So what have I done? I've written a novel, a novella if you must, that took up most of a year and now takes up a substantial part of my heart (only a few people have ever read it, and only a few ever will, but I'm okay with that). I've spent four years emerged in this world of pretentious literary folk, writing out everything that comes into my head, looking for inspiration, trying and trying and failing and sometimes succeeding. This is the only thing I can do, and the only thing I really want to do. And that's a universal statement, right? Writing fiction can, and should be, ageless. Well, so long as it's good.

On the other hand, there's this:

"She's already a reality star and a fashion designer, but Lauren Conrad is adding another title to her crowded resume: Author.

Conrad, 22, has signed on to write a three-book series of young adult fiction for HarperCollins, the publisher tells PEOPLE. The books – the first of which is scheduled to hit shelves in the summer of 2009 – will be loosely inspired by Conrad's own experience going from an ordinary teen to a reality TV star.

"It's definitely influenced by my own life," Conrad tells PEOPLE. "The books are about a girl who moves to L.A. and stars in a reality show, so obviously there are some similarities."

So will Hills costars like Heidi Montag, Specner Pratt or Brody Jenner wind up as in Conrad's series? Not exactly. "I'm not trying to do a fictional story based on all my friends in my real life because their stories aren't really mine to tell," says Conrad, who has gone through many dramas on her MTV show. "Some of the characters may symbolize people in my life, but it is in no way calling anyone out."

Conrad's best gal pal and The Hills costar Lauren Bosworth has already been offering advice. "I run ideas by Lo and I'll ask for her opinion because I value my friends' opinions," says the budding author, who has completed the outline for the first book.

But not everyone in Conrad's life has been clued in to her plans to pen a series. "Honestly I haven't told everyone," she admits. "I've told my best friends and they have all been really supportive. Nobody was worried."

And it's enough to make me want to puke up all that cheap white wine I drank last night-- a Wednesday night-- while I pretended to work on my most recent novel idea.

Also, who knew they sold quilted Chanel handbags at Target? I sure didn't.

for digby

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:05:00 +0000

This is the greatest minute of video I've ever seen. I have just watched it six times in a row. Please. Please watch this. Please do this for me.

And...there. I just watched it again.

wish you didn't have to go, no no no no

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:03:00 +0000

My sincerest apologies to anyone reading this*.

*This, this summer, has been a four month long drought of creativity for me. I haven't been updating frequently (or writing at all for that matter), but not because I have been too busy for it. The opposite, actually. It's been four months of stasis, repetition, the same, the same, wait, something different?, no, actually, the same again, circles, circles and circles, circles without cracks. And it hasn't exactly made for the juiciest material.

I could put down in words my opinions on the Olympics (opinions including but not limited to: Michael Phelps' obnoxious dolled-up mother, the laughable coverage on NBC, dislocated elbows, etc), but nobody cares.

Or I could tell you all about these tv shows I've been watching with intense dedication (Skins, Mad Men), usually running through a single season in a single day, but everybody's already seen them.

Or I could brag about all the books I've devoured this summer during all my time off, but (surprise!) I've barely read any. Instead I go to the Goodwill by my house at least twice a week and search through its impressive book section, usually coming out with about three or four titles each time for $2 a piece, and then I take them home and stack them precariously on the dresser in my bedroom.

So that's my nutshell summer. My summer has been a stack of dirty used books that is always just on the brink of toppling.

Any second now.

ontario's --pit--.

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:36:00 +0000

I've visited countless cities (mostly east, never west), lived in about four (faux-London being the latest map dot), and only ever dreamed of one (my big British fantasy). Toronto doesn't count in my calculations. Toronto never counts. It's always been the city that's a short patch of highway and a subway ride away from me; sufficiently far enough away that it doesn't qualify as home, and yet close enough nearby that it doesn't hold any appeal as a foreign object. I love travelling to cities on vacation solely for the pleasure of throwing myself into an unfamiliar map and quickly untangling my way through it-- I had the New York City subway memorized in half an hour. It's taken me 22 years to figure out the TTC, and even then I still have absolutely no idea what goes on east of Yonge Street.

Toronto was never my city, my vision. Funny, then, that I find myself now about to fully commit to this civic space for the next two years (at least). I just handed over the rent deposit today. I've just adopted this place.

I spent about two months scouring craigslist ads, peering for annoyingly bright orange rental signs in windows, and calling landlords who were quick to give me rehearsed dismissals. Apartments were seen and discounted, apartments were frantically applied for and just as quickly given to other (better?) applicants (families with children, young professionals, junior architects and the lot). The process of apartment hunting in downtown Toronto--bearing in mind that my preferred area to live in is a relatively small rectangular boundary (there's no way I can live north of Bloor! I'll get stabbed if I'm south of Dundas! The world just drops off west of little italy!)-- proved to be harder than most. It was easier to get into grad school than it was to secure a suitable place to live in the city: ultimately, success at this task came down to a mix of being both "good on paper" and personable in person, and neither is particularly easy. We looked, and found, and tried, and lost, over and over again. Desperation dug its hooks into us. But then, we finally lucked out--very deep into the eleventh hour, I might add-- with an apartment that almost seems a little too west but will likely turn out to be perfect.

So a room, an apartment, a new home, an entire new city is now mine-- all it took was a few months worth of searching, and a lifetime of getting over my obstinance resistance to the T dot.

the pump.

noreply@blogger.com (leslie) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:11:00 +0000

Ever since I was diagnosed four plus years ago, my grandma has made it her mission to send me every diabetes-related piece of information she can get her hands on. She's sent me emails about "exciting new developments in stem cell research!" (they never actually come to be), and newsletters from the Canadian Diabetes Association explaining the difference between type 1 and type 2 (sorry, grandma, but I already know), and carefully snipped newspaper articles about the disease's rising rate (I know I know I know). Her information for me has never been particular informative to me-- save, of course, for the time I read an article in one of her old Canadian Living magazines about a woman with type 1 who didn't control her blood sugars carefully enough as a teenager (ergh) and then drank too much as a university student (oh, fuck me) and then, due to resulting complications, ended up completely blind before the age of 30. That little bit of information did hit home, actually. I started bawling on my grandma's couch out of sheer fear.

So, I was surprised when this news release came out yesterday and my grandma wasn't automatically the first person to alert me about it. My mom, actually, was the one who called and woke me up and frantically told me to googlenews my disease. And there it was. And it changed everything.

I became a completely different person the moment I was diagnosed with type 1 on that June day four years ago. The switch was instanteous. My biggest accomplishments up to that point-- most likely my good marks or high school running career-- suddenly paled, and in time they meant even less. Managing this disease requires effort and attention every day, minute, second of my life. It's my full-time job, and my forever burden, and the most important thing I'll ever do, but it's also the thing most easily forgotten. I've had friends who took years to realize that I have diabetes, and some friends who probably still don't know. I'm always hiding just in the background, pricking my finger and wiping away the blood, stabbing my bare stomach with a needle beneath the veil of a table, frantically drinking down a bottle of orange juice in the checkout line at ValuMart to make sure my blood-sugar low passes before I reach the cashier. It's a full time job that I'm not allowed to take even one second away from, because everything I do right now determines what will happen to me later: if I don't keep my blood sugars under control now, there will complications waiting for me down the line. They'll be there. Just waiting.

I've always known that there was a potential solution out there, but I always discounted it. Well, not a "solution" as such, but a means to help keep my blood sugar levels under tighter control with the push of a button. The pump is an ugly, boxy little device that looks like a perma-pager and constantly delivers a dose of insulin to the individual via a needle inserted under the skin. Did I mention that it looks like a pager from the '90s? I know that this little beast can significantly improve one's ability to manage their blood sugar, but the fact that it has to be attached to the body at all times seemed a little off-putting to me. That, and the fact that a pump costs upwards of $5000, along with $200 for monthly supplies (none of it covered by my mom's drug plan). Being a poor undergrad student and future starving grad student, the pump has never even been a possibility for me. I was happy to dismiss its ugly appearance because I knew I wouldn't be able to consider it, at least not until I was a grown-up with a good job and benefits. But know, everything is different. Money is no longer an issue. Good health is the only thing that matters. I know that I'll always give my disease the care and attention it requires, but it's so wonderful to know that there are options out there to make it easier for me. The provincial government has sent down this wonderful (free) piece of equipment from heaven, and it is going to change everything.

This is my deus ex machina.