as Apple Martin is my witness

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

dirty secrets

"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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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