remember my friend beth?

i remember my friend beth. my generous, gregarious, funny, flawed, sweet friend beth.

i remember the tattoo she got that long weekend we spent in new orleans – a guardian griffin with a n’awlins crescent on her shoulder. she was a new yorker with a southern sensibility. she was equal parts impulsivity and fierce loyalty, protective to the core. her friends were her family, and she guarded those relationships closely. she would forgive her friends anything – any hurt, any slight, any neglect – the relationships came first, and her feelings came second. seems like she was always coming second to someone else, but that was her nature.

i remember the surprise birthday party she orchestrated for me – the only one i’ve ever had – because she knew how much it mattered. she had a way of honing in on the sensitive, achy spots in your heart, and tending to them. like a psychic healer, she always knew just what you needed most – a phone call, a gesture, a balm. she had a knack for knowing when you needed to talk, when you needed cheering, when you needed to be left alone. she was attuned to that kind of thing – she was always a caretaker, and when she cared for you she took care of you.

i remember her animals. i remember the day she got franny, her beloved golden retriever. franny was her first baby, but there were a lot more to follow. she could never turn away an animal in distress – sometimes to her own detriment. she didn’t always have as much money or space as she had heart, but there was no one else on earth i would have trusted more with the care of my pet. she would watch my dog when we went away and i always felt a bit guilty when i came back, knowing that she was probably nicer to my pooch than i was.

i remember her look. she was striking in that slavic way. tall and slender, all angles, with high cheekbones, dark hair and fair skin, and a red mouth – beth was never without her signature red lipstick. she had a loping walk – the kind you develop when you were real knobby-kneed as a kid, but she never outgrew it. she favoured classic tailoring, linens and silks and chunky silver jewelry. she had a closet full of crisp white shirts, but she liked to surprise people as well. a photographer friend of mine once used her as a model for a book cover he was shooting, with a blond bob wig and black gloves, very femme fatale, and she loved that. she turned heads without even trying, but she definitely enjoyed the attention.

i remember her generosity. she’d give you the shirt off her back, and she once very literally gave me the shoes off her feet. that generosity of spirit made you just want to soak her up, to drink it in like water. she often gave more than she had, and that sometimes left her in a hole – emotionally and financially. but if you needed something, anything, she was there. if you needed her tomorrow, she would be there yesterday. no hedging, no boundaries, no questions asked. it was that simple for her, and when you were around her, it made perfect sense. it was the only way she could live.

i remember her sense of humour. she was quirky and wacky light-years before quirky and wacky were cool. she loved a crude joke – crass, slapstick, that was right up her alley. she liked her humour unrefined and honest. she had a laugh that had a hint of snort to it, and sometimes it morphed into genuine snorting hilarity. which sounds unattractive, but it wasn’t – it was all part of her goofiness. goofy – that’s what she was. people can relate to that, it made her accessible and approachable and such fun to be around.

i remember beth as beautiful, tough as nails, vulnerable, rebellious, effusive, extroverted, resilient, self-destructive, warm, loving, scared and scarred.

last night, i found out that my friend beth has died. i’m still piecing together what happened. i’m still piecing together my heart and my memories. although we’d lost contact, i never stopped trying to find her, and i always figured at some point we would reconnect. that will never happen now, and all i can do is remember her as she was.

i remember my generous, gregarious, funny, flawed, sweet friend beth.

lynyrd skynyrd – free bird

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last night jonno and i watched “avatar”. not at the cinema, after paying £20 and dealing with the crowds and transport on a saturday night, as one might generally expect, but from the comfort of our living room.

yep, we download. and i don’t even feel a little bit guilty about it.

in fact, i’m quite glad after seeing “avatar” (which i found trite, formulaic, and downright corny [not to mention insulting on some levels]) that i did not spend an hour plus getting to and from the theatre. i’m quite glad that i didn’t have to worry about us not getting seats together. i’m glad i didn’t have to sit through a full *quarter-hour* of advertisements, and another 15 minutes of previews. and i’m quite glad that i didn’t fork out £20 for the ultimately disappointing experience.

all of these are factors which hold more and more sway in my decision about my movie-going (or not going) habits. it’s all become such a hassle. it’s all become so shamelessly overpriced (£10 for a ticket and another £5 for some popcorn and soda?!). it’s all become more about the marketing than the actual movie.

and it’s a model which no longer works. it’s outmoded. twentieth century. the idea that the filmmakers have a god-given right to hold you hostage and milk you for every penny in order to subsidise ever more ridiculously budgeted movies – well in the age of the bit torrent, i resent it, and i don’t have to put up with it. i’m voting with my bandwidth.

as are millions of others. a few years ago, bit torrents were the domain of the technically savvy. today, bit torrents are completely mainstream. sure, the enforcement agencies continue to try to crack down on torrent sites, with some success (mininova and the pirate’s bay having both recently gone under). but like a many headed hydra, more spring up to take their place.

and it’s not a new conundrum – the music industry has also faced the same issues. so one might ask, do i also download music?

no. and why would i? why would i spend time searching through dozens of torrent sites for a single well-seeded torrent of an album when all i want is one or two songs? why would i use peer-to-peer programs which are rife with bloatware and malware? why would i take the risk of downloading a virus from some unknown computer out there?

why would i do any of that when there’s itunes and amazon and emusic that allow me to easily download exactly the songs i want for an extraordinarily reasonable and addictive 99p per song? without risk, without hassle, without a second thought.

so here’s what would make me stop downloading movies: a digital rental of up to £5, that allows me to decide if i want to stay in to watch a film, that allows me to watch indie movies which i might otherwise have to wait for mainstream distributors to release on dvd to see, that doesn’t leave me feeling ripped off if i actually didn’t care for the movie, and that doesn’t try to fleece me with millions of unwanted adverts. and where nearly everyone has an “on demand” feature from a cable box, or has the ability to stream content over their computer, there is absolutely no reason this model can’t be done. it would cut also down on piracy and give the independents a wider audience.

what it *wouldn’t* do is force me to subsidise the next £300 million James Cameron piece of rubbish.

and i’m okay with that.

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warning: what follows is a rant. a petulant, self-indulgent, unkind, stomp-my-feet-temper-tantrum kind of rant. look away now if you don’t want to read further.

it’s the kind of rant borne of two cruddy, miserable days. it all started yesterday morning when the tube was suspended – i had to walk to the rail station with blistered feet in heels, and when i arrived, i was greeted with the sight of a massive hoarde of people bunching up and spilling out of the station.

this is one of the things i hate about brits: the tendency when everything goes tits up, to just wait like a herd of lowing, passive cattle, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. (told you i was going to get nasty.)

and the fact that i hate that characteristic just irritates me even further when a service like the tube (a very expensive and ill-run public service) seems to go haywire far too often. and people just put up with it.

so i was in a crummy mood. they weren’t letting people into the rail station (even though the rail *was* running, unlike the tube), and they were letting a bunch of people out a side exit, and i saw a few people slip into the station through the side exit. hell, i had a rail pass (and therefore didn’t need to validate my ticket at the gates) so i tried to do the same.

only to get violently shoved by the rail employee. yes, i was physically assaulted by a guy in a fluorescent vest on a fucking power trip who shouted, “what’s wrong with you?! you’re jumping the queue!” (i wonder if he would have dared lay a finger on a male passenger?)

because really, that’s all he cared about. not the fact that i pay through the nose for a tube service that never functions properly. not the fact that i was severely inconvenienced and made late for work. not the fact that the rail service which *was* running, was being curtailed in the name of crowd control rather than expediency.

no, no. the fact that i jumped the fucking queue gave him the right to shove me with his shoulder like a linebacker and scream in my face.

(my formal complaint of being physically assaulted, is now being dealt with – had i not been so shocked, i might have had the presence of mind to call the cops at the time.)

so i got home, and i was annoyed all evening. then today, i walked out the door to see this:

this is the shit from the neighbours. they don’t seem to understand that the front of my house is not a rubbish dump, so they regularly engage in what’s called “flytipping” here – illegal dumping of garbage, refuse, waste, etc. they dump their household rubbish bags in front of my house. they dump their old furniture in front of my house. they dump computer monitors and old ironing boards in front of my house.

this morning, i was treated to several piles of accountancy textbooks they’d apparently decided they no longer wanted. so i shoved them back in front of their driveway, and went off to work.

i had another crap day at work dealing with other people’s incompetence. (gah – can’t *anyone* do their jobs properly??!) and then came home to the pile of books… moved *back in front of my house*, papers flying up and down the street. i stormed off to the hardware store on the corner (who abut the alleyway where the entrance to these people’s flat is) and asked them if they knew who was dumping the shit. turns out, they don’t have anything to do with the people living in the flat, but have just been calling the council to come clear away the rubbish every time. same as i’ve been doing.

so this is what happens: we all know who dumps the rubbish. the council comes and cleans it up. then they just dump more rubbish again. and my tax money pays for it. argh!!!!! it’s beyond infuriating.

and finally, to cap it all off, the postman decided in his/her infinite wisdom, to leave my amazon parcel outside my front door – probably because they were too lazy to make out the collection card and drag the parcel back to the depot. when i found it, the two books which i was soo looking forward to, which were supposed to be inside were long gone.

this is what happens, though, when you’re an expat – a bad few days turns into a bout of effing and blinding about what a shithole of a country you live in, how you can’t believe you live in such a back-asswards place that’s stuck in the victorian era, how you can’t wait to get out because everyone and everything is supremely incompetent. how the most mundane things (transport, litter, post) can’t even get done properly, the natives are cattle, and it’s all gone to hell in a handbasket, god save us when the olympics arrive!

the little (and not so little) annoyances pile up until they become a mountain of self-pity that you can’t seem to dig yourself out from under. the difficulties of daily life become magnified until you attribute them to an entire country and people who can’t possibly do anything right, and it would all be different *if only you lived somewhere else*.

and i do want to live somewhere else. i am keening to live somewhere else. this smae thing happened with new york, and it happened with boston – the familiarity really does breed contempt. but when it’s another country and culture, it’s just so much easier to say the brits suck, than to acknowledge that urban living can be crummy sometimes. the city closeness starts to press in around you until you feel you can’t breathe, but you can’t yet escape, so let’s blame everything on the british. you can’t appreciate any of the beauty of the city (look! historic buildings and sushi restaurants side-by-side! the river and the theatre and the lights and the multi-culti populace and the palace!) because you’re so busy staring downcast into the dirty gutters and breathing the bus fumes. i’m sure vancouver doesn’t have any dirty gutters and bus fumes, and it certainly doesn’t have any sucky brits.

this will pass. i know it will. but right now i’m looking down at the gutters. the city is squeezing the life out of me, i have no books, and there’s rubbish outside my front door.

bloody britain.

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so they say the third time is the charm.

this is the third time i’m entered to run the edinburgh marathon, taking place on 23rd may. twice previously, i became injured and had to withdraw – last year, just a few days before the race.

however with the help of some physiotherapy and my natural stubborn streak, i am running again, and determined to complete my fourth marathon.

and as i’m going through all the trouble, i thought i’d try to fundraise some money for an organisation very near and dear to my heart: the elephant nature foundation.

those who know me well, know just how strongly i feel about the work that the elephant nature foundation does. Lek and and her team work tirelessly to save the asian elephant, rescuing one ellie at a time. Lek is also a brave and outspoken advocate of eliminating traditional abusive training methods.

having seen first hand the dedication work of Lek and her team, and having experienced the beauty of an “elephant haven” where ellies can spend their days just being the gorgeous creatures they are, i cannot recommend this organisation highly enough.

lek and the elephant nature park have been recognised for their work by the humane society of the united states, national geographic, and time magazine.

but don’t just take my word for it – read more about Lek and her respected foundation in the news here. watch videos of the ellies they have rescued here.

a hundred years ago, there were 100,000 elephant in Thailand. today there are fewer than 4,000 Thai elephants left.

if you haven’t already read about our experience at the elephant nature park, you can do so here, and see more pics here.

they are magnificent, sentient beings, and lek’s commitment and drive are an inspiration to me. if she can dedicate her life to saving the ellies, in the face of incredible odds, then i can certainly try to run a few hours and raise a few bob to do my part.

a world without these amazing creatures is not a world i want to live in. please consider sponsoring me at my justgiving page.

thanks in advance.

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my biggest pet peeve these days? titles.

over here in the u.k., titles are *mandatory* for practically everything. every form you fill out, every account you open, every online purchase you make, you are required to choose a title.

stop! until you choose a title, you may not pass go! you may not buy that set of plastic mixing bowls for £9.99 until you answer the very important title question!

and while most of the time, it’s the standard mr./mrs./ms./miss choice, being that we live in the u.k., often the choices will include the more exotic honourifics lord/lady/sir/dame etc. etc. etc.

i’ve always been against titles on principle – there are very few instances where my gender and/or marital status are required knowledge for a retail exchange or provision of services to be carried out smoothly and successfully. it’s really wholly unnecessary in 99% of all instances. but in such places where it was required, i have always, always used ‘ms.’ as a title – partly as a nod to second wave feminism, but mostly because it’s none of their damn business whether or not i’m married and i like being cryptic.

over here though? even though i’ve always selected ‘ms.’ every bloody time they force me to use a title? they still put ‘miss’. without fail, on every item where jonno’s and my own differing surnames are included, i am ‘miss’. but even on my own bank account, my paycheque, my junk mail… all ‘miss’, every last one of them. for some reason, ‘ms.’ in the u.k. is not widely used… or, it would seem, acknowledged.

frankly, it pisses me off to no end. the insistence on a title where none is needed (does it *really* make any difference to my veg box order if i am baroness jen, or professor jen, or mrs. jen?) is idiotic enough, but in a country where arbitrary class designations are still so rife (as if by being born into a “noble” family, lord poshbottom of earlchestertonshire is somehow better than anyone else), and where the outmoded queen still sits on her throne pretending to be important in the world, i can kind of understand it.

but to force me to use a title and then not even honour my elected honourific? well that’s just galling. i may not think that titles are important, but to blatantly disregard what i choose to call myself is downright rude.

so lately i’ve been rebelling in my own childish, but amusing way – selecting titles at random. my grocery account is under ‘captain’ jen, my cable bill arrives for ‘mr.’ jen, and so on, and so forth. if they’re going to force me to play their little stupid, bullshit, classist game, then play it i will. it’s petty and small, i know, and entertains no one but myself.

but i can’t wait to use ‘marchioness’. or hell, maybe i’ll just start making some up.

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things that drive me crazy about jonno:

- he leaves empties everywhere. empty tubs of peanut butter, empty cartons of milk, empty bottles of shampoo. there’s nothing like going to use some clingfilm/margarine/coffee only to find a container full of air.

- he kicks me in his sleep. rhythmically. he’s got periodic limb movement disorder, which means that just as i’m ready to fall asleep… i get kneecapped. it does not make for restful nights.

- he smokes. i’ve been trying to get him to quit for years, but no dice. my favourite is when he has a cigarette right before climbing in bed.

- he’s immensely cheery when he’s hungover. no matter how rough the night before was, he springs out of bed in a sprightly, hypermaniacally happy manner. when i can barely open my eyes, it makes me want to strangle him.

things that drive me crazy about jonno:

- he makes me belly-laugh, every goddamn day. it’s a kooky, goofy side that he keeps private, but when we’re alone together, his offbeat sense of humour is infectious, and it makes my life immensely richer.

- he is loyal to a fault. family and friends always come first, and those priorities are crystal clear for him. moreover, not only does he put up with my crazy family, but he actually likes and values them – and the feeling is mutual. that makes all the difference.

- when he wakes up in the morning, with his sleepy eyes and tousled hair, i can see the little kid he used to be. and it makes my heart melt.

- he’s driven to achieve the things that are important to him. for nearly two years now, he’s been studying for an accountancy diploma via online coursework. at home, evenings and weekends, he’s been turning down social engagements, and studying his little brains out with a discipline i am in awe of. and he finally received his diploma, just the other day. i couldn’t be prouder.

- he is steady and calm and unfazed by all my insanity. he is kind and good to the core. he always does the right thing. he is a better cat parent than me. he has the most wonderful eyes.

i love the hell out of that guy.

happy anniversary to us! five years down, only 45 to go.

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i am endlessly fascinated by the soundtrack of my own life – it ebbs and flows, swallows up the new and spits out the old, wandering in this direction and that.  it is always morphing into something new that surprises me every time i turn around – kinda like the evolution of personal relationships, my relationship with music is ever-changing.  and one of the best parts of discovering new personal relationships is discovering new music.  it becomes the background theme to the times and places and people that you will forevermore associate with a particular song or album.  and it is this emotional panorama that makes music so intensely, acutely personal.

those sentimental attachments have been playing a lot on my mind, of late – and playing a lot in my mind.  a lot of memory lane has been on repeat in my brain.  so often music *is* our memory – a stand-in for emotion and nostalgia.  memories of our childhood, memories of events, memories of family, friends and lovers.

so often, long after the details are forgotten, the music remains.

if you could distill an era of your own down to a few songs, what would they represent?  with that in mind, i thought it would be interesting to do a series of playlists based on the decades of my own life…

… starting with the 90s.  i graduated high school in 1990, so the 90s were the decade when i went to university, the decade i lived in montreal and new york, the decade i got married.  the decade i was young and then grew up.

AC/DC -You Shook Me All Night Long – this song is my university drinking song, the song we used to blast before we went out, and the song we would drunkenly blast when we got home, much to the annoyance of everyone else in the dorm.  i was 17, underage even by canadian standards, and determined to break out of my “good girl” mould.  this song is all about freedom and rebellion, and it was the beginning of mine.  and lets face it,  is there a more rocking drinking song? i submit there is not.

The Smiths – Asleep – this was the song on endless repeat the months in university that i spent contemplating suicide.  after a fun few months as a freshman, i got dumped.  hard.  by the person who’d introduced me to the smiths.  combined with a lot of other crap going on, it was the beginning of a downward spiral.  and though i’m pretty sure this song is probably the most popular suicide song ever, when you’re fast in the grips of the blackest depression, it seems like it’s meant for just you. and when you’re looking at the snow six floors below your window, this song provides the words to the feeling that you could never put words to for yourself.

Beastie Boys – No Sleep Till Brooklyn – two years in, i dropped out of university and moved to brooklyn. this song was playing.  coincidence and fate are sometimes two sides of the same coin.

Notorious B.I.G. – Juicy – this was one of our rooftop songs.  the first years in brooklyn were the poorest, and yet richest of my life.  it felt like i was truly living for the first time, and i was in the best city in the world. and when you feel like that, you gotta go up on the rooftop.

Counting Crows – Rain King – i hate this song.  for a year in 1994-1995 in brooklyn, i lived with 7 other people in one apartment, and they played this all seemed to play this fucking album incessantly.  i was working full time, going to school full time, and i would come home, exhausted and needing to write a paper, only to find giant impromptu parties in my living room and the fucking, fucking, fucking counting crows playing.

Diana Ross – I’m Coming Out – the upside of living with 7 other people was that there was always a party in my living room.  we lived just above a liquor store, and with a russian who always had quality vodka in the freezer.  the girls would get wasted on gallon jugs of cheap white wine and do the bus stop while the guys smoked bongs and drank vodka.  it was hella fun.

Heatwave – Always And Forever – in the summer of 1997, i got married.  this was our song.  i know, i know!  but that’s the thing about couples’ songs – you don’t choose them, they choose you.  it was a ridiculously hot day, i was so late that our minister nearly had to leave, we got married in the park, i wore a white dress and purple sandals.  i don’t really remember too much else about it.  that’s the weird thing about weddings – you think you’ll remember every detail, but it all goes by in a giant blur.  but i remember this song.  funny – until i looked it up just now, i thought it was by ‘peaches and herb’.  just goes to show.

Len – Steal My Sunshine – in february 1999 we moved from brooklyn to the burbs of boston.  it turned out to be ill-advised for so very many reasons:  i took a job i came to loathe, and it was effectively the deathknell for my marriage.  but for one glorious summer, it all seemed fantastic.  we had a giant flat with a garden.  we had a dog.  we had a car.  i used to come home from work, crack open a beer, bring the radio and newspaper outside, turn on the sprinkler and let the dog loose.  it was my own little slice of suburban heaven, and this song captured it all.

turns out, i wouldn’t be that happy again for a long time.  but i didn’t know that at the time, and i did not yet know of all the changes the new millenium would bring for me…

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valentine’s day sucks. there, i said it.

it all starts out innocently enough. in early grade school i remember the required annual arts and crafts projects, where we’d all fashion giant envelopes out of stapled manila folders, sloppily glue on red construction paper hearts and glitter, add our names in big block letters, then hang them off the sides of our desks. in the weeks before the holiday, we’d have to have our parents take us to buy a box of cheap drugstore valentines – the pressure to select the “right” kind weighing heavily. the teacher would have already distributed a list of class names, and in an attempt at inclusion, we were supposed to write a card out to each and every child. some did, some didn’t, and those of us whose parents made us write one for everyone on the list would still allocate the “worst” of our cards to the kids we disliked. on valentine’s day, we shoved them all into a big box on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room, hoping desperately that at least a few in the pile had our names on them. finally, late in the afternoon, we’d have a party, eating cupcakes and crisps at our desk while the teacher distributed the cards into everyone’s named and decorated folders.

to see some kids’ folders bulging with cards, while some kids’ envelopes held just a few token, parent-enforced valentines … that’s where my dislike of the holiday began. it was a popularity contest, pure and simple. i was always somewhere in the middle, but i always feared being one of those kids whose thin folder told the world they were a loser.

in middle school and high school, it only got worse. the schools (in a brilliant stroke of fundraising) offered carnations (or for high-schoolers, roses) that you could purchase and have sent with a note to your “valentine”, for the whole school to see. as in grade school, there were always some girls who went home with their arms full of flowers, and many, like me, who felt hopelessly uncool because we had none. the pressure to be “in a relationship” on the day, just so someone would be obligated to send you a flower, was intense. if you weren’t “dating” someone, you were unsophisticated and inexperienced. and god help you if you happened to be gay – the social isolation already experienced by those kids was only brought into sharper focus by a holiday which emphasised just how different they were. they weren’t just shy and inexperienced – they were outcast non-participants.

as an adult, all the gut-instinctive things i hated about the holiday as a kid have only been reified. the obligation to spend money, the perpetuation of heteronormative stereotyping, the portrayal of women as wanting/needing to be showered with prescribed gifts of diamonds/chocolates/roses/childish teddybears, the pressure to publicly display affection, the cheapening of genuine sentiment by demanding it be expressed on a given day, and the social exclusion of people who are either not in a typical monogamous romantic relationship, or (horrors!) not in a relationship at all… it all adds up to a big giant yuk.

so i’m boycotting valentine’s day. we don’t need more flowers, cards or chocolates in this world …we need more real love, understanding, and acceptance.

and what i want to know is, where’s the holiday for *that*?!

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i pass this poster every day, twice a day. plenty of people see this and think it’s a sensible advert.

i see it every day and it makes me irate.

it reminds me of this wonderful advert that the police put out at holiday time:

it is not my job to make sure unlicensed mini-cab drivers don’t rape me. that is the job of the *fucking police*.

funny, i don’t see any drinking or mini-cab adverts aimed at warning men. and if there’s an expectation that men should be safe drinking, and taking cabs, and can do so free from assault, then shouldn’t we hold the same expectations of safety for women?

we don’t make people or society safer by telling women they shouldn’t do what men do. you know, drink. and take cabs.

in a nutshell, this is the problem with ads like this: you *cannot* make women reponsible for “protecting themselves” without also implying that the corollary is then also true – namely, that if you *don’t* “protect yourself”, then you are somehow responsible if something happens.

it does not make sense on any logical planet to say, “we’re not victim blaming… but just in case, you should avoid becoming a victim”.

even worse, trying to scare women into never taking cabs or never drinking *does not make us safer*. it does not put rapists behind bars, and it does not innoculate us from harm.

i’m sick of seeing horrible, sad depictions of women who “should’ve known better”, crying with regret and shame because they didn’t heed the warnings, and now have been raped. (after all, don’t they know if they’d just been more cautious, they would’ve been safe ? but they were too brazen! and now look – they’ve been violated instead! look at them scream!)

vomit.

no. what i want to see is rape conviction rates that make it into the goddamn double digits. what i want to see is women who are unafraid to do the same things men do – walk the streets at night, drink (sometimes too much, even), take cabs alone. what i want to see is a society that no longer tells women they need to protect themselves from potential rapists, but that demands laws and policing that truly protect *everybody*.

take every last penny put into “sensible” victim-blaming adverts like these, and put that money towards stopping rape.

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sure, everyone has nicknames for their pets… but i like to think we put a little imagination into it.

zeke
ezekiel
zekey
zizi
zekelino
bubba
buddy
pipsqueak
dingleberry
fuzzbucket
twinkletoes
prancer
frog-stomper
teh kitteh
furry feline friend
peeping tom

…and on sunday mornings at 5:30am, an especially heartfelt “for-the-love-of-all-that-is-holy-and-good-shuddup-already!!!”

lucky for him he’s pretty cute.

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one of the things i have come to truly appreciate about the u.k. is that it is, by and large, a pretty secular country. that’s not to say that people here do not practice religion – but that even without the benefit of any constitutional provision about separation of church and state, religion plays a infintesimally small (if any) role in politics, policy-making, and the public conversation at large.

and that’s just the way brits like it.

even so, i’ve been utterly surprised at the size of the furore over the pope’s recent comments in advance of his imminent visit to the u.k. the pope strongly criticised the u.k. equality laws which are designed to prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender… even in the employ of the catholic church.

The pope said: “The effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal [of equality] has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

turns out, the british public very much dislike being told what to do by a figurehead of another country, much less a roman catholic one. see, britain’s official church is the church of england – they did away with the pope a while ago when he and king henry had a falling out over the granting of his divorce, and haven’t had much use for him since. between a quarter to one half of the country consider themselves to be of “no religion”, depending on which poll you believe.

additionally, given the perceived influence of the catholic church on the recent u.s. healthcare reform palaver, and the general distaste for the role religion plays in so much of u.s. policy (stuff like “don’t ask, don’t tell”, the abortion wars, and fundamentalist congressional evangelism just do not happen here), and the pope’s comments have made him almost instantaneously persona non grata.

the backlash and condemnation has been swift and loud.

and immensely, immensely gratifying.

as an atheist who grew up in a tradition of church and belief, i understand how and why people want and need religion in their lives. i may not want or need a religion, but i would never begrudge others theirs. i understand how people feel divine guidance is important in their daily existence. while i haven’t believed in a god for many years now, i understand what it feels like to do so.

what i do not, and have never understood, however, is a belief in any higher power who views some individuals as lesser humans because of who they are. what i do not, and have never understood, is the need to try to dictate others legal rights based on a very personal spirituality (or lack thereof). what i do not, and have never understood, is the sheer hubris of those who believe that *their answers* to the greatest of life’s mysteries are *the* answers to the greatest of life’s mysteries. what i do not, and have never understood, is the audacity of those in positions of power who would use their belief systems to reinforce their power by stripping others of theirs.

so i have no love for the pope, who seems to feel threatened because our laws take away his right to discriminate against gays, women, and people of non-catholic persuasion. i have no love for the pope who uses his bully pulpit to tell our government how to run our country. i have no love for the pope who as the leader of billions of believers, still espouses a hurtful message of exclusion.

and for once, i am surrounded by compatriots who feel the same.

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driving past in the rainy night, the neon sign outside the solicitor’s office said, “need a will?”

ha! i said to jonno. you’re welcome to my four year old computer, wedding ring, and my iphone if I die.

i said it with a casual laugh, but i wasn’t joking. i have nothing of substance, nothing of value.

most of the time, i’m perfectly okay with that. most of the time, it pleases me – that rootless, aimless part of me that eschews being tied down to any place or any thing. most of the time, i’m comfortable flying through this world unfettered by objects. i don’t feel lacking, and i don’t want. it’s freeing.

but every once in a while, it strikes me just how different my life is to that of my cohorts – who have houses and cars and children and stock portfolios. things requiring planning, responsibility, insurance, protection. things requiring a will.

have you seen “up in the air”? when he’s talking about casting off that backpack? that scene completely resonated with me. that’s what i identify with. i thoroughly enjoyed that movie – i was envious of his spartan existence… until i suddenly realised that we’re supposed to feel sorry for him. it hit me: i’m supposed to be embarrassed by my dearth of things.

things = grownup. people without things are juvenile. people without things are not to be taken seriously. a crawling flicker of shame began to creep up from the pit of my stomach.

and so most days i continue along happily in my uncluttered lifestyle, oblivious to the pity or scorn of others. most days, i can laugh at the idea of a will. most days i could put all the things i hold dear in this world into a backpack, and be grateful for it.

but every so often, out of the blue, through a fictional movie or a simple sign passed in the dark… every so often, this culture has a way of making me feel like a real freak.

everything must go – the weakerthans

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the thing is, i can honestly say that if i lived in a world without babies, i’d almost never think about them.

but i don’t live in a world without babies – i live in a world which is chockablock with them. both of my sisters gave birth to their second children in the last few months, my old university friend just had one. babies are in the street, the topic of conversation at work, on the television. babies are everywhere – they are the universal denominator.

and so, like it or not, the world is designed to force me to continually confront my decision not to have any. biology makes it difficult to avoid having children. society makes it difficult to avoid thinking about them.

i mention this because even though i’ve long since decided that giving birth isn’t for me… i would be lying if i said i never thought about it. every woman of childbearing age thinks about it, and i am no different. how could i not?

in fact, i might think about it more than many – because every day, i am made to continually evaluate and re-evaluate my “no” decision, in a world where the default is set to “yes”.

every day, people around me are pregnant. every day the media around me categorises women as mothers and mothers-to-be. every day i see or hear or read about children and babies and parents and how special and magical and wonderful it is – for everyone else.

and setting myself deliberately outside that circle, where i have consciously chosen not to share in the commonality of that experience, where i have opted out of one of the most singularly unifying human roles…

… well, sometimes it is a lonely place to be. sometimes it *does* cause me to question, in spite of myself. more to the point: sometimes i wish that i wanted a baby the way everyone else wants babies, because not wanting them feels like missing out. it’s annoying that babies take up my dedicated brainspace, that i so often find myself thinking about something i don’t want. but it’s built into the automated system: whenever i see a baby, my mind involuntarily does a little self-audit: “sure you don’t want one of those? yes, i’m sure. okay then… but are you *really* sure?” biology is an annoying fucker.

society knows this. it plays on this. i have unending sympathy for women who are infertile, because i imagine that, like them, i am hyperattuned to the saturation of messages that insist babies and children are the single most fulfilling life event to ever happen to a person. and i’m sure it is for those who have them – but it is tiresome to have to mentally reassert that my life is not bereft of meaning because i don’t want a baby.

yes, i’m actually saying that not having kids is sometimes lonely and tiresome. that’s hard to understand for most. and no reason to actually have one, of course.

still, it’s impossible to deny – in the face of all my certainty, the world that is full-of-babies constantly tries to throw clouds of doubt. and sometimes i can’t help but think the easier, less solitary path would have been acquiescence. to do what everyone does because everyone does it.

but that’s no reason to have a kid either. i know that, and believe wholeheartedly in my choice – i just wish life wasn’t constantly forcing me to think about it so often.

because it gets tiresome. and it can be lonely.

pressure free – nada surf

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(see here for my blog for choice entries from 2009, 2008, 2007)

“This year, we are dedicating Blog for Choice Day 2010 to the legacy of Dr. George Tiller. Dr. Tiller often wore a button that simply read, “Trust Women.” As we reflect on Dr. Tiller’s contribution and the current state of choice, our question to you is this: What does “Trust Women” mean to you?”

this really resonates with me. last year, in the wake of dr. tiller’s horrific murder, i found myself arriving at some surprising conclusions – that “trust women” extends far beyond the issue of abortion rights.

to live in a fully realised egalitarian society means that we must trust women:

-to control their own lives
-to control every aspect of their own bodies
-to make decisions that are right for them
-to make decisions that are right for their families and relationships
-to exercise the same kinds of autonomy, freedom and choice that are afforded to men

..and trust that doing so will lead to stronger societies for us all.

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you know, i guess i’ve been pretty lucky so far – for as long as i’ve been a massachusetts voter, i’ve had the luxury of knowing that my two congressional senators were champions of most the things i hold dear as a self-avowed bleeding-heart liberal. i’ve known that my two senators were in favour of women’s rights and choice, social services and benefits for the poor, environmental causes, full civil rights for all races/sexualities/gender identities, and protection of individual’s rights to privacy and speech. i knew, without even checking, that ted kennedy and john kerry were always on my side of the vote.

and now, i’ve been lumped with a representative whose politics i not only disagree vehemently with, but who will be actively voting against my interests as a woman, as a progressive, as a humanist. that sets me on edge just thinking about it.

worse than that, though, is that this vote was a proxy vote for the rest of the country. and that fills me with despair. it has taken nearly seven years living outside the u.s. to realise just how conservative and insular so many americans are. they don’t care about healthcare for all, they care about taxes. they don’t care about gay rights, they care about protecting their own hetero-normative mythologies. they don’t care about women’s rights, they care about their own patriarchal religious beliefs. they don’t care about global warming, they care about not spoiling the view from their condo with wind turbines. they don’t care about the american dream, they just want to make sure someone’s not stealing their dishwashing jobs.

ted kennedy must be turning over in his grave.

i was there for the obama election. i dared allow myself to hope that people wanted a kinder, gentler society. i’ve often felt alienated from my countrymen over the past seven years, and i’ve often thought that because of that, i could never go back. turns out, one-in-five obama voters supported brown.

today, what i know is this: there is one less vote for the kind of america i want to live in, and my hope was too fragile to sustain this kind of blow.

so fuck you, massachusetts. if you don’t care about me, why should i care about you? a friend recently posted this on their facebook profile, and it’s so apt that i’m quoting it here:

“elections belong to the people. it is their decision. if they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will have to just sit on their blisters.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

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*thwack*. the sharp point of an elbow slammed into the back of my head and i saw stars float in front of my eyes.

sitting at my desk, i hunched low and kept my eyes down, hoping the teacher hadn’t noticed.

*thwack*. the elbow met my head again as she returned to her seat, ostensibly using the wall-mounted pencil sharpener. i did my best not to flinch visibly, even as the words on my paper swam in front of me.

crystal n_________. probably the smallest girl in the entire school. my tormentor.

hard to believe that back at the start of september, we’d been friends. i started sixth grade in a different middle school from all my old fifth grade classmates. at eleven, i was shy and awkward, with a choppy home-grown haircut, still getting used to my brown owl-like glasses. so when i recognised crystal from the accelerated enrichment class we’d both been in the previous year, it was a huge relief. we were both learning to play the flute, both liked prince and wore purple legwarmers. crystal had an indefinable edge to her, a coolness combined with the defensiveness of living in a grittier area of town – but i didn’t care. we quickly started hanging out together, passing notes, exchanging stickers, and even had a few sleepovers where we played 1999 til we wore out the record.

and one evening, lying in our sleeping bags in the dark, she confided to me that she was abused at home.

i didn’t know what to do – what do you do when you’re little and someone drops that kind of reality in your lap? i only knew that when someone reveals something bad, you’re supposed to tell someone in authority. someone responsible. and so i persuaded her to tell our teacher.

we sat in the teacher’s meeting room, the three of us. i don’t remember what was said, but i remember staring at the wall as if my life depended on it. i’m sure the teacher said all the right things, made the appropriate reassurances.

that wall was seafoam green.

what came after that, was a fury directed at me that blindsided me, spun me round with the force of being clocked. at began with a campaign of silence. crystal no longer spoke to me. when i tried to talk to her, find out what was going on, she looked through me as if looking through a ghost. my notes and calls went unanswered. i couldn’t understand what i’d done to make her reject me so completely. but she never let up, not for one second. from that moment in the teacher’s meeting room, with the seafoam green walls, it was if i had ceased to exist.

until, that is, she switched alliances. crystal and i had been a pair of oddball friends, but somehow less odd for begin together. everyone else in our class had pre-established friends from years of graduating up through the grades together. she and i had become friends out of necessity. but now she began cultivating relationships with the popular girls, currying favour with them through her acid remarks and brazenness. as the leaders at the top of the food chain, they admired someone who could act so tough. they took her into the clique, and she soon became one of them.

i’m not sure what she told them about me, but it must have been pretty awful. previously they’d ignored me – i was completely peripheral to their day-to-day, not even worthy of attention. once crystal joined their group, all that changed. they began going out of their way to trip me, sneer at me, steal my books off my desk when i wasn’t looking and hide them. to them, i was something for their amusement – it made them laugh to knock my flour on the floor in home economics class, or snigger at a private joke until my face burned red. it was crystal, however, who reserved a special kind of hatred for me.

“you’re dead. after school, you’re dead,” the note flung surreptitiously into my lap read. i managed to leave unseen by the rear exit of the school, and walk home by the back streets that day. but she wouldn’t let up – she hissed epithets in my ear when no one was looking, continually threaten to beat me up, shoved vicious notes through the slats of my locker. and her specialty – the elbow to the back of the head with an innocent look on her face, while i swallowed the pain.

and day after day, i endured it in silence.

i don’t know why i didn’t tell anyone. perhaps i knew without asking that the adults couldn’t do much. after all, she was so sneaky about most of it, it was invisible to the naked eye. perhaps i assumed that without proof, no one would believe me. perhaps i knew any intercession on my behalf might make things worse.

when, towards the end of the long school year, i finally told my mother, i remember only this: she offered me a prayer. a prayer that i clung to, repeated ceaselessly like a balm. a prayer that did little to stop the bullying, but somehow felt soothing nonetheless.

god has not promised
skies always blue
flower strewn pathways
all our lives through

god has not promised us
sun without rain
joy without sorrow
peace without pain

but god has promised us
strength for the day
rest for the weary
light for the way

god has promised us
help from above
unfailing sympathy
undying love.

i don’t know why or how that was supposed to make me feel better, but it did. even as i stumbled home in shame, hot tears running down my cheeks when i couldn’t hold them back until i got home. it makes me angry now, that message – that somehow the torment of that year was part of my cross to bear, and that if i only believed hard enough, i could continue to bear it with god’s help. no child should believe that the cruelty of others is part of god’s will.

and i did bear it. sixth grade finally ended, and by the following autumn, crystal and her friends had moved into different classes. i was once again blessedly ignored, forgotten about.

but i’ve never forgotten about her.

as an adult, i came to understand, of course, why she turned against me so viciously, in an effort to protect herself from someone who knew her secrets. funnily enough, i was a threat *to her*, though even in all that grief, it never once occurred to me to lash out, or use what i knew to discredit her. i understand why she did what she did.

i can understand it, but even now, more than twenty-five years later, i can’t forgive it.

i looked her up recently on facebook, out of curiosity. and there she was. looking almost exactly the same, only an older version of the eleven year old she was. my stomach seized up involuntarily – it seems unbelievable to me that someone who’s lived so long in my memory as this feared image could be right there, looking innocent in her curls as ever. if her facebook profile is anything to go by, she doesn’t seem like she ever softened at all. i guess she might’ve had a difficult life if she was so hardened by eleven. maybe life didn’t get any better for her after that.

and of course, i wonder if she ever thinks of me. if she’s ever sorry for what she did, the hell she made my life for that whole year. writing about it now, the tears i never let her see then, still spring easily to my eyes. it probably doesn’t even register on her memory.

i wish i could say the same.

just like anyone – aimee mann

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how long can you hold on to a dream?  i was talking to my work colleague the other day about our current disillusionment with our jobs.  and they’re *fine* jobs – they’re good, solid jobs that make a difference to others.  but we just sort of fell into these roles, and they’re jobs that we’re good at, but not passionate about.   we spent an hour daydreaming about the kinds of things we wished we were doing instead.  “so what do you want to be when you grow up? ha ha ha,”  – but the laughter was hollow.

then the other day, amity wrote a blog post about not knowing which direction to head in her future.   and i, (always so quick with the sage advice that i am incapable of following myself), said don’t worry! lots of people are just feeling their way along in life! you’ll get there eventually!

but those two occurrences have left me feeling very unsettled.

i don’t remember how it was that i came to know i wanted to be a therapist, but at seventeen when i was applying to university, i knew that that was my ultimate goal.  there was never any question – i’ve always just known.

and now…well, three weeks ago i turned 37.

and in talking about it, it suddenly hit me like a punch to the gut – the hard realisation that *twenty years later*, i am no closer to my dream than i was then.

fuck me. twenty years.

oh sure, i’ve got a b.a., and i’ve made two aborted half-attempts at getting into grad school.  but those jokes i make about “working on a 50 year career plan” are worn threadbare of amusement.  i look at friends who are doing jobs they really love and wonder why the hell i’m not.  i’m filled with a deep, disquieting jealousy.

how did i let this happen?  i still want to be a therapist just as much as i did those twenty eager years ago.  more so, even.  it’s all i’ve ever really wanted to do, always been my ideal.  i can even picture myself doing it – i can imagine my office, i can imagine what i would wear, i can imagine what i would say.   i know i’d be good at it too, damnit.  if there was ever anything i thought was destined to be in my life, that’s it.

and every day i spend stuck where i am now, is one more day that i’m not working towards making that dream happen.

part of the holdup is that up until now j and i have been dithering about our moving plans – i wanted to hold out for more travelling opportunities first, he wanted to get to canada as soon as possible.   back-and-forth we go about the best approach, who will apply for a visa, how much money we need in the bank, can we take off for another couple months, yadda, yadda, yadda.

it’s the paralysis of indecision, and i’m sinking in it.

so the other day when i realised it had been twenty years, twenty fucking years, since i first knew “what i want to be when i grow up”… well, it occurred to me that maybe it’s actually time to grow up.

enough with the half-assed attempts, enough with always wanting to do just-one-more-thing first, enough with being stuck in the kind of job that makes me jealous of other people’s jobs.  i’ve been casting about for something new to anchor to, a new challenge – and i think i’ve found it.

for twenty years, it’s been there all along.

distopian dream girl – built to spill

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under the bush administration, i used to hear from a lot of people who said they wanted to move to the u.k. because they thought it was “more enlightened”.

to those of you who imagined that britain is some sort of liberal utopia, i present to you three news items from today:

5 convicted in Britain over protest at parade

LONDON — A court found five British Muslim men guilty on Monday of harassment and using insulting language during a protest they had staged at a parade welcoming British troops home from Afghanistan. The men had shouted slogans describing the soldiers as “murderers,” “rapists” and “baby killers.”

The highly unusual trial, in a district court in Luton, a town with a large Muslim population 30 miles north of London, was seen by the defendants’ supporters as a rare test of Britain’s liberal free speech laws. Lawyers for the men argued during testimony last week that they had been justified in the words they displayed on placards and shouted at the soldiers because they were speaking “the truth.”

But the district judge, Carolyn Mellanby, found five of the seven defendants guilty of offenses under Britain’s public order laws, specifically of using “threatening, abusive or insulting words” and of “behavior likely to cause harassment and distress.”

now here i have to take exception with the n.y. times characterisation of britain’s free speech laws as “liberal”. in fact, as i’ve pointed out here many times before, there is no such thing as “free speech” in the u.k. – only that speech which has not been made illegal. and “hate speech” which is thought to be unduly inflammatory or potentially provoking violence, is illegal.

which brings me neatly to exhibit b:

britain moves to ban controversial islamic group

LONDON (AP) — The British government banned an Islamist group notorious for glorifying al-Qaida and tied to terror plots at home and abroad, but its Lebanon-based spiritual leader promised to reorganize under a different name.

The group, Islam4UK, will be banned starting Thursday after its British leader, Anjem Choudary, threatened to bring hundreds of people marching in protest through the streets a small market town known for honoring the British soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The latest ban puts the group in the same league with terror organizations such as al-Qaida, and the Tamil Tigers. It could lead to the arrest of anyone meeting under the Islam4UK name or using the group’s insignia.

The group, previously known as Al-Muhajiroun, was banned before only to change its name and resurface again.

nope, no freedom of assembly here either! setting aside the obvious inanity of “banning” something which can simply reform the following day under another name, you’d assume that if they were actual terrorists, they could be arrested under the terrorism act (rather than just oh, “banned”), right?

oh, wait. someone already said that.

“‘Shouldn’t we, as a democracy and a country which upholds the rule of law and order, be banning individuals who break the law rather than banning organizations?” spokesman [for The Muslim Council of Britain] Inayat Bunglawala said.

and speaking of the terrorism act:

stop and search powers of the terrorism act ruled illegal by the european court of human rights.

Police powers to use terror laws to stop and search people without grounds for suspicion are illegal, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.

The Strasbourg court has been hearing a case involving two people stopped near an arms fair in London in 2003.

It said that Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton’s right to respect for a private and family life was violated.

Home Office Minister David Hanson MP said he was “disappointed” and would considering whether to appeal.

those are the same laws which have in the past few years pretty much allowed any police person to stop and search any person anywhere without reasonable cause… as long as they record it in a notebook. they’ve made excellent use of this law – using it for everything from trying to get knives off the streets to harrassing climate change protestors to intimidating news photographers and tourists from taking photos of tourist attractions… but not actually catching many terrorists.

so tell me again what kind of “enlightened” society i live in?

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yesterday “jen’s den of iniquity” passed its 6 year anniversary.

the form and function of this little blog have evolved so much since its inception. saying that, this has been a difficult year for me as a blogger – i’ve had more than a passing thought this last year about hanging it all up. small personal blogs like mine feel like they’ve been outmoded in many ways – unless you have a particular theme or tailor your writing for a specific audience (something i’ve steadfastly refused to do – for me it would just feel so artificial), it’s become really hard to build up a following. without concerted effort at self-promotion, the “community” of bloggers seems less organic than it was back in 2004. it’s particularly difficult if you don’t have any kids – so much of blogging seems to revolve around parents these days. that’s no knock on parents who blog … just the reality of who is reading and who is writing. for reasons i can’t quite pinpoint, i seem to have lost a large portion of my viewership this year, and (if i’m honest) spent some time sulking about that.

i spent a few months grappling with the atrophy of readers – it is difficult to feel that you are writing into a void. it’s hard not to take it personally when you spend a lot of effort writing something, only to have it go unnoticed. it makes it terribly difficult to stay motivated. i hate to admit how much even a few words of external validation mean to me. it’s *painful* to feel like you’re the last kid picked for the kickball team. this is not an appeal for anyone’s pity – just a recognition of why it bothered me so much.

but in all my pondering, sulking and mulling, i kept returning to this: it would pain me far more to not write at all. even if i only have an audience of one, writing has become so important to my daily life, so central to my being, that i could never quit it.

it’s become reflexive – i write in my head even when i can’t get to a keyboard. i write in my heart, even when it means nothing to anyone else.

i just can’t seem to quit you, my little den of iniquity.

so even if it’s just you and me and nobody else out there, happy anniversary.

last year – akron/family

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so 2010 didn’t get off to a great start for me. it all began back in 2009, when our boiler decided to cut out a few days before christmas, leaving us without any heat or hot water.

in an old flat with lots of falling-apart single pane windows – we’re talking stand in front of one and feel your hair blowing with the outdoor breezes.

during a 2 week cold snap with average temperatures of 0C (32F).

the thermometer read 12C (53F)… indoors.

thus began a 12 day saga to get the bloody boiler fixed. it included a mad dash for a space heater on Christmas day, waiting around for five plumbers appointments (two no-shows, and two where they didn’t actually even open the boiler) countless irate emails to our landlord, one denied request to stay at a hotel, one registered faux-legalese letter threatening to report it to the local council, and one episode of taking off work in the middle of the day to go home and identify the boiler model number. not to mention countless hours banging on the boiler fruitlessly, countless kettles boiled in order to take a lukewarm bath, countless tears of frustration, and countless hours huddled under blankets shivering.

it was hell. it was pure misery. it ruined my holidays.

finally, blessedly on monday we got our heat and hot water back. even now, two days later, i keep touching the radiators for their reassuring warmth.

imagine my reaction, then, when on New Year’s Day i awoke to an internet outage. which lasted six days. area outage, we were told – every day we would call up and be informed that it was estimated to be fixed by later that day, only to go to bed with the green modem light blinking sadly instead of glowing happily. finally they began telling us they couldn’t estimate when it would be fixed, and we stopped calling. thank god for 3g service – on those overlapping days when i was unshowered, freezing cold and internet-less, my iphone saved my sanity.

and then this morning i woke up to a happy modem light. praise jeebus and pass the beer nuts! there was a hairsbreadth line between me and the men in white jackets.

i may have previously mentioned my white hot hatred of virgin media.

this did not help.

so – not an auspicious start to the new year. but now i’m showered, warm, and fully connected again. it’s got to get better from here on out…right?

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I don’t make new year’s resolutions, as I think i’ve mentioned here before. Resolutions are doomed and there’s no point in making them – if you weren’t motivated enough to try to accomplish them throughout the year, you’re not likely to be any more successful just for starting on the magical 1st January. Instead, I enter into each new year with a sense of those things I want to try to shed and leave behind in the old.

This year, one of those things I want to leave behind is eating habits that are harmful to our planet.

There’s been a lot of mainstream attention given to our interaction with the food chain lately. Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”, along with films such as “Food Inc.” and “Fast Food Nation” all document the way in which the public demand and consumption of food has changed, and the dramatic way in which those changes have impacted how food is produced and delivered.

None of this is news to me -it’s not that I didn’t know any of this before. But with each additional piece of information, I’ve had to do even deeper exploration of why I eat the way I eat. I’ve had to question why I continued to ignore the clear messages. I’ve been taking it all in, but closing my eyes when I bite into that burger.

Because when I take the time to examine it, it doesn’t make sense. I choose not to shop at ASDA or Tesco’s because I disagree with their marketing and labour practices. But day after day, I pretend my eating habits don’t matter. I continue to put meat in my mouth, knowing the environmental toll it takes on the planet.

What it boils down to is this: I, more than many others, have the luxury of making deliberate, considered choices about the food I put in my mouth. Doesn’t that obligate me to do so? And why would I not?

The problem is, once you start thinking about it, it’s hard to stop. There are people in underdeveloped countries who are most vulnerable to the effects of global warming and overfishing, and yet have the least power to affect change. I’ve been to some of those places, I’ve met some of those people, I’ve seen the pollution first hand. How can I ignore it?

Over the past few years, I’ve reduced my meat consumption dramatically due to the meat-churning factories, and patted myself on the back for doing so. But I’ve increased my fish consumption exponentially – and that’s just as harmful. The fishing-industrial complex rivals that of the intensive beef or pork or chicken industries. It is estimated that by 2040 *all* fishing will have collapsed. For millions of people in developing countries, fish is the primary source of protein.

A few years ago now, I stopped eating chicken because of the gross practices of the chicken industry. I’ve bought only free-range, organic meat when I do indulge – and it is an indulgence, sold at a premium. I’ve rationalised that if i’m going to buy meat, I should always buy the most “ethical” meat I can. That’s a good place to start.

But why do my ethics seem to stop there?

I have a choice. I have the knowledge and money and availability to eat in a way that reduces the impact I have on the planet, the suffering of animals, and my personal contribution to the suffering of other people. Many people don’t have that opportunity. It’s hard to justify squandering that opportunity and continuing to eat meat and fish, out of habit or craving. I’ve been wanting to make the change for a while now… so what am I waiting for?

And so from the new decade, I’ve turned over a new (old) leaf. I was vegetarian for 14 years previously, but reverted to eating meat this past decade, because it tasted good. These days it’s harder and harder to get past the taste of the bitter disappointment in myself.

I can do better… and so I will. No grand resolutions, just a quiet saying goodbye. Leaving behind the old lazy rationalisations and excuses, starting to exercise my firmer judgement and choice. Not perfect, not holier-than-thou, just an improved version of who I know I can be.

Happy New Year to all.

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