sitting here with some irish cream...many thoughts signifying nothing...or maybe everything...something in the middle

so i'm home from work. listened to tom waits all the way home - "mule variations"...maybe my favourite tom waits album...maybe...hard to say really...anyway, stepped off the streetcar onto deserted marion street...bare tree branches silhouetted against light reflected off clouds arching over the street from both sides, and yellow streetlights glowing into falling snow. here's me feeling meditative.
actually the song "come on up to the house" was playing as i walked along marion. i had the volume up pretty high cuz it's such a gorgeous album - the recording is just awesome...the most beautiful sounds captured and with headphones you can even hear the room in such a sweet way...
...here's me feeling more meditative. that song is somehow really important to me. "well the moon is broken and the sky is cracked, you gotta come on up to the house/the only thing that you can see is all that you lack you gotta come on up to the house..." "...there's nothing in the world that you can do, you gotta come on up to the house/you been whipped by the forces that are inside you, you gotta come on up to the house". it's that little oasis kinda place, something i've always looked for/hoped for...adam's family has played this role at different times in my life, showing me that families can work...be good things...be good homes...and lotsa friends have shown me all kinds of gentle generosities with their couches and tables and living rooms and sometimes other rooms too...but i've always imagined that when i grow up i'd make my home into that place too...as much as i could. my friends should always have a place to come to or go to in my house. family too i guess although that's got some hard sharp edges. i've always wanted that, and it's always been very important to me to be able to offer that. i've even imagined a future where our children's friends know that our house is safe. sarah says her house was like that growing up. not so much my house. wasn't even so safe for us really. maybe that goes toward why i feel so much about having/offering that. maybe it says something too about seeing clearly to a place or time when that can be real...something about how i'm in a good place with sarah. (she wants to have a basement so our strays plus me and the kids don't overrun the place...smart woman...) i guess it's my best idea about how to make a difference in the world...make the world a better place - realistically speaking making the world better usually happens in small ways...sometimes our responses are all we have...our local variety store got robbed last year, and all i could think to do was to introduce myself and find out the names of the guys who worked in the store...a response...one of the only times i was really proud of my dad was when i was in my early teens and the neighbours - the desmarais's - were having it out bigtime. steve desmarais's dad was really laying into him - we could hear every word...it was city housing, a duplex with us on one side and them on the other. he was saying really awful things to steve, who was also one of my friends, and making threats...well when steve came outside, scared and crying my dad brought him into our house. made me proud. never mind the hypocrisy of all the times the desmarais's heard my dad yelling the same kinds of things at me...anyway...life is complicated huh? someday, that's what my house is gonna be. and our kids will know too that if their friends are in something bad that our house is a good place. their friends will know it too i hope...all my people gotta know about our house.
wow maybe i should be drunker...

the other day i was riding the subway home and i saw this dad and little son sitting together reading the wish book, which is sears christmas catalogue...well i'd forgotten about the wish book. it was a big deal when i was a kid. the day it arrived...we'd all sit down with it, me and my siblings, and that was when we really made our christmas lists. it had a whole section of "gifts under x dollars"(different amounts on each spread) starting at ten dollars, and we'd look a little harder for the cheap gifts cuz even as kids we had some ideas about how money and christmas went together, but we'd look at everything in that catalogue. basically it was a book of dreams...and hopefully some would come true...dreaming was so nice we'd even come back to the wish book every couple of days, hoping to find something we'd missed. i don't know if those folks on the subway used the wish book the same way as the wehrle kids did, or if it meant any of the same things...i'd just forgotten about the wish book for a long time...christmas is complicated...

picture this...i'm standing on the west bound platform of the yonge subway line at yonge and bloor station...late rush hour, so not super busy but still lotsa people...tears slipping silently down my cheeks, actually dropping onto my jacket cuz i'm finishing one of the better books i've read in a while...some sadness, some courage...i was finishing "shadow of the wind" by jose ruiz zafon. stephen king has a quote on the cover describing it as "one gorgeous read". good description really. also had great quotes - "love is like pork..."something about a nice tenderloin and bologna being part of it...genius. it's set in barcelona between the 1920's and 50's. really interesting historical period too. world war, government overthrow, fascism... throw in a mysterious book and a love story and some tragedies...some of you might be getting a copy of this book as a christmas present....

also before that i was reading "a fine balance" by rohinton mistry. probably one of the best books i've ever read. it was the first time i was actually afraid to finish a book cuz i knew it was gonna break my heart. but i did. and it did.

now i'm reading "the wisdom of crowds". it's really interesting actually. about the idea that a diverse group of people will come up with a better solution than any single expert, even if the group is not made of experts or even particularly knowledgeable people....the author, james surowiecki, uses some pretty amazing examples - like the 800 folks who guessed the weight of a prize bull after butchering and the average of their guesses was only off by one pound - none of the guesses were closer....or the stock market after the challenger shuttle disaster - immediately after the challenger exploded, the stock market responded by selling off stocks of the four companies involved in the shuttle...what's surprising is that the company stocks that suffered the worst (by far) was for the company that would be found culpable 6 months later. no explanation could be found for this phenomenon, and many were investigated. kinda spooky really.

so we got our computer back. and tonight i was in the mood to talk. so here's my blog updated after so long that michelle resorted to typing echoes at me...hmm...kinda funny that one. but now i've run out of steam...and irish cream. i'm gonna go sleep. glad to be back.