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Wednesday, 11 November 2009

  • erinB (also known as the 'xanga conscience') has goaded me back to xanga.  erinB and others who drew me to xanga are friends I made through my brobomb Tyler, I never see any of you so I stopped xangablogging, save for the occasional rant spurred by post-adolescent male angst.  I'm sorry.

    But for erinB and anybody else: I feel on top of the world today.  My past weekend was a 9 out of 10 and life has been at an all time high... well maybe too predictable to be at a 'high' but it's definately at an all time good.

    You wouldn't expect it, but I really enjoy my work.  I'm a garbage man and it's a good time, I have a great work partner, appreciate the vigors of pitching trash and delight my inner boy cruising around in a great big truck.

    Being married is all it's cracked up to be and much more.  Super great.

    Brazilian Jiu-jitsu fills any gap between work and Beth (my wife).  I do that with these dudes: http://www.alliancebjj.ca/dragan.html
    I love bjj.  It's mad-wild excercise, infinately complex and challenging.

    So this past weekend was a 9/10.  I went to hamilton to compete in a bjj/submission grappling tournament.  While I was there I stayed with my Uncle Dennis, unky D was my mom's twin and it was very meaningful to spend time with someone who's connected to her memory that way.

    I trained pretty hard for the tournaments and on saturday I took 4th in the gi tournament (this is a gi: http://www.fightplanet.ca/store/catalog/images/lavato%20top%20shot.jpg ).  On Sunday was the no-gi submission grappling tournament and I took 1st in my division in that one.  The anxiety leading up to these competitions was unbelievable (for me anyways) and I was flying pretty high sunday night.

    The only thing missing from last weekend was my lovely wife.  She had to work.  Maybe I'll blog about some of this stuff sometime. but hopefully this update keeps erinB off my case for a little while.

    You happy now Bredin?  Bless your friendly heart.


Saturday, 02 May 2009

  • power walk

    I went for a power walk a few weeks ago.  A -real- power walk.  No ankle weights, no spandex, no pumping, swinging arms and not even a single bead of perspiration excreted.  Yet with this brief walk on a Saturday afternoon I asserted a strength and solitude to shake Olympus - a veritable antithesis of Donne's, 'No Man is an Island'.

    And as I walked backwards down the road facing oncoming traffic with my going numb in the cold wind I was taken back to my childhood.  Softball games were family affairs, both my brother and I played and at certain years we played on the same team.  After one such event we boarded our boxy, red aerostar minivan with popsicles in hand and headed home, hopefully with nintendo and hotdogs in my very near future.

    You know that intuitive tension you feel as a kid when adults fight or disagree?  My prepubescent spidy sense sent tingles up my spine as soon as I got in the van; mom and pops were fixing for a tangle.  So I left my seatbelt undone, they were too occupied to notice and seatbelts were a drag on an evening of baseball, popsicles, nintendo and hotdogs.

    The tension in that humid little tin box with wheels escelated and soon my mother, exhasperated and frowning had my stoic father, with a sophisticated smugness pull to the curb so she could walk home.  I always took mom's side, even if we were having one of our own frequent fights, no matter what.

    'I'm going with mom.' I said, crawled out of the back seat and went to take my mothers hand.

    'You should have stayed in the van, I'm too angry to talk, go ahead of me, Reid.  I'm serious.' And I could tell she was serious so I stayed about a block ahead, craning my head back now and then to make sure my cranky little mother wasn't falling too far behind in her short, poorly balanced gait.

    Well Ma, thanks for the tips.   I was ready for Beth when she pulled the ever scorned 'silent treatment'.  Thirty seconds and I bailed like a paratrooper on V-Day.

    'Answer me please.'  I looked over at my fiance in the driver seat awaiting a response.  My chest was knotted - as with my mother, silence is the one tactic, the one weapon which ignites rage, anger and humiliation.  For her then and for me now, the silent treatment is an unparelelled degradation and insult.  This was the first time I could remember approaching a fury I couldn't easily tether.

    'Pull over the *&%@ing car, I'm not going to ride with someone that won't speak to me.'  She quietly pulled over and I stepped out of the car and walked the opposite way. 

    VICTORY!  Half way between Guelph and Cambridge on a country highway I had made my point!  With a single action I showed my self-reliance and control.  A brilliant combination of my father's passive aggression and my mothers dynamic showmanship.  A true craftsman in the art of interelational feuds, I had said so much with so little; I don't need motor vehicle - remember my dear, I hitch-hiked across this damn country and I did it alone - I am above petty bickering, let me out and we'll talk when we're both rational and most regrettabley, when I'm honest with myself now I see that I was saying, 'I'm Reid Harkness and I can cut anybody loose because I roll like that, biznatch."

    A mere ten seconds and I was enjoying the weather, the cool wind, the bright sun and the peace and quiet of the countryside.  I began musing on human narrow-mindedness and the quirkiness of our social and relational idiosyncrasies.  I made clever jokes to myself about the penis size of the men in large trucks with mud-tires that drove on past, the tough guys never stop. I greeted the balding, plump middle aged man in the orange toyota versa that pulled over to pick me up.  I told him why I was hitching and he shared an insight into a fight he was having with a colleague at work, a fight he had forgotten the cause of.  We chuckled at human nature and parted ways.

    The shitty part of pulling a power move is how shitty you have to be to someone.

    "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

    ---Meditation XVII: No Man is an Island, John Donne---




Sunday, 01 March 2009

  • Courage for a Coward


    "So what's the difference between us?
      we can start at the penis
      or we can scream, 'who gives a fuck' and see who means it."

    - Eminem

    I live in Kitchener, I'm a garbage man.  I drive a truck and pick up blue boxes, a damn lot of them.  I'm considered somewhat of a phenom around the recycle yard; for my ability to box like a mf'er.  Two thousand boxes a day or thereabouts, pounding it out and grinding it down. Up at 5am, work at 6am, home by 6pm, shower, work out or Jiu Jitsu, bed.  Monday nights wings with bros, wednesday nights date with fiance.  Weekends deal with the irritations of reality and daily living, maybe indulge in some nerd-dom.

    What kind of nerd-dom?

    http://www.armageddon.org/ - Yes, I MUD.

    Maybe drive to Simcoe, play some pencil, paper, dice with some old friends. http://alternityrpg.net/news.php

    Roleplaying is a favoured art of escape for me, cheaper than drugs and only marginally less socially acceptable.  Also, my fiance gets pissed when I get pissed(runk).

    Back to picking up garbage, back to me being a chump.  A sucker stuck working for the man, an uneducated slob making green for the educated and providing convenience to that soft, overweight bald man with the nice house and the smug smile.  But I don't hate it, I don't hate him, I don't hate them, the grind.  I love it, I pity them.

    My insecurity, my weakness makes me strong.  The things I do, the things I am don't give me a high place in society, they don't give me dignity.  So, if I can't throne myself well in society, then I will make myself a superior human being.  I'll make myself stronger, I'll be smarter, I'll stay sharp after fatty's blunted dull and alive after he's eating dirt in a grave.  I'm not a phenom box-thrower because I think it's important or because of any kind of moral constitution, I just want to be better than other people... maybe need to feel better.

    And this is my perception.  I thank God for my insecurities, without them I'd be lazy, dickless, sleeping in.  And this looks, sounds like rebellion but it isn't, it's the opposite.  This is me falling in, cowing to it, taking my place in the herd.  Cutting my teeth to match the cog I have to turn with, drowning in the monotony of the masses.  No more drifting now, I'm getting married, I need security.  Well, 'security' is an illusion, a mirage I must create for a woman, a mirage a lot of men create for women and children, a mirage women and children need to see.  So I'll do it and I want to do it.  I'll get me a house and a mini van with a five star safety rating and I'll make schedules, keep appointments and maintain relationships, I'll blue-box forever.  But the old man, the proud, independent old man; as he dies is rending the new man and the scars that streak over his neat new figure will remind and haunt him, keep him from rest and push him to bleed.

    This is my confidence.  It's an old, worn-out trick of discontented males, a fake kind of confidence.  A cheap, imitation designer t-shirt sold at carnivals.  But I'll wear the damn thing until I get done what I need to.

    "We have no great war
      no great depression.
      Our war is a spiritual one,
      Our great depression is our lives."

    - Fight Club


Saturday, 14 February 2009

  • My Dead Mother's Tooth brush

    “Don’t you think it’s strange, using your dead mother’s tooth brush?”.

    My fiance was questioning me, perhaps even accusing.  My mother had only passed earlier that very day, but, I didn’t think it was weird and I had what I feel are some very good reasons to be scrubbing my dentures with the pink, extra-soft bristles of my passed matriarch.

    Reason number one: she’s dead and can’t stop me.

    Second: She was always on my case, pestering and nagging me about personal hygiene practices, tooth-brushing being very high on her list.  Yet, at the same time I must concede that she was staunchly opposed to sharing tooth brushes while she lived, claiming that the bristles left microscopic lacerations over one’s gums, tainting the instrument with the user’s blood, a fluid she felt shouldn’t be shared or passed.  I never shared this hang-up with her, however, and coming back to my first point, there was no danger of her using it after me anyways.  I’m positive that her desire for her boy to have clean teeth would have overcome the stigma of brush passing.

    Third: A very practical observation; I needed a tooth brush.  My fiance and I were at my Dad’s place, and had been staying there much loner than intended.  I came for an overnighter, but as dear mother’s condition worsened… which it did rather suddenly, I prolonged my stay.  I’m not proud of it, but no, no I don’t bring a tooth brush for an overnight visit, don’t judge me.  All this to say, I hadn’t brushed my teeth in three days and it now felt like they were wearing little yellow wool sweaters.  Decisive action needed to be taken.

    I didn’t think I had the audacity, but now, after a few drinks I’m feeling brazen enough to say how it is I really feel about the thing, the statement, the snide comment made about the use of my mother’s tooth brush.  Point four!  She was my damn mother and I’m the oldest.  When someone dies the loot gets divided amongst the family.  I had a blood claim to that brush.

    So back and forth, up and down I vigorously worked the pink plastic tooth cleaner, the minty paste foaming pleasantly in my mouth, washing away the stress and taste of the hospital of the last week.  I don’t want to be pretentious, or to sound contrived.  The fact is, I don’t even appreciate sentimental expression, but standing over that porcelain bathroom sink, periodically spitting light green froth down the drain I had a surreal, profound moment.

    The bristles were soft, too soft.  I could see my mother in the mirror looking back at me, the feeble little brush in her feeble little mouth.  Leaning on the counter with her free hand to keep her balance, weak shoulders sagging with each weary, ragged breath.  The brush in her mouth, her eyes half closed, her delicate hands, delicate, blue-veined hands arduously manicuring one of the tiny, final intact pieces of her decrepit self.

    I saw tufts of her curly brown hair sprouting from my own scalp.  The same abrasive, dogged spirit doing what we wanted how we wanted, whether it was considered strange, unclean or not.  I thought of everything she left me, made me.

    And then I remembered that morning and I saw her grey skin.

    Her last breath.

    Her lifeless eyes.

    Fresh white hospital sheets tousled around her freshly cold, dead body.




Wednesday, 02 July 2008

  • Currently Reading
    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    By Lewis Carroll
    see related

    frogger

    I'm a lowly, salt-of-the-earth kind of working slob that loves to shove his face full of chicken wings, sucking the bones clean and reveling in the jagged heap at the end of my conquest.  Oh the joyful din as we would fill our bellies with sauced meat, rivers of beer and the barbarous fellowship descended from Valhalla.

    Yet here, in a land of cursed poultry where chickens are dwarfed by insects and are particularly scrawny of wing I have found the American chicken-wings' Burkinabe sister: the brochette.  When I thought all was hopeless and true male celebration of appetite an impossibility my comrade and brother, Ben Steele leads me to the brochette stand - spiced meat on a stick!  Two hundred francs a piece and we fill a plastic bag, return to our fortified abode and unleash meat-starved, ravenous appetites.  God bless our greasy chins and glistening fingers.

    Yet in our quest for meat we intersect with the epic journey of another pilgrim - a frog near the brochette stand.  Composed of the most resolute and stalwart stuff as I have ever encountered the green jumper emerges from the sewage of the Ouaga canal and endeavours a crossing of the venerable Charles du Gaulle, or as I call it, Charles du Gauntlet!  In only a few, strong strides the frog reaches the median and without hesitation plunges into the fray, avoiding a taxi only by luck and suddenly afterwards straddled by a looming van, piled fifteen feet high.  Veering to the left and then cutting back right it's in the moto lane wherein lies the true trials and dangers of Burkina traffic.  Without order or formation an overwhelming swarm of 50 - 100 cubic centimeter engines, armed with black, sickle-treaded rubber tires overtake the amphibian like the malicious chariots of Assyria.  Somehow emerging triumphant on the other side it leaps on, backed by the cheers and shouts of two young men charged with the prospect of spiced meat and a tale of courage and mettle to share at our table.  Hail a hero of our youth and subject for a particularly clever episode of Seinfeld, Frogger.

    In further news, I bought a kind motorbike.  Suzuki DR 350.



    The best way to see Burkina.

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reidharkness

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    • Name: reid
    • Country: Canada
    • State: Ontario
    • Metro: Peterborough
    • Birthday: 3/30/1984
    • Gender: Male
    • Member Since: 2/2/2006

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