weird_day epitome of incomprehensibility I had a panic attack on the train when I was writing something. My fingers and toes were tingling. Probably a bit of asthma had caused me to hyperventilate without realizing it and I found myself feeling weak and my heart racing all of a sudden. I called my father, even though I was in the quiet section. He talked about panicking on the train last week when one of his fingers was frozen white; he blew on it and the feeling came back. He talked for a long time and I got bored, but it'd be rude to say, "I'm not scared anymore; can I hang up? I need to go back to writing my Second Unfinished Novel." The moral of the story was that people are wimps, even those in a privileged spot. Like me: train pass, my own phone now, a regular job. Ridiculously lucky. Ridilucky. At work my boss B. came up with a brilliant idea after a meeting with my boss N., who is sort of but not exactly boss B.'s subordinate. He announced, all excited: "So! I have this new game." The game is that he would fine N. $1 for every spelling mistake he made. And I was to report on her. This would be something fun, see, but also sort of serious, because it would train N. not to write so quickly and make so many mistakes. I was kind of aghast when I realized he meant it. At the time he was saying it he meant it, anyway. And then he thought up one for me: he'd fine me $1 too if I was more than 15 minutes late on a scheduled task and hadn't reported it to N. He was being stricter with N, he said; it would be easier for me to follow my rule. I imagined a day when I was tired, and it was a busy time of term... was this even possible? Sometimes N. would be teaching a class, too, and it wouldn't do to bother her... Anyway, he put a tall blue glass on the table and said that it would be the piggybank. It'd be a fun thing! he said. We could use the money to buy lunch! Sushi! I tried to look unfazed, and vaguely said that I didn't usually carry dollars around, but he didn't seem to pay me any attention. Is this even legal, though? It seems to be too weird for people to make laws *against*, I guess. "The Anti Swear-Jar Legislation"? But I shouldn't be so anxious. He'll probably forget about it all in a couple of weeks... and then take it up two months later and say, "Remember that idea we had? Why didn't we follow up? I'm telling you, that's the problem with our company: unfinished business." 170112 ... e_o_i Typos. "N" is a she, not a he. That'd cost me $1 if I were her. 170112 ... e_o_i He hasn't mentioned the fine jar at all. It's sitting there with three dollars in it, one from N. and two from me. Probably he realizes there are better things to do. 170410 ... e_o_i Yeah, he forgot about this. Also, we moved offices. That helps. 191012 ... e_o_i It wasn't so much a weird day as a weird evening. I was getting ready to disembark the train when I saw an OPUS card (transit) pass wedged between my seat and the empty one beside it. "Oh, did I drop that? Better get it!" my mind went. It had a face and a name. Not mine. A youngish person, likely a she. So while I was eating supper I got online and searched. Someone with that name lived or at least worked in Pierrefonds, but how to contact her? Was she on Facebook? She was. I messaged her. But messages from non-friends don't give you automatic notifications, at least the way I've got mine set up, so I wasn't hopeful. But when I was finishing supper she got back: "OMG you found it!!" After a few exchanges, it turned out she worked at a pub near the Fairview shopping centre. Was working there now, shift until 1. (Shift from 7 PM to 1 AM?? And a student probably? I feel tired thinking about it.) Long story short, it's a get-bus-to-able place, and soon although later than I said I was at the counter, asking awkwardly, "Does someone named Person's Name work here? Who lost a bus pass?" and I was directed to the happy bus-pass-regainer, who offered me a free drink in return. "Oh, well, thanks!" I said, not completely surprised - I'd brought my writing notebook in case I wanted to stay a little. "Do you have a cider?" They did. And I sat down where I was, at a little table in front of a stage where a duo played fiddle and guitar, both of them singing sometimes. Mostly it was toe-tapping Irish music, but there were also some soulful covers, including one of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues (which I looked up the spelling to when I got home and found a bizarre_injury_inflicted_by_an_ostrich. As one does). I got absorbed in writing a scene for Carol Winter Writes an Essay, sort of a transition bit about the siblings at school discussing a mysterious old lady, Mrs. Z, who survived three heart attacks and two husbands. Most lately she's been seen inspecting the trees and bushes at the Winters' new place. Who is she? Is she secretly a communist who secretly killed her first husband? And why is she afraid of airplanes? (This might be a red herring, or at least a dubiously red non-herring, like the reddish twinkling star in starry_night.) But I still felt awkward about sitting there not paying for anything, so I bought what turned out to be a rather large basket of onion rings. I wrapped some in napkins and brought them as an offering to my mother. ... I fail at saving money, but at least I was somewhat useful! What's more, *Facebook* was somewhat useful. Once in a blue moon for both of us. Oh, and the band is called RedFox and bills itself as an indie-folk operation. 240222 ... e_o_i March 5, part 1: Last Tuesday, I saw a white security or police van back into a parked car with an audible bump...and then zoom off ahead. Not very security, right? But let's back up (and not into a car). First of all, the the flavour mixture my mind put together in dream_chocolate isn't all that farfetched. The day before, leftover porridge sat sad and cold in the fridge, so I decided to treat the slop of steel-cut oats like rice. I mixed it up with slices of mushrooms and green pepper and pineapple and beets. This was my supper last Monday and Tuesday. Second, that Tuesday was one of my productive days, where I wrote and checked off tasks in my Non-Hidden Agenda, which is made with paper salvaged from the old student record system of the Presbyterian College of Montreal. Thick yellow paper with blue lines, like the library cards of my childhood, made for a nice analog Google Calendar. Third, when I was leaving Concordia for the Jewish Public Library to get some books for an essay, the makeshift metal ring attaching to the strap of my laptop bag decided to break. This contributed to my almost-sleepless night after (in_which_i_forget_that_muscles_exist). 240312 ... e_o_i part 2: But that's just my normal weird. The weird weird didn't start until I was walking I was walking from JPL to the metro station along Cote-Sainte-Catherine. See, there'd been a protest in the park that I heard as I was going into the library, and when I was walking out I heard the security guard and man at the desk talk to each other about where the protesters were headed, saying something about them going down a different part of the street but to keep an eye out just in case. I was curious, because I'd heard people chanting "So-So-So-li-da-ri-TAY!" - to my mind, a very student-protesty thing, so I wondered whether it was about Legault's tuition hikes for international students. So I lagged back to see a group of about 100 people, many of them students but also at least one family with kids, round the corner onto the same street I was on. Palestinian flags: protesting the Gaza war, then. My curiosity satisfied, I went on. Some vehicles were going in advance of the protest - the van I mentioned, at least one police car, and some security guards on bikes. That was when I saw the security van back into a car parked along the side of the road and the driver zoom off again like it was nothing. I didn't know what to do. I looked at the side of the car to see if it was dented. It didn't seem so, but then the streetlights gave dim yellowy illumination - it was about 8:30. I took my phone out, thinking I could take a picture of the car's license plate and then the security van's for evidence - but the van was already far ahead. I was angry. What kind of person would drive so irresponsibly - not carefully AND not taking responsibility? Were they just there in the first place to intimidate a peaceful protest? Why the police presence? If they were really there to protect people in the neighbourhood, why smash heedlessly into people's cars?? Timidly, I tried to alert one of the bike-riding security guards, but none looked my way. Well, they were doing a job. And they steered the bikes quite expertly, adjusting their motions like a flock of birds. So the Ceasefire Now! crowd marched down the street's middle while I resumed my sidewalk trek, now clutching my black phone case. 240312 ... e_o_i part 3: I debriefed with Dad: was I wrong to do nothing? He said not necessarily. He gave a perspective I hadn't thought of: perhaps the van driver faced a similar dilemma - whether to follow what he'd been hired to do or stay back and make sure things were all right - and in the second he had to make the decision, he chose to the first. Me: How do you know the driver's a "he"? Dad: Guess I just assume bad drivers are men. (Laughing.) No, sometimes it's the women who can't drive themselves into action. ... Back to the scene. I took the metro to Lionel-Groulx stop, which has the bus line that goes to Pine_Beach, but the bus pulled away just as I was running up to it. Thanks, bus. So I decided to take the metro to the westbound train, but when I got back in the metro station the protest had arrived, complete with a drummer. Then I was stuck in the same metro car with a bunch of them, right behind the drummer. I was torn between being interested in the situation and annoyed by the noise. As for the messaging. I wasn't about to go "Both sides are wrong!" as I did in dream_dialogue. Netanyahu is a Bushier Bush than George W., and the destruction and starvation the army has caused in Gaza are horrific. Then again, I don't have to revere the concept of Palestine OR Israel. Is real? The pale stone says yes and no. All countries are made up; kingdoms rise and fall; the earth is humanity's only tangible, long-term real estate and we're fucking it up enough already. I know, I know, my perspective is skewed because my frame of reference is Quebec/Canada, where no one's gotten killed over the question of Quebec's nationhood since 1970. I think. But anyway. This is all a preface to why I joined in when they said "Ceasefire now!" but not "From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free" and "From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever." Back home, my brother said I was quibbling when I nitpicked the slogans. This is true. I was thinking of them too literally. Literarily? I like the switch-up of the first line, flowing one way and then another. And is "Students! united! will never be defeated!" literally true? Nah. But that doesn't stop me from striking against tuition hikes this week. There's a big protest planned for tomorrow. 240312 what's it to you? who go blather from