On Running, Laughing and Porn.

I was so zoned out during my run this morning that it took a noise from a car to startle me into realizing – to my great horror – that I was smiling. What’s this, then? Could I possibly be feeling better?

Nothing in my life has materially changed. In fact, I made some decisions last week that are likely to make me materially poorer! So, what’s to be happy about?! As I frantically searched my trusty internal depression catalogue for a quick fix, I could have sworn I heard my grandma Rose’s voice say, “Enough with the depression already!” This, of course, is impossible, because Rose was always overweight and could never have kept up with me. Also, she’s dead. But even more accurately, my grandma Rose would never have used the word depression because on my father’s side of the family we didn’t use fancy words like that. She would have said, “here, eat more chicken, bubbula” which I would gladly have done then and there because her breaded chicken was so freaking good it made chickens want to eat it!

OK, that’s gross. And maybe even depressing – what will become of us when animals long to munch on their own flesh? – but before I can follow that trail towards my familiar dark woods of scary stories, a funny thought pushes its way into my consciousness the way only a Caspari thought can, its genetic force (from my mother’s side of the family) expressing itself like a well-worn battle cry: “Look at me! Look at me!”

When I lost my virginity, my grandpa Peter (Caspari) sent me a dozen red roses. How did he know I lost my virginity? Because I called him in Florida and told him. True to form, he responded by yelling at me (he was partially deaf), “It’s about bloody time!” This reaction might lead you to think I popped my cherry at some ripe old age like 39. Try subtracting 20 years from that, which gives you an age which, for a bourgeois, Bauhaus-trained architect who had reached his own sexual prime at 12 in 1930’s-uber-liberal Berlin, would have appeared uber late by his standards. Perhaps you’re curious as to why I told him at all. Well, not for the obvious reason that the Casparis don’t understand the concept of conversational taboo, so why not take advantage? Despite the fact that I have spent years on knees praying for a Catholic conversion to put an end to Caspari honesty practices so ill-conceived they have been known to devastate vital organs, like hearts and lungs; and despite the fact that my grandfather was not an easy man, not by a long shot; and despite the fact that his off-the-charts entitlement behaviours combined with a full complement of sexual proclivities that would make porn blush, I told him not because I could but because I’m a Caspari. I told him coz I needed to yell at someone who would get it, “Look at me! Look at me!!!”

My grandfather and I had a tempestuous relationship we both enjoyed immensely. I thought he was a bully and he thought I was a bitch. He was a misogynist who tried to “feminize” me, and I was a militant feminist who took aim at his ideological balls. And those were the salad days of our connection. My grandfather was a physically imposing man with hands the size of Yeti paws and a roar to knock you down from a hundred yards. After my grandma Erica died, though, grandpa Peter shrunk to half his size, losing his most worthy opponent, a woman with a primness so sharp she could pin you to the wall in a single pedantic stroke. To wit:

Erica: “Would you like more chicken, Liz?”

Liz: “No, thank you, grandma, I’m fine.”

Erica: “I didn’t ask you how you are feeling, I asked if you wanted more chicken.”

There’s no way I could be married to that. Yet her 60-odd year relationship with my grandfather thrived on exactly that kind of gauntlet throwing. Kindness would have killed their relationship faster than her bad cooking. So when Erica died, I could see Peter would need fresh blood. I decided that once a week I would gallantly park my crusty feminist and ride the silver bullet to his castle (read: I took public transit across hell’s half acre – High Park to Laurence Park -- then rode up a shiny elevator to his well-appointed penthouse door). In his larger-than-my-apartment kitchen, I prepared him a delectable and safe-to-eat meal (Erica did not cook so much as play salmonella roulette].

While my grandfather could still drive (100 in the city, 100 on the highway, stop sings = a suggestion only), he “drove” us to the movies after dinner. On one such occasion, we saw a film starring Helen Hunt and Jack Nicolson in which Jack plays a rich self-centred recluse who is also a colossal prick. An unexpected combo, I know, but he pulled it off convincingly. And I think my grandfather enjoyed him very much. Helen Hunt, on the other hand, played – surprise! – a smart single mother brimming with integrity and patience as she tries desperately to raise funds to pay her mounting medical bills thanks to her sickly son who, if memory serves, was on the death’s doorstep. At any rate, HH and JN clash at first, of course, but over time she humanizes him and, by way of returning the favour, he falls in love with her and foots her medical bills so that her son may live! I tried very hard not to imagine them having sex. HH and JN, that is.

In the parking lot after the movie, as my grandfather fumbled for his keys while each of us stood outside our respective car doors waiting for them to open, both of us lost in our private thoughts, or so I thought, Peter suddenly reared his head and sailed his this little nugget across the gleaming white rooftop of his Cadillac towards my unsuspecting ears: “that woman was a real BITCH!” He meant Helen Hunt, of course, whose character had been nothing short of spotless.

. . . .

And for one dangerously-close-to-postal moment, I fell for it . My heart rate skyrocketed, blood spilled out of my ears and every single invective I have ever suppressed tripped over every other invective in a race to be the first out of my mouth to bitch slap the man. But something in me quietly suggested I look up instead. So I did. And what I saw was a crumpled old man leaning on his cane, looking like a five-year-old boy drowning his grandfather’s suit, smugly eyeing me with an unmistakable look of victory. Like I said, I almost bought it. Except that for the first time in our relationship I saw something I had not previously noted. It was that the victory was not his, and it never had been. It was ours. Peter was baiting me, but he was baiting me for the same reason a fifth grader baits another fifth grader: because he liked me, and because he wanted me to like him back. “Look at me! Look at me!”

It’s been 40 minutes of running and I’ve reached High Park. My breath is coming fast now, like an anxiety attack, which makes me think of Costa Rica, where my family is going in January to attend a cousin’s wedding. And when I say my family I mean my entire extended family – one mother, two brothers, their two wives, two nephews, one aunt, one uncle, two cousins, the girlfriend of one cousin, and the fiancé of the other – i.e. the wedding party. OK, so “extended” is a tad hyperbolic, but believe me we make up for lack in numbers with largess of personality. It’s the Caspari side. Lest you think a personality fest sounds like good times, trust me when I say it’s not. As for Costa Rica, I love to sweat it out on a beach like I love to bathe in Epsom salts after an attack by a rogue band of quill-releasing porcupines. While its true that reading all day long is most definitely my bag, exposing my white, rash-prone skin to blistering, rash-inducing heat with the only options for relief being an overly chlorinated, peed-in pool filled with wealthy drunks, or a salty ocean naturally exfoliating my 3rd degree burns, is not my bag at all. It’s not even my change purse. And because I’m not a drinker (or, at least, not yet), planning for a week of obliterating intoxication would require planning, which just seems like too much work for a holiday. But when a close family member proposes to pay for this fun family fiesta, I am the first one to throw in the towel and call uncle.

When this same family member subsequently informed me, however, that I not only had to pay for my single supplement but for hers as well since my state of singledom combined with my refusal to share a room was the cause of increased costs, (I had no idea being single was now considered a fineable crime!), I shouted down the e-mail, “I don’t even want to be on this shitty planet, nevermind going to fucking Costa fucking Rica!” OK, I was in a suicidal depression at the time, which she could not have known. I mean, who can really decipher mixed messages such as “I’m suicidally depressed” and “the only reason I am not killing myself is because it would kill you.” To her credit, however, she did snap out of her single-supplement stupour long enough to write me an e-mail claiming that my life would surely improve (though she never explained how), lulling me into the false belief that she cared for my well being after all. In a reciprocal show of good faith, I told her I’d stay with her during my visit to Ottawa a few days later, believing, as I never give up believing, that if I did something nice it would transform our relationship into the loving connection I have always dreamed of.

Here’s what really happened: I travelled across the province (you try taking the train from Toronto to Ottawa), and arrived to inhospitality dressed up as two sleeping options – sharing a bed (um . . .NOT!) or, sleeping on the pull-out couch. The couch won. But just before bed I was told that the couch could not actually be pulled out into a bed because the feet of the couch would leave indents in the carpet, thus affecting the condo’s resale value down the road in, like, 10-15 years. A sane person would have booked into a hotel. Not I. Always the first to volunteer a liberal sprinkling of salt in my self-inflicted wounds, I slept on the couch – a full foot too short for me – and wallowed in my suffering until the next night when I was given a real bed at my brother’s house and had to surrender to comfort.

This story might sound depressing to some of you, but I swear to god it made me laugh on my run this morning. Time really is the great healer. That I laughed in order not cry is beside the point.

As I hit the home stretch of my run, the muscles in my legs begging for mercy, I thought about the time at grad school near the end of my degree when I was studiously avoiding my studio, and battling a bout of loneliness so destabilizing I had started talking to my feta cheese at mealtime, commending it on its dual achievement of pseudo-crunchy texture and sweet flavour while also yielding a soft-yet-salty presence that transformed my daily single supplements into 5-star events.

Just to mix things up a little, I decided to distract myself with a small side project: a wee photomontage featuring a day in the life of me and my vibrator. There was the picture of us relaxing with the Sunday papers after a delightful brunch. And the picture of us laughing in the living room at some witticism I had tossed out . And the picture of us spooning in bed before we fell into a blissful sleep . . . I’d show you these pictures except that I don’t want to expose myself. Because the truth is, I’m cheap: I own the world’s most bargain-basement sexual aid, after one’s own hand, that is, which I would gladly use to save a few pennies on batteries, but I can’t shake this feeling that relying on my own devices is tantamount becoming a fallen aristocrat forced into manual labour. The vibrator allows me to convince myself that someone else, like a stable boy, is attending to my needs. And I prefer the stable boy because despite his lowly social status, which makes him an impossible marriage prospect, he helps me forget that I’m servicing myself with a cheap, cold, hard plastic un-penis that has a pallor so beige that even beige would find it beige. No one needs to see that colour of beige. It’s obscene.

A friend of mine recently had the supremely brilliant idea of writing an investigative report about the range of vibrators on the market today, and, therefore, the supreme luck of being the recipient of a giant box of every imaginable vibrator being manufactured. And to my great good luck, she had the supreme generosity to send me the Cadillac of vibrators, The Rabbit – an object I never dreamed I could own because it’s way out of my snack bracket. (And because I believe that my hard-earned cash should only be spent on necessities, like boots.) My friend must have thought my old vibrator had bit the dust in my apartment fire. Selfishly, I did not disabuse her of this belief, even though I was out of the country when the fire broke and I had my crappy vibrator with me, because a) I wanted the rabbit, b) I wanted the rabbit, and c) I wanted the rabbit.

I am sad to report, however, that after taking the rabbit for a test drive, I had to admit defeat: in the end, the rabbit was too rich for my blood. I may come from privilege, but I have grown up with a poverty mentality that impedes my ability to enjoy what the privileged enjoy, i.e. all manner of too muchness. The vibration was too strong; the deep aubergine hue too purple; the width too girthy (I know, I know, a problem most of us would love to have!) So now the rabbit sits atop my bureau as a sculptural piece, which it is. Someone should give that industrial designer an award.

When my run was over, I was spent but happy. Kind of like how you feel after a good roll in the hay. Better, even, because I didn’t have to sooth anyone's ego afterward. And then I got to enjoy my stories again as I wrote and posted them on my blog, my favourite uni-directional form of Lizzing, a.k.a. Look at me! Look at me! While some would argue that a writer should keep her audience in mind at all times (“why are you subjecting me to your filthy porn?”), I would argue that I do just that. Writing is no different from self-pleasuring in this way: you must always imagine the perfect audience first; then you can expose yourself.

Never

Here’s a map of your life. Memorize it. And then erase it from your memory because it’s useless. And then never say "never" . . . Never is the new “now it’s going to happen for sure!”

I swore I would never move back to Toronto. Never, never, never.

I have this game I like to play: Part 1) what was I doing this time last year? And Part 2) what will happen this time next year? The first part entertains me for minutes at a time from the pure shock value of how little I know about what the future holds. And yet, despite experience continually demonstrating that the future is always beyond my wildest imagining, I persist in playing the second part, especially when the first part, or the immediate present, are both painful enough to require escape fantasies.

This time last year I had amassed over two months of e-mail correspondence with my childhood sweetheart. This time last year I was the holder of a plane ticket to visit said childhood sweetheart on the other side of the country and due south, into his country. We had not seen each other in over 25 years. I would spend his 40th birthday with him. How never-never land is that? I was living in Montreal at the time, writing marketing material for a company in Halifax and teaching painting classes one night a week around the corner from my apartment. I loved Montreal. But I believed true love could make me leave my beloved adopted city. I never thought an apartment fire would hasten my departure.

This time last year I was readying myself to re-meet this childhood sweetheart at the end of November, but did not yet know that I would return to him again in December (before my fire), and then again in February (after my fire). This time last year, before I met him in the flesh, I wondered if he could be the one, but I did not yet know I would actually plan to marry him two months later, and that I would then leave him a month after that, three weeks after I moved to his city to spend my life with him. (He's lovely, BTW. Truly wonderful. The problem was me.)

I never expected, as I turned 40, that I would move back into my father’s house. I never expected that my bread-and-butter marketing contract would dry up in the summer, leaving me to wonder what was next. I also never expected that the painting project I would assign myself as a way to see if I could become a working painter -- a project that seemed positively saturated in fame-and-fortune potential -- would be such a struggle that I would ultimately abandon it.

I also never expected, this time last year, that I would go to Berlin five months into this year and again six months after that. I never imagined I’d ride my bike all over that city and make it my own . . . by my self!

Recently, I applied for a job that, this time last year, I never would never have expected to be qualified for this year. Yet they seemed to want to hire me. And then I did something I never could have predicted: I withdrew my candidacy for reasons that seem so mystical I have told only a few people who I trust not to have me committed.

When I think about it, I have always felt dogged by this feeling that my talents, such as they are, never go deep enough. For instance, I am not one of those painters who knows everything about art history, or about the history of painting in particular, or about contemporary painters, much less about painters in my own city, or even about paint itself. I have heard other painters wax poetic about painting structures, colour relationships, their ties to Abstract Expressionism or Photorealism or Postmodernism and other such things and I have berated myself for not going deep enough in my chosen métier. But then I realize, I don’t love painting the way I love writing.

Except that I don’t go deep in writing either. I have not studied journalism. I took one creative writing course a thousand years ago but I can’t remember anything about it, and I could never expound on writing techniques – such as plot arcs, character development, sentence structure and other writing-related techniques – in an informed conversation with anyone, let alone a shop-talk conversation with another writer. I know nothing about writing except that I like to write.

I never thought I’d be a writer of books though I’m the process of writing one. I did think I’d have a painting career, which is funny when I don’t actually paint enough to have shows in which people might actually get to know my paintings. But I also never thought I’d teach painting, yet I have and I loved it.

I never thought I’d get over my so-called life partner leaving me, but I did.

I never thought I’d be living in a spectacular apartment in Toronto for the same affordable price I paid in Montreal, but I am.

I never thought I’d meet my friend’s brother’s dreamy best friend, an engineer who, in university, knitted his girlfriend sweaters (yup, you heard right) but a decade later I not only ended up working for him but also co-writing a training manual for home inspectors with him, as well as developing a life-long friendship.

Recently I bought a book that is changing my “never” thoughts (Martha Beck’s “Steering by Starlight”. If you can get over the flaky title, you are in for a wild, life-altering ride. Trust me.) For every “never” that attempts to define my world view (which is another way I make myself feel safe), there is a “it could happen” and a “why not?” and a “now that you’ve said never, it will happen for sure!”

This time last year, I had no idea what I wanted to be. I still don’t know. Except that I know I love to write and paint and travel. I would love to get a job that paid me to do all three. It seems impossible. Will there never be an editor ignorant of the blanks in my résumé who somehow stumbles upon my erratic blog and decides on a hunch that I’m just the person to send to Australia to write a travelogue from an un-in-depth perspective? Will there never be an editor who wants to see travel pieces liberally peppered with side stories about depression, or insights about the differences between, say, almond croissants in Melbourne and almond croissants in Montreal? Will I never find an editor who wants me to write about how I searched for years to find R, another childhood love, who lives in Australia, finally locating him through Facebook this past June, and who responded not only with sheer delight but with a plane ticket to his country where we would fall in love, marry and live happily never after because the truth is his response was not only lackluster, but it was obtuse and, frankly, rude, instantly shattering every fantasy I'd ever had about our future happy reunion. Besides, I think he’s married. And I swore I’d never date a married man. But I have. My last two boyfriends were technically married when we got together, giving me, in one case, the exquisitely painful experience of being the rebound/transition girlfriend who never stood a chance. Never thought I’d be that. But I was. Such fun!

Now I employ "never" the way a parent deploys reverse psychology. This strategy may never bring me what I hope for, but it also just might. Although I know that I don't know what's gonna crop up next, I do know my expectations will get the smack down, and that what happens will be beyond my anything I could have thought up. I’m just not that imaginative.

Yes, I have shoes . . .

Boots. God, I love them.

Having grown up in the land of Imelda Marcos, I suppose I was bound to develop a shoe fetish at some point. But until January of this year, I prided myself on being the girl who had only two pairs of shoes -- army boots for the winter, worn with everything from jeans to flowing flowery La Cache dresses, and Birkenstocks for the summer, worn in my youth with hairy arm pits and a don’t-mess-with-me ‘tude. I did not have a shoe issue. That was for other people.

After my fire, I noticed a marked increase in my desire for shoes. Well, boots, more specifically. Women’s apparel has rarely lured me inside a shop, but suddenly I could not walk past a shoe store without pressing my nose to the glass and salivating.



And I mean that: I salivated, for real. Was this new desire for boots literally rewiring my reptile responses? I mean, you can’t exactly eat shoes! Yet there must be a reason why the words “delicious!” “scrumptuous” and “edible” came to mind.

What was this new boot love and why did it have such a grip on me? I have always wondered about men and their cars – like who the fuck cares what kind of vehicle you drive? It’s for getting from A to B, so what does it matter what emblem festoons its hood? And even if some stranger on the street thinks your car looks cool, it’s not like you’ll ever know that person’s thought, so how does it benefit you? Or, it’s not like even if you did know that person’s thought it would improve your finances, your love life, or anything else in your world, except perhaps boost your ego for a nano second. Someone admiring your car is not someone admiring you.

So what’s the car desire about?

A few years ago, my friend Kim and I shortened the term “issues” to “shoes” and now I see the connection clearly, tracing my new shoe fetish back to this metonym.


Having lost every object I have ever loved, I guess it makes a certain kind of sense that I would choose something solid in the world to fixate on while sorting out my issues, aka: shoes. And shoes make even more sense as a metaphor/metonym as I frame my future in terms of the path I am on, the steps I am taking into the unknown with no safety nets – no home, no stuff, no job security, no partner. I am figuratively walking through the desert of my life. And for that journey, it makes sense that I need good shoes.

But do I really need $300 Trippen boots bought in Berlin and loved for their exterior seems, their Red-Cross-logo shaped heels and the fact that they even have the wonderfully evocative name, “Nurse”?

Yes. I need those boots. And here’s why. I finally understand William Morris’s insistence that we surround ourselves with aesthetic beauty, regardless of our financial situation.


One needs beauty as much as one needs love and security. Visual desolation carves up the soul as surely as abandonment. At least that’s my experience. Case in point: when I walked into a friend of a friend's apartment once to find out why the baby living there was always screaming bloody murder, my first thought was, “what a horrible place!” The unhappy baby's mother lived in her partner’s cozy, decorated-with-love apartment, while she had installed her baby in the next-door apartment, and had left the space utilitarian – empty-but-for-her crib, bereft of friendly Winnie-the-Pooh decals, or soft colours on the walls that might entertain and sooth the baby until her mother finally made her appearance to proffer some human comfort. I believe the baby suffered from beauty abandonment.

My Trippen boots, which I have only worn twice, bring me enormous pleasure nonetheless as purely aesthetic objects. This pleasure sends a warm feeling through my body, which feels a lot like being in love. I even contemplated making a painting of my boots all summer, so I photographed them often.


And this desire helped me answer a question I have had for a while about the purpose of plastic Japanese food, the kind you see in display cases outside Japanese restaurants.


So, what is the purpose of plastic Japanese food? These facsimiles are ubiquitous in Japan where I assume most consumers know very well how to read Japanese menus, and are intimately familiar with what their food looks like, so it's not like they need a visual aid. That must mean the plastic food's purpose is not informative. Therefore, it must be purely aesthetic. It’s an expression of the desire to represent something in the world, something someone loves. And that’s why I paint portraits. To represent what I love. And in so doing, I effectively don’t just copy something in the world, I create another version, a discrete entity that goes on to have a life of its own. I used to collect plastic Japanese food items because they were these perfect objects with no purpose but to be their own aesthetic selves. And as discrete objects, I loved them differently than I love sushi, which I also love. But when I lost my plastic collection in the fire, I did not return to that love. Instead, I switched to boots.

When I wear boots, my Trippens or the others I have, for I have four pairs, I feel strong and beautiful. And Nurse is the perfect name for them because when I feel strong and beautiful, I’m one step closer to healing. My boots empower me to walk the way Nancy Sinatra walked, although instead of "walkin’ all over you,” I am walking into my own life, my way, even when running shoes seem like a better idea, and other people’s paths glow, like crack, with the promise of a smarter, safer life.


The streets of my journey may look dodgy to others, and often they scare the crap out of me, too, but I wouldn't trade them in for cleaner, Disney streets any more than I'd choose a beach holiday over Berlin, nor would I traverse them with anything less than a beautiful pair of boots!

Fuck Advice

Half way through grad school, one of my professors told me that the graduate committee thought I should stop painting and start making conceptual art.

I’ve always found that the strangest sort of advice: instead of working with my interests, with what I am doing, the advisor tells me to do something else, something I am not doing, something I have not even considered doing.

The committee meant well. They had heard about a stunt I had pulled. But the ruse had not been about creating a piece of conceptual or performance art. It was a private rebellion against one of my classmates who, instead of voting for more studio time for our second-term class (studio time had been choked out in favour of theory courses in the first term), she motioned for us to do research and presentations of important contemporary artists. This person never produced much in her own studio, so her proposal was hardly surprising. She was an academic. She loved collecting information. And now she was asking the rest of us to spend time doing the same so that she could add our information to her database.

My classmates, who all saw it coming, and who all wanted more studio time, asked me to vote against her, which I said I would if they promised to back me up (they often complained about her behind her back but agreed with her in person. I was the only public dissenting voice). But they caved in the end and then complained bitterly to me afterwards. Tired of their inability to voice their own wishes for themselves, and tired of being left to twist in the wind, I closed my ears and came up with my own plan – The Donna Hay Revenge Plan. If I could not have more studio time, I sure as hell was not doing more unrelated-to-my-interests work for the edification of this particular colleague.

The Donna Hay Revenge Plan went like this: Donna Hay is an Australian chef with a fleet of fab cookbooks to her name. The defining aspect of these cookbooks are Patrina Tinsley's photographs. Patrina Tinsley employs a very narrow depth of field, which brings the dishes closest to the viewer into sharp focus, while the surrounding dishes quickly drop away into fuzzy, dreamy soft focus. All this is true (except the photograph below, which is mine, not Patrina Tinsley's).



Everything else I said about Patrina Tinsley in my presentation, and about her painter sister, Eliza, who does not exist, was a bald-faced lie. I photographed Patrina Tinsley's photographs from one of my Donna Hay cookbooks and ran the pics through a few very simple Photoshop filters so that they looked like low-res images of paintings. Then I invented the story of Eliza and Patrina Tinsley. Eliza went to art school while Patrina went to chef school. Patrina, however, was interested in more than just cooking; Desirous of presenting her food in performative ways, she and Eliza collaborated to create food events to which they would invite artists and the general public, and for which Patrina would create aesthetic feasts for the eyes and gourmet concoctions for the stomach. At these events, Patrina would photograph all the dishes. And Eliza would make paintings of the dishes after the event, displaying the paintings at the next event. And so it went, event after event. I talked breathlessly about how Eliza and Petrina’s events were attended by other famous artists, most notably from the Arte Pauvera movement (artists whose names I now forget). I explained that for a while in the mid-to-late '70s, the sisters were the toast of Australia and Europe.

I illustrated the story with my Photoshopped images, telling the class I had downloaded them from the Australian National Gallery’s website, which was why the painting images were so hard to read as paintings: it was due to the low-res nature of the image. How I wish I still had these images to show you, but I can't find them on my computer. Dammit! They were so bad they were great!

I followed the sisters’ careers right up to where they are now: Petrina no longer chefs but has become Donna Hay’s food photographer. And that is actually true, the part about being Donna Hay's photographer. While Eliza is considered the Mary Pratt of Australia, and is well-collected by the Australian National Gallery. I gave my colleagues the website URL in case they wanted to go and look it all up.

My presentation was excruciatingly boring. It reinforced my status in the program as a boring painter who was not remotely plugged into the latest contemporary art scene. My nemesis took copious notes. The only person who knew what I’d done was a professor who was a close friend. He told the grad committee a month later and, based on this stunt, they thought I should trade painting for conceptual art.

“Really?” I said incredulously. “Well then, why don't you tell the grad committee I'd be happy to oblige if they would just kindly let me know which projects they think I should undertake.” Honestly, what did they think???

But I did not take this advice. I returned to my studio and worked for anther year on my Chuck Close project, surrounded on all sides by people who did not believe in the project and who did not care much for painting, some of whom begged me to stop.



God I had fucking chutzpah then . . . I trusted my gut, I believed in my self and I kept on trucking . . . and my final project was great!


Pink LizChuck is on display on the third floor of 401 Richmond. (Grey LizChuck burned in my fire.)



I am now in a similar place -- surrounded on all sides by people who mean well, people who think I should do this instead of that. And instead of standing my ground and believing in my own crazy ideas, I find myself reduced far too often to a confused puddle of tears -- what am I doing with my life? What am I going to do???? But every time I call out for help, many of the answers I get back just don't look like me. But the fault is mine. The best advice I got this week was from Dale who said, "stop canvassing your friends and start trusting yourself!"

The other day, I was in 401 Richmond and stood in front of Pink LizChuck, all 9 feet by 9 feet of her. She's huge and "blousy," as one of my profs called me. She commands the wall and all the space in front of her.

And I wondered, where can I find that Liz again?

In Praise of Sadness

I have blog guilt.

For almost two weeks I have avoided writing a new post because I felt I had nothing to offer that was not going to be tinged with sadness. This concern came after a conversation with a dear friend who, looking out for my best interests, suggested I remove all references to depression in my blog. She advised the same thing for future dates -- do not talk about my struggles with depression. For a brief moment, I could see her point.



But when I thought about it more (which I have done obsessively since the conversation two weeks ago), if I had followed her advice when choosing a partner, I would have missed some of the most interesting men I’ve ever loved.

But the other thing is, my blog's purpose is not to lure dates. And, more importantly, if I am a depressive (I still prefer the German “melancholia” for describing my particular bent vs. depression, which is essentially pathologized sadness vs. melancholia, which is poetic sadness), then shouldn’t I pitch myself as I am when I am on dates? I mean, otherwise I’m basically false advertising, and at some point, when my peppy cover-up cracks, which it will, my poor date-guy will get the real me and won’t he feel duped? “Wait a minute! I thought you were a happy person!”




Besides, advising me not to be sad is like telling a dog not to shit.

I am not sad all the time, of course. That would be exhausting. But I am sad probably as much as I'm happy. And anyway, what’s wrong with sadness? Why would I try to live on only one end of the spectrum all the time? When I began writing this, I was listening to Simon and Garfunkle’s Bridge over Troubled Water – music of my childhood: my father’s music. And it suddenly hit me that I was already sad as a child, and that’s because I was carrying my father’s (and mother’s) sadness, especially when listening to his music. It was also a sadness belonging the songs themselves. In other words, there was an abundance of sadness to tap into, so it’s what I cut my teeth on. But also . . . hello . . . sadness exists! And since it does, why not welcome it? Befriend it? Express it?


And that’s why David Kramer’s blog (http://toothlessalcoholic.blogspot.com/) came as a huge relief. My friend, Ann, directed me to it. In his blog – the Toothless Alcoholic – David Kramer (he’s one of those guys whose names cannot be divided: he’s not David or Kramer; he’s DavidKramer), openly, and with well-honed self-deprecating humour (the man’s a Jew so he can’t help it), he writes about his love for, and struggles with, alcohol, greasy food, his weight, his art career and his deep fear of a Republican win on Tuesday. David Kramer is fucking funny. And also sad. But good sad. The kind of sad my friend, Ann, coined when her son was a baby and he would go from laughing to crying to laughing in the space of 10 seconds – happy-sad. It’s kind of like good-evil. Or sexy-ugly.

Anyway, like DavidKramer, I like to face life's challenges head on. And take responsibility for my feelings. Kind of like I'm saying, "you want to throw pie at me? Well, I can do you better, I’ll take your damn pie . . . "



... tape it to my face . . .


... and then squish it around! Yum!"

My artist friend, Sara, paid my sadness touching homage. For my 40th birthday, she made me a shadow box entitled Waiting for Rain. That's me . . .

I have never felt more seen and appreciated for who I am.

I know that there is no formula for feeling safe in this world. Perhaps my friend who advised me to hide my depression feels more safe when she does not risk exposure that could lead to rejection. But for me, exposure happens to make me feel more safe than hiding because then I feel the person who has seen all of me and still loves me must really love me and not some fantasy or facsimile of me.

It seems to me, the whole point of doing this . . .


. . . . is to be able to do this!




As my friend, Jacline, used to say, by this age, we've all got baggage. And, frankly, that's the stuff I find intriguing. Besides, I feel as if I've done it all in terms of addressing my sadness, including pretzelizing and filtering myself silly in order to attract unconditional love, and not just the love of lovers, but my mother’s love, the love of certain friends, and so on. And the only thing that ever makes me feel lovable is wearing myself not only on my sleeve but on every last shred of my being.


And, finally, one last thought: how can you hope to be unconditionally loved when you do not love yourself unconditionally?

(The paintings with text are David Kramer's -- one of my favourite artists.)