Things I Like

Friday 21 August 2009

  • I really like how Canadians say "about". Or at least, Montrealians. They say, "aboot" and it sounds really really cute.
  • I really like how Leonard Cohen's music is totally sublime and yet he can't sing for peanuts. I really like how at the end of the doco I watched on him last night (I'm Your Man) he had a pretty decent backing band by the name of U2.
  • I like how it's Friday. I like how Friday comes around once a week. It would be better if it was twice a week. But then again, it would be worse if it was once a fortnight.
  • Consequences. No, not that card game, but actual consequences. In some ways, I am still a child and I will not choose things for my own good. For example, not eating sugar even though it is killing my health, and I wore my jeans yesterday after several months in the cupboard and I had to unbutton them to sit comfortably. Even though I know it's making me feel yukky and my blood sugar levels to go gooberly, and even though I know that I feel great without it. The consequences of my eating habits and certain genetic elements and predispositions and health issues means that I am almost certain that I have developed endometriosis. This means that I am forced to change my eating and exercise habits otherwise I will suffer pain. This is, ultimately, a good thing. I need consequences.
  • I like how the Melbourne woman who walked her small dog in high winds on a pier the other day probably would have learned not to do it again in high winds, like the insanities that prevailed this morning. I like it that the young bloke who was on the pier ripped off his gear and dived in and rescued her doggy for her after the wind picked it up and flung it into the sea.
  • I like it that ultimately all of the thoughts and fears and things and wounds that keep us from ourselves and from each other, all will be somehow fixed, subsumed, ripped away, whatever is done with them by Love, somehow, someday, starting now. I like how even though this is the most painful thing we will ever do, Love will not ultimately allow evil to win. And so I like how we can say in one sense that all of those things, even though they loom, are paper tigers in the grand scheme of all time.
  • I like it that ultimately all of the things that make us the people we really are, like love and integration and joy and loving God and letting God live and move and have his being in us, are more real than the seat you are presently sitting on right now.
  • I like it how, when you set your intention for something - like, for example, to begin setting aside an hour each day for writing once more - it feels like you are making space for nothing, making space for bubbles. But what actually happens is that as soon as you make space for it, stuff rushes in like a vacuum. Not necessarily usable stuff, but stuff. That is so cool.
  • I like it how writing something like this makes me happy :)

9 comments

  1. Funny - I picked up that soundtrack this week at the library.

    You HAD to go for the accent, dincha?? The Brits come to us Canucks for proper English pronunciation and inflection. But yeah, the Montrealers do sound sorta cute(?) especially Cohen.

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  2. you and i, my dear, have a very similar "i like" list. i was going to pick out the one i like the best, but they all pretty much hit the mark in my book (even the melbourne woman, who i can only hold in my imagination.) well, that's aboot it. lovely!!

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  3. it is good to read what you like - do you still like the Hawks?

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  4. I Like This Post!!!

    and I LOVE the way Canadians say "about" it kills me! I used to bug by friend Doug to say it and then I'd laugh...he finally got that it was a compliment to his groovy accent.

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  5. I like this post too. You made me happy because I realized all the things I like and should be happy about myself.

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  6. I really liked reading this post!

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  7. Hey Sue!

    I agree. This was very cool to read. I enjoyed.

    Cole

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  8. Montrealers (les Montrealais, if you please) have an interesting form of English that blends in French idioms. I have been living in Montreal for over 30 years, though, and have not heard "aboot". Maybe I am immune to it now. The French-speaking Montrealais have their own charming accent in English. I am a transplanted American and have been told I have some kind of Maritime accent. Weird.

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  9. Norm - really? It's funny how serendipitous things are, isn't it? Like, how you start noticing Leonard Cohen everywhere when you tune in to the Leonard Cohen frequency going on in the airwaves :) Makes me wonder just how much every day we tune *out*.

    I did have to go for the accent, it's a rather charming sort of a one :)

    Lucy - we are having pink and yellow weeks and sharing "i like" lists. That's lufferly :) I like you, I hope you are on your own "I like" list? And vice versa :) I like myself pretty well. The challenge is liking myself with all of *that* crap in there too, but even that is developing along nicely towards greater self acceptance :)

    Mark - of course I still like the Hawks! I like them even when they have awful seasons. It's a shame it's the end of the season, we are just starting to come into some form. We have SO MANY young blokes playing this year, in such a horribly disrupted season - the fact that we may make the eight, thanks to Freo beating Essendon, is quite dumbfounding, really :)

    Barbara - haha, yes, that's a good thing to bug someone about. It's such a lovely combination of English and American-sounding accent. I guess Australian is sort of the same, people say we sound cockney, and I guess we do. Geez, we're all just offshoots from the Motherland, aren't we :)

    Erin - well, then, my work here is done, if I have made you happy :) It's funny how insidious everything in our culture seems to be designed to keep us focussed on what makes us *un*happy. Hey, I am rereading Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and I just keep thinking of you in it. Highly recommended, I would love to know what you think.

    Tess - cool! I'm glad! It's funny how posts resonate with people when you just write them flippantly while you're at work. I must do it more often :)

    Cole - hey, good to see you. Thank you, kind sir.

    Barbara - I will be interested to see if your ears tune now to the sounds you hear roundaboot. A Maritime accent? What, like you say "Harrr me hearties" a lot? :)

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