some of this is true

I’ve apparently been tagged by Daorcey for “Book Tag,” which goes like this:

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

(There is also instructions to “tag five people,” but I’m not sure there are even five people reading this, so I will skip that part)

I am doing this at work, as I eat a poor-quality club sandwhich from the pizza joint across the street on my lonely weekend lunch break, so the selection is limited. I considered waiting until I got home, but then I remember the layout of my desk, and realized that, if I faithfully followed the instructions, I would end up with the same book.

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Libel is the publication of a false and damaging statement. It is part of the broader legal category known as defamation, covering slander (ordinary conversation) and libel (published or broadcast). Defamation is a statement that tends to lower a person in the opinion of others, or exposes the person to hatred, contempt or ridicule.

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- The Canadian Press Stylebook, 14th Edition

So that may have been a let down, I realize, and I don’t really have a good story to go along with this. Thankfully I’ve yet to be sued for libel, and I do hope to keep it that way. There was that time while working for the university newspaper, the Gauntlet, during the students’ union elections a few years back, when I caught the ire of a certain presidential candidate. We reported that he was and awful, and I admit that, with a certain amount of zeal, I did my best to make sure everyone else knew. Wrote a few opinion columns. Asked belligerent questions at debates. Quoted his outbursts with all the swear words included. So I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when this particular candidate had his henchman tell me they’d see me in court with their “thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyer,” and he yelled this at me in the middle of a crowded food court while I sat at a table selling tickets for a banquet for communications students. Well, his tenacity proved to be even greater than his stupidity, and he took the whole election to two levels of appeal, having the results at first thrown out and then, eventually, reinstated. His thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyer turned out to be a fellow student who appeared to have learned all he knows about the legal process from Law and Order (I can relate). And there was no lawsuit, and the world returned to normal. So that’s the only time I’ve been threatened with a lawsuit, which is the only relevant thing I could think of to write about to follow book tag. The only other book within reaching distance is the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, which, in case you were wondering (and since there are no real “sentences” to pick from, per se), features as its fifth definition on the 123rd page (including the definition that begins on the previous page) the phrase beat generation, defined as young people from the 1950s who rejected conventional society in their dress, habits and beliefs, those damn dirty hippies.

And just like that, I’m back.

A week at home, seeing family and friends, and this morning I arrived back on the East Coast. I took a red-eye flight, a term which I never quite understood, but I suspect if I took a few minutes thinking about it — or on Google — I’d have an answer.

It’s the second time I’ve been on an overnight flight like this. The first was when I first moved here more than two years ago, when I couldn’t sleep with my head filled with fear and excitement, and the daunting task of moving into an empty apartment all day Saturday before everything closed on Sunday, as they did in Nova Scotia until recently. There’s something compelling about the experience — going to sleep at night and waking up, at the start of a new day, somewhere entirely different. It would feel instant if it weren’t for the occasional wake-up call for turbulence or switching flights, in Toronto, at 6 o’clock local time, which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t only three hours after I left Alberta and around two hours since I finally made it to sleep.

When I first arrived at the Calgary airport, I was early and decided it would be somewhat romantic to have a drink at the airport lounge, by myself, as I prepared for a night of flying. The place was nearly empty — three men lined the other end of the bar and a couple sat at a table in the corner — and the bartender seemed more than a little depressed to see another face to serve, at midnight, when she would rather, I imagine, be doing so many other things than tending bar in an empty airport lounge with three German tourists and me, a twenty-something nondescript patron who didn’t say much at all as I admired the framed poster on the wall for Tombstone, a movie that was at least better than its cousin Wyatt Earp, but still far too poor to deserve having its poster displayed with such prominence. And then, after I drank my Grasshopper beer (I was, after all, in Calgary), I walked to the gate and boarded the plane, ate a sandwich as the plane lifted off and I then tried to position my sweater between my head and the side of the plane so as to mimic a pillow, which did not work as well as you might think.

And then more than six hours later, I walked off the plane into the Nova Scotia air, which a better writer would probably describe as salty, though I have to admit I have never really found the air out here to be salty at all. But what do I know.

I wrote a story recently about the warm winter and whether it would change our Canadian identity, assuming that it’s shaped to some degree by our relationship with the weather, either by how it directly affects our lives (recreation, survival, toques) or the fact that it’s all people talk about.

Now, the warmer weather affecting our identity in any substantial way? Perhaps, but I think it may be a bit of a stretch. Either way, it was the topic de jour yesterday, as I made my trek across our sprawling country.

Halifax to Toronto went without incident, and then . . . A 45-minute boarding delay between flights — not bad, considering the horror stories I had heard, briefly, about canceled flights and chaos. And then we sat in the plane, not moving, watching our satellite TV (daytime programs like Dr. Phil and The View, with CSI repeats on A&E) while the guy next to me watched his sports TV between flipping pages of his Sports Illustrated and making comments about his frustration with the wait in a voice loud enough that the people next to him (read: me) could hear — but I resisted engaging and encouraging that sort of behaviour.

Two and a half hours later we made it through this long line of airliners to the de-icing machines and — with the rush of a pilot who didn’t want to have to get back in line should the de-icing chemicals (awful for the environment, I hear — though probably not as bad as the litres and litres of jet fuel we burned into the atmosphehre) wear off before we were airborne — we were gone.

And so, 12 hours after I left my house, I was home. And my room still looks the same, with the Tragically Hip poster still hanging next to the hanging mobile of wooden sailboats — purchased, I’ve been told, in France, and the street looks identical, save for a few new vehicles I don’t recognize and a scarecrow at the house four doors down, which looks like it was put up at Halloween and the homeowners just haven’t bothered to take it down.

And I am very tired.

Like writing an old friend or a distant relative, the longer I wait the longer I want to delay logging in to update this. Semi-daily updates can be forgiven for being irrelevant, but the first in two long months, well — you get the idea. Which explains a number of previous posts that were, by even the most generous standards, pointless.

Here is a picture of an old car.

This picture was on the first roll of film — antiquated, out-of-fashion, 20th-century technology film — that I’ve shot with in more than a year, as newfangled digital technology has slowly taken over my photos and my life.

But step into my time machine if you’d like — I’m taking a photography class.

My first class of black and white photography at NSCAD was last Tuesday, and we learned advanced techniques such as turning on the camera, and removing the lens cap.

Since I will be missing the second class, someone who knows far more about me in the techniques of darkroom processing was kind enough to show me how to turn a roll of plastic covered in silver, with the use of carcinogenic chemicals with names that are also verbs, into this: