Today I have given the Blog over to Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund:
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Heidi so sick of Norway!!
Always hearing about how it best country in world to live!!
Heidi call bullshit!
Norway no best!!
Hold on. Heidi have joke.
What first two letters in Norway?
NO!!!!
Norway is NO country!!
Ha-ha!! Heidi very, very funny, it true. Heidi negotiating with Netflix for special. Heidi way better than Amy Schumer. So over-rated. Real hack. Schumer maybe funny for Norway, but not REAL, USA funny!
Heidi hate Amy Schumer and Norway.
It true.
Heidi hate Norway so much she been trolling Norway on Twitter!.
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Norway MFA(Ministry Foreign Affairs): Norway made education a top priority because it is not only a human right – it is a prerequisite for development.
Heidi: @NorwayMFA HUMAN RIGHT?? WHAT ABOUT DOG RIGHT?? HEIDI THINK NORWAY SMELL LIKE STINKY CAT FACE!!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Maybe stupid Norway only think about human rights because no-brain Norwegian Elkhound make animals look bad!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Norwegian Elkhound is worst! VERY BAD DOG! Huge national embarrassment!!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Norwegian Elkhound stupidest dog.
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Very bad with sex, too. Ugh.
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Heidi so embarrassed to have relations with Sköll.
Heidi: @NorwayMFA He couldn’t hunt ladybug, let alone moose! Ha!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Sköll moron. He chase sun.
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Norwegian Elkhound sit on throne of lies! Norway sit on throne of lies! Heidi hate throne of lies! Heidi hate Norway!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Heidi say NO WAY to Norway!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA You stink!!
NorwayMFA: Norway is proud of its environmental policies, and the fact that we offer more green space per person than any nation on earth!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Why Norway only care about people? Is because Norway evil?
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Norway ever think so much space because everybody hate place so much??
Heidi: @NorwayMFA It true. So much subtweeting about Norway, Norway would not believe!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Everyone talk behind Norway back. Think Norway gross! Full of stupid sweaters!
NorwayMFA: Norway now has 32,000 electric cars which is the highest rate per capita in the whole world!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Ha! Electric car what weak two-legger use at Ex! Nothing to be proud of, Notway!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Like being proud of anemia!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Think fjords stupid, too!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Fjord sound Norway make when Norway fart!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Heidi rather live in volcano than Norway!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Norway, you nothing but fake news!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Heidi think taxes are for chumps!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Ayn Rand barf if she ever step foot on parasite country!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Norway full of slackers living off bloated government!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Heidi believe if give dog a fish, feed dog, but if teach dog how to hunt, dog feed self!!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Know why nobody ever say MAKE NORWAY GREAT AGAIN? Because Norway never great!
Heidi: @NorwayMFA How many countries you conquer lately, Norway?
Heidi: @NorwayMFA Heidi rest her case. Norway, you the Bono of countries.
It’s was her son, I think.
They had the same eyes.
He was staring through things, his eyes fixed on some invisible, stabilizing horizon off in the distance. His knees were trembling, and it seemed like it was taking all his energy and concentration just to be out of bed and sitting in a chair. He wore tiger-striped pajama bottoms that looked like they were bought by somebody who loved him, somebody who wanted to add a little spark to his long hospital stay. And as the woman pushed him by the assembled strangers who cluttered the hospital, she reached out and touched his hair, letting her hand fall to his face where she caressed, and then cupped his cheek. I’m not sure that he noticed, or even if he was able to respond if he had, but it didn’t matter. She loved him for eternity, through all fires. He belonged to her, he would always belong to her, and she touched him with such tenderness and heartbreak, such solitude, that this small, personal moment became something transcendent. As if phosphorescent, it hung there, suspended for a moment or two before receding and returning us to the day.
Rachelle, my wife, had to work and was unable to make it. These are the text messages that she sent me over the course of the evening:
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Rachelle: Pickle, tell me, how’s dinner going?
Rachelle: Really? You’re giving it a C minus, maybe a D?
Rachelle: That’s strange.
Rachelle: Really? You’ve lost a lot of respect for the family?
Rachelle: Did they call you out for bringing half a bottle of wine again?
Rachelle: You have to stop doing that. It’s embarrassing!
Rachelle: It is.
Rachelle: No, I’m not embarrassing, you’re embarrassing.
Rachelle: Oh, I think I know what happened.
Rachelle: What did you wear out?
Rachelle: You wore your black turtleneck and that jacket, didn’t you?
Rachelle: I know you think it makes you look like Carl Sagan.
Rachelle: I know.
Rachelle: But I still don’t understand why you think that’s a good thing.
Rachelle: Look, I don’t hate the cosmos.
Rachelle: Or space exploration.
Rachelle: Just bad clothes.
Rachelle: Now come on, just tell me what happened.
Rachelle: Oh, sweet Jesus that’s hilarious!!
Rachelle: So, just before everybody was about to start dinner, Marston said, “Edgy Pastor, would you please lead us in grace?”
Rachelle: I love that girl.
Rachelle: No, she’s not full of herself.
Rachelle: She’s so clever, and she’s right, when you wear that outfit you do look like an edgy Pastor.
Rachelle: Yes, you do.
Rachelle: Yes, like some white dad who’s going to rap Genesis or something.
Rachelle: Oh honey, I would never get in the way of your relationship with God!!
Rachelle: There’s more?
Rachelle: Hannah said, “It looks like a jacket you mother might have bought you.”
Rachelle: It’s like that girl is my daughter.
Rachelle: And then she added, “At a store called For Your Son.”
Rachelle: “For Your Adult Son.”
Rachelle: Oh Lord!!! Tears are streaming out of my eyes I am laughing so hard!
Rachelle: And then Marston said, “And she paid for it with a coupon she clipped from a newspaper?”
Rachelle: Oh Pickle, you really are defenceless in the face of those girls!
Rachelle: So what did you do?
Rachelle: Oh.
Rachelle: Do you think that was a good idea?
Rachelle: Well, it’s just if you’re always pretending to have an asthma attack, people might not be very responsive when you actually do, that’s all.
Rachelle: See? I told you!
Rachelle: That is just too funny, I love that they all held hands and prayed for the edgy Pastor during your fake asthma attack!
Rachelle: Did you end up saying grace?
Rachelle: Well, I think you should have embraced the persona and rapped it!
Rachelle: Yes, your life is nothing but a series of missed opportunities.
Rachelle: Oh, I’ve got to go, work calls!
Rachelle: Well, my edgy, little Pastor, I’ll see you in two hours, may you walk with the Lord!
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A sprawling outpost on the edge of the city, the place has always reminded me of an airport. It’s insanely busy, there’s a multiplicity of languages and cultures streaming through the corridors, and the store, the things that they sell, are never truly what the consumer wants.Ikea is more of a way station, a place in your life where you pause, and finding an acceptable but temporary solution, move forward from who you are toward the glittering horizon of the person you’ll one day become, a person who will eventually be able to afford the sort of “adult” furniture you might one day pass down to your children. And so, when you find yourself at Ikea on a Sunday afternoon, you discover, in both a figurative and literal sense, that you are not where you want to be. Ikea, is not your beautiful house.
Perhaps as a result, most of the people there, like commuters, have a slightly dazed and unhappily obliged expression to their faces. However, one couple looked happy, like they were starring in their own movie and the rest of us were just extras there to lend contrast. Located somewhere in their beautiful twenties, they were animated, as if playing games in an amusement park or falling in love while ice skating. Wearing a shiny, silver miniskirt that showed off a splashy array of tattoos, she was a platinum blonde with a kind of retro burlesque vibe, and he, well, he didn’t look quite as confident as he was dressed, but he was trying hard.
They were in Ikea as tourists, treating the place a bit like a museum where the exhibits weren’t the storage solutions and furnishings, but all the weary, humbled people shopping there. It was a cultural excursion for these two, an anthropological journey that was meant as symbol of the quirky, self-conscious lives they were trying to fashion for themselves. She, independent-minded and unpredictable, loved the carnival food on sale there, the secret passageways through the intricately designed shopping trails and the way that things were piled up like giant toys, and he was planning on getting a tattoo of the Ikea Monkey to commemorate the great day, both of them smiling secrets at one another, certain that they would never grow into the compromised, dream-beaten people they imagined blending into the background all around them.
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After family had left and the remaining adults retreated to their bedrooms, the girls began a dance party in our living room. The bass-heavy music thumped away, with the girls singing along together in a harmony that they might never find again. For that moment, they were a perfectly constituted choir—a constellation of sound, movement, energy and potential.
Studying YouTube, they taught themselves new dance steps.
Gas.
Pedal.
Gas.
Pedal.
And as they gained confidence and expertise, their steps grew louder and more choreographed. They were becoming more like the versions of themselves they wanted to be, and their voices, now high-pitched and excited, rose above the music. Lying back in bed watching TV, Rachelle and I could make out flashes of their tossed hair reflected back from the mirror in the hallway, and it was like catching glimpses of agents of nature, unguarded and fierce in their natural habitat.
As it was getting late, we told them that they’d have to keep it down and mind our neighbours, and so they began to dance softly. Having switched to stealth mode, it was as if they were now in moccasins– their feet falling as soft as whispers. And after 30 minutes they had danced themselves dry and all ran to the kitchen, chugging glass after glass of water from the cutest cups that they could find.
And in 10, 20, 30 years, that song they were listening to will come to them over the radio or in a bar, and it will all return in surprising torrents. The moves, like muscle memory, will return, the pretty, downtown dresses bought on Queen Street, the junk food shared and last names suddenly recalled….Yes, that feeling of the endless summer of youth, of being thirsty and drinking cold, cold water, of a life once so simple, pure and beautiful– everything still imperishable and perfect stretching before them.
I have to say, never in my life have I seen such a dense concentration of hipsters. Children, less than two years old, wore vintage Star Wars t-shirts. Facial hair was artful and complicated, with moustaches waxed to fine, compelling points– as if they were trying to win arguments. Every couple we came across seemed to share a small dog and a colourful sleeve of tattoos that suggested a fondness for roller derby.
The event was actually quite small, existing within a chain link fence that contained no more than 20 tables, and as we walked around and around in circles, it felt very much like being at a hipster Merry-Go-Round. All looking like subtle variations of one another, we trudged around and around, picking up the same tired retro bric-a-brac that we always picked up, and then, unimpressed, putting it back down. Part of this repetitive carnival vibe was likely due to a big silver Airstream Yacht that sat there like the main attraction.
Inside this recreational vehicle was a fortuneteller. She was reading Tarot Cards and there was a small, nervous, two-person lineup outside. A young, Indian man with a meticulously ordered mustache, a scarf wrapped fashionably around his neck and t-shirt depicting a robot with antlers, chewed his fingernails. Behind him was a fabulous black guy dressed sharply in white. He was wearing a Bowler hat that was tilted so precariously, so precisely, that if he were to have moved an inch or relaxed his posture just a little bit, it would have surely fallen off.
It was difficult to ascertain what truth they hoped might be revealed to them inside the RV, but all of the lives on the grounds there, so studiously documented on Instagram and unfurling before friends in frenzies of vinyl proofs, felt static, as if everybody was now trapped between irony and discovery, fated by some Greek God to walk the same circuit again and again and again.
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