On the eighth floor of the cardiac wing at the Toronto Western Hospital a man sits on a bench near the elevators.
This man has his shoes and socks off, his winter coat on. His feet, which are both resting lightly upon one of his wet shoes that he had turned on its side and covered with a sock, look swollen and cracked. Painful. He sits like this, his eyes closed, the palms of his hands facing upward, his lips moving gently. He has been called to prayer. His feet must not touch the ground. Behind him, there is a window through which you can see a huge, blue sky. The sky looks like it goes on forever. It looks like it’s everywhere. Sunlight takes seven minutes to reach the earth, and at the end of the journey it falls through this hospital window, illuminating a praying man. It’s all such a mystery. And all the people streaming in and out of the elevator give him a hard look when they first catch a glimpse of his exposed, wounded feet, but after a moment the looks become softer, much softer– each one of us there, now in the midst of prayer, too.
]]>As I am a very well-connected person, I was able to secure a statement from the White House Intern who was caught in the power struggle between President Donald Trump and CNN reporter Jim Acosta last week. As you may recall, Trump thought that Acosta was taking too long with his questions and asked the Intern to take the mic away. She tried, but could not complete the task.
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“It’s embarrassing to me that this distraction has taken the focus off of Antibiotic Awareness Week where it should rightly be placed. Antibiotics save lives, and are one of the great tools that America can use to ensure her security.
Nevertheless, “Micgate” has become a central story in our news cycle, and I realize I need to address it. This is the one statement I will make regarding the incident.
Many of you have been asking how this has been effecting me. Well, it has certainly brought me an awful lot of unwanted attention and a vast number of offers from various porn sites. Obviously, most of them involve microphones, as has been widely speculated, but the rumour that Pornhub offered me $300, 000 to star in a video called, “Enemy of the People,” is true. In spite of a more complex, layered plot, one in which I was to be driving alone on a rural road in Mexico when my car breaks down in the midst of a migrant caravan that’s just been refused entry in the US, I will in no way be connected to this venture, as it is not reflective of my values.
I think the most impactful thing that I have felt in being a part of this spectacle, is experiencing celebrity, of being reduced to a symbol. When most people watched the clip of me trying to get the microphone from Mr. Acosta, they saw a poor, helpless Intern caught between two powerful men. There was the President, commanding me to perform a humiliating and difficult task, while Mr. Acosta made sure that the world saw, vividly and clearly, that I could not not complete this difficult and humiliating task because, of course, he would’t let me!
If it wasn’t so mortifying, it might actually have been funny!
I feel I must also point out the irony of me, a young woman, reaching out for a microphone, as if maybe I had something valuable and worthwhile to say in this temple of performative masculinity. But of course, like so many other women, I was ignored and then mocked.
Many of you have also wanted to know if I was a member of the KKK, a nazi or a racist. I am not, nor have I ever been, even if my local Starbuck’s barista has now taken to writing RACIST SCUM on my coffee cup.
That will be all I have to say on the matter. Thank you for your time.”
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After more than 460,000 miles, the 2022 edition of The Amazing Race came to an end last night with husband and wife duo Justin Trudeau and Sophie Gregoire being crowned the winners! CBS spoke with Justin and Sophie to ask about their experience!
CBS: “Congratulations on your victory! Can you tell us how it felt when you won The Amazing Race?”
Sophie: “Oh, it was unbelievable. We were so physically and mentally exhausted at that point that it was just music to our ears!”
Justin: “This was really, really big. I think the only thing I can compare it to was surviving the Black Trump Virus back in 2019 when it wiped out almost a third of the world population.”
CBS: “What do you think was the secret to your success on The Amazing Race? ”
Sophie: “I believe the biggest thing was that we really thought through the Roadblocks and the Detours. At first we were really impulsive, just jumping in very aggressively, you know? But after our encounter with the underground tribes of Cannibal Island, we realized we were going to have to take a more strategic, measured approach.”
Justin: “Look, I’m very competitive person and I always expect to win. Before Peoplekind’s first contact with The Radium, I was the leader of a great nation, so I had the ability to build consensus with the tribes of Cannibal Island, and working together as one, we were able to destroy some of the other competing couples, namely Adam and Bethany.”
CBS: “That looks like a Canadian flag you have stitched onto your bindles. You were President of Canada in the Before Time, weren’t you?”
Justin: “Prime Minister, actually, but yes, it is true. We were known for our tolerance, diversity and inclusivity.”
Sophie: “Canada, toujours dans nos cœurs!”
CBS: “Indeed, we were all very sorry to see Canada burn during the dimensional shifts. So many fine comics used to come from there.”
Justin: “ Yes, Shaun Majumber, Rick Mercer and Russell Peters to name just a few.
CBS: “So what was your favourite moment from the Race?”
Sophie: “Oh gosh, definitely, the Bollywood Challenge we won in Global Sector 6. So much fun!”
Justin: “Absolutely, it was a real game changer.”
CBS: “So as a successful team, what advice would you give to future contestants going on the show?”
Sophie: “You must make all of the scheduled blood sacrifices to The Radium. It doesn’t matter if you’re exhausted or wounded, you still have to perform the entire sacrifice. Correctly. And if you don’t, The Radium will know! Look what happened to the mother son team of Dot and Danny.”
Justin: “I would just add that even though it’s important for you to respect the survivors of all the Global Sectors you visit, you really are better off shooting first and asking questions later. ”
CBS: “Do you have any special plans for the Oxygen Credits you just won on The Amazing Race?
Justin: “For now we’re not going to change. We’re going to just continue hunting and gathering, but eventually we would like to be able to acquire a flesh slave.”
]]>Thin and pale, her hair was pulled back into a practical, oddly lonely ponytail. Her mother walked beside her, carrying the young woman’s belongings in a plastic bag and speaking cheerfully about trivial matters, as if relieved to finally be able to speak of trivial matters. She was trying to assure her daughter that she did not belong in a hospital, I think, and that she could just pick up her life wherever she had been forced to abandon it. The young woman said nothing as the mother talked, and although her eyes were still a little sunken and dull, there were traces of relief to be read in her tired and beautiful face.
They passed through the revolving door that led to University Avenue and stepped out into what must have felt like a miracle. The night was so unseasonably mild that it seemed like you’d just emerged into some temperate and surreal vacation– and everything, the waiting stand of festive cabs, the disembodied sounds of the night, everything, felt laden with potential. The young woman stepped forward onto the sidewalk and looked up into the the dark canyon of sky above her. With arms outstretched and head back, she moved in a slow circle, as if calling the world back. When she was finished she was facing her mother, her arms still open. And in this unexpected moment their eyes caught. They smiled at each other, and then over the course of a second, maybe two, their smiles began to tremble, and then they were both in tears, sobbing and embracing on the sidewalk, the cab drivers looking quietly on.
]]>It was a cheap, addictive entertainment.
Like Netflix.
Like porn.
Like the buildup to the Super Bowl.
The big event, as far as most media was concerned, was the landfall in Florida. This, it seemed, was the point to which all of our lives were leading, the apocalypse that was sure to prove whatever it was we needed proved. Days, perhaps even weeks before this happened, there was wall to wall coverage promising cataclysm. I learned to fear the “Cone of Uncertainty” and “Life Threatening Winds,” I listened to talking heads as if they were debating some sport, and I watched relentless loops of footage of nature destroying any puny mortal concerns that stood in its path.
And as the hurricane carved out it’s terrible path, each demolished, little island a grim foreshadowing of what was about to happen to over-populated and under-prepared Florida, the hurricane was simultaneously a prophecy of doom and a trailer for a Hollywood disaster film. Almost giddy, each day the broadcasters revealed– in all its punitive majesty– another verse in this Book of Revelations.
The media, of course, profited from our obsessive fear, and turned the volume up as loud as they could. The more clicks the better, and if it was terror and anxiety that ushered in these clicks, so be it. At one point a rain-soaked reporter, bent and staggering against the elements, conducted an urgent interview with a man who had not evacuated. Clearly the reporter was hoping for some Florida Man archetype to emerge from the scrub, a guy who looked like Kid Rock and was armed with a crossbow and some alligator mace, and wasn’t going to let some “lady storm” tell him what to do.
Instead, the reporter got a genius cardiologist, who with astonishing knowledge, detail and reasoning, explained precisely why it was safe to be exactly where he was. He was calm, too, not a trace of panic to him, and he made the reporter look like the very bad actor he was.
That the media manipulates and distorts news events, or even creates disaster porn, is nothing new. When 9/11 took place I literally could not take my eyes off the tv.
It was the most riveting thing I had ever seen, and it was a rating’s sensation. Now, with all our various technologies even further entrenched, this sense of chaos and anxiety has become a permanent, immobilizing fixture of our lives. The media, desperate to make a buck, feed us all the worst case scenarios, whipping us into a frenzy of panicky, dependent consumption.
My level of excitement had reached such heights that when Hurricane Irma finally struck Florida, I was actually disappointed–like I would be if I saw a movie where the trailers were better than the actual product they were selling.
This is completely perverse and backwards, but there you have it.
It is instructive when you’re caught in the swift currents of one of these types of stories to look up beyond your computer screen and out the window.
Remind yourself that we are actually living in the safest time in history.
( https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-23/world-actually-safer-ever-and-heres-data-prove )
Go outside, for surely something beautiful will fall to you.
]]>And so I did.
The place, stripped to a skeleton staff and now loosely populated by the permanent residents– most of whom were confined to wheelchairs of varying complication– was pretty empty. The days, now shapeless and free of plot, offered little and so I wandered hallway after hallway. Seeming more memory than music, the theme song to MASH drifted from one room I passed,
while another was antiseptic and empty but for Trump/Pence banners taped defiantly to the wall, and then through a doorway, I caught a glimpse of a nurse changing a patient’s tracheotomy tube– so intimate and tender as to be virtually erotic. Downstairs, scattered like islands, I came upon people who sat anchored and voiceless in wheelchairs, each one stationed near a window, watching.
There was a church service later in the morning that took place in the same space that hosted Bingo, Pub Night and all our other events. It was Catholic, which occasioned a few religious props being removed from a box and placed on a cafeteria table, and somehow this act was achingly beautiful.
A strong, elderly woman dressed all in black walked in, made the sign of the cross, and then nodded warmly to all who made eye contact. She went directly to a middle-aged woman who was frozen and strapped into a wheelchair, and touched her with a tenderness that exceeded language. Gently, she pulled a favourite sweater over her head, and then smiling, began to brush her hair—a mother’s imperishable, radiant love, holier than a saint.
An impossibly old woman was reclined, almost prone, in a wheelchair. Blankets and knitted things covered virtually every inch of her body, and her skin was so very thin, her body so frail, that it seemed as if a soft gust might be enough to push her through the veil. A couple of hospital staff tended to her, telling her that her brother would be there any moment now. Her eyes flickered open at his mention, and as if surfacing through water she said, “Oh, I hope so,” and then she fell back down and in to sleep.
Ten minutes later a tall, elderly man, clearly ill himself, entered and sat stoically beside her. With a bible open on his lap he mumble-prayed along with the priest. He never touched her, nor did he say anything to her while she slept through the service, but it was clear that he was her brother. He was her tie to this world, the one now disintegrating around her into a living mist. Drifting in and out, all of time swirling around her, what version of her brother might she have hoped to summon, what memory returning in dream, what ghost to see her home?
Whenever I’m in one I think of some punitive elementary school. There’s an entire galaxy of largely symbolic rules, and everything associated with us is measured, weighed and timed. And as you stand in line you find yourself worrying about whether you remembered to bring your phone charger. Or your cool sneakers. Or your medicine. And so it goes, and never for a second do you forget that what you are about to do may be the last thing you ever do in your life.
Flying is something of a miracle, and we’re all, at least partially, expecting it to fail. And who can blame us for this suppressed expectation? Any time a plane crashes it’s international news. When the story breaks, people all over the world, those doing dishes or clicking “like,” are wondering just how they would have behaved in their last terrified moments as fire, cloud and sky sped by.
And please don’t forget the terrorists.
They might materialize at any moment. If you forget this, there is a terror alert, like a goal-thermometer on a fundraising marathon, warning you that today, the day you’re to give your first professional speech, the terror alert is ORANGE.
So air transit, even in a best case scenario, is a tense thing.
I imagine that Dr. Dao, the man who was dragged bleeding off a United flight earlier this week, was feeling some of this tension and uncertainty as he waited for his plane to fly him home to Kentucky.
Now we’ve all seen the video, and everybody knows that what took place was wrong.
However, the corporate face of United used the word “re-accommodation” to describe what happened. This is the kind of soft evil that creeps into our lives each day, and then stays there, existing beneath our skin like some sort of bacteria. We know all about over-booking now, and it all reduces to the airline valuing profit over people. This is the corporate way upon which our society functions. What seems to have shocked the microsystem in this case was that nobody would take a material inducement to give up their seat.
And what’s the corporate ethos in such a situation?
And so they dragged him screaming and bleeding from his seat. The law, of course, is behind United. Trapped in this culture where being busy is seen as a sign of status, we’re all so desperate to escape the heaviness of our lives and get to the beach in Veradaro,
that we accept that we might be “re-accommodated” when we buy our tickets. We sign-off on the fact that although we’ve bought a ticket and made all sorts of arrangements contingent on the timing of that flight, we might still lose our seat.
It’s kind of insane. The law allows a corporation to hedge on their services in order for them to maximize profits, even if it’s a ruinous policy for individual consumers. That the law favours corporate growth over human security is nothing new, but this is a particularly vivid example of the amoral structure that pins over our lives.
In the aftermath, Dr. Dao’s was vilified– a tactic minority communities know all too intimately—and the saga, now diffused through late night talk shows, social media and PR flak, is about to replaced by the next meme-worthy event. And still, the corporations will preside over us like gods, and because we believe we need what they offer, we will ignore our own intuition and continue to be subordinate to them, regardless the cost to human dignity and instinct.
]]>Sitting on the sidewalk between the mailbox and garbage can was a man selling pens. He wore a red ‘Fly Emirates’ hat, had a distended tongue that protruded through his mouth, a tracheotomy tube sticking out of his throat and loosely bandaged hands. He was so low to the ground and positioned in such a way that it was difficult to tell if he had legs or not, and he gave the appearance of some wax creation melting into the grey concrete.
A chopper sounded unseen in the sky above, likely landing on the roof of the Children’s Hospital right around the corner. Somebody, all sorts of people even, were in the midst of the worst, most unimaginable day of their lives.
A handsome business man with an immaculately trimmed beard strode by as if on a catwalk. Standing about 6’3, he was resplendent in a perfectly fitted suit that he’d accented with a pair of beautiful Italian shoes and a pocket square. He spoke calmly into his phone as if he was in control and absolutely everything was going exactly as planned.
Walking toward him was a blonde woman who was just as thin as a blade. She was concentrating so hard on looking unattainable she seemed angry, like she was off to eliminate an enemy. Dressed expensively, she was so deeply articulated by fashion that it was hard to imagine anything existing beyond exterior. Behind sunglasses and confident on high heels, as inky as a shadow she smoked–an image to be captured rather than a person to be spoken to.
It seemed that these two people, these two vectors of power and beauty, had been moving their entire lives toward this moment of collision, but they passed without incident or plot, and the man selling pens on the street beneath their indifferent gazes cast such a stark contrast as to feel like a biblical thunderbolt.
Moving his mouth to no effect, he held out a pen to everybody who passed, but nobody stopped or even noticed him. Not a single person. He was beneath their sight line, both figuratively and literally, and may as well have been living in a completely different world.
A woman on crutches was standing near him. You could tell that she wasn’t sick– that she’d just had a minor accident and was still living in one world and not the other. But still, she was angry. She might have been angry about a lot of things. She was limping about very dramatically, exaggerating, exasperated that that the cab stand was 20 meters away. The beggar, wordless and unseen, waved a car over for her, and as one materialized, she limped furiously past, never noticing the blessings of the saint kneeling before her.
]]>Heather:
When I was initially diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease I characterized it as an act of terror. By doing that I abnegated any responsibility for my circumstance. I did nothing wrong—there was nothing I could do to have prevented the disease, it was like getting on a bus that just happened to have a bomb on it. I did not feel weak. I did not feel that I was to blame. It was a random, utterly arbitrary occurrence that just happened to have victimized me. It would not come back.
When it did come back, my sense of disease as terrorism intensified. It became a manifestation of fear. Cancer was the terrorist bomb that could explode within my body at any moment. I became jittery and tentative—vigilant to anything out of the ordinary. I lived in fear, and I lived quietly, unwilling to make commitments to people or things, I locked myself indoors for worry of the terrorist threat within my body.
I am trying to stop that.
As always,
Anderson
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I had a long stay in the Toronto General back in October and it wasn’t much fun. You feel interred when in hospital, and for a quite a stretch there it seemed as if I didn’t have very much to be encouraged by. The days, enveloped by a fog of confusion, frustration and dread, were very long and very slow, and I found myself looking forward to dinner, imaging it might be a little clearing in the woods. However, nothing could have been further from the truth.
The meal, delivered wordlessly by a stranger in a hair net, would arrive with the loveless flat, slap of a plastic tray. The food itself, alien, was a visual insult, a slushy confection that had been poured from one container into another, a reminder that you had absolutely no control over this life you now inhabited. I found it all inexpressibly demoralizing, so I began to order food in whenever I could.
I wasn’t much good at providing the delivery service accurate information about how to get to me. The Toronto General Hospital is a monster. It goes on forever, in every complicated direction and level you can imagine.
It’s disorienting, like a space station made by a long extinct civilization, and having been moved a half dozen times since my admittance, I didn’t have any practical understanding of where I was. I simply could not give instructions as to how to get to my room. I didn’t have a clue.
All the same, I was in a ward with three other men on the 14th floor of the thoracic/respiratory wing of the hospital, and it took the delivery man ages to find the place. He must have travelled all over the hospital, unwittingly engaging in a tour of all the grief and suffering tucked away there from public view.
Across the hallway, a woman wept loudly, as she did every day at that hour. An elderly man lost to dementia, roamed the corridors a muttering shadow. Family members, huddled and speaking in quiet, hollowed voices stood by the ice machine trying to devise coping strategies.
Our room was dark but for the glow of my tiny tv set, but still, at a glance you could tell that everybody in there was pretty deep in the woods and not going anywhere soon. The delivery man, who probably wasn’t expecting this intimate and difficult a journey when he started work, brought the food to me. Looking very emotional– for reasons that I am sure ran deep and mysterious on this Thanksgiving weekend– he said a quick prayer in a language I didn’t understand, and then petitioned me to get well, “You must get better, sir, you must, there is so much for you, sir!” and then nodding toward me, his palms pressed together, he returned to his life, and out of ours.
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