leroBlog

i have made this gift salad for my friend jesse, but he is 40 minutes late for dinner.

this is not an indictment of jesse. i recognize this is ALL MY FAULT.

—> . 0-: (that is an icon of a crying housewife-me taking a methamphetamine diet tablet, just about to do a whole lot of vacuuming.)

(one who acts like a nerd but does not possess the supernatural intelligence of a nerd)

My ex-boyfriend Peter lent me his glasses so that I could better understand the story he told me about the CBC listener who sent a holiday card to his office with the inscription: “Merry Christmas. You suck.”

There’s a cat in my apartment right now, but it is not mine. If I had the glasses I’d know exactly where it came from!

Ladies, don’t you love getting tipsy on a bit of Cava and strutting around in your ankle weights? I know I do! LADIES??

IKEA food… Bad choice!

Talking myself out of buying a sauna suit… Good choice!

“Filing” my receipts for 2009 in a used jiffy pack… Bad!!!

Nico’s long-forgotten Parisian member of the Misfits look… Good!!!

i went to see some excruciating comedy on tuesday which caused me to drink and smoke and then look this i’d been swimming in some sludge off the new jersey turnpike.

beforehand, before this skull crushing comedy, i’d written down some Very Important Points about life.

1. people enjoy bonding over the severity of their past hangovers
2. it’s annoying to make a TO DO list and then do something you did not put on the list
3. maybe open a bar that serves only booze milkshakes
4. don’t buy any more of Amy’s frozen enchilada trays
5. maybe start dismissing people who say “towards” and “afterwards”
6. it’s difficult to know how to arrange one’s face NOT when one is waiting for a friend, but when that friend has arrived and is saying hello to people he or she doesn’t know that well and you will likely not be introduced to

If you go to the newsstands in CANADA and AMERICA (Canada’s pants) and you go to the section with girls on the covers of magazines and you open the one that says “Marie Claire” to a special certain page, you’ll get what’s below! A Q&A with me. Here’s the thing: I stupidly gave away the denouement of the book because I am stupid, so maybe just stare at the photos and do not register any of the words. If you feel like staring adoringly, the internet won’t mind. Except for those people from the Amazon.com Vine Program who seem to have gathered into some kind of internet lynch mob. My life failed to meet even the lowest of their expectations. Also, some of them think I should be put in an asylum.

Kindness and understanding abound! What a time to be alive.

Earlier I wrote a pathetic post. Then I deleted it. Maybe you saw it. If you saw it, my bribe still stands. If you didn’t see it, and you’re wondering about the bribe, just drop me an email.

Earlier, I was angry at my “you’re not fooling anyone, fireplace” fake fireplace. It wasn’t pumping-blasting enough heat into the living room. Now it seems to be doing its job. I also have the oven on (for food.)

On the fireplace is: 1. my broken camera (still under warranty), 2. a stuffed spermatozoid in a foam green ashtray, 3. pictures of my cake-loving nephew, 4. Republic of IKEA tealight holder. On the floor near it: 1. Kinski/Herzog DVD collection that my parents’ bought for my brother for Christmas that he temporarily bequeathed to me because it wouldn’t fit in his luggage.

Earlier, it was shorts weather. Not earlier today though.

I’m reneging on my outburst regarding links. I want to post them all up in this post. I want to explode links on your face today. So I’m going to. On this 2nd day of the 2nd decade of the 21st century.

Here is some advice I gave in the National Post (the newspaper that used to carry my column and then axed it for what I assume was a bunch of different reasons, instead of just one large “Kathryn, you make very little sense” reason.)

And this is a valuable video I made over the holidays.

Scotch Lesson with the Borels

Also, the terrific Sarah Liss wrote this, which set my insides all ablaze with joy.

Now I feel gross! Goodbye, goodbye.

Sheila and I did a special project for the DAWN OF THE NEW DECADE. It’s coming out in the Toronto Star in three hours, but here is a photo and the text without the link because come on, links? LINKS? What is this, a goddamn golf course??

HELL IS OTHER PEOPLES’ PARTIES by Kathryn Borel and Sheila Heti

At almost midnight, Sheila dropped our camera on the steps of the church at Lowther and Walmer. We’d heard what sounded like North African party music coming from inside the church, so we rushed over hoping to be welcomed – positive we’d be welcomed – after all, isn’t everyone welcome in a church? But the doors were all locked. When the superintendent realized we were there and opened the door a crack, we asked if we could be let in to take part in whatever event was causing the beautiful singing. He turned us away with a dismissive, “They’re Ethiopian,” and closed the door. Kathryn put her hands to her face, breathed in and remarked that her fingers still smelled of the Ethiopian stew we’d eater earlier in the night.

We pulled out the camera hoping to record the absurdity of being shunned at the one place designed to take in strangers. In our eagerness to capture how crestfallen we were, Sheila fumbled the camera, causing it to smash on the stone steps and break. Kathryn yelled, “How the hell am I supposed to remember that I have friends if the thing with all my friends inside it no longer works because of my FRIEND?”

We walked away shame-faced in silence for a half-block and then were met with a staccato rain of fireworks and the cry of a lone female voice from a second story window: HAPPY NEW YEAR, PEOPLE!

~

This New Year’s Eve, we had decided to do something different. Because New Year’s is so much about the hope for our own renewal – and the possibility of a fresh start – it occurred to us that there was something paradoxical about the tradition of celebrating with one’s closest friends. These people, after all, are the bearers of our laden history. They remind us of our limitations and reinforce the banality of who we are. How is this commensurate with our best-laid plans and aspirations for change?

Instead of going to the parties we had been invited to (year after year) we would see how it felt to spend the night crashing the parties of strangers. This would surely allow us to forge superior versions of ourselves.

~

We went for Ethiopian on the Danforth – a neighbourhood that was far enough away from our homes on the west side to feel novel, but not too novel: we eat Ethiopian food all the time. Prepared for action, we immediately accosted a table of three young women who were taking each others’ picture and we offered to take a group shot. We had a friendly conversation that lasted a few minutes. They told us they had no resolutions for the new year, but always celebrated together and were going dancing. Kathryn accidentally put their camera in the injera, we felt a little silly, and walked back to our table, where we lost ourselves in our own conversation for forty minutes, as usual.

Realizing we were slacking on our mission, we paid and left. We wandered the streets for half an hour, continually deceived by Christmas lights – those beacons of home – which at every turn promised revelers behind their eager, blinking glow. But there was not a single party.

On the wide and eerily deserted Greenwood Avenue, across the street from the TTC train yards, in the rain, we felt a little lost and shut out. We took some photos under a sign that said NO EXIT and lamely remarked, “Maybe hell IS other people.”

~

A cab dropped us off on a residential street near Church and Wellseley. Sheila suddenly stopped and said, “Wait, there’s laughter!” In a dapper little semi-detached, we saw humans moving behind a window. We thrust each other up the steps and let ourselves in, before we chickened out. Four men in their thirties wearing well-pressed shirts and three attractive women in sparkle dresses greeted us in a willing, if slightly skeptical way. A blonde in the kitchen looked up from the fridge with a face formed into a question mark and said, “Welcome?”

Nervously, we blurted our only prepared deceit, “Is Jackie Linden-Webster here?” Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t. We hysterically apologized as Kathryn fake-consulted her iPhone and spontaneously said, “OH! We’re supposed to be at 24 Beverley!” We lied and said that we were from Montreal, then Kathryn quickly thrust the bottle of contingency champagne into Caroline’s gracious hands, both of us wishing the bribe would erase our existence. We had just learned that they all knew each other from law school and the varsity volleyball team. We were far, far from idealized versions of ourselves. We were barely people at all.

After twenty minutes of forced repartee, we left.

If we were aliens at Caroline’s, at the frat house we were ghosts. No one looked our way as we wandered through the cavernous rooms past a game of beer pong, past a boy and a girl covetously leading each other upstairs, and a short guy recounting a story of being punched so hard his tooth came through his lip. There was no reason for us to be there. They didn’t need or want us. Feeling truly old for the first time, Sheila wondered if friends shield us from the truth of our place in the world.

~

Five minutes after midnight, across the street from the church, Kathryn finally looked up from her broken camera, grinned at Sheila and echoed the screaming lady: HAPPY NEW YEAR, PEOPLE! We exchanged a kiss. As we walked south through the Annex, past strolling couples and an overflowing Brunswick House, we realized the places we had visited were not for us to penetrate. They were places of belonging.

Coming toward us, walking dejectedly in the middle of the road was a friend of Sheila’s who paused and wished us a happy new year. He explained he wasn’t in the mood for conversation, as he was in process of breaking up with his girlfriend. A bit further down, Kathryn saw a woman in a cream-coloured dress standing on the front porch of a house, and ducked her head, rushing Sheila along. The girl had dropped Kathryn as a friend a year ago for being too abrasive.

At this point, we were exhausted. Our New Year’s Eve had not given us the feeling that we could be better than ourselves in the coming year, because we had been such asses all night. We wondered aloud if it is, in fact, comfort and security that provides a person with the stability and confidence needed to evolve.

No one we had spoken to all night long admitted to having resolutions, but everyone we had encountered was with friends.

Sheila finally admitted, “My pal Josh is having a party down the road.” With new energy, we quickened our pace, and arrived at the house. People we recognized were outside. We went with relief up the walkway, smiling easily at the smokers lining the path – than ran into a boy Kathryn had dated, who she had been studiously avoiding all year. He glared at her.

Serendipitously, Kathryn had friends there too.