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Food
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This one touches on areas of trauma (but is also about community (and dystopia)).
Perhaps the largest of the issues I’m currently working on is food.
There have always been foods with textures or smells that make me physically uncomfortable or worse. There are also many specific tastes that ruin a dish for me, a lot of which are popular “also added”s. I also have ethical issues with much of food production. Not to mention: dinner events often involve bright lights and competing loud sources of sound. Plus there is a very specific way to sit and to hold utensils (plus sometimes secret etiquette like that time Wesley Crusher played frisbee on an away mission), and the social expectation is to participate in “polite” conversation the entire time (“polite” excluding all of the above topics). Also, it is mandatory to look unfailingly cheerful and relaxed.
Food involves judgment. Societal, certainly. Diet cokes and salads (look at your thighs!). At home, for reasons, I didn’t feel the food supply was secure. I bought protein bars to compensate, and sometimes saved half for later. You’re welcome to imagine the consequence of hoarding a half-eaten protein bar in a big box in the closet.
I never really learned to cook. Cooking and eating were, I understood, a waste of resources. In university, on scholarship, I ate raw cans of tuna with a fork and felt unentitled to bread and spices and condiments and other luxuries. I also ran cross-country, a weird combination of strong and malnourished.
My good doctor a few years ago seemed accepting of my theory about Avoidant-Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, which has manifested for me as resentment of eating. Even now when I have food in the fridge and time to prepare it and no one around to judge my dexterity, I would still generally rather not eat. Sometimes it’s not just an aversion but a physical inability.
This is incomprehensible, I know, to people who have more of a binge-eating relationship to food (or even a healthy one, I guess, if those people exist). The closest to understanding loved ones seem to get is that I’m “just not hungry,” but that’s not it. There can be physical pain involved. That has, historically, been irrelevant to the question of eating.
I’m working on all of this. I’ve developed tricks based on new self-knowledge, and I try to deliberately spend time on recipes and groceries and kitchen practice. Sometimes I even reach enjoyment instead of resentful sustenance! But learning new skills and changing old habits is hard. There’s a lot of back-sliding and I still have the instinct to save groceries “for later,” especially in times of stress (which now certainly is, what with climate and safety concerns about the food supply, inter alia).
One thing I’ve found helpful is food exchanges (leftover swaps). I also like learning how other people were taught to do things, and then eating the meal we prepared together. It’s good for me personally, and I think it’s good for community too. It doesn’t make sense for everyone to buy their own groceries and try to personally cook and eat everything before it goes bad. There is money and labour to be saved from a more communal approach. (Reminder: capitalism is bad.)
I’m now imagining a group chat that involves meal planning. More sharing, more variety, less waste. (“I’m going to need the cumin next week; could you bring it to the meal exchange?”) Maybe there could be a shared calendar…
Anyway. A more personal and stream of consciousness post today, as I procrastinate eating and worry about the wisdom of posting anything vulnerable and opinionated in a world getting more cruel. But then I think “What would P!nk / Tank Girl / Katniss Everdeen do?” and the answer is more truth and more community and more shit-disturbing. So.
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An advisor resigns
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Exciting federal political news today: it looks like Justin Trudeau tried to demote Chrystia Freeland in favour of another rich white dude and she, after years as his closest political advisor and heir apparent to the Liberal throne, said “no, fuck you.”
To be clear, she said “no, fuck you” in the most Liberal status quo way possible: focusing entirely on the economic situation, making dibs on the Team Canada brand, and posting a bilingual resignation letter on what was formerly an important network for breaking news but is now a Nazi bar.
What I assume happened is that she, too, lost patience with Justin Trudeau, notably re: wasting money to buy votes in a desperate attempt to not lose the next election. Rather than listen to the expert advice of the woman who has been his Deputy PM since 2019 and his Finance Minister since 2020, Trudeau brought in a special financial advisor on economic growth, former Bank of Canada white finance guy Mark Carney, and then attempted, it seems, to demote Freeland in an upcoming Cabinet shuffle, advising her of this mere days before she was expected to present the fall economic update on his behalf.
I assume Freeland was unwilling to be quietly glass-ceilinged when she thought the proper course was for Trudeau to resign so she could take over, so she instead quit publicly in the hopes others would be inspired to join in ousting him and installing her. It is very dramatic.
Is Trudeau finally unpopular enough to be ousted? Maybe. There’s a lot of private dissatisfaction, and this is a pretty public stunt compared to grumbling behind closed doors and signing what may or may not be a secret petition.
Is she popular enough to become Liberal leader? Maybe. She’s extremely pro status quo, which apparently appeals to many Liberals. But lots of people don’t like women in power, and there seems little reason to believe she’d be any better at actually fixing things than Trudeau proved capable of.
Is she likely to be more successful than Kamala Harris at convincing people to vote for a pro status quo brand over raging populists? I doubt it. She does not scream charisma to me, or compassion below the middle class, or genuine concern for the planet and future.
But we’ll see what happens. I personally would be extremely interested to hear from Jody Wilson-Raybould and Célina Caesar-Chavannes today. Like they said years ago: Justin Trudeau doesn’t like when women challenge his mistakes, even in private.
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Pieces I did not produce
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I spent a lot of time writing this past week. Hours on Saturday and Sunday and Tuesday and nothing “produced.” First I once again felt too resigned to publish a piece about politics. I couldn’t even get people who espoused the same principles as me to listen when I sat at the same table as them and got paid for my research and writing and knowledge. What makes me think this is any less futile.
On Monday, I went with a friend to see butterflies at the nature museum, and I listened to a bunch of podcasts on Buddhism / psychology, and I thought about newly hatched butterflies being in no rush to leave the hatchery, and about the lessons of playing tag when you can and enjoying what you eat so much your entire body vibrates. That’s the piece I failed to produce on Tuesday. (What does a butterfly care about its economic value.)
Last night I listened to a data discussion organized by COVID-19 Resources Canada, a bunch of professionals doing their best to track and predict what’s going on despite inadequate information related to widespread denial. I couldn’t keep up with the science and acronyms, but the tone felt familiar (surreal). That inspires a piece about documenting the real-time collapse of society that I expect to not produce today.
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Pith and substance
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I continue to think about the proposed Oil and Gas Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cap Regulations, as Alberta plans an objection under its Sovereignty Act.
Specifically I wonder how the federal government intends to justify an “environmental” law in court if, based on its own analysis, the proposed regulations are expected to have essentially no ameliorative effect on the environment.
The Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement (RIAS) begins:
There is an urgent need to address climate change and move towards a low-carbon economy. Canada is committed to doing its part to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), the major contributor to climate change. … [D]ecreasing emissions in the oil and gas sector by introducing a regulatory emissions cap is necessary for the sector to do its share to tackle climate change and reach the Government of Canada’s GHG emissions reduction targets.
Under the Paris Agreement, the RIAS says, Canada committed to reducing GHG emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. But once you scroll past huge tracts of verbosity you get to this informative table, preceded by the admission that the proposed regulations “are expected to enable Canadian production to grow in response to global demand.”
What I understand from this information (PJ = petajoules) is that it is the federal government’s own evidence that the cumulative effect of these Regulations will be a 16% increase in oil and gas production by 2032, whereas without the Regulations there would be a 17% increase in oil and gas production by 2032.
In other words, and I invite correction if I’m wrong here, the expected value of the proposed regulations is a -0.7% change from baseline production levels, eight years down the road. In still other words, with or without the regulations the outcome is significantly increased production compared to 2019, which I am quite willing to bet was already significantly increased compared to 2005.
How is this doing the “necessary” and “urgent” work of reducing emissions? Of course people are pissed. Oil and gas people are understandably pissed because it wastes their time and money and subjects them to essentially pointless oversight. Environmentalists including Steven Guilbeault should be pissed because the entire scheme seems demonstrably unrelated to meeting international commitments and improving air quality.
Which brings me back to my original question: how do you legally justify an environmental law that is expected, in advance, to do so little to improve the environment? What is the constitutional analysis of the scheme’s “pith and substance” when the federal government’s own evidence about its expected environmental impact is so weak?
In my opinion, the pith and substance is to look like they’re doing something significant, to trick people concerned about the future of life on the planet, while doing very little to restrict oil and gas companies from the extraction and pollution they were planning to do anyway. Paperwork and propaganda.
And then federal Liberals are confused when people don’t want to vote for them, failing to see this as a direct consequence of their ineffectuality, expecting a $250 bribe to “working Canadians” (but not the income-less) to paper over the gap between their rhetoric and their actions.
It doesn’t.
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Tiny travelogue
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The world has changed a lot since the last time I published a travelogue.
The previous trip I wrote far too many words about was 10+ days long and involved airplanes and foreign languages.
In comparison, this was just a one-night trip by bus and light rail and train, less than half a day’s journey. The kind of jaunt I made regularly to see a band and/or visit a friend/boy, in the before times.
I find travel more challenging now, personally and interpersonally. The world has become manifestly more hostile to those who don’t conform, which of necessity includes me, one of very few passengers wearing a mask as others coughed and sneezed freely into mass transit shared air at up to 1497 ppm CO2.
I felt my vulnerability strongly this week, carrying most of my essential belongings in a backpack and suitcase, alone and unsure where I was going. Looking, maybe, like the most obvious gazelle on the plain.
A lion and a cougar got on the O-Train at the same downtown stop as me. The lion made a big gallant show of moving out of the way so I could embark: a sly performance of respect for a delicate creature traveling alone, so encumbered.
I nodded back politely and moved inside the car warily. I stood ready stance over my suitcase and observed the lion and the cougar suddenly pretend not to know each other.
Close to the next stop (not mine), the lion clocked my awareness and also spotted a magnificent muscled zebra, heavily adorned in gold. (That last part’s not a metaphor.)
The lion now made a big gallant show of getting out of the zebra’s way so she could disembark. The cougar didn’t budge from his seat. The zebra got off and strode powerfully away, the lion went to sit down, near but not with the cougar, and both turned to their phones. I continued to stand guard.
My stop, obviously, was the train station, which I noticed on approach looked dark and nearly empty. As the cougar and the lion disembarked together but still pretending to be separate, I had a vision of all my belongings being torn away, of becoming paralyzed trying to decide whether to chase my backpack or my suitcase, a too-slow analysis of which items were the most desperate to fight for, which predator I had better odds against.
So I stayed on the train one more stop. I had time. As the train and I pulled away, I saw the lion and cougar abandon the pretence of being strangers, halfway up the dark stairs a gazelle was not also on. An unsuccessful hunt.
They were gone by the time I made my way back to the train station, and that was by far the worst thing that happened on these particular travels.
Highlights from the train down included cheerful, helpful, trilingual staff (I hope they’re paid well); a toddler just learning to walk who found me fascinating; and large warehouse graffiti: Grow Good Together.
Through my mask, the new train smelled like childhood motel.
I was picked up at the station by my old mentor, the indefatigable and kind Graham Stewart. He and his equally spirited wife Deb had agreed to host me overnight in the warm and welcoming home they share with their expressive dog Molly and, at times, up to 21 family members.
Graham was recently back from a trip to Northern Ireland with his son, with the goal of investigating Stewart family history based on internet research and old local records that weren’t always primarily motivated by accuracy. The behavioural aspects of that interest me, especially the detective work of most plausible explanations based on known facts and our understanding of human nature.
We theorized, for example, about why an ancestor’s age was inaccurately low on a wedding certificate after impregnating the daughter of a well-off local businessman, and further what could be gleaned from the son-in-law’s subsequent success as a merchant.
We talked about a mother’s grief for a child who died young from disease and was unremembered decades later by anyone else. We talked about an ancestor’s wartime diary that was more about pie than war. One day, one sentence announcing the death of her husband. A testament to the human need to keep records and keep going, and to the impossibility, sometimes, of words.
We talked about the nature of family, the practice of acceptance, the challenge of growth. I cried twice, which is my standard response to unexpected kindness.
The return trip the next day was fine except for train delay and managing to injure myself with my suitcase (resulting in a 3-inch blue and purple bruise on my calf).
All told this trip took about 34 hours, and what I’m taking away is a feeling of support and encouragement and acceptance, genuine appreciation for who I am. A confirmation of the importance of telling stories and collecting data and documenting existence. A lesson about the need to make efforts to connect, even though there’s risk. A reminder about patience and empathy and love, and a lifelong belief, maybe, in the possibility of redemption.
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About the author
CKirkby
- earned degrees in language / literature and law (but is not currently a lawyer or a journalist);
- worked for over a decade on Parliament Hill;
- misses writing; and
- appreciates thoughtful comments, en anglais ou en français. (Email addresses are not published.)
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