I Should

Somebody I know especially liked the heading "15. I SHOULD" from the chapter titled "My Life Underwater" in Nicole Krauss' The History Of Love. The following words are those of teenager Alma Singer, and read:

I SHOULD
Get out more, join some clubs. I should buy some new clothes, dye my hair blue . . . I should develop some useful skills like public speaking, electric cello, or welding, . . . find a hero that is not a man who wrote a children's book and crashed his plane . . .

Come to think of it, the passage means a lot to me as well. It's a match to light the fuse that brings down one more wall of inhibition, and let in one more breezy aspect of life. Douglas Coupland reckons that a person needs seven hundred years to experience a full, rich life, but he notes sadly, that we all die with a 630 year deficit. In other words, it's a prod for us to get off our asses, to let go, to make good our short lives. A recognition of the need to fight the fear and improve ourselves. With so much to see, hear, taste, it's almost criminal for a thinking and free mind to do otherwise.

The other meaning I get from the excerpt has to with self-loathing, the "looking at oneself in the mirror and then shaking one's head in disgust" type. The embarking on some sort of self-improvement binge, yet again, type of loathing. Symptons include dieting. Working out at the gym. The compilation of invariably half-fulfilled to-do lists. Taking the nth stab at being beautiful.

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Thanks, Ms. Krauss, for those words, for making public our private battles.

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My Short Term To-Do List

• Eat toro. My daughter Shaula and I are really starting to like sashimi, especially salmon and prawns. We've graudated from the teriyaki and maki rolls. We're going to try tuna this weekend. Granted, I've had toro [fatty fresh tuna] sushi before, prepared by none other than Hidekazu Tojo, creator of the California Roll, but this was way back when he was working at the Soft Rock Café on West Fourth in Kitsilano. The raw factor was a little overwhelming though, because it was also the first time this small-town boy had ever eaten Japanese—instant noodles excluded. Since then, I've steered clear of tuna, but it's time to give it another try.
  
  All of this culinary adventure (including a maki cone called the "Magnum", a tribute to, and favourite of, Tom Selleck) was compliments of a well-off engineering classmate, who, as it turned out later, was trying to get me to write one of his papers. I believe he was in his seventh year of a five year undergrad program.
• Eat at Vij's, Go Fish, Banana Leaf, Feenie's, West, Wing Nuts, Shiro.
• Donate my tax refund to charity. I'm still researching to whom. Not as easy as one would think.
• Run 10K in under 60:00.
• Lose ten pounds and weigh 150 lbs. I have lost 5.5 lbs so far.
• Catch Mike Stern, Bobby Hutcherson, Paquito D'Rivera, and Neko Case at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival.
• Commit an act of random kindness.

To create and fulfill a life-changing, high-octane to-do list (i. e., not the list above) requires a precipitating event. But nothing of that sort in my life right now.

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On completely unrelated matters, Matthew gave a hair sample at preschool Monday, as part of a "Population Patterns of Hair Zinc in Preschoolers" survey. Tomorrow, Shaula and her classmates get to ride on a tugboat on the Fraser River.