I can read it in his hand gestures, my brother was "expecting / probably some bitch who does not budge" ("Buildings and Bridges") and we so go round and round, not listening to each other, not accepting each other. I try reasoned argument, I try examples, I indicate my openness to all points of view – all tactics learnt from standing up in front of twenty in-fighting, back-biting, preoccupied teenagers and getting them to focus on the task at hand. The best pedagogical practice fails in the face of someone who has known you since you were in grade school. My encouragements are perceived as slights, my offers of assistance (or even food) are turned into accusations. With the practised brittleness of an old married couple, we scratch each other’s scars into bleeding.

I’m trying not to fall into old attitudes, to keep practicing tolerance and refrain from violence, either physical or verbal. But we have a history, and it looks a lot like Israel and Palestine (OK, I did actually find myself saying during an argument, "You sound like Israel and you’re trying to make me Palestine"). We’re older now, supposedly wiser, changed by our experiences – and if we listen, we hear that in each other. So why, when we debate, do the politics of the dinner table take over? "If I say something they find hard to handle / they chalk it up to my anger / and never to their own fear" ("Not a Pretty Girl"). The very basis of my argument is cited as its invalidity ("Well, you would say that, you’re gay") and my ends become lost in finding the words.

So I bend. Or rather, I beat a retreat. To the shower, the grocery store, the security of knowing that I am right and he is – not wrong, but certainly inflexible. I tune out, put some Ani on the stereo. But I find myself walking around the Big Carrot trying to "study the conversation like a map" looking for the "strength in the differences between us / … comfort where we overlap" ("Overlap"). After all, we grew up on the same battlefield, shaped by the same genetics and the same daily grind. Where does difference come from? What created these fault lines within us that translate into explosions between us? Is it just the nature of sibl-ing?

Many of my friends have supportive, pleasurable, essential relationships with their brothers and sisters, however different or crazy they will describe them as when we settle in for a session of my favourite game, "My family is weirder than your family." And I know I’m not the only child who ever harboured adoption fantasies. I feel the love, but beyond that… Just frustration. Childish frustration. No-one understands me. Everyone thinks I’m weird. I’m going into the garden to eat worms (living in Canada and going to graduate school is regarded as on a par with eating worms)-. I’m the short duckling in a family of tall swans. "They asked which one is different and does not belong / They told me different is wrong" ("My IQ").

But I want to believe in the power of difference (today’s argument), that it can lead to more than hate, more than the insularity of "many who’ve turned out their porch lights / so I would think they were not home" ("32 Flavours"). I love the fact that all my siblings are so different in their choices, in their ambitions and desires. My brother is an intensely talented and creative musician, a drum n bass DJ starting to make a name for himself <www.jlevel.co.uk>. I love his work, and I look forward to hearing him on Canadian radio or seeing him on Much Music, and celebrating his achievements. Our family has bent so much to accommodate incessant storms, re-inventing itself in wild and fantastic shapes. Why is it that the record is still broken, playing again and again on that radio station at the far end of the dial? Is that why Ani spends all her time on the road? Because home is where the hate is? "Take me home and leave me there / Think I’m gonna cry" ("Cradle and All"). Feel free to listen. It’s been a while.

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