everybody wanted to be maurice richard...

decisions, decisions and more decisions. it seems that they are never-ending; one is made and two more emerge from its monstrous belly. decisions seems to multiply exponentially, they breed like rabbits, divide like cells.

(do cells divide exponentially? oh who cares...)

i've begun applying for schools, but i still don't know exactly what i want to do with myself. is that bad? i told myself that next time around i would do things differently. I would go to school only once i had established a clear and focused plan. ha! i am beginning to doubt that i will ever have such a thing. so, well, school anyways? school for the sake of school, for the sake of curiosity and my sanity? is that really such a terrible reason? education can't be bad for me, can it? (well...let's not mention the financial part, mmm?)

and speaking of decisions: to montreal or not to montreal? there are forces pulling me in two directions and there are justifications and fears involved with both of them. montreal could potentially improve my ability to converse with the French and the Hip...it could also leave me lonely and lost and purposeless in a brand new city for the second time in a year. it could bring me great joy at the discovery of a side of canada that i've never experienced: maple syrup, frozen ponds and winter clothes! so new, so exciting! so costly. it could bring me constant parties, patriotism, and poutine! it could kill me.

oh yah, and i guess some dude i kinda like will be there.

i guess there's only one thing left to do. ye olde pros and cons list!

ha.

naw, i guess i'll just do what i always do: put it off until the last minute and then make a decision based on panic.

oh yeah, i went to saltspring. it was pretty, and nice, and warm, and people waved at us for no good reason. it was nothing like montreal.

each peach pear plum

off to saltspring, hoorah.

spent a listless week recovering from numerous real and imagined illnesses and pains. still don't feel quite myself: i think it's the changing of the seasons that's putting such a creak in my bones. poor young old me.

i'm looking forward to being out of the city for a few days. i think i may be in some desperate need of perspective on my life here; a bit of distance to allow me to examine each crack and crevice rather than flailing my beetle arms at the bottom of them. it's possible that that analogy is nonsensical, but, y'know, you get the idea. lots of flailing.

anyways, yah, perspective. i feel like i don't have a lot of prospects at the moment, and that perhaps it is time to jolt myself out of this complacent existence. time for something new, or something borrowed, or something blue.

no wait, that's not right.

ah well.

laments, numbers one and three

whatever am i gonna do with myself?

and where?

soooo...

so. spent a weekish in victoria last week.

victoria seems to be some kind of summery paradise in relation to vancouver. i stepped off the ferry into a virtual wonderland of cherry blossoms. everything suddenly became slow motion; my jeans and t-shirt became a pink frilly dress with a matching parasol. i danced among the falling petals with my dapper gentleman on my arm whilst singing a merry tune. this strange turn of events was compounded when we set off in a rowboat - Harmony and I, modest, blushing maidens, sat in the bow twirling our parasols whilst our pale young suitors showed off in the stern. t'was positively jane austen-esque. well, except for the cold rain, the scenery that was more industrial than pastoral, and the fact that our burly men spent more time teasing us mercilessly than trying to impress us. anyways, i guess it was jolly in hindsight. jerks.

it was an adventure, anyways, and i certainly enjoyed sitting by a crackling fire reading afterwards.

and now i'm back to work, which is certainly not too terrible. ayomi has finally begun to wholeheartedly accept me into her exclusive circle of friends. in the beginning we had a bit of a tense relationship: she would giggle and laugh with me like old pals until mama left the room and then bam! jekyl and hyde time. screaming, crying, glaring at me like i was some sort of mother-stealing monster. sigh. but now we're cool, we're buddies, we have lots of fun together waving at ducks and making gaga sounds, or playing peekaboo, or the all-time favorite orange-flinging game which fills babykins with a special glee.

but as much as i'm enjoying this job i know it's not something i can (or want to) do longterm. but what, exactly, do i want to do? i feel like there is something lying there in wait, hidden, that fits exactly, conveniently, all-too-perfectly with all of my various and unrelated interests. it's out there, right?

well.

off to work. anyone feel sorry for me?

raccoons and love birds

ah, spring. t'is here in all it's glory and who isn't loving it? crocuses have sprung from a dingy pot on my fire escape. who knew life was lurking there?

had a nice weekend. it began with a wily raccoon rubbing his adorable nose against my window. i took a video cause he was so terribly cute. awwww.

then i went to burnaby to visit eben. we walked to a tiny patch of trees that i can't bring myself to grace with the title 'forest', but it was peaceful nonetheless. a creek burbled by, and ladies in spandex 'halloooed' us. we walked for a while, and i realized it had been many a moon since i had escaped from the urban.

(ah, the politics of nature. been reading one of my prof's books lately about clayoquat sound. the cultural construction that is wilderness, the lies we tell ourselves as tourists. it's much more complicated than that, but, y'know)

anyways. i got to play with the hensby family bird who took a liking to my shoulder. and then on sunday i got to go to chinatown, wander the classical gardens, drink bubble tea till i felt ill, and peruse the dusty crowded shelves of many a kitchy store.

so yah. i feel pretty grateful for everything. spring, a lovely weekend, and so much more to come. maybe even some cross country skiing next weekend!

oh bjork.

some art-fart humor.

cynicism and greener grass

so. it seems that almost everyone i've talked to in the last week has had work woes. it has made me a bit depressed about everything, because, well, look at us all with our university degrees getting dicked around by a bunch of unappreciative slave drivers.

(well, actually, i love my job right now, my boss is a lovely woman and i'm totally appreciated. but i've definitely been in worse situations)

but yeah. what is it about us young educated kids with no direction, slopping around in the juices of the service industry? or perhaps the administrative industry? why can't any of us figure it out?

i guess it's just that none of us are really trained for anything specific. we have been educated enough to be bitter about minimum wage and menial jobs, but we are not trained to know what we want, or how to get it. what exactly did we think would happen once we pranced off with our bachelors of arts?

oh dear. i'm coming across as a bit of a bitter cliché.

i've just been looking into master's programs lately and feeling a bit...a bit... well, cynical. will yet another degree make any difference in my life's direction? in my level of success? of accomplishment? or am i just grasping at the university life-line in order to feel like there's just a wee bit of meaning to my existence?

sigh.

on the bright side, spring is coming!

a sense of place

So. went to a crazy party on saturday; three hundred people crammed into three stories of warehouse-art-show-extraordinaire, where there was little breathing space and a myriad of great outfits. in other words, it was incredibly intimidating. it is a well-known fact that i fear social situations, and social situations incorporating art and artists are by far the most terrifying. but i survived with the help of two tiny adorable friends, a lot of whisky, a tall dark and handsome doctor and an occasional squeeze on the bottom from some hyperactive social creature that i'm "not dating". so i survived and actually managed to enjoy myself, if just barely.

and once again i ask myself - why am i here rather than there? there is something about this city that overwhelms me. something about its scale, its social problems, its constant layer of dampness, its grey rain grey concrete grey skies, and the bouts of utter callousness that i encounter from time to time. of course most of these things exist in victoria, and if they don't it is not because victoria is this idyllic land but rather because victoria has different problems relating to a smaller-scale whitewashed capital city.

but there was something so hopeful and exciting about the show on saturday. something about realizing that there truly is this bubbling art community in victoria, that there is a big group of people working together and creating something really great. and this relates to something i miss deeply about victoria-that ability to see its community as a whole, an entity, rather than a bunch of isolated groups scattered across an enormous area. so far i haven't really experienced any of that excitement in vancouver, not because it doesn't exist but because i know so few people, and because i have yet to uncover the exciting creative communities that are there.

but yeah, it is just so nice to go back to that city where i have a real feeling of connection and place. that familiarity that chased me away is also what seems to be keeping a big chunk of my heart there while i simultaneously try to eke out some sort of real existence here. it makes things a little tricky. but i spent five years in victoria making those connections, going to university and growing up. so it's inevitable that i will keep it close to my heart, and its inevitable that my community there will be wider than the one i've managed to scrape together in my three plus months here.

i can't help but wonder what will happen when (if?) i decide to do my master's somewhere other than here (which is likely). will i become even more fractured, with bits of my life in cities across the country? with bite-sized chunks of my beating heart scattered everywhere that there is something or someone that i love? this is the blessing and curse of our generation, it seems: the overwhelming number of choices we have spread out in front of us. how can we ever choose from so many seemingly arbitrary options? how can we balance this freedom to move and change with the need to have a sense of place and community?

fading at the edges

so, i had this dream last night about starting over. quitting everything, dropping everything, starting from scratch. can we ever do that?

i thought maybe that's how it would be when i came home from asia; i would be a 'new person' (pshh...) and i could start a totally new life in a new city as whoever i wished to be. but somehow i seem to be as tangled up in my old victoria life as much as ever. going back in time, even.

and yet... i talked to some friends on the phone the other night and the conversation was full of awkward pauses, silences, spaces. what to say when our lives are so separate? what stories to tell when the stories don't include each other? and a fear has come over me that perhaps all those memories and friendships will go the way of those i made in highschool; that they will slip-slide away to be rekindled briefly and without much hope (though preciously nonetheless) on brief holidays.

but emanuel reminds me that the old folks always say (and the old folks are often weathered and wise) that the friends you make at university are the ones that stick most stubbornly throughout your lives. is this true even when we all go such separate ways? so far it seems true enough; i certainly can't seem to get rid of you guys too easily...

and of course, of course, i would never want to.

c'mon. i didn't mean it.

another little thing that's been on my mind: will we follow in our parents' footsteps and let friendships fade a little at the edges when (if) minivans, mortgages, mommy-ing-daddy-ing take over? will we too become too absorbed in our little life-bubbles to remember how important and healthy friendships are? will we become mundane little family automatons? egad. such a scary thought. i just keep thinking that if i ever have children i would love for all my friends to be a big part of their lives. i would love them to have all these crazy godparents teaching them about derrida and bubble-making and indie-rock and how to fashionably perch underwear upon one's head, and all those important life skills. you know what i'm saying?

ok, well, y'know. i'm guessing this stuff's all pretty far in the future. so i'll drop it for now. but y'all better not ditch me when i have 10 screaming hyperactive and mouth wateringly adorable red-headed children, you fuckers.

up quark down quark red quark blue quark

tried to read 'the elegant universe' last night. holy moly. i think it's time to go back to school, get some training in physics, start again.

i thought the graviton was a ride at playland...and... just... how can we all be made of these little theoretical particles, how can these tiny abstract things make up all the madness of life? it hurts my head.

sigh.

lost without a place to go crazy

such a nice birthday weekend. out dancin' on friday, to bodyworlds (eww) on saturday, made a delicious rebar dinner, watched march of the penguins, and then out to vij's on sunday (oh my goodness, deliciousness). t'was lovely.

and now it's back to real life after all the surreal perfection of the last month. it hit me this morning, crawling out of bed at noon, feeling groggy, useless, aimless, lost. wait! these blues were supposed to be gone! they were supposed to be the 'new to vancouver' blues, not the 'three months and counting' blues.

i am so torn between my need to accomplish something 'important' and my need to have time for myself and for my friends. and so far it's been the accomplishing that's been sacrificed - and it's making me a bit blue. i see so many people around me working on these amazing projects, creating something from nothing, doing fascinating creative stimulating things. and moi? i wander the streets, i write in my journal, i insulate myself from the world around me...

yeah. i feel stagnant. i can't remember the last time i worked on a project, the last time i created something or felt inspired. i know it can be done, and i know it must be done but i'm not sure how to balance my life in that way, and i'm not sure if i'll ever be able to focus on one single thing. my indecision causes me to do nothing rather than everything. my indecision will be my undoing.

so, who's gonna give me the kick in the pants i need?

norman's overwhelming tendency towards mushiness, and other stuff.

hey kids.

so, 2007, eh? well, i'd like to give a shout out to all my peeps near and far who made my year, my new year and my life so far so sweet. word.

but seriously. t'was such a nice new year's eve. a last minute lurch, squeal, turn, and i found myself back in victoria getting drunk on jarrad and kristy's strangely shaped ergonomic scandinaviarama of a chair. just like old times. and i looked around at everybody and i thought, gosh, these people. they're so god damn hot. and also so god damned special. that's right. you guys are god damned special. and don't you forget it. who else would make a dinner of yucca, pears, artichokes and grasshoppers? who else would lick each other's faces incessantly, or wear underwear and lampshades on their heads and then allow photographs to be taken? (well, besides four year olds of course...) who else would indulge my obsession with wearing just the right thing, and then later force me at gunpoint to remove my pants when i became bashful? who else would tell me jolly stories of public vomiting while i had a little vomit of my own in the loo?

so yah, the night proceeded, we made our jolly way to tippi's, we partied apocalyptically, we hid out in the breakfast nook, we all made out with each other at midnight (god you guys are hot), we danced our pants off, wore our sashes like good samaritans, got drunk off our asses (or was that just me?), and stumbled home late into the night. it was as every new year's eve should be.

t'was awesome. i'm still glowing, and still hung over.

and thinking of the year to come. seems like one great big blank slate to me. a little terrifying, actually. i have no plans whatsoever for the future, i have no idea where or why or what i'll be a year from now. but i have fucking hot friends. so, y'know, i got all i need.

(oh yah, and i kicked matt's ass at scrabble. the perfect weekend indeed.)

city, rain

longing for more? check out flickr. updated. linked at yer right.

some olden golden footage

carabeeners, mole rats, swordfights and the ever sexy abe lincoln...

so. i've been in a pretty good mood today. is it the thought of mole-rats and their cute little beady eyes and jaws of steel? is it that i get paid to walk in parks? or is it maybe, just maybe, the energy waves of millions of orgasms occurring around the world all at once?

whew. hot.

so, here's what's been happening in my life in the last while:
visitors have come from across the sea; they have bundled and bumbled their respective ways into my home, they have curled up/passed out in my bed, on my couch, on my floor. they have startled my roomate, cleaned my dishes, eaten my food, gotten drunk and most of all have kept me entertained and happy for the last week. thanks guys!

had a potluck on monday which seemed to be the culmination day of visitors visiting. it felt a little odd that most of the people in my house were from victoria. it's confusing when people move out of context and spill into different worlds, but nice too. we had a giant communal meal, impressively and consistently yummy.

i also went to a party full of robust young tree planters, gangsters in chains and hipsters in jaunty hats, spiral staircases, simulated swordfights. there was even a man draped in carabeeners who sported a first aid kit at the hip. we had an awkward conversation about knives. i spent most of the night hiding behind pamela, vanessa, meg, the stairs, anything for the love of god.

i always think i'll like parties. then i get there, feel awkward, talk only to those i know, drink way too much, giggle, go home.

on wednesday vanessa was here and we had a fun evening out with a random group of good solid nerdy people. the conversation ranged from sexy lobsters to threesome propositions to comic books, and so much more in between. t'was a good time needless to say. the only blip in the evening was when i was called "the commercial drive type". good thing i'm a forgiving person...

oh the holidays. whatever will i do when my social life wiggles back into whatever hole it came crawling out of? back to long walks, coffee shops, quiet mornings and long blog rants.

meh, it won't be so bad. or even so different.

an update for the sake of updating:

today was filled with coddling crying cooing baby tears. why do they cry so much? how do they cry so much?

today was filled with couch naps, quick snacks, and the sadness of leaving. somehow today decided to be the day that the emptiness of all this leaving struck me down. the flip-side of the happiness of all these visitors became apparent. what is good must return to whence it came.

this fragmented community is making me so sad. why do we all feel the need to leave each other in so many ways?

raise a tent of shelter now

yikes, what a storm. my roommate and i congregated eerily, sleepily, simultaneously at the window at four a.m., watching the trees bow almost to the ground in some exclusionary reverence, some ceremony to which we bore witness but could not understand...

i found it hard to sleep as the creaky house i call home swayed and croaked; as wiggly tree fingers tap-tapped on my shuddering window... eep! hid my head under my blanket, felt so much like a child. felt suddenly so small against the backdrop of an entire universe that i will never fully understand...

chapters one and too

it suddenly struck me that christmas is nigh. so very nigh. today is, what, the 14th? how did this happen? i am always so unprepared for everything that crosses my path. i look up from my coffee, my book, and wham! i realize that life goes on even when i'm not paying attention, which is frequently.

but it's not too late, i suppose, to join in the merriment. this coming week should be a very whirlwind of merriment, in fact. potlucks, dress-up parties, lantern festivals, craft-makin' and bread-bakin' - and so much visiting. i can hardly wait.


* * * * * * * * * * *


so. last night i spent the good part of three hours on the telephone having this twisting tornado of a conversation with eben. a lot of this conversation seemed to revolve around the ways in which we change, in which we ebb and flow...

(an aside - last tuesday eb was introduced to a girl named flo. it made my night)

...and today i'm thinking a lot about the ways in which we become different people made up of different tangible and intangible material from year to year. being human is such an effin mystery, such madness! we are born, we obsess about every silly detail of our self-obsessed lives, we slump around these man-made worlds, occasionally looking up and around in wonder, and then we look back down into our little worlds, obsess some more about weird human constructs such as money, romance, art... and then eventually we die. and what was it all for?

one question i posed to eb was this: what, exactly, would you talk about if you knew you were going to die in, say, five days? how could you not realize how pointless everything is? how could you not realize how almight important every little thing is? and what do you say anymore to those you love? how much of our lives revolve around our futures, around avoiding the frightening reality that all we have is now? (as the flaming lips once said) and once that future is removed how do we keep from drowning in the present; that moment that we struggle so much to avoid?

oh, i know, i know, i digress. and perhaps 23 is a little too young to obsess about mortality. but it's there, and maybe if we think about these things enough we can find a way of accepting them and making our lives less of a distraction, more of a life.

who knows.

well, any thoughts?

rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony

oh, so much drinking. an amusing 'mod' evening in which an odd assortment of friends and acquaintances gathered together, got drunk, sat on strangers' laps, had "one night stands" with their boyfriends, danced to motown, played with their cellphones, made new friends in the loo, and eventually moaned in a drunken stupor. i somehow coerced some friends into sharing a cab with me despite their living on the opposite side of town which means i am apparently good at convincing drunk people to do silly things. perhaps this is an applicable skill for the apocalypse?

and today is seemingly a write-off. my brain doesn't seem to be working well. i made the strangest breakfast that began as an omelette and ended as a strange vegetable-polenta-tortilla-potato-parmesan-o-rama. it took me over an hour to make (mainly because i couldn't quite decide what i was making until i got too tired to continue and just ate it) but happily it was kind of good hangover food. i don't think i could ever recreate it though, which is too bad cause it looked grossly weird enough to be included in the cookbook that is in the works. (for those of you who don't know it will be a book of delicious items that look extremely unappetizing. the purpose of this book is to save people money by preventing others from eating their food without looking like a stingy bastard. and no, allen's (in)famous cottage cheese jello casserole cannot be included because it tastes as revolting as it looks. sorry al)

well, as i said my brain is really not working well. i'm having a lot of trouble spelling which is a very serious matter indeed.

hydrocephalitic listlessness

one thing i've noticed lately: i have stopped writing in my journal religiously, only occasionally opening its holy pages to read over, think, and scribble a few awkward lines. and i think perhaps this site may have something to do with that.

but then, as eben says, i write even in my own journal as though for an audience, so perhaps i may as well have one...

spent the morning at my kitchen table, spying once again but mostly reading this incredible epic article about joanna newsom (tonight i see her!). anyone who doesn't quite believe in her should definitely read this article... i sat for an hour afterwards just listening to her new album and crying and feeling so... so... well, you know. that way that you feel when you hear incredible music that touches something personal, something specific in your life. there's probably a term for it, or should be.

i perhaps have a new job as a nanny. not sure how i feel about having yet another sporatic (?) job with random hours. i'm finding it harder and harder to have a routine, which i realized while traveling is something i desperately love. morning coffee and reading is still a go, so that's something. i'm grateful for my ability to wake up slow even while employed; to have a few hours to stare at the wall and ponder the intricacies of life and death and music. but i'm finding it hard to enjoy all this free time to its fullest when i'm always stressed about Money and my Future and all that other stuff that takes over.

so, any ideas kids? for Money, for My Future?

and contemplating christmas this morning too. family and friends and that warm glow; and also the recent fallability i've discovered in those i believed to be infallible throughout my childhood. maybe not so much fallability as vulnerability, which is perhaps worse. getting older is so strange. my love for everyone is changing, becoming more complicated but maybe stronger.

well, anyways, christmas comes and even though i'm not making christmas cards i'm definitely feeling infinitely older this time around. wiser? weathered? not too sure. maybe just different.