Monday, January 31, 2005
It is Malcolm Lowry Week
...Among Other Things
So. There've been some changes 'round here. Well, not "here" per se but *taps chest* "here" instead. And of course there's a long freakin' post about it but I'm not going to post it today. I'm tired of myself and the pathways in my mind. I'm tired of looking only inward these days. oh, ho, don't get me wrong, I'm still focussed completely upon myself, but now, it's a little more exterior. And someday soon, there'll be an unexpected phone call of my own that I can shift focus for. That will be a start and it's the best I can do at this turning in the road.
Diet changes? Check. Exercise every day no matter what? Check. Get some books and work on the habitual anger I seem to have learned / been dealing with lately (ie: ever since the cancer)? Check. Recognize, admit and start rolling the idea around in my head that it's not RG that needs to come off the plate, but Matt? Not only the NotMatt who surrounds me like a fog but the real and physical Matt? Check. Get some books and work on my memory since I can't very well travel around the world as a directionally dysfunctional human being with shite memory? Check. Read more poetry? Learn over again how to actively and consciously appreciate what's going on around me? Start again to look outside myself? Check. Check. Almost check.
I find out this week whether or not the kindly mortgage brokers can get me what I want (ie: equity take out) to partially fund the Airborne Pathojen 2006™ tour. This is by no means a given and very important because if it falls through, I've changed my entire life, sold 85% of my possessions, rented out my home on a lease and am living in an RV for absolutely no good reason at all.
And oh, yes, the first of a week of Malcolm Lowry....
No Still Path
Alas, there is no still path in my soul,
I being evil, none of memory;
No path, untenanted by friend or ghoul,
Where those I have loved best touch wings and sigh
And passing enter silently the place
Of dream, illumined by bright fruit, and light,
That circles from the always brightest face
Of love itself, and dissipates the night.
There is no path, there is no path at all,
Unless perhaps where abstract things have gone
And precepts rise and metaphysics fall,
And principles abandoned stumble on.
No path, but as it were a river in spate
Where drowning forms, downswept, gesticulate.
Go, Malcolm.
After the Dream...
This morning's horoscope
Some vivid and intense dreams could reveal a lot about yourself and your own motivations, which might increase your self-awareness and thus make everything easier for you. The drive to succeed, both in material and spiritual matters is likely to play a powerful role in everything you do today, JENNIFER. Onward and upward!Death, Your Own
I know that dreaming about death signals a new beginning or a new direction but frankly, I could do without it.I dreamt that I was being put humanely and painlessly to death. I don't know why. If you didn't show up for some reason they came to you and since you'd been asked to prepare a bomb beforehand for this very eventuality, they blew you up.
My 'funeral' was at 2 pm, my death to be at three. Mom forgot to pick me up (which she did a few times in childhood) and going downstairs to the amphitheatre, where I knew no one who had shown up, I picked up a mic and said, "Well, then, just one more important event in my life that didn't quite go the way it was supposed to." People I didn't know laughed.
After, Mom and I retired so I could hastily scribble down the names of the people who got my stuffed animals (friends. childhood?) and a couple pieces of jewelry (Matt), she left. Around 3 pm I realized that no one was coming to get me because I was supposed to take care of getting to my own death myself. I thought maybe I should call 'them' but then I realized all I had to do was wait and they would come for me.
I thought that yet again, not having enough information or asking the right questions, even in circumstances where I just couldn't have known any better - seemed to be the norm for me right to the end and caused me so much more pain than necessary while everyone else just wandered off, forgot about me and blithely went about their business.
And then I woke up. And now I'm telling you to get it out of my head. I'm just not so sure I was really dreaming though.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
The Monday Bumper Sticker #5
lyric at post:
..that golden one leads a double life
you'll find out..color>
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #14
But I *Work* There, Your Honour
One of the cast members from Ally McBeal is filming a mini-series in our old ER where I work called Terminal City. I was all excited until I checked the cast list.... I'm sorry but I just can't see him as stalking material.
lyric at post:
..I stand underneath street lights dreaming of the moon
it is rising in a desert a life I never know
taken away and now I'm walking by myself..color>
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Update on the Barn Fire
Cause I know you're all dying to read the account from the newspaper, cute quotes and all - - such as this one....So that was that. So it was a rude awakening, someone beating
on my door telling me my barn's on fire.
As soon as I looked up, I could see: 'Yes, it's definitely on fire.'"
lyric at post:
..all I've got here is books and music
I used to have exercise but I outgrew it..color>
Friday, January 28, 2005
wish you were here
Just wanted to say thanks for the emails and comments, all. It was a nice thing to see after a few days with the big black screen blank. It's stopped seeming quite so accusing. I'm doing alright, the changes are having a positive effect and that's a nice thing.And Jen, the sirens you could hear? Barn fire.
And quite a nasty one at that, they had to call in reinforcements.
I'm not sure whose, but the weekly newspaper lists all police and fire calls when it comes out. The anticipation is overwhelming.
This is what passes for excitement in a place where the fire siren is actually the call to the volunteers to get the hell on down there.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Away Message
There is a fine line in the human being that separates one half of a person from the other. Without its existence, life as we know it could never have existed. It is a space that allows out only what is taken in. It is a void that must remain open and free, lest an emergency descend upon us. Though it is often the cause of many struggles, we must learn to appreciate it - and so, I have gone in search of my butt crack. For, without it, I am nothing.A "Slightly" Longer Explanation
(Also, Happy Australia Day)I don't really know how to explain this or how well my point will come across but I'll try to do my best in as few words as possible.
Because that would be a miracle and it would be nice to leave you with a miracle. Yeah, right. At least you know the thought was there.
I haven't seen my doctor in 9 years (he recognized me right away, how sad is that?), so we had to spend some time catching up with each other. Because I do not have a cute little acronym for him, yet, for now I will just call him "the doctor". Eventually, he got me to do a stress test, you know, those ones that total up the amount of stressful events in your life in the last year? The levels are something like:
0 - 150 = you're totally unstressed. or dead.
150 - 350 = yeah well, yanno, everyone has rough years but you're alright.
300 + = you *should* be dead. or heavily medicated.
Anyways, it's no big surprise I'm sure that using only the last 10 months, I hit over 470.
We talked about the drugs and how much of a struggle it was for LFD to get me on them in the first place and how much I didn't want to be taking any more than I had to. Because, the other big thing with anti-depressants these days is that they mix up these little cocktails of them. To, "boost" or "enhance" the effects of whatever one they've decided you should poke in your face every day.
And, you know, I'm fine with that. It would be absolutely fan-fucking-supercalifragilis-tic to just jam in a bunch more happy pills and have this all go away.
Except, here's the thing.....
Let's just take the 15 years of shit brain chemistry right out of the picture and assume that I'm just this happy girl who's had a rough year. Who's suffering from accumulated stress of momentous and monstrous proportions. Would I be drugging myself? Or would I be trying to deal with the effects of the stress? What does trying to make it all go away really accomplish in the end?
The thing is, here, I'm not just dealing with Matt. I'm dealing with .... I'm not even going to make a list because you all know most of it anyways. I'm fully aware that if the drugs hadn't kicked in last summer and any of the rest of this stuff happened, I would have more than likely been non-functioning by October. I certainly wouldn't have picked up and moved here. Matt's presence created a buffer between me and well, everything. I'd never had that kind of support and what that support gave me was a sense of being able to.... what did I say before?.... walk towards anything on earth and not be afraid.
So, I did. And I wasn't. And it was easy and wonderful and scary but not in a bad way, it was just another adventure. I suddenly learned what it was like to not have to rely on myself for everything. To have someone to ask advice of who was right there with me, on the inside. He didn't even do anything, really, he just hung about being witty and smart and cute and thinking I was great and maybe I have friends that do that but we all know that it's a different thing. That's a different responsibility. A different level of support. And oh, I can't tell you how much I've wanted that, how much I didn't even know it existed - and how it felt to have it.
And then, having just found it, it was gone.
Like all along there'd been this invisible roof holding all of that stress away from me for all that time and when Matt left he'd had the crucial support beam tied to his leg. And the roof of my world came crashing down on me.
This isn't about Matt. This is about learning to rely on myself again. This is about finding a better way to deal with the stress so that the day they offer me the job is also not the day that they tell me if I can't stop being mean to people then I'll lose the job. (uh, today). This is about finding a balance between what I can do and what I need to do. This is about taking a deep breath and thinking before I get angry. This is about taking ten deep breaths and stopping a thought before I cry.
This is about a loneliness that suddenly lives inside of me that no one can help. A desolate, sad place that cannot be filled by you, by friends, by crowds, the cat and sometimes I'm not even sure, by myself.
This isn't about recalling, reliving or examining the past or resisting imaginary pictures of the future that might have been had we continued down the same path. It's not about what Matt is or what we were.
It is about finding a way. My own way. It is about relearning something I'd forgotten so easily and so completely. It is about trying to get to a place where that void isn't so painful. A place where a ghost isn't beside me all the time. Where a hand that no longer exists but that I can still feel isn't touching me in that first moment I wake up in the morning. It's about me.
And, so what that means, is that I'm going to go offline for a little while. I have only so much energy and right now it has to go to my job. The new job, the job that symbolizes the means to an end, to get me to my goal and frankly, about the only concrete thing I've got right now.
Until I learn how to do this better, whether it be light therapy to make up for the sunshine I've lost by moving here, whether it be giving myself healthy food and getting more exercise, whether it be staying away from the ability to contact Matt or the temptation to come here and be sad, or wish that there really was something someone else could do. If there was, I know that I could ask you and you would give it to me if you could and I love you for that.
So, I'm going to take one thing off my plate for now and see how that works. I won't be far and it may not be for long, but for now, I need my job. I need myself. I need to stop trying to work something out in here that cannot, ever, be worked out.
The face that I turn towards you is a face that no one has ever really seen until the blog. But there was a face that turned towards Matt that no one else on earth had ever seen. Both of those people are me. All me. But one of them is more of the one I want to end up as. One of them is the one I am trying to make the core of me. The first reaction. The face that everyone sees. I need to get a little farther along the road to her doorstep before I come back because I don't need Matt to love that girl and do everything he can to keep her around, I need me to.
lyric at post:
..lighthouse man can’t help us all
some are saved and some will fall
he’ll show you where the danger lies
but he can’t help if you capsize
cause he’ll light your way but that is all
steer your own ship back to shore..color>
The Monday Bumper Sticker #4
Sunday, January 23, 2005
not taking my own advice
..because I've just spent most of the day in bed or on the couch. I'm angry. I'm deeply sad. I cried. I had a cigarette, which made it all worse, if only for the sheer fucking stupidity of lighting a cigarette after almost four months. Being disappointed in yourself just adds that extra layer of self-loathing.Thinking that my reaction yesterday has just as much to do with not seeing hope today myself.
I can't sit. I can't move. I can't watch TV. I can't read. I can't even think because thinking makes me cry. I'm trapped today in this circle.
I want to hold my boyfriend's hand. I want that hand to wipe away this tear. I want that hand to have been here so that this tear would never have been born. I want to roll over in the morning with a heart full of joy just one more time. I don't want to spend today trying to make this better because it's only me and I can't be everything to myself today. I can't be anything to myself at all today, most especially the things I need. I'm angry at being so weak. I'm angry for being so sad.
I'm unable to choose a direction to go because it feels like the only direction that will offer some peace will never be there again.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Bolder & Snappier Than I Oughta Be and Horrified By My Thoughts
I'm comfortable with Dave. Although, in some strange way, he's 'family', I'm just - me- with him. I like that, I don't find it often anymore. I had a good time. I haven't had a good time that wasn't heavy with stories, past, love, emotions (stop me anytime) in a long while and it was refreshing because it was genuine. I can be myself with him. He doesn't judge that - he just accepts that I am this person he thinks is great and - it's even better - cause it's mutual.It's strange to hang out with people who stop to take stock, who look at themselves once in a while. It makes you realize that not many people do. It makes you glad that you do. It makes you glad that there are people in your life who do. It makes you see that the people in your life that do are just that more precious.
After the whole Matt story, me pulling no punches, on my side or Matt's: he bet me ($5) that I would arrive in Australia and Matt would be there waiting. Apparantly, I'll email him next year to find out where to send the money. He makes me laugh.
On the opposite side of that....
There is a site I used to visit quite frequently. An unhappy man. Lost and trapped. Angry. Heartbroken. Alone. I would leave encouraging comments, never acknowledged, never returned. Links never visited in return.
Don't get me wrong here, the internet begs no reciprocity. There's no expectation of acknowledgement.
I can fully admit that since I started this place, my life has been a shitstorm of unhappy events. I can fully admit that sometimes I descend into despair, that I am angry, unhappy, upset, sad, ... etc... etc... etc. But, I think, we can also all agree / see that I am also moving forward, working it out, learning and living along the lines as best I can towards the things I have said. That no matter what I say in the moment, as blogs go - even if it's complete and utter despair - within 24 hours there is some indication of hope, of looking forward, of maybe not believing but making a fuck of an effort to find something good or happy or *whatever* to look forward to until something like that can be made real. Even if it's only the size of your bathroom
This person, he doesn't. His life is a constant poor-me shit storm. Constant. Constant. Nothing else. It's his choice to be that way. There is no realization that the world is not fair, that changing things is up to you and no one else. He's not working through sweet fuck all, he's there to complain, to hope that someone is coming along to save him. To have people tell him that he's needed, wanted, special. Over and over and over. None of which never makes any difference. And eventually, when those people stop throwing energy into a bottomless hole, well, then shit, that's just one more rejection, yeah?
Ahem... Newsflash pal - we are only as important as we make ourselves. We are only as special and as good and as loved as we believe ourselves to me. As we make those in our lives to be.
But, despair is his right. It *is* the internet. We all have the right.
We all have the right.
I finally removed him from the list of people I check in on periodically because of a few reasons - - he needs to make an effort. Life is hard. Work with it or shut up. Talk about it, get through it. Move along, but keep moving forward. There is always something positive. Look for it, search for it, find it or don't - but keep on trying, keep on moving. We all have bad moments, bad days, bad weeks. My good days have nothing to do with who I fucked last night, who loved me for five minutes, who I put myself on to, who I wanted you to be, who I wanted me to be. My good days are all about what I can provide to myself. Get over it. Get over yourself. MAKE AN EFFORT. No one owes you anything that you cannot provide already. To yourself. To others.
And yanno, because I finally snapped and came one keystroke away from leaving this...
..then maybe it's time to look for something more positive, move somewhere more positive, become more positive. Maybe it's time to stop talking, maybe it's time to just shut up and stop loading your misery upon the world and expecting them to take it. Maybe, really, it's time to just kill yourself and please, save the planet more misery. I believe it has more than it can already handle and if you took a moment to look outside of yourself, you'd realize how good you have it. How lucky you are. You'd see a doctor. You'd get help. There are millions of people who don't have the option. So, forgive me, but get help, shut the fuck up or kill yourself and save us the misery.
I cringe at the impulse to say something so absolutely horrid to another human being but it comes down to this - I can recognize when it's time to walk away, I can recognize when it's time to get help. Can you?
lyric at post:
..I could be asleep boy, or I could be awake
I could be alive man or be the walking dead
I could be ignorant or I could be informed
I could lead my life man or I could be lead..color>
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #13
Fear
I just finished a cup of yoghurt and because Cabot likes yoghurt, I put it down beside my leg so that he could jam his face in there and lick the cup.I looked down just a minute ago to see him reach in with that uncanny five toed paw, swoosh it around the sides and bottom of the cup, pull it out and proceed to lick the yoghurt off of it, before dipping the paw in for more.
He gets creepier by the day.
Nothing, And Then....
I didn't really have much to say today. The Aviator was incredibly well done and I didn't expect it to be. I slept in. I organized some stuff. I did laundrey. Looked up motorcycle classes on the 'net. I wrote out a medical history for my visit to my new/old Doctor on Monday. I sat down for a long chat with Tony:Calgary (formerly known as Tony:here and different from the one who's irrationally angry).Sometimes, he is wildly off-base with how he sees me but it's not a common occurrence by any means and usually he is pretty spot-on, something that he gets better at all the time. Conversations with him for the last while have been, well, I don't even have the word for it. Insightful, I think, is best.
I haven't spoken to him since the day that Matt left. I called him as I left the ferry terminal and he 'talked me home'. A few days ago he'd left a message so today I settled in to call him back.
He said something today that stayed with me after I got off the phone and that was, "You're not like other people, Jen, in that when something happens that you need to come to terms with, you face it head-on. Not only that, but you take it out every day and look at it and poke at it, even though it may hurt, until you understand it. Then you put it away because you've changed it so that it just becomes a part of you. Not many people do that. Not many people *want* to do that."
And although I think most people would consider it a bad personality trait, he meant it in a good way.
Later, while rummaging about for someone else's words to post today, (being unable to come up with anything of my own).... I came across this....
Truth or reality is avoided when it is painful. We can revise our (life) maps only when we have the discipline to overcome that pain. To have such discipline, we must be totally dedicated to the truth. That is to say that we must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest than our comfort. Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth.
The problem of distinguishing what we are and what we are not responsible for in this life is one of the greatest problems of human existence. It is never completely solved; the entirety of our lives we must continually assess and reassess where our responsibilities lie in the ever-changing course of events. Nor is this assessment and reassessment painless if performed adequately and conscientiously. To perform either process adequately, we must possess the willingness and the capacity to suffer continual self-examinations.
M. Scott Peck
The Road Less Travelled
Rereading this made me think a couple of things. I had copied this down many years ago, at least twelve, from the same copy of this book that I still periodically return to, the latest being a few months ago. I had purchased a copy and sent it to Matt and although I know he began to read it, I don't know if he ever finished it. Because his view right now is all about the avoidance of pain, I wonder, a little, if passages like that would have made an impression.
Not just on Matt really, but on all of us... When we read something that anyone around us would think we would 'know' about ourselves, that they would consider to be blatently self-evident - do we recognize it? Or do we just skim over it without ever considering it's validity? By the same token, do we also disregard it if it's a trait we already possess? What do you think? I know that when I reread the book a few months ago, this portion of it made no impression on me at all.
I think I wrote that down all those years ago because it was something I believed to be useful, that it would be a valuable behaviour, as something I wanted to be able to do, something I was striving for in my life. (I think also it may be the best way to explain to you, Vanessa, what I meant about dealing with it.)
I realized today that back then I did do it, just not until far after the fact of the 'event'. I also suddenly understood - that I am there. That maybe I'm not very good at it and maybe sometimes I go about it the wrong way and that I still have a lot to learn about the process - but that I am there nevertheless.
That's cool.
lyric at post:
..though I've been unable,
to put you down,
I'm still learnin' things I ought to know by now..color>
Friday, January 21, 2005
Someone Else's Words Today
I was a very narrow creature at my heart,Until you came.
None got in and out of me with ease;
Yet when you spoke my name
I was unbounded, like the world -
I never felt such fear as then, being so limitless
When I'd known only walls and whisperings.
I fled you foolishly;
Looked into every quarter for a place to hide.
Went into a bud, it blossomed.
Went into a cloud, it rained.
Went into a man, who died,
And bore me out again,
Into your arms.
Clive Barker
Galilee
Thursday, January 20, 2005
The Reason I Was Googling Telegrams in the First Place..
(Because, Duhh, I'm Avoiding the Studying)
..A Telegram of My Own
okay, obviously waaaay too much time on my hands, but tee teehee hee, as long as I'm amusing myself you should all be giggling with relief.....
lyric at post:
..When you're cold and under the covers
does it ever bother you
do you remember how warm the truth is
how can you live without it?..color>
I Have a Question for God-by-Blog,
But First, One For You
Can I send canned goods by mail internationally? Specifically - soup. Don't ask. Just answer my question....(then see previous post).....
Can I really send a telegram to the afterlife?
Excerpt:
All of AfterlifeTelegrams.com's messengers have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, by a certified doctor, and have a minimal survival prognosis of about a year or less. All messengers are tested by AfterlifeTelegrams.com, to make sure that they have memorized the telegrams that the messengers are entrusted with and are periodically quizzed to make sure they have not forgotten them.If the messenger who was given a telegram should have the good fortune to survive one year past the day the telegram was given - then the fee is refunded with the understanding that the messenger will attempt delivery, when his/her time comes, for free.
A little further investigation at their web site makes me feel a bit better. It's dropped to $5 a word but ....
It's not a bad idea actually, don't you think? I've got a few things I'd like to say. What about you?
lyric at post:
..Its a short song but it's a hell of a story
when you spend your lifetime trying to get your hands
on the holy grail..color>
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
There Goes the Neighborhood
Okay, so maybe that post below sounded a bit snotty. Except when you factor in that I.was.right.And now, since I said that, I'm even snottier. Ha!
I clicked through about 60 "next blogs" on the weekend and if you take out the errrrr..... 20ish written in a language I do not understand (ie: not in English), I found only two that caught my eye - but I am loathe to say that out loud because I'm sure 800 people have come by here and thought, "holy fuck, is this chick BOR-ING, or what?"
Which, (if I can be honest, just for a moment) is absolutely fine by me, since I hate people who call me CHICK.
Anywho, I found God.
This post, Wiggles, was the one I came across and God's kinda funny. Except he/she/it yells everything and c'mon, we all know we'd recognize the divine without having to be beaten over the head with it. Don't you think?
lyric at post:
..you are broken now but faith can heal you
just do everything I tell you to do..color>
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #12
Back in School
Our trainer's great. He's very good at tying everything together, but I started to realize today that he's not so good with the "I don't know that" portion. It's pretty technical stuff but I think it was fairly obvious that I knew quite a bit about the subject and the point I was trying to clarify. But to assume I'm the one who is wrong (even though you must be aware that I'm asking about something you don't know much about) and handle it by repeatedly not allowing me to actually finish a sentence (ie: answer half the question, but not the right half) only serves to make me doubt everything else you've said.
Shit, I say, "I'm just learning blablabla and so I'll need to doublecheck that and get back to you." at least five times a day. It's the easiest way to avoid being yelled at and seriously, people think the better of you, or at least trust you more than they normally would, for it.
Pick and Choose
I should be used to people knowing nothing about me by now but I think what bothers me is that they still insist that they do. I don't go out because...a) I live outside of town
b) there isn't anywhere I want to go
c) there isn't anyone I want to see most of the time and
d) going out = spending money which actually goes against the entire reason I'm here in the first place.
No one actually thinks to ask what I've been doing at night for 8 years in Calgary, they've just decided to think I'm depressed because of Matt or whatever it is they think and *I* think I'm tired of trying to figure it out or make them understand. I'm short-tempered, impatient and frankly, downright intolerent lately.
Newsflash. I may be single but for god's sake, that doesn't mean I am, should be, have to be or am under any obligation to be living some sort of single life, whatever the hell you think that is.
For some weird reason, people who aren't single believe that single people lead different lives. Exciting lives. Lives full of parties and endless pots of money - well, they're SINGLE, they have all that money, yeah?
I imagine couples come home after work, eat dinner, hang out on the computer, sit on the couch and read or watch TV, drink a cup of tea before bed, right? Am I right? Brace yourselves - I do exactly the same thing, except it's the cat on the other end of the couch. I probably talk to the cat as much as most couples do to each other and since the cat seems to be answering me in complete sentences, maybe I'm actually on to something here.
I do not need to be getting back out there, for you see, I was never out there in the first place and perfectly happy being alone before Matt came along and I really feel no need, ever, to have a man in my life because certain people think I should. If you always wondered why you never met anyone I was involved with, it's because Matt was the only one important enough for anyone to meet.
Restraining myself is almost physically painful and I'm sure I'm going to do some internal injury to myself one of these days when I mention that I'm going out one night and the people around me beam and, in a voice you would use with a small child, exclaim, "OH! Good for you!!"
Christ. Fuck off already.
I went to a movie with Mike last weekend. I hated it. I don't know what he wants from me but if he's got any brains at all, he knows I'm not interested. I carpooled with him for god's sake - all through Matt leaving, and although I didn't say much, there were tears and I doubt anyone could have missed how much I loved him, like a solar flare, it was. I want to be friends with Mike but I just honestly can't bring myself to have a conversation, to care about what he has to say about anything, to coax him along. I don't care. It's a waste of my time. Time I could be reading or walking or blogging or talking to the cat.
You could say I better bloody well get over that attitude since travelling around the world alone will be pretty nasty if I won't *talk* to anyone but right now, I only want to talk to certain people. And so I will. And there's nothing you can do about it.
I'm going to a movie with a new friend on Friday. Cause, she's someone I think is absolutely fantastic. We have a lot in common and she's just brilliant. Really.
Next week I am having dinner with Dave. Dave is my stepmother's sister's ex-husband and an all around great guy who's cool to hang with. We'll probably have dinner and then go somewhere for some good blues. If such a thing exists in this city.
Plus, you know, he's an alcohol distributor and there's that warehouse full of booze that he owns.
If one is going to be choosy about one's company, one must decide upon strict criteria, I think.
lyric at post:
..but I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
here in this lonely place..color>
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Digital Shiver
I could not get a permalink to a specific post on Digital Shiver to work properly and so I'm giving up and posting the entire darn thing here, because I am absolutely entranced by it.Saturday, January 15, 2005
On page one there is a picture of a crying girl. Her sobbing makes no sound because the breath has left her lungs.
Page four describes a windy day.
Page five is for the lives of others; there are bent and dying figures, and the sound of distant bells.
Page eight is a description of kissing someone’s skin.
Rain strikes leaves on nine.
A screen door bangs on page eleven. You can hear the ocean on page twelve.
Page twenty is a log of dreams. The words will not stop moving.
On twenty-two, a boy jumps rope.
Page twenty-five is adolescence, watching from the corner.
On twenty-nine is someone who is taking greater care.
On page thirty you are naked.
Page thirty-one, inserted loosely, belongs to someone else. A man is clutching papers, and is running up a hill.
Page two, by chance, was first passed over: descriptions of breach and reprieve.
On thirty-three, a conversation, dying to begin.
Then I can come back whenever I want to read it and stop looking like a stalker to Charles. Mostly.
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #11
Scarlett Faced?
I wonder if she 'reads' the tabloids cause I'd be dropping that one faster than.....-insert appropriate metaphor here as my brain is too full of trunking and the concept of a 31 digit phone number you have your entire life-What is this Global Warming You Speak Of?
Don't get me wrong Sal, I'm not complaining about the rain. I'm in training for the rainforest after all and it's much like any other place - 'it's winter, it snows/rains/gets to 40 degrees, get over it'. Although, I guess in Aus you don't really call it winter, per se.It's just a bit, well, OFF that last week was a record low for the month and this week it's a record high. We ended up having 4 inches yesterday and they think maybe 8 more today. It soothes me to sleep and I threw the queen sized feather bed onto the twin bed I now sleep in last night so I'm all cosy and lulled (well, actually I sweated like a.... something all night but whatever, I'm sure that's good for me).
I say, bring it on.
I'm on course in M1 and Succession for the next three days and then on Friday I write the exam for my job. Pray for memory retention and clarity, kids.
Monday, January 17, 2005
Tricksy Little Monkeys
Having learnt my lesson when it comes to Matt and all that charming Aussie (and SE Asian, la) slang I either ask or immediately look it up now.Like, f'rinstance, today, when he referenced all the bogans at the car show in Perth this weekend..... I immediately
...being of faerie blood, dontcha know, and all my little faerie friends seem to like to be playing the mean tricks and heyyyy, waaait a minute, I might be onto something here! this could explain a LOT! what if.. and how about.. remember when.. and that time that.. cough cough
..... where was I? Oh yeah, I immediately thought, well, bogan, right? Wrong. He meant these bogans.
Okay, I'm kidding, I knew what he meant, I grew up a shunned outsider in a isolated westcoast pocket of hockey-hair Canadian Bogans, - but that website is funny. Excerpt from Save the Bogan.......
Other distinguishing male characteristics include a tight black denim covering on the hindlimbs and bright flannelette markings on the forepaws and belly.
There are numerous factors attributed to the decline of the local Bogan population. More controversial theories suggest many bogans may have removed their mullets, purchased "cargo pants" and attempted to integrate themselves in Melbourne's mainstream population, but these claims are yet to be substantiated.
At present there seems little hope of restoring the Bogan population to its previous levels. Recent attempts by the Federal Government have included the development of a new artificial habitat in outer Melbourne named "Sunbury", but it seems this area may be too close to civilised air travel to attract large numbers of the species. More successful has been an enclosed breeding program in Canberra called "Summernats", which takes place annually at the National Exhibition complex in Watson. The program has proven highly effective, combining motor vehicles and bourbon with rampant displays of female sexuality. Authorities recently introduced a V8 Supercar race with similar results, and have attracted Bogan elders AC/DC for a brief national visit early next year.
lyric at post:
..I've been driving for an hour
just talkin' to the rain..color>
Moody Weather
I got to sleep at three am and I do.not.want.to.go.to.work. Where I can't access the internet...did I mention that? I may have but we all got reprimanded last week so they really mean it. I suppose.Anyways, like that Crowded House song that urges us to take the weather with us - the heavens hurled rain all night and as it continues this morning - although there is no mention of how much fell in the last 12 hours it must be comparable to the 2 inches they say will fall today.
Tissue, anyone?
How Long IS Monsoon Season, Anyway?
Reading in bed, I cry through the first three E. Berg stories in Ordinary Life while the rain drums on the metal roof before realizing it's close to one am and I'm not going to get much sleep tonight. I get up to go to the bathroom and I think, suddenly, that although I always check email before I go to bed, that now Matt has emailed me.I don't think much about emails from Matt anymore. He's travelling around, he's back in his life, they are sporadic and besides, they don't tell me anything I need to know. I'm not sure any of them ever did, anymore. I used to think for a while that one of them would say he thought he was wrong and then I actually got one. Although it wasn't the type of wrong I wanted it to be. It tells me he's not wrong now, but later, he thinks he will be. And I don't know what that means for me. Or for him.
I trust in my heart, but I think that I may no longer have any trust in his and somehow, that makes me the saddest of all.
So, I open my email. It came 9 minutes ago. And I don't know how I do that. That thing where I know. And it makes me cry a little more.
And I know that Jen,also will want to tell me that the stories aren't as sad as they seem but it's all I can see. The sad. That crumpled face that stares out at me from my mirror.
I don't know where the strong Jen went and I honestly couldn't tell you which of the three lost things from 2004 I would choose to have back if it were only one that I got.
Strong Jen. Lost Munchkin. Boy.
Because, deep down, I know that the dead stay dead, that trust can never be fully regained once it has been diminished and that strong Jen is still in there somewhere. I just have to be patient enough to search until I find her again because sometimes, in life, that's the only choice you get.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Giving In To The Peer Pressure
Since you people are whiners about the so-ugly-it's-pretty logo picture, I've changed it. For now. This one is a picture Matt took in November in Alaska.I think it means that if you break down due to your tire popping off caused by driving over big rocks, the bison will come and, mistaking the vehicle for some sort of smaller competing species trying to move into it's territory and steal it's wimminfolk, will headbutt it until it surrenders.
I could be wrong.
lyric at post:
..baby, if I could keep it together don't you think I'd try?
and maybe if I could make something of this,
why wouldn't I?..color>
Rigamorale
Hello, nasty credit card people that I owe shitloads of money to, I'd like to change my address.Can we have your card number?
Yes, it's blahblahblah.
The address that we have?
blahblahblah
The last three numbers on the back of the card?
bla
Your old home number?
(403) ***-2358
That's not what we have. Work number?
I don't know. I think it started with 294.
No. We don't have that one.
I've changed every number I've ever had, twice, in the last two months. I don't remember my work number, whether you have the old one, the newer Calgary one, or the reception one.
Would we have a cell?
Maybe, but I couldn't tell you what that was either since I only had the last one for three months. It ended in 2358 also, though.
We need a phone number.
I don't remember them, the last couple of months have been a bit stressful. Can you not just ask me the security questions?
We really like to get a phone number.
If I can't remember them then I can spout numbers all night and never actually give you what you want. As a security issue, anyone who could tell you the 3 code numbers on the back of the and my address, probably knows my phone numbers too. And why would they just change my address? So they could pay my bills? There has to be other information you can use to verify that I am me.
You can't tell us your numbers?
No.
She put me on hold. For six and a half minutes. Came back and asked me the last three digits on the card again. My birthdate. My security question. And then changed my address.
Maybe they figure thieves will hang up if put on hold. The touch tone system only wants my birthdate. You can apply for more credit using only the number and a birthdate. But you can't change an address for the bill without the hot lights, truth serum and a doctor to verify your identity.
*sigh*
How hard is it to imagine that not everyone has numbers indelibly stamped into their consciousness? I'm lucky I remember my goddamn bank card number and I couldn't tell you my cell phone number right now if my life depended on it. I used to be better with digits (although, admittedly, not much better) but somehow I think the numbers I need to know ...say... to do my job are a little more important right now than my last 10 phone numbers and which ones I gave you depending on when I got the card. What's the security question for, if not to bloody well use?
I'm sure life was easier at some point. Probably back when I still sucked my thumb.
lyric at post:
..I suggest that we do something kinky
no pilot flying private plane
to smooch you on the hills of Spain
no catapult to all night kisses..color>
Saturday, January 15, 2005
The Theoretical Question of the Day
If the fighting off the flu while feeling crappy and shaking like a crack whore in need of a fix or three is just as bad as the flu itself, what exactly is the point of the flu shots?But, like the trooper I am, I've begun the three hour- long process of crawling the six feet to the shower so I can go to see Oceans Eighteen or whatever it's called with Mike.
At least it explains why I thought fruit fly and octogenarian as examples made any kind of sense in that last post.
lyric at post:
..now I'm in a bar in Copenhagen
and i'm trying hard to forget your name
and I'm staring at the label on a bottle of cerveza
and every fucking city feels the same..color>
Friday, January 14, 2005
Teeny Reflection
Just checking the links to make sure they all work, really, to avoid saying the bigger stuff.....and then I came across the hundred things...23. I wrote a lot of bad poems as a teenager. You will never see them.
24. I did, however, send one or two a week overseas to my friend Rob when he was in the Gulf War. He still has them all.
25. One, about smoking, is used by the Canadian Military in their stop smoking program. I wrote it when I was 16. It embarrases me.
It still does. Embarrass me, I mean. Especially since at 16, I'd been smoking for four years. I continued to smoke for 19 more. It's only been 3 months and one week since I quit.
And, proving the old adage that it's the little things that are the deciding moments - the last two months haven't made me get as close to pulling into the gas station to buy cigarettes as yesterday did. The only reason I didn't, in the end, is that I'd finally stopped wearing the waterproof mascara and man, I looked way too much like Alice Cooper.
The final straw yesterday? On top of the rest of it, which I'll get around to... someone wounded Ms. Betsy and I can't even describe how that made me feel. She is Matt's car. It was painful to be 'responsible' for damage. Even when she's paid off, she'll still be Matt's girl.
And so will I.
And no, I didn't go on the 'not a date' date the other night. It's been four weeks. FOUR weeks. Does it not seem like a thousand lifetimes? It must to you - if it does to me. Cause you have to listen to it. Actually, you don't have to listen to anything so screw you, but, it's never been a question of whether I'll survive or not, it's just been a question of what I will find, what I will end up with, how I will carry this love and what I will do with the fundamental changes he's caused - inside myself and outside of myself.
It feels to me a lifetime since Matt's been gone. The lifetime of a fruit fly or an octogenarian, depending on the day you ask me.
That's brutal.
lyric at post:
..long way to baby,
long way to go now now..color>
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #11
Claustrophobic? I Prefer "Comforting & Womblike", Thanks
When your bathroom is 47 inches (3.9 feet) from the 'door' to the far wall and 56 inches (4.6 feet) from left to right, you can reach everything from inside the shower without even having to lean more than 15 degrees. Who needs more than that?Give me a break, alright? I'm struggling for the positive today.
lyric at post:
..a satellite recalled your voice
sent me round the world again
all the night you've dreamt away
sent me round my heart again..color>
Thursday, January 13, 2005
oh, But Hey, It's a Brand New Day
I can't even work up the energy to tell you about my day, suffice it to say ... camel. back.But I have had a few new visitors. Apparantly, these people have linked to me. I have no idea why. I don't even care.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Moments of Morbidity, Necessary Reflections
or:
Hell is Where We Wake Up Dead
And Realize How Much Life We Had - But Didn't Use
A few years ago I had an acquaintance who would regularly stop by his parents farm, do a little work and just generally wander around but not really tell anyone he was there. One particular time he'd been doing just that and had an accident involving the tractor. He was far enough away and badly injured enough (or trapped, there are just some things it is unthinkable to ask, even if they mattered) that all he could do was lay there as he bled to death over a period of a few hours. Fully conscious, at least until the blood loss decreed differently, knowing that no one knew he was there, knowing that he was dying, knowing that no one was coming.
Although I did not know him very well, I was haunted by that for months. No, I am still haunted by it. In some miniscule way, I lived that with him and periodically I relive it as myself. It still brings tears to my eyes and a profound sense of loneliness, sadness, and fear.
In that situation, well, take a minute and think about it. Without even trying very hard I'll bet you can't help but imagine a small portion of the thoughts he must have been having as he watched his life drain away. I think about him and what he might have been thinking - mid 20's, young enough still to feel like you lived on the edge of life, with everything stretched out before you - I think about what I would have been thinking - old enough to have taken some chances, a few more years to reflect upon. Regrets, wishes, dreams, people loved, people lost, old angers, second chances, a wish to just say that one thing, to have just one more time, one more day.
Alan HAMBLETT was last heard from on Thursday January 6th but has not been observed since. It is believed that Mr.Hamblett suffers from dementia but is an avid walker and is thought to have been out walking near his home when last observed. Mr.Hamblett is described as a caucasion male, 178 cms, 86 kilos, with blue eyes and grey hair. He is believed to have last been wearing a red and black checkered flannel jacket and a hat.
Update
Search and Rescue volunteers and an RCMP Dogmaster were directed to the location of the body of 75 year old Alan Hamblett in Devonian Park off William Head Road just after noon Monday.
SAR volunteers, RCMP members and a helicopter were utilized to comb the Metchosin area near the residence of Mr. Hamblett. Devonian Park, located off William Head Road, was an area of special interest, since he was last seen in the park four days prior. Shortly after noon on Monday, January 10th, a pair of hikers reported finding the body of Mr. Hamblett off the main trail in Devonian Park. Investigators examined the area and found no evidence of foul play or suspicious activity. Preliminary scene examination leads investigators to believe that Mr. Hamblett sat or squatted down on his own, and eventually reclined onto his back prior to his death.
The cause of death will be determined by the Coroners Office, who now has jurisdiction in this matter.
I do not know this man although he lived in my neighborhood and this park is roughly a kilometre from my house. You could say that's because I've only lived here for two and a half months, but I also now live in the neighborhood I spent 8 years in as a teenager, and most people here do not move away. I imagine he has always been my neighbor.
I don't listen to / watch the news and so I heard about this on Monday morning while passing by a radio.
The day he went missing, Thursday, was the night it snowed and whatever else happened to him, in a city with the mildest climate in all of Canada that barely ever gets below freezing - snowfall that Thursday night and temps to -5 would have ensured, I think, that he wouldn't have survived the night. Even if it had only been a twisted ankle that kept him close enough to the trail to be found by the first hikers to pass while the snow had barely begun to melt.
I wanted so much for them to find him, for him to be okay.
On Monday morning, I was wishing they would find Alan Hamblett alive and well.
You could say that maybe he wanted to die, that he chose a favorite place to do so and while that may very well be true, it's not what I'm concerned with here. I can't bear to think of someone else in the circle of my knowledge having to die in such circumstances.
It may very well be that the only connection that exists between these two events is the one that I have created in my mind but it is that connection that I'm trying to talk about. The idea of the knowledge of one's final hours in a situation that needn't have occurred and what someone would do with that time.
I know that there are tens of thousands of people out there who've been exactly there in the last month but it just doesn't have the same impact. That is overwhelming, it's far away, it's... whatever. This is right here. I can't but begin to imagine that feeling multiplied by a city or a country. I can't. It is utterly beyond me. All I can do is feel for one person at a time.
I'd like to think that if the two of them could say one thing to all of us it would be, simply, to live, to do it all. Or, as Tanys would say, "Come ON, let's go!"
All I can do is vow to myself that if I were ever to find myself in that situation then the dreams come true will outweigh the steps never taken. That these people's stories will make me mindful when I forget - as lately I struggle to keep my feet on the road I've chosen. I need to remind myself that the memory of those who are gone can be honored by listening, even if I have no idea what they would have said, even if it's just what I think *I* would say given that chance at the end of my own life, even if it's just a story I make up to explain something I find hard to decipher, even if it's just my own flawed heart I'm listening to.
We don't like to think about death but I have learned that sometimes we have to. That to properly honor Life sometimes we have to open up that door and sit down for a good long chat with the Death of our own. I met Death's opening act personally a couple of years ago and Death is just right there, right now, it was right on top of me this morning, it is a reality that is closer than we think, closer than we want to believe.
I mentioned before that there were trails here I could not walk now (if ever) because I had walked them with Matt and this park is one of those trails. I had walked it as a teen with my mother and the dogs and then years later with Matt. Just seven weeks ago.
I think Devonian Park will not be a place I can ever go again. I think that even if the sadness around Matt being gone from me lifts, that park now will always symbolize a kind of deeper, wider human hurt.
Reflexes? Check. Check. Check.
Thank you to the young gentleman in the truck (oooo, all these pretty windows! whatever could they be for? is it an upgrade, did I have to pay extra? so pret-ty!) who so kindly tested my survival instinct this morning by swerving from his lane to mine without bothering to look whilst both of us travelled roughly parallel at high speed.I managed to not reflexively jerk into the oncoming traffic and missed slamming into his door by about 18 inches - my brain screaming, Fuuuuuuuck, the car's not even paiiiiid for yeeeeet". I don't think I have ever changed lanes using only my mirrors. EVER.
Thank God he didn't slam on his brakes when he noticed me right beside him. We would have both been fucked. Especially since Betsy was also carrying a full 30 lb pro-fucking-pane tank.
Jeesus, buddy, you know that "shoulder-check" thing they stress constantly during your driving test and in every commercial you ever see about driving? THEY DO THAT FOR A REASON ASSFACE.
lyric at post:
..another night with open eyes
too late to sleep, too soon to rise
you're short of breath, is it a heart attack?..color>
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Voicemail
Hey, it's Mike. I rented Blade II - didn't know if you'd seen it or not yet.I'm getting all prepped for tomorrow night. Talk to you then.
I guess this means I can't bail out like I was thinking, hey? The car pool guy, who I owe some time to for the rides. And the ear. And it's NOT a date. And I am all about vampire movies and I have no friends. Plus he's a good guy.
He just won't ever be MY good guy.
A Poem.
Or, at least, Pieces of One.
Only part of it because I am not done. And no one liked the last one. Not that I actually reworked it. I got busy, and now remembering that day is too difficult. For now. And yes, every single poem I've written in my entire life has been free verse. Not a ONE of them bloody well rhymes.You never knew
you who knew me
so well
You who could feel my warmth
on the coldest nights
at your side
or a thousand miles away
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #10
Shameful Momentary Lapse of Maturity
And just as all the great thinkers and self help books tell us that every human being carries every possible behavior within us, it's all just a matter of emphasis, innit?www.penisland.net
www.whorepresents.com
www.therapistfinder.com
www.cumstore.co.uk
lyric at post:
..the fire is dying now, my lamp is growing dim
the shades of night are lifting
the mornin' light steals across my window pane
where webs of snow are drifting..color>
Monday, January 10, 2005
The Monday Bumper Sticker #2
lyric at post:
..we are strangers here
on our way to some other place..color>
Sunday, January 09, 2005
If I Were 'Man's Best Friend'...
I'm unsure if my loyalty would extend to smelling 'mom' and 'dad's' urine, no matter how much it helped the fight against cancer.Makes me wonder, though, if the Munchkin knew before any of us that I was sick, if she knew what it meant, if she knew when I was going to be okay. If she knew finally, how much I would miss her. Still.
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #9
Public Spectacle
On the way home from a lovely family dinner last night, I stopped at the wine store, choosing a lovely (and cheap, I'm all about the cheap) shiraz (Painted Turtle, which I love and am considering having a glass of, curling up on the couch with needy cat and a book - except that it's 10:30 am).....Anyways, reaching into my bag for my wallet, my hand landed on something cold and SQUISHY. I panicked slightly and yanked it out onto the counter before remembering it was a ziploc bag of gravy to go with the roast beef leftovers, also in my purse.
I don't think the other five people in line believed the "teehee, leftovers, family dinner" explanation. Gravy in a bag just looks... well, you know.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
I Guess Some People DON'T Contemplate Life on Milestone Birthdays
My apologies to those of you that haven't been here for my entire life (shame on you! I'm shocked and dismayed!) but in regards to (#1) this whole Tony,there (#2) saga, it's time to close the chapter.The voice mail that was left for me during Lesley's wedding at the end of September, which has since been relegated to the aether when I changed numbers, went like this (my message said something like, "I'm sorry I can't take your call right now."):::
then you can just go FUCK YOURSELF."
It was of course, quite a bit longer than that but you can trust me when I say the rest of it was just the same thing, in variations, with just as much fuck-ing involved.
Needless, I think, to say, I've never called even though he was my best friend, even though he's still listed as getting everything if I die, even though I moved back. I even asked our mutual friends not to tell him I'm here.
Lately, I've been fighting the urge to call him. It's loneliness, I know that. It's always been my nature to be the one to call and take a hit for the friendship and I promised myself, NO MORE.
Last Thursday was Tony,there's 35th birthday. On the way home from a family dinner tonight, I... I'm not going to say gave in .. I allowed myself to give him one last chance. After all, 4 weeks after that message, I was gone and if he were trying to contact me, he wouldn't have been able to.
Our conversation:
me: I thought that I would give you a chance to apologize for that terrible message you left for me in September.
he: What message?
me: The one that went.......
he: I never called you in September.
me: Yes, Tony, you did.
he: I haven't talked to you since June or so.
me: Why would I lie about it?
he: Well, I don't remember it, I must have been drunk.
(drunk enough at 8 pm to not remember it? that's harsh. or a lie)
me: Sooo, that's it. You don't remember so it didn't happen and you don't need to apologize for the terrible things you said in a final attempt to save this friendship?
he: That's right.
me: You have a nice day, then, Tony.
click.
And that, as they say, was that. I wouldn't have backed down on this one and there's no way for him to find me now but I do feel better within myself knowing that I gave him that last chance. I'm right with myself. I don't think that he will ever be able to be the same.
So, here's a couple of things I learned between yesterday and today, all of which I knew already I guess but just never said "out loud".
If you are wrong, admit it. You don't need to grovel, weep, moan, prostrate yourself in self chastisement or be belligerent about it. It doesn't need to be belabored. It is not a WIN or LOSE situation. It won't kill you. It may even make you look better than the person you really are. It may save a friendship or save a life. It may save nothing at all but hopefully, your self-respect will be a little more intact if you admit you were wrong - IF YOU ARE. To admit when you are wrong requires you to be honest with yourself. If you can't be honest with yourself, I don't have the time to waste on you.
Be a positive force. We can't all be positive all the time, nor should we be, but some of us see hope - even if we can't see it right then - we know that in time, in the distance, we will see its shine in the dark once more. In the meantime we'll continue to struggle in the direction we think it lies. The people around you can feel if you are this kind of person, or not. I believe that these kind of people bring hope to others by their very existence.
Judge only yourself. If you're judging me first, you'll never say, do or be anything I respect. You may as well just shut up, stay home and poison yourself. Because, try as you might, you won't poison me.
lyric at post:
..I'll watch over you
you need not walk this world alone..color>
It Wasn't Me, It Was Her. I Swear
Living in a place with 8 million animals and having a crap memory, I don't remember from day to day who is who. Eventually, you have to stop asking over and over again, don't you think?I know one of the six cats is "Johnny" and the one of the five dog that barks alla time is "Tessa" (cause she gets yelled at the most) but I couldn't actually tell you which is which if they were lined up in front of me.
One of the dogs is named "Jenny" and sometimes, I can hear Stef yell, "JENNIFER!" in that oh-you're-in-shit voice and it never ever fails to make me stop, look around guiltily and wonder what the hell I've done now.
lyric at post:
..well, it's 1-2-3-4 take the elevator
at the Hotel Yorba I'll be glad to see ya later
all they got inside is vacancy..color>
Friday, January 07, 2005
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #8
The Best Thing I Read All Week
Thinking, from Dooce, God love that woman.(for those of you unwilling to do the clicky clicky:)
“Mrs. Armstrong! Which one will we be refilling for you today?”
WHICH ONE, INDEED, Buddy.
..and it's such a shame, that I can't tell you anything
you won't hear me,
still you endear me now..color>
Snow Day
When it snows in Victoria, people who are from here call the radio stations non-stop, assuming the world is about to end any minute because there's slush on the lawn. The transplants roll their eyes and say, "Whoooo scaaaary, look, there's enough snow out there to get my pant cuffs wet."Although I spent 26 years here, I'll give you one guess as to which one 9 winters in Calgary has made me. It doesn't even occur to me to put a jacket on - it's -2 kids, that's shorts weather compared to -65 with the wind chill in Calgary last year.
Growing up here, the drill is usually, once it starts to snow - wait two hours praying it will stop - when there's actually accumulation, leave in masses to rush home - driving no differently than you usually do - and if you get stuck in say, the middle of the highway, just abandon your car. Just leave it there in the middle of the highway and walk away.
You think I kid. No sir.
I'm taking my time getting ready for work and enjoying my coffee before hitting the road. Considering myself a prairie girl who's commute out of the boonies takes 45 minutes on a good day in a city with no snow clearing equipment and most of its traffic lights on the fritz because of the 'heavy weather' - I have only one request, get out of my way.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #7
Cutesy Kinda Weather
Since Miss Betsy LaRue is the only car in our department with all-wheel drive, at work today we spent a good half hour working out an elaborate 'Jen-picks-everyone-up' schedule in case the snow was too much for everyone to get to work.The city is expecting 5 centimetres and a low of -2.
tee, teehee, hee, they are SO cute.
lyric at post:
..day by day I'm feeling stronger
day by day I'm lasting longer
day by day you help me make my way..color>
Slightly Sheepish Confession
I only grocery shop when I run out of the plastic store bags I use for garbage.lyric at post:
..and i miss you like my left arm that's been lost in a war
today i dream of home and not of london anymore..color>
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #6
In Contact But So Out of Touch
Normally, I ordered my contact lenses off the internet from some company on the other side of the country. They'd arrive in two days, I didn't have to travel all over Calgary on buses, schlepping through the cold weather and they were the same price - between $30 and $35 a box (six disposables, one eye).Figuring now that I have a car, I should actually take advantage of my new mobility and just stop by and pick some up after work, I called a place here in town.
$69.50. She tells me it's per box of six but I assume she's just some insane lady who wandered in out of the crazy-making wind and picked up the phone when no one was looking, so I called somewhere else.
Whew, oh, that's better... $65.00. What? What? According to this woman, they're the cheapest in town.
Even 'off the street' in Calgary they were $37 bucks.
What the hell is wrong with these people? Apart from the fact that it's a blatent rip-off, I don't care if you're on an island and you can charge a premium for dog-shit and get away with it - but, the burning question to this computer-attached-to-my-ass girl is: are you familiar with that internet thing everyone's talking about?
lyric at post:
..so ask me tomorrow what I thought of yesterday
there's so many things that I cannot explain
I'm in love with you
and I can pull it through
all I ever wanted was days out by the sun
to watch the world go by and take each day as it comes..color>
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #5
You Know You Work Near the Dementia Patients When....
...walking by the bulletin board you notice out of the corner of your eye the festive Santa covered "perfect Christmas gift" bulletin posted there is actually just a sneaky ad for The Hip Protector.lyric at post:
..steal me, deal me, anyway you heal me
maim me, tame me, you can never change me
love me, like me, come ahead and fight me
please me, tease me, go ahead and leave me..color>
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #4
New Year's Resolution
Make sure there is always a spare full propane tank so you don't wake up ever again with no hot water.Well, it's good to get that one out of the way right at the beginning.
Maybe it should be amended to: find some sort of damn gauge so you have advance warning before you go to bed that it may expire during the night.
lyric at post:
..they can't hurt you
unless you let them..color>
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
It's Not an Eccentricity,
It's an Endearing QUIRK
Growing up here on rainforest island, I wore cowboy boots alla time. Loved my boots. Wore 'em to work with skirts, wore 'em to the bar, wore 'em all day, they were my dancing shoes, wore 'em ... well, all the freaking time.The first week I'm in Calgary, just a few days after Christmas in 1996, we go on down to Electric Avenue and I get out the truck, step down onto the four feet of ice that covered everything and SPLAT. Right on my ass. Cause cowboy boots have no tread.
After that lesson in grace under freezing conditions, I would occasionally wear them to "Cowboys" (ie: large bar full of scads of charmers, usually drunk as skunks on the 25 cent draft). Mostly cause I wore them with a tank top, ripped jeans and a man's suit jacket. And I had no hair. So, all the drunks left me alone and I could just hang with my friends without being hassled.
No doubt about it though, I was still cute.
Anyways, in the last five years I have only worn my cowboy boots (I even have two pairs) during the Calgary Stampede, because they forced us to. No, really, they do. And I've never actually been happy about it.
Probably because I wouldn't normally choose to wear them with jeans and long-sleeved jean shirts in 35 degree weather (that's 100 for you 'murkins).
What's my longwinded get-to-it are-we-there-yet I-gotta-pee point?
Getting clothes together for work tomorrow (it's chilly in that basement with the no heat built during WWI), while babbling away to the cat, I absentmindedly pulled out jeans, a turtleneck, a sweater, and my cowboy boots.
These days I may feel like I belong nowhere and to nobody and that I have no roots but that doesn't negate the fact that for all intents and purposes, I am "home". And, apparantly, the boots think so too.
Which reminds me, I wore that shirt last week for the first time since the day I met Matt (in that picture as a matter of fact) and something in the cuff kept poking me in the wrist. It was a piece of straw.
As I pulled it out with a sentimental little tear in my eye, it suddenly occurred to me, "wow, that lasted longer than Matt did."
lyric at post:
..and now I think it's kind of funny that you say you love me
you tell me that I'm crazy then you smile..color>
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #3
Japan's Marathon Monks
ABC news in Vancouver, Canada and Sydney, Aus have some sort of weird joint news show called Hemispheres. The other night, I watched a segment on Japan's Marathon Monks. It's a quick read and it was only a ten minute segment on the show but it was just so incredible that I had to look up a little more on it. Here's some highlights:
...Genshin Fujinami sleeps for just two hours a night, and walks or runs through the forest for 17. And he does it every single day for more than three months. Forget high tech supplements and performance drugs. He lives off a rice ball and a bowl of noodles. Fujinami is one of only 46 monks to have completed the gruelling test, known as the “Kaihogyo”, in the last four centuries.
...Over a seven year training period, these "running buddhas" figuratively circle the globe on foot. During one incredible 100-day stretch, they cover 52.2 miles daily - twice the length of an Olympic marathon. But the prize they seek is not a pot of gold nor a few fleeting moments of glory, rather it is to capture the greatest thing a human being can achieve: enlightenment in the here and now - whereupon they will become living Buddhas - modern day saints.
Any who ...fails to complete any part of the prescribed practice, it is his duty to take his own life - by either hanging or self-disembowelment
One guy - did it twice. Here's a rundown of the 7 year path they follow and a history of the Tendai.
Next time I have the urge to whine about my 20 minute walk, I may just have to think again.
Monday, January 03, 2005
The Monday Bumper Sticker #1
In a mighty effort to distract the world from my obvious inability to write happy posts, interesting posts, posts that I have promised or promised to finish, etc, on and on - I have (you may have noticed) instituted the 'Short & Snappy Drive By Post' and have now come up with the 'Weekly Bumper Sticker'.Monday will be the day. Mostly because it is a bait and switch technique that I came up with TODAY!
Because otherwise I shall actually have to relate the sordid story of the septic tank backing UP the toilet last week (ick) followed a day or so later by the discovery of an unexpected and sudden shortage of propane (ie water heating, furnace, cooking ability) as well as the way I felt when I got up at fivefuckingforty-five am to no hot water for a shower so that you may better understand today's mood caused by the fact that my pipes (aka - the big hose that runs out from the barn) froze last night and how I woke up this morning fighting the clingy goopy sadness residue of a Mattdream to a shivering screeching cat on my head, ice on the insides of the windows and no fucking water.
...so, you know, the first bumper sticker seems pretty fitting...
lyric at post:
..run your nails down my back
be sure to leave tracks
to match my emotional scabs..color>
Short & Snappy Drive By Post #2
The Christmas Gift I Would Have Bought for Effing...
If I Bought Christmas Presents.
The HeadBlade.It's the thought that counts.
lyric at post:
..and stranger than your sympathy,
and all these thoughts you stole from me.
and I'm not sure where I belong.
nowhere's home and I'm all wrong..color>
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Just a Rest Stop On the Road of My Life
It has just occurred to me that in 365 days, give or take a week, I shall be on a plane to the other side of the world, with no plans to return to this one.A whole new world.
A whole new life.
Wow.
lyric at post:
..the Reverend Green, be glad to see you
when you haven't got a prayer..color>
Short and Snappy Drive By Post #1
Letters of the Week
Cause they're all so freakin' LONG and gahhhh lately.Two best letters of the week at Macleans, Canada's Weekly Newsmagazine.
One: in response to an article about George's visit to Canada, which mentioned we fed him beef - or did in the print version, anyhow.
(mad cow! mad cow! hahahahaha, we gave George mad cow!)
er... ahem....
And number two: in response to an article about some scandal or another regarding stripper immigration policy.
Uh, good point, that.
lyric at post:
..cause I've been under the paper you were writing on
you left your impression long after you'd gone
on me,
marks only I can see...color>
Saturday, January 01, 2005
New Year's Day - Inside the Heart-Shaped Box
Arrrg. I am thinking thinking thinking about a year end post. I have a cute little idea but that requires a little more effort and a little more time, which will become the other kind of reflection I wanted this year. I still owe you the Thanksgiving post - I haven't wanted to end the year without it, but it still needs some editing.It is however, fitting, to officially end 2004 / formally welcome 2005 in some way. Last year, it was Perseverance, which I think is just as important this year.
(in part, from 'The Meaning of Things, Applying Philosophy to Life' by A.C. Grayling, Reader of Philosophy, U of London, whom you are going to meet again today)
I'm not far enough away from this year to see what it will come down to in regards to who I've become or what I've learned. I'm loathe to natter on about the difficult things that were borne this year because, let's face it, all of our lives are difficult at times and I'm the first to admit that almost every valley had a sky-high peak, so dwelling on the bad somehow negates the inclusion of the good. Which is just not acceptable in the way it used to be for me. I am no different from you and you are no different from me. It is all just one big mixing pot and the trick is, of course, to stir it all up, contemplate the lovely moments, acknowledge the ugly bits and then absorb it all - the good and the bad - before picking oneself up and continuing to stagger along this path.
But, I pulled that book from last year out again a few minutes ago because this thing that I am struggling with has been looking like this the last couple of days......
...If this is what being in love feels like, if this awesome and sweeping and terrible thing that lives in my heart engenders these feelings in everyone - beginning or ending, that how I'm feeling is NORMAL, that my heart didn't find or recognize in Matt anything other than some sort of chemical / biological reaction and I'm struggling with it for the simple fact that I've never experienced it before, then, in a way, well, what a fucking rip-off.
I guess we all want OUR pain to be different, OUR hearts to be sure and right, OUR perceptions to be crystal clear and better than everyone else's. When maybe, in truth, I felt this way because that's what one is supposed to feel when they fall in love....
Jesus, if that's the case, then I think I'm good with just this once and I can just go back to being content with plain, solid love. No, really. Thanks though.
I want to believe that my heart recognized it's complementary other half and maybe I'm just overthinking (you think?) but one can never be sure about anything if one doesn't consider the other sides. Seeing things from one angle will only succeed in a one dimensional understanding and eventually, a skewed and narrow-minded belief that, I think, would be almost impossible to shake.
I've never been happy with only one dimension.
I've been through a lot of emotions in the last month and am convinced hourly, daily, weekly of something other than what I was convinced of the hour, day, week before. I mention the one above because it just happens to be the current one I'm working through. And so, in a way, it's the one I'm writing my New Year's post about.
Over to you, A.C.....
...despite appearances, the kinds of love that are most significant to us are not those that fill novels and cinema screens. They are instead those we have for family, friends and comrades; for these are the loves that endure through the greater part of our lives, and give us our sense of self-worth, our stability, and the framework for our other relationships.
Romantic love, by contrast, is an episodic, usually short-lived, and often scorchingly vivid turbulence in our emtional histories. To judge by the attention it receives - not least in poetry and song, our parliaments for discussing the heart's essentials - it is one of life's profoundest experiences. Yet, paradoxically, the official line is that apart from a few experimental feints in early adulthood, love's true heights should only be experienced once, with lifelong bonding as the appropriate outcome. Anyone who claims to fall in love frequently is deemed irresponsible, and with some justification: for it is such a time-consuming, exhausting, ecstatic, painful, transforming business that it requires a long recovery - in some cases, indeed, whole lifetimes.
Sober folk claim that falling romantically in love is not a good way to get to know someone, for Stendhal's reason that we cloak the beloved in layers of crystal, and see a vision rather than a person for the whole period of our entrancement. On this view it is a delusional state, and the fact that it is short-lived is therefore good. Others think that that romantic love is the only thing that allows us to burn through the layers that conventionally insulate people from one another, baring the soul of each to each, making true communication possible - the kind that speaks the language of intimacy, not in words but in pleasures and desires.
This is far from the only difference of opinion about romantic love. Another debate rages over the question whether a propensity for romance is an essential human trait, or whether it is a social and historical construction, present in some periods and societies but absent from others......
The Greeks had different words for love's different manifestations. They spoke of agape, altruistic love (in Latin caritas, which gives us -but with what a cold ring - our word 'charity'). They spoke of ludus, the playful affection of children and of casual lovers, and pragma, the understanding that exists between a long-established married couple. They spoke of storge, the love that grows between siblings or comrades-in-arms who have been through much together, and of mania, which is obsession. And they allied the latter with eros or sexual passion. They thought that love in all its forms was divinely inspired.... But divine inspiration was not always welcome; manic eroticism, they said, was often inflicted as a punishment by the gods, and it's unreasoning and distracting character interfered with what they most valued, namely intellect and courage....
In making these distinctions the Greeks showed an alertness to the fact that close relationships subserve a variety of ends. ..
...In Hardy's prophecy of the newly emerging pattern, romance is not an end in itself but a step toward love of the other kinds - it becomes the porch to friendship, comradeship, the equal or near-equal partnership in life's adventure....
In opposition to the view that romantic love was invented by the troubadours, some argue that it is a unversal phenomenon. To claim this is to take sides in the debate between 'essentialists' and 'constructionists'. The former claim that romantic love is one of the four, great intrinsic, inescapable upheavals which define the human condition (the others are: being born, having children and dying). ....
It is both a pun and a truth to say that the subject of love has always been left to amateurs to explain. There is no science of love because it is too various and protean to fit a theory. People attempt love as climbers attempt Everest; they scramble along, and end by camping in the foothills, or half-way up, wherever their compromises leave them. Some get high enough to see the view, which we know is magnificent, for we have all glimpsed it in dreams. And that is what the feast of St. Valentine is about: the dream of love. Life would be bitter indeed if the dream never became reality, or if the main experiences of love in our lives - storge, pragma, ludus, agape - were not enduring and stabilising enough to save us when the storms of eros and mania sweep over us - bringing bliss, and leaving havoc in their wake.
And so what conclusion does that leave me with? I could go through it point by point, and I have, in my own way (and much more in my mind than I have here - I'm sure you're happy to know) but, when all is said and done ....
...there is no conclusion. In another week or another month or another year, my heart will be clear and it will tell me what it was trying to show me or teach me, and, in the meantime, I just have to let all the rest of it in to drive a few blocks on my mental highway before hitting the next set of lights and taking the exit.
This isn't about what is normal. It isn't about anyone else's experiences or viewpoints or feelings, nor to be honest, does it have anything at all to do with Matt's - it is about mine. And mine alone.
And I? I trust in my heart. Then. And now. Still.
