breaking things

fucking curiosity... the death toll for cats is rising exponentially.

Having been grumpy for days, I find myself in a state of near apoplectic rage. Too bad my dishes are all pyrex, as I could do with hurling a few of them into the ally. And then going for a long long run... starting running so blindly angry that I end up sprinting a good 5 km and collapsing, lungs heaving, stomach churning-exhausted.

I feel like King Knut... raging against the inevitable. And, like the shore, there will be eventual calm once the rushing tides abate... I just don't know when that will happen. My patience is shot, (did I ever posess any to begin with?) and we all know that I do so well when life spirals out of my control...

[timothy to claire: "here's a phrase that describes you: 'I'm not a control freak... things just go better when you do it my way.'"]

This too shall pass. Thanks mum. I just don't enjoy the process. Always prefered the destination to the journey.

Rather than being in the shelter of a big top, sometimes it seems like this tightrope I am walking is really a power line and it's monsoon season.

Metaphors all over the place tonight... general lack of coherence.

Tempering the rage: Justine and I talking last night at "all hours," solving all the problems of the moment-specifically le francais... a lot of red wine should do the trick! And the satisfaction of nailing the Bach to the wall tonight.

Not quite running, but for now, it's all I've got.

grey.

I walked home across the reservoir field tonight at around 5:30 and the whole city was grey. The sky was pewter coloured and the buildings of downtown, all steel and windows, reflected the clouds. But strangely, it wasn't at all dark. Somehow everything seemed to glow-luminescence.

"before last night my heart was grey//like my country is today...''

Mum said that part of learning to put yourself first is learning how to be alone and not searching for other people's validation. I think this autumn is teaching me that in spades. The only problem is that learning how to validate myself is a little more complicated than I had anticipated.

Really, who eats 3 balanced meals and two snacks every day? Those people need help.

Brief joys:

Talking to Platonic Love in the library... (flutter of heart beat... ha ha ha)
Stepping out my door and really smelling autumn.
Strong tea pouring out of the elephant pot into blue and white mug half filled with milk
Solitary cigarette on the back step in the middle of the night
Trans continental gossip
chinese take out food

"we'll sleep when we're dead"

Hell is...

...other people.

Nina reminded me of that the other day. And for me, on top of hell being politics papers, hell is other people.

Other people in my space, or-more currently-profoundly out of my space. The gaps in space and time that were occupied by now vacant people. Negative people? Negative space? I guess over time we learn to fill in the holes, like puttying the pin holes out of a wall...replacement theory. Or we stich together the tear leaving bulky seams...

Such mixing of metaphors. Mr. Chalmers would have a heart attack.

Jeff was at my house tonight, and while he was nice and funny and tried really hard to take my mind off school and talk about something else (anything else), I wanted to yell at him: "STOP TALKING TO ME!!! Stop looking at me!!! Stop trying to get me to relax!!! I am NEVER going to fucking relax..." It wouldn't have been fair, because he was honestly trying to help, but it occured to me how much more relaxed I would be if I could just scream at him until he left. However, being my well brought up self, I offered him a cup of coffee and let him talk to me about his school work and sports and music. The words washed over me and I realized that I only had to listen to about one third of them in order to make coherent responses. [It is at moments like this when I realize I am a completely horrible person] I just kept making non-commital noises and he kept talking, and I passed the time by thinking about all the stuff I have to do in the next week... Maybe by the end we were both more relaxed?

Rowan has been haunting me the past couple of days. Invading my thoughts when I want to be alone, and making inappropriate comments in the back of my head. Somehow, I think this is normal-he is the most recent reference point-but it irks me. Mostly because I doubt he is having this problem with the ghost of Claire...

solitude...

profound aloneness right now.

leaving me at a loss for words to express my feelings...

just that right now, in the middle of the night, in a city that isn't mine- but is more mine than anywhere else- I feel small.

lonliness like the ferry waves on the beach at Gabriola... arriving unexpectedly, crashing in rhythm onto the reef. Chaos in the tidepool and random shifting of the rocks on the beach. the sound of the retreating wave, pulling the rocks further from shore and then returning them to almost where they were before. noise of waves and rocks bashing together is lodged in my inner ear, I couldn't forget it if I tried. and then...just when it seems there must have been a wind or tide shift, it stops. quiet again, the slapping and gurgling of calm waters. no matter how many times, always suprising me because by the time the wake reaches our beach the boat is long gone and for a minute I am confused as to the source of the disturbance. Which isn't really a disturbance at all... just semi-routine levity for the inter-tidal range.

gainful employment

hired at the Italian cafe... the kitchen is about 14x15 feet. Possibly the smallest comprehensible space in which to serve food to 60 seats. Two burners, a flat top, toaster, mini pizza oven, panini press, slicer, waffle maker, two fridges and a freezer. Oh, and a sink. Somehow it all works. Two people fit nicely and it is not a big pain in the ass to mop.

My chef, Ali, is Iranian. He looks exactly like the actor who played the Iranian colonel in House of Sand and Fog (an alternately wonderful and awful film). He and his family escaped Iran just after the revolution and the death of his father-a colonel in the Shah's army... He speaks quickly and tends to go off on tangents sort of related to food... but not really. Because I only worked with him on Friday, and wasn't there for a large rush, I still have no idea what he will be like when the shit is firmly lodged in the fan. I'll probably find out sooner or later, as I will be the only other person within a two foot radius chef rage will be experienced at close range.

Terminal exhaustion seems to rule my life. That and a meal time schedule. Eating every 4 hours seems bizarre to me, but I guess that is a measure of how much I need this structure. Grocery shopping tomorrow for actual food, and then a gigantic leap onto the bandwagon of...health? well being? For a start, I'll take a simple reduction of neurosis.

Ballet class yesterday was wonderful. Only four of us and a grey drizzly day. The simplicity of movement sooths me. Exercises I could do in my sleep require precise concentration to achieve perfect technique. It is somehow a physical meditation: focusing my mind on achievable details while simultaneously allowing it to detach. (ha ha ha, if read correctly the previous sentence asserts that ballet detaches my mind... how ironically correct!) Right now though, it makes me happy.

Especially humbling are the rest of the women in the class. All of them rank beginners, they approach dance with an energy and joyousness that blows my mind. I cannot comprehend ballet without baggage. And they are weightless. We laugh a lot. Such a revelation to me.

Exiting the studio and into the crackling autumn wind- complete with apropriately coloured leaves and children wearing scarves- I am buoyed by limber muscles and a peaceful mind right over to the music faculty where my peaceful mind is shattered by rehearsing the hardest choir music I have ever seen. Really. This shit is for real. Yesterday we just read the recital rep, and it's a good thing we don't perform it until March, because it will take me at least that long to get the notes, let alone the shifting time signatures. Nicholle's recital is a PhD exam, and thus the rest of us have to be up to her capabilities. The music blows my mind and my sight reading skills. Recently moved to Alto 1 from 2nd sop, I am having to listen damn hard to find myself in the chord.

Thus I find myself employed in various pursuits other than school. Hmmm better fix that soon. Right after I make Nina dinner and and unplug the drain in my shower.

le tired...

...then take a nap- and then fire zeee missiles!!!

no profound musings today. patati, patata...

such long days, thursdays... but the somehow I like the feeling of total and complete exhaustion at the end. Where I drag my carcass home up St. Laurent from the metro station, through all the people out to start their weekends at 10:30 on a Thursday, and into my tiny house. Collapse into chair. Relish inactivity. Savouring the feeling of my muscles relaxing, the tautness easing, becoming human puddle.

Apparently, I may be gainfully employed by tomorrow afternoon. In a kitchen, (will I ever escape... probably not...) and in a hysterical twist, I seem to have enough experience that I have to do an audition shift for them to see how competent I really am. Jordan and Timothy: you can stop having fits of laughter any time! It is a little Italian cafe, and after a day of work tomorrow I will have a much better idea of what I am getting into. Pizzas by the look of things, and probably salads and sandwiches. Really, I never will escape!

The chicken stock made good soup. And Justine and I ate the rest of the pie... well, mostly I did. But she helped a great deal. And since there is enough pumpkin for 3 more pies... we will be eating it forever!

Finally, an A on a response paper. Bane of my existance has been (temporarily) lifted.

procrastination as elevated to an art form

should be reading for the ethnic conflict exam on thursday... nicer to drink tea and whine about stress levels... that is what university students do.

Today, for example. Woke up to CBC's news, slept through a class, woke up again, wrote response paper that was supposed to be handed in during previously slept through class, emailed said paper to prof, ran to school, was lectured at, came home to study.... which thus far hasn't happened to a great extent!

I did, however, make chicken stock from the remains of the thanksgiving fowl. The wierdest part was preparing them for roasting and having to saw the necks off. I am used to looking at dead chicken and completely divorcing the meat from it's previous animated form. Somehow the necks made them look obscene. Whereas before they were just un-cooked dinner, with necks they became a little bit alien.

Now though, they are just carcasses and have made nice stock, and I feel like a 1950's house wife... who should be studying...or ironing...