15 minutes

If you were told you had 15 minutes to leave your house, what would you take with you?

my one bag consisted of:

1pr boxer shorts (bought in cardiff while at bording school)

1 marines teeshirt

lots of comfy underwear... totally forgot to pack bras...

1 pocket watch, courtesy of petit frere

1 pr red Fluvogs boots

1 pr grandmother's shoes from 1940 that fit and look divine

1 pr gold sequined flats. becase I had to.

2 prs of red shoes: the grocery shoes from first year uni, and the Boston shoes that are magical.

(how many shoes now...don't ask...)

1 pr jeans and 1pr lululemon pants

3 scarves from the middle east: one from Halab, Cairo and Damascus...

3 tees: one from paris, one courtesy of le frere from mtl. one a fave...

one scarf woven by mum.

my letters from the past 4 years, my camera, and some valuable jewelry.

It all fit into one duffle bag.

The photo albums, computer hardrive, and legal papers did well in laundry baskets.

Forest fires... the new way to downsize....

famous....

hahaha...

I have blog comment spam. Which is funny, as I think there may be about a sum total of seven people, plus my mother, who read this thing.

the new black

"Morgan Freeman is, like, the little black dress of cinamatography."

For better or for worse...

So I was at a wedding last weekend. Avec l'homme. And since a lot of our mutual acquaintances are getting married or planning to get married, weddings have been on the brain of late.

The weekend wedding was quite lovely, except for some parts where I was whispering to the Falklander that I was going to have to go throw up in the bushes for a few minutes, and that if the priest at my wedding called me a princess I would shove my bouquet down his throat and drown him in the font.

However, the bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, and the wedding party all charmingly attired and flowered. The wedding took place in a garden, the reception in a dining room with vaulted ceilings and huge windows. There were two ponds to walk around for exercise or to escape the small talk, and the weather was gorgeous. The whole thing was exactly as though it had been planned in two colour coded 3 inch binders for the past year. Which it had.

This particular wedding was full of celebration, which all weddings should have in abundance, but short on reality. It was the perfect fairy tale wedding.

I think the thing that really bothered me was that the wedding seemed not to reflect the reality that my dear friends were diving into. Marriage is hard, HARD work. The divorce rates show that, statistically, (the most heinous kind of proof), 50% of marriages in North America don't last. Children, finances, stress of living with another person and modifying ones own life to accommodate theirs takes its toll eventually. Perhaps the generation I belong to has less gumption and stick-to-it-ness than that of my grandparents or even my parents. Or maybe society has changed to recognize that a lot of the long lived marriages of the past were not the Hallmark card platitudes that we were led to believe. Either way, marriage in this particular day and age, seems-to the cynical-a bit of a waste of time.

But, cynical and black hearted though I am, I don't think this marriage was a waste of time. I think it was wonderful and necessary and one small public statement of the kind of love that we are short on in our troubled times. I just wish a few more things had been said:

A recognition that my friends are extremely brave. That marriage is difficult and challenging and terrifying, even for such young bright people. That hard times will occur. That they are both strong individuals and that marriage should not subvert their individuality, but strengthen both of them as people.

I hope that one day I will be as brave as they are, not stop running full tilt toward the precipice of the unknown and the unknowable.

Quote of the month

"the best thing about getting old is that I don't care anymore. I just put on my shoes and walk out the door like a doukhobor."

They'd rather shoot rats at the dump

To date, shoveling a bunch of pine needles and branches into a trailer and then taking it to the local dump to unload has not been at the top of my list of summer fun activities.

But when unloading said trailer takes one minute and forty eight seconds, even I am suckered into a repeat performance.

The dump, man. It's where it's at.

(insider trading tip... buy stocks in dairy queen. the way the falklander and I are putting away ice cream will guarantee you multiplying dividends for years to come.)

wine goggles

female customer: "you know, you really are a very beautiful girl. No, I mean it, you have such a lovely face."

momentarily flustered server: "ahhh.... thank you, um, that's very sweet..."

female customer: "oh don't pay attention to anything I say. I'm drunk, I don't know what I'm talking about."

offspring

there are two choices:

either you educate and discipline your children so that they can sit in a restaurant quietly, order some concoction off the menu, and generally act pleasantly...

or you can arrive at the restaurant, assume that the servers are your built in baby sitting device, and let your progeny run wild to the horror of 100% of the staff and 99% of the other patrons.

When I run the world, those who choose the latter option will have to muzzle, leash and sedate their spawn upon entry to anywhere where the napkins are not made of paper.

some cheese with that wine?

Work, over the past few days, has been interesting. At risk of turning this rather eclectic bit of self absorbed mental masturbation into a restaurant blog...

and no, I would never dream of usurping the throne of the master

I am on my 12th day of work in a row. At this point, customers cease to be viewed as humans and more as biological waste disposal units with a peculiar function that allows them to choose what they ingest.

At point in time, after working 2 doubles in 3 days, I am only just hanging on to maintaining my general public-worthy smile and I am blatantly making things up. The vegetables with the halibut? Carrots, Chinese broccoli and mashed potatoes. A wine pairing with the duck? Whatever the hell you want. The cooking method used on the salmon? LADY, LOOK AT YOUR FUCKING MENU... IT SAYS GRILLED SALMON FOR A REASON!

(Does Chinese broccoli exist? Only God, and the Chinese know- and realistically, if it does exist I am sure there is a perfectly acceptable name for it in Cantonese or Mandarin that is not replete with neocolonialist connotations.)

I have taken to accruing a particular pleasure in watching yuppie men order a bottle of our most expensive wine to impress the friends they are taking out to dinner. The farce unfolds in the predictable manner: he orders a completely inappropriate bottle for their food choices but one of the most expensive on the list. I bring bottle, present it, open it, and pour a taster for him. Throughout this process he ignores me completely. He lazily reaches out a hand - with not quite metrosexually buffed nails but dammned close - and grasps his glass by the bowl. Swirls the wine around and takes a deep inhale of the bouquet. By this point I am wondering if he will be able to smell anything at all other than his own inflated ego and the mere pick me up of white powder lingering in his nasal passages. But of course, although the wine is about 4 degrees too warm and should most certainly NOT be paired with duck breast, he pronounces that "It'll do," and I make my round of the table; dousing the yuppie, his friend, and their wives with wine. When I make my way back to his glass, the ordering yuppie graces my presence with a glance.

"How do you find the difference between the 1998 and the 2000?"

...now this is a test. I have to say what I think he wants to hear. If I deviate from the script, all - and by all I mean any hope in hell of a tip - is lost...

"Well sir, I haven't had a lot of experience drinking the 1998 as it is quite rare and highly sought after," (this to soften up his ego... He is drinking exclusive wine, and I, a mere mortal, cannot afford to indulge so often,)

"But I must say that the 98 has a fuller body and a more complex bouquet than the 2000 which is just coming into fruition."

...take that you platinum credit card, presumptuous bastard: I said 'fruition' to you...

The trump card is that we don't carry the 2000 vintage on our wine list, so that, unless he has extensive wine experience, he will never know what I am talking about. Nor does he care. He's just watched Sideways a few too many times and wants to come off as a sommelier in front of his golfing buddies. He really wishes he were drinking beer, and his botoxed and scalpeled wife/trophy girlfriend/highly paid escort would rather have a wine spritzer. Nobody at the table is happy with the possible exception of the hapless friend who -based on my previous conversation with his friend the yuppie - thinks that he is drinking the nectar of the gods. Even if he thinks the nectar of the Gods is a bit warm, it's nothing to scoff at.

clearly, we also make grape flavoured gin.

"I'd love a beer, what do you have on tap?"

"I'm sorry sir, we are a winery restaurant and only licenced to sell the wine we produce."

"So you don't have any beer?"

"No sir, but we do have a very extensive wine list and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have about our wines."

"No, that's ok. I'll have a martini."

evaporation

I find it chronically wierd when, upon seeing somebody that a year ago I would have gone to the moon for, there is no expected leap in heartbeat.

"I don't love you anymore, goodbye."

how to annoy me

-call me honey. at any time, at any place: I will rip your face off.

-ask me to recite all the desserts on offer, ask me to repeat them, then order 2 coffees, 1 decaf and a peppermint tea.

-San Pelligrino. With lime, NOT lemon.

-dishwash slowly. I know you are tired and it's a shitty job, but I did it too and I was faster than you on my slowest day. Speed it up and you will escape the dishpit far faster. Also, I will have some forks to reset my tables with.

-go home with the pen I put in your bill fold so that you could sign your credit card bill. I am not your personal stationary supply. Bic pens are not collectibles.

Departure Bay

I'm crying while I fold my laundry. Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap is on CBC, and he's playing Canadian female musicians and he plays Diana Krall's song Departure Bay. She's from Nanaimo, and so am I-in a round about way: my dad grew up in a house on Departure Bay Road- and this song hits me from so many angles. If you can, get a hold of it and listen: there's a chord change in the line, "I just get home, and then I leave again," that breaks my heart.

The fading scent of summertime
Arbutus trees and firs
The glistening of rain-soaked moss
Going to the dairy queen at dusk
Down narrow roads
In autumn light

The salt air and the sawmills
And the bars are full of songs and tears
To the passing of the tugboats
And people with their big ideas

I just get home and then I leave again
It's long ago and far away
Now we're skimming stones and
Exchanging rings
And scattering and sailing from Departure Bay

The house was bare of Christmas lights
It came down hard that year
Outside in our overcoats
Drinking down to the bitter end
Trying to make things right
Like my mother did

Last year we were laughing
We sang in church so beautifully
Now her perfume's on the bathroom counter
And I'm sitting in the back pew crying

I just get home and then I leave again
It's long ago and far away
Now we're skimming stones and
Exchanging rings
And scattering and sailing from Departure Bay

A song plays on the gramophone
And thoughts turn back to life
We took the long way to get back
Like driving over the malahat
Now a seaplane drones and time has flown

I won't miss all the glamour
While my heart is beating and the lilacs bloom
But who knew when I started
That I'd find a love and bring him home

Just get me there and one we will stay
A long time off and far away
Now we're skimming stones and
Exchanging rings
We're scattering and diving in Departure Bay

I was wrong

I actually did start work today.

(insert gospel choir here singing "Praise the Lord and Hallelujah")

It was not quite the miraculous experience that one may have expected having lunch at a rather fine restaurant in a rather spectacular location. All I was praying for was another set of arms and that time could move in two separate dimensions: slow for the front and super fast for the kitchen...

Needless to say, the whole time-travel thing didn't really work out in my favour, which left me explaining to my darlink tables that really, an hour wait for a sandwich was a perfectly acceptible timeframe. It's amazing how easily people can be bought: a basket of bread keeps them happpy for at least 45 minutes.

Lesson of the day for future restaurant experiences:

If you are so starving hungry that you HAVE to order your appetizers right NOW, and will order your mains later; BE PREPARED FOR A LONG WAIT FOR YOUR MAINS!!! This is not our special way to fuck with you, there is method behind this waiting. See, here's what happens: When I ring in an order with the first course and the second course on it at the same time, the kitchen begins to prepare the mains at the same time they whip out your appetizers. When you finish your appetizers, I clear your plates and tell the kitchen to pick up the mains for your table; they then finish up cooking your mains, plate them and I take them out to in (what is hoped to be) a matter of minutes. This all happens because main courses take longer to cook than salads- thus, while you are masticating your mixed organic greens, your medium/well steak is being fired. DO YOU INFIDELS KNOW HOW LONG IT TAKES TO COOK A MEDIUM/WELL STEAK??? I didn't think so. So, if you insist upon ordering your mains after you order your apps, then your mains will not have the cooking grace time of how long it takes you to eat your apps, and you will be waiting 'till the cows come in to nosh on your overpriced pasta and your roasted chicken breast panini.

Just sos you know.

Yes, you too can pay 40$ for eating sandwiches and inhaling the fumes of cow anus.

The bulldozers are still in front of the restaurant. I have not the arithmetic skills to calculate the probability that I will actually WORK tomorrow; I'm guessing that it's something close to a snowball's chance in hell, or that my leg hair will miraculously disappear for ever.

Also, the landscapers have put a huge load of manure on the newly planted flowers and shrubs so the whole place smells like shit.

5 am

is the hour that I awoke this morning. A combination of the lingering effects of one glass of red wine too many, and the gut wrenching pain of menstrual cramps. Now I would like to think of myself as stoic, but the sad reality is that when I have cramps I would sell my first born child to the white slave traders if they had a bottle of extra strength advil on hand. (Yet another reason I should never beget offspring.)

Seriously, I long for the days when a woman's monthly bleed was a time of rest and rejuvenation and maybe a few afternoons spent in a sweat lodge or a sauna. Those times, at least in my current cultural habitat, are long gone sadly... Instead I have a full day ahead of me, a day that has to start with getting dressed and pretending to be human.

It's only 6:30 though, being human can wait.

port hardy

has attitude and a rugged worn-down look that belies its steel and perseverence.

the kind of place where change comes slowly and what's good enough for the parent's generation is good enough for the children.

a town that has no problem giving the pretentions of anything south of Campbell River a big Fuck You.

I admire that.

and happy hangover...

... to the most beloved petit frere.

on this, your western hemisphere birthday, when you are restoring yourself from the eastern hemisphere birthday, I hope that you managed to drink a pint of water before you passed out and took a tylenol or paracetemol or advil or SOMETHING so that you didn't wake up this morning feeling like death.

And if you did. My sympathies, it will pass... and you are 20!!!!!!!

My little gravel eating, civilization drinking dragon... I love you so much and am missing you like hell.

party hard. I love you.

this house

is where I learned to shell peas and that 3 raspberries in my stomach to one in the bucket is a fine ratio. More of a home than much else right now.


We took the ferry to Vancouver yesterday to change some flights and to see some friends from Wales. The friends are engaged and have a lovely flat and garden and barbeque and tiki torches... scary and lovely at the same time.

Now in Duncan, chilling w/ le grand pere, who is at the moment listening to the police radio on the scanner. Nothing like good old small town almost-crime!

A dispatch on Gabriola will follow. Suffice to say that I am sunburned and had to be talked out of buying a pair of tie-dyed yoga pants (I have never done sun salutations in my life), but the eagles and the seals and the swinging from trees made up for the mud and chick pea fiasco.

island time

heading w/ aforementioned falkland islander to the island today.

no bears there.

re-evaluating

my prioraties.

It's funny being back chez parents and having to adjust to the different pace of life. Dinner has a specific time. Plant watering is apparently part of my job description. Phone calls are overheard-at least, one side of them anyways. And my perspective shifts to accomodate the other side of me that was often back-burnered in the whirl of Montreal.

Particularly helpful for perspective was sitting atop Mount Edith, half way between Banff and Lake Louise, in the driving snow and wind, contemplating exactly what kind of crazy one would have to be to decide to head down the back of the mountain to find an unmarked trail that may or may not get back to the bottom. Apparently, that is the kind of crazy that I have become: because a few mouthfulls of trail mix later I was blissfully tramping down a snowbank behind an overzealous Falkland Islander whose definition of fun is shooting fat american tourists for sport.

Perspective is also watching the interaction between my mother and my grandfather, both being careful and protective of the other in completely different ways. Family lunches, besides convincing me that I am something of a sociological and political sport*, are good for reminding me of my place in the affection/dependence/inheritance chain.

And yes. I did see a bear. It was a small black bear cub and it meandered through our campsite on Thursday night just checking the place out. Perspective...was achieved again as I quickly realized that my postition in the universe could be little more than bear kibbles. Take that-over educated, eastern canada inflated ego!

*sport: a plant (or part of a plant), animal, etc. which exhibits abnormal variation from the parent stock or type in some respect.

if you go down to the woods today...

Heading to banff to find bears. Big bears.

And to hike a bit.

one week

it always is a bit of an adjustment to return here. My mind takes longer to wrap around stuff that used to be second nature to me.

Like the fact that the drycleaning place went out of business, so the pet store beside where the drycleaners used to be is now taking drycleaning. My drycleaning is getting done at a pet store!!!

(I'm scared to pick it up incase of feathers...)

the movement

was accomplished in a daze of sleep deprivation and hangover. Packing drunk is an experience I would rather not like to repeat.

other highlights included:

Apparently Air Canada now thinks it is necessary to charge its passengers for the privilege of eating their shitty airplane food. Which means that in order to have sustenance of any kind on the 7 hour flight to BC, I was given the options of roast beef sandwich ($6) prepared no less than 2 weeks ago, or a styrofoam cup of instant noodles ($4) which I could have picked up myself from the supermarket for about 75 cents. There were other possibilities too, but really, who spends $2 on packaged cookies? Somebody somewhere in the bureaucracy thinks that because we, the passengers, are a captive audience we must also have lost our fucking minds as well as our price parity index.

I, however, outsmarted them by pre-eating a shawarma that I bought at around noon and then gaining nourishment from gingerale for the remainder of my time on the stale air and screaming baby filled flights. Consequently, upon landing and seeing the darling man that was picking me up, I promptly ripped off his arm and, with minimal mastication, devoured it.

the killers

the advantage of going to a concert where most of the audience is still in high school is that I can see over their heads and, for once, actually see the people on stage.

t minus 48 hours. not enough time. not quite real.

end of days

the last days in montreal and I am running my ass off.

this is all.

packing up

Whilst packing stuff to haul back to the land of wine, gainful employment and a shared bathroom, I realized that I am the owner of 2 potato mashers.

And I have never actually made smashed potatoes while living in this city.

Once again, my life is being whittled down to fit into my luggage requirements. I am not totally sure how I feel about it: like any middle class north american girl who shops at the Gap, I LIKE to have nice things. Not necessarily in abundance, but certainly-much to my chagrin- STUFF is important to me. I remember when I was moving into the apartment where I now live and the idea that I would have to acquire such trappings as a bed, table, chairs, bookshelves, and, God help me, side tables, made me slightly nauseated. Now getting rid of them feels like the first sharp tugs on the stem of a plant that is about to be forcibly transplanted, roots dangling in the air, none of the cozy protective dirt to insulate the shock.

(that was a really bad simile, almost would have been acceptable in grade nine poetry... but hey, let's cut the woman some slack: she's obviously in an advanced state of grief over the imminent loss of the physical embodiment of an ikea catalogue. No more happy Swedish existence, whatever will she do?)

The tactic so far has been to adopt the personae of the housewares fairy. I show up unannounced at my friends' doors and bestow upon them my excess stuff. The significance of a freely given slotted spoon should not be taken lightly.

pass the salt.... bermuda??

It's funny when you think you know someone quite well and then they come out with something completely divergent from what you think you know about them.

Like that my father went to Bermuda. Twice. In the 70's. And came back with a fleet of sailboats, one of which he shipped accross Canada on the train for $75.

He's visiting for a few days before heading back to BC and putting a motorcycle together. I think I convinced him that fixing the little Honda 180 in the basement and teaching me to drive it would be a great project for the summer. I guess the Hastings side is finally rising within me...

Today's adventure: how much gin to buy to facilitate our G&Ts for the next 3 days... Realistically, can there ever be too much?

In other news, I figured out how to post pictures on here, and I am deciding if I like it. Mostly due to my technical ineptitude and general laziness I haven't really tinkered around with pictures, preferring to let my garbled sentences be the window to my soul. And I have this feeling that if I got used to posting pictures I would drop the writing all together. Which would further the laziness. ho hum. Any thoughts?

les souliers des filles 

mini golf and water towers

We left Boston around 8 on Friday night, the culmination of a day filled with route planning, meeting his sister, coffee with neasa, moving boxes, packing the car, a tour of Boston with MIT electrical engineers. Driving out of the city with my feet on the dash board and a 480 mile blast to Salisbury Maryland ahead, I could not have been more excited.

I think it is the movement between fixed points that does it for me. So exhilarating to start in one city and end up in another one... the time between punctuated by music, rambling conversation, consumption of gummy bears and animal crackers. Or just quiet, the contented silence between two people who have reached the point where not everything needs to be said. Restful.

The coast of North Carolina and the sand dunes...houses on stilts for no particular purpose. Finally, standing by the Atlantic for the first time in 4 years. We took out the motorcycle and sped around Nag's Head, ending up at a lighthouse in the middle of a marsh. The light was spectacular. Riding back, the setting sun filtered through the trees and into my helmet and it was as though I was in the middle of Vivaldi's mind when he was writing the autumn movement of the 4 seasons.

Charleston, SC: a sudden departure from America. We couldn't figure out where it felt like we were, but certainly NOT the States. The coffee house put our coffee into plain white paper cups... art galleries with quite blues playing... public gardens...cobbled streets. Shutters and little ally ways. Plans to go back.

In retrospect, the 4 days are a series of snapshots in my mind. click: carrying boxes in the elevator of his building in Boston. click: stopping on the bridge over the Delaware Bay at 3 am to look at the stars. click: running down dunes to escape being told off by the park ranger for the second time. click: sitting in the car watching the rain come down in the middle of nowhere, Georgia. click: smoking cigars and singing to nirvana on the radio.

perspective, which I have been sorely lacking, was restored this past weekend. And laughter... so much laughter.

midnight train

to georgia.

or rather, a long drive. But really, when am I ever going to get to go to Georgia again? Leaving tonight for Boston, then to Atlanta...

to the flying boy: safe travels, godspeed. I cried all the way home.

apartment

I am sure that somewhere along the line, I realized that, to transform myself in to an adult, I would have to begin to be able to let go of things. Given the choice, I would make like a packrat and save everything I could get my hands on. Stuffed toys from my babyhood? Ok! Costume jewelry from grandmother? Sure! Grade four art project? Why not...

Over time I have managed to pare down my deep carnal longing to put things in boxes and just KEEP them. My closet is regularly cleaned out. I give old books to charity or to friends whom I think will like them. I don't let left-overs languish in my fridge. Until 2 years ago my worldly possessions could fit into standard luggage requirements. I value my portability.

What is harder for me to let go of are the intangibles. Relationships, places, experiences. You know that teeshirt that says "If you leave me, I am going with you"?...

And now I am leaving Montreal for good in less than a month. And I have to give up my apartment. And I really, really, REALLY, don't want to. I feel a bit like a dog in the manger, but this apartment should be MINE FOREVER.

So much for maturity.

further juxtaposition

Friday night: la cousine et moi head to Thompson House, the graduate student's house. An old stone mansion on the edge of Mount Royal that was donated to the University, it is now a fantastic place to go, drink, talk, and eat. Being the grad student's house, it is constantly filled with grad students: extremely intelligent, funny, articulate people that I adore. The walls are all wood paneled or papered with distinguished paper, and there is fantastic art all over the walls. Beer is cheap, a snooker table is upstairs, and the view of Montreal is unparalleled. Every time I walk through the door I feel like I should be wearing tweed and tortoise shell glasses.

Saturday night: la cousine et moi head to a techno show. Miss Kitten is playing. The cavernous hall is filled with beautiful, sweaty people gyrating to a heavy bass and random electronic noise. There are video screens hung on the walls showing digital collages of Japanese animation, exercise videos, and soft porn. There is a lot of dyed black hair, piercings and tattoos. And tall people, I am constantly dwarfed by dancing giants. Strobe lights blind me and the smell of pot in the air bring back the memory of the last concert I was at, which ended badly in a un-planned introduction to the public health care system. We leave around 3, la cousine having given her (read, my) phone number to about 4 different people. I am now really wishing for call display...

Bizarre. We are so different, we two... and yet, so similar in other ways. Apparently we look alike: who knew?

women

it seems that I am surrounded by women these days. Which isn't really a suprise, given that my gender makes up 1/2 the population, but suddenly there are these really strong, smart, funny and beautiful women in my life. I'm not sure how to cope.

Some people (and you know who you are) would not EVER see a sudden onset of women to be a problem. I don't either, it's just funny. All my close friends have mostly been guys. Apart from two rather fraught and disasterous friendships in the highschool years, I haven't ever had close female friends.

You know, girlfriends. The ones you call at 2pm having just woken up with a hangover to plaintively ask if she has any idea how your clothes could have possibly ended up in the kitchen... the ones who you can spend 24 hours in the company of and not want to kill them or set them on fire. The ones who remember the names and identifying characterisitics of all your former men without the use of polaroids or name tags.

Yesterday, in the company of two of these women, I laughed so hard my stomach ached for hours. Bent double sitting on the curb, my breath coming out in short gasps as I tried to both laugh and talk a the same time.

I have no idea what set us off... does it matter?

juxtaposition

today, the first warm day in ages, sees me running errands on St Laurent: cutting keys, fixing my watch, dropping the cousin off to have her hair chopped and chemically altered. It's sunny and for the first time in months I am enjoying the feeling of the sun on my back.

as I am leaving the city soon, I've been noticing more and more the things about it that I am going to miss.

and today I realized that I will miss most horribly the cultural juxtapositioning of a city caught between the Seine and the rough and tumble new world.

there was a man on the sidewalk busking in the most franco of ways: the accordian.

and he was dressed as a cowboy.

catching up

so this is what happens when a chronically sleep deprived individual is able to sleep for as long as she wants: 13 hours of really weird dreams...

the one this morning that involved 3 close friends, a chicken and a lot of toasters. WTF??

I am spending time by myself and doing things I love: reading non-school related material, making cookies, watching movies.

not waving but drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been to cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh no no no, it was too cold always
(still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

~S.Smith

cross eyed with times new roman...

which, I guess is better than going blind from staring at ariel or comic sans all day... I can only imagine the response of my very distinguished professor if I handed him my thesis written entirely in Treefrog. Or Webdings 3.

not to fear, 'tis but the ramblings of a diseased mind. which is now seeing the world in black and white with serifs.

Remember Neas? all those afternoons in the castle with Martin, staring at fonts...

apparently the only solution to this ailment is to cut the crap and go out to face society. Eat pizza exquise first, drink wine out of a paper bag. Dance ass off to the sweet tunes of the early 90s...

"it's like that, and that's the way it is - Huh"

the plumber cometh

tomorrow morning. sometime before 10 am. Which is funny, since I haven't been awake before 11 in about a week. Or 3 days. When one goes to bed at 4 in the morning, drugged on NyQuil, one has difficulty rising to do her sun salutations at the appropriate time.

Fortunately, a night of the intricacies of Canadian immigration policy and the Indochinese boat people await me. (Who was saying that I don't get out enough?) If all goes well, I should still be awake at 10 am to let my landlord and the plumber-god-who-will-fix-my-drainless-tub into my humble abode.

And it's hovering around zero tonight, inside the walls. Maybe he can fix my heating while he's at it...

achievements for today:

1. laundry
2. buy milk

not bad for six hours awake.

the leaving is getting palpably near, and I can no longer pretend that life is going to continue as normal. I finish university next week. I will be back in BC by mid June at the latest. I will work/play my way through the summer. In October... travel? become a cashier at Safeway? start painting a picket fence in Calgary? ride a motercycyle to Cairo? curl up in a ball and hibernate? These are decisions I feel completely unqualified to make.

Not suprising though. Since my Saturday night when I succombed to a winning combination of dehydration/low bloodsugar/stress/exhaustion I haven't had the energy to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Usually this wouldn't be a problem, except that I live alone: no roommates or family members to cook or wash dishes for me. Don't get me wrong, I love living alone-maybe when I have returned chez famille, I will write down all the virtues of living solo- but right now I could use a manservant. I was told that the term "manbitch" would be more apropriate, but I am loath to use that particular term because of connotations with Pulp Fiction.

Have been inside way too much today. but it's rainy, and I am lazy.

"take a holiday in spain...

leave my wings behind me
drink my worries down the drain
fly away to somewhere new..."

the ER on a Saturday night is not really where I was thinking of...

small things...

sleep solves so much.

and one of the lost boys has been located. this one's been in the israeli army for the last 3 years, and hasn't been heard from in about 2... we spoke briefly this afternoon, and he'll call tomorrow.

suddenly everthing seems ok.

God, I'm glad he is safe and alive.

jealousy.

Nobody will ever say that I am the world's most compassionate or kind person. Really, I'm not even close. I lack tolerance, perspective and general good will.

But usually, usually, I am able to be happy for my friends when good things happen to them. Most of the time I can harness my generosity of spirit and be genuinely glad when they get good jobs, find nice boyfriends, achieve stunning marks or win vacations to Cuba.

Lately though, I have been singularly unable to conjure up joy for the lives of others. In particular, one of my best friends.

It's nothing big: she is pretty much set for post-graduation plans, has enough money to do whatever traveling she wants, and (this is the kicker) is being courted by a most wonderful man. When I say courted I mean it in the old English sense: he sends her funny, intelligent and articulate emails, he brings her flowers and he knows when to leave her alone to study. (which isn't particularly old english at all... just classy and grown up...)

And while objectively I am happy for her, inside I want to die. I want him to let slip some grossly inappropriate comment, or to have bad table manners. I want her to decide it's not worth it. I want to stop feeling like the wicked step-mother in the manger.

I've had enough time alone with my mind to realize that most of this is my own hysteria: the panic of being spewed out into the real world, the lack of sleep, the remnants of a horrific love affair that left me questioning my worth as a person.

It's not terminal. This too shall pass. And as much as I live by the adage that denial is the first step on the road to healing... I have to get this out somewhere. I wish I could be funny about this, witty and humorous and insightful, but right now I feel ravaged, and paralyzed. Like my heart has the kind of 'road rash' that you get falling off your bike aged seven. It goes away eventually, but in the meantime it hurts like hell and looks really bad for what is, realistically, just a surface wound.

"wake me up, wake me up, it's one of us that's screaming"

it's late...

... and I am listening to the Killers.

the hell has commenced and it's exhausting just thinking about it.

end of tunnel light comes in the form of a possible escape with dear friends, and some news of the lost one.

my darlink brother has started a blog too. he is cool and writes really well. Unlike his sister whose brain has started to melt out her ears...

anyways, check it out kids:
here

bed for this muffin.

what every daughter wants to hear...

"your father is 2/3 of the way up a tree on the end of the extention ladder. He is tying a live powersaw to his waist..."

the fashion police

The first really warm day, and the mcgill fashion victimhood was in full swing. Restraint ladies. We do not have to wear all of the spring trends at once.

case in point: cowboyboots. flouncy skirt. gold sequin belt. teeshirt. slightly shrunken one button blazer in peach. pearls. big headphones around neck. dangly chandelier earrings. artfully messed up hair, probably in need of a wash.

Under no circumstances should these distinct items form a whole outfit.

There will be more warm days. I promise.

And the Uggs with the miniskirt and it's only 5 degrees out? Two things: legs that blindingly white should be dontated to science to be used as incubator lights for premature babies. AND it is five degrees out!!! That skirt is approximatly five inches long. Parts of you that should not be that cold are going to get that cold.

'sall I'm sayin... (and maya says too... only she is too polite to tell you!)

one month later

you asked me what I have learned:

-to always buy good cheese.

-to listen to music that I don't understand. for longer than I normally would and then, in the middle of half hearing it, to appreciate the skill and devotion of those who play it.

-to relax and enjoy the embrace

-to look for the good in people. to accept the grace and help of my friends

-to be careful of those close to me. Not to take them for granted.

-that who we choose to love doesn't always make sense. And that "sense" in the cognitive aspect, isn't all it's cracked up to be.

-that dep wine always tastes the same

-that I can survive more than I thought I could

-to cut myself, and other people some slack. because, really, we are all just works in progress-half formed sculptures that are malleable and will never be glazed or fired

-how to count music in 12/8 time

-that the human capacity for fucking up is great. as is our capacity to forgive and eventually, to laugh and be kind.

roller coaster days

Because I am aware of the horrible quicksand of self-pity/absorption, I am trying a new tactic in the face of academic hell and post-apocalyptic personal life.

Awareness. Of myself and my surroundings and the universe.

And remembrance. Of a few key paradigms.

(Ok. Stop laughing. Really, I know it all sounds horribly Californian and aroma-therapy and badly designed muumuu-ish. Let me explain. Then call all your friends and relatives and let them know that I can be found dressed in a caftan in the garden of a "wellness center"...)

I have six weeks left of serious university. Because of trying to finish in 3 years, I don't have the luxery of a soft last semester. I have six weeks to go. And more writing/reading/thinking in that time than the rest of my life combined. This isn't hard to achieve, I tend to spend most of my time in a vegetative state, tending solely to my immediate needs, leaving analytical brain activity to the overachievers.

Somehow the combination of extreme stress and lack of sleep and lots of coffee and not enough food have turned me into something resembling Janis Joplin coming off a six day binge, while concurrently nursing a brutal attack of PMS.

Add to that my self-chosen topics of study: Apartheid in South Africa, war crimes in Sierra Leone, landmines, the Rwandan Genocide.

I've been a little erratic lately. And by erratic, I mean bi-polar. The spikes and dips don't oscillate at all, they follow the same pattern of a heart monitor at warp speed.

And since I don't know how to stabilize, I am acting like a spectator on an out of control rollercoaster. A lot of the time I am scared and feel like barfing, but there are moments of calm when I can look at the scenery and wave to the people on the ground. Awareness, learning to keep myself company.

And, because Anne Lamott is my fairy godmother (although she doesn't know this yet)I am remembering these two things:

"Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have lunch with the person."

"I live by the truth that "No" is a complete sentence."

restituere

maybe I should rename this blog... something more along the lines of: "what you are reading is the sleep deprived ramblings of a caffiene addicted undergrad who desperately needs to simultaneously read/write pages and pages of political analysis and escape to a quiet place and rehabilitate."

rehabilitate: verb. to restore to normal life by training and therapy. from the latin restituere

Life, right now, is a little bit like being in the middle of a train wreak. only it's happening in slow motion. And I have no idea what point of the crash we are in: there is certainly carnage and blood everywhere and the twisted remnants of once recognizable structures, but there is no particular conclusion in sight. No approaching moment when the momentum is ground to a halt and there is profound silence-instead: a constantly increasing roaring that fills my eardrums.

I feel like one of the chilren in the photos from the Cold War, practicing nuclear bomb protocol by hiding under desks.

until you understand

it's hard to stay it's hard to look into your eyes when I say I'm leaving
I can't be sure but I think I made up my mind, although your heart is bleeding
I wish the only one I had to be was me for you to see this clearly
I wish the only thing I had to do was hold my arms around you
so long so hard until you'd understand.
so long so hard until you'd understand.

I somehow feel that I'm pulling away your ground before I've even started
to realize my words have caught you by suprise makes it even harder
I wish there was a way to make you read the signs I'm bringing you this evening
I wish the only thing I had to do was to hold my arms around you
so long so hard until you'd understand.
so long so hard until you'd understand.

~kings of convenience

Grace

It must be something in the air this year. Relationships are doomed.

My friend Zak and his girlfriend Emma are the latest in a long string of casualties. Somehow their relationship fell apart, and though they still love each other very much, she is now half a continent away and out of mobile phone range. He is still here, trying to pick up the pieces of a life that was completely wrapped up in another person.

He called me up last night to ask if I wanted to go to a "yalla party". Yalla parties are difficult to describe without giving a comprehensive description of the certain breed of wealthy middle eastern young men who comprise the Yalla demographic. But suffice to say that I was certainly the only natural blonde in the room, and I'm willing to bet my inheritance that I was the only one who didn't own a cell phone. My role was arm candy and to make sure that Zak didn't start to cry in the middle of the sparsely furnished living room. I'm not sure exactly why he called me up, maybe because I am well acquainted with the culture of the Yalla, and I can play the game rather well if I am in the mood, maybe because I have an endless supply of stupid jokes that are just offensive enough to raise eyebrows, maybe because there is something about me that enables men to cry on my shoulder.

We took off from the party early, and ended up sitting in Zak's apartment staring out at the Montreal skyline trying to make sense of the world.

He loves her so much, and though she loves him too she'd had enough and took off. Although it breaks my heart to see Zak so much in the gutter, I have huge respect for Emma for knowing her limits and taking care of herself first. It is a skill that I am learning slowly, and only recently put into practice for the first time. I am finding it lonely and scary and wonderfuly spacious. I wonder how often we let our boundaries of "this is ok" get incrementally shifted simply because we are worried about the fallout of a break up.

And though it is devastating and horrible and just...sad, there is a kind of poignant beauty in watching someone rebuild themself. It's a visible display of courage that is rare, and it takes such grace to admit that current location is rock bottom and you're going to need some help to crawl up the well. And grace to accept the help and love and support that is offered.

kickin' it old skool

I rolled out of bed this morning at 945. The alarm had gone off at 815, and I managed to sleep through U2's greatist hits for an hour and a half before my body decided to regain consciousness. I have a class at 10. School is about 12 minutes- walking fast-away.

I am not going to whine about this, because the morning was brilliant.

I woke up happily suprised that I wasn't hungover, and given that Laura and I went through 2 bottles of wine last night, hangover absence is cause for both suprise and celebration. The 1 litre of water and an asprin before bed really does work. Thanks dad.

It's sunny today, and as I threw clothes on, brushed my teeth, printed a paper proposal that was due in my 10 am class, and drank yet more water, I quietly anticipated a sprint to school in blinding sunshine. Winter here (and it is still winter)is awful, but at least for me, sunshine makes a hell of a difference. Sunshine means I get to wear my cooler-than-thou sunglasses which allow me to stare at people without them thinking I have escaped from the psych ward.

Tearing down the sidewalk in my down vest and sunglasses I probably looked like some yuppie vancouverite in Whistler-all that was missing was my no-fat-double-latte-mocha-chino-thingy and my yoga mat.

No part of me cared. For I was in a different universe, one in which I had on my favourite sneakers for the first time in months and had the sweet songs of a mixed tape from Neasa blasting my eardrums.

Yes. I said mixed tape. No. We have not been transported to 1986 or the universe of High Fidelity.

I have been a fan of the mixed tape for as long as I can remember. Mixed tapes are a physical and audio reminder of specific points in time. They anchor me to moments and feelings I otherwise would have lost to the brain drain of time and information overload. (by brain drain I actually mean my brain liquifying and pouring out the back of my head... I swear this actually happens to graduating university students)

I made mixed tapes for friends and they made them for me. For about six months my friend John and I sent a tape back and forth each putting a song on and spending our allowance on postage. I have no idea what happened to it, probably in a box at his parent's house in Sherwood Park... The summer I worked in Sorrento, we made a "songs of the summer" tape for all the staff. It has everything from Black Sabbath to Ani Difranco to the Rolling Stones on it. Tapes were birthday gifts or given to boys that I loved. Two boys in particular broadened my musical horizons with the selections on their tapes, little packages that came in the mail and were instantly inserted into my walkman.

Yes. My walkman. It is yellow, a Sony sports model which means it is huge and clunky. I got it so that I could listen to tapes while I ran out my adolescant angst on the streets of my neighbourhood. I couldn't take being alone with my mind for the 40 minutes to an hour of running, so I distracted myself with Punk bands that I had never heard of, courtesy of Naomi: my much cooler friend who lived in Vancouver-a place with a real music scene.

I took tapes to Wales and ran with them along the clif path, and through Marcross, and away from farm dogs. And they were a tangible link to the West in Lebanon, when all I wanted to hear were some acoustic guitar chords and a mellow baritone.

This Christmas break, when people were selling their first born child for an ipod, I found and resurected my walkman and tapes. Since then I've been rocking it 1998 style around the city for as long as the batteries hold out.

So really, it's not the sunglasses that make me cooler than you. It's that, attached to the other end of my ear phones is an electronic device that is bigger than your cellphone, ipod, and blackberry combined. It's yellow. And I'm listening to the Watchmen belt out "Brighter Hell" or the Hip singing "Nautical Disaster"...

The bleary, slept in, walk to school has never been better.

i don't know what I can save you from

you called me after midnight, must have been three years since we last spoke
I slowly tried to bring back the image of your face from memories so old
I tried so hard to follow but didn't catch the half of what had gone wrong
said I didn't know what I can save you from, I don't know what I can save you from

I asked you to come over and within half an hour you were at my door
I'd never really known you but I realized that the one you were before
had changed into somebody for whom I wouldn't mind to put the kettle on
said I don't know what I can save you from, I don't know what I can save you from

I don't know what I can save you from, I don't know what I can save you from...

-kings of convenience

dreaming of sleeping

The mother of all choral concerts is tomorrow night- that would be the other thing that gives me nightmares. I think every so often my subconscious decides that a stunning slideshow of images from the Rwandan genocide:

"they ranged from burying people alive in graves they had dug themselves, to cutting and opening wombs of pregnant mothers. People were quartered, impaled or roasted to death. On many occasions, death was the consequence of ablation of organs, such as the heart, from alive people." -Mamdani (2001)

is a little too much to take, and puts me naked, 800 pounds overweight, on stage in Pollak Hall in front of all my ex-boyfriends and makes me sing the alto line from the Brahms fuge over and over and over.

I wonder what it says about me that I prefer the genocide dreams.

Flippancy has always been my weapon of choice when dealing with things so serious and tragic and arbitrary. I do deeply understand and care about the issues and the facts. It's just that if I am serious all the time I end up crying in my kitchen at odd times.

Like tonight, when the cbc ran the coverage of the Mountie's memorial services in Edmonton.

how to go insane; a step by step guide

1. enter university as a polisci/development major.

2. decide to finish above degree in 3 years rather than the 4 usually allocated.

3. put off highest level courses until final semester.

4. decided to write term papers/do projects on severely depressing subjects. (suggestions: sierra leone, apartheid, landmines, IDPs)

5. stop sleeping.

6. drink only coffee.

7. test the theory that nicotine really does have a calming effect.

8. volunteer to create powerpoint slides for a group presentation. (only do this if you have never worked with powerpoint before)

9. finish above slides 1/2 hour before presentation. do not save files to a CD. leave them on your laptop.

10. arrive at presentation exhausted, plug laptop into projector. watch as your laptop freezes.

11. reboot computer. curse loudly in front of your professor who is also your thesis advisor.

12. begin to sweat. heavily. reboot for third time. realize that only the curser is frozen, and that if you had thought to bring your mouse, you could fix your computer.

13. try to ignore the murmers from classmates who are waiting for the presentation to start.

14. run upstairs to the library to borrow a mouse.

15. run downstairs to classroom praying audibly.

16. restart computer w/ mouse plugged in. re-attach projector cable. start presentation an hour late.

17. return home. drink beer. read landmine books.

18. wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare in which you were trying to hook up a laptop to a landmine detector...

the world is too much with me...

this is not a whine. Really. It's more of a lament.

I disagree with Neasa. It's not the bird flu that will kill us eventually, it is more along the lines of losing the thin thread of civilization that keeps us from behaving savagely. This conclusion is based on around 4 hours of research on (in no particular order) landmine victims, apartheid in South Africa, the civil war in Sierra Leone, the Lebanese civil war, and the plight of refugees and Internally Displaced People.

I've been staring at graphic images of man's inhumanity to man for so long that my eyeballs feel like they are about to bleed.

It is these times, in the middle of the night, when I should really be sleeping and not contemplating the state of the universe, that I am rolfed with waves of grief for things I have no part in and have no way of preventing or helping. The thing is, I haven't been sleeping well, so at this point I much prefer the horrors delivered to me via Google than the ones my subconscious can conjure up. At least then I know what I am battling.

I am losing my grip. But then, that's nothing new...

le escape

is going well, thank you for asking.

the past two days have been the best in recent memory. Currently neasa and I are compiling a photo essay, which may at some point grace these hallowed pages...

the two of us, actually two halves of one rather insane human being, have been running between shoe stores like there's no tomorrow. Every so often we stop to eat, or drink-like last night when, for my good behaviour, I was awarded with a pub crawl of harvard square which ended up late/early staring out at the city from a 24th floor window. this morning: a bleary but heartbreakingly lovely breakfast whereupon I made the startling discovery that plastic cheese equates with real cheese here. hmmm. Montreal wins for omlettes.

drive through MIT campus, running riot around downtown. A two hour walk back from the bus stop, which was wierd, because it should have taken 3 minutes: insert yet another shoe store, mexican food, buying terrible terrible celebrity gossip magazines, German licorace sold by an aging transvestite, a whirl through the fine arts building, two movie stores....

sated with all things non academic, we have collapsed and are doing little more than reaching for more licorace and turning the shiny pages of US weekly.

having a wonderful time.

(looking into therapy for shoe addictions... ahhhh fuck it. it's genetic!)

"but if you wear spandex...

...don't you automatically fly?"

again, where I least expect it, grace comes in odd forms.

midnight conversations planning world domination by two superheros, Clout and Wiseness, had me laughing so hard my stomach aches now-a day later.

the ringer

details not necessary- been through the wringer this week.

Funny expression, (probably picked it up from my mum as I do most of my odd turns of phrase...case in point: kerfuffle.... or shambols...) It stems from what happened to clothes in the olden days when they used wringer washers. I am by no means well equipped to extrapolate on the details of wringer washers, but I have seen one and actually used it once or twice.

-Anglican summer camp, we used to threaten the kids with death by wringer washer if they didn't go to sleep fast so we could go make out with the boy counsellors-

The clothes would be washed sent through the wringer to get all the water out so they would dry faster. The wringers are two cylinders that sit one on top of the other lengthwise and roll in opposite directions. The clothes get fed through the small space between the two wringers and their rolling pushes them through and squeezes out all the moisture.

The clothes come out looking all limp and haggared. Fit only to be hung on a line in the breeze for an afternoon, slowly regaining their shape with each breath of wind.

Sometimes disasters occured and clothes got stuck in the wringer and tore at the seams. They would get hung up too, more carefully than the others, and would be mended when they were dry.

The wringers of exhaustion, stress, infidelity, insomnia and freak weather patterns have left me limp and ripped at the seams.

My breezes come in the form of pachebel's canon, hot water bottles and scottish accents, soup, and an escape to Boston.

It's taken a while to realize that there is no shame in escaping...

happy birthday...

...to me!

going to ottawa to skate on the rideau canal.

sooooo excited.

mutant parcel from hell...

this is the conversation I just had with my mother over messenger. Verbatim. And, having reduced both me and Nina to hysterics, I felt the need to share it.

(best to read it w/ my mother's voice in your ears... if you don't know my mum, she has a Canadian accent and a very dry sense of humour, and tends to start laughing before the funny parts. somtimes she snorts when she laughs-but it's not her fault: family trait. I come from a long line of laugh-snorters.)

Joan says:
your b'day pressies got sent y'day.

Claire says:
hoooray
PRESSENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joan says:
remember that you left your pressie from Aunty Cindy? So we had one box with her present already wrapped and another one from us. In hindsight, the logical thing would have been to get a monster big box for both and fill it up with popcorn and send that, BUT in typical 1st born, single focus (your Dad) fashion we wrapped two parcels separately.

Sooooooooooooo.... There I am: 2 pkgs in front of the Post Office lady who says: What have we got here?

Me: Birfday Pressies

She: When does the one for Montreal have to get there?

Me: They're both for MOntreal

She: The same address?

Me: Yes

She: ?????????

Me: a brief explanation

She: so, they're both going to the same address

Me: Yep

She: It's going to cost you a lot to get them there by Sunday
......she figures it out, tells me and then has to wave smelling salts under my nose.......
She: but it would be less if it was only one parcel

I have visions of taking the parcels home to your Dad. This is not a good vision.....

Me: ummmmm

She: Is it ok if it is only one parcel?

Me: sure

She: OK
and she picks up the magic tape dispenser and proceeds to make 2 parcels into 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wanted to make a little sign and stick it on saying: Post Office Lady Did This!!

Claire says:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
super

Joan says:
Honey: you’re laughing now; wait til you SEE it!!!

Soooooooooo while she is going ballistic with the tape dispensing I notice the Valentines and think –DAMMIT we didn't put your Valentine in…sooooooo the Valentine Mum picks out a not too sloppy one

Claire says:
oh god!

Joan says:
writes in it, licks and sticks the envelope, and writes your address on the front, and puts a stamp on except mail has gone up and I need a 1 cent stamp, which she is quite happy to sell me BUT…she wants to know

"And how much was the card?"
which is now in the licked and sticked envelope.....

hmmmmmm, says I

Back to the card rack.....
Is there another card?
Is the sky green?
Is there an "F" in way?

By this time, your parcel looks like something that would not get through any customs office anywhere and certainly ain't going to make it with anyone with a packing tape phobia

there is, miraculously, only me and the PO Lady (guess everyone else who needed postal issues could feel the vibes....) still at the counter.

Sooooooooooo I pull off about 3 cards, and hand them to her price side up

She: You want three more cards?

Me: Uh no, there isn't another one of the one that's already in the envelope so I thought you could choose your price

She now gives me the look I've been wanting to give her and STILL doesn't crack a smile.
(does she do things like amalgamate people's parcels to screw Canada Post everyday????)

Claire says:
hahahahahahahaha.

Joan says:
and then charges me for the cheapest card of the bunch laid out before her!!!

I pay up, say "thanks very much" and she said (straight faced) that you could keep any mail that got inadvertently caught under the tape!!!!! You'll see what I mean when the parcel arrives if some Canada Post fanatic hasn't slashed them apart!!! Make sure your paring knife is sharp - I think the weight went up about 500gms just tape alone.

Claire says:
this sounds like the mutant parcel from hell

Joan says:
hahahahahaha
make sure you have tongs and protective clothing

The PO Lady has been handling your mail from Dad since before Lebanon
so maybe she wondered who the Hell I was sending you parcels???

Claire says:
hahahahhaha
that is the best story ever
EVER

Joan says:
just hope it gets there "in one piece"
hahahahahaha

Claire says:
piece... being relative...right?

weather

so I bought some skates yesterday.

and now it is going to be hovering around 3C for the rest of the week.

one day I will appreciate this irony.

saturday

It's the first time I have been by myself, alone, in almost two days. Yesterday was a brilliant, wonderful day filled with brilliant wonderful people, but sleep was a relief in that I could finally shut down and not have to interact. Today I bounced from shopping w/ Ninn for bass player clothes, to choir rehearsal, and finally to the theatre where I am the front of house manager. I am in the otherwise unoccupied office right now, trying out the new internet connection. Wireless, my dears, is the greatist thing since the gold sequined shoes I caved into yesterday.

Yesterday Nina came over for tea which turned into dinner, and, while manger-ing on baguette and cheese and pate we talked for hours. About boys. Because, really... what else is there to talk about? Obviously the various males in our lives are the center around which we orbit. Of course it is necessary to spend hours discussing the inner workings of their brains. We have to learn to put ourselves in their positions, understand things from their perspectives: then it will all make sense. Really. How else could it work?

Or not. Forgive the cyanide laced sarcasm of the previous paragraph, it's been a rough few days on the XY chromosonal front. My own particular relationship is not the one at issue (things there are lovely, he skates like a deamon, makes me laugh, and is learning not to take my insanity personally) but some of my closest friends seem to be constantly evaluating and re-evaluating the status of their relationships. It is tiring to listen to, and must be more tiring to keep up on a daily basis. I wonder where the urge to have things be perfect comes from? And the lack of patience for things to work themselves out in a timely fashion?

Maybe it's our ages: early 20's are not known to be humanity's most rational years. Maybe it is the immediacy of communication: it's easier to react without thought when we can pick up the phone and leave angry voice mails or fire off stinging emails. Maybe we so desperately want to know that things will turn out alright that we are willing to lose sight of the current to focus on a distant fuzzy version of a future.

Mostly, I think we all need a good dose of perspective.

protocol

walking three abreast on a sidewalk, already narrowed by snow banks, is a complete violation of basic sidewalk manners and protocol.

Don't do it.

Also: when walking with another person, the correct way to deal with an oncoming pedestrian is to move into single file to allow for ample passing room. Under no circumstances should one remain beside one's walking partner rudely forcing the oncoming party into the aforementioned snowbanks.

It's uncool. Really.

I will walk all over you.

epic sunday

Since we started brunching sometime last fall, Kate, Justine, Sait and I have had a few epic Sundays. The kind where we meet on a street corner at 1130 in the morning and part company around 630 in the evening, and in between, all manner of hijinks are gotten up to.

On epic sundays I get back to my apartment late in the afternoon/early evening, and sit in my brown chair exhausted but unable to stop smiling. I forget, in the middle of these afternoons, the stresses of life here, the annoying people I deal with on a daily basis, the strife in the world, and I laugh with my friends until my stomach is spasming and I can't breathe.

Yesterday was an epic Sunday.

All of us short on cash, and me with an abundance of eggs and flour, we cogregated chez moi to eat pancakes and watch episodes of six feet under. A nice sedate plan for a January brunching. Except the weather/temperature gods decided to go and create a spectacularly beautiful day, and bump the mercury up to -2. It was practically summmer.

Tv watching was abandoned in favour of skating at Parc Lafontaine.

The parc is to the east of my flat, and is quite a masterpiece of created greenspace (or whitespace in the winter). there is a large serpentine lake in the middle of it, now nicely frozen, and there are benches at intervals in the center of the ice to rest on or relace skates. Classical music playing through loud speakers. Lots and lots of Montrealers skating.

We rented skates and headed out. We were all of equal skating finesse and spent much of the rest of the afternoon chasing each other around the ice; Kate had an untiring appetite for spinning Justine and I around-especially when surrounded by lots of people. We saw children for what seemed like the first time in ages (the university bubble doesn't really make for integrated social interaction), and older couples skating around and around, holding hands.

It was bright and sunny and the air was crisp every time I inhaled. I wanted to stay forever.

Afterwards we hiked up Mont Royal with Justine's roommate Isabelle. We were supposed to be helping Justine take pictures of eggs for a photo assignment, but we missed the light by about five minutes so we climbed up to a lookout point and sat watching the lights come on in the east end. We ate cookies and drank hot chocolate out of a thermos, and slowly began to freeze to the bench.

On the way down, we eschewed the path, prefering to slide down the side of the hill on our bums, resulting in some really wet trousers and a lot of hilarity. Running through the snow in the forest we kept falling over because our feet would break through the snow cover and we would unexpectedly sink up to our thighs. Pelting down a hill at top knots only to be suddenly face first in the snow...

Kate made dinner at her flat, and while she and Phil and Ninn did their harmony homework, I fell asleep on her bed.

I'm still exhausted from it this morning.

teapots

this town is teapot deficient.

For a city with as much diversity as Montreal, it is remarkable what a homogeneity it is displaying on the teapot front. Currently there seem to be only three models of teapot on wide release:

1) the white 1-2 cup ceramic teapot. This model will nicely compliment our white flatware and serving platters. It will also not clash with the white (accented with red/blue/black) mugs. Sometimes this model has a bamboo like handle in an effort to relieve its crushing monotony of white and infuse it with a psudo asian sentiment. Now, I have a white teapot. And white dishware. But my teapot is in the shape of an elephant and I had the dishes well before the "boutique hotel" look came into vougue for apartment living. And they are from the dollar store. Buying a $32 teapot that could easily camoflague itself in an arctic lanscape is absurd.

2) the $6 china town teapot. the main attraction of this genre of teapot is its price and the fact that it is usually decorated by some nice painting of bamboo fronds. (fronds? stalks? branches? What is the correct bamboo terminology?) However, if one is seduced by the price and pretty design, it bears remembering that it was probably painted in some dodgy teapot-painting-factory in the nether regions of china, and that it is inevitably designed badly. The tops fall off while pouring, it is prone to cracking, it pours badly. And really, no matter how much money you save on a cheap teapot, if it pours badly it will drive you insane. Trust me. I applied thrift to the purchase of a kettle that pours water anywhere but into the apropriate recepticle and every time I use it I get a step closer to the straight jacket and pureed food.

3) the cast iron japanese teapot. This type of teapot is not a bad option as long as you are the type of person who will pay 75 dollars for what is, essentially, a nicely forged teapot in miniature. Truely beautiful, these teapots are perfect for people who not only know how to make proper Japanese tea but who also don't mind drinking said tea in thimbles. Firmly Anglo-Saxon, I distrust a teapot that doesn't make enough tea to fill one of my white dollar store mugs. There is no way that I will be hosting a tea ceremony any time soon; my flower arranging skills have been likened to that of a caffinated octopus with ADD, and I don't have enough egg cups.

the search continues...

home made hair cuts

A barber shop near my apartment has a sign in the window:

"we fix home made haircuts "

I wonder how many people have gone in specifically to have their home made wonders fixed.

Most of my friends cut their own hair, or get others to cut it for them. Mostly it looks pretty good, and, seeing as we live in Montreal-city-of-fashionably-insane-hairdos, we can get away with a lot. The other thing is that we wear touques for about 5 months of the year, and no matter how much you spend on a hair cut it will come out the same after any extended touque wearing experience.

Actually, come to think of it, it's been ages since my hair was cut. Not that it matters, since a) the above touque reasoning applies, and b) I just don't care that much.

No. That isn't true. I do care, a lot actually... the real reason my hair hasn't been touched by scissors in around a year is fear.

The last time I got my hair cut I went to a fancy salon/spa thing in the swish area of St Laurent. It was the kind of place that I feel out of place in because I am obviously not cool enough to be there. I sometimes wear corduroy: the people in this place would never dream of such suburbia.

The guy that cut my hair was very chatty-I don't do small talk well. All I wanted was a haircut that would make me look cool (in my cords) and not like a republican or an anchor-woman. By which I meant: no one length bobs and it better look good without the use of a straightening iron or blow dryer. Maybe because it is my hair and I have been dealing with it all my life, these instructions seemed simple. Chatty pink shirted stylist (Not hairdresser... stylist!) was either not listening or didn't think I was serious. He lost interest in me soon anyways because I was loath to discuss the scene in Montreal or the relative merits of feathering versus layering my locks.

I ended up looking like a Fox News correspondent... my stylist managed to make me into a republican anchor woman, without the nasty puce blazer.

I've been trying to forget the horror, and ignoring my hair seems to be working. It's getting a little long though... maybe this time I will take the scissors to it myself-at least I know I'll have a back up plan!

gentlemanly behavior

So Kate and I were eating lunch at the Midnight Kitchen yesterday, munching on vegan chilli and cake, when she brought up the question of what qualities a gentleman has to have. The list, by no means finished, is below. Bear in mind that Kate, being Scottish, has a mildly different take on the subject than I do: she thinks he should be able to ride a horse if the need came up, I think that being able to jumpstart a snowmobile is far more practical. But I guess practicality isn't the point of being a gentleman. Let me know if you think we've missed some integral element...

-should be able to ride a horse/snowmobile with passable ease if necessary

-should be able to remember types of drinks ("and a vodka tonic for the lady") and coffee/tea preferences without prompting

-able to play golf

-able to tell a joke well

-women: is charming enough to make any woman in the room feel beautiful, but knows to stop short of making her feel uncomfortable

-deals well with animals

-can converse on a wide variety of topics: politics, literature, current affairs, music...

-in conversation, actually listens to what others say and does not monopolize the discussion-keeps the ball rolling

-knows when to send flowers and when to offer up the heartfelt apology

-never criticizes/spats with partner in public

-dresses apropriately for all occasions (kate went on about morning suits and smoking jackets...I just wanted a moratorium on plaid shirts and sports jerseys when not at sports matches...)

-will use moisturizer if he has dry skin

-has cufflinks in his posession

-walks on the street side of the sidewalk when with a woman, to shield her from splashes

-can hold his own in a game of pickup football (soccer) with the lads (boys)

-has basic mechanical knowledge (ie: can diagnose car trouble and can change oil/tires/windshield wiper fluid)

-punctual.

"doing well"

(thanks neasa)

I am beside myself. For the first time I think I finally understand that turn of phrase. I feel like I am standing beside my self, much like a base coach, whispering suggestions in my ear and watching to see whether I follow them. Similarly to the poor base coach, I am increasingly feeling that no matter the intensity of my suggestion to myself-(for example: "Claire, you really should eat.") following through is up the capricious whim of a completely unknown two year old.

Melt down is not really the world for this, closer to willful self destruction.

If I could, I would run away and deal with life here later, when somehow I am stronger and more able to cope. But, due to financial constraints, I would only be able to go as far as my two feet would carry me. Escaping reality in the side streets of Laval or St Hubert is really not what I had in mind. As soothing as video lottery terminals and neon signs advertizing all you can eat poutine 24 hours are...

"I think she overstresses, sometimes, to maintain a recognizable stress-level"

somehow I seem to have outdone myself this time...it's a slippery slope

broken things

It's been a bad couple of days for keeping things together.

My headphones lost an ear piece.

My christmas present watch from my brother fell out of my jeans pocket when I hung them up to dry off the cuffs. The glass face which protects the hands dislodged itself and when I tried to play Miss Fixit, I cracked the glass.

A particularly out-of-left-field and shattering arguement with someone who is becoming quite dear to me left my (already shaky) peace of mind jarred.

The death of a friend of friends in a skiing accident. I didn't know him at all, but it's still tragic and horrible. And those of us who have lost other people (such a lame euphamism: "lost" for death... as though those of us left living have absent mindedly misplaced our loved ones) are grieving Chris and mourning our private sorrows.

Days, I guess are like this: fragile.

family pictures

"there's a security guard. Quick! don't look like you're planning to do anything naked..."
~emily

"if we get caught, I'll just tell them it's nothing sexual-we're related..."
~jaymie

honestly, my darling cousins are completely and totally insane. the concept of photo booths has a whole new dimension for me now.

saltspring

I wonder how many people in the world carry a piece of a place within them... somewhere that is home to them, the smells, sounds and the feel of the air on their faces...

Even though I didn't grow up on the west coast, it's embedded somewhere behind my diaphragm, between my ribs. The rhythm of waves on shore is a background track to much of my life, and the smell of low tide makes me smile. I'm never here long enough, and never frequently enough.

On the ferry from Saltspring to Crofton this afternoon, in the blinding sunshine, I wanted time to stop. I wanted to be alone-but-not-lonely standing on the top deck of a boat watching the driftwood and fishing boats, one masted dingys and kayaks, for the rest of eternity.

Justine said she thinks of me as surrounded by water, as though even when I am on dryland, I am somehow aquatically inclined.

The coast is my check. The tune, whistled in the wind, that I am relentlessly trying to pick up and carry.

perspectives

being mouthy and strangely competant in most aspects of my life, it comes as a bit of a suprise to a lot of people that computer glitches that do not fix themselves right away leave me frothing at the mouth and planning ways to kill off the gremlins that are clearly inhabiting my harddrive. In all honesty, besides turning the sucker on and off, I have no idea how anything works, programs, downloads or otherwise, and I intend to keep it that way. However, had I a thimble's worth of common sense or laced my cereal with slightly less stubborn juice, I could probably be convinced that learning how to debug my parent's computer could be a useful way to spend my time. I would then have been able to check my hotmail account, my university email, and write on this little page of self indulgence.

As it is, I have been happily out of touch with the "real" world since returning to BC.

I am at my grandfather's house on Vancouver Island now, (where the computer still won't take me to hotmail...) staying on the coast for a few days to see relatives and friends before heading back east. I wish I could say that the past few weeks have been a whirlwind and this is a well deserved break, but truthfully, Kelowna was quiet and I slept a lot.

I only keep in touch with about two friends and one was working a lot and the other didn't get back until the 23rd. I went to a few open houses, did some christmas shopping, cooked a little, slept a lot... nothing to light the pond on fire.

The usual entertainment sufficed: making up answers to my parent's friends queries about my post-university plans (lap dancer got some priceless reactions), watching a lot of movies, knitting (I am my grandmother), and slipping out of conversations that involved marriage, babies and my prospects therein. I love how I think that the perspective in Montreal is so skewed-grad school obsession, academic excellance trumping mental health- but really, it's got nothing on the good old hometown.

It is good to be on the coast, I am running out of ways to be polite about my lack of direction or ability to hold sucessful husband auditions.

home (?) again...

I am sitting in the Westbank library, checking email while my mum does groceries for my father's voluntary unemployment dinner tonight. It's finally happened. He is retired!!! In celebration we are going skiing tomorrow and picking out a Christmas tree.

My darling brother has taken off to Australia, from the sound of his voice over a sketchy phone line, is having a ball. He started work at the hotel today, and I hope it went well-jetlag and sharp kitchen knives are not always the best combination. It was hard to watch him go through airport security, he looked so young and small and ... then I realized that I was 2 years younger when I took off and far less pulled together. Terrifying the amount of trust my parents must have had in my apparent good sense!

The house is quiet without him. I miss joking around and cooking dinner with him, fighting over the amount of spice the sauce needs.

mum is done groceries now.

off to cook some prawns!!!!

perfection

I have re-acquired my copy of Bird By Bird. (thanks sait!) It is written by Anne Lamott who is an insanely talented and honest writer; a woman whose words make me laugh out loud on the metro, and keep me up reading by flashlight in the middle of the night.

The actual book is something of a personality. I can't remember where or when I got it, but I have a strong suspicion that my mum bought me my own copy after I disappeared hers. It is worn and there is lots of underlining throughout and the odd margin note. I am so glad to have it back, especially at the beginning of exam period, because somehow Ms Lamott puts me in perspective. A commodity I am dearly in need of right now.

"I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you and have a lot more fun while they're doing it."

I keep remembering a sign on the wall of the ballet studio in Kelowna: "We aim for perfection; excellence will be tolerated."

What was I saying about perspective? Permanently skewed??? Yes, I thought so.

avoiding the new testament

Yesterday I accidentally fell asleep in the TNC office for 5 hours. I dreamt about a crocodile in a my bathtub and waging civil war in a grocery store. Weird stuff. When I woke up it was dark and I felt like I had missed the entire day, which, I guess in a way, I had. I was worried that I would be up all evening, but I managed to fall asleep around midnight with relative ease. I feel like I am about to get back on the 'terminal exhaustion' bandwagon. Bloody exam schedule.

Last day of lectures for me today... we managed to convince the seminar prof that we didn't need to meet on thursday, so I unexpectedly have time to do laundry this week. Exams start on the 7th (and I have two that day) and then a week to prep my seminar paper and study for ethnic conflict. Right now I am exhibiting zero motivation on all fronts. I know enough about myself to realize study avoidance has gotten extreme when I would rather learn my choir music than do a few readings. So far I haven't resorted to cleaning the apartment obsessively, but I am sure that will come.

I wonder if other people manage to self-sabotage as well as I do. Realistically, I should just get down to work and save myself the anguish and annoyance... but I seem completely unable to do so right now. Probably why I am writing random crap on here.

"I listen to the wind, to the wind on my soul/
where I'll end up, well I think only God really knows/
I've set it on the setting sun/but never never never never/
I've never wanted water once/I've never never never/
I listen to my words but they fall far below/
I let my music take me where my heart wants to go/
I swam upon the devil's lake /but never never never never/
I never make the same mistake/no, never never never"

shoes

new shoes. again. what was I thinking????

but they are so beautiful

this addiction has to be stopped.

senseless kindness

I am full of pasta and scallops and spininch (highly reccomended on cold damp nights) and ben harper is playing from the kitchen. And someone else is doing the dishes. This is a moment to perfect to let go without notice.

As was opening the door in the middle of a term paper to a choice of swiss chocolate or cigarette.

Or perfectly timed tea and croissants.

Lately, though my life has been insane with school, I've found myself having the best of times with my friends. So much laughter.

Maybe it is because the semester is almost over and I can relax a little and breathe. And sleep. I think life is evening out.

Stuff that's been on my mind:
-next year: what to do, where to go... India, Neasa? Africa?
-the utility of introducing a bass player into the newly found equilibrium
-topic for my seminar paper
-how quiet the house will be at christmas without Timothy. How much I am going to miss him
-how glad I am that Timothy is getting out of Kelowna
-how much I love "petoncles"
-new pillows.
-red wine

boots

I wore my hiking boots today. It wasn't snowing or anything, I just decided that they needed a trial run so that my feet get used to them before I have to wear them every day. When I opened the cupboard to take them out, I caught a glimpse of my other boots-my old ones.

I got the old boots the summer I was 13 because I was hiking the West Coast Trail with my mum and some of her friends. The shop that we bought them from isn't open anymore, but it was on the main street in downtown Kelowna, and the process of finding the right fit was close to buying pointe shoes: take an hour or two, try on everything in your size in stock, make about 50 'practice walks' around the store, finally, once your brain is numbed to the differences between pairs, choose something that you think makes your feet look cool. My boots were grey with purple accents (this was 1995!) and they cost about $250, which I thought was astronomical, and was suprised when my normally budget-conscious father didn't get annoyed when paying for them. He said they were a good investment.

I hiked the West Coast Trail and canoed the interior of BC with those boots. They were staples of my wardrobe during several summers of camp counsellor employment, and I wore them every day for eight weeks working on a landscaping crew the summer I was 16. They also were the boots I wore while riding on the back of my dad's motercycle all over New Zealand, and on a grade nine trip to Europe. In between adventures, I wore them to and from highschool, the movies, dance class...When I moved to Wales, the boots went too, and then to Lebanon, accross the Middle East and now Montreal.

I only had blisters the first hike; somewhere there is a snapshot of me sitting on driftwood at a campsite near Tsusiat Falls cradling a moleskin covered foot, the boots discarded in front of me.

The purple is indistinguishable now, they are a fairly uniform shade of grey, and there are holes where the stitching has disintegrated. There are cracks in the leather by the joints of my big toe and little toe where the boots bent with every step I took in them. The treads are completely worn down, and when they stand on their own the boots look like my feet are still in them. The laces are ratty, with at least two knots for mending purposes. There is a white line of dried salt around them from the roads in Montreal in the winter-looks a bit like a high water mark... These are not sexy boots.

Last December I left them on top of the radiator over night, trying to dry them off. The rubber soles, having had enough of my abuse, separated from the bottom of the rest of the boot and only stayed attached at the heel. I didn't even try to superglue them back together, somehow I just knew they were finished.

My parents bought me the new boots for Christmas last year. They are really nice-they make my feet look dainty, and they are a tasteful brown. They don't fit right though. Like rebounding from a relationship, I jumped on the "new boots" bandwagon, willfully disregarding the small pinching of my toes and the blisters growing on my heels.
"You just need time to break them in," I told myself, "You haven't had new boots in so long, you don't know what to expect. Give them a chance."

I spent the rest of the winter with pinched toes and bloody heels.

The new boots are better now. I have broken them in as much as possible. Nine years down the line, they may have history too. They just won't have the same history...my teenage years are in those boots, quietly sitting in the cupboard under the stairs, waiting for me to figure out how to deal with them.

whirling dervish

It's been two weeks since I saw them, the dervishes, and only now are they coming to mind...delayed...cognitive...analysis...

When I hear the word "dervish" I think of the cloud that surrounds the road runner in cartoons when he is speeding down the road, narrowly missing cacti. Helter Skelter and vaguely out of control. But they are not like that at all.

The music begins and they start swaying gently side to side with their arms crossed over their chests. As they are swaying side to side, they are also making a small figure of eight movement with their shoulders. Because of their long and wide skirts, their legs are obscured, so the swaying dervish-men have the appearance of seeming to grow out of the ground. A dervish-assistant walks through the group of dervish-tree-men with an incense burner wafting clouds and clouds of smoke around the already otherworldly swaying beings. Then, suddenly, with no apparent queue, all the dervishes start to spin. They turn to the left and gradually get faster and faster, but at no point do they seem out of control or haphazard. At first, I was looking very intently to try to figure out the movements of the feet, and the arms and if they were spotting or not, but after a while I gave in to the spinning and stopped analysing and just watched.

The dervishes spun with intense speed and perfectly co-ordinated arm movements, yet I felt like there was a core part of each of them that wasn't spinning, that was still and bemusedly apart.

It seemed to go on forever. As though the spinning was eternal, had been started eons ago and would continue long after we left the theatre. And suddenly. They stopped. All at once. Finished. Standing still, arms back crossed over their chests, heads bowed. Perfect balance.

Lately, I feel like a dervish in training. Spinning for all I am worth, starting to detatch.

midnight cleaning

I've often wondered about "new age" music. Somehow the glint in a Yani fan's eyes frightens me. As though she is recieving messages from outerspace via his haunting pan-pipes played at the Acropolis...

Right now I am proof of my own theory:

I stopped writing my African History term paper at 1am on the basis that I was tired and would do better to finish the sucker off tomorrow morning. In need of a bit of relaxation, (and sick of the majority of my CD collection) I put an Enya compilation in... within the time it took the kettle to boil-for my herbal chamomile tea (ha ha ha)-I was overwhelmed with the urge to clean my bathroom, tile scrubbing and all... As my bathroom is pretty small scrubbing the whole thing didn't take too long, so I moved on to sweeping my living room and hallway, and some light dusting. I contemplated mopping too, but somewhere in a part of my brain NOT being directed by the ghosts of Enya and Martha Stewart I realized that I was going a bit far...

Self indulgence

Interesting days.

The silence of my flat drowns out the residual soundtrack of the week which lingers in my ears. Telephone rings, polite inquiries, alarm clocks, cacaphonic voices, laughter... It is so necessary to just sit here in the semi-darkness and the quiet, letting pent up everything drain away.

I have new artwork: a cast of breasts. My breasts. It was "dyke days" this week at school, and Nina and I, after teasing Nisha all week about her duty to the woman's studies department to attend, decided to go and plaster our breasts for posterity. Realistically, mine will probably never look so good again, and Nina-Brazillian to the core- wants to be able to remember at age 50 what hers looked like before plastic surgery took over! There were about 10 women, of which we were the only two not to have ex-girlfriends, but no questions were asked and maybe we were ambiguous enough to pass. The whole experience was quite fantastic. Because Nina and I were "doing" each other, there was no sexual vibe between us-but afterwards we both felt completely relaxed and mellow. The wine probably helped...

And then later last night, Nisha and Waleed finally caved in and told each other that they were hopelessly in love-something that most of us around them have known for months. Good to see Nish so happy. And Waleed was more relaxed than I have ever seen him...I cannot imagine how he has existed since the spring so deeply in love with her and not said anything. I would have exploded. It's so new right now that I don't even know what to think about it; I am excited for them and terrified at the same time. Neither of them are wont to dive headfirst into something that isn't serious, so this may be the beginning of something longterm.

I've been thinking about timing lately. How right now when I feel like I am marking time before moving away again, others around me are settling in or beginning something new. I find it difficult not to compare where I am, in my life, with where any other random person is. I think I need to value my life experiences and learnings a little more, but I just assume everyone around me has similar-or better-stuff going on. Because all I know is my life, it seems normal and unexciting, and I have no reliable way of figuring out how I am doing relative to the rest of humanity. ...Well Claire, does it really matter how you measure up?... ha ha ha-really, on a lifetime scale, of course not. But right now, while I am in flux, it creeps in. "Comparisons are odious." Yes, they are... and I need to work on exorcising some odious voices in my skull.

I think I need to work on being present. Which sounds lame and airyfairy in a lemongrass tea and deep breathing kind of way. But really what I mean is to concentrate on the place I am in right now and not to waste energy on past or future. Because, really, stuff will work itself out.

Blah blah blah... self indulgent crap.
except that I tend to forget about taking care of myself. So self indulgence can be excused. Once or twice.

raining

Soothing: It has been raining on and off all day. I know this, not because I have been outside getting rained upon, but because the window has been open and I've been pounding out analysis of the Congo Crisis to the soundtrack of rain.

Touching: Jeff brought me "des petits gateaux" to feed my brain. Apparently vanishing from the human race for a few days can have benefits. Such beautiful little tarts, and a box with a bow. The hardened cynic in me wonders what he is up to, but the rest of me just ate the damn tarts and will ponder the deeper meaning later.

The weekend: mostly blah, but I did manage to catch up on some sleep. However, I am not sure how good an idea sleeping was... I can go for weeks on adrenaline and caffiene and 4 hours a night, but as soon as I relax and let my guard down I get sick. Right now is not the time to get sick. I am eating oranges by the pound and drinking so much water that I am sure I no longer walk: I float.