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Saturday, January 31, 2004

hehehe... 

Ben ripped his underwear at work today.

Observations of a Freshmart cashier 

She comes in at least three times a day. She is unnaturally tall and bony, with wild white hair that sticks out from her head in soft tufts and breath that smells unmistakably like gum disease. She always wears plaid and she is obsessed with dates. Every morning she buys a newpaper and requires the cashier to explain several times that it is in fact today's newspaper. I told her yesterday that it was January 30th, and she stared at me incredulously, utter shock and disbelief. She could not imagine how time had passed. After she buys the morning paper, she comes back a few more times during the day to buy the same paper again. She will not, under any circumstance be persuaded that she has already purchased said paper. Impossible. Last night I sold her her third daily news in four hours. I wrote down over and over again what the date was on receipt paper and compared it to the heading on the newspaper's cover to prove to her that we change our papers everyday. She eyed me very skeptically as she always does, clutched her paper close to her body and hurried outside. On her way across the street, I watched her stop a stranger and show him the paper, asking him to explain today's date to her.

Another regular customer has earned the affectionate nickname of "Crack Lady". I wish there was another reason other than the obvious facts that she is a lady, and addicted to if not crack, than some other sketchy hardcore drug. She is also suspicious of me and constantly argues with me about ciggarette brands and whether or not she is allowed to smoke in the store.
"I'll just stand here by the door..."
"No. You're still not allowed."
For an entire summer, she would come in once or twice a week, buy four tubs of peanut butter, four packages of spaghetti and smokes...that's it. Everytime she did this when I was working, she would return a few hours later and repeat her strange order....always perpetually denying having been in earlier that day for the exact same items. One day she came in with thick foundation gooped all over one side of her face, and no makeup to speak of on the other side. She looked like a clown after a water fight. The funniest memory of her is still the day she stole Debbie's coffee right off the counter. What balls. I don't see her anymore.

For three weeks last July, there was heavy contruction going on across the street from the store. The workers would be in every hour or so for water, pop, chips, smokes, with all of them at once coming in for lunch at noon. Very Punctual. One of them was about forty, sandy-haired and covered in tattoos. He always wore shorts that were too small for him and he smiled at me in a way that made my skin crawl. Chris, the meat manager, told me that he was so bad, you could tell he was thinking dirty thoughts about me just from watching the back of his head. I remember the day he offered me a job.
"We're looking for landscapers and gardeners. No experience necessary. 12 bucks an hour."
"Well, I have a job, but I know a guy who's looking for work..."
"No. Nevermind. We just want the pretty girls in tight shorts."
With that he slid a dollar tip across the counter, making me feel like a paid whore. My nausea was overwhelming. I told Chris about it and he said that I didn't have to serve him anymore and if he gave me any more trouble, then he would personally "thump" him.

A convicted local rapist from a few years ago used to hang around freshmart. He liked Jill.

Greg is my favorite customer. He's always singing and dancing and making merry. He wears purple sunglasses, tight jeans and is perpetually drunk. He will come into the store at 9am on a saturday and be completely out of his gourd. He likes to tell stories about famous Victorian authors, referring to them by their first names as though they are old friends. He's at least forty and a political science major at Dal. When he found out I was an English major, he was positively elated. He always wants to know what I'm reading, what I'm writing, what my latest grades are. If I tell him about an A that I've received, his face breaks into a giddy smile like a child at Christmas and he whoops and hollars his hearty congratulations, telling every customer that walks in or out of the store.
"She got an A!! She got an A!!" "Oh wow Kathryn!"
Except that when he's especially drunk he always calls me Crissy. I have never corrected him.
One day he told me that he saw angels. They came to him.
Another day I told him that I was writing a paper that compared Shakespeare to Faulkner and that the paper was about meaninglessness. I expected another childish attack of giggles and rapture....but instead he grew very quiet. He looked at me like I had stumbled upon a secret password and he wasn't sure if I had meant it, or if it was all just a coincidence. He took off his sunglasses and I considered the remote possibility that he might actually be sober. He said two sentences to me:

"We've been waiting a long time for you. Welcome."

He gave a flourished bow and then walked out the door.

...jobs like these offer such a wide spectrum of people to study.

mmm....cookies. 

My fridge is full of condiments and I'm eating cookies for breakfast.....

Last night I went to what could have been my highschool reunion. I went to The Idiot to see Rob's band play, who were as awesome and entertaining as always. The first thing I saw when I walked in with Katie, was about thirty John A'ers...most of whom I had known in junior high and elementery as well. Seeing so many people always forces me to see myself, which generally ends up ruining my night for me....goddamn self-awareness...

I thought about how I would look to people at my highschool reunion. Would I meet their expectations of me? Would I have met my own for myself? Mostly though, I spent the majority of the night skirting the one question I hate the most. The question that I try not to ask myself, but that follows me around like a big red balloon tied around my neck.

"An English degree huh? So what are you gonna do with that?"

I don't know, okay. Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear. Yes. Yes, I have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars for this education and I have no idea what I'm gonna do with it. I will admit to my utter and complete non-plan. I'm not proud of it. It scares the hell out of me to not really know why it is that I'm doing this. I know what a nice job would be...but it's not something i can count on. I really want to go to Ireland. Sit in my small, Dublin apartment, with window boxes and loud neighbors, and write books that touch a generation. I want to be woken up at all hours of the night with images crowding my brain and metaphors dripping from my pen and fingertips. I want to clutch words like hot embers and precious jewels, simultaneously painful and beautiful. I want to be a recluse. Spend weeks not talking to a soul, have minor tantrums and be a genuine nutcase over the placement of a comma. I want to spend my days watching people, legitimately. I want the slow, cool caress of language to wash over me, but also to know when to pick me up off the floor and rough me up a little. I want language to fill me like a sickness, where writing obsessively is the only relief. I want to write. That's all I've ever really wanted. I want to write and be read.

Usually I just tell people I want to teach and then change the subject.

Friday, January 30, 2004

perhaps 

He stared at me the entire class....the boy with the ambiguous accent. Where is he from? Not quite Scottish. Not quite Irish. A hint of Australian, but not quite that either. Perhaps he's faking it...there is no accent. He's a fraud. Perhaps I've had an accent that I've been hiding all these years. Perhaps I'm a fraud. It's delicious to think of such remote possibilities. The more remote, the more delicious.

But why stare at me? Oh......he knows. He is on to me.

Frost and Dreams 

I'm on the eleventh floor of a building and I can't see out of the windows. Overnight the frost has crept up the glass in an icy embrace. It makes me feel cold just just to look at it and it makes me wonder what it is that I cannot see.

I've been contemplating why it is that I am doing this.Why do I open up my mind and spill its contents sloppily, for anyone and everyone to see? Why do I explore the things I hate about myself in such a way that others can now see these attributes? I had lunch with Mom yesterday and she was trying to wrap her head around the idea of a web log. It's a tricky thing, private yet public, honest yet censored. And I do censor myself, I can feel it. I have drawn a line between who I am genuinely and my computer screen and never shall the two truly meet. That doesn't mean that everything I write is a lie...on the contrary, I am being honest...aren't I? You would know as well as I would. It's as though I have created a filter, another screen, perhaps a layer a frost to speak through. What is it that I am not saying? What can't you see through my wall of ice?

On a side note: Last night I dreamt that the roof caved in. I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling as though I knew what was going to happen and I was ready, anticipating. Slowly, the middle started to sag. Horrible ripping sounds broke through the silence, followed by splintering wood, shattering glass and tortured screaming. I wasn't afraid. The ceiling came down slowly, covering me completely. I felt no pain and decided to patiently await my own rescue...but it never came.

Thursday, January 29, 2004

Late night murmers and lullabyes 

I can hear him now, my minstrel of tortured strings and weary hands. Our apartments share a wall and some nights I hear him playing sweet muffled songs to me...like a stereo playing through a pillow. The first time I heard him I decided to play to him as well. At first it was just noise, two guitars trying to overpower each other, but after a while, we started to take turns. I would play and sing for him and he would patiently listen. His turn would come and he would then fill my ears with his sweet strumming and aggressive power chords. I feel like we have had an intimate conversation although we have never met.

That night our adjoining apartments became cells and we were lonely prisoners, sending coded messages of comfort through the walls.

Is microwaving towels even safe? 

he was dripping wet and freezing cold, his arms thrown around his body, feebly clutching his own shivering back. I remember thinking how remarkably blue his eyes were just then.

"do you want me to microwave your towel?"

He looked at me in awe, then disbelief, then excitement, "YES!"


My mother used to always microwave our towels for us when we were getting out of the tub as children. I can vividly remember sitting in the bathtub, the water almost blue with soap residue and cooling quickly. The door opened and my mother's smiling face poked around the corner to ask if I would like my towels microwaved. I remember the way it felt when they were first wrapped around me. So hot and soft that all I wanted to do was just close my eyes and feel the heat all over my cold, damp skin.

....come to think of it, I have a lot of fun memories that involve bathtubs.

I remember the day Erin thought it was a good idea to fill the tub with all my stuffed animals. They soaked up all the water and I sat shivering, wet, cold, in an empty tub with sopping, twenty-pound care-bears.

I remember the day Amanda and I tried to turn her bathtub into a camp. We sat there all day behind the curtain and read ghost stories to each other in devious voices, with a red flashlight held under our chins.

I remember in highschool, Kerri and I trying to make a bed in a bathtub...but I don't recall the reason why, or if anyone actually ended up sleeping there.

I remember, more recently, getting stoned with Ian while sitting in his bathtub. There was still some water in it and my socks were wet, but the rest of me was warm and floaty. That is my favorite bathtub conversation ever. I think we were in there for hours.

I remember when Ian lived with Matt, he invited me over to hang out and spend the night. He made me a bubble bath and then once I was in, he layed down on the floor next to the tub and got drunk. We made quite a pair, me wet, soapy and naked, and him intoxicated and giggling.

I remember having a jacuzzi at my parent's place the day my grandfather died. I was drinking port, letting the alcohol swish around my mouth, trickle down my throat and go inevitably straight to my head because I hadn't been able to eat at all that day. The hot jets pushed all the sadness out of me and I slept like a friggin' baby.

I remember just over christmas, all three of us in the jacuzzi, wearing bikinis and drinking. Carolle was probably half in the bag, Erin was quiet and I was contemplating how to stealthfully acquire the bathing suit that my mother had lent to me. It actually gave me a bustline! Imagine that!

Bathtubs are fun...I encourage everyone to recall their favorite bathtub memories.

Speaking of ads.... 

Hey, did you ever see that Mr. Clean commercial from a few years back? Like all the other ones it featured a middle-aged woman/mother figure spending her days tending to various domestic tasks. The funny thing about this particular ad is that after completing the scrub down of each room, a cartoon Mr. Clean pops out of the newly shining surface and raises his arm for a high five with the ever so diligent woman. If that's not a hallucination then I don't know what is! Me thinks the little housewife has spent a few too many days home alone, sniffing the bleach cleaners.

Okay...so I buy the perfume and I'll look like that? 

I am so sick of walking into women's clothing stores, trying on a dozen pairs of women's jeans and not finding a single pair that fits me because I am actually shaped like a women. Who decided that the nicest looking jeans should not allow for curves? The fashion industry would have me believe that because I am not 5-11, my cheeks are not hollow and because my body does not resemble a pre-pubescent boy, I am not beautiful. They want me to curse and hate my body for it's softness and femininity. Well fuck them. I won't. I like the fact that my tummy is soft and my butt sticks out enough to be called a "booty". I like that I am short. It means that I can wear high heels without feeling gigantic. I never want to be tall and willowy and thin. Muscle and strength, to me, is a thousand times sexier than whatever standard of attractiveness anyone holds over my head.

Speaking of sexiness....why is this the only thing ever appealed to in women's advertising. If you turn a few pages in a magazine, more than half of the ads feature pictures of naked women, half naked women caressing a fully clothed man, women with closed eyes and erotic facial expressions. Why is it assumed that sex is the basis of everything I think and do? A picture of a woman wearing a soaking wet white blouse with no bra will never convince me to buy anything. It only convinces me further of how sad and ugly the world is in which I live.

I have recently finished an assignment for a history class in which I had to create an ad for a 1950's sitcom. I decided to address the issue of gender roles and the segregation of women from the public sphere of men. I created a perfectly nauseating character called Peach Keener, who does little more than play with her hair, bake pies and hope that the boys will like her. The ad was made up of a bunch of picture and clippings to decorate the text, with tons of ridiculous phrases like "Hair dos and dont's" and "Adventures In Beauty!!" Sounds ridiculous right? Here's the kicker: the phrase "adventures in beauty" was clipped from a magazine that came out this year. AAAARRGGH! Nothing has changed in fifty years, only the packaging and presentation has improved. Do people actually take this shit seriously? I sincerely hope not.

Who By Fire 

it feels like someone forced a cheese grater down my throat. I can barely talk...even a whisper is painful. Otherwise I feel okay, a little sleepy perhaps.

I worry about everything. It's becoming rather compulsive. For myself, I worry about my weight, my grades, my future and my relationships with others. I have this fear that creeps around the back of my head like a weasel and snatchs at my thoughts as if they are shiny, fluttering coins. The fear is that everything is fake. That the affections I receive from others are just surface, show and when I leave people express their general dislike. I have no reaosn whatsoever to think this. None. I just do. The last thing I want is for such a paranoia to snowball out of control and to end up like Stephanie. When I knew her, she truly believed the whole world was out to get her, to ruin her chances at happiness. She feared this greatly from me for reasons I cannot fathom and used this fear to destroy me. She took one of my closest friends away. He went so willingly, perhaps his falsity is where my fear has its origin. I never want to be cruel like her. I never want to be that self-absorbed.

I worry about my friends too. I worry about Kaitlin and her job at the parole board. I think she is unspeakably brave to do that. I know I never could. I worry about Curtis and the way he bottles up everything he feels and then numbs it with alcohol. I worry that he is extremely sad and feels like he can't talk to anyone about it. I worry about Melissa for her sensitivity. She is such a loving person, she gives her heart away freely. This is such a wonderful quality in a person, it seems so unfair that her heart keeps getting broken. I worry that someday she won't smile. That would be positively tragic. Her smile is so contagious.

I worry about the world. Somedays I feel like it's the 1950's and nuclear war could start at any moment. I worry that thousands of people will die needlessly, meaninglessly for a man with a personal vendetta. I worry that entire countries will act like playground children and try to push each other down. I worry that there will be no safe place to play and no safe water to drink for my own children. I worry that the distribution of wealth will only get increasingly worse until the majority of othe world's population starves to death. Clutching empty stomachs and screaming of injustice, they will beg for mercy but they will not be heard over the scraping of silver forks on china plates and the clinking of wine glasses.

with all this worry, it's a wonder i can appear calm on the surface. I wish i could erase these fears. Sometimes I try to change the smaller ones. Other times, I just put on some Leonard Cohen and hope to my as yet non-existant god that I am wrong.

Song for right now: "Who By Fire" by Leonard Cohen

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

late night discussions 

Everything is funnier when there's a boy doing homework on your bed, wearing bright red shorts that have rainbow flowers and volkswagen beetles all over them. Plus they were handmade by a crazy Australian named Kurt. Life has amusing quirks.

Ben: "I wonder if I shaved my head, if I could use the hair for beard extensions? I wonder if that's ever been done?"

Kathryn: "You could always transplant from your armpits."

Ben: "No...I don't want my beard to be that curly."

song to listen to right now: "City of Lakes" by Matt Mays

Me talk shiny one day. 

Ben is so funny in the morning. He refuses to get up until the last possible second. This morning while I was drinking my massive cup of Earl Grey tea, he made some noises and movements behind me to get my attention. I turned around and he was lying there smiling, eyes shut and arms outstretched, reaching for something that he couldn't see but that he knew was there. I layed back down with him and he quickly snuck his cold arms into my warm housecoat, pinning me to him in a hug. Within seconds he was snoring into my hair, but whenever i tried to get up again, he made little gowling noises like a cat backed into a corner.

This morning Ben got a new pirate name. "Wet Beard"

"Har HAR!!!...sploosh."

i find that I can't focus. My mind is wandering over the hills of a faraway place where I have never been, but I know I would recognize. I have seen it in my sleep. I dream about green rolling hills and dark cliff faces. I dream about sunsets of salmon and tangerine and other colors that are also flavours. The sunset is delicious, a full-course meal. I dream of warm rain and empty streets to run through, with absolutely no need for any kind of destination. I dream of fascinating strangers in shadowy lands, drinking whiskey by campfires. I dream of children and tire swings and games where you get to take on a whole new identity. Those were always my favorite kind. I dream of wind so powerful that you could lean over a cliff face and not fall, suspended between earth and air, between stability and plummetting. I dream of clouds that sweep overhead so fast that they look like galloping fat horses. I dream of blackened feet from running on pavement all day without shoes (who needs shoes anyways?) and a breeze that is saturated with the scent of blooming lilacs.

Some of this is real, some is fantasy....it all blurs together when i sleep. I like it the best that way.

where black is the color, where none is the number 

sometimes at night
I close my eyes
in a darkened room
so that each darkness is enveloped by another
threefold blackness.
It's reassuring to know
that even if I opened my eyes
and threw back the curtains
it would still be dark
and I would see nothing.

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Just got back from Andrew Mac's apartment. He made us all supper...i lost my perogie virginity. Now i sit in a dark room in front of a bright screen, Tom Waits cooing softly from my stereo and my love making tea in the kitchen.....ahhhhh....life is nice.

I've been thinking lately about all the wonderful friends I have and how different things used to be when I didn't have friends. I used to hide in the woods during recess, sit on a fallen tree trunk and read. I used to decorate my row boat with ferns and flowers. I would make myself flower necklaces and bracelets. I would put dandelions in my hair and I would close my eyes and pretend to be somewhere else. I used to pretend to be Ophelia from Hamlet....of course i didn;t really understand that she killed herself at the time. I just liked the image of her climbing a tree, overhanging a river, clutching little bundles of wildflowers in each fist. I always imagined her eyes were closed and her hair was blowing softly against her mouth. The branched she perched upon was heavily shaded, but a few rosy fingers of sunlight escaped through the leaves, framing her like the bars of a little shining cage. Maybe she just wanted to get out of the cage? Maybe she fell? Maybe nine years old was too young to be reading Hamlet......that might explain why I'm so loopy now. *grins demonically*

song for right now: "Pony" by Tom Waits

so much shouting, so much laughter. 

...sigh.
Ani Difranco, your words are immortal.

"I'll teach you how to throw a football"

"I'll probably break something"

"I'm sure you only break hearts"

.......how smooth was that eh?

Creeping around my apartment, as quiet as a mouse. 

I love watching him sleep....but not in that creepy stalker in the bushes kind of way. Everytime he stays over, he sleeps at least an hour or two longer than me so I have the pleasure of looking at him for a while. His face is so calm and content. His body shifts every few minutes, first curled up in a ball, then spread out from one edge of the bed to the other. If I try to talk to him, he just makes tiny little noises, little grumbles, little wimpers...all muffled against the pillows and blankets. Sometimes I'll lean down and kiss him on the nose and he'll smile the biggest smile, but he'll never open his eyes. Watching how content he is to sleep makes me want to go back to bed.

I'm up early today to go to the gym. Gotta run, gotta sweat, gotta burn all the calories that ever go into my body. Weight loss has been equal portions of blessing and curse. It's great that I love to shop again and that i have a lot more confidence. It's not so great that i never get to sleep in anymore. I look and feel better...but i can't enjoy food anymore. Everything i eat is coupled with an overwhelming paranoia that i just have to ignore. I haven't had icecream in over two years, same goes for fast food and most desserts. Life altering decisions are just that.....i suppose i just never expected it to work for me.


Today feels odd...different than any other morning. Everything seems to be made up of light and shadow, blacks, whites, bright and dark. I feel like the person in the picture. I am standing in a dark forest, with nothing and no one around me...just trees in every direction. I am walking and somehow I know where to go. I know where every loose rock and twisting root lay in my path and i jump over them nimbly despite the utter blackness around me. I don't, however, have any idea where my route is leading me. Suddenly, the sky and forest behind me fills with the brightest light. This light does not illuminate me, but rather darkens and sillhouettes me. I am little more than a shadow, without qualities, without features. I am blank and non-descript. I am othered to the world of light. I am frankenstein's monster. That's how i usually feel...eclipsed by someone else's brightness. A brightness they have earned and deserve. A darkness I have yet to accept.....what would happen if i climbed a tree?

Monday, January 26, 2004

We Are Ugly but We Have The Music. 

music amazes me. Everyday, it is an integral part of who I am. I can't remember a time when I wasn't humming a tune to myself, or thinking about a favorite song or band. Music has this way of affecting the body and the mind simultaneously. Truly good music touches your soul, but it also enters into your blood stream. Before you know it, your circuits are streaming with songs, your heart is laying down a beat, your bones ache with melody and you absolutely have to move.

some songs are so perfectly constructed that almost everyone I know has the same reaction to them. I challenge anyone to listen to Stevie Ray Vaughn play guitar and tell me that his notes are not sweet and fluid like honey dripping off of a spoon. Listen to Blind Melon's "No Rain" and try not to imagine dancing in a happy wild abandon in a field full of flowers under a glorious sun. I will bet that you can't, at least not naturally. I challenge anyone to put on "Heard it though the Grape Vine", performed by Marvin Gaye and keep still. Maybe you can for a minute or two, but sooner or later, a muscle twinges, a foot taps, a hip wiggles and before you know it...you....are....groovin'.

I dare you to listen to "My Girl" by the Temptations and not smile.

It's all inside of me...a warm, flowing sea of music that brings life to everything. It is amazing.

i am not cut out for this 

oh my god. I just opened an account at the computer science building so i can be a supergeek and Blog all the live long day. Only problem is....everything. Let me tell you, the process was more painful than a root canal. The computers here, ironically, suck. They are slow and plodding and make people like me have near seizures waiting for them to bring up pages. So now I suppose i can be classified as both a computer and an English geek....i'm probably gonna lose friends over this. If I start watching reruns of the original startrek, playing dungeons and dragons, or wearing one of those "byte me" tee-shirts...someone please shoot me. The world doesn't need another one.

On another note: FUCK! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! F!!! HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!! SHIT! HELL! DAMN!!!!!!

it is sooo cold! My fingers haven't been warm since I woke up. When I went to the Second Cup to ask Brad for hot water for my soup, I considered dipping my hands in it.....seriously, when scalding sounds appealing...you know you're in Halifax in January.

So i think I now have an " email me" thingy...yup thingy...what? it's a technical term....shut up. Yeah, so anyone who feels the need to respond, concur, share or tell me I'm a stupid raving moron, please feel free to use the email link and drop me a line....although i haven't tested it yet, and I don't know exactly how it works.....hmmm...yes....someone else will do it for me.

chowchow for now.

Song for today: "The Nurse Who Loved Me" by A Perfect Circle

Breakfast of Champions 

it's only 7am. It's still dark enough that the world appears cold and unfeeling. Advil and tea, caffeine and pills. I could be on Absolutely Fabulous if I added some liquor to this morning extravaganza.


Today I feel out of place. It's as though the whole world exists in color but I somehow am a walking Sepia figure. My Sepia world consists of various shades of brown and gray, making everything look tired and dirty. Today I feel tired and dirty. Today the world is not my oyster (what the hell does that expression mean anyway?), but it is my cunning venus fly trap. Today I only have one choice...predator or prey? I think I'll choose to be self-defeating and cannibalistic. Today I will trap and devour myself.

Ahhhhhh... 

I'm sitting on my unmade bed, my room is disheveled...but mine. I have opened the blind and I am staring out into the darkness...the view from my window is little more than a narrow grassy alley between two properties and an old metal fence. My eyes are glazed and unfocused, but my fingers still diligently pluck the chords to the Dolly Parton song I just learned.

"Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, I'm begging of you please don't take my man"

I love old country. Willie Nelson. Merle Haggerd. Hank Williams. Yeah. My callouses are red and raw and peeling...totally disgusting, but I display them like war medals. I am proud of the pain and effort involved in music. I relish the bloodshed that goes into a really rippin' new song. I love that feeling of excitement after writing a song, like you're afraid to go to sleep, because it might be gone in the morning. I need to play more, need to write more, need to break the skin and see what's underneath. I'm not afraid. Are you?

Sunday, January 25, 2004

...late and insane? 

Almost midnight. Quick! Quick! Post something before the date changes! Why? This will certainly be one more thing to obsess over. One more thing to pack into my schedule. What can i say, I'm a glutton for punishment. Bring it on baby.

I hate skiiing. In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say that I hate all winter sports. I dunno, the idea of flying down an icy slope, with long, unnatural objects strapped to my feet somehow just doesn't appeal to me much. I remember the first time I tried to downhill ski, i think i was 12. I went with Alison Warden (whoa, blast from the past) and she had been skiing since she could walk. Right off the bat I was separate for the others, shunted into a lesser class and abandoned. I spent two hours in a beginners ski class where everyone was under the age of ten....and I was still the slowest learner. I remember the green snowpants I wore that were ill-fitted and made me feel conspicuous and lumbering. I remember falling on the rope pull that brought you to the top of the bunny hill. I remember being laughed at by strangers. When I finally got to the top of the mountain for the first time, i remember watching all the smaller kids whoop with glee and fly down as though they had only pretended to be beginners. I inched closer, stumbled, started down awkwardly. I fell on the way down, tumbled like in an old cartoon where you gather snow and become a giant snowball...I hit a tree and cried. When I finally got to the bottom, I hid in the lodge at a corner table for hours. I remember hot chocolate and inquisitive adults. I remember hating myself...but to a far greater degree, loathing skiing.

Strangely enough, I don't hate Winter. In fact, I love it. I love snow and early darkness. I don't find the shorter days the least bit depressing. I love sweaters and hats and scarves and mittens. I love the way people walk in Winter, shoulders up around their ears, a whole species of neckless people. I love the way the wind makes you gasp for breath and hits exposed skin like an icy slap. I love rosy cheeks and pink noses.

I love it when the trees in the south end are so weighted with snow that the streets all look like white tunnels, glittering cathedrals of ice. When you walk down them at night, its as though every step echoes through the blackness around you. You can hear everything. Every mournful creak of every branch, crippled under the extra weight. Every soft thud as the extra pounds force the braches to give one by one, letting delicious dollops of snow drop to the ground like freshly whipped cream. Every snowflake....seriously...just try.

I love the way it feels when I come inside from the cold, my apartment so unearthly warm that the air feels damp and my coat instantly feels like lead. I love making tea to warm up and crawling under my blankets, watching heinous, time-wasting television. I love playing my guitar with cold hands, the steel strings bending and singing under my pink stinging fingers. I love how music sounds when it's freezing cold outside....every note hangs warmly and softly in the air.

But I totally fucking hate skiing. People freak out when I say that. They act as though i told them that I hate puppies or sunshine or something. It's nothing, however, compared to the reaction i get when i tell people that I hate Sloan. The last person I told that too told me to get the fuck out of Halifax and never come back.....i think they were serious too.

Mornings Humble Me 

I woke up this morning and was astounded by the daylight that was trying to force its way into my room. Somehow, in a matter of mere hours, nature and time has changed errevocably and now everything seems somehow new and detatched from all that has happened before. Man, I wish I could do that. I wish that sleep could somehow erase the events of the previous day, leaving me feeling as fresh and new as the morning. But it seems that I must carry everything with me, attached to my limbs like little weights. Different memories have different weights....how much will the events and memories of yesterday weigh me down? How is it measured? Grams? Pounds? Or something less tangible....hard to say.

Last night I dreamt of a pizza place/internet cafe in one. One corner of the room was filled with old dusty boardgames. Mike from work was there, he smiled at me and asked me to play scrabble with him and an older British man. I never saw a single pizza and I don't remember who won.

Song for today: "Into Dust" by Mazzy Star


Saturday, January 24, 2004

okay...i think i've got it now. 

alright, i whole-heartedly apologize for the last few posts...totally not worth reading, i know. I guess I'm hoping that this will inspire and push me to write more frequently. Even if am tired, incoherent, moody or whatever, I think this will still entice me to express myself. My mother always tells me what a great and talented writer I am. Throughout my entire family, I have always been known as "The Writer"...well....i think they seem to know something that i don't, but this is as good a place as any to start searching.

man i suck at this 

sorry if people are actually reading these now...all just test posts for today

buh?? 

i have no idea what i'm doing today.

Still Working This Crazy Thing Out 

ah ha, so now I have added titles to my blog....doesn't that sound like some kind of thick body fluid? Guess what I have a Blog!! Ew!

mmm, listening to coldplay and refusing to use any capital letters, now that's what i call empowering. I've come to realize something as of late. I don't understand myself any better than he does...maybe less, so how can i expect so much from him? He can't know how it feels to walk underwater when everybody else gets to walk on ground. He can't hear the snow fall like I can at 2 AM on my quiet South end street.

Last night he came over for the sole purpose of hearing my anger. We spoke to each other in a way we haven't spoken to each other since we were sixteen and it frightened me. Mostly because I was the scary sounding one. Sometimes i don't even recognize my own voice. It's as if the words fall like fat, stinging raindrops from ceiling clouds, hitting us like a tohusand tiny pin pricks. How can i not want to see or talk to someone I know that I love? How does he feel right now? How did he feel last night when I told him to leave? Maybe I should stop wondering whether or not he understands me and consider the idea that I don't know him at all.

a monumental step for me in the world of technology....i set this up by myself, i can hardly fucking beleive it. This first post is really just a way to get my feet wet, so expect better things to come.

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