A Broken Crow

We met inside the cold frame of street lights and salt-etched sidewalks so he could "get some things off his chest" I tried to concentrate on how cold my toes were on the way there, so I wouldn't have to think about what he was going to say. I saw him waiting in only a sweater. I wondered if he was cold.

"ask me a question, it's easier that way"
"no. You tell me what you wanted to tell me."

He talked to me about trust. About how he could never trust me with anything important ever again. About how that hurt him more than it would ever hurt me. I was just trying to listen and understand what he was saying and he said I was shrugging him off.

"every night, you're a little more distant"

Good.

Last night was a night of wine and joints and meeting new people. Jeff is highly enjoyable, despite looking rather a lot like Adam Kennedy. He has an argument that relates smoking and drinking and drugs to the natural flow of the universe. It's really quite convincing...when you're hammered. After hearing his theory, I thought it would have been most ridiculous to NOT have a smoke. Mike is right, Jeff IS too smart for his own good...or at least for my own good.

We watched The Warriors again and I drank wine straight from the bottle. I wore my "Strumpet" shirt and took my medication with mouthfuls of beer. Oooooh classiness. I fell asleep on the couch at one and was apparently quite adorable. Good for me.

Woke up this morning in the windowless abbatoir of lunacy...almost noon. We went to breakfast on Spring Garden and sat at a high table by the window. The window featured a painted cartoon sun, with huge eyes and a gaping, laughing mouth. We both agreed that it was scary. There was a man sitting outside on the patio, right by our table, with his back to us. He leaned back in his chair, staring out at the chaos of the street, slowly sipping, slowly smoking. He had created a small pocket in time for himself, outside the bustle and relentless speed. I do that sometimes. He set his mug up on the railing and I watched the steam from it get snatched up by the wind and pulled from the hot liquid violently. I watched the ash from his cigarette warp and curl and trickle down over the sleeve of his coat like tiny snowflakes. I wondered what he was thinking about. I tried to create an inner monologue for him but my own was a little too fuzzy.

Breakfast. Western sandwich for me. Eggs and sausage for him. I love that three in the afternoon is still considered morning in his mind. We chatted about Kamloops while we ate and grinned happy grins at each other over our plates. I could sit aimlessly there over a thousand coffees and not run out of things to say. I could drink a thousand coffees in utter silence and enjoy it just as much. I like the way he squints out the window like he's looking for something. For a few minutes, I just watched the sunlight. It spilled over the table in waves and hugged our little breakfast corner with warm, golden arms. It danced and played over his lips and cheekbones like a miniature ballet. I closed my eyes and felt the deliciously warm embrace of coffee and endless possibilities. I'm still smiling.

Here are some potential T-shirts to be made and distributed to the Freshmart Staff.

(front) "Slap Me With Bacon!"

(front) "Medicinal Waste"

(front) "Lucky Doucette"

(front) "What A Little Slacker" (back) "Don't you want to smack her?"

(front) "I Offend Women!" (back) "Nice Tits!!"

hehehehehe....this is what i'm paid to do people.....yup. We're dead serious about this T-shirt thing too, we already made a "Strumpet", "Lush" and "I just died in your arms tonight" shirt. Oh the hilarity.

I walked to work today feeling lighter than I had in months. I practically had to restrain myself from skipping. The past week has been strange. A mix of wonderful with a dash of guilt. Recipe for disaster? Maybe. We talked last night and I told him everything. I was prepared for yelling. I was prepared for tears. I was prepared for accusations and harsh words. It was unnecessary. He was calm. He surprised me. I had been banking on drama and he was cool as ice. Is this good or unsettling? I think it's probably both.

I'm trying to focus. Focus on how I feel right now about everything that's been happening. I'm stripping myself of pretense and falsehood. I'm closing my eyes and I'm smiling. Really smiling. It feels good to smile without the weight of pretense.

This morning I woke up at four am with a belly full of knives and a mouthful of blood. I woke up from the pain just under my ribcage. A sharp, slow moving, rolling pain. It's unique to anything I've ever felt. I got up, stumbling, and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. As I reach for the taps, I caught a glimpse of my refection. Red lips. Too red. Red with blood. I opened my mouth and shuddered at what I saw. Teeth. Red with blood. Tongue. Red with blood. I spat out mouthfuls of it and then suddenly it was gone. I don't know what happened. I don't know where it came from. I can't explain it. I went back to bed feeling uneasy, tasting blood.

Today was the the day, which means tonight IS the night...which means I can't procrastinate any longer. Here it comes guys. Timber. You may commence throwing stones....now.

A Broken Crow: A shattered bird
A Broken Crow: The pulling to earth of something light and flying
A Broken Crow: Something you hate inexplicably, and would only find it beautiful after it was broken
A Broken Crow: Something associated with dark things and bad omens shown to be vulnerable
A Broken Crow: A tortured cry
A Broken Crow: Something Ben said to me when i was stoned

So I spent last night doped up on advil and penicillin, watching Moulin Rouge. I've been thinking a lot. Perhaps too much. Things can't stay the way they are right now forever. In suspension. Acting without voices, like everything is an old silent movie when other people are watching. If I was someone else, watching me go about my day wrapped up in half-truths like blankets, I'd be skeptical.
I'd lean over to the person standing closest to me, even if they were a total stranger and say:

"Do you buy that? I don't buy it. You don't buy it do you?"

You shouldn't.

I'm in perpetual tiptoe mode, blank faced and cryptic. I survive in my obscurity, but I can only be obscure for so long. The longer I do it, the less real I seem to myself. I feel like I'm fading. An old photograph left in the sun too long. You can't really tell it's me anymore, the facial features are washed out and ambiguous, but the outline is still faintly visible. You can tell I was there. So where am I now? Oh man, you have no idea.

Patrick. That kid fuckin' kills me. He has A.D.D. and displays it proudly like a badge of honor. He's bursting at the seams with energy and exuberance and has the attention span of a hummingbird. He'll come into the store four or five times a day when he doesn't have to work just to tell us stories and talk to the customers while bagging groceries for free. He could be telling you about buying dogfood or vacuuming his own glasses by mistake and his face would still take on an expression of sheer delight and excitement. He wears wrestling themed trucker hats tilted to one side and garishly bright yellow track pants. He is idolized by his little brother and all his friends.

When I came to work on Monday, he asked me about my recent break up. I think he was trying to have a heartfelt moment with me but he couldn't stop snickering. I don't think he knows how to be serious and I think that's absolutely wonderful. He reminded me of a promise I made jokingly about four months ago.

"I guess this means we'll have to make out"
"what?"
"You said I could be your rebound boy."
"Really? Did I?"
"You did! And I'm holding you to it!"
"Oh god. You've already made out with two of my friends, Pat."
"Hey, share is fair..."

What a nutcase. I can't talk to him without laughing out loud. I simply adore him. I wish I could be that happy that easily all of the time like he is.

When he works nights, Patrick has made a habit out of serenading Mike with 80's power ballads.
(breathy falsetto) "Mike. I just died in your arms tonight.."

It's so funny. No matter how many times he's begged to stop, he keeps doing it and I laugh. Mike even locked Patrick in the freezer for fifteen minutes. Still, not even slightly thwarted. I admire that kind of persistence. We're going to make him an "I just died in your arms tonight" T-shirt. I'm stoked.

I wish I could stop time. If I could, everything would be perfect. Sometimes I have these moments where I just stop and think...wow, everything is so right here. This is right. Let's not change anything and just stay like this forever. Except that's impossible. I like to imagine fragments of my life as divorced from time and context.

Look at us, cradled in a soft bubble of sunlight where no one can touch us.
Where comforting silence blooms like rose buds on our lips

okay okay okay, so I haven't been posting the last few days. I kinda went into hiding over the weekend. Just wanted to be unreachable and reclusive. Now I'm fucking sick. Full-fledged fever, cold sweat, aches and sore throat. WONDERFUL.

I'll try to think of something clever to write about later, but since today will be spent in bed sulking...I can't foresee too much inspiration. We'll see.

I am picturing myself on the train, looking out the window, watching fields and trees and mountains blend together into one continuous streak. I want to wake up, feet up on the chair across from me, bleary-eyed and tangle-haired, bombarded by sunlight. I want sunrises to pour in through the windows like liquid and run in rivers down to my fingertips. I want to stare out at places I have never seen in miraculous wonder and feel awed at what I am doing.

If I go alone, I'll write a letter everyday to the one person I wish was there with me most of all. I'll describe how different the air smells as you travel west and how the setting sun is a perfect glowing orb, pushing hot rosy fingers through the glass for a fiery embrace. I'll pick up rocks and wild flowers from all the places I go and label them with amusing anecdotes. My gift to that person will be how much I missed them.

is it terribly unhealthy to be unable to sleep for days upon days due to sheer stress? For over a week now, i've been going to bed at three and four in the morning, only to wake up inexplicably at eight or nine, feeling like i'm a tight bundle of nerves about to explode. i've cut my caffiene intake in half, because if i didn't, i'd start running around in circles, raving like a lunatic. i am a lunatic. it's undeniable really. i don't mind, because i know that the right kind of insanity can be intoxicatingly sexy.....to other crazy people at least.

I'm not doing any dishes today. I'm not making my bed. I'm going to eat food that isn't good for me and chew packs upon packs of gum. My apartment is messy like my life. At least I match.

Today I will only listen to music featuring strong kickass women. Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Ani Difranco, Tori Amos. I will turn up me stereo and dance, belting out their words. I will feel better because of it.

Now I'm just a cliche and I can't help it. I put on one of my more depressing cds...Hayden, 'Everything I Long For'. I'm making comfort food. If I were you, I'd give me a good slap for being so predictable.

My biggest comfort in this whole terrible situation is how unbelievably and overtly disobediant I was of that stupid fucking curfew last night. I was out on the streets practically all night. Fuck you Halifax.

So that's it. Just like that. Done. Book closed. Strings cut. A balloon untangles itself from a tree and floats away sadly.

Wow. That was quite a trek. I love that in a state of emergency the pedestrians take over the streets once again. I walked down the middle of Spring Garden Road, slowly, squinting from the glare of the sun off the snow and marveling at what I was doing. I scampered over snow banks taller than me with Blondie blasting from the walkman I stuffed in my pocket. I made eye contact with strangers and they returned my knowing glances as if to say, "yes. yes. isn't this amazing? don't you just want to break down and play?"

On larch street, there has been no shovelling and no plowing as of yet. The snow spreads, almost a meter high, in all directions. The snow is heavy and packed down enough that if you're careful, you can walk on top and not sink through. I walked down my street, a meter higher than usual. I felt like Jesus, walking on water, except I was following the foot prints of others and dodging dog pee every few steps. Ah well. Can't have everything can I?

I can't do this anymore...it's been 32 hours since i've left my apartment. At first I was enjoying this isolation, this protective surrounding of snow on all sides. Now I feel like it's closing in on me. Crushing my little world into compact cube of anxious thoughts. Last night I briefly considered kicking a hole in the wall and forcing the mice to be friends with me, just so I could have some company.

I'm going outside. Soon. I'll be gone for a while and I'm not coming back until I'm so cold and wet and tired that I long for this little decorated prison of mine. I'm going to find the deepest snow and hollow out a place for me to curl up and sleep. I'm going to hug snow drifts. I'm going to wish I was young enough to own snow pants. I'm going to relish the fact that this weather is undeniably apocalyptic.

Entertain that apocalypse idea for a while. Let it brew and percolate.
What would you do today?

My words are fleeting like snuffed candles.

Played a song. Thought of you.

"Said Maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me..."

This morning i fell apart completely, like an overloaded bag of groceries when the bottom rips out and all matter of fruits and cans roll away in all directions.

This afternoon I patiently tried to put myself back together, puzzling slightly over the fact that everything has changed and the pieces don't fit together anymore.

I don't know yet what evening will bring.

I'm tired, trapped by snow, crying and eating peanutbutter by the spoonful.

I can't write this self-analytical stuff anymore. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sick of reading about me and my feelings. Instead, I'll tell you a story. A great story, filled with suspense and fear and youthful exuberance. I'll tell you the great ghost story of my childhood. Everyone has one, here's mine.


I was probably about thirteen at the time and it was summer. Night had fallen and the air was hot, dry and still, settling around you like a thick blanket. I was sitting outside under a tree, enjoying the smell of the bark and the dampness of the grass slowly soaking through my shorts. Suddenly, the patio door slid open in stealth and silence. I watched as Erin, her boyfriend Robert and our cousin Suzy crept carefully out of the house, conversing hurriedly in stifled whispers.

"Are you sure they're asleep?"
"Yes. Stop worrying."

They walked out onto the driveway, glancing nervously back at the house for some sign that they had been detected. Darkness. Only darkness pouring out from every window. I watched them relax and loosen, until they saw me under the tree that is. I grinned a triumphant grin. To a thirteen year old, this is too good to be true. Pure gold.

"and where are we going at this hour?"
Nervous glances between them, words communicated with eyes.
"Fine. Come with us and keep your mouth shut."

I stood up and brushed off the blades of grass and bits of trees clinging to my sweater, feeling as though I had won a contest without first knowing the prize I was trying for. I didn't ask where we were going, but by the time we got to the road, it was all clear to me. There is a small shack, just down the road from my house that has been an object of fear and suspicion to neighborhood children for as long as I can remember. The shack allegedly had been a small summer cottage in the sixties for a childless married couple, The Whites. No one is sure of the circumstances surrounding it, but The Whites abruptly stopped coming to their cottage on the bay years ago, and there it has stood ever since. Untouched, or so we'd like to believe. I can't tell you what it looked like before it became run down and creepy, but I can describe to you the cottage of my memories. It was small and white, with a red roof and paint peeling off in strips the size of dinner plates. The roof was slowly caving in on one side and the whole place just looked kind of waterlogged and condemned. The door was warped and cracking, with several boards nailed over it to keep it shut, and to keep people out. The windows were constantly being broken and replaced, but strangely, even the new windows took on this look of age and smokiness, so it was almost impossible to see through them. I can remember playing in the woods with Amanda, running as fast as I could and then screeching to a dead stop because I had reached The White's property line. Everyone knew the place was haunted. Amanda and I used to play games where we'd dare each other to run up and touch the shack, or stand next to it for ten seconds. I remember doing this vividly. My heart would be racing, every breath of wind would sound like ghostly footsteps and the bushes would fill with snarling eyes, watching me. Those were the moments when I was the most scared. We stopped playing the games after we got a little older, but the shack remained an emblem of our greatest fears and we refused to go near it most of the time.

Erin, Suzy, Robert and I reached the shack. I hesitated. Should I turn back? Prove once and for all that little sister can't handle hanging out with the older crowd? I swallowed nostalgic terror like lump of cold meat. It slid down my throat and fell into my stomach like lead. We walked in towards the shack from the road in silence. Every whisper of the trees became menacing to me, the distant windchimes making my knees shake and my teeth chatter. As I came closer to the shack, the hairs on my arms became an army, standing at attention. At ease. I said at ease! No such luck. We walked around to the back door, away from the view of the road. It was only at that point that I comprehended why it was that we were here. We had come to break in.

Childhood fear and morbid curiosity leads to teenage destruction and trespassing. Robert surveyed the doors and windows, trying to decide the most vulnerable spot. He chose the door and, pulling a well hidden hammer out of his coat, set to work right away. At one point, the shack had been a hideout to the rebel teens of the neighborhood. They would break a window, climb inside and use it as a place to smoke, drink and basically transgress all the rules of their society. Because of this, the grass around the house was covered in a thick layer of broken glass. Jagged icing on a cake.

But from the looks of the place, no one had been there in years. The windows were boarded up and the wood was growing moss and other small life. The back door was curved almost like a C underneath the wooden X nailed over it. It had been beaten by rain and snow and heat for a decade and was completely weathered shut. We had our work cut out for us. After two hours of pounding and prying, the rotten wood finally gave way and the door fell open, creaking hideously like old bones. What hit us first was the smell. A wet, sour, earthy smell, so overwhelming that I took a step back before I actually went inside, up the warping stair and into this crumbling, rancid corpse of a cottage.

Walking into the shack was like walking to an unfinished life. I couldn't believe it. It looked as though someone had been living here but had departed without warning and had never come back, leaving everything behind. All the furniture was still there. There were coats on hooks and boots in corners. The cupboards and drawers were all filled, even neatly organized. There were dishes on the table, left behind after a meal, covered in a layer of wet dust. In another room, there was an old sofa with mice holes chewed into the cushions. On the coffee table, a newspaper from the 1970's, open to the sports section, yellow, faded and brittle. It was as though we had stumbled into another world. A piece of someone else's life, frozen and on display. It was so creepy, I started to feel sick. I wanted to go home. I liked being afraid of the shack when the only reasons were in my imagination. I didn't want the fear to have tangible sources. But it was too late now.

"Maybe we should leave."
"Don't be stupid. We spent half the night trying to get in, we're gonna get a good look around first."

We continued to explore the decaying, suspended moment that was the shack, every corner we shined our flashlights into bringing new wonders and horrors to our morbidly delighted eyes. How could this be? Why would someone get up, have breakfast in their little cottage and then leave and never come back? (And no, they didn't die, that I know for sure) The shroud of mystery surrounding the shack grew thicker and settled around our shoulders like a cloak. It was as though there was this protective dome containing us while we searched through the shriveled remnants of the past.....that is until Suzy's scream shattered it over our heads.

She was in the bedroom at the time. It erupted out of her like a howl of wind, a gasping, screeching sound of terror. We ran to find her, all the while I pictured fiends and ghouls and demons sliding like shadows over the damp, decomposing walls. We got to the bedroom doorway and found her standing beside the bed, flashlight shining over the wall. Words. Words scrawled in bright green paint, with letters dripping down onto the floor. Every wall in the bedroom was covered in the same messages.

"I'll be back"
"I'll get you"
"Motherfucker"

The words started to swirl around me like a tornado. This was too much. This kind of fear had crossed the line from fun to traumatizing. I suddenly was attacked by feelings of weakness and nausea. I clutched the bed post to keep me upright, but then quickly let it go. I didn't want to touch anything in this place anymore. I didn't want to be here anymore. The others were laughing. They thought it was all a joke now. Just some asshole, ten years ago, trying to be funny they said. I couldn't laugh. My voice had dried up and left me with a mouth full of sand. Suzy calmed down. Yes. Yes of course. It was ages ago. No one has been here for years, we could tell by how hard it was to get in. No worries. No one is scared.

As if to prove her bravery, Suzy reached forward to touch the words on the wall. A low shuddering, wretching sound escaped her lips as she pulled away two fingers covered in green. The paint was still wet.

I have never run so fast in all my life. I didn't know I could run so fast. We got home and went into separate rooms without speaking. That night my dreams were filled with villains and rotting places and dripping green words. I have told this story to a few people. Most don't believe it, but it's true. Ask Suzanne or Ben or Dianne. When they looked at me skeptically after I had unravelled my tale of horrors, I decided to prove it. I took them to the shack in the daytime. I brought them around to the back window, heart racing and palms sweating. I showed them where one of the boards on the windows has fallen away and you can look into the kitchen. I pointed out the streaked green fingermarks on the wall by the door where Suzy wiped off the paint on the way out.

I love how we write and speak in coded words, as though being cryptic is being safe. My words are failing me. They're not forming that veil that keeps me hidden. I'm out in the open and exposed. I'm sick and broken and drunk with choices. I'm searching tirelessly, my face wind ravaged and stung with rain. I'm searching damp streets and starry skies...are you there?

I feel like a prostitute that hasn't been payed. I don't sing my songs for just anyone. I generally don't perform too much because when I do, I reveal a raw earnestness in myself that I like to keep tucked away from leering eyes. When I sing, I release pieces of my soul fluttering through the air like maple seeds, endlessly spinning. I dredge up my most intimate and personal feelings and saturate every note with them. It's never just my voice, it's my whole being that you're hearing. To be judged on it then is like standing naked before a room full of strangers and asking them to hold up score cards. It's hard. It makes me feel used. I do like singing for smaller groups though. I like going to parties and finding refuge in a dark room at the end of a dark hallway, cradling my guitar like a child. I like playing for one person at a time. I want them to know that it's not just my voice they're hearing. I want them to know that it's special.

I tried to make tonight's performance special, but everything got muddled and complicated. The mics were acting strangely and I couldn't hear my guitar. I sang on instinct and felt an unsettling knot grow and tighten in my stomach.

It planted itself in my stomach like a clenched fist as if to remind me how insane the night was becoming. And it was insane. So insane. A level of insanity that only I really understand. I spent the night trying to watch out of the corners of both my eyes. I tried to make it follow a certain logic, but I couldn't. I turned it all into a story, but by doing that I have to admit that I've reached a kind of climax. I'm at a turning point, a place of evaluation and decision. Is it so wrong that all I want to do is sneak off into a dark room at the end of a dark hallway and play a heartwrenching love song for that one person?

Location: Kathryn's Romantic Literature class in the very sleepy and dungeon-like Life Sciences building.
Time: Almost lunch
Mood: Excessive boredom to dangerous degrees

"You are SO not listening."
"Yeah. I know. Not at all."
"Fuck it. Let's get out of here."
"Wouldn't that be rude?"
"...Yes."
"Well then no."
"Chicken."
"Shut-up."
"WUSS!"
"I said shut-up."
"Whatever. You can stay but I am SO outta here!"
"Fine. See you later then?"
"We'll see..."
"But, but I have two midterms later...I need you!"
"Yeah well, you should've thought of that before you got all snippy with me."

*Exit Brain*

"Shit..."

*Commence vacant staring and occasional drooling."

Today is the day of tests. I have two midterms, but also I'm being tested on my musical and emotional performance. Is everything okay? Oh yes, perfectly fine. A-plus. Good show.

Today I will bear my soul to drunken strangers in a bar and ask for money in return. I will feel cheap whether I win or lose. Hopefully there will be fun and friends in that cheapness.

Today I will sing a song to a large audience, that made me cry on Monday. I will maintain my composure throughout but perhaps I will fall apart when I'm off stage again.

Today I would drink to make things easier, except I don't have the money for it.

Today I will sit in class, two rows behind him and pretend that I am listening. I will stare at my shoes and wonder how it's all going to turn out. I will imagine somehow that it isn't all up to me.

Today I will carefully plan gestures and facial expressions in order to appear as though I know what I'm doing. I will scotch tapes the cracks in my stories and place wads of chewing gum over the holes. I will depend on the quick fix and I will wait patiently for it to inevitably crumble before I try something else.

......I'm not looking forward to today.

When I'm nervous, I chew gum constantly. I chew with passion and frenzy, piece after piece until I feel sick. Most of the time, I forget about the gum and swallow it....so far tonight I've chewed almost two packs of gum and have accidentally swallowed all but one piece. I feel sick to my stomach and I'm not stopping. Is that terribly unhealthy??

Sometimes I think you see everything through an invisible camera lense. You walk around, fingers and thumbs pressed together in a rectangle frame that you wink through. I think you look at people and places and mentally add lighting and proper mood music. Everything is the perfect scene in the perfect movie, starring us. It's beautiful. But it's not real.

Today was spent in bitter struggle with myself. I box from both corners and I lose on both sides. So many questions. Is this a mistake? Perhaps. Am I throwing something wonderful away because I'm going through a stage of self-reflexive angst? Perhaps. Is there something truly and terribly wrong here? Perhaps. So now I have the time and space to think. Think. Figure it all out, color-coded and filed away for easy access. Nothing is that simple. I've tricked myself again.

Yesterday I forced myself to be brutally honest on paper. No one would ever read it but me, and it took three tries before I stopped lying to myself. This is not encouraging. Not at all. How can I expect someone to understand me when I don't understand myself, let alone believe one word that comes out of my mouth. I have to stop acting. Step outside the frame of the camera lense, outside the little box made from two thumbs and two fingers.

It's the way my fingertips are cold but my palms are sweating.

It's the way I feel simultaneously hungry and nauseated all the time.

It's that gnawing feeling in my stomach.

It's that racing feeling in my chest, like i'm always on an elevator, plunging downwards.

It's the way my brain feels like a hairdryer that's been tossed into a full tub of water.


....I can tell it's going to be a bad week. My body has let me know in advance.

tangled hair across my face, heavy eyes and head full of dreams.
I can't believe I'm in this place, nothing's right, nothing is what it seems.

....So...now we're on a break. But what does that mean? How could I suggest something that I don't even understand? Am I insane? In all probability, yes.

What a horrible way to spend a night. Struggling with words, clinging, clawing at tear-soaked whiskers, negotiating the terms of being "friends" for a while.

"Hey, I love you, but friends don't touch each other like that..."

And they don't. I don't know how to do this. No one warned me about how much this would suck.

I've been avoiding it all day. Putting it off.
Ticking time bomb in my pocket is swelling and perspiring in hideous anticipation.
I'm alone for now and therefore safe.
Exempt from myself until later.
Later in my apartment, where the tunnels will narrow while I walk through them.
I will get stuck.
I will struggle.
I will force my way out.
My apartment will be cold and uninviting.
It will be empty.
Of everything.
I will dance in shards and fragments of me.

Danny is a strange and wonderful person. He is so nervous all the time, as though he has practised everything he says, but he can't stop messing the lines up. Whenever I talk to him, I can never get past the feeling that I'm watching a character in a play fumble over the script. He says strange things at awkward times and often stares past you when he talks to you. I can never know what he is actually thinking, his eyes, intensely blue, forming a barricade.

He doesn't talk much, but when he does his face takes on an expression of anxiety and self-loathing. His eyes narrow and he sneers at himself, shaking his head in disbelief of his own words. It is as if he's saying "why are you even listening to me? I don't know what I'm talking about..." He mutters under his breath so it's almost impossible to understand him. He stutters and twitches whenever the conversation goes past a few sentences.

I have never heard him laugh beyond a nervous giggle. I would love to make him laugh so hard that he had to fall down and clutch his sides. I would love to hear him yell with confidence, or sing when he thinks no one can hear him.

Danny always talks about how stupid he is, but he isn't. Not at all. He has wonderful little moments when he says things that make me believe him to be the smartest person in the room. This morning after class, he asked how my weekend was. After telling him about my latest night of intoxication and brain cell genecide, he looked at me, blue eyes twinkling.

"You know, a hangover is just another kind of victory dance..."

I was stunned. That's the greatest thing I've heard in days...probably weeks.

I walked to school alone today because I didn't want to share. He was just in the washroom and I left without him so I didn't have to share the morning. I only wanted to listen to myself breathe. Inhale. Exhale. And everything is fine. Except that we had been arguing again and everything is not fine.

I left a few minutes before him but he got to school before me. When I came upstairs and saw him there on the floor, he looked up at me smugly, as if to say he had won. Were we racing? I guess so. I never knew. I sat down a few feet away, with my back turned and pretended to be doing something important. We didn't look once at one another. He was writing feverishly, furiously, scrawling anger and frustration across the page. Each word leapt up and stung me before gently settling down upon the paper. I knew he was writing about how silly and wrong I was....am. Maybe so.

In class, I sat two rows behind him, still without saying a word. We are playing games you see, of how much we can communicate in our silence. I sat two rows behind him so I wouldn't have to feel the hot pressure of his stare on my back, but also so he could feel mine. Danny came to sit with us as usual, but was taken by surprise.

"What? Should I sit in the middle or something?" (He did, admist confusion)

Laughter. A ripple in the tension that is quickly restored, like a knot pulled tight in a taut string. How to say How to say? I keep thinking of Faulkner's character in 'The Sound and the Fury', named Benji. He had no concept of time or space, and spent countless amounts of effot and energy "trying to say" Everything described by Benji is fluid and dreamlike, often intangible. That's where I seem to be right now. In a fluid world, suspended, trying to say trying to say.

Did you know that there are only three hostels in Kamloops? One of them is built inside of an old fashioned courthouse. The dining room is the old courtroom, and still has the prisoner's box and the bench and everything. The showers are built into the old jail cells. Seriously, how fucking creepy is that? Really fucking creepy. I want to stay there when I take the train to BC. I figure it's the most likely, out of all the hostels, to be haunted. I dig ghosts.

She is ancient and tiny and always overdressed for something as simple as shopping. She lives across the street in The Carlyle, which means she's unspeakably wealthy. Rolling in it, if you will. Her hair is the color of frozen butter and her skin is creased and leathery, like a reptile. She laughs at everything, mostly herself, with a cackle that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. That kind of laughter should be accompanying the shoving of small children into ovens, or the pleasurable drowning of kittens. It's evil, sheer evil. She doesn't actually get her groceries from us, but comes over to socialize and tease Chris, the meat guy. He calls her a witch and she laughs, sounding like the perfect witch. Yesterday, she came in and bought a single can of coke with a one hundred dollar bill. She slid the crisp new bill across the counter cackling, revealing craggy, yellow teeth and electric blue eyes. She cackled and I, clinging to a fragment of childhood hysteria, inwardly shuddered and twinged in delicious fear of her.

He is not a regular, but stops in now and again for milk and last minute supplies. There is nothing remarkable about his actions or character and normally I wouldn't choose to write about such a person, except for his hand. His hand, small, shriveled, flabby, curled like talons towards himself. It wiggles when he walks, as though dancing. It's a different color than his other hand, a kind of purplish grey, with dark fingernails. It looks as though it was deprived of light and blood for years, and now is trying to catch up. It appears to me as simultaneously weak and threatening. He always carries his groceries with this hand. I wonder why?

She should be in a commercial about the dangers of cigarettes. She walks with a limp and growls at anyone who gets in her way. She wears so many layers that it's difficult to know how big she actually is, but she always wears the same hat, loose knit, nubbly, worn and covered in cat hair. The skin on her face hangs loosely, as if pulled by invisible weights towards the ground. Something has happened to her facial muscles, leaving her mouth to gape open at all times, drooling slightly. She has an unnatural amount of hair on her chin and around her lips (where bright coral lipstick is applied clumsily, extending a half of a centimeter beyond the actual mouth in all directions). She has disturbing growths on her hands and neck, crusty and cracking. I can only imagine it to be some form of cancer, but I try not to look at them. One day she had a complete loss of bowel control in the third aisle. She literally shit herself and then dragged it all around the store while she continued to shop. I wasn't there for that, but I heard about it from a disgruntled Robert who had to clean it up. She has an unfortunate nickname now. She comes in almost everyday, and everyday buys a pack of cigarettes. She looks as though she has been smoking for fifty years, but somehow, amazingly, she doesn't know the name of her particular brand of smokes.

"Gimme some Benson and Hedges."
"Okay, which ones?" (there are at least ten different kinds on the shelf)
"You know the ones."
"Um...no. No I don't. Why don't you tell me?"
"You know!! The green ones!"
"Do you mean menthol?" (there are at least four kinds of B&H Menthols on the shelf)
"............."

Silence. Right. So I have it figured out by now, but it was especially funny when Patrick had his turn figuring her out. She kept screeching and hollering for her cigarettes, telling him he knew which ones they were and that he just wasn't giving them to her.
"The green ones!!! The green ones!! What are you stupid?!?!"

Poor Patrick. He didn't get a chance to tell her that's he's completely colorblind.

-My apartment, in winter, with the window open and the blankets around me.
-The upper hallway at John A, with Jon and Suzanne
-Katie and Jaime's room at King's, one of the few places where Katie can be forced to rap.
-By the firepit at my parents place, with Matthew and Jonny, and a big steak cooking
-On Dianne's lawn, sitting on Golden Boy (who has since left us)
-Reflections, on stage, empty except for a few friends and two people chain smoking at the bar.
-Shad Bay Head, being drowned out by crashing waves
-the back room at Freshmart, while Mike is mopping the floor.

Yet another night when the brain is defeated and pushed aside. I haven't been stoned in over a month, so it hit me pretty hard. I felt stupid. I felt like a zombie. I felt like a stupid zombie.

I'm always mad at myself when I bring my guitar to a party and then smoke pot, because then I never want to play or sing. My voice sounds strange and foreign to my ears. It sounds muffled and far away, like it's trapped inside a glass jar. Last night I forced myself to perform through a drug stupor. I was gripping the guitar so tightly I kept checking my fingertips for blood....it's happened before. I kept imagining that I would drop the guitar, or that my voice would disappear, coming out only in small, inaudible squeaks. I tried desperately to hear myself as I sang, always thinking, "is that me singing? Does that sound okay? Are they hearing what I'm hearing?" I tried to let my voice out of the jar it was caught in, but I couldn't, it stayed muffled and dull, endlessly circling inside a hollow space. I played anyway, trying not to care how it sounded to those in the room. I chose mostly fast songs, in hopes that the up beat rhythm would keep me going, and that the speed would mask the fact that my voice was trapped in a jar. At one point, when I had just finished playing a Tragically Hip song, I picked up my glass and there it was. My voice, floating, swimming really, in a cranberry-vodka sea. I drank the rest of it, thinking that my voice would be restored to me, but no. It rings out as dulled and muffled as ever, from the pit of my stomach.

Last night I became intensely anti-social. I didn't want to be part of the conversation for any reason. Ben asked me two questions over and over again, each time getting the same response.

"are you sleepy?"
"yes."
"wanna go to bed?"
"not yet."

I stared blankly at walls and pillows and floorboards and shoes, searching for something that does not exist. I thought about people, but not the ones who were there. I thought about music, and for a few moments, wished myself to be back home, in my tiny apartment with mice-filled walls and doors in the backs of closets. I wished for Buck 65 and Beck and Blondie.....and possibly other artists beginning with B. I thought about Kamloops. I thought about my voice in Kamloops.

I can't seem to get you out of my head lately. My mind is a swimming pool and you sit on it's edge, dangling your legs into the shallow end, happily kicking your feet.

"oh please, don't you rock my boat, cuz I don't want my boat to be rockin'......
Oh can't you see, I like it, I like it like this....."

Last week it was two red welts on either side of his head, just below his hairline. He didn't have any recollection of how he got them. Yesterday it was a black eye, except he remembered the cause of it.

"At least tell me you were defending someone's honor..."

"I was, I swear I was"

Christ. Please be careful. You're too cool to be getting your face beaten in every week and I worry about you. Now, when you disappear for thirty minutes at a time, I'll wonder if your smart mouth is getting you into trouble. When we go to the dome, can I tether you to someone? Not Patrick, you'd kill him within five minutes. I know you don't need a babysitter, maybe I just need a fucking valium or something. No more bruises? Please?

Shadows slide over my sleeping face, completely unaware. The darkness seeps into my pores, filling me. My head, clouded and heavy, raises groggily in the blackness, only to sink back down again in despair. No. Not again. Why does this always have to happen. Why can't we, just once, skip this, forget this, abolish this entirely. Blackness devours my heart and soul like a flesh eating disease and I am consumed by the inky depths. Shadows pour into my brain, freezing thought, leaving only a looping reel of disturbing, garish images to torture me. Teddy Bears, Candy, Roses *shudder*....ugh, cards, heart-shaped, no NO!!! Make it Stop!!!!!!!!!

Happy fucking Black Saturday to you all.

she stares
crack-eyed
bleach-blond strands over her face
skin, an unnatural orange
artificial
girl from a bottle
purchased over the counter
from a drug store
I wonder if she knows
behind raccoon eyes
fingernails stuck on with airplane glue
that she belongs in a bottle
on a shelf in a drug store
with a bar code
and a price tag

It doesn't matter that I'm part of a "couple" or that I'm extremely happy being a part of that "couple", Valentine's Day is still so STUPID. Yes, there's an idea. Let's create a day so that all the people who are already happy can feel even happier and all those who are a little lonely and a little insecure can feel three times worse. Let's circle around the single folk like a pack of ravenous wolves and do super happy tribal dances until they all feel like crap, go home and eat an entire fucking tub of icecream. I don't know about the rest of you, but Valentine's Day was always that for me when I was single. Remember in Elementary school when it was practically a requirement to give a valentine to everyone? Rendering them utterly meaningless scraps of commercialized garbage with colorful picures of Spiderman or Rainbow Brite?? Yeah, it was easier then. But then as the years went on, people still gave out valentines, but they did so selectively. Suddenly, the amount of valentines received was akin to one's worth as a human being. I remember a year when all my friends got an armload of valentines and I got four. Yup, four. I told myself It didn't matter, that they were meaningless. I told myself that I didn't want valentines anyways and anyone who did want them was a silly vapid chump. Well then I was a chump, wasn't I? Until last year, My valetines tradition was to end up in tears, crying quietly in a bathroom stall, or the floor of my own closet. Oh!! How romantic!! I can't wait until next year!!

The only thing worse than Valentines Day as a single teenager is Valentine's day as a couple. I remember my first one. Oh, the expectations, the preparation, all the thought and meaningful bullshit. But mostly I remember the disappointment. The feelings of embarrassment, confusion and anger. Reaching out for the familiar bathroom stall tactics, crying in total silence for a few moments and then coming back out to face everyone.

"Are you okay?"
"Yes. Fine. Completely fine. Happy Valentine's Day."

But those days are long behind me and mostly just amuse me now. Slightly painful, highly humorous memories. Everyone seems to laugh when I talk about them, so they must be funny. Hahahaha?

Anyways, the point is that Valentine's Day is so unbelievably stupid. I refuse to even acknowledge it. It doesn't exist. It is a non-day. Or....or! Or I could, instead of ignoring it, celebrate it with whole-hearted, sarcastic mockery. I think I might just do that. I will make homemade valentines with messages of true value......Here are some examples of what they might say:

Love sucks

Valentine's Day is for morons

Cupid is a jerk in a diaper

Eat me

or how about some poetry?

Roses are red
marshmallows are soft
Exclusive holidays are cruel
so why don't we all just fuck off!

thank you, I'll be here all week.

The inner me is dancing and singing 'Don't Stop 'till You Get Enough' at the top of her lungs. Ha. Inner-me is so funny sometimes, I wish she could come out and be my friend, but maybe that would just be weird. Besides, I know for a fact that inner me doesn't really like outer me. Inner me and outer me haven't seen eye to eye on anything in months. In all honestly, I think they openly hate each other. Personally, I'm with inner me all the way. She's genuine. Outer me means well but is a phony nine times out of ten. Question remains now....Which one is typing? Neither. It's a third party who has no name as of yet. I'll call her Wilma...yes, Wilma. That will do nicely.

so long then
talk to you all later,
Wilma

I'm standing in the shower, (I'll admit, a highly suspicious way to start a story) and I'm letting my mind wander. I am thinking of all the things I have never said, all the words that gathered in my mouth, ready to burst forth and I swallowed again regretfully. I imagine that these unspoken words have not gone anywhere, but have manifested themselves physically on my body, forming a thick film on my skin. A layer of words, but one that is hard and shiny, like the shell of a beetle. Like armor. Words are my chosen weapon, my defense must therefore be the refusal of them. Their silence. Having words and choosing not to say them. This is how I protect myself, but it's a filthy habit.

I imagine this layer of words being washed off in the shower. I open my eyes and look down to see them trickling, running, moving in rivers across my skin. The words pool at feet, seep slowly into the shower mat and disappear, spinning hypnotically down the drain. I watch in silence as each word in turn changes to read 'goodbye' before leaving me completely. I wave. I am clean.

Why do I do this? Last night, we got drunk in a strange livingroom in a strange house for no reason. We picked up Melissa and brought her all the way into the city for our tiny impromptu party. If she resisted, we fully planned to kidnap her. We were pulled over by a cop on the way home because of a broken headlight. Melissa and I made the situation worse by giggling and trying to make the bags full of booze inconspicuous. I told Melissa that we were all going to jail, and she would be the tasty treat of a woman named Butch with sailor tattoos who would call her 'Lil Boo Boo'. Melissa's new name is 'Lil Boo Boo'. Ben and Curtis drank beer quickly. I gave my affections to a vodka concoction in an old mason jar. I like red drinks. Melissa played with an etch-a-sketch globe that eluded and confounded me entirely, so I focused on destroying what pathetic motor skills I have. Josh arrived with his new girlfriend and we made fun of the small collection of 'Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen' movies this house had acquired. I suggested we watch one just for fun. I was ignored. Just as well. We spent the night telling stories and truths, slippery and intangible. We played a slumber party game, admitting to our bests, worsts, favorites, most memorable. I heard fairytales that turned into nightmares, told openly and honestly through the aid of drinking. Throughout all, I sat wedged in a corner of the couch, pillow over my lap, half hiding. Half hiding physically, always hiding emotionally, but that's no secret. Everyone does that. I cradled my drink gently between my palms, steadily sipping, feeling the alcohol flutter and cloud my mind. I like the way my face gets hot and numb, everything is dulled and amusing somehow. I went outside for a solitary cigarette that I had to light off the stove burner. I stood out on the porch smoking, listening to my drunken friends inside, hearing them through a layer of wall and a thicker layer of my own stupor. I leaned over the railing and asked myself 'why?'. A dangerous question at all times, but more dangerous when you've been drinking. Why? Why? Why? I repeated the words over and over, detatched from any context, subject or situation. I muttered them under my breath. I spat them out quickly, rapid fire, like bullets from my mouth, sprayed out over the snow. The snow, the snow had begun to soak through the elbows of my coat where I leaned over the railing. I finished my smoke and turned to go inside, carefully avoiding my reflection in the glass door. Enough introspection for one night. All the time, the same word pounding, throbbing inside my head relentlessly. Whywhywhywhywhywhywhy? I don't know. I don't know anything. Just leave me alone tonight.

At some point in the night the dog bit my hand, for no reason at all. I bent down and asked it why. Why? Why? It didn't answer.

stop. look at the title. No, really read it. Take it in for all that it means. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that incredible? It comes from the song 'Chimes of Freedom' by Bob Dylan. I read that line for the first time three days ago and ever since it's been swimming around the sea that is my mind, resurfacing, causing ripples. The first time I read that I just stopped. Everything. My mouth hung open stupidly and I was just completely floored by the words. The words. I can't stop thinking about them.

I want to see and think things that wondrous. I want to live everyday, experiencing naked wonder. I'm going to seek out and find the naked wonder that exists everywhere, clothed in secrecy and doubt. I will strip my world of secrecy and doubt so that maybe someday, when you search for me, you will find me up on a hill or in a tree, watching and listening and breathing in naked wonder.

Ben! Ben! I had a dream last night that was really just a replaying of another night from many years ago. Do you remember when we went to the semi-formal together in grade eleven? It was winter. February I think. I had a crush on you then I think. I wore a dress that was all wrong. All wrong. It wasn't black or blue or red or burgundy or any of those common wintry colors. It wasn't wintry at all, in fact, it was fall. It was brick red, burnt orange, golden yellow and green, all blending and bleeding into one another. I was dressed in fall, a season apart from the rest of them. I felt stupid in the car. I felt out of place. But when I got there, you were wearing, to my great delight, a tan suit. You were dressed in fall too, all wrong like me. We matched each other perfectly in our misfitness. Two autumn leaves in a sea of purples and blacks and navys. I remembered how you matched me when no one else did. It reminds me of the song I wrote for you, which until now, I hadn't thought of in this context.

You and me
forever on the outside
looking in
at everyone warm, smiling, laughing
i guess we'll be
together on the outside
they'll never see us hide
or say we never tried
tonight

Wanderin'
in circles on the outside
happenin'
to end up in each others arms
witnessin'
miracles on the outside
'cause with you i find
it's us that leaves the whole world behind

Come with me
did you hear me call
run with me
i'm not afraid to fall
i'm not afraid to fall
i'm not afraid to fall

So silently
come join me on the outside
don't look back, no, no
at everyone warm, smiling, laughing
'cause i believe in heaven on the outside
so let the road unwind
we'll leave the whole world behind
let the road unwind
we'll leave the whole world behind

"Because when you're on the train, you just have to do these things that are so cliche romantic..."

Yes. Thank-you. God! Yes! Thank-you! Thank-you!! Until now, I didn't think anyone really understood what I was saying, but you do. Don't you? You understand me perfectly even when I'm too inarticulate to explain myself. You know what I want to say when the words shrivel up and die in my throat like wrinkled brown berries. Thank-you for understanding. I needed to be understood today.

Thank-you for knowing what it's like to live everyday with a scorching fire inside of you that can only be released with a pen, feverishly scratching. Thank-you for knowing what it's like to have words well up in your mouth, spilling out and scattering everywhere, rolling around the floor like glimmering, misshapen marbles. Thank-you for believing in romantic notions in a dark cynical world. Thank-you for understanding the need to be unplanned and imperfect and sloppy, because passion IS imperfect and sloppy. Thank-you for having a broader sense of reality than most people I know.

I'm listening to a tape that Mike made for me. The songs all have this hypnotic effect over me, causing my head to sway, my hands to pause, my eyes to glaze, my thoughts to race. Man, Buck 65 is talented. That beat isn't coming out of the stereo at all, but out of my own chest. That turn table is really me breathing. That music is really just me, existing.

I'm sitting in my apartment in utter suspension. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting to find out whether my art, my form of personal expression, my dreams for myself will be taken seriously. I sent the email and now I'm waiting. How do you convince someone that you have never felt so strongly about anything in your whole life? Can you force someone to take your words as perfect grains of truth, believing in them and you impicitly? I've been checking my email every hour, desparately. It's so pathetic.

We stared at each other in a thick silence. Unable to explain this away. Everything muddled, interlocking, tied up and choking. I'm choking. No I'm not. I'm being melodramatic again, but so what? I tried to express myself clearly and honestly, no candy-coating to make it go down easier. He said I was attacking his character. Was I? He said I was making assumptions. He said he would get the ideas he wrote down and show them to me right now, He said he loved me. He said. He said. He said.

I said I didn't want to talk anymore. I said I couldn't talk anymore. I played my guitar over his voice and let my eyes unfocus while staring at my blanket. A blue haze, a film over my eyes. Plucked strings and a blue haze, a voice somewhere in the distance that I didn't want to listen to. He said. He said. He said.

We went for a walk. Really, he started to go home, I was going the other direction. I stopped and watched his back recede. Turn around. Please turn around now. Oh god, he isn't going to turn around and I'm going to be left standing here, staring at nothing, Turn around.....He turned around. His arms flew upwards in exasperation. Is this all for show? A game? He came back.

We walked in silence towards the south end, down Oxford St. I didn't look at him. I gazed intently at the slick, wet streets, shimmering and reflecting orange light. I tried to look through the streets. Transparent. I saw myself. Transparent. We walked down to the Wagwoltic...that weird quasi-country club for rich South End families and their fat, lactose intolerant children. We walked up the driveway and stood in the parking lot looking up at the moon. It was blurry and smudged along the night sky, as though it had been scribbled in with pencil and erased, leaving a hazy residue behind.

He said he didn't want to take a break. I said I didn't want to either. He said I was the best thing in his life. He said he enjoyed our time together. He said he was worried about me. hesaidhesaidhesaid.

I didn't say. I couldn't say. I hugged him and I didn't say. I said I loved him. I do. I do. He walked me to my door and kissed my nose. I didn't say. I thought. I wondered. I started to...I choked.

On my good days, the days when I feel most creative, my mind is like a cluster of blossoms, soft, surrounded by the glow of fireflies. It's wondrous and beautiful and shows me where to look, tells me what to say. Today is not a good day. Today my mind is a greasy little monster, snickering and taunting me, bouncing around my skull. Today my mind is a festering wound, red, raw, swollen and oozing fluid. It is a giant scab that I can't keep my fingers out of. It's disgusting and awful and sees horrible things.

At school, I spend my days with Bob Dylan. I'm learning about him in three different classes, each one having a slightly different reason for why he wrote a particular song, for what he meant by a certain metaphor, for why he plugged in in 1965. My brain is scorched with images of him in the early 60's, fresh-faced, rail-thin, tousled hair, ciggarette smouldering, dangling precariously from his lips. His voice follows me from building to building, pointing out what lies underneath it all. I wonder who else he talks to, or if it is only me. I'd like to think I am the only one.

I have had a picture of him hanging up in my kitchen since the first day I moved in. it's only small, pinned to the wall above the kitchen sink, behind the fishbowl, where Wesley the fish continues to live, but barely. I'm sick of watching him struggle to swim and then sink to the bottem for hours on end. I might have flush him and put us both out of this misery. But Bob seems to be watching over him. Eyes wincing, face strained as though tortured with song. Ciggarette between teeth. The picture is that dirty old black and white, grainy and pixilated. He looks far away and beautiful, pinned to my wall, watching my stupid fish die.

This morning, while I was laying on the floor on the fourth floor of the Rebecca Cohn, waiting for my Dylan class to start, I tried to listen to everyone's conversation at once. At first I couldn't help but concentrate on one coversation at a time, like I simply couldn't listen to something that was not in some way coherent. But eventually, I gave in to the noise and chaos and let all the morning chatter in the hallway have equal audio play. The conversations started to bleed into one another, creating a runny, mushy sound. Egg yoke dripping off a fork. Eventually the sound became so distorted in my ears that I couldn't even distinguish it as voices. It sounded like water. A rushing, roaring, rumbling water, flowing underground, so you don't notice it at first...but if you are very still and very quiet, suddenly it is all around you. I layed on the floor with my eyes shut and let other people's coversations become waves of sound, picking me up and rocking me gently. I floated on a vast sea of language, sentences rolling in waves, crashing down in exclamations and laughter. Little words lapped at my toes.

When I go across the country by train, I will buy a package of ciggarettes. Not because I smoke, but because I do not.

I remember when we took the train to Montreal, Jaime and I split a pack of smokes. I remember us sitting in the smoking car, which was its own little community, fully contained. We listened to conversations we would never had heard. We acted completely out of character. I remember listening to this blonde girl, with hair so styled it almost looked like a beehive. She described herself as the freak of Bathurst...which made me wonder just how small Bathurst is. I remember watching the wavering threads of gray, trickling slowly out of pursed mouths and billowing around sleepy heads.

More than once, in that car, we shared stories with our smokes. I want to hear them again. I want to tell my own. So I will buy a pack of ciggarettes, regardless of the fact that I don't smoke.

What other ways will I step outside of myself? I might enter a Kareoke contest to make some food money. Maybe I will start wearing hats inside or listening intently to jazz. I will drink whiskey, dark brooding liquers, local beers that people swear by, hands over hearts.

I've heard that if you try hard enough, you get your hands on real Absenthe in Alberta or BC.....perhaps I will be breaking the law....more than usual....perhaps.

I have changed my desktop background to a picture of Salmon Arm, BC. A place I have never been, but hope to visit this Spring. My background used to be a picture of a sunset. It came with the sample pictures, ambiguous, meaningless and impossibly pink. I have no idea where the picture was taken and I don't care about it. That has all changed. I care about everything now. Everything matters. Everything can play a part in the perfect story that brews like homemade whisky in my mind.

The picture of Salmon Arm was taken in Winter, at night, and features a row of gnarled trees, naked except for their covering of snow. The trees stretch off into the distance, beckoning the eye to search past what is immediately visible. Beside the trees there is a footpath, the snow kicked up and trudged upon by dozens of feet. Footprints of people who live in Salmon Arm. I am imagining my own footprints there, mingling with theirs. I would feel close to these people if I could physically walk where they walk. The picture is taken at night, but is filled with an unearthly orange light. A streetlight of some kind. But it is blurred by darkness and snow and poor focus, the long pole almost invisible to my eye. All I can really see are the two glowing orbs, peeking and glittering through the stark, white branches. They illuminate the snow, making it look like a soft, yellow blanket and they cause the trees to cast threatening shadows. A row of elongated, spindley-legged demons, with arms outstretched and sharp, twiggy fingers reaching. That light calls me to it, and not in that cheesy after-life way. It reveals a path to follow. Far off in the distance, in the picture, I can just barely make out a house. In front of the house, there is another orb of light, smaller, fainter, but still there. As if to say, "keep looking, there are more of us here to find."

This is my desktop background. I look into the picture and I see myself, already there. I wave to myself. I ask myself if it is as nice there as the picture seems to portray it. No one is disappointed. Salmon Arm is perfect. Beautiful. Like nothing you've ever seen. You should come. You should see it.

Okay. I will.

so last night was Black Tie night, and all in all, it went off pretty well. Tim, Carolle's boyfriend, was my temporary date. I had to return him when she eventually showed up, but he was lovely company. The food was marvellous, the show was amazing, and the dancing was kickin'. Here are some of my favorite images I'd like to remember:

Rob Anderson as our bellboy

Our suite with the jacuzzi in the main room surrounded by mirrors and tacky paintings of greek columns on the walls. It was a total sex room. So nasty.

Mom in her CFMP's (Come fuck me pumps)

Carolle looking like quite the little strumpet in the 'All That Jazz' number

My dad, dancing to Aretha Franklin covers

Tim's jokes about Norma Lee McCloud, our host. ("Norma-lee (normally), I would be wearing more clothes, but...)

Verounique's Janet Jackson impression

Tim's sexy dance for carolle...in front of everyone...HA!

Walking aroud drunk with Tim, talking about Louis Riel and Iron Maiden and realizing that we really don't belong there.

Mary Lou drinking straight vodka out of a soap dish

all the flashing of boobs and gratuitous nudity that comes with hanging out with a dance crowd

Lou's herbal ciggies....'Voodoo Rum', black with a gold filter. Not very good either.

Erin, gesturing with the doritos, flinging them across the room

Encouraging Tim to loudly sing "Run to the Hills"

Yep...lots of smutty family fun. Can't wait for the next one.

So I finally saw a mouse in my apartment. For months now I've heard them in the walls, crawling, scratching, running in small armies. Maybe they were just training all this time. Only now are they going to come for me...

The first time I heard them I spent an hour searching my apartment, looking for holes in the walls, gnawed corners of boxes, any sign that they were in here. Nothing. That was months ago. But just now, as I sat down at the computer with my tea, I saw it. That distinct curl of a tail, that unmistakable brown fur, that telltale scurry, out of the corner of my eye. It came out onto the kitchen floor from behind the fridge as if to say, "I claim this land in the name of pestilence! You, madam, are doomed!", before slipping quickly into an imperceptible hole between the counter and the heater. That little bastard.

I'd like to tell you a clever plan for eliminating this little problem, but in all honesty, I don't plan on doing a thing about it. I've had two unfortunate mousetrap experiences...hey remember that boardgame? Yeah, that was a good one, so many little pieces...not as good as Grape Escape though. In that one you got to smush things.

I'll let the mouse stay. I'll call him William. Maybe if I give it a distinguished name, he'll seem like a pet that I don't have to take care of. How ideal! He will be my lousy friend, down on his luck, who squats in my apartment, eating my food and making a mess and not offering to help with the rent. He will be my surprise visitor, maybe even my roommate until spring. I don't really care. And anyways, he was probably here first.

Give me your hands and I'll teach you to fly. We won't fall as long as we don't let go. You and I will flutter down softly like leaves, swept up and swirled every so often by a strong gust of wind. You and I will cling to each other in the dark. We will laugh because we are scared and we will find ourselves to be tragically beautiful, or beautifully tragic. You decide. We will run through wet grass in bare feet and dance to the sunrise as though it is at our command. As though it is rising for us alone. We will listen exaustingly to Hawksley Workman and Leonard Cohen, dissecting each line for its relevance to us. We will drink warm juice and eat bruised apples out of our backpacks, watching endless rocks and trees through the windows. We will lose track of the date and the time and the place, because all that matters is here and now and us.

Let's be different people everyday, adopting new identities, pasts, even accents. Let's be Irish in Toronto. Let's be Russian while sitting in the observation car. I want to explore mountains and forests with you. I want to get lost and ask a stranger for directions only to be led even further off track. When we get there, we have to go to a concert. Any concert. We'll sit in the back of a lounge that has old carpet and wobbling tables, sticky with beer. We'll listen to the music like it's a sermon, watching each note tremble and quiver in the air over our heads before letting them slide down our throats like warm milk. We will drink everything in.

We'll do it all together.

I love Matthew's mind. I would like to crawl into it, curl up and go to sleep. I would only have beautiful dreams there.

Last night I went to see my sister in the Dal opera. As always, her performance was fantastic and inspired. She had to evoke the muses of the Captain from Jaws to help her out with the drunken scenes. I love it.

*slurringly sings* "Farewell and adieu to you fair spanish ladies...."

The opera was about a fortune teller, played by Erin, who has spent her life cheating her clients with phony seances. It all goes wrong because at one point, during a seance, she feels a hand on her throat in the dark and thinks that she has actually summoned the dead. She is frightened and confused, desparately trying to account for such a phenomenon. She blames the incident on Toby, the mute boy she has taken in, begging him to admit that he tricked her. Toby refuses to answer. But there is something haunting her in his eyes. He sees more, he knows more. The fortune teller, Baba, goes mad with fear and paranoia. She kills Toby, thinking that he is a ghost...but what truly happened is never really revealed. The opera ends with her crouching over the corpse of Toby, gnarled hands reaching, clutching, begging for answers that never come.

"Was it you? Was it you?"

It was an excellent performance....but one scene, one line really resonated with me. It was simultaneously so tragic and so beautiful. Baba's daughter, Monica, loves Toby. He loves her too. They are playing a game in which he professes his love to her, but she must kneel behind him and speak the words for him. At one point Toby get frustrated. He begins to weep isolated, desparate tears...until Monica says this:

"Toby, I want to tell you something. You have the most beautiful voice in the world."

And maybe he does. His voice is the most beautiful because no one can hear it. What if this is always true? What if blind people see more beautiful things in their blindness than we could ever imagine? What if it is them who pity us, regarding us as having a handicapp. What if deaf people, in not having to hear that wall of sound we live with every day, are able to hear things we did not know existed? What if abtract idea like truth, beauty, love, bliss...what if these things all have sounds? Music? Do you think a deaf person could hear it? I do.

I don't have shows. I don't have venues or performances or tickets or programs. No one interviews me and asks me inane questions about my influences and favorite movies. No one carefully clips and saves pictures and articles published about me to show to everyone. Bravo has no interest in doing a show about what i do. Bravo has never, and likely will never even know who i am. I don't receive armloads of flowers on opening nights. I don't have opening nights. My only performances were to near empty rooms, scattered with people i begged to come see me.

You know that scene in Peter Pan when he's chasing his own shadow...I feel like that sometimes, except the shadow is chasing me, and it's not even mine.

There was that night, years ago now, that continues to resurface and torture me. We were at the golf course club house, having dinner. We were lined up to be introduced and categorized, ready to be filed away, neat and tidy.
"These are my daughters. This is Carolle, The Dancer. This is Erin, The Singer. And this is Kathryn.....um."

And that was my category. Just file me under "um" for now, thanks. My label is void. That was one of those moments when my perspective did a 180 degree pivot. The eyes that looked out eagerly, turned inward, questioningly. I was forced to look at myself for the first time. But I saw lots of things. Lots of convenient labels to choose from with which to define and describe me. Why didn't you? I hate that memory. I would like to pluck it out of my brain like the festering weed that it is, before it chokes out all of the beautiful things that might want to grow there.

so here you go, I'll do it for you. I am Kathryn, The Writer. Or at least i'd like to be someday. How could not know that about me? But before I can write, i have to live. I have to suffer and experience things vastly different from my comfortable norm. This spring, the beginning of May, I will try to take the train all the way across Canada. I will look out of the windows and watch trees filled with angels blurring as we pass them. I will meet interesting strangers who are beautiful in their mystery. I will feel exaustion, fear, excitement and confusion. I will long for comforts that I willingly left behind. I will relish discomfort and let it teach me. I will have an adventure. I will give it a soundtrack. I will laugh until it hurts and cry until i laugh. I will find beauty in garbage and road signs and sketchy diners. I will see things that are there only for me to see. I will show them to you.

I will have experienced something and I will write it all down. You'll see.

I allude to things and you wonder what I mean. I know it bothers you that I don't tell you everything. Truth be told, I don't tell me everything. I keep myself in the dark, covered in silver scarves, holding one hand over my eyes and another over my mouth. I sing loudly to drown out my thoughts. I keep secrets hidden in drawers, under folded clothes and hope that I don't find them. I make up secret languages and codes, scrawled on scraps of crumpled paper and old receipts. I leave them where I will forget about them and later sweep them into the garbage can without thinking. I habitually trick myself, pull the wool over my own eyes and pull shiny dimes from behind my own ears. I am always suprised and delighted.

So I'm sorry if you want to know my secrets. I can't tell you.

Once again the words creep in and force me out of my much needed sleep. This is why actual authors always become crazy and look like vampires. Thinking about last night, trying to piece the moments together so it forms a coherent whole. I was planning on doing this last night, but everything was spinning and laughing at me, so I went to bed where the sheets and pillows were only snickering softly.

The Dome wasn't the sleazy, scary place that had been built up in my mind. People exaggerate. It's just a bar. A bar full of drunk people who stumble into me and dump drinks over my head. What an asshole.

"Are all girls in Halifax as beautiful as you two? They just don't make 'em like that in Alberta."

We laughed and danced with them for a while. I think they took a picture of us with a digital camera.

"Yeah, I want to be a writer.
"Well you ARE a writer. You're just not published yet."

When we drink we all play games of touching and kissing each other. So strange when you think about it the next morning. Little kisses, little laughs. Musical laps.

I think I felt jealousy for the first time in months. It chewed away on my stomach and rib cage, grabbing a hold of my insides and twisting them furiously. Wanting to yell and scream. Looking away instead. Always pretending. All pretense. It's all just a game, isn't it? Yes. Just a game.

"Your mix tape will be ready on friday."
"This means we're having an affair you know.."
"Really? What kind of affair?"
"Oh, the best kind."

It's always the conversations I recall. Fragmented and fleeting. I snatch at them. I want to hold them and put them in my pockets for later, but I can't. They are like balloons caught in trees, shimmering and trembling in the wind. Tantilizing me. Out of reach. Still.

....was that coherent? No?

I had a night like that once. When everything fell into place like a perfectly scripted play. A night of laughter and nostalgia and unearthing long buried feelings. A night of soft whispers in a loud, dark bar. A night of blur and haze. Where the alcohol flows like water and stories are told knowingly through booze-scented breath. Where you know all the songs playing and you find yourself slamming down bottles to the rhythm of 'What I Got' by Sublime. Where looks from across the table speak an entire novel of beautiful words. A night of secrets and confusion and drunken tears. Of split second decisions followed by an ocean of questions and consequences. Running away for the purpose of being found. A night where the moon knows more than everyone else. I had a night like that once

Raindrops bead across my face, slipping down my neck and into my jacket. I shiver with cold, but I like the way the rain makes everything gleam...like the world has been polished because company's coming. Icy droplets run down my arms like tiny rivers, dripping steadily off of my fingertips as if I am their source. I shed raindrops in layers, like I am shedding skin. I imagine when I step inside I will be renewed entirely. My skin will be pink and raw, but promising and innocent.

I'm sitting in my apartment with my window open, listening to the sounds of thawing. I can hear the city melt, grow soft and runny, forming enormous puddles of dying winter. I love how hard becomes soft each year. I think I'll do the same.

I have a complex relationship with mirrors. I dread them and yet at the same time, i cannot walk by one without sneaking a quick glimpse into it, if only for a split second. I don't do this to admire myself, but to reassure myself. I need to know for certain that some unknown person has not snuck up behind me and flicked a swith or pulled a particular string that would change everything back to the way it was two years ago. I look in the mirror constantly to be sure that it is my twenty-year-old self and not my eighteen-year-old self looking back at me. I feel like my body is in an unnatural state and therefore must eventually return to the state it was in before...that's some sort of physical law isn't it? Yeah, i know, I'm an English major for a reason. Whatever my real fear is, I spend each day unwillingly obsessed with my reflection. I hate this about me.

I watch myself in the mirror when I do crunches on the exercise ball at the gym. My eyes focus upon my side, that fold of skin, that one little soft spot that threatens to undo all of my hard work. I glare at it. I tell it that I have a new life now, that it can't be a part of it. It doesn't listen and it doesn't care. It grows eyes and a mouth as I watch it, winking at me and sticking out a long pink tongue. I give it a good pinch. Take that. I hate you. You remind me of how I used to be.

Eventually I give up and it wins. It always wins. I try to focus on the positive, all the things that are different about me and not so soft. I stretch carefully and walk towards the showers, but not before giving myself another long hard look in the mirror. Ugh. I hate this about me.

My alarm blares out into the darkness, a high pitched urgent sound like a siren or a smoke alarm. It always scares the hell out of me. I've had it for years and I still wake up every morning in total frightened confusion, with my heart racing. My hands reach out feebly towards the incessant noise. Make it stop. Make it go away. In my half-asleep stupor I can only manage to hit the snooze. I lie back down, disoriented and try to get more sleep, knowing in the back of my mind that the sound will begin again in only nine minutes.

A second attack. This time the hand is ready for it. I lick chapped, rough lips. My mouth feels like it's full of damp cotten and my hair is stuck to the back of my neck in a cold sweat. I stumble out of my bed like a drunk, legs teetering and wobbling, threatening to give me away. I flick my bathroom light switch, forgetting for the twentieth time that it has burnt out and I'm too lazy to fix it.

I feel generally awful. Woozy and drunk still with sleep, sore from my exursions at the gym yesterday. This is no attitude with which to start the day, so I make tea. Earl Grey. I have some granola. I do a few yoga stretches, and I come to you. Everything feels better if you know there's an easy way to talk about it and have at least a few people listen. Thanks guys.

There is a boy who lives on my street whose entire world is contained within an old bed sheet. He has the body of an adult but the mind of a child, so his age is ambiguous and hard to determine. Everything about him is soft. He is of a gigantic stature but his body is large and unworked...Soft. His hair is the color of caramel and the texture of goose down. On sunny days he stands on the sidewalk in front of his house and plays with a bed sheet for hours. The bed sheet is old and worn, blue with a pattern of burgundy diamonds. It looks mass-produced and was probably purchased at Zellars or Sears. He wraps the sheet around himself like an oversized cape, trailing along the ground and gathering leaves and dust. One hand pulls the sheet tightly against him, the other performs the game. He gently flicks his other hand up and down, like the action of playing with a yoyo, making the sheet ruffle and jump and dance in the soft breeze. If a really strong gust of wind blows, carrying the sheet outwards and threatening to pull it away from him, he tugs the sheet back down gently and a soft murmur escapes his lips. I think he's beautiful and soft. I want to touch his hands, because I know they would be as soft as dandelion fluff.

One day I was watching him play from a safe distance when his mother caught me out of an upstairs window. She was folding freshly washed bed sheets.

"He's beautiful, isn't he?"
I am startled and embarrassed, my cheeks feel hot. "Yes, he is."
"You can say hello if you like. He might say it back. You don't have to hide."

She smiled warmly and left the window. I approached the boy with caution and stealth, assuming that I would frighten him, when really I was the one who was scared. He heard me behind him and suddenly the bed sheet dropped from his hand and hung lifelessly to the ground. He turned around and squinted at me through thick glasses and a piercing sunset.

"Hello." I smiled as though I was trying to sell him something.

He is smarter than this though. He smirked at me and a small giggle rose in his throat, erupting in soft bubbles of laughter. I walked home with the distinct feeling that he knew something that I didn't and he was teasing me about it. Still, he is beautiful. Someday I will touch his hands and feel how soft they are.

Last night I dreamt about the Canada days of my childhood. In prospect, on Canada day, everyone decorates their boats (yes, almost everyone has a boat) with canadian flags and red and white balloons and goes in a boat parade. It sounds boring but we used to make it fun for ourselves. Two years in a row, Amanda and I filled garbage bags with water balloons(red and white of course) and armed ourselves with super soakers. Any time the bay got narrow, which was often, and a boat passed closely by us, we would attack. Most people were very good natured about us and laughed, but we always got a few shouted obsenities and rude gestures...which made us laugh harder. After the parade, someone with a large dock and a large property would host an after party. There would be tons of food, boiled corn, mussels, coffee. At one party a few of us kids had a coffee drinking contest. I won. I drank eight cups and went temporarily insane. Most of the time though, we would spend those parties stealing half beers. We would hop from boat to boat, all tied together, and make away with any open bottles. The owners of the stolen beers would never even notice our presence. They were always way too drunk (yes, alot of people get drunk and drive fast boats around there). Then we'd congregate in the first empty boat we could find and choke them down. We never got drunk from them...we used to pretend though. That was the best part.

But that's not what I dreamt about. I dreamt it was Canada day, but I was just sitting on Amanda's dock. We couldn't go swimming because the water was writhing with snakes, so we were waiting for a boat to come buy and offer us a ride. Three boats came buy, all driven by celebrities. Bruce Campbell waved at us while zooming by in his zodiac. Jamie Lee Curtis was in a Kayak with two young children. She stopped to chat but we still had no offers of a ride. Finally, a big, luxurious speed boat pulled up to the dock, with Tim Curry of all people at the steering wheel. So we hopped in and had a fantastic time. Now, I am one of those people who knows when they are dreaming. Throughout this dream I kept wondering why these celebrities? I never really think about them or have any great desire to meet them. While we were shooting about the coves in Tim Curry's boat, I realized that these were all celebrities that Ben would like to meet. I had his dream in my childhood setting. Weird no?

I hate knowing that if I were to step outside right now and look up at the sky, I wouldn't be able to see the stars. You can never really see the stars in the city. All the lamp posts and traffic lights and flashing neon signs blur together, preventing the sky from taking on that blackness that I remember from my childhood. Away from the city, the night is the purest, thickest black. The sky looks like an inky cloak, suspended over the earth and we all sleep, cradled within its twinkling ebony pocket. In the country the stars shine like beacons, speading across the sky as far as the eye can see, like a vast black field covered in winking diamonds. In the city, the brightness of the stars is muffled, choked out with pollution and chemicals and garish artificial lights. They can only shine faintly, like the wavering feeble glow of a candle that has just been snuffed but the wick is still red and smouldering.

The first week I ever lived in the city, Amanda came over to see my new apartment. We were getting out of her truck late that night when we noticed the sky. Murky, smoky and a distinctly burnt orange color. Not at all the silky black sky I knew from home. We immediately assumed that there was a fire somewhere nearby. A big one, one that could fill and color the night with its ashy residue and threatening gleam. As we silently watched the sky, we became increasingly aware of a sound as well. A low, distant rumbling from all directions. Like a soft, velvety roar that clutched and cradled us with an enormous hand, fingers curled and palms sweating. After a few more minutes we realized that these sights and sounds were not signs of destruction and disaster, but natural effects of the city. That's when I first discovered that the city does not know true darkness or true silence like the country does. That night I went to sleep in my factory bed, amidst the whirring and churning of a city without real night. I didn't sleep well.

Today in my romantic literature class, I was shown an artist's interpretation of Percy Shelley. His eyes were drawn to be exaggerated and out of proportion to his face. It gave him this other-wordly kind of quality so that you know, just by the picture, that he saw things that other people couldn't even imagine. My teacher explained that the picture was not accurate, but purposely altered to express the fact that Shelley was a visionary. I spent a few moments pondering what a similar interpretation of myself might yeild. Would any part or faculty be augmented or diminished? If anyone ever does draw such a picture of me, I kinda hope that it shows my tongue to be filed to a point. hehehe.

Let's start with early this morning shall we?
I wake up. I am sick. Just when my body was finally getting over the chest cold from last week, my head decides to explode into my nasal passages. Marvellous.

I have a shower in the dark, as my lightbulb blew out. Highly unpleasant.

I burn my toast.

But 'no matter' I say. I smile widely and plan to go about the rest of the morning with high levels of optimism and pep. This plan, inevitably, falls to shit. The turning point was on the walk to school. As I crossed the street from my building, an adorable, friendly, excitable puppy barrels out of a driveway to meet me. I love dogs, so naturally I stop to pat said puppy for a few moments. As I get up and start walking to school, the puppy follows me, all the while dancing and barking and circling my legs with puppy-like playfulness. At first I am amused, but the farther I walk, the more I am beginning to realize that this puppy has decided to follow me wherever I go. Why don't people love their dogs anymore? If this dog received the love and attention it deserves, then it wouldn't try to throw itself at the first stranger who doesn't give it a good kick to the ribs on the way by. I get all the way to Coburg and turn the corner, the puppy persistantly keeps close to my heels. I don't know what to do. I really don't want this puppy to get lost, or hit by a car. I just want the damn thing to go home where it will be safe.....so I do the only thing I can think of the make it turn back. I yell at it. I yell at the puppy in that ugly "bad dog" kind of tone that all dogs understand perfectly and fear collectively. The puppy looked at me with obvious confusion (dogs have very expressive eyes you know) and then slowly turned back and walked home with his little tail hanging down limply.

I felt like absolute shit. What kind of monster is capable of yelling at a puppy for no reason at all, even if it was for it's own good? You can imagine how fantastic of a mood this put me into. Marvellous. Gee Kathryn, how was your morning? Well, I'm sick, I burnt my breakfast and I frightened a small domestic animal. I probably gave the poor thing a complex. It might require dog therapy....

So i wasn't feeling very sunny, to say the least. I stalked to school, propelled by anger and self-hatred. I resolved not to look at myself in the mirror for the rest of the day and I marvelled at my own capacity for cruelty. "Hey!" I thought disgustedly, "maybe I'll be able to tell a child that the tooth fairy is an alcoholic and that Santa is dead before the day is out." Oh ho ho.....this is shaping up to be a good one don't you think?

Three hours of class. No change in mood. Nothing to better or worsen the already shitty day. But no worries, it gets worse.....of course it does!!!! On my lunch break I go to the Dal printing shop to color copy an assignment I have completed.(My teacher requires 2 copies of everything) The assignment is on construction paper. It is slightly larger than regular printer paper...I am aware of this. Even though they are able to reduce things to fit on smaller paper and they can print on paper much larger than construction paper, the printing shop lady cannot color copy my work. Why? Well we simply don't know, it's a mystery. Super. Marvellous.

Finally I go to campus copy (who doesn't do color copies by the way) in order to print off my essays due today. All the computers are busy. I see Brad who tells me that he is almost finished, so I try to brighten up and patiently wait my turn. While I am waiting for a computer, I notice I'm being stared at by a red-haired girl to my right. We make eye contact, then she goes back to her computer game of racing penguins and her icq while I continue to wait to do actual work. At this point, I am near starving, wasting my lunch break and almost having a seizure from sheer annoyance. I would have reached out and strangled her if I wasn't so enthralled with her nerve and egotism. I finally print my essays, but campus copy has misplaced their regular stapler so I have to use the big awkward one that slightly mangled the corners of overything it fastens together. GOD DAMNIT! I hate people and today sucks.

The worst part is, it's only two o'clock and I have two more classes to go to.

Trying to teach me how to sing is like trying to teach me how to breathe. Unecessary. I don't say this because I fancy myself some prima donna prodigy type. I certainly don't. I say it because I don't sing in order to sound pretty and please the aural faculties of others. I sing because I need to. I sing and write songs because if I don't then I will swell with melodies until the pressure is unbearable and burst. When that happens, all matter of notes and rhythms and chords will flow like avalanches of sound from my shattered being. The air will fill with bleating horns, wailing strings and thunderous percussion all rolling together in a cacaphonous tidal wave. It will be messy too.

This must be avoided at all costs, so I sing. I write songs and I sing them to myself over and over again. Sometimes I think my songs are completely divorced from my mind. They are born somewhere between my heart and my stomach, like pulsing, glowing embers. I cannot leave them there, as they will surely burn me. I let them escape through my fingertips and my toungue, spitting and plucking little bits of flame and music.

She was seven. I was nine. We had exausted all possible games and toys, so logically we decided to build a teepee. No small task for children, let me tell you. It took the better part of a day to construct, spending hours running back and forth with fallen tree branches and armloads of brush. She had just moved there and her father had been doing a lot of clearing on their new property so materials were not in short supply. When we finished, we were sweating and limb-weary. My sweat shirt was covered with dirt and bark and tiny tufts of green moss, clinging like snowflakes. I remember smelling my hands and realizing how much they smelled like earth and trees. I liked that. Our teepee stood about a hundred yards from the house and was, at its base, about the circumference of the average kitchen table made to sit a family of five. Amanda swung her arm over my shoulder and we admired our creation like two teenage boys eyeing a new sportscar. We crawled inside through the one small entrance we had made for ourselves but, to our disappointment, we couldn't gaze in awe at our ingenuity and skill. It had taken so long to build the damn thing that it was almost dark outside. You can imagine therefore, how absolutely pitch black it was inside our teepee. This simply would not do. We considered getting a flashlight, but it just seemed so inauthentic and we, more so than most children our age, were purists......So we decided to light a fire in the teepee.

The fire crackled, tiny, glowing and beautiful, throwing a soft orange light. I watched the shadows the fire made leap and dance over her face in celebration of what we had done that day. We were completely silent, words would only sully this moment of sheer accomplishment and pride.....until i heard her scream.

"Fire....FIRE! THE ROOF!!"

I suppose that in our raptures of self-congratulations, we had neglected to watch the steadily growing fire between us. I looked up, panicking, to see that brush over our heads had indeed ignited and was burning happily. Who would have thought that dry moss and flame would be such a destructive combination? There was no time to exit by turn through the tiny hole we called a door, which now seemed ridiculously small and possibly lethal. A pox on you hindsight! Damn your incessant and unwelcome clarity!!

We had to destroy it. As if by instinct, a common understanding or some strange temporary telepathic powers, Amanda and I both leapt to our feet and, kicking legs and flailing arms in wild abandonment, reduced our creation to ruins. The teepee shattered into pieces as though it had been constructed with popsicle sticks. A dozen or so small fires on it's shattered remains continued to consume and devour our work, but each soon fizzled and died out. We stood side by side, not speaking, surrounded by the smoking wreckage that was our childhood game. We gathered the blackened logs and brush and threw them all over a small cliff, watching them fall onto rocks and the wet, pungeant seaweed of low tide below. We kicked dirt over the remaining evidence of our lesson learned the hard way. We ceased to play with fire and we told no one.

I am stupid. I cannot figure out how make a link for comments. I went to the help tutorial where they broke the process down into a few basic steps, but i think they overestimate my capacity to understand what they deem as "basic". I would have to read a computer jargon dictionary before any of this would even begin to make sense. I didn't even understand the installation instructions enough to give a half-assed shot in the dark kind of attempt. There's just no hope for me.

Funny thing is, the instructions began with the words "Installation is easy!" YOU MOCK MY PAIN!!