'the adventures of a thirty-ish university graduate' or, alternately and perhaps much more aptly: 'as mad as a barking fox'

Saturday, December 31, 2005

need the rain to wash away our bad love

people are slowly drifting in- a physical reflection of the sparkles that are spposed to be snow dancing outside the front window. it's all framed by lights that change colour and which reflect in a tree made of tinsel.

new years eve. i'm twenty one. i'm sitting on my floor, working on my school work. some part of me is asking if this is what someone of my age is supposed to be doing on a night like this. the other part of me is shaking its head- this is what i do every new years.

next year i promise to laugh and cry a little more. i promise to tell you what i mean even if it scares me. or you. i'll dance more with my shoes off regardless of who can see me. i promise less drama, and more drama than you can handle. i promise merlot, schnapps, firelight and hardwood floors in all kinds of weather. i promise you that someone will die, someone will live and someone will move on. i promise more bad music [including but not limited to justin timberlake and britney spears] and i promise to try my hand at singing in public. i promise i'll walk, and never take something like going up a flight of stairs for granted ever ever again.

mostly, i promise to be me. i can't really guarantee you anythign else.

catch you on the flip side.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

mother will she tear your little boy apart?

kate and i arrived home at just about the same time yesterday.

i'm perched on the stairs, asking her how her exam went when we first hear the dweller mumbling incoherently. he starts to get louder, yells a few things and then falls silent. we stare at each other in, i think i can assume, abject terror and retreat upstairs to look up some appropriate numbers to call to get someone-anyone to come and help us help him.

enter a super hero disguised as a mere morgen. he and kate go to the cellar, where they find the dweller, covered in vomit and his own waste, curled up in a ball in the corner on the floor mumbling to himself. there's glass all over the floor and just about everything is trashed or smashed. they get him up, into his bed, and start reasoning with him about going to the hospital. he stays mostly calm, but gets more and mroe agitated as they continue, so morgen gives him a time limit of one hour, comes back upstairs and calls the cops.

the men [and woman, in this case] in blue arrive and convince james that he needs to get up out of the cellar and get some help. apparently he agreed, so an ambulance comes, james gets in and the physical aspect of the dweller is removed.

kate spends the next two hours on the phone calling various people and trying to track down his family, which we eventually do, leaving a message on his sister's voice mail that's lacking in details.

the dweller's sister calls us back today- i talk to her for almost forty minutes about what happened, and am told that this happenes every year, all the time at this time. she also says that she is done with him and can't invest- yet again- emotionally, physically, or financially. and i mean, who can blame her? she then promises to call the hospital and let us know about james and to try and figure something out about his stuff [that is all trashed or good only for the trash anyways, seeing as how most of it it covered in vomit and badness].

she calls back a few hours later.

the dweller never made it to the hospital. he's out and about somewhere, severely depressed, wasted, and more than likely cold, seeing as how it's negative twenty-eight with the wind chill outside today.

this whole situation is wash.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

my mother says when you going to live your life right?

house intervention: accomplished.

i think things went rather well, over all. it turns out that my leg is bionic, kate and morgen have superpowers [especially morgen], and kate ramer really is scary and very no-bullshit when she wants to be without being incomprehensible. james just brought up the same old shit about how he's hard done by- but we got some emotion from him this time in that he did tell me to 'shut the fuck up' a couple of times.

well, at least we know there's a soul in there. an angry, embittered, ill soul who really needs help, but will have to seek elsewhere for a caring, nurturing environment.

in the meantime, kate and i have started referring to him as the dweller- a man-like beast who smells funny, wants sympathy and who has more than worn out his welcome.

harsh? my bad. totally my bad.

vide cor meum

there's something so indelible about listening to opera, dreaming with eyes opened wide and staying up far too late talking about everything and anything, comfortable in mismatched socks and pink slippers with your best friend.

i think i'm going to keep these moments forever, and only ever share them with the moon.

take the long way home

so, the creepy guy that is living in my basement has a serious problem with drugs and alcohol. mostly alcohol- he doesn't know his limit and drinks until he can't walk and/or falls down the stairs.

last week, james fell down the stairs in the middle of the night. he sliced his arm up good and bled like a stuck pig all over the place. tonight, he fell down the stairs, landing is a convoluted twisted heap of limbs and clothing halfway down, stuck on a pillar. but this time, in stead of being the middle of the night, it happened while i was watching die hard instaed of studying. [who can resist a good old fashioned action and christmas movie with bruce willis?].

what pissed me off the most about this though, was not that he was drunk, not that he could have seriously hurt himself, not that he was so wasted that it was inevitable- but that if somethig had happened, i would have been entirely unable to help him. i couldn't even offer to help him up. all i could do was hover on my crutches at the top of the stairs- asking if things were good. the control freak mother in me was livid that she could do nothing, and at the same time, i was livid that i was even put in the situation of having to do anything.

it embarassed him. and you know what? i'm glad that wasted asshole was uncomfortable. welcome to how he makes me feel every second of the time that i spend in his presence.

i can't wait for him to get the fuck out of our house.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

where just a couple of pigeons are living

i dream of snow.

curled in my bed, the rough wool of my blankets tracing lines around my legs and getting trapped by my left leg, i slowly re-imagine the way snow squeaks when you twist your foot just so. i envision the way snow on a hat feels. i imagine that i can taste the water that runs from melting flakes as a sudden rush of warm air from a well-heated shop passes through me.

tucked up on the couch under the ugly blanket, i watch kate come in from outside with her face red and her nose running from the cold. i remember how it feels to have the tip of your nose go numb despite wearing two scarves. i re-live the way cold legs burn when they enter a warm room. i consider what it is to really and truly appreciate a hot chocolate on a cold day.

from my room, i watch the snow fall outside onto kent street.

i forget what that sounds like.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

oh, here comes the flood

you know what's kind of sad but not really in my own little world right now?

the fact that i am beside myself, over the top with excitement because i can now bend my leg almost to its full extent. were i to sit on a couch and hide my crutches, you wouldn't even be able to tell that i'm utterly and totally gimpy and will be for two more months at the very least.

now, if you'll excuse me, i go to bend my leg. muahahahah.

[and yes, that was a manical, slightly evil muahahaha laugh there. the knee makes some pretty wicked noises on the inside. can we say hello to the sound of no cartilage?]

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

let's dance

i spent three hours today watching peter cut, paste, and glue a card decoated with a duck-billed platypus dressed as santa in an under water scene which included a treasure chest full of presnetns and fish that were like elves.

it was out of control. there's just no words for it.

in other random news, these lyrics stand out to me today for no particular reason. i think. i hope? god i fucking love this song.

"Standing at the door of the Pink Flamingo crying in the rain
It was a kind of so-so love
And I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again
You and I had to be the standing joke of the year
You were a run around, a lost and found
And not for me, I fear

Take your hands off me, hey
I don't belong to you, you see
Take a look in my face, for the last time
I never knew you, you never knew me
Say hello goodbye
Say hello and wave goodbye."

Sunday, December 04, 2005

bones sinking like stones

i can't fucking articulate what i want to say.

it involves the fact that despite any ideas to the contrary, there is always some good in the world and that the idea that one person has the worst life possible seems, to me at least, inherently stupid and unfaithful to one's self. and that no matter what, it ends up ok in the end. and that self-action and faith in whatever the fuck you want to believe in is important- not faith in something, but the act of faith itself.

why are young people so fucked up? honestly.

Friday, December 02, 2005

but just saying it could even make it happen

as i crutch through the disater that pretend to be our living room, morgen asks me if i've written anything about my experiences.

this has created an indefinable something inside my head. it snicks, catching like a rough edge on silk or a piece of glass on an otherwise bare floor. it looms over me the way downtown sneaks up on me when i wander aimlessly, always ending up going north. it stops me like jumping into georgian bay in april.

because, really, how do you describe a monster made only of metal, painted green? to a child, it's a dragon, flying fast from a stolen mountain. and how do you describe the sensation of flying through the air, entirely at the whims of physics, unable to take control over a body which should rightfully be yours to control? and that noise- how do you describe the noise your body makes when it bends in ways its not supposed to, when parts crush and come in contact suddenly with ashphalt?

i'm still searching for words.

but i have become convinced that volvos are built like fucking tanks and that if i ever need to plough through a field of zombies, i'm picking a volvo to do it. because a few legs and arms can't even dint such a beast of a machine.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

forlorn somnambulistic manical in the dark

i was planning on school today, but my first class starts....oh in one minutes. so i guess that half of school is out. i think part of my reluctance to go stems from the fact that i know i'm going to have to tell the same story eight million times, and that i'm going to have to watch other people like a hawk to make sure that they don't run into me.

oh, and the whole having to be in real clothes and clean also slowed me down a bit.