it's a hellified way to start your day

i wake up to faye softly asking me where she can find a towel, shuffling quietly around in the early-morning sunshine that's making my toes tingle. after i manage to get something out i roll over, laughing because i'm still entirely drunk.

when i close my eyes, i see lime juice, cocktails, sugared glasses, ice buckets, bottles of merlot, liz dancing with a stuffed snake, pedro explaing that beesan fell asleep in the end of the end come down way, kelly bray swaying slowly on the balcony, kiersten and victoria asking me where the frat boys are. i see a couch full of fourth years, their faces blank as i try to explain who larry gowan was [hellooo criminal mind?] i see kyle okeefe laughing his ass off because we're too stoned to move, repeatedly telling me with glee that he's fucked. i see kate and morgen.

mostly i just see that nostalgic happy feeling i was searching so desperately for in human form, dancing to bad music, mugs clinking in salutations to the end of the year, teeth exposed in smiles that reach into everyone's eyes.

now that's the way to end a year.

I'm so used to being wrong, so put me where I belong

walking down bank street, i notice that summer-sky gleam off in the west where the sun has set. you know the one- it turns the sky a peculiar shade of blue that just isn't comparable to anything else in the world.

so this is it. third year is over.

i can't help but think back to what i thought on this occassion last year, or even two years ago. i recall being filled with a sense of wonder, a disbelief of sorts that everything that i'd been witness to- the parties, the room mate antics, the classes- that it could all be ended with one day signifying the grand end. last year and the year before, this day made me nostalgic.

today i'm nothing but tired. i don't want to remember that i missed half of my year, that i buried two people, that more time was spent feeling alone and disconnected than ever before.

god, that's so, so fucking pessimistic of me. can i be any more fucking narcissistic?

[that's the vox coming through there, in case you were wondering].

maybe, maybe i feel this because today's not the end. my kates and i have planned a year end bash that's going to be spectacular. and maybe, on sunday, when i wake up with a hangover and the smell of good times in my hair, i'll be able to look back and see the hundreds of smiles, the cards, the flowers, the songs, the classes, the room mate antics, the random phone calls, the moments of class and everythign else that has made this year so wonderful and for those few moments, i'll feel that familiar pang of disbelief that my year can be summed into a few seconds worth of memeories.

then, with my luck, i'll probably hurl.

but at least i'll have felt that feeling.

people are you ready? let's start the show

eleven fourteen p.m on a thursday night.

i've a cookie in my pocket [pocket food, anyone?], a mug of tea cooling to drinking temperature, lyrics born on the speakers and my meagre buddhism notes spread around me. my exam is in just over nine hours.

i can't even be bothered to care. instead i'm thinking about what i'll do with my afternoon, the party on saturday, and how much i want to dance.

let's start the show indeed.

will you stay down on your knees?

i've re-discovered nine inch nails.

there's really not much more to say than that except that trent reznor- on top of being quite the looker- is a freakin' genius when it comes to music and lyrics. makes me feel grown up and young all at once.

[oh frankenboring procrastination. how i love thee].

black like a murder of crows

if i had my way, there would be no such thing as frankenstein or take home exams. instead, i would be trying to read a novel by salman rushdie or nick hornby or gabriel garcia marquez curled in my bed with a bowl of popcorn.

instead, it's back to victor and his damned creature. talk about gnashing your teeth- these guys are going to slay me. again.

people think i'm craaaaaaazy

ottawa slipped into summer last week, the pavement reflecting and holding heat long after the sun dropped behind the houses and the just-beginning-to-bud trees that sit to the west of us. girls wore short skirts, snadls were brought out and all of our house smelled like a mixture of when we moveed in sunscreen and the tropical fruit sitting on our table.

rather than studying properly for my exams, i enjoyed the sun to its full extent. i also enjoyed the nightlife a bit. namely, frat boys down at zaphod's. i know alcohol isn't supposed to be an excuse for any kind of behaviour, however, a bottle of red wine, some vodka and a shot of tequila makes me craaaaaazy. throw in some pot [which, for those keeping track, i've indulged in twice this weekend] and the grand result is me on a dance floor busting skanky moves with two boys at once.

who knew i had it in me?

this morning lacked a sunrise as a heavy bank of clouds dumping down rain intermittantly has been sitting over my city for a few days now. despite the sombre looking outside, our house was full of laughter and music and good food as morgen and kate and i [and three friends- dan, trevor and UNSUB] made a sunday morning feast that defies any conventional language for description.

it was good. i mean really, fucking, good.

and now, the afternoon more than half over, i'm crawling back into bed with frankenboring and a pencil entirely content.

awake but i'm still dreaming

"when you asked me to dance, i wish i'd said yes."

quite as good as i should have

it's amazing, really, what three hours of mulder, scully, aliens and super-disgusting fungus spores popping out of people's throats can do for the soul. not to mention the music of elvis.

i'm going to bed for a week.

and i feel your fears

i'd forgotten the potential early morning sunlight splashed across hardwood in oblique angles holds.

it's the same kind of potential you can find wandering through neighbourhoods full of too-large houses, the evening sun glinting off of old leaded windows, reflecting so much more than the shades of rose and purple which deck the edges of the sky, fading to something darker in the east.

seven of us sat around in a circle, my idea of a snack slowly ridiculed but enjoyed, while we tossed out ideas about voltaire's candide and the genre it falls into. racine's account of phaedra is found to be lacking, but somehow surpassing the classical presentations all at once. and don quixote is simply too much to put down in words.

morcheeba plays in the background. and then the tea party. and then led zeppelin.

i watch as the sun slips across the floor, the potential of the morning shifting and changing as its path forces the reflection into a small sliver, trapping a few leaves from the philidendrun.

tomorrow i fly home for another funeral.

i don't know whether i should laugh or cry. however, i'm consoled mightily by the thought of flowers, my brothers and my sister, and a foul black fur beastie. and somewhere, in the midst of all of that, the echo of a woman who will forever stand as the meter against which i will measure kindness, an open heart, the true meaning of love and loving, and the quality of butter tarts.

such a perfect day

sometimes, when i'm reading and i have music on in the background [that isn't linkin park, my god what was i thinking?] the lyrics sneak their way into my head and i find new bits of words strung together that i've never really noticed before. and then other times, the sheer wonder of lyrics that you've always noticed and loved sneak up on you when your computer randomly plays a song you've not heard in quite some time.

tonight, of course, was no exception.

without further ado- i present the cop-out post of some new song lyrics into which i'd like to dive deep for a long while:

see, you and me
have a better time than most can dream
have it better than the best
and so can pull on through
whatever tears at us
whatever holds us down
and if nothing can be done
we'll make the best of what's around

and [my new favourite classic of the moment]:

take my hand
travel south cross land
put out the fire
and don't look past my shoulder
the exodus is here
the happy ones are near
let's get together
before we get much older

that there was something i missed

surprisingly, listening to linkin park actually HELPS with studying.

and here all i thought they were good for was either being made fun of or being the secret guilty pleasure music you indulge in when no one except your roomates are around.

in other random unrelated news, i spent five hundred and twenty nine dollars and thirteen cents on one helluva end-of-the-year present to myself yesterday morning. [three guesses and the first two don't count]. i'm not sure if the wave of nausea i experience everytime i think about it is from sheer excitment or the fact that i could have flown to london, england, for the same price.

maybe it's a bit of both.

i feel your burning eyes burn holes straight through my heart

the strangest series of events has transgressed over the past week.

friday morning, upon waking, i was greeted with a peculiar feeling of something. it took me forever to realize it, but it was the fact that more than half of me wasn't buried deep under my mounds of blankets. and i wasn't cold. outside, it was close to twenty degrees. i opened the doors, put on led zeppelin one and danced while i cleaned, not caring about the spectacle that consisted of me was on view to the thousands of people passing my door throughout the morning.

later that night, i found myself in the back of a church, the heat of the day still lingering and the voices of the choir softly echoing and rebounding off of the pillars that supported the wooden ceiling above my head.

an hour later, i was stealing bits of cinnamon bun french toast from kate and humming along with paul mccartney and wings as band on the run competed with kitchen noises, conversation and the rustle of movement all around.

saturday was a blur, spent in my pajamas and hating the weather which had- of course- turned cold and damp. things remained static until kate tossed much ado about nothing into the vcr very late in the evening. keanu reeves can't act, but kenneth branaugh frolicking about in a fountain is not a sight to be missed.

saturday bled into sunday with a frightening similarity.

until, that is, kate took me out for breakfastlunch at the manx, where i was served french toast stuffed with bananas and smothered in fresh cream and chocolate sauce. no calrioes there folks, i swear. walking home, there were a few eerie minutes of silence in between the tall buildings that made it seem like time had stopped.

monday was long: thirty four hours, twelve cups of coffee, two shots of vodka chased by three dill pickles, and a bag of sunflower seeds kind of long. watching kate print her assignement on my printer at close to four in the morning, i had a flash back to first year that made me laugh on the inside. my god, what were we thinking?

tuesday was rough. i thought it impossible, but coffee really can give you a hangover. by the time brit lit rolled around, i was ready for something, anything to jump start my system, to give me something to really think about.

what's that saying? ask and ye shall receive?

andrew wallace walks in just as i am betting peter that his wife is having their first child. he apologizes for being late and then announces that- in his words- the stork arrived on sunday morning. in the self-same breath he moves on to ask if any of us have any question about where we left off last class. we all stare gaping, open mouthed, until vanessa puts up her hand and asks if it was a boy or a girl.

i watch my professor intently. a small grin curves the sides of his mouth and his hand starts tracing a random pattern on the desk in front of him. a boy, he announces, who weighed in at just over eight pounds. we hold our breath, waiting.

waiting. waitng. waiting.

until finally someone blurts out "what's his name?"

and poor andrew wallace- who, most days, comes to class promptly, well groomed and quite chipper- looks at us with a five o'clock shadow and bags under his eyes and with a shirt with a collar that's gone horribly asunder- looks dazed and almost confused until again, that small smile creeps across his face and, with his mind miles away he answers that the name of his son is harry. harry nicholas.

what a way to end third year- applauding for a new father.

i highly recommend it.