hear what i say

annie lennox and a bowl of yogurt, one sock on and one sock off, seven hundred words blinking on the screen, itchy eyeballs and a million and one thoughts whirling around.

most of them have to do with the inappropriate removal of clothing in public spaces.

i think i may be screwed.

yay?

what did you do today?

a captured moment:

i'm sitting on our foot stool, twisted sideways and to the right. on the butcher block is a deep earthenware bowl, characterized by rough textures and brown and green flecks, filled part way with chicken stew. beside it, split open and steaming from impossible angles is a tea biscuit, the recipe holding more charm and magic for me than most. i've put a bulb in the kitchen light that makes it look like high noon on the south wall- the white is positively glaring but i love it absolutely. coldplay, or the stones, or maybe belle and sebastian is playing in the background- something so familiar that i can't distinguish, nor do i care to.

my sweater itches around my elbows and around my shoulder blades, reminding me that wool is like nothing else and that my posture leaves quite a bit to be desires. my feet and ankles are like ice- my slippers have been abaonded with this slight promise of spring that looms over everything here and now.

i have a pencil crammed in my hair and a book dancing with words infront of me. despite what they say, i maintain that unWhigged cannot be a word. that damned w jumps out, its hugeness stark and frightening in form.

three seconds? maybe an eternity?

i had a dream about a place like this once.

you know you shook me

led zeppelin + kaffee! + egg + monk jokes = hello monday!

[all of this also serves to take some of the edge off of the panic and sene of doom lurking just beneath the suface because, and oh i am quite sure of this, my reading week was more of a procrastinate and watch movies and eat a lot of fruit and wear skirts whilst longing for summer kind of week. definately not one devoted to reading, as per the title suggests. blast!]

can i find the candle of thought to light your name?

the sidewalks are bleached white by the salt, hard and opaque under the late afternoon sun. i imagine that, were they viewed from high enough, they might resemble a disjointed skeleton, breaking off abruptly, twisting unnaturally through long areas of browns, blacks and deep greens, splashed about through stark stretches of deep colour.

he wouldn't dare admit it, and i'm sure he'll show his strength once more, but my skeleton, snaking through this flesh in a slightly more ordered manner than the bones of the roadways tells me that old man winter has lost his grip. there's a touch of something in the sun, a lack of soemthing in the wind, the sound of something just outside the range of perception that points toward the possibility of earlier sunrises, later sunsets, birkenstocks, and barbeques.

i can never decide if march is actually a season of shutting down or waking up.

the possibility of a hyacinth in the near future is quite likely.

a portrait of a flower in full bloom

so, despite my declaration that children of men wasn't outstanding, i might have to actually come out and say that it's actually outstanding. it stuck with me much longer than it should have, and now i find myself planning to watch it again in the near future. maybe i just like the weird dystopian aspects. maybe i'm secretly in love with michael caine. maybe it's clive owen, who, for once, captured my attention and not through being a dick. who knows? regardless- i think perhaps maybe it was outstanding. and quite so.

in other news, today marks the first day in just over a week that i feel human again. maybe it was cooking- i made a giant pot of chicken stew and a pineapple upside down cake and biscuits for my roomies. maybe it was clean clothes- my sweater smells like cheer and, i'm pleased to say, bergamot.

[i've been aiming for that for some time].

or maybe, maybe it's something else. i don't know. i hate leaving things so airy-faerie [as a weird aside- i must say i am tempted to type that as aerie-faerie, simply for aesthetic reasons, even though the meaning may be a little off if i do so. and by a little i mean a lot]. but, well.

it seems i am still suffering from being unable to find the right words.

i still can't fault with this.

also- are you blind? i mean, honestly.

but maybe it's the perfect day

so, i just illegally watched children of men.

and i have to say that i truly wish i had pushed harder and longer for poeple to go and see that in the theatre with me. not that it was outstanding, but it was different.

it did make me say "jesus fuck!"

which definately counts for something, at least in my books.

you'll have to trust it

so where do i begin?

i feel almost as if i've been sucker punched. or maybe- and probably more accurately- that i've spent the last five days living instead of participating in life. it's refreshing and lovely on some levels, and postively, absolutely terrifying on others.

friday night and most of saturday defies explaination. a houseguest of anna's suffered from severe alcohol poisioning. use your imagination to imagine a girl in such a state in a living room. you can guess how the room fared, how the people looking after her fared, and how much cleaning there was to do the next day. imagine also, however, that in the midst of this, another girl shows up- one who is stuck in the worst possible way, needing to be somewhere desperately and having no way to be there.

this contributed partly to the madness of those forty eight hours. not only was i vomited on [by two different people- but the second time just involved astronomically bad timing on the parts of morgen and i], but i also drove tuesday to peterborough, and then myself back to ottawa on next-to zero hours of sleep in a borrowed car. and then, in less than eight hours, i found myself on a bus to toronto to try to spend some kind of quality time with my siblings, which included sneaking swedish berries from the cupboard to watching knights joust at medieval times.

i feel washed out. pale. worn thin like old jeans in a small town.

there's something about days like these ones that just make the following time seem strange- odd things highlighted in a most peculiar way. songs take on meanings that they probably don't have, pictures capture attention spans for longer than necessary, and scents that aren't really there hang like wisps of silk in the air.

i've lost all the proper words i need in the past few days.

i think i like this.

look after me and i'll look after you

biggest. effing. gongshow. evvvvvver.

[needless to say, this needs explaination, but it'll have to wait as three hours of sleep creates the inability to even attempt an iota of coherency. just, you need to know- the rug is gone. and i managed to get vomited on by two people in less than six hours. and i drove five hudred kilometres. and just about anything and everything else you can imagine in between]

a grey moon on the rise

i've been thinking a lot about communities lately.

it might be because of what i'm reading, or because of what i'm experiencing. or maybe it's because of who i've been talking to, the music i've engaged. regardless, i've been thinking about communities. i like how communities can be spontaneously created through a shared event. my favourite place for this to happen is on public transit.

normally, on city busses, no one looks you in the eye. everyone half smiles, nods, shuffles out of the way, and leaves little to no lasting impression. however, toss in a holiday, a snowstorm, a bus driver who does nothing but joke about getting close- it is after all, a holiday of love and we are, after all, young and able bodied students, the willingness of everyone to laugh out loud with each other, and a normally solitary bus becomes a group of people united.

this is what happened tonight.

it was astounding. and i wish it could happen every day.

brother, brother, far too many of you dying

even though the feast of saint valentine is tomorrow, my roommates and i celebrated it this evening, in style no less.

kate made heart shaped biscuits. i made a heart shaped cake with hot pink icing that really was more than amazing, and heart shaped love-meat, and anna brought a busy busy busy heart out of a hermit state to join in. there was ice cream [which we store outside because it's colder than out freezer], a sprinkle of wine, red food dye [i made kate snort tea out of her nose in connection with said dye- so many points!], rice, steamed broccoli and tea everywhere. near the end, morgen came in with a burger and from there thigs slid into debate and conversation and curled mouths and emotive hands.

it's now nine o'clock. i've had an entire day and have yet to even begin reviewing my notes for my midterm tomorrow.

living seems to have taken precedence over life this day.

and i can't be arsed to care.

spinning round inside my head

sometimes i forget about songs and then, at a mere suggestion, i am swept away into their sound again.

don't you know this life goes on
and won't you kiss me
on that midnight street
sweep me off my feet
singing ain't this life so sweet

this years love had better last

there's some things. some things.

my backpack is currently full of empty bottles, a sticky cake plate, a cork screw and three corks, beer caps, random papers and scraps from gum packages. i haven't gotten dressed yet. last night things reminded me of cinnamon and molasses- foreign and fond and unmistakeably necessary.

yeah, a tunnel, from my window to yours

i spent the majority of yesterday in bed.

oh, not that that is anything new, i know. i just feel like maybe i should once again get a handle on this bed thing. as i gravitate toward its softness, its solitariness, its security, i find myself disconnecting with the outside social world. instead of focusing on the realm of out there, i think more about in here, about me in an extrmely limited sphere. this simply will not do.

however, in defense, my bed really is quite spectacular.

in other random news, i seem to be limited musicaly lately as well. everywhere i go, i am followed by the sounds of achtung, baby! and peter gabriel and chirs martin. again, i'm not sure if this is good or bad. it's familiar, that's for sure.

i need to make a lemon cake.

i'm going to watch battlestar gallactica.

i think i've gone and done it again.

you've been trying to throw your arms around the world

slipping into twenty three surrounded by kitchen things, a five layer cake, spicy shrimp, collective soul and the people who i love best here in ottawa.

yeah, that about sums it up.

that, and that particular feeling that is equatable to riding on a roller coaster that cannot be accurately described in words. you know, the one that can only be known by association?

of course you do.

oh i beg, i'm begging please

so i made the best/worst decision ever and downloaded an n64 emulator to play mostly mario kart and some diddy kong racing.

it's got me thinking though, of my all time favourite video game moment of life. it's in zelda, ocarina of time. i can't remember the lead up exactly, but link is in the mountain of the gorons and he plays a song for the goron king.

said goron king begins to dance.

i know it might seem weird to take joy from a programmed response, from an event that must happen by necessity in a created world, but, good god, i watched that danmed goron king dance his dance about eighteen million times because it is by far one of the happiest things of video-game life i've ever seen.

if only i could find a copy of it on the internerd!

fucking well come and find me- i'll be waiting

i find myself overcome at strange moments by images so vivid, so present, that i am reduced to tears.

tonight it was the beach boys, the thought of a small basement kitchen, and my father mouthing the words to a simple song.

i thought of a thousand and one questions i suddenly wished i had answers to. things like, what the first serious album he bought was. and what colour of suit he wore to prom [did he go to prom?], and what season it was when he got his driver's liscense, and what his first apartment looked like. things that seem so inconsequential, but really, can mean quite a lot.

of course i'm reconciled to the fact that i won't have answers. it's not the answers that i'm looking for particularly.

however, in case you need to know:

the first album i bought with my own hard-earned money was lawrence gowan's au quebec. i went to my high school prom, and my dress was a floor length salmon affair with gold beading that i still to this day secretly adore. i got my driver's liscense in june- early june, with warm days, cool nights and everything still that impossible yellow-green. that night i told mom i was taking the van, twenty dollars, and that i didn't know when i'd be home. it was terrifying. and outstanding. and thrilling. i haven't lived in an apartment yet- but my house is old and crooked with hardwood floors and is full of laughter and smells of baking and bright yellows and teals and rich browns and oranges- all things you could not tell from it's horrific exterior. oh- and we have pigeons. i haven't the heart to evict them.

but i do have the heart to listen to the beach boys.

and smile.

it's funny how life can go

two words to sum up last night: drinking game.

what sticks out most in my mind, thought, is the way the wind danced around my pantyhose clad legs and the lights reflected off of spinning snow as peter and i walked to the wine store that is not a liquor store to buy three litres of half-good red wine. what is most clear is the image of a giant group of people, smiling and laughing, cake crumbs and chocolate dipped strawberries rolling and falling haphazadly around the room. what i remember best are the curved smiles and glinting teeth and clapping hands and sock clad feet as people danced around one another, sharing stories and debating over the attractiveness of certain actors in battlestar gallactica.

[that last one really shows how geeky we all are. and despite what the girls say, i will never love gaius balthar. never]

i woke up this morning to the voice of thomas edison speaking on the radio.

i have no set plans and a million and one things to do. days like this are my favourite kind.

words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup

i had grandiose plans for today.

instead i washed a mat, watched an episode of battlestar gallactica, looked at found things, and bought the most eclectic collection of food yet this year. all very grandiose in their own way, i suppose, but certainly not the level to which i was aspiring.

i seem to lack motivation.

perhaps a good sleep will fix this?