I wish:

1. there was someone to tell about tonight

2. my cats were still alive

3. I could rain out all my thoughts and then feel better.

4. I had a bodiless existence

5. I didn't feel guilty about liking people's book/movie/artist recommendations too much.

6. more people sent me text messages so I could feel a tenth as popular as my sixteen year old brother.

7. I bruised more easily

8. the world had half as many people in it

9. bodies healed faster

10. someone cared, or I made something someone cared about.

11. nights like these were less frequent

12. people spent less time making ipads and more time making technology that improves the world for everyone, not just those who can afford it.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I can't say anything meaningful.

I am annoyed by everything tonight.

Fuck.

Is the only word that comes to my head.

Fuck.

Because I don't know what to say.

Fuck.

Because I have sadness swallowing up my stomach. I can actually fucking feel it clawing away at my existence. This anxious, shaky feeling. Comes and goes, comes and goes. Comes more than it goes.

Fuck.

Because I hate my generation.

Fuck.

Because I am jealous of love affairs between book bound pages.

Fuck.

Because all the people on the television are the same. The same fucking people, the same kids, the same blonde, thin people. The same stories, we all care about the same things.

Fuck.

Because I shouldn't be complaining. Life is perfect, or it should feel that way.

One month

to write a book.

to print a single copy.

So fucking

frustrating.

I have nothing

to say.

But so much to say.

Seeing differently

When we left last night, my ears were still ringing from the music, and my thoughts were still collecting moments into anecdotes. Processing the details of sequins and almost fights, tiaras, and lady gaga, we headed back to your apartment.

"Do you see that guy?" you said pointing to a man walking in a parking lot outside of the tall white apartment buildings. We were a few blocks from your street. "He's the one who took off his shirt."

"I know a guy took off his shirt," I said squinting into the darkness, "But I didn't think that's him."

"It's him, it definitely is," you gave him a quick look and added "Gross."

I thought back to the guy who was on the dancefloor, and tried to compare this man with him. I remembered the shape of his body as if it were a white paper cutout, yet I was unable to fill in the details.

I thought of something to tell you. "Did you see that girl with the short hair wearing the green?" I asked. I thought this would have been enough information to tell you and have you know exactly who I was talking about.

"No, I don't think so," you replied.

"She was a really good dancer with the green shirt and a skirt," I replied filling in the details.

You said nothing, and I continued. "She danced with the drag king when she gave him money. She was a really good dancer."

"No, I didn't notice," you said.

We left these differences of perception in the street, and drank water from your kitchen. Everything was interesting and beautiful. I felt changed even though I didn't want to acknowledge this feeling for fear that I would destroy something that had started so delicately. Change starts slowly and accumulates gradually until you realize that you cannot find the veins of your former existence in your present body.

Your bones have elongated, your thoughts matured, and your desires, depending on your age, have changed subjects and become either more or less intense. Some girls I know stopped wanting pokemon cards, and longed to see sex and the city movies. When they are old, I hope they want to see sunsets more than go shopping.

I don't know how I am changing. I can't pinpoint all the little growths, like little sprouting seeds that seem to be taking root on the recent past self.

I was reading Q.E.D. today, and Helen asks Adele, "Haven't you ever stopped thinking long enough to feel?"

Helen was really asking me this, and I thought about it for a few seconds and smiled. 107 years later and I knew that I was meant to be asked this because in many ways we are the same kind of girl. Although my life is without the drama of a love triangle, we are plagued by too much thinking which gets in the way of useful things.

Again, I've started off with one thought, and ended with a completely different one.

Things me and my parents share a love for

My mom:
1. gardening/flower gardens
2. visiting my grandmother's grave
3. traveling in Canada
4. Walking/hiking
5. Bonfires/camp fires
6. Cat Stevens and Carol King
7. Swinging on swingsets
8. Giant Tiger
9. American Idol (the good seasons)
10. Basement parties

My dad:
1. New/cutting edge technology
2. World history
3. The television show The World's Greatest Warrior
4. Bird watching
5. The Vinyl Cafe radio show
6. small towns/supporting local industries
7. Fresca pop
8. military burial sites/monuments (but for different reasons)
9. songs like "Mustang Sally", "Call me Al", and "House of the Rising Sun" that he plays in his cover band.
10. psychic/paranormal events and dream interpretation

Rabbit Funeral

This past week a rabbit died. The body was thrown into the middle of the street, and run over by cars. My mother showed it to me, and asked me if I thought we should call someone to pick it up. It's intestines and muscles were torn, half flattened. Red oozing internal organs smushed into the grey concrete road.

A day passed, and the rabbit's body seemed to disappear. Today when I was walking home from the store, I saw it lying where the edge of the road meets the sidewalk a little down from my house.

I put on gloves and put it on some brown paper. I covered its body with flowers, leaves, and grass that I had picked from my garden. The body was flattened and broken. No blood, guts and gore. It's fur was soft and warm. Only fur and bones left. I could feel this through the gloves, and it made me incredible sad.

I tied string to keep the paper together. My hands started shaking, and I realized I am not good with dead things. I was very sad, yet I realized this is what I had to do. This animal did not deserve to decompose on the side of the road.

I was going to give the rabbit a name, but I realized that rabbits don't have names. Not ones that humans have. It was not a pet rabbit, and I didn't want to give it an identity. I just wanted it to be the rabbit that died and deserved to be buried.

The next thing I did was sit down on the plastic lawn chairs in the backyard, and sit the coffin across from me on another plastic chair. I felt like there had to be some sort of ceremony. I was burying this previously living thing, and I didn't want to just shove it in a hole. I thought back to church ceremonies I had been to, and I realized the only part that I ever liked was the singing. People don't sing in public enough in large groups.

So I sung to the rabbit. I sang Regina Spektor's On the Radio, Fleet Foxes Tiger Mountain Peasant song, Kimya Dawson's Loose Lips, and finally Reconstruction Site by the Weakerthans. This might seem silly, but it was an important and necessary moment. I am sure the rabbit would not have cared if I sang to it, but they were someone that affected me deeply in the past week, so I had to let them know.

I had to wash my hands, get my bag, and the shovel, so I let my ipod play Regina Spektor out of its speakers while I went inside. I didn't want them to feel alone when I wasn't there. I started walking down the street with the coffin in a blue reusable bag. I walked to the trail where I knew other rabbits would live. I found a shady spot near a tree, and began to dig a small hole.

People started walking by. Guys in white undershirts with backwards hats on their bikes, a little girl and her mother, two university looking guys riding bikes. Every one of them looked back at me, but even if I had tried to explain what I was doing, they wouldn't have seen the importance of it. I was going to just put the paper coffin in the hole, but then I realized that if I were a rabbit, I would want to be buried in dirt not brown paper.

I lifted the body out of the coffin after I had snipped the thread and unfolded the paper. I laid the rabbit gently in the hole, and covered the body with fresh wildflowers and grasses I had picked on the way up the trail. I took a moment, and paused before I covered the body with dirt. I placed one wildflower bunch on top of the fresh hole.

After this I was very sad, yet I wanted to stay with the rabbit for a little while longer. I sat on a log just across from the grave. I took the book that I had in my bag and decided that I would read a small passage out loud from it. I brought it with me because it always makes me feel better. I read the last 8 pages of The Little Prince. It was the passage about the stars, and how bodies are really just empty shells. I realized that the rabbit was gone, and I had only buried the empty shell. It made me feel better to think that somewhere out there this rabbit was hopping along with all the other rabbits, and it had merely left behind the body.

I don't know if anyone will understand this. I felt very strange doing this today, but it felt important, and it felt like I was supposed to do it. I walked around the trails afterwards for two and a half hours and thought. Thought about the rabbit, how bodies are really shells for people to slot into. Though about people, books, and mosquitoes. I documented moments.

Impressed the counsellor today. She thinks that I am really creative, and that making a lot of progress. Loved my zines.

Impressed the girl who was working on the website with me. She doesn't know what a good website really looks like, so a poorly made template excited her.

Had a good BBQ with my sister, and her friend, one of the most beautiful girls I have ever met. Asparagus, and red peppers and veggie burgers.

Then we went to the mall. Not a shopper. I wandered the store, and kept getting distracted by the token queer girl who worked there. I realized that in my awkward glancing, staring, and half wandering in her direction, that I did not look obviously queer. Mall closed, and I am almost certain I passed her girlfriend, or queer looking friend in the parking lot calling her. She said her name, and asked her why she had stayed so late.

I don't mind coupled people that I know. Girls who have girlfriends, boys who have boyfriends. I might think, "aw they are so cute together," etc. I am not jealous in that way. It's the strangers that get me. When I see two girls who are holding hands downtown, I am immediately drawn to them. I want what they have. The worst is when I go to a show. It's any show, any band, artist. Beside me, behind me, in front of me is the world's cutest girl couple. Lily Allen, Regina Spektor, Wintersleep, Ani Difranco, Tegan and Sara, Joanna Newsom. Some concerts they show their affection more obviously than others, but there they are. Every time. They are holding hands, whispering into each others ears, singing and mouthing the words together. This is their artist, something that they share together. I think about them as much as I think about who's playing.

I am getting a little sick of my queer self-discovery thing.

I read somewhere today that the book the Perks of Being a Wallflower is being made into a movie. I simultaneously love, fear, hate, and admire this story. I doubt the film will be as good.

Lately I've also been thinking about learning some serious code. Javascript, PHP, real CSS, Actionscript, or something. Pick one, and become really good at it. I love love love people who are really good at things like this.

(source:wikipedia commons)

She was the first computer programmer.

Wear your fuck yeah jeans

Fuck yea jeans are the pair of jeans I own that I love too much. I wear them almost every chance I get, regardless if they are clean or dirty. They are comfortable, maybe a little worn, but they look alright. They're not too low or highwaisted, nor are they an awkward cut. They are still clean enough if they have dirt on the knees or on the side, or if they have a peculiar raspberry-coloured stain near the pocket that I can't decide whether its food or some sort of ink.

I call them fuck yea jeans because when they are clean, like actually clean, that's what I say. I say it aloud to myself when I realize that I actually took them off long enough to throw them in with the ordinary clothes. "Fuck yea, jeans."

They are still fuck yea jeans if they aren't freshly out of the washing machine. They are still fuck yea jeans if they get things spilt on them throughout the night, when the colour starts to fade, when you buy new jeans that you really like. It's never the same. The places I've been in these jeans, the art, thoughts, and people I've met and experienced. I've slept in them, and worn them the next day more times than I can count.

If I didn't have to look nice today, I would have worn them. They are not fuck yea clean, but they will have to be for the weekend that's to come.

thoughts

hot.

tired.

sweaty.

lonely.

I want someone to need me again.

July and August are better for this.

Even running pottery at camp, I feel needed.

May and June

I am not used to the weather

Especially when it is like this.

I am reminded of the time when it was the hottest day of the year two years ago. I think it was Hamilton Pride. The bus was crammed full of people on a Saturday in June, and a pale, tall skinny woman with dark hair got off at the stop before the Freeway.

She got off the bus, started walking, and peeled off her shirt. It was as if it was the most natural thing that she had ever done-to walk down the street in a black bra and jeans. I was shocked by her confidence and wondered if I could ever do something as bold.

At least I have art.

Photocopy love

Fighting wanderlust again. No sleep.

I don't want to be here anymore. I want to be in northern Canada. I want to be in Western Canada. I want to see the ocean, the prairies, the cobblestone streets of vieux Quebec, the fishing villages of Nova Scotia, and everything in Vancouver. I want to leave and travel and wander until I have to buy new shoes, and then wander again. Alone, alone, but never lonely. Wanderers are never lonely except at night when they are staring at the stars, and they realize there are no bodies next to theirs. But, they get over this.

Kerouac and I share the same birthday. The day I found this out, I knew it explained why I want to travel so much. I have met people who share the same birthday as us, and they are non-wanderers with their roots dug so deep into the stones of their cities that they will never leave. They say they might, but they will never leave. Maybe only some people born on this day feel compelled to travel. I think it has a lot to do with growing up. When I was a kid we would move more often than my friends. I've spent twenty years unevenly divided into six different houses. I never associated staying in one place with stability. The house we lived in for nine years, the longest of them all, frightened me after awhile.

This need to leave is like a sickness. It keeps me up at night. It is one more thing that I think about when I go to bed, and last night I could not get to sleep. I have been awake for twenty-two hours and counting. I will probably fall asleep under the shade of an outdoor tree and forget my obsessive need to photocopy zines.

I want to travel, but I am pinned down by so many obligations and responsibilities and a lack of money. I thought this over between the hours of 3 and 6 am. I am contemplating Katimavik, except that it'll fuck up my plans for braces, and graduating on time. Who really cares though? Six months away from here, six months living, loving, and exploring new cities, people, and landscapes. Even my practical side (that only wants me to do sensible things) is telling me to consider it. Usually I am more torn in decision making.

I might as well fill out the application.

My wanderer's heart is aching for change.

Really?

Video editing today/this morning/now gave me this.

Thirty-eight minutes to get coloured lines and blurrs.

It's pretty, but not what I need right now.

Letter D Blog Post Titles

Dear body

Dear ghosts

Dear New Year

Disclaimer

Distract me not

Done it all

Awkward Girl, grrrl and Girls

Awkward girl gets another chance.

Computer programmer penpal from Saskatchewan reminds me not to be shallow.

That I am awkward girl, and someday, someone might take a chance on me when they wouldn't want to.

I told him this was unlikely, but he said in kinder words I am awkward as fuck around most people. That its ok not to be the awkward one, but be more thoughtful because 90% of the time you're the one who is the least comfortable in social situations.

I am glad he is so logical because he keeps me sane.

Riot grrrl and grrrl movements have had me captivated for days.

I am trying to figure out what this means,

If I am grrrl enough.

Riot grrrl trumps anything post-fag that I've seen.

It's fuck you, fuck yea, fuck it, and I'm not going to shut the fuck up.

Radical, queer, feminist, activist, and to some extents anarchist.

Probably other things I've forgotten.

I'm going to hopefully be zine trading for some grrrl zines, so I'll see when they get here.

Girls wear short dresses, short shorts, and barely there t-shirts when its hot outside.

Tank tops, hats, and sunglasses.

Bright cotton shirts with witty sayings.

Converse shoes, red cherry patterned flip-flops, and birkenstocks

I'll take a summer of sunburn, bad tan lines, and dehydration if its anything like today when I came across two half-naked girls laying on beach towels suntanning just off the path where I was walking. Surrounded by trees, dirt paths, and feeling heat exhausted, I felt like I was in a midsummer's night dream.

Love this season.

Fighting wanderlust

I was lying in the grass last night and staring at the stars in the field. Little kids whispered to each other "Wow look at that!" as there was a loud crack, and greens and blues and reds exploded into the sky. A little boy was chased around by his brother near the swingsets. I was listening to firecrackers, thinking about Montreal, and what I would have been doing if I went this weekend like I was going to. Plans fall through. If I went to Montreal, I wouldn't have made my other zine, I wouldn't have been able to have a take-out picnic in the abandoned schoolyard and talk about life, love, and the things we expected to happen as the sun set. It was all like a movie.

Everything is not perfect in couple land I hear from the people who are there. I am always standing at the outskirts of their exclusive clubs, their boyfriend and girlfriend, and boyfriend and boyfriend and girlfriend and girlfriend clubs, wondering what I am doing. I get the stories, their frustrations, and all I can think is that they should be lucky to have what they have. They are not the ones who are sitting in their bedrooms alone typing on their typewriters on the floor while listening to french music and female jazz singers in the background. Sounds pretentious, but I feel they express so much emotion.

"A fine romance with no kisses, a fine romance my friend this is."

The price I pay for growing individual stability is love like this. Self-love, perhaps lonely, but better than the ephemeral kinds that last a season or two.

"Laisser tomber les filles, laisser tomber les filles, un jour c'est toi qui pluereras."

I love France Gall and all the girls who have covered her.

"So like.."

Me: You should just be glad that you have a boyfriend.

C: Like you would even want a boyfriend anyways, right? So like are you into.. you know?

Me: What do you mean?

C: Well there's two kinds of people on the market. If I'm keeping my eyes out for you.

Me: What do you mean two kinds of people?

C: Like boys and girls. In your zine, you said you might like men, you know...

Me: Where did I say that? I didn't specifically say one thing or another.

C: You know.. you said you might want.. dick

Me: You misread that. Think about it. It's two very different things.

C: Oh.. Well, not that I care about your personal zine crap or whatever. So like.. what are you into? Like short haired like Lisa or long hair like Alaina?

Me: Do you want a checklist? It's not just about haircuts. They are two completely different people.

C: Well then. Nevermind. Geez, sorry I asked.

As my friend Sandra says

facepalm moment.

On the back of my cellphone

Yesterday I was walking and thinking like I usually do. I carried my permanent marker in one hand, and my cellphone in the other. I have had this cellphone for four years. It is red, and the paint is rubbing off the back. It was a nice, hot day, and I was thinking about all the times I have dropped this phone on the floor. I often sleep with it under my pillow. Not because I am popular and waiting for text messages at all hours of the night, but I feel comforted knowing I can squeeze it and immediately know the time. I am obsessed with time a little more than most people are.

I am not the kind of girl who buys glitter, stickers, or glitter stickers of things that say "sexy" or are flower patterned unless its meant to be ironic. I write on things, I write things, I make signs and write on them.

There is not much space on the back of my phone. I thought there would be room to write something long. I debated what the meaning of a single word would be, like LOVE, HOPE, or FREEDOM. It might seem tacky.

I wrote the first thing that came to me:

It's inevitable.

dear

The smell of permanent marker is making me sick. Poorly ventilated room. I am making a new zine. A zine only for the boys. The ones who listen to my life rants. It's called "dear". Making things is better than the alternative. I am lightheaded. I could crack a window. Just felt like I had to document this moment.

qqc

I miss when I painted this.

I miss the impromptu photoshoot before.

dsl is the french equivalent of srry.

I woke up this morning and wondered about chatspeak in different languages.

So I picked my favourite language.

qqc means quelque choses which means some or a few things.

Letter from Ryan today, letter from Leah on Monday, mailed out zines to reviewers, sent some postcards. All and all its been a good week for the postal system.

Today I appreciate all the people in my life.

Today I am excited for the summer.

Today I am so in love with the world, it hurts.

Competition

I feel like I am in competition with a girl who makes a lot of things too. There is no actual competition, but if there was, I don't know what I would do with myself. I wouldn't even know who would judge that kind of thing.

I think people should pin artists against each other, and see where it takes them. Have art shows that are like Emily vs. David. Sounds like a worse version of one of those dress design shows. The prize would be a felt ribbon and something else.

In my head I keep having to push myself harder and harder because people are doing things, and I am doing nothing. Tonight I felt overcome with the need to write something. I went outside and watched the sun set on the dandelions. I took out my old typewriter and nothing came to me. I wrote things on four pieces of paper. Letters, stories, poems. All of it was forced and shitty. All of it I recycled.

It's been a good day today, but I am a little worried that I am running out of creativity. I have ideas, so many ideas, but somewhere between thinking and writing them they get fucked up. Then there's this apathetic feeling where I just don't want to do anything.

Writing this is harder than it usually is.

The products of the evening's not really great artistic pursuits are more 1K notes. I make these all the time when I can't think of what to do. A 1000 x 1000 box on photoshop, a solid background colour or two, and caps locked helvetica font in white.

Domestic Wanderer

Still no kitchen. Still no kitchen. Have the urge to bake something. A cake, cupcakes, macaroni and cheese like my great aunt used to make when I was younger. I want to sit at the kitchen table like I used to on Friday nights when everyone is gone out, with a tea and some paper. Every few minutes get up and check the progress of something. This more than a month away from happening again.

I could pack up some pans, and wander to friend's kitchens. Be the domestic wanderer. Searching for some oven to stick some muffins in, tables and chairs to rent out with a story, washed dishes, and a drawing. Craving the stability of appliances where they are supposed to be. Wander to somewhere that does not have an unplugged stove in the living room. That would be anywhere I guess.

You can't just show up at someone's door with an old mixer, and cookie mix in your bag, and expect them to let you in. You do have a key to a backdoor. To do what with though? To come in like a thief, bake something, clean up, leave half, then leave?

It always feels weird leaving someone's place like that. It reminds me of sleeping over. Not the kind of sleepovers you had when you were little. When you woke up, someone's mother would make you eat cereal, or cook pancakes, and try to get you to tell them about your favourite subjects in school. These are the adult sleepovers where you find yourself on someone's couch, or on the floor. Waking up in the morning, and sneaking out like you were never supposed to be there in the first place. That there is some looming, half-imagined mother's nagging voice in your ear telling you that this isn't what respectable people do.

Respectable people bake though.

I will say that baking a cake, crossed with unannounced arriving at someone's house, plus cleaning up afterwards, plus art, plus a copy of a zine, will equate to something a normal person might do.

Cover

Feeling courageous.

Or trying to.

Distribute day tomorrow.

I think.

Zines stacked beside me. Did I say too much? Was I too honest? If I hand this to someone, and see them flip through the pages, how will I feel when they know? Know about the girl thing. Am I ready for any of this? Will this become another "brilliant" idea that my future self will question?

Act then analyze.

Though that's not really sound advice. If I really acted I'd be halfway North or West by now on the late night bus with a bag packed for a week and forever. Can't just go to British Columbia no matter how much you might want to.

Be cool, be calm. Be calm, be cool. Breathe. You are stressing yourself out too much. Swear more. Drink peppermint tea. That always makes you feel adventurous. Don't make excuses. Make art. Breathe again. Coping like this makes your therapist proud of you. It doesn't make it easier to cut vegetables though.

Fuck you aly.

Care less.

Care more.

Crawl into your bed when everyone else is asleep, and pretend you forget your body's geography. Your heart is never where it's supposed to be. It gets shifted too much throughout the day and ends up somewhere near your ankles. It's always telling you to go. Pick it up and rest it on your shoulder. The closest it will ever be to your head. You can't move anywhere when you are asleep, except in dreams. So it makes sense that the heart is closest to your head at this time of day.

When you close your eyes, your brain will escape from your skull and throw itself to the ceiling and try to make something of the shadows that you never see. This is ok because nothing makes sense. When you open your eyes in the morning, it will be back where it is supposed to be, and yet you will feel like you have been crying all night. Run your fingers through your hair, because everything is ok now. You are in the real world where real things can actually hurt you.

Don't feel connected.

Letter C Blog Post Titles

Ca va?

Characters

Cheese and Rain

Clean Room. Panoramic of the mess.

Collecting memories of recent past.

Couldn't be easier. Couldn't be harder.

Counselling 102

Counting on being forgotten

Cues from nature

Gender Fuck What

My queerish art movement zine.
Can't wait for crashing Tuesday coffee day.
Free for the girls who like jb more than I do.
One dollar otherwise.
Or swaps equivalent.

Already have the cover idea for issue two.
I love this.

(if you are reading this now you will get a free copy)

3:01am thinking about:

-what it would feel like to know you are dying
-girls
-my zine
-moving north
-British Columbia
-if people will just garbage bin the things in my room if I died suddenly
-if I like or don't like postcards for the right reasons
-why the recent past versions of myself think it is a good idea to do things
- women jazz musicians
-how often Judith Butler has sex
-solar pannels
-the liklihood I have a borderline personality disorder
-my overanalytical tendencies

Day to day to day to day

Yesterday the cops showed up just after the hockey game ended. Wanted to know if Mary was here. When the cops are standing in your kitchen, no matter what they are there for, it feels a little like your fault. Mary's still crazy, still might go to jail, still part our problem.

Monday my dad lost his job. Fired for being too mean to work with. All the euphemisms they told him. Had to, "let him go," because "the company is moving in a new direction." I still knew. Fired for being a jerk. It happens more than it should.

My great aunt is preparing to die. Cancer. She can barely walk, barely breathe. It's radiation, or wait til the cancer kills her. She gave me her envelopes this week. You don't give someone your envelopes if you are expecting to use them.

Today it is raining. So much rain. I can't deal with the rain when I feel like I have to walk. I have to go for a walk or else I will go crazy with all these thoughts and news choking the rational processing part of my brain.

I hope tomorrow it doesn't rain because I deserve to have a good art crawl after a week like this. I don't want to show the girl who hates Hamilton, one of my favourite parts of Hamilton on a backdrop of unending rain.

Waded through my things instead of puddles.

I cleaned my room today.

Found my old Pearl Jam t-shirt.

It's worn and has small holes in it.

Eddie was drunk off of wine pouring himself over an amplifier.

Seats that weren't even worth the price

To anyone else but us.

Found my ripped jeans.

Wearing them, I remember the last time I wore them.

That little bar in that little town.

How she took the bus home alone.

Too ill to be bored.

Found my black sweater.

The one I wore to camp.

The left pocket is torn from carrying too much masking tape.

Not covered in clay and paint now, but if feels like it should be.

Found letters to my favourite stranger.

She'll never get them all, there's too many,

And they are all missing pages, and envelopes.

It's what it feels like when someone doesn't have room in their life for you.

Came across

brutalized National Geographics, red yarn, knitting supplies, a letter from the east coast of dreams, old hockey cards, sequins, thread, three glue guns, photographs, mail, abandoned index cards, an unopened cat calendar from last year, pens, permanent markers, water colour paintings, ice cube trays I used to mix paint in, half written songs, pennies, guitar picks, at least a hundred drawings, doodles, and sketches of cartoon girls, old papers from last term, a hidden stash of mechanical pencils, exacto knives that were never used for cutting paper, bad poetry, old notebooks, clothes my mother bought for me and made me wear even though I hated them, and many other wonderous, sad, and surprising things.

All this still doesn't chase away the weight of the clouds

The weight of the week.

Dream 11: Left at the border

Monday May 10, 2010
I had a dream last night. I was in a concert hall, a large stage. It was an indoor queer music festival. Dozens of feminist, queer, alternative, and indie acts were playing. I was one of them. I remember standing on stage with my guitar and people clapped when I finished playing. I nodded and smiled. The stage had red curtains, and there was a sea of seats in front of me.

I got off the stage and some petite, short haired girl in a black headset told everyone that they were renting out the stage and venue to a church afterwards. Everyone backstage was shocked. Two guys who were standing next to me laughed and sighed.

I was in the backstage room, and I was sitting on the ground putting on my shoes. It was one large holding room. Two guys who were together as a couple and in a band started singing "It's a good old hockey game." I joined in and sang, "Hello out there, we're on the air, its hockey night tonight. Tension grows as the whistle blows and the puck goes down the ice. The goalie jumps and the players bump, and the fans all go insane.." I finish the verse and go into the chorus and the next verse.

The two guys laugh and look at me. One of them says, "How do you know this song?" I feel like they are judging me and the way that I look. That in the dream I look too feminine to be a hockey fan.

Everyone is going out after the show. I am sitting on a couch waiting for the people I am going with. The couch is a long, green, vintage one. I look down the couch, and I see the crossed legs of twelve girls. They are wearing different coloured stockings and high heeled shoes. Red stockings and golden heels, green stockings and brown shoes, yellow shoes, green stockings, white shoes. They are pretty girls with blonde hair, brown hair, red hair. They are wearing short skirts and dresses. I feel like I'm in a movie. I'm the only wearing jeans. They are blue.

A girl with long, wavy brown hair comes up to me, and we're ready to go. I grab my things, and we walk down the hallway a bit. Leah's leaning on the wall, and the girl tells her to come along. We get in the car, and I text Nesreen to tell her that I can't go to the art crit thing because I won't be back in time.

I'm in the car, and the long brown haired girl is talking, Leah's in the passenger seat, and I'm in the back, middle with a guy and a girl on either side. They're talking about this great party that we're going to be going to. I'm excited too. The brown haired girl takes a scenic route to Niagara falls winding up mountains and tall hills. We travel across long, almost impossibly long and high roads that are surrounded by green shrubbery.

The girl mentions something about the party being in the states. I fumble through my wallet, and I only have my healthcard. I don't have a passport or a driver's license. I immediately panic. I ask the people in the car, "Is the party in the states? What do you need to get over the border?"

"Passport, or a driver's license," Leah says from the front.

I tell them I don't have one. We're in a residential area of Niagara Falls now, so too far to turn completely back. I know they're going to still go to the party without me. I tell them I can't go, and they pull up to an area near the border that is residential. I don't want to ruin their evening. I get out. I don't mind getting out, but the thing that bothers me the most is that Leah doesn't care or say anything. No, "seeya later," or "that sucks, have fun here," or "let me know how your night turns out." She starts laughing with the brown haired girl in the front seat. I knew Leah more than the girl who was driving me, and they get in the car and go off. I wake up mad at being blindly left at the border.

I told this dream to my therapist today, and she ask me what I thought it meant, or if it meant anything.
I said, "I don't know."

Really? After all that last night, you put it in your pocket? You're not the kind of girl who will destroy little bits of herself, and then put the exacto knife in the pocket of the sweater you wear to bed. But, you are that girl. Easy to say you forgot, but people don't sleep with guns in their pockets.

Watch yourself

Watch yourself girl.

Stop checking your phone, she'll text you back.

It's 12:15am, and even though she might be busy or sleeping, she'll text you back.

She has the honour of being the very first drunk girl that you saved.

If nothing else, she owes you an e-mail address.

Stop fucking checking your phone.

It's the middle of the night.

Your late-night lapses of judgement aren't so much romantic, as they are creepy.

Give her a day to respond before you ask her if she forgot.

Why are you doing this again?

She might even be less stable than you are.

Instability doesn't need more instability.

Time's passed.

Time changes people, changes things.

Or, it changes nothing.

Remember when she said she didn't like the city?

She didn't like Hamilton.

Not in a "oh its not really that great, kind of crummy" way.

She said, "I hate Hamilton."

Almost without hesitation.

Well, we'll see.

Remember, you don't have to wrangle every fucking girl you meet.

Most of them aren't worth it.

To be honest, this one's probably not worth it.

But that's never really stopped you before.

Just do it and gauge implications later.

You have to stop being the oldest twenty-something you know.

Fucking complex complex

I have it in my head that I am broken, messed up, and stupid. That I am fucked up, ugly, unstable, and unlovable.

Reason 1: cutting and depression.

Reason 2: disastrous previous relationships.

Reason 3: body mass.

Reason 4: lack of originality and talent

Reason 5: confused identity

Because of this, no one is allowed to love me. No one wants a girl who rips open her skin when she can't deal anymore. That's not cool. No one wants a black hole of a girl. Someone who sucks all the good feelings out of you until you can't deal with it, and you have to leave to save yourself from feeling hopeless. I don't want to be the one who needs saving and protecting.

No one wants a big girl. A girl who fills out clothing, and is used to being ignored because of this. The kind of girl people might make fun of you for dating because she's a whale. A girl who is used to jokes, and implied jokes on her behalf so don't talk to me about being discriminated against. The kind of girl who is interested and talented to a point, but after that she's not really all that great of a person, and you know the things she does will never bring her money.

And if its not bad enough that this girl is all of these things, she's fucking scared. She's scared and she can't explain why. She knows she is scared of being vulnerable again because the last time she was really vulnerable, she was still holding back. She's scared of making mistakes. She's scared of her parents. She's scared that she will never amount to anything. She's scared of being loved, then forgotten. Scared of being used, then discarded when she gets boring.

And the fucked up part is that I know this is all normal. To feel these things, to feel uncertain, unwanted. People feel at least some of these things some of the time. In my head, I am the only person in the world who feels these things. And everyone else has their lives stitched together. I am a bad person. I am a bad, broken, lonely, ugly person, and everyone else in the world is not like this.

I know. I know what you are thinking. I am thinking the same thing. That I should just tell the thirteen year old version of myself to go write some angsty teenage poems and cry about life. Feel terrible for an hour, or even a day, and then I will feel better. The thing is, there is so much unhappiness inside of me. I can't even explain it because its scary. It scares me how unhappy I am. I wish I knew why.

Even though I have given up that whole thing, that whole leaving the world thing. You know, the permanently checking yourself out of the hotel thing. The thing I can't seem to come up with good euphemisms for. That never go back from the end thing. I've still written myself off. Those three weeks when I was so certain about everything, about dying, I told myself I would never be with anyone again, I would never do anything great, I would never be the person who I was supposed to be, so fuck it all. It's been a few months, yet I've never really forgotten those things. I'm never going to do anything or be anyone, so why not live wallowing in my own apathy? I'm not really dead, but this isn't living.

I am a mess.

I am a mess.

I am a mess.

I feel unfortunate for the people who know me.

Thing is, I know this is all wrong. I know this is distorted through my own lens of self-perception, but this is what I believe. It's not logical. It's not healthy. I believe it anyways.

There is a sad feeling stewing in my stomach. Numbness. This feels frighteningly like when I sat in the student centre and wrote the first letter on yellow paper. The letter that turned out being twenty pages long for one person that I ripped up three weeks later into little pieces.

I am calm.

I am numb.

I have to.

I have to.

I have to.

I will forgive myself for this.

I am not dressing up for your girlfriend

I am not dressing up for you or your girlfriend. I tell myself this as I peel off my clothes and pull my wind messied hair out of its hair elastic. I step into the shower and turn on the water. I remember when I went to that movie with you and my sister, and we joked on the car ride back about secret lovers. The next day was your birthday party, and I spent forty five minutes trying to find the right thing to wear. Something to make me look older, although its impossible to look old enough. All of your friends are married, marrying, or have kids. They have to let their husbands and babysitters know when they are going out.

I remember thinking about the right cardigan to wear as the water stops and I am jolted into present tense. I fiddle with the tap, and the shower head spurts a sad, trickling stream of water. I shake and grow cold as soap slides down my shoulder. I think about the skin I am dressed in. I could never be your lover. I could never love your girlfriend. I am a girl. You only love women. Definition of a woman: females who've got their shit together. I am just a scared girl who is fumbling through life with no path and only a vague conception of my own identity.

I am not dressing up for you. I tell myself this as I finger comb the last dregs of the conditioner into my cold dripping hair. You couldn't love this body. You research and work with people who have mental disorders. You would know what everything means. My cold body is blasted with cold water, and I think that this is the worst shower I've had since that time I decided to have a cold water shower to save on energy last year.

I wrap my body in a towel and dry myself. I am self conscious of the desire to paint my nails. I give in. I tell myself that I am not dressing up for you or your girlfriend. I paint my nails the colour of my affection for you: pinkish brown. If I lived in queertopia I don't know if I would even like you this much. You are too old for me. Dating me would be like dating a fourteen year old girl. I couldn't tell you anything you didn't know. I couldn't show you anything different about the world or this city because you've been here longer. Everything I say would be cute, not serious.

I am not dressing up for your girlfriend. I tell myself this as I put on a skirt and a nice clean shirt that my sister gave me that still has the tag in the back. Your girlfriend strikes me as the kind who acknowledged her love for women later in life. There's nothing wrong with this though. She's a woman. Women don't love girls. I tell myself I am dressing up for the girl who I might meet there. This is unlikely because its a play. Plays equal couples on dates. I wouldn't want the girl I meet to see me like this anyways. I am a girl dressed as a doll mimicking the kind of woman you would like. I don't look like a whore. I look nice in the way that I think you would think someone would look nice.

I am not a jealous person, but I can't help doing this. I don't know why when it comes to you, I dress up for you and your girlfriend. I just hope that you don't notice.

Postcards, coffee, writing

Postcards, coffee, and writing were the things I did from my list.

Here are the postcards I made. This is a kind of lazy documentation, but I will try scanning them tomorrow. I have addressed some of them, or else I would say, "pick whatever one you want!" The third one down, the writing is for no one but me, and one other person.

Typical Friday Night

I want to go out and do something, but I don't know where I want to go, or who would go with me. Not that to go out you always need someone, but its Friday night, so people who go out usually go out with other people. My sister is going out. My brother is going out. My mom is sleeping and waiting for the electrician.

Tomorrow night I am going to see a play, so I shouldn't be so unhappy. It's just times like these I get jealous of other people who have a lot of people in their lives. I have people too I guess, but they are busy people, people who have a lot of other people, or people who live far away, like Texas. Maybe some of my friends are free tonight, and I could ask them to hang out, but most of them always have Friday plans.

Things I could do:

1. A nothingness combined of absent-minded television watching, internet surfing and letter writing.

2. Make the watercolour postcards I bought last art crawl

3. Clean my room

4. Take the bus to school to print off my prisoner letter, and then decorate the pages.

5. Take the bus to downtown and sit in Jackson Square or Grandad's place for a length of time.

6. Go for coffee somewhere else

7. Write something

Nevermind. I am stuck here by a mother who won't stop yelling. Wakes up screaming at me to clean my room. I could only go out if I lied about having someone to go out with. Funny how everyone who was already going out, is allowed to continue on with their plans. For me there is no one to let down by not showing up.

I am shocked at how quickly my mom's mood switches. On the phone my mother laughs and talks to the electrician's wife.

"Oh haha, how old is the baby? How old is he?"

I don't know what to do.

A few nights ago when I was walking home, I talked to a ghost of a girl I had never known when she was alive.

I didn't want to seem disrespectful. I don't even know the girl who knew her anymore, but I had to ask her something. So, I whispered my thoughts into the night as I walked up my street, and pretended not to look odd. I didn't see or hear her, but I knew she was there.

The last thing I said was, "I am putting a postage stamp on these words and sending them to you, so if you don't get them now, they will find you wherever you are. Goodnight."

I blew her a kiss, which fluttered away in the breeze, and opened the door to my house.

Dream 10: Blogs and people

I had a dream where I was reading all the blogs that I look at. I read Leah's blog, and I noticed that it didn't seem to make sense. There were spaces in between words, and I realized its like what I do with things like this post where I sometimes change the colour of certain words to white instead of leaving them black to make them invisible until you hi-light them.

I hilighted part of it, and then there was tilez font written in something vertically. The font that I wrote those notes in. Almost like a half-attempted game of scrabble. I printed out the post on paper, and realized I couldn't hilight the words that were in white because they didn't show up.

The only other thing I remember from the dream was Chris from multimedia, and Julie. Both of these are snapshots that don't really have a context.

Chris was sitting with his back on a wooden ledge in front of a brown brick house wearing a red plaid shirt trying to explain something to me.

Julie was sitting beside me, and I saw her face in profile. She had her hair in a ponytail and was wearing a black shirt that advertised the play she's in in green letters.

Letter B Blog Post Titles

Back from the show

Be my curator

Becoming an identity?

Between the hours of 3:00-4:00am

Blue eyes

Bonjour Corbeau

Book bound girls Photoshoot 1

Book making

Bought

Boy and girl part 21

Boys bathrooms

Breathe.

Want.

Right now more than anything else, I only want one thing. No amount of writing or making things seems to change that. Fuck. I want to feel what it feels like to actually release, to actually let go. So much mess though. So much mess to clean up. I know I'm not making sense. I might be good for two more days, but the rain is coming. It's going to pour soon, and the string holding my seams together is fraying.

My hands feel like they are trying not to shake. Who was I kidding? Present girls don't want to deal with this shit, with erroding people. It's so hard to stay here and write this right now. So hard. I want to just say fuck you self-control, and run behind a locked door. I want it. I need it. I deserve it.

Get to bed aly, and stop talking to yourself.

Please rain.

For me.

And the tulips in my backyard.

Goodmorning.

Being yelled at before being awake. I throw this on the list of reasons why I can't live here anymore. If it happened once a month or less, I think I could deal with it, but its happened twice in two days.

Lying in bed this morning, not wanting to move, I remembered leaving in the mornings to catch the schoolbus. Some mornings I would leave the house crying, actually crying, and have to tell myself to stop before I got to the bus stop and had to go to school. Crying for being yelled at.

Lately its been yelling just before I go to sleep. The last thing I'll hear before I turn out the lights at 12:00am, 1:00am. Last month, one time she yelled so much I couldn't breathe properly. Then she yelled at me for being too much like a 3 year old and crying for attention.

Yelling in the background right now as I write this. Adrienne Rich, this is my politics of location. This is where I come from. A house full of angry noise in the mornings and at night. Where throughout the day I am afraid to be yelled at, and where I am made to feel guilty for not wanting to be here.

I don't know how many people come from a place like this. I should probably not be writing this at all, but its been stewing in the pit of my stomach for weeks.

Quality time means I have to sit infront of the television with my mom. Sit and watch tv. I don't have time to waste on CSI or Criminal Minds or the most recent episode of Grey's Anatomy. I watch them anyways, because if I go into my room and do what I want to do, its being antisocial. Writing, making things, my mom doesn't get it.

I'll admit to liking some of these shows. But, after most of them, I feel like a vacuum was shoved into the side of my head and sucked out something important. I never watch them and have an idea afterwards. Never. We have DVR and everytime I miss and episode of the week, I'll try to watch them on my own time.

I realize I just don't care. I tried to watch three shows in the early afternoon a few days ago, and I couldn't make myself care. The television played in the background while I wrote something down. After some times of absent-mindedly scanning the familiar faces between stanzas, the television prompted me to either delete or don't delete.

Deleted because I don't care enough to watch it again, or to try to.

And I think to myself, there's got to be more than this. There's got to be more than this house, than this life. I don't mind working more to live without this. Yelling again. So much fucking yelling.

It's not a terrible life. I'm probably complaining more than I ought to, but I can't feel okay here. Unsettled, and anxious. And its a beautiful day.

(my brother texted this to me a few weeks ago)

Dear present girls,

I say present girls instead of summer girls because summer girls seems too cliche, but that's what I want. A summer girl. Any girl really, but I feel like I deserve a summer something. My sister's had half a dozen summer boys, and I think I deserve just one girl. Some feelings that will look nice in photographs when I'm blue during winter. Some feelings that seem more beautiful than they actually are because its sunny everyday.

The camp girls are coming back this year. I was too afraid to be more than just nice to them, but I'm not afraid this year. The girl with the leaf tattoos on the back of her calfs. We'll talk in the old stone house at night. Tired and sore from working all day with kids in the sun. I'll find out her perspective on the stories that people have told me when people talk.

There's the other girl who was engaged to her girlfriend. I remember nobody knew, and she wasn't going to talk about it. Afraid then like I used to be. Maybe this year she'll talk about it, or maybe she won't.

Then there's all the girls before and after and in between. The ones I haven't met yet, the ones who I'll make up in my stories. I'm not going to feel sorry for myself anymore. When I went to see Dave Kuric, I told him that I was fond of taking pictures of people without them knowing. He said that this kind of photographer is a "hunter". Whether this is the nickname, or the real term, I don't know.

I hunt strangers. I hunt girls. I hunt stories. I hunt opportunity. I hunt a lot of things.

I feel braver today than yesterday.

My sister would say that this is exactly like how I am with drinking. I'll say that we should go out and celebrate the end of a term, or finishing a project. I'll be enthusiastic until it actually comes down to the doing of it, and my ambition and intentions will wane.

I would say that you can't compare drinking to girls.

I would say this is more important.

I am saying watch out.

Whether or not this is just talk, or this becomes actions,

it's going to be an interesting summer.