Thanksgivin'r

THINGS I AM THANKFUL FOR. I am thankful for this cup of coffee in front of me.
I am thankful for the way the sun comes in through my kitchen window in the morning, and with that, I am thankful that this year it was sunny on my birthday. It's never sunny on my birthday.
I am thankful for my family, they put up with me, and love me.
I am thankful for my ability to see an image for what it is.
I am thankful for being a realist (all the while I curse it).
I am thankful for the ability to see, walk, taste and smell.
I am thankful for The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright.
I am thankful for a really good pasta sauce.
I am thankful for my friends, big time. They show me love in the hugest way, and I love them back so, so much.
I am thankful for oatmeal with maple syrup and toasted walnuts, lemon zest and plain yogurt.
I am thankful for good words.
I am thankful for The Clean, Silver Jews, Pavement, Galaxie 500, etc. All that 90s shit.
I am thankful for animals. Does that sound stupid? But really, only an animal can truly show you empathy and unconditional love.
I am thankful for dead leaves scattered on the sides of the streets. In piles. I love walking through them.
I am thankful for the days when I feel good.
I am thankful for having a sense of humour, and being able to laugh at the most upsetting things.
I am thankful that I can live on my own.
I guess I'm thankful for having a job.
I am thankful for those days when I think I can love someone.
I am thankful for orgasm. What would a world be without it?
I am thankful for the art of sewing a good piece of clothing. Nothing is better than a sweater that fits beautifully.
I am thankful for a cold night. And I'm thankful for those few days it snows, and the entire city is quieted.
I am thankful for a good book. One that you love enough that you want to maybe hug it when you've finished it.
And I'm glad I haven't wanted to give up.

Love

"He used to say there was four women in every man's heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman. It was just a thing he said. I don't know what it means." Billy Pretty in The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

Bad Day January 28th

When I awoke this morning at 630, I rolled off the couch and stumbled to the bathroom to take my contacts out. I climbed into bed after changing into my pyjamas and read the news on my phone. I laid there with stinging eyes, knowing I wouldn't fall back asleep and by 830 I was convinced that it would be a good idea to plug in the kettle and turn on the radio.
After getting back into bed with a cup of coffee and a new book, I realized it was snowing, which further lead to me feeling truly defeated in all of my unfruitful attempts at making health-related goals.
I opened the cover of Watership Down, studying the map of adventure in hopes of finding my place in it.
Now, having gotten through the first fourty pages or so, my coffee has gone cold but my eyes still sting. How I yearn for dried grass and the smell of morning in the middle of nowhere. The sound of a creek and a bear running through it. The colours of the various weeds and flowers, and an overripe raspberry the colour of which cannot be replicated artificially between my fingers. The shape of wild strawberry leaves, and a glimpse of someone's treehouse longsince abandoned.
Ginny and I would get aboard the raft that she and her father made, we were much much like Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, though I was much less skilled at it all than she was. If I recall correctly I lost my hat that one day, as I gurgled and struggled to get back onboard. I watched it slowly bounding along in the water, happily free like any hat would be if it's been caught by the summer wind.
I often think of Bob Windsor's cabin up in the valley. What a beautiful musty old shack, surrounded by tall grass and a field of wildflowers. If you weren't careful, you would step right into an stream, hiding under overgrown brush.
Oh, how I recall that honey-sweet smell in early August of dried grass, dust and honeysuckle. it would overtake all senses, and if my body didn't stop in recognition, my entire spirit did (and it still does at the mere thought of it).
I remember how we'd be covered in dirt, dust and clay most every day, but could easily dive into the river and wash ourselves off in the purest of water.
It's January in Vancouver. I can't say I ever remember feeling this troubled and quite truly depressed, but I'm sure I say that every year (like we all do about everything.) Why is this place such a source of darkness and sorrow? So many people relish in it, know how to get through it, indulge it. I am finding I understand this place less, that my every impulse is elsewhere, in other towns, on other roads, in other wildernesses.

I am finding that what I used to find a real drag now is extremely appealing. Like gathering firewood, for instance. I remembering being forced into going with my mom and stepdad to get some in Dean's old bright orange Ford pickup with the chainsaw and ax in the back. He had two decals of buck heads on the rear windows, and it just occurred to me that this vehicle would be something my friends would fan their brows over (nostalgia is a real thing). I remember driving through a dried-up river bed, and through a steep ditch in order to get firewood. I hadn't been so frightened in my life, but looking over at my mom laughing while Dean wrangled the gears and yelled, "Woohoo!" made me realize what I was experiencing. I remember us coming upon an abandoned shack, which I immediately deemed a witches house, where I saw a blown up latex glove and the big, glassless windows and my fear of looking inside. I'm sure when I got home that day I forgot about it all once while picking up a book or calling Lach to ask what he'd had for lunch that day.
I want more of this. Discovery and exploration where there is no one else to be found. Taking it all in without someone yelling at me to get out of the way, or being to distracted by the most ridiculous thoughts to really enjoy the things I love about life.
The city is a wonderful place at times, but at most it is a life-sucking pit of insincere pricks trampling over you for something better.

News

I have been living in a new apartment, without the internet, for two months.
I've read nearly ten substantial novels since I've moved in.

Feels good.

Going on a trip next year, working seven days a week to do it.

Will feel good.

Sleepy Summer.

I have heart.
I have a heart.
RED - WITH PURPLE FLASHES

THIS DAY.

What I've Learned

Whenever I bake cakes I want to write.

On the Subject of Me

Let's you and I talk about me. And then you. Or first you, then me. Let's cover all the bases for the day and then walk in silence, in our own thoughts, for hours more.

rule of thumb

do not defend stupidity

Induced by Cider & Wine

I've got my front door open to 12th avenue
and there's some warbly tunes playing in the background, like a record slowing and quickening and here I'm sitting waiting for that bottle of wine to open itself.
Today I squinted into the sun with a mouthful of cider, whilst listening to rap, no less. I sat on a cushy grass bed blanketed with a crocheted throw with said blades poking through the eye holes. Knowwhaddimean?
I finished the crossword and sudoku. I watched a little girl giggle around with a pointy red hood - laughing and falling round an empty cement pool. Her mother wearing a baggy military jacket and a soft bun on the top of her skull.
When you hear that Bob Seger song you know I'll be long gone...

I sat with a new friend talking about old things. White kids listening to black music.
I frequently found myself thinking of the days back home when some friends and I would sit in the park listening to Dre and smoking grass. The same shades of green that I saw when I was stoned then stay with me today. I still find myself gazing off into the nothingness of the vivid colouring, thinking of a time past when I had a warm, fuzzy brain and rolled in the grass, laughing until my back hurt, until I couldn't find a way to stay, until I didn't know if I'd ever get home.

My life doesn't mean much these days - yesterday my goal was to find out just how long it took to walk around the Stanley Park seawall (1 hr 45 m).
I'm sure my new job starts in about a week, but until then I am rendered to my own company, and the company of those I see on a near daily basis, whom I don't need to have an especially real conversation with because we already know what each other have been up to. I like that, the silence. It's like being with family. Mind you, I am starting to get restless and am in fear of getting a bit depressed.

I haven't left the house at all today. I had to shut the radio off, CBC was driving me absolutely mad (gas prices are through the roof, Jian interviewing Shania Twain).

I baked a coffee cake and cleaned the bathroom. I read some, and changed twice in preparation for leaving the house at some point.

I had a bath. I steamed peas and ate them with butter and salt. I made hot chocolate and drank it by the spoonful as I did when I was little.

Tomorrow's a whole new day.

'Unca Biff! Watch me do the split.'
Gently he set Baby on her feet again. She curved both arms above her head and her feet slid slowly in opposite directions on the yellow waxed floor. In a moment she was seated with one leg stretched straight in front of her and one behind. She posed with her arms held at a fancy angle, looking sideways at the wall with a sad expression.

- from The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

This is not (by far) the most meaningful quote from the novel, but I love how it captures the way kids can seem so weird and wonderful while performing.

Last Minute

Coffee at midnight, hopefully this is the last time I'll be doing that for a while.
It's funny how things can change in an instant, like the direction of the wind - is that cliche? but that's how I see it, possibly feel it.
I'm holding on to the old direction in the way I hold on to nostalgia rather than an actual person.

Differences are differences, I've always been good at not missing people, so I find myself still grasping something that isn't the person so much, but the feeling of that person that occured within me for such an incredibly short amount of time.
I feel sad, in a way, about it. Also sort of annoyed. I know what's good for me! So I'd allow my mind to allow me to move on.


But, it would have been nice if the wind didn't change direction.

That Will Run Next Year

I sit here and ache in a chair made out of wasted money, rolling up my sleeves and rocking forward and backward to the shocks of caffiene. A break from silence with Smog.
Two exams down, two to go.
I am surrounded by papers with words I've stared at for hours, though my mind has mostly been elsewhere. I decided to take a break - it's dinner-time after all, and since it's actually slushing outside..I'll wait it out before heaading home. May take all night.
Whether or not there is any type of God, I'm not supposed to say and today I don't really care. God is a word and the argument ends there


Chewing gum, chewing tapping chewing swallowing sipping staring sighing
Outside there are green fields and people walking covered running
There's a waterfalling gutter behind me, singing out spring time
Timely waving across the concrete
Like the sound waves
Between you and me
While we say
'Thinking of the Future'

The Weather in San Francisco by Richard Brautigan

It was a cloudy afternoon with an Italian butcher selling a pound of meat to a very old woman, but who knows what such an old woman could possibly use a pound of meat for?
She was too old for that much meat. Perhaps she used it for a bee hive and she had five hundred golden bees at home waiting for their meat, their bodies stuffed with honey.
"What kind of meat would you like today?" the butcher said. "We have some good hamburger. It's lean."
"I don't know," she said. "Hamburger is something else."
"Yeah, it's lean. I ground it myself. I put a lot of lean meat in it."
"Hamburger doesn't sound right," she said.
"Yeah," the butcher said. "It's a good day for hamburger. Look outside. It's cloudy. Some of those clouds have rain in them. I'd get the hamburger," he said.
"No," she said. "I don't want any hamburger, and I don't think it's going to rain. I think the sun is going to come out, and it will be a beautiful day, and I want a pound of liver."
The butcher was stunned. He did not like to sell liver to old ladies. There was something about it that made him very nervous. He didn't want to talk to her any more.
He reluctantly sliced a pound of liver off a huge red chunk and wrapped it up in white paper and put it into a brown bag. It was a very unpleasant experience for him.
He took her money, gave her the change, and went back to the poultry section to try and get a hold of his nerves.
By using her bones like the sails of a ship, the old woman passed outside into the street. She carried the liver as if it were a victory to the bottom of a very steep hill.
She climbed the hill and being very old, it was hard on her. She grew tired and had to stop and rest many times before she reached the top.
At the top of the hill was the old woman's house: a tall San Francisco house with bay windows that reflected a cloudy day.
She opened her purse which was like a small autumn field and near the fallen branches of an old apple tree, she found her key.
Then she opened the door. It was a dear and trusted friend. She nodded at the door and went into the house and walked down a long hall into a room that was filled with bees.
There were bees everywhere in the room. Bees on the chairs. Bees on the photograph of her dead parents. Bees on the curtains. Bees on the ancient radio that once listened to the 1930s. Bees on her comb and brush.
The bees came to her and gathered about her lovingly while she unwrapped the liver and placed it upon a cloudy silver platter that soon changed into a sunny day.

Reading...

From the comment section of Canada! How Does It Work?


"Canadians are less patriotic than Americans are, and sometimes I think that's a good thing and other times I think it leads to less investment in the political process of the country. By way of illustration, I read an article recently about a Canadian who purchased an old building somewhere in the states (Delaware? my memory is sketchy). Later, it was discovered that the building had been used as a barracks in the War of 1812. Local sentiment rejected foreign ownership of this building, and the Canadian was forced to sell it. Meanwhile, they recently discovered the remains of our Second Parliament under a gas station somewhere in Toronto, and the local consensus was to just leave it there and maybe excavate it some other time."

EXACTLY!!!!

As If This Isn't Lovely

I am in a sun-lit room
in the middle of the afternoon
with a cup and saucer of coffee.
And Cass croons his way through the airy room
I've got
a tablet full of notes in front of me
I can't hear a word of traffic
sweet tints of apple linger on my tongue
and the faintness of that headache slowly drifts away.

Save the Brain

Since I woke up this morning I have had an intense fear of getting dumber with age.
This is why I feel I can't stop going to school now, otherwise I'll just get worse at writing shitty papers I don't care about. I'm not even sure why this matters.
And why is everybody I know at school so sure of themselves? Why does school have to be the way it is?
I am not destined for a career in academics.
I should be working on a farm. Or in the bush. Or on a boat. Or open a pub. Or in a garden. Or in a clinic. Or at a library. Or be a lifeguard. Or become a carpenter. Or operate a food cart at the beach. Or work in daycare. Or in an old folk's home, where I'd read them their favourite books and bake cookies and listen to their old, mean, tired complaints.

A Woman Under The Influence

(click for full-screen to see it properly)

I saw this with Marla quite a while ago, and I still think about it all the time.
If you haven't seen it, see it.
See it see it see it see it see it.

Three Things

1. Sitting over the weekend in a hobbit house. The walls are lined with books.
2. Hot Chocolate
3. SLEEPING IN