Although I have felt like I have been watching my own torturous death for weeks now, possibly since school ended and I started spending over half of my waking life with people I hate, yesterday I did not have to go to work, and I did pleasant things with nice people.

Laura and I went shopping for exotic fruit and we baked bread. We went with Tim to a giant fabric store where I bought some grey woollen cloth to make my cape out of, and then we went for cappuccino downtown. Back at my house, Tim and I made Laura listen to music we think she should like, and we ate more bread and read parts of books.

A productive day

At last. I practiced scales and a concerto. I wrote. I read a chunk of The Bit and the Pendulum. I'm almost finished it now. I earned 40 dollars.

I had the best breakfast today. Gingerbread cookies and an avocado smoothie. I drank it out of the blender. I'm calling in sick to work tomorrow.

I've been reading a book about computation and information/quantum information theory. I've been thinking about the brain as a computer.



Use learning a language as an example. A computer program could provide the necessary codes for translating words from an unknown language input into words from a known language output. [If input aqua is 0011111 then output 1100000 for water.] This is what a human brain does as well when a person is first learning a language, but this kind of crude translation is not considered true understanding or fluency. A human brain eventually learns to directly substitute the words from the new language for words from the old one, doing away with the translational code entirely. As far as I know, a computer program could not do this.

On the other hand, say there is a computer program which reads more like this: if input equals that liquid stuff coming out of the tap, output equals aqua [oo11111] or water [1100000] depending on second input of either Latin or English. The second input is thought of as the language used in a conversation. This is plausible, but doesn't yet explain the transition between the two "programs", which the human brain is clearly capable of.

Grounded again. Merry Christmas. I'm going to finish The Bit and the Pendulum. It's really the most convenient week for it to happen - I have to work almost every day. This won't happen when I move out.

Twenty minutes ago, I bought my very first hand saw.

Because I understand it and didn't before, and because I'm thrilled about the information, I am going to explain something about the emission of light. Very simply, when an atom's energy is increased, its electrons move into an orbit with a larger radius. The electrons then jump back to their original orbit, and this results in a release of the energy that caused them to move into a larger orbit in the first place, in the form of a photon. A photon, you remember, has zero rest mass and is a particle of pure energy.

Episode

At Starbucks yesterday, a customer complained to my shift supervisor that I'd been rude to her. Apparently I'd forgotten to get a scone for her, and when she asked for it, I'd continued taking an order while I went to the pastry case. Oh insulting. This sort of thing happens quite a bit. I am not trying to leave emotional scars, but really, I don't take precautions against it, for strangers, and I couldn't care much less.

Collecting things to move out. So far:

- two square white plates - slightly bigger than desert size, much nicer for small meals than those ridiculous giant dinner plates North Americans seem to consider essential

- two square white bowls - food looks much nicer on white or clear glass

- a big towel, a face cloth, a hand towel

- a french press for tea - I may need another for coffee

- two double-walled borosilicate Bodum glasses

- a loaf pan

- my secret-compartment pillow

- floor lamp

- liquid measuring cup

- an old couch


I want:

- two knives

- a blender

- a cookie sheet

- measuring spoons

- two pots

- a whisk

- eating utensils

- mixing bowls

- a lap top

- a Bernina sewing machine

- small trees

- a bookshelf

- a MYTO chair

I am, very slowly, getting thinner.

Listen up!

For Christmas [or whatever other excuse you'd like to use to give me a nice present], I'd like a big, laminated, political world map. An upside-down one would be especially lovely.

I'd also like money. I want to buy a Blend-Tec blender. One of the ones that can puree ipods and marbles.

I'd also like Ariel by Sylvia Plath.

Many of the poems that are chosen to appear in Poetry magazine, arguably the most eminent poetry periodical published in North America, frighten me. Really, it's not the poems themselves that frighten me. Most of them are not good enough to frighten or delight anyone. The merit they are assigned frightens me. These poems are praised for their rejection of the Significant, for their portrayals of late - night waitresses, and for their ambiguity.

They often accomplish nothing but a description of disappointing marital sex, or a description of a drunk outside of a pawnshop. But they aren't even good descriptions. A lack of philosophical content is thoroughly alright if the description itself is beautifully stated and stunningly accurate. But they are overblown, tired, in a style that mistakes its content to be profound; they use slang awkwardly, like parents trying to be cool. When a person finishes reading one, a person shudders. Is that false climax of a brilliant conclusion all that human thought is capable of at this stage? This is what my wife looks like when she climbs out of the shower. Oh eureka.

Nice Things

The food situation in my parents' house is dismal, as a rule. They've started living mainly off of frozen dinners, which I am not around to partake of, which include meat, and which do not taste good enough to warrant the ingestion of hundreds and hundreds of calories. I've resigned myself to spending my tip money on food. Today I bought Liberty yogurt and a big honey apple. The apple I ate with Superstore peanut butter when I got home, which was a delicious way to go about it. I like Liberty yogurt a lot. It tastes much much better than any other yogurt to be found at the grocery store and doesn't cost any more than the mediocre brands. If I owned a food company, I would want to produce something similarly good.

I saw Casino Royale last week. I have never seen such an excellent shooting film. I am willing to admit its superiority to The Dark Knight.

And yesterday I bought a Bodum tea glass. They're selling them at Starbucks. I was surprised to see them on the shelf - most of the Christmas mugs are cheap and tacky. These are anything but. They are double-walled. They do not say Starbucks Coffee anywhere on them. It's a rare thrill of relief when a person recognizes something worth more than the money they will spend on it.

Tom-Tom #3 comes out on Monday.

Materials Technology is Awesome

20 minutes before I have to drag my feet toward Starbucks. You all need to know about gecko tape and similar materials.

I'm sure you know that geckos can climb windows and even hang on to them with one toe. This is because their feet are covered in tiny hairs called setae, which are branched at the tops into tinier hairs called spatulae. These act something like super-velcro on a molecular level. The ends of the spatulae get rather entangled in the molecules of the material the gecko is attached to, increasing the area of contact between the two types of molecules, and therefore the strength of the Van der Waals force [in short, the group of forces acting between molecules, mostly attractive]. If a gecko applies a perpendicular force [lifts a foot straight up off the glass or other surface], the foot becomes unstuck, but force applied parallel to the surface cannot lessen the grip.

They've developed several different artificial dry adhesives modelled on gecko feet. Lots of them have a hold several times stronger than their natural counterparts. In place of setae, carbon nanotubes have been used. [Carbon nanotubes are the strongest materials known to exist. ]

I hope they make shoes soon.

Plasma gets left out. It's a state of matter too. It accounts for most of the matter in the universe, in fact.

I'd like to get thinner.

On Guy Fawkes day, Tim and I had a ceremonial book burning of a box of horrible evangelical and "educational" [home schooly] books culled from one of his mum's shelves. Great fun. Burning, in general, is great fun.

Fire rivals trees for prettiness. Turquoise and diamond white flames flash in the corners. The ash from book pages remains in sheets and can be read from, if you don't breathe on them, because the ink is a pigment made from metal oxides. Before they are consumed, the pages glow purple and pink. The books collapse progressively into a series of kaleidoscope flowers. The sparks crawl over the edges like tiny worms. Pretty, unbelievably so.

And the temperature and the fact that this temperature is the product of pounds and pounds of material is oddly exciting. I liked the temperature, because it was icy cold out, and the air was positively wet.

The [true] idea that everything has a reasonable explanation is a wonderful one, and the best imaginable relief from hopelessness and confusion. It makes me want to die a lot less.

Tomorrow is Guy Fawke's Day!

New goals for November:

- print Tom-Tom #3 and make it not suck

- get a bank account at Superstore, where the interest rates are highest

- finish the rough draft of a certain story which I have promised to publish

- solve the bothersome trig problem from Vectors

- buy a dress

I decided to do a pencil drawing of my own face.

Amazing, it actually looks something like me.

The eyes are too far apart, and it's a rough sketch,

but:

it is the most lifelike drawing I've made.

I've been saving this swear for years

Being alive and myself is fucking brilliant.

now again

now beginnings!

now that I am patched up,
something to say,
pleasant to go

you may see me standing
in the weak winter square
fluttering
like the fingers of the wind
in a cotton shirt

you say that I am pale
and small and tough
from growing
through a long ordeal

right you are!
I am beautiful
my backbone is
There



I wrote and published this last winter, but more people read my blog now, and I am proud enough of it to post it again.

Death Cab

I want to live where soul meets body
And let the sun wrap its arms around me
And bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing
And feel, feel what its like to be new

Cause in my head there’s a greyhound station
Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations
So they may have a chance of finding a place
where they’re far more suited than here

And I cannot guess what we'll discover
When we turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels
But I know our filthy hands can wash one another’s
And not one speck will remain

And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So brown eyes I hold you near
Cause you’re the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere
Where soul meets body

A physics lesson, given for the entirely selfish reason that I need practice explaining things I know

The kilogram is a strange unit, yes? An SI mass unit referenced to a certain arbitrary physical object [the International Prototype Kilogram, funnily also known as Le Grand K] whose mass is actually fluctuating? Yes.

I read though, today, that if and when the coulomb is absolutely defined at [6.241 509 629 152 65 ×10 to the power of 18] elementary charges [an elementary charge is the charge carried by a single proton, although the absolute value of the charge of a single electron is the same], which has been proposed, the kilogram will become an SI derived unit, a much more respectable status.

If the coulomb had an exact numerical value based on a natural unit such as the elementary charge, this value could be combined with the definition of an ampere:

"the constant current which will produce an attractive force of [2×10 to the power of –7] newton per metre of length between two straight, parallel conductors of infinite length and negligible circular cross section placed one metre apart in a vacuum.", which must also be equal to a charge of one coulomb per second flowing past a fixed point.

Since force in newtons must equal [mass in kg times acceleration in metres per second squared]
one kilogram could be defined as the mass which will accelerate [2 x 10 to the power of -7] metres per second squared if subjected to the [2 x 10 to the power of -7] newton force which defines the ampere and therefore the coulomb.


Tell me whether or not this was remotely intellible. I want to get better at it.

My parents are talking about moving again. It feels lovely to know that if they do, I won't need to be dragged along.

I am considering a serial for Tom - Tom #3 - #6 ish.

It's a contest.

How long can I stand it?

Recently, five days became a ridiculous length of time.

I won't ask yet.

Delusion

Unnatural when a person rediscovers that she appears to maintain an existence outside of her own head. She is in fact visible. The walls are solid and cannot be sidled or spied through. Others claim to be people just like her. Impossible. If she held her breath long enough in the swimming pool, she would not become a clownfish, she would die instead. Die! Impossible. Apparently her feet are her own, and the pain is hers when she scalds them with coffee. But she can watch the scenario like a film. The others that claim to be people [perhaps they are people, in which case she isn't sure she'd like to call herself a person] claim a claim on her and call it Love. Impossible. It's another word for bossing her hologram around. Only an idiot would think this visible act was a self.

I am hyper serious.

Wherein everything I haven't written about drags around behind me. Like a catheter bag on a stand. [Metaphores!]

I haven't written about it because I'm lazy and it's ironic, but I find nothing harder or more annoying than translating vague picture reels of logical sequences into words. But words have to be able to do more than This.

I am like an obscure young paleontologist fully expecting to discover every one of Darwin's missing links while struggling to pour plaster into shellfish fossils. All of my colleagues are sniggering at me, and the talented ones think I am revolting.

Everybody's saying
that hell is the hippest way to go out
I don't think so

I've been working on a poem four or five days now. I have part of one stanza. I have lots of promise. I want very much to finish.

Tom-Tom #3 will come out in early November.

Going to school is less frustrating when your teacher understands more than you do. I like violin lessons. I do not like physics class.

book bag

I am sick of sewing and every activity [such as slicing cloth with super-sharp shears] related to it. After nearly two weeks I've finished a new book bag, barely in time, since my old one now has thumb-sized holes in the bottom. The new one is everything a book bag should be: sturdy and huge. It's as plain as was possible without using only one color, but the three colors I did use - dark purple, bright blue, off-white - made the construction and design more obvious in an esthetically awesome way, and I prefer this type of beauty to printed fabric or added ornamentation. I haven't been so happy with anything I've made myself since a self-fastening envelope in August. If my comp's USB ports were working I would post pictures. Some of you will be lucky enough to see it in the flesh [cloth].

A cheerful post

Glynis reminded me that a new set of goals, a set for October, is in order:

-Walk to Whyte Ave. This has been a goal for quite some time. It will be accomplished tomorrow.

-Finish The Lord of The Rings. I'm in the middle of the third part.

-Finish Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, including all the math.

-Read On The Wealth of Nations.

-Play my new Kymlicka piece to relative perfection.

-Buy a super nice cooking thermometer. Then make marmalade with it.

They keep demanding that I lie.

I am so tired.

I saw the "Poetry Route" posters for the first time yesterday, on the way home from school. The city of Edmonton thought that publishing poetry on the inside walls of buses was a creative idea. Perhaps it is. Regardless, I am not only intellectually, but personally offended by the posters. It is despicable that drivel like that is taking up recognition, funding, and publishing space that the work of talented poets is denied. If this is the sort of arena I have to look forward to, I'm not sure I want to be a more-published writer.

A day of vague hatred. I am holding a meltdown at bay with avocado, milk, and sugar. I am dissecting my old cd player. I will cry later.

September 20

I am trying not to ruin everything I touch. It's miserable to realize that I do. I want to improve things and make things, rather than degrade and destroy them.

I am suddenly aware of the process of [the broad sense of] industrial civilization, that is: thousands of years of certain human beings desperate to create perfect, durable, elegant things. They all wanted to outwit senselessness, waste of time, prevention of pleasure, decay, and despair with their own competence. So do I.

New Items

I'd like to post some literary productions, but I find myself hoarding them for Tom-Tom #3. Thus:

I am sick. In my congested, sore, fevered and chilled and exhausted condition I have been spending eight hours a night scrubbing burned milk and tannin off of sinks, steaming wands, and pitchers. Also infecting countless Starbucks customers. When I'm not at work I'm reading The Two Towers and huddling under my ratty quilt. I look great when I'm sick. Sort of like a schizophrenic.

I've started violin lessons again.

I've ordered copper earrings from The Noisy Plume on Etsy.

I'm writing a new story and designing a building for it.

You're

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.


Sylvia Plath

On the literature front

I've finished The Fellowship of the Ring, and I'm one chapter away from the end of Six Not-So-Easy Pieces.

Bones

I am extremely happy today in honor of yesterday. I climbed a pine tree and ran down another hill. I slept. I went to the playground and swung on the swings. I curled up and drank hot tea. Everything is sensual today.

The lack of butter and the abundance of margarine in this house is the last straw. I hate with great integrity. I am so tired of every mediocre aspect of living at home with these people. Happiness is nothing but work here.

I am about five pages away from having filled an entire notebook by left hand. I've been practicing since the spring. I'm getting pretty neat and pretty fast. Making my body do what I want it to is great fun. On Tuesday I also climbed into a tree from the ground to a branch about level with my face, which I've never been able to do. I started by walking up the trunk while holding the branch I wanted to get on to, then hanging by my knees, and finally swinging my hips over and sitting up. Then I went higher.

"I want to see, real and living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry."

-Ayn Rand

In the middle, with curly hair.

To read before Christmas

-Lolita
-Othello
-Six Not-So-Easy Pieces [again]
-The Fellowship of the Ring
-The Prince

September tomorrow

I went for a walk with my headphones and found, wearing them, that I could stand my prole neighborhood.

TomTom

Wow. After I jumped
it occurred to me:
Life is perfect.
Life is the best.
It's full of magic
beauty
opportunity
and television
and surprises -
lots of surprises, yeah.

All my life, I worshipped her
Her golden voice, her beauty's beat
How she made us feel
How she made me real
And the ground beneath her feet

And now I can't be sure of anything
Black is white, and cold is heat
For what I worshipped stole my love away
It was the ground beneath her feet

Go lightly down your darkened way
Go lightly underground
I'll be down there in another day
I won't rest until you're found

Let me love you true, let me rescue you
Let me bring you where two roads meet
O come back above
Where there is only love

My oh my, My oh my

# 2

I start real school tomorrow, as I've mentioned. I am not terribly nervous. The sum total of my preparations has been:

-printing off a map and a bus schedule
-buying mechanical pencils
-doing a load of laundry
-showering

The last time I went to school I was five. But the things I could be worried about do not seem very important. Mostly I don't want to get lost, although I probably will, and I hope I am able to do the work easily.

#1

I'd like some nice clothes to wear. Lately I've gone into stores and tried on things and been surprised to look wonderful. I've stood in front of the changing room mirrors and acknowledged that the prettiness suits me. I can't afford it, but it suits me. I've put my utilitarian clothes back on and walked home.

A poem I like with no qualifications

The room was cheap and sordid,
hidden above the suspect taverna.
From the window you could see the alley,
dirty and narrow. From below
came the voices of workmen,
playing cards, enjoying themselves.

And there on that ordinary, plain bed
I had love's body, had those intoxicating lips,
red and sensual,
red lips so intoxicating
that now as I write, after so many years,
in my lonely house, I'm drunk with passion again.

-C. P. Cavafy

because I have more friends over the internet

I am happy. I start real school, for the first time in my life, next week. I'm probably going to get lost at NAIT. But I am taking physics.

Tonight, I am going to start sewing another secret-compartment pillow. I'd like to get better at sewing, since occasionally I have such excellent design ideas. Pillows are good practice.

I have an 80Gb ipod, and very nice headphones [Grados] to listen to it. Tim has the ipod until Sunday. He's putting a lot of music on it.

I bought purple ink for my fountain pen.

This is quite a lot like one of Glynis's new posts. I think I unconsciously imitated her.

I finally understand exactly why I felt so threatened by my parents' exclusive appreciation of classical and baroque music. I cannot say I honestly thought the brand-new emo/screamo/hardcore music I made a point of listening to was artistically superior. I was rebelling against the idea that the creation of everything beautiful and original was past. People are so sickly nostalgic; not only revering the past, but hating the future. I very much enjoy and have always enjoyed Bach and Beethoven and Mozart. However, I refuse to hold the opinion that greater music will never be written.

third

second

trust your eyes absolutely

Insomnia

Although my written posts can stand on their own, I think, there is nothing wrong with a photograph of my friend Eden once in a while. I have shot the promised new photos, but they are currently trapped in my camera because something is wrong with my parents' comp's USB ports.

.
.

I wish I could post pictures of the secret-compartment pillow I designed. It's really neat. I think I'd like to start selling them. People would buy them and hide books in them.

The summer in review, with reference to the list I made a few months ago:

-I have read books, including Utopia by Thomas More, which was illogical and silly, and Way of All the Earth by Anna Akhmatova, which was badly translated, but included poems like The Guest, which is the most erotic poem I have ever encountered. I am in the middle of Six Not-So-Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman right now. It's a book on some basic but gorgeous physics [Relativity, Symmetry, Vectors, etc.].

-The frequency of hand-holding walks is up to a more acceptable level. We both enjoy them immensely and don't make excuses about it. I like this kind of physical contact with this person a lot, and he likes this kind of physical contact with me.

-I saw Richard III at an outdoor theater in July, and it was marvelous and funny.

-I haven't gotten a lot thinner, but I have gotten thinner. I feel more myself and less ugly.

-Money? I am rolling in it. I'll have enough for my first year of college by October, if I keep saving almost all I earn. I'm not saving every penny. It's lovely to have the freedom to buy project supplies and books [I bought The Fountainhead], and to be able to afford to pay for dates sometimes because I want to. I'm going to subscribe to Poetry Magazine - www.poetrymagazine.org - on Friday. People forget that the money they earn should be serving their own purposes, should be enabling them to do what they want to do and have the things they want to have.

-I don't need as much sleep as I thought I did. I sleep at odd hours.

I have interesting and exciting plans for the next few weeks. They include a Superstore shopping cart, vinyl, lumber, cloth, electricity, charcoal, paint, quinces, and other things. I'll update as the projects get started and finished.


I finished Tom - Tom #2. Email me soon if you'd like a copy. It's good, but not as good as I'd like. I'm extremely dissatisfied with my writing lately, which is a productive thing, because I'm working to make it better. But read the new zine.

The perseids peak tonight.

What about the ethics of claiming an abandoned shopping cart? I need one, a Superstore one, specifically.

The Guest

Nothing is different: thin snow beats
Against the dining-room window-pane.
I am totally unchanged,
But a man came to see me.

I asked: 'What do you want?'
He said: 'To be with you in hell.'
I laughed, 'Ah, there I can't
Oblige you, you'd wish us ill.'

His dry hand touched a petal
With a light caress.
'Tell me how they kiss you,
Tell me how you kiss.'

And his eyes, glinting dully,
Never slid from my ring;
Never a single muscle
Moved under his snakeskin.

O I know: his joy, his greed,
Is to know intensely, eye to eye,
There's nothing that he needs,
Nothing I can deny.

-Anna Akhmatova

let me take you down

cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields.

The batteries are purchased. They are charging as I type. I couldn't observe my three-week grounding this morning because I had to go buy them.

I have discovered The Beatles. Also late.

I got my learner's license today. Three and half years late, but I have it. I didn't appreciate it when the woman at the registry office looked at my picture and said, "Oh you poor dear, I'll just use the other one."

Tomorrow I plan to buy camera batteries. This means that photographs of the secret-compartment pillow, my scoodie, Notebook Issue 6, and me wearing 3-D glasses, are forthcoming.

I would really like a photograph of Tim, but I don't think it would be kind of me to demand one, since he hates having them taken almost [but not quite] as much as I do.

I'm really stressed out. I've written a nightmarish piece.

The Dark Knight is super-fantastic.

I think I like cuddling.

electri-city

During the past month I've taken apart two old blowdryers, one that doesn't work and one that does. This morning I plugged them in for the first time since they've been just guts and figured out how to fix the broken one. I touched a wire to the right piece of metal, and the fan started spinning and the coils heated up. It was incredibly thrilling to understand why it hadn't worked before and why it was working now. But I am not eager to electrocute myself - I've asked Tim to give me advice on how to reconnect it permanently.

July 26

Tonight I get to pretend I'm a writer. Fun! Notebook Magazine http://www.notebookmagazine.ca is launching its sixth issue, which includes six [count 'em - six] of my poems, at a sketchy cafe with delicious chai tea, TONIGHT. I quite accurately and literally can't remember the last time I was so excited. You can tell I'm excited. I used caps lock.

Also: I made a pillow with a big zippered secret compartment in the middle. Big enough for books. The pillow is blue and sand-coloured. It's for Ros for her birthday.

Acmeism

I've been reading a bit about Acmeism in poetry. I don't have a perfect understanding of it yet, and doubtless I will discover tenets of it that I disagree with, but as far as my knowledge reaches now, I consider myself an Acmeist.

'Acme' is a Greek word meaning "the best age of man". Acmeists are obviously rather humanistic, as opposed to Symbolists, who are the literary equivalent of mystics. I especially dislike the preoccupation and reverence devoted to "the muse" in Symbolist poems. The muse does not exist. Humans write poems for other humans. Poetry does not exist on a higher spiritual plane, and it is certainly not dictated by the gods. Poets seem to like thinking of themselves as mere secretaries, but I find this despicable. Why hide your talent behind nonsense about your immortal Muse?

Every half-baked word I write costs me work and worry. When I write something almost-good it is solely by my own efforts. I am not afraid to say so.

Oh happy day. I have gotten my act together and am writing decent things again. Maybe Tom Tom #2 will come out within less than six months.

Yesterday I drew my mechanical alarm clock's innards.

Christine Fellows

Night.
There's a lantern in your window.
If we could come in closer we would see you in your housecoat.
What a sight.
Grains of sawdust mist the air,
Like your kitchen is a movie set and you're the heroine in there.
In your place
A renaissance collage
Next to the plastic lobsters
A reverent homage.
Then you might
Write another bashful letter
To a Russian ballerina
All the way in New York City
It's Saturday Night
On Utopia Parkway
I pray that you might
Think of something you'll love to love
(to love to love to love)
Tonight
My dear Mary Baker Eddy
I pray for Brother Robert
And those boots of lead again.
Despite all I know I can't contain
I'll gather all the parts I need and hope that we remain.
Whitewash over me until
Pure Varathane runs through my veins
And I'll at last be still.
Right when the arrow leaves the bow,
It erases all uncertainty and love I'll never know.
It's Saturday Night on Utopia Parkway
I pray that I might
Make you something you'll love to love
(to love to love to love)

I started re-writing today.

To quote my facebook profile...

I am trying to become a perfectionist. Never before in my life have I made a concerted effort to do anything properly, to the best of my ability, until I was happy with the result. I have always cut corners, refusing to buy the materials I needed, refusing to start over after I'd made a mistake, refusing to learn enough about what I was trying to do, etc.

I have started to try. There have been a few, tiny successes, so tiny that they will make me look foolish: a scarf I made for myself that is really pretty and that I can't wait to wear, my milk-foam skills [I decided that if I was going to be stuck in Starbucks eight hours a day this summer that I might as well learn to make good foam - but it can still be improved], a violin piece I have been working on for months because I want it to sound amazing, mailing my zines off in envelopes so they arrive in nice condition, some banana bread that didn't taste like cardboard, a few drawings I like, the way I set up my new room - only keeping the things I adored or absolutely needed.

I told you. I've made myself look foolish. Most people take these sorts of things for granted as the results of an obvious method.

The Summer Progresses

I am in good condition, as far as my list goes. An update:

-I am nearly finished Utopia. I really need to find another translation of an Anna Akhmatova collection. D. M. Thomas is not good for her.

-Hand holding walks with a boy have occurred, but not often enough.

-On Saturday Tim and I are going to see As You Like It at an outdoor Shakespeare festival.

-Life is better in size eight, I swear.

-I have relearned how to ride my bike with no hands.

-I got a job at Starbucks. I will be rich soon.

-I haven't slept much. I keep waking up when the sun rises at five, but that is not a bad thing at all. Some days I take naps.

-Piano is now at the two-handed stage, violin is now at the I-can't-wait-to-have-a- teacher-again stage, and bass is at the I-need-to-practice-a-lot-more-stage.

-I stopped crocheting a scarf, because I need some help from my oma on ending my rows, and knitted one instead, all in one night. It's purple and yellow. I can't wait for it to get cold so I can wear it.

-I haven't learned to knit mittens yet. But the season is young.

-The cake has been good. There has been a lot of it.

-I've already mentioned my new story. The poems are few and far between and not excellent or usually decent. I am trying to be patient.

In other news:

-My new room is perfect and extremely clutter-free.

-I've ordered a scoodie from my friend Glynis [bearwoman].

-I have new zine subscribers.

some days like today

When I need to be brave, some days I pretend I'm not a woman. I don't pretend to be a man, but more an entity aside from considerations of gender. Perhaps 'pretend' isn't the right word.

When I ignore the fact that other people look at me primarily as a female, it's much simpler and easier to walk purposefully and arrogantly, like I like to, to look at them in the face, and to say what I mean.

Ten days is too long. I would happily skip to Wednesday night. I want to see you more than I like to admit.

I am going here tomorrow.

starving

I've been starving to death in my own house. If I get this job [luckily I should know by tomorrow] I'm going to celebrate by going out and buying whole grain bread, cheese, lemons, cantaloupe, red peppers, quinces, apples, butter, tea. If I don't get this job I will have to continue living on oatmeal, cocoa, and fat-free ice cream. I will have to continue feeling sick.

story

I've started writing my first long story ["long" here meaning more than a page and a half] in about two years. I am about half way through the very rough draft. I can't wait to start re-writing. Rough drafts are the creative equivalent of stacking firewood, in my books - both literally and figuratively. In fact, stacking wood is more satisfying. When you're finished stacking wood you have a neat pile of fuel that will probably last you all winter. When you're finished a rough draft, you have weeks or months of work still ahead of you. Also fireplace fuel, I suppose. But it's more like kindling. While we're exploring double meanings and bad metaphores, it's even like kindling for your story.

The story is about crows. It will hopefully be one hundred times more elegantly written than this post.

I am happy.

I like the idea of synthetic diamonds

moving up in the world

I have a new bedroom, in which I hope to lead a completely separate and private life, somewhat "protected" from my family. The new room is twice as big as the old one - I have room for my desk and sewing table. Also for an old couch and a bigger bookshelf. It's still ugly, and all of my things are still in piles against the walls, but I have high hopes for the next few weeks. I like setting up apartment using only my own things, as few and shabby as they are. They are mine. I will have nicer ones eventually.

It will be wonderful to have a place to study.

excerpt

"The justification of sacrifice, that your morality, propounds, is more corrupt than the corruption it purports to justify. The motive of your sacrifice, it tells you, should be love - the love you ought to feel for every man. A morality that professes the belief that the values of the spirit are more precious than matter, a morality that teaches you to scorn a whore who gives her body indiscriminately to all men - this same morality demands that you surrender your soul to promiscuous love for all comers.

"As there can be causeless wealth, so there can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards. To love is to value. The man who tells you that it is possible to value without values, to love those whom you appraise as worthless, is the man who tells you that it is possible to grow rich by consuming without producing and that paper money is as valuable as gold.

"Observe that he does not expect you to feel a causeless fear. When his kind get into power, they are expert at contriving means of terror, at giving you ample cause to feel the fear by which they desire to rule you. But when it comes to love, the highest of emotions, you permit them to shriek at you accusingly that you are a moral delinquent if you're incapable of feeling causeless love. When a man feels fear without reason, you call him to the attention of a psychiatrist; you are not so careful to protect the meaning, the nature and the dignity of love.

"Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another. Your morality demands that you divorce your love from values and hand it down to any vagrant; not as reward, but as alms, not as a payment for virtues, but as a blank check on vices. Your morality tells you that the purpose of love is to set you free of the bonds of morality, that love is superior to moral judgement; that true love transcends, forgives and surives every manner of evil in its object, and the greater the love the greater the depravity it permits to the loved. To love a man for his virtues is paltry and human, it tells you; to love him for his flaws is divine. To love those who are worthy of it is self-interest; to love the unworthy is sacrifice. You owe your love to those who don't deserve it, and the less they deserve it, the more love you owe them - the more loathsome the object, the nobler your love - the more unfastidious your love, the greater the virtue - and if you can bring your soul to the state of a dump heap that welcomes anything on equal terms, if you can cease to value moral values, you have achieved the state of moral perfection."

-from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

summer agenda

.

.

.

.

.

.

-read books [Utopia, What is Symbolism?, my new Anna Akhmatova books, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, The Lord of the Rings, the rest of the Time Quartet, books on trees]
-go on a lot of hand-holding walks
-see Shakespeare plays
-get a lot thinner
-ride my bike
-make money
-sleep
-practice violin, bass, piano
-finish crocheting my scarf
-learn to knit mittens
-bake a lot of cake
-write a lot of poems and at least two stories

Notice the correlations between this list and the Wants list.

the innocents

imposter!
stop threatening
panamanian
spaghettification
exponentially
infantile stress
buckets of tremble
pluralizing
pen skids-

young men and
women
continue
to name clouds
"walrus"
"dragon"
"the mountains of Mordor"

so even the sky
belongs
to our perpetually
fresh batch
who know nothing
of oxymoronic
maurauding harmonics
doomsaying scum

from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The trees were tall and triangular. They were quiet.

Liesel pulled The Word Shaker from her bag and showed Rudy one of the pages. On it was a boy with three medals hanging around his throat.

"'Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?"

At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It's likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn't matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. He skin was empty for it, waiting.

Years ago, when they'd raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death.

"Of course I told him about you," Liesel said. She was saying goodbye and she didn't even know it.

news items

-my hair has finally grown out enough to put into a ponytail

-i love it when the movements of the leaves in our big tree make it look like the wind is manipulating the electro-magnetic field itself

-endocrine therapy sucks

-jasmine tea does not

-i get paid today, which feels delicious

-tom-tom number 1 is about to be mailed

-i'm baking five-minute artisan bread

-the schedule is math

-i miss heather, laura, tim, sarah, oma, robyn, natalie, kait, eden, auntie janet

-beethoven sounds good this morning

gettin' published, do do do do do

in notebook magazine - a whole set of poems plus a short interview this time. hooray! this will be wonderful for my reputation. all the cool people in edmonton show up in notebook.

i'm given to wants of some desires

- to understand higher math and to be able to use it whenever i want to
- to write fantastically well
- to develop skills that will make me money that i will be proud to earn
- to be admired, and better liked
- to do everything as well as i possibly can
- to invent ways to do things better
- to be beautiful
- to stop pretending
- to create and maintain much better mind maps for myself
- to know a lot more about economics, literature, music, history, philosophy, physics, plant biology, and cooking
- to get a tattoo
- to try hard for anything
- to finally start pickpocketing
- to examine pus under my microscope
- to be published more
- to build my bookshelf
- to read Utopia
- to be thin
- to be around people i actually like

i am proud to have someone's secrets to keep.

march

months later
we are less like lovers
and more like students

went out today

to an excellent used bookstore and had no trouble convincing the owner to take a pile of zines to stack on his counter. i'm excited, but i feel as if i've just stripped down to nothing in front of the whole world. i'm still not used to the idea of strangers reading my stuff.

a picture of me

Mud Flood

Mud ink
Mud think
Mud wink
Blink nod

Mud weep
Mud sleep
Mud peep

Mud mouth

Mud talk
Mud squawk
Mud lock
Mud block
Out

Mud love
Mud dove
Mud glove

Mud gutter

Mud search
Mud church
Mud perch
Mud lurch--

Mud tumble
Mud mumble
Mud bumble
Berry tea

Mud lands
Mud brands
Mud bands
Mud hands

Mud art

Mud buyers
Mud flyers
Mud spyers

Mud you
Mud me
Mud random professor
Mud random soldier
Salutes

Mud trench
Mud drench
Mud clench
Toes

Mud sex
Mud flecks
Mud specs
Spandex

Mud funny
Mud honey
Mud money

Mud scrap

Mudblood
Mud flood

obsession

my recent obsession with trees is the product of a poetic appreciation for their pride, a craving for leaves and bark and roots after months of snow, and other peoples' suggestion. i suspect most obsessions start this way - as a vague intense personal attraction, combined with the pleased self-consciousness that comes with the first time another person recognizes it. from that point the obsession is deliberately developed, and probably broadens in focus to include more of the subject's aspects. in keeping with my own theory, a habit of doodling trees on christmas cards led to a poem about a group of young trees cruelly uprooted and thrown on a boat, which led to several comments about my fixation with trees, which led to a plan to learn to graft branches in the spring, which led to a story book, which led to a visit to the conservatory which may have permanently altered my psyche, which led to another, more-influential comment by my boyfriend, which led to a plan to plant a tree of my own and get a job at a greenhouse, which led to roselow seeds in a pot, which led to a plan to get a tree tattoo, which led to an interview this week at a greenhouse.

sketch #1

Blood is shockingly dark red and rich. It smells like spoons. When people watch it gurgling through a slender plastic tube, out of their soft inside elbow into vials with printed labels, they begin to see their bodies as cleverly disguised deep wells.

wahhhhhhhh wah wah wahh

someone just do me a favor and slap some duct tape over my mouth. if i am as stupid as i sound in everyday conversation, you won't be missing much.

thoughts for Valentine's Day, 2008

I wrote this last night, while I was at The Tea Place, studying.


If I stay here alone past six-thirty, I'll begin to look like a loser. Oh well. Tim and I would have felt uncomfortably like we were supposed to act in a dreadful prole movie if we had gone out tonight. There would have been too many people making out all around us, and they would have looked like mating sheep or something. I would have inevitably mentioned it. Better for the health and happiness of the general public that we stay holed up in our respective rooms and see each other on Saturday instead. We're going to visit the conservatory. I like that boy a lot.

now

now beginnings!

now that I am
patched up,
something to say,
pleasant to go
you may see me standing

in the weak winter square
fluttering
like the fingers of the wind
in a cotton shirt

you say that
I am pale
and small and tough
from growing
through a long ordeal

right you are!
I am beautiful
my backbone is
There

pathetique

beethoven's second movement
and i am pathetic.
i will never write words like this.

lucky

today i am the luckiest.

feed

it creates a strange sense of grave responsibility to realize that you are genuinely hungry, and that you have to feed yourself. not stuff your face, not satisfy some craving for ice cream, but feed yourself. you have to walk into the kitchen and determine what you should eat so that your body will work properly for you, because you are hungry. do you need cereal or greek salad or dark chocolate or stir-fry or bread and cheese? how much do you need?

it is a new and good experience for me to realize that i need food, and to enjoy making and eating it.

new blog

i was tired of the old blog, and ready for some excitement in my life, hence and beyond! oh excitement.

meta- is a greek prefix meaning 'beyond' or 'after'.

i am not thin, but i am ok.