my weekend.

the river. my girl and i both love it here.

i recently bought the missing cord for my digital camera, and i can already tell i’m going to be  a menace with this thing.

i have been wanting to take pictures of this period in my life, in case there weren’t any words to describe it, but there are.

the most surprising thing about the transition i’m effecting is how much peace and calm i’m feeling.

every so often, i run over the day i graduated in my mind. would i have done anything differently?
the answer is no. i’m a passionate woman, once aroused, and my passion was – but i was defending myself. i felt disrespected and hurt; i owned that. i tried to express that, not to place blame, but in order to fix and move on.
it didn’t get the intended result, of bridging a gap and opening communication (in fact, the opposite), but my soul feels like i’m respecting it.

which is always a good thing.

the universe is showering me with flowers.

and i’ve been taking care of myself.
i’ve been quite adamant about that, actually. this means fresh air. making sure daisy gets outside (and takes me with her). eating well. getting enough rest. staying washed and groomed.

also, a few indulgences. a chestnut/raspberry/jam cheesecake to celebrate my graduation.
good coffee.
beer with the neighbours.
a documentary film festival with one of my favourite people in the universe.
registering for an all day yoga workshop next weekend.
making plans for the anarchist book fair the week after.

more coffee? don't mind if i do!

talking with friends. being reflective. owning up to the responsibilities i have. holding myself accountable. and most importantly, being extremely kind to myself.

so what do i want to do?

the last of my grades rolled in today. i’m extremely proud of myself. this year, as i juggled 2 or 3 jobs, 4 classes, and the rest of my life (grad applications last semester, scholarships, loans, taxes, poverty), i pulled off mostly A’s, with two B+s. this means that my g.p.a is raised by .10.
this is good if i want to go to grad school. it also means that the risk i took last fall paid off.

my academic mentor is after me to make my applications next year. she will be moving to another university, in a rural town, (we laughed and laughed at the idea of her in high heeled rubber boots, walking across the farm fields to work, or perhaps adopting a pot-bellied pig, a la george clooney…it’s similar to putting barbie in overalls, basically) but she will still be walking me through the process.
if i choose.

my godsister spruces up resumes for a living. i’m enlisting her to help me create a professional looking c.v.
i’d like to look into getting an advertising job…something where i could make a good living and use my skills as a writer, while i wait for my opportunity to make it creatively.

old friends.

other than that, i want a clean apartment.
to get my typewriter spruced up and park-worthy.
it’s really funny how little time i want to spend chained to my desk now that i don’t have to anymore.

i never really wanted to. i did it for school, and out of respect to a preferred method of communication.
for me, i need people. i need hugs. i need to spend time with myself and with others. i need to be creative.

armenian red lentil soup, mixed salad with roasted portabello mushrooms, chia gel. yum.

it’s nice to know that my life has always been here, waiting for my head to clear.

remarkably without drama. with a lot of beautiful, beautiful gifts in it.

silly photo shoot with rachel and cristophe.

i didn’t really get much “time off” before i was thrown back into working full-time. which turned out to be a blessing. my work is ferking crazy a lot of the time (to the extent that people constantly ask me how/why i stay on there, after almost 3 years) and sometimes, the answer becomes clear to me.

i work in a small space. a lot of the customers are regulars, so after years of being with them, knowing their eating habits and their health concerns, a lot of them are more like friends or familial figures than anything else.

i know i try and create family wherever i go. but it was good to be able to answer the “how did school go?” question with, “i graduated”, and get congratulations for that. to be told what an accomplishment it was. be able to own that, as well.
also, to be told that i’m apparently so determined that i will be able to accomplish anything.

happiness is wearing my mama's jacket.

i’m feeling tired, to be sure.
but a good tired. a tired like i’ve run a huge marathon and i passed the finish line and there’s a massage and buckets full of ice waiting for my sore feet.

rachel, and tulips.

it’s also been a bit crazy (does anyone know what’s going on with the moon?) angela’s motorcycle had a malfunction on the highway at 110 km/hour on her way to work; she almost skidded into oncoming traffic and died. she didn’t, she came out unscratched. but fielding that call from my sobbing friend was lovely.

a few days later, rachel was biking to work, a car ran a stop sign, hit her and left. she was thrown into trees and broke a few ribs.

a dear customer’s cancer is back.

all this impresses on me is how precious this life is.
how poignant every human connection.
how much love my heart can ultimately hold.

oh, my silly puppy.how much love my heart can, ultimately, hold.

it’s surprising.

after all i’ve put it through, all it’s experienced, that’s all i feel.

a book, some nice bowls, a much-wanted teapot, a lucky buddha. signs, much?

this week is beltane.
may day.
a time for healing, rebirth, new growth. a very potent time to make changes and to be.
i’ll be observing its passage in my own way. with my blue candle and my gemstones and a piece of parchment paper to write my wishes down.

what says healing to your heart?

alice in wonderland (entirely appropriate, i think) and english peas as a bedtime snack.

p.s. god, this camera is amazing. i lovelovelove it.

transition

i’m back.

the past few months i tried to post every once in a while, but it never felt right. there was so much going on that i couldn’t put into words. briefly: i lost a few friends (one to cancer, one to a car accident); became dangerously poor (which is really stressful for me because i don’t have the best credit, so i can’t get any loans from the bank, nor do i have parents i can get an emergency donation from); juggled my two jobs and my four classes. had a few health problems of my own.

i didn’t break down, but i became so stressed out and down that i wasn’t a lot of fun.
nobody has to be fun all the time, i know that. but i felt weird about coming back to this space freaking out.

anyway. yesterday it ended. i wrote my last exam. i got one of my final assignments back from that same prof; i got an A. so i’m hoping i can extrapolate that mark and know that all my sacrifices the past year for this degree were worth it.

i spent the night getting drunk on campari (not something i’m ever going to do again. it was something i’d never tried before and yeowza, does it taste like ass) and leaving a lot of messages for my friends.

see, i broke up with f. last night. i don’t know if our friendship will be able to continue. we had made plans a week ago to hang out yesterday, and something i guess happened on his end a few minutes before i emailed to confirm that we were still getting together. he told me he couldn’t, and asked if we could reschedule.
this happens a lot with him. once or twice would be fine. over and over makes a girl pretty insecure.
so, we stumbled into an argument, because for once i stood up to him. voiced my anger (which was more hurt, but whatever).
he got angry back. he doesn’t like it when i get defensive.
we sent a few emails back and forth, angrily.

then he said : “I’m just going to go away. Or stay away or whatever. […] Congrats on your graduation. Congrats on your finishing something that took a lot out of you. Now, leave me alone.”

to back up just a little bit, a few days ago i had a few doctors’ appointments. one was with this therapist i am going to be doing some work with. we really got along, in the sense that he immediately got me: “no. you’re not afraid of letting go. you’re desperately afraid of being alone. there’s a difference.”
the fact that he was able to see me so clearly, so immediately, was good for me. and cathartic. i spent a lot of time crying. and then spent the rest of the day feeling like a human punching bag. which i often do, in therapy, which is why i often avoid it.
but anyway. the therapist had earlier sent me home with some ‘homework’: to become clear about what i wanted out of our time together. i came back with an answer…that i wanted to be able to be more functional when my ‘shit’ comes up. to not let it flood me and freak me out and stress me out. to be able to maintain perspective, and also, to get more solid self-esteem. then the doctor said to me, “why don’t you tell me what you want to be able to deal with?”
and i raised my eyebrow, snorking back all my snot, and said, “point form?”
so i gave him a quick list of everything.
and he looked at me and said, “so. you’re telling me that you’ve lived through one hell of a lot of trauma. it’s no wonder you’re fucked up.”
and i asked him if it would go away. he said no. he said i’ll be able to manage it, but i’ll always be dealing with it.

(crying a little now)

i told you that bit about the therapist to explain my reaction to that (final) email from field. i interpreted it as permanent. my family was REALLY fucked up, in lots of ways, my mother was REALLY fucked up in lots of ways, and i find in times like these that i revert to that modality, her coping mechanisms. if she got upset with me, five minutes later she would be knocking on my door trying to make things right.
that’s not exactly where i’m going with this – he thinks whatever he thinks, i think whatever i think, but i do think in this instance i had every right to be upset and to express that – but that we NEVER said “that’s it.”

so. he wants to be left alone. and i read over our exchange and it became so apparent that even though we were never actually together again, i was hoping for something way different than he was offering, at the finish line. i wanted to be closer. i wanted to be the person he leaned on. his best friend, his lover…i wanted to be his partner. his idea of what that role entailed was different.

i’m not sure, though, if i was over-reacting. if that email meant permanently, or for a while. i know that it’s no longer healthy for me to think that i can be the woman he needs. i’m willing to be his friend. i don’t want to lose such a kickass friendship, that’s lasted for so long. anyway, i didn’t (right away) leave him alone. i wrote him a few emails. left him a message. basically to try and leave a line of communication open, if he should choose to use it. also to wish him well.

bah, this is so weird. i graduated (even though apparently it’s not official until i convocate, but it felt like a release yesterday) and this happened, all within 6 hours.

talk about a transition.

i’m not sure if i can maintain this space right now. i guess i’m blogging as i feel. but i just wanted to check in and say that i’m in the rest of my life now.
and i’m kinda scared.

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brick wall

last week, i got a 2-line email from concordia informing me that i’d been rejected for their m.a. program. this week, i got a much more nicely worded email from ubc telling me the same.

i’m feeling the resulting complete lack of motivation to finish my semester. an encroaching “meh” in terms of the ridiculous amount of reading i have to do, the assignments i have yet to complete….i really don’t have to be here. my g.p.a. is now at the minimum required for grad school; i have all my courses; and since i don’t seem to be getting into any of the grad schools (yes, i have 2 left to hear from: university of toronto – yeah right, i never thought i’d get in there – and university of guelph at humber, which is actually not in guelph but toronto) i wanted, there just doesn’t seem to be much point.

i don’t even feel like writing. i’m too burned out. i scribbled down an idea a few days ago for the first time in a month, but now i’m behind in school (because of the meh), and so my actual responsibilities are taking precedence. i’m tired. i’m tired, and now i have a loan debt to deal with, and it looks more and more likely that rather than kickstarting a new adventure in another city, i’ll be staying in this one, in this apartment.

there are upsides to this. i have an in, i believe, with the emsb (english montreal school board) in order to start substituting at the very least. apparently, you don’t have to have a B.Ed in order to start at certain school boards here. teaching will give me an opportunity to, if i live frugally, pay back my loan and perhaps save a bit for my next move. i won’t have to incur all the debt from changing apartments and or cities or whatever.

the crush? not so much a crush anymore. i honestly can’t read him too well, but the more we hung out (3 times, i believe) i realized that we weren’t for each other. i hate repeating myself….that’s the bad thing about having an almost-photographic memory: i remember what i’ve told you about myself or what’s going on with me, and when i give you my number i expect, if you like me, that you’ll remember it. i’m not about to waste my time on someone who can’t do these things, even if he is extraordinarily hot. i’m sorry. too many fish, or whatever.

field is here for the weekend, except not really with me right now. it isn’t the “bestfriendapalooza” (2 days of uninterrupted, after 4 months apart, best friend time, replete with tattoo-getting and club-going and dr. who watching) that we both needed. it’s “something came up” so he came over for a few hours last night and might come over for a few hours today and then he’ll fly back to victoria tomorrow.

i checked my email last night after he left, so he doesn’t even know about the ubc thing. i’ll tell him later.

randy pausch says something about how the brick walls are there to keep out the people who don’t want something bad enough. i think i’ve hit mine, and i don’t know if i have the strength to bash through. or even what i’m bashing through for.

point form

i’m tired. it’s 7:20 am, i’ve been up for a while (my alarm is only supposed to go off in 40 minutes)…i can’t sleep. i couldn’t sleep yesterday, either. it’s the beginning of my week and i was sort of hoping to only be this tired by the end of it.

my crush and i had a wonderful date. now i’m all scrimped up because i don’t know when/how to ask for the next one. i’m not exactly a game player (okay, AT ALL) but admittedly, calling too soon or too late can fuck up the chemistry. i’m playing goldilocks with my love life. it doesn’t help exactly either that he’s been casually seeing another woman for a few months now. he says he doesn’t know where it is going and it doesn’t EXACTLY bother me (i didn’t expect him to be totally single) but it just makes me feel restrained.

my father got married for the 4th time. to a 35-year-old woman from beijing. she’s still living there while they figure out her residency stuff for costa rica. considering the woman is only 5 years older than me, making her 27 years younger than my father, i’m slightly weirded out by that.
oh well. there’s a good chance i’ll never meet her.

presentation tomorrow in class. i have 2 days only of class, but with work and everything, they run 10 hours long. i applied to graduate last week.

i got another editing job and someone wants me to write a screenplay with them.

now, to wake up…

all of my love, all of my love, all of my love

i’m here, i’m here, i’m here….i swear.

it’s been FOREVER since i posted. i know. i’m sorry. i miss all of you, and i do check all of your blogs pretty much daily. often, you can’t even tell i was there, but it’s part of my morning coffee-wake-up-ritual.

happy new year.

this is going to be all over the place. there are certain things i really want to tell you.
first, i don’t mean to leave the blog for long, ever. but LIFE has been happening lately. again. the last time i wrote, i was in the middle of finishing up two grad applications, writing i-don’t-want-to-think-about-how-many essays, and working two jobs. when the brunt of that ended on december 15th (once i mailed off the two apps), i sat on my couch almost comatose for about 5 days, drinking beer when the sun went down and watching as many seasons of house as were available at my video store.

december 20th was my friend zoltan‘s memorial psy-trance party in ottawa. i of course couldn’t miss that, but i also couldn’t peel myself off my own couch until 5:30. so i got to the bar by 10, (there’s a bus that leaves montreal every hour, i could only get on the 7 pm. bus, so that meant i got to ottawa by 9:30), danced myself SILLY for 5 hours, went to the after party, and then got back on the 7 am bus to go to work at 9:45.
that was AN INSANE party for my lovely friend. he was a non-conventional person who left no instructions, really, as to what he wanted to have happen to his remains before they were shipped back to hungary, so my friend flora found an appropriate vessel for him in what the crew started to call the cosmic bowling ball. which is exactly what you’d think, except a lot lighter. so his ashes were right there in front of the d.j. table the entire night, soaking up our love and our howling cat calls and the throbbing beats on the floor…..
…wait a second. i should explain something. psy-trancing LOOKS a lot like “raving” (you know, the zoned out kids with soothers in their mouths or what have you, who are snorting coke off each other and just acting like idiots). psy-trancing involves a lot of the same deco – fluo paintings and the like – and has a certain subtype of trance, but for my crew/family, and a lot of others out there, there is a spiritual bent to the dance. an attempt to raise energy, for a certain purpose; an attempt to get into a spiritual trance through dance.
so, yes. a lot of energy was raised that night. twas beautiful and inexpressible.

and the next day i was at work. EXHAUSTED.
and then i go home after 10 hours at the store and pack, because wouldn’t you know it, daisy and i are taking the train to a small ontario town which is the closest to banane’s actual town as we can get. we left my house the next morning (if zoltan’s party was the saturday, this was then the monday) at 8:30. we got in at 2.
the day after that, the whole caravan was in oshawa. then back to peterborough the same day. the day after that banane, her partner, and i, and our two collective dogs, left for ottawa. where we spent 3 nights. (3? we went back to peterborough on the 26th). i stayed in peterborough until the 29th, and then daisy and i took the train back to montreal. where i promptly tore apart my apartment, moving the office to the living room and vice versa….until i started work again.

my holiday was lovely. for the most part. banane and i are lovely. we pretty much always are. we drank lots of whisky (her idea, at first i was like, “hells no! where the hell is the liquor store….oh, yeah, not montreal. things close here.”) and chatted and took the doggies for runs in the park. i saw lots of a good friend of mine. we spent time in a small town called sharbot lake where banane’s friends own a cabin. we had nice family time with our step-dad, who i haven’t seen in probably two years.
there was a hitch though, and i’m hoping that it was just because i was so.damned.tired, but i crashed early lots. zoned out a bit. felt….disconnected, or disjointed. sis commented on it. (it could also have been a bit of the tobeyweed…) but that was there. it’s okay, though. i shook it off.

now i’m back at school. spent 45 minutes IN THE FUCKING WAITING LINE at the bookstore today to buy about $200 worth of books. have another grad app due on friday. i’m currently avoiding HOW MUCH REWRITING i have to do on that f***er. wow. so i’m sloooowly getting back into the swing of the things here. it being my last semester. EVER.

got a line on a substitute teaching gig.

got a date on saturday with a boy who makes my heart stop. (there’s a bit of bee insecurity backstory to this one, because i asked him out initially, and then he proposed what to do, i said his suggestion sounded good, and then he *poofed* for 5 days. but a dislocated shoulder gets him forgiven). i only mention this because i NEVER feel like this. like i’m bloody thirteen years old with a picture of donnie wahlberg on my wall. (true story. i kissed him every night). crushes are good.

see? all over the place.
and now i’ve got to do my theory homework before my menstrual cheeseburger buzz wears off (the cheeseburger purchased out of pity for my angry uterus) and so i must run, but i will be back, soon.

OMG HILARIOUSNESS

can we try something different? if you want me to write something specific, i could be up for that. ask me a question. i’ll get back to you. i’m shit at replying to individual comments, i’m sorry about that, but i’ll actually write the posts.

🙂

wanna see what i look like now?

betting on myself

apparently, i need to write, as i can’t concentrate otherwise. life is pretty scary, in what i hope will be pretty good ways, but right now are just plain unnerving.

and i KNOW it’s only the 5th of december, and there is more than 3 weeks for me to figure this all out, but…my finances are in such scary shape.
thank god my bills are all paid in full. it just sucks when i got my holiday pay (requested because i was worried about rent, etc. for january) and it was a lot less than i thought, but that’s still all there was, and when i transferred that to my visa, it didn’t pay my visa off all the way, and then i had to file my grad school applications online and THAT (being that there’s 3) cost me $290…i don’t know if i’ll be able to afford going anywhere for christmas, at this rate. maybe i’m being overdramatic, but there you go. i’m estimating i have about $300 or less of credit on my card, and $6.00 in my chequing account. that’s WITH working my ass off.
i was recently informed by osap (my loan people) that i submitted my financial info wrong, and while on the good side, that means i’m entitled to more funding, on the bad side, it’s frozen until i get things figured out. and my funding was only due to come through on january 1st, anyway. the school doesn’t even open until the 4th, and then after THAT my loan takes about 5 business days to get into my account. so rent might very well be almost half a month late next month.

i’m working a wonderful new job. at a community centre, helping disadvantaged kids with their homework. i love it, although terribly challenging it is. it is also where i met my new crush, but let’s be honest here, as much as i am trying to figure out a way of getting past my shyness and letting him know that i like him, i just have no bloody TIME.

if you want to know where i’ve been lately, it’s been term papers (one 7-page one due on the 26th of november, another 7-page one due on the 27th, as well as a 3-page one); midterms (chaucer – 3 hours, on december 1st); working at the centre 4 days a week, 2 hours a day; finals (one coming up on sunday, another one on wednesday?) and trying to keep all the details of my grad school applications in order. i just realized i’m going to have to send in, by MAIL, my grad application for university of toronto, so it’ll have to be sent off LATEST december 11 or 12, and not the (now seemingly cushy) 15th.

and i don’t even KNOW if i want to go anymore. banane doesn’t want me to. she thinks that if i do go, i’ll be chaining myself to debt for the rest of my life. and i have to agree with her….she bought a house with her inheritance from my mother…i spent mine on my depression and university and surviving the past few hard years….but she can sell her house. it’s equity. she has her own business. i have nothing to show for mine…

i am holding it together. i don’t have time or the, what-did-i-call-it, luxury of having panic attacks or anxiety attacks about any of this. i need to get up every day and i need to work. in order to barely scrape by. i am holding very, very, very strong to the vision of my writing right now (which i haven’t even looked at in about a month, as i’ve been too overwhelmed with school, etc) and praying that i followed it here, to this place, for the right reasons…i knew this day would come and that i am living my dream, or the path to my dream, more like, and that it IS big and it IS frightening as hell and i’m constantly juggling for my basic needs of survival….but this is part of it. the betting on yourself.

right?

oh, and because of the crush i have, guess who i’m pretty sure wants me back now. if anyone guessed field, they would be correct.
(i’m hearing all sorts of, “i’ll always be in love with you…”/”i don’t want to lose you….”/”in so many ways we’re perfect for each other…..”)
sigh. men.
i made a poll! yay! can you help me? feel free to ask me questions in the comments, i’ll refine the poll or answer them accordingly.

does somebody need this?

Sometimes, when you’re feeling your lowest, bee, the real you is summoned.

 

And you understand, maybe for the first time ever, how grand you are, because you discover that vulnerable doesn’t mean powerless, scared doesn’t mean lacking in beauty, and uncertainty doesn’t mean that you’re lost.

These realizations alone will set you on a journey that will take you far beyond what you used to think of as extraordinary.

There is always a bright side.

    The Universe

just a little more....you can do it....

words can’t express

my lovely, lovely, lovely friend

this is my friend, zoltan tolnai.

he died two days ago. from cancer. i want to get that out of the way first because that is not what i want to talk about.

he was A WONDERFUL MAN.

i used to talk a bit (i believe it was on the porch), about how i was involved with a psychedelic-trance community in ottawa while i lived there. that’s how i met zoltan – MY GOD what a phenomenal dj he was. he was like this (bigger than) gnome-like man…something magical and wise around his eyes, and his big grin. it probably helped a little that he had a hungarian accent and was a bit older than most of us.

the way our community worked for me (because it was huge) is that, you’d be friends with a group of people, and sloooowly start hearing someone’s name. you’d think to yourself, “i think i need to meet this person. that is what the universe is telling me.”
then you’d meet them. and the serendipity would be amazing…

that’s what happened with z and me. i LOVED his sets, freaked out about them, and then i met the man (honestly i couldn’t believe that he lived in ottawa). soon, he would search me out on the dance floor.
“why aren’t you dancing? i love when you dance.” 
or
“you make me so happy when you smile. you should smile more.”

i mean, this guy once BOUGHT ME A TICKET to an out-of-town festival, found me walking down a downtown street in the car that he was riding in, told me he’d bought me the ticket, and convinced me to hook up with all my friends when i was sure i was going to be working that weekend.

no ego. all heart. all sweet smiles and good times.

and i can’t believe he’s gone. i can’t believe he almost didn’t TELL anyone that he was going into the hospital for what turned out to be the last time.
i’m so glad the notice went out (on facebook! lol) and he wasn’t alone when he crossed over.

some day, my friend, i will write you the memorial you so deserve. because you deserve some mad, magical poetry, and not just something that is bred from my raw heartstrings. you deserve a composition. but for now, i have to get back to my essay writing…which i know you’d want me to do. i have to keep living.

but the hole where you used to be really hurts.
i’m so sorry i didn’t get a chance to get down there. it had been too long.
i miss you and i love you.

love your butterfly