Taking Credit and Taking Charge

I always find it difficult to take compliments for work that I have done and I can detach from criticism. I just don't feel like I own the product. At the same time, however, I feel proud of what I have done.

I've been reading Leonard Nimoy's I Am Spock, which is great if you want lots of Star Trek Trivia. But, at the same time, he spends much of the book talking about his relationship to "the pointy-eared guy", and how Spock has helped Nimoy to be successful. There are debates between the actor and the character over who should take credit for a compliment. Nimoy also has countless stories about going to the writers and producers to change scenes to adhere better to the essence of a character. If he was given a story line that required Spock to fall in love, for instance, Nimoy needed good reasons for an emotionless character to feel this.

It's an important thing to remember, and I've heard many directors say it: when all is said and done, the storyteller with the closest connection to the audience is the actor. After rehearsal, it's all about the people onstage. And in film, the lasting product that we see is the performance that the actor has given. There is, of course, less control in this process due to editing and such. You always identify with the actor however.

Considering that, I agree with Nimoy's insistence on keeping the character straight. I am sure some of the writers must have wanted to strangle him at times, but I feel I would do the same thing. The actor is the guardian of his character. Especially in a television setting, consistency is important.

And just one little note: it is also interesting to go from William Shatner's Up Till Now to I Am Spock, just based on their retelling of some of the same events, including Shatner's on-set pranking. They are very different people and especially different actors, and this has made for quite the extracurricular study session!

Bring it ON!

I'm in love with the idea of having my own company, with my contemporaries, all contributing to one altruistic goal of creating Great Art. And in a way I have it. I have the opportunity to work with my classmates and have access to these wonderful spaces. And, in this university setting, I've got an all-access pass to people of all different backgrounds and sensibilities. I'd love to get it going.

Sometimes, though, it is difficult to think of myself as an artist. Sometimes it is really hard to shake the desire to want an A- at least on a project that you're working on rather than getting caught up in the process. And sometimes it is hard to not create a project based on what you know the instructor likes.

The irony is that they are always telling us to do the opposite, to take risks and to not care what our grades are. "They really don't matter", one of my instructors has said. She waved the matter away with a flourish of her heavily-jeweled hand. "What I'm looking to see you do is to put yourself out there! Forget your fears. No one is judging you." But they are. We all are judging each other, to a certain extent. And despite its connotation, judgement doesn't always have to be critical.

It is finding that balance of reckless abandon that makes for creativity, the mania that infects us until we quench it by producing art. It is a divine energy, the same that has entered saints and mystics for thousands of years, telling them why things are the way they have become. In this world, we need to find a way to balance the rawness of the divine with the consistency that is the manufacture of art.

I found myself in a bad place about a week and a half ago, on the fourth. We'd just finished our end of the semester with the annual coffee house, and there were parties to follow. I watched all of my friends leave the building, forgetting I was there in their excitement. I walked home, sat on my bathroom floor and collapsed. Waves of powerful anger, fear and despair were coursing through me, and I wanted out. The next morning, I felt heavy, weak....but purged. I realised that it was everything I had held on to for the entire semester. All of the anxieties and stress that I felt I couldn't show in the semester had to come out sometime. That was also the night I took out my mother's rosary. I don't pray with it regularly, but I needed something tactile to reconnect me with God, with the heartbeat of everything else that was alive.

I truly believe that creativity is what joins us to our god, and the artist can experience periods of disconnect, which feel very hollow. What happens when we are alive and full of the energy is a high, and when we fall below neutral, it becomes hard to handle.

Part of tapping into the energy is being open. One needs to be healthy, rested, and willing to accept failure as well as success. And one needs to understand that nothing we do is something we can take credit for, not entirely at least.

I am thankful for having become more adult this semester, but I am also thankful for not losing the explorer inside of me; the little one who is willing to try anything, even if it means being laughed at.

You may hear more about Grenadine Dance later...

It's Music - Covers Edition Addition

Catharsis

A lot of things have come full circle for me, especially in the last few weeks.

We've recently wrapped up Romeo and Juliet (it closed on the 21st - can you believe it?), I've finished my papers and I am now moving on to finalising my other assignments. When things meet again like this, it feels very complete and yet, like I'm missing something.

I think with closing a play this feeling is especially strong. We started rehearsals in the middle of September, and we've been working on Shakespeare in class for the entirety of the term. When it closed, I was holding hands with Lord Capulet and the Nurse, crying onto the silver makeup I would never wear again. Here we were, at the end of a two month-long process, done. With a play, with any performance, the nature of the beast is that it is ephemeral. One night is never like the next, no two audiences are the same. We have many pictures, but that doesn't begin to capture the experience that we all became a part of.

In our acting class, we had to write a very long paper about Shakesperean text. Basically, how what we've studied and what we've done onstage have done for our development as actors. I've not only changed as an actor, but as a human being. I've been working, maintaining friendships and relationships, delving deeper into academia, learning how to cohabitate ... to use a cliché, I am leaving the world of G the girl behind and becoming more of G the woman.

In performance, all of my professors want to see me become more adventurous, stronger and when appropriate, more sexual. More take-charge. I am also in a job right now where I am in charge of putting on a radio show, delegating tasks and having more responsibility than I have ever had as an employee. I am beginning to see the parts of me that emerged when I was ten, the parts that I will need as a mother. I really feel this semester has been very instructive, and I owe it to everyone I've worked with. I owe credit to myself.

I've always had trouble seeing my self-worth. Like many people I know, I'm ready to put myself down and pick out flaws long before I'll ever compliment myself. But now, I feel proud of what I've accomplished. I am proud of the person I am becoming and I can't wait to keep figuring this person out.

If you read this, and you know who I am, if you've spoken to me or gotten to know me in the past few months, I thank you. You're great.

Gargle

Reposted from an old blog of mine


I tried to write some poetry last night
but the well was dry, taxed too far
I've stolen sips once in awhile
and the perfect water kept my throat wet
Tangible and tasty droplets teased my tongue
and I drank until they became grains of salt.
That was when I choked.
Some of the brine is still in my eyes
and they sting, everything is seen through a new lens.
Yet the blurred faces still make sense to me.
And I understand their smiles.
Perhaps someday my vision will clear.
Maybe I will never be thirsty.
I think I will drink my water
From another pool, this time.

The following is a proposition.

Let's be entered as a better presence. Let's be understandable and understated.

Pulp Fantasy

Seriously, folks.

It’s always a good thing when what I am studying in class and what is happening in ‘the real world’ collide. Especially when it is theatre history, where people with four names and a penchant for starched shirt fronts tend to be the star players. We were talking about melodrama of the Romantic period, specifically in opera, where the black moustachioed villain leers over the sweet girl in a lacy bonnet and stainless white dress. Our prof showed us one slide of what would have been a cheap novel of the time, where a ‘girl of eight years is violated and strangled by a monster.’ Classy. And we really haven’t evolved past that. Pulp novels and fantasies, damsels in distress, aggression and submission...these are all still very prevalent images to this day.

And yes, in a person’s private sex life, a little S&M or submissive role play is neither uncommon nor unhealthy. But you’ve got to pause and think about how these images, while playful in the bedroom, can be disastrous when it isn’t consensual.

Women’s bodies have always been the object of desire and wonder for men, and of course, other women, too. A reverence for beauty of figure can quickly become objectification. A woman’s body becomes the object of sexual desire, and it is detached from the person who occupies it. We stop looking at the woman herself, and to the features that we adore. We want her. And while celebration of the body is a great thing, adoration can turn ugly. We desire the thing and not the woman. When someone commits a sexual attack, it is a strike with the body, but it doesn’t end there. It is ruinous in every other aspect of the victim’s life because we are not separate from our bodies. We are so detached from them in every other way. Exercise is no longer an expressive act, but a way to re-model ourselves. We mask our smells, deny that we grow hair in lots of places, and treat food like it is fuel, to be metered out in doses purely for its nutritional content. We look at our weight, height, our BMI, heart rate, calories burnt – we understand our bodies through numbers, not through actually being in-tune with them and knowing by feeling when something is right or wrong.

In my research, sexual assault victims tend to describe an out-of-body experience during their attack, like they’re watching themselves from outside of their body, or that they actually leave the room. This is a survival mechanism to lower the impact of trauma. Often, victims have trouble getting back into their bodies. They’ll experience severe weight gain or loss, and I read a few cases in which they self-injured as a way to reconnect with how they feel. Dance and drama therapy in these cases are very useful to bring people back to their bodies.

I think this is something we’ve been shy about as a culture, and I can see things happening now that are pulling us out of it. We think we are very sexualised, but we are kind of like a thirteen year-old boy: we understand the body in an abstract and conceptual way. We see the ‘ideal’ body every day, and we spend our time trying to attain that. Sex is very much about what we think it should be, and not what it is: a natural body function. It can be beautiful, and it can also be hilarious. When we actually encounter a ‘real’ body, we’re shocked. We respond to it. We don’t know how to handle it when it becomes real.

She

She hangs like a pendant bead
against a neck of crumpled skin.
And catches the light, warping it
and finishing it to strange beauty.
In the heart of the heart
is light itself. A place
where life animates life
and nothing knows where it begins.

She is an heirloom, a longingless glass.
Long ago broken by a man's hands.
It is an undertaking she wishes
she'd done alone.

Pendulous beauty, pretty but cold
I may as well be dead, she says
but glitters on into the next day
as the untouchable bauble we want her to be.

Idolatry

You sit in the cathedral of my longing,
alone. You are unbothered by the graces of stars,
the understated twilight
and the romance of the sun and the earth.

In a room full of colour and stone,
candles poison the dark.
We raise a glass of forbidden wine
to a hidden god.
We are not polite.

Hidden handholds in places I've tried,
this is a sacrilegious crime
against the wall.
I move in here as I move within
a place of less permanence.

Unfinished

There's a time to be normal

and fall into the crowd.

Now's not the time, love,

it's time to be loud.

And the better we laugh,

and the bigger we feel,

can make it better-

can make it less real.



If you came to my doorstep,

and called out my name,

I'd be the prettiest girl,

but the neighbors'd be ashamed.

How lovely you are,

and how silly I am.

Let's grant that single wish,

that we've both been thinking of.

It's not something big,

But it isn't so small, love.

It's Music! - Covers Edition

I think it's safe to say we all have a love-hate relationship with covers. It's great to see a good artist take an empty-headed pop song and make it a soulful ballad or a cheeky little ditty. And then, there are the covers on the opposite end, that are over-produced to mask the little talent of the 'artist' and make every self-respecting hip music lover's blood boil. The ones in the middle of the spectrum, the ones that sound pretty much like the original are no bother to anyone. We can appreciate them, but they don't change our minds about the song.

I've been combing the YouTubes for some time now, collecting music. My favourites are littered with covers that I've really liked. When I find one that makes me pay attention, and changes the original the next time I hear it, I am impressed. Here is a sampler:



It's hard to make me forget about Elliott Smith. But this song does very, very well with a female voice.


Oh, KT! The best part of this is how she creates a solo live performance, and how at home she is onstage. Seeing the pieces being put together onstage can be obnoxious, but when an artist includes the technical process in the performance, it becomes even more impressive. I love her voive in this song, and I really like how she didn't change the pronouns!


I do have some issues with some of the Arcade Fire's later stuff, but this is one of my top songs from the Clash, and this arrangement is great. It's very much in their own character. The instrumentation makes it sound very ancient. The Arcade Fire has had quite the love affair with Great Britain, so it's very suiting that they would cover an English band. A lot of people I know HATE this version. You can't argue that it isn't unique.


I think I've heard the original version once, but this is now a Lily Allen song in my mind. She's got such a great sound and such a special musical personality. I think this speaks for itself, especially if you've heard the Britney Spears original.


Franz has such a flavour that whatever they do becomes theirs. Beatles covers tend to be fairly safe and mild or very differnt. Me likey!


(That's all I'll put up for now, and I know a lot of my comments are fairly vanilla, but it's about the music.)

Little Birdies

I have never been on Twitter.

Is this something I should say with my head hung low? Or, like the proud people who shun cable television, mainstream news networks and my mother, who no longer listens to talk radio, should I be stubbornly smug at my refusal to be herded with the rest of the flock?

I have no idea. Having only ever heard about the website, I can't make any real judgement. From what I know, though, the idea really doesn't appeal to me. Which is odd: shouldn't it be harder to send a letter to the world - which is how I see 'long-form' blogging- than to be texting out the the cyberpublic?

I don't think of myself as nearly important enough for someone to care that I had an amazing halibut burger after work or that my socks feel itchy at 3:47 PM.

But what makes me think that anyone reads this? Why would anyone have an interest in a stranger's angsty poetry or the fact that she really, really likes Joel Plaskett? I know for a fact that my mum reads this. When I tell her there's something new on here.

If you think about it, the whole idea of personal publishing is, well, something else. In what other period of history has it been possible for Joe Whosit to tell everybody about his cat, Marbles? Maybe it isn't the fact that someone will read it, but that someone MIGHT. You can write with the freedom that you're pretty much in obscurity, but who knows?

And maybe the 140-character limit is something that I see as silly because I am verbose. I love using too many words. But, there is something to be said about using them economically.

All in all, I don't think Twitter will change the way we live, or make anyone more important than anyone else. Like anything on the Internet, everyone is doing it. That's when it becomes a contest of who has more people stalking-er, following them as they micro-blog through the entire day. It's also become the new corporate playground. Big companies, like your dad awkwardly flailing in the bouncy castle, are trying to play it small-time. And it's embarrassing.

So, to Tweet or not to Tweet? Well, I'll probably never actually use Twitter, but I may go check it out. I hear Oprah's on there now.

Driftwood

To be in the softness of it,
this is something I do not look for.
Losing myself in the falling grace
is not something I plan for.
I don't even hope for it.

Lost, gone, far away,
breaking on the brink of brine
Being better, alone
Leaving it to be simple
Learning the luxury of solitude,
and then breaking the fast
by seeing the soft gaze of another,
only for you?
No, I do not seek to quiet that desire
to be caressed in their thoughts.

The water will not always
be warm, or still.
The salt hurts as much as it heals, sometimes.
The water forgets if you are who you are
or driftwood, flotsam.
It doesn't toss you any differently.

But soon, after your bath,
your sharp edges smooth,
you will be mistaken at a glance for a stone,
and surprise! Your discoverer will see how light you are.
Rounded, perfect, belonging to no one.
Only retaining a ghost of the place you came from.
that forgotten tree.

You, beautiful piece,
little and perfect
have never known what it is to truly navigate
You are pulled by magic. A force
and, dearest, we both know
you don't understand it.

You are shaped in the form of your own
loveliness,
I watch you, and wonder where you've been
And if we would have met,
no matter what.

Perfect piece.
A saviour of the earth and sky
and born again of the sea,
I marvel at your grace.

August 18th, Sombrio
Morning: an ode of beauty, I am surrounded

Sand

He is asleep, and so,
I will let him lie
alone, and unafraid of the shadow
unaware of the sun and the rocks
Not seeing a glow or hearing a heartbeat
and another

I will practice silence.
I will hold my form up and out.

We understand little of now.
It is not etchings on walls
(like yesterday claims to be).
It is not our hard-earned speculation
of what may come

My now is warm.

It is understated and it is soft.
And it is mine.
I steep in it

Crest

To take the work to hold the hand
the hand that left me for dead.

I see the lines of a smaller man
and the deeds that hide the greater plan.

The better the life the stronger the death
the further the climb the harder the press.

And, smell the sweat that ruined the dress
smell the sound of a great distress.

Hold the hand of the man to impress
hold his hand and do not forget.

A body with a mind all its own

Illness usually is my body's way of saying, 'put the brakes on!'

I get sick during times of high emotional traffic, where I am processing a great deal of thoughts and feelings; also when I am busy and things like seven-hour sleeps and three squares become luxuries.

"Strep" (my mother's, and almost my doctor's diagnosis) is such a malady. It's the freaking summer, and I've not done much to distance myself fully from work or what I'll have to do in school.

Being sick makes me miss things to heal myself. While this sucks, there is always a reason for everything. Maybe tonight is for rest.

Yeah, sure.

(A Monologue)

Let's try not to get petty, shall we?

It isn't as if I've pretended to like you for the benefit of your feelings, so don't go assuming that my honesty means rejection. It doesn't. I like you. I just would rather not be around you.

I've been struggling lately. I've been hanging on to the basic tenants of life: sleep, coffee, and film. Anything else is icing. If the garbage makes it out the door, I'm considering that the event of the day. Dressing is a feat for the record books.

On occasions such as these where I make myself useful by contemplating my uselessness, I find myself wondering why I won't just open my front door, walk those four blocks to a bus stop and go talk to you. Well, I could talk to anyone, but for the purposes of repairing our fragile friendship, let's make it you. I'd tell you that I feel like a lame, stupid lump with tatty hair and even tattier shoes. You'd tell me that I'm great, and that my hair is fashionable. I could pour my heart out to you, and you'd catch it and swivel it around until all the irrationality fell to the bottom. And then we'd watch Goodbye, Lenin for the umpteenth time.

Why the hell don't I do this? Well, if you haven't noticed, I'm clever but not at all smart. Smart people see the wrongs and know to right them by means of rational solution. Clever people see the wrongs, ask why they are so wrong, begin an internal moral debate that sends them into a shame spiral and then can't be arsed to do anything about it. I'm so clever, sometimes I skip right to the end.

So, I've been asking myself why I've sent you on this lovely emotional mystery tour of my mind. Partly as an explanation of why I have the personality of a used sandwich bag at times. Partly, because I love to talk about myself. But most importantly, to serve to you as a reminder that I see how wonderful everything is about you, and how I could be defenselessly in love with you. We could both be happy. Until I saw the wrongs. And let's not get started on that, shall we?

If you understood me better, you'd see that I am too clever for my own good. And that makes me very, very proud. You don't want to have to deal with that.

You're too smart for me.

(This has been a semi-fictitious rant from the perspective a man, maybe. I have no idea yet)

It's Music!

I wanted to throw out what I've been listening to recently. I've rediscovered my love for Joel Plaskett, and dropped about twenty dollars on 'Three'. Worth every damn penny.


It is at times kind of bumpkiny and folksy. Which is lovely and indulges that prarie girl inside of me. I also really like how the entire album follows the triad theme. Mr. Plaskett is good people.

I also came across Dionysos, completely by accident. And they are great. Kind of like the Arcade Fire (mixed-gender harmonies and duets, megaphones ...), I'm liking the live stuff better than the recorded. It is also nice to hear things in the language I'm losing. This is from Taratata.



I have my friend Andrew to thank for this next one. Since he showed this to me (about a half-dozen times in one evening), I've been looking up what both of them have done. This is about as fun as it gets. I really like the video for the costumes, camera work, and especially the movement and choreography. It's messy. It's a little lazy. It's great.




... And that is it for now.

So, I blame this one on Liam. Or, Stone. Or, Pebble. Whoever you are, you've got me thinking.

I really feel Canadian, and yet I'm not quite sure what that means. At work, when I'm given American money, I'm a little proud about how much prettier ours is. I love the people I've met here, the family I have in this country, our arts communities and Rick Mercer. Especially Rick Mercer.

But, and this is a biggun, I remember being in school and being told we would be reading a Canadian novel, watching a Canadian film or having to do a project on Canadian history. I think every person who went through those classes with me sometimes felt like we were being beaten with a huge maple leaf-shaped mallet:
CA - NA - DA! CA - NA - DA! CA - NA -DA!

A friend remarked once, "It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't try to sell it to us like, Can Con is good for you. It didn't work for spinach." And it is true. In school, at least, it seemed like showing us work by Canadians was the stuff you had to get to before dessert.

I don't feel the same way now. I listen to the CBC, read from Canadian papers, and am happy to discover new novels with a Canadian pedigree. Just as long as it isn't trying to be something it isn't, or if it is trying too hard. Both really rub me the wrong way. Whatever art is, it should be genuine. If there is so much intellectual scaffolding, the truth of the art can get lost. And it just becomes obnoxious.

I am on a time crunch at the moment, so I'll just finish this briefly: let's try and be ourselves. Whatever the hell that is. As soon as something gets to be really forced or deliberate, then it loses something. I know there are a lot of holes in what I've just written, and Possible Reader, if you see fit to stick something in one of them, go right ahead.

A Non-Poetic Update

Obviously, the multiple words in the title (as well as the title itself) should be a quick giveaway to you, my very hypothetical reader, that this isn't the usual beat poetry, crunchy fare.



Having plodded through the past ten months, six of which I have spent in a romantic relationship (five in one, one in another), I've decided it is time to make some changes.



The end of the spring was fairly dramatic for me, considering what happened to my academic life. The consequences have really forced me to think about if I am in the place I can be happiest, where I can learn the most ... hell, if theatre is what I want to do. It has really made me think about why I am studying this, and can I be happy and healthy doing that? My health has been an excellent measure of how good a particular situation is for me.



Anyway, going back to what I mentioned about relationships: for the next while, I am going to actively avoid a new romance. I'm not going to pledge celibacy or anything, because that's a very big promise to keep.



I've used romance as a distraction. I've had a few relationships where there was a lot of passion to begin with, but towards the end, lots of problems. Sure, it's great to be told that you're beautiful, to have someone to spend time with ... all that. But after awhile, it can become a Linus-and-blanket situation. And that's unhealthy. Besides, I will be living with Sarah next year, rehearsing and performing a show, and possibly working. I will have no shortage of distractions.



I think it is time for my ego to stop giving rude gestures to that sage little voice inside me that warns me against things like this. If it says, "I know you want to tear into a bag of chips and watch YouTube videos. But you'll feel better if you go to the gym", I need to listen to it. If it says, "You know you're great. Why do you need a guy to tell you that?" I need to not let my ego respond with, "UP YOURS!"



Moral of this self-indulgent diatribe: I want to flourish, not only survive. And until romance becomes a energy source and not a drain, I will abstain from it. I have been lucky enough to date men who I want to be friends with afterward, one who I can talk to about pretty much anything, so I can be more than happy with friendship. I want to learn to repair myself, because I've left a lot of broken parts laying around. And I want to learn to love what will be there despite whoever or whatever I end up spending time with.



Phew. OK, so MAYBE this means I will start blogging for real, now. Hmmm.

Which

I wish I knew the answer.

Green

Only the green parts will be greater and curl forward into gold. The originals will transform and not be copied. Tools against the ascension of our greatness are useless.

Let's bake under the sun and watch our skin go gold. Let's not filter through our browns and yellows.

Please, don't filter.

The margins are only suggestions. The margins are only suggestions. Because limits are meaningful only to show us how far we can go and how beautiful we can be.

I held the sun once, a golden being in my hand that I didn't understand. We talked for a bit before I realized that the truth had come for a visit. No wonder I didn't get it.

I write and it is easy, and it makes sense. I sing and it makes less sense. I act and I don't understand at all.

Yes

Take me with you.

Fracas

I couldn't gleam more from life
then to see inside your soul
and find myself there;
even a ghost
or a shadow of my laugh
or my eyes.

I want to be indelible.
Because when we are old
(when we are grey)
the pieces I gave you won't get older.

And I'll never let your smile wither
Your eyes, and your touch have marked me;
The ropes, the knots
-because we've tied a few-
are a perfect tangle

I wouldn't cut them for the world.

I

It is very freeing that no one really reads this.

As always, there are aspects of myself that remain a mystery to me. I can't control them let alone understand them.

Have I really handled myself so well? Has my grace come from courage or survival? I could keep myself together and look alright to other people. What it boils down to is this: I am a much better actor than I give myself credit for. Perhaps people suspect. But I am not a broadcaster when it comes to my emotional well-being. Do you know me? Great. But there are things you won't ever know about me.

What it boils down to is this: I am currently experiencing the unfortunately familiar cocktail of rage, despair, restlessness and loneliness. It is funny that I had not yet gotten to this point yet considering the events of my life recently. It was almost as if my emotions had to go on the side in order for me to function. Actually, that is exactly what it is. What I hate about it is that I know when it is coming. I know and I know that others can sense my storm on the horizon. It becomes one more thing to be preoccupied with.

I was, to put it somewhat melodramatically, betrayed. I am also coming down off my first real affection for someone. At times I feel like the quarry stone in my family. And there's the money thing as well. What might be labeled as triggers for my emotional stew are obvious. But why now?

I do not want to label myself. I am not anything I have been given or have absorbed from anyone I know. That just seems like such an excuse. I wish I were stronger.

I don't flatter myself enough to suppose I am 'touched' or somehow brought closer to the divine by my upward sweeps into greatness or my falls into the pit. But if I can be taken into perfect unity, then the fall would be grave. And the fall feels grave. It is like a quicksand bath in a concrete vest. And your world is a puppet show, a mockery of the little one who sinks.

And I know. As I have always known that I will come the other end. That to carry out the occasional thought I have would be too cruel. So I remain and push. I push for you.

And you know what the worst part is? This helps me.

Anthem

You and I were rocking the boat, baby
And you smirked at me and said 'life's a blast'
We almost fell and I thought maybe,
It's time that we just let that storm pass

As if we were gonna fight the brine
Who's ever broken that wave?
It isn't for us to waste the time,
But why not do something else, babe?

So you and me are dancing around
And we're both pretty good at taking the lead
The sky is a light show and rain surrounds
Our tiny little boat on the big black sea

Cleave

My favourite word in Italian was lasciare. It means to leave someone or something. We don't quite have the word in English, and it is a shame.

I don't love it because of what it means, but because of the way it sounds. It matches perfectly the tearing crush of parting with whatever or whoever it happens to be that you love. I've discovered that people love concepts as much as they love things that are "real". I know people who would be happy to be in love, regardless of who it would be with. I also know people who are enamored of ideas of the world and themselves, and to see these fall apart breaks their heart. I do also know some who go madly for the sum of the parts. He loves her for her eyes and her laugh, for her effortless way with words and the fact she isn't afraid of him. Or, someone who loves the river and the traffic, all the faces that are always different and every place she can find a photograph.

I don't know where I fall. I become attached to ideas. To words. To the way that people think of me. I also fall deeply in love with people, friends and otherwise, for details. So, I am not sure what kind of a lover I am. A little unsure, perhaps, but always loyal.

I've discovered that the essence of love is giving. Loving the place or the person or whatever it is does not detriment you, but nourishes you. Giving them or it little pieces of you doesn't mean sacrifice because you get so much in return. And that is the best thing. Maybe a city can't reciprocate love. But the feeling becomes yours. It is something that is perfect for sharing, but if it can't be, it exists just fine in solitude.

To leave something, lasciare. The pain only comes from the attachment of leaving what you love. The fact of the matter is that holding on is alright. Bringing little pieces of them with you is allowed. The illusion of leaving is separation: phyiscal entities can be separated. Feelings and connections have an infinite reach.

As much as I can intelectualize this, I don't know how qualified I am to live it. I've left things that I have loved dearly. I've seen people come in and out of my life, not knowing how important they are to me until they waned back and forth. Absense makes the heart grow fonder.

Maybe the purpose of the separation is to teach you what you have. Because nothing that is a loss is anything but a gain in disguise.

Parting

I reflect on where I live, and I realize, for the fifth time, that I like long goodbyes.

Image

We are made in the image, right?

Then what does HE or SHE or IT look like?

And how many of us have white beards, four arms, or a hawk's head anyway?

Or, being made in the image maybe means something else. Something very different. Does it mean that we are made as a part of God?

Because we've come up with some pretty neat images over the years. It almost seems like a two-way street: we make our god(s) in our images. Then again, though where did those ideas come from?

The art that has come from trying to bring the divine closer has been amazing. Anything that works from the desire to come closer to the underlay of the universe ends up being somethin' else, depending on what was actually achieved. Perhaps the desire to create that image or be that image versus trying to make something worthwhile or valuable is what 'true' art is (I know I am NOT the first to think so).

Maybe the idea of an image is not an appropriate one, but considering how visual human beings are, we go right to what we can see. But it is the best we have for now.

Expect

I have some massive expectations for this summer:

1 - Continue to work at my first job at least 25 hours a week
2 - Find a second job
3 - Take singing lessons
4 - Take dance or martial arts classes
5 - Write the essays for the scholarships I am going for (more short-term)
6 - Read the last remaining Shakespeare plays I haven't read, and re-read most of the others AND watch some of the films
7 - Maintain long-distance relationships with my close friends and my family
8 - Actually maintain a social life during the summer

I also want to learn to take care of myself. This will mean spending more money on things like food (I owe myself better quality meals) and even extras like something pretty to wear or a DVD as a reward. If I were a seperate person taking care of someone else, I would be treating them a lot better than I have been treating myself.

It seems my expecations for other people are lower than they are for myself. I give most people the wiggle room to be human, but god forbid I screw something up. It's a very ego-based way of living, isn't it? I'm sure that people can move beyond the ideals I have. And who am I to have to reach these superhigh goals? I am no better than the next person.

I want to expect more from people. I do.
I've just been dissapointed enough to be realistic. Maybe I don't have the right expectations for people.

I want to be able to put 100% of myself out there. I want that and I just want someone to want to give me that back. But that is something I need to let go of more.

This summer, I want to be able to try and give without the fear of recieving. I want to give and not worry what I'll get back, if anything. I was able to do this once or twice, but it is fairly painful when it backfires.

I want to expect the best, but love what happens anyway. Maybe that is too lofty a goal for one summer. Or a lifetime.

But it is good to keep in mind.

Speak

I talk you over the mountains to this seat in the sand
where we lie. It is a blanket in a million pieces.
Did you laugh?
I can understand why, reading the lines around your mouth.

There is water, unfriendly brine. Too grey to explore today,
so you - always with more spirit - test it with your finger
but are shocked away.
We will come back when the sun is out.

You and I speak and the words are never words.
My hands are never just hands, your eyes more than what they see.
And everything that passes
is true.

Lipstick

That's the lipstick that can't fade when you wake yourself up
you've been talking in your sleep and the worst part is
when you can't shut yourself up.

And the words that you hear seem torn and still true
so awful and perfect that listening is too much
but they are your own words.
How clumsy of me.

And the worst part is when you want to be quiet
but the sleep self denies, and lives through the night
speaking things you didn't know you could understand.

So you bite your own tongue and you dissolve your own words
they don't feel like yours, do they?
But your lips are stained
and they look the perfectly awful colour of the truth
so waking up and seeing your face adorned
with the mouth of someone who shouts the answers

the answers you didn't know you could understand,
feels distantly powerful.

The memories of the sleep shout are dead, they've gone to a space
that doesn't exist when you try for it.
And you are clumsy again
and you wait, again, for night to come.
To speak what is horrifyingly, beautifully whole.

Withdrawn

It feels odd and wonderful to be in the place I grew up in. I am in a halfway stage between homes. To be here means comfort and family, but it also means a lot of other things as well.

I do miss my friends that I grew up with. They haven't really left me and nor I them. And the newer friends I have made have become a smaller offshoot family. And none of it feels unnatural, maybe just a little pull in every direction. 

And the lack of work and outlet of the creative is also making me feel different. There aren't any classes to go to or papers to write. 

This city is also quite a bit less pedestrian-friendly, especially where this house is. The city may be getting to big for itself.

But this house is a little planet unto itself and feels like the incubated creative I have known forever. A place to come back to.

Renard

Il etait une fois ...

Examine

Apparently, this life is very worth living. To be evaluated. Examinations and year-end check-ins. This is not the unexamined life.

Today was slow. The minutes of cars waving, distorted by heat seemed doubly as long than they did yesterday. Today was so beautiful, and it was nice enough to slow itself down for us. Funnily enough: when a day comes like this, I don't take the time to witness it. It is easier to witness when things go speeding by, and you watch yourself get up at the crack of dawn to walk to work. Maybe the out-of-body thing is a survival technique so your soul doesn't get shocked when you blaze by someone asking for change or when you haven't eaten since who knows when.

Today, it was slow. I was hungry, and I fed myself. I met so many people today. Buying coffee for Sarah and I, another person in line chatted me up, flirting, I suppose. She was very tall, and I remember a nose ring. And the boy on the bus with huge cloudless blue eyes with music I could hear through his headphones.

My mind is entirely to quick for itself. I never stop thinking. I never stop wanting to know what everyone else is thinking. There are always songs stuck in my head. It was nice to be made to stop. It was nice to have the world hold me, and remember that I am loved, that I can be loved and that I can love.

Thank you, I really needed it.

River

Back soon

Kindness

I have little doubt that there isn't some plan that I am only beginning to understand.

Sometimes I see the knots in little moments of my life. Little kindnesses. I was walking home feeling low from goodbyes. Big and small ones. I walked past a puppy and its owner and it stopped and licked my leg. How do dogs know?

My life is full of kindness. Sometimes, the kindness is wrapped in a little cruelty, but the good part is that the cruelty always teaches you something. It always takes a few blows before you can learn how to fight.

There is never a moment that isn't a lesson or a consequence of a lesson.

I understand the gentle moments. But that isn't the half of it.

Memoria

Parla italiano?

Si? Allora: http://www.radio.rai.it/radio2/amnesia/

One of the best radio programmes out there.

"Ogni volta e la prima volta" "Each time is the first time"

Grotty

Kernel

This is the centerpiece of ... something I am writing. I don't know exactly what yet. So far, it is about an encounter between two people and all the possibilities that come from their meeting. Based on my life? Yeah, very much so.

"Up From Under"
- How I said the 'L' word

ONE: You know what? That's alright. Because I said what has been eating me from the inside out and, damn it, it feels good to get it out. You don't have to say anything back. And, frankly, I didn't expect you to. And this place, this place and you, aren't exactly the way I'd imagined but I had to say it. I had to say that I love you because I do. And I've been fighting against myself for weeks.

(pause) And trust me, this isn't something I've looked forward to telling you. I knew it would be a mess and I would piss around and avoid it for as long as possible. It wasn't a burst of happiness or a huge feeling of satisfaction I just had to share with you. It hurts and it is awful. It has ruined me a little. And now it makes me worry because I have given you a piece of me and who knows what you'll do with it. Will you take it with you if you run off with someone else? Will you give yourself back to me? Or ... will that part of me die there and we will both have to give up? I don't know. But I can hope.

(line cut by OTHER)

You can't say it back. It hurts, a little, but you know? That's alright! Because when you figure it out and it boils in your heart and you have to tell me, I'll listen. And we'll be worse off then we were before. Won't that be perfect.



It is quite a gloomy outlook on the whole thing. But I am so sick of the moon, spoon, June that I needed to write something about that unshakable ache that being in love gives you. Or, that feeling of needing to give a secret and not being able to.

Great

Isn't it wonderful when you have a moment when you stop doing and start being? I was brushing my teeth this morning and was suddenly hit with the realization of the fact that I am alive. I am a living being.

So, no. Maybe this is not a life-changing epiphany. But, damn, is it nice to know. No matter what happens to my poor little ego, I will always be able to breathe and my body will still be warm. And what possibilities come with being alive! Really: what on earth can't I do? I'm just, perhaps, not willing to do some of it, or waiting to be ready to do others.

Aren't we lucky to be here? You and me? To have loves that brings us to our knees and makes time invisible. Even to eat, and to be kissed, and to laugh! Oh, goodness. Even to fall and bleed. To make friends and to find enemies.

How is it that my blog entries start off semi-normal and end up being very obnoxious rants where I wax poetic about nearly everything? I am so silly. My muse is probably a Sapphic re-incarnate...

Today I did the best in-character imporov that I have ever done. The whole situation felt very real and I fell into the character as one does with a script. You know that feeling? When everything feels dangerous and real, but the sliver of the actor left in you feels safe knowing where this scene is going to go. Roughly. The rest is up to greatness.

Poverty

Don't just walk away.

Ciel

Si je tire, et tire encore, qu'es ce que passerais?
Si j'oublis de tirer,
encore, quoi?

Je te pousse, et pousse encore.
Presque jamais tu en ai besoin d'un pousse.

Et comme une bombe, comme une grande tirage:

Je sais que je suis amoureux.

Encore, je pousse. Sur ton dos, et tu tires a mon coer.

REGARDE-MOI! Dit-moi quelque chose, n'importe quoi, de vrai.

Parce que, mon beau, mon ciel, je ne te crai jamais.

Book

I came from the bookstore and then the library smelling of stale thoughts and antique ink. Books are sense-bending beauties with spines that crack and pages that thin and yellow. Flip pages flip flip.

And I bought a book that I have read so much, but never enough to catch everything. That is the beauty of the book. I write this in a room of books & pages and stories. There is so much I have to know. Only now am I finding the confidence to read it all.

When I read, I can feel the whole of my brain become full again, lit up and ready. My body tingles and I am ready for anything. Is there anything both so solitary and social than reading? I have said hello to the dead and lived with them for a moment.

Time has become nothing. Sometimes I can make it swing forward or stop dead. It is nothing. So much that is supposed to be important to me has become fiction. Time is not real. Money is not real. And I am barely here.

Who am I to write this? To write any of this? Not one moment is mine. You don't notice wind until it picks up a leaf.

So, leaves, LIFT! Let yourself fall up into the currents of air that have never left you.

I now return to hold the soul of a man who I will never know. Flip pages flip flip.

Hold

There are so many things that really should be said. But they hold no meaning.

Not for me, anyways.

There are things that need to be said. Now. They hold my whole being and squeeze.
And threaten to make me burst.

You can't hear me, anyways.

Empty pilgrim, solamente una macchina. Seulment une machine.
Knock, shake, hold.

Are you listening?


[reflections on C, from 2002, edit. 2009]

Chances

In school, I am always told that mine is the generation that will make everything change. We are on the brink of something big, and it is our time to make things better.

No pressure.

We learn about the philosophers and the writers, the Angry Young Men that lived and wrote and died before us. We study them in class now, and for a moment, in my plush lecture seat, my heart races and my blood rises and I feel the push of revolution deep inside me. I know what we will do. We will write, and talk and we will be a voice in the thousands-year long conversation of the undying young. Our voice will carry in to the textbooks of our great-grandchildren, and people will hear our words and feel the rushing call to words as we did. And then, the lecture is over.

My ideas, the plays and words in my head still tug at my as forgotten children do. "Will you not show me?" they say, "Will you not let me live?" It aches. It aches and pulls too hard to let them die and float away. Some days I try to give them life on the page. Sometimes, they are half-formed, tragic. Little wretches I have forgotten to love. I am sorry, beauties.

When assignments and groceries occupy the time and my world, I let them go. And I mourn them. Sometimes the sadness is crushing. My stillborn thoughts.

But, sometimes, they stay. They live and thrive in a deep corner of my self. So, stubborn, they push out of my head like Athena and INSIST on being real. "WRITE ME! I AM ALIVE. Let me live." And they push out of my head and force pen to paper, fingers to keys. And I am the flute that the wind blows through. The music is never mine.

And sometimes, they push into every corner of me and I become a new being. They slip into my skin like a glove, and I die. I leave my body. I am no longer what I ever was before. I die, and I go, and there they are. And when it is over, I fall back into my skin, cold.

I am never trying to take chances to make change. And I am never striving to be the new voice. But sometimes, the voice holds my throat still and sings a note through my lips.

I am the flute that the wind blows through. The music is never mine.

Sweet

This will be short, just a filler. Just something to make it look like I've been doing more.

Which I haven't.

This is a bite. We'll order more soon.

Archer

I see a kiss, and another. I know what it means, and what it is trying to be.
I see a kiss.

Why is it that we want so badly to have what is just beyond. Does it make us try or does it make us angry?

We strike, we hit. Targets. But it is never quite on centre. We are so fully imperfect, it makes me happy. I never want to be perfect.

Nell

I don't have to rehearse until a little later tonight. All my homework is at home. All my food is at home.

The person I'd like to see right now is at home. But not mine.

Nell is waiting for me. Nell will come soon and I'll try and see her clearer and softer than I have before. She is the healer, the light-seer.

I love men who smile.

Stall

I've decided I am going to procrastinate a little more. I mean, I really have done most of what I set out to do today.

But - holy carps in fresh lemon glaze! It is already past three. Dammit.
Dammit.

If I scheduled my life down to the hour, I'd probably get so much more done.
But I'd also be one of those people who schedules their life down to the hour.

Plus, my sister is coming. So, I need to have actual food in the fridge, and fast.

Basement

It is great fun sitting in the basement of a party. I am listening to people laugh, and it is like being in the next room while a sitcom is on. Why are they laughing? Sometimes it is fun to guess.

There is also one next door. They are singing to music, but they only know the choruses.

I'd normally be asleep right now. My Friday nights are no more eventful than having to pick what pijamas to sleep in. I'm not sure if this is what you'd call an improvement, but I am enjoying it anyways.

It kind of confirms my status on the periphery of things. I watch. I hear. I'm not in the middle of it. Not feeling excluded so much as detached. A clinical observer.

The noise pushes.

Seekers

There are some things that it is okay to be too young for. This is just way too fun to be one of them.

Yes, citizens. It is Sputnik Time

So this is the inaugural blog post. Whee. I finally caved.
You'd think there'd be a parade, or something. Instead, we have the best cybercat that ever did walk the interweb.

Let's see what comes of this.