It's been ages

I haven't posted here in a very long time. Life gets in the way, you know.

And in some ways I've forgotten that I have a voice. It's small, but it's there. And my audience doesn't have to be any bigger than me. Which, today, it isn't.

Living alone again has been good, and bad. As punishing and rewarding as an artists retreat.

And this city isn't one where you can hop on the subway for fifteen minutes and emerge to another neighborhood where no one knows you.

I missed the first time I came here, full of the idea of reinvention. I'd hoped I could go to a new place and become a new person. I'd hoped I could come here and leave it affected by me, my thumbprint on it somewhere. Indelible, shallow, and still electric from my touch.

But you see, it doesn't work like that.

You're the one doing the moving - and sometimes the shaking - but only very rarely do you get to change yourself. A haircut or a new perfume can make you feel brand new, but to the strangers that see you, you haven't changed a bit.

They, the great they, are not affected by your transformation. And perhaps they emerged, phoenix-like, from the hot remains of a loss or despair. They too are wearing new clothes. But to you, their mate in this fleeting moment, they are nothing different than what they must have been for years.

It's all in the way you're feeling.

Links live in the wilds ...

Puns! It must be after dinner.

So, after making a "what's laying around" salad (romaine, radishes, cucumber, and a quickie vinaigrette) and seafood pasta (shrimp with herbs, pepper, chili flakes, garlic and olive oil tossed in kamut penne), I decided to relax a little in the mighty sea of blogs.

Links? Well, it probably doesn't come as a surprise that I love me a good fashion blog. And beyond the Satorialist, which is pretty much a staple for us all, there's a few I've come across that merit some sharing.

Yours Truly, x features a very adorable English lady who takes her boyfriend on 'London Dates', wears vintage, has mood boards aplenty, and really adores cooking. She's not saccharine so it's totally not annoying if you read several posts in one go (as some blogs similar to this have been). Her sense of style is that great fusion of what's just ahead and lots of influence from the past. And her read hair is gorgeous.

Nest   is a blog to make your house super-stylish, so in a sense, still a fashion blog. Meg Allen-Cole also appeared on the webseries "Threadbanger", which I hate to say totally went downhill after Meg and Rob and Corrine all left. This blog even features a tour of her Brooklyn apartment and of course, it'll make you a green-eyed monster in ten seconds flat.

What I Wore Today is totally more personal, but for sure nice to see how a fellow person dresses. What I mean by that is the people in the photographs from the Satorialist, say, always seem so unbelievably good at dressing, to the point where I'm suspicious. It's probably not warranted, and they are that put-together or original. But she's more down-to-earth. She works, and isn't a supermodel, which adore.

Style Rookie is again the stuff of legend. A 14 year-old suburban Chicago kid, Tavi has become famous for her insights into the world of mainstream fashion. Skeptics and nay-sayers aside: even if she fades from the spotlight, or goes in a totally non-fashion direction, the pictures of what she wears to school will last. And they'll never stop being just, so COOL. I've never had the stones (or, to be fair, the cash) to pull of what she's wearing to middle school. You can't criticize her for not standing out.

She's also so pop culture-savvy, she even rivals my boss. Which is huge.

And we end with street peeper, which is exactly what it sounds like. Cool kids wearing cool clothes. Not my fave, worth a look, though.

Roommate just scared me three grey hairs, so I gotta calm down. Phew!

Enjoy if you're a style geek like me :)

Oh, hai June

It's getting hot here on the Coast. Finally. And I've got the burns to prove it!

I really wanted some iced tea, but decided to bypass the fruity, citrus thing. Love it, I wanted something else.

So, I took a bit of raw sugar, and three tea bags (one vanilla Earl Grey, two Bengal spice) and threw 'em in a pitcher. Hot water on top, steep for five to seven minutes, fridge that mother, and in a few hours, you have the basis for some delish creamy tea by mixing in a bit of milk.

And I'm sure it could be made alcoholic, but I'm not sure with what. Kahlua? You'd probably know better, internoms.

Been busy. Very busy. Something more substantial than tea next time :)

The Better Way

Throughout my travels as a human being, backpacking through this country called life, I've learned a lot. I'm blessed to have had access to the richness of a post-secondary education, an amazing family, a network of friends that has become a second family, and work that has come my way that has been both challenging and enjoyable. And, of course, relative to so many people, I've had it great. I've had it beautiful.

I enjoy the luxury of complaining and of making mistakes that won't cost me my livelihood, my dignity or my freedom, as so many little things could do for women beyond my cushy existence. I'm typing right now, which means I have a computer, internet access, a free voice in my country, and that I am literate.

There is nothing more life-affirming than love. And the most lasting, and the most halting of all loves I have been blessed with is a love for life. I am fascinated by desires, by survival ... the fact that we are alive and that so much of the time, we forget to ask why we are here, and just get lost in the rapture that is what we are living. And that the most beautiful and terrible thing about life is that you can't be sure we get any more of it than what we got now.

I don't know if I believe in an afterlife. I certainly believe in heaven and hell, but they tend to turn up on earth. Looking at the shattered world of a war, or the broken skeleton of a city after a disaster, you can't help but think that the devil's taken up residence there. If you've ever been laughing hysterically or felt the rushing undertow of life as you step on a stage ... there are so many morsels of heaven that we are allowed to taste every day. We, as humans, are allowed to feel happy without any reason.

The funny thing I've noticed is that we never sensationalize the millions of moments of beauty. And I think we could stand to spend more time thinking about it.

It isn't New Year's, but I'm re-affirming a resolution made by so many of us, on a conscious level, but kept by so many who take no pains in forgetting to complain: I'm going to celebrate beauty, life, and the world I'm lucky enough to be a part of.

This is all I have.

Back in TV Land

If you know my family, like at all, the fact that we haven't had cable TV in nine years probably won't surprise you. We traded it in to send money to a Foster Child in Niger. Even though it took some adjusting at first, we've really liked not having it.

In Hometown, we have cases and cases of DVDs and a whole lot of VHS tapes from when we were kids. Dad has even gone the route of a big ol' flat screen and a Blu-ray player.

What I've liked about the switch was the ability to pause, and to play whatever you want whenever you want.

Want to watch Fraiser at three in the morning and pause it to take a pee and put some socks on? Go nuts.

And I know, you can get the PVR and Netflix and all that. And I suppose that works.

But maybe I'm just not evolved enough to get past the ownership of a shiny new box set of a TV show I love.

The biggest thing, though, was not having commercials. And I'll get to that in a minute.

Roommate grew up on TV, and so we have it now, and have so for nearly two years.

I'd say that on average, I'll watch maybe three to six hours a week.

Well, for every half hour of a show, about twenty minutes is the TV show itself with ten of commercials. For an hour, that's twenty minutes.

So, for that rainy, boring week where I watched six hours, I saw two hours of commercials.

Ever since getting commercial TV again, I've found myself wanting  things more. One particular example I can think of was at Christmas, I was constantly seeing a commercial for a Tim Horton's coffee mug,

I started to want that mug. Real bad.

And passing a Timmy Ho's downtown, I stopped myself before entering.
Why do you want this??


I never thought I was affected by advertising, and like everyone else who assumes they have a stronger mind than the Mad Men, I don't. I want to be normal. And I want to be happy.

The fulfillment I would get from that dinky made-in-China ceramic mug would last me just a few minutes. An artificial achievement as a substitute for something, say, I crocheted or an assignment completed. I was being sold a feeling, not a mug.

Advertising, through my thinking about it mostly, has really affected the way I see the world. I'm trying to be very conscious about not simply accepting bus shelter messages and girls smiling on the pages of magazines as the truth.

Whatever that is.

On Damage

We don't like damage here. No dents in the cars,
Throw away what's scratched,
what's stained.

And I cut the bruises from the apples I eat
because I don't want something damaged.
I want something unscathed, not
Unbecoming.

And I flinch if they lean in
for a kiss
to shake hands
and my breath isn't perfectly minty enough
If my heart is hurting and if my mind won't let me hide it.

I don't like the stain on the corner of the hem of my t-shirt
Out comes the bleach, the soap,
And I scrub with brushes until my eyes hurt
from seeing a stain that no one can see.

I don't like the hair between my eyebrows,
black, and pushing through destroying two arches
Groomed and pushed and pulled into place.
So, I pick and pluck until they are naked and red and hairless.

And I don't like my freckles because they dapple my skin.
Imperfect and in need of concealing.
So I do.
I dab on liquid skin from a bottle
to erase the years of playing in the sun.

But

It is impossible to wear white in this life without grass stains
and spaghetti sauce splatters
It is impossible to work hard and play harder
and never scar
It is impossible to feel the grace of healing
if you have never been broken.

On damage I am still divided.
On the flaws of others I find myself fascinated,
and on my own?
I am still walking the path of curious acceptance,
moving forward then retreating
Pausing
To pick a scab only I can see.

Dream Fable

I had a dream a few nights ago that just knocked my socks off. And usually, I don't remember them. I just have this feeling after I wake up of knowing that I was involved in something awesome. Usually with a few Australian animals and a light show.

This one, however, was very different. It felt like it was November, and in rural England, where you see bits of old stone walls, and the twisty, newer roads give way to the straight, Roman ones. Just, old and misty, and very green.

The original dream involved myself and my two siblings, but I've changed it in this rendering.

It's spooky (and long) so consider yourself warned.

There were once three children who lived in a small town. Everything was generally peaceful. Everybody went about their business, and most of them were friendly. The children lived on a small farm with their parents, their dog Charlie, and many other kinds of animals.

There was one thing in the town that was very strange. Now and then, someone would come across an animal that had been killed in a particular way. It would be drained of all its blood, and the rest left out. People all had ideas as to what could have happened to the animals: a madman in the woods, some kind of wild creature ... some even said it was a vampire. No one knew for sure. But to be safe, everyone locked their animals in at night, and kept a close watch on them during the day.

The children had set off to play early one morning. They walked down the road, and out alongside the woods. On their walk, they found a chicken, headless and without its blood, in the ditch. The children shared their suspicions, but knew that chickens were not very smart, and it could have been anything that could have killed it. And on they went. They were still joking about the stupidity of chickens when they noticed a bell and collar on the road. They followed a short trail of blood into the woods, and came across a cow, missing all four of her legs, entirely bled to death. Horrified, they ran home.

None of the children told their parents what they had seen. They knew that if someone found out they were near that part of the woods, they would be punished. And besides that, they were curious. That night, after supper and before bed, they made plans to go back to that same place and investigate.

That's all I've got for now!