FEROCIOUS SONJA

The Business of Partying

2011-10-20T14:06:00.002-05:00

"Laugh, laugh, laugh, and be happy" - Big Mama Thornton?

How Not to Listen

2011-05-16T15:34:00.002-05:00

EMPATHY BLOCKER EXAMPLES

Downplaying: "Oh, don't cry. I'm sure it's not that bad!" ... "It's not the end of the world."

Denial: "There is nothing wrong; nothing for you to be upset about. Everything is OK."

Reasoning: "Don't cry. Can't you see that the other child didn't mean to hurt you?"

The positive spin: "Look on the bright side. Can't you see, this probably happened for a good reason?"

Cheering up: "Don't worry." ... "Here, let me tell you something funny I heard the other day." ... "Here, have an ice cream. That'll cheer you up."

Advising/giving options: "Why don't you try doing this, or that?" ... "I think you should just ignore that so-and-so."

The expectation: "You should have known better." ... "Get over it." ... "Don't let it get to you."

Put down: "Don't be silly." ... "Don't be ridiculous."

Diagnosing/labeling: "You are being over-sensitive."

Distracting/diverting: "Hey, have a look at the pretty puppet."

Stealing the thunder: "Now you know how I felt when the same thing happened to me."

http://www.naturalchild.org/robin_grille/emotions.html

omg deadline

2011-05-15T02:28:00.004-05:00

Medical Terminology

Amniotic fluid: Amniotic fluid cushions the fetus from injury, allows movement and helps to stabilize temperature.

Amniotomy ("artificial rupture of membranes" or "breaking the waters"): Surgical rupture of the fetal membranes to induce or expedite labour.

Breech: Delivery of a fetus whose feet or buttocks appear first.

Caesarean: Julius Caesar (or one of his predecessors) is rumoured to have been born by this procedure. Hence, the name "Caesarian." The term "section" in surgery refers to the division of tissue. What is being divided here is the abdominal wall of the pregnant person as well as the wall of the uterus in order to extract the fetus.

Cervix: The lower, narrow part of the uterus. The cervix forms a canal that opens into the vagina, which leads to the outside of the body.

Amniotic Sac or fetal membranes: Any membrane that functions for the protection or nourishment or respiration or excretion of a developing fetus.

Doppler: Hand-held ultrasound device that transmits the sounds of the fetal heart rate. This can generally pick up heart tones after 12 weeks gestation.

Doula: A person who provides non-medical support to a birthing person and their family during labour, childbirth and the postpartum period. The term can also be used to describe other supportive roles for other life events such as abortion, death and more.

Electronic Fetal Monitoring: This is an ultrasound device used during labour and birth to record the fetus' heart rate and the birthing person's contractions. It can be used intermittently or continuously.

Epidural: An anaesthetic injected into the epidural space surrounding the fluid-filled sac (the dura) around the spine which partially numbs the abdomen and legs.

Episiotomy: An incision made between the vagina and the rectum.

Fetus: The unborn offspring from the end of the 8th week after conception (when the major structures have formed) until birth. Up until the eighth week, the developing offspring is called an embryo.

Forceps: An instrument resembling a pair of pincers or tongs that are inserted through the vagina used to grasp the head of the fetus and pull it through the birth canal.

Induction of labour: An intervention designed to artificially initiate uterine contractions resulting in progressive effacement and dilatation of the cervix and birth of the baby.

Meconium: Dark sticky material normally present in the intestine at birth and passed in the feces after birth. The passage of meconium before birth may be a sign of fetal distress.

Midwife: A person, usually a womyn, who is trained to assist those in childbirth.

Nuchal cord: A condition in which the umbilical cord is wrapped around the neck of the fetus in utero or as it is being born.

Obstetrics: The branch of medicine that deals with pregnancy, childbirth and the recuperative period following delivery.

"Oxygen": Actually, Nitrous oxide, which added to oxygen, and when inhaled, causes a relaxation and calming. In some areas it is used as a pain management technique for childbirth. Once the inhalation has stopped the effects quickly disappear.

Pitocin or syntocinon: Synthetic form of the naturally occurring hormone, oxytocin, used to induce or maintain labour. When you have Pitocin you will also normally have a continuous IV drip and continuous electronic fetal monitoring. There are increased risks with using Pitocin including fetal distress, a higher likelihood of requesting pain medication like an epidural, caesarean section, uterine rupture.

Perineum: The region between the vulva and the anus in females.

Placenta: A temporary organ joining the pregnant person and fetus, the placenta transfers oxygen and nutrients from the pregnant person to the fetus, and permits the release of carbon dioxide and waste products from the fetus. The placenta is rich in blood vessels. The placenta is expelled during the birth process with the fetal membranes; together, these structures form the afterbirth. Most mammals eat the afterbirth.

VBAC: Vaginal birth after Caesarean Section (VBA2C = vaginal birth after 2 caesareans)

on with the rigamarole!!

2010-08-19T23:19:00.002-05:00

So after 8 months of semi-blissful residence at our Canora House, we get notice that the property is being listed for sale by the owner.

What kind of person sells a house right from under a 6-months pregnant woman's ass?

I feel properly fucked. Good and screwed.

Again. Because this is nothing new. Nothing new at all.

When oh when will there be a place just for me and mine? It seems like there's never a stable moment.

So many things to get worked up over right now. Too many!! I have to make a schedule to manage how and when to worry about certain things!!

other parents

2010-07-24T13:34:00.003-05:00

I have a REALLY hard time not worrying about what other parents might think of me, especially because I'm still a new parent to our 7 year old Serafina and I just haven't had the opportunity yet to develop comfort with or confidence in what seems like my built in parenting style. I look at myself and see the fully-realized product of my own parents and I shudder and resolve to do better but holy moly I'm both amazed and disgusted with myself all the time!!

I worry about how it all looks to other parents, even my own partner. I have to work really hard to remember that I'm a smart, sensitive, good person and then I resolve to slow down a little more and set aside the feelings of inadequacy and ill-equippedness which during most acts of parenting surely canNOT be helpful. I have to really try not to listen to the voices in my head, which I tend to create for other parents until I'm alone and the time is right to examine what seems to be other people speaking but really it turns out to be my tricksy brain using other folks as imaginary mouthpieces for my fear and insecurity.

This is a time of real insecurity for me, obviously. Assigning words to other folks is something I fall into during times of stress and distress. It's hard not to allow relationships to break down when I do this to folks, since it's without their consent, confirmation or knowledge that I put sometimes horrible words in their mouths!! This is something I have to really work on; allow myself to get this exercise in self-abuse out of my system while remembering that I must ultimately attribute all of that abuse or negative energy to MYSELF. It would be very easy to backslide and simply believe that "intuition" is helping me decide what other parents think of me, but holy fuck, that's unfair to everyone. And I do know what I'M really thinking. I'm really thinking, I'm scared. That's all. I can leave it there if I want to.

In any event, I decided during one of these alone times that I would only listen to my partner in terms of parenting style and parenting decisions. She's the only other parent in my life who isn't just a voice in my head, when it's all said and done. No one else in their right mind would ever comment on my parenting style or parenting decisions if they knew me well, and if they didn't know me well and said something, look out!!

While I have my fears which I can readily admit to, you'd better be confident you know the whole story, have a handle on most of the back story, and also be confident with subtext.

And after all, my partner's voice is the only voice besides my own (and our children's I suppose) that matters at all in terms of parenting OUR children. I can ask for and take advice, welcome or reject criticism, but ultimately, it's me and my partner doing this.

can of worms

2010-06-24T09:24:00.002-05:00

I'm kind of afraid to write these days. It's all well and good to write about stuff when you know hardly anybody is watching. There was a time when folks read my writing and those people meant a lot to me but I felt like my writing did nothing to impact them in any substantive way. Potential embarrassment, guaranteed rage and disgust, the occasional laugh, but nothing that could do irreparable damage. I mean, irreparable damage to the ego is usually good for you even if it hurts, causes a lot of inconvenience and, if relied upon too heavily, destroys relationships. I consider relationships based so heavily on ego sort of superfluous. I'm more interested in folks who can roll when someone tells the truth about themselves and the lives they lead with others.

Now though. I'm not just writing about myself and my friends and lovers, all immature material, not so worthy of much or diligent discretion. Certainly entertaining, certainly meaningless when it all boils down, especially now that I haven't been properly fucked up in the past half-year.

Now I've got this beautiful spouse who truly truly matters to me, who truly truly supports me, who can roll with a little embarrassment, can experience the required rage and disgust without viewing me as a gangrene needing amputation. Her ego has a range of motion beyond reasonable expectation. We can disagree about things that are fairly important to us, like artistic expression, movies to watch, meals to eat, lifestyles to experiment with. We agree on the fundamentals and if we don't, we can make it work.

Now though. We are running a family. It's not just the two of us living together in a kind of dynamic harmony. We are like Ulali. We function that way. I can see folks in my life tipping their heads, cocking their ears, waiting for it to happen, pulling their chins in and watching for the song to fall apart in front of them, but it doesn't. The way we are living has a quality that seems unstable and discordant, but before that discord becomes established, we start filling in the gaps. This leads us to a full and complex level of vibration that evokes an emotional response from a surprising amount of people.

That emotional response is what troubles me. I wonder how it is that two people, who in my view are doing very well at living quietly and peacefully, can stir up so much shit. I've got good vibes and bad vibes and vibes of all types coming at me from all sorts of angles. I'm not a person known to compromise herself in order to be liked and accepted, and it's certainly showing these days. Those folks who feel kindly towards us are invariably holding themselves at quite a distance, notwithstanding the amount of goodwill they harbour for us. You know, drop it like it's hot.

There's nothing wrong with my family's situation and smart folks know it, but at the same time, smart folks certainly don't want to get too close to it.

Then there are the real big negative nellies. Doom and gloom and a whole lot of reliance on what they've been taught and then what they've accordingly thought all their lives so how can it be that we're not ascribing to that pattern? How can it be that we do not respond in the usual ways to violent behaviour, unwelcome pressure to conform, threats, manipulation, withdrawal of love and affection? We just stick to our principles without apology and this seems to be so outrageous. Just minding our own business, thinking hard, communicating effectively and following our hearts has become a radical action. There can be no regret when we have done the hard work of having somewhat original thoughts about our relationship, our roles as parents, our place in the world together and as separate human beings.

The whole thing does cause grief, however. Certain choices have cost us relationships that help us to be more comfortable. It's not our choices that have driven folks away, contrary to popular belief. It's the choices certain folks have made.

The choices people have made are things like:

"I refuse to change my mind even though I have not had an independent thought about the issue."

"I will not allow even love to bend my opinions about gender."

"I do not believe folks have the right to decide how to love."

The choices I've been making since my creation have really led me into an arduous journey. Correction: the way I am, the way I was made, the way I can't help but allow myself to be, my innateness has really led me into an arduous journey.

I'm finally beginning to believe I was designed for my life. I'm not going to get out of this alive, but that's the whole point.

I'm going to die, thanking all the powers that seemingly be, that I refused to intentionally shame or maim anyone for just being the way they were made.

Realistically speaking, I am going to die with some amount of regret, but I expect it will be for shameful things I've done unintentionally or with the best of informed but misdirected intentions.

I recognize and honour the fact that most folks who act like asses are simply working with what they have. I do not believe most folks who act like asses are doing the best they can. I can't believe that. We are designed to be better than what we can do. We are designed to evolve and grow despite ourselves. Fear and ignorance are poor excuses for haters.

I'm halfway through a marvellous pregnancy. I'm turning out to be a fantastic baby-growing device.

I can't help but wonder how I'll love this new human I'm manufacturing.

I am afraid I am too much like sandpaper and less like water. Right now I see child-rearing as a lot like two landmasses wearing away at each other. I acknowledge this process, while not exactly gentle, is necessarily subtle and should take a lot of time. It's a natural effect of two entities existing next to each other. Yet I make so many efforts to just erode methodically, like factory-work. I have discovered that I really don't like to spend a lot of time moulding the human child. In other words, I wish my efforts would have more immediate results.

I am attempting to be a creative parent. I do take some time and I think a lot. I do not do things instinctually because I don't trust myself yet. I have a lot of work to do in that regard.

In that regard, mechanisms that were installed very early in my life are being dismantled every day. I find a lot of this dismantling work comes in the form of dreaming. I have started to dream often about violence and rage with a target. I wish I didn't have to sleep sometimes.

I watch myself and see there is very little flow to the way I currently parent. I am hoping the experience of childbirth will help me become a more natural parent, like water, gently smoothing out the roughness and naturally helping my children re-arrange the jammed up places. I want to push only when it's a natural part of my children's landscape.

There's nothing like hating the way you are when you're doing something important. Talk about a force of nature. The way to go about this is like sailing; attempt to capture the power of the winds of self-loathing and glide as smoothly as possible towards the end.

update

2009-12-07T09:02:00.002-06:00

My skin has become some kind of monster in the space of half a year. Like, "Revenge of The Eczema", after 3 years in remission. I've taken prednisone three times in the past three months and am feeling hopeless about the situation. My chinese doctor has seemingly given up on me. That hurts. Reading Susun Weed these days has directed me to daily burdock root infusions, in addition to the nettle and red raspberry leaf I've been drinking for the past month or two.

The rash bit is becoming disabling. Last week I sat through a somewhat lighthearted meeting with people I love and all I could think about was doom. Makes me feel isolated, like The Doors song, "People Are Strange". This is not the me I've been for the past three years. It's the me I used to be and I want to run, run, run!!

I need to examine my past and who I was and who I am now a little more, obviously. Maybe work on reconciling the parts of me, integrate the me of anti-2004 and post-2004, get things a little more unified in my brain. I guess we have to revisit things now and again, take a proper accounting, spiritually, physically, intellectually... Not a very attractive undertaking at this juncture. And how shall I go about this? Past Life Hypnotherapy? Reiki?

All I really know right now is, I'm tired of having a raw body. I scratch blood now. The blood's right there, under a thin, fragile membrane.

The dermatologist I went to see figures I'm being poisoned by off-gassing from the brand new materials which comprise the brand new housing co-op I've been living in for the past half-year.

I thought I was doing something right by moving into a cooperative housing arrangement, running for the board of directors, taking some control of the way the place where I live is run, but the building is actually filling me with toxins, by all appearances.

It would be a pretty good place to live if I didn't have sensitivities, but this is not worth it. This month is pretty much the last gasp here; if things are not improved by the end of December, we're looking to move.

"We". Yes, "we". We're going to move. My family is now officially: Andrea, Xtina and me. We have extensions of ourselves: Andrea's sisters, her mother, my own parents, my friends, her friends, our friends...it's kind of a fucking wonderful life right now. My plans are gigantic, so extremely amazingly huge. I'm doing stuff in regards to family that I've been trying to do for the past seven years or so. I guess this is another reason I need to reconcile the anti-04 with the post-04. Reconcile the Sonja whose already-small family dissipated into thin air that year leaving three sad refugees, with the Sonja who has two wonderful people at home with her plus a whole network of healthy, supportive individuals who say "I love you" first, who return my calls, ask if I need help, accept my help with trust, don't try and avoid conversations with me, don't wish they were somewhere else, ask how I am, tell me they miss me, offer to commit more wholeheartedly... It's a fucking shocker, let me tell you, and I fucking deserve it.

Tomorrow I go for an interview in regards to my dream job. I suppose it might be called a long shot, but I do well at those. I've really bore down this past year to earn this and we'll see. If not, it's a lesson and I am already grateful for it. I know what I want to do now, for the most part, and if I'm not meant to do it right now for a living, at least I know how to go about getting there. I'm already doing things to get there. I'm busy with an online course and expect to earn a certificate in non-profit management within a year or two. From there, who knows what I'm capable of?

This isn't even half of it, but I'm too busy to continue. Until the next time, take care yo.

izzat, karma, what-have-you

2009-10-21T10:01:00.003-05:00

It's natural that people who were once close, who saw each other through heavy shit for years, every day, off and on and whatnot, will drift apart once the circumstances of their lives change significantly.

We all move on, we become "different people", we still love each other but there's just no time, or they're there and I'm still here, or whatever.

It happens. I know this. I accept this as natural and good.

I do wonder though, what it is I did, what, in a past life, in this lifetime, at a time and place I don't remember in any event, I could have conveyed to an old friend when I find they only contact me when they need to hook anOTHER of their friends up with something I've got or can do or whatever.

An old friend of mine only calls me on behalf of other people. This hurts.

I don't know what to do besides stop being available for such nonsense. Networking is one thing, but I feel like that behaviour is just plain old mean, at best, totally crass.

And yet, is this caused by some past-life behaviour? Is my karma trying to teach me something?

Is this what growing up is like, or did I just fall in love with the wrong friend a decade ago and now I'm reaping a whole field of "Could you hook my friend up?"

I know compassion can really help me in this regard and I make my gestures with as generous a spirit as possible, but when I've done what I can to assist this friend of a friend, I just don't know how to keep myself healthy and be open-hearted to what I consider insulting, use-and-abuse behaviour, without hurting myself.

I know my mother would say "fuck 'em", but I'm tired of estrangement and I'm tired of being sensitive too, but the reality is that I come from a family of estrangement and my sensitivity is what makes me a fantastic person. If I wasn't as sensitive as I am, and the reality is I'm not that sensitive when we're talking plainly, I'd probably be a real asshole.

Oh well. The next time it happens, I'll probably just lose my cool, give this person a royal telling-off and not hear from them for five years or more, for any reason.

lists

2009-09-29T11:37:00.002-05:00

I wanna wake early on weekdays in order to:

- exercise
- review and revise my goals (for the day/week/month/year/half-decade and so on)
- visualize a good day or meditate on something that is irking me
- write a to do list
- write a nice note to a nice person
- eat nutritious breakfast
- groom
- floss my teeth
- do prostrations

2009-09-16T09:30:00.000-05:00

Leonard Peltier:

Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing nothing is an act.
Let who you are ring out & resonate
in every word & every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There's no sidestepping your own being
or your own responsibility.
What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message.
You are the message.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

blogs

2009-09-14T09:09:00.003-05:00

I've been reading some tremendously good blogs for at least a month or two, now, and wow, there are some real gems of consequence out there. Some choice tidbits:

lefty liberal men proclaim their sexual entitlement to women, while simultaneously patting themselves on the back for being champions of womens and minority rights ~The Womanist

Zucchini and Kimchi Quiche with a Brown Rice Crust
(makes 6+ servings)
Printable Recipe from Closet Cooking

Ingredients:
2 cups cooked brown rice
1/4 cup gruyere (grated)
1 egg
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 cup gruyere (grated)
2 cloves garlic (chopped)
1 cup kimchi (drained and chopped)
1 cup zucchini (grated, squeezed and drained)
2 green onions (chopped)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Mix the rice, cheese and egg in a bowl.
2. Press the rice mixture into a pie plate.
3. Bake in a preheated 450F oven for 5 minutes.
4. Mix the eggs, milk, gruyere, garlic, kimchi, zucchini, green onions, salt and pepper in a large bowl.
5. Pour the egg mixture into the pie crust.
6. Bake in a preheated 375F oven until golden brown and set in the center, about 30-35 minutes.

It is long past the time for all of us to start to see, to identify, to articulate the pain of systematized brutality. It is time to recognize that much of the pain is the result of a system designed to ensure our pleasures. ~stuffwhitepeopledo

“Women of the earth, take courage. You carry the teaching of a people who look to you for guidance. Be mindful of your walk.” ~The Indigenist

Mission Statement!!!

2009-09-02T13:29:00.002-05:00

I am at my best when I'm busy dancing, cooking, eating, drinking, biking, advocating for others, making love, talking about myself, reading, researching, working to dismantle oppression, organizing, reading out loud to people, listening to music.

I will try to prevent times when I'm bored, lonely, tired, hungry, procrastinating, overwhelmed, ignored, dismissed.

I will enjoy my work by finding employment where I can research, compose, teach, have meaningful discussions and listen to music.

I will find enjoyment in my personal life through research, cooking, meaningful dialogue, dancing, eating, drinking, listening to music and making love.

I will find opportunities to use my natural talents and gifts such as organizing, discussing, reading, researching and memorizing.

I can do anything I set my mind to. I will be a lawyer with a gorgeous home in the city with lots of books, music, fantastic furnishings, friends, dinners, parties, wonderful food and a beautiful family. I will also maintain a gorgeous cob home in the country where I will go often to really experience my basic and earthy fundamental values.

My life's journey is dismantling oppression in Canada and the rest of the world as a lawyer who wins giant human rights cases and a writer of wonderful truths about love, bigotry, incest, injustice, heritage, ancestry, repeating histories, traditions and innovations.

I will be a person who my friends, family and colleagues will toast as an amazing woman who insists upon justice and works to improve conditions for everyone. My most important future contribution to others will be Justice and Liberty.

I will stop procrastinating and start working on:

* learning how to spend more time alone
* becoming more physically fit
* learning how to cut my hair

I will strive to incorporate the following attributes into my life:

* brilliant and original ideas about reality - like HST's
* stoicism - like my mother's father's
* balls - like DGK's

I will constantly renew myself by focusing on the four dimensions of my life:

* avoid sugar
* yoga
* discipline
* writing

hahahahahahahahahahhaahahahahaha!

2009-09-01T14:23:00.001-05:00

How Not To Get A Woman
By Kythryne Aisling

Dear Random Woman Who Called The Office Again Today:

No, I still do not know how you can "get a woman." In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that you're enough of a chauvanistic pig that the only way you'll be able to get a woman is if you pay for one. And even then, your chances are likely pretty slim, because most of the sexworkers I know have a rather finely honed ability to tell when someone will be entirely more trouble than they'll tolerate for $200 an hour.

Here's a little hint for you, since you seem to have somehow managed to dodge the cluestick until now: women are not sex objects, nor are they merchandise. And it's pretty widely known that if you want to get into a woman's pants, you'll have the best luck if you start out by trying to get into her head.

Forgive me if I seem a bit reluctant to divulge the directions to Sappho Avenue, but you see, I've had more than a few encounters with women like you before, and frankly, the queer community isn't going to welcome you with open arms. Or open legs.

You see, there's a reason I'm reluctant to claim the label of bisexual, and it's not the oh-so-politically-correct "bisexual implies that there are only two genders" excuse that I usually offer up when someone asks why I scribble in "queer" on any forms that inquire as to who I'll do. The real reason is that I'm tired of having people hear "bisexual" and immediately translate that into "skanky ho who'll fuck anything that holds still long enough." I may be a slut, but I'm a choosy slut with high standards and a strong sense of ethics.

I'm also tired of being hit on by "bi-curious" women who want to venture into the Big Scary World Of Pussy Licking, but only if it's accompanied by the restriction of (pick one from Column A and one from Column B) My Husband Won't Find Out or Can My Boyfriend Watch? and I Only Like Skinny Femme Women With Long Nails or None Of That Kinky Shit, without stopping to think that perhaps there's a person attached to the genitalia who might not enjoy getting dumped when the aforementioned "bi-curious" woman decides that she really does prefer the cock after all.

Not to mention that I'm very tired of having to explain that yes, I am a bisexual polyamorous woman, but no, I won't fuck you unless you're already my friend, reasonably well acquainted with either latex or the doctors at the STD clinic, and willing to introduce me to your (check all that apply) husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/domestic partner/chewtoy/pimp/significant other not otherwise specified, and even then your chances are pretty damn slim because my dance card is already full and there's a waiting list just for dates and phone calls, thank you very much now go away.

And if you can't connect the dots between those three statements and my reluctance to help you on your quest to Get A Woman (But My Husband Can't Know About It), then you're even dumber than you sound over the phone and I'm going to have to trade the Nerf Cluestick in on a 2x4 Cluestick for the next round of Why I Wouldn't Help You Even If It Was In My Job Description, Which It's Most Decidedly Not.

Have a nice day.

No love,
The Very Unhelpful Woman At The GLBT Counseling Organization

discipline

2009-09-01T08:51:00.003-05:00

I've got about half a blog post drafted on discipline but it isn't ready yet. What I do want to mention straightaways is that while drafting my post on discipline these past two weeks, I totally plunged into no-holds-barred excess and associated self-abuse by way of the consumption of a variety of evils, a la various forbidden meats, sugar by the pound, dairy by the barrel, bread and chocolate...I did not do well at all last week.

The consequences are, as I knew they would be, bad bad eczema, severe anxiety and moderate weight gain. And regret. Oh, the regret that's associated with the failure to take good care of oneself.

I MUST develop discipline!!! It really is a real goal of mine, MY NEXT BIG PROJECT:

Discipline is a goal of MINE. I have recognized the need for discipline in my life off and on for about ten years now, at LEAST.

I need to learn how to force myself to do a few things, in order to achieve what I want in life. This is not learning how to make life difficult or not-enjoyable, it's learning how to make a difficult decision, commit to a difficult path and SUCCEED with the use of discipline.

When I've succeeded through the use of discipline, I know I will feel RIGHT. I'll feel good, because I will feel able to do so much more. I feel trapped right now. Whenever I've succeeded, I will feel more free than ever.

When I think about what I'll be able to with my sense of discipline, I have a definite feeling of motivation. I feel like I can take on anything.

I can see myself there.

discipline - actual post

2009-08-19T09:40:00.006-05:00

Right now, I'm working on developing discipline. I've visited this before, but the thing has often fallen by the wayside, as is what happens with me and some or most difficult things to do. If you know what I mean.

I've been going for some therapy sessions this past month or two and we've talked a lot about the anxiety. The shrink figures the root problem with my panic is the debt I am saddled with combined with other, more worthy stressful things. And, well, duh. But not duh. Because we seem to forget about "minor" painful things when we live with them for years and years. Like a chronic and persistent headache - I hear some folks don't go a day in their adult lives without some form of headache. They say some days are worse than others, some days they don't even notice they have a headache until the remember to feel around in their head for the old familiar pain. High pain thresholds or whatever that is.

I think that's what's happening to me with my debt - I'm forgetting often how hard it is to work for a big bitch in a shit-job for which I'm overqualified just to pay a third of my cheque to a debt that was not worth a hill of beans because I was too young to graduate and become an underpaid prison warden for a bunch of children and work with a bunch of ugh, teachers.

I'm forgetting to credit myself with the fact I've pulled myself out of a giant pit of despair and addiction in only five short years.

I'm forgetting how to work towards changing my circumstances.

Or maybe that's not it. That's a bit drastic.

I'm struggling to focus on the next worthwhile bit of self-development and associated change in circumstances. I've known for a while that I need to develop more discipline.

To be fair. I actually have developed some discipline - I quit smoking for the final time almost sixteen months ago and I've been solidly committed to the process of remaining smokefree. I continue to develop discipline in that regard.

In the past six months, I've regained control of my appetite, which I haven't had a hold on since my blessed recovery from food allergies and unfortunate marriage in 2006.

And blah blah blah, there, good, I've given myself some credit.

But now, let's get down to brass tacks. As far as discipline goes, the above, well, it's more about taking responsibility for myself through the use of discipline.

What I am going for now is less about learning abstinence and self-care than to embody this magical phrase:

I AM SUPER-MOTIVATED AND UNUSUALLY WELL-EQUIPPED

I want the above to be a major cause of my success. This is about that whole "1% inspiration 99% sweat" thing.

acknowledge the importance of motivation
1. in hard times, it will serve me well
2. I can distract myself with my vision when life gets in the way
pursue intrinsic motivation
1. get my emotions involved in what I do
2. practice optimism
3. develop personal enjoyment in worthy pursuits
4. pursue the sense of educational achievement that comes from doing a particular thing
exercise extrinsic motivation
1. get my emotions involved in what I do
2. use pain and pleasure: associate doing with pleasure, and not doing with pain and regret
3. think about the impact of taking action versus not taking action
4. remember to practice forgiveness and compassion, as this is a risky business
5. actively move towards the motivation and gain pleasure from it
6. focus on the activity and avoid pain and fear
7. use a combination of rewards, pleasure, pain and fear to create motivation
use rewards
1. my mind and body will respond more readily if there is a tangible, immediate reward on the path to achievement
2. I can condition myself to develop desirable behaviours if I use rewards on the path
3. schedule the rewards so that the action is immediately rewarded; the action is associated with the pleasure of being rewarded
4. choose a variety of rewards: try to focus on rewards relating to personal growth and spiritual fulfillment, the reward of free time, luxuries that exist in the home, healthy foods and behaviours
try NLP (neuro-linguistic programming)
create a conducive environment
1. make the environment work-friendly
2. add variety as needed: do not be afraid to get out of the house with a notebook, take my book to the laundromat, study at the library, write my paper at the coffeehouse
use motivational music
1. set up the Ipod playlists
2. while listening intently, visualize myself being motivated, taking action, and reaping the rewards from my action
combine motivation with goal setting to maximize results
1. with goal setting, I have a more complete perspective of what can be achieved through my plans and actions in the long term
2. what do I want to achieve
3. why I want to achieve it
4. when do I want to achieve it
5. how can it be achieved
create a goal setting journal
1. state the goals in clear terms
2. state the plan
3. state the benefits
4. set a schedule of action items, deadlines and milestones
5. review the goal setting journal whenever I feel a lack of motivation
6. keep track of progress and identify roadblocks more easily
get curious and interested
1. become obsessed with motivation
2. become obsessed with discipline
3. become unusually well-equipped

big love

2009-08-14T11:46:00.001-05:00

see more Celeb Look-A-Likes

recommit

2009-07-22T10:19:00.003-05:00

I've had a rough fucking past 6 months as far as anxiety and career choices go. It's taken a toll and I've suffered enough. What I have to do now is recommit to my choices. I chose to return to CGK. I knew at the time I begged my job back how weird it can get here. And I've pouted about it enough, felt genuine anxiety over it, suffered enough panic attacks. I'm here and I'm not going anywhere until I get accepted into law school. Period.

My job now is to make the best of it. Make it good. Make it fantastic. Renew it, refresh it, recommit to it. I am a precocious fucking individual. I am capricious. I know I can definitely make that shit work for me and I know I can turn this fucking law firm on its head.

Things are kind of looking up. Attitude has a lot to do with it. I also have wee chunk of money coming to me. We'll see how far it goes and what exactly I can do with it. Ugh. I have a feeling my plans for travel and camp are bunk though.

bean pot fuck yeah

2009-07-17T13:12:00.001-05:00

I couldn't resist the consignment store across the street yesterday. It was pay day. I figured, well, I do need a butter dish and there's no way I'm going to find one if I don't take a gander now and again. So in I went and oh boy!! No butter dish, but one fine-ass motherfucking bean pot. $10. It's so mine now.

I also got me a $2 pyrex dish - round and with a cover. It's so me.

weekend lovely

2009-07-13T12:51:00.003-05:00

So this weekend was the first time I slept at my new apartment at Greenheart and oh boy!! The first night was fantastic!! We professed our love for each other for the first time for reals...a night of firsts on Saturday the 11th of July, 2009, let me say that outright. We said it at the park of our first date. Nice night for it.

What a fantastic life I've found myself leading!!

Last night we had a candlelit late-night dinner with that young man. The whole scene reminded me of last-night dinners my parents and I would have way back pre-90s, by candle light, in our friggin' trailer. My pioneering past includes a trailer, better-known to me and my folks as "the silver bullet". My first real childhood home is something which if I named it out loud and proper these days, most of my friends would say, "oh, that was like my first vibrator." Or something else just as vibratory.

Yesterday gf and I went out in the afternoon and acted like cats, checked out all the back lanes and every garbage can we came across, went home and ate ice cream. Then curled up together in the early evening sun. Cat Day!!

The back alley shenanigans resulted in a find of some sweet-ass old bottles, two of which are "Jamaican Dry" ginger ale bottles - I remember that shit being so hot, burned the lips right down to the guts and beyond. Also picked up a SWEET "Old Vienna" stubby bottle - really cool, like new, but it has to be thirty or more years old. I might have to give it to my dad. I forget if he collects the stubbies.

Hehe, she said stubby.

Also found another kitchen table, this one for the gf. It needs some repair but it's quite a nice retro 50s style. It was about three blocks away from the new homestead, but I hoisted it over my head and walked up Sherbrook, storm trooper-style. Needed some breaks of course - I'm not as tough as I wish I could be.

Some other things I'm excited about:

- using the wooden bowls I've obtained from the antique store across the street from work
- using the cheese knives I've obtained from the same store - the standard three blades + funny fork. The twist is that they have a groovy hanger thingie. so cute!!
- more candle-lit dinners in my new home
- the way my new building 'sings'. The plumbing is still priming - right now, I hope that singing continues forever and ever. I'm sure I will regret this once reality sets in.
- burrito-making parties with certain queers who are interested in taking care of themselves. For the purposes of burrito-making parties, I MUST get a kitchen island built for myself, obtain a kick-ass couch/seating arrangement, and a wonderful sound system for muuuuuuusic.

Cat Day ended with another, more unexpected profession of love, which was quickly rescinded. Oh life. : )

I dumpstered me a sweet-ass kitchen table

2009-07-10T11:40:00.002-05:00

So I forgot to mention that on Monday I walked into my new back lane and lo and behold, a fucking awesome kitchen table is sitting beside a dumpster, waiting for me like an obsessive but much-desired lover.

This table is exactly what I've been fantasizing about. Life is so weird.

Now all I can do with myself is obsess over the couch I want to find waiting for me in some other back lane, hopefully close to a friend who has a truck.

green tara

2009-07-09T16:17:00.003-05:00

So I discovered my new mantra recently. I tend to seek a mantra to live my life by when I need help. I write it on a post-it or I tape a small piece of paper to my computer monitor. Sometimes I read it silently, some days I mouth the words, sing the the thing in my head, scream it out loud after work when no one's around.

The last mantra I had was a Prayer to Ganesha, for New Beginnings and boy, did that shit ever spur me into a few new beginnings!! Most effective, but I'm tired of starting things, now I have to take care of myself very aggressively. I need protection is how I'm feeling today and so I've discovered the Mantra of Green Tara:

"om tare tuttare ture soha"

which protects me from:

1. lions and pride
2. elephants and delusions
3. forest fires and hatred
4. snakes and envy
5. robbers and fanatical views
6. prisons and avarice
7. floods and lust
8. demons and doubt

Holy moley, this mantra's got me covered on 16 sides!! I have no doubt it will work wonders for my anxiety and anger and will help me develop clarity of purpose.

modern mixtape

2009-07-06T13:52:00.000-05:00

moving can be a good thing

2009-06-29T11:50:00.006-05:00

Well, I'm almost completely packed for my move on July 1, 2009. I'm quite pleased; things went surprisingly well yesterday as far as putting things in boxes and bags and whatnot, thanks to two super-duper helpers, one of whom I'd only met on Friday night!! Strange. Last move too, I had the assistance of a great drummer, who I'd only met once before, maybe. I think I may have met him THAT day! Perhaps I'm becoming one of those Devereaux-types, always depending on the kindness of strangers. Lemme tell ya, I LIKE that kind of kindness!!

So tonight. I have yet to pack my kitchenery, there's a bookshelf or two to finish up, and I need to pack up the technology. Drag up a shelf from the basement, drag some shelves downstairs from my rooms, some houseplants and then blammo!! A few things from the bathroom and I'm done. Just need to pack all that shit in my friend's SUV. Yay for friends with SUVs! Never thought I'd say that!

All that said, this might be one of my most well-organized moves in history!!

AND...let me just remind y'all that I am triumphant - I've stayed at Fawcett longer than a year, almost two years!! longest stay in my adult history - I did well and I suppose it's just now time to go. I've taken steps and found good opportunity to move into a great housing arrangement. Not to say that the arrangement I'm leaving hasn't been totally awesome...if it weren't awesome I wouldn't have stayed for almost two years.

I think it's just time to grow up - I'm turning 30 in exactly six months and I just really need to solidify my life style and my living style - I can't depend on the company of others so much to define me, I think.

So now, the things I think need to make me happy:

- couch
- comfy chair/loveseat
- end tables
- floor pillows
- bean bag chairs
- throw rugs
- cylindrical lampshade to replace the one I tore up 7 years ago
- funky butt-ugly lamps (with non-wicker shades)
- cutlery
- serving utensils
- stainless steel measuring cups and spoons
- bakeware: muffin tins, cookie sheets, cake pans, loaf pans, etc.
- casserole dish with cover
- kitchen linens
- knife set
- kitchen table and chairs
- cutting block
- toaster oven
- electric kettle
- coffee grinder
- microwave?

So I've been plagued by anxiety this past week something fierce but it's been coming and going for almost a year now.

And not your garden-variety "anxious feelings". I'm talking physical panic attacks, "episodes" where it feels as though there's an armour-clad black knight shoving his prong into my spine between my shoulder blades. That talk is true, about anxiety and how it feels as though there are iron bands growing out of one's ribs; it's also true that there seems to be some evil demon who can tighten the screws on the iron bands, thus making it nigh impossible and certainly extremely painful to draw a decent breath.

I'm taking steps to deal with this issue but it looks like a long climb and I'm only starting in earnest. In the meantime, I'm just going to move house and try to pay my bills on time, enjoy life with a new sweetheart and eat nutritious vegetables on a regular basis.

Thanks to my mate penny lane for reminding me of this nugget:

Fearless
You say the hill's too steep to climb
Climb it.
You say you'd like to see me try
Climbing.

You pick the place and I'll choose the time
And I'll climb
That hill in my own way.
Just wait a while for the right day.
And as I rise above the tree lines and the clouds
I look down, hearing the sound of the things you've said today.

Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd
Smiling.
Merciless the magistrate turns 'round
Frowning.

And who's the fool who wears the crown?
No Doubt,
in your own way
And every day is the right day
And as you rise above the fear-lines in his brow
You look down, hearing the sound of the faces in the crowd.

love is a rose

2009-05-29T15:22:00.003-05:00

I miss Cat Stevens and I miss American Graffiti but I'm glad I actively keep all of that at a distance now. My stomach hurts too much when I think too much about apocalypse berries, pizza from Slices, tequila by the 24, veggie bakudan, giant pasta meals, sharwood's curry with badly-cooked rice, licking the plate, cottage cheese and bananas.

I have to skim those tasty morsels when I come across them; do the enjoyment without the immersion. Too dangerous, too stupid, too weird.

This practice of detachment helps with buddhist stuff and reiki, and just basically keeping the love light burning.

I'm very pleased with Flight of the Conchords. It doesn't help with my hedonism, but there are so many other things to dive into. Things like bike-riding to the best green curry soup in Winnipeg, matsaman take-away, red wine and blue cashmere in bed at xmas, Bob Marley on summer afternoons, homemade miso soup, dried kale, peanut sauce on broccoli and baby bok choy...

Life is so strange; I keep saying this, but the more time I spend living, the more true it becomes. Amazing how life is just one weird layer over another weird layer.

What are you running from, or what are you running towards?

2009-04-28T09:26:00.002-05:00

I'm running from my past, all my relations. I'm running from heartache, the woods, the forests, the sound of the wind in the tops of poplars in autumn.

I'm running towards family, freedom, seriousness and hilarity.

2009-04-01T13:52:00.002-05:00

"So try this, Virgo: Leap ahead many years in your imagination and tune in to the guidance of the ripe and vibrant wise guy or wise woman you will ultimately become."

I've been languishing in relative misery these past two months. I made a decision about my employment that I regret. I do not wish I hadn't decided to move forward, I simply made the wrong choice. There was no way of knowing then that I'd dislike what I'm doing now so intensely.

I've been belly-aching about this for almost the entire time I've been here. First I thought it was simply me adjusting to this new environment, after having a sweet deal for the past four years. Then it was my feeling of boredom and uselessness; I wasn't getting enough tedious work, let alone engaging work. Now that I'm somewhat busy with somewhat engaging work occasionally, I see that this just ain't for me.

I have no purpose here. This is something I'm going to have to do until I find something I'm truly supposed to involve myself with. I wish I had a timeframe.

Well, here I go.

My New Employment Goal

I am finding employment that is:
- carrying a start date of within one month or less
- worthwhile (Sufficiently valuable or important to be worth one's time, effort, or interest)
- rewarding (providing personal satisfaction, affording financial or material gain)
- specialized (developed or designed for a special activity or function)
- complex (When the actual motions of the heavens are calculated in the best possible way, the process is difficult and complex. --Whewell)
- ongoing but moderate learning curve
- inspiring (stimulating or exalting to the spirit)
- positive (Characterized by or displaying certainty, acceptance, or affirmation)
- heroic (Brave; intrepid; courageous; daring; valiant; bold; gallant; fearless; enterprising; noble; magnanimous; illustrious)

spill my fucking guts

2009-03-15T03:40:00.002-05:00

I've struggled through the entirety of the months of January and February with LIES. BIG FAT LIES for almost sixty fucking cold hard days. All I wanted to do for two fucking months was FUCKING LIE. Exaggerate, convolute, blow out of fucking proportion, embroider, fabricate, hyperbolize and distort.

March has turned out different this year. March is turning out to be all about exposure. Revelation. Showing my true colours. I'm even getting a dose. I found out about myself; I discovered things I already knew about myself last week. I like to listen to other people having sex. I like to lie in bed and stare at the inside of my eyelids for three days at a time, but not any more or any less; three days is it.

It was a full moon during the week of Friday the 13th this month. Last month was even more acute, but I don't remember last month, except to say that my leg FUCKING HURT and I was accordingly MAD WITH PAIN last month.

I hid out the beginning of this week just like I used to do all the time in the old days and not so often lately. Hiding out this way is not obsolete by any means, but it's becoming more rare. I stayed in my dirty sheets from Sunday morning this week to Wednesday morning with only brief reprieves in the forms of "The Watchmen" (oh my gawd awesome), holding a nice baby, a commitment I had to my community, reading really fucking great books and talking on the radio then grocery shopping for useless junk.

Aw fuck. Going to bed now. Without spilling much of my guts. I guess it's because I've done enough of that this month already. Fuck!!!!!!!!! Way to stagger around and squeal like a pig. What else am I goin to do though? Keep my hole shut?!! So not my style...

"like me" like me

2009-02-19T22:53:00.003-06:00

I totally wish someone would "like me" like me. Like me "like that".

I'm really ready to be loved...again? (It's so hard to believe that folks mean it when they tell you they love you, especially after they've stopped loving you, or at least telling you or whatever.)

Right now, I'm feeling a pinch. I'm feeling like, wow, excluded. I'm feeling like, wow, I could do a better job of having a partner than ever before. I could also do a better job of having a few partners, but right now I gotta start at one or two I suppose, or more, whatever.

Right now, I need to be loved again. I need to be around someone who loves me, regularly. Not someone who loves me regularly, but to regularly be near that person who loves me.

Without feeling transparent, without feeling as if I'm being treated and regarded as a shabby substitute for "the real thing", a person to kill time with, someone who will happily take "maybe" as the only answer, ever, to any question no matter what type of question it is. I ask questions that can be answered and I don't know why I don't get many answers.

I find myself in the role of chump and it does not resonate with me. This is not a believable part for me nor is it something I agreed to do, I did not attend any casting call for this, there was no audition.

I have noticed nothing is by agreement these days, it is all unspoken, it is all how the chips fall and it is all "unintentional", but oh, fuck that, nothing is unintentional, nothing is accidental. I do relationships on the basis of consent language, this is my goal and it is my modus operandi and this is the program and my life is incongruous with my goal and my modus operandi and my program and so that says "Still don't know what I was waiting for / And my time was running wild / A million dead-end streets and / Every time I thought I'd got it made / It seemed the taste was not so sweet / So I turned myself to face me / But I've never caught a glimpse / Of how the others must see the faker / I'm much too fast to take that test / Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes / Turn and face the strange...Just gonna have to be a different man / Time may change me / But I can't trace time"

Everything is eventual? Everything is intentional.

I want to phrase this positively. I want to say:

I want to be loved.

That means love in all sorts of forms.

I want pure love directed at me.

I want it, right now.

I want to be looked at as an opaque creation of Great Spirit,
an accidental, eventual, intentional amalgamation of solid molecules,
particles of carbon.

I want your awareness, that
I am flesh that bleeds,
bones that break,
feelings that hurt,
spirit that soars.

I want to speak and have direct eye contact made, while
my mouth is moving, and
sounds are coming out of it.

I want ears open.
I want sound consideration.
I want to know the attention I deserve is being paid to me.

I want to be one, all one, like Dr. Bronner says.

I want the work to be worth it.
Whether or not it's easy or hard or weird or normal or other or other, I want the work to be worth it to me, to you.

Whether or not it's taking too long and is very painful, or
it's quick and easy, boring, neither here nor there.

Whether it's at a real close proximity,
a regular working distance,
far far away and infrequent,
too frequent,
not frequent enough,
not regular,
too regular,
I want the work to be part of the worthy process, and
I want the worthy process to be ongoing.

I want the worthy process to be that beautiful journey.
I know that beautiful journey exists.

I want to just be happy I'm with you, and
I want to hear that you're just happy to be with me.
That I'm just happy to be with you.
That you're just happy to be with me.

I want to believe it when I say it, and
believe it when I hear it.

Right now.

there's a kind of touch

2009-02-08T02:59:00.002-06:00

I still hurt from certain events. It's been two years I recognize that but fuck you. I still hurt from events 22 years in the fucking past, so fuck you.

I hold a fucking grudge. I'm sure I told a certain person that tonight but then again, I make shit up in my head. The lights were not so consistent at the bar and I have a tendency to watch patterns as they appear on the floor. I like to sip and stare with my head down. It's a problem but I don't wanna ever fix it. These are the reasons I go to the bar these days; sip and stare.

And think. Hard. About old places. I took a shit in the bathroom stall tonight, where more than four years ago I fucked my most dearest gf, the woman I would have married if shit hadn't hit the fan when it did, if I hadn't heard that song by The Cure when I did, two days before my period, three days after she'd found herself in the arms of a karaoke-singing drunk-ass bitch who lived with his mother in a shithole of a town.

I wonder about an equivalent term for "cockblock". There are way more instances of cockblocking in lesbian-land than there ever will be in the land where a dyke-like-me-at-scandals-or-whatever-the-fuck-it's-called-now finds herself now and again. It's sad that when I wear a new shirt and jacket to the gay bar that there's no terminology to accompany the occasion.

A dear person who's helped me through many things termed my style of touch "very penetrative" and I wished then that I could follow through and I wish now that I could follow through. I live in the wrong day and age, especially when I'm drinking. Just take your fucking pants off. I'll tell you. I'll fucking tell you.

There was a butch dyke there tonight, who had the fucking moves. Didn't stop as long as I was on the dance floor. There's something hot about that and it doesn't have anything to do with the back of one's neck, the way they touch your ass, the way they point their eyes to the floor. It has to do with the way the pants hang off the ass, the way the armpits look when the arms are up, and fuck it, the music's good, I'm shaking my ass and go to hell if you can't handle that shit no matter what your age, no matter what your sensibility, this is about individuality.

I have much love for the universe. I miss curling up in bed with a person who reminds me of a kitty-cat. I can't help these things. I put my hand in a place where it used to go naturally, back of the head, just where the brain says hello to the spine, and I think the thoughts I used to think and now they're not realistic, now they're not about anything but what a joke life is and that's fucking fine. You know, learning curve. I'm glad for the lessons, I'm glad for the opportunity to learn a thing or two.

Life's an Ice Storm, fuckers, and I wanna be one of the folks fucking pointlessly in a warm albeit immobile car, not getting off but getting seriously horny about infidelity, yours and/or mine, or neither. Maybe it's just about getting each other off or rather working each other up for later. I've always suspected and most recently really learned, morals are for chumps. I don't wanna be some moron thinking abstract thoughts about what it means to be a fucking molecule and the ramifications of acting naturally, acting on impulse, following through on the opportunities presented by life. By that I don't mean, dive in, every time. Sometimes it's an opportunity to refrain, an opportunity to say no, an opportunity to say fuck it, I ain't a jerk.

Nevertheless, I wanna be feeling shit and making mistakes, right up until the moment when life is over. I wanna always remember what it's like to put my hand THERE, hear a certain sound. Oh life. There's a kind of hush. It's not happening these days and I feel fine. Wow, sorry.

and

2009-01-25T03:16:00.002-06:00

And fuck man, there are so many fucking prerogatives. There are so many circumstances people do things about; fear-based decisions are made about so many things and these things are started with the best intentions but folks just don't seem able to fucking FOLLOW THROUGH. They decide love is not an everyday thing or they forget or they believe things about themselves, like, they can't, they don't wanna be the way they've said they'll be and they just stop. And that's their fucking prerogative.

I take my fucking prerogative, don't get me wrong. I just think taking my prerogative without notice is an end to it all, it's a way of ending life. And I do it, not that often. Not without a lot of awareness of what this might be like for me especially, for other folks yes, but who cares, if life as we know it is ending, why would I give a flying fuck? That's why I'm taking that fucking prerogative. I don't care to know, not any more.

Yes it is easy to be hard. See above.

power and responsibility and the things in between

2009-01-25T02:54:00.002-06:00

I was speaking to a person I consider a really dear friend in the making tonight, someone I respect and wonder about but it is not weird, not obsessive, not anything really, I could stop it tonight and it wouldn't hurt and we were talking about what it means to ask someone to fetch. You know, hey honey, will you please get me a glass of water while you're up? Thank you. I told my dear friend how I felt in these instances and she told me how she felt in these instances and it just seemed to me that tonight was the first night I've asked someone to do something because they loved me for a long long time.

It is so easy to be hard when you find something out about someone. You know they know it is hard on you when certain things happen, and when certain people do these certain things without notice, without seeming acknowledgment of the difficulty they know you might have, it hurts.

I never ever want to ask for a glass of water to be brought to me ever again, I really don't. I really always want to get it myself. And I really always want it just to be brought to me even if I haven't asked for it, because someone loves me and they figured I needed a glass of water, and it's a surprise for me and it is good.

I've got a whole lot of covers by Amy Mann running through my head right now and it is hard not to rage, hard not to feel pretty betrayed, because there are certain things people who love you do when they say things and then they change their minds. Like that they've changed their minds. This doesn't happen often enough for me. It is not easy to have relationships with people and have lines of communication developing and then there are other things that happen in their lives and they are distracted forevermore and the lines of communication just seem too hard suddenly, probably because there is this feeling of limitation that goes with communicativeness, some limitation I don't seem to have unless it's OVER. When these lines of communication become too hard to other folks, I have a hard time remembering it's not OVER. I probably have a hard time because for the past twenty-nine years it's seemed that when communication becomes too hard for others, it actually is OVER. I'm afraid. I'm so afraid I'm too much for these others. I want more than one but it seems as if there's not even one. Oh help.

Oh well, it seems as if things are a-changin'. I'm happy, I'm hurt by the small things, I move on, I move. Seasons change. It's exhausting and beautiful and I'm drunk and long-overdue for bed. Long-overdue for a lot of things. It's a sad state of affairs. I have hurt feelings right now and I have ill will. I am wounded and wild with wonder. What the hell!!!!? How is it that people do these things. How!???

The Spiderman Contrapositive

2009-01-21T11:13:00.001-06:00

The Spiderman Contrapositive

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one-minute transportation

2008-11-26T14:13:00.001-06:00

Describe your primary mode of transportation. Do you wish it was different?

Right now my primary mode is Winnipeg Transit. I was just thinking yesterday that I need to get seriously re-acquainted with my bike. Today I discovered the world's longest skating rink is being extended to Assiniboine Park, thus I will soon have a direct bike route to work. In a winter wonderland. Serious awesomeness.

more one minute

2008-11-16T18:50:00.002-06:00

What bad habit would you like to change?

I'd like to stop the compulsive eating. Again on Friday night, I was upset and dejected and bought a large bag of Doritos and a 600 ml cream soda and took it home with me and sat and watched youtube. Before I knew it, you can only guess. It's hard on my guts.

Three Goals

2008-11-14T08:51:00.004-06:00

I'm following "One Minute Writer" so here goes:

THREE GOALS: Write about three realistic goals you'd like to achieve in your lifetime.

1. Write a book.
2. Open and run a successful restaurant (legal, illegal, whatever).
3. Bike the entire "western world".

with good intention, i say thanks to those who do and don't bow to censorship

2008-10-31T15:35:00.002-05:00

from June of only last year (it seems like forever ago and let me just say off the hop. joy, gratitude, love, lightness of spirit all shine on):

Last night I actually dreamed (dreaming being very unusual for me)...about the city flooding and our wedding cake floating along the swollen gutters of West Broadway in its special pail.

I was looking forward to eating that wedding cake: freezer-burnt, slightly mashed-up, year-old staleness and all. I was looking forward to the purge it would possibly have caused in us, maybe even a whole week's worth of gut-wrenching regret pouring out of our bodies before Christmas. I can't look forward to the life I thought I was going to be living. I guess that was what the dream was about, watching all that life I was hoping for just float away...

It's been a time of synchronicity, let me tell you: at first I thought it happened on the seventh day of the seventh month after our marriage, and that really blew my mind, but I was mistaken. I don't know if being mistaken about the numbers made it hurt worse, but being wrong always stings, so there you go. And I do that, I try desperately to find patterns inside the pain. I really wish things made more sense and had more clear explanations. I don't know if that helps or hinders the process of healing.

It was a big day but not really for me. My mother's 55th birthday, the day my immediately former partner gave birth to a new boy.

First day of summer, first quarter moon.

Big tornado weather. Probably around 20 years ago I almost got whacked when a tornado came through the beach area and a big tree fell right between me and the doorway I was trying to run through. My dad reached through the branches and snatched me into the safety of our weird shanty. I don't know what day that was, but it happened around this time in June a long time ago.

My horo-calendar says it was a day where marriage was highlighted, but it also advised new marriages should wait until mid-July. That's not very interesting, though.

Today I came to work and mysteriously, an internet horoscope presented itself. I mean, I sat down, started fucking around on the PC and a new window just basically opened itself up without my urging and I was presented with this nugget:

"This was the year I came all the way home. It was a turning point when I learned to speak with my own voice instead of trying to speak with the voices of everyone who's ever been important to me. In 2007 I found my power spot, my mother lode, my sacred ground. For the first time, I have a deeply felt certainty that I belong here on this planet; I belong here in my life; I belong here in this community and this mission and this body."

I'm a Capricorn, and this is a Virgo horoscope, but I think it is still very applicable, especially because of how it presented itself so assertively. My mother's mother is a Virgo (with all the biggest kinds of energies between us), and the person with whom I'm about to cohabit is a Virgo and when I was born 27 years ago, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were all sitting in the constellation of Virgo, or in what you'd call my 11th House (or Power House simply because of the amount of planets that were sharing that space in the sky while I came into the world).

"The House of Friends. Through our friends, we find strength in numbers -- we see the power of the collective, the group...it's the group, by virtue of its collective strength, which helps to define what we as individuals will do...The Eleventh House also speaks to destiny -- in simple terms, our hopes and dreams, what we desire and what we want to achieve. Our creative vision is highlighted, the simple act of working toward our maximal selves. The power of collective creation, as well as the creative sparks generated by the group, are also important to this House."

I'd have to say that Virgo's been a major influence for me in the past, and I suppose at this moment I've been further gifted with a major clue as to how to continue through life for now. The old adage of "Misery loves company" makes me very wary of the above, but then again, what's a girl to do?

Pain makes me act harsh when softness may work better. I don't want to be manipulative so I try to pull out and make the clean break even cleaner.

Pain seems to agree with me. I wish people didn't find me more attractive when I feel pain. Folks become really admiring, they praise me for my strength and my ability to function in the midst of trauma, they get real excited when I become philosophical. At the same time I allow myself to fully feel and process my emotions all in plain view. They like that.

This is how I grew up, I was split into two, one piece of me in a constant howling state of frenzied hurt, fear, despair, hatred, vulnerability, totally broken by life, the other part very calm and confident of my abilities to handle anything the world chose to bury me under, harsh, unyielding, unbreakable. I don't know how to put those two things back together. To find some congruence would mean to stop feeling, care not at all, hate wholeheartedly?

At this moment I can't see joy, gratitude, love, lightness of spirit being parts of my new whole. That's what I'll be working towards, in any event. Belief in the unbelievable. I remember trying that idea not so long ago, believing something unbelievable. It didn't work out, but you know, try, try again.

salt water

2008-10-18T12:45:00.003-05:00

It was hot that day and I was hoppin'-mad and a bit of the old hopelessness came into play as I pedalled my painful way home through sweltering streets, ignoring tattered homes and crushed lawns and too many fences.

I crawled into the house on hands and knees whimpering because you know that feeling; you've used your all to get back and now what? So I clawed my way up dusty stairs and into a cold shower and SCREAMED, SCREAMED AND SCREAMED. After too much of that, a long long time of screaming, the full-body cramps dissipated as quickly as they'd come and I stopped screaming. Shakily I answered the phone and after mutual explanations I received confident and compassionate advice and went to get the sea salt and my favourite glass and filled it high with cold saltwater.

The liquid touched my lips and as I sipped I burst into real tears... tears I would have cried twenty-two years ago. I clambered into my dirty sheets and sobbed and sobbed and sipped my cold saltwater, shivering and as I did I felt something release. The saltwater had released something that I had cramped myself for an hour to keep inside me and I could not see it but watched it go with unfocused eyes and skin that didn't know what temperature it was. My hair was electrified and I could feel tremors beneath the shivers.

I put on some clothes after a short time: my tomato-red T-shirt and my soft green skirt and my wretched Birkenstocks. As I made my way to the bus stop I thought about food such as kohlrabi, cabbage, raw peanuts, fake mayonnaise and whether or not too much dairy in one's life would cause emotional calcification just as much as it did kidney stones for some people. I thought about beheadings and cannibalism and Christian fundamentalism and above all, as I munched on compensatory chocolate and sipped comforting cream soda, watching bus after bus pass me by, I contemplated complicity and reiterated to myself how that bond is not for me. To be complicit with anyone is to stifle myself. Release is the key.

A Good Rip-Off

2008-10-14T14:34:00.002-05:00

We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us, a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears and to caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet when we don’t close off and we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings. His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes two kinds of selfish people: the unwise and the wise. Unwise selfish people think only of themselves, and the result is confusion and pain. Wise people know that the best thing they can do for themselves is to be there for others. As a result, they experience joy.

When we see a woman and her child begging on the street, when we see a man mercilessly beating his terrified dog, when we see a teenager who has been badly beaten or see fear in the eyes of a child, do we turn away because we can’t bear it? Most of us probably do. Someone needs to encourage us not to brush aside what we feel, not to be ashamed of the love and grief it arouses in us, not to be afraid of the pain. Someone needs to encourage us that this soft spot in us could be awakened and that to do this would change our lives.

[Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, p. 87-88]

I believe I have either ripped off half the femoral attachment of one my hamstrings or else I've blown an adductor. Based on the limitation of leg movement I'm experiencing right now, I'd say half my hamstring's ripped off. When I extend my leg and twist my foot in such a way, there's a problem. It hurts.

I'm also experiencing a feeling of being ripped off in the world of queer journalism in Winnipeg. I feel as if Winnipeg is rampant with little pockets of self-styled, self-designated, self-identified elite, and the elite's job is to exclude others and to exclude me is to rip me off. To exclude me is to rip off my well-deserved success, experience, credit, whatever.

The elite. I think the elite turn away when it hurts, when it's not comfortable to accommodate, when it gets really challenging and it's scary to continue with something.

What happens to the elite? They look good usually, or they're at least very enviable. And I resent that and I resent that they often have something I want and that's why they've turned away because to have something and lose it because of not having turned away, well that hurts. They think they're protecting themselves but they're doing it unwisely.

This life's going to be the end of all of us, no matter how much turning away we do. Suffering (and by that I mean samsara or attachments, delusions etc.) and death are the only guarantees in life. Some of us even avoid taxes.

Gosh I'm feeling decidedly insane lately. Sucks to want to turn away and see people turning away and then not turn away because this is how it needs to be. It hurts to be alone, it hurts to be turned away from, it hurts to be ripped off.

somos gitanos

2008-10-13T01:49:00.002-05:00

since I'm inebriated and feeling expansive and BIG, because of the company of this evening and the efforts of good, new and getting-there good friends (dinner party), I am so drunken that I can say these things without shame or inhibition. 7 bottles of red wine distributed amongst six wild dykes of varying sexualities at a Canadian Thanksgiving can still cause a bit of a stir in this old girl's heart. (last significant thanksgiving I had was when I drank a 26-ounce bottle of Magellan gin with a favourite brother-fag and woke up in the early-evening, next-day to an eviction notice in 2005).

Tonight (before midnight probably), we finished off a half-26 of bombay sapphire gin while dancing to george michael and I thought of my ex-wife and I thought of you. how new possibilities such as yourself are so really NEW and yet so POSSIBLE. huh. drunkenness. my apolly-ologies. :) I don't really mean any of this in an IMMEDIATE way. My heart is STILL oh-so-tender, oh-so-raw, still, and I'm so done inflicting this sort of shit on anyone but the folks to whom I'm committed in a very platonic, stable, non-hormonic way. But the fact we're practically a continent away from each other, the fact you ARE continent away from another MOST-HORMONALLY CONNECTED person, this means big things to me right now.) take that how you will. a river can be a continental divide, and I'm talking to YOU and YOU and YOU, fuckers. brap.

And it is ALL ultimately platonic, despite our best efforts to turn each other on and admittedly, I haven't been trying that hard, with YOU, with ANYONE, and especially, YOU. I don't seem to have it in me lately. It's only 1:30 am right now, but this time and place is BIG, as I've mentioned. I touched myself while thinking of a somebody totally not you or you earlier today, and it was okay, and actually a bit exciting because I know it's expected and unexpected, but I also spent two hours fighting off tears while chopping fall vegetables because of Joni Mitchell and you last night and hormones. Full moon madness I should think. I get my period around this time of month. Well rather around this day every month. Anyway.

I'm EXCITED. I put my eye teeth together last night in a certain way because of my ex-wife, with whom I was working on a one-time drag king production. My ex-wife looked at me during a performance art piece (called "Rebuild") and my eye-teeth connected at her and it was actually HER way of putting her eye-teeth together, it was HER way of saying "HIYA, I'M HERE, COME HERE". That is so fucking frightening and yet I'm hitting "publish" in forums other than hotmail, not just for you, but for EVERYONE, and for her, and I wish that last statement could be in an even lower case than lower case, because I'm still angry and hateful despite my best efforts, despite the expansivenes of my infinite and most-pure heart. I want to work harder but this is a test of time thing, it really is. I require the time it takes to be a better person, to have a bigger heart. To evolve. I do the work and yet here I am still striving. Continuing.

I want to entitle this "somos gitanos" so i will. It means "we are gypsies" and it's not even in the way that it means in Spain, it's not even in the way it means in other hispanic cultures. It's the way it means in MY world. The language of Spain speaks volumes to me, and only me, in the way that it does, for ME. There's a "passion". "Una pasion". No one but me can get that. That's what literature does to you when you read it enough. And the culture that happens when your ego dissolves. The clapping of the hands and the tapping of the heels and the sideways glance that perhaps when your ego disappears and you just WATCH THE SHOW, let go and WATCH THE SHOW.

My friend can say something about this but she can't convey that shit fully. Same as the "lei lei lei" introduction I tried to do on my room mate's birthday in the car. This paragraph is not for you. (Sorry) : ) nor was it for anyone besides myself. I'm listening to a track called "dime adonde vas" (tell me where you're going). I"m telling you and I'm telling myself, because I'm the one asking but I'm assuming you are curious. Hope you don't mind.

Well. My spine is losing its blessed rigidity. I better leave you with this. Let's keep this going. Please.

happy hearts fall from my stupid hands

2008-09-21T12:20:00.003-05:00

I'm starting to forget what it's like to pine and oh my, how happy that makes me. It also makes me callous, blunt and a different kind of selfish. That's fine, this is how evolution manages to make me better despite myself. All I have to do is stay clean, fairly sober, take as much responsibility as possible, get enough sleep, drink plenty of water, eat the right foods and I'll be rewarded with a purgative redemption. I'll lie in bed one night with eyes riveted by bare ceiling for nine to ten hours, wondering why I'm so boring, why I'm so evil despite my best intentions, why humanity is so epic in its disgust for itself. Then I'll either stay in bed all day or I'll go on with life as if nothing ever happened and hopefully, whichever thing I do, I'll be happier for it, better company, easier living.

My heart has mended, perhaps. I don't have the ache in my chest and throat as much anymore, if at all. I wonder about the anxiety attacks I was experiencing all through the month of August. Maybe those weren't panic attacks, those were clearing episodes. Heartbreak literally vaporizing out of my chestal area. I hope so.

I watch certain folks struggle through their own struggles and I wonder about it but I also identify with it. If anyone can understand perverse urges and actions, I think it may be me. I know what it's like to want to fuck around with the way things are. Spit in the old flame's face and then throw dirt in it. I think that's over for me right now, which is awesome.

when the blood comes: Blunt Force Trauma

2008-09-15T10:37:00.002-05:00

It's a well-known fact amongst my intimates that I'll tell ya. I'll fucking tell ya.

It is not easy at first and to catch on to this fact and embrace it is to take a leap into the unexpected. It is an exercise in bravado. A few hardened souls may find some enjoyment in my frankness but many folks in my lifetime have taken real issue with it at certain points and some have even fled. Those who have chosen to stick with the dialogue I would hope have never regretted it and perhaps have viewed the discourse as an enrichment and at the very least worthwhile.

Many folks are just "not tough enough" to exist in Sonja-land and I would say perhaps they consider me "not fluff enough". Even with tongue in cheek, I am not so tacit with those whom I feel secure and safe; I see very little need for couching terms that are not so uncertain, and especially when I am intimately acquainted (usually not in the biblical sense, mind you, that's all so dangerous, not couching with one's lovers).

Thus, if you ask a straight question, I'll give you a straight answer and I trust my beloved co-conversant to receive my straight answer as such - straight, in the spirit it is given, and they may assume the spirit is as loving, bright and open as the relationships I try to maintain.

My most genuine responses, and the most easily misinterpreted answers, are quick and dirty, you will get no bullshit or fancy business. It is easy to choose to be offended but I find it is usually your problem with the fact reality is harsh. If you wish for me to soothe you, you may want to ask for what you want rather than expect I'll pussyfoot your hardhitting questions and investigations into truth.

However, qualifying an answer is not beyond me and I am happy to do so. Thank you.

that house and time

2008-09-09T23:59:00.004-05:00

I read myself and I go back to right back to that house and dive right into that summer, the summer I got my tits done, the summer I started smoking, became highly organized, became a stoner, became an office drone, became a true Led Zeppelin fan, realized myself as a genuine lover of flowers and food, a transvert?

We sometimes went to her house for Metis lunch hour, yesterday's breakfast sausages and yellow mustard couched between slices of rye bread, heartburn sandwiches. Bannock and butter and cheese. Mushroom soup and stale dough gods. We always went back to work and I would burp loudly through the afternoon, file papers, create a database, sing along to my peace and love songs, loudly, no shame, never did have.

I wonder about her because I think she was a transvert too. Yet another lonely desperate addicted queer in rural Manitoba, treading in fluids, waiting for the pills to kick in.

I get mixed up about that time. I realize I still had an apartment on Assiniboine that summer but it was more like a dirty city secret than a home and then my Janis Joplin poster got jacked there along with my goddess ink drawing. I still want to go into that landlord's bathroom and piss on his toothbrush.

I don't remember who all I was in love with then, but I'm sure most of them had a alliterative names. I do remember reading the Celestine Prophecy in a night in that illicit apartment on a big brown sectional couch made of horrible fabric and having big new thoughts. I'm sure my brainwaves are different because of that night. "Synchronicity" continues to be one of my keywords. I was a fan of the homemade aqualung and those were the days when I didn't need to roll one for the road.

I slept a lot, or more like nodded out a lot and talked on the phone a lot with a dear friend and I can tell now how much I blew her mind. After that summer we were thick as thieves, truly ourselves together and with another and it was a bubble bubble toil and trouble time for us. We got through it and there's been lines drawn in the sand over and over and finally a bridge burned. I'll put aside the cliches now I hope.

I still have a blue shirt from that time that I still wear to the office.

I stayed at my grandmother's house and I realize just now that perhaps it was really the grandfather's absence that was the true thing that made me the who I am, who I still am. Not the drugs, the paperwork, the frickin' western hour afternoons nor the music. Lasting impressions though. I continue to be as tortured as the scars on my left tit and am now as worn down as the scars on my right one.

The cliches do hold on, don't they.

flood swamp

2008-09-07T03:21:00.002-05:00

There was a great crash of thunder, BIG THUNDER, the kind that makes me ponder, get excited, you know, "this could be it, after all, out here we're not expecting the unexpected". It was just rain. As the puddles overflowed and as the bottles emptied, I won A-Side with Squirrely Early and challenged my dad, and the too-good-looking-Rolly, B-Side Champions, $5.00 a head. Squirrely Early and I lost, but as we danced our not-so-victorious-dance, his sixty-plus years to my twenty-eight, he says in time to the beat of the radio, tuned non-graciously to 100.7, "oh and there's the karaoke girl". Well.

Sometimes I wonder about my roots and attach what I think is a mythology but IT'S A REAL STORY. I need to get in touch with a certain woman who happened to give me two precious dictionaries, or perhaps make up a fitting tale for her. Either way may serve.

I wonder about Cheryl who gave me two full sets of horribly-racist and wildly out-of-date encyclopediae to which I rarely refer. Her house was like a place in the movies, too dusty, too untouched for the past quarter-century, too ancient for out- of-the-blue confrontation. The books have been at the ready, at my beck and call, out and about, for more than a year, and I've yet to crack a one of those musty, moldering sons of bitches. ]

Actually read all the book you own fuck. YEAH. FUCK YOU. I will when I'm ready, you superior piece of shit. Sometimes there's ghosts in them books. Fuck Off. I will when I'm ready. It's not like YOU own them. You wouldn't know what to do with that shit. There's a smell.

I'm rushing here.

I wish there was more time to say things about my dogs, the way people out here treat them. How the land fills with water, there's so many holes to step into, full of cold slimy water. Heritage.

I talked to Squirrely, the way he talked about 1937 and the school house that was nowhere near the artesian well which I consider such a touchstone. Back then that shit was just a source of water. Now it's the thing that defines me.

It is hard to sing songs. I say, "I know how to follow." I sing along real good. My heart hurts these days. I need to build a family of my own. I've been fantasizing about the future.

cactus

2008-08-10T14:49:00.000-05:00

I'm such an addict.

I watch myself and it is good that I do watch, because I see things I do and I don't like it, but I understand how it is for myself and I resolve to do better and sometimes I do better and I sometimes take it for granted and sometimes I'm amazed and sometimes I do worse and I get infuriated and sometimes I understand how it is and resolve to do better.

And to do better I have to watch even more carefully. This past week has been a week I can learn from. It began with Tuesday, when my boss came into the office and immediately began picking on me. She is doing this more and more frequently and it's a result of her own struggles with addiction but it's wearing me down and I find myself barely able to support her because we don't communicate effectively and my heart is less open to her than I might be capable because my ego becomes involved. As my ego becomes involved, my heart seems to close and I find anger on the threshold and to get back into the place in my heart where the Universe dwells, I must pass through anger.

I'm aware more and more of the wage slave phenomenon and just want to escape the madness. This is sort of how I felt when I first became university-educated. I'd developed critical thinking skills, picked up a thought-enhancing marijuana habit and suddenly, I wanted to DROP OUT. And I did, I fell right into a queer bar scene and all it entailed: wild dance parties, excellent company, good times, school of hard knocks, a different kind of education, underemployment, hard drugs, hard times, bad addiction, fear and loathing, heart-expansion, nostalgia, loss of control, street skills...

I look at myself and see I'm coming full circle and this time I want to drop out but not INTO anything. I just want to pull out of the destruction cycle. I don't want to be a slave anymore and I don't want to be a slavedriver. I don't want to make anyone feel the way I do, unable to "talk back" or just take a walk for twenty minutes because of my temper, because I might lose my job and accordingly "ruin my life", be unable to pay bills, be unable to keep my home and thereby become a vagrant and as such, a criminal. It's illegal in most places to be homeless. How fucking weird is that. Just by refusing to play this "economy game", we become criminals, even if we don't steal, even if we never touch an illegal drug again, we don't hurt anyone, etc., we can be jailed for simply having nowhere to go. Most folks who do not desire to play the "economy game" are put into institutions and forgotten about, they're labelled as "depressed" or "sociopathic". This may be true of most of the folks in care and I don't know if they deserve incarceration just because there's a chemical thing going on that no one can predict, but some of these folks are just SMART, though not smart enough to avoid the authorities all the time.

So here I am, for once not desiring to sedate myself into unquestioning acceptance of the way things are. And so, watching myself as closely as I do, I see that I ate bad things this week to soothe the dragon inside of me, the fierce and ferocious part of me that may be the heart-entity that allows the anger to settle onto the threshold, the part of me inside my heart, the thing that lurks behind my ego and whose imperative is filtered by my ego in many naive and ignorant ways. Ways that lead to my need to soothe or sedate, ways that cause me to act self-destructive. Ego. Or that dragon and that anger may just be one with Ego, eating its own tail, initiating a life-long battle I must wage with myself, eat AND be eaten.

(I've been misunderstood all my life in respect of my fascination with cannibalism but maybe the above is a part-explanation. More like an explanation as to my fascination with auto-cannibalism. I'm still working out my interest in cannibalism.)

Thing is, as long as I remain sober, straight, square and sedentary, I will always encounter anger-causing situations. The way things are, the "economy game" is just one piss-off amongst countless piss-offs. I must learn to deal with this feeling - whether it be tied up in ego games or a major and valuable part of my heart-centre, more likely both - without turning to self-destructive behaviours.

What is the opposite or binary or polarity of destruction? Yeah, we know, CREATION. It is with such reluctance I approach creativity. It is not easy to build, grow, make. When I consider creation and creativity, the dragon - considered so ferocious and fierce when it's anger we're talking about - becomes a snake, elusive, furtive, burrowing, slippery. I seek it with a clear heart-centre and it gives me an urge to sit and exist and to create nothing. Add nothing to this place, this life. Just be. I cannot subsist on "just be" in North America. I must do, not necessarily create, to subsist in North America.

I guess I'll have to move. And in order to move, I must do, not necessarily create, to subsist long enough in North America, to pay my dues and move.

Don't even get me started on relationships:

CACTUS ~ David Bowie covering the Pixies
Sitting here wishing on a cement floor
Just wishing that I had just something you wore
I put it on when I go lonely
Will you take off your dress and send it to me?

I miss your kissing and I miss your head
And a letter in your writing doesn't mean you're not dead
Just run outside in the desert heat
Make your dress all wet and send it to me

I miss your soup and I miss your bread
And a letter in your writing doesn't mean you're not dead
So spill your breakfast and drip your wine
Just wear that dress when you dine

D - A - V - I - D

Sitting here wishing on a cement floor
Just wishing that I had just something you wore
So bloody your hands on a cactus tree
Wipe it on your dress and send it to me

Sitting here wishing on a cement floor
Just wishing that I had just something you wore

disappearing and developing

2008-08-06T15:23:00.000-05:00

Every August, I seem to "disappear" one or two loved ones and this year has been no exception. Last year it was my room mates, but for a change it was not my choice. After ten years of friendship, I hardly hear from either of them although I'm sure they're still fond of me. In 2006, I stopped speaking to and being a chump for what I mistakenly considered my best friend. Year before that, I dumped my girlfriend for what I considered a violation the terms of our relationship. Year before that, my entire family became estranged. I could go on. It would appear that this is a hard time of year for me. I don't know if I've ever truly noticed that before or if this is something I'm shocked by year after year.

When I notice a pattern like The Amazing Month of Annual Disappearances, I worry that no matter what, I don't change, I don't evolve. But I can see that I do change, I do evolve and I set the intention to make it good and it is good. I am satisfied with the changes I make for the most part and when I am not satisfied I resolve to do better. What I consider definite personal evolution does seem to occur: I quit smoking, I make a leap in consciousness, I come to the realization I deserve more respect, I make more compassionate choices, I make healthier choices, I adjust my language, I adjust my thought processes. These are good decisions, these are healthy developments. There is nothing wrong with the choices I make and I am proud of them. I WANT to be this way because I don't like being the other way any more, if I did like it, I wouldn't change. When the unexpected happens, I do my best to adjust, I try to remember my goals, I adjust my goals, I change my perspective, I welcome the lessons life has to offer, I attempt to be grateful.

I'm dancing in my chair, singing out loud, brain in earphones

2008-08-03T18:13:00.000-05:00

TVC15 ~ David Bowie
Up every evening 'bout half eight or nine
I give my complete attention to a very good friend of mine
He's quadraphonic, he's a, he's got more channels
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
I brought my baby home, she, she sat around forlorn
She saw my T V C one five, and then baby's gone, she
She crawled right in, oh my
She crawled right in my
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
Oh, so demonic, oh my T V C one five

Maybe if I pray every, each night I sit there pleading
"Send back my dream test baby, she's my main feature"
My T V C one five, he, he just stares back unblinking
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
One of these nights I may just
Jump down that rainbow way, be with my baby, then
We'll spend some time together
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
My baby's in there someplace, love's rating in the sky
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five

Transition
Transmission
Transition
Transmission

Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five

Maybe if I pray every, each night I sit there pleading
"Send back my dream test baby, she's my main feature"
My T V C one five, he, he just stares back unblinking
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
One of these nights I may just
Jump down that rainbow way, be with my baby, then
We'll spend some time together
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five
My baby's in there someplace, love's rating in the sky
So hologramic, oh my T V C one five

Transition
Transmission
Transition
Transmission

Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five

Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five

Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five

Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five

Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five
Oh my T V C one five, oh oh, T V C one five

a mighty wind

2008-07-20T14:09:00.000-05:00

A mighty wind blew through my tent last weekend and since then, nothing's really been the same. Not much has changed on the face of things, but there's so much subtext. So much subtext. Part of me wonders if perhaps I'm not as insane as I'm afraid to be, as insane as I'm afraid I am. My brain.

My tent is a good one; as that mighty wind gusted and buffeted, my tent would lay down under pressure every so often. Whenever that furious breeze off Pope's Hill got too heavy, one of the poles would lightly wack my sleeping face. And then my tent would spring back. No damage.

This is how I wish to be, how I suspect I am. Folding occasionally under pressure, briefly, just enough to give the rat in the cage a little tap, a reminder to be alert. There's a world out there into which my rat will always have to emerge eventually. Once the storm's over.

I emerged after the windstorm hopeful and joyous about the sunshine and found what I considered an unnecessary mess.

It is not easy for me to forgive the mistakes of others especially when those mistakes affect me directly. In fact, I don't really believe in forgiveness. I believe in growing as a person, whatever that means. Forgiveness is a nice word for "being too lazy/scared/tired to hold a grudge". In my world, forgiveness is a fucking fake thing, it doesn't mean anything. There's been a lot in my life to forgive and I haven't forgiven one thing. I've gotten over it. Felt, been affected by life and its accompanying shitstorms, learned, developed, moved on, got on with it, got over it. And if that's what forgiveness is, then it shouldn't be a word. I guess grief shouldn't be a word either.

Sometimes language is such a great way of throwing away important experiences.

And here I go!!

Breakthroughs (such as setting aside a grudge, facing the demons, returning to the scene of the crime) are so personally monumental when one examines oneself, and yet you know. Big changes in such a relatively small life, there should be more ways to examine this than on a micro- or macro- level. Are there other levels that I'm not aware of? I really wish it was time to go back to school but I know I'm not done here.

I feel like there are so many more things for me to do the breakthrough on. Are other folks like this? I know of one person who seems to be charging at it, full steam ahead. I was looking at their online pictures today, and all I could think was, "What a life you're having!!"

I watch myself some weeks and I think too, "What a life you're having!!"

A week like this past one, since the mighty wind, I would not be saying, "What a week you're having!!" I've been tempted often these past seven days to say to myself, "Run and hide!!" I did a few times. I took Wednesday night off and cooked for six hours. I slept the day away yesterday. But for the most part, I took this past week ON. If I'd had more sleep, maybe I'd be feeling less negative, and I didn't take great care of myself or my home. One must accept these shortcomings and strive to do better, starting with sleep, grooming, taking care of business. I know I need to slow down and focus on my goals rather than allowing distractions to invade and take over as I've been doing. Going with the flow is less of a willy-nilly business than one would think. Gotta choose what flow it shall be, and consciously, I should think.

But again, breakthroughs. I'm having big ones, thank you. Breaking through great big, big obstacles by making small connections, having seemingly innocuous personal interactions, moving confidently through public spaces that are fraught with personal discomfort. I've been learning, developing, moving differently, all so I could get on with it, get over it. Series of such relatively small things, small things that are turning out to be so pleasant and worthwhile, small things I didn't think would be easy. I wonder how this will turn out but I know right now I can let go of that so I really can begin to focus on my goals.

a Rushmore moment

2008-07-17T00:12:00.000-05:00

Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can't buy backbone.

I remember examining other folks' clothes and wondering what the diff was. Looking back, I see that it was all about money. I thought everyone got their shirts out of a garbage bag dumped on the porch in the early morning; I did not realize most of my classmates selected their shirts off a rack offering many sizes and many varieties, colours. FASHION. It was a mystery to me where the boys got their skater shoes and the girls got their scrunchies and knee socks. I didn't know that skate shops existed and I was terrified of department stores. Social anxiety at the cashier, worried that I was making the wrong purchase, not cool enough to buy something at the Zeller's.

I couldn't figure between green denim and black. It was all the same to me. Cheaper should always be better, no?

Ten to twelve years later, I'm wearing hand-me-down shorts (actually cut off from some hand-me-down pants) that don't match my shirt (in 2004, it fell out of a case of Coors Light I sold at the country bar), my sandals are still nasty and broken (left behind by a former room mate) and my hair's not that clean (my scalp hurts and shampoo stings right now). My grooming has actually worsened (tweezing is rare, my toenails are dirty and any day I shave my armpits or legs is monumental and worthy of marking on the calendar).

When some item of my clothing rips, I don't bother to repair it or replace it. I currently have not one pair of pants that are not seriously flawed in some way. Zippers, seams, hems, buttons, broken, split, fallen, lost.

I hate buying clothes new, although two brand-new dresses have recently appeared in my life and they delight me. I can't wear them anywhere, though. I spree for used clothes maybe once every two years and as far as I'm concerned, the more threadbare the cotton, the better. Nothing is as comfortable as a see-through t-shirt. I like the asses ripped out of my jeans. Right now, I don't actually own a pair of jeans. Too expensive and they wear out too fast.

I'm not sure what I'm getting at. I don't feel like I can afford clothes.

moderate progress

2008-07-08T10:10:00.001-05:00

It seems I’ve pretty much made very moderate little progress since setting this goal.

1. My chinese doctor modified my restrictions by restricting sugar and deep-fried foods only. So I can do the yeast and whatnot, though in smaller quantities.
2. I’ve visited the Terry Fox Trail once. It was a good time; I took Audrey with me and we did as many exercise machines as was sensible and managed to jog most of the time.
3. I AM doing yoga with Lina twice a week. This week will be my first week without yoga, in fact, because I’m going to Folk Fest tomorrow. In lieu of yoga class, I will try and get Carla to show me her restorative postures that she suggested last weekend.
4. I suppose I have actually been biking everywhere. Biking is becoming so second-nature that I hardly notice it’s happening. I’ve taken only one car ride per week, that’s about it. No buses for the past long while. Walking’s been a weekend thing for the most part.
5. I have played baseball every Wednesday, but will be missing tomorrow because, again, I’m going to Folk Fest. Perhaps I will try and organize some sort of game involving balls this weekend.
6. Raising my heartrate and making a muscle are things that seem to rarely present themselves as opportunities. I think I’m going to have to seek these opportunities rather than wait for them to present themselves.

When all’s said and done, I think in the past month I’ve had good success with items 3, 4 and 5 (these are items I really enjoy and have no problem complying with) and poor success with items 1, 2 and 6. Accordingly, I need to really focus on items 1, 2 and 6.

I suppose item 1 is the major challenge for me; it takes a certain state of mind to have the happy self-discipline I wish to achieve. I’ve been acting like a glutton for quite some time, and do need to reduce my intake of sugar, and just really the quantity of any old food I eat besides vegetables.

Doing the Terry Fox Trail (item 2) is more of a personal after-work commitment. I can certainly do it on Tuesdays and Fridays after work. Other days are somewhat more problematic.

Raising my heart rate and making a muscle are certainly the main goal and outcome of item 2, though there are other times and situations especially during the weekend that I can constantly work on item 6. I do a bit of gardening on the weekends (making a muscle). I could take a hard ride on my bike, have an extremely light jog, play some sort of game with someone. I need to be more active.

See more progress on: develop and maintain the body of a really hot goddess

King Can

2008-07-01T03:45:00.000-05:00

"Hey."
"Hi."
"Wanna drink a king can with me tonight?"
"No thank you, I'm done tonight."
"Oh you sure?"
"Yeah, it's all good. No thanks. I'm done."
"Well are there any girls coming from behind you?"
"I have no idea."

I think everyone has a sort of brain thing where they forget there's a person attached to the genitals. For me, I know I certainly have a lapse every once in a while. But I have to say, I do know I'm mostly aware of the person attached to the genitals and even though the genitals are the thingies that really are attractive to me at that given moment, I do try to consider the person attached thereto. And I know this person may be doing this thing for a reason completely different than my own ie. they actually have a serious case of the hots for me, are envisioning a perfect life together with real life scenarios and non-sexual contexts whilst I am sweating and swearing and reaching towards a place where I can pretend to come.

I find when I fall into one of these things I tend to develop a case of the hots after the trickery, as a way of humanizing myself or perhaps more aptly, civilizing myself. Or perhaps putting pigs in pants as my mother refers to the phenomenon of making something more like society than it really is. Sometimes I have a dirty ride and I become intrigued. This is normal and natural and something to be celebrated and explored without neurosis.

Brass tacks accounted for, much of the time when I'm into getting some sort of freak on with my trick and/or you-know-what, that's where it begins and ends. Sometimes I can't stand the idea that the physical is not linked so intrinsically with the emotional or mental or spiritual or whatever. Most of us need to forgive ourselves for that and/or become aware that we are acting like animals and should really try on a pair of pants once in a while.

Sometimes it's just sex and pants certainly don't have any place or role therein.

Not that I had any of that kind of shenanigan tonight. First it was Mr. King Can, then it was Dan with the Fan. Both were charming gentlemen in their own ways, both did not really make eye contact. It's a wonder what a pretty dress can do to distract the desperate folks at 3:00 am on a big hot party night.

I should've gone for the convenience store barely-eighteen person eight hours ago. Such charm, such youthful exuberance for the night to come. We could have drank 7 Up through a straw together and talked about our souls.

Pieces of my heart dangled from my chest tonight. I'm sure I have no clue what to do with this, but I'll also certainly be fine.

EARTH FOOD (revisited)

2008-06-26T15:19:00.001-05:00

Many moons ago I was, for the most part, cured of food allergies. A huge cause for celebration. And weight gain exceeding forty pounds.

Before the cure (acupuncture using the NAET treatment), I became VERY food-aware. I was restricted to eating about 4-10% of the what was available in the general food market. That left me slavering over 90-96% of the foods that were forbidden to me. It was a nightmare. Some folks' version of hell.

Although I became extremely depressed, I adapted by smoking tons of reefer but also by raising my FOOD-CONSCIOUSNESS. Expanding my mind and my appetite. I ate and enjoyed a lot of different things and I also read and was disgusted by a LOT of ingredient labels and official and unofficial documents and articles on food.

There were a number of important trends I noticed:

1. The "may contain" disclaimer, and the fact that my allergy foods were not listed on any sort of label but I'd react anyway, whether it said "may contain" or not. I thereby learned that if the ingredient in a food is there in a MINUTE AMOUNT and is not one of the top 8 recognized allergens (soy, peanuts, milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts such as almonds, cashews, walnuts, fish such as bass, cod, flounder, shellfish such as crab, lobster, shrimp, soy and wheat), the Canadian government does not require that the ingredient, in whatever MINUTE AMOUNT it is contained, be listed. Fact of the matter is, many allergic folks react to ANY AMOUNT of their allergen culprit, minute amount of same or otherwise. So eating a manufactured food is like playing a really tasty game of russian roulette for a fair number of chumps who "eat it anyway".

2. CORN. My major food allergy was corn. CORN SEEMS TO BE IN OR ON EVERYTHING. If you don't believe me, watch the movie "King Corn" and then phone me. Corn is a shit food. It's not nutritious and yet we are fed so much of it, like the pigs we are quickly becoming, that our hair is composed of...CORN. If you don't believe me, watch the movie "King Corn" and then phone me for some verbal abuse. Corn in some sort of shape or form (high-fructose syrup, starch, flour, etc.) appears on 90-96% of any of the food labels in the common supermarket. If you don't believe me, phone me and invite me to beat your ass in a vicious game of Supermarket Sweep. That'll teach you, ya chump.

3. GMO foods are taking over . GMO foods are lovingly referred to by more than a few jokers as FRANKENFOODS. When I was allergic I happened to take the time to research FRANKENFOODS because I wanted to know how far into the molecular level my allergies went. I believe my allergies go pretty far but the medical profession balks at any kind of research in this regard. Allergists as paid by our healthcare system seem to be extremely reticent in any sort of capacity in the field of food research, let alone looking into the GMO consequences on the food-allergic. Did you know that the only non-GMO tomato in the common supermarket is the hardy Roma tomato? And that might not even be true as of today, since it's not like I've researched the genetic modification of any kind of tomato since the winter of 2005. For all I know, Romas could be the biggest fucking FRANKENTOMATOS I could possibly put in my sandwich.

4. Hormones are invisible. You cannot see hormones. Not many folks will tell you you're eating hormones. The government certainly does not care to let you know if you're eating hormones. When you pick up a tray of eggs, how often do you think, "hmmmm, who laid these eggs? did she eat anyone else's glandular secretions?" Truth be told, if you're eating eggs, you're eating someone else's glandular secretions. But are they the PROPER glandular secretions? If you're eating any sort of chicken, pork or beef product or by-product, you're most certainly eating a plethora of hormones, most of which are UNNATURAL, unnatural in the sense they have NO BUSINESS WHATSOEVER being in that bite of food you're taking.

5. Pesticide and herbicide kill living things. Does it make any kind of sense to you to spray poison, at any grade level or in any amount, directly onto the food you eat? Would you ever consider spraying your apple with Raid before you eat it? Have you ever seen your mother give the lasagna a good shot of Deep Woods? Did your dad put Warfarin in the granola? Would you ever butter your kid's toast with anti-fungal cream? Would you ever marinate your steaks in Round Up? The government actually subsidizes the farming industry in this sort of insane behaviour.

6. Antibiotics are for the unhealthy. Farmers are misusing antibiotics in an attempt to prevent disease in their livestock by giving their animals a regular dose of antibiotics. Antibiotics cause yeast infections. Yeast infections are the fucking devil. Do some research, you'll be astounded.

So basically, I'm done my six-point tirade and I thank you for reading. Please consider taking action by supporting:

Bill C-456: An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (mandatory labelling for genetically modified foods)

Paul Dewar's Bill: An Act respecting the labeling of food products that requires the mandatory labeling of the use of hormones, antibiotics or rendered slaughterhouse waste in meat and poultry products, and the use of pesticides or genetically modified organisms in all food products

solstice

2008-06-23T11:41:00.000-05:00

I was at the SNAC last night to get an attunement in conjunction with the summer solstice. It was all sounds and colours. Crystal singing bowls and a dulcimer and interesting drums and stuff. They got us to do a little Qi Gong (movement and energy) facing the south (direction of summer). It was like my feet were glued to the floor. The point of the Qi Gong was to put our excessive unnecessary and harmful energies into the earth through our feet, where it would be neutralized and recycled. I believe it totally worked, my feet have never felt so magnetized. It was like my soles were growing into the floor. They kind of hurt. Then we all laid down on our sleeping bags and there was a concert of "spiritual sound", for which the inspiration was fire (element of summer) and the key was C major (sound of summer).

I am not quite into the sound therapies, it all just seems like a bunch of pretty noises to me. A lot of noisy vibrations and no melody. Nothing you can fuck or dance to, certainly not. But I did try my best to breathe meditatively and found myself setting a lot of helpful intentions in respect of my second chakra (the summer chakra under the belly button) and watching the "light show" behind my eyelids. Lots of groovy colours and stuff as I sunk into a deep meditation. I found myself on somewhat of an astral journey where I guess my spirit body jogged around the city for a while. I came out of it and my cheeks and face were pulsing like when you run or work really hard and fast and your heartbeat is at its most intense, all the capillaries are pumping really hard and you can feel all your pulses. My breathing was slow, deep and even, but my circulation was seriously elevated.

When I came to my regular senses I was very alert and I quickly became really annoyed by the singing bowls and nonsensical noises. I was really impatient to just get on with it even though I'd spent the previous at least 45 minutes pretty much completely taken away by the sounds and vibrations and colours and whatnot. I kept on rolling over and over and over on my sleeping bag and thinking, "You New Age flakes are just making a bunch of noise." I'm so gauche sometimes hahahaha I love it. There were essential oils to sniff occasionally so that was fun.

After the noises stopped we had a collective "OM" session where all of us sat and said "OM" together for about a little while. OM's a big old important meditation sound and it really creates some weird vibes in the room, I do have to say. After the OM-ing we went outside and watched two hotties do some fire-dancing. The fire-dancing is so amazing; they do routines with nun-chuck thingies, giant whips, batons, all on fire. It would have been better if it had actually been dark outside. But anyway, three cheers to nightfall at 10:45 pm!!

After the fire dancing I got a spearmint tea made with fresh plants picked from the herb garden, and a quinoa salad. Then we sat at a bonfire for an hour and a half and exchanged stories with the SNAC residents and some other funky guests. I told everyone about how Old Man Fraser had a talking crow in his basement. A guy there had been travelling on foot and hitch-hiking and whatnot for like ten years and told us about a totally perfect day he had one day. He said that his buddy wanted to get out of the bush one morning and our new friend said "Okay, but only if I can have donuts for breakfast." (of course that's a really tall order in the deep woods). So they pack up their gear and make their way to a bush kitchen they knew of and asked if there was anything to eat that they could work for or something, and the people at the bush kitchen said, "Nah, we've got nothing but coffee and donuts today, you can have that." The day continued to be small miracle after small miracle.

We also discussed what would happen to us if the "system ever collapsed". I think most of the people at SNAC are just starting to think about learning how to survive in the wild. I love having skills. I love being able to start fires and eat things with dirt on them. There are very few things that are better than confidently looking at the wilderness and knowing you can walk in and disappear, somewhat safely and for the most part, very happily.

sleep deprivation

2008-06-20T11:57:00.000-05:00

Today I come back here to read myself and I realize I am completely and totally sleep-deprived. Dog-sitting is great and everything but getting up before 7:00 am is completely fucked. I hate it and I'm not getting enough sleep. I read myself and see that I am totally insane. Mania has me in a chokehold.

I'm making some bad judgment calls and revealing too much of my whims and not my real intentions. I'm not making any decisions but it appears to me as if I'm making unmeasured decisions.

I love the concept of having an "internet presence"; this way not only can your friends and enemies watch you as you act like yourself, YOU can watch you. I stalk myself and feel concerned that if I keep up this level of activity, this amount of interactivity, I will crash and burn in a digital firebomb. Go down in a blaze of glory or simply meltdown in front of the sneering masses. I don't download.

do you want to touch me there

2008-06-19T15:57:00.000-05:00

I have never made a practice of balancing myself physically and I know I certainly haven't achieved very much mental balance this far into my life. Way back in the summer of 2006, I attempted to balance myself on all levels but allowed myself to be derailed by my then-future-spouse. Booo!!

Oh well, I'm back on track. Seriously back on track. It's nice. I have a lot of things on the go and I feel balanced about all of it. There is very little that I'm failing to do. I have a heavy schedule that I'm fulfilling, for the most part, and the schedule's fulfilling me, which is really the important point. Things I'm doing?

I am going for my second yoga class tonight. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the movement and my friend who teaches the yoga is so sweet and kind. I'm looking forward to hearing my joints crack as I reach my "edge", as my sweet friend puts it. I'm looking forward to quivering on my "edge".

Before the yoga, I am meeting one of my best friends in all the world at the house I'm taking care of to walk their dog. I love my friend, who is so true with me. We do not bullshit each other and we respect each other and consider each other. I love it.

Tomorrow morning, bright and early at 5:30 am, I am awakening in order to walk the dog, have a shower and then bike to the university down the street in order to run an "Energy Station" for Winnipeg's first annual "Bike to Work Day". I will be counting cyclists, registering interested folks in our bike advocacy group and handing out coupons, t-shirts and free bagels. I am sure I could use some help, so swing by if you're willing to volunteer. There's a fancy t-shirt in it for you.

I am soooooo impressed with my workplace. Not only is the most senior partner biking to work tomorrow at my urging (he's 79 years old), the other two senior partners (they are sextagenarians) are biking to work tomorrow. Not only are the three senior partners at my law firm biking to work tomorrow, but the two women in the real estate department are biking to work tomorrow!! This is major. I am so proud and honoured that they have been listening to me and watching me and possibly admiring me as I've biked to and from work for the past three summers (and some days in the winter).

And I'm also so impressed with my room mate. She has managed never to smoke in front of me since my big quit six weeks ago. She has been honest about smoking during these six weeks; she went to Montreal for a week and a half and admits hopefully without shame that she smoked a lot there. It seems like she remains smokefree for the most part and that is a big achievement for someone who used to smoke "socially" every day. A bummer of cigarettes she is no longer, I suspect (and hope).

Not only has my room mate supported me in my smokefree decision, she has agreed to help me volunteer at the Energy Station tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM. What a truly decent friend she is, to awaken at 5:30 or whatever in order to help me count cyclists!! I love her so much. And this is a huge thing for her because she dislikes being involved in organized activism, so I know she's doing this mostly for me. What a peach!!

After work tomorrow, I'm having coffee with another good friend and her doggie. Then I'm going to a Vigil to Honour Children Who Have Died as a Result of Violence. This vigil is being held in Winnipeg's sketchiest park and I doubt anyone will show up. This saddens me but I'm going to go anyway.

After that, I'm off to a good friend's birthday party. This is an important party not only because it honours this friend's day of birth, but important for me personally because I was at her birthday party last year and it was the day after my spouse broke up with me. I was a mess and I'd just started smoking again that day. I was fragile, sick-feeling with stress and anguish, completely traumatized and full of rage and those women at that party were so good to me. It was very good for me to be at a party that day, just existing with a bunch of women who knew what it was like to have a broken heart and who made no demands of me. They expressed disbelief that my spouse would choose to not be with me, reminded me that I was a special amazing person. It was really good. After the party, I remember my room mate and I waiting for a bus and beating each other and dancing around with her shawl because the mosquitoes were like swarms. It was so hot and muggy and we were bitten to death. Such a difference from this year; the mosquitoes may be out this weekend, but I haven't had one bite yet. As we were waiting, a piece of graffiti got us right in the funny bone, it said "CARS STINKS". So awesome.

Very vivid memories. This is what happens on the one-year anniversaries of painful things. Details come back so instantly, stark and harsh if you haven't recovered enough. The date of separation was a big day, June 22, 2007. My mom's birthday, an ex-girlfriend had her son that day last year. There was an F5 tornado that night like a twenty-minute drive away from me. It was a weird night. The next morning I bought a pack of smokes and called my future room mate to see if she wanted food and we ran into the woman who married me to my spouse and she had her friend who I met over breakfast and he's very sweet. Ant then went to a birthday party. I cried a lot and I smoked a lot and I felt like life wasn't worth living very much at all and I was VERY ANGRY.

Thing is, I'm excited that a year has passed since I was so angry. Life feels so good now. I'm happy all these things happened to me, around me. Truly amazed that I enjoyed most of it, the dullness of recovery, the fantastic escape I had into millions of pages of fiction. Really sinking into my new habitat and having a joyful enough swinging lifestyle, a few gaffes and ignominies, but hey, I wouldn't be me without ignominy.

I've learned so much and evolved more than I thought possible in one year. I'm happy to go back to that birthday party and spend time with those women again. Just this past Saturday I had breakfast with that new breakfast friend I met last year and we went garage saling and we ran into my ex-spouse's then-girlfriend. I felt very little animosity, no anger, just awkwardness and a bit of sadness. I've come so far out of the old hysteria. The trauma and drama game. And leaving my cigarettes in my chinese doctor's office six weeks ago has helped so much in that regard. That smoking-craving cycle really gets to you, no matter what.

So in my life, I have many things happening and there is a definite balancing act happening alongside. I suspect there is a solid power source in me, whether it's Reiki, voodoo, raw spirit, all of the above. I love the various activities I'm engaging in. On Saturday I'm going to another street fest to repair my sweet friend's bike at (the commuter cyclists' group I'm in is hosting a repair blitz at Sargent Street Fest, bring your shitty bike), and then I go on to the major solstice festival at Old Market Square that should last into the small hours of the night. I hope to be an official gogo dancer at 11:00 pm that evening. On Sunday evening, I am going to be attuned to the new solstice with singing crystal bowls, oh how New Age!! hahaha

Life is so weird. If I can stand on one foot eventually, in that fucked up yoga pose (the tree or some shit), I think I'll be able to do anything eventually.

My friend Vlinder mentioned that I need to maintain focus in my smokefree decision. I totally agree. And I think by focusing on the things that make me happy, however many things there are, I will have huge success in all regards. I look back at myself in times of terrible weakness and see that it's whenever I become focused on JUST ONE THING, one thing that makes me miserable, one thing that I think is more important than anything else (such a twisted thought, there are things that are so much HUGER than just any one thing in MY little old life), THAT'S when I become weak. THAT'S when I become IMBALANCED, when my worldview is filtered through a pinhole and I can only see something admittedly painful, but completely distorted by my narrow field of vision. If I make a point to regularly train my eyes towards the horizon rather than always right in front of me, on the thing that's causing me excessive pain or causing me excessive pleasure (both have their addictive facets) I will have achieved a good thing, the kind of focus that can expand and narrow as the situation is appropriate. See many things at once, see a few things at once. Never see only one thing. I don't know if thinking about one thing only is good for me. I consider it obsessive and scary, looking back at past experiences with the one-track mindset.

I'm on a tangent, I'm terribly sorry. I smoked an "herbal remedy" last night and now that I've had a wonderful night's sleep and I'm done giggling uncontrollably ("Family Guy" is sometimes so funny, picture the Cookie Monster as Junkie Exhibit "A"), I'm having all these "deep thoughts" hahahah. Good times.

Things I'm thankful for?

1. the "howling" good time I had this past Saturday. Those dogs at the house I'm care-taking crack me up, especially when I'm trying to do something important.

2. my bike. I love my bike. My faithful steed. I'm sure the way I feel about my bike is very similar to what cowboys feel about their horses. Pure Love.

3. China Cola. I've just recently discovered China Cola. It's made with chinese herbs and spices such as Szechuan Peony Root, Malaysian Vanilla, Nutmeg, Cloves, Licorice and Cardamom. It's the only cola in my life now, everything is piss.

4. my job. Some days, I really dislike my boss and the status quo. Most days, I celebrate my boss's strength, admire her position in life and really try to model myself against her success. I believe she appreciates my intelligence and recognizes my power. My co-workers are tremendous people.

5. all my friends and/or "chosen family". They all know me so well and love me so properly. When I think of my friends, I know what is the definition of "kindred".

6. my good health. I am 215 lbs of vibrant, active and optimistic energy.

7. my smokefree decision. I LOVE BEING FREE OF ADDICTION!!!!

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
-Andy Warhol

the body of a really hot goddess

2008-06-04T10:17:00.001-05:00

1. follow the diet restrictions of my chinese doctor
*eliminate yeast
*eliminate dairy
*eliminate sugar
*eliminate chocolate
*eliminate alcohol
*eliminate caffeine
2. visit the Terry Fox Trail
3. do yoga with Lina twice a week
4. bike everywhere
5. play baseball every Wednesday
6. take every opportunity to raise heartrate/make a muscle

See more progress on: develop and maintain the body of a really hot goddess

sporadica

2008-04-04T11:40:00.000-05:00

I have always tried to observe myself and lately I often notice and comment that I am very scattered. I do not feel much frustration in this regard, but I recognize there may be a need for focus at some future point.

I am doing such a variety of things lately that it boggles my mind. And I am glad I have shed my previous focus. My previous six-year focus on WEED. How drab my former life seems compared to what I have now.

I am currently becoming concerned about my sleeping pattern and sometimes I crave reefer just to get me to sleep. I find myself so keyed up around 10:00 pm, that old familiar pre-2000 pattern of the all-nighter temptation. Some softcore mania threatens at these times of night, but I'm not fearful. I no longer view this burst of power as a bad thing. Maybe someday, when I'm rich enough to do what I really want with my life, I'll use this time of night as an opportunity to create. Or seek more varied genital stimulation.

My life has become so rich with opportunity that I no longer feel very trapped. An amazing feeling, the not-so-trapped.

When I speak of my finances, I say I feel trapped, and that has been true during most of my life, but now, when I speak of my finances, I only say I feel trapped. I fail to mention that I am satisfied with the status quo, but I am.

I tried to file for bankruptcy and/or do a consumer proposal this week, but it turns out neither's not worth the effort and the whole process would likely backfire. Accordingly I am still prancing down that honourable path called paying my debt. I suspect there's very little room left for evasion in this lifetime.

I have always felt that I am meant to:

Face the music.
Pay the piper.
Dance to the music.

here i am

2008-02-21T12:41:00.000-06:00

So I managed to observe the lunar eclipse off and on last night in the midst of watching the imaginary biography of Diane Arbus called "Fur". Fur's a fantastic movie, watch it. Starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. The lunar eclipse was wicked, what a great night all-around. I didn't think the earth's shadow would seem so furry. Fur was definitely last night's theme. I don't mind.

I also watched "Stranger than Fiction" last night, which I've seen before and which I totally adore. Watching it again made me reminisce about the first time I'd seen it and I was a bit sad throughout, not that I didn't laugh any less, nor did I cry or anything like, but the knife did definitely twist. So many memories from the past year and a half are packed into such mundane but fully-loaded triggers like Emma Thompson's spitty ciggy-tissues.

Will Ferrell's ridiculous singing voice among many other things can manifest as particularly painful and annoying stabs in the heart for me, more than anything inspiring such feelings as true regret and terrible grief. I've previously and often felt such things, but this is new and somewhat improved grief and regret. This is like hybrid pain.

It's been a fairly rough week since Valentine's but also a highly rewarding and somewhat educative one. I've been told frequently by all parties both specifically and generally concerned that in order for healing to progress I must let go of hate-feelings, anger-feelings, bitterness-feelings. Here are two pieces of advice I received very recently to that effect:

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." ~Buddha

(Buddha also said:

"You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.")

Writer and theologian Emmett Fox wrote this:

"It appears that a party of hunters, being called away from their camp, left the campfire unattended, with a kettle of water boiling on it. Presently an old bear crept out of the woods, and, seeing the kettle with its lid dancing about on top, promptly seized it. The boiling water scalded him badly; but instead of dropping the kettle instantly, he proceeded to hug it tightly — this being a bear's idea of defense. Of course, the tighter he hugged it the more it burned him; and the more it burned him the tighter he hugged it; and so on in a vicious circle, to the undoing of the bear."

Emmett Fox advised that when we feel anger or any grievance rising, we should sternly repeat to ourselves, "Bear hugs kettle" and think about God instead. ~Heartfelt Blessings

Speaking of God and referring to yet another movie I've recently watched, Johnny Cash's dad says in "Walk the Line" (...RIP JRC) something like, "God is the one to blame, he took the wrong damned son!!!!..." I feel like Johnny Cash's bastard daddy quite often. It is not easy to think of God when all one feels is betrayed by The Powers That Seemingly Be. It is not easy to ask the higher power for help when one knows it was that same higher power that orchestrated all the heartbreak and hell one finds oneself stuck with. Yeah, and all that shit about moving in mysterious ways applies to me too, and you and you and U2.

I guess therein lies the Answer. Buddha also said:

"He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye...

...The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart..."

These practices are just not so easy for me or for anyone. To live in the present moment wisely and earnestly is a struggle, and completely ill-advised if any of us has any interest at all in being "normal". Social pressures seem to insist that we all mourn for the past, worry about the future, anticipate troubles. There seems to be no other thing to do according to our present philosophies or lack thereof.

This is what frustrates me about life in general and this past year specifically. If I am to learn anything from the past, it seems that I should be frightened of the future and what it may bring. I recognize though that I'm sounding dark right now, focussing on the worst experiences and the worst case scenarios.

I don't think I'd trade any of it for anything, for what it's worth.

Speaking in the present tense (said tense ignored in large part by all western literature), I am happy to be here. I am delighted to be thinking these thoughts, I am content to have a machine on which to record them and I am completely grateful for this current tension in my head, which may or may not have something to do with the full moon eclipse of last night, the two films in which I was immersed as well as the current transit of the Sun from Aquarius to Pisces. Case in point, how do we talk about the present without speaking of the past and future as our touchstones?

How do I address my hate-feelings, anger-feelings, bitterness-feelings, without acknowledging how they'll affect my future dealings and without addressing my past experiences and their contribution to same?

I'll let you know.

just as cold

2008-01-02T14:04:00.001-06:00

I'm sure there's a word for my mood right now but I don't know it.

I had weird dreams and/or weird waking thoughts last night during which I vowed to buy my ex-room mate 100 lbs of Vector cereal. I'm certain I owe him much more than 100 lbs-worth of Vector cereal. I doubt he ever got more than a bowl out of any box of same he'd bring into our home during our extensive cohab periods. Vector's so much good and for some reason I never ever hesitated to pilfer his cereal. Never regretted it either, until last night/early this morning.

I saw the Juno movie last night and the funniest line was, "Will you hang on? I'm on my hamburger phone..." Too cute.

I love my friends so much. There are so many of them and they're all so good to me in their various ways. I have a fortune cookie right now that says something like "Someone is speaking well of you." I know it. That's a nice feeling.

I'm really shocked at myself lately for how capable I am of maintaining equanimity, goodwill, optimism, positivity, even a modicum of motivation. Today is somewhat puzzling because my core feeling is serene, yet I do admit there are these weird particles of discontent, panic, dysphoria all through me and around me. I am hardly affected by this in the usual ways (ie. rage, unreasoningness, unreasonableness, depression, histrionics...). I am not ignoring the bummer issues of which there are the usual amount, but I guess I just have recently formed a really solid nucleus. I seem to be willing to be consistent and maintain a balanced mood. Maybe it's also that I'm finding it easier to pay equal attention to the many positive things floating around me in the midst of all the turds.

I've had a lifelong tendency to ignore and/or take for granted the positive aspects of my existence and to focus on what I came to accept as That Shitstorm Called Life.

My existence has become (and always was) so much more than feces hitting the proverbial fan.

Things that used to really bother me have ceased to make me hurt. I lack my old reactivity: the often inappropriate but totally auto-conditioned responses seem to have been reprogrammed or are no longer necessary.

I doubt any of this new development (read: maturity level) in mood management will make me any more or less dramatic or weird. It is actually my cherished hope that this current aplomb will aid me in becoming really creative and productive and fantastic. I need something, SOMETHING, to drive me into whatever is necessary to believe, conceive and achieve a literary masterpiece. Or even just a rotten, piece-of-shit book no one will ever read.

I've had some insanity-visions during my long walks home as follows:

* exotic dancers doing their divested best to the tune of Bowie's "Pallas Athena"
* me, in dragface, corset and boots, announcing the following:

"Hello, I am David Bowie...(adoring fans going apeshit)...This show is about to get really fucked up."

* Breyanna Burlesque, suddenly growing a thousand new arms and sprouting a wart or a third eye or maybe horns. Or all of the above
* a published work by yours truly based on the lives and demises of various Manitobans, for which I will surely (hopefully) be sued for libel, slander and defamation
* me, wearing clothes that aren't held together with safety pins and blind faith

come together

2007-12-26T18:53:00.000-06:00

So all of a sudden I'm feeling the blessedness in myriad ways. Joy is returning. I feel an upsurge of happiness when I think of my present state. I'm digging into a brand new reality, one in which I find myself with wonderful music, good company, great flavours. I walk Portage screaming along to Ipod songs and wishing I could start a catering business. I just want to feed people and eat and drink and play with paints and talk about my soul. This reminds me of first discovering the bohemianism possible for girls who live with girls. This reminds me of seeing moral libertinism presented in Henry and Junewhen I was too young to watch movies about writers in Paris.

I love my room. I love the bells that will ring if things get a bit acrobatic in my bed. I love the plants I put on the windowshelf just before the world froze over. I love the music I'm starting to listen to and the music I'm starting to listen to after 10 years. I love our kitchen, blue and yellow and busy with pics and places and situations I'm starting to appear in.

I'm starting to feel my family growing, finally, finally, finally occupying a wholly satisfying space with a rewarding person that I really admire. Talented and lovely person with a tremendous grasp on the meaning of reciprocity.

I've got a set of beads on my wrist that I purchased on the day I had a relics blessing and I fucking love it. I love counting the beads and saying the words and searching for clarity, watching with amazement should my desires be manifested. Asking for sense and sensibility, equanimity and power. Achieving same and resolving for further practice.

Riding the tiger is a truly majestic game that I embrace more and more fully and with less attention to fear and greed. I'm truly looking forward to the next round of evolution. How amazing and wonderful.

This time round, I do it sans apology.

Dear Dear Sarah

2007-09-14T11:58:00.000-05:00

Oh those were the days. I remember being so angsty at that time last year, but determined and hopeful also. I remember being enamoured of Mr. Tongue and trying my best to be attractive to him with my blogs. He'd just confessed that he was reading me when I wrote the neighbourhood post. I've been considering the idea of resurrecting this ferocious blog because it always tended to be more general and less directed to focussed readership; fewer acquaintances are aware of it, yet more people who are extremely dear to me read it more seriously. Maybe. Whatever.

This was the blog I used to get over Faith and Grand Marais, I expect. It also helped with my allergy complaints. I read a few posts this morning and was surprised at how immature I sound to myself as I am now. I hope I'm not getting stodgy. If I was getting stodgy, you'd tell me, right? I wouldn't be offended, I'd just consider new ways of becoming unstodgy. I don't really want to go back in time, I just sort of wish I could recover all or part of the joie de vivre I always seem to think I've lost somewhere along the way. I feel like as life passes, I become sadder and sadder. I don't think this is particularly accurate, but I've come to know that feelings are usually very inaccurate and hardly indicative of objectivity-based reality. But we are subjective creatures and to deny that is to be a fucking faker.

Things certainly have changed a lot since I stopped getting lost in my own neighbourhood. Former neighbourhood, twice removed. I remember smoking my brains out on Ruskin. Enjoying the peace in the midst of my frustration. I'm enjoying my peace right now, too, loving the small things and the undemanding company of a few friends who know me best and a few others who are willing to respect my limitations.

I baked two loaves of vegan bread last night while reading a dreadful book called "The Discovery of Chocolate". Don't read it. Altogether dissatisfying, despite the chocolate talk. I made a vegan loaf called "Health-Tasty Spelt Bread", which contained sunflower seeds, flax seeds, toasted sesame seeds and whole spelt flour. It tastes like heaven. When you come and visit, I will have one waiting for you. Any suggestions for a sandwich filling, or do you just want toast? I had a bitch of a time getting the spelt loaf out of the ceramic dish it was baked in. I didn't know ceramic cooks things differently from metal, but it makes sense. The bread stuck like crazy, but room mate got it out totally intact while I wasn't looking. Then I put the "Pear Bread" into the oven. This recipe wasn't vegan at all, so I had fun looking up replacement ingredients on the internet, using 2 tsp arrowroot in place of an egg, 2 tbsp applesauce (home-made by yours truly and room mate) in place of 2 tbsp shortening, 1 cup maple syrup cut with water in place of 1 cup honey. I used the pears the room mate picked on Monday from our friend's tree. Apparently this has been the only year that the tree has actually bore edible fruit.

The pears are delicious, our porch is filled with about 100 pounds worth of local pears and their gorgeous aroma. Smells like a beautiful autumn in there. I thought I'd try to make a good dent in our pear hoard with this bread, but it only called for a cup's worth. So I used three pears out of the 5,000 we have to munch our way through. The bread turned out great, cinnomon and cloves and sweetness. I will have some waiting for you if we haven't already eaten our 5,000 pears.

It seems my culinary endeavours have shifted since last year, first from desperate subsistence and subsequent decadence and over-indulgence, into a rather healthful, environmentally-conscious and locally-minded organic extravaganza based partly on whim and mostly on availability. Credit the room mate for this, not my non-existent discipline. I find myself wanting to delight her with fresh organic bread. It's nice to have someone around who will eat my offerings and then take her own turn at feeding me too. Very good dynamic. I am eating a lot of things that are good for me without putting undue wear and tear on the planet upon which we all seem to accept we are parasites. Soon I will really try my best to be a symbiotic participant on this planet rather than just being reassured with my small and pathetic attempts at aegism. Then I can truly be smug and holier-than-thou.

I went to my parents' last weekend for their year-ender party. My dad and I almost won the A-side in the beanbag toss tournament but Carla's such a sharpie at the aiming thing was paired up with this really obnoxious local guy named Howie and they kicked our ass. They were up 1 to 9 and then Mackie and I came back to tie them, so they won 11 to 9 because I tossed a bag while saying "whoops", in a really dainty and stupid way, and the bean bag fell about four feet short of my target after looping ridiculously high in the air. All sorts of chauvinistic thoughts occurred to me and I almost blushed. (Blushing doesn't happen very often for me, so take note) I'd been acing my throws for almost the entire match and then had to have a "whoops". Everyone found the thing really funny, so I'm glad they had a laugh. My dad got so drunk by the end of the night that he continuously spilled his rum and water on his shoes for about two hours, while being constantly surprised that his cup was empty. What a guy. He was stumbling around the bonfire like a buffoon whenever he got up. I saved his white ass more than once. A queer local named Janet Tweedy brought her guitar and some really bad weed and she and Carla and I sang like angels for most of the last parts of the evening. Quite satisfying.

I hear Bob Marley in my head all the time. For the longest time, it was Johnny Cash's "Jackson". This new soundtrack may be indicative of progress. I'm considering adding Rastafarianism to my Religious Views on Facebook. According to the Rasta, I'm hearing the voice of a real prophet more often than not these days. Sweet. (I am informed however that Marley died a converted Ethiopian Orthodox Christian. Go figure.)

Moving on, I should mention I haven't touched alcohol since the beginning of August, though I've had a few hoots with varying results. There's a neat picture of one of these green indulgences that I'll try to post at some future time. I don't trust myself with liquor very much right now. The idea of drunkenness turns me off these days but I know this is still a dangerous time for me and my pesky susceptibilty to alcoholism. I suspect having a few drinks might transform me into an unpredictable mess of hilarity and hysteria, melancholy and rage, peppered with many blank and meaningless reflections on life and possibly blackouts. I'm not really willing to accept that kind of behaviour from myself lately. Even while I'm sober I am constantly tempted to throw certain items, of little current interest but of great meaning formerly, off the Maryland Bridge. If you're up for it, you can suggest a cleansing toss when next we see each other. I can't do it alone.

Here's a relevant horoscope:

Plagued by back problems, my friend Eduardo went to a psychic healer in Brazil. He got his treatment while seated on a chair in a room crowded with other patients. The shaman massaged Eduardo's spine for a few minutes. Suddenly, out of nowhere, streams of black mud appeared all over his back. Was this some sort of stage magic? The healer announced that the mud had been the cause of the pain, and that he had exorcised it from Eduardo's body. My friend rested there a while, musing on the improbable event that had apparently happened, and enjoying a new feeling of ease in his back. His bewilderment at the mystery of his own cure turned to stupefaction when he saw what the shaman pulled from the next patient's belly: an old shoe. Now here's an odd coincidence, Libra: One of the best gifts you can give yourself right now is to visualize a psychic healer (or your guardian angel) removing a load of mud and an old shoe from your body. http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/libra.html

My spirit is definitely worn down too. All the smoother, eh?

bike

2007-05-21T22:00:00.000-05:00

So there's been some tragedy-feelings for quite a long while now, still continuing but also diminishing, finally, thankfully, hopefully until they're all gone.

Last week, it all sort of came to a head and I got the urge to not exactly side-sui, but just to go to bed for seven years. This because just at the end of pouring out the contents of my tear-soaked and too-bitter excuse for a heart to my dear friend, I discovered my bike had been stolen. Hysteria.

I haven't felt that way in a long time, perhaps the last time being when I decided to end it with Faith; the effects of the shitstorm that resulted from that decision were extremely bothersome in both the physical, mental and spiritual health senses of the word. When that love affair was ended, in the most ignominious way it could have, all I could do was breathe and work. For like five months. Breathing and working. That's sort of my ground-zero, I guess, breathing and working, both functions performed in the most deliberate possible sense. Conscious breathing, conscious working. Nothing else allowed in the ol' brain besides sucking on the cigarettes and the joints. My childhood was quite a bit like that, sans the tobacco and weed addictions.

So I basically realized after seeing that my bike was long-gone, that it would be necessary to consciously go through the Five Stages of Grief, and it might take a while. Ho hum, what a drag. But you know me, melodrama. The Breathing and The Working began forthwith.

It was suggested that I might get a Free Bike. The idea was ludicrous to me, but I gave it due consideration amidst self-pitying tears and I decided to take some good advice and pursue it, resisting the urge to go to bed and amidst the breathing and working, I posted a myspace bulletin and a facebook note regarding my new need for a Free Bike.

It's been a week since I posted my plea for free. And I actually got two. Two Free Bikes. So the world proves itself to be a kind and plentiful place after all, at least in this regard. Especially since the bike graciously supplied by the one and only Dr.Tongue (of That's Noise) has just been souped-up within an inch of its life a la www.bike-dump.ca . The other, donated to me by the very hot and good-looking, very interesting and talented, high school friend Julie B, which bike I have gifted to my gorgeous room mate.

Sidenote: The Bike Dump is The Best Place in the World. Or at the least, The Best Place in Winnipeg. I spent one of the happiest days of my life there yesterday. Just saying.

Because The Bike Dump is the best place ever, I am taking the opportunity to fix up my room mate's new bike at, well, you know. So awesome to have an excuse to go back. They've sucked me in for keeps!

COURT DATE and ______________

2007-04-26T11:49:00.000-05:00

I WROTE THE FOLLOWING YESTERDAY BUT HESITATED TO HIT PUBLISH BECAUSE IT SEEMED REALLY PSYCHO. AND TODAY I FEEL EVEN LESS STABLE. THERE ARE MANY THINGS I WANT TO DO TODAY. QUIT MY JOB. SMOKE 4579 CIGARETTES. BUY A QP AND TORCH IT UP. SNORT ENOUGH COCAINE TO KILL A LARGE HORSE. EAT A BUNCH OF PILLS. DRINK A 40'S WORTH OF GIN AND JUICE. PUKE IN THE STREETS. GET INTO A BIG SCUFFLE. TAKE OFF MY CLOTHES IN PUBLIC AND WALK UNTIL MY FEET ARE RAW DIRTY MEAT. SCREAM. JUMP. LIE DOWN. GIVE UP ON IT. BECAUSE I SUCK IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAYS. JUST SAYING. THE PROOF'S ALWAYS IN THE PUDDING. AND WHAT'S TO BE DONE WHEN THERE'S NO PUDDING?

Anyway.

I'm less disturbed than I could be, but I know that I'm focussing on other smaller more stupid things because this big thing hurts too much to look at, in a direct, close-up way. In a direct way, if I were to examine it, get real proximal with it, I'd be compelled to say without emotion, "Careful, I was raised by wolves." But in an indirect, looking anywhere but at it, very distant from the fact of the matter, with more emotion than anything's worth, I often say, "I come from a really twisted place and I'm doing my best."

In a looking-at-it-sideways way, I could say, "Fuck this shit, and fuck all of you, I owe no one nothing, and I'll be pissing off now." And yet when doing that I'm also forced to see it from the other side, and so I must say, "I could never just ignore this, if I did, I'd be almost completely without blood."

Family's family? Who's family? Whose family?

My mom and I discussed the "materia familias" last night at 10:15. (Coincidentally, or perhaps in perfect synchronicity and as a way of alerting me to the importance of the use sensitivity, the night before last a different person had phoned me and we had discussed another matter of familial nature around the same time. I do kind of wonder if this evening will bring even more weird 10:15pm-kin-centred conversations. Definite example of The Law of Attraction, but I wonder what it is that's attracting whatever it's attracting?)

Questions raised in 2004(with spoken and unspoken answers):

1. Is all of this just about money? (YES)
2. Is money more important than family?(YES)
3. Do you care what happens to the family? (NO)
4. Do you want to destroy this family? (I DON'T CARE)
5. Why are you doing this? (I'VE ALWAYS BEEN DOING THIS)
6. Do you have any idea what you're doing? (I DON'T CARE)

And then there's always the often unspoken almost as frequently spoken

(Question of All Time: DO YOU LOVE ME?

Forget I said that. Forget I asked. Don't answer. And please try to forget what I'm about to say, too. Thank you.)

There's a part of me that wishes my 20-year habit or fondness or compulsion or weakness for ____________ (estranging, leaving behind, rejecting, starving, being starved, being rejected, being left behind, being estranged) would have continued past November of 2004, would have come to total and inexorable materialization (I want to say materiality, but a faithful observation of semantics will not allow it). This is a fear-based wish, this is a cowardly desire, this is a flicker of ingratitude. (And it is all very shame-inspiring. And what inspires shame? Blood? Blood.) For it all to be over. Too hard.

Vow to Bow

2007-03-14T12:45:00.000-05:00

How can I help myself?

What can I do but to do what I'm doing?
(to know the way, we go the way)
I had a teaching once, almost seven years ago
I may have used it once or twice only
Now I think I might finally start to learn how to learn my lesson
The farther along, the worse it feels, but that's an illusion
All of that's an illusion, and an allusion too, really.

With a vow like this comes a chance to love with my hands wide open
The way I want to and always wanted to.

I'm your poly-valentine

2007-03-05T14:58:00.000-06:00

Your Candy Heart Says "Cutie Pie"

You always seem to have a hot date, even though you never try to meet anyone.

A total charmer, you have a natural appeal that keeps you in high demand.

Your ideal Valentine's Day date: multiple dates with multiple people

Your flirting style: 100% natural

What turns you off: one-sided serious relationship talks; you are open and honest, and you need others to be, too

Why you're hot: you're totally addicting

http://www.blogthings.com/whatdoesyourcandyheartsayquiz/">

I know it's a little late for Valentine's Day, but I'm addicted to these blogthings today and laughed for like fifteen minutes when I got this one.

honouring, or Doormats

2007-03-02T01:16:00.000-06:00

It's not a good feeling when you feel as if you're viewed as a doormat. Something upon which to wipe one's shoes, a place where all the unwanted stuff from outside can be left. A doormat is never really thought of very often. I only occasionally realize our doormat needs vacuuming and resent even that basic very infrequent requirement.

When I worked in the gas station and also at the bar somewhat simultaneously during the summer of 2004, I worried about doormats a lot. I knew how unsightly an ill-kempt doormat could be to the paying customer. I was hypersensitive to the need for a tidy-looking doormat. I used to start a shift by shaking out the doormat and sometimes mid-shift if I had a spare moment. If the doormat was obviously filthy by the end of the shift, I knew that it was either a really successful day or bad weather.

However, a pristine doormat at the end of a shift is never a good sign. You at least want that doormat to get used enough with the foot traffic of paying customers to cover the cost of the weekly visit by the doormat guy. It costs about $20.00 a month to have a fresh doormat delivered weekly. It's all about breaking even.

So there's a happy medium to be stricken that's for sure. You don't want your doormat to look unwelcomingly rotten, like no one's cared to shake it out even once that day, but you do want there to be some evidence of use by the time of closing.

David Suzuki

2007-02-22T14:25:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure how many folks are reading this blog anymore. I certainly seem to have mostly forgotten about it, randomly throwing up some of the verbal diarrhea every so often (ewww imagery), without any seeming regularity. I've been a busy girl since hooking up with my partner, but I wouldn't change any of it just so I could blog more often. That seems to me to be a little tooooo interested in blogging, you know? However, blogging has been my only real form of writing since my return from ignominy in 2004, so perhaps I should make this more of a priority, now that I'm happily wed and accordingly a little bit at odds and ends and wanting to pursue my other interests again.

Writing is definitely one of my interests. Much of my plan involves being a writer. I wonder why, if I want to be a writer, that I don't write. This is one of life's big mysteries.

The environment is definitely another of my interests.

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/NatureChallenge/

I pursued my interests on Tuesday, February 20, 2007, by attending David Suzuki's "If YOU were Prime Minister" tour. It was a great night with my wicked-ass roommate Mark. I borrowed a pen from the guy sitting next to me so that Mark could take notes on his little notebook and I wrote on my hand twice, but then I washed it off later without thinking. I think my memory power's coming back though (thanks, sobriety), because I remember I wrote down "Agenda 21", and "A Silent Spring". "A Silent Spring" is the book that apparently brought environmentalism into the public consciousness before or just after I was born. Before that book, the public didn't even think of the environment as an issue or a concern. "Agenda 21" is a document almost as old as "A Silent Spring" and much like the Kyoto Protocol, which has seemingly been tabled or thrown aside because it is so rigourous or something like that.

One thing I'm interested in getting my hands onto for real is a document called "Sustainability Within a Generation". It was something drawn up by a lawyer of all people and it's used by the David Suzuki Foundation and is being adopted by all sorts of folks. If we make our best effort, Canada can achieve sustainability by the time I've raised a teenager, if I was to start now. But I'm not planning on raising a teenager right now, I'll leave that to my ex-gf!!

David Suzuki invited us to sign up for The Nature Challenge, and I have done that and invited many of my friends to join me and I take this opportunity to invite you to do the same, dear reader:

www.davidsuzuki.org/NatureChallenge/

I also pursued this interest today by spamming everyone I know or to whom I may be connected slightly with David Suzuki propaganda. I wrote a letter to my MP and MLA regarding putting a tax on single-use plastic bags, which are my NUMBER ONE PET PEEVE.

I FUCKING HATE SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAGS. www.reusablebags.com <---- go up there to find out exactly why they suck so fucking bad.

PLASTIC BAGS BLOW. BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag). It's not that fucking hard.

Well that's it for my interests. Gee, I'm kinda limited here.

Poisoned Brain ~ An Old Poem I Wrote For An Ex-Lover

2007-02-08T17:33:00.000-06:00

1.a) Your lack of praise has hurt me

1.b) You are no longer impressed with me and you're waiting for me to stop tooting my own horn.

2. You must view me as someone to treat like you treat your mother, someone you have to put up with.

3. Sex seems like a duty you have to perform with me. That makes me sad and makes me feel dirty, shameful and nauseated that you are pity-fucking me whenever you actually bother with me.

4. You think I'm white trash, inbred, coarse, ungroomed and uncouth.

5. You don't like the jokes I make.

6. You ask me my opinion and then tell me how wrong I am.

7. You don't care how much I love you.

8.a) You don't appreciate what I have to offer.

8.b) You're not even aware of what I have to offer.

8. c) I was hoping that you would figure out that I'm slowly but surely becoming something you could appreciate more. You are not willing to spare the time for that to happen.

9. You don't like me as much I like you.

2007-01-31T09:46:00.000-06:00

I still need efficiency and power.

I still need to recognize the "obstacle illusion" (something that looks like it will be a huge problem, but which turns out not to be).

I still need more power of imagination.

I still need the determination to hold out for exactly what I desire.

I really do need to wait for poetic justice.

I totally need to work harder with others to bring about a revolution in political and economic structures.

I have now developed complex relationships with intelligent machines.

I am currently working on a host of new ways to experience erotic pleasure. Internet stalkery abounds!!

I have had many new ideas about what it means to be human and I've rejected a lot of old ideas about what it means too. (I did timeline therapy for the first time this month and I caught a glimpse of the human I was being three lifetimes ago. Seriously. What a poor sap.)

I continue with my crusades for the preservation of the environment. I need to do better with that:

Goodbye "Frog-Killer" Coffee. We shan't be meeting again after January 31, 2007. (I think I'll be having to treat this one like all of the other numerous addictions.)
Bicycle bicycle bicycleI want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycleI want to ride my bicycleI want to ride my bikeI want to ride my bicycleI want to ride it where I likeYou say black I say whiteYou say bark I say biteYou say shark I say hey manJaws was never my sceneAnd I don't like Star WarsYou say Rolls I say RoyceYou say God give me a choiceYou say Lord I say ChristI don't believe in Peter PanFrankenstein or SupermanAll I wanna do isBicycle bicycle bicycleI want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycleI want to ride my bicycleI want to ride my bikeI want to ride my bicycleI want to ride my -Bicycle races are coming your waySo forget all your duties oh yeahFat bottomed girlsThey'll be riding todaySo look out for those beauties oh yeahOn your marks, get set, go!Bicycle race bicycle race bicycle raceBicycle bicycle bicycleI want to ride my bicycleBicycle bicycle bicycle bicycleI want a bicycle raceHeyYou say coke I say caineYou say John I say WayneHot dog I say cool it manI don't wanna be the President of AmericaYou say smile I say cheeseCartier I say pleaseIncome tax I say JesusI don't want to be a candidate forVietnam or Watergate'Cos all I wanna do isBicycle (yeah) bicycle (eh) bicycleI want to ride my bicycle bicycle (c'mon) bicycleI want to ride my bicycleI want to ride my bikeI want to ride my bicycleI want to ride it where I like
Green Workplace=Our Own Goddamn Fucking Responsibility First
Stop wasting food.

My Plate: January 2007

2007-01-04T13:07:00.001-06:00

efficiency and power
recognizing the "obstacle illusion" (something that looks like it will be a huge problem, but which turns out not to be)
power of imagination, determination to hold out for exactly what is desired, poetic justice
revolution in political and economic structures, complex relationships with intelligent machines, host of new ways to experience erotic pleasure, many ideas about what it means to be human
crusades for the preservation of the environment

Wicked Survey

2006-10-27T09:20:00.000-05:00

1. Initials:

SCJ-M I fucking hate hyphenated names.

2. Name someone with the same birthday as you:

Terry Irvine.
Bo Diddley.
Del Shannon.
Davy Jones of The Monkees!
Patti Smith.
Tracey Ullman.
Douglas Coupland.
Ben Johnson.
Tiger Woods.

3. Last thing you ate:

Pizza. Yum!!

4. Favorite color?

Blue.

5. I say Shotgun! You say?

Geek in the back?

6. Last person you hugged?

Penner!!

7. who stole it?

Not me!

8. How many provinces have you been to?

Two.

9. How many provinces have you lived in:

One.

10. Ever lived outside of Canada:

No.

11. Name something you like physically about yourself:

I like my shoulders. And my thighs look pretty good to me, generally.

12. What's your sign?

Capricorn

13. Who are your best friends?

The ones who don't ask me to please leave whenever I get my panties in a knot.

14. Why are you still up?

Because I couldn't sleep without having completed this survey!!

15. Who made you angry today?

The dildo who invented single-use plastic bags.

16. Rank your favourite types of food.

1. East Indian.
2. Sushi.
3. Mexican.
4. Chinese.
5. Greek and/or Italian.

17. Favorite holiday:

I like any sort of feasting day.

18. Do you download music:

Not yet!!

19. Favorite animal?

I go apeshit over puppies. And goats are okay, too.

20. Favorite plant?

I enjoy the angel-wing fern quite a lot. Also like palm trees.

21. Would you date the person the posted this?

I would jump at the chance to date ScottyMac!!

22. Has anyone ever sang or played for you personally?

I feel that most DJs play their set right to me whenever I'm on the dance floor. I recognize that's the egomania, though.

23. Do you love anyone?

Penner.
My mom and dad.
My friends.
I want a puppy.

24. Do you like Bush?

The President: fuck no. I'd like to fart in his face.
The Band: Yes. Back in the day, I really wanted to suck Gavin Rossdale's cock.
The Pubic: it's got its perks.

25. Have you ever bungee jumped:

No.

26. Have you ever gone white-water rafting?

No.

27. Has anyone ten years older than you ever hit on you?

Yes! One 40 year-old fat man actually suffered a heart attack for it.

28. How much money ya got?

Enough to meet ends.

29. Have you met a real redneck?

Yes.

30. How is the weather right now?

Stark and bright.

31.What are you listening to right now:

The sound of machinery.

32. What is your current fav song?

My Baby Does the Hanky-Panky.

33. What was the last movie you watched?

Almost got through that prequel to The Exorcist yesterday.

34. Do you wear contacts?

No.

35. Where was the last place you went besides work?

I was at the Y climbing the wall last night.

36. What are you afraid of?

Failure, insanity, getting hit by a car, bats, certain people.

37. What do you have peirced or tattooed??

right arm on bicep: freak power tattoo
right inside wrist: no-smoking body tattoo
just under belly button: figure 8 tattoo

No piercings, because they smell funky to me.

38. How many pets do you have?

Just four adorable room mates and some pigeons we keep outside.

39. What's one thing you've learned today?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus

40. Who was your favorite teacher in school?

Mlle Gurdebeke. Yeah, you eat that banana, slut.

41. What do you usually order from Second Cup:

Large Dark.

42. What color underwear are you wearing??

Pink. For some reason, I'm loving the pink gitches these past two years.

43. Are you missing someone?

I will be before Saturday's over.

44. Fav. TV show?

The Wonder Years.

45. Do you have an ipod?

I wish.

46. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celeb?

No.

47. Have you ever played spin the bottle?

Yes.

48. Who would you like to see right now?

No one particularly, though I wouldn't throw Johnny Depp out of the room.

49. Favorite movie of all time?

The Road to Wellville
Titus

50. Do you find yourself loved?

Yes, and I'm surprised and overjoyed that I do.

51. Have you ever been caught doing something you weren't supposed to?

When I was a baby, I apparently used to run into a hallway closet to shit into my diaper and would always get caught.

52. Favorite flower:

Sunflowers and daffodils are grooviest.

53. Butter, plain, or salted popcorn?

Buttered, salted popcorn.

54. What Magazines are you reading:

None.

55. Have you ever ridden in a limo:

Yes.

56. Has anyone you were really close to passed away? Who?

Yes. An old friend.

57. Whats your favorite game?

Tag?

58. What's something that really bugs you?

Single-use plastic bags.

59. Whats your favorite sport?

Badminton?

60. Do you like Michael Jackson?

Yes.

61. Whats your favorite smell?

I think it's still marijuana, actually. Or chocolate shop.

62. Favorite football team:

Da Bears

63. Favorite cereal:

Kashi

64. Do you drive:

Not very often.

65. What's the longest time you've gone without sleep?

Three or four days.

66. Last time you went bowling?

2002 or 2003

67. Where is the weirdest place you have slept?

Ontario

68. Who was your last phone call?

Some crazy lady.

69. Last time you were at work:

Today.

These Days (2?)

2006-10-24T11:23:00.000-05:00

School has turned out to be even cheaper than I thought at less than $200.00 per month for ten months of the year. Four years doesn't seem so long when it's that cheap and spread out, you know? I'm feeling a little better about the whole idea of committing myself to the program, though my instructor made a mildly homophobic comment on Saturday which did not make me feel very...I don't know, secure? Oh well, I know she totally "didn't mean it that way", but after she said that she couldn't cut her hair too short, because her sons would make fun of her for getting a "lesbian haircut", I felt like everyone was looking at me for about twenty to thirty minutes, which was distracting and kind of scary. I haven't been around anyone with such a stupid mouth for a while, I guess. I'm not going to let it stop me from going to class and whatnot, though. I might mention my feelings of paranoia caused by her comment next time I see her if I think it's still a big deal. A whole month until the next class, I might have a different perspective on it, but I don't want it to be a regular type of thing for her to say, that's for sure. She can save it for her time at home.

I've got a fair amount of studying to do and it seems as if I have very little time to do it. I need better time management skills for my life outside of work. I have resolved to arrange a day planner for myself or some shit. My brain is not equipped to handle my lawyer's work schedule and my own outside-of-work life at this time. I'm getting busier and busier. I guess that's a good sign.

I think I need a Reiki or a healing treatment of some kind and very soon. I have spent some intense moments examining my eating habits and they are starting to really freak me out. I am watching myself and I see I am getting fatter by the minute and I fucking hate it and yet I seem to have very little consistent self-control, especially when I try to exert some willpower or try to want to continue to be healthy and improve my eating habits and general condition.

I am hesitant to explore why I am so addictive or whatever, but I'd like to give it my best shot in some way, as I guess it's necessary for healing. For some reason I don't want to really show anyone just exactly how fucked up I feel I am but I do need healing. I wonder why do I feel like I should only be tough in front of everyone? It's embarrassing for me to know anyone knows. I know people worth knowing will not judge me or be very afraid of me if I reveal my various cracks, after all, it's not that unusual, I'm sure most people kind of feel this way, or at least know what I mean.

I realize I am kind of "fake" around most of my friends, companions, acquaintances, parents, etc., even though I know I'm less full of bullshit than most people walking around; it's like I've got three levels of being genuine and I'm still quite dissatisfied with all of them:

1. There's the public drunk-style genuine, where I get real tanked and really do lay everything all out for anyone but pretty humourously or at least I try to be funny about it, because how can you not laugh, right? I'm not a melancholic drunk and I'm very rarely an angry drunk, so I laugh as I lose my control and my motor skills. And I reveal my bare facts, no holds barred, but there's the cushion of liquor or drugs to protect me and any others from things getting too stark and serious, I guess. This habit of getting myself hammered is becoming less frequent as the years go by but when it does happen it's more ferociously intense and quite reckless and it causes me some regret at many points. The day after I always wonder why I got so wacked-out and I resolve to drink less next time or not at all for a very long time. The hangovers are getting worse and worse.

2. Then I have a public theoretical genuine, whereby I attempt to disclose half-truths and real truths with very little feeling invested, most commonly seen by close friends and trusted acquaintances, the part of me that most folks respect and view as the real deal, no bullshit, "I'll tell you anything if you ask the right questions", but as I disclose I look at myself and find it hard to see any depth at this level. I seem to myself for the most part very shallow and brittle, where this version of me can only go so far before I crack and become ugly or pathetic or boring. Leading to the next level which is scary and which I don't very often wish to reveal to friends in case they freak out and run off, and besides, I don't want to be a huge bummer all the time generally.

3. The very private, really genuine level of me, which you may have encountered maybe once or twice, if you've spent time with my late at night, having had no business staying up so late, after about three to seven hours of exhaustive 'light' conversation. I do my best to keep this part of me out of obvious sight. I view this private side as the one where I actually admit to others just how suicidal I am under the few layers of determination, good intentions, hopes and dreams I try to maintain and keep active and strong. It's very rare that I voluntarily let the real private genuine part of me come out, like right now, actually, but it's very very real and it exists under and through everything and it generally sucks some or all of the joy out of every experience I've ever had.

My goal this year has been to make this third level, the private, real, genuine part of me that I try to suppress most of the time, more public and at the same time more joyful and grateful for living, rather than to be secretly continuously depressed and wondering in really negative ways what the point of living is and being what I consider really ugly and wrong and too disturbing to let myself out of my cage most of the time. Can you dig it?

I hate the idea of being melodramatic, even though I am actually a pretty melodramatic person and this is actually the truth. I use this blog to get much too personal with myself and with you readers and to challenge our senses of privacy and propriety.

That said, I know I am taking major steps to become more genuine and to make that genuine part of me more healthy and happy. I feel I've made a lot of progress in this area this year, but I am very impatient and when I look at the timeline I get quite a bit despondent because I am afraid I don't have the energy to go to the next levels.

Personal evolutions initiate learning curves and the thought of learning curves generally makes me exhausted. I crave change in that area; I want that idea of a learning curve to be a challenge I look forward to rather than dread. I don't want to dig my heels in anymore; I want to see the various obstacles and enjoy thinking about overcoming them.

In any event, I am going to continue in my recent endeavours; school was good this weekend, I worked out with a new, hopefully regular gym buddy last night, I opened an RRSP this month and I am going to begin work on NaNoWriMo on November 1, 2006, and I continue to plan the wedding. My wedding dress is possibly being made as I type this. That's an exciting thought. To me, anyway.

Life is good...

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
~Socrates

It's just very frustrating at times as I work on feeling worthy of my various blessings and desperately try to get over myself at the same time or something.

I am not wrong or dumb or insane, I'm just thinking non-traditional. You should try it.

2006-10-12T10:09:00.000-05:00

Venus in Aquarius:King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886) was deposed after being designated as insane by a team of psychiatrists. Among the evidence they cited as proof that Ludwig was crazy were his blueprints for a flying vehicle that would resemble a peacock. In recent months, however, a German engineer named Dalibor Karacic has examined Mad King Ludwig's plans and declared that they are feasible. The steam-powered peacock would have indeed been capable of flight. Ludwig, says Karacic, was ahead of his time. Take heart from this correction, Aquarius. If you relentlessly nurture your faith in your frontier ideas--notions that others might call fairy tales--you will ultimately be vindicated.

This past weekend was one during which a lot of my life plans were challenged. I had some recently-made friends over to welcome my new room mate to the house and to watch me get totally hammered and they brought up some details they'd overheard about my future. I confirmed that it is all true; I am committed, polyamourous, and happy to be that way. They were shocked and called me stupid for believing something so open and fragile could work in the long term and advised me to have a "pretend wedding", and enjoy a "fake marriage", because the real thing would not last. I smiled and made direct eye contact and remembered that everyone is entitled to their opinion and thanked them for caring. Two days later, I found myself repeating the process, earnestly so, hoping that it wouldn't turn ugly, or I wouldn't turn ugly. Or that I just wasn't so ugly. I would love it if more people would actually want to accommodate me and my plans once in a while, rather than me feeling guilty for setting things up so they're obliged and then I get the feeling as if I've become a huge horrible inconvenience; even though I know I am and don't care, I wish it weren't so troublesome for me to have desires and dreams deserving of fulfillment. Make much sense?

I'm just not interested in following the cookie-cutter pattern when it comes to major life decisions. I like to make arrangements that seem bizarre to others. I will tell you, my plans make perfect sense to me. I find it mind-boggling that most people have been doing marriage the same way for like, millennia. Fucking shocking!! I get turned on when I read about any ancient societies that had a more free-wheeling definition of personal relationships/love affairs. Sue me for attempting to take a more rare page out of history.

Friends who have known me for ages are already aware that I like to think I blaze trails when I decide to make a new move.

I wish I could be good and perfect and happy and smart and funny all all all the time, but I'm not because it's apparently impossible to do that without being a fucking faker, which I try not to be all all all the time, though apparently that's also impossible. Anyway. If you're not into it right now, please don't continue to read. God I'm a drama queen. And not very much in the good way.

Today, and here I want to generalize to "always" but I won't because that would just be melodramatic haha, I hate the weather and I hate me. I think there's a correlation in that which I cannot ignore. I am trying to find the weather pleasant but it's not happening. Yesterday, I enjoyed the world quite a lot until the snow started falling on my late way to the Y. In fact, I walked to work in the morning yesterday and totally welcomed the wind and greyness and wished that things would stay so for a few weeks or just a couple days even, not only because I dreaded the snow, but because it would have been nice this October to get bitten slightly everytime I walked out the door and feel slightly chapped but not severely and not very wet at all and not have melting and to frequently find a hot feeling inside my coat without interference from dripping hair and ears and collars or something.

I feel like crying but I can't squeeze out any tears or anything right now. I want to tear out my hair but I like it too much these days, thanks to my hot sticks-hair dresser. Some days I realize just how enough-to-hurt fucked up and crazy and weak I am and today is one of those days. Attempting to change myself makes me want to curl up and die, just give up on the whole deal of existence because effort is fruitless until the effort is made. And "Human power is not dependent on the number of hours, but the ratio of human movement to subsequent run time." It makes me realize how awful I think the me I'm trying to change is and how whatever improvement I'm going for can only be a slight improvement or none at all on the shitpile out of which I'm attempting to form a human being. If I was happy with myself, I wouldn't be trying to change, right? I dunno about that but today here I is.

Whenever I start something new I am intimidated, angry, impatient, sick and upset, jumping the gun by being disappointed before I even fail at whatever shit I'm taking on. I worry about things that are completely out of my power, I fret over details no one else notices or would care about if they did notice. I examine every nuance of the experience and hate hate hate. What is wrong with me? Is this what happens to people when they get older? Is this why people stay the same as they've seemingly always been and do the same thing as everyone else? Because everyone feels this way and they don't want to? I need to stop that inhibitiveness, whatever it is!!

There is pride and the getting over of oneself. Setting aside the beliefs I held previous to my new direction is a necessary part of believing in something new, right? With new belief comes new pride? Do I need either for the future?

My first instinct is to run away from every single thing that is in my life, good or bad, because I don't want to be today very much.

I am going for a therapy session after work today, so that will probably be good. I am then going to the WAG with excellent company to see the Rodin exhibit and look at other possibly brain-stimulating/sensibility-irritating things. You're more than welcome to join us. I would love it if you were at the front doors of the gallery at about 7:45 if you want to just show up.

Anyway. I guess I just am about to face more-than-usual pressure right now and I'm already cracking a little. Fuck fuck fuck. Anyway.

Gotta Have Visionary Soul

2006-10-11T09:27:00.000-05:00

You are a curious person, always in a state of awareness.Connected to all things spiritual, you are very connected to your soul.You are wise and bright: able to reason and be reasonable.Occasionally, you get quite depressed and have dark feelings.
You have great vision and can be very insightful.In fact, you are often profound in a way that surprises yourself.Visionary souls like you can be the best type of friend.You are intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, and a good healer.
Souls you are most compatible with: Old Soul and Peacemaker Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Be patient, I'm trying to get over myself

2006-10-04T11:01:00.000-05:00

I need to stop bragging so much about how clean I am. Jesus Christ, you'd think I was the first person who ever decided to stop pissing the night away every night, drop the cigarettes and screw her head back on sans cannabis.

So here we are. Nothing much else to talk about. I need to develop more personality and focus on things that aren't about being sober, smokefree and weedfree.

I am now almost completely allergy-free. I mention this fact to anyone who will listen. I suck people in at dinner by saying, "Oh, I'm sooooo glad I'm allowed to eat ___________ now. Four months ago, this would have made me miserable with rash...or dead!!" Whoever it is accompanying me to dinner has to politely say, "What do you mean?", otherwise, (s)he'd be rude and not very good dinner company. And so I launch into yet another self-absorbed, overweening tirade about my (formerly - after all, this is all sooooo two months ago by now) allergic, food-intolerant disposition, how martyred I felt, how cut off from everything I was, how sad and isolated I have been for years due to the extremely restricted diet I had to follow.

I then move into singing the praises of Dr. Shi of the Acupuncture and Chinese Medical Centre, 225 Vaughn Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, and her excellent use and seeming adaptation of Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET) and I urge my dinner companion to go and try it for him/herself, whether (s)he is obviously allergic or not. I really do bore myself with this through the entire blather, yet I can't keep my yap shut about it. IT'S A FUCKING MIRACLE!! I am like a fucking missionary about it. Yuck!!

I have to fucking realize that the miserable, isolated, cut-off, excluded, sad, depressed, lonely, crazy, starved part of my life is over, at least for the time being!! I am healthy, happy, able to access all sorts of things that were not available to me for years years years. I need to fucking go for it, take advantage, take the focus off the fact that it's unusual (at least to me) to be in a restaurant with other people and not eating two pounds of raw fish with only ginger and wasabi and may a few slices of cucumber, avocado and a carrot, because I can't have the rice and at the same time I'm fucking starving for carbs, any carbs, bring me some fucking steamed millet before I slit your throat, I need some fucking carbs or I shall surely die, no not rice, that is bad...

I don't have to care if the sashimi touched the rice and it's not a shocking fact to anyone but me; so bring on the fucking maki!!

So in short, I'm trying to get over myself, but seriously, it's been only three to four months since my acupuncture treatments. It's been only three months since I started eating in restaurants again, and having a piece of pizza every once in a while. We're approaching five months since I made significant changes in my life. It's still seems very new to me to go for a cracker, or even a bowl of mushroom soup, for that matter.

I was talking to my room mate last night about the life I'd been leading until the treatments started and I seriously wept just at the thought of how miserable I was. He professed that he was frequently scared I'd be doing the side-sui dance whenever my bedroom door would be closed; this is an indication that my sadness was profoundly obvious to anyone who cared to look a little closer than the brittle smile I tried to tack on my face. How awful!! I have to confess too that dance was frequently looking like a pretty joyful alternative to what I'd been doing for almost ten years, which was watching my body progressively reject every food it attempted to ingest with a horrible, painful, hand-cracking, body disfiguring rash which would not give me a fucking break.

I'm really happy my life's changed. So sue me for talking about it too much.

New Life

2006-10-03T09:40:00.000-05:00

So I've discovered I'm leading a completely new life. Just suddenly realized this morning that everything's shifted pretty much right over and in a good direction. I found with great surprise that there was small smile on my face at about 7:00 am, on my walk home from my lover's apartment. If you know me, you will find this extremely unusual as it's a well-known fact that I'm a miserable cunt most mornings and I very rarely am able to muster a kind word or a pleasant attitude with sincerity of any kind before 9:00 am, a shower and/or a cup of strong coffee with cream. I just need a few things, you know?

Anyway, I was happy this morning with none of the above in effect and there really isn't anything very extraordinary happening right now that would cause this kind of good attitude. I am known to put a smile on my face in the early morning of the first day of Folk Fest, mostly because I find it delightful that I can have a gin and tonic with a joint for breakfast and not be viewed as a a freak of nature. I wake up with a smile on my face if I've had an extremely good shag the previous night with an amazing new fuck buddy who I know is gone, not just in the bathroom.

I do not just smile on a rather ordinary day early in the morning. It is not like me. Anyway, I ramble.

I did some self-examination and figured out that I'm well into the process of consciously designing a new, very good life for myself. I'm going for what I want. I am spending lots of good quality time with my partner, who I am going to marry on December 15, 2006. I feel loved and supported and I see how I love and support. I know this sounds cheesy, but fuck you, this is really shocking that I'm doing this right now. I've had an unhealthy past. Up until now, I think a lot of the love and support I've received and reciprocated has been extremely twisted. Not necessarily all unhealthy and bad for me and others, but all definitely blended with anomie, mental illness and addiction.

I'm currently making a point of untwisting myself and I'm consciously choosing to spend time and share my life with others who are also untwisted or who are devoted to the idea of becoming more untwisted. People who admit they have problems and are willing to put in the work to solve them as best as they're able, ask for help when they need it, and to teach and share with others the lessons they learn through the process. This is important to me; to immerse myself in a life wherein the inevitable obstacles of human existence are no longer used as excuses to stay in, stay behind, stay angry, stay sad, stay afraid, not grow, become bitter, and to surround myself with folks who also use the challenges as opportunities to self-examine and learn something new about life, other folks, oneself. If that makes sense.

Kate Nowak says:

Changing our lives is a great deal like building a house. It is not done by
hammering one nail in a board but by repeated application. Over and over we must
let our minds center on the life we would live instead of on the one being lived.
And just as applying hammer to wood repeatedly can eventually lead to the
completed frame of a new house, so can steadfast application of one thought to
another lead to the completed frame of a new life.

I started building a new frame this year, and it began with this:

147 days smoke free.
1913 cigarettes not smoked.
$909.64 and 14 days of my life saved.
My quit date: 5/9/2006 6:00:00 AM

On Thanksgiving, October 9, 2006, I will be five months completely quit of cigarettes; smokefree. It will be a shocking achievement. It's just a welcome coincidence that I'll have the day off that day.

Let's indulge in a little retrospection here. Last year on the evening of Thanksgiving, I was dropped off in Winnipeg after a visit to the old parents near the town of Grand Marais, Manitoba.

grand marais means "big swamp", and it is.

I remember climbing the three flights of stairs to my Ellesmere apartment and feeling absolutely dejected: completely dissappointed in life. I suppose I was understandably bitter, due to the fact there was yet another relocation on my wintry horizon, I was subjecting myself to some very crazy amounts of work hours, and at that time my sexual relations were a total bust (some straight men are such complete pussies). In short, I was continuing to experience a distinct sense of personal diaspora, my body and mind were completely exhausted and overworked/overstimulated, and I was fucking horny.

So I called Gio's and ascertained that my favourite person was bartending. Good old Danno. He'll pour liquor into you to celebrate, to mourn, to pass the time. It don't matter to Danno; he's into booze and when it's you he's serving, it's a good thing. I arrived within the half-hour and he cracked the bar's new bottle of premium gin for me; after all, it was Thanksgiving that night and I was the only customer. Staff gets dibs on the new brands of liquor. Plus I get the staff price. (I'd post an actual picture of the gorgeous bottle of Magellan I drank on the night of October 10, 2005, but blogger.com is a piece of shit today for some reason.) So click here to look at how tempting it would be to see a bottle like this, tastefully back-lit on a lonely cold autumn holiday night...

In 1519, five ships led by Ferdinand de Magellan set out to
circumnavigate the world and explore the "Spice Islands." Three years later,
only the ship Victoria returned to Spain, with 18 people and several barrels of
cloves. Sadly, Magellan, who died in battle during the voyage, never saw the
results of his spice discoveries. Those spices inspired the creation of Gin as
we know it, and it is to cloves in particular, that Magellan Gin owes its
unrivaled taste. http://drsusanblock.secure-shops8.com/view_category.asp?cat=58

Anyway, Danno was off-shift by midnight and I was still there with him, completely gassed. I'd tipped quite a few of the G&Ts back; almost 26 ounces worth of premium fucking 'man-gellan', as we were calling it by that point. After the club was shut down, I was talked into or did the talking into going over to the other gay bar (Club 200) and so had a few Black Russians, if I can recall correctly. And then, all of a sudden, either Danno disappeared or I did, because I woke up in my own bed, unthankfully alone (what do you expect when it's a party between two raging queers?!), and very pain-addled. Gut-wrenchingly hung-over. I am sure I said farewell to the last strip of existing enzyme-producing materials in my digestive system. No wonder I am prone to allergy and food-intolerance. I've had a bi-annual puking-fests caused by binge-drinking for ten-plus years now. Needless to say, my Thanksgiving weekend was necessarily extended, ashamed as I am to admit it now, almost a year later. Alcoholism can catch a girl by real surprise.

I suppose I made an important decision at that point and definitively ended my love affair with gin in all of its various glorious forms. I can honestly say I haven't had a gin-drunk since Thanks giving 2005. Considering the fact that at one point in my life I would openly (and accurately!) refer to myself as Sonja "Gin-Soaked Tit" Jensen-MacDonald, this is a major triumph. I've had maybe two gin and tonics since that night. I can honestly say it's not the same anymore, anyway. Sigh. When good friends part ways...

So as far as my new life goes, these are the obvious triumphs:

My sudden but very overdue departure from being a terrible gin-slut;
The success I've had over my cigarette addiction;
The amazing fact that I have been almost completely weed-free (only two tokes in August, and one in September, all of which were totally uninspiring) since approximately July 6, 2006. (It's been hard to peg exactly what day I stopped toking, due to the fact that it wasn't a well-documented decision coupled with the shockingly high memory-retarding levels of THC I've been maintaining since the new millennium.) This is a real surprise to all and sundry. Never thought I'd forsake the sweet chiva. Not in a million years...

Please devote more of yourself to the important practice of recycling, and do it properly:

Winnipeg Blue Box Recycling

Further words because I'm out of ideas

2006-09-26T09:08:00.000-05:00

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
- Goethe (1749-1832)

I got into a really quotey mood yesterday and so I have decided to post a few treasures today, with my commentary, of course. Goethe's my favourite. A Dutch lady on my quit smoking journals told me he is to German-speakers as Shakespeare is to English-speakers.

I have noticed politicians very often use the above advice with much abandon.

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Oh, Abe!!

(Note the fact that our Mr. Lincoln is following Mr. Goethe's advice to the tee. With a lot of success. I'm totally charmed, aren't you?!)

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."
- Gloria Leonard

I would have to say I'm too inexperienced in this subject area (having only posed nude twice, once for art, once for the hell of it), and I haven't read nearly enough of other folks' opinions on the matter, but I thought I'd put Gloria Leonard's statement up so that you readers could have a chance to comment on same. I wish more folks would talk candidly about nudie pictures. Please use this opportunity to do so.

"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
- Gore Vidal

I would have to say I'm totally with Gore on this one.

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
- Woody Allen (1935-)

!! Woody Allen is so fucking weird.

"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I'm starting to catch on to this idea. In any event, I like it, Mark Twain.

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
- Sun Tzu

I'm currently conducting an experiment based on this hypothesis. The experiment is called This Life.

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
- Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)

I really wish folks would do more thinking along the lines of the above quote. Or something like, "What makes my own chosen or inherited form of worship so much better than those bitches' over there?" or "Why am I so fucking special in my holy practice when those freaks seem just as devoted and fanatical?"

I just think everyone should listen to their priest, guru, shaman, rabbi, holy man and then think critically. Please try that, folks. It's actually quite fun. Don't believe everything you hear or read. Especially when it's self-addressed as "truth" or "fact".

"Hell is paved with good samaritans."
- William M. Holden

Again, good words, but think critically about it for a moment.

"I think it would be a good idea."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization

Enough said. Gandhi's kick-ass.

Some of us are trying, Gandhi!!

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- Tom Clancy

This is interesting. I'm writing a novel in one month during November as part of the NaNoWriMo challenge and need to remember Mr. Clancy's above point if I want to make the effort worth its while.

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Can you guess who I'm thinking about in relation to this quote? Can you? Can you?

"Love is friendship set on fire."
- Jeremy Taylor

I had strong suspicions of this at an early age and have proven its veracity a couple times by now. A few things have doused the various fires, being cowardice, disrespect and lack of virtue. Now the challenge lies in keeping the coals burning. I look forward to faithfully tending the hearth with the help of my friend.

"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
- Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan

I would also like to die in peace without some weirdo mumbling nonsense over me.

"Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Good advice. Can I ride my bike instead?

"He would make a lovely corpse."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"George W. Bush would make a lovely corpse."
-Most folks (1946 - )

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

I think we all need to remember this occasionally when we're wandering around without any seeming purpose.

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Both are valid ways of living. I'm not sure, but I'm starting to think I'd rather be agog than aghast, if you know what I'm saying.

Watch Harold and Maude.

Plans and Whatnot

2006-09-22T15:20:00.000-05:00

Dear Holy Guardian Angel:

Please help me to suspend my disbelief indefinitely.
Please liberate me from suffering.
Please make me smarter.

I hereby declare the beginning of a new age in which I conspire and agitate and work hard for a new wage.

BRING IT ON!!!!!!!!

I've been in a bit of slump for the past week or more, just kind of feeling hopeless, lethargic, weak, unhealthy, unsure, weirded out, hesitant. I've really been thinking about my reasons for this and I think it's because I'm not maintaining constant focus on my goals. I need to remember that things are only attainable if I put the effort in. If I just desire something, I will not necessarily get it. But if I go for something, the odds are very likely that I will reach my objective.

I need to stay focussed!!!

Things that I can focus on:

Writing a novel in one month. Can't wait for November, baby!!
School and massage therapy. Can't wait for grad, baby!!
My Wedding. Can't wait for December, baby!!
Buying a laptop computer. Can't wait to be smokefree for seven months, and then downloading like a motherfucker, baby!!

20 Points for Peace

2006-09-15T10:55:00.000-05:00

I am terrified of conflict and the breakdown/dissolution of relationships that I value at the present time.

Whenever conflict's occurred in the past, estrangement was the commonplace in my life with the only alternative being outright battle. I am tired of this pattern and I am endeavouring to change the arrangement currently between my ego and my heart so that I consider and use other ways of dealing with conflict.

Conflict is healthy and necessary. Anne Lindthorst said: "A crisis is a turning point." And I do agree. For the future, I would prefer to turn towards a viable future rather than to turn away from an unenviable past.

There has been some recent and intense discussion about (seemingly undue) privilege and what it means to me and certain others at this moment and what it could and would mean to me if I was to work on my attitude.

What makes me and certain others more deserving of good fortune and lavish reward? I feel as if there is a lot due to me but I have not worked nearly hard enough to even deserve the very good lot I already have.

I think a lot of my sense of entitlement stems from my heartfelt desire for peace, equality and universal love. I truly don't want any more or any less than anyone else in this world can have, and it really fucking razzes me that some have a lot, others have very little. The nature of things gets to me. Life is a balancing act that someone always seems to break their head trying to perform.

Regarding the push-pull nature of life, I think our intense need to gather and keep whatever we can gets us into a lot of trouble when it's at the expense of others. Power, food, water, resources, space, time, information, whatever, the hoarding of all of these things is a prescription for warmongering behaviours.

Someday they'll give a war and nobody will come.
~Carl Sandburg

http://www.beyondintractability.org/resources/quotes.jsp?nid=5309

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.
~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Aye, fight! But not your neighbor. Fight rather all the things that cause you and your neighbor to fight.
~Mikhail Naim
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
~Nelson Mandela
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
~Winston Churchill
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
~Albert Einstein
I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
~Elie Weisel
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. ~John F. Kennedy
No man is an island entire of itself ... any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
~John Donne
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peace begins when the hungry are fed.
~Anonymous
People try nonviolence for a week and when it doesn't 'work' they go back to violence, which hasn't worked for centuries.
~Theodore Roszak
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
~Robert Lynd
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
~Bertrand Russell
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
~Pablo Casals
The maxim that people should not have a right till they are ready to exercise it properly, is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
~Macaulay
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
~Hannah Arendt
The soul of our country needs to be awakened . . .When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders.
~Veterans Fast for Life
There are three truths: my truth, your truth and the truth.
~Chinese Proverb
We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another.
~Luciano de Crescenzo

Shine a Light

2006-09-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

Before your next car purchase, please consider buying a hybrid:

Have Some Real Insight
Why We Need To Keep it Clean

There, I'm done. Well, not really.

I recommend that for today you should also consider writing a letter or e-mail like the one at this link to your government officials regarding the disgusting and ignorant overuse of single-use plastic bags and offer to him or her a bit of a solution to the devastating effects of plastic bags on our morale (there's fucking garbage floating around everywhere I fucking look these days!!) and on our environment (bags just don't disappear, you know!!).

You can find your Member of Canadian Parliament here:

yourmembersofcanadianparliament

You can find your Member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba here:

http://www.electionsmanitoba.ca/mlasearch/mlasearch_link.htm

Anyway, onto me.

I am currently playing phone tag with the principal of my former massage college, trying to get information on returning there in order to complete my massage certificate via distance education.

You might be interested to know that back in the day at massage school, my practical instructor informed me after one particularly gruelling exam that he wished it had been him on the plinth and not the hot second-year student I'd reduced by that point to a warm good-looking pulp. I still take it as a compliment and not as a come-on, though both do certainly work for me!!

I am determined to become enrolled in distance ed at massage college before the snow flies, though it is a tall order and I'm not sure yet if I can afford it at all. I know I have some credit hours there, so that may count for something on the final bill, but I doubt it. Schools bilk students though I do have to admit real education is worth almost any price when we really come down to brass tacks and all that.

Getting my massage qualification is becoming increasingly important to me at this juncture.

This morning, I wept a little as I got out of bed because the thought of another work week made me want to do the side-sui dance:

gib'bet / [jib-it]

–noun
1. a gallows with a projecting arm at the top, from which the bodies of criminals were formerly hung in chains and left suspended after execution.
–verb (used with object)
2. to hang on a gibbet.
3. to put to death by hanging on a gibbet.
4. to hold up to public scorn.

The thought of even another five years as a wageslave really fucking brings me down. At the rate I'm going, only my line of credit will be paid off in five years. After that, I'll be left with about another $35,000.00 in government loans to pay off plus the shitty fucking interest at whatever rate Canada decides is appropriate. Finding effective ways to cope with the future is fucking futile when you're attempting to live life under an axe of $43,000.00 + interest!!!!!!

Resounding and emphatic FUCK!!!!

As part of my ongoing effort to manage my life practicably, I watched 'Til Debt Do Us Part last weekend and it really motivated me to attack my financial situation as best I could considering my new marriage plans, but when I look at my total debt-load, my present best just seems really fucking lame. Therefore, I need a real career. This Legal Assistant Bullshit just won't dig me out of the hole fast enough, that's for sure. Another five years of this crap and this crap alone and I really will be tying the fucking noose. I need to pull myself out of this hole by my own hair.

So the only solution I really am willing to consider is to complete what I started with the massage therapy school and take the distance education while keeping this damn full-time lackey-for-lawyer job and this very-irregular but now-becoming-highly-rewarding part-time position at the gay bar. Just another way to turn around and totally shit on my present (becoming not-too-shabby now that I'm smokefree and weed-free) standard of living. Wanna be falsely poor and feel falsely dumb no matter how many shifts you work per week and lessons you study? Hold down 1.5 jobs and go to school. Wanna be exhausted and totally overwhelmed by life? Go to school and keep both your jobs.

Oh yeah. That's right. I guess I'll have to sleep when I die. Fuck.

Taking some cosmic advice

2006-09-06T09:52:00.000-05:00

I love Free Will Astrology too much:

Advice for my Potential or True Self:

"Be more aggressive in giving your own names and frames to life's
mysteries."

I need to really get a grip on the fact that it is only me who can draw lines in the sands of my life and define what is magical. One person's trash is another's fortune and all of that.

Yesterday I inquired of one of my room mates as to his opinion on a certain upcoming life-altering event and he simply told me what his friends thought of it and really did not answer my question. He expressed hope and fear. I need to stop looking to others for support. I am strong enough to make decisions on my own and I'm strong enough to carry through with my decisions without the approval or advice of friends.

Advice for my Soul:

"You will attract fate's favors whenever you get your ass in gear to get to the
bottom of things."

I'm not sure what things I'm supposed to get to the bottom of, but I suspect it has to do with the past, desire or cravings/compulsions, fear and expectations. I bet there'll be more on this later.

Advice for my Persona or Ego:

"You've slipped into the Anything-Goes Zone...a nerve-wracking sanctuary where
you're safe and yet filled with doubts and pregnant questions. Exceptions to the
rules will be the rule. My advice? Experiment ingeniously."

This is a perfect description of my current situation. I intend to experiment ingeniously and with a fucking vengeance. This is new territory and it is relatively safe despite my wish to hesitate.

Advice for my Astral Body/Philosophical Side:

"You also have the potential to propel yourself higher, farther, and faster than
maybe you've ever gone."

It is definitely true. Past the point of no return. I can't wait to actually reach the top of the mountain and see what the view's like. Then I guess it's on to other projects having seen it all from on high.

Advice for my Heart:

"You have a chance to begin a project that could lead you to a summit with
inspiring vistas. You don't need to master any exotic new skills to do it, and
can pull it off as long as you're patient, take good care of yourself, and are
willing to both respect your limits and push yourself harder than usual."

My Reiki Master gave me this same advice. "Take it slow, but don't stop." All I need for success are:

Patience,
Real commitment to health,
Self-awareness, and
Hard work.

Advice for my Aggressive/Destructive Side:

"It's time for you to become almost ruthless in your intention to enjoy
yourself as you carry out your life's work. Your drive to do good
deeds and be of use to people will ultimately fall short unless you love
what you do."

I really am afraid to invest any sort of enjoyment into situations most of the time. I've been screwed down pretty tight since 2004 in order to find a sense of discipline and maintain my commitment to responsibility. I suspect it might be time to let myself out of my cage a little.

112

2006-08-29T08:27:00.000-05:00

112 days smoke free.
1457 cigarettes not smoked.
$693.06 saved this year thus far.
11 days, 3 hours of my life saved.
My quit date: 5/9/2006 6:00:00 AM

I have made it almost four months free of addiction and without a puff. Not one cigarette, not one little slip. I am proud of myself. When I look at myself and how I felt back in say, March of this year, I know I am a success, if only in this one thing, which is enough. Seriously. I said back then if there is just one thing that will define me as a non-waste of human life, it would be a real commitment to smokefreedom and it is totally fucking true. I made a deal with myself that there would be no pressure to do anything but quit smoking. The number one priority, the only priority in my life for this year. I am four for four. Soon, I will be four for eight. I am going to win.

And so here I am after 112 days, smokefree and healthier, happier, fitter, strong, less-stressed, more free from addictions of all types, slightly wealthier, more socially acceptable, more focussed, more confident, more attractive to myself and others, more productive, more constructive, more controlled, more fun, more consistent, more considerate, more respectful, more self-affirming, cleaner, safer, optimistic and buoyant.

Amazing how sticking to one difficult-to-stick-to-decision can alter your entire disposition and affect all further routines and life events.

I have not blogged for over a month and I think it's because I have had to use August 2006 as a time to adjust and self-examine on a subconscious and routine (boring) level. I have had a look and I have concluded I am happier than I have been since before 2004 (an extremely difficult year and a real culmination of the arduous and ignorant years previous to it).

It is not easy to get used to and accept that it is normal and safe to be content with life. It is extremely difficult for me to look forward to the future but I am attempting with serious effort to be optimistic.

Apparently, optimism tends to engender good health. Nietzsche said this or something to this effect.

I have been dreading the future for about most of my life, but now it is different. Since beginning my quest for smokefreedom, I have tried desperately and made it a real goal to resist the hypnotic temptation to look for the worst in everything. My habit has always been to avoid thinking about future rewards without attaching an automatic expectation of failure, repression, abuse and heartbreak. It has been my tendency to avoid thinking positively because it has been my experience since childhood that I will be let down, devastated, disappointed if I expect or wish for good things to happen.

For various reasons during my formative years, good stuff was never a guarantee or even much of a likelihood, but I could always count on the bad things to hit and stick regularly. I routinely experienced shit and abuse and that had its effect I suppose, though I was strong and ultimately demonstrated I could be composed of stone and I achieved many great things during that challenging time in my life. If you look into or have heard described the timeline of my early life, a kind of pressure from the outside world was exerted during my sixteenth year, and I began to crack, leaving parts of me vulnerable and exposed. This pressure caused both beneficial and damaging outcomes, and I continue to evolve as a person with a still-developing emotional range.

I have to admit that since my evolution began in earnest during Year Sixteen (1996), I have been denying a real and most certain truth: good things occur all the time, constantly, all around us, but unlike the crap of life, happy events are seldom publicized, emphasized, punctuated, dramatized and most alarmingly, they are hardly ever sensationalized. Good tidings are not given the treatment of shock journalism; there is no scandal involved generally, and I really do not understand why.

Why is it that good fortune and the news of others' contentment seem boring and unexciting?

Have we been trained to be turned off by light-heartedness and true glee, or is it just me?

I believe there is a true need for sensationalism of happiness, in all forms and variations. Too much emphasis is being placed on misery, doom, misfortune and calamity without providing the counterpoint of small joys in the midst of tremendous adversity. We should always remember there is an example somewhere of what kind of happiness is being achieved and attempt to use that to inspire some sort of hope.

I still need to get used to the idea that I, too, deserve all good things. I say to my friends all the time that they deserve all good things, and I do truly believe it. There is a theory that as you bless others so shall you receive those blessings tenfold (karma?). This theory was not really a motivating factor (as I really didn't think it would work that way) in my decision to begin the well-wishing, but there is evidence that my heartfelt quest for real altruism is actually paying off despite my (beginning to be former) belief that I was born under a bad sign and I am doomed to misery and loneliness.

I need to find and read a book called "The Selfish Gene". It was recommended to me by my (former!) drug dealer/ex-lover in early spring this year. He described the book very briefly to me and then we discussed the ideas of altruism and self-sacrifice extensively over a large doob. The conversation had a profound effect on me as I have always been very impressed by my ex-drug dealer and his learned opinion. I know that sounds ridiculous, but here we are. In spite of what y'all may think of his career choice (which I totally respect - entrepreneurship is wicked-awesome in any form), he is a very interesting person and his house does not smell like cat-piss. So there's that, too. I have thought about this book and altruism a lot this year, and it is good:

altruism [al-troo-iz-uhm]

–noun

1. the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or
devotion to the welfare of others.

2. Animal Behavior: behavior by an animal that may be to
its disadvantage but that benefits others of its kind, as a warning cry that
reveals the location of the caller to a predator.

Both of the above definitions turn me right on. There is a definite need in this world for real unselfish concern and more frequent warning cries to others. Altruism needs to be more of a priority to folks on all levels of society. I am positive there would be fewer levels of society (causing undeserved lack to many and allowing undue privilege to few) and fewer fundamental differences (causing pain and suffering to everyone - Discord plays no favourites), if everyone was just a little more devoted to the welfare of their fellow humans.

As part of the quest for altruism, I think there is a need to be less annoyed by and more earnestly interested in our differences as human beings.

2006-07-26T11:49:00.000-05:00

CHANGES

Still don't know what I was waiting for

And my time was running wild

A million dead-end streets and

Every time I thought I'd got it made

It seemed the taste was not so sweet

So I turned myself to face me

But I've never caught a glimpse

Of how the others must see the faker

I'm much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

(turn and face the strain)

Ch-ch-changes

Don't want to be a richer man

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

(turn and face the strain)

Ch-ch-changes

Just gonna have to be a different man

Time may change me

But I can't trace time

I watch the ripples change their size

But never leave the stream

Of warm impermanence

So the days float through my eyes

But still the days seem the same

And these children that you spit on

As they try to change their worlds

Are immune to your consultations

They're quite aware of what they're going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strain)

Ch-ch-changes

Don't tell them to grow up and out of it

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strain)

Ch-ch-changes

Where's your shame

You've left us up to our necks in it

Time may change me

But you cant trace time

Strange fascination, fascinating me!!!

Ah changes are taking the pace I'm going through!!!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strain)

Ch-ch-changes

Oh, look out you rock 'n' rollers

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strain)

Ch-ch-changes

Pretty soon now you're gonna get a little older

Time may change me

But I can't trace time

I said that time may change me

But I can't trace time...

[alto saxo-mo-phone!!!]

As you must be aware, I FUCKING LOVE DAVID BOWIE. He is God. He has mismatched eyes. He has snaggle-teeth. He is a fellow Capricorn. He is a slut. All of DB's songs explain my life to me. My great-grandfather (from the side of the family I'm actually proud of - now all deceased beside me ma and me)'s name was "David Bowie V_________." These are important things.

The above song is this year's anthem, I must admit. Life on Mars has been my favourite for a long time and it does continue to be the most amazing musical and lyrical expression of who I am and what is playing on the reel in my head, however Changes is a most apt descriptive of my current persona-at-large.

This year, I turned and faced the strain!!

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. ~Mohandas Gandhi

I am changing, but I can't trace time:

The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop
off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or
trouble. ~ Henry Miller

My Mojo Year (2006) Update :

I have not done much Spanish as I said I would back in January, but I have had some Spanish. If you know what I mean. (wink wink nudge nudge)
When I began to quit smoking, the harmonica got pushed aside. I went to the Crosby Stills Nash & Young concert this month, though, and it really made me wish I'd kept practicing. It is only the end of Month 7 of My Mojo Year. I know I can take advantage of the next five months by playing with my harp. So I will.
I managed to publish one article in the local gay paper this year and have attempted to do no more. I know I can take advantage of the next five months by composing a piece of significant length on the topic of quitting smoking and/or making similar life-changing improvements to oneself. So I will.
I have not massaged many folks thus far and those to whom I have given a massage were not worth much of the effort nor did I put much effort into it. I am going to attempt to wheel some sort of deal so that I can acquire further mad skills and I want that to happen before the year is over. Wish me luck!
Habitation: 2006 sees me moving two times as opposed to the three moves of 2005 and the six that occurred in 2004. Overall, I would have to say that while my living situation has still been shakey, it has certainly improved and the transience of my life has decreased exponentially, for which I am thankful. Incidentally, I am moving to a new home in exactly six days. It will be an improvement (however unwelcome the displacement is, it's for the best).
I was a pig in shit in my backyard until I quit smoking on May 9, 2006. The backyard then became somewhat of a "trigger spot" for me and I still have to avoid spending very much time there. The garden was a crapshoot; we got some lettuce and squash and peppers and cucumbers planted and then received a tip about our impending relocation. So I let the fucking garden dry right the fuck out. And the lawn is crispy brown. On to the next, leased-for-one-year-at-least backyard!!
On Buddhism. I went to one of those ceremonies where monks in funky orange robes sweep a fully-completed intricate mandala of sand into little baggies and then pour the remainder of same down a hole in the (frozen) river. It was awesome. My friend and I did a few prostrations in the snow for merit. Then I lit up a smoke on the way to the car. Addictions make me _____________.
I've been on a few outings at a wider variety of venues, but I generally find concerts boring and/or socially unbearable and I am really enjoying spending very little money on nothing much at all. So there you go. Sigh

My nerves are shot right now because I invited someone special to read the (occasionally offensive, quite often vulnerable, sometimes scary) thoughts I share with all of you. Help!!

On "The Pinch"

2006-07-14T12:38:00.000-05:00

“In wealth, many friends; in poverty, not even relatives.”
-Japanese proverb

The above is a fact. I communicate with exactly one person with whom I share a blood tie. My mother is someone I just can't quit, because she won't let me. Aside from her, it is entirely the fault of the poverty circuit that all interactions with my entire family have ceased entirely. Money and the lack thereof is a travesty. Further, the concept of such an arbitrary medium of exchange is an aberration. Money causes delusions because it is a delusion, essentially:

"Money is created by a kind of a perpetual interaction between
concrete things, our intangible desire for them, and our abstract faith in what
has value: money is valuable because we want it, but we want it only because it
can get us a desired product or service." http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/03/061303.asp

Figurative speaking aside, money is a piece of paper with a number and a bit of unimaginative art on it. Folks kill each other for a piece of paper. Folks fuck each other for a piece of paper. Folks die from lack of food, lack of shelter and lack of healthcare because they don't have a piece of paper. Folks work themselves to death because they buy into the idea that they always need a piece of paper:

“Women do two thirds of the world's work. Yet they earn only one tenth of the world's income and own less than one percent of the world's property. They are among the poorest of the world's poor.”
-Barbara B. Conable Jr.

Poverty has always been a theme in my life. Much of it is and always has been subtextual, but subtext is most pervasive and all-encompassing. The latent nature of poverty has always alarmed me, not necessarily the poverty itself. It is hard to address the concept of 'lack' as a definite happenstance when it is happening constantly. The words acute and chronic apply to this theme.

Hunger makes the issue of poverty a more explicit problem.

I am extremely familiar with hunger. There have been two primary causes of hunger in my life and I have been working quite effectively to eliminate both of the following:

Poverty.
Allergies.

Hunger is the handmaid of genius. - Mark Twain

I need to be grateful for the most extreme challenge that is my life. I'm trying to start to do really important things.

Shot Nerves and a lot of other repetitive nonsense

2006-07-13T14:58:00.000-05:00

Forgive me; it's been 13 days since my last post. I forgot I had a blog. No I didn't; I've just had a bit of a life.

Thus, my nerves are shot; it's all due to a barely-acceptable level of sleep-deprivation, a lot of overdue over-stimulation, and a fuck of a lot of unwelcome paranoia.

What's new?

*I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of the semi-colon; I've used it at least 160 times today, and I'm still going strong with it. I believe John Irving's a big fan of the little winker, too; I thought maybe using the semi-colon would make me feel like I'm a bestselling novelist, even though I can barely finish an e-mail message these days.
*Sunday, July 9, 2006 was the two-month anniversary of my commitment to smokefreedom. I'm quite certain I have almost entirely won this battle. When August 9, 2006 rolls around, I shall do something of great consequence to commemorate the triumph of beating this horrible addiction.
*By August 1, 2006, I shall have relocated to a more ghetto, more humongous, more pink home on Beverley Street, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, along with my three adorably ____________ room mates. The idea of relocation still makes me HOPPIN' MAD, but the prospect of living in such an interesting, spacious, creepy, expansive, tall, pink, stucco giant shanty is very encouraging. I can't wait to get big secondhand bookshelves for the big secondhand house. Anyone got a powerless lawnmower?
*I have had two acupuncture sessions for the purposes of treating my allergies and I think both have gone extremely well (My crap changed - I can proudly say I now digest!!). My acupuncturist is an extremely confident lady with a lot of extremely interesting facial expressions. I wish I could have like 10 milllion of her babies. I think they'd all be extremely powerful children.
*A certain one of my friends is finding me extremely annoying lately - it's a fact. I thought maybe it had to do with reefer. However, I have been reefer-free for the past seven days (by choice and without regrets but with much resulting paranoia) and I have not managed to have even one conclusively positive communication with said friend. I am afraid I am just extremely annoying or one or both of us have become such intolerant humans that it is a no-go. Do-dee-do. Boo. What can a girl do? I do what I can. "Be who you are and say what you feel"...right? Right.
*I've realized that I only trust people enough to hear me. I don't know if this is true trustingness. I don't know how to further describe this little epiphany, beyond:

I've told quite a few deep, dark people quite a few deep, dark secrets. They have listened and been sympathetic, but telling them made no difference. Nor did their sympathies make an impact on my trustingness. This makes me sorrowful.

My Way or the Highway?

2006-06-30T14:20:00.000-05:00

KING OF THE ROAD - Roger Miller
Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let fifty cents/
No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain't got no cigarettes/
Ah but, two hours of pushin' broom buys a/
Eight by twelve four-bit room/
I'm a man of means by no means, king of the road/...

I sing.../...

Unlike most of the folk I hang with, I do enjoy the straight-up hobo. The homeless lifestyle appeals to me in weird ways. I find many transient people extremely intriguing; I wonder often if they like it and how the fuck they managed to fuck themselves ending up in their homeless roles and whether it was because of choices they specifically made to bring it upon themselves out of curiosity or spite or whatever it is that makes you leave whatever home you may have, or if it was simply a matter of circumstance, or a combination of both which is more likely, but still, why did it have to happen? How? For how fucking long has it gone on and when will it end? Where will that bag lady end up and with which of her bags and why? I do empathize at a very deep level. I accordingly tend to make up hard luck stories for certain more colourful and personable tramps and in doing so, rather than shudder with the humanity, I thrill at the idea of a constant pressing need for various means of survival, a glaring lack of shelter and loving sanctuary, a subjective knowledge and real insight into the mysteries of true urban nightlife...the terror and rage and somewhat pathetic hope these bumskis must feel on a regular basis...that is real stress.

Panhandling is one thing, homelessness another, though they do often go hand-in-hand(out). Many of my friends are extremely irritated by the fact they must regularly face the unfortunate people who are not afraid to ask for help (money). The standard reason for refusal (which is reasonable and totally the less-unfortunate's prerogative) is often based on the idea that one does not wish to support these beggars in their frantic pursuits of booze, drugs, solvents, hookers, the winning ticket, whatever it is that got them to look like that in the first place, Jesus!! Where's the rest of that dude's nose?!!...The thing that puts my hand in my pocket is the consideration that, while these paupers are going after their own various fixes, what or who is it that must be pursuing them?

I imagine many of the longterm folks with no home go to have to routinely go to MacGyver-like measures to effect some sort of Shanty Life or erect some makeshift "lean-to" existence. This thought also inspires me before it saddens me. I wish everyone had to be more resilient, more resourceful, more willing to make use of crap, garbage, things that have fallen off buildings or been ripped off of trucks.

Bin-diving and all of the folks who indulge in it by necessity or otherwise are also of real interest to me. Bin-divers remind me of my dad, actually. He is, always was and always will be a "dump- man". You know the type: bearded and long-haired, he waits until "Dump Day" then fills an empty barrel he's previously found at the dump with various useless items he's also found previously at the dump and investigated and since rejected as total crap even for him, and then he gleefully rushes the dog into the cab of his truck, speeds out of the driveway and returns three hours later with a new barrel full of new garbage items that he has "salvaged", dog gasping with dehydration. I enjoy observing this particular style of consumption. He brings some trash home, takes some of it back to the dump and then brings back some entirely new trash...Notice how he's actually causing there to be less garbage?

Despite the current populace's general aversion to dirty things and others' leavings, we must remember that sooner or later all of this really will be an acceptable lifestyle for everyone, after we have used up all of our resources and we can no longer sustain ourselves in our unnecessarily-unsustainable ways of life. (No water for laundry in the future...No more textiles!!) In fact, my dad's example above is probably indicative of a lifestyle most people in the future will view as the lap of motherfuckin' luxury. This thought excites me: that it is possible that my dad could be considered by many people, centuries from now of course, as a man of means.

As I end this post, I wonder why I began it in the first place. I wanted to write about my current path and how fucked up it is that I find myself having to move yet again. This is Move No. 23 for me, and me being only 26 years old. How is that I am so transient? While being lucky enough to never have been without a place to lay my face, I have come close. I have had definite and not-unreasonable fears of falling into vagrance and I have definitely and frequently partook of the dry-rot taste of real poverty and more often than not. I have been surprised and shocked to find myself trapped in seemingly endless cycles of addiction and recklessness, spite, self-destruction, drama and trauma. I realize that I consider it all somewhat purifying. What I've been being purified of is fodder for a memoir of epic proportion, I would imagine.

During any times of transition, I do tend to relate to the down, out and destitute on a very frank and empathic level, with real humour and definite candor, even now, when my ever-shrinking ass is securely planted in and I am concurrently being pacified by a nice home in the Corydon Village area. The fact of it is in light of Impending Move No. 23, it may just be that I will be back in the ghetto with the Deadbeats of Bum Town before the snow flies this year.

June thus far: Good Times, Noodle Salad

2006-06-21T10:33:00.000-05:00

pics courtesy of Tanis!!

WHAT IF THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS?

PRIDE 2006: GIO'S FLOAT

DANNO, MYSELF AND MARGARET, DOING THE PRIDE DANCE

GOD LOVE THOSE PRIDE FREAKS

MARTHA ON SURPRISE VISIT, WITH HIGH ANGEL (4 caps worth of heaven?)

("la la la...I'm cute...la la la")

Comeuppance Required

2006-06-14T11:08:00.000-05:00

(image ripped off from www.occasionalplanet.com)

Lately, I have been feeling way too much like Cloud Nine-like.

Right now, I'm not sure who it is that's getting the golden showers, but I really do truly sincerely hope they're totally into that kind of thing...

I get really upset over the fact that I do find happiness sometimes. And it's especially alarming when it's other folks who are causing me some joy. I fear situations wherein my face hurts from smiling.

What is wrong with me? Riding the tiger, doing the bull-dance...

My horoscope compared me to Tallulah Bankhead this week. She was a huge libertine:

"Possessed of a tremendous energy level, very few people could keep up with her. She smoked over one hundred cigarettes per day, drank gin and bourbon like they were water, and carried a suitcase-full of drugs to help her sleep, stay awake and just function in general. She reportedly engaged in hundreds of affairs with both men and women. Her biting wit, salty language and outlandish behavior – like the propensity for taking off her clothes at the drop of a hat – shocked and outraged everyone." http://home.hiwaay.net/~oliver/bankhead.html

<------Tallulah Bankhead: Whatta Hottie!!

She said:
"It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time."

Near the end of her life, her cunt apparently fell out from too much doing-it-like-crazy. That's not very encouraging for me right now, especially since I'm like a huge fan of doing-it-like-crazy. Not that I've been doing it like crazy or anything. More like doing it a little bit. Doing it enough to just satisfy my manic appetite. Amazing what the loving touches can do for a girl's mental health, I do have to say.

Speaking of loving touches, tonight I hope to give a bit more of same to a certain really nice female from whose apartment I departed early on Saturday morning. What a shame-filled morning that was. However, her fat-assed smartmouthed co-worker/friend confirmed for me on Monday that the number she gave me was indeed her real number and not a fake number as I had feared it would turn out to be. (That's right. When I ask for someone's number, an event that is not very usual at all, I really tend to worry that the number I'm being given will be bunk, thereby proving that I am bunk for having been given said bunk number and giving it a pathetic try.) Sigh. Sense of self-confidence would be nice... Sense of self-worth would be nice...

I need to read the signs from the universe with more logic. Take them at face value:

When folks give me their real number, it means they really want me to call. They wouldn't give me their real number if they didn't!!
When people really want me to call, it means they want to talk to me.
When people want to talk to me, it means they want to hear what I have to say.
When people want to hear what I have to say, it means my opinion matters to them.
When my opinion matters to someone, it means I matter to them.

Hmmm. Face value tangent not making much sense?

What I mean to say is, I hope the above five-point system of reading the signs is a good thing, and not a formula for my ultimate comeuppance.

And when any comeuppance does occur, I do hope I can say: "This has taught me a valuable lesson!"

Debauchery Update

2006-06-12T09:26:00.000-05:00

I've been very busy. I've been overwhelmed with business. My Friday night, which I'd planned out to be rather sedate and/or mildly buzzed but not at all trash-alicious, actually turned out to be extremely twisted, in that I found myself super-bombed at about 6:00 am on Saturday morning, stripped down to my hot lacey gitch, confronted by a strange and messy apartment full of three large cats and a new very-hot, very-mysterious female with great and original-sounding first name on flannel (!) sheets. I remember realizing my outrageously-ironic-seeming state of deshabille and thinking very fuzzily, very slurrily, very purple-hazily, "How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?!!" It seems we shall have to do some reconstruction:

Totally do remember pissing the Friday night away at Gio's. Too many tequilas added to no dancing that I can recall, no water whatsoever and a hot crowd. Good times!!
Who dat'? Oooooooooo!!! Bye Jonny!! (Jonny, Jonny, Jonny, Jonny, whoop! Jonny, whoop! Jonny, Jonny, Jonny!)
Sitting on patio at end of night not smoking cigarettes, but finding myself having "a toke by surprise" (except I think it was actually my reef- but I don't know who convinced me to roll 'er up or who I smoked it with. I think it was in an illegal location, too. sheesh!) .
Finding myself shocked that I was sitting pretty cozy with a certain female I had been half-heartedly chatting with off and on since April. (I remember sort of meeting her at the Pyramid and bargaining with her for a better place in line at the bar. She won, but I got a tequila bought for me. It turns out she's quite feminine and totally demure, despite her terrible-seeming attitude. She's nice. She is also friends with friends of my room mate, which I'm sure is fun.)
Watching her smoke clove cigarettes and talking about bullshit and being absolutely fucking desperate to fucking kiss her, though paralyzed with bad nerves.
Remember thinking, "This fucking tequila better not be crossing my eyes...".
Totally laying one on her clove cigarette-saturated mouth.
Being sure my brains would shoot to the moon.
I suppose (drunkenly): Blacking out next and not remembering leaving bar with her or anyone, though folks who were there say I left amicably and with great and good cheer with a dear friend, my two room mates and the strange and fun girl.
Finding myself making out hardcore on Queer Street whilst my two room mates (but not the friends of her friends) waited fruitlessly as I continued to make out with her hardcore.
(Apparently making out for at least half an hour before the room mates realized I could make it home without them having to wait an additional half-hour for me just to decide I'd been invited upstairs. God bless my room mates...so kind and supportive of romance and sluttery and willing to wait. Or maybe they're just big perv-voyeurs. Or both!!).
(By necessity, this is the point when our Reconstruction definitely becomes based solely on hearsay and very sketchy flashback-style recollections of dawn and dissoluteness.)
Finding myself near-buck (she still fully-clothed, though!!-wtf?), terrified to begin snoring or dying of anaphalactic-cat-caused shock, sun starting to shine through streaky curtains (bedsheets) into very surreal and not-sure-if-this-is-how-it-all-looked-and/or-went-down-because-I-was-soooo-tanked-crackhouse-style scene: (clean laundry-smelling!?) flannel-covered mattress on floor, no blankets, no pillows (?!), no furniture, posters on wall haphazard and irrelevant to occupant..."Lord!! Where the fuck am I?!!"
Apologizing profusely for my unself-conscious-until-just-now, out-of-control-"Wow-embarrassing-to-be-here-like-this, I'm-not-usually-this-crazy, well-not-lately-anyway"..."Where-the-fuck-did-my-clothes-go?", total fucking drunken gaucherie.
How cliched!! Extra! Extra!: "Diesel Dyke Gets Wasted, Loses Clothes, Doesn't Score"
She seeming to hate me because I decide to give her the third-fucking degree, (I think-was drunk!): I asked her if she was a virgin, if she was straight, if she had a girlfriend she was about to cheat on, if she just wanted to make out, if she minded if I stayed, if she minded if I left because of her cats, if she was too young, if she was too high, what's the problem, take your damn clothes off!!
She leaving the room for like half an hour to apparently write her number down on a post-it before I left, because she actually did have a super-good time and would like to see me again!! (!!)
Me, waiting for her to come back with her number wondering if she was hoping I'd leave or disappear while she was gone, or if she'd come back, for that matter. Was this even her apartment?!!
Me, simply sitting, still near-nude, too wasted to look for my clothes just then and too lazy to be that polite by taking off.
Me leaving her Queer Street apartment with her number, thinking, "That was new."
Me, doing not The Walk of Shame, but The Motherfucking' SHUFFLE of Shame. The Let's Just ZigZag My Fucking Wasted Ass All the Way Home (no matter how long it takes - fuck these church-people) with my Damn Eyes Shut Shuffle of Shame!!
Me, Trashed But Nevertheless Elegantly-Wasted, managing to remember (though eyes glued shut by tequila and exhaustion) at 6:30 am passing through Osborne Village to buy a 24-pack of toilet paper at Shopper's. And actually being allowed to. And actually having money left over to make this important purchase.
Me, Terrified that I really would just Pass Out on someone's lawn with face planted on said 24-pack Toilet Paper, rather than dragging my wasted ass the rest of the way home.
Me, The Total Hurtbag, waking up at 11:00 am, not sure how it was I made it from Osborne Village to Corydon Village. Not remembering locking door behind me or setting alarm clock or putting toilet paper on toilet paper roll.
Finding all of the above accomplished (with style!).
Fighting Killer Hangover for five hours. Cream Soda is good for hangovers. Too bad I didn't have any.

fight night

2006-06-09T11:34:00.000-05:00

Last night may have been one of the funnest nights of the year and I was actually cruising around in a maroon car and I was happy. Very!!

But seriously, Anonymous, who the fuck are you and don't creep me out like that. Leave a clue as to who you are you weird anonymous commentors who make my spine crawl when I read your comments!!

But whatever, in addition to being very pleased with myself for being in that maroon car, I physically felt like dung because I'd been out late on Wednesday night before and had managed to pack away probably more than ten tequilas in the three hours I was at the gay bar that night. I don't know why I went there in the first place, as I really do not like the Wednesdays there so much.

Fucking gay-raoke sucks, even though most of the folks there can sing the karaoke like a bastard. I hate gay songs. And fucking country. Why do those bitches sing so much country?

One odd thing that happened on Wednesday night that bears mentioning (though there was plenty of other odd, totally unmentionable shit that went down that night, too): I totally was cuddling it up with my Reiki master (yeah, I know that sounds flakey) who happened to be at scarey-aoke, both of us murmuring to each other lovely platitudes and heartfelt blessings (Reiki's about love and nurturing) and we ended up in a big ol' fucking liplock!! I totally found myself almost about to slip him the tongue when there was a tap on my shoulder. That's funny, because my Reiki master's totally gay. I love it when weird shit like that happens!!

Making out with my Reiki master. Geez!!

Anyway, last night. Last night I went with the fabulous person to her boxing club's "Dinner and a Fight" event at the Days Inn on McPhillips. It was wicked-awesome because we had missed the Dinner. Of course you're all aware by now that I. do. not. eat. Outside the house. Fuck I hate my sick twisted body and its corresonding allergies TO EVERYTHING.

I did have a glass of wine though. Actually, I had two.

Let me say: Nothing beats two glasses of the ol' vino tinto when you're watching some meatheads pound each other any time a pretty bell gets rung. It's surreal!!

It was really amazing; when we walked in to the banquet area, there were all these enormous round dinner tables with full fucking feasts spead out over each of them, eaters shoveling shit in like it was going out of style, all surrounding a gigantic fucking boxing ring, with spotlights, towels, that weird funnel for spit and blood, the whole nine yards. I was overcome by the primal and basic feeling of ultimate bloodthirst. Let the bashing commence!!!

We ended up sitting sort of isolatedly away from all of the straight people and what few gay groupings that formed after we arrived either elected not to acknowledge us whatsoever, or perhaps they were afraid we'd blow their "cover". Yeah, like all guys can pass for straight when their hair's been lowlighted, streaked, straightened, laminated, and blown-dry to resemble a sepia-coloured wedding cake. But whatever. There were lots of latent homos there too. You can pick them out as the over-the-top enthusiasts of the usual tangle-ups that occur during the matches. I too enjoy it when the fighters hug each other and look like they're trying to grab each other's dicks. I don't pound on the table like the closet queens, though. They're so fucking obvious.

Alas we were not completely and totally shunned because a nice pair of homos (one young and beardy, one old and well-groomed) came in and sat with us. We had a good time making fun of the folks who were unself-consciously making fools of themselves screaming inanities.

My favourite catcall: "Hit him as hard as you can!" I think this one's genius because it's mine. I didn't use it though, because I was afraid someone would hit me as hard as they could.

My other favourite catcall: "Don't let him hit you!" This one's cute because someone actually did say it, in earnest, from the other side of the room.

It was a very weird scene and I thoroughly enjoyed the novelty of sitting in a room full of the straight and narrows, drinking my glass of red and trying not to feel up my friend in front of all those squares as a pair of dudes in great shorts and funny hats whacked each other with big pretty mits. Go red!! Hit him, blue!! So different from my usual life that I had to sort of catch my breath and thank jesus for sending me something new (well, I was really grateful).

Now I can't wait to see my friend fight, even though it seems kind of weird to look forward to the day when you and a bunch of other people can sit and watch your lover punch and be punched.

In conclusion: In the past month, I have had several definite and completely clear indications from various people I know and don't know, love and don't love, respect and don't respect, that I AM HOT SHIT. That's very encouraging and it's caused me to feel happy about the way I look, act, interact and feel about life. Yay!!

More D. Bowie: It's for Good Measure

2006-06-05T15:59:00.000-05:00

"David Bowie's Area exists throughout the entire universe, flowing around and through everything that is, surrounding us perpetually in its crotchful goodness. Soon you will be able to break the limits locked into your senses so that you too can see Bowie's Area bulging all around you and feel it expanding the tights of your life."

Your life will change (or you will laugh) if you only visit:

http://areaology.com/areabasic.html

Needs for everyone to seek out and enjoy:

2006-05-31T13:26:00.000-05:00

allies
sanctuaries
resources
inspirations
pleasures

2006-05-30T16:36:00.000-05:00

Try out this groovy link if you're obsessed with making some $, like I currently am:

http://snipurl.com/ndlv

Things I can do right now: (ripped off from www.freewillastrology.com. I never could get enough of the Brez)

(1) Pay attention to any idea that won't leave me alone.
(2) Give people what they really need, not necessarily what they say they need.
(3) If I keep my brilliant ideas secret for fear they'll be stolen (and oh, do they ever!), people will hide their brilliant ideas from me (they do anyway).
(4) Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by partners who have been talked into it.

SYNCHRONICITY

2006-05-29T21:38:00.000-05:00

I went for another Reiki yesterday and I actually had visions this time. Seriously. It was messed right up. I recommend Reiki if you have real issues that you are sick about talking about. I think it sounds pretty flakey when I try to describe it, so I won't say anything about it except that I think it's like a really focused form of guided meditation with a smattering of magic fingers. Ummmm, it's not like I think I had 'visions from god' or some crap, but it was more like my unconscious mind presented me with several relevant images that certainly make at least a bit of sense to me when I think about stuff that really sucks and makes absolutely no sense to me.

I went in wanting to let go of certain ideas, habits and beliefs that no longer work for me but which are really automatic now. I also wanted to build more of a real sense of balance in my head. I certainly do believe in the Power of Thought, and Reiki is said to be a healing technique that can really help people achieve more evolved thinking and a stronger sense of personal destiny. www.reiki.ca/faq.htm

I am sold on Reiki for the time being, because even though since yesterday I have still kind of clung to certain dissatisfying automatic reactions resulting from the stagnant ideas, habits and beliefs of yore (all of which have been a total bummer and which have made me feel like huge shit and a big bitch for like ever), I am getting over the fact that I still react automatically and I'm not being too hard on myself about it.

I am actually becoming confident that I can stop being such a bitter pill about certain things and get on with my life and drop the way I interpret fucked-up shit. This confident feeling is very new and somewhat foreign to me. I remember feeling similarly after I left my foster home to live with my grandparents. It's been a long while since I've been able to maintain any sense of positive aplomb for more than three hours without the aid of certain chemicals or a face in my crotch...

Today I felt induced to troll around in here a little and reminisce. It is swamp people, my December 15, 2005 post, that resonates most strongly today, because at the very end of the entry I mention a love spell that I really hoped would work, even though I didn't believe in love spells as they were more of a pleasant, silly game to occupy my big, dull brain at that dark and lonely time...

HOWEVER, FUCKING LOVE SPELLS ACTUALLY WORK!!!! AND PERFECTLY...

My life has totally become some spooky fucking shit and who the fuck woulda thought. As with suicide, monogamy-or-the-pathetic-and-boring-semblance-thereof is not a viable or sane option for me right now, which is FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC. So Thank You, Powers That Seemingly Be...let's be friends for a while, maybe. Please love me!!

Anyway, to conclude with and even though I am somewhat embarrassed to be bragging on here (well way more proud of myself than embarrassed), I want you all to pick up June's issue of Swerve magazine (it's free + it's gay + it's local = pretty good shtuff), because I submitted an article and they published it. It's pretty boring, but it's still two pages that I wrote and they published. It's a short book review and an interview with author Debra Anderson. Her novel is called Code White. Check me out in there even if you're not a raging queer and let me know if you think I suck.

The Aeon: Rebirth

2006-05-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

When beginning to write these silly things, my tendency is to give my post a title and then just write and try to relate my content to the title in some way.

Today, I thought "hmm..Rebirth seems too cheesy, but it is pretty much what I want to call my blog today...", so instead of trusting my own judgment and just naming it as such and going ahead and writing whatever, I had some self-doubts. Lately, I have been consulting a deck of Jungian tarot cards that I got really cheap at that bookstore in CityPlace and they've been a great help to me for inspiration and the flow of old and new ideas, not really for this blog, but for my interactions with others, my goals and my dreams. It's been nice.

So I pulled a card with the idea of getting insight into new beginnings (for this blog, duh) and the desire to achieve balance between what I've learned and what I'm about to try to do without really knowing what I want (for the rest of my life, duh).

I pulled a card called The Aeon. It is the last card in the deck. The first sentence in the card's description: "The aeon is the archetype of rebirth." Whoa...spooky new age shit, hey?

Jung's quote for this card:

"Life is the touchstone for the truth of spirit."
-The Practice of Psychotherapy

I have been having a lot of thoughts of suicide for quite some time. It has always been an attractive thought for me, but it's been an especially viable option since the death of Hunter S. Thompson last year, who just happened to kill himself. I idolize Thompson, but even though he probably did more than 500 times his weight in blow and more than likely drank at least 26 units of alcohol per day, I do not do these things. Nor do I think I should be suicidal just because HST did himself proper. And I don't think I'm that impressionable and slavishly devoted to his precedent that I would consciously decide that I want to follow his example. But you know how some people think really ridiculous things on a very subconscious level...well since the old bastard's side-sui, I've really had a hard time embracing life. It's a fact. Let's just say it really was the end of an aeon for me when he did himself. I'm actually sadder about it than I ever thought I was. I never met the guy I haven't even read all of his stuff. I think I only own one HST book, and it's not even the amazing classic stuff from his classic days (it still kicks everyone else's ass, though).

Regarding my own life, the touchstone of my spirit, I have been bitter because I think it sucks. I'm bitter because I can't act like HST did when he was a young buck. I resent the way the world is. I hate people who drive cars without considering the karmic debt they're assuming. I get sick when I think of children pointing at their mouths.

One can only lead by example.

I decided I needed change. I wanted to do something good for the world that was within my means. I realized my example was the most important thing I could develop at this stage in my life. I seriously quit smoking cigarettes this month, finally, after three agonizing months of research, re-education and conscious self-rehabilitative behaviours. It is strange coincidence (and I don't mean to sound creepy or totally believing of this shit, but I think it's important to acknowledge the synchronicities in life, too), that I made the decision to quit on the anniversary of HST's death, February 20. I was not aware of this connection until today when I decided to do some research into my recent changes to life and whatnot. My major new beginning this year was this smokefree decision. I essentially CHOSE LIFE one year from the day my dreams seemed to shatter with the blast of a gunshot. I don't know how not to sound like a huge flake here. Hmmm...He was 67 years old when he shot his face off. I ripped off the following from http://www.myspace.com/huntersthompsongonzo:

Artist and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:

"...He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know
that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or
stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings
through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment
to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even
better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell —rest assured he will check
out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to —and go there.
He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too —and
Peacocks..."

This may actually be his published version of a real suicide note, also ripped off from said myspace page, which they probably scanned out of Rolling Stone magazine:

Anyway, The Aeon card symbolizes, among many other things like reinvention, seasons, crossroads and personal karma, laying a ghost to rest so that you can move on.

So here's to you, you drunk fucking bastard. I ain't 67 yet.

"I AM LONO, I AM HE. WHEN THE GREAT BELL RINGS, I WILL BE THERE."

Freak Power Forever.

Arbitrary Gay Day

2006-05-23T13:08:00.000-05:00

FACT: Wow, I am pretty gay.

Sometimes I ignore this fact or I find it inconvenient or it's boring or embarrassing or it just doesn't go with the way things seem to be set up in my life, but truth be told, when the bones are bared and the cards are laid out and it comes right down to brass tacks:

Wow, I Am Pretty Gay.

As does www.gaypridewinnnipeg.com, I encourage everyone from far and wide to "come home, (Dorothy)" from June 1 to June 11, 2006 and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first Pride March in Winnipeg. That's a lot of years for all flagrantly and not-so-flagrantly gay folks and hetero-phobes to march and pretty much voluntarily put themselves in the line of any possible gay-hatin'-assassin fire. The day of actual demonstration makes me nervous, because it is actually a really sick, perverted reason to get together, whatever the year's theme happens to be:

"WE ALL LIKE TO FUCK-NOT-LIKE-YOU!"

And boy, do we ever get excited because every year there's more of us who like to fuck not-like-you. Legions of fairies and butches on foot, all sorts of androgynous homos loping along in black, fat and skinny trannies, truckloads of over-powdered drag queens, boys and/or girls, cross-dressers, GQ drag kings, stereotypical leatherdaddies, bears and bear cubs, dykes on bikes, Wolseley lesbians, femmes (not nearly enough of those show), homos-who-blend-so-well-you'd-never-be-able-to-tell, flamers, twinks in pink, nerdy packs of bisexuals all wearing Elvis Costello-glasses, metasexuals, metrosexuals, PFAG'ers, limp-wristed fags, straight-but-not-narrow folks, you-name-it-we-got-it-in-rainbow, basically all friends and fans of Dorothy come out and WE MARCH FOR GAY PRIDE.

A few years ago I was in a car behind the Happenings late one night smoking drugs while still on the shift. I was having a good ol' time toking it up with a much-favoured euro-trash and a few other assorted male members of the above-listed selection when suddenly I sketchily wailed into the melee, "Do you ever wish you weren't gay?" And the biggest flamer from the group crowed, or rather lisped, "My mouth at God's ear, honey, every single day."

That has stuck with me throughout the haze of the past however-many years as one of the realest, baldest, most honest and accurate statements about gaiety that I have ever heard, along with these statements:

It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses. ~Daphne Fielding, The Duchess of Jermyn Street

If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work: "Hello. Can't work today, still queer." ~Robin Tyler

I have always thought that closets are for clothes and along the same lines as Ms. de Beauvoir was able to put it so succinctly, "In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."

And on that note, I want to say I am pretty gay, but I still like to do the 'mess-around' as much as the next wanna-be slut:

Let my lusts be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and a mockery. ~Hart Crane.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
~Johann von Goethe

I touched a very nice female body a little bit over the clothes this weekend and with said nicebody managed to indulge in what I refer to as "a good, old-fashioned dry-hump". It was extremely nice to feel up a nicely-formed woman. I don't know how much more I can say about it than, "Wow, I am pretty gay."

However, I am also pretty depressed. Nothing makes me feel happy because life sucks and I want to die.

If I'm going to be lonely, I'd rather be alone.

Turning it all around

2006-05-20T22:19:00.000-05:00

Whoops and I just lost my post. Damn. Good night!!

An old African proverb says that cattle are wealth, and there are no cattle without dung. This idea is applicable to me right now. The source of my greatest riches has produced some waste matter that needs to be cleaned up. Ironically, if I can act expeditiously, the waste matter could be turned into more riches. I need to take a hint from the Masai people, who use cattle dung as plaster in building their homes. The scent helps repel lions, who dislike it, from venturing too close. -slightly adapted from www.freewillastrology.com

The Ghost and the Darkness is a great fucking movie. I suspect those traintrack workers could have taken a page or two out of the above link.

I am "a funny monster with a brilliant future"

2006-05-15T10:42:00.000-05:00

Most of you readers will certainly not agree, but it seems to me that my abilities to cope are improving. Or right now I'm just in a manic state and I'm not aware of it. The latter seems more likely, but I'm trying to look at life-things in a positive light; I really must not fear this seemingly misleading sense of optimism, I must take advantage of it, because I know it will not last and I will end up bringing everyone down sooner or later. Right now though, my gut tells me to say: "Future, kiss my white ass, because I'm feelin' kind of sassy-molassy."

Rob Breszny suggests for this week that I should watch for unexpected changes caused by the healthy improvements I've made in my life (ie. quitting smoking, finding new, improved ways of dealing with stress, insisting on getting a new fridge). Apparently Mr. Breszny's not saying the changes will necessarily be bad, just that I should be alert for results I didn't foresee. Ain't that the truth: I phoned the landlords yesterday to see if they could fix or replace the leaky cunt we call our fridge (an attempt at said healthy improvement) and well, if you have read yesterday's post, enough fucking said. And that's just swell right now. (Folks, I'm not this chipper because I'm high, I'm this chipper because frankly, I doubt I'd be willing to live if I gave into the disappointment I am tempted to feel in relation to human existence at this moment in time. Oops! I think I just brought everyone down a little. I am just so fucking sick of getting a certain message from "The Powers That Seemingly Be". Like, "Just fucking die, Sonja. We don't want you here.")

I'm nervous enough about getting bit in my ass by my past foolishnesses, and now Mr. Breszny's warning me that I should look ahead and watch for similar consequences to my current good, not-foolish decisions.

Life totally sucks my rubber dick, but I'm really quite happy about not much right now. And I'm not high. (I just can't get over that fact.)

Moving right along, today's Official Theme is the somewhat welcome but totally annoying presence in my life of several control freaks who are afraid to be honest and open. I love these freaks, because I can dig it (I'm quite the schemer at times myself). But at the same time I really resent these folks for being scared bitches who manipulate situations from behind the scenes and claim not to want credit while actually claiming said credit through private discussions with everyone but the person who might be grateful or disgusted with the contrived situation and the results thereof.

Want to sour a really nice thing? Make it happen. Don't allow it to happen naturally, make it happen.

Also on the subject of openness and honesty, I have a lot of difficulty taking a hint, especially from folks who claim to love me and want to spend time with me and who also say they are not at all afraid to be open and obvious with me but at the same time tend to deny the existence or validity of certain glaring indications to the contrary. Please don't ditch me at the Dairy Queen while I'm ordering you a cheeseburger. Just tell me to fuck off forever if you find me annoying. I'll understand, because I know I'm annoying. I can't stand myself most of the time. (A lot of the time I basically wish I could tell myself to fuck off and stay away, but to leave the weed.)

On the flip side, I didn't get ditched at a really nice BBQ this Saturday evening; I had an awesome fucking time, to be open and honest. My friend that invited me to the BBQ is good to me and totally understands my special needs (mentally, I'm an allergic 12-year old boy-pervert with behavioural issues) and she gets me to take care of myself when I'm dull-minded and feeling hopeless (or just hungry). I am constantly afraid that she and my other loved ones sometimes avoid me because they don't want to have to deal with my inconvenient allergies. It is probable and I do understand, but the thought totally hurts me despite how mature we all try to be about it. So I dunno, I want to retract the preceding paragraph, but at the same time, I would prefer brutal honesty, because that's what y'all get when I'm not being pathological. I just don't know what I'd do if one of my best friends was honest and finally came out and said "Fuck off forever, I find you too annoying." Probably cry.

Speaking of being a crybaby, I lost track of the number of weeping sessions in which I indulged this weekend. I believe the lamentations started on Friday night over a chicken sandwich. This developed into an intermittent happening throughout the course of the next three days. When I think about this, I don't know how my friends and room mates don't just say "Fuck off, I find you too annoying", other than the fact that it must be kind of funny to them. Tyson in particular really gets off on it, actually.

I remember a time when Tyson was very uncomfortable with my frequent and heartfelt expressions of genuine sorrow, but now I think he might even look forward to my hysteria. He came into my room yesterday and found me weeping while folding laundry. Of course I don't want to tell you readers why I was bawling, but I told him all about it in what he calls my "crying voice", which he apparently finds delightful. I'm weird. And so is he. Anyway. The subject of crying has just become tedious to me for some reason...

In conclusion, I just want to say:

I don't want to fucking move again. In the past ten years I have moved 21 times. That is really fucking excessive and I want to stop and stay. I fucking hate The Powers That Seemingly Be.
I am not done with my healthy decisions to make improvements in my life. I'm going to continue to be smokefree despite my fears that life just won't fucking give me a break. I have reached a point of no return. I coughed up Black Tar on Saturday morning in the shower and I hadn't smoked cigarettes since Monday. It is fucking sick that this shit is still being expectorated. How could I do that to myself again, even if I fucking hate everything and everyone? (well I don't really, but you do get that I'm somewhat dramatic)
Please don't manipulate the shittiness that is reality in some idiotic attempt to make it seem less so to me. That makes it more shitty.
If you think I'm paranoid, I agree. If you think it's marijuana that makes me paranoid, think again. I have been paranoid since childhood (I'm serious - it was unreal). It's odd, but weed makes me less paranoid and it always has (It's a fact, and fuck you if you doubt me). I have old friends who will attest to this. For all of your information, it is my plan to abstain from the chiva until after my Reiki session, so I shall accordingly be paranoid until Wednesday, May 17, 2006.
After Wednesday, May 17, 2006, I shall be high.
I love my friends and I don't want them to hate me for being:

extremely allergic and quite bitter and sometimes really unreasonable about it
paranoid or alternatively,
stoned
demanding
a fucking crybaby
somewhat dissatisfied with my totally acceptable life

Fuck Them Up Their Stupid Ass

2006-05-14T21:30:00.000-05:00

There are times when I feel like I'm winning and everything seems to be going swimmingly and I almost feel...optimistic. This week has been a hardcore trial by fire and I kicked its ass. Honestly. I went smokefree and it's been six days and five sleeps since my last cigarette and there have been a few times during which I desperately wanted to go back to Addictdom, but I didn't, I have stayed in Smokefreedom.

You have no idea how hard it was on Friday and Saturday morning, but I got through a few real bitch-cravings and I'm stronger for having done it. I woke up this morning thinking I was winning and that life would be better after a few months, since I'd have more money, more time, more health, more coping abilities, more pleasant-smellingness, more self-confidence, more more more.

However. It's been exactly seven months plus a day since Tyson phoned my cell phone from our home phone. It was a weird phone call, because I was napping in my own bed before I had to go to work at the bar. Here is how it went (October 13, 2005, around 8:30 pm):

Me (sleepy): Hello?
Tyson (freaked-out-sounding): Where are you?
Me (grumpy): In bed. Where are you?
Tyson: At home. Where are you?
Me: IN BED!!! What the fuck is going on? Are you in the apartment, you freak? (confusing pause as we realize we're talking on the phone but we're in the same apartment.)Me: Hang up the fucking phone and come to my room, you jackass!!!

So basically, he had checked our voicemail and had been informed by a geeky salesguy named Russ Knight that our home at 74 Carlton was being "condo-ized" and we'd be required to leave within a short while. This information coming only after me having moved in maybe four months previously.

Only seven months after receiving the above heartbreaking information, it seems that I shall have to be moving again.

I don't want to jump the gun by saying, "Fuck, I have to move again," but when it all comes down to brass tacks:

"Fuck, I have to move again."

I don't know exactly when because I haven't received a notice but I did get an accidental warning, so I suppose it's only a matter of time before I'm officially informed yet again, that I am not welcome anywhere for any substantial period of time. What number of moves will this be?

Let us count:

1. Moved from parents' house to Victoria Beach;
2. Moved to grandparents' house;
3. Moved to University College;
4. Moved back to grandparents' for summer vacation;
5. Moved back to University College;
6. Moved back to grandparents';
7. Moved to Maryland Street hovel;
8. Moved to Assiniboine Avenue with Erin;
9. Moved to grandparents' for summer, got evicted from Assiniboine Avenue;
10. Moved to Spence and Balmoral single apartment;
11. Moved to Spence and Balmoral apartment with Erin;
12. Moved to Clarke Street with Tyson;
13. Moved to Carlton Street with Tyson and Jason;
14. Moved back to grandmother's for final time, kicked out after three months;
15. Fled to neighbour's house for three weeks, kicked out;
16. Resorted to parents' house for two weeks. Was tying my own noose.
17. Moved into charming cottage with dog and no running water;
18. Moved back to Winnipeg, crashed Mark and LeeAnne's party and stayed in livngroom for three months (thanks guys);
19. Moved to Spence and Ellice single bedroom;
20. Moved back onto Carlton Street;
21. Moving out of the condo due to the fact they condo-ed. Assbags;
22. Probably having to move out of this sweet little house by the end of this year, because someone's a Stupid Twat.

Being bitter gives me gas. Sigh.

2 Things to Do

2006-05-03T16:16:00.000-05:00

1. Rob Breszny says:

"Espertantina, a town in Brazil, celebrates May 9 as Orgasm Day... The astrological omens say this is an auspicious time for you to seek out, cultivate, and honor your own orgasms."

Well!! Don't mind if I do...can it be in public?

2. I also want to make sure I begin to follow a certain philosophy that I actually used to adhere to quite heavily (unconsciously, too - I was a wicked-smaaaaart high school student):

"Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it." -Brecht

Damn, bitches...

I've been so busy the last fucking six to eight years reflecting upon what I have learned or can't figure out that I fucking forgot to SMASH SOMETHING into pretty pieces.

I'm gonna do that right now. And then jerk off. Or vice versa... Or at the same time...

TODAY IS ARBITRARY DAVID BOWIE DAY

2006-04-25T13:50:00.000-05:00

http://www.davidbowie.com/

http://www.davidbowieisverydisappointedinyou.com/

http://user.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/bowie.htm - Yes, I'm a Bowie-ist. And so shall you be, if you're not careful...

http://areaology.com/ - See and explore David Bowie's "area".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie - For the studious fans of David Bowie.

http://www.5years.com/start.htm - It's all old school, unless it's new school.

http://www.rockonthenet.com/artists-b/davidbowie_main.htm - New school.

http://kaffee.150m.com/bowiequiz.html - Find out if you're old school or new school.

www.bowieart.com - He's not just a singer, you know. He's a Renaissance Man.

http://www.heroesband.com/ - Ripped off stuff, with credit given where due.