twenty thousand words

over the sand, over the plan

2010-04-07T12:32:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, I went to see "Chloe" with my mom. After seeing the previews and reading the reviews, I wasn't expecting much: some dramatic tension, Amanda Seyfried's butt, the chance to snicker when familiar Toronto landmarks came into view (Cafe Diplomatico, really? that place blows). But my mom, for some reason, was expecting more. She told me afterward that she had hoped the movie would be great. She sincerely believed it could be one of "those movies"-- you know, those ones, the ones that hit you in the gut and linger in your shadow for weeks.

Chloe was not that movie.

Last night I went to see "Greenberg". As a fan of Noah Baumbach, I thought, maybe, maybe!, but no, no. It couldn't end fast enough. Where were the characters with lovable quirks? Where was the near-disaster and faint trace of redemption? Where were the endearingly uncomfortable moments? Where was the goddamn squid and the motherfucking whale?

I've been thinking lately about the titles that would make up a list of "those movies" for me. There haven't been a lot in my lifetime, but there have been enough--and the important ones have certainly stuck with me. I've dragged them around like dirty blankets, showing them off to anyone who'll pay attention. So pay attention:

- The [aforementioned] Squid and the Whale: I watched this movie for the first time in the spring of 2006, shortly after my own parents separated. It made me want to puke (jizz on the lockers) and it made me want to cry. It captured the shittiness of teenagehood and the absurdity of writing workshops and it's uncomfortably funny from start to finish. It was perfect for me then, and still now. Every time I watch it I just want to puke-cry.

"She's a very risky writer, Lili. Very racy. I mean, exhibiting her cunt in that fashion is very racy. I mean Lili has her influences in post modern literature, it's a bit derivative of Kafka, but for a student, very racy. Did you get that it was her cunt?"

- Lost In Translation: the movie at the top of my mom's list, as well. It's so small and so compact, and yet it left a pothole inside me. Somehow, it always makes me feel safe: even though the movie is about characters lost in a foreign land, lost inside themselves, it still feels like home to me.

- All the Real Girls: I first rented this from the Brampton Public Library (!) in high school, and then several times from the Mississauga library, until my boyfriend was finally able to find a copy for me on dvd. After imbibing a slew of movies over recent years about rich people with problems (Funny People, Greenberg), it's so refreshing to come back to this simple small-town beauty. I watch it now, and think: fuck, this is so sad; fuck, is this ever lovely; Zooey needs to get rid of the bangs and M. Ward and go back to this, terrific acting with a bad haircut.

you get a boner in your stomach?

2010-01-18T01:00:00.003-05:00

Tonight, during the Golden Globes telecast that I had been waiting for, I found Angus on the Family Channel and felt incredibly torn: do I watch one of my favourite impossible-to-find movies from start to finish (commercial free, I might add) or do I keep it on NBC and watch terrible upsets like Carey Mulligan (of An Education, one of my favourite movies of the past year) getting snubbed out of her deserved best actress win? Sandra Bullock won out, at the Globes and in my living room. My Angus, as ever, went unwatched at the other end of the dial.

Admittedly, the movie isn't very good. It's got a pre-Dawson's Creek James Van Der Beek and a miscast Kathy Bates and an embarrassing George C. Scott and plenty of cliche. It sums up 1995 for me pretty well, though: I was nine at the time, and a real sucker for teen comedies. My love for this movie has grown over time, mostly due to circumstance: it hasn't been released yet on dvd, it's rarely shown on tv, and finding a vhs copy is like finding a needle in a thrift store. The hunt is hard. So whenever I find it, even if just in snippets during commercial breaks, I feel immensely satiated. Watch this scene and you'll see how heartbreaking it is. Well, how good it is. Just how not-terrible it is, particularly for a movie starring Dawson Leery.

Other 1995 tidbits, plucked right out of my childhood:

Johnson & Johnson & Dead

2010-01-11T13:06:00.002-05:00

On December 31st I publicly announced (to the small crowd in our living room) that my new year's resolution was to "finish my thesis". Okay, fine, but that's not so much a resolution as an obligation: failure is only an option if I'm willing to shell out another 5 thou worth of tuition to buy myself more time.

My new new year's resolution is to be a better diabetic so I don't flame out at age thirty like Casey Johnson. Of course, continuing to avoid becoming a drug addict will probably help me out the most on this front, but still. Thirty years old? Diabetics should not be dying at thirty. We're supposed to enjoy long, glorious lives like Mary Tyler Moore.

Wait. I just looked up MTM on Wikipedia, and this is what it told me about her: "In addition to her acting work, Moore is the International Chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International.^[26] In this role, she has used her fame to help raise funds and raise awareness of diabetes mellitus type 1, which she has, almost losing her vision and at least one limb to the disease."

Okay. My new new new year's resolution? To stop reading articles about diabetes that scare the crap out of me. I'd like to keep all of my limbs, if possible, thank you.

"i will never be hip"

2009-11-21T20:47:00.001-05:00

like everyone else does

2009-11-14T14:55:00.000-05:00

2009-09-02T00:18:00.001-04:00

I never went to camp as a kid. I went to a day camp, twice, in the woods north of Brampton: the first time, when I was six, someone stole my sleeping bag on "sleepover day" and I refused to go back for the remainder; the second, when I was ten, my best friend was supposed to accompany me but came down with chicken pox instead. Still, I never went to real camp. I just watched TV all summer. I just watched TV shows about other kids going to camp.

pitter patter

2009-07-14T21:16:00.003-04:00

This past Saturday, watching Broken Social Scene play a free show at Harbourfront, I nodded my head and convinced myself that I had seen them play there before in the summer of '05 (the summer where I was nineteen, the one after all these major life changes had taken place.) I watched Kevin Drew sweat on stage, and I thought to myself: the last time I saw these guys play, I had just gotten through the hardest year of my life. Yeah, I thought. That's right. I had survived some tough shit and made it to the other side, where KD et al were standing on a stage and playing songs just for me, for free. Yeah. Two thousand and five.

Then Brendan Canning grabbed his mic: "the last time we played here was in 2oo4!"

And I thought, fuck, really?

It was five years ago. I had just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I was little more than a month away from moving to Halifax for university. I had accomplished nothing that summer;, nothing more than learning how to stab my skin with needles. My brother took me downtown for the day, and then to this free show at Harbourfront. I was all too familiar with You Forgot It In People, had listened to it plenty of times in our parents' stationwagon while rain ran down the windshield. But this was the first time I had ever heard them play live. And it hit me hard.

At the time, I had no idea that this band would stick around for the next five years of my life. I couldn't have known that their music would be there, playing quietly in the background, through so many crucial moments to come.

I would see them play, again, at the Marquee Club in the Fax, just a few short weeks before it closed down. It was the first time I would use a fake id, but in reality I wouldn't use it: the bouncer would check my friends, but, amazingly, not me. I'd be slightly stoned, a little drunk. I'd lose the others in the crowd and watch the show all alone, feel the trumpets, feel everything.

I would trek through a snowstorm to buy Stars' Set Yourself On Fire the week it came out, and I'd listen to it every goddamn day, even the day later that spring when I'd move away from the Fax forever. I'd sit on a plane and watch the coast disappear.

I would buy the next album when it arrived in the fall of 05. I'd listen to "It's All Gonna Break" after every crush failed, and I'd feel better. "Backyards" was to be playing in the background the night my mom would call to tell me that my dad's secret affair had been revealed and they were divorcing.

I'd sit on someone's bed, watching Half Nelson on his computer, well aware I was making the gravest error, "Shampoo Suicide" everywhere.

I'd learn to love my first name, all thanks to Feist.

I'd fall in love, real love, finally, over a shared appreciation for music and a mutual history of arts & crafts moments.

And then I'd see them again, one cool summer night in a garbage-filled city, from my spot in a crowd thick with assholes. A tall guy behind me would knee me in the back; the hippie girl in front would toss her frizzy hair into my face. I'd be so short that I could barely see. But I would still feel something. They'd go on to play four encores, and I'd feel all of it.

I feel it, still.

that's how i was when i was young

2009-05-25T00:32:00.003-04:00

Lessons in Growing Up, #1:

Last Friday night I decided to go running, for a couple of reasons: 1. I had nothing else to do, 2. I haven't been able to run for weeks, and it felt about time to break the rules, and 3. I pride myself on being a night runner. Starting from the summer I was 15, I always tend to run at night once the days get hotter. Night running is such an unusual thing, not least of all because it is SHIT TERRIFYING. I've witnessed intense fights, stumbled on couples having sex, been threatened by wildlife, fallen on my face a few times, and interrupted plenty of pot-smoking teenagers. But running at night in the summer also encompasses all the things I love about the sport, at its heart: it's always quiet, you get felt up by a nice breeze, flowers smell better after dusk, and the aloneness doesn't feel lonely at all. Most of all, you're invincible. You're completely covered in dark and yet you're still invincible. As I started out on last Friday's night run, I felt all of it. It wasn't that dark out, and I even decided to dart through the scary woods behind the St Clair West station. Near Bathurst I stopped in a park to tie my shoelaces. Some old fat guy walking a pug waved me over. Nervously, I went. He shook his head as he spoke to me:

"You know, I wasn't going to tell you this, but I have to. A few weeks ago, right in that parking lot over there, I saw a girl get raped. She got raped by a black guy on a bmx bicycle. The police were all here, and it was on CP24--you didn't see it? And, my god, her face, she was so scared. So, you know, you just can't trust people, and you gotta be careful at night, and I just had to tell you, so."

So? I ran home faster than I ever have. Thanks for nothing, pug man.

The Loneliness Of

2009-04-27T21:55:00.002-04:00

I started using my insulin pump a week and a half ago. My nurse (a precocious woman who loves lipstick and looks like a deflated Fran Drescher) clicked the device into place, and that was that. Well, not exactly: I was given strict orders to follow for the next few weeks, in order to get my blood sugars down and insulin rates stabilized. Most of the rules are tough (3 meals a day, no snacks in between [where is that DQ Blizzard I was promised?], tight carbohydrate budget). Some of them truly suck (no alcohol or sleeping in!) But one of them has proved nearly unbearable: no exercise. Until my body works out the kinks with this pump, I am indefinitely barred from putting on my New Balances. No matter how sunny and beautiful the weather is (today), no matter how much my leg muscles twitch from lack of activity (happened today), no matter how much I ache to get out there and start up my half-marathon training again (oh god, today). These running-free days are killing me.

I just finished reading Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I've never really loved his writing style (something lost in the translation, perhaps) and this book is no exception, but it drew enough parallels with my own life to draw me in. I read it while sitting on the train to London. As we sped past creeks and forest floors and backyards, I thought about running. I thought about writing. I thought about running and writing, at once: two things I love, used to love, still care for, need to do, need motivation to start, can't give up. I want to run as fast as a VIA train and write as well as Murakami. That's what I want.

"Most of what I know about writing I've learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate--and how much is too much? ... How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? ...
In any event, I'm happy I haven't stopped running all these years. The reason is, I like the novels I've written. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of novel I'll produce next. Since I'm a writer with limits--an imperfect person living an imperfect, limited life--the fact that I can still feel this way is a real accomplishment. Calling it a miracle might be an exaggeration, but I really do feel this way. And if running every day helps me accomplish this, then I'm very grateful to running. ...
Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life--and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree."

- Murakami, What I Talk About...

hey, yeah, awww

2009-04-08T01:05:00.001-04:00

This time last year, I assumed the hardest part was going to be getting in. Of course. All that paperwork! All those weeks of waiting! Once I got in-- and once I passed that remedial mythology bird course laden with trick questions-- then the water wouldn't be choppy anymore. Then I wouldn't be worried.

Then things wouldn't be so unclear.

Wouldn't it be nice.

It's the April of the first year of my master's program, and I've barely made a scratch. There's certainly no dent. I know that I have a voice, and that I have so much more time to prove myself and make progress, but I can't help but feel this: the more time I put into this pursuit, the less I'm getting out of it. I don't really want to be a grad student slumming away at a part-time coffee shop job. I don't want to be a Torontonian who still secretly hates Toronto. I don't want to be a writer with permanent writer's block.

I want to think that I made the right choice last April, but I'm starting to worry that I can't keepy trying to convince myself anymore. I don't know what to do with myself.

How does one get themselves out of a slump like this? What is this slump, anyway? It isn't the stuff undergraduate hissy-fits are made of. No, it feels bigger than that. It feels like a total confusion of place and time and direction-- maybe none of this is right?

I used to always spend summers at my grandparents' cottage on Lake Huron. They sold it the winter I turned 14, but we all knew that the preceding summer was probably going to be our last and we treated it accordingly. By "we" I mean just me: I was the only other member of the family who showed any attachment to the cottage apart my from grandparents themselves.
Our cottage was a real cottage, (dilapidated, tiny, and wooden) unlike all the suburban-style monoliths that grew in the empty lots down the road over the years. It stunk like mothballs, and rain bled through the walls, and ants got into the sugar pots, and I loved it there. We listened to my dad's Jeff Healey band cassettes and played Scrabble. There was a receding, zebra mussel-infested shoreline behind our property, but we usually just went to the beach area just down the street that was much larger and cleaner. (The time my cousin and I found a bra and panties discarded in the surf there is, sadly, a story for another time.)
If you stood in the middle of this beach and looked straight out at the lake, you could see a rocky island with a single gnarled tree directly in front of you. It wasn't that far out, but as a child I thought it was the most impressive thing I'd ever seen: this bizarre, dead tree, floating on a bed of rocks in the center of the lake.
During that last summer at the cottage, I decided to finally swim out to the island. It didn't take me very long, and I found that the island wasn't even straight out from the beach-- it was located a few hundred metres to the left. It was a disgusting pile of rocks and the tree itself was practically driftwood. I stood on the rocks and touched the dead tree trunk and it wasn't even sunny out. But I did it, right? I got there, and that still matters, doesn't it?

Wouldn't it be nice.

how to scare a baby: #4

2009-03-30T16:21:00.001-04:00

See? I told you it was fucking terrifying. Terrible, and terrifying.
This movie was a dumpy and derivative amalgam of "The Wizard", "Labyrinth", and "The Neverending Story", and it also features some of the scariest things I've ever seen on VHS.

Poor Baumer's probably rolling in his grave.

as Apple Martin is my witness

2009-02-28T18:23:00.004-05:00

Today I caught myself thinking about the late winter/early spring of the year I was in grade 9. I was doing an ISU project on Carl Sagan's Contact for my English class. I decided to try "tv turnoff week", breaking it only once to watch a well-timed airing of the Jodie Foster movie on City. I was listening to a lot of Coldplay's Parachutes. I was training for track season, but the shitty weather meant training mostly indoors: running through the corridors of South Hall after school, tripping over girls in the stairwells putting cornrows into dudes' hair for $5 a pop. I was fifteen, not the edge of twenty-three. I was way more productive in the past than I am in the present.

I have a plan for the future, though. It involves running the Don Valley and the Martin Goodman trail and the Leslie Spit. Early (as early as I can manage) weekend garage sale-ing. Finally writing all that quality fiction that I set out to write this year. Being unsick. Opening my windows more than a crack. Drinking as much wine as my bloodstream can handle. Getting my insulin pump and finally getting myself under control. Okay--perhaps those last two sentences don't exactly jive.

No, everything's not lost.

a simpler time

2009-01-21T00:54:00.001-05:00

dirty secrets

2009-01-13T23:23:00.003-05:00

"Creative non-fiction", I figured, would be the easiest hill to climb. My masters program lasts for two years, consisting of three workshops, two classes, one mentorship, and one thesis (heart attack), and I can't gorge myself on pure fiction the whole time. I'm not allowed to. So, I've got to whet something else, and I figured "CNF" was the best choice. It wouldn't leave a scar. My other options (playwriting or poetry) don't even really count as options: teenage me wrote one poem ever--perhaps, perhaps two--and if you read it, you'd know why*. So, CNF it was.

But what the hell is CNF? During the first class, our writer/leader/preacher gave us a rundown on the wide range of writing styles that qualify, but was quick to footnote that Sedarisisms don't count. (She went on to compare reading his books to watching a stand-up comedy routine; according to her, when you're finished with both, you've had a laugh but the experience isn't memorable or meaningful. She said this with a perfectly straight face, no Sedaris-style sarcasm evident, and my heart dropped.) So, it isn't humour. It also isn't editorial, journalistic, academic, or "too" creative. The great range of CNF shrank quickly. I realized that I was left with only too options: dry, or soaking wet. Either very social, or very personal. Deeply topical, or glorified blogging.

I'm not sure I can do either.

Blogging is one thing (anonymous to a degree), fiction is another (nobody really knows what's real and what's not), but committing intimate details of one's life to paper and then handing those papers out to other people (friends, writers) for them to workshop just feels a little too raw and bloody for me. "Leslie, your life has a pacing problem on page three." "Leslie, your life just wasn't believable enough at the end." "Leslie, your life didn't really grab me from the start." Moreover, what the hell am I supposed to write about that can sustain itself for fifteen lag-free pages? Boy problems, 'betes problems, sad things, happy bits? "Creative non-fiction" is so far proving itself to just be a pseudonym for "grade 7 diary".

I'll stick with fiction, thank you.

* I just found a word document on my computer called "high school writers craft poems variety". Although I don't remember writing them, or if they ever made it off the safety of my hard drive, these two aren't all that shitty. They're actually pretty neat (one even rhymes!) Maybe I'm being too hard on poetry--it might be a gentle giant, after all. Now let us never speak of this again.

Joseph Cornell and The Dirty Little Secret

Box of big nothing

We look inside and wonder

But only you know

The Best Of

Scenery passing in a blear
Closing in on the end, hope drawing near
Feet moving quicker than the beat
Faster farther, never chasing defeat
Breathe, check, turnover, check, going, flight--
...
Stop.
Ground is tougher than might
The player's lost its needle but the album still spins
Pop! Hiss! Silence can't make will thin
Up again- legs meet motion, vinyl starts talking
A little bit warped but never, ever walking

in the land of businessmen

2009-01-08T22:11:00.004-05:00

For the past two months I've been spending many of my early, early mornings toiling away* behind the disinfected counter of a Starbucks located down-down-downtown. "Shilling coffee to stockbrokers", as my Grandpa calls it. Digging deep to make sure I have enough in my bank account to pay my rent, the cable bill, the internet bill, the remainder of my tuition, for groceries, for public transit, for cat food, for the occasional bottle of less-than-a-tenner wine. A veritable Chai Walla.

They pay me to smile. I've seriously burned my hands twice. At the very least, this work provides me with an endless list of easily employable endearments: "double short", "half sweet", "extra hot".

The other day, after a busy and stressful morning rush, I whispered a comment to one of my coworkers-- "they all look the same to me!"-- only to be met with a disapproving glare. "You can't say something like that out loud!" they responded. But, I mean, really: once you've seen one recession-rattled businessman with caffeine sweats wearing a wrinkled grey suit, you've seen them all.

* being yelled at.

2008-11-27T00:20:00.002-05:00

I don't have a lot of things going for me. I mean, I share my birthdate with Steven Weber and Chastity Bono, and my initials match the "Lord Krishna Bank". But there was always that song to redeem me, the one song in the world that I thought used my first name: "Groovin" by The Young Rascals.

One day a few years ago, listening to easy hits while driving my mom's car one weekend at home from university, I realized that I'd misheard the lyrics every time. It wasn't "I feel it comin' closer day by day, life would be ecstasy, you and me and Leslie" (where I always imagined Leslie was the dog or something crashing this couple's romantic Sunday picnic). No. It was "endlessly". Just "endlessly".

I felt like I'd just been dumped.

just like anyone

2008-11-24T23:26:00.001-05:00

I'm constantly flip-flopping with this program. I am certain that it was the right choice for me to make, and at the right time, but I'm still not convinced that I really want to head down the road that they seem to be priming me for: "Pretentious Writer, 20 years away". There are tiny things that tend to sway me one way or the other, and there are thousands of them throughout each day, and I'm constantly choosing one side and then changing my mind, and as a result I still don't know what the fuck to do with myself. I fall asleep spooning the same demon every night.

What the hell do I want?

I have trouble finishing up the final polish on this novel chapter: i don't want to be a writer.

I settle into bed with my laptop at 130am one Sunday night and manage to write a pretty great short story in a little under three hours' time, one day before the deadline: i want to be a writer.

I go to the ATM for some twenties and am rewarded with a bank account balance slip that's less than $1, but more than 0 (it was 51 cents): fuck, i don't want to be a writer.

I see a crazy guy in the woods up at Spadina and St Clair, who is pushing a baby carriage full of urine-soaked Chihuahuas wearing dog collars made out of rope, and attempting to rake up the leaves, to RAKE UP THE LEAVES IN THE WOODS: yeah, i want to be a writer.

I continue to feel completely ostracized from the generally older students who populate my MFA program: I'll never fit in. I'm not pretentious enough. I don't want to be a writer.

I realize that writing is a solitary act, and a lonely life, but also that I'm a solitary person, and a lonely one, and it suits me just fine, and even though I've been doing this since high school, the reality is that I'm still wetting my feet, and I still have a million stories left to tell, and I'm not done yet, so I guess I'll keep going as long as I've got it in me: okay, fine. I'll be a writer.

somebody's patti scialfa

2008-11-10T01:20:00.003-05:00

I'm supposed to be writing an essay right now (that's right, an essay, that beast I fought for the last four years but apparently have yet to slay). I'm also supposed to be writing the third chapter of a "novel" for my fiction workshop (a novel that I conjured up the night before my first class back in September, and a novel that I've been molding out of garbage for weeks, and a novel that will likely stop at the end of chapter three and never see the light of day once this workshop finishes up). I'm also supposed to be running, running always, in prep for that December race I love so much (they give us free egg nog as consolation after the snowy 10.8k, and that's a great deal in my books). I'm also supposed to be managing my budget, budgeting my time, and timing my breaks.

But I don't want to right now. I want to take another break instead.

The Worst Songs Ever, and Why I Love Them Anyway, Jerks

"Sad Eyes" by Bruce Springsteen (from 18 Tracks, 1999)

This is one of the laziest, safest, and most boring songs Springsteen has ever done, off an album that's barely even an album. He sings like a little lady, the arrangement is saccharine, and the lyrics are fortune cookies. But the first time I heard it (on an episode of Dawson's Creek) I knew that I was hooked. Embarrassed to admit it, but hooked. It happened in season 2 of DC, during the awkward but not entirely regrettable Andie+Pacey plot. The late-late nineties. It was an easy time, a hopeful time. It was a time before James Van Der Beek disappeared, and before Joey Potter bowed down at the temple of Xenu, and before anyone had even dreamed of a 90210 remake. It was a time when good things could happen, as long as you believed they could. If you wanted a boy to climb up the trellis outside your bedroom window, declare his love for you after tumbling onto your floor, and then kiss you while holding your face in both hands (Pacey Witter style), then, yeah. It was possible. Everything was possible in 1999.

"Have A Heart" by Bonnie Raitt (from Nick of Time, 1989)

Because my dad used to play this cassette all the time when I was growing up, before I learned how to tell the difference between shitty music and good.

"Only You" by Yaz (or Yazoo, if you prefer. From Upstairs at Eric's, 1982)

I was going to write about that one scene in The Office Christmas Special, you know, those ten heartbreaking minutes at the very end that always send me into projectile weeping, but this really doesn't even need an anecdote. It's a good song, seriously.

No One Says It 'Til It Shows

2008-10-21T23:08:00.004-04:00

I usually don't remember. Every year it comes around, and I never remember to remember. It's been so long, you know? So much has happened to me since-- it's hard to hold onto things suspended in the past.

But, somehow, this year, I heard the song. The song came up, somehow, on a random shuffle. And, for once, I remembered.

When I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen maybe, my favourite song in the world was "Say Yes" by Elliott Smith. I don't know what it meant to me then. Maybe I was sad, and he was sad, and during the two minutes and thirteen seconds of that song we could be sad together. Whatever the case, it meant something big to me. Eight years ago today, he put two big wounds into his chest and that was it. Sure, most of his music was completely depress-o and heartcracking (the image of Richie Tenenbaum, freshly shaven and bleeding rivulets from the wrists, comes to mind), but then there was that song. That song. Some people do great things, and some people kill themselves. Sometimes it's the same person who does both. You're gone, but I still have your song. Thank you for the song.

I'm glad I remembered this year. RIP, XO.

in the backyards, with your friends of late

2008-10-21T16:01:00.001-04:00

There's a storefront on Bloor Street, a little west of Ossington, that has a cat and a scratching post in the window. A cat and a scratching post, and nothing else. In fact, it isn't even a store. It's just a big empty window with a cat in it.

A few days ago, I was walking that sidewalk stretch, as I do a dozen times a week, looking for the cat in the window, but I couldn't find it. The store, the cat, the scratching post: everything had vanished from Bloor. It took me a few minutes to finally figure out what I was looking for. The storefront was completely camoflaged; it had been covered over with a wall of wood for renovations. Okay, so that made sense. But--

what about the cat?

Today, finally, there was a small handwritten note taped to the wood in front of the store:

"THE CAT IS FINE SHE STAYS IN THE HOUSE"

Solid Dude

2008-10-11T01:32:00.002-04:00

"Why I'm Running the New York City Marathon
by Ryan Reynolds

A couple of years ago, I walked uptown to Central Park on one of those perfect November days. The air had a bite to it while the sun shone bright. It was the day of the New York Marathon and I thought it might be fun to watch the runners nearing the finish line. So, I joined the crowd about a half-mile before the race's end at Tavern On The Green. With my arms resting on the cold cordon, I saw an incredible spectacle of people pushed to the very brink of collapse. I expected exhaustion, but what I didn't expect was to see just how much these runners had to EARN their prize. It was emotional. The pain was etched into their faces so deeply, you'd swear they'd spend the next 3 weeks looking like Abe Vigoda. I saw guys coming in to finish with bleeding nipples. Why in the hell were their nipples bleeding? People were crying. People were limping, hobbling, screaming, crawling. But most importantly, people were experiencing a sublime rapture that I couldn't even hope to understand. They were touching something magical no stalk-still mortal simply watching the race could comprehend. These people had accomplished something real. At that moment, with all the energy, inspiration and passion swirling through the crisp autumnal air, I breathed in deeply and decided something: I'd never fucking do that ever, ever. What in the fuck were these idiots thinking? Bleeding nipples. Bleeding. Nipples.

Two years later, by some tragic backwards prophecy, I find myself signed up to run in the New York City Marathon. Every other day I train. I run like a bastard all morning. Not since the discovery of Junior High School has a torture been so effective. Why on earth would I willfully do this? On behalf of my Father, Jim Reynolds, who's spent the last 15 years in a life or death struggle with Parkinson's Disease.

Let it be known at the outset, I am not a runner. I am a running joke. Waking up at 4:30 am and jogging anywhere from 11 to 23 miles has been nothing short of horrifying. Although, I've never given birth to a professional basketball player through one of my tear ducts, I can't imagine a worse way to start the day. Conversely, some people have real problems. I digress...

A year and a half ago, I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Michael J. Fox. Like so many before me, I found it impossible not to be touched by his story of overwhelming strength, passion and relentless commitment to help those afflicted with this insidious disease. The man is inspiration exemplified. Plus, he was in Back To The Future. Which was, well, awesome. In a moment of extremely poor judgment, I offered to do something big for him--I offered to compete in the New York City Marathon. Which was, well... dumb.

While I'll probably never fully understand Michael's struggle, I've had a first hand peek behind the curtain of Parkinson's. I've watched my father -- a strong and proud person who successfully raised 4 arguably insane children - slowly, cruely stripped of his independence. His golden years robbed without explanation. It quite obviously sucks. Witnessing my Dad suffer over the years galvanized my need to step up. On November 2nd, I'll join thousands of other men and women to march in lockstep solidarity toward searing psychic pain and physical humilation.

One of the reasons I chose RUNNING specifically, was because (as Murakami so eloquently put it) my competition is the most formidable foe of all; ME. The person I have to beat is the guy I was last week. The person I was yesterday. Indescribably worse, those affected by Parkinson's wage a similar war in their own bodies every single day. Unlike a marathon, their struggle won't end in a shallow pool of vomit just outside Tavern On The Green while waiting for an ambulance. They continue day in and day out, silently battling away in the most personal of struggles.

Yes. I'm asking for a donation. I don't do this with any degree of levity. I know we're in rough times and there are literally millions of causes worthy of your hard earned cash. It's my hope the story of my father combined with my own goal of becoming the first person in history to sob uncontrollably for 26.2 miles straight, may inspire you to give something too.

Please know that NO DONATION IS TOO SMALL - and certainly, no donation is too large. And If you don't give anything at all, maybe I've primed you for a future donation in someone else's name. For someone else's cause.

If you visit the site below, you'll be directed to my page on the Team Fox Website. Michael's foundation has raised over 100 million dollars in the fight against PD. On my page you can leave a personal note of support or mockery along with your donation.

In the end, no matter how much I mythologize this run, no matter how much I choose to romanticize this campaign against my own will, lungs and ambition... there's always going to be that guy who finished the marathon on a pair of prosthetic legs. And there'll always be my Dad. And Michael. And Millions of others who bounce back off the ropes against all odds. So, I promise I won't congratulate myself too much.

Finally, if you happen to be in New York on November 2nd, come down and watch. Feel free to bring a smile, automated defibrillator, or a fresh set of nipples.

Click here for my Team Fox page

On behalf of Me, my Father, and everyone struggling with Parkinson's, our endless gratitude."

source

i was supposed to be writing the most beautiful poems

2008-10-01T00:18:00.007-04:00

I want:

- to get one (or two or several) of these prints and hang them on my living room walls, next to the more-realistic portraits of raccoons and deer stolen/borrowed from my grandparent's cottage. These are perfect. These are the kind of things I feel I would have made myself back in the eighth grade, had I been more artistically gifted at the time. That was during my "clever funny animals" phase: I used to cut out the heads of wildlife from the pages of my old Owl magazines, and then gluestick them onto the bodies of models in J Crew catalogues. I was way ahead of my time. Oh, wasn't I.

- to reach the day when the CBC's airing of Coronation Street is finally in sync with the BBC. Sadly, I don't think our Canadian shores will ever meet their British ones. Right now, it's early autumn in Canada, and early December on Corrie...early December of LAST YEAR. We are embarrassingly far behind, and, besides, bad things are bound to happen during the upcoming holiday episodes. Bad things always happen in Corrie Christmases; a murder, an affair, a fire at the very least. I just want to feel happy things at the same time the Street feels happy things.

- to get my pump (soon, pancreas, soon).

- to see Okkervil. I have been underwhelmed by the Toronto show calendar so far this fall; there's been little I've been looking forward to except for this, and even then it was only the tiniest spark. But now, I've reconvened: I've been wanting to see this band I love for a few years now-- that sad snowy winter of early '06 was defined for me by Okkervil River and only a few others-- and the chance has never revealed itself until now. So, I'll take the band gladly. I'll take Will Sheff in my arms and hug him until he pukes.

- a good place to run in Toronto. More trees, less creepy European men who whisper "beautiful" in my ear when I pass them on Bloor Street. I want the paths along the river that I wore down in London, I want them here. I want to find a lovely patch of woods, not that muddy rape-path in Forest Hill I stumbled onto last week. I want everything I love about other places to be consolidated in this place.

That's all.

Projectile Weeping

2008-09-15T12:04:00.008-04:00

Last Friday night, David Foster Wallace killed himself at the age of 46. I didn't hear about it until Sunday afternoon, and it took me at least five minutes to fully register the news. Sometimes when famous folk die, us plain people often feel like we've been punched in the gut. It depends on the individual, and the context, but I'm willing to bet that we've all felt it before. It is slightly embarrassing to admit: that a person you've never met, were never going to meet, know next to nothing about, is long gone, and now their loss is plucking at the strings inside your own heart. I mean, it can't be real sadness, right? But, for me, the loss of DFW was a genuine gut-punch.

I read Infinite Jest last summer exclusively during my breaks at work. It took me three weeks and several re-starts and one library renewal to finish, but once I had slogged through to the end I felt the familiar twinge in my stomach: I knew that this book was going to be one of "those books" for me. His language play, his muddle of characters and time periods and content, and his often three-page-long run-on sentences were all difficult to get through, but as payoff the book made me reconsider where I wanted to head with my own writing. It encouraged me to take more risks with style, to think smarter, to try harder. In short, it made me want to be a better writer.

David Foster Wallace had the rare ability to impress and destroy and rebuild and entertain and touch, all in just one sentence. He was less a "writer" and more simply an artist, a builder of intricate webs of words and thoughts. He was one of the best voices of this generation, and I can only hope that other talented wordsmiths will take up his mantle in the years to come. Here's to a truly unique voice, a thousand perfectly penned pages, and a legacy of gut-punches. Rest easy, DFW.

"We're each deeply alone here. It's what we have in common, this aloneness."

big and dirty

2008-09-11T12:46:00.004-04:00

I've been having trouble readjusting this September. Past Septembers have always entailed a jump back into the familiar: that old campus, that dingy transit system, those boys in striped shirts and girls in purple Western hoodies and too-early-in-the-season-Uggs, my roommates, my boys, my big beautiful oak trees. As soon as I got there each fall, and despite the lack of air conditioning in the various apartments I rented, London always felt like home. The city sucks, but it was always my Forest City.

It's been about two weeks, but Toronto isn't my Big Dirty yet.

Although, to be fair, it is pretty damn dirty.

This house of mine looked pretty nice upon first and second viewings, but as soon as I moved in I realized that every interior surface was actually covered in a thin layer of dirt and grime. The floors and the kitchen counter and the bathtub. The walls and the window-sills and the windows. The doorknobs and the baseboards and the front door of the fridge, even. I cleaned and primed and painted and fixed it up for five days straight, and it still doesn't feel like home. A few days ago I finally, finally felt a small flicker of comfort in this place-- something really small, but something noticeable. I'm hoping it'll snowball in time.

School is something else entirely. During the orientation "party" I slowly realized that my one fear about entering this program straight out of undergrad was being confirmed before my eyes: I am the baby. I am the youngest person in the group by at least two years, and even then most of these other people are closer to 30 than I am to 20. Quality in writing is often guaged by the life experiences of the author, and my fact sheet (young, suburban, cynical, straight, redheaded and pale like fucking Anne of Green Gables) isn't doing me any favours. I'm sure most of these people doubt I have the capacity to succeed at this, at this stage in my life. And I'm sure they wouldn't be suprised if I were to admit to them that, yes, I too doubt my potential and worry sometimes that I've started out too early. I haven't written The Great Canadian Novel yet and tucked it away in a drawer, and I haven't been published in literary journals or won large-scale writing contests. So what have I done? I've written a novel, a novella if you must, that took up most of a year and now takes up a substantial part of my heart (only a few people have ever read it, and only a few ever will, but I'm okay with that). I've spent four years emerged in this world of pretentious literary folk, writing out everything that comes into my head, looking for inspiration, trying and trying and failing and sometimes succeeding. This is the only thing I can do, and the only thing I really want to do. And that's a universal statement, right? Writing fiction can, and should be, ageless. Well, so long as it's good.

On the other hand, there's this:

"She's already a reality star and a fashion designer, but Lauren Conrad is adding another title to her crowded resume: Author.

Conrad, 22, has signed on to write a three-book series of young adult fiction for HarperCollins, the publisher tells PEOPLE. The books – the first of which is scheduled to hit shelves in the summer of 2009 – will be loosely inspired by Conrad's own experience going from an ordinary teen to a reality TV star.

"It's definitely influenced by my own life," Conrad tells PEOPLE. "The books are about a girl who moves to L.A. and stars in a reality show, so obviously there are some similarities."

So will Hills costars like Heidi Montag, Specner Pratt or Brody Jenner wind up as in Conrad's series? Not exactly. "I'm not trying to do a fictional story based on all my friends in my real life because their stories aren't really mine to tell," says Conrad, who has gone through many dramas on her MTV show. "Some of the characters may symbolize people in my life, but it is in no way calling anyone out."

Conrad's best gal pal and The Hills costar Lauren Bosworth has already been offering advice. "I run ideas by Lo and I'll ask for her opinion because I value my friends' opinions," says the budding author, who has completed the outline for the first book.

But not everyone in Conrad's life has been clued in to her plans to pen a series. "Honestly I haven't told everyone," she admits. "I've told my best friends and they have all been really supportive. Nobody was worried."

And it's enough to make me want to puke up all that cheap white wine I drank last night-- a Wednesday night-- while I pretended to work on my most recent novel idea.

Also, who knew they sold quilted Chanel handbags at Target? I sure didn't.

for digby

2008-08-21T01:05:00.002-04:00

This is the greatest minute of video I've ever seen. I have just watched it six times in a row. Please. Please watch this. Please do this for me.

And...there. I just watched it again.

wish you didn't have to go, no no no no

2008-08-18T17:03:00.004-04:00

My sincerest apologies to anyone reading this*.

*This, this summer, has been a four month long drought of creativity for me. I haven't been updating frequently (or writing at all for that matter), but not because I have been too busy for it. The opposite, actually. It's been four months of stasis, repetition, the same, the same, wait, something different?, no, actually, the same again, circles, circles and circles, circles without cracks. And it hasn't exactly made for the juiciest material.

I could put down in words my opinions on the Olympics (opinions including but not limited to: Michael Phelps' obnoxious dolled-up mother, the laughable coverage on NBC, dislocated elbows, etc), but nobody cares.

Or I could tell you all about these tv shows I've been watching with intense dedication (Skins, Mad Men), usually running through a single season in a single day, but everybody's already seen them.

Or I could brag about all the books I've devoured this summer during all my time off, but (surprise!) I've barely read any. Instead I go to the Goodwill by my house at least twice a week and search through its impressive book section, usually coming out with about three or four titles each time for $2 a piece, and then I take them home and stack them precariously on the dresser in my bedroom.

So that's my nutshell summer. My summer has been a stack of dirty used books that is always just on the brink of toppling.

Any second now.

ontario's --pit--.

2008-08-10T00:36:00.005-04:00

I've visited countless cities (mostly east, never west), lived in about four (faux-London being the latest map dot), and only ever dreamed of one (my big British fantasy). Toronto doesn't count in my calculations. Toronto never counts. It's always been the city that's a short patch of highway and a subway ride away from me; sufficiently far enough away that it doesn't qualify as home, and yet close enough nearby that it doesn't hold any appeal as a foreign object. I love travelling to cities on vacation solely for the pleasure of throwing myself into an unfamiliar map and quickly untangling my way through it-- I had the New York City subway memorized in half an hour. It's taken me 22 years to figure out the TTC, and even then I still have absolutely no idea what goes on east of Yonge Street.

Toronto was never my city, my vision. Funny, then, that I find myself now about to fully commit to this civic space for the next two years (at least). I just handed over the rent deposit today. I've just adopted this place.

I spent about two months scouring craigslist ads, peering for annoyingly bright orange rental signs in windows, and calling landlords who were quick to give me rehearsed dismissals. Apartments were seen and discounted, apartments were frantically applied for and just as quickly given to other (better?) applicants (families with children, young professionals, junior architects and the lot). The process of apartment hunting in downtown Toronto--bearing in mind that my preferred area to live in is a relatively small rectangular boundary (there's no way I can live north of Bloor! I'll get stabbed if I'm south of Dundas! The world just drops off west of little italy!)-- proved to be harder than most. It was easier to get into grad school than it was to secure a suitable place to live in the city: ultimately, success at this task came down to a mix of being both "good on paper" and personable in person, and neither is particularly easy. We looked, and found, and tried, and lost, over and over again. Desperation dug its hooks into us. But then, we finally lucked out--very deep into the eleventh hour, I might add-- with an apartment that almost seems a little too west but will likely turn out to be perfect.

So a room, an apartment, a new home, an entire new city is now mine-- all it took was a few months worth of searching, and a lifetime of getting over my obstinance resistance to the T dot.

the pump.

2008-07-24T00:11:00.003-04:00

Ever since I was diagnosed four plus years ago, my grandma has made it her mission to send me every diabetes-related piece of information she can get her hands on. She's sent me emails about "exciting new developments in stem cell research!" (they never actually come to be), and newsletters from the Canadian Diabetes Association explaining the difference between type 1 and type 2 (sorry, grandma, but I already know), and carefully snipped newspaper articles about the disease's rising rate (I know I know I know). Her information for me has never been particular informative to me-- save, of course, for the time I read an article in one of her old Canadian Living magazines about a woman with type 1 who didn't control her blood sugars carefully enough as a teenager (ergh) and then drank too much as a university student (oh, fuck me) and then, due to resulting complications, ended up completely blind before the age of 30. That little bit of information did hit home, actually. I started bawling on my grandma's couch out of sheer fear.

So, I was surprised when this news release came out yesterday and my grandma wasn't automatically the first person to alert me about it. My mom, actually, was the one who called and woke me up and frantically told me to googlenews my disease. And there it was. And it changed everything.

I became a completely different person the moment I was diagnosed with type 1 on that June day four years ago. The switch was instanteous. My biggest accomplishments up to that point-- most likely my good marks or high school running career-- suddenly paled, and in time they meant even less. Managing this disease requires effort and attention every day, minute, second of my life. It's my full-time job, and my forever burden, and the most important thing I'll ever do, but it's also the thing most easily forgotten. I've had friends who took years to realize that I have diabetes, and some friends who probably still don't know. I'm always hiding just in the background, pricking my finger and wiping away the blood, stabbing my bare stomach with a needle beneath the veil of a table, frantically drinking down a bottle of orange juice in the checkout line at ValuMart to make sure my blood-sugar low passes before I reach the cashier. It's a full time job that I'm not allowed to take even one second away from, because everything I do right now determines what will happen to me later: if I don't keep my blood sugars under control now, there will complications waiting for me down the line. They'll be there. Just waiting.

I've always known that there was a potential solution out there, but I always discounted it. Well, not a "solution" as such, but a means to help keep my blood sugar levels under tighter control with the push of a button. The pump is an ugly, boxy little device that looks like a perma-pager and constantly delivers a dose of insulin to the individual via a needle inserted under the skin. Did I mention that it looks like a pager from the '90s? I know that this little beast can significantly improve one's ability to manage their blood sugar, but the fact that it has to be attached to the body at all times seemed a little off-putting to me. That, and the fact that a pump costs upwards of $5000, along with $200 for monthly supplies (none of it covered by my mom's drug plan). Being a poor undergrad student and future starving grad student, the pump has never even been a possibility for me. I was happy to dismiss its ugly appearance because I knew I wouldn't be able to consider it, at least not until I was a grown-up with a good job and benefits. But know, everything is different. Money is no longer an issue. Good health is the only thing that matters. I know that I'll always give my disease the care and attention it requires, but it's so wonderful to know that there are options out there to make it easier for me. The provincial government has sent down this wonderful (free) piece of equipment from heaven, and it is going to change everything.

This is my deus ex machina.

An amendment to my last post.

2008-07-22T13:21:00.004-04:00

I have a feeling that my love for "Asking For Flowers" will soon be supplanted by a few new releases heading our way come fall: the new Okkervil River and the new Karl Blau. These recent leaked tracks are giving me some warm and funny feelings. This could be it. These could just be the great albums of 08 that I've been waiting so patiently (actually, not all that patiently) for.

An ode to the only album I've truly liked so far this year

2008-07-21T22:56:00.002-04:00

I have a very unabashed love of folk singers with throaty voices, scribbled lyrics, and guitars. I've crushed on many different musical genres over the years, but the only one I've ever been able to firmly dig my hooks into is folk (I'm using "folk" here as an umbrella term, only-- I guess I'm trying to pin down a feeling rather than a style). Maybe it has something to do with the cassettes my dad used to bring along on every cottage trip while I was growing up. I'm sure it has a lot to do with my tendency to attach myself to particular places, and the type of music that seems to surround them: urban is more exciting, urban is where I'm heading and what I need to learn to love, but I will always be a bit more rural at the core.

I have this clear memory of waking up at three in morning one snowy February day when I was fifteen. Rather than forcing myself back to sleep, I decided to waste the few hours I had left before school by nesting in the couch and blearily watching the MuchMoreMusic video flow. Nothing about it was memorable, but then there was this video by Kathleen Edwards on the screen ("Six O'Clock News", her first single off her first album, was the one), and for some reason it became a moment I would continue to remember. I remember that I was wrapped in at least two blankets at the time, one of them likely being the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sleeping-bag that technically belonged to the dog, but I was still cold. I remember that I had the TV volume down really low to keep from waking up the rest of my family, and that the snow heaps outside were turning slowly Tropicana as the sun began to rise. And the backyard was pretty, and the day was pretty, and the song fit even if her voice didn't sound all that polished. It was a moment where I suddenly forget that I was living in a filthy Toronto suburb, and truly believed that I was inside some beautiful rural morning. I desperately hate country music, but this wasn't that: this was just the country, in song-form. Everything fell together in a really delicate way, and it felt like I was home.

Her latest, "Asking For Flowers", gives me exactly the same feeling. The only difference this time around (apart from the fact that the the vocals are much less rough around the edges) is that she's moved on from waxing about rural rot and she's started singing about life experiences that ring even more true. It's always comforting to find an artist who seems to be moving at the same pace as you are-- in time, their songs become artifacts for you to claim. I'm lucky that Kathleen Edwards has yet to be picked up as a poster-child for mainstream Canadian folk. Sure, there was one song on the last album that got played on Mix 99.9 for a time, and then there's this new Polaris nomination-- but really, she's still an untouched resource. Good thing. That means these songs can still be mine to dust, polish, and hold dear.

"Six O'Clock News" meant something back then because it transported me to some rural place where I felt I belonged. The first time I heard "Sure As Shit" off this newest album, it also felt suddenly meaningful-- not because it took me somewhere else, but because it hit so close to home: while she was singing about "lounging around all day in a hot pink chenille housecoat", I was still wearing the wet terry-cloth towel I had been too lazy to change out of hours after my shower.

It's good, guys. I really mean that.

shuckerdoodles!

2008-07-15T00:50:00.002-04:00

Sadly, I think I've given up words this summer in favor of video. But seriously: a Scrabble game show? Chuck Woolery* in his prime? This contestant who is completely unstoppable? It's a good watch, most definitely.

But wait! There's more!

*I used to have a mild crush on Chuck Woolery while he was hosting "Greed" during the post "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" era. It was a terrible game show, and he was such an asshole to every contestant, and he constantly screwed up his lines and stumbled around the set drunk. How adorable.

Absolutely Flabulous

2008-07-11T23:18:00.006-04:00

"It's bad."
"It's not bad, is it?"
"It is."
"No, no. Bad suggests that, you know, it's evil or something. You know it's not.. It's poor. It's rubbish. It's shit. It's a shitcom!"
"It's a shitcom? Well, we've sorted that out then."

Who is this skinny lad with the heavily lined lids and the cellophane-d hair? Trust me, it's not hard :

Still not sure? :

Much better.

you'll know, you'll know

2008-07-10T00:28:00.003-04:00

I think I have a serious problem with the eHarmony.com couple. You know exactly who I'm talking about--"go with the flow" Anne Marie and "not so much" Lee. These folks right here:

My problem isn't with the watered-down soulful background music, or with the slow motion scene of him spinning her in the street cribbed straight from Love Story. I don't mind the excessive footage of Anne Marie's hair bouncing to prove her carefree nature (look how shiny!), or the obligatory bits of heterosexual machismo (soccer! bowling!). I can't even find fault with the weird sound of Lee's voice-- it's almost endearing.

My problem is that this commercial doesn't feel at all like a commercial. These people aren't playing their parts. They aren't pumping out phony tears to ensure cash in hand at the end of the day. No, miraculously, somehow, these are real tears. I'm sure eHarmony.com is a total sham, but I truly do believe that these two overly-groomed people are actually in love. And that's a problem because every time Anne Marie and Lee materialize on my tv screen (once a commercial break, a million times a day), I'm reminded of the fact that my own flesh-and-blood boyfriend is currently 7 hours away. A province away, an entire language away. Anne Marie and Lee are holding hands every ten minutes, but he and I aren't even connected by tv signals: even if he were watching the same commercial as me at the same time, it would still be in French. Something something lost in translation...

Every time I time I turn the tv on it makes me miss you more. I miss you to pieces. At least we didn't meet on a dating website, though. That would just be embarrassing.

Also good:

2008-07-01T23:41:00.002-04:00

Potentially Bad Things That End Up Being Good, Somehow -Vol. 1

This shitty movie:

Despite my well-known love of romantic comedies (their bones, not always the final packaging), lately I've been finding myself universally unimpressed by what Hollywood has been handing me. I mean, 27 Dresses?? 27 Dresses was practically unwatchable. They attempted to turn Katherine Heigl into the dowdy uggo sister simply through a brunette dye job and some cardigans. I mean, really. I just couldn't suspend my romcom disbelief.

I was prepared to dislike this movie for that reason above, but also based on the presence of Abigail Breslin (where's Dakota when you need her? Answer: deep inside puberty). But, by the end, I had to concede that it actually was pretty good. It didn't get too laggy or maudlin, and it ran a steady race. The legs held up. The bones were pretty strong. Plus, any movie that celebrates irritatingly sassy redheads earns an automatic extra half-star in my books.

This godawful tv show:

Yeah, it's The Bachelorette. Shut up. Shut your face. I'm fully aware of how overly-edited and cloying and rehearsed these shows can be (lord knows I've watched enough to judge [my reality tv binge is going on eight years and strong!!]). Still, the one thing that can make a reality show great rather than terrible is the "casting", and this season of this terrible show has really benefited from fantastic casting. Her final two dudes include the one in that photo above, who is a mildly unattractive pro snowboarder, and a guy who has about thirty pounds of baggage (a three year old son, to be exact). And, if that isn't great enough, one of her other guys looked a hell of a lot like a dumpy Jason Bateman:

Don't you agree?

and
this disgusting craphole: The flea market in the basement of the Dixie Outlet Mall

A wonderful labyrinth of thrift junk that I happily wandered one afternoon, right up until the point when the mean old hag who runs Rosemary's Antiques...Rosemary, I think her name was...until Rosemary yelled at me to stop touching her precious gaudy baubles before I knocked them all over the floor. Thanks for the warning, Rosemary. You're right. I am five years old.

i keep faith

2008-06-19T01:41:00.004-04:00

There's a big, mostly unused ski hill sitting in the middle of Centennial Park. To get to this park when running, I need to cut through the woods behind my house and then follow an unpaved pathway along a creek, over a bridge, and around a construction site, all the while praying to god I'm not seconds away from being mauled by any of the (sub)urban coyotes and wildlife in the area. Did I mention that I only run at night? I only run at night. I run with ipod on full blast and only scattered (sub)urban moonlight to guide me. I like it, though. I tend to run faster when I'm fearing for my life.

So this hill. Tonight I veered in the middle of my normal route and decided to run up to its top, where I had a complete view of the bright lights of downtown (and some of the gta's less bright spots). It's a beautiful thing. And then in the distance I saw this weird honey-coloured light in the shape of a half circle. And I stared at for a long time, trying to figure out what exactly this light was and why it was located so high up in the black sky: maybe a splatter of far-away glare from the cn tower? maybe an electrical station? maybe a new sign for a Texaco station? It took me roughly five minutes to figure out what I was staring at.

It was the moon. My sparkling gas station in the sky was actually just the moon. I ran home fast down that hill.

And in other disturbing full moon news (be forewarned), this man now qualifies as one of the hottest bachelors in the world:
You were warned.

a sea black with ink

2008-05-26T23:36:00.002-04:00

A few days ago, I came home one afternoon to find that my puppy had eaten the tv's remote control. (Of course, in the real world I would call this device a "channel selector", just as I would use said-channel selector while laying on a "chesterfield" in my "family room", but since I've been told multiple times in the past that the Bank family's domestic vocabulary is totally archaic and British, I have decided to censor myself here in blog world.) So. The remote control had been reduced to tiny grey plastic shards scattered across the floor. My panic (that my dog had eaten the entire thing, batteries and all, and was heading to swift death) was soon replaced with sheer anger (upon finding the chewed remains of the rest of the remote hidden under the couch).

In the end, I didn't kill the dog. In the end, I resolved to start watching tv like an attention deficit 8 year old might: sitting cross-legged on the ground, head tilted up to screen, flinching every ten seconds or so to change the channel. Thank god we only have basic cable. I don't think my patience could handle any longer a range.

There's been at least one good side effect of my dog's demonic behaviour. Today was the first day in a number of days straight that saw me actually sit down to pleasure-read, quietly and without fidgeting, for more than an hour. Ever since I moved home from school for this four-month-long transition period between schools and degrees, I have avoided picking up any fiction. I couldn't tell you why. I don't even know why. Maybe the previous school year-- all those ridiculous lit classes I took, all those pointless lecture hours and badly-written chapters I can't take back-- scarred me more than I realized. I don't know. Don't even know. But now I'm here, with a stack of books I'd love to read teetering on my desk, and public library late fines looming, and librarians bitching at me for not paying my existing late fines, and a two-seater porch swing taken from my previous front steps in London and transplanted into my back garden here in Mississauga, and all the time in the world (ninety days, give or take).

I've got a two-seater, but there's only me. I guess I'll just have to live with that.

tabernac!

2008-05-24T01:31:00.005-04:00

Rene-Charles really needs to get his roots did, soon.

"This food ain't fit for us dogs!"

2008-05-17T00:31:00.004-04:00

I think I can smell a summer project brewing...
Better watch your back, Jasper. You too, Digby.

giving us Bank(s) a bad name

2008-05-15T00:16:00.006-04:00

Seeing as lately I have been at once without job and with total lethargy (plus with a big tv!), I've been watching a lot of crap. And that means that mostly I've been watching a lot of Tyra. She's had some real gems on her talk show front over the past few weeks, but since I've started watching it daily PLUS the weekly dose of Top Model, I've quickly come to realize that Tyra is obsessed with race and weight exclusively. She's obsessed with herself. She's obsessed with being an "overweight" non-white woman. Sometimes this doesn't yield the greatest results: see Whitney, the newest crowned top model who claims to have been tormented as a child because of her weight issues and who cries when she gets her dreams of being on the cover of Seventeen come true because she hopes this will inspire all those young fat girls out there to start thinking that fat is actually as fierce as Tyra always says it is. And Tyra cheers, and Whitney cries mascara tears, and it all seems well and pleasant and good...until year-old pictures of a substantially skinnier Whitney materialize on the interweb and blow the whole charade to bits.

Hey Whitney-- where'd that juicy booty of yours get to?

But sometimes, every once in a while, Tyra's indulgent weight preoccupation results in some of the most entertaining TV ever to grace the hour between 10 and 11 am (eastern time). Please enjoy "Fat Woman on Tyra":

For ol' Olmec

2008-05-07T12:45:00.004-04:00

My grandparents used to own a winter retreat in a retirement community in Bradenton, Florida. It was a sunny, well-groomed place where old people speeding around in golf carts used to angrily shake their fists at my brother and I as we rollerbladed around the streets and tried to avoid running into slow-moving alligators that were about as old as the people. We drove down every March break, usually taking about 24 hours to cover the straight line that ran from Toronto to the Orange State. My dad would bring books-on-tape with him from the public library, and he'd listen to these while the rest of us slept in our seats as the car rumbled through New England. On one particularly gruesome trip I can recall waking up in darkness to the sounds of Kathy Bates reading "The Silence of The Lambs". Once we got there, we swam in the old person's pool, shopped in the old person's outlet mall, and lounged on the old person's beach. But mostly we just watched American TV. There was nothing, nothing better than American TV.

We watched Road Rules marathons on MTV, and caught the earliest episodes of Buffy on the WB, and Talk Soup on E! when it was still hosted by John Henson and was still hilarious. But mostly I lived inside Nickelodeon. I may have been a Canadian, but we spent so many March Breaks down south that I considered myself an honorary Nick kid.

So now be nostalgic with me and let's watch an episode of Legends of the Hidden Temple! Please?

pretty sad.

2008-05-04T00:37:00.002-04:00

For an eerie, unsettling, almost embarrassing glimpse into my potential (post MFA) life some fifteen years from now, go watch The Savages and try to picture Laura Linney's character with red curly hair instead of brown.

It's pretty. But sad. You know.

kid, you'll move mountains

2008-04-25T00:02:00.003-04:00

I found a black ballpoint pen in my purse today.

After a year's worth of notes, every single piece of my collection of black pens had seemingly died. But then I checked my purse, and there it was: a thin tube with a black artery still pumping straight through its middle. This is the pen that will get me through the last two exams. This is the pen that will accompany me to graduation. This is the pen that will write me to freedom.

I only ever write in black ink; never blue, and you'd have to pay me to use pencil. Its something similar to my refusal to pick up the 6 Richmond from anywhere but NatSci, or my inability to run without my ipod. I operate according to a schedule of habits, a grid of comfortable tics.

When I finish this last exam, I'd love to race down to Harris Park and take this last pen and chuck it from the banks into the swirling Thames. (From the Bank to the river.) Today I completed the last edits on my thesis, had it printed and bound, and then carried the package like a baby to University College to drop off for my professor to read and mark. I cradled it in my arms carefully. I'll probably receive my diploma soon and tuck it into a desk drawer somewhere, but this little thesis felt far more important. It weighed a ton, my book did. My book. No single piece of paper can ever mean as much as that pile of paper does.

For now, my pen is waiting for me. I probably won't end up throwing it into the river; I wouldn't want to disrupt the current after all.

navy brown

2008-04-23T14:07:00.002-04:00

A few days ago, while running near Cherryhill Mall, I saw: an empty bag of Beef Jerky and a used syringe sitting side-by-side on the sidewalk.

Last night, while walking near-ish to Jim Bobs, I noticed: one orphaned shoe (slutty metallic sandal!) lying next to an empty Bacardi Breezer bottle (strawberry?)

Last week, walking past the train tracks on a sunny afternoon, I found: the homeless man in the red jacket. (I had not seen him in over a year, and was worried that perhaps my favourite Richmond Row vagrant had died. In reality, all he did was get a new jacket [navy blue rather than dirty red]).

London sure has strange ways of saying goodbye.

close the chimney flue

2008-04-17T01:30:00.005-04:00

Warning: the following is just one of the many, many, many odes I've written for my (transplanted) roots and my East Coast boyfriend. Stop me if you think you've heard this one before.

Here, about two weeks away from the end of my undergraduate career, I've found myself involuntarily living in the past. But not really in the past past: everything that happened before that one night in the hospital four years ago doesn't exist to me anymore. There are traces, I guess, snapshots of what my childhood was like and audio clips of memories and flashes and seconds and blips. But sometimes I can't decipher between what really happened and what I just remember seeing on TV (inside my head, my childhood is probably half my own and half Kevin Arnold's.) No, now my tangible memories only reach as far as the start of university. So that's where I've taken up refuge lately. I'm spending my days in Halifax circa 2005.

As embarrassing as this is to admit, (and disregarding the fact that I've already revealed this secret to more people than I'd like to admit), one of the biggest reasons on my "pro" list for choosing Dalhousie was (sigh) Joel Plaskett. I'm not even sure what was going through my head at the time. I think, for a while there at least, I entertained myself with the possibility that this decade-older Canrock-er might actually fall in love with me. It was one of those eighteen-year-old-girl hopes that looked pretty and sounded funny but had some solid roots. I listened to "Down at the Khyber" on a cd player in my backyard during summer afternoons as my departure loomed. I watched old episodes of Street Cents online to catch glimpses of my new city I knew nothing about. I became obsessed with it all, because I needed to be hopeful about what was to come, because I still fought back tears each time I stabbed myself with a tiny needle, because there wasn't anybody to talk to, because I needed to be hopeful about something.

I moved out east, and I never once found Plaskett reading a tattered paperback on a bench in the Public Gardens, and I cried and I struggled and I tumbled, but there was always hope. (Is this getting sappy? Like, really sappy? I worry. I'm tougher than this.) I used to sit on the sill of my rez room window and listen to one of his old CBC Radio 3 sessions over and over, letting it repeat and repeat and repeat as much as it liked. I used to read the cartoon his girlfriend (or wife, now, maybe) drew for the city's free paper on a weekly basis. I used to go see him perform every time he was in town, even though that was frequently and the songs were always the same chords, the same banter, the same feelings. But at least I was feeling something.

I'll never advocate on behalf of Joel Plaskett, the amazingly innovative singer-songwriter. The music isn't anything special, and the boy behind the guitar is starting to lose his spark with every passing year. But I'm glad to have him on my side, all the same. Your Favourite Band Ever really should be the band that you're most afraid to admit liking. It should be the one band that you have a rehearsed defense for, the one that you follow with an embarrassed "I know" shrug, the one that still has meaning even if only in your room at night when nobody else is listening. Fuck, this is sappy. But Plaskett really, really did save me. I put the CBC session back on repeat tonight. It was probably the first time I'd listened to it in months, years maybe. And I sat on my bed, with a years' worth of notes on Old and Middle English fanned out before me, and I felt like I was still eighteen. And I cried, naturally, but they weren't exactly sad tears or fear tears-- just tears, just drops & drops for my rainy city and my long-lost East Coast boy, but really for some newer cities and newer boys.

I saw Plaskett at Pearson airport this past December. I was checking in at the counter and he was attempting to check in at the self check-in and failing miserably. He was flustered and there was a ice storm outside and our plane was delayed by four hours but the timing was perfect, and the world was beautiful. There's still hope. There always is. Thanks, Plaskett.

2008-04-12T19:35:00.003-04:00

Why can't this be my weekend? Why can't this be my Toronto? Why can't this be my life?

Check out this video: Saturday Afternoon montage

A memo from the 'fax.

2008-04-12T19:24:00.005-04:00

Plucked from the archived depths of my truly awful livejournal account, written on this exact day three years ago:

"The updates where I have nothing to talk about but nothing better to do until my episode of Sex and the City finishes downloading are definitely the best.

So yeah, I finished first year university last night- capped off with a very lacklustre english exam. But now it's done, and it's behind me, and I don't have anything left to worry about. I'm sure my marks are decent enough to get me into Western. I found out today that I have a job for the summer. I will get to see my mom and my dog on the day after tomorrow. The only thing I really have to worry about right now is the fact that my boxes and suitcases are still in the closet of my old room, and they made me give back my key, and the ex-roommate is going out drinking tonight and therefore won't be up for most of the day tomorrow but SHIT I need those things! Goddamn. I have to ship everything by tomorrow.

But oh well. I like when things fall in place like this. I considered myself to be extremely unlucky after everything that happened last year. Now, I can feel that life is getting fairer and overall better, but I know it's not luck. I worked so hard to be a good person this year- I observed every quality I hated in the people here and strove for the opposite. Now, I'd like to feel that it's paying off. It's a good feeling.

It looks like I'm not going to accomplish any of the things I wanted to do before leaving Halifax. I used up my dalcard dollars today, and filled out forms and arranged plans and bought gifts and walked downtown- but that's it. I could have gone out tonight for the last time but no one is available, and I'm just not feeling it. I'm not going to have time for Peggy's Cove. Hell, if I have to spend all day waiting for Kelly to wake up so I can get my bags, I'm not going to have time for anything tomorrow. It's a bummer and it makes me feel empty and incomplete and uneasy, but there's nothing I can do about it now. I accept it. At least the weather is somewhat nice.

Fuck. I hate residence. I will not miss it. Fuck Dalhousie. Fuck Dalhousie. Fuck you and your dirty toilets."

But really. How is Kelly doing now? It would be wonderful to know, but these days not even facebook can bring two former live-in enemies together (damn you, privacy settings).

this could be the last time

2008-04-09T01:13:00.002-04:00

Youtube won't let me link, but let me tell you-- it's worth it. It is oh, oh so worth it:

Part 1!

Part 2!

And Part 3!

And then they all something somethinged in the end.

ps. didn't I tell you it was worth it?

the seldom seen kid.

2008-03-31T23:59:00.005-04:00

I'd like to be able to sink into our quicksand pit of a couch and make it through an entire hour (or two or five) of mindless tv without feeling some sharp worry pangs about all the work and studying and reading and planning I should really be doing. I'd like to not worry, and then not worry about not doing anything about the worry, and then not worry about worry about worry about worry. I'd like to stop snowballing.

I'd like to finish school and travel, finally, again. I'm not lacking for experience: I've lucked out on a bunch of easy vacations in the past, and I took them for everything they had to give. But this winter has been this fucking winter and now I'm itching to get away again. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm moving to Toronto this fall (it isn't home, exactly, but it is only a short subway+bus ride away from home). I'm not moving to London, England (The Big Life Dream), and I'm not even moving to Montreal (The Substitute/"it'll do i guess" Life Dream). No, Toronto it is, and I'm sure it'll be good for me, and I'm sure I'll be good for it, but, really, I just need to get out of here at least once before I have to settle come September. I'd like to jaunt to NYC for a weekend. I'd like to go to Chicago for the Pitchfork fest....yes, again, so long as they add at least one more band worthy of giving me the chills to their roster, and so long as I'm not forced to stay in that horrible hostel again (I'm pretty laidback, but those shared bathrooms were the proverbial final nail-- I awoke one morning to find an unclaimed boy sleeping on the communal couch, and the sink clogged with someone's soaking wet weave. HIYA, HI-Chicago Hostel!)....I'd like to go back to England, as ever, as always, but I guess I'll just put that one in my pocket for now.

I'd like to finally finish the last few lagging pages of my thesis. It's my baby: I wrote the first page on the third day of October, let it germinate over the course of the year, and then finally hunkered down and poured out forty+ pages over reading week (I didn't leave the house and survived on coffee and arrowroots, exclusively) until I was nearly at the end. Now it's my postpartum blues: I haven't added more than a few sentences onto it since the start of March. It's just sitting here on my hard drive, steaming away, waiting for the conclusion I'm more than ready to write. In time, baby, okay? Gotta watch some more tv first.

I'd like to reach that day where I listen to "Someone Great" for the four millionth time and finally get sick of it, because it's been months and months and months and I'm still not there yet.

I'd like to march into a crowd of Western Girls dressed in salty UGGs and droopy sweatshirts and pooch-leaking leggings and scream out "you all look like Tony Danza circa the first season of "Who's the Boss?"!!!" But I never would, because they're all pretty scrappy.

I'd like to be the anti-Western girl: redder curlier hair and paler frecklier cheeks and faster walk and pencil-ier skirts and tougher face.

I'd like to drink white wine straight out of the bottle (20 year old Leslie's poison of choice) and then toddle over to the Keaton and puke in their Pepto Bismol pink ladies bathroom. Yeah, that's right, that's what I think of you, Alex P. Keaton: I love you to death but you make me sick.

I'd like to read as many books as possible while my eyes are still in reading shape and my spirits are still up reasonably high.

I'd like to trade my diabetes with someone else for a week, a day, even. I just need a break from needles, is all. Any takers? We can do a swap. I'll take what you got.

I'd like to not leave you behind.

I'd like to stop writing? I'd love to sleep.

running, returning

2008-03-29T15:57:00.005-04:00

One night some months ago, it was the start of the fall but it still felt like summer and the band Akron/Family (accompanied by members of Megafaun and one Pitchfork writer named Grayson) was setting up a slip 'n slide on our front lawn. It was somewhere around 3am, and any alcohol that may have been associated with the post LOLA evening was long, long gone. There was us (a few fourth year university students) there was them (a group of big-bellied, hairy bearded married musicians in their near-thirties), there were a few strangers we'd picked up during our walk home, there was a sheet of linoleum flooring they'd stolen from a house being renovated down the street, there was a bottle of dish soap, and there was a hose. They stripped and slided. They played a sing-along of their own songs using Karas' guitar. We forced the cat to come outside. We had a big group hug on the front porch before they lurched off to find the hotel they were staying in. It was the tamest, most innocent afterparty ever in the history of afterparties, and it was epic.

I went to bed that night hoping that the craziness that had just gone down would prove to be a precursor for the rest of the year. It had been an intense, unbelievable, unforgettable night, and I had faith that all the coming nights would be just as amazing and weird and good.

They weren't.

This was a year that saw me plummet academically, endure perpetual sweats over the future, learn to breed hatred for just about everybody, and lose contacts with some people and things that used to be of primary importance. I just slipped. (I also literally slipped on the ice one night during the tail end of London's horrible winter, but that's another story.) It was an endlessly hard year, and I'm not even in the clear yet.

Still, though. I mailed away my future yesterday (a single piece of paper cradled inside a way-too-expensive xpresspost envelope.) I felt like throwing up as I handed it to the girl behind the desk. She took my future and stamped it, hard, and then tossed it through a little slit. So there it is...there, it's gone. It's now.

I used to believe that my academic future would entail a leafy autumn campus full of warm old buildings and me, dressed in some sort of Ali McGraw-ish outfit, hugging a pile of books and leather-bound notebooks tightly to my chest. But I've slowly found the flaws in this vision: I don't have long black hair, nor am I attracted to Ryan O'Neal types, nor do I have the arm strength to lug a stack of books around. Come to think of it, Love Story sucked.

I'm surviving the year, just barely, and my future is currently in transit somewhere between London and Toronto. I've decided to pick the other future. The one that isn't connected to any past fantasies of mine. The one that doesn't include old buildings or musty books, but might come to include all these other things I've been too scared to even dream about. Things like slip 'n slides, afterparties, and massive nights. Epic songs filled with trumpets. Long-long-distance afternoon runs that turn my thighs to jelly. Stories that tumble beautifully out of my head after being cooped up in there for months. People who leave me besotted. A city that isn't London, and a campus that isn't Western. It took the entire year, but I'm finally hopeful again.

jump the hedges first.

2008-03-24T23:16:00.005-04:00

The surest sign of spring I've seen so far, ignoring the obvious sub-zero temperatures and perpetual southwestern Ontario snowfall: finally visible from beneath a slowly melting snowbank, the body of one dead squirrel set peacefully spreadeagled on a sunny stretch of sidewalk along Central Avenue. Looking like he's just laying out for a light afternoon tan. No bloodspots to speak of. The end of his tail already partially trampled by the salty winter boots of ignorant, good-for-nothing co-eds such as myself. Goodbye, James Squirrel Jones. Hello, springsomething.

hey london

2008-03-15T14:54:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I've walked in shoes without socks through a muddy park full of ugly urban squirrels, dead or alive, doesn't matter. A while since I've stood on the corner of the intersection waiting for a 21 Huron Heights to rumble past, dreaming of jayrunning to the other side, balmy from the last bits of sunshine creeping through the jagged roof of Jim Bob's. Since I've sidled out of the way to let a slurry girl in 4 inch heels and aStitches tube top lean forward and puke all over her claim of the sidewalk. Since I've seen that homeless man in the all-seasons orginally-red-but-now-concrete-coloured ski jacket shuffling outside of Planet Pizza, or, on occasion, stooping by the front doors of the public library. Since I've involuntarily written stories in my head while rocking uncomfortably, pressure shifting from foot to foot and back again, at some lame can-indie-rock show at Call the Office that I spent way too much cover on. Since I've stumbled home at three in the morning myself, blurred on a stream of terrible vodka and soda's. Since I've run past a dirty river that wasn't sealed off by a sheet of ice. Since I've hugged you and actually meant it, you filthy bastard. It's been a while.

"Play 'Summer of '69'!"

2008-02-29T20:40:00.009-05:00

Also, Ryan and Bryan happen to share the same birthday (November 5th). Beautiful.

Best Original Song From A Motion Picture EVER

2008-02-27T18:05:00.002-05:00

Yeah, I'm still stealing other people's ideas. What of it?

"That designated driver's pretty hot. I'd like to get her drunk."

2008-02-25T00:19:00.006-05:00

The Banks aren't hopeful. I became a pessimistic kid became a cynical teenager became a jaded grown-up (and that's a term I don't use lightly). Basically, love and happiness are things I'm wired to disbelieve in (and here's hoping that's a real word). Things can't possibly happen for a specific reason-- that's crazy talk. That's something taken straight out of chick lit, and there's nothing (nothing!) in the world I hate more than regurgitated chick lit.

But then this kindof turned it all around for me: On Freaks and Geeks, the tv show that became my favourite ever became my salvation became my guide for life, Lindsay and Nick fell in something like love and then fell out of it but probably would have fallen back into it again if season two had ever been allowed to see the light of day. In real life, Linda Cardellini and Jason Segel fell in love all the same. And then, several years later while sleepless at 2am and too lazy to find the remote to change from TBS, I realized that Lindsay and Nick had been paired up from the very start. The movie that had brought them together so many years ago was none other than...

...a movie that apparently only exists between the hours of midnight and four AM on channel forty seven. They played a couple in the movie, and then became a couple two years later thanks entirely to Judd Apatow and Paul Feig. And that, my friends, was the proof I needed to believe that love is real. If Nick and Lindsay can make it, surely anyone can.

BUT THEN THIS HAPPENED. And now I'm not sure I can believe in anything anymore.

everyday i write the book

2008-02-22T13:58:00.000-05:00

"Alright, well then maybe you're not her type. She's into stuff like old school Elvis Costello, she listens to obscure podcasts, she reads Dave Eggers. You know, she's deep, man."

The above quote doesn't come from any of my cherished obnoxiously contemporary novels or more-hipster-than-thou Brooklyn bands or indie-darling film-fest movies. No, in fact it's a line from summer '06's little gem John Tucker Must Die. (Note: viewing is not recommended.)

I've spent nearly twenty two years defining myself by the stuff that I love. There's some snobbery to it, obviously, but I do truly love all the things on these lists I've stapled onto my identity and held close.

In a few months' time, I am set to start defining myself by the stuff that I create. And I'm restless, because it's exciting. And I'm trembling, because it's absolutely terrifying.

Exactly one month ago I found myself standing on a pebbled pathway in the backyard of Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West. My mom was a few feet away, talking to a family of tourists from Norway who were temporarily escaping days of 20 hour darkness they'd left back home. I was bare-shouldered for the first time in forever, and those shoulders were blindingly white. The sun bounced off me. The lawn was covered with six-toed cats named after dead celebrities. I kneeled down to pet Truman Capote. The bitch tried to bite me. And I knew. I swore at the grey furry asshole, and I knew that it was time.

Getting into a Master of Fine Arts program for creative writing seems like a good reason to rationalize starting a blog. Or maybe starting a blog is a good reason to rationalize getting into grad school. Either way, it's the right time for me to stop relying on other people's words and start spewing out my own. Sorry, Elvis. Sorry, Ernie. I'm going it alone from here on in.