high above the largest ocean on planet earth

We must talk in every telephone, get eaten off the web
We must rip out all the epilogues from the books that we have read
And into the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare

We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell
Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell
And in the ear of every anarchist who sleeps but doesn't dream
We must sing, we must sing, we must sing

While my mother waters plants
My father loads his gun.
He says, "Death will give us back to God,
just like the setting sun is returned to the lonesome ocean."

We must blend into the choir, sing as static with the whole,
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul,
And to this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run, we must run, we must run.

We must hang up in the belfry where the bats in moonlight laugh
We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And into the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.

And then we'll get down there,
way down to the very bottom of everything
and then we'll see it, oh we'll see it, we'll see it, we'll see it.

Oh my morning's coming back
The whole world's waking up
Oh the city bus is swimming past.
I'm happy just because
I found out I am really no one.

At the Bottom of Everything
Bright Eyes

tapping your time on a conga drum

i made a new friend from south africa who introduced me to my newest goal. emu riding. wee!

the bits of your broken tooth

o job hunt. you are so demoralizing. once again i begin to consider the benefits of marrying rich.

white as a knuckle and terribly upset

i have made yogurt twice now.

wait, that's a lie.

i have successfully made yogurt twice now. there was some trial and error but i have mastered my own process. i am eating some of my second batch right now and i have not died or even fallen seriously ill.

it's actually quite simple. so simple it seems like it shouldn't work. warm your oven to 100 degrees and turn on the interior light. at the same time, bring a pot of milk to a boil. watch it carefully because once it hits boiling point it foams over in half a second. remove from heat and let cool until it is lukewarm to touch. technically you want to heat the milk to 180 degrees, then cool it to 110. i still use a thermometer because i'm very impatient and messed up at least one batch by not letting it cool long enough. once cooled, stir in a tablespoon of plain yogurt with active cultures - this is likely any plain yogurt you buy at the store or leftovers from a previous batch. cover with a lid and place in the warmed oven. leave the light on but turn the heat off. the light is enough to maintain the level of warmth that will cultivate the bacteria. after seven hours you will have yogurt! and the longer you leave it past seven hours, the thicker and more sour it will become.

i prefer plain yogurt. i add honey or fruit when i eat it so i don't have any suggestions for how to flavour your creation. but it's yogurt! and you made it! i say just try it to feed to friends. yogurt party!

the sun was burning out the cells in my brain

this particular strip is just so very appropriate for my blog.

now seems to be a good time to introduce you all to a softer world. i discovered this delightful little art-comic when it used to be published in the coast, halifax's weekly entertainment newspaper. we ripped it out nearly every week to display on the fridge or someone's door. if i ever find a place to live (i'm still crashing at whit's itty bitty bachelor apartment) i want to order prints from their web site to adorn my walls.

the sound of loneliness makes me happier

the gestation period of a human has passed since my last post. this may lead some to wrong conclusions regarding the reason for my silence. in truth, i simply grew tired of my own narcissistic navel-gazing. and while the past nine months have been filled with events that have rocketed me to bliss and drop kicked me to depression, i have not felt the urge to record these moments. it was a relaxing break for my brain to simply allow this veritable roller coaster of emotion to wash over me, being fully present in it instead of detaching myself by constantly narrating life inside my head.

last spring found me starting my first full time job out of necessity and not desire. in a cubicle, no less. i would list that under the drop kick category. i sincerely felt the drudgery of nine-to-five, monday to friday office work. dilbert comics took on a whole new meaning in my life. i lived for friday. while i understand the vast majority of our society lives like this, i cannot see how. i suspect drinking helps.

monica moved in while she prepared to head back west without me. her departure was gradual (it took three tries for it to finally take) which helped me to adjust to being somewhat alone in the east. it is a very strange feeling to be surrounded by people who have only known you a year. shared history suddenly seemed surprisingly important. none of these people, whom i loved dearly, had met my first car, seen me wear orange ballroom skirts to high school, even recognized mr. pg. i savoured the freedom and the loneliness for the few months it lasted.

then, the culmination of a year's planning and scrimping. europe. most definitely the top of the bliss list. made each and every day spent sorting emails in a lifeless gray box worth it. walking the streets of paris at twilight, drinking wine in borrowed glasses in the middle of palazzo san marco in venice, racing across the tarmac for first-come, first-serve airplane seats with ryanair... those and so many, many more are dream fulfilling moments i can never forget and each one still makes my heart race.

after a few final glorious weeks in halifax, i began the sudden and unexpected drive back. the return across canada, in the same circumstances and with the same wonderful beings as the initial trip, was almost a life in rewind. the first couple days felt as though the two years spent in the east had never happened; that we had arrived triumphantly and were now simply turning back for home. in fact, i kept insisting it was spring, perhaps imagining that we had wintered on the coast. return trips to moncton, montreal, dryden, georgetown, winnipeg and nelson only reinforced the feeling of living in reverse.

now i have landed once again into some sort of normalcy. restarting life back on the west coast is proving to be a challenge, of course, but a delightful one. the job hunt is not my favourite activity. i am absolutely sure within myself that i am more than capable of doing the jobs that i apply for but i find it difficult to prove that to potential employers by means of a cover letter and resume. let me have an interview and i can tell you! but more often than not i don't get that chance. my skills, experience and knowledge are a little all over the map. payroll, design, cheque checking, serving, insurance, cleaning, machine embroidering, reception, knitting, selling... even i have to admit the breadcrumbs on my career path are widely scattered.

which brings me to the straw that broke the stubborn camel's non-blogging back. MetaLab is looking for an office asssitant. look at their web site. it is beautiful. beyond the initial aesthetically pleasing design, it is functional, clean, straightforward... a stunning example of everything i believe web sites should be. everything i wish my web sites were. and i desire this job breathlessly. i want to fetch their dry cleaning and bring them coffee and type minutes of meetings if it means i can absorb some of their genius in the process.

*note* my apologies to the metalab team for this shameless begging and flattery. please be assured it is completely sincere. i just want the chance to work with you.

i know what this metal is for

Indeed, there is nothing more vexing, for example, than to be wealthy, of decent family, of decent appearance, not badly educated, not stupid, even kind-hearted, and at the same time to possess no talent, no special quality, nor even any eccentricity, not a single idea of one's own, to be decidedly 'just like everyone else'. Wealth, perhaps, but not the wealth of a Rothschild; an honourable family, but not one that has ever distinguished itself in any way; a decent appearance, but really not very expressive; a decent education, but no idea about how to put it to use; intelligence, but an absence of one's own ideas; a heart, but a lack of generosity, etcetera, etcetera, in every respect. There is an extremely large number of such people in the world, and even far more than it may seem; they are divided, like all human beings, into two main categories: those who are limited and those who are 'far more intelligent'. The first category is the happier one. For the limited 'ordinary' person there is, for example, nothing easier than to imagine himself to be an unusual and original person, and to take enjoyment in this without hesitation. Some of our young ladies need only have their hair cut short, put on blue spectacles and call themselves nihilists in order to be instantly persuaded that, having donned the spectacles, they have at once begun to possess their own 'convictions'. Some men need only feel a drop of some universally human and good-natured feeling within their hearts in order to be instantly persuaded that no one feels as they do, that they are in the vanguard of public enlightenment. Others need only accept some idea by word of mouth or read a page of something without beginning or end in order instantly to believe that this is 'their own idea' and has been conceived within their own brains. In such cases, the insolence of naivety, if one may be permitted to express it thus, attains an astonishing dimension; it is all of it incredible, but is constantly encountered . . .

One of the dramatis personae of our narrative, Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, belonged to the second category; he belonged to the category of men who are 'far more intelligent', though completely inflamed, from head to toe, with the desire to be original. As we noted above, however, this category is far more unhappy than the first. The fact of the matter is that the intelligent ordinary man, even though he may imagine himself in passing (and, indeed, throughout the whole of his life) to be a man of genius, and most original, none the less retains within his heart a worm of doubt, which sometimes leads to the intelligent man ending in total despair; for if he submits, it is not until he has been entirely poisoned by a vanity that has been driven inward. However, we have in any case taken an extreme instance: for the overwhelming majority of this intelligent category of men, matters do not proceed at all so tragically; their livers may deteriorate towards the sunset of their lives, perhaps, but that is all. Even so, before surrendering and resigning themselves, these men sometimes continue to play the fool for an extremely long time, all the way from their youth to the age of submission, and all from a desire to be original. Strange instances are even encountered: from a desire for originality an honest man may be prepared to resolve upon a base action; it sometimes even happens that one of these unfortunates is not only honest, but is kind, the Provider of his household, maintaining and nourishing by his toils not only his own family, but others, too, and what do we see? All through his life he can have no rest! For him, the thought that he has performed his duties as a human being so well is not at all a calming or consoling one; even the contrary -- it is this thought that irritates him: 'This,' he says, 'is what I have wasted all my life on, this is what has bound me hand and foot, this is what has prevented me from discovering gunpowder! Had it not been for this, I would certainly have discovered either gunpowder or America -- I don't really know which, but I would certainly have discovered one of them!' Most typical of all for these gentlemen is that throughout their lives they can never ascertain for certain just what it is they need to discover and just what it is that, all their lives, they are on the point of discovering: gunpowder or America? While their sufferings, their longing for discovery, would truly have been enough for Columbus or Galileo.

The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

i will write the song that breaks you

there has been much misunderstanding surrounding one of my twenty-five statements. strangely, i've usually found that when i'm purely honest i am not the only one who feels a certain way. i usually rely on this when revealing personal information. if it's something i can't imagine anyone else agreeing or sympathising with i generally keep it to myself. so i've been rather surprised that a recent realization i came to is unique to me. at least, as far as i've heard. but maybe if i explain it won't seem so strange.

i'd rather be interesting than happy. i think the misunderstanding lies in the idea that i want to appear interesting to others. that's not what i mean at all. i agree that would be shallow and unfulfilling. i want to be interesting to myself.

i think it's why i often satbotage myself. i believe that i would be happier if i followed a balanced routine with an early bedtime and nightly flossing of my teeth. but i also believe this would bore me. so i find myself unable to stick to any such schedule for extended periods of time. i intentionally stay up too late reading or working on a project because i think it's more interesting, even though i also know i'll regret it later.

i know other people do this as well. they probably just think of it in different terms. or perhaps others have different motivations for this kind of behaviour.

the schedule thing is only a minor example. most of the time i'm sure the reason i can't maintain the routine i think i should is simply because it is unreasonable or unrealistic so i get tired and just don't want to maintain it anymore. human, or so i'm told.

but this thinking applies in most decisions in my life. i would likely be happier if i lived closer to my family or accepted my limitations and lived within them or learned to be content. but my mind instantly rejects any such thought. i do not choose the path i think will make me happy; i choose the path i think will teach me more and prove more interesting. and, for whatever reason, the two don't coincide as often as you would think they would.

that's not to say that i'm desperately unhappy either! just that the pursuit of happiness isn't a priority in my life. am i alone in this?

i must have slipped between his teeth

twenty-five things about me

1. i am an introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging, rational mastermind. that means i am anal, ruled by logic, and fiercely independent.

2. sometimes my mom calls me sweetcheeks. i know she calls other people this too but it makes me feel very special when she says it to me.

3. i love my family immensely. they are my favourite people in the world. i love that we are all uniquely dysfunctional people on our own but that we can come together and laugh about it.

4. i have more than my fair share of amazing friends in my life. not sure how that has happened but i am constantly blown away by it.

5. i would rather be interesting than happy.

6. i am a compulsive knitter and reader. i wish i had other hobbies that i consider more cool or productive, such as painting or sewing, but to some extent i think hobbies pick you and not the other way around.

7. i want to see, do, try, and experience everything. most of the time this feeling is so overwhelming i am paralyzed by indecision and instead do nothing.

8. my dream trip is russia.

9. i consider myself a writer even though i haven't written anything seriously since high school.

10. i believe all men are either liars and scum or pansy momma's boys. sorry dad, you fall under momma's boy. but that's one of the things i love about you.

11. i still believe in love.

12. i have always felt that redheads are a superior people living among us. i only wish i was one and i hope they accept my imitation as a form of honouring them.

13. i am so cheap i save and reuse tea bags.

14. generally i prefer to eat brown rice, vegetables, and homemade soup but once i bought a warehouse pack of chocolate pop tarts and lived off it for a week. and another time, after a mild emotional breakdown, i ate an entire two litre tub of rolo ice cream in one sitting.

15. i hate getting older because i don't think i'm learning enough in the process. also, i miss my naive idealism.

16. wearing rain boots makes me feel invincible.

17. my one true love was morton gunther adolf schmidt, an '87 vw jetta. i loved him more than i like most people and when he died i cried longer and harder than i have about anything else. i find this funny and sad at the same time.

18. sometimes i feel my most dominant emotion is envy. i'm really working to become someone who rejoices when others rejoice without any thought for myself.

19. i have an unprecedented capacity for sleep. my secret talent involves getting up at the last possible moment and being washed, dressed, and out the door within ten minutes.

20. i need people more than i care to admit. even to myself. i wish i was a better people-person. i don't even really know what that means and that may be the beginning of my problem.

21. the blues is my favourite form of music. it honestly portrays the messiness of life in a way that makes you want to dance.

22. i am most grateful for Jehovah's forgiveness for many reasons, one being that it is teaching me to forgive myself.

23. sometimes i feel that people - even those closest to me - are afraid of me. this is the loneliest feeling i know.

24. i find kilts sexy.

25. i am most at peace when walking at night. i look forward to the time when i can do this without people worrying about me.

the clock keeps on doing its job up on the wall

my baby brother is coming to visit me! ack! i am so excited i could vomit.

steve will be here in five days. and he's staying for seventeen! we will have many adventures and happifying moments. i have plastered the house with pictures of him to prepare my room mates for his arrival.

ok, plastered is a bit of an exaggeration. i have randomly placed eight pictures throughout the house.

i want to do everything while he's here. i want it to be his favourite trip ever so he talks it up and convinces my big brother and my baby sister to visit me too. any hints as to how to impress him? i've got lots of food on my list. one problem is he's not a fan of seafood, so one of our biggest attractions is shot. maybe i'll just bribe him with candy. it would work for me.