cut my thoughts for coconuts

holy fuck.

2006-03-06T05:09:00.000-05:00

look at the time. look at it, goddamn it. insomnia strikes again.

i'm watching my houseplants wilt and haven't the motivation to water them.

i get grad pictures taken today. i'm not feeling particularly successful at the moment. and the finality of it all rather scares me. if i don't have the motivation to get some sleep so i can look decent in the morning, where am i going to find the motivation to write eight essays, two proposals, and five exams by the end of this?

my stomach just experienced a twinge. we're fucked, we're fucked, we're fucked.

a dangerous woman up to a point.

2006-03-05T14:26:00.000-05:00

so i'm having sex with one boy and illicitly falling in love with another.

actually, i'm not entirely sure that i'm falling in love with him. but i want to be, sometimes. i imagine fluttery stomach things and toy with his emotions, as someone falling in love should. there's a girlfriend involved somewhere, but i don't tend to notice such things in the throes of this sort of thing. passion? perhaps.

the boy who has become the other man to my other woman-ing is nice... he's beautiful when he's being earnest, and he's almost always earnest when naked. but there are weird moments of detachment. i think we're both pinch hitters for something else.

and i want that something else so desperately lately.

look at me, all i think about is men and sex. this does not bode well for my writing career. i'm going to have to force a less cliched theme on my thought patterns at some point. or what the hell, i'll just make everything into an allegory for what i don't want to talk about directly. that's just the thing these days.

reunited.

2006-03-02T01:40:00.000-05:00

well hello, blog. it's been a long time. how've you been? lonely? i must apologize for myself. i've been an insensitive boor.

i promised you a commitment and i've gone and whored myself out to essays and laziness. i must admit, the laziness was good... but it can't last with him. he's just so boring.

so i hereby renew my dedication to thinking out loud.
pay attention, someone. something may come of it yet.

errata.

2005-11-03T18:30:00.000-05:00

something someone said in my contemporary canadian lit class today:

he was only a cubist when it came to love.

i think it was in reference to modigliani. who is neither canadian nor an author. i wasn't really paying attention. but i liked the sentence.

a thought about happiness that emerged at 6am on saturday night while i was on mushrooms and recently surfaced scrawled on a sticky note when i cleaned my desk yesterday:

to look outside
and have someone
next to you,
breathing.

just like that.

problems with god and illness.

2005-11-01T02:19:00.000-05:00

so it took me a rather long time to acquire enough motivation to write my spinoza essay. it came out finally at approximately 2pm this afternoon in the form of a 5-page rant on how spinoza refuses to make sense. where's the authority, man? where's the authority. god doesn't count.

spinoza claims that truth is its own standard. if i don't doubt something, that makes it true. this gives interesting credibility to some of my most outlandish convictions. for example, my theory that asian people walk approximately 37% slower than north americans or australians. or my suspected underground collective of red-shoe-wearers.

part of the reason that it took me so long to finish (or indeed start) the essay is that on sunday i spontaneously became ill. but it was an ambiguous illness, as sometimes happens. my body ached, and i had a throbbing headache that refused to yeild to conventional medication, and i sort of felt quasi-feverish and my throat hurt, and my stomach was weird. this morning the headache persisted and i felt dizzy. unfortunately, none of these things add up to a doctor's note. i always have a problem with this... if i get ill, it's never ill enough.

i've also had this strange tingle on the right side of my chin all day. completely inexplicable. and rather odd, i must say.

i'll leave you with an image: at one point tonight, i had a handlebar mustache plus goatee made of red lipstick. you don't get a context.

spinoza and my thumb.

2005-10-25T21:48:00.000-04:00

i don't particularly care that spinoza thinks that i have adequate and inadequate ideas.

i also don't particularly care that he is a strong internalist, though i rather like the title. (not in its fancy philosophical definition, but in my imagining of it.)

unfortunately, i must care about these things. i must be passionate and argue with spinoza, and be quick and intelligent about it. in between 2000-2500 words. these things that professors get you to do for wee little arbitrary numbers sound very strange when you think about them long enough. unfortunately, that is precisely what they're telling you you have to do.

all i want to do is read and think. i'll write when i'm good and ready.

in other news, i managed to cut off a good sized chunk of the tip of my left thumb yesterday. i'd never really cut myself before, and it was strange, how quickly the blood came, how close it is to the surface at all times and how MUCH of it. now i have a little red dimple in my thumb that still persists with this infernal bleeding. i wonder what the brand new skin will look like.

i didn't realize until now that i don't use my left thumb at all while typing. though i have come to know how hard it is to fasten buttons.

concerts and underpants.

2005-10-20T03:57:00.000-04:00

why yes, i am aware it is a wednesday night. at an ungodly time.

i am only slightly aware, however... due to the powerful combination of lack-of-sleep, cold medication, booze, cigarettes, an amazing concert, several amazing parties, more booze, and more lack-of-sleep.

saw broken social scene tonight, with new buffalo opening. feist and sarah harmer made surprise appearances. i hadn't heard bss's new material yet, and i must admit it didn't particularly stand out for me... but perhaps that was the crowd's fault. i was absolutely appalled at how cadaverously still everyone was. most people didn't even contribute the obligatory head-nodding or hand-clapping when provoked. quite sad. why buy the ticket?

went to the grad club afterwards for the alleged afterparty. myself, along with my cohorts karen, brendan, and brendan's way-older brother retreated to the upstairs bar to avoid the quite mediocre open-mic night that was going on... and lo and behold, who walks in but sarah harmer. then feist. then nearly every single freakin member of broken social scene. so we snuck behind the bar and put on a jamiroquai tape (only music laying around) and tried to pretend that we didn't notice them. strange impulses when you see your favourite musicians... you want to say something, but don't want to come off like a sad wee groupie, and definitely don't want to start with "hey, great show..." so what to do? pretend not to stare, essentially. and spend the time narrativizing the event to tell your friends later.

much cooler than the "i love your music" awkwardness, however, was the fact that as we were leaving, kevin happened to have (at least semi-) drunkenly taken over the open mic night and made up a song to a chick in the now itty bitty audience. both hilarious and brilliant. love him.

then i went home and danced in my underpants.

caffeine revelations.

2005-10-13T21:27:00.000-04:00

i've recently noticed that when i drink caffeine, not only do i become shaky and slightly manic, but my vision improves. it sort of feels like my prescription has suddenly become too much for me. the boundaries and edges of things hurt my eyes, and light looks like metal.

this is particularly fun when it rains. looking at a puddle under a streetlight is like looking at the sun. i feel glowy in my melbourne-coat and fancy umbrella, and people look at me like i have secrets. or so i'd like to think.

just returned from a book reading (catherine bush, "claire's head") where the author talked about pain as a form of consciousness. interesting, i thought. i liked her shoes, so i trusted her.

had several awkward moments waiting for her to begin, because i had had a serendipitous run-in with a guy who had previously asked me for directions then happened to be sitting next to me. it would have been a lovely beginning to a story-book relationship if he'd been at all attractive. pity. i spent the time trying to avoid acknowledging the coincidence and eye contact by tracing "dixie" with my finger over and over again on the cup of coffee i mentioned earlier.

you see? everything's connected. and perhaps i really shouldn't drink coffee.

yearnings.

2005-10-12T22:04:00.000-04:00

just watched the new Bob Dylan documentary (incredible). but now i'm listening to Satie.

i'm torn between a desperate need to become a dusty nomadic neo-folk singer in the southwest and a longing to move to Paris and drunkenly plunk out spare melodies on a beat-up old piano in a womb-like apartment.

both involve cigarettes.

how camembert saved my life.

2005-10-11T00:36:00.000-04:00

so i've failed to write every day so far. no surprise there.

a chronological review of thanksgiving weekend:

1. train delayed, ride home late, cold but no coat.
2. talked at length about how i hadn't been sick for months, then promptly got sick.
3. partied in complementary housecoat in the penthouse of a casino with ex's new girlfriend.
4. cynical attack on ex for furtively trying to hide existence of new girlfriend (no need, i'm not evil or jealous).
5. spent saturday night watching romantic comedy with father and codeine.
6. thwarted in attempts to buy new broken social scene album. apparently it doesn't exist in windsor.
7. cold-medication-induced insomnia makes me into snot-ridden zombie woman.
8. thanksgiving dinner was nice. i brought camembert.
9. avoided doing only homework assignment despite being bored senseless.
10. more cold-medication-induced insomnia, despite copious amounts of nyquil. i even watched wrestling.

so things aren't quite going as planned.
sleep would be nice. so would productivity. so would a non-messy social life, maybe. (who am i kidding, i'm bored when there's no mess to poke at.)

i'm going to creatively write something soon. i can feel it.

in the meantime, i could use a hug.
but don't forget the plastic gloves, or i'll infect you.

love then and now.

2005-10-02T17:16:00.000-04:00

last night i sat and talked with my 18 year old housemate on my fire escape, him and one of his friends, about girls and music. they made me feel old, but not just because of the numerical difference. they were both so idealistic and in love... one had a girlfriend back home that he was contentedly obsessed with, sure that they'd last out the year of long distance. the other one had just met a girl and had a great first date with her, laying on grass and looking at stars, surprised that they weren't nervous around each other. (i'm not surprised, they were quite drunk.) they were both just so sweet about love... still in awe.

then they ask me if i had a boyfriend, and i had to say no. it's been some time since i've connected with a man on a relatively deep level. (travel-relationships don't count.) since the last it's been furtive drunken affairs and failed flings, nothing with any meaning other than "perhaps don't do that again." i don't know if i miss their fuzzy-eyed idealism, though it is nice to know it still exists... but i do fear losing the knowledge of what it feels like. don't get me wrong, i have minimal cynicism regarding men and love, but i must admit i've become slightly discouraged.

at this point, love isn't something to be in awe of really. more usually, love is just annoying. you know how great it is, how it changes people, but you also know that if you go out looking for it you're just going to get frustrated, only find more booze and failed sexual experiments. these things are pretty cathartic too sometimes, i suppose.

but forget all these cliched meanderings. all i want is someone to fall asleep with. and i don't care who it is as long as he smells good and my head fits into that place between his shoulder and his collarbone.

please excuse me while i listen to sappy music and kick myself.

a motivation experiment

2005-10-01T15:02:00.000-04:00

i currently have no motivation. this is a problem, as there are a lot of things in my life that require motivation right now. so this is an experiment.

i figure that if i can write something/anything on this blog thing at least once a day, i might be prompted to write journals again. and if i write journals again, i might have some concept of what the hell i'm thinking. and also i might write fiction again. and maybe essays, which are sort of necessary to complete my degree.

there may be absolutely no logic to this experiment, but i've always been lacking in that as well.

so anyone who may pay attention at any point... enjoy. welcome to the frustrated neural misfirings of a quasi-neurotic (currently slightly hermetic) student.

i desperately need a cheese sandwich.