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Nov-Dec
NOVEMBER 16 2000the reason that almost everyone seemed like such a nice person when you were a child was because almost everyone likes children.
NOVEMBER 14 2000
face it: just as some people take naturally to art, sport, or dance, some also take more naturally to life itself.
NOVEMBER 03 2000
w e l l - a new month and still here we are. the space that we are in is fluid, unremarkable, profitable, yet fast moving. we move up and down as one; his highs are mine and my greatest highs are easily skidded to a halt by his tone. i would have used the phraseology 'bouncing' not long ago, to describe such a fluid state, but this is not bouncing. bouncing implies some form of touch. now it is more a fluidous state where unlike watching things pass us by, it seems as if i can't even see them. as if they are simply no longer there. where i used to wonder how much fun everyone was having, now i'm quite certain that i was in fact the only one having any kind of real fun, and that now i'm the one left standing hoping still to have any fun at all. i look around for those of us having fun and i'm met with empty stares. long nights with babies or obligatory lives required to provide our obligatory lives. well, it sounds much more desparate than it is, but it's not far off. everything is functional, for just about everyone. the few who dine and delight are far fewer than those who dine and dash. i pray for them all, the dashers and the diners, as i do for the woman in the neck brace and as i do for yourself, and for myself.
it's good timing for an all day seminar; good timing for some mEpping, good timing for
OCTOBER 30 2000
w e l l -
more discussions today with the "i prefer people who prefer questions to answers" man. dispite encroaching illness and icky-sounding coughing, my brain is on 'high' cycle and my analytical antennae are abuzz.
all i can say is, when you're on top, everyone looks like they're staring at the ground. man is that annoying.
we discussed the general state of incompetence and the miracle that buildings still stand. why does it make me such a virgo to want competence???? i guess strength in numbers caused humans to survive evolution.
______________________
OCTOBER 29 2000the clock says three-zero-zero. 3:00. the bed is cold and empty, save me. i met a girl who reminisced outloud, she talked and talked and wouldn't stop. i wondered what kind of batteries she had inside. she seemed like just your average drunk chick until she had a son. she seemed like just your average dead president until she said her sisters were whores (manner of speaking) and her husband had done time. i turned to look at trina, her eyes aglaze, she wasn't listening. why was i?
i listened because she was in fact a thoughtful girl; she could have been me, i suppose, telling my life in her way in that smokey room, so candidly, so ernestly. she rambled on in that way, coherently annunciating and using above average grammar for a drunk person, with an obvious remorse for the things she had done and the person she had been. yet what shone through behind her painted black and white pasty face was an unmistakable pride that i was drawn to and fixated by, in that back room where the conversation takes place...and finally i was tired, my coughing body and soul needed rest. so without remembering that the clocks were going back, i stood up, waited for any kind of pause in her breath, told her i was very tired however interested in her story, and had to go home to sleep. acknowledging only half-heartedly that she had not stopped talking for a very long time, her painted face looked down at the ground not far in front of where she sat cross-legged and declared "oh my god why would you have listened to me" and i quickly left that room, her wide-eyed, halloween made-up 'pretty' in her own words face etched sleepily in my mind.
photograph curtesy of CJE.
OCTOBER 26 2000 illness free, nearly.
now the java warms the soul, wakes my life spirit; sends me into the life of the living again.
many buzzing life forces surround me as the golden yellow maple leaves fill the picture window. they fill me too, with a sense of home - a warmth that can only be explained to a northern hemispherer raised in the burbs. Indian summer belongs to us now; the window is cracked open, outside life but rustles, two more swatches of sunshine about the size of your hand leave their temporary position on the twig as gravity takes them home. there is truly nothing more magical than fall literally cease-firing in your face. allows you to smell that pile of leaves you were hiding under in the back yard and um, even more of something i can only try to define as God-like, because who else would bother to paint a tree so?(photos taken here)
on voting; dispite my blase polictical indiference, i guess voting was taught to me as something that one simply MUST do. however i never close myself to novel ideas (or at least novel to me) and therefore it fascinates me when Time magazine will print ...and i quote "voting is not a charitable act. it doesn't help others or ensure a continued democracy. yu can be more effective donating those two hours to building a house with jimmy carter or even reading a story to jimmy carter....better yet, find someone who favors the candidate you were going to vote against, and stay home talking about the issues. it won't accomplish anything, but it will help us get election results more quickly. and that means an earlier work night on nov.7 for me" - joel stein. ok ok so it's humour. i guess it's just humour i don't find funny. even though all i know about any election is who the candidates are. (sometimes)
OCTOBER 24 2000
i used to work with only nice, decent people. scientists tend towards it.
now i work with the rest of the world. oh well.there have been thoughts running thru it - ramblings - mutterings
but now i will merely cathart as the book says, rid my focused consciousness of the concentrations i require in order to perform duties, my job, keep this home neat and tidy. and neat and tidy it is.
Joy hits at strange moments. Leo Sayer sings through my radio
and my blissful journey into a place that only exists in my mind
flashes through my head. that tall poplar tree in the Bourgeois'
front yard swayed in the thunderstorm, our lips still fresh with
the first few tastes of beer that we knew.
these fleeting moments come fewer and fewer. once, while my
hangover kept me awake at 4AM and recently in the car. what's a girl to do with aging memories....
<<<photo session coming soon>>>
SEPTEMBER 13, 2000
in the year 1989 i graduated from McGill University with a major in Genetics from the Biology department. Jobs were scarce.
in the year that 2000 i turned 35. jobs come knocking at your door nowadays. things are very very different. we are getting raises because the market is burssting. change, expansion and growth are everywhere. we barely recognize it. we're hanging on and hoping that things will stay this way.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2000 what do taxi drivers talk about?
interview in my mind:
him: "what's your passion?"
me: "food, really. and the progression of events" "i'm not extremely excited with what is,
what was, or the way things are. it's the combination of events that had to follow a certain sequence in order to lead up to what is now that is most intriguing. it's not sociology, per se, i'm not sure what the science is. it's the chain of events, the happenstance that mixed up all the facts and all the events in the combination, right or wrong, to produce the outcome. that is the true fascination, the only really exciting thing on the planet. unfortunately i'm not sure it's study will earn me a living. nor am i certain that it is possible to know anything like that in truth and detail.him: "so then, why should i hire you"
me: "because i have a combination of skills that is rare"
him: "oh?"
me: "even though my great passion is food and the history of food and the succession of events leading up to what is now and real, what is required to see the world in this way is a type of passion that crosses all boundaries of domains."
him: "how so?"
me: "i'm also empathic"
him: "oh"
me: "don't you agree that it would be nice if your Director of Customer Support was empathic?"
him: "maybe"
me: "i feel, intuitively" i'm seldom wrong. when i apply myself, i aim all of this passion and empathy at the 100% mark.him: "what motivates you?"
me: "i thought you'd never ask"
him: "after food and passion?"
me: "i'm greatly interested in pomp. glamour; true beauty; and showmanship, in any field. if you can entertain me without insulting me, go ahead.
SEPTEMBER 10, 2000
i've a laptop and it's in my lap.
tension wants to say high pressure, leave me aLONE.
leave me be to my mEpping, to my words of aloneness, my only moments of true sanity;
the only ones in the clearly understanding, where i look into this place, into this space and see clearness.sss where no one cares if my fingers smell of cigarettesmokeness; where there is no caring, no daring, no sparing, no forgiving, no Christines, no city smells; only five sleeps , five more sleeps.let me breathe into my space, my life. let me reflect myself as no ballerina ever saw,
into the deepest truest waters crystal with clarity, it's all i ask for. allow me this.is it this space which i fear a child would croach?
SEPTEMBER 08 , 2000
i'm sitting in a bustling corner cafe at the lively cross-section of ste. catherine and crescent streets in downtown montreal. i'm sitting here watching the goings on and i begin to wonder, why would anyone bother leaving this to go on vacation somewhere else? there was a time when all of what was downtown was so familiar to me, each nook and cranny uneventful to my eyes because i saw it every day. those days are the past now; but the sad part is that now there is so much more to miss. few empty store; no boarded up blocks, only action. only life. only downtown, what downtown should have rightly been when i was 19. but it was not. as i sat there watching the passerbys; the well-dressed Indian man sipping his latte, i wondered what he was doing there, in that place, and the suburban youth trying to figure out which hotspot they could get into: the same hotspots that we tried to get into when we were 19; the travelling girl with the noesrings, the new students eager to get drunk during frosh week, the bar hoppers in droves, the young girls sharing a beer in this extraordinary oak cafe; most certainly as extraordinary as any in a foreign place; which this, my own beautiful city, becomes to me by the moment. i feel sad that my city has grown, changed, and come into an own of it's own that is not the own that i knew or anticipated; and that i have not been there to watch it change.
i watch them counting as it goes in and out. a penny here, a penny there, but it must all add up in the end. who could keep track of that, who could spend more energy on that. where are their children while they are counting and what would they be doing if they were not? the creative minds are gone.
SEPTEMBER 07 , 2000
outside the ringing in my ears the chinese red reflects off the shiny rug.
i'm told the coffee table comes from mexico, so i suppose it's a bit of east meets west.
i'm searching inside groggy brain for some kind words; some created thoughts, but all i do is chew.
he sleeps.
i'm on the upper-budget balancing act and this is good, as the countdown ticks away... 15-7=8 ... so i'll be quiet in 8, for 27.
what? what of me? what of this empty brain? i'm cold, chilled like. i'm feeling neutral, and itchy.
i'm watching the time wittle. i'm reading the sides of boxes. i'm leaving on a jet plane. i'd need more coffee, that's what i'd need. harumph.
SEPTEMBER 05 , 2000 Anniversay days
we're deleting database entries and putting away the sleeping bags.
we're snuggling in the rain and watching incredible puppetshows.
we're eating steak and retrieving personal ads.
we're consoling friends and buying anniversary cards.
we're 'we-ing' we're 'me-ing' and we're 'he-ing'
we're taking time, we're eating out.
we're doing o.k.i have time to think about what i should think about.
i have time to wonder what they think and to care or not care.
i have time to stop and gently pat someone's back, i have energy,
i have myself.
i told you that the grounding was coming. i knew it was. the spinning around me has ceased. my world is a little bit sure dispite the uncertainties. my universe is expanding now. what else can i tell you right now; my upbringing has done me weller than that. i'm not unhappy with my breasts; i'm not ashamed of my family. play with nothing. toy around. lose yourself. sing. eat chicken soup, i don't care, just do what you have to do to be you. i feel strong. i feel so strong.
Unloved
There will be no consolation prize
this time the bone is broken clean
no baptism, no reprise and no sweet taste
of victory All the stars have fallen
from the sky
and everything else in between
satellites have closed their eyes, the moon
has gone to sleep
unloved unloved unloved unloved
here I am inside a hotel choking on a
million words I said
cigarettes have burned a hole and dreams are
drunk and penniless
here I am inside my father's arms
all jagged-bone and whisky dry
whisper to me sweetly now and tell me I will
never die
unloved unloved unloved unloved
here I am an empty hallway
broken window, rainy night
I am nineteen sixty-two and I am ready
for a fight people crying hallelujah
while the bullet leaves the gun
people falling, falling, falling and I don't know
where they're falling from
are they
unloved unloved unloved unloved
hoping that the kindness will lead us
past the blindness and
not another living soul will ever have to feel
unloved unloved unloved unloved
unloved unloved
Written by Jann Arden Richards. © 1994 PolyGram Songs (Canada) / Girl On The Moon Music
(SOCAN) Controlled by Songs of PolyGram International, Inc. (BMI)