« September 2005 | Main | November 2005 »
...Red Wine, Bruschetta, the Godfather, and discussions about Gender Roles. While she didn't intend to, or even understand, it was rather wonderful. She even managed to tickle me, so I suppose everyone won.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Vinyl Syndicate - Man of Steal
Currently Eating: French Bread, Blue Cheese, Left-over Bruschetta
Currently Making: Pasta Sauce for later, it's a good weekend
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Death Cab For Cutie (soundtrack of my life these days, between this, The Postal Service, and world music, I'm not listening to much else)
Megali came over, dearest surrogate sister. I called her and then slept until she arrived. We sat around drinking coffee and tea, eating ginger snaps and ice cream, talked about relationships and happiness, school and life, growth and rest. We stayed up far too late, listening to Balinese Gamelan and Classical Indian music. She left in the morning to do a series of errands. And then, so did I.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: The India CD from my MUSC class (this copy is better encoded, d/l it even if you did before)
Currently Eating: Hashbrowns, Eggs, Baked Potato w/ butter and sour cream, Potato Skins w/ Cheese. Ummmmm, breakfast potatoes...
My back is sore, and I'm tired of sitting. Computers, classes, busses, meetings. I stare at screens almost more than I do anything else. (I am acutely aware of the irony of my blogging now, don't bother) It's strange, but all I want to do right now is watch a movie. Maybe it's because I've been so damned active mentally as of late. Maybe I just want to be told a story, just sit back and enjoy.
Everything is going well, which is a weird thing to say given my circumstances. But everything is as it should be. Hard work and determination shall be the meter of my happiness, graciousness and accomplishment its melody.
Responsible Consumption Week is coming to a head, really important things are going to be moving in the next two weeks, focused almost entirely on me. Renewable Resources doesn't have another midterm for an other three weeks or so, plenty of time to catch up on my missed learning. Contemporary Moral Issues is going wonderfully, except my grade, except my grade, except my grade. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is... going, more of an expectation of what November will look like (all the memorisation and blocking should be figured out by December, and if that happens I'll be glad). World Music Cultures is joy distilled, the more I learn in the class and about the prof, the more thankful I ended up there. The Thesis should be worked on this weekend, and a meeting with my advisor should happen next week.
Halloween might well be a time of relaxed work and early evenings. I'm planning to carve pumpkins and watch a Korean film on Monday, but not much else. I just don't think I have any real desire for partying. I just want to ... chill.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Death Cab For Cutie / The Postal Service
You Should Download: The Bali CD from my World Music Cultures Class. Gamelan-y goodness.
What do you find comforting?
Not being betrayed.
Maybe the problem is that I'm inherently dramatic, that the stuff sticks to me like flies on shit. I don't look for pity, or for support, despite what my detractors might claim. I suppose I'm just done with lying. School seems to be the last refuge of that, things aren't really nearly as honest as they could be. Or perhaps I'm viewing things through a slightly too dark lens. Or maybe that's just how I interact with others professionally, my tact and grace take on a slightly heightened tone. Sometimes I let the more blunt me slip out, and I always seemed to get shocked looks. I love to hear you swear, it reminds me that you're human.
I'm really quite easy to please. Be consistent, be honest, be yourself. I'm not sure I ask anymore of people, yet this seems to be a huge hurtle for most. Our society teaches us to be the exact opposite of each of these things, perhaps I should be saying Reject your social programming to more accurately gauge the weight of my demands.
I played in a Balinese gamelan ensemble today on a bronze keyed xylophone. My gods, I'm in love. It's like immersive music, the point is not performance, but more participation. There's no notation, and all the teaching is oral. If you get lost, you can literally feel where you should go and you'll be right. The gamelan instructor referred to the ensemble as a family, and it was so true. You accept and need everyone there, even if some of the members are strange and alien to you.
I'm still weary and wounded from the Moot. I'm tired constantly, my shoulders do funny things when I stretch out my arm, and there's a series of welts and bruising on my left shoulder. I went from 8am Saturday to Sunday at 10pm while getting maybe one hour or two of sleep in that whole period.
There's a RCW meeting on Thursday, hopefully I'll have had a chance to do some work on that beforehand, as well as a Balinese listening quiz. Tomorrow is studying, schooling, and funeraling.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: NIN - Only (from With Teeth)
Last night, I ended my LARP, my fictional world, my obsessive passtime, my simulation, my socio-political commentary, my myth cycle. I knew since Wednesday and have been randomly bursting into tears over it. The end was right, the time was right, the story was actually complete and it had proper flow. A story of stories, a meta-arc. But it's over. I've done World of Quest's End for longer than I've done anything in my life. Longer than any schooling institution, longer than any relationship, more involved and detailed than anything I have ever done. It is my single greatest creation, and it's done. I attended the last Moot, said nothing, waiting for the end under blankets. I cried before, during, and after. It was good, and right. But I will miss it, its passing saddens me. As I mentioned: it seems to be a time for endings.
I will be having a wake for all the people who have ever been involved in it. Sometime next month, probably the second or fourth Saturday.
Written On: Brother's Computer
Currently Listening: Death Cab For Cutie - Title And Registration
My uncle is dead.
A possibly melodramatic way to start a post, it wasn't intended that way. I'm not upset or railing against it. Seems to be that time of year: one of endings. Perhaps, more appropriately, that sort of time in my life. I think it is for the best. He suffered a major heart attack while driving and while he didn't crash (that is frankly beyond me) he had no brain activity for a really long time afterwards. If he had survived, he would not have even been the same man. Better to die a great eye surgeon, having lived a good and prosperous life, than live out the rest of your life as some empty shell of a man.
I worry about his children. He wasn't old (only around 50) and his children are too young to take it well but not young enough to not understand. Early teenaged years is not the time to have your father snatched from you without any warning.
I haven't had time to think about it much. Been a bit busy, if not in action than in mind. Been working on school assignments and gearing up for an important Moot this weekend. He had the heart attack on Wednesday and was dead by Friday. His body gave out, who knows why, but it did. Everyone has a moment to die, it seems. It just is. I wasn't too close, but not too distant either. Seems to be my relation with the dead.
The funeral is on Wednesday, I will be missing rehersal for it.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism (song off the album of the same name)
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism (full album)
Currently Eating: Heritage granola with rice drink
Excepted from a year-long Fellowship in Economics informative message I just got:
...Application Process, Timelines and Salary Information
This position is intended to attract top candidates. The salary for this position is $40,000 and it will be located in Toronto. Moving expenses, subject to a limit, will be covered for successful out-of-town candidates....
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Kidneythieves - Zerospace (full album)
Bali may be the coolest little place ever. I'm a wee bit dubious about the gender divide (as it seems only men do all the cool stuff, which is bad), but other than that this place seems awesome. It's a small island in Indonesia that isn't Islamic (the only one, they're Hindu) and their cultural integrity is staggering. It is a place where Western values and culture tried to take hold and just... didn't. It's not that the Balinese are necessarily anti-western, or that they are resistant to change. Quite the opposite, they love innovations, especially of the artistic variety. But TV, constant irrigation, computer games, etc just... doesn't interest them.
It almost isn't even real. There aren't seasons there. Like, no perceptual difference between them. Also, every village has two temples, one to the ancestors of the village and one to the goddess of death and destruction. Typically no other temples. The pic above is the detailing on a goddess temple.
Shit, I knew I forgot something. I forgot to take out the Balinese CD from the library. No wonder I've got them on the brain. On that note...
I love you. I could say it again and again, and never entirely get sick of hearing it. Sometimes there is a deep need, some unfulfilled action that needs to be exorcised, which can never be fully perhaps out of some socially conditioned desire for a reply. Sometimes it is like the tide, not like a torrent or storm, but some strong undercurrent that would pull me into the vast emptiness of cold saline creation where fish crawled from to learn how to walk and breathe. Sometimes it is like a pile of blankets, soft, warm and comforting; bodies piled like so much cloth and wool, tracing the lines behind ears and under smiles. Sometimes it is unsaid, waiting upon the perched gestures of a girl as frantic and mad as I am. Sometimes it is hidden behind sidelong glances from behind hair, around glasses, or both. Sometimes it lives alongside terror born out of actions that are not yours, from baggage that you did not give me, living silently with rejection and abandonment. But no context makes it not true.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Bjork - Homogenic (most of the album anyways)
Just Ate: Herbed Crackers w/ Emmental Cheese, Soda Crackers w/ Corn Relish
Currently Eating: Open Faced Peanut Butter, Macintosh Apple, & Raisins sandwhich on Buttermilk and Honey Loaf
Currently Making: Pasta Sauce from Juggler's Roma Tomatoes (I think I've got my supplies down to less than 2 kilos!)
Purple, I call you mistake, I call you weakness. A complex web of reciprocity shone through filters and reflected, waiting for the light to get there when it never does. The mind is willing, but the body unable. The body is willing, but the spirit unable. Representative of some internal conflict that I refuse to reconcile with, that I couldn't even if I tried. Some fundamental contradiction I want you but no beathed most often without words. I don't want things I can't have, but even I can be fooled into thinking I can have things that want me. But the spirit is unable.
Red, far more appropriate now, fires burning into watered rust that wears down shoulders. Some terrible incestuous dance I can't stop. I would have called you wife. I just want to speak and be understood, by the ears the message was intended for. Don't get me wrong, I refuse to live like a shattered empty shell. I don't need to redefine subsistence because I know it is merely a matter of calories, elements, and sleep. I don't delude myself into believing it is more. But sometimes I slip, into that dangerous gambit.
In the morning, this will be a shallow memory, which heals quickly. Like some nightmare, it cuts to the quick, but drifts away as the day rises to fullness.
Written On: Home Computer
I've never not been able to sleep because of coffee. I'm really sleepy but am very awake. Apparently two cups of poor man's turkish coffee (grind up real fine, mix with boiling water) is enough to keep me up. Once, coffee was bad, this terrible representation of an awful work environment and the source of serious negative physical side effects. Now it has become a comfortable luxury, like wine, drank rarely yet deeply enjoyed.
However, I haven't drank 2 cups in one sitting in a very very long time. Apparently caffeine works...
Written On: Home Computer
I don't intend to give people a terrible view of my life here. Sometimes, I feel a quiet piece of panic rise up in my throat and in my mind, and this is where I share it. Sleeplessness and possibly a slightly too busy lifestyle often give rise to these. But make no mistake, I am happy. The world is a cold and terrible place, but I like it here. I can't help but see the majesty of life, beauty dripping from every leaf, from every sliver of light, from the curves that delight my eye of every stupid little infactuation I get. These things are a song written to my health, a melody of joy played upon the heartstrings of a worn cello.
I want to make music.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Venus Hum - Bella Luna (full album)
Currently Eating: French Toast made by Beth, w00t!
The house is sticky hot from cooking and some sort of squash-like plant is still in the oven I think it's a sugar pumpkin or some such, I hope it tastes good. Was up faaar too late last night, didn't go to class today - partially a rebellion against how little I will learn - and I've got rehersal tonight. There's a part of me that wants to run off and find an early afternoon showing of Domino and just go by myself beforehand. However, I really should go process my Student Loan, because it has finally arrived. Apple fest is tomorrow (well, technically it is Sunday as well), a whole bunch of people are meeting here for 11am, you're welcome to as well if you can.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Venus Hum (full album)
Currently Eating: Kamut Pasta w/ pasta sauce made from scratch using roma tomatoes, red onion, and oyster mushrooms, topped with grated chevrotina.
Step by step, walking through halls, along wind and rain swept streets, gay waiters and ethical death, then back again. Am I walking through life, memory, or a dream? Or is it some surreal combination of all three? Exhaustion, lack of food, and a strange lack of stress. Most burdens removed, with small ones or ones unnoticed struggling to the surface like bubbles in viscous liquid.
Written On: Home Computer
I discovered a beautiful little gem on my brother's hard drive, a hip hop artist by the name of Bubba Sparxxx, who's a large southern white boy that raps about fiddles and moonshine and it's possibly one of the most wonderful things I've run into for a while. Kinda like Johnny Cash meets Jay-Z, or something equally surreal. Stuff like this gives me alot of hope for the idea of long term reconciliation between the races in the southern united states without having to demolish the culture created there. Very good.
Speaking of gems, My Beautiful Girl Mari at KMM was quite good tonight. Throughly surreal, managing to maintain that kid's film feeling without spoiling it for mature viewers with too much sugar or simplicity. I liked it quite a bit, even though you could probably accurately describe it as a childhood drug binge, but what good fable could you not say that about?
Midterm tomorrow, another the day after. That last stupid STATA assignment still isn't done, and I really don't know what to do about that. Maybe ask for an extension until Friday? I dunno...
I miss you. But everyone I interact with now has to be multiple convergences of wants, every time I choose to spend time with another human being there's some sort of grocery list checking that occurs. Music studying, eating, emotional support, check, that's enough... Multitasking calculus, how does the variable productivity vary across time with respect to you. I'm pretty sure I could cheat somehow by taking natural logarithms and then derivates to get the answer, but for the life of me I can't remember how that works...
I'm getting away from the point (in a particularly obnoxious manner too), I miss you, that's really what it all boils down to. I've got more to say, but the truth is, I don't have the time or ability to do so. I suppose this is what people talk about when they tell me that they don't have the words to describe how they feel. I dislike it intensely, probably why I am so meticulous and obsessive about my ability to communicate.
This entry feels stunted, frustrated, lacking clarity with a dash of uncertainty... maybe that's accurate, so here goes...
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Bubba Sparxxx - Deliverence (full album)
To be or not to be...
Written On: Brother's Computer
Currently Listening: Xzibit - Losing Your Mind hip hop warning
I was preparing for a rehersal, printing a copy of the revised script and ended up being the tiniest bit late. Feeling terrible that I was wasting other's time, I rushed, no, ran to my destination. Upon my arrival, hardly any of the cast was there and I realised that I was only five minutes late or so and I still felt bad. Nothing happened, I couldn't sit, nothing going on, perched squatting on my hams. Time crawled by, just... waiting. Erin said I don't want to sit here waiting for two hours for no one to show up. This was said after half an hour of waiting. It was entirely possible that other people were still about to appear, but we didn't even have enough present to reherse anything, and people shouldn't be being surprised at being left behind when they're late. Fifteen minutes later, I had made the necessary phone calls and we were already heading towards Beth's performance instead. Always do something, even if it is relaxing...
Or blogging...
;P
I hope this post finds you well, because I am doing well and it is a good feeling.
I dreamed this.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: The Legendary K.O. - George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People hip hop warning
My spine feels like it is made of metal, leading to steel support structures that keep the soft living insides protected. My skin and muscles stretched across this cold frame. My eyes bevelled rectangular screens, reflecting the cold neon glow, while my arms extend, fingers ending in communication points. And from this point of physical content, information, invisible yet tangible travels from mechanical to electrical to optical. I feel so very very in control, but the flesh complains.
Written On: Home Computer
Listening To: ApocalypticA - Cult (full album)
I'm really very tired. It would be really nice to be able to find a balance, a point where I am actually always doing something that is good for me. I'm not sure such a state is possible, or maybe that's how everyone lives, either option I strain to wrap my head around the fullness of it.
I have to defend a paper tomorrow. It is a paper I don't even really fully understand the gears and levers that make it work, but I understand the thing's purpose, start, and end. The meat of it, which is really the thing I will be talking about the most, is still causing me some grief. Translogorithmic production functions, subinputs, continuous time Divisia analyses, and a whole slew of other concepts I've never ran into before still baffle me.
I don't have anything else to say, other than I'm kinda melancholy. I remember a girl standing at the top of a set of stairs that lead to my front door. I remember her telling me that she might be working everyday, but that she wasn't that busy. I wish I could say the same, now more than ever.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Rob Dougan - all the instrumental tracks (Furious Angels full album)
Currently Eating and Sleeping: not enough
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: VAST - I'm Dying jesus/emo warning
There should be more than enough time in a day for three seperate blocks of five hour work periods.
Busy busy busy, clickety clack, clickety clack. The music fades from VAST to NIN, from one acronym to another. From soft cello to grinding noises that you imagine something with huge giant gears would make.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: NIN - [with_teeth]
I knew you were a snake when I picked you up.
I miss you. The way my name drifts off your lips, the tone and meter of your voice as you speak. Sidelong glances, glasses, and thick brown hair. Thin wrists and comfortable sweaters. A patchwork girl of things I haved loved about others, with a spine of morality that is so firm it could probably have belonged to Atlas. I miss your rants, your moments of dry biting humour, your uncomfortable distance, and crisp clarity. I miss your bleary eyes, your tired forgetful moments of softness and vulnerability.
I did always love the villain who wanted to be good.
Written On: Home Computer
Currently Listening: Postal Service
Currently Eating: Big Don's Antipasto
