You should read this article.
It really made me think about investing some time in my skills, myself, humanity and all that jazz.
So, in advance, I've been thinking about all the things 2013 might hold, and what I can do to resist or facilitate that change, to bring it about. I've been thinking a lot about my "resolutions" or whatever you make that you may or may not keep and this far I've come with a tiny list.
RESOLUTIONS (but the kind I really plan on keeping, REALLY)
1. Dedicate more time to art & true to life, wholesome pursuits.
Fuck you Facebook, I'm going to write/play piano/paint/draw/take photos/make something beautiful or painful/bake something/read abook Maybe I'll tweet about it later so you don't feel abandoned.
2. Try new stuff.
I was thinking about sports when I wrote this, like taking boxing classes. But this applies to everything. So often I'm afraid to walk into a new cafe, a class, wear something because it's "not what I normally try on." Ridiculous. I'm scrapping that draft and I'm going to do it. All of it!
3. Be less afraid in general. (You're not that person anymore.)
The conversations happened in a couple of different bars at a couple of different times, but they all made me arrive at this conclusion. The 20s thus far seem to be the Renaissance of life. (We'll see what I think 8 years from now...) Everything begins to change. Throughout your twenties, you evolve, REALLY REALLY evolve for the first time. The work highschool and puberty initiated on your body transcends to you as a person. You become more, you begin to learn more what you like, what don't like, what you stand for. You develop your talent and your personality, your preferences. Sometimes, but mostly not, you get backing from the Medici family. By the time you're 30, society kind of wants to know what it is you want from life, and you're hoping to have a pretty good answer yourself.
The Renaissance was a time of beautiful change, innovation, enlightenment. I want all of those things for myself. I am governed by baggage and fear that happened to a person who I really am not anymore. I'm not the sheltered, lonely self loathing kid of yesterday, I've evolved beyond that. I know it's tough to break the chains of your mind, but if wrestling with anxiety for years has taught me anything it's that if you hold tight and you carry the hell on, you're going to get over it in the end, and be a better person for.
I will no long try and avoid eye contact with strangers, or step aside when I think people are trying to chat up my friends, because maybe, they wanted to talk to me too. I will no longer discount myself or beat myself up as less smart or less good at something. I will do these things. (Or at least I'm gonna try, damnit.) It is not wrong to want something, or to think you deserve something, especially if that something is respect or happiness. That's human, people.
4. Speak more French.
Be less shy about pronunciation and grammar and give it a shot, because that's how I'm gonna learn.
....There's more of these but I have to go try and clean my room and study, because we're LEAVING WEDNESDAY for Christmas Holidays after my LAST EXAM which is TOMORROW! I CAN'T STOP WRITING IN CAPITALS. ALLATHEM THANGS.
P.S. Had a great study session/dinner with some friends tonight. There's nothing like talking to people who are also writers, and I'm putting this here because I want to remember the feeling of sitting in an Irish Pub in Montreal on a mild snowy night with a brainful of British Literature, a glass full of beer, holding a discussion about Tolstoy vs. Rowling, modern literature, writing and passion, laughing about the devastating effect of hormones. Happy.
December 17, 2012
December 16, 2012
Even less by the time you read this.
This weekend has been one of randomness and awesomeness.
Bek and I went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts Montreal; they have a limited time exhibit featuring a bucketful of Impressionist painters. Bek being a visual artist, me being an art lover and Impressionism being my favourite era/style of painting, we knew we had to take the opportunity to see the work of the masters.
I saw my first real life Lautrec and Degas (my favourite artists), I stood in awe and I know what when I go to Paris (someday), I am not going to be able to cope with ALL THE FEELS that ALL THE ART and ALL THE HISTORY are going to impress upon me. I'm pretty much expecting to wander around the city alternatively swooning and sobbing, followed by drinking wine and shoving the best bread in the world into my face. I'm predicting the future here, so if anyone wants to come and hold the tissue box while I spend an afternoon sitting beside Oscar Wilde's grave and sniffling, or staring, frozen up at Notre-Dame, or wandering around Montmartre, declaring that I AM GOING TO MOVE HERE AND WRITE LIKE HEMINGWAY, DAMNIT, book your seats now, advance tickets are on sale.
We polished up some Christmas shopping, and came home. I began preparations for dessert for our Sunday Christmas dinner, baking up some ginger molasses cookies for a greater purpose than being just cookies, as hard as that might be to imagine.
We finally decided at about 11 o'clock it was a good idea to go out into the world and so we hit the Ostrich Bar, which I have labelled it because of the MANY OSTRICH HEADS MOUNTED ON ITS WALLS. I do not exaggerate. While we were there, we ended up sitting beside/ spending the whole night talking to a mash of guys who all hailed from former British colonies. I was psyched because one was from Melbourne, Australia, where Jill and Steve are moving. So I set about trying to ply them for information. We had a blast.
On the way home, we got our first French Happy Meals, which I ordered in English, patiently and carefully despite the never-ending line of intoxicated people in McDonalds at 4AM. We walked home, ate our tiny cartons of fries and passed out. Or at least I passed out, not before suffering the delusion that I was totally going to read another chapter of Les Miserables before I fell asleep. (HA, right.) Culture will always suffer at the hands of pints & exhaustion.
In other news, today is our Roommate Christmas, wherein we open gifts, watch Rudolph on TV and make ourselves a nice dinner since we won't have a chance to celebrate over the holidays together. Bek got me my very own Freddie Mercury shirt which she had specially screen printed, and Tom Waits's 'Bad As Me' album on vinyl. I'm smitten, I do believe I will keep her.
According to the internet there are 8 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 55 seconds until Christmas. WOO! I'm actually on top of it this year! (Mostly!)
Bek and I went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts Montreal; they have a limited time exhibit featuring a bucketful of Impressionist painters. Bek being a visual artist, me being an art lover and Impressionism being my favourite era/style of painting, we knew we had to take the opportunity to see the work of the masters.
We polished up some Christmas shopping, and came home. I began preparations for dessert for our Sunday Christmas dinner, baking up some ginger molasses cookies for a greater purpose than being just cookies, as hard as that might be to imagine.
We finally decided at about 11 o'clock it was a good idea to go out into the world and so we hit the Ostrich Bar, which I have labelled it because of the MANY OSTRICH HEADS MOUNTED ON ITS WALLS. I do not exaggerate. While we were there, we ended up sitting beside/ spending the whole night talking to a mash of guys who all hailed from former British colonies. I was psyched because one was from Melbourne, Australia, where Jill and Steve are moving. So I set about trying to ply them for information. We had a blast.
On the way home, we got our first French Happy Meals, which I ordered in English, patiently and carefully despite the never-ending line of intoxicated people in McDonalds at 4AM. We walked home, ate our tiny cartons of fries and passed out. Or at least I passed out, not before suffering the delusion that I was totally going to read another chapter of Les Miserables before I fell asleep. (HA, right.) Culture will always suffer at the hands of pints & exhaustion.
In other news, today is our Roommate Christmas, wherein we open gifts, watch Rudolph on TV and make ourselves a nice dinner since we won't have a chance to celebrate over the holidays together. Bek got me my very own Freddie Mercury shirt which she had specially screen printed, and Tom Waits's 'Bad As Me' album on vinyl. I'm smitten, I do believe I will keep her.
According to the internet there are 8 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 55 seconds until Christmas. WOO! I'm actually on top of it this year! (Mostly!)
December 12, 2012
Waiting Game
Even before I moved, I was recruiting people to visit Montreal. Any time the subject would come up, the conversation would end with an invitation. Now that I actually live here, I want visitors even more. One of the pleasures of living somewhere new is sharing it with the people in your life. When Jill came to visit in November, we picked her up from the bus station and she said something like, "Guys, I know this is sounds dumb but...all the signs are in French!" Wonderment. It's in all the little details which you take for granted but are still brand new to your house guests.
We have a substantial list of people who want to come down for visits, parents, siblings, friends. Adrian was on the list, and this past weekend he finally hopped on a bus at 1AM on a Saturday morning to see La Belle Province. He arrived here just after 9AM, which means I got my butt up at 8:15 on a Saturday to hustle to the station and pick him up. Oh, and also, I was in excruciating pain.
Flashback to Wednesday when I couldn't fall asleep due to this loud aching in my torso, waking me up a couple of times that night, not allowing me to find any shade of comfortable. Thursday, Friday, nothing. Saturday morning, getting on the metro to get to the Greyhound station, I was taking toy soldier steps to keep from aggravating this encore of agony. My thought was if I could wait until Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, after Adrian left and Rebekah was at work, neither of them would have to know or worry about me, and I wouldn't ruin the weekend.
Well, as Adrian and I wandered up Mont-Royal Avenue, stopping into a bakery for a small breakfast, it was clear there may have been some problems with this plan. I was half hunched by the window of the bakery, I could feel sweat break out across my forehead and when I picked up our tray, I think my hands were shaking. My stomach was in hardened knots, twisting and constricting. A small sliver of me thought I might pass out. When we sat down, I was able to pull myself together. That was at 10AM
By 4PM in the afternoon, I wasn't sure I could function until Monday, and I finally fessed up. Adrian and I headed off to the nearest walk-in clinic, my hopes for a quick fix crushed when the sign on the door said it was full and taking on no more patients for the day. We headed to a Second Cup to get internet and to text Bek, who, in another scene, threw out half of a freshly bought coffee in order to her hustle her ass home to check on me. We concluded with no after hours clinics available, we ought to go to the hospital.
Cut to the waiting room of St. Mary's, the three of us sitting in a row. Waiting room is not a misnomer. I swear we sat there 2 hours before Adrian and Bek took their leave. Adrian needed to check into his hotel and Bek needed to feed the cat and check on the pork shoulder I had tossed in the slow cooker earlier, visions of an awesome dinner for all of us dancing in my head.
I had no aftershocks of pain as I sat in the waiting room alone, but with each minute that passed, I felt myself sinking into what everyone else around seemed to have caught. Hopelessness, exhaustion, the grey-washed mood of watching time march slowly on while you sit and wait and go nowhere. I remember looking at the time in the corner of the television playing French CBC and thinking, Please, hospital gods. My friends need a weekend. Please let me be okay and let us get out of here in time to have a good Saturday night. When people come to visit, my own expectation is that I show them a good time. Touristy stuff, restaurants, boutiques, live music. Pretty much the opposite of sitting in a waiting room where everything on the walls is crooked and you can hear someone horking phlegm in the bathroom every five minutes.
I shot them a couple of texts telling them that they didn't have to come back. Even if it was just to wander around solo and get a sampling of the atmosphere, I wanted Adrian to experience Montreal. I wanted Bek to have her Saturday to herself after a long week at work. But they came back without hesitation, reclaiming their seats on either side of me. We snacked on candy canes for dinner. We tried to tag team crosswords on Bek's iPad to pass the time. We giggled over inside jokes, old and new, not only because they were funny, but to try and keep our sanity together while literal hours scraped on and on. Adrian wandered out to a convenience store to find us food since the cafeteria was closed, I got the Golden Girls theme stuck in my head, and all around, we were the people in the waiting room having the best time. Which is kind of like saying you had a somewhat-kind-of-mostly painless death.
I can't explain how hard the wait was at times, when our laughter died, we leaned on eachothers' shoulders, buried our faces in our hands. Exhausting. Boring. Grueling. When the intercom would call what seemed like everyone except me in for examination, I could feel my hope leaving, along with everyone else's in the room.
Between feeling sick and being surrounded by people who are also suffering, for an undetermined amount of time, you can be pushed to your limits. The wait was insane...but it would have been nearly impossible if those two hadn't stayed with me. At the same time, mama was texting me. She refused to go to bed until she heard answers, because her worried mom-ness had her convinced that I was going to have to have my appendix removed. I'm lucky in both that I still have my appendix and that I have an amazing support system. I'm sure if I had needed anything serious, my mother would have been on the next flight down, ready to kick ass and Florence Nightingale me.
We arrived at the hospital just after 5PM and around 1:30AM, they finally called me into one of the rooms, had me strip down, poked at me a bit and told me that it was WEIRD, but it didn't SEEM like there was anything wrong with me. It sounds funny to say but I had not waited 8+ hours to be told I was fine. Fine was not the answer I was looking for after being crippled by mysterious pain. The doctor said maybe it was sort of inflammation of the tissue in my torso, gave me some pills for the pain and signed me on up for an ultrasound, which I have at 10AM tomorrow. (I'm sure that'll be some kind of interesting blog in itself.)
The moral of this story is that having good people in your life makes intolerable things tolerable, and for that I am truly, truly grateful. Also, waiting rooms suck.
We have a substantial list of people who want to come down for visits, parents, siblings, friends. Adrian was on the list, and this past weekend he finally hopped on a bus at 1AM on a Saturday morning to see La Belle Province. He arrived here just after 9AM, which means I got my butt up at 8:15 on a Saturday to hustle to the station and pick him up. Oh, and also, I was in excruciating pain.
Flashback to Wednesday when I couldn't fall asleep due to this loud aching in my torso, waking me up a couple of times that night, not allowing me to find any shade of comfortable. Thursday, Friday, nothing. Saturday morning, getting on the metro to get to the Greyhound station, I was taking toy soldier steps to keep from aggravating this encore of agony. My thought was if I could wait until Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, after Adrian left and Rebekah was at work, neither of them would have to know or worry about me, and I wouldn't ruin the weekend.
Well, as Adrian and I wandered up Mont-Royal Avenue, stopping into a bakery for a small breakfast, it was clear there may have been some problems with this plan. I was half hunched by the window of the bakery, I could feel sweat break out across my forehead and when I picked up our tray, I think my hands were shaking. My stomach was in hardened knots, twisting and constricting. A small sliver of me thought I might pass out. When we sat down, I was able to pull myself together. That was at 10AM
By 4PM in the afternoon, I wasn't sure I could function until Monday, and I finally fessed up. Adrian and I headed off to the nearest walk-in clinic, my hopes for a quick fix crushed when the sign on the door said it was full and taking on no more patients for the day. We headed to a Second Cup to get internet and to text Bek, who, in another scene, threw out half of a freshly bought coffee in order to her hustle her ass home to check on me. We concluded with no after hours clinics available, we ought to go to the hospital.
Cut to the waiting room of St. Mary's, the three of us sitting in a row. Waiting room is not a misnomer. I swear we sat there 2 hours before Adrian and Bek took their leave. Adrian needed to check into his hotel and Bek needed to feed the cat and check on the pork shoulder I had tossed in the slow cooker earlier, visions of an awesome dinner for all of us dancing in my head.
I had no aftershocks of pain as I sat in the waiting room alone, but with each minute that passed, I felt myself sinking into what everyone else around seemed to have caught. Hopelessness, exhaustion, the grey-washed mood of watching time march slowly on while you sit and wait and go nowhere. I remember looking at the time in the corner of the television playing French CBC and thinking, Please, hospital gods. My friends need a weekend. Please let me be okay and let us get out of here in time to have a good Saturday night. When people come to visit, my own expectation is that I show them a good time. Touristy stuff, restaurants, boutiques, live music. Pretty much the opposite of sitting in a waiting room where everything on the walls is crooked and you can hear someone horking phlegm in the bathroom every five minutes.
I shot them a couple of texts telling them that they didn't have to come back. Even if it was just to wander around solo and get a sampling of the atmosphere, I wanted Adrian to experience Montreal. I wanted Bek to have her Saturday to herself after a long week at work. But they came back without hesitation, reclaiming their seats on either side of me. We snacked on candy canes for dinner. We tried to tag team crosswords on Bek's iPad to pass the time. We giggled over inside jokes, old and new, not only because they were funny, but to try and keep our sanity together while literal hours scraped on and on. Adrian wandered out to a convenience store to find us food since the cafeteria was closed, I got the Golden Girls theme stuck in my head, and all around, we were the people in the waiting room having the best time. Which is kind of like saying you had a somewhat-kind-of-mostly painless death.
I can't explain how hard the wait was at times, when our laughter died, we leaned on eachothers' shoulders, buried our faces in our hands. Exhausting. Boring. Grueling. When the intercom would call what seemed like everyone except me in for examination, I could feel my hope leaving, along with everyone else's in the room.
Between feeling sick and being surrounded by people who are also suffering, for an undetermined amount of time, you can be pushed to your limits. The wait was insane...but it would have been nearly impossible if those two hadn't stayed with me. At the same time, mama was texting me. She refused to go to bed until she heard answers, because her worried mom-ness had her convinced that I was going to have to have my appendix removed. I'm lucky in both that I still have my appendix and that I have an amazing support system. I'm sure if I had needed anything serious, my mother would have been on the next flight down, ready to kick ass and Florence Nightingale me.
We arrived at the hospital just after 5PM and around 1:30AM, they finally called me into one of the rooms, had me strip down, poked at me a bit and told me that it was WEIRD, but it didn't SEEM like there was anything wrong with me. It sounds funny to say but I had not waited 8+ hours to be told I was fine. Fine was not the answer I was looking for after being crippled by mysterious pain. The doctor said maybe it was sort of inflammation of the tissue in my torso, gave me some pills for the pain and signed me on up for an ultrasound, which I have at 10AM tomorrow. (I'm sure that'll be some kind of interesting blog in itself.)
The moral of this story is that having good people in your life makes intolerable things tolerable, and for that I am truly, truly grateful. Also, waiting rooms suck.
December 03, 2012
Christmas Jam
Top 5 Christmas Songs (And the preferred versions....if I have them....)
#1. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Judy Garland (from Meet Me in St. Louis).
Garland's trembling rendition to a family coming together against all odds during the holidays always punches me right in my gingberbreads. This version is my favourite also because it uses the line, "Until then we'll have to muddle through some how" instead of "Hang a shining star..." EMOTIONAL GRIT, PEOPLE. It's what's for (Christmas) dinner.
#2. The Little Drummer Boy - The Jackson 5
Besides the Jackson 5 being awesome by default, this version is one of the few in which a little boy actually sings the role of the Little Drummer Boy.
#3. Carol of the Bells
Epic. And that was before the Trans-Siberian Orchestra cranked it to 11.
#4. All I Want For Christmas
Is you!
#5. Baby, It's Cold Outside -Any version involving Zooey Deschanel
In the version off of the Elf soundtrack, the mellow jazz saunter of her duet with Leon Redbone makes you want to abandon the outside world, stay inside, turn up the ambiance and snuggle up with something hot and alcoholic. (Like a beverage or maybe your significant other. I don't know.)
The quicker tempo and the gender reversal in the She & Him version with M. Ward is a fun take. So there.
#6. Claire Fontaine - Hawksley Workman
Claire Fontaine isn't really a Christmas song, and it's off of a Christmas album that really isn't a Christmas album. "Almost A Full Moon" sounds like Hawksley wandering around his life during the month of December with an acoustic guitar and an accompanying band, narrating the yuletide activities he espies everywhere. (Sample lyric: "Put away the turkey to make sandwiches tomorrow!") However, somehow, he makes it quork. (Yes I just made that up right now.)
That being said, I love Claire Fontaine. Fun story, when I first heard the song, I DIDN'T know it was a brand of notebooks (like Moleskine) and I thought Hawksley was literally singing to his lover who was some quirky indie girl who made her own paper. Then, one day I was in class and the girl sitting next to me had a purple Claire Fontaine notebook and my brain exploded.
BONUS: This Gift by 98 Degrees & Never Knew the Meaning Of Christmas by N*Sync
My least favourite Christmas song, as I ranted to Rebekah on a cold Saturday night where we bundled up and got our march on to an establishment, is Jingle Bells. Jingle Bells is mediocre. Jingle Bells sounds like a baby got eggnog instead of milk and in a nutmeg induced fury, hammered out the same three notes on a piano until it was declared 'music' by everyone else at the party, who also happened to be swamped on Christmas cheer. A one horse open sleigh does NOT sound like fun, either you're going too slow and that's boring, or you pick up velocity, and the winter air cuts into you with a vengeance. HEY.
In other news, tomorrow is my last full day of classes for first semester. What. The. Hell.
#1. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Judy Garland (from Meet Me in St. Louis).
Garland's trembling rendition to a family coming together against all odds during the holidays always punches me right in my gingberbreads. This version is my favourite also because it uses the line, "Until then we'll have to muddle through some how" instead of "Hang a shining star..." EMOTIONAL GRIT, PEOPLE. It's what's for (Christmas) dinner.
#2. The Little Drummer Boy - The Jackson 5
Besides the Jackson 5 being awesome by default, this version is one of the few in which a little boy actually sings the role of the Little Drummer Boy.
#3. Carol of the Bells
Epic. And that was before the Trans-Siberian Orchestra cranked it to 11.
#4. All I Want For Christmas
Is you!
#5. Baby, It's Cold Outside -Any version involving Zooey Deschanel
In the version off of the Elf soundtrack, the mellow jazz saunter of her duet with Leon Redbone makes you want to abandon the outside world, stay inside, turn up the ambiance and snuggle up with something hot and alcoholic. (Like a beverage or maybe your significant other. I don't know.)
The quicker tempo and the gender reversal in the She & Him version with M. Ward is a fun take. So there.
#6. Claire Fontaine - Hawksley Workman
Claire Fontaine isn't really a Christmas song, and it's off of a Christmas album that really isn't a Christmas album. "Almost A Full Moon" sounds like Hawksley wandering around his life during the month of December with an acoustic guitar and an accompanying band, narrating the yuletide activities he espies everywhere. (Sample lyric: "Put away the turkey to make sandwiches tomorrow!") However, somehow, he makes it quork. (Yes I just made that up right now.)
That being said, I love Claire Fontaine. Fun story, when I first heard the song, I DIDN'T know it was a brand of notebooks (like Moleskine) and I thought Hawksley was literally singing to his lover who was some quirky indie girl who made her own paper. Then, one day I was in class and the girl sitting next to me had a purple Claire Fontaine notebook and my brain exploded.
BONUS: This Gift by 98 Degrees & Never Knew the Meaning Of Christmas by N*Sync
My least favourite Christmas song, as I ranted to Rebekah on a cold Saturday night where we bundled up and got our march on to an establishment, is Jingle Bells. Jingle Bells is mediocre. Jingle Bells sounds like a baby got eggnog instead of milk and in a nutmeg induced fury, hammered out the same three notes on a piano until it was declared 'music' by everyone else at the party, who also happened to be swamped on Christmas cheer. A one horse open sleigh does NOT sound like fun, either you're going too slow and that's boring, or you pick up velocity, and the winter air cuts into you with a vengeance. HEY.
In other news, tomorrow is my last full day of classes for first semester. What. The. Hell.
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