drying out.

I feel like salt herrings today.  My insides twist in the wind.  I am left hanging, a crowd in the air.

I spend moments across the ground, across the concrete, the grass.  I am lifted off of the earth, I am never truly here.  i leave no footprints and no backward glances.   

Today is a day for false fronts, blue skies streaming across icy water.  I rattle together and lean left, I sway with the wind.  I am red fish dangling from a cloud of strings.

so rip me apart.  tear string from string.  grind me into the sand and dirt and rocks of existence. 

someday I'll run.

dailys.

1. Lunch with friends is the best thing.  Yesterday it was vermicelli, laughter, and vintage stores.  There is something incredible about friendship, about the exchange of warmth.  Grey spring days are made infinitely better.

2. A quick list of things that are beautiful: loose leaf tea, the green leaves of spring, old books, necklaces with long chains and tiny charms, big wooden furniture, lace.

3. There's only so much stimulus I can take.  I don't like being touched, unless I'm wearing long sleeves.  I don't like loud noises, unless I'm by myself.  I'm increasingly afraid of elevators and concrete parking garages.  I find sometimes I need to leave a party and sit by myself, in a bedroom or the front stairs. 

4.  I love my family.  I have brothers, I have a mom and a dad.  When I'm upset, my team is behind me.  I realize the incredible luck in this.

quiet nights.

1. I watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou again tonight.  It's one of my favourite movies.  It's incredibly subtle: almost laughter, almost tears.  It's clever and human and unusual.

2. Is it okay if that's all I have to say?

mixing references.

1. today is a day on which I feel invisible.  Less than fog, more than stones.

2. today was a day of incredible sun.  march sunshine proves kelowna to me.

3. I find myself torn between honesty and expectation.  I can write in full sentences, I can write about music, about products, about fashion.  or I can write instead fragmented me.  shatters of bodies, of thoughts, of ups and downs.

4. won't, can't, didn't.  I am so full of negatives, of nails.  the future, which I worry about constantly, seems impossible today.

5. tomorrow.

squeeze your heart into the spaces between buildings.

empty into the air, breathe out future and warning.  I rest myself into fog and into mud, arms and legs touching walls.  I'm claustrophobic, but I want to nestle into a tall narrow space with no thoughts and no emotions. 

tighten your heart like a corkscrew.  try to let your muscles fill the air around you, let them beam radiance and thought into the air.  there's so much space in the world. 


try to have weight.  I let happy and sad settle into my hips.  I curl up, I sink further into the quiet impossible spring.  it touches my skin, it covers my eyes.

I dive into the water.  Once submersed, I cannot think.

house&home.

1. Hardwood floors.  I want big, wide planks, stained dark and worn.  Too glossy and too blond and too narrow makes hardwood no fun.  I do have a soft spot for parquet, however.

2. Walls covered in: art by children in beautiful frames, enormous mirrors, line drawings, and maps.

3. Of course, high ceilings, big windows, and exposed brick walls.

4. Bookshelves, half industrial half wooden.  Full, always.

5. Lastly, a summer house.  A place across the yard to think and write and drink coffee.  Ah, dreams.

I'm not concerned with context.

1. Searching 'Guatemalan genocide' on wikipedia redirects to 'Guatemalan civil war'.  Really? Thanks for the lesson in semantics, wikipedia.

2. I pretend to know when I don't know.

3. "sleep now.  dream of puppies."

4. It's grey and loopily, coldly dreamy outside today.  Coincidentally, I much prefer the g-r-e-y spelling over the g-r-a-y spelling.

5. Things that only English majors care about: the deconstruction of binary oppositions, unique pluralizations, the difference between subject and object, and liminal spaces.  "let's unpack that a little."

6. tonight is a night for loud music, red wine, and bicycles.  One of my favourite combinations.

7. I'm constantly caught between shyness and narcissism. 

collections of favourites.

1. Nights out. Red wine, killer beats, staying up way too late.  I picture my memories in slow motion, laughing, black and white.  I want to dance through the sky, I want to quit existing, I want to tack myself to the music and let it drag me through the night.

2. Blazers and circular sunglasses.  Tight pants, mixing textures, nothing matches but everything goes.  Spring time is here, all blueyellow light and piles of twigs at the side of road.  That first day you feel the sun through your coat makes me fly hopeful through march.

3. Isabel Allende says her grandfather gave her bones.  A sense of honour, the ability to stand straight when times are hard.  I picture myself, spine straight, always defiant.  I stomp through my life with the grace of a lion, storming muscular through turbulence and sadness.

4. A professor tells me my conclusion is gorgeous - poetic, really.  But far too long.  I like conclusions, free from the structure that encircles the rest of the essay, snapping and cracking itself into winged fullness.  Conclusions are for waterfalls and swinging hips, for silky writing and elevation.  "Too long for a paper of this length."  I pout.

I might start referring to 'my practice' soon.

can we just talk about yoga for a second?

1. I like to engage in something called competitive yoga.  I made it up, and I'm the only one in my yoga class that knows we're playing.  I can out-toppling tree all of these bitches!  It's really not great.

2. I am obsessed with hot yoga.  Afterwards, I just want to write lame poems about how I can 'feel all of my muscles breathing' and other things that also make me cringe.  This sounds lame, too, but I have to say it: it's such a positive environment.  I eat that up.

3. I am very flexible some ways.  I won the wheel competition this morning at yoga.  (Again, I was the only one who knew I was signed up, but whatever.)  My belly, my calves, my quads - all of these things are very long and happy.  Other things, like whatever that is at the back of my hips - that one is no good whatsoever.

4. Sign up for a class.  Just do.