| all monsters and dust |
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so many layers of the world
I am making a mix tape called "Songs I Like But Phil Doesn't" to listen to on our road trip to PEI; I have had One Chance in my head all day and I think I will go crazy if I can't listen to it, and my portable CD player does not like my Modest Mouse CD, for some reason. Last time Phil was at my apartment I said, "Let's listen to some music that I like but you don't!" and I put on Modest Mouse and Phil was like, "Whoa, you sure called that." Wow, I hope we can handle being alone together in a car for ten hours. (Luckily, Joey will be there for the trip home.) The mix tape is the last thing I have to do to get ready, marking the end to a long day of errands and packing and dealing with Joey's predicament and borrowing stuff from people and figuring out how my cousin's tent fits together because my sister apparently took all the pieces all apart, which you are NOT supposed to do when she borrowed it to go secret bungee jumping last month. Yesterday was much more relaxed, since I did absolutely nothing to get ready for the trip, despite its being only 2 days away. Instead. I spent it lying on a blanket in my parents' backyard, reading Rolling Stone and eating all the ripe blackberries on their blackberry bush; and swimming and hanging out with Heather's mom at her cottage. She is giving us all this camping stuff that has been salvaged from Heather's car. We were even going to take her tent, but discovered only Friday that it is ripped on one side and full of holes. Heather hadn't checked it before leaving. That would really have sucked for them to discover, arriving at the campground after dark as they had planned. It makes me chuckle a little. I miss Heather so much. I still have those moments where I forget she is gone. Whenever anything cool happens, my subconscious still immediately thinks of Heather and how excited she will be to hear when I tell her. It takes a few seconds for my conscious mind to take over and explain to my subconscious that this can't happen anymore. Then they fight it out for a bit and I feel like I am losing my sanity. I have to close my eyes and take a few deep breaths and convince myself that I am not crazy. Even this mix tape I am making makes me think of her. I am so angry that she will never get to hear this music. I tried to listen to Little Plastic Castle the other day and I had to turn it off because I couldn't handle it. I remember listening to that album at Heather's cottage, sitting on the screen porch, looking out at the lake. I remember sitting in the quad, at school, singing along when whe should have been studying. They are happy memories, but sometimes it hurts too much to relive them. Some days are worse than others. Some days I hardly think of her at all. Other days she seems to be everywhere I turn. Like today. As I was pulling out of Le Vegetarien's parking lot, I saw Barb, my old sychronized swimming teacher, in my rearview mirror. She had grey hair and was holding the hand of a young boy, probably her son. It took a second to process, since in my memory Barb is permanently frozen as an 18 year old lifeguard. I am older now than Barb was then. Heather and I met in synchronized swimming when we were 10 years old. I only remember this extremely vaguely, but Heather loved to tell the story of how we did a duet together in the end of summer show to the song When A Man Loves A Woman. Heather was the man and I was the woman. I remember she wore a purple bathing suit and a top hat. Heather quit synchro after that year and it would be six or seven years before we became good friends, but when she was filling out her passport application recently, she wrote in the space for references that she had known me for 14 years and we both freaked out a little. Heather would have loved to hear about my seeing Barb, and her grey hair, and speculating about whether she had married that guy with the buck teeth who used to hang around the pool. Then, when I came home from the grocery store, my mother told me she had found something while cleaning a corner of the living room. It was a card that Heather had given me, dated January 1998. On the front is a picture of the Grand Canyon; she had been there over winter break, I think. Inside the front she had glued a small map of Greece, where we would be going that May. Inside, she wrote: Dear Laura, Oh, our travels. Heather wanted to come on this trip to PEI. I remember how she whined at the thought she might still be away, in BC, when we went. And now she won't be coming for an entirely different reason. And thre is such a hole there, where she should be. We have been friends for 7 years, the four of us. Ever since our high school trip to Switzerland, when we started sitting together on the trains. We thought we would grow old together, have little reunions every year or so, share our lives with each other. It's so hard. But there's nothing we can do except remember, and keep going, making our way happily through the world.
The highlight of today was when an Asian tourist in a suit and tie asked me to take his picture in front of the horrific statues of orange cows and chickens erected in the water fountain at Place-des-arts. The inside of the fountain has been painted yellow, and the whole scene is one of the most hideous things I have ever seen in Montreal, coming a very close second to the bleeding tree Christmas lights on McGill College. He handed me his disposable camera and ran to stand in front of it, his posture very straight, arms stiff at his sides, smiling a gigantic school boy smile. It was so charming that I had to consciously force myself to walk away afterwards, and not stalk him for the rest of the afternoon in case he needed me to take more pictures of him, beaming in front of various monstrosities around the city.
What is up with all these white girls with Arabic tattoos? Is Arabic the new Chinese or something?
two men in the elevator
"Yeah, it's just like in the olden days. There's the rich, like, the kings, who have all the money, and then there's everyone else, below them, starving to death." "Yeah." "The only difference is that today instead of starving, the people eat chips." "And are fat." "Right, and go to McDonald's."
it's really the five second rule, but i couldn't have done it in five
Yesterday I spilled my fruit cup all over the restaurant table, and there was a beat before Megan yelled, "Ten second rule!" and started counting back from ten really fast. I scooped up all the fruit with my bare hands and put in back in my cup before she got to zero. Then I ate it. Because, seriously, mango cannot be wasted.
What I Did This Weekend: Andrea & Frederic's Wedding
 It was a weirdly awesome mix of very formal and off-the-wall unconventional. More later, I am exhausted.
In front of me in line at the 99c Pizza
Punk Kid: Two pieces of plain cheese. Counter Man: [puts pieces in oven] Anything to drink? Punk Kid: Naw, man, I'm just gonna drink beer outside.
the fascist in me
My Father: Every American I talk to is praying Bush won't be re-elected. Me: Every intelligent American is praying Bush won't be re-elected. MF: There're a lot of unintelligent Americans, by your definition. Me: I know, there're a lot of unintelligent people period, by my definitions. MF: We have to live with those unintelligent people too, though. Me: I know we do. Because they seem to breed faster than the intelligent ones do. MF: That's true, they do. Me: I know it's true, I just said it. MF: That was Mr. Hitler's policy too, limiting who could breed. Me: Because smart people understand overpopulation, and planned parent-- wait, did you just compare me to Hitler?!
The update which focuses mainly on the past 2 days in Montreal and completely ignores the fact that I've been on vacation in Maine for a week
Yesterday I woke up feeling sort of ambivalent about being back in Montreal. It's dirtier and noisier and smellier and I could go on and on, but on the other hand, it's good to be back in my comfort zone. By which I mean my apartment. And also, there is so much going on in the city all the time that you never get to experience in a small town like the one I grew up in. Walking to the corner grocery store, the whole neighborhood was echoing with the most beautiful gospel singing, which I discovered to be coming out of a church around the corner that I had never noticed before. In the alley, a woman in a muumuu was sitting on her balcony curing jalapenos over a small grill. Half a dozen wreaths of red and green peppers hanging from her clothesline. This, I was thinking, is what I love about the city. In the afternoon I took the bus up to MEC to buy a backpack to use on my upcoming PEI camping trip. Or, that was my plan. The bus stop I was waiting at was across from one of the 500 Greek Orthodox churches in my neighborhood. They had blocked off the street and were having some kind of event, piping tinny Greek chanting and music through enormous speakers. People were coming and going, and cars were stopping willy nilly in the middle of the intersection to see what was going on, or to jump out and buy some meat on a stick (a Greek specialty, I think), wreaking havoc with the traffic. Finally the bus came and I got on it, only to be waylaid 3 blocks later by an India Day parade. The bus driver clearly had no idea what to do and circled back around the block until a supervisor drove up and sent her on a detour. As we drove further and further from the original bus route and my destination, I started to panic a bit and finally opted to get off the bus before it crossed the Metropolitain and I couldn't find my way home. As soon as I was off, the bus turned left, back towards its original route and MEC. If I stayed on the bus I would have been there in 3 minutes. But instead I had a 20 or so minute walk along the side of a 4 lane highway. To add to my frustration, the Indians, having apparently learned the proper method of celebration from the example of their Greek neighbours, were driving around, leaning on their car horns. Car horns are obnoxious at the best of times, but this was deafening. This, I was thinking, is what I fucking hate about the city. Instead of walking to MEC, I walked to the mall and spent $100 on books and CDs, to ease my seething. I couldn't really afford to; that $100 was earmarked for my new backpack. I clearly have some kind of rage/control/spending issue. On the plus side, because of the bus detour, I now know how to get to the park for the last night of Shakespeare in the Park tomorrow. On the down side, I feel pretty stupid ordering my backpack online when I live only a dozen or so blocks from the store, but that is what I am going to do because fuck if I'm going to risk living through that again. In this neighborhood there is always some kind of kamikaze cultural event just ready and waiting to wreck your plans. And on the subject of holy fucking shit I am stupid, I just ate an olive which was resting next to a hot pepper and then rubbed my eye. So that is pretty much the end of the discussion, right there. Um, the whole discussion, because I suddenly have a burning eye to attend to.
The Nebraskan of Spanish
"Mexican Spanish, Telemundo says, hits a middle ground between Colombian Spanish, which the network considers too fast and terse, and some Caribbean accents that are too slow and imprecise. Telemundo executives say Mexican Spanish is the broadest-appeal, easiest-to-understand Spanish -- if Telemundo's coaches can iron out its typical sing-song cadence. In other words, it becomes the Nebraskan of Spanish."
Phew. I am back. And the skin on my back is peeling. It is gross, but kind of cool. Being back is always bittersweet. I feel both more relaxed and more freaked out than I did before I left. I have to go buy a wedding present for my former roommate. More later.
Dear Internet, I am going on vacation, to Maine. I want a shirt that says I (heart) ME. Get it? Do these exist already, or what? See you in a week or so, L.
"Sometimes, I try to find her in the stars. I ask her things, as though she's a Magic 8 Ball: Am I doing this right? What do you think about California? Some absurd part of me feels that she should lead my life, guide my listless hand. It's all bullshit, of course. I don't feel anything profound in those moments. Just that I'm alive, and she's dead." I relate to this so much. Also, this is the best idea EVER.
an inauspicious beginning to what I had hoped would be a better month
This morning I was awakened by the sound of loud, persistent knocking at my apartment door. My first thought was that it might be my sister, so I rolled over and pulled on a shirt, but then the fog in my head lifted just enough for me to realize that it was Sunday and my sister was in Toronto today. Then I remembered that it was the first of the month, and decided the person at the door was probably my landlord, so I whispered "rabbit, rabbit" and rolled back over and held a pillow over my head to muffle the knocking. An hour or two later I got up, made coffee, discovered that I had left the balcony doors wide open all night, got ready to leave and then spent an hour looking for my keys. I haven't lost my keys in ages, because I have forced myself to learn to always leave them on the hook next to the door. But this morning, they weren't there. I searched everywhere I could think of, multiple times, and eventually decided to just use the spare set and worry about them later, when I opened the door and found my keys, dangling from the keyhole of my apartment door, where I had apparently left them the night before. I felt like such an asshole. While I was lying in bed that morning muttering "I already paid you for this month, motherfucker, let me sleep!" my landlord -- or whoever was at the door, trying to help me out -- was probably thinking about how I have turned out to be the most obnoxious tenant ever, in the whole history of fiefdom. Just answer, for Christ's sake. We know that you are home: your keys are in the goddamn door. Sweet fuck, I am so incompetent I should not be allowed to live without supervision. The problem is, I already worry too much, and this is not going to help. Actually the real problem is that I worry too much, but not about practical things like whether I left my keys in the door or the stove on -- which I have also done in the past -- but about things I can do nothing about, like whether Bush will be re-elected or why Phil doesn't understand that sometimes it is better not to know. The other problem is that growing up, we never locked anything, and it's hard to get worked up about something when you were raised not to think twice about it.
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"The mind of the thoroughly well informed [person] is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, and everything priced above its proper value."
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