| all monsters and dust |
|
put your troubles down, no need to bear the weight
There are a surprising number of people on the 10 o'clock bus to Montreal on a Monday morning. More than half the seats are filled. Travelling by bus, in a window seat with an empty seat next to me, on a sunny day, is I think one of my favourite things in the world. It feels very purposeful, and yet freeing. There is a destination, but getting there is someone else's burden. It feels like floating in the wind, waiting for it to deposit you where it will. It is like a moment of limbo in life, in between two concrete locations and experiences. For the duration of the trip there are no attachments or responsibilities. There is nothing that needs immediate attention or worry. And that is an unbelievably liberating feeling. Somehow, being in transit allows me not to worry. It's not that I "forget" my worries, as the cliche goes, because I am fairly aware of the things that I am likely to worry about later (what it was exactly that I did wrong for that project I was working on that my manager said she would explain to me but then apparently forgot to last week and whether it is worth bringing it up or not), or that I was worrying about earlier (whether I should explain to my mother where it was that I went on Sunday morning, which was to the Waterville cemetery, so that she would stop asking me cryptic questions, or whether such an explanation would make it more uncomfortable, as it did when my father asked in the car on our way back from the mall and when I told him he didn't say anything else for almost the rest of the way home and until he asked me when Sunday shopping became normal and I said, when they changed the law? And then I babbled about how there is still no Sunday shopping in Nova Scotia because I was relieved, but also I didn't want to go back to the oppressive silence.) But since it is next to impossible for me to do anything about them right this second, I am somehow miraculously able to calm my mind to a degree that I otherwise achieve only by sleeping, on the nights I have good dreams. Which doesn't happen all that often. Especially lately. By which I mean in the last several years. Someone once described to me the effect of morphine in this way: you can still feel the pain, but you no longer care about it. Not so much numbness as indifference. This is how I feel on the bus. The things that make me anxious every other second of my life don't matter here. They aren't relevant. They just don't apply to this time and place because I am not in a time and place. I am moving from one situation toward another situation, but until I get there my time is only my own and I can do whatever I want with it, and what I want to do is read and listen to music and think about my sister and the goldfish she will maybe get this week and name Marmalade. And so I do. And I'm happy. Then I see the Montreal skyline up ahead and I think, uh-oh. Time to start worrying again. In the city, we drive past a house. The entire south side of the roof is covered in pigeons, nesting in the sun, and I think it's beautiful and feel strangely attracted to it, although I don't understand why, since normally I hate pigeons. I think there should be a rule about getting off the bus which would be that the people sitting at the back of the bus have to wait for the people sitting in front of them to get off first, unless those people are not making any obvious attempt to stand up and edge into the aisle. I don't mind waiting my turn, but I hate waiting in my seat in that half-sitting-half-standing position while people who were sitting behind me push past as though they can't stand to be on the bus one second longer than they absolutely have to now that it is stationary or they are late for some emergency or are way too important to be courteous and let me out. People, sitting in the back of the bus is a choice. You should not make this choice unless you can handle the responsibility that goes with it. Stop. Shoving.
louisiana = (swamp + dinosaur + cemetery)
I haven't been doing very well with words lately, so here are some pictures. 
be careful what you check
US Airways lost my luggage in Philadelphia back in November, too. Philadelphia does not so much love us back, I would argue.
punctuational poetry
Apostrophe by Roger McGough twould be nice to be an apostrophe floating above an s hovering like a paper kite in between the its eavesdropping, tiptoeing high above the thats an inky comet spiralling the highest tossed of hats
oh, those romanians
In another in a long list of stories about the crazy-retarded names people give to their poor, defenseless children: A Romanian couple who met over the internet named their son Yahoo.
killing me with kindness and karma
stand by
My computer is still royally fucked and could shut itself off at any second so I'm posting this before it does just so you know why I'm not otherwise posting anything. I have this whole long post about the weather, too, but you will have to wait for that. Lucky you.
balance vs. harmony
First day back at work! I spent most of the day trying to figure out why my version of a particular program would not play some audio files! That was fun. For real, I love getting paid to not do anything of substance; it pleases my inner slacker. Then I came home and my computer reset itself five times in a row and then finally would not start at all. That was not fun. Something is clearly defective, but I don't know what it is or how to find out or how to fix it. (Although I do have a strong inkling that it is Phil's fault.) And instead of getting paid I am going to have to pay for it. This pleases no part of me whatsoever.
dear people i know who i have secret livejournal accounts that they don't know i know about,
Please stop writing horrifying things that make me wish I didn't know about your secret livejournal. I am too nosy to stop myself from reading.
a cautionary rant (unedited)
I highly doubt that anyone who reads this has an account with Excel Telecommunications (a long distance provider), but on the off chance that you do, you need to cancel that shit right the hell now because they are motherfucking dicks. Or, if you don't have an account, I need to you to promise that you will never, ever get one, even if it sounds like a good idea because a portion of your bill each month goes to a charity, like your mother's school, and she asks you to sign up as a favour to her and you figure, what the hell, what difference does it make? Oh. Let me tell you. If you sign up with them they might send you a phone card, which you might put in your wallet, never use and forget about; and then your wallet might get stolen and you might not cancel your phone card, since you've forgotten all about it; and then 10 months later you might get a phone bill which shows $50 worth of phone calls made to Lybia using your card, and you will call up the company and explain to them that your phone card was lost and you did not make these calls and they will tell you you don't have to pay for it but then a month later you will get another bill and the charges will still be on it and you will call them again and they will put you on hold for an hour and finally come back and say, actually, it turns out that the matter is still under investigation and you will have to wait until you get your next bill to see whether the charges have been deleted or not and then call back. And you will be pissed off, because 1) they know what phone number the calls were made from, so how hard can it be to investigate and 2) your phone bill is consistently about $10 dollars a month and you basically call the same numbers over and over so it is SO COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that you would not suddenly wake up one day and make $50 worth of calls to fucking Lybia! So you will be pacing around your apartment muttering that $50 is almost not worth this kind of hassle and this had better be sorted out by next month or you are so going to cancel your account with them and the phone will ring and it will be the guy you just talked to at Excel asking you when exactly you lost your phone card and then saying that it's your fault for not reporting it before the bogus charges were made and not actually coming out and saying that this means you will have to pay the charges until you ask him point blank and he answers, "Um, well, that's what it looks like." And then, when you tell him you want to cancel your account, he will smugly tell you that you can't. You have to sign up with a new provider who will do it for you. Then you will hang up and rip up your bill and be pissed off for about a week until you accept that $50 is basically a tax on your stupidity for signing up with a sketchy company that is named after a spreadsheet program in the first place. Eat shit, Excel telecommunications. I guess I can kind of understand your argument that it is my fault for not reporting the theft of my card, but since it is painfully obvious that I am not lying about it, you are the one being an asshole by claiming that this is all just procedure. Don't you have insurance for these kinds of situations, for the love of god? And fine, ok, I guess I could accept that I have to pay for some thief's use of my card, even though this seems morally reprehensible, if you hadn't told me I wouldn't have to A MONTH AGO. And then have the gall to jerk me around on the phone for an hour before I can get an honest answer out of anyone. You are liars and you are assholes. How dare you promise me one thing and then take it back. If you made a mistake it's your own fault and you should pay for it. But whatever, I am over it. I will pay it and you will lose my business and therefore lose more overall and in the long run. God, I hate telephones now even more than I used to. Thankfully my stint as a marketing researcher for Bell is far enough in the past that I have managed to repress it and sign up for their long distance plan without any painful memories of self-loathing re-surfacing. *** In positive news, it turns out my antibodies are ass kicking jedi knights, because Johanna and Maxime both got sick, so Phil must have had the flu after all. The window of infection has now passed and I am still as fine as desert sand. In other excellent news, Sam Rockwell is playing Zaphod Beeblebrox in the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide movie. I'm so excited! Tomorrow I get the results of my French placement test. I thought the test was pretty easy and considered flubbing a few answers so that I would get put in a lower level class but I settled for just not thinking about any of the questions for longer than a minute and was the second person done with an hour to spare in the allotted time. So we will see what results.
...and i approve this list
I may be the only person in the entire world who doesn't mind the word "blog" -- "diary" is much uglier in my opinion -- but the rest of the words* on the 2005 List of Banished Words can, and should, totally eat it as far as I'm concerned. * technically they are mostly Noun Phrases, if you want to get all linguisticky** about it ** this is one of my new favourite words ever
ps. note to self re: new year's eve
Lesson learned the hard way to keep in mind for next year: Do not even think that you will be able to just pop over to the grocery and/or liquor store to get last minute supplies right before you leave. And if you must go to the store, do not take a car, nor plan to meet anyone in a grocery and/or liquor store parking lot, no matter how deserted they are on every other day of the year. This is especially true if you are meeting in the parking lot of the Ottawa LCBO that is closest to the bridge to Hull and all the SAQs in Quebec are closed due to a labour strike. The first five times you drive around the block and parking lot you will probably be fine and able to keep up your fake zen attitude, but then the sixth you will inexplicably have a meltdown when the Brinks truck gets stuck on the ice and you almost hit some pedestrians who zig zag in front of you without warning and you see a car that is selfishly parked over two parking spaces and you are traffic jammed in a parking lot for heaven's sake and it's probably been 10 minutes since you crawled forward an inch and the car in front of you keeps trying to reverse and turn around even though there is absolutely no room for it and the car behind you starts honking.
it's been a long december...
... and there's reason to believe Well, if the superstition that the way you spend New Year's predicts the way you will spend your year, then I will spend it hanging out with interesting, cool and open people, and eating good food, and playing fun games, and having stimulating conversations. (...And dancing to Beyonce.) Which, you know what? I hope is true. Things are not looking so good for Phil, though, who started feeling sick right around midnight and then spent the next 24 hours puking. Oh well. If he spends '05 feeling sick, at least he will be surrounded by interesting and cool people, and people in the next room dancing to Beyonce. We are not sure whether it was food poisoning or the flu, but I am hoping it was food poisoning, because if it was the flu I will surely get it and I had the flu in 2004, dammit! 2005 is supposed to be a new and better year for me! I can't remember how I spent last New Year's, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that I spent it feeling miserable and alone, because 1) that's how I spent most of the year; and 2) I'm pretty sure that is how I actually spent New Year's, now that I think it over. Not so much a shock that I wouldn't want to remember that. I was going to write a sort of recap of 2004, but I am in a good mood right now, and that might ruin it. Because, man. 2004 was The Worst. I'm glad it's over and we can all use a symbolic fresh start to move on to new things. (I don't know how the hearing went 2 weeks ago, but I am praying that he pled guilty so there doesn't have to be a trial. I wish I could find out for sure, but it sort of hasn't come up in conversation recently -- "Speaking of Merry Christmas, do you know if the man who was responsible for the death of your best friend/girlfriend/daughter/sister pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment last week or not?" If there is no trial and no one has to testify, then at least we can close that chapter of the book. The book itself will never close, but at least we can get some chapters out of the way, know what I'm sayin'? Or does this metaphor suck as much as I think it does? Oh well, no time to edit, I am moving on to new and better things.) The only thing I am sad about is that 4 is my favourite number and I won't get to write it all the time anymore. But, really, that doesn't weigh much on the scale compared to the number of things I am happy I won't have to live through again in 2005. I am trying to be really positive and proactive and making all kinds of plans and lists and things to look forward to accomplishing this year. I will probably write about 2004 later, for closure, because I think it might be a good kind of therapy, but for now: looking forward. (My only other real regret is not taking that company flu shot. What a mistake that turned out to be. Unless... If I had the flu just a couple months ago, could I be immune to catching it again? Granted, I had the fever-chills-sore-throat-feel-disoriented flu, not the throwing-up flu, but, really, I think I gave enough of a sacrifice to the flu gods then for them to spare me this time around, right? The cosmos deserves to give me a little break from suffering in 2005, right? Right? I should probably go disinfect everything in my apartment that Phil touched, just in case.) Happy New Year! UPDATE! I just did a search and discovered that I ALSO had the stomach flu in 2004, almost exactly one year ago to this day! Wow, blogs are really great for storing inane information about one's life. But, good lord, enough with the flu already! My body should be churning out antibodies like crazy at this point. Damn you, mutating flu virus, damn you.
|
|
about
"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."
archives
credits
|