a neon sign that tells the time

music: pretty little bird (the saint of vancouver), mark berube



i live in the quiet of the fourth floor library. i am watching strangers and i write about honeybees and god and then think about goodness. i split-second see my yesterday faces all around and i'm reminding myself how much time and space have slipped away. and they tell me that it's spring, but it isn't really. mittens, salt sidewalks, new piles of snow blank pages. don't worry about the next. there is no need to worry for the next. insomnia won't leave my room until two in the morning so i write pages and pages after midnight. cool fingertips and scalding coffee can smooth over the bruises under gritty eyes. so we soldier on, alone against these words, and i'm crossing lines off my list quicker than i add them.
this (oh, this) will be over before i need to give up.

the house of all sorts.

music: australia, the bicycles & also the shins
mood: lovehopefully; somewhat coldly

when i was little, one of my favourite books was about an old apartment building and all the people who lived inside. when you open up the cover, each front door is the cover to a smaller story. a little boy and his novelist father are playing hide and go seek. a dog, a tortoise, a cat, and a parrot wait for their owner to come home. children are visiting their grandparents for the weekend. piano lessons take place on the third floor; a partydress and pin-the-tail birthday is on the second. blow out your candles and make a wish!
today, i am vaguely an artist. i'll take photographs for student-written plays (kate's fantastic faces), draw knit-a-thon posters, play with photoshop and doodle through abandoned essaynotes. browsing descriptions of hostels in florence, i daydream of lone travels (so soon!). i make a pact to find halifax summerjobs, drink coffee with books, with myself, with you. conversations with loveglow-falling friends make my winter heart cross it's fingers again. keep telling me stories.

(matt peach, hairspray)

i think realism just might kill me,
so i'm living in a dream world and i'm staying up all night
and i leave a light to light, and you leave a light to light
and i hope that we will live lives that are illuminated.

this is a party!

a st. patrick's mexican party for jodie's birthday, without sunglasses or sombreros! stevie made a cactus cake with matching cupcake flowers. i am thinking about skipping the market this morning. maybe soon it will stop raining.

buttercups out of a buttercup world

hear: don't ask me i'm only the president, badly drawn boy
wear: cherryprint rainboots and handmade jewellery

when we get lonely at black and white birthday parties, let's put on coats and rainbow scarves and go walking in the quiet midnight world. we'll sit crosslegged in muskoka chairs outside the sleeping library and watch as wind fills the treebranch sails. by morning, the frozen ground will melt and colour will seep under the skins of everything. the grass on citadel hill will glow yellow in the sunday morning light and we'll eat bountiful brunches, then study (hotchocolate drunk and sleepy) at the library. i'll be watching seagulls fly over the glass roof and thinking how you'll be here this time tomorrow.

suddenly, after all, things may not be so complicated.

memory of cassis, edna st. vincent millay

do you recall how we sat by the smokily-burning
twisted odourous trunk of the olive-tree,
in the inn on the cliff, and skinned the ripe green figs,
and heard the white sirocco driving in the sea?

the thunder and the smother there where like a ship's prow
the light-house breasted the wave? how wanly through the wild spray
under our peering eyes the eye of the light looked out,
disheveled, but without dismay?

do you recall the sweet-alyssum over the ledges
crawling and the tall heather and the mushrooms under the pines,
and the deep white dust of the broad road leading outward
to a world forgotten, between the dusty almonds and the dusty vines?

i am curious about you.

music: goldberg variations, glenn gould
sound: hear the notes but listen for his feet pressing against footpetals, fingers dancing across keys, human voice humming, singing, breathing

i can't afford the time i am taking but slowmoving mornings are always worth it. i haven't written a book report since grade seven so i am wearing a borrowed raspberry scarf and drinking marshmallow hot chocolate for luck. the february hyacinths have dried out and soon i will have to throw flowery corpses into the snow. after yesterday's impropmtu frenchtoast brunch, the checkout man at pete's gave us each a longstem rose and we carried them (mittens between fingers and thorns) with our groceries all the way home. today, petal edges are shadowed by cold but they smell like july. i am sending words forward to see how the letters will change by the time they return. also, i will sew small worlds out of felt and build cities from cardboard to learn how the future fits together.

"dreams under the midnight sun" (p.34)

listen: a violent yet flammable world, au revoir simone

this rush toward the edge of land where everything falls away into ocean and i become uncertain is so easy. mum and i spent a perfect beaches day walking along streetcar tracks to nowhere, coffeeshopping and exploring a curiosity shop built entirely of lost postcards, sunday hats (with matching hatpins) and aviator scarves. tea with grandparents, early supper, airport goodbye! instead of writing research papers, i watch the unseen patchwork world slowly drift by and i eat tea and oranges not all the way from china. the silverdime moon sits in the window and for this i am lucky. these many years later, it will still (crossing continents) follow me home in the night.

kaleidoscoping

music: don't call me whitney, bobby - islands

i am telling strangers i've come home for my grandmother's birthday and this makes me feel like a good person. in truth, i'm not sure why i'm here now instead of there. the woman sitting beside me on our unsteady flight introduces herself as peggy. six vodka tonics later, both endless and over enthusiastic, she thanks me for saving her when we didn't crash. at the airport in toronto, the waiting line for taxis is longer than the one to get on airplanes. and i secretly hope, elevator gliding to the baggage carousels, that familiar surprise faces will be waiting there to claim me. i sit beside an old woman on the bus to kipling station and her georgia o'keefe eyes brighten the lonely, raging snowstorm. she tells secrets of her midnight dancing on warm beaches and the moon's unseen opalrose aura. there is fresh graffiti on the downward walls of my favourite toronto place (the so brief outside from broadview to castle frank). 'supercalafragalistic' in neon pink and green makes me smile. my dentist says i have a beautiful set of teeth. i tell him i've never been told this before (and i haven't and please don't). i get off three stops early and visit my favourite bubble tea place, a bustling often-empty noodle shop. it is honeydew sugar sand against my tongue, worth my ten frozen fingers. a taxi-shaped blur crushes a pigeon and it writhes alone on grey pavement, holding stiff wings up to the air like hands, like hope. nobody notices and they push against my back, annoyed when i stop to witness its dying. eight scarf-wearing boys walk toward me on the sidewalk and they all smile hello. but none of them look like they'd enjoy reading books together aloud.

spring is springing!

wait for a morning when the sky is so blue that it cuts through clouds and stings your ever-tired eyes. hopefully it's a sunday, because then you can wake up slow, listening to windchimes close outside your window and the wide churchbells spreading solemn across the city. pull on your favourite hat and walk to the corner of vernon and watt street. wait till there is no one trespassing on the sidewalk, then walk carefully toward the crossing lights at jubilee. admire soft tree branches and humming wires, mudsnow sculpures melting beside empty driveways. admire the sidewalk, it is a pale rough ribbon leading perfectly to the fire-engine door where your pathway ends. wonder who lives there and whether they stand alone and quiet in early mornings, waiting for the coffee to brew itself. maybe they watch the forever sidewalk, wondering where it leads and whether they should follow.

i will be back so soon!