Trisha's posterous

Sisyphus Journals- April 14, 2009- Saint Bernard Mythology

Arrived ten minutes late for work today, but they are flexible, and David, (the guy whose office I look onto through a glass window that separates us, is very casual and keeps saying so, sort of throwing up his hands and smiling and saying in broken English and a strong Chinese accent (in response to my apology for being late), "Oh, we so casual, s'okay, no problem."

I like him. He seems like a kind and gentle man.

I was still a little or maybe a lot..high all day at work today...was up till 4am, so got about 4 hours of sleep, and could still feel the effects of the drugs in my body when I woke up.

I can't say if I was a little or a lot stoned still becuase my ability to gauge what is normal and abnormal has become oddly affected by the combination of both presrcibed drugs for the bipolar and my (slightly less frequent use of 'other' substances) DXM-ing, which presents itself as such an acceptable format of self-alteration, so soothing and lacking in grit, oh so not heroine sheik.

I am utterly irresponsible about this. About this, random combining of various chemicals, like I have a death wish, and maybe I do, I don't know, probably but I'm too afraid to end my life outright.

Also, the Neo is so play school, so commercialized (I know a lot of teens and adults, all sorts of people who've caught on to this substance out there take in various other forms...like cough syrup, Robitussin, or gel caps, whatever, so actually my liquid Neo Citran format seems as far as I can tell fairly under the radar.

There is a subtle and deceptive differentiation that happens when I think of the various ways I could get high from DXM, and each is sort of fraught with its own built-in idiosyncrasies and social discrimination: if you take a bottle of pills, gel caps, that's particularly bad; if you drink a bottle of cough syrup, that's also bad, possibly interchangeably bad with the gel caps, but I am a 'fence-rider' so can't really tell which would be regarded as more pathetic, you know, drinking cough syrup or swallowing gel caps; then there's pure powder forms which I've heard are out there but I wouldn't have a clue how to 'score' any, and I think other forms that are available on the Internet, for sale. I mean, I don't know, I suppose you could fancy it up however you wanted to, lace it with rat poison, make it into crystal, like meth, but not meth, and off you go.

Off the world goes, getting high, young and old alike.

I am being candid about my DXM use because I aim for the truth, that's A, but also in this instance to perhaps draw upon a social hypocrisy which may be inclined to judge people like me, the drug seekers, the seekers of the high, those of us who turn our backs on productivity and citizenship and just get fucked up instead.

In case it isn't obvious and you have no idea what I'm referring to, I'm going to be a bitch and put it forth as follows:

YOU ALL....DO....DRUGS.

In one form or another. The most obvious example of a legalized form of 'drug' which does not have the same kind of social stigma attached to it is booze. It's a drug, has the same mind-altering effects, in varying degrees, and yes I know there are studies that say this and that, that a glass of wine each day is good, and then the next year it's not good, and then five years later it's good again, and Italians give it to their kids at dinnertime diluted perhaps with juice or water, and so on...I know.

But booze is a drug, and even if you say you consume it only for its fine vintage, for its 'taste,' there is the added 'affect' of getting your glow on, you know, the warm fuzzies.

And I'm not saying one way or another that it's good or bad to drink booze, and lots of people drink responsibly (I was not one of them, not ever, never will be, not ever ever ever...remember that Trish).

I'm saying though that it is chemically designed to get you high (only they call it 'drunk' or tipsy or whatever).

And of course cigarettes, still legal, but barely, will be legal as long as the government (Canadian/provincial anyway) can keep increasing the price of cigarettes with those fucking 'warnings and propagandous images on the packages', and so keep punishing smokers and so forth, stigmatiizing smoking in the media (and people are such fucking fodder they all go for it, so many fall for it), and so suddenly smoking is gross and stupid and so forth. But the real reason the government (and our beloved Surgeon General) have cracked the whip on smokers is not because they have suddenly developed a compassionate conscience for all of us who still smoke, who kill ourselves slowly and surely, the poor stupid fools we are. They have cracked the whip because (think about our health care system, pretty good free health care, but....)...if you smoke, then (as per American influence and so forth) all sorts of distinctions can be made on your medical record, your eligibilty for life insurance, certain kinds of health care (free but not so free if you're a smoker), and so on. You get the idea.

To tell you the truth, when you get right down to it, yes, abuse of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes or whatever, IS NOT GOOD, but we all know that.

It's the propaganda and hypocrisy that kills me, the lynching that's going on out there.

(I am grateful for my Canadian health care coverage, don't get me wrong, I mean, I seriously really am, expecially as of late, since I've needed so much of it...this would have cost me a fortune no doubt if I lived in the States. Incidentally, I was shocked when my sister told me the other day that I would have to get some health care insurance before going to NYC and Minnesoata this summer, that it's crazy not to, cuz like if you get in an accident, or break your leg or whatever while you're in the country, apparently it would cost me like thousands and thosands of dollars...which made me bug-eyed and sick to my stomach...).

Okay I'm going to swear now...

"AMERICA IS THE RICHEST COUNTRY ON THE PLANET AND YOU GUYS FUCKING WELL SHOULD HAVE FREE HEALTH CARE!!!!"

GAAWWWWWWD.

It's honestly, from my perspective as a full-blooded born and raised Canadian who has known nothing else, staggeringly unbelievable that the US government has so effectively fucked over its populace by denying it proper health care, (and while we're on the subject), proper education.

I have the utmost compassion for you guys.

Anyhooo....

I started off talking about how I was ten minutes late for work and still stoned, stoned all day sort of, like I was drifting through the day, kind of euphoric, the world was wonderfully softened, and it just hurt less, the light, the noise, the people, the industry, the construction going on on campus, the computer monitor blinking at me, me blinking at it, the two of us sort of engaged in a battle of authenticity and magical realism.

At the same time, I also felt guilty for being high while at work, so there is that complication, you know...I know that this kind of self-alteration is not life-sustaining, and that is why drug use is not a solution to your pain, insofar as it might make you feel better temporarily but ultimately (I learned the hard way, but then it was booze, wine mostly), it can very well ruin your life and kill you.

It depends on how you want to look at it I guess, drugs and alcohol and so on. It is soothing. It CAN and DOES make you feel great, for intervals, but then you will always need MORE and more and more...and you will never get enough.

Drugs and alcohol can end your pain, instantly, like you could die.

I don't mean to sound overly dramatic, but this is the gamble I consciously take every night I have copious amounts of DXM (which I've noticed, as if I hadn't known it would happen this way, is resulting in my consumption of a LOT more than it used to to achieve the same effect).

And it's like...Neo Citran right? How can that be so bad. I don't have Neo Citran track marks. I don't get nose bleeds from snorting coke. Or sores and rashes as one would get from Crystal Meth.

I just drink my lemony soothing concoction, petting my bunnies, going out back for a cigarette once in a while, staying up all night cuz the effects of the drugs, the combination, is probably making me manic, which I've noticed is then followed by a devastating plummet into depression, like for a day or two, and on and on it goes...

(Although I've had sleep issues and gone on very little sleep most of my life, since my teens for sure...or...let me restate...I've gone on very little sleep throughout my life, punctuated with periods of time when I have slept to great excess....has always been one extreme or the other, henceforth, I give you...the bipolar me). At least that seems to fit).

I cannot stand, cannot seem to tolerate 'normality,' the ordinariness of life, cannot seem to just settle into my skin and be, live in the moment.

I must have either extraordinary elation (mostly chemically-induced these days...as I have never been a euphoric manic bipolar type but rather a dysphoric manic bipolar type, meaning that my 'highs' are not happy, they are intense irritability and anxiety, a different kind of mania, or so I'm learning), or I must have (and I'll conjure it, create it if I have to I guess), some kind of epic existential self-induced tragedy happening to me.

I cannot walk the line.

I drink hot lemon concoctions which were administered to me at leisure while I was a sickly kid growing up, 6, 7, 10 years old, every year it seemed becoming stricken with tonsilitis, and so they gave me at time, Neo Citran or Gingerale, that kind of thing. I'm not making excuses, but I feel a need to couch my frequent drug use in the proper 'atmosphere.'

My Neo Citran DXM (anything with DM on the box), has the ambiance of a Saint Bernard delivering a barrel of brandy to a "cold and flu sufferer,' some good looking commercial actor with brown hair and blue eyes whose ski trip has been interrupted by his "nasty cough and cold," and so, (does anyone else recall these commercials?), along comes the Saint Bernard with a barrel under her chin, attached to her collar somehow I guess, and it's snowy and white, and the good looking commercial actor with brown hair and blue eyes is snuggled up next to a big wood burning stone fireplace in the ski lodge, all "aches and pains," clearly suffereing from cough due to cold etcetera, and next to the commercial actor is a gorgeous blond with bodacious ta tas (to cleverly and retroactively link this post to the one I wrote before, yesterday), and the bodacious blond is there to nurture the guy, and the Saint Bernard jumps up on the big comfy couch between them, and they both sort of nestle into the animal actor with the barrel under its chin, only you know from the voice over that it's not rum or brandy in the barrel, no, it's the "hot lemony relief of Neo Citran," then the scene cuts to a close-up of the powder being stirred deliciously into a steaming hot tea cup, probably clear glass cuz it works better on film.

And I drink it and more and more and more, to great excess (upwards of 15 packets a night now, when I in fact take it, which seems almost nightly these days, though as noted before, even the Health Authorities that be have declared that this stuff is not physiologically addictive, but they make the distinction that it can be habit-forming and 'psychologically addictive.' Am I the only one who thinks there's something totally whacked about this criteria?? I mean, I get what they're sayin. It's not heroin. I don't think there'd be withdrawal even. It's a pretty friendly little drug. And I take full responsibility for my total disregard for my mental and physical health these days; it's true, I am doing this to myself, not eating (a banana today so far is all...no appetite), and drinking Neo Citran and staying up all night with my bunnies in the basement. It's so totally whacko.

Not sure where all this is leading, but I guess I'll find out before too long. Obviously, I cannot live my life this way. But something's happened to me in the past couple of years, like the depression (bipolar), whatever, has developed fangs, has the character of an incubus, or incubi, something deadly and unearthly hunched upon my chest in the darkness, that pressure.

I haven't been 'there' in a while...and even writing that last paragraph was sort of hard, like I don't want to go there...it's honestly blood curdling, that experience, the depths into which I have now gone.

I had no idea.

I just had no idea.

This whole post was really just designed because I wanted to tell you something kind of funny, in a not so funny way of course, but still, it is sort of funny, ironic at least,

So I was still high when I got to work, and ten minutes late (and we now know that David was okay with that..I put in an extra half hour today actually), and today I met the Vice President of the University, which is sort of like meeting royalty...He seemed like a nice enough guy, named Jim Anglin, the big VP, and I shook his hand and said hello, was in the midst of a friendly conversation with Stuart the Scottish mail delivery clerk who I have always adored and who now sees me all over campus at any number of locales, and so, Stu and I have this kind of rapport and like each other), and the VP Jim Anglin stepped back and said he didn't mean to interrupt, and I was like, 'Oh, hey, nooooooo problem." (But inside I was thinking....Yo duuuuuuude, you're like second in command....you're like...."First captain...Second Pick!!"). And so my point is I think it's funny that I was high when I shook the VP's hand today.

I find the whole hierarchy and those titles completely fucking laughable, sorry, but I just don't buy it, the way so many people in the UVic community fall down all over themselves when these particular big shot dudes are around...I resent it and it irritates me just because I have built into me this fundamental belief, like to my core, that we are all equal here, we are all just people, and title and "idol worship' (ring any bells??? Hey, where's Jesus?? Where's the spicy chick peas?? Where is Moses or Charleton Heston with those ten commandments cast in stone...you know...thou shall not worship false idols...WELL???)

I've been typing for a couple of hours now....I'm kind of manic right now...duh.

The crash is coming.

I really have to get my shit together one of these days.

Posted April 14, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 13, 2009- more China Beach

Posted April 13, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 13, 2009- China Beach

Drove out to China Beach with my sister today, an hour and a bit north of Victoria. I love it there, was a bit cold, always windy.

Handfuls of people here and there.

The nice thing about west coast beaches on the island here is that they never seem especially populated.

We met a dog named Cedar who followed us around while her 'patron' (I disagree with term 'owner') was surfing.

Big waves. Lots of glare, white sky bordering on grey. Hailed on the way back for about a one kilometre stretch of road, then nothing. Just slick rainwater.

Feeling particularly irritable (I don't know what about), low grade, kind of a low low grade sad.

Been eating too much sugar. Just sugar, anything with sugar in it.

Feeling 'plump?' Water retention? Late this month but that is normal, late or early or whatever, have never known when, like ever, since I was 13. A lot of people would find that unusual. I'm used to it.

I feel like fasting for a week to get rid of this feeling.

I am getting high tonight, I just am.

But here are some pictures of one of my favourite places.

Posted April 13, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 12, 2009- When things look Pretty & Why I love Wild Horses

New house. New start? New life?

Yes and No.

One problem of mine is I can usually answer yes or no to almost any yes or no questions. I am a bona-fide self-declared 'fence-rider,' which has often been misinterpreted by others (in my opinion) as a sign of weakness, a lacking of political backbone, a wishy-washy way of living one's life, to never root yourself firmly into an idea or philosophy, dig your claws in, make your case.

To be a 'flake.'

A cherry picker waiting at the goal line (off-side).

To be a blond. (I am, sort of, reddish blond, but have been blond blond with highlights many times). If you have an ample 'chest' (and I do, not magnanimous in proportion, pun intended, but enough that I don't get to wear cute little shirts and bras, enough that I have always felt sort of 'plump' as a result, enough that running is harder for women like me than sporty spice types, although when I was running way back when, my tits basically disappeared, or went down to B-cups...I was a size 4, stream-lined)...anyway, yeah, if you have an 'ample chest' AND you're blond, you're sort of cursed there too in a way, in terms of being taken seriously. It's true. We all know this, don't we? I have forever felt that I was born inside the wrong body (no, not a trans-gender issue), but just that I 'feel,' inside, like a plain jane waif, pale-skinned, definitely a brunette. Maybe I'd still have blue eyes, not sure.

By the way...I don't know if I used magnanimous properly up there, but I just sort of had to use it, even if it's not quite right):

See below (a brief interjection from the dictionary addict):

magnanimous

Pronunciation:

\mag-ˈna-nə-məs\

Function:

adjective

Etymology:

Latin magnanimus, from magnus great + animus spirit — more at much, animate

Date:

1567

1 : showing or suggesting a lofty and courageous spirit <the irreproachable lives and magnanimous sufferings of their followers — Joseph Addison> 2 : showing or suggesting nobility of feeling and generosity of mind <too sincere for dissimulation, too magnanimous for resentment — Ellen Glasgow>

— mag·nan·i·mous·ly adverb

— mag·nan·i·mous·ness noun

My body has never matched who I am.

That is to say, while my breasts may not be magnanimous in proportion, (you know, my bosom, boobs, fun bags, bodacious ta tas, my land of plenty, my cleavage perpetuators, my breasts....) they have never seemed to 'fit' me. I have always wanted to be sleek and dark and literary, (I mean, so long as we're all out there cultivating personas); have always longed for a ribcage like a birdcage, delicate fingers, naturally beautiful fingernails, French manicured perhaps, (every so often, as an indulgence). I would much rather be 'bodacious-less' and taken seriously, than bordering on magnanimous, and ignored. In other words, (<-- writing tip, it's bad form to begin a sentence with 'In other words,' because if that is the case you should get to the point and just begin by using 'those other words;' don't preface it)...so, let me start again.

My breasts are not showing or suggesting a lofty and courageous spirit. My breasts are not so irreproachable as to encapsulate the lives and magnanimous sufferings of Joseph Addison's followers. My breasts neither show nor suggest nobility of feeling and generosity of mind, nor are they too sincere for dissimulation, nor too magnanimous for resentment, but...

....they do get in the way from time to time...

It would be interesting to live a day as a flat-chested brunette.

In the HBO film, Gia, (a kind of glammed up biography of 80's supermodel Gia Carangi known only as Gia), Gia (portrayed by Angelina Jolie) says something like, "I don't think you can ever really call yourself a woman unless you're a blond, ya know?" (she was a brunette and either bisexual or a lesbian) She was a heroin addict who died of Aids when Aids was just becomining known to the world.

Here is a link about the real Gia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gia_Carangi

(I just looked over that wiki site. Here's a bit of serendipity for ya...She and I have the same birthday, January 29th.). I have always been fascinated with Gia Carangi.

Strange.

Anyway, yes, I believe in magic, or if you prefer, cosmic collisions. Predetermined instances of fate, or fate and free will sort of working together, weaving the tapestry of your life; your choices somewhat guided by, coerced by the wind at your back, influenced by the momentum that still surges in your blood and DNA at the cellular level, traces of The Big Bang in your sloughed skin cells, pushing you into that particular direction you were no doubt inclined to go anyway, though you have the choice and can alter your course.

I believe our lives are both predetermined and random; both at once, a paradox of no uncertain shape and size.

This life, being alive, knowing you're going to die one day, that is a paradox, because we live linear existences, from one to one hundred (that kind of thing), we write stories based on a similar methodology of linear thinking (which I don't particularly favour or utilize in my own narratives), and if we live a linear existence based on mathetmatical measurements and proclamations of 'infinity,' then it is a paradox to live and at the same time to say one die you will 'end.' (which is probably why most people believe in God or an afterlife or something...because we are products of a linear existence that will not let us free of its grip).

I believe in...enchantment, sleight of hand, the paranormal, the supernatural.

Why not?

Why do Gia Carangi and I have the same birthday? What are the odds that I would be sort of infatuated with her for years and only now, this morning, April 12, 2009, learn that we share the same birthday, though a decade and a half apart?

Aquarians.

A couple of fucked up Aquarians.

I want to be Jane Eyre.

But I digress, (a lot)...

Back to the point I opened with: is this new house the start of a new life? A new place in which Leigh and I can begin anew, revived, husband an wife, let the bad go and move towards a brighter future?

Yes and No. It's both. I could 'choose' to tow the line. But well, no, I'm kidding myself. Or am I?

See, this is my problem. I am a cherry-picking blondish blue-eyed though not quite magnanimously-chested fence-riding flake lacking in political backbone. But in my defense, I offer the following:

All of these decisions, issues, yeses and nos, they confuse me and frustrate me, because on some level it seems that for every situation there is a yes, and for that same situation there is a no, that it must be so, and this in turn comes from something to do with ones and zeros of which the universe is comprised, with protons and electrons, (anti-matter), quantum theory, time travel, superstring theories which have essentially proven that the 'same' object can, for real, exist in two places at the same time, it has to do with ones and zeros, and all of it, all of this ultimately makes any yes or no answer I may offer to any yes or no question ultimately redundant, given that there is only one truth anyway.

If it's not a 1.

It's a zero.

(I think this is the simplified mathematical equation through which one finds God).

So Leigh asked me like three or four times last night, or over the past couple of days (we've been talking, interacting again, sleeping together etc. though still rather apathetically, or maybe that's just me), "This place is great, hey?"

It is a question of sorts even though he states it as a declaration. It's that upward swing at the end of the sentence only that makes it an inquiry. I hate that, questions that are really statements designed to seduce the other into agreement.

"This place is great, hey?"

I said, "Yeah, I like it. it's nice."

This seemed so insufficient to him, or so I surmised, when he asked (stated) again sever more times within the next hour or two, the same thing, reworded.

"God, it's so nice to live in a house all our own, isn't it?

"God, it's so great having a basement, so much storage, and this backyard is amazing, hey?|

Each time, I said, "Yes, it's nice..."

The fact is I have been withholding any great excitement about this new house (which I do really kind of love), because as I said to Leigh after the fourth or fifth time he tried to wrench from me a level of joy and novelty that matched his own for our new settlement into a house with the kind of postal code and street address that I know matters to him for all the superficial reasons it does not mean shit to me, "It's just geography, Leigh."

He is content, happy in his new home. I would be too, could be too, but it seems to me that a pretty new environment does not compensate for (to quote RT) what is lacking in spades between Leigh and I, in this marriage, always has been lacking.

What was it, three or four days ago, that he went ballistic about the bathroom window being open, and prior to that, some comment that sure, I could leave, but "how would I support (myself)?"

OR..

(financially-speaking, but it felt like a dagger anyway, as if it related to the wholeness of 'me' which it kind of does):

"At this point, Trish, it makes no difference whether you stay or leave." (I had said that if I was such a burden then wouldn't it make sense that I leave?). Then he added, "Sure, you could go, go and live on welfare..."

The thing is, prior to being with Leigh, since I left home at 18 and moved to Victoria, (with no money and like, one suitcase), I have always managed to take care of myself, financially, you know, though it has always been hard, a struggle, student loans, working, school etc (my family is not rich to say the least...I grew up watching credit cards get cut up at the kitchen table late at night)...but I have never asked to be taken care of by any man, not even my dad (who I met when I was 22ish), not even him, have never asked for a penny and I never ever will...it's a matter of principle...

It's a very 'sore spot' for me, having grown up sort of lower to middle class or whatever, in a small town, having gone to school with rich kids...(my sisters and brother have this same 'sore spot')....one of the worst thing you can say to me is that I'm somehow 'using you' for money, that I'm taking advantage of you in some financial way. It KILLS me.

And I have worked hard, both on the job and/or at school, over the years, preceding Leigh and during my years with him, but he has repeatedly dismissed this notion, refuted it via nuance and many time outright directly. It's just never enough. And while it's about money to him, to me, it's about dignity, and how can I be happy and content if the underlying 'truth' of our relationship is that he thinks I'm basically a loser? I have spent years proving myself to him. I've noticed he has never felt inclined to prove himself to me, except sexually, but that is designed to serve of 'proof of his manhood and 'girth,' and has nothing to do with proving himself to me as a kind of whole-hearted man of good will and principle.

The house is nice, is coming together 'nicely,' and it's cozy, beautiful, not huge, but sort of great. The back yard is amazing. Gas fire place in the big living room, hardwood floors throughout, a fireplace in Logan's bedroom, wood burning, dining room with French doors that open onto a perfect lush garden backyard patio, overlooking the yard (deer roam through our backyard quite frequently) My rabbits love it out there, and sure, as I said to Leigh, "Yes, I like it..." then perhaps negated (or at least damaged) my approval of the 'nice nice house we now live in,' by that statement: "It's just geography."

There is so much about our marriage that looks pretty on the outside, or has historically, for years, but which in reality has been hell on the other side of the front door....7 years of hard drinking (me anyway......) in which we were basically just drunk lovers and drinking pals, 7 years of hangovers (I must never drink again), followed by (interestingly, it all started with my 'sobriety,') the steady decline of our relationship (now that I could see clearly?), a drifting apart, hard-felt unbuffered resentment which used to be drenched in booze and so never had quite the same damaging effect on us as it does now, now that I at least have stopped drinking. In the Pinot noir days, we woke up hung-over and just sort of chalked it up to another night of 'the booze made us do it,' and on and on like that, for years.

I am moving away from pretty things. I am sick of pretty things and hardwood floors and Chintz couches and 300 thread count sheets or whatever. It's been so cyclical, so much superficial prettiness punctuated by an underlying 'sickness,' punctuated by pretense and falsehood and pain.

I love him, I do, I'm certain of it.

But it is possible to fall in love with entirely the wrong man.

I am sickened by the pretty things that surround me these days, and yet, I think the grit and hard knocks of 'the world out there,' would (for now anyway), just eat me up and spit me out.

I am not well enough.

So in a way, Leigh is right, I am sort of staying because I need him. (although I AM working and have not technically cost him anything, hardly, I mean, shit, I barely eat).

But is it too much to ask to be cared for in times of great distress?

I would do it for him, for anyone who asked me probably, in a heartbeat.

I'm writing to you from the coffee shop in The Village.

I am writing to you from the trenches.

I am trying so hard to tell the truth.

Everything hurts.

It always hurts, every day, this ache in my chest, every day. The ache in my chest (like mourning the death of a loved one? or, to make it more tangible and relative to my own life experiences), the terrible pain that winter in 1989 when my cat ran away, to be un-found, and un-fed, and un-beheld by me forever after, forever without absolution....that kind of pain and sense of loss....

Here.

In my chest.

My throat.

I don't know why this is happening, why I seem incapable of just feeling genuinely 'happy' for Five minutes...It's not always hardcore I want to DIE despair, but it's at best sort of a low-grade sense of pointlessness with intervals of phsycial 'aching,' as noted.

You must understand, I need you to understand this: I cannot make it stop...cannot make the ache go away, not on my own, not in a sustaining life-long way, probably not without medication.

I want to be held close, gently, I want a man to touch my face and linger there, my lips, my cheek, then slowly to the nape of my nake, and in this way I want him to draw me in and kiss me.

And I will touch his face and linger there, touching and feeling for signs of spirit, signs of what is real about him, what matters about him, what has wounded him, and I will find it (those tender places, and all over his body too, later, in semi-darkness, because I love it, and because I am good at it, you know, I just am, finding the most erogenous places) and I will find what hurts and kiss each place, and love him just to love him, whatever love is.

Lastly, I want to be held for a long time, post orgasmic, and to hold him back, though softer from a feminine place, to say, 'no, you are the man and I am the woman and I need you to be the one to enfold me somehow'), all this, after so much touching, after such a 'long journey into the night,' of finding in another what is there to find, (or what's the point of being alive?) except each other (and animals and nature too).

I don't ever want to be let go, and I don't mean literally; I mean, I want to be as connected through absence as much through proximity, to be loved....forever and ever and ever...

Don't let me go. Don't let me go.

My heart is too big, I can't endure the wholeness of 'this.'

P.S. Pretty things are as wonderful as they are deadly.

Beware of pretty things that are not really pretty at all.

Now think of wild horses running free across a field of rolling hills on the prairies, horses running just to be horses, belonging to no one, wild horses, like Mick Jagger says, imagine Mick Jagger in his leather pants out there on the Canadian prairies singing, Wild horses could not drag me away from youuuuu....clouds of dust, blue sky, boundless; your heart, unpained.

Close your eyes and dream of me.

Close your eyes and I will dream of you.

Close your eyes and together we will dream that there is such a thing as wild horses running free to a Rolling Stones soundtrack.

Posted April 12, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 11,2009- House and Factory and some Chagalls

Posted April 11, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 10, 2009- Boomerang

For the past couple of days in particular, I have had this utterly ravenous appetite, like insatiable (clearly, something checmical is going on, and pre-menstrual...I get that way...don't all women?). This happens every month. But those two days pass, then my appetite is gone again. As of today, for example, I just realized (it's 4am) the only thing I've consumed since this (or I guess it's now yesterday) morning, is a banana.

Yesterday, I was a food vaccum.

Today, any sense of craving or hunger is non-existent. My appetite is swiming in conjunction with my moods I suppose. I should ask the doctor about that, just curious, although I've always had food and body image issues.

I feel fairly nauseous at the moment. That's how I remembered I hadn't eaten.

It's 4am and I'm still revving. It's been lately a sporadic and completely unpredictable storm of hypo-something or other (like now, staying up, that feeling of just wanting to keep going and going, to write more and more and more), and sudden plummets into fatigue, or no, not 'fatigue' per se, but just, falling asleep all over the place.

I literally fell asleep while sitting in my chair at my desk at work today, just for a second, you know, how when the head lolls and you sort of out of reflect flinch awake again. That happened about five times, then I went out for a break and got a double Americano...

I am a boomerang.

Is that how you spell boomerang.

Yes, I just checked, it is:

Here is the Merriam-Webster online definition of "boomerang:"

boo·mer·ang

Pronunciation:

\ˈbü-mə-ˌraŋ\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Dharuk (Australian aboriginal language of the Port Jackson area) bumarinʸ

Date:

1825

1: a bent or angular throwing club typically flat on one side and rounded on the other so that it soars or curves in flight ; especially : one designed to return near the thrower2: an act or utterance that backfires on its originator

Oh hell, that is SO very me.

I am an "act or utterance that backfires on its originator."

Have also been known to 'curve in flight.'

I have to go cuddle my rabbits now.

Posted April 10, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 9, 2009- I am the secretary around here

My email to Leigh, earlier today, from my temp job (yes, emailing on the job), at the Office of International Affairs:

i am sickened with worry, pressure, money, your contempt of me, how you treat me, regard me.

I feel like a tenant, an unwanted tenant.

I am clearly a paycheck to you.

Shall I leave?

Just tell me.

You do not realize it, but you are not being fair.

Your priorities and perception are fucked.

I love you, I think. But you are pushing me away. I cannot tolerate this much longer. I don't mean to issue ultimatums, just letting you know where I'm at.

RE: money coming in...

I do have money coming in but it is geared towards pay periods, thus I have been unable to offer you anything because I will not receive a paycheck until the next pay period (April 1-15, on which will be added by 2-day thing with Global Studies), and will receive payment for that, along with most of my payment for my time here, with a pay cut-off date of the 15th (so...the 16th and 17th of next week will go on the NEXT pay period...this is how it works, I know, I am a 'secretary'). Payments for April 1-15 for casuals do not get issued until the 23rd.

I did receive a small paycheck for my reto pay for Recruitment a couple of days ago ($116), which I could just GIVE you, but I need to live too.

I don't know what to do.

I am earning some income as well through pet-sitting. Will not get that until they return in a couple of weeks ($200). Payment for my poems ($100 each) should come this month.

I should get money back on taxes.

Having said all this, my larger point is...why do I feel like an employee? You really only care about money. For the record, our recent increase in rent is because of your marital situation, custody issues.

I am so tired and lost, I just want to leave....but I do love you, but maybe that's not enough.

Will go home after work...tonight I plan to write at the Village after pet care all around. The writing is important because in the long run it will prove to be the most financially beneficial for me (or us, whatever), although I know you don't believe this.

Posted April 9, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 9, 2009- Hot Air

I am so fucked.

Marital status: bordering on unbearable...or am I just crazy, can't see clearly.

Knocked off the DXM for the past two days so yeah, feel 'better' in that way, but...

This morning, getting ready for work, in the bathroom blowdrying my hair, was hot, had the bathroom window open a bit to compensate (seems reasonable).

Enter: husband. aka Leigh.

(He has been content, as we have had sex lately, usually while I'm semi-conscious, un-guarded, whatever, and I've been sleeping in our bed for several days now).

As I was saying: enter Leigh.

L: "Do you realize you have the window open?: (something like that)

me: Blink...I know it's coming and I know I cannot tolerate this shit this morning, again, still...

L: :Do you know how the heating works in this house?" (patronizingly, or that's how it feels...he takes on this businessman tone...)

me: "Are you kidding?"

L: "Well, do you know how much it costs, to heat this place?"

me: oddly enraged: "Oh my god, would you just fuck off with money again, I'm so sick of it, I am so fucking sick of hearing about money money money all the time!" etc

L: "Well, you might as well be throwing (this part I love) my money out the window."

me: "more fucks and so on...." (I can have such a foul mouth). "You realize you're ending this marraige? Do you realize that?"

L: more of the same

The end.

I race for the bus and actually get to work on time.

This job is slow, hence my blogging. They seem oblivious to my presence, satisfied that I occupy space at this desk, 'appearing busy in an office is key, we all know this to be true."

Anyway, so yeah, I feel fucked.

I just can't stand this pressure, money, being devalued to a paycheck, that's how it feels.

I am not a flake, a user, someone who does not pull her weight. I have been dealing with an illness, I just have.

Have decided to wait to make any profound moves, departures from the marriage, until I have spent some time speaking with Dr. Mohammed; my first appointment with him, the neuro-psychiatrist, is April 22nd.

I cannot see clearly, but I know I feel like shit most of the time.

Posted April 9, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 7, 2009- Two chairs and sheet lightening

I feel like a stranger in my own home.

Broken record that I am, I must report I am feeling exceptionally down. I wonder if I can attribute this to bipolar or simply that things are so bad between Leigh and I? A combination I'm sure.

I cannot fathom staying.

I cannot fathom leaving.

Both at once, and seemingly equal in their conviction.

Busy day.

Temped at the Office of International Affairs. Phone did not ring once, very slow job. But comfortable enough. I work exclusively with a Chinese guy named David Wang, He's nice, has a birthmark around his right eye, sort of charcoal-coloured. He speaks with a strong accent. All around me are different languages. Lots of French a few cubicles over, but it's too fast and I can't pick it up for the most part. I want to take French lessons at some point, fun and casual sort of thing, to re-ignite 12 years of dormant French learned in school. I had a crush on my grade 12 French teacher, Monsieur Van Camp. I get so many crushes. Had a crush on the Scottish waiter at Shine cafe the other day. Sometimes I wish I was single or that it was okay to have sex with other men while married (despite my admittedly dire sex drive). It (sex drive) seems a tad more lively when I consider the prospect of a new partner, but that is normal no doubt. I do not typically have a wandering eye, would never cheat of course, but even so, just in terms of 'looking,' I've never been particularly inclined. It's kind of like shoe shopping; if you can't have them, then why bother? I can appreciate 'beauty' when it's there, on strictly physical terms, but it's just so unimportant. I do think there needs to be 'chemistry,' something Leigh and I have never had.

I was so young.

We slept together on our first 'date,' which was just supposed to be a thank-you dinner from Leigh (then my boss) for working so hard, overtime etc. We rode our bikes from the univsersity all the way out to the breakwater, had a low key over the counter dinner at Ogden Point Cafe, rode our bikes back to his place (his dad's then virtually vacant house which Leigh was staying in after splitting from his wife). He had champagne. And probably wine. We got plastered and played pool in the downstairs rec room.

We went upstairs and talked by candlelight, sitting on the living room floor. The only furniture in that house were two chairs.

Leigh and I began our marriage with two chairs in an empty room. This seems so poetic and almost too obvious a metaphor for how a relationship can begin with the essentials and end up cluttered with so much shit.

I am lost.

When we were in Cuba to get married a couple of years ago, we knew we wanted to buy one piece of Cuban art, soemthing local (well, everything in Cuba is arguably and particularly local). There was this great painting a guy had done of two chairs, sort of impressionist, ochre, exotic, beautiful. It seemed like such an obvious choice, the perfect one to get given the symbolism. (We've often talked about those two chairs, how it all began). Leigh did not want to buy it. Money issue of course. I had my own money and could have just bought it, but he wanted to wait to see what else we might find. We went back a few days later to get it and it was gone, so instead we have this androgynous portrait of a serious looking individual. I think it is clearly a man. Leigh has always insisted it's a woman.

Enough about the marriage though. Starting to bore even myself.

Managed to get in two hours of writing tonight, finally, after pet-sitting for both my sister who is in Van on a conference, and for this other girl, Dani, who is friends with Megan, whose bunnies I have also taken care of in the past. Went to Starbucks and wrote, made myself just do it, just start. Once started, I lose myself, but I need more discipline.

It was the Brenda Hughes poems. Wrote another section, which needs a little more done to it, more stuff woven in, but was happy with what i ended up with, images of sheet lightening on the rolling fields outside of Calgary, how it took my breath away as I peered out at it through the tinted glass window of a Greyhound bus, one of many summer trips to visit Aunt Pat in Calgary every year (the aunt who was just here), how the sheet lightening lit up all the cows and hay bales, briefly, how the sheet lightening made me believe in something like love, and the thunder that followed made me believe in something like God as it cracked open my heart and the whole of existence seemed to boom inside me.

I miss that.

Posted April 7, 2009

Sisyphus Journals- April 5, 2009- Unrequited

So I make up my mind to leave, you know, "leave this marriage," because it's intolerable, except of course it is not intolerable. We have both been tolerating it for years.

Earlier today, after an argument, another one, another argument superficially about money but I think more importantly (from my point of view) about power imbalance. I feel, I think accurately, that my value in this marriage is proportionate to my ability to bring in money, always has been, always will be.

When do you cut loose?

The thing is, well, two things:

a. Despite everything, I still love him.
b. I think leaving my kill me.

That's sounds dramatic, but there is a fairly viable reality to this statement.

I want to fall in love with someone else so that it doesn't hurt so much to go. I know you're not supposed to do it that way, you know, find another rung to grasp before letting go of the one you grasp in your other hand. I realize I should probably leave, break it off, move back to Vancouver, settle in, get a life (I found a job I am pretty qualified for, online, craigslist, working downtown Van for a non-profit organization, facilitating with grant writing and so on. This time, if I "go," I will go towards something more defined and planned, will not just throw caution to the wind and just leave my life for another unknown life, with neither the money nor strength really, to follow through with it,

I still love my husband.

We haven't hardly spoken in several days. I have not slept in the bed with him, upstairs, in probably at least a week now. I spend most of my time in the basement, in the 'bunny room,' with my rabbits. I am becoming part rabbit. Marcello is sleeping on a fuzzy blanket on the back of the couch, sort of perched over my shoulder. His eyes are open, but I can tell by his breathing that he is pretty much asleep. Caravaggio prefers the low ground, the carpet or the little tiger print bed. He doesn't like to be cuddled much, just loves to eat.

How do you leave someone you still love?

Posted April 5, 2009

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