But the morning was hell, one of those awful unbearable ones when everything feels hopeless and dull, when you are crawling out of your skin, when you feel nauseous and dizzy, when your skin is gray and toxic.  Oil in the veins.  Tar at the back of the throat.  When you feel alone and irrelevant. 

You think, 'maybe in the new year.'

Black thoughts.

One of those emotional storms the eye of which is my despair, and whose centrifuge spins my mouth shut, threaded lips, sewn.  In the whir of it, car parts, two-by-fours with nails in them, a barn full of hooks and knives, and a cow, maybe two, torn apart, split hides, blood and bone, their bodies torn apart by something as unanticipated as wind.  Poor broken cows. 

Dirt in the eyes.

A one-ton flatbed truck falls on your back.  Glass in the corner of one eye.

Nobody cares.

But after the nap, I felt good, remarkably okay, wrote for a couple more hours, and now this, writing to you.

How is such a dramatic shift possible?  This cannot be normal.  If I could turn down the volume on these emotional shifts, particularly the despairing ones, I think I could hook into life, find an angle, a loop to hold onto. 

Just emailed the academic adviser at UVic and set up a self-imposed deadline for completion of my PhD proposal (which I've decided will involve looking at film and literature over time).  Deadline is January 4th.  Aiming for summer or fall entry date.  Maybe the fall because there's no way I could afford to go right now, but then, I've always found a way.

I need this in my life right now, the big return to school.  It's time to do the PhD.

(I could in the future teach writing and film, no problem, would love that).

I will write my books and poetry etc at the same time.

I realized upon leaving my place this morning, (stepping into the sunshine, feeling remarkably good, woke up feeling instantly cheerful, after a night last night of total despair...the mood swings are just staggering, I cannot be clear enough on this point), that whatever I do, whatever my issues and problems are in this life, it is critical to me that I be successful.  I just refuse to stop moving forward.

Going to a tuba Christmas Carol concert in Market Square now.

Because my skirt rode high yesterday.

Because I miss Paris.

That city eluded me.

For two weeks that city eluded me.

Because of the red umbrella in the snow.

Because my initials are carved into the railing at the top of that tower.

Because I believe that means something.

Because women kept glancing at me, the length of my skirt.

They didn't approve.

Because of love and sex

Because of sex.

My skirt was too short yesterday.

I liked that.

Because life is short.

So he was back again in my dream last night, revealing my worst faults.

Then the dream shifted,  I was back at my old job in the law department, my lowly clerical job working for big shot lawyers and deans of law and so on (the one prof who everyone warned me was a jerk was the one guy I really clicked with, isn't that funny)?  People came to me if ever they needed something from him,  I liked him right away.  He was simply direct and didn't pander or bullshit.  A lot of people have a problem with not constantly being socially consoled and having their asses kissed.  I didn't really bullshit either so I think he liked me.  He had me do all of his scanning and some correspondence for him.  Hmmm, I miss that guy.

Anyway, so I was back in the law department and the computer tech guy and I were talking, and he kept slipping in zingers, disguised insults, little stingers designed to covertly hurt someone.  You know this type of person right?  He's actually nothing like this in real life, but in the dream he hated me, clearly thought I was a loser.

Is it really obnoxious to talk about one's dreams?  I mean, literal REM dreams not "I dream of living the rest of my life at Disney Land." ??

Some people think it is, but I don't believe that.  I love hearing about what people dream.  It's completely fascinating. 

So anyway, I meandered in and out of sleep and nightmares from 3am till 7am, and so it was not a good sleep again.

I felt this pressing need to get the nightmares 'out here' so they couldn't linger inside me.

That T-shirt comment from years ago really hurt me.  It was after I read that comment that I lost about 40 pounds, was a loose size 4, was running average 70K a week, and hardly eating anything.  It really took hold of me.  I have been trying so hard to get back to that weight ever since.

Have not had an appetite at all lately, which is sort of tricky because it's so easy for me to indulge in that and just not bother eating.  I mean, I drank a glass of organic Happy Planet juice at 3am this morning, and I felt guilty about it.  It comes and goes.

Okay, well, looks like another beautiful sunny day out there.

Things to do today:

-Work on essay for a few hours.
-look into volunteer work for working with street kids and women
-do up notices for ESL tutoring
-write at least the first paragraph of project description for school, don't make it harder than it has to be

Why do I feel like there's a hundred other things I'm forgetting to do?

6:01am. 

I have been flirting on the surface of sleep all night, cannot seem to fall under entirely.  Gave up just now and decided to blog.  I've been more or less awake since 4:30am.  So I 'got up' just now with burning eyes and nauseous stomach.  Just put in eyedrops.  Latest Allegra doesn't work at all.  Only the Benadryl seemed to snuff out my allergies, but it's too expensive.  Dammit.

Woke up (before I opened my eyes) with strange calculations and ideas spinning through my mind.  This has happened many times before; a litany of thought spins through, seems blazing, exact and correct, feels epic in its ingenuity.  But later, upon rereading, it, that blazing litany, seems like folly (nonsensical gibberish).

But none the less, I need to get it outside of me.

Damn my eyes are allergic.

Just had a major dizzy spell while sitting here typing (just a second ago).

The brightness of this monitor in this otherwise dark room seems to be the thing making me nauseous, but it probably isn't.

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.  Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't." (Alice)

Oh I never liked that big nervous rabbit.  He made me nervous.

So my rousing thoughts this morning as I lay there (or rather, here), trying to fall asleep:

I'm drawing a blank.

Ha.  Ha.  Just kidding.  I could 'preamble" forever.  This pun (the source of the forthcoming retroactive declaration) intended.

So let's talk about forever.  Everything is already and necessarily retroactive, and all of this is a preamble, even the thing which proceeds the preamble. 

The 'amble,' if you will.

(This is why I love haiku.  Haiku takes the infinite and makes it small yet astonishing).

The symbol for eternity (mathematically speaking) is an eight turned on its side.  I was never good at math, but I always thought math as a principle in itself should end with the sideways eight, or rather, it should begin and end with the sideways eight.  What more is there to talk about and how many ways can 'it' be talked about?  What's the point?  What greater proof can be than this?  All other numbers (ie, all symbols) should fall away.

I woke up thinking about this.  There was a striking point I wanted to make, but it's just beyond the bank right now.  It will come to me, something about the mind flipping off a projector wheel, negative film, celluloid, flipping off the reel into infinity.

No, it's all fuzzy now.  Have I fried my brain?  I would not have lost this when I was younger.  I understand why (though I am far from being a mathematician...I would be the mathematician's nightmare, but he is also my nightmare) there is a consensus of sorts that suggests great math can only be created in a person's prime. Poetry does not see the point in math, and yet without math poetry could not exist, and vice versa.  But poetry, unlike math, has no shelf-life; perhaps the greatest poetry is derived of a long life, maturity, and time.

Infinity to the power of infinity minus one.

Would not the first 'dot' in space have been regarded as infinity itself?  No, this is wrong.  Is the space surrounding the first 'dot' infinity itself?  Or is it the space surrounding the space that surrounds the dot ithat is nfinity?

This is the impossible syllogism.

My mind goes back to that dot.  The sideways eight feels excessive, an unnecessay flourish, a symbol that longs to be poetic but which is not poetic in itself, but rather it is a symbol through which poetry transpires, or a surface upon which poetry transpires, or the space surrounding poetry, or the sideways eight in the middle of poeticism.

I once read about something called the 'anti-knot,' which, were it to be uncoiled, would solve the fundamental question of the nature of the universe.  It's a theoretical knot, not a real knot.  The thinking upon which this concept is based feels slippery, like a slippery fruit rollup.  I want to eat it, but 'it' would kill me instantly.

Is it the celluloid of thought flipping off the reel that is real, or is it the reel?  Or is it the stuff surrounding the reel?  Or is what's real the stuff surrounding the reel and the celluloid?

To say something is unreal is antithetical to reason, and yet such a statement (well not the statement, but what the statement means) is a fundamental notion upon which philosophies are based.

Even the unreal must be real, strikingly real in its un-real-ness.

7:30am exactly.

The sky is violet, will brighten to blue.

The last faint star is out there, on the rise above the blue recycling bin filled with newspaper and empty bottles of rum.

There is a big fluffy orange cat curled up asleep on my feet (he is literally sleeping on my feet, stretched out across).  I will try to slip down under the covers again without disturbing him.  Wish me luck.  He just meowed, a question marked meow.  He speaks English in kitty vernacular. There is nothing I would not do for this animal.

He was a big man, appeared to have a big barrel chest, the heart attack kind of chest, or belly, the kind that means high blood pressure.

A high risk barrel chested big bellied man reduced to a mound under a white sheet in the middle of Douglas Street.

He was tall.  His feet were sticking out the end of the sheet.  Just those two feet, pointed to the heavens, to the washed out industrial sky, the kind of sky you choke on, the kind of sky that makes me think of empty wine bottles and gutters, serrated tuna fish can lids and fishing rods.  I don't know why that is.

I have a strange fuzzy memory of a muddy pond, bleak white sky, cold feet, fish bait (roe), and a hook and line.

This man died on an industrial kind of uninspiring day that evokes in me the sense of a hook and line.

No sinker.

The bus crept by.  I sort of lost my breath when I saw that body.

That was the first dead person I've ever seen. 

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so...

-Favourite transitional moment during an acceptance speech:Germaine Jackson accepting an award (one of several) for his late brother, Michael.

"I'd like to thank Allah for blessing us....and I'd like to also thank Dick Clark....etc."

-Carrie Underwood, country diva incarnate.  Could she get any hotter?  I mean, she's all country and loves Jesus (and maybe horses too?), she's a good girl no doubt, but her four- inch heels muddle the Christian good-girl stereotype.  Is she supposed to be the blessed virgin or the whore?  It seems the good lord has come a long way, thus allowing the blessed virgin-esque diva slash sweet country tart...to encapsulate the essence of both the virgin and the diva (whore is perhaps too much, when referring to Carrie Underwood but not if you are flailing scriptures around from a little town in southern Texas...or dueling banjos on the riverbank in the movie, Deliverance (God works in mysterious ways).  Hmph.

What would Jesus think of her hot pants?

Excuse me for a moment while I go burn my bra, right after I fuck the football team.

moving on....

-Lady Gaga rules.  I love her voice and her theatrical performances.  Loved it when her piano caught on fire.  She's a kind of popular culture savant who has something new to say and who could kick Carrie Underwood's little country ass.

-Adam Lambert?  WOW.  I mean, I got the sense the audience didn't quite get the deeper message behind his performance, his deliberate exploitation of sexuality (lewd and crude but beautifully stylized...people are stupid), his commentary on bi-sexuality, and damn, that boy can sing.  He's ahead of his time.  If the planet survives, if humans survive, we will look back upon this guy as an oracle or a prophet.  Mark...my...words....

-I love you Whitney Houston.

-Taylor Swift.  What the hell?

-MJ...RIP.

A note to self, a book title: (because for some strange reason the title of this book constantly evades me, even though I read the book and saw the movie, and want to read the book again!):

FUGITIVE PIECES (Anne Michaels)

(I think I mix this up with THE TRACY FRAGMENTS...(pieces...fragments...you know)

And note to self: Read Anne Michael's The Winter Vault.  Because it's bound to be wonderful.

I haven't read the book but still I wanted Michaels to win The Giller. 

I wish I could afford to buy books right now.

There's this gray and white female cat in the neighbourhood who's been hanging around since I moved in.  When she meows she sounds like a baby.  She's the sweetest thing.  She lives a couple of doors down, but the guy who (I will never say 'owns))...the guy with whom she resides is in my opinion a jack-ass because she is obviously not cared for properly.  She's always outdoors, even now that it's getting cold, she's too skinny, and she just seems sad all the time.  She meows and meows, so docile, she follows me up the driveway, tries to trip me up, doesn't want me to go.  It breaks my heart.

So for a few days she's had a sore paw, and tonight when I opened up the door for her (I usually give her food and water) her paw was really bad, swollen and infected.  I let her in, and now she's sleeping on my bed (or maybe under it).  I'm so stupid...she got off the bed while I was out of the room, and I didn't realize she couldn't get back on.

Anyway, she's under the bed now. 

I'm keeping her inside here till her paw is better, will stop in at the vet tomorrow and see about antibiotics, or something.  The 'guy with whom she resides' probably won't miss her, but I'll keep an eye out anyway.  If he's really concerned, he should be out looking for her.

I wish I could keep her.  I'd love her more than he does.

I've had a couple of days lately that I'd chalk up as good.  Lots of writing, finishing up another essay.  Damn, I think I"ll have a book soon.  Yeah, stay focused, stay focused. 

There have been a few minutes in these couple of days (short intervals, like for a minute or so, like 60 seconds...I'm being precise because it matters, because sometimes precision matters..because I'm big on precision...so many of us just drift about our lives and don't see  anything...I don't want to miss anything, but I don't want to miss the forest for the trees either)...anyway, there have been a few 60-second intervals when I fell into my own skin, my body, my rhythm. 

I remembered who I was.

I wasn't afraid.

Life, everything, wasn't so big, you know?

I can't remember the last time I felt that way.  I must have been, what, 10 or 11, maybe 12 years old.  I realize that sounds dramatic, but I think it might be true.

It's like having asthma (which I do), not being able to breathe well, but for years, months, years without relief, then taking a shot of your inhaler and just like that, you feel your lungs open, your chest becomes open, and you can breathe.

Those sixty-second intervals, they're like that.

It's 2:30 am and I'm up watching Bend it like Beckam,  If I spelled 'Beckam' wrong you'll have to forgive me.  Serves him right for marrying a spice girl.

My toes hurt big time from running tonight (first run in weeks).  It felt really good.  I've lost endurance and strength, but I'll get it back.

Off to see the kitty.

PS: If you are reading this and you have a cat (or dog or fish or bird or iguana or hamster or horse or giraffe or bunny rabbit and bunny rabbits need a lot of care and attention so don't just get one cause they're cute...etcetera), PLEASE...take GOOD, VERY GOOD, care of your animals.  You will GO TO HEAVEN if you do this.

Gandhi said, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way its animals are treated."

Please do not cage any animal, or any one for that matter.

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So tired it's sort of unbelievable.

Benadryl for allergies (my eyes are swollen and stinging) makes me drowsy.

Saw my step-daughter L today.  She is so growing up.  I have missed her, hugged her tight after dropping her off, kissed her on the forehead and said, "I love you so much."  She had a good  night.  She told us our fortunes with a homemade paper fortune teller.  You know those ones you made out of a sheet of paper back in 7th grade?  L is smart, sharp, been through a lot for someone so young, 13.  She's almost always happy, upbeat, and was today, but I see the teenager coming in slowly, brooding, sweet without knowing it, her mind and body still growing, her shiny smooth hair, her eyeliner and mascara perfectly applied.  She is pretty.  She wants to be a lawyer one day, and eventually a judge.  She will be, trust me.

Evening's events and today in general, costly.  Coffee shop visit with L turned into dinner, for her and me, bill was more than I thought, and a lot more than the $5 I had put aside to buy her hot chocolate and me coffee at Starbucks in The Village.  Had to buy Benadryl <-- I don't know how to spell Benadryl...and too tired to look it up.  Anyway, Benadryl ($19) , dinner ($22), food for my rabbits, my little skittles I call them lately, ($10), and I'm flat busted.  It's ridiculous, living on virtually no income.  I am literally impoverished, choosing Benadryl over food, and carrots over my livelihood for the next week.  It's impossible.  I'm in a dire situation.  But I have this sense of levity about it, because when you know you have almost $0, you feel liberated from the financial spectrum all together, and being so down and out and knowing there is nothing you can do about it,...why bother worrying?  It's well beyond worry.  It's out of my hands entirely (for now).  This state of nothingness is also liberating.  I do realize this sounds like I am removing myself from accountability as a holistic and valid discipline (part of being a 'grown up'), But that's not the situation here.  My hands are simply tied.  Cannot work until some paperwork comes through (waiting for about 9 weeks now), and quite honestly, I don't know if I have it in me to work right now.  I feel like I might shatter like glass at any given moment, so unhinged, alone, terrified lately.  The evenings are truly hard.  I have been feeling a sense of irrational certainty that I will die soon, like death is literally, for real, coming for me.  I feel like it's all going to just end.  I don't mean that I am wanting to kill myself hardcore 24/7...this sensation is outside of me, comes from a silhouette, the dark side of the moon, bad overused metaphors and that place just off my periphery...that is death coming.  It is already decided; that's how it feels.  Last time I was consistently feeling this way, this surreal pending doom, was just before the hospital back in May.  Maybe it will fade out soon.  That is possible.

Anyway, yes, the financial spectrum: I am living on welfare ($610 month, $400 of this goes for rent) and a few bucks here and there vis a vis a methodology of external generosity and my resounding shame...that ensures my survival in this short term situation.

So I am broke again.

This is a problem because I have to buy bunny litter b/c the little skittles pawned their litter for a new big screen tv and a whole bunch of other stuff they don't need, so many units and stereos and computers, everything with a remote control that is completely impossible to operate.

I seriously have to sleep now.

a quote before going...a poem by John Donne I read in between stacks of books in the high school library, grade 11, that hell, that poem in that book with worried thin paper.  I remember how the paper smelled, mossy, a patch of moss on a cloudy day around dusk somewhere in England perhaps, the scent of English paper. 

Blank paper has a scent.

(Tonight, my step-daughter let me smell her new perfume, on her upturned wrist.  And I sniffed that small space of skin.  I was simultaneously stricken by the complex swirls of scent, some flower, delicate, so much softer than a rose, a hybrid of an unknowable flower, a flower without a name, a hint of Samsura, and the faintest touch of a lily which is living off the heat of whatever flower it was that came first.  And that moment changed the whole dynamic of my relationship with that little girl I've known since she was four.  It just clicked into a new configuration; all the same parts realigned, Familiar but in flex, up-rooted.  The scent of rich black soil.  A tough root clenched in the hand, pulled from a place that was locked but is not now.  A balmy wind; that scent of autumn coming.  Autumn, not spring.  It's cooler than usual, more sleek, quieter).

Sleep deprivation loosens my prose.

That poem by John Donne, one of the metaphysical poets of his time.  I love this poetry stuff, in particular this poetry that focuses upon the subtle turns between mind and body. 

If ever I could get to the bottom of this, I would be healed.

( Title unknown )...I don't remember it.

As lines so loves oblique may well
themselves at every angle greet
but ours so truly parallel
though infinite shall never meet.

Therefore this love which us doth bind
but fate so enviously debars
is the conjunction of the mind
and opposition of the stars.

I'm back after a short departure, after another ducking-out of this cyberworld.

I miss the medium too much, feel compelled to write on walls and inside bathroom stalls, on metal, or on hard wooden surfaces, scratches across the skin, the wrists, chalk on sidewalks, paint on canvass.

Exacto knives and oil paint.  Paper cuts and charcoal.

Horror and bliss.

It's all right here.

It's all right here under the circus tent, the blue night sky. 

I have a trapeze painting in mind, a series of three, little white stick people flying through the air on a dark background, stick people swinging between fear and freedom, between despair and delight, stick people leaping across a universe of stellar collisions, blackness, sunlight, through rain, leaping and swinging high above an ocean, a garden, a sidewalk, a lake, a river.

It's just air.

Oh this holy mind.

Oh this holy heart.

In secret I really love myself.

Implicit in being a bright light is the snuffing of it out...

I will not be snuffed out anymore.

Will not be 'guilted' into sex or relationships or marriage anymore.

I miss love.

Hands are dry from gel sanitizer.

Feeling down.  Reality is setting in, and I don't like it.  Whichever path I imagine seems impossible.  Maybe Montreal.  I think maybe that would work.  I need to get far far far away.

Crushed, smothered,  Unfairly judged, always someone's new psyche 'case.'  Fuck this.  I wish I'd never let anyone in on anything that was ever happening to me.  That was the worst thing I could have done, going into the hospital and the events that followed.  I should have lied and said I was away on a writing retreat or something.

I need to get far far away. walk in snow, listen to a water heater tick in a drafty Montreal apartment.

Start over.

Become anonymous.

Speak that Montreal language.  Leonard Cohen's nude.

I have it in me to drop off the radar.  I drop off the radar, isolate, because the more isolated I am, the fewer people there are out there to mirror myself back to me.  When alone, I am unaccountable, unknown.

For someone who can't stand the terror of being on my own, I contradict myself by seeking it out at every turn, only to run back with my heart thumping in my throat.

Platonic and not platonic.

I draw him in close then push him away.  It's so neurotic.

I love him.

I'm confused, really torn, not knowing if I should move on or go back.

I'm in limbo, the woman, that pillar of salt, frozen in time.

Could we ever really work together, be good together, and if not, is it entirely because of me, or is it because we are incompatible, because with him I may never be living my own life.

Terrified of being alone.  I feel hollow when I'm alone, like I don't exist, insubstantial, like a see-through person, gauze, you could slice a samurai sward through me as you might wave a bubble wand, and I would fall apart, divided.

We had an argument tonight, won't get into it here online.

I'm afraid, feel guilty, don't want to let him go, not sure what to do.

What if I am incapable of making a decision?

Is it just me?  Am I fundamentally crazy?

I need someone to just tell me what to do.

I have actually hand-written many of the subsequent places of residence after # 5, on napkins and on the backs of parking tickets, and on the backs of receipts.

I'll insert those here on the blog sometime soon.

But as a point of reference for me I thought I'd simply make a list (to the best of my memory) of all the places I've lived.  I will likely forget one or two, but hopefully they'll come back to me at some point.

Here they are:

1. Grandma's house on 14th avenue, my first home.  We were living with Grandma at the time.

2. Baker Estates Apartments.  I have very little memory of this.

3. The green duplex on 3rd street.

4. the condominium complex across the street from the green duplex. (fell from Hilda Magus' 2-story window and broke my arm, smashed in my teeth.  I was two years old.

5. house on 5th avenue with the cool attic bedrooms, and the onion patch in the backyard.

(How old was I now?  I don't know, maybe five or six?)

6. My step-dad's (not yet my step-dad) house on King Street across the tracks.  5 acres and bears and velvety purple flowers I thought were that thing called poison ivy.  I made necklaces out of the dandelion stems in the yard.

7. House on 3A street (a block up from the green duplex and condominums)

(ten years old to 14 years old)

8. Moved to Prince George BC.  (there for two years)

9. Moved back to Cranbrook, into my Grandma's trailer in Highcrest Trailer Court (not the house she had when I was first born).  We were in the forest, on the fringe, out of town.  Loved the wilderness but was so fucking depressed for two solid years (grade 11 and 12) I wanted to die.

(18 years old now)

10. Left home for university, moved to Victoria, lived in the dorms for two years (Margaret Newton 107 where I lost my virginity....and second year in one of the cool townhouses that were made for the athletes during the Commonwealth Games the year before).

(I feel like I'm jumbling places now, memory gets sketchy)

11, House on Mackenzie Avenue a block from the liquor store which was bad news.  Shared it with K and a couple of her PG buddies.  I was always cleaning up after them.

12. Allenby House with landlord Rich who drove a classic model something nineteen-sixty something porche, which I found pretentious etc.  But he was hot and so was Corey, and Majou the super hot model from Montreal who spoke decent English.  I got particularly bulimic here, burned a hot butter knife held over a flame, pressed it upon my tummy above the butterfly tattoo and the scar still remains.  Shot cocaine on the docks (yeah what a cliche) with a homelss long-red-haired-guy named Leo who smelled like tin and roses when I wrapped my arms around him after the shot took hold, but before the cops came, arrested him, and took me away in an ambulance because my heart was racing way too fast.  I felt bad for Leo.

(21 years old now)

13. Gordon Head Townhouses with the Bob Marley poster in the living room and the pot-smoking girls.  I wrote Theresa's mid-term essay on Aphra Behn's Oroonoko for which she paid me $100.  She went on to be a teacher.

14. Basement bachelor suite on Tovido Lane.

15. Suite in James Bay on Oscar Street I think where I got into Fiona Apple.  The place was so awesome, shared it with a horticulturalist named Jody.  She told me, asked me, to leave a month in because her boyfriend was suddenly coming back from working up north as a horticulturalist also.  Got screwed over by a couple of horticulturalists in love.  In retrospect I should have told her to leave, not me, but I was young and gutless.

16. House on Synod Street up from the church (hence, Synod), a communal style house with this guy, Noel, who lurched around in the rose bushes late at night squeezing the aphids off the leaves.  That guy sure hated aphids.  Poor aphids.

17. Basement suite on (can't remember the name of the street) off Shelbourne, near Hillside.  Not much to say about this place...uneventful but filled with pain.

18. Basement suite on Richmond Avenue up from Camosun College.  Mrs. Rogers was my landlady and lived upstairs, kept opening the door to my place, shouting down that she smelled smoke and what was I doing and what's that noise.  Started drinking mickies of spiced rum, straight up, all night long.

19. Ultra swanky condo on south end of North Park, downtown, a kind of Melrose Place environment, condo owned by Lisa's Mom, Lisa who had her car and living expenses and condo paid for.

20. Moved in with Rob to be my boyfriend for 3 + years, into his place in the house on Caledonia Avenue, across the street from the crack house, the house with the beautiful cherry tree in the backyard.

21. Moved up north to William's Lake to be with Rob who I never saw because he was always out putting out forest fires etc.  Lived in an ok apartment in the apartment building owned by his parents.  His mom who told me I was fat.

(23 years old now?)

22. Rob and I moved back to Vic, into a basement suite off Cedar Hill Road (I think), which my sister found for us before she went to Europe for two months to live on the farm outside of Rome.  Turns out the place was infested with flees.

(24 years old?  Rob goes up north again in Spring, and returns again in early autumn...the distance kills me).

23.  Rob and I live in a little apartment across the street from the Vacuum Cleaner Repair shop on Cedar Hill Road.

(Rob goes up north again to fight fires, but this time I don't follow.  The distance kills me).

24. I move into the apartment on Bowker Avenue.  Rob returns from fighting fires up north, early in autumn, moves in with me and stays up late looking at porn on his computer.

(Second or third? year together, Rob and I, I'm 25 years old and working as an office clerk at UVic finishing up my second undergraduate degree in English Lit, working in Housing for my boss and future husband.  Rob and I break up).

25. Cool apartment with hardwood floors and alcove ceilings and a cool retro kitchen, but it's on Esquimalt Road and I sort of fear for my life when I walk home at night, because I should.

(I start seeing my boss future husband...we almost get 'caught' in my old dorm room, MN 107...oh my god that was funny).

26. Lord Simcoe apartment in James Bay.  Plush carpet.  View of Parliament Buildings and Inner Harbour.  Got robbed in this apartment, in the middle of the night, while I was sleeping.

27. Caddy Bay apartment across from Oak Bay High (move in with my future husband) on the ground floor...a year or so passes...I start drinking Neo Citran DM to relax, wake up with panic attacks.

(26 years old now)

28. After a year or so, my boss future husband and I move to another apartment (#29) on the 3rd floor, which we have to leave after a year or so because the building caught on fire...one cat died.

30. I move to Vancouver for my MFA at UBC, into the apartment on West 5th in Kits, live directly underneath the landlady who is crazy and has like a hundred porcelain jesuss (jesuses?  jesus's? jesus's?) on display around her apartment, and her husband is old and wears an oxygen mask so crazy jesus lady has a big sign on her apartment door that says "No flames allowed, Oxygen Present!)

31. A couple of months later I move into one of the graduate student housing condos on campus.

32. Move back to Vic after my first fall semester in Van cuz my student loan money falls through...back in with boss future husband, months of hell cuz I am only going to school full time! and commuting back and forth now between Vic and Van...and my boss future husband hates me for not bringing money into the 'home.'

(28 years old)

33. Boss and I move into the cool upper suite in the heritage house on Roseberry Avenue in Fernwood, the suite from which I could see the spire of the Belfry, where I wrote and wrote and completed my MFA.

(30 years old)

34. We move into upper level of house on 5th Street up from the 5th street Bar and Grill.  Hate it and move out a month later.

35. We move into the old heritage house on Beechwood Avenue, best place ever, stay there together for 3 + years.

(Boss and I get married in Cuba, Cayo Ensenachos, January 26th, three days before my 33rd birthday).

36. Six months after getting married, I leave boss now my husband, move back to Vancouver, little basement suite with bright yellow kitchen on West 13th, spiral into a stupor of DXM (Neo Citran DM), stay up all night every night, sleep all day or go without sleep entirely.  Streets feel shifty.  I'm losing it.

37. Six months later and I move back to Vic, to my husband, back into Beechwood place.

(34 years old)

38. We move into new house on Foul Bay Road, great place but lacks heart and I feel alone, really alone, live in the basement with my rabbits getting high, while husband and two step-sons (who are now living with us) commune upstairs.  Everything falls apart, really falls apart.  I'm nowhere, oblivious, probably dying down there.  No one, my husband, no one really knows or they don't care.  I want to die but I'm afraid to do it, my greatest worry...who will take care of my rabbits?

39. Brief period 'residing' in the psyche ward, for about a month.  Boss now husband and I break up while I'm in there.  He is "done with me."

(35 years old, present time)

40. After getting out of the hospital I go to NYC, then Minnesota, then live in a camper for two weeks on Island View Road.

41. Where I live now, basement suite in my sister's new house on Prior, where I feel like a bit of a loser but I'm working hard, trying to get my shit together...

I hope I hope I hope....

(I think that's it).

I can't seem to stop eating these gummy bears. 

They now come in a whole new spectrum of colours: red, green, yellow, orange, blue, lighter blue, champagne coloured, and so on.

I like the flavour, but really it's the texture I love.  Soft and squishy, but not too squishy, you know, gummy.

When I was a kid I loved gummy bears.  I've always loved gummy bears.  But the new spectrum is invigorating.  These new bears enhance my life minutely, but powerfully.

Small pleasures.  Life is comprised of small pleasures.  Life is short.  I am bound by nothing.  I refuse to be.

It's like my greatest joy these days is gummy bears.

Also, I think the bears are my compensation for the nervousness, my anxiety, my wanting more, more, more.  Never feeling solid, at home.  Everything feels loose.  It nags at me.

Also, well, sex.

It's the connection I'm missing, my hand tracing a man's skin, a man's body.to be crushed tenderly under the weight of him, to feel so carefully pinned to whatever lies beneath me. 

The sheets are crisp and cool.

Thread count: 800.

I love fine linen, though I'm not high maintenance.

I just love heavy weighty things, good thread count, grand furniture (my old red bordello style couch from Chintz my husband has in his home, in my old life), ornately carved dining room chairs, a big oak table, those two antique green wing back chairs we never did re-upholster.  I love heavy things that are pinned to the earth.

Like me: I want to be pinned down, kissed and loved, never let go of.

Solid things.

I want a solid man.  He has to be older.  I have never once been attracted to a guy my own age; they never seem solid enough, they seem like they're still growing, like they are looking for someone to complete them.

I can't complete anyone.

No one will have me at hello.

I am sort of perpetually unavailable, emotionally.  Nothing gets through.  I want to let it through.

I miss feeling kept and crushed, pinned and moved upon, rhythmic.  And after, soft kisses, me on my side facing him, he's facing me, it's dark in the room, the window's open, raining outside, smells like wet leaves.

I'm happy.

And he touches my face, my lips, then down the line of my body, stops at my waist, where I curve inward, the small of me, touches my soft belly, then rests his hand in the hollow.

I miss that.