Sunset and Skyline

Me: "Yeah, I didn't have any callouses because I was used to classical guitar."
Kelsey: "Yeah right, you had those...neon strings."
Me: "Uh...nylon."

Three hundred. Yeah, that's it. This is my three hundreth post. It's been well over a year since I began my blog. In my true characteristic dramatic fashion, I've decided to pause for a moment. I'll probably come back, sometime, and someday I will indeed stop posting forever on Reflections and Fuzzy Slippers.

I can track my life so far as having been through a three stages. The first, earlier childhood, lasted up until I was about ten or eleven. The second, earlier adolescence, is one that I divide in two: before and after coming to Royal West. The difference between the two is enormous; the character with which I began high-school was a major improvement on the person I was before.

The third began July 27. I think it must be undetectable at this point, but it will become more apparent with time. I'm not going to change much more. Certainly, I will always metamorphose more than is probably normal; I will always shift and adapt. Yet the base for my changing personalities, the core, that which is actually me will not be altered.

This is something that, if ever I am able to communicate, I must refrain from analyzing until it is strong enough to endure such probing.

You see why I am certain that RFS will not exist forever, as much fun as I have had writing it. It is absurd to assume that I will ever stop writing, or to even assume that I would be able to if I wanted. But this blog is from a different stage in my life, and although it must change as I do and have done, someday I will choose to end it. Endings are my favourites.

True to its name, Reflections and Fuzzy Slippers has always, I think, been an outlet for both my most philosophical and my most ridiculous ideas. And it has always served its purpose as a mirror, the mirror that I hold up not only to my life but to the world at large.

There I was, watching the waves roll in. And out. In. And out. Watching the moon, breathing, through the rain. That gorgeously hideous thunder. I am in love with the ocean and with the rain. Redemption. Whether everything ends or nothing does is one of the greatest questions the world has ever known.

Makes you yearn to the sky.

Chez Chantal

Extracted from the ubiquitous notebook. Because it was there, and it remembers better than I do.

In a corner of Charlevoix, where the village of La Malbaie, the Saint-Lawrence River and the train tracks meet, there is a building that was once a very tiny house. It is now a restaurant and store, neon-lit, selling everything from hot dogs and Pepsi to cappucinos, postcards, and fireworks. The exterior walls, like those inside, are plastered with posters and advertisements -- for motels and movies and concerts and whale-watching tours -- and all around are brown chairs and tables, some with umbrellas. Few cars drive by, but those that do are invariably filled with teen-agers, laughing, four of them crowding in the front seats...and occasionally a particularly drunken young man will stand up through the sunroof of his friend's car, grinning and shouting at no one at all.

It is a Monday at the end of August, and my brother has led us here in search of ice cream -- mint chocolate chip for myself and my father, swirled soft cones for the younger two.

There are two people working in the store. One is a youth who reminds me of Weiner, despite little physical resemblance. It has something to do, I suppose, with the tilt of his white uniform cap. The second is a girl with brown hair tied back; I cannot see her face, for she is standing at the back of the vast area behind the counter, near where a flight of red steps ascends to the unlit second story. By the window is a display of figurines and trinkets that my father cannot resist inspecting. Once in our new green van, he declines to show his purchase, hidden in its white plastic bag.

Outside, a waxing half-moon dances behind clouds. To the right of the store is a street and one last line of houses, a a phone booth crammed on the border between two private lots, as if in afterthought. To its left is a single railroad track, and a fenced-in area. Beyond the fence lies the bay, the Malbaie, and beyond the bay is the river and the ocean. There is a black motor scooter leaning against the fence, which -- in the absence of other signs of life -- I conclude surely belongs to one of the store's employees.

I finish my mint chocolate ice cream as I walk back to the car, savouring the last bite. My mother looks at the sky.

"Let's go for a drive," she says.

So we get home, and Emma's room, which was supposed to be painted dark blue and light yellow, has been painted dark blue -- and light pink. But at least Ambrosine is alright (one gets paranoid) and tomorrow I'll walk over and pick up the birds. And then, straight to hell, or hours locked in my room (metaphorically...I have no door) writing summer reading reports.

Alright, lyric break.

Morning found us calmly unaware

Noon burned gold into our hair

At night, we swam the laughing sea

When summer's gone, where will we be?

-Yes, it is The Doors.

Banana.

My kitchen is covered in egg.

I've been learning a lot lately. Honestly, I don't know what school is for. Today I learned why it isn't a good idea to fry eggs in olive oil. Yesterday I learned that it isn't a good idea to automatically assume that your piano teacher will expect that you have been learning the third movement of the new sonata. (They tend to begin with the first.) I've learned that it isn't a good idea to bike while carrying nine hardcover books in a backpack, and I've learned all about bad ideas concerning drugs (seriously, if only Keith Moon had been to therapy or something). I have learned that there is no better way to wake up than to the sound of rain pounding on the ceiling. (Yes, the ceiling, considering where I live.) I have learned that there's really no point in worrying about the future. I have learned that elephants are awesome.

Using the word "awesome" as the deft transition between paragraphs, my guitar is pretty awesome. I'm infatuated with her. I've named her Ambrosine.

Okay, I'm tired and currently unmotivated, so it's time for yet another round of stuff I found on my computer. I don't know how I manage to stumble across so many things that I've forgotten about. This is completely different from the last one, and although it's fairly old, no one aside from me has seen it before. I hope. It's a little unusual, not only because I don't usually write in the first person, but also because it draws a little more on my own experiences than I feel comfortable about. It was an experiment.

They always told us that we could do anything. As if that made it true, as if we were equally gifted and would all be offered equal opportunities. Perfect honesty has never been perceived as the best method for raising children. The idea, of course, is to shelter them from the brutal truth of the futility of their existence, pacify them with fantasy. Adolescence is the hellish repercussion.

In the ninth grade, our guidance counsellor distributed questionnaires among the classes. These were designed to uncover each student’s ideal profession, and were full of questions such as Do you enjoy working with children? Would you be interested in a career involving travelling? Do you want to work outdoors? The guidance counsellor was tall, and the smell of his clothes reminded me vaguely of the shoehorns my father kept in his closet when I was a little girl, which looked like ducks if you turned them the right way.

I was only ever called into his office once, when a teacher was given cause to believe that I was suffering from depression. He asked me if I had been contemplating suicide, and I told him I hadn't been. He made a few notes on a small white paper with a blue pen and a businesslike manner, and we never spoke again.

My questionnaire advised me to consider work as an anaesthesiologist, but I didn’t go into science when I left my high school, so I never found out if I would have been a good anaesthesiologist. I could never bring myself to put much faith in the accuracy of the analysis. An anaesthesiologist kills a patient for a little while and then brings them back, and I think that the best anaesthesiologist would be someone who was able to make the patient feel perfectly at ease with that idea. I can’t imagine anyone being at ease with their life in my hands.

Sparkles.

Guitar picks are supremely overpriced.

"I don't know. I just...don't get it. I remember one thing...I think it's called algebra."

-Neil on math

(ha ha, on math. it's funny because it sounds like a drug reference.)

I like people, but I'm not a people person. For me, people have always been only a small part of the whole, just one element of the painting or one motif of the fugue. People are interesting...watching them, listening to them, provoking them, imagining what they might do when you aren't there...but are certainly not my main focus in life, and the relationships between people are not usually the most interesting relationships I encounter. I am a setting person.

I realised this a few months ago, but I have probably been holding onto the knowledge all my life. I like really really big pictures. I like places and periods of time. Rather than other elements such as characters and events being influenced by the setting, I perceive the opposite -- everything contributes to the main idea, to the emotions embodied in the setting. For setting is not, as is commonly assumed, a mere backdrop to the more interesting things: it is the very essence of the story. It is what we should remember when we walk away.

This is evident, of course, in my choice of literature (hence the peculiar interest in fantasy, science fiction and anything described as "dystopian") and in my favourite pieces of visual art (photography included...it's landscapes for me), but it is also a prominent factor when it comes to my musical preferences and, indeed, in every aspect of how I live my life as a whole. Would you rather watch the people inside the bus with you or look out the window at the busy streets? I never ask myself this question, but it would not take me very long to form a reply.

All this to further explain the love of travelling I continue to allude to. And now, a stuff-I-found-on-my-computer interlude. This one is very, very old. It must be...oh, certainly far older than my sister. It comes with a diagram. I was a very strange child, I know.

The Mopfish

A Special Report

by Anne Malcolm

The Mopfish is a distant cousin of the Jellyfish. It gets its name from both its appearance and the fact that humans have often, unwittingly, used a Mopfish tied to a stick as a mop. These 'mops' are not suited to cleaning floors (despite the Mopfish’s looks) and so wear out after one use. Dishonest mop sellers have been known to substitute Mopfish for the genuine article. Therefore, the newly discovered Mopfish are declining in population. A truly wonderful campaign-'Save the Mopfish'- has been started to help protect these creatures from retailers such as 'Canadian Tire' and 'Reno-depot'. *

The Mopfish lives in the Atlantic Ocean. It can go all its life without eating, however it has a small digestive system and will eat soap and tulips whenever it finds them.

The Mopfish is a fascinating, though mysterious, animal.

*All rights reserved

Extra heavy, man.