Reflections and Fuzzy Slippers

Epigraph

2009-09-26T23:44:00.017-04:00

Alright, well, this is it.

If there's one thing for which I am grateful, it is that things change. I don't know if things change on a cosmic, eternal level – if universes run in loops or existence is an endless stream of conscious and unconscious – but things change in an individual lifespan from an individual perspective, with no regard for the individual's views on the matter. This concept has a number of names, depending on how it is perceived. Sometimes it is called Hope.

The galaxies spiral away from each other and back again. Things change, more or less. And so unto eternity. But forever is pretty big, so we break off chunks of it to look at it better. These chunks have a number of names too, all of them equally valid. And sometimes they are called Stories.

The thing about a story is that it ends; in fact, the ending is the most important part. I would mention at this point something about that being the fundamental difference between eternity and bits of eternity, and thereby try to justify my lack of a fitting close for this fragmented look at high school life, but I don't think I'd even be ready to end a story just yet. (As evidenced by the fact that I never really have ended a story just yet.)

To tell the truth, I'm not convinced we've even made it to the prologue. If the grand symphony is about to begin, this blog has been about the people who come in beforehand and set up chairs, or fold programs, and the band that's warming up backstage, and the first members of the audience coming in from the snow. Because in my mind, it is very often a certain kind of grey, cold, still day that happens sometimes near the end of November, a day like a blank canvas or an empty page, vibrating with lyrical possibility.

Despite gratuitous romanticism and rambling, I don't mean for you to imagine my eyes glittering with sentimental tears as you read these lines. By now, you've probably figured out that I'm a closet optimist, but we can both pretend that we don't know anything about that, and I can keep on playing the cynic for a few more paragraphs.

I won't claim to be ecstatic about everything in my life at this point. I'm still a little bored. I'm still a little needlessly sad. I'm still all the things I have ever been, though some parts of me express themselves in different ways now, and will (I always hope) continue to shift as my world does. But the landscape of my life has developed in interesting ways since April of 2006, and I – like my old friends the trees – have been shaped by the storms I have endured, however trivial those storms have seemed.

So what now. To tell the truth, I'm not sure. I'm never sure. I'm never good at keeping my fingers silent for long, either, so perhaps I will be continuing my legacy of rambling at another address in the near future. Should that happen, I will post the link in the sidebar here, because I've chosen to keep the RFS archives open a little longer. Should that not happen, I am quite confident that other things will.

I've been writing this post for the past two hours. It isn't the twenty-sixth anymore, really, but that's a pretty good date to go out on, so it can stay. And now, my friends, I draw the curtains closed, or throw them open. In doing so, I bid farewell to a more youthful time – not to my friends from that time, but to my past self. I'll make sure to visit her now and then, but we aren't bound together anymore, and we can go our separate ways.

And first of all things, my own separate way leads me back to the concert hall, where the orchestra has begun filing in, and the percussionists are setting up, and the room falls silent as all eyes face forward. You can see it too, can't you? The rapid whispers of pages turning, finely formed fingers resting on finely carved fingerboards, dark-robed profiles illuminated from above. (Like a dream. The waves roll in and out.) In a moment the violins will begin tuning, followed by the dark melodious clarinets; the crystalline tones of the horns; the cello's sensual, melancholy voice; and the glorious bass. Then the conductor comes out, and then we play for awhile before the concert ends.

After all, the eternal music will eventually change, more or less. And no individual chunk of time lasts forever, except perhaps as part of an endless stream of conscious and unconscious, where universes, among other things, run in loops.

I feel pretty peaceful about it.

S.T. (orm)

2009-08-23T21:58:00.005-04:00

I got so rained on today. It was unbelievable.

Looking through the archives, I am shocked to find that I have never yet elaborated on my admiration for a certain 'phonometrician' on this blog. Composer, pianist, and artist extraordinaire, he was notorious for the cryptic (yet, I assure you, absolutely logical in context of the music) comments he included on his manuscripts. There's probably a reason his name is one letter short of 'satire'. He was the Zappa of the late nineteenth century, giving his 'Pièces humoristiques' titles such as Embryons desséchés (a suite consisting of three short piano pieces, each named after a class of marine invertebrate; the third one finishes in a brilliant cadenza that you absolutely must hear sometime) and Sonatine bureaucratique (a parody of Muzio Clementi's style; as someone who was once forced to play that stupid clementi sonatina in C, I approve wholeheartedy). His character was also apparently in Moulin Rouge.

I speak, of course, of the great frenchman Erik Satie. Truly, the world lost a beautiful and original mind when he died in 1925. His Wikipedia article includes a poignant list of the items his friends found in his room after the funeral (no one except Satie himself had been inside for twenty-seven years). Excerpts are presented below.

great number of umbrellas, some that had apparently never been used by Satie,
a total of four pianos: two of which were back to back, two of which sat upside-down on top of the other two
numerous unpublished compositions

These compositions included, of course, the outstanding work Vexations: a score of a single page, bearing the inscription, 'Pour se jouer 840 fois de suite ce motif, il sera bon de se préparer au préalable, et dans le plus grand silence, par des immobilités sérieuses'. Modern interpreters usually believe this to mean that the piece should be played 840 times in a row.

Inspirational fuel for all future college students.

2009-08-18T22:54:00.004-04:00

Summer is over. And in honour of the end of an era...

...

SQUIDPUNK!

Oh come on. What did you expect?

If I don't think of a title soon I'm going to be very cross indeed because there is soup waiting

2009-08-14T17:52:00.003-04:00

I was walking home from piano today. (Not the best opening sentence ever, but forgive me...I'm just warming up here.) My backpack was full of books, including the complete Mozart sonatas, and my sickly neurons beat their angry fists against the back of my skull. The sun shone like it had just been the subject of a bad review, and felt it needed to prove itself. ('I am afraid that Mr. Sol's brilliance has waned in the last several years. Perhaps we would do well to turn to fresh talents, rising stars in this universal field, who may be better equipped to light up our lives.) A little girl pushed a wheelbarrow, the sky was blue, leaves crunched under my feet....

Of course, that was the big event. It took me awhile to realize it, too, like something you'd expect from a cartoon character. Leaves crunching under my feet, in what I felt was still the middle of summer.

Part of me, unsurprisingly, was all 'oh man where did all that time go', but part of me was actually quietly pleased about the matter, because I love fall. And not just because I get to wear coats. I love fall in all incarnations, the beauty of october and the gloom of november (september is less interesting). In some ways, I like it better than winter, because after fall there's winter to look forward to. (And what do we have after winter? The gloopy, slushy ides of march. Also the rest of the month, which I'm always glad to get out of my system.)

Too tired to write any more.

Hot and a Cold

2009-08-13T17:02:00.002-04:00

IF YOU FIND THIS MESSAGE

YOU ARE AFRIEND INDEED

AND YOUR ARE A SOVIOUR FROM

THE DEEPS,

-message in bottle found by the beachcombing crew that unearthed the objects currently residing in an enormous wooden cabinet in the Tate Britain, London

I'm sick. Being sick sucks. Not because I'm disgusting and spouting inconvenient fluids at every intersection, and not (entirely) because of the inevitable headache, but because I get to stay home in bed and not do anything for an entire day. When I'm healthy I can fill the minutes and forget about what I'm doing with my time, but now I'm doomed to melancholy contemplation in my room, and an aching back because I don't know how to sit in bed.

That's what I had to say. I'm sick but not dead, even though I've been a very bad blogger and my skull feels like it's been smashed about with bricks.

star-weaver

Summer Shower

2009-07-26T22:18:00.003-04:00

'Why are you eating Arthi's slime?'

-Alex to Jacob

I GOT WET.

(yes beautiful. give me the flash and the crash of a storm over brightsunny any day. i will take the blue fierce light that bursts out like so many nerve endings, neurons firing frenetically, an interconnected web of celestial superhighways. give me the rivers that flow up-down rather than the lazy slithery earthly forest creeks, and i will flow upstream until i can see the stars all around me. they always say write what you know but i say: write what you dream. i dream electric.)

Potpourri

2009-06-11T16:41:00.005-04:00

In lieu of an actual post explaining my current thoughts and the direction my blogging will take in the future, I'll just stick up some notebook excerpts so opaque even I've forgotten what some of them were about. And they're from a month ago.

Silently following the silver-blue unicorn through the forest into the clearing of light.

The trick is to string words together based on musicality and not literal significance.

Starflakes of morning light scatter over the shady river. An ondulating snake of grey shimmer wriggles out a smokestack; a ship floats in front of the house. It wears the dark habit of an elderly sister. Cracks run jagged across the ashen dawn.

It is all the newness and the dust of the day. A stick figure scrambles spiderlike on the rocks as the boat approaches the island, a soft note of welcome resounding in an all but empty world.

(I like this dream. It is a nice dream.)

She had an aromatherapy voice.

I believe in everything. I tell people it's because there's some truth in everything, which is true -- like everything else. But it runs a little deeper than that, to the point where some might find it worrisome (I don't). I really just believe in everything. It's not so much that I believe a part of everything as it is that I am willing to accept any fantastic but logical story tossed my way. ('Realistic' but illogical has less of a chance.) That is why I can't lucid dream.

But the birds are not themselves truly free. No one here is, I suppose. I would like to take my home with me, drive it or carry it on my back, and never have to concrete myself into the ground.

Castles in the sky. Doesn't it sound beautiful? Castles made of cloud and sunlight. Give me cloud castles over Earth castles any day.

Why do people feel the need to limit themselves to a single reality? (Calvin & Hobbes, etc.)

A piano tuner that can only work when drunk, because the vibrations seem magnified and clear to him.

I've somewhat changed my philosophies since these scribbles (jeez, why would I use so many words to say something so simple?), so it's interesting for me to look through them now. Maybe less so for you, but it's exam time, and you might find this better than doodles or suchlike.

Anyway.

Piano exam over!

And here's to you....

2009-05-28T22:53:00.000-04:00

This goes out to everyone else who never found Garfield funny.

2009-05-16T20:42:00.003-04:00

Guys, I'm killing myself laughing.

http://garfieldlostintranslation.blogspot.com/

All Things Become Clear.

2009-05-15T20:52:00.010-04:00

I love my teacher's new piano. It's a stunning golden-brown Steinway Model A with crystalline tonality and incredibly sensitive reaction. Playing on that instrument, a musician can lay bare the foundations of a work, and build the colour up from the core of the sound. The hammers on the strings ring out bell-like, pellucid; there are no layers of sonic varnish to distort the pristine notes. It's his third piano since I started there in the ninth grade, and even though the first one may technically have been the highest-quality specimen, my heart belongs completely to this new companion.

My teacher has been warming to it too. Tonight at my playthrough (audience of three, Jenna included), he pointed out the characteristics I have mentioned. His friend, probably a musician himself, agreed.

"It's a beautiful piano. And you -- (looks at me) -- belong there."

Gyahhh.

Does he know -- he can't know -- how long it's been since I felt sure of that? Does he sense, perhaps, how uncertain I've become of my place lately? Witness this speedwritten notebook excerpt, from just three days ago:

it sits
before me a great landscape of sound
silver beams of light drawn into eternity
and I watch the clatter of the
mountains rising, falling back,
white waves in the great black ocean.
An arm reaches toward the ceiling;
my hands are timid, uncertain.

I am not yet ready
to fly atop this darkling spirit.
I trip and stumble through the paces
up and down the monochrome path;
the notes false, still,
after so much bloodshed.

Now, though, I can regain lost confidence. And I can devote myself to being whatever I am...not for any practical purpose, but only out of love -- pure and unadulterated as the sound of the piano itself -- for the beauty at the heart of all things. That is where I belong.

but there will come a day
when together I and the beast
spread wings, lift,
and teach ourselves to trace
glorious radiant patterns through the stars.
On that day and after,
the universe belongs not to us,
but to those who look and dream
and listen.

There will be more and more for all of us.

Reminiscence and Expectation

2009-05-12T00:21:00.004-04:00

Q. Why is Wistful like an octopus?
A. Both express frustration with ink.

It might be a little more appropriate if I was in the habit, lately, of expressing much of anything. Nevertheless, I wanted to slip that joke into a post at some point, and time is sort of running out for RFS and me.

I did think I'd hit 400 posts by the end of high school, and then could close down with pomp and fireworks. I haven't, and I'm still not sure about when or if I'm going to finish. And what exactly should finishing entail -- the end of new posts, or the complete disappearance of WistfulSparrow?

It makes sense to stop by the end of the summer. After all, it's clearly a high school blog I've been writing here. Alongside the occasional humourous anecdote and interesting piece of information, a casual search would reveal much unwanted baggage from the earlier years -- archives of trivialities from the eighth grade. I know, because I've been through everything recently, backing up important parts to prepare for any eventualities. Furthermore, I question whether Blogspot is any longer an appropriate outlet for me, as my presence on the internet is more subtle than it was three years ago, and will hopefully continue to evolve in the future.

I don't know where I'll be in a year. Maybe still exactly here in this room. Maybe halfway across the globe. Whatever the circumstances, I'm sure you anticipated the probability that I will not want to be tied to an older incarnation of my being. That said, I'm not sure I'll erase the archives immediately. They will likely hang around on the web for a few months before I unpublish them all. I may also keep the domain name, as a memento, or to prevent anyone else from adopting the name I once made my own.

There will be more about these decisions later. For now, maybe I should be honest about some things.

I don't constantly talk about this, so it may surprise some (though probably not any of my beloved readers) that I've decided to study music in university. I haven't decided to only study music in university; that is, knowing my tendencies, I may attempt to further my education in multiple fields. I'm not so sure about english literature because I don't find I enjoy or benefit from academic analysis: poetry is about what you feel it and not what this word and this word put together means in some dictionary. Perhaps this will change in the next two years.

But so much for school. I honestly don't know if I'll even last through CEGEP (where I will not be studying music) without taking off someplace, so this is a little...vaguely outlined. Higher education is somewhat less affordable outside of the province, which could be a problem (very unlikely to win scholarships in music). Obviously, I'm not implying that I absolutely need to leave Quebec, what with McGill and all; I'm just suggesting that it might possibly have a small chance of working out that way, given the particularities of my character.

It doesn't really matter though, in the end. I like to learn things, but from a practical/financial point of view, I don't think the number of years I spend in school will have much of a correlation with my eventual earnings.

Certainly, these are the naive perceptions of a pampered seventeen-year-old, but I'll never know the world until I see it. Certainly, the idea that I might not spend much time in university might surprise many of my teachers, but I wouldn't underestimate my own ability to make stupid decisions in the space of an instant.

We'll all see where the wind takes us.

There is nothing else to say.

2009-04-12T19:35:00.008-04:00

I have some stories, and some of them might even be good. I don't know. I can't talk or blog at all these days, and maybe until the end of the school year. I haven't felt so damn constrained since elementary school, and I very much need to get out of this beautiful, colourful metropolis so I can see what colour the sky is on the other side of the walls. This is my last battle with tedium for awhile, at least, and I must not surrender to the mundane.

I know, I know. This lunacy isn't really something I can call on anyone to share. The melodrama is my own peculiarity, and my episodes of delirium are the sole true indication that my brain may not be wired quite the same as everyone else's. So until school is out, and until the world shifts a little, I'll crawl inside my shell of self-absorption and sing myself to sleep with ballads of the fantastic, with requiems for unborn worlds.

By now you are probably well past sick of hearing about my itchy, itchy feet. But when a person is made to swallow their words and repress their impulses all their life, the eventual explosion usually transforms that person into a caricature of their reveries. This is a familiar plot device: never permitted sweets, he opens a candy shop; abused as a child, she becomes an assassin. The fifties became the sixties.

My impulse has a name: wanderlust. It is a very simple one to repress. After a mere decade and a half spent in one place, it has become an all-consuming obsession; every moment is spent contemplating a driving ambition to leave the city I love. And -- here's the other half -- I don't want to live here again, afterward, when all is done. Because in my childish vision there is no 'done', and life will continue to evolve forever if I wish it.

If I think about it, I know in my heart that one adventure would never have been enough. I still want those bloody spaceships, of course. I still want to be able to fly away from everything. And if someday I do, well...don't hold it against me forever.

I can't wait to be old and wise. Then I'll know how stupid I was for thinking so.

2009-04-02T16:49:00.022-04:00

'No one's ever smart enough than me. '

-Jacob

A small update, to make it clear that I'm not dead, and perhaps (dare I dream?) to spur my fellow blogsters on in a difficult time of year.

First, I've been continuing in much the same way as ever: staying up too late for no reason, complaining about the optimism of crocuses, dreaming of spaceships and, occasionally, playing some music.

I finished my public speaking some time ago. Originally, I was going to lift Jacob's original idea, and write it on death. I did throw together the first little bit:

I want to die. Not right now, but eventually. I want to know what it's like.
It's not that crazy, is it? I mean, adventure, the unknown, the 'final frontier'. If I can't go into space, I can at least go into death.

EDIT: Apparently, I had thought of this before.

Then, as you probably perceive, I got a little sidetracked, and wound up writing my speech on our prejudice toward extraterrestrials and other species (akin to the racism of previous centuries). It was the nerdiest, craziest speech of my life, midnight ramblings to inebriated friends excluded. Having slept particularly little the night before, the performance was appropriately terrible: I spoke far too quickly, my dark-ringed eyes bulging in their sockets, my hair reaching out in all directions like the arms of an octopus on amphetamines.

By the by, did you know that no octopus has tentacles? If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, you can click one of the links to Wikipedia below. A warning, however: the sentence extracted from the online encyclopedia, and preserved in this post, is possibly the single most frightening thing I have ever read. (With the exception of this article.)

Unlike the giant squid, whose arm and tentacles only have suckers lined with small teeth, the Colossal Squid's arms and tentacles are also equipped with sharp hooks: some swiveling, others three-pointed.

Now that I've destroyed any possibility of either of us sleeping tonight, allow me to amuse you with the ending of my speech. Hey, it's tradition. I must apologize in any case, as I am afraid the conclusion lacks the punch of other examples. The first time in my life I either open or close with a quote, and I go for Calvin and Hobbes.

(You know, sometimes I do manage to convince people that I'm perfectly sane. I'm not sure how either.)

Should we someday come across extraterrestrial life at an earlier stage of development than our own species, it is almost certain that we will eventually exploit it in some capacity. If, by contrast, our world should be discovered by another civilization – and perhaps it already has been – we must hope that the aliens are more compassionate than we would be, and indeed than we have been historically. For now, I turn once again to Calvin for elucidation regarding humanity; he sits on the red soil of Mars, arms folded.

'Why should the Martian be afraid of us?’ he asks, crossly. ‘We’re just ordinary Earthlings, not weirdos from another planet like he is.’

It isn't exactly my favourite piece ever, but there is a part of that conclusion that absolutely thrills me. Without a doubt, I am more proud of that single phrase than all the other phrases in the speech combined.

And perhaps it already has been.

To tell you the truth, the reason I wrote the speech was probably, at a subliminal level, just so I could say that. If so -- what? Are we being left alone (too uncivilized, barbaric)? Maneuvered by unseen hands? Or infiltrated, steadily and secretly? Personally, I believe it is most likely ignorance and hubris to imagine that we might be of any interest to extraterrestrial intelligence, just as it is so to imagine that we might be the pinnacle of evolution in the cosmos.

But maybe, hopefully, we can find out for sure someday. It's the twenty-first century, and I demand spaceships. Then I'll discover the key to time travel, and everything will be perfect.

Oh, and yes, I am now officially certified to drive straight, whatever the reality. This means future posts to be written about my escapades with my father's car (standard). My current crowning achievement: starting the vehicle, driving around in a circle, switching from first to second, and stopping. This also means I am technically capable of rescuing friends in the dead of night, although it becomes a mite trickier from a practical viewpoint (Toyota Sienna).

Heh, 'small update'.

I dreamt of dolphins, and a whale.

Aliens etc.

2009-03-21T18:17:00.019-04:00

'Arrogantly twisting the sterile canvas snoot of a fully charged icing anointment utensil, he poots forths a quarter-ounce green rosette near the summit of a dense but radiant muffin of his own design.'

-'Muffin Man', Frank Zappa

My computer has had a stroke and lost all her memories, but she is recovering with the loving support of family and friend (me). In case you were losing sleep over it.

In lieu of a real post (because it is March), I'm just going to put up some more doodles. Personally, I love this stuff; the things other people imagine can be very surprising, particularly with people who don't draw much otherwise. Only a couple today, until I scan some more.

I don't plan ahead, so most of the time the figures end up sprawled across physics problems. Normally, I would take the numbers out of the scanned images, but because my (mediocre) photo editing software disappeared with much of the rest of my computer, I've had to resort to airbrushing in Paint in order to make the numbers under the actual drawing less visible.

Egyptian style is cool, or I can't draw feet. Also some ill-defined referencing of REM lyrics.

I must be the most impatient person in the world.

I had pie for breakfast

2009-03-14T10:50:00.001-04:00

on pi day, hooray.

Powerful, Beyond Words

2009-03-02T07:55:00.003-05:00

Some of you may remember the Scholastic store in New York, where I read part of a story and we looked at the harry potter merchandise. (That trip was way too satisfying to my not-very-inner child.) Some of you may also remember leaving the store, only to find out that I was actually quietly busy at the cash.

'It's for my mother,' I insisted. 'Her birthday is coming up.'

('So...you bought her a picture book?'
'It's a graphic novel.')

I finally read (read? looked at pictures, really. but looked intensely) it on Friday, and I was really quite stunned by its beauty.

As always, clicking will tell you more. It's really quite breathtaking, as a story and as artwork. Of course, it's also set in a strange and wonderful world, with strange and wonderful plants and animals and architecture and technology...the sort of things I love best.

If I Didn't Know Better, I'd Think this Post Was About Computers

2009-02-27T21:33:00.009-05:00

'...What's the difference between Protestants and Christians?'

-sebastian

Everything is breaking all the time.

My winter coat's zipper is completely jammed, so I've had to improvise every morning for two weeks. My clarinet has a bad cold, possibly pneumonia, and barely wheezes through the clarion register. My guitar -- my beautiful Ambrosine -- is in the hospital being repaired. And, of course, my own mental health is at stake, for my computer has taken ill as well.

Worms. Nasty ones, too; desert makers forty feet long. When I first noticed something was going wrong, it was just a matter of sluggishness, pop-ups, no pictures loading in explorer, and impromptu shutdowns. Also, none of my antivirus software worked, and system restore was blocked. Unsurprisingly. Later on, it was more a question of the cpu slowing to a complete halt as soon as the desktop loaded. I must have restarted fifty times in the last three days.

Our techie friend is out of town, and I know very little about anything computer-related, but I've been doing my best to get everything back in shape. Sort of. The fact that I am typing this on my own computer is a testimony to my many hours of lost sleep. The fact that I am typing this in Chrome is a testimony to the fact that the worm is smarter than I am.

In the process of the fighting of the good fight against computer viruses, I backed up all my files and some of my music, erased all the minor programs I could think of, and combed the internet hunting for new bug-killing freeware. Thanks to above techie friend, I was able to find a trial version of Kaspersky, a Russian scanner. It saved my worthless ass, but it's hard to take its language seriously:

Most antivirus programs: usually do stuff to viruses like 'quarantine', 'clear', 'delete'
Kaspersky: NEUTRALIZE.

I suppose it's a genius. It restarts the computer so it can eliminate viruses before they kick in. Still, the war has not yet been won. It could be awhile longer before I'm back with a real post, although I may have something small up here soon.

Lucky for you I don't act on all my impulses.

Grade Trip, 2009

2009-02-07T14:13:00.005-05:00

Farewell, my friends. February and March are useless for blogging. I have six tests next week and a ridiculous science project to attempt, so it will be awhile before I am back with anything of substance. I close for now with a busride excerpt.

...

Every morning was colder than any other. Every day in the city began in a cacophonic explosion of sunlight, grit, breakfast cereal. The needle on the record player looked the grooves on the disc over, felt them, stuck. The roads carved left-right-left in brisk lines between the buildings that were little by little pushing the sky away. All was white-and-grey, brown, water dripping off air conditioners, and rickety iron fire escapes snaking down from towers where the paint peeled. The cars would not stop when told to.

The dragon slept in the basement, its fiery snuffles floating up from the skylights of its apartment. It slept but watched, eyes throughout the grid of the streets and pavement, and also in a children’s store with foxes and baby elephants. Now and then its tail would swish.

Where we stayed there was a park where pigeons (black, white, black-white, speckled brown) bobbed along and sat together atop the street-lights. The buildings were very tall and would not fit inside a camera. One became small looking at them.

There were men and women walking dogs, but no strays, no cats in the great downtown. There was a time for cheesecake, and too many cups of coffee. There was also a time for waiting in the underground, and running through turnstiles, and (most of all) for poetry. In poetry we find life and the reason for sticking
to it.

Find myself a city to live in.

Cat Books

2009-01-30T21:48:00.007-05:00

There must be a reason why you never hear stories about dogs. Boots aside, the feline is wildly popular in literary circles, at home with a variety of casts and settings. To name a few, the cat has been in books with

-fairies (spelling may vary):

-rainbow chariots:

-hotels:

Clicking will tell you more, but if you find any of these anywhere anytime, I strongly recommend the read.

The rest is silence.

2009-01-29T16:39:00.010-05:00

'Because you know what? If that insulted you, it obviously...did.

...Uh, think about that.'

-Mistah Z

In case you haven't noticed, I am rapidly losing patience with high school. Last time I posted here, it was to complain about my fellow students, but my fellow students are frankly the least of my concerns. I won't go into details about my run-ins with certain teachers and certain members of the administration, because I sincerely doubt you're looking forward to hearing about my stupid authority issues; after all, I'm hardly the only one who would appreciate being treated like a sentient being every now and then (though I probably have the worst temper of anyone I know, outside the family, and thus am probably the most bothered by it). Not that I have anything against non-sentient beings, of course. They're probably the wisest of us all.

That said, I could have spent today skiing.

I bought some frozen yogourt from the patisserie this afternoon. I chose vanilla because the apricot containers were all broken, and, well -- white seemed like a good choice today. A little boring perhaps, but then how many people were eating ice cream outside today? And, well, it was really good. It's 3.00ish for a smallish container, but the taste and texture are quite superior. Given that the containers are clear plastic, the dessert is also less likely to have a TCBY-esque hole in the middle. And you can recycle them.

Unfortunately, dear friends, I fear I've led you on a little. I wrote this post with a single purpose in mind; the rest is filler. I want to ask a favour, that perhaps none of you will ever need to grant.

Although the obscure phobias are far more interesting, the fear I am about to reveal is a far more common one. Mortality doesn't bother me; dying is something I'd like to try sometime, when I've had enough of the other stuff. Being buried alive does bother me. Taphophobia is far less rational now than it used to be, what with 'the advent of modern medicine' and all, but I imagine it would be at least as uncomfortable now as ever to wake up underneath six feet of ground and a big rock.

So, cut me open first, or burn me. I don't really care, so long as you make sure I'm dead.

And on that cheery note, we end the post....

Sometimes I think I'm only happy when I have a keyboard beneath my fingers.

Eight, Eleven, Seventeen

2009-01-22T15:47:00.020-05:00

'Mom? Is the biggest number in the world an odd number, or an even number?'

-sister, whose birthday is on saturday

My brother and sister have said some pretty adorable things over the years. (I am told that I have as well, but that is for another post.) A quick glance through the archives should reveal as much, but most of the magic has not yet been shared. For instance, when my brother was small, my parents were wont (as indeed they have been with all of us) to debate trivial matters with him with all the solemnity of preachers or judges.

It was decided one evening that my brother should take a bath.

Mom: 'I know you don't want to take a bath, but if you have to, I'm sure you will take one with dignity.'

Kid: 'Who's Dignity?'

However, it is the mispronounciations and the spoonerisms that have always been among my favourites. My brother is surely the king of these ('Blah-blahs' for 'Loblaws'), but my sister has been known to make a few interesting adjustments to the language herself.

Of these, my absolute favourite is her rendering of 'specific'. She pronounces it 'pesific'. It's really only missing a letter, but it's amazing when it comes up in a sentence more than once. From 'pesific', of course, we derive 'pesifically' and 'pesification' (although never, interestingly, 'pesify'), words that I'm considering sending to Oxford University for inclusion in their next edition of our English-language Bible.

And now: a note to certain members of my math class, à la Sophia and Alicia.

First of all, let me make it clear that I believe you are very good people, and if I knew you better I am sure I would love you dearly. If you were actually going to read this, I would advise you not to take personal offense at my anger, and instead work on the constructive advice I have so subtly provided.

That said, it isn't as if you had no idea this year was coming. You have all finished high school math, and you know well the inflexibility of our administration regarding schedules; what else did you anticipate the eleventh grade might hold in store? No, you were forewarned, yet you persist in annoying our (frankly) already touchy educator (and no, I won't elaborate on the rumours) and being generally irritating to the other students. And by 'other students', I of course mean me.

The course is called 'Pre-calculus.' This would imply that its objective is to prepare us for further studies in the field. There is some purpose to our learning, some reason for us to take math this year, and while I agree that it may be less important than some classes, your constant nitpicking and complaining is absolutely insufferable. How dare you berate our teacher for outlining concepts that you personally feel have no practical use 'in real life'? (As if 'real life' for any of us could take place outside an academic or intellectual setting.) How dare you, as athletes and musicians, deny the value of uselessness, and the beauty of impracticalities?

If poets you are not, at least permit our instructor to do her job, and be appreciative of the fact that she -- unlike some -- is actually motivated to teach. Judge the worth of the course in private, after you have graduated, after you have gone on to more advanced material, after you understand a little more about the world and have thrown off this pathetic adolescent arrogance.

My word for 'egg cosy' was definitely my crowning achievement.

Chromosome Issues

2009-01-19T17:12:00.009-05:00

'Who cares about money?! This is ART, you blockhead! This is great music I'm playing, and playing great music is an art! Do you hear me? An art!' (pounds on piano) 'Art! Art! Art! Art! Art!'

-Schroeder

I saw the most beautiful human being on Saturday. The instant during which our paths crossed was insufficient for me to determine this person's gender, not that it matters in the slightest. He or she was of average size, with angular features and short, dark blue hair.

Dammit, I wish English would take a cue from Turkish and use a non-gender-specific third-person subject pronoun. The Turkish word is perfect: a single letter, an expression of eternity and of nothingness -- 'o'.

je = ben
tu = sen
il/elle/on = o
nous = biz
vous = siz
ils/elles = onlar

I have no use for gender roles either, but arguing against stereotypes is counter-productive. By acknowledging a divide between the sexes, we only reinforce this divide.

No more feminism, no more 'sensitive guys' (good will hunting etc, please shut up), no more math class segregation. No more anything about what I shouldn't be wearing or saying or doing, please. It's not about rebelling against conventions, so much as ignoring conventions I find meaningless. (Just wait till my marriage rant.)

It's been said before, and now I never need to say it again. Saying it defeats the purpose.

I know you will all forgive my exhaustion-fueled choler. Oh, and I've added a link again. As nerdy as ever, I assure you.

I wear whatever shoes I like now.

The Back of the Bookstore

2009-01-01T19:01:00.005-05:00

It's been a good month for books. Aside from the six books I received for my birthday, the five that came out of christmas, the two I pilfered from my father's shelves, and the few remaining novels from a long-ago excursion with Senor Peonie, I was fortunate enough to stumble across a secondhand store while in BC, where I lost no time in picking up cheap, tattered scifi paperbacks. One of them I present to you now.

Ursula K LeGuin's The Dispossessed is a staple of science fiction literature (oxymoron? you decide), but up until now I never realized it was also a well-written novel. The two distinctions are not exactly noted for frequent convergence, so it was a refreshing surprise to find a book that combined worthy ideas with pretty words. It was Max's suggestion that I read it, and it was fortune that led me to discover it at the White Rock secondhand bookstore, but I first heard about it from this list that I would suggest you check out, but would by no means compel you to do so.

Now maybe I can wean myself back off webcomics for awhile.

East it is.

But the Octopus is our friend.

2008-12-31T14:29:00.009-05:00

Every year at band camp, we play a variant of Never Have I Ever as an icebreaker game. The group forms a circle, with one person standing in the middle. They then say something they have done or mention an aspect of their character, and everyone who has done or is the same has to switch places. The person left in the middle goes next.

I'm actually not too keen on standing in the middle. I have a blog to rant about myself already, and I'd rather find out about other people. Besides, I always manage to embarrass myself somehow, and scare off the few kids who've made the mistake of talking to me.

I did get stuck there once or twice this year, though. (Apparently there are only three people in the band who play the guitar.) On one occasion in particular, I made the careless blunder of actually divulging honest information about myself.

'I'm really, really scared -- no, I'm terrified -- of squid. They're freakishly smart, and they have ten arms...and here's the thing. Scientists just keep finding bigger and bigger squid. I mean, they don't even know whether they should be making new species, like colossal squid. Lots of people are afraid of sharks but I'm just scared of squid. So I don't eat squid, so that when they all rise up and take over the world, I'll have more of a chance with them.'

Empty silence. Not a creature stirring.

I suppose I should have stopped after the first sentence, but no one was stopping me from going on about it, and I don't think that would have helped me very much anyway. The ignorance of the masses faced with the obvious impending disaster is staggering, much as it has been throughout history. Only this time, the danger is much greater than ever before -- colossal, in fact.

xkcd agrees.

It's 2009 in Tokyo. What's the big deal?

Fruit + OCD = best job ever

2008-12-18T19:13:00.004-05:00

Friends,

I have finally found my calling in life.

http://www.ediblearrangements.ca/

Also, chemistry was horrible.

The Suspender Strut: A Comprehensive Guide

2008-12-16T12:58:00.007-05:00

Not a natural-born strutter? Interested in improving your moves? Want to pick up an old skill again after years of disuse? Suspender-style strutting may be for you! Fast and easy results even with no previous experience, guaranteed!

Materials:
-1 pair concrete or imaginary suspenders
-1 empty street or corridor free of disturbances

Begin by walking down the street as casually as possible, wearing suspenders. What we're going to do here is ease smoothly into a strut from a normal walking style. Some of my contemporaries suggest slowing down before the transition, but I believe that the strut is best perfected at a constant speed, seeing as that's what you'd want to be able to do eventually. Do NOT come to a stop, unless your intent is more to perfect the Suspender Stance. It is VERY DIFFICULT to begin strutting from a standing position, and this should not be attempted by beginners!

Moving into the strut should be natural and fluid. You should be angling your head a little in the moment before the transition, with a slight sneer to one side of your lips, but try not to think about it too much. Glance nonchalantly off to the side, then snap suspenders once, very deliberately.

You should immediately glide into an arrogant strut. Work on improving the expressivity of the walk until you feel comfortable moving into it in public, with or without suspenders.

Congratulations! You have just mastered the Suspender Strut! Watch this space for more walking styles in the future.

I got brownies!

2008-11-28T21:28:00.007-05:00

I've been sort of tired, busy, and apathetic lately (I fell asleep on the floor yesterday), and haven't been blogging so much, but I think my family's birthday gifts warrant mention.

From my grandparents: a bathrobe. To be honest, this is nothing near the strangest in the family history. My mother's side is generally a little more reasonable (no Uncle Andrew), but notable standouts include a set of combs (seriously, there were like 11 of them, all in this spacey metallic blue) and a can of aerosol deodorant ('See, I have the same one! Now we can smell the same!'). This also happens to be the second time they have given me a bathrobe.

Hm. You know, when I read that over, it really doesn't seem that unusual. Bit of a trend, actually. Gifts with meaning.

From my dad: Okay, I'm not completely sure of the most basic rules of parenting, but I should think that not allowing your daughter to wear her telephone number on her chest ranks pretty high. So it's probably not a good idea to give her three different shirts with her (nick)name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and musical instruments of choice proudly emblazoned across the front. Of course, the shirts are all far too large, and there will be no giving these to thrift shops.

One might think that things don't get any more beautiful, but the fun didn't even stop there. More personalized items were to come: paper and office supplies primarily, but also a stack of bizarre cards with moose on them. My reaction was difficult to gauge (sort of a bewildered speechlessness), so I'm not sure my dad realizes just how deliriously happy this makes me.

From my mom: It's a clock. That runs counterclockwise. The numbers are all on backwards, and the hands move in the wrong direction.

With hazelnuts actually.

The amount of cutlery I have in my room is staggering.

2008-11-24T12:45:00.007-05:00

My notebook has not been completely silent lately, nor have I sworn off the late-night typing sessions, but still it has been nearly eleven months since I last posted a piece of writing.

While it is true that I have slowed the pace of my entire blog, the main reason for this remains that I cannot trust the Internet with my best work. My best work is always very much unfinished, and it would not do for another to steal my children away even before they are fully grown. (Which never actually happens.) I only ever post the bits and pieces here, the forgotten, the abandoned, the clutter in the corners of my hard drive.

If this seems a convenient excuse for poor quality, I must admit that my 'best work' is not much better. The difference is the amount of time I invest in finding slightly better words. (Blog posts are generally at the very opposite end of the language scale.)

I also have a paranoid fear of sharing anything current. The moment I show it to somebody, it becomes an established fact, a finished piece, carved in stone. Or so I seem to believe.

So much for that. I'm off to take a nap. Perhaps I'll come back soon and talk about my new books.

Why would you call this a 'cold'?

IT'S THE BEASTIE!

2008-11-21T21:01:00.000-05:00

'Dad, in America, children have four rights: education, shelter, food, and stories. Read us some stories.'

-brudda

It's time for kids' books again! This is one of the most amazing ever. Be sure to read aloud with a heavy Scottish accent.

Also: check out the labels! I've broken my 'random useless pieces of uselessness' category into two: 'random useless pieces of uselessness' and 'highly unprofessional reviews'! For easy access of my most brilliant criticism.

Food OCD

2008-11-20T20:45:00.009-05:00

I remember there used to be a commercial on when I was a kid. As is so common with advertising, I haven't the faintest idea what the product was...maybe cars or insurance or something. In the commercial, two executives in suits were standing next to each other; for some reason, they were holding slices of pizza. Then one of them paused, flashed a grin, and made an announcement that stirred my youthful soul.

'Crust first!'

He then proceeded to bite into the slice in exactly this fashion, and my little heart swelled as I gazed upon it. I, too, was a loyal and lonely devotee of that practice.

I've stopped eating pizza that way now, mainly because the older I get, the more I like the crust. But I still think we should have some kind of club. We could sit around a table and discuss our individual obsessiveness. Personally, I would always eat the crust, then begin at the point again and work my way through, but I've heard tell of those who start at the tip, then eat the crust at the halfway point. Everything goes in the Crust First Club.

Except people who don't eat the crust at all. They are the poor bastard children of the gastronomic OCD world.

And while we're on the subject: corn.

Hey, you knew it was coming up. I'm not actually picky about corn at all, but I know most of the world is divided over this issue. So what do you guys think: typewriter or spiral style?

My family has always believed that food should be an adventure. An adventure rife with urgency and peril.

Depressed about Blogging

2008-11-16T21:01:00.011-05:00

Nothing ever changes. Nothing nothing nothing. Nothing changes because I don't know how to make things better.

Why must we be so impossible to satisfy?

I'm delirious again. I recognize it, but I cannot stop myself. And yes, I knew you were there, at that very instant. And yes, I knew you were going to talk to me, to speak those unique, particular words. But what good would it have done to say so? It's not like I'm always there.

If anyone asks, I guess I could just blame the Layers again, but it isn't really their fault this time. And we all know how much fun I have trying to explain the Layers anyway.

I'm sure poets cannot analyse their own work. That's why they write poetry, dammit.

EDIT: They say things have to get worse before....

Breaking News:

2008-11-14T20:25:00.006-05:00

HOT CHICK PERFORMS ACROBATIC FEATS IN CROWDED SUBWAY; NOBODY NOTICES

Sparrow Despairs for Humanity

A young, attractive female was spotted swinging around the ceiling handholds on the orange line early this afternoon. Said female was apparently dressed appropriately for a workout, but after a few minutes of intense gymnastic action, left engaged spectators with the impression that she would be better suited to leaping off skyscrapers and battling bad guys in the dead of night.

The grand total of engaged spectators among two metro cars: four.

A first-hand account of this remarkable occurence comes from one Wistful Sparrow, a young woman who was visibly distraught over the unimpressive audience.

'It's just difficult for me to understand. I mean, this girl is right in front of their faces, flying around on the ceiling of the metro car. How could they not notice? How could anyone possibly be so blind?'

Further enquiry left unanswered the question of whether this incident was a recurring stunt. Updates will be reported on RFS as soon as possible.

This is kind of stupid and I think I might stop doing it if I don't start thinking of better ways to end my posts.

Best Sign Ever.

2008-11-08T22:02:00.001-05:00

Jacob: 'I get all my stuff from China.' (Pauses.) '...That was a cheap joke.'

-- http://fuknus.chrisdamitio.com/?p=2496

This even beats out the one I found in grade seven. I have no words for it.

Also, this is my 365th post. Reflections and Fuzzy Slippers, now in page-a-day calendar format! Unless you need it for a leap year, in which case you'll have to wait a few days.

I've decided to start labelling all my fruit.

Creeping toward Nerdvana.

2008-11-04T23:10:00.011-05:00

Dad: I barely even know who Sting is.
Mom: It's alright. He was kind of after your time.
Dad: I mean, I always...I always thought Michael Bowie was the lead singer of Sting.

I swear I become more of a nerd every day of my life. A true nerd, that is, not merely an academic overachiever, escaping from the headaches of all the P classes (Physics, Precal, Phys Ed and Phrench) into a fantasy world of solitary revelry. I am a hardcore sci-fi junkie, a hopeless internet addict, and an individual of what many would deem desperately poor musical taste. Seriously, it's just getting worse and worse.

I've spent a lot of time trying to come to terms with this aspect of my character, but I realize now that it really defines me as a person. It's part of who I am, and there is no changing it. I'm going to have to tell my parents someday, although something tells me that they won't be surprised, but I wanted you guys to find out first. You have been such good friends to me thus far; I knew you would support me in this.

That is that. I have plenty of new blog ideas, some of which will hopefully become realities once this busy spell ends, but for now I must away.

'Nerdery' is a good word too.

Pre-November Doom and Gloom

2008-10-26T23:57:00.003-04:00

Math class free periods are pretty dull when there's nobody to talk to. And I quote:

why the hell why can't you all just never always
I'm not well acquainted with this cheery cheerful banter
banter is a closed door. I ramble and wander through the hallways looking for a way out of this goddamned bastard house there has to be a way something out there there has to
some people I think maybe have found it
but they're not telling. lots of reasons.
why why why and the hands my hand isn't there or not yet all pushing helping lifting reaching and music the music
November has truth more pure and fine and cold. August has memories.
ow ow ow my arm fucker shut it hurts
no way this can last forever but can any thing
your eyes your eyes -- veiled but I feel them faintly
it knows too much and I know too little
damn

you're a walker or a mocker

can I be both and neither?

I never want to leave this love

but I do want to leave this world

I guess that makes me pretty stupid not knowing after all my hair is everywhere

dandelion haloes

Oh, and if my recurring bursts of enthusiasm for Chopin nocturnes has led you to wonder what exactly I've been going on about, you might like to check out the one I'm playing this year at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MzrAGZHDvo.

The hands will be back.

I am eyebrow retarded.

2008-10-21T19:25:00.005-04:00

Looks like the Sparrow here's gone and got herself something new to talk about. World take caution, because Alicia has very kindly offered to try to teach me how to draw.

I figured I'd let you guys in on the training process (seeing as about 25% of you guys is already part of the training process) by posting periodic updates on my training. So here, without needing to abandon my last shred of self-respect because that shred has long since been lost, is the product of the first lesson. Click for bigger.

All right, so I won't be joining the ranks of the great romantic I mean impressionist masters anytime soon, but I think even this is a step above my customary doodles and wing people. It's obviously not finished yet, but already it could use a fair amount of cleaning up: the nose is rather wider and more bulbous than a human's ought to be, the face remains disconcertingly androgynous (recognizable as female, but only just), and the chin and cheeks look like the subject needs to bathe once in awhile.

However, let us examine the compelling evidence for this lesson having helped me: it's fucking shaded. For me, a pencil has always been something you sharpened after you broke it crossing out the last three paragraphs of your work, and only after you broke it crossing out the last three paragraphs of your work. Now here I am learning that the side of the pencil can be useful too. Whoodathunk.

In other news: My brother's guppy Diana gave birth to twenty little fry on Sunday. We wondered for awhile whether the one that we'd found was going to be an only child, then we found three more, and then it all went 101 Dalmatians. All I've got to say is that we better be careful we don't wind up with guppies in jars all over the house, like in that story we read in primary school.

And yes, she is named after the moon and fertility goddess (Roman equivalent of Artemis). The other three are Athena, Venus and Poseidon.

Too much too much.

Drug notebook time!

2008-10-19T12:43:00.012-04:00

I love those drug awareness books. They're the perfect size for note-taking in science, brain-bleeding in math, and ripping pages out of to turn into WWI letters for english. Plus they have really cool high school kids on the front so we can really relate to the message.

This year, I made sure to get the one with the guy on it. An attractive specimen, as you can see:

Nevertheless, I feel he owes me a huge debt, as my slight alterations to his costume have made him about 1000 times cooler:

From possibly-toxic teenager to SUPER AWESOME SPACE PILOT in just a few easy steps. Amazing what a couple of Sharpies can do in the capable hands of a nerd girl.

I can't think of anything clever.

Cereal Battles

2008-10-07T21:44:00.014-04:00

There are too many freaking towns in England. All I need is one largish town-like-agglomeration for my WWI letter, and I'm just far too overwhelmed by the possibilities to choose one. My dad's old road atlas of the islands has not helped at all; the maps look like paintings by Jackson Pollock.

(Click for close-up. Not that it'll help.)

It escapes me why anyone would turn to this book for reference. It also escapes me how so many people manage to fit into Europe, and still have room for fields and forests and the like. I gave up after twenty minutes of poring over the incomprehensible atlas, an exercise that only served to reinforce one of my core tenets: I am getting off this planet as soon as possible.

I suppose that's why reincarnation has never particularly appealed to me as an idea. I really don't want to be here forever.

We'll let my absurdly itchy feel alone for awhile, as I turn to the reason I started writing this: my cereal issues. Not too much depresses me more than the idea of being born again as a dog, but cereal is definitely one of those few things. The reason, my friends, is that I am very, very easily bored, especially with food.

But maybe you've been there. You know when you get a new box of cereal, and maybe you've tried it before and maybe you haven't, but the point is you get it and you open it up and for the first few days everything is great. Then, after three or four mornings of eating it, you start to get really tired of it, but to the point where even the thought of it makes you feel nauseous. Fucking honey bunches of oats, I hate you.

And here's the thing: no amount of different types of cereal in the house will solve the problem. We have about fifteen different types of cereal in the house right now, counting hot porridge and the Froot Loops that we keep buying despite the fact that none of us has ever successfully consumed a complete bowl. It doesn't matter. Every morning is a stressful battle of wills between me and a couple of artificially-preserved grain mixes.

No, I can't just eat toast. Cereal is so much more convenient.

By the way, I don't know if any of you have met my latest favourite:

I had some aspirations for this post, but I realize it's all lost now. I'll just finish up with a quote about my favourite composer. Again.

...We must conceive of music, then, as always going on in this pleasant household, and of the fond parents violently distressed when they saw that their infant son reacted with floods of tears to the sound of music. They thought he hated it, and it was only when he began to pick out tunes on the piano that they realized he had been crying for joy. They had a hysteric on their hands, not a music hater.

-"Frédéric-François Chopin", Men of Music, Brockway and Weinstock

EDIT: I forgot to mention my brother's latest injuries! After having his right hand stepped on a week ago and displacing a tendon or something, he was tackled during a game of touch football last Thursday and wound up breaking his left clavicle! Word on the street is he's resolved to stay together and quit getting hurt, but some are skeptical about his promises.

And speaking of promises, elections are tomorrow, and I hope all you registered voters reading this have been thinking long and hard and intelligently about all the candidates. Personally, I have to confess a certain bias in favour of the old Rhinoceros Party. They really should have won a seat or two. There's also a monty python sketch about elections that the rhino party probably lifted some ideas from but I promised myself I'd stop bringing that stuff up on my blog.

NEW EDIT: I just thought you should know that I drew the saddest little wing guy ever on my desk in English last week. Bye.

Stupid hat.

Black, White, Rainbow

2008-10-02T17:28:00.011-04:00

Alex: Yeah, I have to see a doctor about these migraines.
Me: I think it's all in your head.

This is why mathematicians should generally not write books.

Find the interval for which the distance that twice a number is from seven is always less than or equal to eleven.

Ridiculous. Instead of attempting to decode the problem, I elected to make a list of stuff I want in my Drug Awareness notebook. Here's a sample:

-white top hat
-white dress pants
-long white gloves
-rainbow trench coat

I suppose some of these merit explanation. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted one of those ridiculous long black trench coats that are neither warm enough nor cool enough and serve mainly to hide things under (watching The Matrix in English last year did not help this in the slightest). However, I really don't think that black is the creepiest colour someone can wear; white wins by a landslide.

In the last year, I've managed to pick up two very important additions to my monochromatic wardrobe. I bought a white blazer (blazer-like thing, really) in France and a black coat in July. And, apparently being blessed with the kind of good fortune a Scot should appreciate, I paid about $30 for each.

Several complications arose out of this. One, I swiftly realized that the best (creepiest?) thing to wear with a white blazer is white pants. Two, Kelsey had actually already (something like half a year before) purchased a (nicer) black coat, and you know it's unthinkable that two people in a group should be wearing black coats (no, but really. it would be a little odd). Three, I figured that the only thing neater than a black top hat is a white top hat.

Unfortunately, rainbow trench coats do not seem to exist. It's really too bad: just think of all the symbols something like that would combine.

Later in math, I was given back the notorious questionnaire in which I compared zero to the forces of darkness and the portal to a parallel world of emptiness.

Q. Why does zero matter when solving equations?
A. How can there be something without nothing? Once you begin to count, to understand the concept of 'some', you must follow that up with an understanding of the concept of 'none'. Zero is this concept.

made you look!

Life according to my favourite composer.

2008-09-30T21:28:00.008-04:00

'I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness. And yet I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.'

Cheerful old fellow, this Chopin. I stumbled upon a collection of quotes and was impressed, although not surprised, by the intensity of his depression. The master of romantic piano music really needs to watch more Monty Python.

Here he is describing his accomodation whilst staying at Majorca:

'It's a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or haircurling, as pale as ever, in a cell with such doors as Paris never had for gates. '

I could live without curlers, but white gloves are a necessity. Watch this space for more paleness.

Here he goes again, expressing my own and everyone's great doubts about it all:

'I am gay on the outside [...] but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams - or sleeplessness - melancholy, indifference - desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death.'

And finally, a long, long parade of doom and gloom:

'This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. (There we go.) A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life.... Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!... Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? ... But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is.'

Aspiring psychologists take note: here is a case study that can be diagnosed with just about anything. Great thesis topic.

Aspiring musicians: buy the nocturnes. And if you know any aspiring inventors named Doc, sign me up for the nineteenth century.

There's just no end to the monty python references.

This will not do wonders for my schoolwork.

2008-09-24T18:27:00.004-04:00

Do not expect to hear from me for awhile.

I feel so very, very betrayed. I never knew Neil would let me down like this, but evidently he has less respect for the way I'm trying to cope with addiction than I had believed.

*draws deep breath*

Today, my guitar teacher lent me the complete DVD set of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Now, it's possible that he doesn't realize just how deep I'm in. Just how much of a flaming nerd I really am. But then, most people aren't exactly very public about this kind of thing. I felt you all should know only so that when you next observe me giggling uncontrollably for minutes on end in the middle of math class, you don't leap to the conclusion that I am insane. Crazy, yes. Not insane.

There was some more stuff that happened today but I can't remember it now.

EDIT: I've just realized that out of my five latest posts, four mention monty python, and the fifth is about science fiction. See, this is why I can't answer when people ask me what I want to do with my life.

Happy? Obviously, I'm ill.

I really love Greek names.

2008-09-23T16:43:00.007-04:00

Well, it took me 356 posts, and in the end I didn't write it myself, but I've finally put my name on the blog. I know it comes as a huge revelation to most of my readers.

In the news today, Dufault has offered me a half-credit for doing one of my favourite things in the whole world: alphabetizing and organizing a bookshelf. Specifically, the one full of Smiley's books in 210. Both seem happy with the idea of somebody working on it, but I bet they aren't as happy as I am.

Also, after watching Life of Brian twice at Alicia's last Saturday, and after Orlando's failed attempts to pronounce 'real root' in math today, I've decided that I should try and go a whole day without saying the letter 'r'. Hopefully many ridiculous situations will arise.

Today my brother completely freaked the shit out of me with a fake egg, which he threw over my head. I lost consciousness for a fraction of a heartbeat, and when I came to I'd dropped my dishes in the sink and lost my spoon.

And finally, a link to one of my favourite things on the interweb. Visions of the future, as seen in the past. It's priceless.

Brothers, sisters, can't you see? The future's owned by you and me.

Castor and Pollux.

More books.

2008-09-14T20:03:00.001-04:00

While Arthi fought yet another battle in the office on Friday, I found a Nebula Winners anthology on the lost-and-found shelf under the teacher's boxes. It looked lost and forlorn, so I (out of the pure and honest goodness of my heart) elected to give it a home.

As it turns out, one of the stories featured in the collection is Asimov's Bicentennial Man. The novelette (novelette? novella? short story? who cares?) happens to be one of my favourite Asimov shorts (and, if you know me well, you are probably aware that I have read far, far too many. they are mind-expanding), as well as one of the few stories that I suggest reading next to a box of tissues (lots of stories make me cry, but tissue tears are an entirely different brand of feeling, and one I believe others are more likely to share). Basically, it's about a robot who wants to be human. So yes, I guess you can bring out the transvestite comparisons. Recommended.

I actually remember seeing the movie once, a long time ago. Of course, it was considerably stupider and more glamourous. The inevitable casting of Robin Williams and addition of a love interest were a letdown, if an expected one; from there, it slid somewhat complacently into cliché. After all, the wonder of the original story is that only an author with such a stark, unornamented style -- a style stereotypically male and stereotypically haut sci-fi (bas sci-fi, or so I term it henceforth, being more along the lines of those horrifyingly fascinating space-erotica paperbacks) -- could pull off such a plot and retain his dignity.

So yes, it was probably worse than the film version of I, Robot, but I'm not absolutely sure. ('I'm Will Smith, I hate robots, I wear Converse'; cue incomprehensible but vaguely interesting car-robot-chases, and a little later you have one very confused fourteen-year-old wondering what exactly the answer to the mystery was, and who the robot referred to in the title is, and what any of this has to do with Asimov.)

Bugs.

2008-09-13T16:13:00.010-04:00

It was huge. It was black. And it flew. Around my bed, to be precise. It was a battleship of a bug, an monster of uncountable appendages, ridiculous proportions, and an indeterminate number of body sections, all bound together by some mystical dark force. Had it not appeared to possess several times the requisite number of legs, I would have called it Death in insect form, but this unearthly beast was beyond classification in any known arthropod genus. As my body locked into position, my reflexes rejoicing at the advent of the crisis for which they had been designed, my highly-developed brain (nourished by the sort of novels one cannot admit to having read except among a trusted few) came to the logical realization that here, at last, was the probe I had so long expected to see. Here was evidence of extraterrestrial surveillance; I had known it all along.

Needless to say, my father was unable to locate the levitating Leviathan. While I searched the basement for harpoons, pitchforks, and holy water, he grabbed the net we used to catch tadpoles, fish, frogs, and the occasional budgie (what good would such a weapon have done him?) and poked around my room. I sleep with heavy books beside my bed now. (Which is true, but after all, I always have.)

Today, my brother was on the garage roof when he stepped on a bees' nest.

It isn't really my story to tell, but I have no doubt that it is one of the worst experiences of his life. I've never heard anyone scream like that before. He leapt down (eight feet up, and he leaps down?) and ran into the house, shrieking and flailing his arms, a cloud of striped warriors following him everywhere he fled.

'Get out get out!' I screamed. 'Go to the park! Go find mom at the park!'

Exit brother, unshod, tearing for the park, the hounds of hell at his back. Exit brother's friend, running for home and his own mother. Cut to attic, as I contemplate climbing out through the window. Close-up on lingering swarm in living room of house. Back to attic, with me pulling on pants and putting socks on -- two on my feet, two on my hands.

Brother's friend came back, bringing his mother, three other kids, and antihistamines. In honour of the fresh audience, I provided my best impression of a paranoid, senile widower.

Paranoid, Senile Widower (locally, Old Sockhands): 'Go away! Get out while you can!' (Waves socked hands.) 'They're all around you! They'll get you too!' (Runs down two flights of stairs, charges out front door. Socked feet, hands disappear into distance.)

And my brother. Panic attack, pink and swollen, chunks of skin missing. Mercifully, bones unbroken and allergically unreactive. But the trauma, and the pain.

Perhaps I'll just stop sleeping. I'll patrol the second floor, standing sentinel outside my brother's door, armed with a rolled newspaper and a rubber boot. And always, always watching for the Martian bug.

EDIT: I forgot. Get Fuzzy, I am shamed to admit, was today a fairly accurate reflection of the way my own mind works. I'll never make a politician.

The idyll.

Two books. Three days. Plenty of zeroes.

2008-09-04T21:05:00.014-04:00

'What's so funny about Biggus Dickus?'

-Life of Brian

Honestly, if this lending of books proceeds in a way anywhere close to its current rate, this will be a hell of a year. I've had two people give me books to read since school started. And not just give me the titles, which is fantastic enough; I mean actually hand over the volume with a return-whenever date affixed.

On the first day of school, Frances from my homeroom lent me Good Omens, which Alicia has been telling me to read for a year or two and I've been resisting because I like to pretend I don't like Neil Gaiman. I'm almost finished. I thought about saving it, but I've never had much in the way of self-control. I figure I'll wind up with my own copy eventually anyway.

Then, today, I was looking at a book on Orlando's desk. The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. This, I said, must be the most amazing book in the world ever. (One of my dad's favourite phrases to use around me has always been, 'I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.') So she took the hint that I honestly wasn't really making and handed it over. (If the whole year of precal is spent talking about zeroes, infinity and math puns, I may actually learn to pay attention.)

My second driving lesson is coming up. I'm trying not to think about it. And for those who don't know I'm the worst driver in the history of the world, I am. I can't drive a car, I can barely steer a sailboat, and I'm just very happy that I've never hit anything worse than a mailman while biking. Hey, we should go biking soon.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, Sophia. What I actually wrote was: 'The powers of darkness. The void. The portal to a world of emptiness.'
What I should have written was: 'Zero is the mind-killer. Zero is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face zero. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when zero is gone past me I will turn to see zero's path. Where zero has gone there will be zero.'
(In other words: Wonderfully confusing Dune reference!)
And yeah, I'm super glad you're in those classes. I'm stoked. It'll make it so much more interesting.

NEW EDIT: xkcd is my favourite webcomic. Not that I read more than one. Definitely not AHAHAHA. But seriously. I've been following for awhile, and it's consistently amazing; check it out down the right. And don't give up on it if the first one you read is about weird fetishes. (Not that anyone honestly would. Quite the contrary, I believe.)

I could have kissed them.

Are you saying that everyone who owns a bike store is a lesbian?

2008-08-20T22:41:00.000-04:00

'You should not rub yourself with radioactive material.'

-Mr. Z

In the spirit of the last post about hair (hell, I could have a whole blog about hair. Oh, man. Oh man oh man oh man. That would be the best blog ever. I would read it every day. I wonder if it exists), I feel I have to take this other picture I stole from the mother internet and offer it once again up into her loving arms.

What is this (thing called love)?

2008-08-17T21:44:00.009-04:00

Found in the notebook. Haven't the foggiest. It's like brain leakage.

Imagine that you're sitting in a little room.
And imagine that you have the power to stop all these nightmares with the pull of a single lever...but you do not pull the lever.

I think what I was getting at, actually, was that sometimes a good story needs someone to make a surprising decision at the moment of climax (yes, that is the appropriate term. I'm trying to be serious here people), a strange decision -- perhaps the 'wrong' decision. Or it could have had something to do with the fact that I had been sitting in the airport in Munich for three hours, and it was something like five in the morning Turkish time. Whichever.

I was going to end that post there, but I think I really have to share with all my latest musical obsession. No, not Kraftwerk. I'm talking about one of the foremost rockers of the modern era, the heart and soul of the ridiculously popular band called Radiohead (which I've actually already mentioned like three times on this blog. Damn I'm a nerd): Johnny Greenwood's hair.

I want this. So badly. It's entirely Ariel's responsibility to make sure I never get my hair styled (styled?) this way. The world is safe only so long as she is the one person with short black hair in the group.

However, no one is preventing me from morphing into one of these guys:

And, I mean, it's not like they're the only 70s scandinavian band with supernatural hairstyles and outfits from outer space. (Although I admit a particular fondness for those pants.) No, what kills me about this is Erik the Red in the corner there. I've only seen that expression once before in my life, and it was on a muppet.

It's all the fault of the dream.

As I Came Through The Desert

2008-08-09T15:08:00.005-04:00

Written by James Thomson
From The City of Dreadful Night

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: All was black,
In heaven no single star, on earth no track;
A brooding hush without a stir or note,
The air so thick it clotted in my throat;
And thus for hours; then some enormous things
Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire
Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;
The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath
Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;
Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold
Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Lo you, there,
That hillock burning with a brazen glare;
Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow
Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;
A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell
For Devil’s roll-call and some fête of Hell:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Meteors ran
And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span;
The zenith opened to a gulf of flame,
The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth’s fixed frame;
The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged
And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Air once more,
And I was close upon a wild sea-shore;
Enormous cliffs arose on either hand,
The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand;
White foambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew;
The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue:
And I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: On the left
The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft;
There stopped and burned out black, except a rim,
A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim;
Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west,
And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest:
Still I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: From the right
A shape came slowly with a ruddy light;
A woman with a red lamp in her hand,
Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand;
O desolation moving with such grace!
O anguish with such beauty in thy face!
I fell as on my bier,
Hope travailed with such fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: I was twain,
Two selves distinct that cannot join again;
One stood apart and knew but could not stir,
And watched the other stark in swoon and her;
And she came on, and never turned aside,
Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:
And as she came more near
My soul grew mad with fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Hell is mild
And piteous matched with that accursèd wild;
A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,
A broad blackband ran down her snow-white shroud;
That lamp she held was her own burning heart,
Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart:
The mystery was clear;
Mad rage had swallowed fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: By the sea
She knelt and bent above that senseless me;
Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there,
She tried to cleanse them with her tears and hair;
She murmured words of pity, love, and woe,
She heeded not the level rushing flow:
And mad with rage and fear,
I stood stonebound so near.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: When the tide
Swept up to her there kneeling by my side,
She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne
Away, and this vile me was left forlorn;
I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart,
Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart:
They love; their doom is drear,
Yet they nor hope nor fear;
But I, what do I here?

I love this poem so much.

I promise this is for real.

2008-08-03T23:40:00.001-04:00

We all love it when people's names match them far too well. Such as that guy there, David Bird, who used to do the ornithology column in the Gazette and maybe still does. But nothing comes close to my mother's picks, drawn from personal experience, of the worst possible names a doctor can have. The worst possible names to hear over the intercom. The worst possible names to read on the door before you walk in for your appointment.

Dr. Deth and Dr. Grief.

First driving lesson was yesterday. It would have been amusing to watch. And...Radiohead in three. (Which hasn't really sunk in yet, seeing as I'd sort of given up on it.)

You can never be the person you were before.

More Stuff I Like

2008-07-30T22:00:00.005-04:00

So I went to watch Jenna figure skate yesterday. And besides being utterly, completely blown away by her extreme skills (and man, does she deserve them, what with all that perseverance and all), I have decided that male figure skaters are awesome. Either my brother will have to take up the sport (he's pretty skinny, after all), or I will have to marry one. Because you know what? It takes some serious guts to be a twelve-year-old in tight pants and pointed shoes, while all your friends are cutting each other up with sticks and little round black rocks. It takes a real man.

And no, not all male figure skaters are gay, although gay male figure skaters are probably about as manly as it gets. After all, as I've said quite a bit recently, man x man = man squared.

Today I saw Mama Mia! at the theater, and it was also a festival of awesomeness. Even more so than you might expect.

I'm home, by the way. I've kind of let this blog fall by the wayside a bit in the past few weeks, but that's typical of the summer. I'll be back eventually, with my customary force of spirit and acuteness of observations. Oh, and my caustic wit.

After all, I myself have never had an average mother.

Making a Tentative Reappearance on the Internet.

2008-06-29T10:06:00.003-04:00

So you all know about Yalım, my lovably nerdy Turkish cousin who stayed with us for a summer and stranded himself in the middle of a lake while kayaking in Ontario. And you’ve all heard about the incredible age differences in my family, so that my father is two years younger than my grandmother and my other grandmother is younger than my great-grandmother. It isn’t too surprising, then, that Yalım is actually not my first cousin but my mother’s; his brother, Cağıl, is younger than my brother.

Here’s when the new details about my family come in. My grandmother has one sister and two brothers. The older of the brothers – the serious, nervous one – is the father of Yalım and Cağıl. My mother’s other uncle – the youngest of the family, the trickster, now the jolly uncle who speaks a grand total of perhaps fifty English words – also has two children: Eray (if that is how you spell it…) and Özge. Like my only set of legitimate first cousins (on my father’s side), they are two years apart, each in their early twenties.

They’re pretty awesome characters. Eray, 24, is much like his father: short, outgoing, and funny. He’s the sort of person who could probably blow cigarette smoke rings at fourteen (he certainly can now), the sort of person who didn’t know and couldn’t believe that we don’t have mandatory military service in Canada. Özge, 22, is a little more subtle: much shorter, understanding, and also funny. She’s the sort of person who doesn’t seem to mind that I only half understand her (probably very amusing) stories about Anglophone children she has met, the sort of person who wages long battles with the gearshift every time she tries to back the car up. Neither speaks English.

You made it through those three paragraphs; you really deserve some kind of story at this point. Unfortunately, I think most of the story has already been implied. Last night, the two of them decided to take their awkward, nerdy Canadian cousin out for a bit. Eray laughing at me for throwing a popsicle stick into a garbage can was a pretty good moment, but it doesn’t come close to the perfection of Özge attempting to explain how to open and close the electric windows of the car.

‘If you want to open it, you press down here,’ she informed me. ‘Pull up on the button to make the window go up.’

Well, we do have those in Canada.

Y and C are coming next weekend. Yalım’s in university now, and apparently has a girlfriend. Fingers crossed for him not to have become too cool.

I’ll post again about my favourite parts of this country: the landscape, the ruins, fragmented suggestions of an ancient time. I’m still gathering material.

Haunting memories of times you never knew in life.

Migraine Woes.

2008-06-19T18:07:00.003-04:00

It isn't easy to write an exam when the paper ripples and the numbers won't hold still.

Summer stretches out before us, but I feel no relief, no euphoria, no pessimism...nothing at all, in a state of calm rather than a void of emotion. This has recently become more of a trend; an explanation, perhaps, for why I am a worse blogger than I ever have been. For this style of writing demands either an interesting life or the ability (or will?) to blow an average life to disproportional grandeur, exaggerating agony and distress. Neither applies or appeals to me of late.

I look back on my old blog posts, and they astonish me; I can't believe that I ever fretted about such things. I only need to do what makes sense to me, follow what I feel like doing, obey impulse without becoming too self-destructive. And I shall experience extremes of emotions -- highs and lows, as much as I ever have and more -- but rarely without genuine reason. If this is another level of maturity, it isn't what I expected.

It's been a creative day.

The stack of laundry on my desk is very impressive.

2008-04-24T23:01:00.004-04:00

Upon arriving at band practice tonight, I noticed a number of things. The first was that I had completely forgotten my folder with all my scores in it.

'Ah, well,' I thought. 'I guess I'll have to depend on the other second clarinet for a change.' While the other second, of course, did not show.

This evening, I learned that I know all of my honour band pieces completely by heart.

It was amazing, though. If you asked me what the notes were, offhand, at a certain part of the piece, I wouldn't be able to answer. But when we began at the beginning and played through until the end, the phrases sounded out one after another -- perfectly. Better, in fact, than I usually play them.

Another thing I noticed was that Joseph and I were wearing the same shirt.

Every week since Cuba, a different member of the band has worn the dark blue uniform shirt we used there. It reminds me a lot of that improv game where your group has to count aloud, and if two people say the same number at once you have to start over.

So I guess we lost this time.

RFS on hold for awhile. Back sometime in the summer, I should think.

If lies are evil, why does believing in them make us so happy?

Thinking of You

2008-04-21T17:01:00.000-04:00

Dear RFS:

I've been away for a long time.

I still love you.

The Guy is gone.

2008-03-10T11:55:00.003-04:00

'Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.'

-Monty Python

Norman Bethune is being repaired, you know. On the way to the Old Brewery Mission on Saturday, we walked by his pedestal on Guy street. There was a solemn ring of pure black pigeons surrounding it, still in the blowing snow. They could have been in mourning.

Bunnies.

2008-03-08T20:22:00.001-05:00

So I fainted. Again. Down and out, five and a half feet to the floor and lines dancing before my eyes when I was rudely awakened from my deep thoughts of dancing rabbits. My dad had just given me the hepatitis A vaccine in the living room (I was standing up; brilliant thinking, you two), a little more than a week before I went away to Cuba.

'Dad, my whole arm's numb.'
'Oh, really? The whole arm?'
'Yeah, no, I can't feel it at all.'

Two steps over, eyes roll over, over and out. My brother and sister were pretty scarred.

That was Sunday three weeks ago. Apparently I passed out mainly because I was (once again) dehydrated, which was because I was sick following the ski trip. I missed Monday through Wednesday, went to school Thursday and the next Monday (french project finally done!), and then I flew away.

But on Tuesday (the Tuesday I was sick), I finally acquired a very nifty little piece of plastic permitting me to enter traffic (although under supervision for a good eight months or more). So more potential trouble.

I've just read Sophia's blog; can you tell? (Oh and by the way Sophia, let me know if and when I can add you to my list again.)

Never break the chain?

I ache. All over.

2008-02-16T17:15:00.004-05:00

Mom: 'Tu ne peux pas faire de l'origami en classe.'

Emma: 'I grecque.'

Mom: 'You can't do origami in class.'

Emma: 'I grecque.'

Mom: 'What?'

Emma: 'I'm saying "Why?" in French.'

About the numbers on those little fruit stickers.

2008-02-04T21:36:00.000-05:00

One Wednesday in Biology:
"I know today is Friday...."

-Ms. F

Four digits: conventionally grown.

Five digits beginning with 8: genetically modified.

Five digits beginning with 9: organic.

Fruit stickers are a big deal in my house, as anyone who's seen the cupboards over the sink can tell.

Hey, it's groundhog time.

2008-02-02T22:04:00.000-05:00

'I love watching rich people fight. I don't know why.'

-Mr. Z on professional hockey

Today was perhaps the most amazing day skiing I've ever had. In past years, on powder days, I'd tear down glades at top speed hoping not to crash into anything. I feel more like I'm flying now. I am completely in control of nearly every move I make. I can go anywhere I want on the trail...up, down, sideways, into the air. It's an agility utterly foreign to someone who can't walk to school without pirouetting across the sidewalk, no matter how much salt has been laid down to eat the ice.

Skiing, part two.

2008-01-31T19:12:00.000-05:00

Three twenty-five, at the top of Tremblant, our bus at the bottom of the north side, and nothing to take us there but black diamonds. Looking back now, I realize that only I had any inkling of what was to come, for only I was both an advanced skier and a beginner snowboarder. Amanda cannot be held responsible for this adventure, nor can her friend. If I was less of an idiot, I would have told them to switch again. I would have told Amanda to take the chair down. I might even have proposed an exchange myself, offered my friend my skis. Yet as Amanda, on a snowboard for the first time in her life, slid over to the top of the nearest expert trail, the only phrase I saw fit to utter was, 'We're fucking screwed.'

The first part of the trail was the steepest part, and I don't know how they did it.
In fact, we didn't really hit the wall until about two-thirds of the way there, when Amanda had a breakdown.

'I can't do it.' She was sobbing. 'There's no one here to help us. They're gonna leave without us.'

Who could blame her? She was panicking. Her feet strapped to a board, she had practically no control over her own fate. The ski lift we had taken up had ground to a halt, and we were, it was becoming evident, rather late. We had seen no one else since the top of the mountain.

'They won't. Absolutely not. And if they did, my parents would come pick us up.' Of course, I wasn't so sure about any of this. I can't imagine my mother being too pleased to drive to Tremblant and back in order to pick up her vagrant] daughter. 'Come on. I'll help you down.' I stretched out my pole to her, but she didn't move.

'Do it. Do it.'

My Ben Stiller impression could not fail me. Her hand swung out and tightened. Slowly, gently, I moved forward, immensely thankful for my newfound control of my speed.

Much of the remainder of the mountain was descended in this fashion. We stopped. We started. She fell. I pulled her behind me. And then, as suddenly as the clouds parting after an epic rainstorm, the mountain fell away, and I saw paradise before us. The ski chalet could not have shone with more radiance had it been fashioned of pure gold.

'We're there,' I breathed. 'We made it. Alex! Alex!'

For a moment, for eternity, the three of us stood on the slope, gazing down at the bus, at the four or five red-suited figures far below. And, like a starving man who feels that food has never tasted so wonderful, I thought to myself that not once in my life had I been happier to see a parking lot.

We came down slowly. When we were at the bottom, we took off our skis, our snowboards, and began the trek to the parking lot -- elated, exhausted, and a little terrified of what we might find when we climbed onto the bus. I am certain that I do not exaggerate when I say that bonds were formed by that descent, where bonds did not already exist. Was it the stupidest thing I ever did? Probably not, but it's somewhere up there. Do I regret it? Not for a moment, but I'm glad we came through.

Tim glanced at us as we passed him. Winked.

'In trouble already, I see.'

Some of my favourite picture books

2008-01-29T21:21:00.000-05:00

Yay, another list of favourite things.

1. Mister Got To Go: The Cat that Wouldn't Leave (Lois Simmie)
Beautiful. This is a beautiful story. It's about a cat that comes to live in a hotel -- the Sylvia hotel in Vancouver, to be precise.

2. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (Mo Willems)
None of the sequels to this book come close to achieving the perfect brilliance of the first one. It's about a pigeon who wants to drive the bus. And you aren't going to let him.

3. Cinder Edna (Ellen Jackson)
This is the best short Cinderella parody I've ever read. And I've read far, far too many.

4. Matthew and the Midnight Pirates (Allen Morgan)
My family has a bizarre obsession with the matthew and the midnight etc. books. I don't really understand it, but this particular one has a few fantastically funny scenes.

Jazz band....

2008-01-29T20:59:00.001-05:00

'Pretend you're a rock star. Which doesn't necessarily mean you're good. It means you're a rock star.'

-Neil

Just when you think you've got everything figured out, life throws the possibility you never even considered in your face. I've said and thought it so many times that it could be my personal motto, but I am continuously surprised by situations in which I encounter this unpredictability, situations so steeped in irony that I feel I could either drown or brew some hot, exotic irony tea.

In order to introduce you to my latest meeting with my maxim, I must provide a brief backstory of my half-year (so far) in the Jazz Band.

Benny Goodman may have filled concert halls even through the glorious seventies, but we mediocre high-school clarinetists are not as well-received in the jazz world. I joined the Jazz Band this year partially because I love jazz, and partially to acquire a foothold should I choose to try out for a place in the rhythm section next year (keys). I have often looked back. I love the clarinet, and I enjoy nearly all of the music, but the fourth bleeding trumpet part is only more boring if you play it on an instrument that is actually far quieter than the horn, and I was almost instantly disappointed by the lack of improvising opportunities. It follows that I never practice; it hardly makes a difference.

In March, the band is going to compete at the Jazzfest. I'm sure you can imagine that I wouldn't be terribly excited about this, but that's actually short of the truth: I'm not even going, because I won't be in town. Of course, when Fortin sent out e-mails with the MP3 file of the song we are required to play for the festival, I wasn't exactly going to make an extraordinary effort to sit down and listen to it, especialy since I was pretty sure my part would consist of three-note patterns interjected throughout the music. In retrospect, I could have played it once or twice, but it came at the same time as all the MP3 material for upcoming honour band projects, some of which I had to learn for the January concert.

Fortin handed out parts to the jazz piece the thursday before last. Because I had never encountered it before, I was a little slow to realize that he had given me the first trumpet part.

'Yeah, so I need the fourth part, right?'

He nodded emphatically. 'Yes, you do.' Then, the terrible, terrifying words: 'Fourth trumpet has a solo.'

Something happened to my stomach as I stood there staring at him with my mouth open. I'm not sure now whether I was considering the ridiculous humour of being given a solo for the one piece I would never play in public or contemplating my impeding doom. I hadn't listened to the piece. I hadn't seen the piece. And (as you probably know) I sure as hell can't sight read in Bb.

It's a stretch to say I played the solo with the band, but I did manage to get a phrase in once.

When did we all get so big?

CEGEP issues

2008-01-17T22:25:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when I want to make myself really depressed, I'll go through university and CEGEP pamphlets with a black sharpie and cross off everything that I would hate studying. I don't know why I do it, because I'm always left with the same disciplines. Commerce, law, engineering, medicine, education, drama, dance, and fine arts disappear swiftly, followed by biology, geography, and all the obscure degrees about specific cultures, specific religions, and dentistry. Of course, I really do like a lot of things about biology, geography, and even medicine, but our society has become so specialized that dabbling is very difficult. Once I've brushed all these off the map, I'm left with biochemistry, physics and chemistry, music (composition, performance, and theory), philosophy, and English literature. Which is, you know, just six too many.

I suppose liberal arts is an obvious CEGEP option for those as undecided as I am, but that sort of knocks out any higher level of science. On the other hand, the science program offered at Marianopolis seems a little dull to suffer through for two years. The required courses are pretty well what you'd expect -- math, math, math, chemistry, and stupid things like magnetism -- but the elective courses are nothing short of a major dispapointment. Basically, you take 9 required science courses, and then...then, you get to choose three more science classes.

As for music, well, let's just say chances are lamentably slim when you play the piano and can't sing for your life, although, thanks to my McGill exams, I technically already qualify to apply. Adding to the general confusion, the prospect of spending two years with entire classes of pushy musicians is not exactly the most appealing thing in the world, but I would love to study music in university, in any capacity.

Of course, my concerns are probably of little consequence. Fast forward a few years, and I'm still going to be an aging eng-lit student, perpetually dreading unplanned encounters with my landlady, surviving off whatever I manage to collect at the bar where I play my own shitty rock tunes.

See how masterfully I've been thus far able to avoid studying for tomorrow's 536 exam? By attempting to convince myself that it doesn't matter?

What I REALLY need is a band.

My Favourite Internet Radio Stations

2008-01-16T07:44:00.000-05:00

For me, the idea behind listening to the radio is to find music I've never heard before, so all those classic rock biggest hits of all time stations don't cut it, unless I'm in a car with no CD or tape player.

a. Aural Moon
Prog station. Sometimes a little scary -- progressive rock is comparable to science fiction -- but great if I'm in the right state of mind. Beautiful name, too, although the site itself isn't that pretty.
http://www.auralmoon.com/

b. BAGel Radio
Such an awesome website. It makes me so happy every time I decide to check it out. Like c, this is more of an indie station -- less-known music from the current era. Very interesting links.
http://www.bagelradio.com/blog/

c. CBC Radio 3
Canada's own web station for newish artists, so it has that extra bonus of being close to home. Because, you know, all my favourite bands are canadian. Seriously, though, this is pretty sweet -- it has a stream I believe, but you can browse through all the artists and hear anything you like, then add those to your personal playlist.
http://radio3.cbc.ca/

d. Technicolor Web of Sound
This is pretty well my dream website. It's entirely devoted to psychedelic rock, so most of what they play is from obscure bands with names like The Magic Mushrooms, Acid Talk, and Strawberry Alarm Clock -- bands that perished with the arrival of the seventies.
http://www.techwebsound.com/

Skiing, part one.

2008-01-12T19:37:00.000-05:00

'It smells like Jesus.'

-Alex

I'm a little apprehensive about telling this story, because it seems to me like a good one. It lives in my head, but maybe that's because I lived it.

It happened yesterday.

'So, Mom.' I asked. 'Did you realize that we were forty-five minutes late coming home from skiing?'

'Why were you forty-five minutes late?'

'Three idiots got lost on the mountain.'

'Oh, be fair. You don't know they're idiots.'

'Well, one of them is certainly a pretty big idiot. And I don't care if you rented movies or not, because I've had enough action for one day already.'

Last year, I spent most of my saturdays skiing with two other girls. One currently lives in Germany, and one, named Amanda, currently lives in Montreal. She doesn't live anywhere near me, so I was very pleasantly surprised to find that she is on the same skiing bus as me, as well as in the same class (with the same teacher as last year). She had enlisted about six other people to join skiing with her, notably her best friend Alex, a beginner-intermediate snowboarder (better than I am, not as good as Kelsey). Naturally, these two are fantastic individuals -- intelligent, multi-lingual, friendly, the whole bit -- to the point where I am quickly able to overcome my shy nature and enjoy the day I spent with them.

And it was a beautiful day. The snow wasn't great, but the slopes were relatively ice-free, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. At one point, we ran into Tim, my instructor from two years ago, who cheerfully confided to his class that I had always been a known troublemaker. Tim was the sort of guy who wore a bandanna beneath his helmet, brought his girlfriend to some of our lessons, and once told us that he had always tried for a 69 average in school. Hey, he makes as good a prophet as I can imagine.

Amanda and Alex an into a couple of girls they knew from school in the afternoon, and we spent some time with them as well. It was close to the end of the time we had there that Amanda decided to trade her skis for the snowboard one of the girls was riding, to try the sport for the first time. I won't lie; I was excited at the prospect of it, and though a little nervous about her desire to take the chair lift, I knew there were plenty of easy trails off the halfway lift.

Of course, after consuming impressive quantities of caffeine and sugar, helping Amanda with her boots, and hiking up from the ski racks, we discovered that we had missed the closing of the halfway lift by five minutes. I shook my head.

'We can't take the lift that goes to the top,' I said. 'The top of the north side is almost entirely black.'

'No, there's one easy one,' Amanda reminded me. 'We took it this morning.'

She was itching to go, afflicted with the rare and potentially dangerous combination of daring and lack of information. We didn't have the heart to say no; what of being perhaps five minutes late? The easy trail wouldn't be too difficult if we helped her down it gradually and patiently

I have nothing but good memories of the optimistic journey up, of advice shouted her way and a pleasant discussion on whether she would fall at the top of the lift. When we arrived, however, I cannot say I noticed whether she did; for there it was, a deep wound in whatever plans we had been foolish enough to make: a bright orange rope stretched across the beginner trail. Closed.

Part two will continue the story, so don't read it if it's not interesting so far -- you can probably extrapolate anyway.

Have you heard? -- the word is love!

Fletcher has a cameo appearance in this.

2008-01-09T21:04:00.000-05:00

I wrote a lot on the plane home from Vancouver.

Casting her fears aside, she leapt over the top of the spidery wrought-iron gates; her white dress floated out around her as she dropped to the ground. As her pale, sandaled feet met the dust on the other side, her mind flew briefly to Simone, to the uneasy question of whether she had found the black case hidden in the rosebushes.

Tom: 'No, it's pretty good. I like the use of...English.'

Picking herself up, she glanced around warily, expecting an ambush that never came.

It seemed to her that she had come to a fork in the road her life had been taking. In the moment that she had shut her eyes and sprung across the tall fence, her choice had been made. The fall to earth had decided her fate.

‘Your metaphors could use a little innovation.’

Startled, she looked up. There, three feet above her left shoulder, was the waif, tossing a small red object from one handlike extension to the other.

‘You followed.’

Etc, etc. The trouble is, I was trying to write a picture book. The idea was to get Emma to illustrate it and give it to mom for her birthday. (It was a great idea, I thought.) I'm just thinking that it might be better to write it in more Emma-appropriate prose. (I tried. It's a lot worse, normally.) It also sounds a little like something that was written on an airplane. (Much more so further on, when the clouds and stuff come in.) So as usual, I wind up with something I don't know what to do with. I could publish a collection of bits of things I don't know what to do with.

On Simone: In Vancouver, we found a picture of the band Au Revoir Simone somewhere, and one of the girls looked a little like an older, prettier, and more refined version of myself.

I don't belong.

Marseilles cards.

2007-12-29T00:19:00.001-05:00

'I'll always picture you with a book in your hands.'

-Grandma

Now, if you too have been puzzled by the bizarre reasoning of a certain popular song of 2007, you had better read this. Right now.

Haven't written in a long time (I guess it's pretty obvious), although I'm not short of ideas. Short of discipline, maybe. But I've been scanning some stuff, so Flashback is being updated again....

Oh, and one more thing you should check out: Reverse Graffiti. Another 2007 treasure -- I think it's one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

Beauty is a sudden radiation of inspiration.

And I quote from our horrible, horrible history manual.

2007-12-17T12:58:00.001-05:00

'Est-tu supérieure à ta mère parce qu'elle est allée au couvent jusqu'en neuvième année avec son costume bleu [...] parce que tu deviendras peut-être électrotechnicienne, cardiologue ou même Premier ministre, alors qu'on lui enseignait à elle l'art ménager pour qu'elle devienne une bonne mère de famille?'

Obviously, I can't take that as a personal insult to my mother, but their sweeping generalizations are like spiders burrowing into my skin. Ma mère est cardiologue, for your information.

Man I really want to go outside again.

I have thirteen finals this year. That is not cool.

2007-12-17T08:28:00.000-05:00

Me in front of school this morning: 'I accidentally left my clarinet in the music room. Couldn't I please get into the music room for two seconds?'
Janitor: 'School's closed!'
Me: 'But I have a playing exam on Wednesday. Look, it won't take long.'
Janitor (over roar of snowblower): 'I can't hear you.'
Me: 'I HAVE A PLAYING EXAM ON WEDNESDAY.'
Janitor: 'SCHOOL'S CLOSED.'

At first, I was convinced that the inflexibility was because I'm not stunningly beautiful, but I'm not sure anyone would be able to counter such a ridiculous policy. I came to school, I'd have been supervised -- hell, I even had my student ID -- and I wasn't allowed because I'm a delinquent sixteen-year-old and who knows what I could have done. School is an institution established for the benefit of the student, so it's only logical to make sure that the student has as few rights as possible.

High school has been fun and all, but it's also worn pretty thin in places.

Can you see the real me?

Confessions.

2007-12-16T09:16:00.000-05:00

I didn't grow up with invisible friends. I grew up with my beloved stuffies. Now, I have more invisible friends now than I ever did before. They aren't invisible in that only I can see them, but rather in that I have never seen them and can rarely communicate with them. Some I know very well; others I feel that I will never completely understand.

I have four mains. Cold, detached Arcturus; angry, cynical Fletcher; mysterious Silvia; and 'F', who I met in a dream. Silvia exists in our world, Arcturus does not, Fletcher can't seem to make up his mind, and 'F' isn't even human.

It's all so big.

Man I love snow.

2007-12-09T21:25:00.000-05:00

'When you get the test, you'll think it's really long. It's not. The first twenty questions....'

-Orlando on an upcoming math test

'The first said I was going to die; the second said I had breathed my last; and the third said I was already dead.'

-Chopin on his doctors

My English project on The Pianist is due on Friday, and here's what I have so far:

-Ten pages of rough literal notes and quotes (I really, really like quotes)

-Four pages of notes on symbols, style, setting, irony, theme, intended audience, music, jump cuts, the point of no return, and guiding principles

-Six very rough paragraphs, three of which (somehow) are about Chopin. Six out of a future fifteen to twenty. It seems to be a very long report.

I have, however, come to the conclusion that Wladek is a pretty cool name.

Just jammin'.

For those who haven't already heard me talking about how great my English teacher is (which I do every day)

2007-12-08T08:26:00.000-05:00

Instead of watching the film version of Lord of the Flies in class and comparing it to the book, we're going to watch The Matrix.

You taught me how to sing.

Snow is heaven.

2007-12-04T07:40:00.001-05:00

Art can be a real pain in the ass.

Ninety percent of the time, you feel like you’re going nowhere. You work and work, and nothing seems to improve. Sometimes you’ll have a small breakthrough, and sometimes whatever you’re putting together – be it painting, poem, or piece of music – will turn out quite well, and you can be somewhat satisfied, but you still feel a little twinge of doubt in the corner of your brain, a little voice that says ‘Hm, that’s alright, but couldn’t I do better?’

Every now and then, though, there’ll be a real surge. True inspiration doesn’t build up over time, and it won’t come very often, but every now and then you’ll feel a real compulsion to do something. All the emotion you ever felt has flared up in one instant and is begging to be free. You’ll set it free in one long burst, singing, or pen flying across the page, or playing your guitar until you can’t play anymore, until your fingers are numb and the pain in your shoulder spreads across your back, until you crumple under the weight of all that passion.

And then, you’ll sleep. Or you’ll doze for a little, trying to sort out what just happened. You never will be able to pin it down exactly.

The thing is, nothing you create during that ninety percent while you’re actually working is ever as good as what came out in that one explosion. It’s frustrating to think about, but nothing in the world seems to make you happier than those surges.

Well, I think you can subsitute all the you’s for I’s and me’s. Obviously I have no idea what anyone else feels like, but it felt better to write it that way.

Man, my shoulder hurts.

Fi-ire!

Busy Busy Busy

2007-11-18T21:54:00.000-05:00

is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

-Kurt Vonnegut

I could have blogged about how power corrupts, using the example of how I was picked on by three prefects for half a centimeter of white, but I didn't. I could have done a long blog all about my feelings about parades, but I didn't. I could have blogged about shunning the paths laid out for me, but, you know. I might.

I have a well of passion deep within me that no one sees, and that even I manage to ignore most of the time.

Another reason why my father is awesome

2007-11-13T21:15:00.002-05:00

This is funnier if I've already told you about his bizarre practice of giving me an extra twenty dollars all the time.

Me: 'So I'm off to buy Ariel's birthday gift. I shouldn't be too long...see you later.'
Dad: 'Well, I should probably give you some extra money.'
Me: 'Uh...why?'
Dad: 'Well, in case you need to take a cab home.'
Me: 'I...I've got some quarters. I'll, uh, make a phone call. If I need a cab from the mall.'

He did this that time I hung out with ministers too.

It went by so quickly I could barely see it.

2007-11-12T16:05:00.001-05:00

Guy on cell phone in street: "I'm at home."

I've been thinking about those visions again...the blackboard and the piano keyboard ...and I've realized that there's something else I do without thinking, but it isn't related to sight. I call it involuntary playback. I believe we all have the ability to some extent (how else could you have a song stuck in your head?)

On a completely different note (argh), I walked into a rescheduled piano lesson once not too long ago to the sound, unsurprisingly, of the kid before me. I sat down to wait until he was finished, but my teacher, upon noticing me, decided to use me as an audience.

Earl (to student): 'Why don't you play your theme song for her?'

What he began to play was, well, eerily familiar. I just couldn't fathom why...it didn't seem like the sort of piece I would listen to for pleasure. Yet although it resounded in the depths of my memory and was clearly a well-known tune, it didn't seem like it was music of twinkle twinkle little star immortality. I identified it only moments before the end...it was Sousa's Liberty Bell march.

If you aren't sure what I'm talking about or why, congratulations on being less of a loser than I am. And then go watch some Flying Circus.

My writing's deteriorating, and it's time for me to close up again.

Well, that worked.

Even cold November rain.

2007-11-06T19:00:00.000-05:00

"BANANANA."

-Marisa

Empty mind of all pain and pleasure, until nothing remains.

Impossible.

They say nothing lasts forever.

Half-post from the depths of the drafts.

2007-11-05T21:25:00.000-05:00

"You sell more bananas, you get more money."

-Mr. Zigby on capitalism

Here's to my latest musical interest. His name is Jeremy Fisher, and he's a not-very-underground Canadian artist. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of him before. I discovered his concert on the wonderful CBC radio 2 the night before halloween, and I had the privilege of carving pumpkins while listening to him talk and sing (We're just friends who sometimes happen to kiss, ain't that right). I think that his youtube video Scar that Never Heals is great.

Although perhaps not as great as this one.

My sister was the most elegant dark-haired vampire on Halloween night, with her curls slicked back and wearing a long dark cape.

This is from a year ago.

2007-11-01T21:33:00.000-04:00

It is a world of slate and silver, a world governed by silence and illuminated by the fading gleam of ancient gas lamps. It is a world of mist and of whirlpools of emotions -- fear, sorrow, fury, love. Sun and moon coexist, each singing counter-harmony to the rhythm of life, the world and the everlasting. Crows perch on the upturned limbs of the shadows encircling the lake. A whisper of wind, the sigh of the leaves fluttering over the ground as you pass, making your way down the path.

Welcome to November. Welcome home.

As much fun as I have delving into old notebooks, I will try and post soon.

But we knew the truth, deep down. And the truth was that we never fit in, not once.

Best wishes times two.

2007-10-28T10:36:00.000-04:00

Jocelyne's birthday: today.

Jenna's birthday: tuesday.

-www.explodingdog.com

Another earth-shattering revelation.

2007-10-26T22:48:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, I find it really weird that I am able to move. Sometimes in Honour Band or History, I'll just stop and think about my hand for awhile. I like to move the fingers, to clench and unclench my fist. Sometimes I feel like the fingers on the hand aren't my fingers at all, but that I can control them, that I can watch from a distance.

I don't feel as though I am my body. I feel as though I wear my body, as though I put it on every day when I come back from dreaming, from being in other bodies (because I am almost never in mine at night).

It's difficult to say this kind of thing without sounding as if I am either complaining or spouting body-image clichés ("it's what's on the inside that counts"). I think my body's alright...it's perfectly capable and functions about as well as average, while allowing me to blend into a crowd (and thereby observe that crowd from within). But it's just a covering for me, a costume that is particularly difficult to get out of. My body is a puppet, and I'm pulling its strings.

Of course, sometimes we're so perfectly synchronized that I don't think about anything of the sort.

Scrolling down on this page, I noticed that it's been somewhere like three weeks since a proper post (i.e. a musing or a rant with a more ambiguous title). Again, I apologize. Next week shouldn't be so bad, so I'll be able to get back to what I love doing.

I'll let you imagine what that might be.

And sometimes, my mouth moves completely independently.

Have a good one.

2007-10-24T16:21:00.000-04:00

Today is Sophia's birthday.

Some quotes.

2007-10-22T17:45:00.001-04:00

Alicia on blog: "And really, all of my posts usually contain some sort of rant about something or other, so I figure maybe I should try and find a different way of dealing with things that upset me...."

Shruthi on me: "She doesn't talk. She rants."

Me on monday at 5:46: "Gotta go now. Plenty of work."

I have nine tests this week.

2007-10-20T20:09:00.002-04:00

So my blogging has lagged a bit. But I'm back, briefly, to tell you all about how incredibly mod I was today. I bought Quadrophenia on record while wearing my mother's good dress clothes (black suitcoat, grey skirt etc.).

(Yeah, okay, it's an unhealthy obsession. But the guy that seemed sort of familiar in the store agrees with me that it's a "great album".)

Oh man I need to study.

Don't let it bring you down.

The perfect amount of sleep...?

2007-10-11T17:03:00.001-04:00

EDIT: I've officially forgiven my math class. Now, as for these parties....

I felt really good today, which is probably why I said so many stupid things and so many teachers yelled at me. Here's a brief selection of quotes, in chronological order.

Math Class

Kelsey: So this six is the b parameter?
Me: No, that six. (jabs at Kelsey's notebook)
Kelsey: But why can't this six be the b? It wanted to be the b.
Me: Because you have to simplify the equation.
Kelsey: Why does everything have to be simplified?
Me: Because we have to simplify everything to understand it...(preparing to launch into RFS-style rant)
Teacher: What are you ladies talking about? Is it math?
Kelsey, me: Yeah, we were talking about the b parameter.
Class: Yeah, sure guys. Good one.
Me: No, really! (resolving not to invite any classmates to Kelsey's calculus parties)

French Class

Uh, aside from teacher's comparison of GVinf and being in the closet and being yelled at repeatedly, and Kelsey singing Twist and Shout continuously over fifty minutes....

History Class

Chen: Jazz band!
Me: I'm late.
Chen: ....?

I managed to guess Marisa's word.

Moral Class

Sub: (heavy Russian accent) But it is not a free period. You either watch the movie, or you read. Or you draw pictures.
Eric: Can we play chess?
Sub: ...yes.

Jazz Band

Fortin: This piece is level three. Or maybe three and a half...I don't remember.
Me: It says three here.
Mikel: Uh, that's the page number.

I really had a lot of fun at Leadership. Having like six people in charge is a very very good thing. Ariel: Moral wasn't as interesting as it perhaps sounds.

Captions!

Future band name: Academic Death Warrant.

2007-10-05T16:09:00.001-04:00

Those of you with whom I have spoken in the past few days are probably well aware of my latest source of excitement. In Rainbows is coming out on the internet in five days, and even though I'm not going to hear any of the songs for a long time, and even though Radiohead isn't my favourite band ever (although I do think they are pretty damn awesome and pretty damn good musicians), I've been jumping up and down about it.

Why? Could be that finally being part of anything current is having its effect. We like belonging, and the fact that many of one's favourite celebrities are dead, well...it makes one feel a little out of the loop. I could digress into another commentary, but I think this is all for today.

ImPOSTer!

Here's what I wrote beside DATE on my science test today.

2007-10-02T21:09:00.000-04:00

2007-09-01.

Think I need a little more sleep?

Countdown to Radiohead: a little over a week....

Bagging was fun. No, really.

2007-09-29T17:57:00.000-04:00

"It was fun in the way that manual labour with people you don't really talk to usually is."

-Me

"Who's Pippin?"

-Me

I am having a good time with APS in band, though.

No posts for awhile, I think. But you should check out Alicia's artblog.

By the way, if anyone is going on the bio trip, what are your room situations like?

Get Plastered, You Bastard

2007-09-28T19:14:00.001-04:00

"For WAR.
...And for pots."

-Mr. Zigby on the uses of copper

Alicia's birthday. She's already written a lovely post about it, so I will try to avoid redundancy.

Predictably, all my friends looked stunning -- Kelsey fabulous in a short black...uh...slip...Arthi gorgeous in gold and brown, Alicia and Jocelyne in their beautiful and vastly different green and blue dresses, and Ariel in a magnificent electric&black skirt that defies description. (I'm exercising my command of synonyms.)

Alicia was indeed stressed.

(on the bus on the way to the Colombian restaurant, coming up from Place-D'Armes)

Alicia: "Well, the metro station you're really supposed to get off at is Mont-Royal."

Me: "Oh, uh, then...Alicia? Afterwards, couldn't we take the metro from there, then? Alicia?"

Alicia: "No."

Me: "Why not?"

Alicia: "Because we don't have enough time." *nearly bangs head on pole*

Me: "...?"

(Dufault correctly pointed out the other day that, in true Canadian fashion, I tend to finish all my sentences on a high note. As if I'm asking a question, you know? Like this?)

The food was good (although I don't recommend it to vegetarians) and the waiters were all wonderful (Alicia fell for the one who gave her alcohol "from his country"), and I generally had a very good time. We were kind of immature when it came to sing, though.

So what went wrong, for me? (You knew this was coming. The post reeks of shoe-drop.) It was my decision to leave. I had a lot -- a lot -- of work to do the following day, so I called my father and asked him to pick me up at midnight. It was only at ten minutes to midnight that I realized that I was making a mistake. We were eating cake in the kitchen, when I suddenly arose and flew out of the room, aiming to catch him before he left the house, but I was too late. It was a crushing experience, having to watch the wrong thing happen, as though in slow motion.

Kelsey, as we walked to meet my father at the door: "It's like we're walking you to your execution."

Alicia, I'm glad you had such a great quinceañera.

That's all for now. I have loads of drafts, so more will probably appear.

Speaking of slow motion....

More about Memory and Visions

2007-09-21T16:32:00.002-04:00

"Your lab report won't taste good."

-Mr. Zigby

My grade five teacher, Mr. Brown, once told us that he had a blackboard inside his head. When he closed his eyes, it was there; he could write things out on it, and erase them, watching the letters appear in his deliberate but fluid handwriting. None of us in the class understood what he was talking about, but somehow the comment lodged itself within the dark recesses of my brain and very slowly trickled into my subconscious.

The idea lay somewhat dormant until a short time ago, when my piano teacher explained to me his own particular perception. He sees a keyboard when he shuts his eyes, sees his fingers spreading over the monochromatic levers, sees the familiar groups of three and two. I understood what he meant, but I couldn't share in his vision.

It was only last week that I was speaking to a boy now in the seventh grade and I had the presence of mind to inquire as to whether he, too, had anything imprinted on the inside of his head. He informed me that he sees gears, and I accepted this without comment, pensive.

There is a reason I take so many pictures. I don't have a very good visual memory. I will always recognize a face as one I have seen before, but I cannot easily summon an image of a particular person in my mind. There is only one image I can retain without any effort at all, and this is my own recurring vision, a vision that I cannot control.

Ah, the suspense.

I see printed words. I see letters and sentences parading past me. I see the curve of the m in smile, the particular purplish tone of the ou in colour. I see marsh and mouse and precipice, but I do not see the things the words describe. I cannot listen to a song I know well without simultaneously reading the lyrics. I do not associate characters in books with the physical characteristics they are described as posessing, but rather with the appearance of their names.

At my second or third piano lesson with Earl, he spoke to me of how, in most cases, human visual memory far exceeds auditory. He asked me to hear an E in my head, which I did (an entirely different subject which I have doubtless already mentioned).

For comparison's sake, he then asked me to picture the colour red. I couldn't. I couldn't picture red. All I could see was the word.

I am extremely pleased that the week is over. I apologize for the lack of a decent conclusion, but you have doubtless become accustomed to that on my blog. Endings are my favourite, but they are also very diffcult.

You know, I'm just going to twist everything until it suits me.

By the way, it is a really bad idea to play the electric guitar for more than an hour

2007-09-15T23:03:00.001-04:00

while standing up. Talk about shoulder pain. How do the pros do it?

Because the world is round
It turns me on
Because the world is round

Because the wind is high
It blows my mind
Because the wind is high

Because the sky is blue
It makes me cry
Because the sky is blue....

-messrs lennon and mcC

Wherever you will it to be.

2007-09-15T10:35:00.001-04:00

Listening to: Quadrophenia (The Who)

This is the first and last time I use Alicia's opener.

When I was younger and lived downstairs in the blue room with my sister, we had two clocks on the wall: a green plastic Ikea clock, shaped like a green plastic Ikea plate with a bee on a stick for a second-hand (secondhand!), and a Sylvester-and-Tweety clock that my grandparents gave me and that I've had for ages (unfortunately, it's a little broken now). They both ran off single AA batteries, and these batteries tend to run down after awhile. A little over two years ago, both of them stopped within a few weeks of one another. This was unexpected, but not unusual. What was truly staggeringly unbelievable was that both of them stopped at exactly the same time, to the second. They stopped at 7:51 and forty-five seconds.

How?

A few months ago, I took the metro from Tyndale to Vendome, where my father had volunteered to pick me up. I stepped onto the train at the Georges-Vanier station, wrapping an arm around a silver pole at one end of the car. Then, looking to the other end, I noticed the hair. Not one hair, but two hairs -- one short and black, one unmistakably distinctive...I had walked into Ariel and Kelsey's metro car.

How?

Over and over, we dismiss such apparent "coincidences". We do not understand why such things happen, and therefore we pretend that they do not happen. Much is based on perception, yet no matter what our carefully established opinions, something always happens to shock us, to make us lose faith in our preconceived ideas.

The unpredictability of life is difficult to capture in literature or in analysis. No matter how carefully you evaluate all the potential outcomes of even the smallest event, what winds up happening will surprise you. There ought to be a scientific law...nothing that is expected will happen, or will happen in the way it is expected to do so. I have never been able to say, with complete certainty, what will happen in the future.

Because the few times that I have known, with complete certainty, I did not conciously realize that I knew until I looked back on the event. Had I realized it, the outcome would, I am sure, have been different. This is why premonitions, from what I gather, are impossible to prove.

I am no Cassandra, but I think that everyone makes a few surprising predictions in their lifetime. And in a lifetime, much more than we would like to believe is inexplicable.

We like to have explanations handy, but knowledge is not always the same as understanding. Think back to Grade Nine biology. Think about everything you learned about the cell. Think about DNA. You learned what the basic substances in DNA were; you learned that DNA transmits genes, that it coils up during mitosis, that bits and pieces of it are interchanged, somehow, with other cells. But did your teacher even once attempt to explain to you how a strange shape composed of protein can contain all the traits of the cell? How can a code composed of only four "letters" transmit information, and how can a cell, an organism without conscious thought, adopt that code and become as the code specifies? I have absolutely no idea. Of course, I won't even mention that question so taboo in the world of science -- the why.

That is why I find so much of school so frustrating. Book learning deals very much with what, very rarely with how, and almost never with why. (And, no, I don't like ME.)

I believe that all things are interconnected. I don't subscribe to the notion that art and science and religion and athletics are four concepts in direct opposition with one another. Rather, I feel that all four are complementary. Indeed, I have never come across two areas of human interest that were mutually exclusive. I am fortunate enough to have never been required to confine myself to one field, and therefore I have become very interested in learning to perceive more of the whole. I can never see the trees for the forest.

I dislike being asked what I want to do when I'm older, what I want to "go into", because I don't want to "go into" any one thing. I want to understand things, and I want to help others to understand things, and I know I would not be able to do so if I chose to specialize.

This two-part rant has been brought to you by the creator of such anti-classics as Being Born in the Wrong Decade Runs in the Family and Somewhere, Anywhere. Life is thus shining.

(Yeah, I've been looking through my archives again).

Let's all battle our own demons.

She came in through the bathroom window.

2007-09-15T10:07:00.001-04:00

The five of us were walking along fielding yesterday, after having been to see Across the Universe. Alicia and I were talking about movies, or more specifically about The Science of Sleep (which I haven't seen) and Amélie (which I have, and yeah, the full title is longer). Just before she turned off on her street, I mentioned the scene where Amélie calls a public telephone booth.

Me: I'd like to learn a whole bunch of public phone numbers. I'd call one of the phones on the second floor during recess.

Five minutes later, walking along with Jocelyne on Fielding, we passed a telephone booth. The phone was ringing.

I kind of loved that movie, by the way.

I guess I don't expect it anymore.

Like Father, Like Daughter

2007-09-12T22:26:00.000-04:00

Mr. Dufault: What I'm going to do is, when I look at all your marks for all the quizzes, I'll drop the lowest mark. So if you're going to blow it, you can blow it -- once.
Manraj: Can this be my first time blowing?

Yogourt. It appears to be one of the family curses. The bane of the Malcolms.

My father's famous accident took place when I was very young -- although still old enough to remember scenes from the event. The lesson he learned? Never to hold a full container of yogourt by the top. No, the lid wasn't on properly, and yes, there was much yogourt and gnashing of teeth. Mainly my father's teeth, as my mother was rather preoccupied with laughing.

Newton provided us with laws of gravity, and my father seems determined to prove them as creatively as possible. Action: container hits floor. Opposite and equal reaction: yogourt sails out of container, hits cabinets, refrigerator, ceiling, and father.

As science-oriented as my house tends to be, it is hardly surprising that another famous scientist enters my story. His name is Charles Darwin, and proving his theories appears to be my unconscious goal. Unlike my father, however, I dropped only half a container of peach-flavoured, and no one was in the house at the time.

Your turn, Tom.

Find me....

I dream of coconuts that crack open to reveal tiny dinosaurs with amber eyes and tiny dagger teeth.

2007-09-04T19:48:00.000-04:00

Title is taken from an old correspondance between myself and a friend. I unearthed it in my inbox a short time ago. I have no idea what I was talking about.

Home from a day that seemed like cheating and at long last holding my sheet music for the band I wasn't sure I was in, I decided to look over said music in preparation for rehearsal tomorrow -- a rehearsal for which the majority of my fellows, who played said music all summer, are vastly better prepared. Three are okay, but the other two pieces look like hell on a staff. One in particular. I can't play the first line. I can't play the first note.

My strategy for tomorrow? Hope no one asks me to play it.

But before this occurred, a strange encounter made me halt in my progress toward my attic dwelling.

Passing Jenna's house, an unexpected motion caught my eye. I say this although I do not remember any unexpected motion, so perhaps an unexpected presence caught my soul. However it was, I found myself looking down to the base of her tree, where I spotted a tiny pair of eyes and a thin, silver tail. A squirrel the size of my fist was sitting in the grass, eating a tomato.

I was worried about him or her, squirrel being so small, but she or he managed to climb up the tree in the time it took me to go home and get peanuts. She or he also didn't seem interested in the peanuts. Jenna, I think you should keep an eye open for squirrel, just in case.

And so I draw my post to an end. The english in this one is often bizarre.

Haze.

Sunset and Skyline

2007-08-23T08:09:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-22T20:18:00.001-04:00

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.

2007-08-08T14:49:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-08-02T16:21:00.000-04:00

"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.

Extra heavy, man.

Travelling Solo

2007-07-29T11:51:00.000-04:00

I know of few things in this troubled world that are more wonderful than taking the bus alone, with no real destination in mind and with no one to meet at the other end. I know of few things that are more enjoyable than the serenity the mind experiences at having no obligations in terms of where to go or what to do. It is an explorer's joy. It is, once again, freedom.

On the eleventh day of May, I took a day off school. I have since resolved to, whenever possible during my life, take the eleventh day of every month off. I walked onto the 105 at 10 in the morning with the half-formed notion of going downtown to look at books or music (ah, but what else?). The bus was as empty as I have ever known it to be, as were the streets of Montreal-West (although Ste-Catherine, of course, was an entirely different scene). I have never known such quiet excitement as I felt stepping onto that bus, with nearly everyone I knew either sweltering in a classroom or running around the hospital (and it is interesting how so many of my acquaintances place in one of those two categories). The list of beautiful things is from that day, as is my copy of Forever Changes (really really good. no, really. check it out).

All this only serves as a constant reminder of my nomadic tendencies. There is so much to see, and I have no doubt that I will see much of it.