I moved! I am much happier now that I am not living at my mom's house. Also, I am now in the best living situation ever: five or ten minutes by bike from both of my jobs, living with friends in a cheap but big and fantastic place with in-suite laundry and a backyard. If there is an earthquake we will all die horribly, however.

There are random little obnoxious things, like how my birth control is MESSING WITH ME (guys, guys, I climbed a mountain while I had horrible cramps, it was an adventure!) and how my work schedule is completely unpredictable so that one week I will work Tues-Sat WHICH IS FINE but then the next week I will work Thurs-Mon WHICH IS NOT, or I will just work on random broken up days and not get more than one day off in a row, which is lame. But I like both my jobs, and I like the people I work with, and any small annoyances are currently overwhelmed by the fact that I live in a great, conveniently located place with one of my favorite people.

Also I am a block from the tiniest library in the city I AM GOING TO ORDER SO MANY BOOKS.

( cut because I am wailing about missing stuffed animals )

In other news, I am moving to Vancouver by New Years.

ETA: I found my bear! She was in the TV cabinet.

Holy crap there is a new Star Trek movie. And it is about YOUNG SPOCK and YOUNG KIRK being, as far as I can determine from the trailer, EXCEEDINGLY GAY FOR EACH OTHER (by which I mean having fist fights and being snotty) and I HAVE TO SEE IT because it is the campest, most unabashedly ridiculous thing I have ever seen a thirty second clip of, and OH MY GOD Young Spock is played by SYLAR, you know, the evil watch-fixing douchebag brain-sucking villain from Heroes. And Kirk drives a car OFF A CLIFF when he is maybe ten years old.

And just.

Yeah, I dunno, it looks like Star Trek has finally laid off trying to be cool and realized it needs to embrace being So Bad It's Good.

I just biked home with about fifty pounds of groceries in my paniers, plus two sugar pumpkins bungeed to my rat-trap and two pounds of concord grapes in a bag on my handlebars. I usually buy my groceries in weekly allotments, but everything I ever buy frozen was on sale. And so were potatoes and yams and onions...

Now I'm going to make Nanaimo bars, coffee cake, azuki rice and baked pumpkin (to use in pumpkin pie this weekend). And I am going to sew curtains and hem pants and... I really like Thanksgiving. It means I have enough extra time to be me.

It's drizzly and cool and the streets are piling up with oak leaves. Daniel is coming next weekend. I'm starting to feel like I can be on track again.

Haven't slept. Or eaten. So take this with a grain of salt.

I want one memory of him that isn't set against a dented wall. I want to see him in my head, smiling, and not feel the glass hitting my hip. I want the sound of his voice unassociated with screaming. God, that sounds so melodramatic. Well, here's even worse:

I want these wants to break my heart. Crack it, bruise it, touch it. I want a fear of death unwrapped by narrative.

Yeah, okay, I'm sleep deprived and just addled enough to think self sabotage in order to prove my own humanity to myself is a great idea. I won't, I won't. I'm going to class. And I'll sleep today, I'll eat today, I'll write my papers and I'll keep my noise internal. Maybe I'll go visit the counselors on campus. Maybe after a nap.

But I don't want to. I just want to become enough of a fiction to believe hallucination-strong in ghosts.

It really says something about how manic and overly ambitious I'm being in a day when it takes Nick Cave to bring me down to normal levels of calm.

...okay so. I am taking a class called Gender and Sexual Identity in Postcolonial English Literature. It is a good class! I expected it to be either really interesting or unbearable, and so far it is the former. However. Yesterday, my professor wrote on the board, as an irrefutable subject of non-discussion, "Bisexuality does not exist."

I have problems with that statement. But apparently I am the only one.

( rant ahead )

How can this be going so smoothly? I wondered. When is the other shoe going to drop?

Then I ran my mother's car into a tree.

What is wrong with me?!

...and yes, I'm fine. The car was parked. It was not a big deal. But. I don't know, I just fail.

When I stare at the stormy sea,
or the frothy boil
of a fast-running river
it never occurs to me
that place is cold,
that I can't breathe there,
I just want to throw myself in.

~J. William Knowles


It's a quote from one of my favorite poems. I'd post the whole thing, but my copy of the anthology it's in is in storage. Sometimes I think it applies to me far too well.

Right now I'm hoping it applies just enough.

...maybe if I post an entry saying how much Daniel fails because he hasn't called and I don't know what's happening and it's all his fault it will force the world to capitulate and he will instantly come online with a really good reason just to prove me wrong and guilty.

...maybe if I post an entry soulfully begging to be allowed to speak to Daniel, the universe will take pity and he'll come online immediately, just to make me grateful.

...maybe if I remain cheerful and resolved and get on with my life I'll be distracted and the world will see how I'm good and useful and reward me by bringing Daniel online immediately.

...maybe if I mock myself about having those kind of thoughts, they'll stop and I'll feel better. And completely coincidentally, Daniel will come online immediately.

None of this is going to work. I don't care. It felt good to write out. I'm going to post it even though it's retarded. (And maybe Daniel will come online immediately.)

ETA: ...h-he called immediately after I posted this. And then came online. \o/

Walking up the stairs in the dark, I reach the top step without knowing. Another step, and my foot comes down on empty air. That lurch, that sickening loss of solid ground. I'm there.

And sailing a dinghy through small islands, narrow passages, when the wind changes and I'm stuck at the mouth of a channel, tacking in small circles, mucking up my rudder with weeds, unable to move forward, to go home or to go on, aware that I'm worrying people by being gone so long, but just a few minutes from where I belong if only the wind would change again. I'm there.

I'm a balloon and someone just let go of the string. I'm climbing with no pro on something which might be just at my limit, and might be just beyond. I've leaped, I've called out.

Be patient, they keep telling me to be patient. And they're right, of course. It's only been two days. Barely. But it's been two days caught in the lurch before foot meets landing. In that weightless, horribly expectant moment.

And what if he doesn't check his email until right before he leaves? And what if he says no? And what if this really is an impossible dream? And what if I can't get there? And what if, what if, what if, he comes on and says yes and I get it together and go?

I keep thinking I can't take much more of this, but of course I can, and of course I will. But my whole heart's one wish.

Get up. Shower. Brush teeth. Toast for breakfast. Make granola. Decline the ice cream shop job. Try to answer my Granny's questions without hurting her feelings. Cut veggie sticks for picnic. Make onigiri.

Doing these things does not stop my thoughts whirling, does not stop my heart yelling. Does not change the fact that even if my hands are busy, all I am doing is waiting.

Wait. Wait. Keep waiting. Learn the business of waiting.

Waiting is hard.

I hate job searching. I hate it so much. And if some place besides the ice cream store doesn't try to hire me today I don't know what I'll do. No, really, I don't. Should I take the ice cream job? Should I hold out? Is it stupider to turn down the job I don't want when nothing else has turned up, or to take it out of desperation?

At least the weather's nice.

I’m in Winnipeg now, sitting in my grandparents’ living room.

( cut for gratuitous whining )

I've been job-searching, and hopefully a few places will call me back after the long weekend is over. For the next couple of days, though, I'm pretty much drifting. Mostly I will start posting chunks of writing up here. We'll see.

So if I can write another 700 words I am completely done except for one exam.

Let's DO this.

From harukami.

1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance, like a lyric to your current favorite song, your favorite kind of sandwich, or maybe your favorite game. Any remark, meaningless or not.
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in your own post.
5. When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.

( answers )

Well. At least the people in the bedroom above me are having a happy Valentine's Day.

...oops, now they're having a happy Valentine's Day on the floor.

Good job, guys.

I hope that everyone else is having a happy Valentine's Day also, but hopefully without subjecting your neighbours to loud sex noises!

You know what. Sometimes my uterus being the angriest organ is a perfectly valid reason to stay in bed and roll around rather than attending any of my classes.

I swear I will get caught up over Reading Break. I will. But for the next two days, I will simply accept my academic failure with grace.