you see tinsel at night and plaid in the morning

Pretend this is written on Hilroy lined paper in a 3-hole duotang with a blue bic pen I found on the floor.

part one: "Tinsel"
I imagine an evening in his parents' semi-finished basement. We sit on that snake-like couch that fills the entire room, you and me. And the four or five of them are spread around on the rug or wherever. It's Christmas time, so naturally I allow myself to relax... at least in the evenings when i've allotted time for some mindless fun.

The house (which is one of many houses in this elite suburban town that looks just the same as the one next door) is decked with the kind of holiday decor a mom would buy at a craft show. This makes us think of the craft show phase conversation we had while on a walk searching for grapes a Fall evening in weeks past.

We're watching movies or Fresh Prince or something. We talk and analyze easy things. The kind of conversation that makes us smile and laugh, like which Aunt Vivian we prefer - pre or post Nicky. We have the kind of time one has with "friends" not "classmates" or worse yet, "film student classmates" ...and I'm thankful for this... and I imagine you are too.
We eat raspberries from the container, listen to home-made rap jingles and play silly games like Never Have I Ever, except you and I are the only ones who never have to swig in comparison to the sausage party we've somehow invaded. Later we go for a haunted walk and crave 88 fine Vietnamese Cuisine. We stand in a circle and I look over at you and you're smiling and laughing and comfortable. Maybe you're a little sleepy, but that's nothing new. We feel like kids at moments like this... when we're around them...when we're in this town... perhaps because this is essentially a middle-school Friday night agenda sans TGIF and tear-aways.

I get lost in this thought and I laugh some more. I feel like i'm on an escalator, but really my feet are just numb and there's ice on the asphalt. A moment goes by and I look up and I see that we're not in that ticky-tacky town at all. You're really just sitting in the kitchen drinking NiQuil and inhaling nail polish remover and I'm cooking the same thing I cook every night - angering carnivores everywhere. We are only just reminiscing. The tap is dry and shia's empty and we're antsy for it. I don't know if we want it or need it. Maybe we don't want it at all. Maybe this was all just a fleeting thought pregnant with a snapshot from third year that I had in my own mind?

I wonder sometimes how things could have been different if some "jenk" stuff didn't go down? I can't seem to think of how else to phrase that even though I try my best for mediocre eloquence. I wonder about it and I think you wonder about it too. Once in a while I wish things didn't become so weird... even as much as I dig weird as weird is only but a natural feeling and I take comfort in what is considered "natural." There really isn't an ending for this but I'm ready to move on to my next thought. We can talk more about this later.

part two: "Plaid"
I believe in that worldly adage "United we stand, Divided we fall" which I believe is originally a patriotic song lyric of some sort. But what it stands for is more than often true in work, in love, in family and friends.

They say when you live in the city your friends are your family... but sometimes I can't help but wonder if the value I hold others is nearly equivalent of there value of me. And sometimes, even if it's just for a second I think of the Rose City and if the people there are any different or any better - value me less or more. Then I remember that this is just me over analyzing everything and then I focus again and I feel better. I like to focus and i like to feel control. It improves my mood significantly. I like work too - that helps. I'm somewhat of a workaholic you can say. Yet at the same time, I'd like the freedom of jetting off to Costa Rica or Egypt at a moment's notice. And at the same time I'd like to waste days away sitting under trees reading William Blake and making out... if I remember how, that is.

Anyways, the point is... I can't at this moment jet off... but I will. I once paid a palm reader on the street 15 bucks and she told me I was going to be a "globe-trotter." I believe her even if she was constantly looking over my shoulder for the cops. No matter how far you go...you can always go "home" again... wherever you consider that home to be. Some of us think that if we don't do something now we'll never do it.... and I thank God I was born with the security in myself to know I'm totally not like that.

A game for you to play:
1. Never have I ever: recorded a song about the ozone layer on a Windows 95.
2. Never have I ever: wore spandex bicycle shorts with neon stripes on the side.
3. Never have I ever: danced on a riser at a shkeify bar, while wearing "Gina" earrings.
4. Never have I ever: liked your best-friend.
5. Never have I ever: ate at the Mandarin then got bad in a parked car.

I need some chamomile and a newspaper asap, blogging makes me feel a little silly.

xoLo.

If i were pajamas I would be: man's plaid shirt, tube socks with 2 stripes on the ankle and CK briefs circa 1990.

"Without you, I'm lost and weird."

It all comes down to simple adoration. Simple love, carried out simply. Speechless, thoughtless, untrue and unreal and intangible everywhere but in your bones.

Without you, I'm lost and weird. You make me feel more than normal.

Yours,

Inari

If I were a meat puppet, I would be....Pepperonochio

The unmatch’d form & feature of blown Youth, says Ophelia.

From the film, Wonder Boys:

Hannah Green (Katie Holmes): James will know about George Sanders.
James Leer (Tobey Maguire): George Sanders?
Hannah Green: Mr. Crabtree was saying how George Sanders killed himself, only he couldn't remember how.
James Leer: Pills. April 25, 1972, in a Costa Brava hotel room.
Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey, Jr): How comprehensive of you.
Hannah Green: James is amazing. He knows all the movie suicides. Go ahead, James. Tell him.
James Leer: There are so many.
Hannah Green: Well, just a few. The big ones.
James Leer: Pier Angeli, 1971 or '72, also pills. Donald "Red" Barry, shot himself in 1980. Charles Boyer, 1978, pills again. Charles Butterworth, 1946, I think. In a car. Supposedly, it was an accident, but, you know, he was distraught. Dorothy Dandridge, pills, 1965. Albert Dekker, 1968. He hung himself. He wrote his suicide note in lipstick on his stomach. William Inge, carbon monoxide, 1973. Carole Landis, pills again. I forget when. George Reeves, "Superman" on TV, shot himself. Jean Seberg, pills, of course, 1979. Everett Sloane - he was good - pills. Margaret Sullivan, pills. Lupe Velez, a lot of pills. Gig Young, he shot himself and his wife in 1978. There are tons more.
Hannah Green: I haven't heard of half of them.
Terry Crabtree: You did them alphabetically.
James Leer: It's just how my brain works, I guess.

*********************************************************************************

It has been one year since I have been shopping at the Eaton Center. Perhaps I resist what I consider the purposeless voyage to identify myself as a starving artist, or because I’m saving for the future, or that I revel in the pride of a working class upbringing. Or perhaps it is because my relocation to Bloorwest has positioned me closer to the vintage sex that is Kensington market, which I have teased and had many times. And it’s been quite satisfactory.
Or perhaps it’s because I often find money, consumerism and the desire for material possessions symbolic of status and greed, and I say 86 the man. A large fraction of my wardrobe does consist of hand-me-downs from my sister (and I’m not ashamed to admit it), and even items off my good friend the clearance rack.
I’m not (but maybe I have been once) an extravagant spender. However, I have more material items than I want or need. I have a whole chest of dolls and train-sets covered in dust that those kids running the streets of Havana would make of better use. I have a lot of stuff. And my standards of “a lot” are comparable to the societal standard of a lot and my desire for goods technically is not significantly lower than the societal norm. This is all regardless of the fact that the bulk of the ideas I support would be semi-blacklisted given this was the McCarthy era.

So it has been approximately a year since I have been at the Eaton Centre shopping. Almost a year. Which means, I lied on the first line of this thing for impact. I lie sometimes. White lies. Fibs. Exaggerations. Just for something to tell the Priest at Saturday evening confession. Anyways. I finally had the time to venture for a morning-turn afternoon of mindless (but in my case mindful) shopping at Toronto’s most visited tourist attraction, so I went and I shopped.

The main event:
It’s a Thursday and the Center is stocked, decked and bursting at the waist-line with Holiday-themed goods and shoppers. I’m dolled up for the occasion. My face is all painted (make-up - my most obvious vice) and I’m wearing black dress shoes. And to me black dress shoes are synonymous to womanhood – the “dressing like I can afford it” me.

I’m here to purchase a plain, warm fashion boot and generally to absorb and enjoy the newly unpackaged holiday spirit, and the basic catharsis often associated with shopping. These plans were abruptly disrupted and prevented by the yelling mothers, nasty tweens, arrogant store clerks and cheap penny-pushers I was surrounded by. Canadians have a reputation for their good manners. Perhaps all of these people were from out of town?

My biggest mistake however, was my visit to Hollister. But now in retrospect, it is considerably less of an atrocity than it had seemed at the time. I actually uttered the words (in my mind) “Fuck Hollister”, and I don’t like to swear. I was lured in by its high budget art direction and catchy pop soundtrack pounding loud enough to hear a wing away from the actual store. Once inside I felt ambushed by peppy size zero’s and tanned OC wannabes trying to assist in making my Hollister experience a rather “fetch” one. Now, I like a lot of the clothing in Hollister, regardless of their cheap quality and simulated-thrift look. But I just couldn’t handle the cliental it attracts. Perfect-ironed hair, impeccable fake and bake tans and a waist-line the size of an asparagus. And this seemed uniform among the entire herd. No need for school dress codes when uniforms are already self-imposed, and provided by the good bettys and dudes at the Tiki-stand Hollister brand. Maybe I’m jealous of such perfection? But then again, maybe I’m not.

Being in this store reminded me of the evening before when I fell asleep watching the old adaptation of Brave New World 1980. Here, I felt like the Epsilon to the store clerk Alphas. And if Huxley’s world did become our fate, in reality I’d be at least a Beta; so you can imagine the strict regime the Hollister-Abercrombie-American Apparel juggernauts are imposing on today’s malnourished-by-choice youth. “History Is bunk!” I had to get out of there.

After going to 15 different shoe-stores on all 3 floors of the Eaton Center, I find myself wandering around the shoe department in Sears during a 2-hour-only 40% off sale. Celine Dion is roasting chestnuts over the P A system and the aisles are crawling with middle-aged shoppers who aren’t “browsing” but “scouring” for deals as if they were plowing through war wreckage for their missing young. My goodness I feel anxiety among a packed crowd.

I spend 4 and a half minutes staring at the display of ladies’ Isotoner gloves and it takes me into a world all my own. Everyone has disappeared except for me and these gloves. I look down at my hands and think of the hands I haven’t seen for two (this year three) Christmases. How sometimes my hands look like how I remember her hands to look. Skinny with knobby knuckles and dry skin from rinsing out the sink and bathtub with Mr. Clean or Vim. I catch a glimpse of something my own and think it’s hers. Do I see it, or do I just want it, like I want the boots. Exactly 4 and a half minutes go by.

After my daydream bubble pops, I see the boots I came for and grab them off the shelf. A man wearing dockers and a golf shirt approaches me and asks for my thoughts on the footwear I have in hand. He’s looking for his daughter. “For Christmas”, he says. I tell the man I bought the same pair last year, they’re inexpensive, look fine, and do a decent job for the label-less fake UGG that they are. He seems pleased by my sales pitch and picks up a box for his gift-list. That is until I lose control of my lips and tell the man that given the occasion a sandal would be more appropriate. He didn’t get I was referring to the fact that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. I’m not that funny. I’ve come to accept it.

I manage to slip away from the awkward moment, and I find a quiet space to myself where I pen some thoughts in a notebook and prepare to try on my fake UGGz which are actually “Nevada” brand. God, I can’t believe I’m admitting that. I wore Nevada overalls in elementary school longer than a child should wear such a garment. I try on the boots and notice the lady beside me. She slips a stocking over her age-spotted foot and tries cramming it into a teal stiletto pump. Did I mention she smelled of tuna? This quirky (and kind of disgusting detail) set off my hunger alarm. So I try on the boots, swipe my debit card and motor to the Booster Juice for a large sized carrot juice. I feel good. Satisfied - which is more than I can say for everyone else running laps around me (around this mall) in search of things to fill the emotional wholes inside them. Or perhaps to celebrate a job well done. Either way I feel satisfied and I just want to get out of there and go home, shelve my purchases for those few occasions I go out and see people see me. I want to go home and wash my hands of the greed and rudeness I witnessed in a number of Scrooge-types. I wanted to forget the lack of Christmas spirit and the amount of brain cells I killed in Hollister.

Now, I know I said I’m never at the Eaton Center, and I just ranted about the wasteland of the size-zero marketing targets. But the next day I find myself at the mall again after having breakfast with my brother and his chic.

I’m walking on Yonge along the Santa Clause parade after devouring a mango-banana crepe topped with blueberries (yay anti-oxidants) only to detour through the Bay. On this day I find myself harboring a completely opposing sentiment to the experience the day prior. I took it all in. The Christmas store displays, the smiling faces, the twinkly santa eyes in all the parade-watching children. I was in the Holiday spirit and just wanted to throw dollars to the street. I sprayed my wrist with Chanel #5 and tried on party dresses as if I was in New York City and was actually a social debutante.

I found myself in the men’s department looking at all of the tweed vests, satin ties and feathered fedoras. These vintage pieces remarkably correlate with my recent obsession for Madison Avenue businessmen of the early 60s (brought to 21st century prime-time). But they also remind me so much of my old man back home. How every time I see him he ages more and more. But how he’s still there and will be for a long time. That one day, I will have the success he didn’t and can dress him up in designer threads and feel like I’ve earned it. I refuse to live off credit. And I refuse to live in debt. I value emotion more than dollars. I prefer to hold on to nostalgia than any material good I own.

And with that, I am left wondering how many people in this city will die this holiday, and I hope that they don’t spend that afternoon at the Eaton Center… or God-forbid, in Hollister.

I often contradict myself. This lie is true.
Time for my soma. – That’s better.
- Lo

If I were any Magic School Bus Character I would be: Carmen.

The world is quiet here

"Two paradoxical things are happening at the same time: On one hand, mass media generates a monoculture, so the structure of existence becomes identical (regardless of geography). People in Clear Lake, Iowa suddenly have the same general worldview and experience as people in Santa Fe and Miami and Fargo. However, the acceleration and splintering of media destroys the potential for cultural universals. There are fewer and fewer specific cultural touchstones that every member a certain generation shares simultaneously (Johnny Carson, Led Zeppelin, “Jaws,” etc.). As a result, people end up feeling alienated by their own normalcy; they feel lonely within a crowd. And this is a huge cultural problem."

-Chuck Klosterman

Would it be pointing out the obvious to note the uneasy silence of a morning-rush subway car? I decided to turn off my audio book so I can make witty observations on commuter life and I am met...with nothing. Literally...NOTHING. All these people and the only sign of human life is a heavily muffled Pink Floyd song from some dude's earbuds. If I were in my drama-queen-Richard-Linklater mood, I would say that this silence disturbed me to my very soul and I feel completely alienated by a society that discourages human contact in favour of single-serving existences enforced by invisible walls forming invisible cubicles. But I'm not. I turned on my audio book.

I fucking love Mondays.

Phlegmatically yours,

Inari

If I were a subculture mix-breed, I would be....Mormon Sk8tr Punk

7:49 p.m.

I've been wearing my glasses as of late and they make me look like a hipster intellectual, which is good, but they give me awful headaches, which is bad. Not that it matters because I get pretty bad headaches anyway because of the stress, which is worse. What if I have a brain tumor? I'm not a hypochondriac, I just worry. I don't think it's a tumor because I hardly use my cell phone (were those studies ever conclusive? Did I ever read those studies? Were there studies conducted?) Apparently I'm notorious for not picking up my phone. It's just because I'm bad with them. Telephones, I mean. It's just such an awkward way to talk to someone. How can you have a comfortable silence on a phone? A conversation without a comfortable silence is no conversation at all...it's just chatter.

Adele says that I might be unhappy because I'm surrounded by friends who make me feel like an outsider. I think she has a point. I often choose friends who are different from me and I always get a strange satisfaction from being on the outside of the action. "But," she said "that gets old, fast." And it's true. It does. The thing is, I still like them. Hell, I still love some of them. But they hurt me and they keep hurting me. I'm not good at severing ties. I'm only good at letting them dissolve.

I'm listening to 'Empty Houses Are Lonely' and I want to move to North Dakota. What is with North Dakota and its population of extremely cool people? Ok, so I only know of Tom Brosseau and Chuck Klosterman, but their coolness outweighs the fact that there are only two of them. Besides, what is the population of North Dakota? Like, 80? Sweet monkeys. I didn't mean that to disrespect North Dakota. I think I read on Wikipedia that it has one of the lowest population densities of any of the states. It's all fact, I swear.

I just want to sleep and sleep and sleep and never wake up. I feel like an old lady. No, I feel like I did when I was in the hospital, only it doesn't hurt as much to bend. Maybe the early sunsets are messing up my internal clock. Maybe I'm a narcoleptic (I'm not a hypochondriac, I just worry). I should stop. I'm going to lie down.

Soporifically yours,

Inari


If I were a pantry item, I would be....a half-eaten jar of Nutella.

Wartime Stories:"close your eyes. and open your heart."

I have a pen pal. Someone I hardly know but care very much about and I know he cares about me too. Last night I spent 2 hours just writing page after cathartic, existential page of words to him catching him up on my life and state of mind as it stands. The most striking part of his letter to me (to which I was responding) was a very simple question...

"Lo, what are you most thankful for this year?"

I didn't even have to think or blink an eye. I am thankful for everything. The good, the bad and the ugly. But especially for my bestfriends & sisters.

I would like to take a moment and give a special thanks to 3 important gems in my life. Desiree, Inari & Roxy.
You are the most beautiful women to me. I learn so much from each of you.

I would like to congratulate Des on her film shoot. Babe you did it and you did it looking sexy. All of that hard work pays off in the end. I am so impressed by your burst of confidence over these past few months. You belong with those Flirty Girls and don't ever forget that. I’ll always remember one of our first drunken nights together you said to me (while shaking your finger between the two of us all drunkenly beautiful): “we’re connected. Me and you.” You may not remember this… but I do… because we are. Us living together… is no fleeting chance happening.

Rox. It’s your convocation today and although none of us are there in the audience… at least mom is and that’s all that matters. Congratulations on your Masters. Let’s celebrate on an island with dirty martinis (for you) and shots of tequilia (for me). Remember money is meaningless, memories are treasures.

On Monday November 10 it is Inari’s 21st birthday. The last of the sexless to turn the 2 and 1. She already knows it will be one melancholic trip, as it recently has been for us both. We are in Limbo but remember… the longer we sleep, the more chance we get to dream. Life will be so much sweeter, after the wait. Trust me. That’s all I ask. There is no tragedy that is without its share of humor. Without irony there is no life.

Thank you.
Peace & Love… LO….Xoxo

If I was a wartime story I would be: a battle-wound.

"All that you see or seem,
is but a dream within a dream."
Edgar Allan Poe

I'm a Rainbow in your Jail cell... Beware of the percussionists

Sometimes, no matter how much it looks like a person changes they're still the fat kid with the big mouth who hurled all over the bleachers at the Main Arena.
The one who always played the Yoshi to some other chic's Princess Toadstool. Who danced around to her brother's Duderanch and sublime and went as a pumpkin for Halloween not a stripper version of a dental hygienist (not that I'm placing judgment). The one who never had a date to prom but it didn't really matter because the guy I liked didn't either...

And yet, however trivial these observations and self-reflections, it's like I'm the only one not in highschool anymore from my hometown. Everyone still hangs out with the same friends, and date the same people (and then rotate within the group when it seems necessary). Inbred, I know.
No matter how much has changed and how well I do in the Big City, I'm still that fat girl with glasses who does her homework and enjoys it and everyone else is the rock star.

When a person is romantically-jaded they have become that way for a good reason. Now I haven't thought about you for quite sometime, but when you re-emerge I can't help but think you were the last person I had a genuine crush on. Even if you were some burn-out from high school whose number is probably 64. God. The very thought kinda makes me wanna upchuck.

It all started because a friend mentioned you the other day and then you popped up in my dream last night which was so weird. We found ourselves alone in a kitchen. We were at a houseparty, typical of our hometown. You were just about to say something but then your cell-phone rang... which happened to be my alarm clock as well. I woke up. Got my self a peach from the fridge and watched a little Freaks & Geeks. It put me at ease just a little... until i realized it was the episode when Lindsey hooks up with the babe drummer. Beware of the percussion.

I don't really know what you are up to now, or if I ever even once crossed your mind as someone you even considered a friend. Based on your former and latter significant others, I doubt you were into my looks... but I thought maybe by some small chance you were more than that... God you're such a douche. I don't even care. But I do. I'm a friggin walking contradiction. Always and with everything.

Moreover, everyone else who has ever come along. I'm sorry. Do us both a favor and move on because I'll get bored and won't care because this last crush left me kind of jaded. On top of it all, I'm way too self-righteous and so goddamn apathetic towards relationships it's unbelievable.

Anyways. I'm gonna get back to working on my feature script. But I leave you with two songs that remind me of you. Or "him" rather because I imagine he would never ever read this and know I was talking about him...

1.

Hello
I've waited here for you
Everlong

Tonight
I throw myself into
And out of the red, out of her head she sang

Come down
And waste away with me
Down with me

Slow how
You wanted it to be
I'm over my head, out of her head she sang
Chorus-

And I wonder
When I sing along with you
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when
She sang
Verse 2-

Breathe out
So I could breathe you in
Hold you in

And now
I know you've always been
Out of your head, out of my head I sang
Chorus-

And I wonder
When I sing along with you
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when
She sang
Chorus-

And I wonder
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when
She sang

2.
Im an ocean in your bedroom
Make you feel warm
Make you want to re-assume
Now we know it all for sure

Im a dance hall dirty breakbeat
Make the snow fall
Up from underneath your feet
Not alone, Ill be there
Tell me when you want to go

Im a meth lab first rehab
Take it all off
And step inside the running cab
Theres a love that knows the way

Im the rainbow in your jail cell
All the memories of
Everything youve ever smelled
Not alone, Ill be there
Tell me when you want to go

Sideways falling
More will be revealed my friend
Dont forget me
I cant hide it
Come again make me excited

Im an inbred and a pothead
Two legs that you spread
Inside the tool shed
Now we know it all for sure

I could show you
To the free field
Overcome and more
Will always be revealed
Not alone, Ill be there
Tell me when you want to go

Sideways falling
More will be revealed my friend
Dont forget me
I cant hide it
Come again get me excited

Im the bloodstain
On your shirt sleeve
Coming down and more are coming to believe
Now we know it all for sure

Make the hair stand
Up on your arm
Teach you how to dance
Inside the funny farm
Not alone, Ill be there
Tell me when you want to go

xoxo - LO
ps. If I was any Scorsese flick i would be: Taxi Driver.