Beth & Manly

Mary

2010-12-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Beth and Manly,

No one reads this anymore. I don't write here anymore. But since last night generally felt like the biggest digression of this past year, an example of a social situation I generally prefer to avoid, why not do something I used to do to deal in the old days? I don't do well with "reunions." I like unions while they're unions. And when they're over? Onward!
I only ever feel compelled to write about my feelings and complicated thought processes when I'm in the kinds of contemplative moods that I currently am in now.

Do you know exactly when you lost your innocence? I don't even want it back; but sometimes I find myself wondering what I'd be like if I lost it the way everyone else usually does. One of my friend's said to me everyone should get their heartbroken to know love. I've suffered from a broken heart (I arguably still do some days) but not in the same way she was referring to. Does it still count? Do I know this "love" she is referring to? Or do I know a different kind of love? A love that isn't transparent and clouded by the innate need and desperation to consummate.

A boy has never broke my heart. I'd like to know that pain. One day, no doubt. But not yet. And not today.I'm in no rush. This is not a race. Until then, I have Caleb Followill's voice to do for me at night, what I suppose your significant others do for you.

People in relationships can be hard to be around. I hate people feeling conflicted because they feel the need to entertain me while also stroking their significant other. Just let me be. I'm a big girl. I'm just fine on my own. Finer than you even.

December, no doubt, is always the hardest. Oh yearning, you are my most painful and yet most favourite feeling.

Love Always,
Lola Anarcha N.

It started and it will end with a film. Trust me.

October 23, 2010

2010-10-23T17:12:00.001-07:00

I alienate people. It's one of my many talents.
I can't let others who feel hurt just because I don't fulfill the idea of me that they have created, affect how I feel. Because right now I feel like it's truly unfair and it's upsetting me. I wish I knew other dedicated writers. I wouldn't feel so alone. But all I know are hacks who chase boys for validation (as opposed to love.) Why do I feel alone? Because I have a sick attachment to my art. And I want to know that I'm not the only one with this sickness.

Fucked up and as happy as ever,
yours truly,
Lola Anarcha N.

Creamsoda and Illinois

2010-08-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

I have a crush on this guy that works at this coffee shop I frequent. The kind of crush where I only know his name because of the label maker print on his name tag.

I haven't had a crush in years. The thing that is as equally exciting as it is infuriating is the very fact that crushes generally evolve from little to no interaction. Most of the time we don't even know the people we have these little emotional things for. The funny thing about this crush? After he served me 2 or 3 times in a very short timespan (of which one of these times I was with my sister and immensely hung over and looking like a rancid courtney love) I stopped seeing him. And it's important to mention that non of these interactions were particularly flirty. I didn't feel any sort of vibe from him, and as the Libra that i am, I'm pretty sure I acted surprisingly reserved (always consumed by copious amounts of scripts to read, or the need to absorb alcohol).

Once I caught him (or the idea of him) crossing my mind as I passed by this coffee shop as I so often do every now and again, I stopped seeing him in real life. He disappeared. He no longer served me my large blacks. It's as if he is no longer employed by said coffee shop. I don't think much would come of this unrequited "like" anyway if I ever do end up seeing him again because it's just difficult to connect with a stranger and progress that connection into a potential and eventual friendship. That, and I'm afraid of "the chase." It's intimidating and vulnerable. And as a self-proclaimed feminist the very thought of appearing vulnerable sounds weak and I'm anything but.

But if we were to ever meet again and maybe even become acquaintances, I think he would be a choice companion to see films with. At the Royal... the Bloor. Pretty together. If somebody were to ask me what I want on a "social" level - just someone I respect and actually like and find interesting to accompany me to interesting films, concerts. Someone to dance to MSTRKRFT with. And roadtrip with to Illinois if I wanted to.

It is quite rare when I actually attend movies with a "friend" and it's because several of these people in my social circles are people I find it challenging to connect with creatively and spiritually. There's a lack of spirit I can really get behind. That's why when I think I can see something good in someone, it's exciting.

I'm in a good place right now. And soon enough, by the new year, I'll be someplace even better. This I know. 2011 afterall was my family's Bonanza Video pin code. And that to me, means something.

You took me to see the Cleveland Indians and left ME at the stadium

2010-08-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

I just found out some news about you. And I'm quite disturbed.
You better have acted out of intimidation.

And I segueway, as the queen of segueway that I am... If you've ever wanted to know anything about me... you can learn everything from The Little Giants. All quotes - MEMORABLE.

Junior Floyd: You wanna learn how to kiss?
Becky O'Shea: No. Why, do you?
Junior Floyd: No. Eeww I just got that vomit taste in my mouth.
Becky O'Shea: Come on, you gotta learn sometime. I mean if you wanna get a job and have kids and stuff.
Junior Floyd: You can have kids without kissing...
Becky O'Shea: Yeah, but you can't get a job. You know, for scientific reasons and stuff.
Junior Floyd: Well... become a teacher.

[receiving their uniforms]
Tad: Death shrouds
[flips one around]
Danny O'Shea: They've got your names on the back.
Jake Berman: So the guys at the morgue can identify the bodies.

Karen O'Shea: Kevin, this is pee-wee football. It's supposed to be fun.
Kevin O'Shea: Not fun anymore. See, all the fun is gone now. See now, It's WAR!

Priscilla: God bless family, friends, flowers, Nickelodeon, fuzzy little kittens, Pez, Mr. Lerenzo, the school janitor 'cause he's so hairy.
Kevin O'Shea: He's an unfortunate man Priscilla.

Spike: Look, you berzerko Barbie doll, when you mess with Spike, you mess with death.
Becky O'Shea: You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk?
Spike: Try me!
Becky O'Shea: I will!
Spike: Let's go!
Becky O'Shea: Right now!
Jake Berman: SOMEBODY CALL 911!

Becky O'Shea: What a hunk. Wait a minute? What am I saying? I'm the Icebox. Icebox doesn't like boys. Except for that one...

Fresh Skivvies and a Map of the Goddamned World

2010-07-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

I either need to have sex or go to Europe. And seeing as though I can never make it past second base without suddenly becoming utterly repulsed by the gentlemen to whom with which I am "getting bad" - I'd say I'd have better luck in Prague.

Luck with what?

I don't know. Feeling alive. Feeling pain when I prick my finger, feeling numb at the sight of my own blood pearling up, tasting the salt and not liking it as much as I do now. I should recoil at the taste. And I should feel sadness when someone's relative dies other them complete lack of remorse. Other than "oh that's too bad, a million babies are starving in Africa." Feeling lust for something breathtaking instead of something mediocre we give way to much credit to. Feeling like there's a point to all this. There must be a point and I think I'm doing a prince of a job missing that point.

Match point.

Yes. Match point.

You like to win?

Love it.

And losing?

Not anymore.

How can you be so sure?

Trust me.

2 magic words and suddenly I'm sure? I believe you?

You can be as sure of me as you are of the world without God.

What?

Have I confused you?

Completely.

Well good, I wasn't born to make your life easy. I was born to do something grand.

Go to Europe or have sex?

Precisely so.

Hmmm.

Will you excuse me now, I must retire to my room and pack.

Bring plenty of fresh underwear.

I shall.

And a map.

Of course, the last thing I want is to get lost. ....Unless it's all on purpose that is. Than I'd really feel alive.

xo

forget that you know me

2010-05-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

it's not that i don't want you to know me, because it's more that I don't really want to know you. but it's more than that; it's that i don't like when my old world and my new world collide and create another world in effect. in fact, go ahead and create a new world and i just won't be part of said new world's species. i'll live on another planet, preferably all alone. except i'd want their to be time... and smoothies. an innumerable, inexhaustible amount of smoothies. but not for you. or you either. but for me. all for me.

LO!!!!

iambic pentameter

2010-05-16T19:16:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare, you are the man.

BIRON: How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.

LONGAVILLE: A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience!

BIRON: To hear? or forbear laughing?

LONGAVILLE: To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to
forbear both.

BIRON: Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to
climb in the merriness.

lo

to the Lions.

2010-05-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

After a week of 9-7s dedicated to the beautiful insanity that is my daily grind, I will no longer sacrifice my 7 to midnight hour on aimless thought. Yes. Spare the Christians I declare; throw the aimless to the lions. Once again, I will slay the sleep that burdens me and burn the brain inside.

Wordily yours,
Lo

women, i've had enough

2010-05-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

Women, I've had enough of how similar you all are. Of how cookie-cutter cliche your truest of true ambitions are. Suddenly you turn 30 and no longer are you competing on how hot you look, how nice your clothes and accessories may be, but on how many kids you have and how cute they look in baby polo. It makes me want to gag. It's not even that you let your dreams fall to the waist-side. It's that you never really cared to have dreams in the first place. It's all very disheartening and hard to take. I'm glad my happiness lies in the satisfaction of my obsessive compulsions and addictions as opposed to the fulfillment of standards typical of the modern woman (which, more often than not is hinged on the presence of a man.) No thank you.

LO
My ocd and I had a wonderful weekend, stereotype free.

if i was good to you

2010-05-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

i was at the computer, reading lyrics from the screen. I was singing star spangled banner. I wouldn't say I'm much of a singing talent, but the american national anthem is my exception. You were in the kitchen - probably stirring sauce or cutting apples. These actions will forever be synonymous with you (the feeling of you nearby).

and you were listening. and you liked it. you hummed along. i did everything around you. you saw me do and say the most vulnerable things a person could imagine. the most embarrassing. it astonishes me how any of us function without you? you may have been losing since i was 8 years old, but you were the rock. you were our rock. oh captain, my fucking captain.

i had a thought that maybe i wouldn't. but i knew i would on this day, ask the questions that rape me continually. (probably voluntarily too.)
i had a thought that maybe i wouldn't. but i did anyway.
how many times did I yell at you? how many times did I grab you by the wrist and say, "fuck off and die"?
how did I do it? What's wrong with me?

i never meant it. not once.

http://www.poetry-online.org/whitman_o_captain_my_captain.htm

Columbine

2010-05-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

In the past year I've deleted almost 150 "friends" from Facebook. And every time I log on, which is rare nowadays, I peg off a few more. And for various reasons. At first it was mostly because if I refer to you within quotation marks, you're not really my friend - nor do either of us care to make any effort. But now it quite simply could be because of an annoying post, an inexcusable use of an emoticon, your display picture with you and your boyfriend (by the way I'm glad you're no longer depressed) or especially this new trend of using only your first and middle name. These middle names are always so unbelievable too. Like "Kylie" or "Ryanne" - as if kids born in '87 have these new-age names? It's a little confusing, and a whole lot unsettling. And I'm into healthy digestion so I'm just going to avoid these 21st century trifles because I have the control to do so.

I haven't deleted it yet. But oh, I'm close. And each day each and everyone of you "cool people" push me closer to the edge.

A simple bang BANG. And it'll all be over. And I won't say goodbye to any of my facebook friends.

Lo
Final thoughts: Could Facebook have prevented or contributed to the shootings in Littleton?

Danny, the Irish Bar-Tender

2010-04-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

So it goes like this.
Not to degrade this serious medical condition, but I suffer from some sort of acute bi-polarity. We all do to a certain extent – mine just seems to be more extreme and more at random than several others. It’s often difficult to explain my change in moods towards certain people and I’m forever apologetic. I don’t ever want to be the bitch, but sometimes you’re just born with bitch inside you and when it rears its ugly head (and it is ugly as you can see from previous posts) you get hot and bothered and jealous and again, you have no reasonable explanation as to why. It’s a chemical jealousy.

But I refuse to censor myself to myself – hence I will not take down or delete any incriminating, self-loathing, or “bitch-driven-against-those-i-love” posts because I’m a big supporter of the honesty-party (however contradictory that allusion may be).

That said, this week has been considerably wonderful regardless of the storm cloud above my head. And to be honest? I blame it shamelessly on PMS. It seems I have intense attitude every so often (like clock-work) when it’s a full-moon or there’s a high-tide or whatever you call it.

xoLola

I'm a fragile egomaniac.

2010-04-29T06:17:00.000-07:00

Why do I do the things I do? Why do I help people?
Because helping people is good and I will forever try to make up for the bad child that I was. But what I need to learn is that often the "good things" I do are not good for me. Why would anyone in their right mind do things that work against them for the sake of making up for some void that is gone and will never return and that I'll never be able to help. Why do I help you? Because sometimes I like to.

Well I hope you have a good weekend. I really do. Cherish every God-for-saken moment. Because one day you might see her die. Lliterally. You'll be holding her hand and singing Day Dream Believer. And the smell. It'll be unbearable to say the least.

Things change. Thank you Eye Weekly for making me feel better after this week of being haunted by some skeletal fiend of neorosis who burns allllllllllll calories by 5 am and loves it. Absolutely loves it. Envy is a dangerous thing. It's like I'm envious of that ambition, but would never EVER want to trade places. Oh my God, never. GAG ME.

Libra (Sept 23-Oct 22)
What's this? You don't have to drag yourself out of bed and cry your way through your morning coffee? You actually smiled on your way to work? (Yup!) Energy levels are rising and so are your spirits — and those of everyone around you. It's like you finally figured out that you're the star of your life and that it's about time you started to act like it.

Happy Thursday!

xoLOla

Praying for some salvation, Cause she's just so bored

2010-04-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

The internet is an infectious, evil device. It subjects us to an abundance of information we eventually believe that we need, because we have such infuriatingly easy access to it. The internet is a cornucopia of beautiful shit that says, "touch me." So we touch it and it feels good, and then we're left with poison ivy. Or worse yet, herpes of the melon.
If it's out there for us to see, hear, know, beat off to - what kind of lazy fucks are we if we don't capitalize on the freedom of such information and use it to satisfy some sort of hunger within ourselves?

You know what I really like? What really gets me going? That thrilling sensation of being teased by the idea of satisfaction... the possibility of opportunity dangling above my nose. I reach for it and it pulls away. Not yet... Not yet!

Just wait. Wait for it.

There will come a point where what I want could quite potentially happen. And I understand that in order for it to happen a lot of people's lives will have to change along the way. But then again, it's nothing that hasn't happened before.

I remember the days of having to buy postcards of my favourite band at the corner store in order to look at pictures of them. What!? What was that? We will never see those days again. My blackberry, after all, is synced to 3 different email addresses, all of which receive updates for various forms of fandom in which I so sheepishly engage.

Goodnight.

xoLola.
Favourite tune of the moment: Hole's "Skinny Little Bitch"

Note to self: block out the moaning, but not entirely...

2010-04-25T10:55:00.001-07:00

Lo, this is a list you should refer to every time you need to remind yourself of healthy positive habits to nurture and assist in your aspirations to develop a prolific, mindful routine. Your friends probably won't mind reading this either.

1) Take your time and don't feel guilty for taking your time. Something that's rushed and "done" is the result of a neophyte.
2) Write EVERYTHING. All your thoughts. Every moment, object, picture, scene, line, word, look in the eye. Keep a hundred lists all over the place in no specific order of ideas about the same thing... Eventually you'll have to sort through all of this ramble, but it's worth it for the value of one of those little gems you'll rediscover when you start to really focus on your story.
3) Don't be afraid to chuck ideas or even reuse ideas! Remember, it's cool to be green. Thank the hipsters.
4) Write characters you want to make love to, it'll make the writing experience a hell of a lot more exciting. Trust me. Sometimes I have to take a minute and compose myself. Dirty girl.
5) Determine whether you're a masochist or sadist. This will help immensely. And if you're conscious of this while writing... it really will enrich your work with identity.
6) Your ideas are not always your own. So make them your own.
7) If people in the apartment above you sound like they're having sex and/or masturbating to bad trib porn and you're trying to concentrate - put on a song with a tone you hope to embody in the scene/story/post you're working on and listen to it on repeat. It will not only mask the sex sounds, but will inspire your work.
8) If you have friends who are bitches (and I'm not talking about any of you AM, AF or GC so don't EVER think that) cut them out. And don't feel guilty for cutting them out.
9) Don't feel guilty.
10) Lastly, spill your guts and then get people to read it. And don't feel the need to preface their reading with any sort of warning/clarifications etc. If you wrote it feel good about the fact that something's written and is clearly good enough that you're getting people to read it.

xoxoLo

- I think, one day, I'll write a manual.

pseudo-haiku

2010-04-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

Will you leave too soon?
The garden, the grass left behind
You'll see her, won't you?

Health is an 'f' 'u' 'n' letter word

2010-04-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't trade healthy for a superficial beauty beyond my natural control. Substance is the enemy.

Lately, I've caught myself thinking regularly about a certain someone(s). Thinking and feeling the way I did in high school towards this(these) individual(s). Call it silly, call it a meaningless crush. But whatever the condescending label - know this - this thing, this feeling, adds an energy to tedious daily routine that otherwise wouldn't exist. The lone, fleeting thought bubble or incredibly bantam possibility that I could in fact fling with this guy(s) injects a rush of adrenaline through my arms and coats my emotion with I guess what is often described as "thrill."

He (they) thrills me. And above all else it feels fun. I feel fun.
I want to have fun.
And I won't apologize for my means of fun because in the long run, as I have learned before, this will not hurt anyone except myself. And hurt is all a part of the health. Or so I'm lead to believe.

xo
Lo

Gem & the Holograms

2010-04-14T20:51:00.000-07:00

So many people lack originality it pinches me a million times and makes me want to upchuck.
I shouldn't waste my insides on the dry, the flat, the moor.
I should climb a mountain. Or at least continue to.

I hate plain and boring.
I hate that even over this annoying, accelerating volume I can hear your putrid voice and see that face that isn't yours.
I need a quiet space. And quiet time.
I need an oasis left of nowhere, full of somewhere.

I need prayer, however sacrilege my actions prove to be.

Where has all the unique gone?
Why are all the gems so far away?

xoLo

Hurt people hurt people

2010-04-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I make it to a bathroom stall and curse to God not to cry.
I know I always say it hurts me most when I think I'm forgetting. (When I see it fading away.)
But, the truth is, it hurts me most when I remember.
My chest gets real heavy. I'm already hyperventilating on the inside. (I hide it well.)
And for a brief moment, fenced in by these makeshift seafome walls, I see it all like it was just days ago.
But that's not what really hurts.
What hurts is that suffocating feeling of being robbed without reason. Of knowing that what you once possessed for such a short short time (and it was a short time, we barely skimmed the fucking surface) will never return to me again. I can never not think that without feeling astounded. And angry.
I guess I'm still angry.
Or maybe I'm just now feeling angry.

However angry, however passionate, the (arguably) easier it's made being out for fucking number one.
Now I move on easy. Let go easy. Get bored easy.
I'll think you're stupid. Or superficial.
I won't call you back. Make promises I don't plan on keeping. I'll leave when I want to leave with no regard for your feelings.
I'll give short notice, and play favorites. I always play favorites.

It's often that I almost feel entitled to be a bitch when I want to.
And you don't have to call me out on it, because I'm well aware. I'll tattoo it on my fucking shoulder to remind you that I'm well aware. I never use this hurt as an excuse and I haven't to get me anywhere or sympathy or anything. Because a lot of people have their own business. Their own lives to notice. And that's ok.
It's ok that no one knows. No one knows the bad, and no one knows the good.
And again my self-righteousness faults me.

"Hurt people hurt people."

It's true.
And,
I'm sorry.
I am.
But, really,
when it comes down to it all...
no one's really that important.
Not anymore.

Call it punishment.
Call it regret.

But don't call me anything.

Lo

Jimmy Ruffin and the pursuit

2010-04-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

And it happened yet again. The slow-motion moment in the midst of chaos.
I'm at Ultra on Friday night dancing like a psycho in celebration of, I don't know - life, when some guy and his slightly less attractive but equally coiffed campus-sheik, wingman approach.
It is clear these lads are not just passing by, but have stopped with purpose - a motivation as to why they choose to stand right there, where I in front of them am flailing so carelessly.
They lean in. My dancing tames however briefly, and I perk an ear. The boy starts, "How's your mother?"
And just as Kanye breaks it down, and the Brazillian dancers sh-shakin' it on the risers hollar a "hells ya", I get sucked back into the dance floor, with nothing more than a suspicion and a hope that I heard him wrong.

Later... in the haze, I consider to myself if this vagrant interaction actually occurred. And although only moments had passed, the booze and exertion distorts my internal clock. It could have been five minutes, it could have been fifty. Or even fifty-two. And as if I imagined it all, the two guys appear yet again, and just as I remembered them. Short and Abercrombie.
I close my eyes for a second, I need to concentrate on the question.
I look at his face, it focuses in and out. His lips are moving but I don't hear what he's saying. In fact, they're moving too slow for reality. It's stalled. A time-lapse. And that Kid Cudi song featuring MGMT starts playing, not in the club, but in a bull-pen circumferencing my head. Thick and stretchy, a theoretical mass that keeps me a foot and a half distant at all times. A foot and a half is a large space between my heart and the world. A terrible flaw.
"How's your mother?"
I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood the question, "What?"
He repeats himself, "How is your mother?"
My face falls. After I unapologetically answer with the simplest, although some would argue morbid statement, there are no other words to describe their reaction than bumbling. Fumbling. Morons. Full of sorries, inching away from the black hole that surrounds me, swallowed yet again into the crowd. Their faces barely making an impression in my mind.
I only remember the idea, not the face. Isn't that sad?
Even after the moment it happened. Isn't that sad?
And then I realize, Kid Cudi's become Jimmy Ruffin. Out of sync with the bumpers and grinders all around, but a perfect melody in my head. "Yes, Jimmy," I think to myself. "What does become of the broken-hearted?"
I stand there, as we slowly zoom out to a wide shot.

Indeed, one soul too heavy for a Hot Mess.
But nearly so.

Lo

(this is parade music) (good grade music) (party like you just got paid or got laid music)

2010-04-07T20:11:00.000-07:00

I'm on fire.
I'm listening to hip hop and pop punk, and look at my face... does it look like I care that you act like you're "better" than me?
I'm dancing, at 11:11 am, I'm dancing in my goddam bedroom, swinging my blonde whore hair like nobody's watching because nobody's watching. And it's freeing. And it's cathartic. And I worked so hard.
I love my job. And opportunity. And friendship so genuine you feel like family, thick, thicker, thickest. Blood. Not water. And finally I'm out of the hell hole - almost out - almost there. And I can breathe. FInally breathing. Finally waking up and moving on, and dancing late.
Like old times.
After she'd call. Remembering when I'd hold the phone to the speaker so she could hear the music. Hear them singing to muffle out that fucking drip.
Drip.
d - R I P.

I just want to party and have fun. So I'm going to party and dance and have fun.
I don't have my words tonight. Not tonight. THey're not here.
And I'm thinking, I still have work to do... get the fuck off itunes.
If you never noticed before - it's a pattern - my best pieces of writing are during awfully stagnant periods. But not now. Not when the fire's raging and I'm neck deep in projects, then the words are on the back burner, until another one of those sad and lonely afternoons... then again, the words will find me, and help me be.
I don't need my words right now.
Get the FUCK off itunes.

Oh music. OHhhhh sweet music. For without you I would not be me. Writing would be my meat, but without music it'd be dry.
What's a piece of meat if it ain't wet?

At least I still got sexual innuendo.

"Easy on the booze," Daddy says. "Easy on the booze."
I'm not even drinkkkkkkking!

xo
Sober Lo

Fast Potato

2010-04-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

The speed of light is 299,792 km per second. Raging fast. So fast it's indescribable, and any effort to's a waste.

I was on a greyhound to Montreal last night when a wild turkey smacked against the windshield and shattered the entire right frame leaving a spheric shaped dent the size of a watermelon in the glass. I thought it was a gunshot. Yup. In the middle of Cassleman, giant crucifixes erected in endless pastures, and I was dead sure it was a bullet.

I don't suppose you feel like writing? Perhaps you can, and I'll dictate while I think these words and breathe these final breathes before i give in to these eyelids, extra heavy. I'm thinking about radios and televisions. About couches and long walks. About conversation and close talk. About my blood and your blood, and blood that is the same. About nothing at all, and everything.

Why do I find myself in these situations over and over again? In an instant - a pull the trigger, drop the gloves, set the razor to the skin instant - it begins. My love for the stranger. Not so much a complete stranger, but an amalgamation of character traits I've already thought up and assigned.

I wonder if I'll ever see #12 again? Grade 5 probability says it's likely.

The speed of light is not that fast.

players light and plastic pails

2010-04-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

We have this home video on VHS circa 1990.
We're in some subpar hotel in South Carolina, a real classy joint with one of those beds that comes down from the wall.
And I'm screaming - the cutest fucking meatball of a kid you've ever fucking seen.
I wasn't one of those weirdo kids, I was one of those shoulda been a child star kind of brats.
So I'm screaming but singing and I'm obsessed with collecting shells.
And my pops comes by in a yellow LA lakers sweatshirt cut off at the shoulders with a sixer of Coors Light. God bless Americana,
Anyhow I'm screaming and bouncing off the walls like any little runt hopped up on Coca-cola and pepperettes. And I'm screaming to my daddy. "Daddy how old are you? DAddddddyyyyyyy."

Finally he states, "Twenty-Five." Announcing it real big, real matter-of-facto ya know?
And I believe him. I don't even think twice. I just turn around and repeat, "Daddy's twenty-five" like a fact is a fact ya know? I carry on and ask my mom how old she is. Clearly, my dad is not twenty-five since I was conceived when he was thirty-six. And I'm screaming.
WOoooooooooYyYYYAYayyyaaaaa.
Like the cutest fucking munchkin you've ever fucking seen.

CUT TO: My sister sprawled out on the mattress (the one in the wall), and her nightgown's riding her waist, and her fruit of the looms are all over the camera.
Mom why are you filming this?

I love home videos.

Lola.

I really like your face(s)

2010-03-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

Yearning is one of my favourite words in the English language.

yearn·ing [yur-ning]
–noun
1. deep longing, esp. when accompanied by tenderness or sadness: a widower's yearning for his wife.
2. an instance of such longing

[thoughts around midnight, kite]
Lola

Paranoia in B-Flat Major

2010-03-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

Quote me.
There are forces of nature at work.
Changes on the horizon. The boat set to sea, is trapped in the eye of the storm BUT the red-headed weatherman says clear skies are coming. And COMING... until we reach some point of satisfaction. Of fulfillment for the time being*.
The FREAKS of nature will calm. They'll find a way to free their freak.
Not today. And not tomorrow.
But soon.
Quote me.
There are changes on the horizon.

Trust me.
Not just for me. But for us all trapped in the eye of the storm that is twenty-two... twenty-something.

Lola.

Mes Amies

2010-03-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Often I am unable to operate in a thick of noise.

I suddenly see a thought bubble from last night. I'm in the center of a dance floor, a commotion of hot mess and hip hop. And I'm dancing - working that pink feathered boa knowing in my right mind that it's ridiculous; wearing this boa in a public venue such as this fails to collect any sort of kosher attention. But because I'm aware of said faux pas, I'm saved by the irony.
I see myself dancing but I'm also thinking. I'm analyzing my surroundings and how I feel about everyone and who I'm with and how I feel.

In this thick of noise my mind operates. It surges through a sea of realization - truths about identity that I feel strongly for. It's funny, isn't it? That some of my most profound actualizations spawn during moments such as this. Clouds of thought floating over chaotic, bawdiful waves of mindless vertical fucking and looping auto-tune.

In this moment I saw myself having fun with my friend with barely any alcohol, zero attraction to any member of either sex, nor the satisfaction of onlookers sending invitations of dishonorable intentions with their eyes. I was having fun because of the friendship. The laughing. The ass-shaking. The sexless debauchery of the feather boa.
And in the thick of it I remembered how fruitful "carefree" can prove to be. The opinions of those potential onlookers do not matter in any way - as much as we think they do. I do not need to waste my time improving myself for others. I must return to improving myself for me. I recall phases where my love for myself was inherent - sent like a chemical signal others picked up upon. I can't fight to get that back, but I can earn it.
And there it is, self-love is fun-love. Self-love is real-love.
How easy it all becomes when you return your focus to yourself.
How easy it is to breathe and to be, when loving yourself returns to the front-lines. And I mean front-lines, because all battles are for freedom.

In time, suddenly, you're free.
And once you're free (again) everything you always longed for - the stuff you ailed for - will simply come to you. And when it comes, it'll come as what the french call a "Tour de force."

Private Lo

If he isn't good enough for me, how can he be good enough for you?

2010-03-25T06:44:00.001-07:00

This just happens to be my rambling morning musing as I sip my cup of joe (black) and nibble on my brioche (blueberry).
I do recall singing his praises; it's because he's a "nice" guy with a touch of edge in his style.. not so much the flake you'd consider those creative types, and once upon a time he was prolific when the man wasn't strapped to his back and working his knuckles to the bone.

Excuses. Excuses. When you've got someone in your grasp as good as you... you take your lady out... To a nice dinner, at a reasonable hour. It doesn't have to be every week... but do not say the words, "I love you, I'm so afraid to lose you, you are my girlfriend" if you do not want to share your time, if you just wish to "squeeze" her in.

I'm starting to wonder whether you're truly happy? I know you wouldn't want to be back in high school, so why are you running to class at the ring of the bell?
I'm starting to wonder... when he says "I miss you..." is he really saying "I miss the warm inviting crevice that is your va-jay-jay" ?

These are my thoughts and I likely have no right to have an opinion on the matter. However they are thoughts of concern. They are thoughts in the best interest.
And I'm starting to wonder, "are these thoughts your thoughts too?"

xoLola
goes Beatnik.

Post-Secret Wednesday

2010-03-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

I rather have love than make more money.
And I rather have my work than ever find love at all.
But if I can swing it, I want it all and then some.

This is what your voice feels like

2010-03-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

I'm peeling the rind. I'm doing it fast - I just hate to waste a minute... a moment.
And there it goes, the blade of a steak knife sears right from the flesh of the fruit to the pink of my thumb and it's beading up now, pearls of lovely heartbeat red. The citrus stings the wound, the blood salty as I kiss my own hand clean. But it looks like your hand. Dry and cracked and desperate for intensive care.

And I take a second to regroup. Regardless how deep, these nicks and scrapes can take my wind. I stop flying. I start falling.
My hands are your hands. My hands are cut all over.

I listen to November Blue on repeat and I cry because it feels so unbelievably good to cry and to feel and to hear your voice. Things you said yesterday ten years ago.

I close my eyes and I feel the skin of your hand. The way my head felt against your chest.

And everything that happens for me is because of you. I swear it.

Fuck my nose won't stop running.

What's that prayer you used to say? I wish I knew the words.
Remember those books we used to read before bed? Mercer Mayer.

~Lo

Terracotta Army

2010-03-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

The literal translation of "terra" - "cotta" is baked earth in Italian. I had a dream last night where my sister, father and I were outside a suburban home standing at the side of the road on our bicycles. It was bright and sunny. We weren't there to see the home, just stopped at that spot for some reason unbeknownst to any of us, and not once revealed in said dream.

The house was more of a luxury to be honest. One of those Spanish California ranch-styles. A "modest" mansion. There were folks on the roof fixing up some tiles. The terracotta kind - the color of rusty reddish Earth.

I looked up at the house and saw that it was actor Scott Patterson wearing a backwards ball cap and a button down, up there doing work on his own crib. Genuinely enjoying the labor.

"Hey, it's you!" I shouted. He looked down at me and smiled as I brought the unlikely encounter to my sister and father's attention. Clearly, without even knowing me, he can see I've got Gilmore Girls written all over my face and being. We chatted briefly. It was lovely - the kind of pleasant you have with a stranger when you're not being polite for the sake of it, but you realize almost immediately you could actually be friends... You relate...

It was at that moment a mail carrier, who I believe was my older brother, or at least knew and/or looked like my brother, delivered the mail. Something was for me... A check? For $40 000?

What? Why?

"It's yours. I thought you knew?" My sister said without a tinge of jealousy or envy... (Yup, this was a dream...)

So I looked at it. It was indeed for me. My first thought was, "I don't need this at all right now. I only support myself." But it was mine. So I held it... I'm still trying to figure out what this gift from my subconscious world could mean?

In any case - the image of that elaborate roof being maintained, taken care of by this rugged, semi-successful man was the image that really stuck with me. This beautifully ornate roof, yet made from ingredients purely of the Earth... That was what was important in this dream. That's what I had my eyes on...

I consulted a dream dictionary. There are signs everywhere after all.

It states, "To see a roof in your dream, symbolizes a barrier between two states of consciousness. It represents a protection of your consciousness, mentality, and beliefs. The dream is an overview of how you see yourself and who you think you are."

It was terracotta. Rooves adorning Hollywood homes, yet originating from homegrown, warm, European hands. Hands are the most beautiful part of the body. They are the hands that build and create and nurse and touch. And when your face and body changes, your hands generally stay the same. Same lines, nicks, same palms...

To the lovely messages from our subconscious world,
-Lola.

I really appreciate the song playing as I write this - muffled through the walls from some adjoined apartment -
It sounds like Coldplay..."The Scientist." And although I'm not a fan of this band, or really know much about them other than the fact the lead singer was a virgin until he was like 26 or 30 or something that "society" deems outrageous, but I deem "normal"... the song is actually quite fitting for my mood... and the composition of this piece.

Antenna

2010-03-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

We're standing there, Joe and I, like idiots with a radio. I don't know why he brought a radio but he did. He does stuff like that. Goddamn! It even has an antenna - I just noticed it. If he pulls it up and turns it on I'll freak. I'll freak! I'll freak out so bad he'll have to tie my arms behind my back, gag me with a pillow sheet, and force me to the ground. ...Or a tree.

He pulls the antenna up. I don't snap. I just swallow, turn and stock off before he even gets a chance to touch the dial.

And then I hear it. The shameless voice of a boy scout calling after me. And when his voice cracks I feel even more like lying on the train-tracks, than I already do. He's shouting my name. When he says it it sounds like something classic and perfect like "Sarah!"
"....Sarah!"
And as much as I wish it was, it's not.

I try to block it out but he catches up to me... Touches my shoulder so that I face him, but not in any way threatening. He'd risk it all to rescue a pigeon from a rat trap after all.

I glare at him and roll my eyes. He's looking at me. But not staring. So kind and perfect - and so annoyingly oblivious to that. He's an innocent.

Again he says my name. I hear "Sarah." He need say nothing more, the inflection alone asks, "what's wrong?" "Sarah what's wrong? What can I do Sarah?"

I shake my head.

He nods... starting to get it... probably thinking I want nothing to do with him. Ok. He gets it. He'll accept it. He'll turn and he'll leave and he'll just let me alone.

...

But he doesn't leave. He's stopped looking at me too. Now he's looking at the trees. He doesn't get it. He doesn't get me.

"You think no one gets you," he says. His voice sounding so guilty, as if he just said something inappropriate. I can tell from his face, he's worried.

And then it just fell out of me... "You wanna know what my theory is? About all this? About everything? The secrets of the universe?"
I continue.
"You wanna know what we all do?
...We talk.
We talk.. And, we walk.
We sing and dance.
Kiss and fuck.
Build and break.
No more.
But certainly no less.
Everything else? It's all just variations of the same.
...And as complex as you think this is? THink I am?
It's actually quite simple."

He's looking at me, but not in my eyes. "You think so?"

I nod.

"So now what?"

"Leave."

"No."

It's the first time I've ever heard him say the word.
It's my turn to talk.

"I don't wanna talk," I say.

"Ok. What do you want to do?" He says my name at the end of his question... but this time I try not to hear Sarah... but my real name.

I take a deep breath. "I wanna do what people do when they don't talk."

After a moment we turn and walk, but this time together, leaves crunching under our feet.
He turns on the radio and it plays an annoyingly perfect tune, like it's the end of a scene in a movie. As lame as I know he knows I think that is, I really like the song.
And how clammy his hand is.

***
Lola
- I wrote this on my ipod while walking home from No Frills. Man, so much of my writing is inspired by walks home from No Frills...

he makes me cry

2010-03-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

"We can't all be the same," he says. "If we all looked the same this world would be a terrible place."

I say ok. But it comes out in a whisper - a weak one - my voice caught in my throat.

"Don't worry about it. You're fine. Don't be sad. You're fine ok... ...Are you there? Hey?"

...I'm there. "I'm here."

"Ok. You're fine. Eh? We'll talk tomorrow. Good night."

Ok.

***

Lola.
i'm a telephone crier.

Talk of indolence, a conversation story

2010-03-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

B: "It's funny," I say to Marie on the balcony, "you're problem is very much like my problem. Wait. No. Scratch that. You nor I have the problems in these situations... THEY have the problems. They're like fungal growth. It gets worse with age, and serves no purpose but to irritate with insidiousness. It's appalling."

M: "Yeah. You're right."

B: "And they don't even know it."

M: "And they choose to ignore it!"

B: "I believe in communication. I've tried it."

M: "Ya, me too. But sometimes I don't even want to talk."

B: "Oh I NEVER want to talk. Sometimes I open up and play nice... but I have to be in an exceptional mood. I'm often in a good mood, but when I avoid conversation it's not that I'm not in a good mood, it's that I don't want to get in a bad mood. It's a preventative measure."

M: "Talk contraception."

B: "Purple prophylactics."

M: "Candy-flavored condoms!"

B: "Bitchin'."

M: "Indeed...(Beat)
...Her laziness annoys me. Like pick up your crap. It's eating the living room. This isn't your personal hole."

B: " 'And like stop showing your fucking mid-drift', is what I should have said to her. Do you know how tacky that is? ...And it's like tooting your own horn... You know how much she toots her own horn? It's like toot, toot, TOOT every second I see her. Just leave me alone. I'm thinking about things. Important things."

M: "Well Megan's the same way. Except she's just in love with her mother. Every two seconds she needs to see what Mommy thinks... It's embarrassing. Em-bare-assing. Like, I'd like to fuck my boyfriend in peace thank you."

B: "Inconvenient."

M: "When I want it... YES!"

B: "....I bet her Mom tucks her in at night too. Lucky cake."

M: "OMG she's SUCH a cake."

B: "I can't stand cakes."

M: "Oh they're cakes. They're having lunch right and the worst part - they brought provolone cheese and mortadella and olives.... Listen. Don't try to be Italian. You will never be Italian, you rude fuckin' Wonder bread eating manga cakes."

B: "Man alive, that's hilarious. Sounds like dialogue."

M: "Why thank you! I fancy myself a writer don'chya know."

B: "Hey, maybe the mid-drift things a cake thing?"

M: "Or an, 'i'm a 14 year old hick, and shop at Claires' thing. It's tragic."

B: "Obliviously tragic."

M: "The worst kind of tragic... A sin."

B: "Yeah."

M: "Yeah." (Beat).
"Wanna cigarette?"

I wave it off; she knows i don't smoke. But she does when she drinks, so she lights that bitch and sucks it back. She is the epitome of cool and I love her. I make sure to take the moment and admire her, then I carry on with one last thought...

B: "Well, who am I to forgive? But I'll do it anyway - to my cake, to yours. They can't help it, they were born that way... Like we, were born like this."

M: "Holier than thou?"

B: "Your words sister, not mine..."

She holds up her cigarette as if to cheers. I hold up my highball. We clink and ash sprinkles down like paper snow.

She turns to me and says, "So we fucked without a rubber last night."

B: "Oh ya? ... What's that like?"

***

xoLola

Flies, a short story

2010-03-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

[Author's Note: When I write creatively the voice in my head sounds like a Southern accent. Read the following passage with one if you can manage.]

Part I

It’s a Sunday and there’s a fly on my potato salad. And not one of those little ones either, but the egg-shaped ones with hairs as long as those in an old man’s nose. My uncle’s name is Beagle. He was named after an old Navy sloop that carried Charles Darwin on a historic journey around the Americas, and the world too. Charles Darwin was a scientist of sorts in case you didn’t know.The kind of science that isn't really real but pondered. There's a word for it, but I can't pin the tail on the donkey with this one.

The HMS Beagle seized operation in 1870. There she went, fifty years after her first launch to sea, she was stripped to the bone and sold for scrap. And like that big old sloop I wouldn’t be surprised if my dear Uncle Beagle sees the same darned fate.
I call him dear, but his friends call him bastard.

It was early June when my parents left for the Key Largo Florida. I was only six years old and it was the last I ever seen of them. My mama was beautiufl, had hair the color of sunflowers, roots the color of their seeds. My father was a bowler, ran with a team called the Yesterday Sandy's. They were headed down to the Keys for a big tournament. "A big one," they cheered as they patted my head and loaded their bags in that Ford pick-up they took from my Gran, almost the instant after my pop's daddy died. They even promised to bring me back authentic Floridian salt-water taffy, straight from the Zeno's factory! The stuff of dreams. Oh boy, I thought. Oh boy.

The funny part of it all - well there was a mountain of luggage stacked in the back of that truck - so high I was worried it'd block the rearview from reflecting the road behind. Worried for their safety, naturally. You should have seen it - their bedroom was nearly empty - drawers almost bare. Looked like a cyclone past through the house too. And yet as I listened to that Ford speed out of the driveway and onto the open road, I sit wondering why my father's lucky bowling ball sit at the bottom of their closet - with his initials engraved 'B' and 'J' all shiney on the front. And I sit wondering, didn't he believe in luck no more?

After a month of living with Gran and her barely saying a word, I started to realize I wasn't getting any Zeno's taffy anytime soon. And when the years started passing, I stopped dreaming of it all together.

My gran just turned 80 at the time, but she looked just about a hundred and twleve. For an old person she sure did smell good, like donut shop coffee and old fashioned glaze. I didn't have to move, 'cause we already lived in her house, off her dime and her cans of Campbells soup. "Mmm mmm good," she'd repeat over and over again. Without much talk or conversation, we established our own little routine, our own way of co-existing in a weird kind of peace. We got along her and I, and I guess it was because my ma and old man didn't just leave behind that special bowling ball, but they left her behind too.

Last Tuesday I was out in the yard and heard the "ding aling aling" of the Dickie Dee ice cream man and boy did I want a Rocket. I caught a glimpse of him - he was breakng on a sharp turn down Everly St. I ran so fast and yelled after him. I nearly tripped and chipped a tooth - surely worth the sacrfice .I caught up with him a moment later, wheezing and out and breath.

I licked that rocket so fast it was almost done by time I reached the front step of my house, my tonge purple from the red and blue fruit flavors, my chin sticky with tears of juices. If Gran saw my face, she wouldnt be pleased. I'd know it from that huff she always made anytime I was impolite or acting like what she called a "neandrathal." That always scared me straight 'cause that's what she called my daddy and I don't think she liked him very much. He never opened the door for her or picked up a quart or nothing. A neandrathal.

I stepped onto the porch and just as I reached for the screen door, there she was lying on the lineoleom kitchen floor, face planted into the ground, Campbells cream of mushroom splattered like an all-you-can-eat chalk outline. And it hit me, it seemed like everyone around me dropped like flies. Was I bug repellent? I wondered.

Sad as it was, that's how I ended up bunking with Uncle Beagle, the Zoologist. He was my only other living relative, but a relative I'd never met only overheard of in passing. Gran's house was repossessed, seems like she had no money, a beehive of credit, and a rather large outstanding dept. The authorities came to collect me and delivered me to the Park Street Zoo. And there he was Beagle James in a navy blue jumper, his name embroidered on his breast and a look of utter confusion on his fully bearded face. He looked like Jesus Christ I thought, the way he looks in the painting that hung above Gran's canopy.

No, Uncle Beagle the janitor (not a zoologist), wasn't expecting me at all. Even more, he wasn't expecting what would come of our life together...

***

xoLola

North Carolina

2010-03-13T11:58:00.000-08:00

I love blaring ridiculously good new-age bluegrass while working on arts and crafts. A fine activity for a rainy Saturday afternoon. Surrounded by exposed brick and wood trim. Wearing my navy wellies - "Shining Time Station cool." My fingertips sticky with glue, my skin cut from paper - my heart overflowing with pure joy and my lips singing along to this sweet sweet music.

Fan. I am a fan. And by fan I mean when I honestly like a band... I LOVE them and I really don't care what people think even if they may not be cool enough for top 40, or pretentious enough for music snobs. I enjoy them because they make me enjoy myself. I think about them, I feel anxious to listen to them and when that moment comes where I discover they'll be drivin' their big tour bus down some big ol highway to my little town to bang their drums and scream their lungs dry... and all for me (at least that's what I dream true) I literally feel more alive with hyper fucking love and joy than I do on my birthday. It's the same kind of feeling I get when serendipitous poetry falls from my mind onto the page when I'm neck suffocating deep in a screenplay or story. Oh God.

Joy. Joy is hard to come by... but as of late... there is so much to be joyful about.

Birthdays. I'm going to Tattoo Rock Parlor tonight for the first time for my friend G's boyfriend's birthday. So I made him a card out of a Cheerios box and Now classifieds. That card in the pic, see? It's supposed to be Moby Dick. Remember how thrilling it was when it finally was Art period in elementary school? Fucking pine cones and egg cartons and pipe cleaner dreams. Getting high off the glue and talking about boys. That's how I felt last night while making that card. Bliss.

I've been thinking a lot about birthdays lately. About AM's in particular. And the fact that, come June, her and I will be experiencing one of my favourite bands live together in celebration of her twenty fourth year... well I can't think of anything more blissful.

We'll be there... in our denim fucking dressings, moccasins and beaded necklaces singing our fucking souls out. Sounds beautiful, right? It's because it is.

Lola.

"You're not a girl, you're a car, you're a red Trans Ammmmmmmm"

What light there is slips through

2010-03-11T20:59:00.000-08:00

My favourite Greek myths are the ones that involve a detour into the Underworld. I think those are the most emotionally accurate precursors to the modern coming-of-age story, because they tell us what we all already know but often forget : that fear cannot be conquered until it is looked in the eye and feared properly, and that growth does not include bypassing the tough stuff.

Having said that, suffering for suffering's sake brings us nowhere. The courage to face difficulty is a two-pronged cure that will take us out of it. If Psyche had walked into the Land of the Dead without knowing what she was facing, she'd still be down there, wailing with the rest of the souls. But she walked out and, in the deepest corners of my faith, I know I will too.

I am beginning to view my life as my own personal myth, with its own gods and demons and trials in the Underworld. I firmly believe that this is what life really is and that everyone, everywhere, is writing their own myths as they breathe. Like any anthology, some myths are more ambitious than others and some small acts of heroism can get lost in the shuffle, but there are no minor myths, no lesser heroes, just smaller or quieter ones. The only stories that don't finish are the ones that don't begin and to begin, you need to leave the familiar and accept the quest. So first let us accept, then let us begin.

Yours,

Inari Grindcore

This is my last post on Sexless. I'm not a fan of stagnancy, so change it, move it, shake it, rip it up...it's all good with me.

thick, thicker, thickest

2010-03-11T19:33:00.001-08:00

I don't like it when you criticize other girls and you say things like, "uh, her body is nothing special at all." Well, if her body is nothing special, and in my opinion it's "better" than mine, then what the hell do you think of my body? And it's not that you're opinion on the matter should matter, but it does. It matters. Your eye represents the heterosexist, North American public. The public I just so happen to be a part of.

... I've had a thought. The world is enormous. That should mean something. And I know what it means about romance - about the world of possibility beyond our own fenced off GTA. It wouldn't make sense for all of our "ones" to be so close already?

But I hate to talk about romance in such close proximity to my self-analysis of my sometimes negative body image because it would suggest that the two are in some way related.

And to think I was actually feeling pretty positive until you said that thing about TY from high school. Fuck TY.

We may be blood, but that doesn't magically make you see me through rose colored glasses. Please see what everyone else sees and judge accordingly.

I'm also a little perturbed that the JOAN Barbie doll isn't an accurate representation of the actual character.

This was just a five minute spell of trouble. On all other fronts - it's sunshine, mild and clear skies... and it only gets better from here.

xoLo

Sell a couple bottles of Dr. Good

2010-03-11T19:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSZwEwl_1Q

Dear Anne,

I'm thinking of taking over the house blog as my own without officially telling anyone or its "co-owners". I'll keep all of its history and posts - not only mine but Inari's and Des' as well. I'd never EVER want to lose any of them. But...you see... it houses so many of my stories and thoughts that I feel abnormally close to it... as if I've already reinvented it as all my own. I love the URL but absolutely loathe the name. I really want to change it to something that speaks specifically to who I am... something that compares to the creative spunk of other such titles that I'm proud of from my own cognatic collection. I could probably come up with an inifinite amount a hell of a lot better than "Sexless." Even though I'm sure I annoyingly coined it to begin with - unknowing of it's existing exponent - parodic popularity.

What I'm really concerned with Anne is my desire just to take something that is not wholly mine without consulting anyone first. It's not that consulting with the others would be any sort of thorn in my side... I just don't feel like I have to. But maybe I do, or why else would I be sussing this out? I'm usually not a wimp like this. Meh... I think I was just looking for an excuse to quote Cher in a blog post... and applied it to the most relevant of passing thoughts I was having.

What do you think Anne? Think i'd be stealing?

Signed,

A Thief on a Thursday night.

Girl, I like your biznessss

2010-03-11T03:07:00.001-08:00

There's a lace curtain over my bedroom window, more like a veil really - and it's the kind of goldish tan as if aged with time. The blinds part slightly and I see the fuzzy incandescents like urban stars against the morning sky. Sad grey eyes with that hint of orange treasure and sunshine pink. I'm ready to watch the sunrise essentially which should happen any moment. Well, is happening at the moment.

I usually right lengthy fabricated stories based loosely on the things that more than often outrage or conflict or haunt me time and time again. Usually long and rather columnish essays if you will. Lately, however, I've been reflecting on those subtle inspirations that I encounter daily... observations that I make that (for lack of a less bible-finatic sounding phrase) - that I'm "thankful for."

I could not have asked for more of a lovely evening last night with G. I like our time together. It's comfortable, cathartic. Her face and/or voice does not fucking annoy me. I genuinely enjoy her company and volunteer to be around her because she's the kind of human being I admire. This is completely self serving BUT I actually feel better when I'm around her - like I'm not digressing but "BETTERING MYSELF.'' I don't like not using my time to do that. Double negative I know but I must for dramatic affect in order to stress the importance of what said double negative implies.

K it's 6:17 am. Time to get my ass out of bed and ready for the salt mines.

xo Lola.

I've nicknamed it already - "white heat." That's good. That's really REALLY good.

Peter Krause, you're a fox.

2010-03-09T19:21:00.000-08:00

There are these moments - few and far between - where I stumble upon a brand new show and it speaks directly to me, every part of me. My mind, my nostalgia, my heart and my hormones, the whole lot. It's the most satisfying and fulfilling feeling to discover a show that feels like it was made just for you. There's something special about tv, especially tv like this. You can count on it every week to be there. And just be there to make you happy, even if it does sometimes make you sad. Some of the best and most successful new television triggers memories. How can something new and unfamiliar and dramatized, essentially, trigger a memory? Something that's happened in the past? The same way I explain the transmission of television light and sound out of that awkward box we all stare at. It's not a result of electrical power or any sort of logistical science. I don't believe in science. I believe in ethereal power. Some godly force. Some meant to be, magical lucky charms kinda junk that drives it all and home.

It goes back to birth and Laura Ingalls. Or the black out power outage, and yet the Goonies was playing on tv. The Price is Right at Nanni's, or Cheers when scary Nonna babysat. Throwing tantrums during Young and the Restless. Learning what drugs were during 90210. "But he has a baby picture on his mantel, why is David Silver doing drugs?" Or hitting puberty during an episode of the Cosby show. Or doing my grade 5 speech on Friends... the list goes on and on and on...

TV may not "feed my family" but I want it to.

xoLo

7:14 am itunes binge and the grand ole oprey

2010-03-07T04:23:00.000-08:00

Erase and sync.

That's like five years of adolescent music history gone.

Half a decade defined by illegally ripped tunes and innumerable compact discs (aka c.d's.)

A feeling only an emoticon can sufficiently express.

I bit the bullet. Ripped the band aid. Held my breath and hit that ever foreboding delete.

Now starting from goddamn scratch.

...And I suppose that's what this entire year has felt like.

A rebirth from that mousy haired, sad little anorexic heart. Luckily that sad sack is no more.

Now I'm blonde, and bodacious... and obsessed with country music. (Ahem... real country music).

It's not a bad thing to love yourself. It's a very VERY good thing.

Think of what is absolutely rad about you... (about those you love!) And there... you love yourself.

Celebrate you.

Lola.

Bonham, Jones, Page & Plant

2010-03-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

I'm a broken record I know. But MAN do things ever happen for a reason.

I'm often on the cusp of committing down right stupid fucking things and it's as if some unearthly element, some stairway to heaven/whole lotta love kinda shit that's just way beyond bizarre - dives for home and saves me from myself. From what coulda been. Disastrous.

Well not disastrous. Just so incredibly fake. He's a flake!

Well what coulda been is not my fate. Please refrain and stay 10 ft away from me at all times. And whatever I said, I didn't mean. And whatever I do? I rather I don't.

Go back to sleep. Go back to never waking up. Go back to the throws of young degenerate folk singer love. And leave me out of it. I'm nobody's second.

...Or third.

"Just do what you want," he says. "Just do what feels right."

As if that's helping.

Yet still,

I concur,

And,

I'll go back to how it used to be.

I'll go back to waiting for when it's right.

Yup. That's my decision.

Afterall, the stars they say, "sometimes it is better to sit back and let fate take its course rather than try too hard. This is one of those times. Life will come to you. You don’t have to chase it."

Mr. Plant? Mr. Page? Will you play me out?

xoLola.

"There's a sign on the wall

But she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have
Two meanings

In a tree by the brook
There's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are
Misgiven

Ooh, it makes me wonder

Ooh, it makes me wonder..."

polytechnique

2010-03-04T19:54:00.000-08:00

I've been watching a lot of contemporary Canadian film lately.

Wow, there's so much quality out there, I can't believe I only make the effort around Genie time.

Jacque Davidts' Polytechnique was beautiful. Again, quiet, subtle yet brimming with emotion the way tears flutter from your lids when you try so desperately to hold them back. To conceal them from whom ever's watching. From whom ever is near.

My God. I was shaken. I felt like I hadn't a clue about the Montreal Massacre. "Why are you not more informed?" I scolded myself and immediately tuned into an hour worth of CBC archival footage... which turns out was twice as traumatizing as the film. And the film was mighty powerful. Powerful in its minimalism.

Minimalism. Is. Beautiful.

As was Sebastien Huberdeau's J-F....

There's a moment at the end of the film in one of the survivor (Valérie's) final reveries. She's addressing the Killer's mother in a letter. She says he - that day - scarred her for life. And even though in her present state she appears content, productive, and in a loving relationship, she is still scarred. And even without this exposition, you know this about her.

It got me thinking. One, really can be scarred for life. Yeah, I suppose scars fade and some even argue they're physically able to disappear completely. But I'm actually highly skeptical of that claim. And although some are closer to the surface than others, and some deeper to the bone, they're there and they're never, ever going away.

goodnight,

next on my list: Victoria Day

Nurse. Fighter. Boy.

2010-03-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

I don't trust people who are uncomfortable with silence.

For those who have a difficult time understanding that, just recognize (for the nine millionth time) that my mind is always elsewhere. Always thinking about other things. So if I seem distracted, I'm not, I'm really just focused on something I consider far more a matter at hand.

Nurse. Fighter. Boy.

Nurse. Fighter. Boy is such a lovely film. It could not have been a more perfect film choice for this evening to massage my solitary silence after a hard days work. And not just because it was inspiring (so simple, so quiet, yet so layered and emotional = every way I wish to write) but also because there's this scene between the mother and son that resonated so much it was as if it was pulled directly from my childhood.

If you get the opportunity to watch this film - please do. It's urban, contemporary - and if you dig classic "indie" with a small unflashy dose of Canadiana you're already sure to respect it without even having viewed it. But it's the lovely written, directed and acted relationships that really pulled my heartstrings in. That really made me believe in the film - however "formulaic"the critics accost it to be.

xo goodnight all,

Lola.

The Equalizer

2010-03-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

12:45pm.
Maybe it was my midmorning snack of two black coffees and a diet coke, but I have this nervous pit in my stomach and a bad case of the jitters. As if I've done something. As if something's going to happen. Or maybe something already has.

I've been more paranoid than usual. It could be that I grew up middle class, and I am so not in that environment anymore... that is until I return to my four-room apartment on Bloor St... It's astounding how severe the hierarchal dichotomy is in the professional world. I often feel inadequate. I shouldn't though and I know that. But, to be honest, it's kind of nice to not be so self-assured for a change. It makes you work twice as hard, if not harder.

It also makes you always wonder what others are thinking and why.

My Dad says not to worry. He says to just be my honest self and everything will be more than fine. How does he say this with such unbound conviction, as if he's in tune with some deeper fate with God himself.

In any case, I've come to understand that even if we think we owe to others for the bulk of our achievements, we also in part owe it to ourselves to see that we at least play some role in getting to where we wish to be.

We just need to build it. And considering there's a massive green tarp right behind my cubicle blocking off a site of demolition - in order to then reconstruct a corner office that oozes years of learning, harwork and success... I know for a fact that "building" is a work in progress. So we gotta be in it for the long-haul. If you're in a nervous hurry? Then this life? It ain't for you.

Patience.
Axl Rose really does give great advice.

Lola.

"Sabrina, you're a freak"

2010-02-28T05:31:00.000-08:00

I've realized I can be overtly judgmental. Perhaps I've always been this way which is unfortunate. Is it wrong to have (at least in certain regards) high standards?

No. But I can't let "standards" in any way compromise what are otherwise human reflexes.

I've never read Lois Lowry's the Giver, the soft science fiction novel that won the Newbury Medal in '94. It's set in a peaceful utopian society where all elements that would induce any sort of chaos, any sort of uproar or unpleasantry are suppressed. Deeper surged into the story, it becomes increasingly evident that this quiet, calm, one world is actually quite dystopian. I wonder why.

"I tried to make Jonas's world seem familiar, comfortable, and safe, and I tried to seduce the reader. I seduced myself along the way. It did feel good, that world. I got rid of all the things I fear and dislike; all the violence, poverty, prejudice and injustice, and I even threw in good manners as a way of life because I liked the idea of it. One child has pointed out, in a letter, that the people in Jonas's world didn't even have to do dishes. It was very, very tempting to leave it at that."

Reminiscent of Brave New World's soma poppers, the people of Lowry's world take pills as a means of control.... pills to numb, to fight emotions. Any feelings that may cause conflict, discomfort... Anger, rage, disappointment, sexual and otherwise romantic notions. These pills prevent "stirrings" as Lowry so poetically puts it.

"Stirrings." I think I live for the "stirrings." My happiest moments are often my most enraged. Enraged in an enamored, passionate sense.

If there's anything else that I learned last night, other than the fact that I need to try and be less "critically" judgmental, it's that maybe I don't have to try at all. Maybe being judgmental isn't necessarily a "bad" thing. Maybe being upfront, and forward about one's thoughts and feelings - anger, rage, passion is a "good" thing. It's a human thing afterall. I don't believe in holding back those emotions that are boiling in one's heart, that are conquering one's brain preventing them from ever pushing said feelings to the back burner just to pretend to enjoy a night out. Who said that such protocol is rule - in order to have a good time? Discomfort is actually comforting for me. In an existential way, it reminds me that we're living and breathing and not just going through the motions of life. In a world where we must smile and be so very Stepford to mask what we're truly feeling out of worry that one might "ruin" an evening or in any case "damper" the mood, is no world I volunteer to be a part of. But unfortunately, we never really choose the world we live in... But we can exert tremendous influence over it. Look at Mr. White Rich man... he basically created the face of the current state of humanity today. Impressive, as it is so very sad.

"Inappropriate" be damned. However unfair it is - thankfully in our society - a society where we spend billions on war, even more on dieting, and a sensational amount on dramatised reality...nothing is inappropriate and that comforts me as sick as that sounds. On that note - fuck apologies.

In the same way I believe that any sort of utopia in contradiction must have bad, and violence and poverty and evil and conflict in order to achieve some sort of worldly equilibrium. In order for there to be balance. We can't all just wander the Earth in a sedated daze... with no passion, no desire. Because without passion and without FEELING there is no philosophy. There is no real knowledge. And knowledge is power. WIthout power we'd technically be undead. You can't orgasm when you're undead.

Lola

- Last night I had this outrageous urge to watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Delighted, I found it online. Fly your freak-flag folks. As Logan (Wolverine) so righteously displays, as dangerous as it is, it's rather liberating.

Post-Secret Sunday

2010-02-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

I want to be a hipster girlfriend to a hipster boyfriend... who's talented... and as (if not more) successful than I. Hipster socialites... And when we walk down the street

Scott Mckenzie's "San Fransisco" will play in the background.

And we'll be pretty together.

Post-Secret Sundays

xoLola.

Tim.

2010-02-20T04:50:00.000-08:00

"To transform the emptiness of loneliness, to the fullness of aloneness. Ah, that is the secret of life."

I stole this from BW's wall, originally quoted so brilliantly by Sunita Khosla, who I feel is some sort of spiritual... perhaps a Taoist. Regardless of the label, the message is insightful... and the phrasing so unfairly eloquent. I say unfair, because I wish I was so poetically profound. I can be, but potentially in my drunkest of moments.

It's going to be a lovely weekend. And although I am without a new episode of Friday Night Lights, I have my tunes, I've got my pencils and a little free time. And Tim Riggins, you lonesome put-upon soul, if it just so happens you're nearing fate is bound by the 4 enclosing barriers of a jail cell... well your return to "functioning" Texas society one to five years from now for the (in my opinion) undoubtable movie special will be so orgasmically satisfactory. (At least I'm praying for it. This is what I pray for.) And I'm not saying you'll find Jesus Christ, preach the holy word, but you'll be ready for your 25 acres, ready to be the real man we all believe you can be. The man I believe you can be! You'll marry Becks, and treat her right. You'll lay her down on that bear-skin rug (or maybe something you bought at Target) and perhaps give her, for the first time, the kind of sex that an equally as real of a woman deserves. And as for Lyla Garrity... she shall be but a distant memory. We all need distant memories. We all need a little heartache. It's what makes us so sexually appealing in the present. Do not regret anyone from your past, because they are an essential rung on a staircase leading to the one. "The one." That's pretty intense.

"Let's make some memories this weekend Six."

xo Lola.

Someone else's Patti Boyd

2010-02-17T19:28:00.000-08:00

(Self-reflected fabricated truths.)

What am I thinking about? Diet cokes and drunk sxts.

I'm being a total girl. I'd like a little reciprocation. Have you already grown tired of my like "total bodaciousness"?
I want a pin-up shot. Something retro wearing a one-piece with batty lashes and big hair and big shoes, wide hips, lots of shoulder, chesteses, and a cigarette... dangling. Cherries and righteous sailor tattoos.
Pretty eyed, pirate smile.

You're not around this week are you? You're not into it are you? You're "gonna go for someone else now." Aren't you? The girl down the street? In the apartment over? My best girl? My roommate? We've already all kissed the same guys; nothing new to report there.
How incestuous friendship is. You'd think it'd make me want to vomit but it don't.

I wonder what the Scarecrow thinks. His opinion of me has likely diminished and his resentment of you exponential.

I'm not going to drunk text you tomorrow night.

***

"You wanted to be a writer right?"

Ummm. I still do? No, I still am.

Women. Triple-edged sword.

Casually, lovingly yours... Unless you look down upon that of course?
-El Oh.

In the state of Denmark

2010-02-16T21:47:00.000-08:00

In my bleary eyed sleeplessness, sounds of tribal drums out my window beating to a homeless heartbeat and the one pounding in my chest. While I'm worried for my elders, penchant and desperate for a little more time - for their health, for my wholeness. Cut me a fucking break? Just one. I won't promise. Can't promise. I will give you nothing even if you think I'll give you the world (next time.) I won't do it. Can't do it.

Not for anything. Not for RC or JL or AA or any other smoked out membranes fronting as musicians. I miss my youth, but relieved to be a woman. Nearly so.

I am an artist. But not a seller of art. Not now. Not without magic. Lame? Sure is. But I rather be lame together. Then lame alone. Lame for fun. Lame because Lo's the only one with numbed feelings. No she's not the only one. So is I. Grindcore. So has Ms. Thrash. They get it. I get it. We're all in on it. The big secret. Together we stand. Pledge allegiance to my biggest fan. The dead.

Guns. We own guns. And gun wracks. And cracker jacks. No crack pipes, but maybe pipe dreams - old dusty fuckers.

When all I really want is a harmonica. And something to love. And then write about.

Scratch out my eyes, go nine rounds with my heart and my soul. Sticks and stones, and all of my two-hundred and six or so of my never broken bones.

Marcellus can you hear me, do you hear me? Is that your tree-house? I'll burn your tree-house. And drink your beer. The cheap, American dirty kind.

What am I singing for? What am I saying?

I am sensing it means something. I am sensing it means something to me. But not to you.

'Cause I am still sleepless while you likely have a roladex. And your gorgeous best friend and triangle love squad and desperate she-wolves. Kosher ones. A ROLADEXXXXXX.... But never, my friend, a rolex.

(Not that I want to own a rolex).

What do I want most in this world? To rest. Let me rest after a beautiful day. Let me dream beautiful dreams after living my dreams. Let me sleep 6 straight. Let me have a night of easy z's.

And so I wax desperate with imagination of a night - such will never be for a long time coming.

And I am so happy with that because that is who I am.

CArrrrrrrrrrrrLLLLlllllllLLLLllllllllllll.

poetry past midnight.

by lola.

Existentially yours.

This is a warning that boys do not think with their brain. (singular - one for the mass of them.)

All in the family

2010-02-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

I woke up yesterday well-rested and relieved. I never wake up well-rested. It's also nearly impossible for me to shut my eyes and not wake up until morning. It was a weird night, to say the least. But I was "on" the rest of the day. I felt healthy. Pro-active.

Again I woke up this morning with a feeling more rare than anything else. This sounds rather flakey and somewhat insane, but the only way to describe it is that I felt full of the Holy Spirit - and I mean this in the most secular non-crazy way possible. On Saturday I was making bold drunken statements like, "I believe in God the almighty, and Buddha and Vishnu! etc. etc." And I worry that I can come off as some sort of religious fanatic or Jesus Freak... but I'm actually extremely progressive and I just hold a massive reverence for the idea of God. The idea of a supremacy, and a larger than life force of nature... or divinity... who can save. And even destroy. It's all very marvelous. And without truly believing in the concept of the afterlife, I don't know how I'd personally make it through the day. After sickness and suffering and death there has to be some sort of paradise where her hair is long, and there are flowers everywhere. Stunning, healing flowers.

Like usual, I digress.

So I woke up with this feeling and for some reason I had established a certain belief. Like I didn't have to consider or question what I was feeling it just felt innate. And right. Yes there are certain people we should push away to improve the quality of our lives. But what if you realize you could be obliviously pushing away those that you should hold close? So I call my new belief "All in the family." Be aware of when you're pushing... because you should instead (not be pulling or possessing) but holding close. Holding dear. Supporting, encouraging. These are what families are made of. And family lasts. Family endures. Family is not feeble or fleeting. You don't choose your family. Family just happens.

And like I always, and will always say... everything happens for a reason.

-Lola.

Very Bad Things

2010-02-14T06:14:00.000-08:00

I continue to surprise myself on a daily basis. What I think I can't - I actually can do and feel good about it after.

I like combat boots. And casual conversation. And pda, apparently.

I could go into more detail but I really don't want to. I could tell you about drinking copious amounts of whiskey with friends who write poetry, or Weezer dance parties in my bedroom, or a beloved traveler returning home after a journey afar. I could tell you about the Silver Dollar and kisses and streetcars. My blonde hair and his nearly black. But I won't. Details tend to eat people alive.

But above everything, I think I was really honest last night. Like I put the fucking slaughtered lamb on the table, for lack of a better image. Seriously, you just get what you want when you're sincere and you tell the truth, even if the truth is slightly twisted, a little tragic but nontheless quite the agent of arousal.

~Lo

My sister asked me how my night was and I said I did "very bad things" but I'm quickly correcting myself because they were actually very good things; well they made me feel good anyway. And essentially, who in God's name has the right to determine what is good and what is bad, if other than myself?

Also - I think AM was the most intoxicated last night. She's fantastic!

Maybe Waldo Has It

2010-02-10T19:24:00.000-08:00

I wonder if anyone was ever as annoyed with me as my sister's younger sister, as I am with your younger sister.

Do you ever find yourself irritated by feelings most likely delineated from jealousy, all because of someone you don't even feel all that strongly for?

Why am I possessive of certain individuals I often find myself disgusted by when I think of them in morning light? I guess I like to pretend - which essentially is a huge gash toward anyone's longing to call me a "stand up gal." Honestly, as I strive for genuinity, I often go out to social engagements knowing well ahead of time I'll be acting for the evening - acting for the sheer desire of the satisfaction one has when having a ball. I'll have a pretend ball, you see.

On another note, when I'm lucky, I'll end up on the same streetcar as this bearded man with a knit toque, and I admire him from a distance. He reminds me of another of my potential love interests who busts tables at the Roxton - but this gent works in some mysterious unknown destination down an alley off Queen W. He's the perfect height, and he's brooding without seeming whiney or adolescent, or "suburban." I think I could love him. Or at least, pretend to love him for kicks have we ever reach the point of "going" out somewhere fly on a friday. Or a Tuesday after work.

As for Benny. He can have his girl. They deserve each other - they do. I can tell she actually likes him, and he actually likes her. Evn though I know he wished I was being true, and it was more than flirty glances and warming smiles, he knew I was a liar. He knew my heart was somewhere else. No... he knew it was lost.

Now only if I could find it.

Lola.

Good Morning Libra!

2010-02-09T05:47:00.000-08:00

After last night and last night's rather dramatic but no-less sincere post, I felt sensational waking up to the Globe and Mail's reading of my stars:

LIBRA (Sept. 24 - Oct. 23):
You are who you are and there is no point trying to be someone different. Each sign has its good points and its bad points and both have a role to play in making you a unique individual. Don’t try to be like others – they want to be like you.

Nice, right?

-Lola.

Botticelli says he's never seen an ocean like mine

2010-02-08T18:42:00.000-08:00

I actively avoid measuring up other women because I firmly believe comparing one's own physical exterior with others, those I know and those who are strangers, connotes the most devastating of evils.

Regardless, life is not fair and I fall to the greatest of faults and I commit the one crime I try so hard to avoid. Moments when I've felt absolutely beautiful as if I could compare with the best of them, were fleeting... few and far between. Flash in the pan, fifteen minutes of fame.

Makeup and hair don't even hide the fact anymore that I am not a leading lady.

I am aware a lot of females I know believe that their major challenge in life is that they are seen as "just a pretty face" or "just a piece of ass" which I'm sure is at its worst a tad irritating. But at least they're being noticed in some way. And I take this moment to remind myself that this is not the way I should long to be noticed. However, I am but human. A hungry, hormonal human.

I snapped at a friend of mine the other night. I just hate it when my naturally thin friends act as if we're both on the same page - both the same size, struggling with the same issue. It's one thing that hurts me the most. I hate it when people play dumb to spare my feelings. I dragged her in my bedroom and showed her a painting hanging on my wall - "The Birth of Venus." I recently purchased two versions of the print - one of the original, the other a Warhol of just Venus' face in black and orange. And although I absolutely love both works, I favour Botticelli's tempura on canvas from the 1480s. It depicts the goddess Venus ascending from the sea as a full-grown woman. She's naked and her body shape is traditional of the curvy women portrayed in the arts of the 15th and 16th centuries. I hang it over my bed and I look at it to remind myself that great and powerful artists (those fucked by divinity) believed that this was beautiful... even if it was centuries ago. And I told her, "this is not what you look like." But when I undress, this is exactly what I look like.

lola.

- When I write, I almost always feel very strongly and positively about the quality flowing through my fingers and onto the blank page. I have tried many arts, but story and ideas feel most innate. When I write I feel honest and emotional and I do not look to any others to craft the way I compose because it's guided by something internal, spiritual. And in these moments I forget that I am conventionally ugly, because this talent... this attribute is most beautiful when it's no makeup, no hair, no clothes, just fucked right and natural.

Lowest saturation points

2010-02-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago I went off my antidepressants. Anyone who has been on any kind of medication that messes with your body chemistry (i.e. all of them) knows that the weeks after you go on and the weeks after you go off are hurly-wurly fuckin' shit storms of moods and flashes and discomfort in your own skin, which is the worst kind of discomfort. I got a lot of headaches. And moods. And piss-poor body image. And consequently a lot of people got hit with the bitch end of the Inari stick. Did they deserve it? For the most part, I think so (sort of). I won't pretend to apologize for the content because, lack-of-drug-addled as I was, what I felt was what I felt and I think I've progressed pass the point of apologizing for honest-to-goodness feelings.

Having said that, should I have swung as hard, harshly, indiscriminately as I did? No. To a couple of people, I felt I was unmerciful in my approach, displaying the kind of selfish brat behaviour I abhorr in other people. A lot of my negativity, I imagine, left residual damage. I went off on more than a few rampages to Lo about my sheer hatred for hipster culture and on people that we knew, when really what I should've done was narrow the range of my bombs and go off on inauthenticity, insincerity and the general lack of understanding and belonging I felt towards most things at the time. Hating yourself makes you look at the world through shit-tinted glasses so many of the judgments flying out of my mouth were reductionist at best, totally unfair and untrue at worst.

So why am I saying all of this right now, so long after the fact? Because, honestly, I didn't want to earlier. I'm not in the habit of being articulate and super emotional at the same time and sometimes I just don't know how I feel. But I look back on journal entries and blog posts and old conversations on MSN and I realize now that, for a long time, I was super reactionary and very unhappy and now, I think, is a good time to go back and give all of that some context.

The last thing I want to tell people that they have to change who they are. If there is anything I'm allowed to judge, it is actions alone and, in some of the cases, the people I've railed against didn't do anything that I wouldn't have understood had I been practicing the empathy that I like to preach. That doesn't mean that when someone hurts me, I turn the other cheek. I ain't Jesus Christ and you aren't lambs to the slaughter. Like I said before, this isn't an apology for the ends, just one for the means.

-I

Confused? Me too.

Guadalajara and my ceramic prayers.

2010-02-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

When you Google image 'ceramic Elvis' among the search results of innumerable Elvis paraphernalia, trinkets and memorabilia of varying degrees of tack... there is an image of a Virgin Mary statuette. I find this rather interesting. But instead of clicking on the image to see just why it pops up for the search noted above, I instead decided that even though the two entities appear remotely different, Elvis and the Virgin are actually related in more ways than one. And I'm positive I'm right about this.

He is after all the King of sexy... and she the Queen.

Epilogue:

(...please note...my search became a success when I Googled 'Elvis Bust.' Then I founds what Is was lookin' for. Apparently they sell them at Honest Eds. For some ungodly reason, when I look at the image above I imagine the most perfect moment with me and someone I truly love. We're eating toast with jam. I can't ever really see his face, because for the life of me I don't fully believe I'm capable of romantic love... but... I feel an idea... and it looks vaguely like Shia Labeouf.)

Oh, to know "Normal" Social Integration

2010-02-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

Your reaction: "Well, who wants to be 'normal' anyways. I don't."
Well neither do I. However, one can argue that desperation for acceptance and perfection technically is "normal." Note, there is a fundamental difference between being normal and being normal from a societally functional standpoint. I really enjoyed grade 11 soc. It was one of the most beneficial and informative of all of my high school classes. That, and growing up learning to function in a massive family has prepared me amply for the real world. It will no doubt continue to help me navigate, cope, adjust and proceed forth in the workplace, with friends and any other community of people I am surrounded by, through any such difficult, and possibly questionable terrain.

I'm just musing here... so bear with me. I think when the person you hate to love tells you something about yourself that's really offensive... I think it's probably the truth. The kind of truth that really rips apart one's character, one's humanity. The kind of truth that (hopefully) makes you question oneself and what one does (or don't even think to do). And consider if in fact what this person says about you (even though they are essentially the devil in the end and you shouldn't listen to them EVER for the sake of your insanity as a woman), consider what you are, how you are... consider if it's true. But what's worse is one who is so stuck in their own deluded vortex that they wouldn't even think to look inward. "Why?" I ask myself sometimes. "Why?" Maybe what I think is sensible, isn't sensible?

Luckily I don't hate to love anyone, so I'm usually just making these speculations about others.

I love waking up in the morning. And I love going to bed each night looking forward to waking up in the morning. I feel like finally I'm getting back on the productive, all around, track I was always meant to be escalating along. I hiccup here and there, but it's only "normal." Understandably so.

Having decided to sleep in an hour extra, and still manage to get completely ready in half the time (!!!) and still get to work with time to spare, I was feeling so excellent this morning. And then something stupid really set me off. And when I allowed it to resurface at the end of the night (and with one, comes all - remember every little thing) I just breathed in and breathed out and reminded myself that one of my greatest strengths is to block out the negative... I used to go a day without even thinking about one negative thought. I hope to reach that point again. Please let me reach that point again. Will. I want will.

I warn you. We are living in a masquerade. We rarely see what is real, but just a change of masks.

Think about someone who annoys you or has annoyed you in the recent past. Don't ever tell them they're annoying or that they've annoyed you because annoyance is not the fault of one person - it involves two parties - the annoyer essentially, and the (often radical) standards of the annoyee as well. I know this, because my own standards are often ridiculous to the point of radical. (I blame my insane Italian roots). Back to my point. Being told you are annoying is hurtful.

Another personal goal - I just want to be aware of those that are helpful and supportive and let them know they are wonderful people. I don't do this enough. That's it, I'm calling my sister right now. Fucking wonder woman.

And to all other women - whether wonders or wallowers - let's try and keep our panties untied shall we? If not for your own sanity and self respect, for the sheer benefit that after I wake up feeling great.... you don't dampen it with rain via txt msg. Thanks.

Donut Holes

2010-01-31T10:29:00.000-08:00

There's a donut shop in Thorold.

It opened in '78 when a couple, new in town, purchased a boarded up soda-shop, installed an espresso maker, planted a garden outback, and hung some art.

They were hippie types. The kind of young lovers you'd expect to be eco-friendly, fair trade yuppies of the modern era. They drove down from Nevada in search of a cooler climate. In search of some personal freedom. They didn't have a structured plan, but a longing for something completely new. They weren't looking for reinvention, they were looking for a change of pace. "Whatever will be, will be" was just a long drive North.

So they left... Neil Young playing on the 8-track, as mile by mile, the couple sang along to pass the time. This wasn't about Vietnam, or their love-hate conflict for their birth country. They had a reverence for America, they did. But after having strange amounts of sex without ever getting pregnant... without ever using prophylactics ("skin on skin baby"), the couple realized their inability to conceive together - and what better celebration of their love then to bring a child into this world? This new America? And since this celebration could never be, the couple couldn't bear to be surrounded by the walls and the woods, the roads, the rivers and the bathroom stalls which they screwed in. Let's blame it on money hungry, industrial, fuel mongering polluted to shit white America. So they packed it all up for some new air. For some new Canadian life giving air.

And then came Molly Sees. Their diner.

Molly Sees (est. 1978 as it says under the antique sign) has become a local fixture among the Canadian townfolk. Thorold's very own Cheers, where everybody knows your name. She takes the orders, he cooks the food. They manage the menu together.

The couple never did end up giving birth. You can hear it in the man's acoustic lullabies played on Thursday Open Mics, and read it in the woman's quiet poetry splashed about her art. They are sad about their empty nest, but passionate that they themselves are living and breathing, that they themselves have each other. And they have their Molly Sees and all of the smiling, laughing children that come in each day with their gleeful Canadian families. In some way, they have given birth.

In true hippie tradition their diner, progressively so, was first to offer a light menu of alfalfa sprouts, whole grains, flax and vinaigrettes - nearly two decades before the mainstream did it - before McD's slated their vacuum packed alternatives for the 4000 calorie deal they normally boasted. And yet, where the irony lies in this tale, is that it is the hippie couple's reluctance to remove the "donut" from their menu, that has turned many Presbyterians in the town against them. The donut - which is culturally iconic of the religious overweight American - represented the devil to this small group of Thoroldians. They attended city council weekly to promote a "get fit - get healthy" citywide movement. It was after-all the 00's and fit lifestyle changes were the new black. The uprising happened after some special on Oprah about a 300 lb woman who wanted to sue Krispy Kreme for making her a monster. These protesting townspeople feared the same was happening to them. It’s funny how they targeted Molly Sees, which was potentially the healthiest menu in town. But the fact that, along with its sprouts, it continued to offer traditional diner specials - re: the donut, the donut hole (“timbits”, “munchkins”, “dew drops”, “country bits”) outraged the newly health obsessed townsfolk, and flagged Molly Sees a red zone. And it was all offered by American hippies, no less.

But the couple continued to resist. And the townspeople who expected the hippie-dippie granola crunchers to be all for the ban, were utterly confused as they were about most things that didn’t support or represent cliche.

See the couple themselves were not donut lovers... but they weren’t donut haters either. Removing the donut (BANNING the donut) represented a mentality they did not believe in... a mentality they did not “endorse”. They were inclusive human beings. The townspeople harassed them - calling them rebels. The couple had always been self-acclaimed peacekeepers; but in moments such as these, they were not rebels, but revolutionaries.

The donut was not the enemy; the couple truly believed this. The “individual” and their lack of control was the enemy. Half of those donut-hating wheelers, continued to pop in Molly Sees for an afternoon eclair, an old fashioned glaze, a tiger tail or evening cruller. So what defines a hypocrite anyways?

And so the couple continued to resist the pressures and the threats of being foreclosed had they not comply. They resisted to remove the donut and all donut-like products because they believed in balance. They believed that when something bad arises or something bad happens you do not run away from it, avoid it or ban it. You do not forget it or shun it and pretend it doesn’t exist. You do not remove the scar, or botox the wrinkle. Instead you turn and you look at it. You look at yourself and see if their is a personal change that can be made. And continue to live on - aware of the bad, embracing the good.

When the couple could not conceive a child they did not allow it to cause a rift in their relationship; they did not resent each other and part ways. They did not stop trying. They simply changed their way of life to allow themselves to heal. And even though there is no pain-alleviating cure...there is always love-making, there is always art, the outdoors, there is always vino and there is always marijuana

Eventually, after 16 weeks of donut drama, the “Molly Sees Donut Ban Proposition” was thrown out. The townsfolk were tired, and they were tried. They were also very... very hungry.

At this, the couple and their Molly Sees finally regained some peace and peace of mind. There are moments though... inevitable moments... where the man and the woman think to themselves whether they really did make a change, or whether they too were running away.

Stories in 15.

xoLo

Fact: Canadians consume the most doughnuts in the world, and Canada also has the most doughnut stores per capita.

What we see when we walk at night

2010-01-30T14:48:00.000-08:00

I am obsessed with orange streetlamps. I love their colour and what they do to the landscape at night. I remember them most vividly, lighting a million 2 a.m. bike rides, a million 4 a.m. walks. I don't ever remember seeing them come on...I guess I wasn't that observant. It was as if they appeared suddenly the minute the sky turned bruise purple, glowing in that silken, all-embracing way that made you think of cream or baths or mosquitoe nets.

I'm trying to make an inventory of how my history has shaped my character so far. If it is even possible to be methodical about this kind of endeavour, then I think the orange streetlamps are a good place to start. I can't remember my birth and so much of my childhood is such a jumble. I kind of marvel when people recall their histories with such detail...which TV shows they used to watch as kids, their sixth birthday party, their fifth-grade science project. I mean, I have those things, but I don't really remember them...it's like all the meaningful events have been squeezed to more recent history, like squishing the toothpaste to the top of the tube. It could be that I was just an unusually unaware child, but I don't think sp. I like to think that melancholy people are generally more observant or, at least, more self-aware, and I was a pretty melancholy kid. At least, I think I was. Again, jumble. All of it.

But the streetlamps. I see them again and again and I find that on the nights when I can't sleep, I am chasing them, wanting that peace back.

-I

Phonies

2010-01-29T06:44:00.000-08:00

Last night I pretended that she didn’t exist, looking right through her and into the crowd. I saw the bar stool behind her and the friend standing next to her… but I chose not to see this person. Normally I’m better than this. I do not do this kind of thing. I rather be kind and casual, cool and collected. And say hello to a person who once was a friend. “Friend.”
Instead I pretend like you don’t exist, because if I didn’t I’d be faking a person that isn’t me. I did not want to say hello. So I did not. And clearly you got the hint when I deleted you from Facebook. How trivial we’ve become when the status of Facebook friendships effect a person’s outlook. Alas, I rather be real and have fun, then be, as Salinger so faultlessly put it, a phony.

We’ll miss you JD.
xoLola

ps. I must admit, once you have money, you like to spend it on nice things. I'm not yet a "brand whore" but one in training. And I've got the best showing me the way. This does not make me phony... it simply makes me human. And therefore "real." Syntax, syntax, syntax.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art

2010-01-27T12:43:00.000-08:00

How often are relationships plagued by random untrue shit you say during their early conception period? It’s not even as if you’re intending to lie to the person. No, it’s more like you’re just too desperate to have something in common that you lose perspective of the truth. “’Don’t Forget Me?’ I love that RHCP song! It’s my favourite of theirs” and you think to yourself “No it isn’t. What the hell am I talking about?” But you have to go with it. Because admitting to a lie this early in a new relationship is suicide. And it’s not a bad song. Not in the least. So who cares?

It’s situations like these that make me really question how well I know myself. Kind of like when you have a really fucked up dream. That's YOUR brain right? But which part? Not one I’ve ever seen before...

So I tend to go along with these semi-untrue things when they come out, because they must be semi-true as well, correct? Otherwise, how could I have said or done them in such a Freudian manner?

But when these things are hard to keep up, really hard... then you have to consider that maybe you made a mistake. A fluke. You were pretty nervous after all. A pinch drunk too perhaps?

To unveil this a bit... I always want to start off new relationships with unwavering confidence. Because what’s hotter than that, right? I want to march right up, tell the person what I think, and where to meet me. But after they meet me, and give me their number... well then what? Text them when I'm ready... a year later? And if they miraculously reply to that post-dated text, and are still free for a beer.... WHAT THEN? What then?- When a year has gone by and you no longer feel that fluke of confidence you did when you were (for example)... thinner, with soft brunette hair, and dressed to the nines. Especially when back in those days you weren’t any of those things for their sake. It was for someone else. For the ghost. The elephant in every room.

Des

Doesn't need anyone to tell her she's insecure. Thanks.

Karaoke Machines and Gossip Queens

2010-01-26T18:52:00.001-08:00

There's something quite telling about the lyricist of "I want you to want me."

Not once in this song does it simply say, "I want you."

The opening Cheap Trick riff came on during a Girltalk song as I was running on the treadmill. And while I was guiltlessly wishing the entire song would just play, the mash up continued on. Regardless I continued singing in my head, "shine up your old brown shoes... put on a brand new shirt...etc" And my mind wandered... naturally. Leading me to this short, but rather psychologically explorative observation.

Think about it.

xo Lo

ps. My last post had a beautiful title (re: "Children of the Corn"), but I sucked it up and deleted it anyways because it was malicious and I'm a guilty catholic. I'm going to stop talking about people (those that I love and those that I dislike). I avoided it for a long time then the nasty habit rubbed off on me. And for that I apologize. Oh, and I'm not placing the blame for my bad behaviour on the influence of others... I take full responsibility. That is all.

"I'm skeptical, but happy" (-via txt msg.)

2010-01-24T12:04:00.000-08:00

I just went flying down the stairs.

I was wearing my leather boots with competent traction, I wasn't running or skipping, rather walking at a steady, yet efficient pace. Therefore, my falling was no fault of any of my actions, but more-or-less a fluke. But I don't really believe in flukes. Do you?

Any other person would have broken their collarbone... perhaps twisted their ankle... fractured their wrist, or at the very least broken a nail. But after a serious wind-knocking, I picked myself up, dusted myself off, fixed my bangs and proceeded to my pre-determined destination. For a woman who doesn't consume much dairy, I barely felt a thing. Am I unbreakable? Sometimes, it quite possibly seems that way.

But the troubling part for me however, is not the ominous possibility that the outcome could have potentially been quite worse, but the very fact that it happened at all - that I fell. The act itself is frightening. It just goes to show that no matter how careful you are, no matter how much you work to prevent "bad" or "wrong" things from happening, they can happen anyways and they will. Maybe we even want them to.

I'm reading Chuck Klosterman's latest book of essays "Eating the Dinosaur" and as usual, his words flow through my mind, as if they were my own. I can't believe how similar our ways of thinking are... I even identify with the spills and the orders of the stream of consciousness of his digressing asides and footnotes. I guess guys named Chuck just get me. (Chuck K, Chuck Robertson, Charlie Brown etc. etc.)

I was actually pleased to discover Chuck (K) had finally married. I thought to myself, "Well I'll be, there's hope for someone as analytical and as married to their writing, as I am to find true meaningful, sparks flying love in the form of courtship afterall." See, Chuck isn't one to marry just any old broad. I believe that Love (and LIKE for that matter), like happiness or sadness is not something you decide or decide based on a need for fucking (like an overwhelming number of divorcees - not to judge or anything)... Love/Like is something you feel involuntarily. It can evolve, but generally, it just happens. It conducts internally. Chemically. It's not in the control of the mind, but of the blood pumping through the heart. And I've seen this. I've seen this in some family and friends who I know feel real love. It's unfolded before my eyes. It's nice.

In several moments in "Eating the Dinosaur" Chuck contemplates "why" we do things... why we say things. What's it all for if it's all generally purposeless? Why do we talk? Why do we flirt? Why do we make jokes? Etc. Which got me thinking about why I blog, especially since somepeople may read this and react like, "shut the fuck up." So I must explain something right now. Why do I blog? It's not like an overwhelming number of people read this thing? Well firstly I love writing, and I blog usually because something's spilling from my mind and it feels good to get it all out. So why not write in a journal? Purchase a personal diary? Why do I put it all out there on the web? The ether? Well I'm not wholly sure why I want my daily musings on the web, just in case people that "matter" are actually reading this. But if anything... it's fun because of that sheer possibility. You get me?

And I know I often have a tendency to be cryptic and use subtext and symbolism without actually saying what I mean... but I'm a film writer! And it's "funner" that way. If I came on here and just said what the deal is, and who it's about, well that's boring. I like the fact that saying "The tree is going crazy right now since I've avoided watering her" - I like the fact that some random could possibly stumble upon that line and boggle their mind trying to interpret it. I'm still trying to interpret it! What's life without interpretation!? It's fucking white walls and beige tile. It's 90 cal breakfast bars. It's ill-fitted dockers. It's women name "Star" and "Skye." It's lame.

As an aside - people usually don't water trees right? Usually it's a natural process, and mother earth gives rain to save the trees from their thirst. That adds a whole other layer of meaning to the line above. Just something to think about.

I'm going to be overtly and ridiculously cryptic for a moment. Indulge me. Some decisions are not that easy. Some decisions involve innumerable factors. They involve tiny little pills that some of us do and do not swallow. But regardless if we do or don't, we will still fall down the stairs. That possibility never goes away. And eventually I will fall. And it will hurt really bad. Well, MAYBE it'll hurt.

There's a sweater I find irresistible. I've probably said in the past that I dig this sweater. I'm looking forward to the possibility of wearing this sweater. Maybe even this week. But at the same time I'm not going to wear it. I know this.

What does it mean when someone says, "I'm skeptical, but happy?" I think it means they're starting to realize I'm not the ideal candidate at all, but still a nice person. As long as I'm still nice.

My laundry's ready!

- Lo.

(If I move a certain way... my collarbone actually throbs. But only a little. :)

Let's not and say we did

2010-01-22T06:14:00.000-08:00

I wonder if some of us (or any of us for that matter) are capable of some sort of witchcraft?
No matter how many teen dramedies or pages from antique literature boast that old, rather unexciting adage, "be careful what you wish for" I can't help but wake up many a morning and think to myself - not how easy magical powers would make my everyday routine; I wouldn't want magical powers - but how having the ability to exercise some untapped personal potential for the sake of my own benefit, for the sake of getting my way, how intrinsic that would actually feel. I guess, in the sheer sense of it all it is magic… or witchcraft.

I watched the Eastwick pilot last night, a 2009 ABC adaptation of John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick. It was surely nothing spectacular, but in its moments of sentiment and whimsy, my warming reactions reminded me just how special a reverence for an internal belief in magic truly is. It’s that jovial power that one-ups all those who’ve allowed their youthful soul (the part of them that is able to believe) slip through the cracks, like disposable particles of insignificant matter. I’d like to believe that if I hold onto this and nourish it, I could very well use it to my advantage – for the purposes of ambition. And yes, I am forewarned by the various media of storytelling that ambition can be a dangerous thing. I’ll keep it in check.

I found out recently that there is a woman in my hometown who believes my mother is communicating to her through a painting. It sounds outrageous, sure, but if this is what she needs to believe in to feel what she needs to feel, then I believe in it too. I told my dad and his response was a plain and simple, “really?” But I could tell by the tone in his voice that he was grasping onto some sort of belief too.

And again, I digress. One subject morphs into the next. It’s just the way I am.

- Lo
Honesty circle: Sometimes I find Paul Gross oddly sexy.

"I saw a fox this morning. And I had to tell you"

2010-01-20T18:46:00.000-08:00

Think about old friends. Not lifelong old... but old. Toronto old.

I'm starting to realize maybe who I thought I knew, who I thought I trusted isn't who I really know... and who I really trust.

I have a friend... I used to give her a hard time because I didn't feel like we meshed very well, like we'd be friends beyond our circumstance. But every time I see her now she's like... sunshine. Yes, sunshine! She's like really real. And she likes what she likes, and she is the way she is because that's the way she is and she doesn't hide it. And we're all balls of insecurity but she really isn't as insecure as everyone makes her out to be. I actually think she's a lot stronger then most of my female friends. And she's hilarious and precious. And I love knowing she's close by. I love sharing my day with her. I love how she doesn't judge me and my weird quirks and disorders. And if she does I love how she doesn't show it. I love it.

And then there are my new friends. New friends that feel like old friends. That say things like, "OH! I remembered what I had to tell you! I saw a fox this morning." It's bizarre how you can know a person for such a short period of time and they feel like your family. They get you and it's just comfortable to eat lunch with them and muse about every babe and every bitch and every bad thing. It's honest. I love how I can meet a person and within an hour of knowing them I can share my saddest secrets and I trust them to value them - and vice versa.

I've also realized that I don't have one male friend (besides mon père et mon frères) who's as honest or as true as any of these ladies. In fact, it's probably my fault as I don't take any of my male friendships seriously. Does this make me a bad person?

Perhaps it's a complex, as I do not sincerely trust any of my male "friends." This has likely been and will be the challenge of any and all of my romantic encounters. I shun commitment to any male-female bond, whether platonic or sexual. There's too many politics involved, and maybe I'm the one creating half of the spiderwebs, and for that I am the one perpetuating these politics clearlymaking me an incompetent politician. It's hypocritical of me to say I hate flirty guys because "tease" is basically tattooed on my ass, but I don't like flirty guys... and yet I don't like it if they won't respond to my flirting. Perhaps further, my problem is the fact that I am slating all guys - guy friends and guy randoms - all under the "they" category. And who's ever really a fan of "they" anyways?

I realize this post is rather bland and unimaginative. It's more of a cluster-fuck of miscellaneous thought probed by the sentimental tunes I am listening to, and the conversations I've had with good friends as of late... but I just needed some written catharsis before I fall asleep to the passing cars outside my window and the poems of Robert Burns.

Sleep tight y'all.

L. Anarcha. N.

One block, two block, red block, blue block

2010-01-17T11:24:00.000-08:00

The sky says it's magic hour. The suburban street is quiet; no kids playing in the front-yard, no fathers mowing the lawn. The rubber wheels of an old bike make a grip skip sound as they roll across the pavement. Shallow puddles from yesterday's rain in patches on the road, splash up, almost elegantly.

PF Flyers don the feet that engine the pedaling of the bike. Size 9s. The wheels turn at an even pace, the rusty spokes spin like the beams of a ferris wheel - smooth, steady. On time.

They turn and turn, and turn onto a patch of street blocked off by construction signs - road work seized until Monday morning. A piece of rubble, ashphault debris flings up from underneath the rubber, and the wheel swerves sharp. No longer is its roll in sync over the pavement, but completely helter skelter. And the entire bicycle falls diagonally. Gracefully and in slow motion. The metal masterpiece clanks sideways to the ground.

Henry Lincoln lies on the road, his legs tangled in the bike. Blood trickles from his eyebrow, dirt buff on his cheeks and palms. After a moment he opens his eyes. Black and neon dots of light sprinkle the darkening sky. He blinks them away. He doesn't groan, but it looks like he's trying to - desperate to release the pain of what will be a mass of bruise and scrapes on his outer thigh.

Water builds up in the corner of his eyes. He manages to lift his arm, reaching over his right shoulder grabbing at the black strap that fastened his guitar case to his back. The strap falls loose from his grip, frayed at the edge - snapped off from the body of the case. He closes his eyes.

***

It's dark now and the porch-light of nine seven J.M. Barrie Lane goes on, a glow already filtering out from the front bay-window of the two-story. It's warm inside.

Henry Lincoln stands alone in the garage, unzipping the black case. He pulls out his Gibson acoustic by the neck which is no longer attached to the body of the instrument. He touches one of the broken strings. There's two that snapped - B and E.

"Twang." He plucks at it and the sound physically hurts him.

Moments later he's inside, standing in the doorway of the dining room. The house is neat, breakable, but not ivory tower. There's a meal set out on the table, untouched. "Pasadena Pantry Bistro" printed sans serif on the serviettes.

Henry creeps into the living room, and sees his twelve year old sister Kelsey lying on her stomach in front of the tv, her face planted in a geography text. He watches as she covers the page of the book with a paper and begins to recite the inscription on the page from memory.

"Plate tectonics is a theory which describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere. It is vital for the existence of life on earth because of the role that it plays in the global cycle that maintains the balance of carbon between the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere...'

Henry shifts his weight and Kelsey looks behind, noticing him lurking.

"It's cold. And there's meat in everything." She turns back to her book, rather bland.

"...A similar process likely takes place on other celestial objects when they are sufficiently similar to Earth. The theory builds on the older concepts of continental drift, developed during..."

***

A beautifully made up women in her mid-forties, business casual, begins packing up the dining table. Henry walks back into the dining room and sees her. She's uptight, kurt. He always finds himself staring at her haircut, her Kate Gosselin hair cut. And her ass.

She's nearly his step mother by common-law. He can't stand her, but still jerks off thinking of her. He really CAN'T. Stand Her.

She sees him and pauses for a second. Her face displeased. Her clenched forehead saying, "glad you finally decided to show up."

He looks away uncomfortably, trying to wipe his thoughts from his mind, and then back at her without much success.

She sees he looks like shit, but continues packing up the table - which by definition involves an open garbage bag and her tossing everything inside. Without care.

Henry flinches. Now he can't stop wondering why she orders so much meat, when she's such a calorie-counting freak. Meat. She likes his meat.

"Where's your brother?" she asks. And POP goes his thought bubble.

Henry shrugs... "And dad?"

"Away," she says.

Silence. "How was yer--"

"Take this out." She shoves the garbage bag into Henry's arms and walks out. Boy, does she leave a chill.

He stands there disheveled. What a bitch.

***

In the middle of the night, lights out, Henry's under the covers in his bedroom beating off to the thought of his near-step mother's Kate Gosslin haircut.

The knob of his bedroom door turns and he stops abruptly. Hard as fuck.

A dark shadow stumbles in, drops a knapsack at the bedside and collapses onto the twin bed across the room. His brother's home and he's wasted.

Henry turns onto his side, stares out the window, then closes his eyes praying to sleep easy. The thought of his broken guitar enters his mind... his broken bike left at the construction site. His brainwashed little sister. His where-in-the-world old man. His deadbeat brother, and his cunt near-step mother.

Nope. Sleep won't come easy tonight.

Lola

and these random little stories.

Étienne says, "Être is to be"

2010-01-16T08:19:00.000-08:00

I went for a long walk this morning to the market, a daily routine. It was 8 am and overcast and I was listening to the Beatles. It's going to be a Beatles kind of weekend, I can tell.

So "Don't Let Me Down" comes on and I'm already feeling rather introspective. I'm thinking about the moment I learned how to spell the word "earth"; it was on a Speak n' Spell and I was at my cousin's house on my cousin's couch. And my eyes are wandering at the muddied leaves flattened to the ground, and the romance of the park benches... chipped and wooden with rusty fasteners. I'm not wearing any makeup, just a touch of mascara and I feel like one of those hipster girls who are fresh-faced, with chunky glasses - ironically beautiful 'cause they're ugly (...in that conventional sense).

Suddenly I see something bright, a dulled shine within the leaves. The rhythm of my internal beat is muted by an inner monologue. I no longer hear the Beatles, but the rant of my perpetual conflict with humanity and morality. This always happens when I see discarded condoms on the ground. In this case, a discarded condom wrapper. "People fuck in parks," I think. "What kind of a person fucks in a park?" And I ask this with genuine curiosity - in no way is it tinged with judgement... Just confusion and wonder.

There it goes, my mind spinning out of control about sex and what it is and what it means and where it happens. "And we're all just a bunch of Neanderthals. Cave men. Our bodies control our minds. We want it. We need it. We thirst and we hunger. But it's not a bad thing. It's just an eternal truth. Robotics will not numb our desire for orgasm... it will only assist it by artificial means. Perhaps in time, make it last longer... And then maybe I'll understand the fuss more thoroughly.

I just wish we weren't so obsessed and preoccupied by it. No. I don't wish that. And I don't wish that for you. Go ahead... be a rabbit. Meet up at midnight, do it on your lunch break. Kiss and peck and say goodbye, until you punch in and punch out and can do it all again. Meaningful or meaningless. At the end of it all, I should worry only about me. Worrying about the sex-obsessions and hormones of others is not my desire, my passion, nor is it my duty or calling. My calling is my work and my work just happens to be associated with the Idiot Box. The silver screen. These devices that use light and sound to convey image, slung together only to form story and teleport these sex-obsessed to other worlds. And when you strip it down to its barest of bones... my purpose is to make people get off by these mirages of light, sound and this 21st century zoetrope formation of story. I'm not referring to pornos... I'm referring simply to the mainstream and the indie. Everything is for the purpose of getting off... not directly in a clitoral or penile way, but simply to feel good. No - to feel something."

As I come to the end of this rant inside my head, I near closer to the condom rapper... And naturally I look down at it to check the brand, for obsessive compulsive curious purposes... And when I do I see that it says "Twinnings."

Well look at that. I lost my shit over the wrapper of an English Breakfast tea-bag.

"Oh," I think to myself.

And within a few moments of dead-air, my mind's on fire again. This time about the irony that I just assumed the wrapper was from a condom, because apparently, like the rest of the world, I am so sex obsessed.

I turn up the volume on my ipod touch, and hope that John and Paul can silence the violence in my mind.

xo Lola

goes jambay.

Daughter Earth

2010-01-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

It’s simple see, on simple seas.
Simple trees and simple breeze.
But simple she, can’t simply be
From simple she to simple we.

Cuz simple she, is only free
If simple he’s across the sea.
Cuz simple he plus simple she
is tearful, choking, black and bleed.

So simple she, lives simply be
With wind and sand,
And birds and sea.

And she does love
But simply see,
Inner demons
deaf her plea.

There she lies
by simple sea.
Alone with Mother Earth she be.

xo
Lo
goes acoutic.

When life gives you lemons

2010-01-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade
make lemon waves
and ride the top of the crest until you see
how moonlit the terrain can be
how bright and star-dust smooth the dunes are
how even though I may think it is all your fault
it isn't.

Yours,

I

He brings his hammer, he brings his nail.

2010-01-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

Everyone's always talking about the weather. And if there's one thing that depresses me it's such talk. Have we nothing deeper to speak of? Are we that afraid of sharing our actual feelings about the day, about our current state of mind, that we concern so much of our human interaction with calculable musings of the dropping temperature, possible precipitation, and unseasonable flurries. That with each morning we greet - "weather" is our go-to topic of choice... almost programmed to sound from our flapping jaw at 9:07am. Stranger-friendly and fire-safe.

Yes, it is cold this time of year. I am fully aware, I was just outside. I know it's cold. Can't you see the blood running from the break in the pink of my lip? The black pond forming at the corner of my eyes. I'm black and red and cold all over. Can't you see it? My cheeks are not a natural shade of rose.

He brings her flowers now.

Twenty-five Augusts past, and he brings cut stems, tied in a bunch with string.
Set on six-feet of frozen mulch.
Hard as nails, spading in the vase.
What a sight. Perfect white on bricks of dirt. Snow bleeding over wheat-colored blades of grass... survivors from the fall.

Ordinarily, worms and insects say disgust - but the thought of a winter bug, winter life scurrying down above her is actually quite comforting. An unlikely comfort. But I grasp onto it.

He brings her flowers now.
Now that's it's cold and buried deep and down and underground.
This isn't a plea for lovers to seize the day, to throw rose petals at every step.
Nor should you rethink any mention of the chill out the door, or the frost on the windowsill.

See he brings her flowers now,
but he planted them with her then.

And the cold will always be cold. And when it's cold we will always say it's cold.
We'll think it to ourselves, and we'll say it to each other. And it will help make things comfortable.
And although it will make our morning interaction easy - warming us into the swing of the routine of our days - know that I will feel a slight discomfort. But only for a moment. A flash of every other memory in a blink of an eye.
Cause I will think of those memories where it is always cold. Where seeds cannot be planted, where flowers cannot sprout up and out, and see the sun.
Where there are no bugs in winter. But, oh how I hope there are.

xo
el oh el eh
Moment of the day - While assembling Ikea furniture, morning shots with Pa.

Bare your teeth, show your bones

2010-01-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

It is dangerous to live a life ruled by subtext.

For one thing, you spend an inordinate amount of time thinking "Fuck, is she talking about ME?"

Call it occupational hazard or character quirk or paranoia, what have you, but do not call it benign. It's like living in a medieval Japanese royal court: a knot twisted means devotion, a knot tied means distrust, violet for the virginal and deep plum for the shamed. What do you say? What do you hear? You ask me why we don't speak the same language when we do, the symbols and meanings amuck in a crossword unsolveable. Nothing correlates but for the deepest wavelengths and who has the time de-riddle that riddle?

New Year's Resoltuion #9384985: speak plain, write poetry, breathe somewhere between the lines.

Yours,

Oil Can goes "Squeak, squeak, squeak."

2010-01-07T19:19:00.000-08:00

"Beauty marks?"

"A couple... in quiet places."

"I never look at myself like that. It scares me"

"I like knowing where my freckles are. But knowing what you look like is only half the battle."

"Wise."

"I pose a question. How can somebody that knows themself so well, so sickeningly well, not have the faintest suspicion of who they'll be with? ...That is to say that they'll ever be with anybody. I can't see him, for the life of me, I cannot see his face."

"He's probably just around the corner. Up the block. Parking his bike. Getting FunDip at the Avondale.
I knew this girl once and she had her first kiss in grade 11, and the dude that kissed her became her first boyfriend, her first fuck. And it was all within the same week. That's seven days in grade 11. So, here's to clarity."

"I lack.
Sometimes i have completely different perspectives on the same issue, given the hour of the day it is. Does that make me crazy? There's this guy - Cadence, and when it's the light of day my head thinks clearly. I know we're only friends and as much as I do find him attractive in that wounded, pouty, I write songs and draw ppictures and have these orgasmic calluses - we don't fit. He's not for me. I'm definitely not the girl for him. ...But when the night rolls around, all of my clarity, all of that assurance flies from my brain, and all I'm thinking is 'why not?' Why not indulge if my body wants his?

And I know the me during the day is the one I believe, the one that's telling the truth. The one at night is just lonely. And that's not to say my night-time me would have anyone... cuz she wouldn't at all. Cadence is special. But he's not mine to be special with. It's not real romance... it's the desire for real romance. You don't actually like me... it's your desire to like someone... In another life, we could have melted from pages of poetry. But not this one. And maybe, even still, I will contradict myself. I will be a hypocrite... and betray me - morning me... day me... afternoon and evening me. And I will fall into you. But know this, I am trying not to."

"Because?"

"Because of the way it'll make me feel. During. Afterwards. Later on. When I see him. When I see everyone. When I see Jack."

"I wish I had some advice to give."

"I don't need advice, I need will power. I need to control what inhibits me. I need to run for the hills when I feel my loins burning for Cadence."

"If they're burning, it means something."

"Yeah. I'm 22 and healthy."

"They burn."

"Falsely. It's the same battle, different day. Distraction. Something to do before sleep, after a movie. Not in the light of day."

"You wank about him?"

"Yes"

"I knew it."

" ...Did you know I used to feel guilt about the very act of self-pleasure. I seriously felt my heart ache with painful regret. Catholic self-punishment. It's inescapable. I was near tears. I'd pray. ...But I digress."

"So if he gets you hot, why not?"

"Why not? ...Why not? The ever-conflicting, never-ever-ending question.
At first, my answer would have been, "his yuppie ex girlfriend, the girl upstairs, and the girl down the hall who's deeply, madly in love with him and will never be happy without his love, but will never admit it and keeps repressing it... and maybe he knows it, and she'd hate me for it. And spit at me for it. And so be it.

But the reasom is not any of these girls. And they are merely girls regardless of their experiences."

"Him, then?"

"Me.

...I feel like I'm flattering him by having this conversation with you about him. And that pisses me off. Because as much as I mention him, it has nothing to do with him. It's me.

Patience. I must remind myself of patience."

"So you're holding out?"

"It's not 'holding out' if you don't want to.
I'm not saying it right. I'm not saying what I mean. I mean,
it's not that I don't want to... or that I'm holding out... but there's circumstance involved. If I did it in grade 11 like your friend from that brilliant story you shared with me earlier, it wouldn't matter as much. But it's different now. And I don't care if you don't see the difference. Or you choose not to see it. I feel the difference. ANd you must know what it's like to feel different.
I just want to stay this way. I want to stay this way until my heart flutters.

Don't laugh.

It's not funny.

I'm not telling a joke.

I'm being serious. A hundred percent serious. Cause anytime I've ever kissed someone I think, 'but why can't I feel anything in my heart?'

You know what that feels like?

Empty.

Like fucking tin-empty. Like a tin man without his oil. Premium oil to squeak squeak squeak and set me free from the imprisonment of these rusted, aching, unmoving walls.
...Maybe Jack's got the oil? Maybe Jack is the one?"

"You think so?"

"I don't know. It's not like I can see him... Or picture us together.. But if it is Jack... I wouldn't be surprised."

"Maybe 2010 will bring some answers."

"Maybe. But I'd probably benefit from knowing the questions first."

***
A conversation by Lo, in 15.
Inspired by: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_fGxeUVhfY
***

A quote by Shel Silverstein:

"When I was a kid — 12, 14, around there — I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls. But I couldn't play ball, I couldn't dance. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style; I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price, and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit."

At least I know someone in the world feels what I'm feeling.

Tennessee Williams

2010-01-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

"They're like mosquitoes," he says of his parents, "they suck your blood and then they die... And you're left with this irritating swelling; inevitably the residual effect of everything they did and said to you, good and bad, that results in all that is fucked and twisted and sick as shit about how you think... No - How you feel."

He pauses. Ashes out his Dunhill, and rips the seal of his juice drink. Always Presidents Choice.
He continues.

"See, I don't believe that we think. I believe there is no such thing as thinking. We only feel and then act in accordance to those feelings. It's all semantics. Cuz thinking is merely a synonym for feeling. Even facts. We don't think of facts, we just repeat them after we learn them. And learning's just hearing.
Anyways, words mean nothing. They're make believe."

The wind howls. The flurries of snow no longer doddle around us, now sweeping against my cheek in little bites.

"But, that's another lesson in life's little scheme." He coughs. His throat, horse.

I'm not really looking at his face, but I can see his expression in the way his voice sounds. I look at the snow on the roots of the tree below us and wonder if it'll stay packy like that, clinging to the naked oak. "That's not real juice. I mean, there's no nutritional content, " I say.

"Hair of the dog my friend." He stares me down. "Listen. She's not worth it, trust me. Her name's fucking Kaylee. Hold her hand, and she'll snap like a twig with a weak name like that. What does she believe in? Chupa Chups and acetone?
Your parents rather you date Wonderbread? Fine. I get that. We're all a bunch of fucking redneck homosexual incestuous bigots. But at least date a girl- Someone with strength. With will."

There's a long pause. My nose is running onto my lip and it tastes salty.

"I like her."

He shakes his head. He doesn't believe me one bit.

"She's okay, really." I repeat myself.

"Don't just do it cuz you think you have to. You can't fuck yourself cool Tom."

I finally look up at him. Glare at him.

"Don't look at me like that," he barks, "I don't look for it - that Malcom X 'cool pose.' I don't check my swagger in the mirror, or whatever they're calling it.'"

At that, all I'm thinking is how he's right. He's cool by nature. That's probably why he's cool. My head jumps thoughts and I flinch, "You just said words are meaningless And now you're judging the girl's name. Something that was put on her."

"That's different."

My eyes say, "how?"

"Names aren't words."

The shake of my head says, "explain."

Begrudgingly he begins,"Names are a person's soul in sound. In calling. Names say something, whether a person acts like or unlike what it evokes. Names tell something about a person, about who they're fucking father is. Names like Samuel, Jubilee, Max, Marcus. Tennessee fucking Williams - now that's a name!
...You don't want a breaking twig Tommy. You want 50 years in 16. You want a tree."

"A tree?"

"A force of nature."

I nod. He smiles big and I can't help but feel warm in this negative 15. It is, afterall, something I don't see often.
I came to the right buddy for advice. And I think he likes that, the way it makes him feel. And the thing is, I didn't even have to ask. He just knew.
And I think to myself: 'he's my friend, but he feels more like my brother.'

***

*Stories in fifteen minutes by
xo Lo*

If I could name apartment #9 anything? Tennessee Parton.

Long live and live long

2009-12-31T14:02:00.000-08:00

I love lists. I hold grudges. I write them down.

My list of the top ten comments I wish I had said in 2009:

10. You are among the worst people I have ever met and had I not been horny and lonely when we first met, I would've never become friends with you. You are an untalented, unfunny, ungrateful loser and I feel sick to my stomach for giving you the time of day. It was a momentary lapse in character on my part and it will never happen again.

9. I don't understand why you insisted on becoming something so artificial. I call it 'artificial' not out of malice, but because your transformation hurts me and leaves me with one less person to trust. I love you regardless.

8. You are cool. Your significant other is not.

7. There is no reason for me to disbelieve you when you say you are happy, except that I feel in my gut that you are not. Stop insisting that happiness is easy. If it were, then you and I wouldn't be the people we are, and I kind of like who we are, but only when we're genuine.

6. How can I measure how grateful I am to you? I can't. Thank you.

5. Shut up. Stop talking.

4. I want you to leave her alone, to be present and to notice how much of her you've let slip through your fingers. You're repeating the same mistakes you made with me and you're too fucking ignorant to see it. I hardly love you anymore.

3. Your helplessness and your lack of responsibility pisses me off. Why is it that you're only a good friend when you're drunk? I don't trust you one bit.

2. I stopped talking to you because I stopped talking to a lot of people this past year. Also, you're boring.

1. You mean a lot to me and the only thing I fear is that I'll grow to resent you as I have so many other people that I love. You were the best thing about 2009. I'll never tell you this because I'm afraid this will scare you.

Yours,

I

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed time of character?
-H.D. Thoreau

Filmmaker

2009-12-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

It scratches the skin on my face... my neck... the palm of my hand and the tips of my fingers. I love holding my hand around your head and resting my cheek against your ear and feeling the pinch; you never shave this time of year. The time when you're caught in your thoughts. Caught in your imagination... brainstorming every shot, playing with every spoken word, and framing and reframing shapes and colors and sounds and silences. Leg and chest. Arm and shoulder. Right there. That curve of the neck....down to the back... the chest. You love how my hair looks when its up. The pearl of my earring. The touch of my ear.

A mattebox around the eye of your mind and I'm in front of the lens whether I like it or not. The all seeing, all hearing lens.
What am I wearing now? In this minute, this moment? I wanna wear that dress with the lace and the seqince... It reflects in the light. The same light sparkling in my eyes. I've always been obsessed with eyelight and you know this. I know you know this.

Your hand is warm on my waist. Take off your Wayfarer glasses and look at me. Kiss my eyelashes with your fingertips not your lips dammit.

Is the moment before not sacred anymore? What happened to courting? What happened to feelings? Real feelings? It's all masked by adrenaline and your blood.

Grab me a goddam typewriter and let me spill my desparation for romance on the page. I hate you. I love you. I don't believe you. I don't even know you. Shoot me. Shoot me on 8 mm. Let the emulsion burn my cigarette. Let the smoke spiral in swirls from my pouty lips through the air. And be violent. I'm violent. Passion is violent. And violence is violet. Ultaviolet.

I see my father in your eyes. When you raise your voice and threaten with your hand. I think it's your skinny ties and silly 60s hair. And it's sexy.

I take off your tie and leave on your undershirt. It's ribbed. And I feel you breathing underneath. Grand deep desparate breaths.

Shut off the lights and smoke in bed.
I could fall asleep to that sound. The chk chk chk and clk clk clk of the roll of the camera. It's a fetish thing I suppose - chiseled in my dna. everything sexual starts young whether we recognize it or not. these ideas are innate. internal. birthed. as thick, as thin as blood.
Let it bleed.

Chk chk chk. Clk clk clk. you hear it. I hear it. Close your eyes now.
We'll drown it out with the sound of the scene... I've always been a screamer.

Lo

It's Christmas time....in the ghetto....

2009-12-23T18:55:00.000-08:00

We're in the car, my father and I, driving along Kennedy Rd. and listening to a bouncy, reggae version of 'Silver Bells'. My dad has been listening to a CD filled with similarly-interpreted versions of Christmas songs (Jingle Bells with island swing, a Rastafarian Silent Night) and I kind of take it in stride because while he doesn't know Bob Marley from a doorknob, this is exactly the kind of music he would be listening to the day before Christmas Eve.

"Do you like this music?" he asks me after one of our many long silences.

"Uh...it's funny," I say.

"I got it from the black guy at the store. He sells them. I think he is the one singing."

"The black guy?" (Note: my dad works at an Asian supermarket in Brampt on that has a large Jamaican clientele and, so far as I know, an all-Asian workforce, so I'm wondering if there is either one specific black guy who works there, or else my dad is showcasing a Vietnamese knack for confusing his definite articles. I'm not even going to acknowledge any racist implications because I know there aren't any. Anyway...)

My dad says: "He set up a stand in the store and sells his music. He gave me a bunch of these CDs."

Long pause. Now we're a block away from our house.

"He gave you a bunch of THIS specific CD? Why?"

My dad shrugs. "I don't know. He's a nice guy."

In the span of about an hour, this and maybe another two minutes worth of material is all that we say to each other. If you find that sad, don't. There is nothing else to say. All the pertinent details are already known. I know that he will listen to this CD on his drive to work even after Christmas without thinking about it. One day he will get fed up with it (probably right after New Year's), turn it off and switch to 680 News or else some random song on the FM. He will probably give a few of those CDs away at our Christmas party raffle on Friday and if my cousin K gets one, she'll want to listen to it right away and laugh that braying, hysterical laugh of hers that's always more funny than anything she's laughing at. The CD will end up under car seats, in junk drawers, in basement crawl spaces gathering dust and cardboard shavings. There will be a copy kept at the supermarket (on the management office's communal CD rack, probably between Paris by Night 17 and God knows) to be played every holiday season until it is lost or too scratched or replaced with something else. And the black guy who gave it to my dad will take down his booth at the end of the holiday season and every time he comes in or passes by, he will say hi to my dad and be extra friendly to him because that's the kind of response my dad inspires in strangers.

Now I don't know if these things will happen exactly as I describe them, but I imagine that the actual events will be darn close. I guess I'm telling you all of this so that I don't take this kind of instinct for granted, just to reassure myself that although I often find my family mysterious and cruel, there are some details that are imprinted in my mental database that will always be there. Just like how the texture of snow is embedded in my skin and the smell of butter in a hot skill recalled by my nose, these are things that you just know. It kind of seems like a minor victory, but when we're swimming in so much that is unknowable, isn't it kind of great, kind of comforting, to feel like we own certain facts to such a degree that we can get at them without working at all? I think so.

Anyway, Merry Christmas.

Yours,

I

Mistletoe berries are poisonous.

A conversation.

2009-12-22T19:40:00.000-08:00

It’s 8:30 pm on a Tuesday. It’s a different kind of Tuesday - and I say that because it’s the Tuesday before Christmas Eve suddenly making this day not feel like every other mundane weekday, but one that’s infused with emotion. Hyper. Almost tense but in a good way.

The bar at the Rex is astir. A local favourite among Welland’s watering holes and pizza ovens, conceived from sweet love in the 1960s.

I’m sitting at the bar on one of those tall stools, with a leather cushion and brass buttons. My eyes are heavy and I feel warm inside. Insulated by the numbing buzz of Frangelico. “Frangelico, I love you,” I whisper to myself. I hold up my tumbler and whisper again, “Frangelico... I love you” puckering my lips and kissing the rim, as if we’re the only lonely in the room. Me and my liqueur in good company.

And we are in good company. Just waiting.

Finally he’s out of the bathroom and I see him from across the way, emerging from the hall. Look at him, so sharp in that button-down, in those jeans. He stops and says hi to an old friend. I can’t quite hear what he’s saying, but I bet it has something to do with the ponies on TV. About Blind Magic and Lucky Number Nine. “Beautiful breeds. I gotta dime and a half on this race,” I imagine him saying with that accent of his. That working class accent that makes me feel as warm as the Frangelico.

I love seeing him smile. I love the corners of his eyes, and how the lowlights above the bar glint in the center of his pupil. A twinkle. And then another. I can drown in those sad blue eyes.

Side by side, our arms brush against each other. Our elbows resting on the bar. Manners are not an issue with my man, and that’s only the base of the iceberg when it comes to why I love him. It’s actually below the base... it’s that deathly frozen part submerged miles deep within the sea. The sea, like the color of his eyes. You can just trust a person's eyes.

Bella Donna is playing on the juke box and all I’m wondering is when he’s finally going to talk to me about what he wanted to talk to me about. ANd what did he want to talk to me about? This is not usually how it goes. Usually I talk. He listens. I talk. He dreams. I talk. And he remembers.

But quiet he remains. Until...

“Eh, one more,” he says to the bartender, and nods to something 40 %. He never really knows when I’m drunk, but I’m drunk. And at this point I just like sitting with him. Feeling the warmth radiate from his skin, smelling the tobacco and the whiskey seeping from every pore on his five oclock shadow. If there was one scent that reminds me of him it’s tobacco and whiskey... And olive oil. Three scents.

And in that moment I become overwhelmingly sad at the realization that I might not be able to sit next to him like this again. No. That one day there will be a time where we won’t be able to sit together like this and just exist together. Breathing the same breath, feeling the same warmth, sharing the same drink. Same blood. Same body.

And then he turns to me and sees my tears. Sees my tears streaming down my cheeks, which are swelling up from the salt, and I look like a kid again. Mascara watering from my bottom eyelashes, melting away any attempt I made at womanhood.

He’s sad because I’m sad. And he knows why I’m sad without even asking, I can tell. Because I’m always sad about this. Since we both lost someone, we carry around this overwhelming fear that another person we love the most will leave too and never come back. We carry it in our heart - a ball and chain wrapped around the organ weighting us down. Our very own internal jail cell holding us captive, punishing past decisions.

“Dad,” I say, “You’re my best friend.”

And then he turns to me. He nods.

“You should go,” he says. “I think you should go.”

And that’s it. He holds up his glass as if to say, don’t beat yourself up kid. I clink mine with his and take a drink. A little pours down from the corner of my mouth, but I’m numb to the burn. The next time I drink I’ll be alone in New York.

xoLo

Christmas tradition: Violent films.

Deadbeat Cookery - Spicy Face Pasta

2009-12-14T14:45:00.000-08:00

For all of you herbal enthusiasts, this is a tasty, savoury way to enjoy your herbal-infused butter. Herbal.

INGREDIENTS:

pasta, frozen california mix, hot sauce, powdered cheese mix (optional), canned whole tomatoes (I like the No-Name brand stewed tomatoes, but any kind will do), salted butter, herb-infused butter, oregano, salt and pepper to taste.

Notice how there are no measurements? That's because you can put in as much of anything as you damn well want.

WHAT TO DO IN WHAT ORDER:

1. Bring pot of salted water to boil. Add pasta. I recommend using only just enough water to cover the pasta...this way you will avoid the tedious draining part before you can add the flavouring.

Nifty tip: Vegetable fusilli has the benefit of being both nutritious and colourful! You will definitely come to appreciate the second part.

2. Once pasta is done to your liking (i.e. al dente or mushymushy), add the frozen california mix.

(You can of course use any frozen vegetable you want, but ABSOLUTELY DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE use FRESH vegetables of ANY kind. This completely changes the chemistry of the recipe if you do, so God fucking help you if you do. You can use frozen peas or frozen green beans or frozen corn or even canned corn if you want to, I don't care, but if you even so much as CONSIDER throwing in a couple of fresh veggies, you might as well just stick your head in the oven because THAT'S how much it will change the recipe, I swear to God. I'm serious. This is not just some arbitrary rule I made up.)

3. Add hot sauce.

4. Add cheese sauce and/or oregano and/or salt and/or pepper.

5. Add butters. Mix well so that they melt, unless you pre-melted them in which case Good for You, Mr. or Miss Foresight! Here's a shiny fucking gold star to stick up your ass.

No, seriously, if you pre-melt the butters, that's quite impressive. Good job.

6. Simmer everything and add tomatoes. Simmer MORE!

7. Mix mix mix.

8. Pour into bowl and mangia, mangia!

There! Wasn't that easy? If you want to take it a step FURTHER and make this banquet-hall certifiable, you can throw it into a loaf pan, cover with bread crumbs or cheese or bacon or more FROZEN vegetables and bung it in the over at 350 until it's GOLDEN BROWN or DARK BLACK, whichever you prefer. That would be a good time to disable the smoke alarm.

Yours, as always,

I

Taste test all the solar flares available.

How to knit.

2009-12-13T08:07:00.000-08:00

There we were standing in the Dollar Emporium. In an isle that sells flashlights on one side and pregnancy tests on the other.

He was in a white tshirt, Fruit of the Loom with holes in the seems. And only a scarf flung around his neck to keep him warm. I was wearing my Zia Marie's petticoat. It was a size too big, but furry on the inside. It was winter afterall.

My eyes were focused on that scarf. So many little frays, so many bubbling loops where the needle strayed from pattern one too many times. Who made it, I wondered...

I couldn't take my eyes off of it. And not because it was beautiful, even though it was. It was because I couldn't raise my eyes. I couldn't meet his. A physical ethereal force wanted me to look up...and I was trying. He was going on about a time he bought prophylactics from an A&P and his mother found the receipt in the trash. So she snooped around his room, and behold, found the condoms in the first drawer she looked in.

"In a sock drawer at thirteen? How much of a cliche are you?" That's all I thought for a fleeting moment, but didn't dare say a word. I wanted the topic as far from anything that would make him think of my vagina. Or what I would look like without clothes on. Smell like... feel like...Oh Mother Mary help me.

He grabbed a yo-yo off the shelf. And finally we rounded the corner and there were the christmas decorations. I went on ahead, straight to the little glittery ornaments. I really did have a task.

Everything was made in Taiwan. But it was all I could afford. Plastic reindeer. Little horns. A holly green, or two. I had ten dollars that I took from the pocket of my father's Levi's earlier that morning.

I couldn't decide.

Finally, he came up beside me and put his hand on my shoulder, which I felt everywhere but.

He pointed over to the side, and picked up an ornament. A cherub.

Ha, cherubs. My mom used to pronounce them "cherUBE." I let out a giggle and put 5 in my basket. These would do.

"Who do you identify most with? Ebenezer Scrooge or Tiny Tim?"

It was out of nowhere, you see, but I just said it. The first thing that popped into my head.

He turns to me and says, “I’d consider myself a healthy balance of both.”

And then I knew.

And then he took me home.

But not my actual home.

xoLo

Whether it's my body, brain, or my craft, exercise makes me feel really good...

Alien

2009-12-11T17:32:00.000-08:00

I'm very happy.

Lo.

The first step to recovery is to admit that you have not failed anyone

2009-12-10T19:13:00.000-08:00

There's a part of me who wants to beg forgiveness for my ungenerous moments. That part of me is a pussy. Fuck generosity.

My problem is that what I mistake for generosity is actually a laying down of arms, of putting down the Magnum, lying on the sidewalk and being trampled by dirty soccer cleats. The world is full of ungenerous people, but the world is equally full of people who can't tell a good deed from a soft back, a moment of empathy from a fear of being yourself. I feel (and this is just a feeling, an uneducated opinion) that, in a way, Hilary Clinton was right: young people are lazy. Not in that they don't work hard at school or at their jobs. On the contrary, quite a few of us are almost pathologically ambitious, but it's not that kind of laziness that plagues us. It is an inner laziness, a spiritual laziness, an abject refusal to dig deep and question where our ideologies of self come from. Why do we feel the way we do? Why do we hate ourselves? Why is the ground beneath us made of such fine, crumbling sand?

There are often times where I watch people and I wonder if they see themselves for how they really are. This is presumptive of me, because of course who am I to judge someone's authenticity? But a lack of authenticity stinks of fear so strong you can feel it burn in your chest with pity or impatience depending on your mood. This is the kind of fear that leads us to be self-indulgent when it comes to the attention of others, that leads to indecision, inconsideration, incomplete answers to the question "Well, what do you want?" What do YOU want? Do you want status, a full Rolodex, a big loft and used condoms littering your walk-in closet? Well, I'll tell you, you can have them. No sweat. Well, a little sweat. And some time. But you will have them, if you want them. And there is no one in the world who is allowed to tell you that those are petty desires. But just because you've satisfied a desire does mean that you have filled yourself in any way.

Because there is a difference between Wanting and wanting. The difference is that the one kind slips into your veins so sneakily you might as well be breathing it; and the other is real. You Want that job, those tits, that man, whatever. But what you want is deeper, something you desire so badly that it becomes sacred and you don't say it because in a way it is obvious and in another way it doesn't need to be said. It is this desire that makes us human and relatable, but for whatever reason we've buried this want and adorned its casket with useless shit. We've distanced ourselves from our true heart's desire, and we are dying in loneliness because of it. The only real solution is to dig for it, not to placate ourselves, but to suffer in the name of discovering our name.

Make no mistake: this is hard work, it will not come easy, but when it does (or so I am promised) you will feel a peace that comes with true freedom. Someone out there is going to say "I know what I want. I want to be happy." That's barely scratching the surface. This is not a cry for treatises, it is a cry for introspection, not a cry for destinations but for journeys. And silent ones at that. Your want is silent, it is a feeling and I imagine you will know it when you know it. I will end with a thought I stole (and shall now paraphrase) off a chalkboard in front of a yoga studio:

Who would I be without this recurring thought?

Ungenerously yours,

I

If I were jar, I would be filled with...golfishes. The live ones, not the crackers.

NightBITCH before XMAS

2009-12-08T19:29:00.001-08:00

What's it like to look like you're from Nightmare Before Christmas everyday of your life? Stockings and bows and smokey charcoal eyeliner. The expensive kind. What do you look like under there?

What do you look like when you have sex? Doesn't your caked on makeup smear? What does your cum face look like? I'd be scared. Wouldn't you be scared having that raccoon bobbing over you... (or under you... whichever position you so incline...) Oh man, what do you look like in the morning? Remind me to replace my pillow cases if we ever find ourselves having sex in my bedroom. I imagine the dry cleaning costs are atrocious. Do you excuse yourself to wash your face? I'm not being mean. I'm just curious.

What's with these fetishes for grown up broads playing the little, lonely girl?

I stick a finger in my mouth and gag. GAG at the thought. Valenti's Purity Myth at example.

And why is everyone in such a hurry to shack up and play house? We're TWENTY TWO. We should be playing the field yo. We should be... we should be just starting our lives. Not settling down. Maybe some of us are more ambitious than others.

Maybe you're happy with your 9 to 5 and your stand up chap, polo wearing boyfriend and all of his pretty stacks of money. And your your lavish, indulgent, healthy parents and your bags and purses and smelly bath soaps you buy over the boarder and charge on credit. You like your life in the Niagara Falls don't you?

I'm being a bitch. I can be that sometimes. It's good to recognize one's own flaws. It's healthy.

I'm also hyper aware of everyone elses.

Lola.

B is for Birth of Christ, I is for Icicle, T is for Tinsel, C is for Candy Cane, H is for Holly

I am Daniel Day Lewis

2009-12-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

Don't believe me? That's cool. I'll just cut you out of my life then. It's easy. I do it a lot.

We're in a world made of sand. Zillions of particles. Breakable. Fragile. Impermanent.

Come together when they're wet, fall apart when the well's run dry.

I'm happiest when I'm submersed in a project. When I'm writing something and exploring the world and everything that's fucked about it, whether it be a blog, a children's story, a script or a friggin greeting card for my boss's jewish niece. "On your Batt Mitzvah. Blessings to you and a lifetime of happiness. Mazel Tov!"

I love writing.

And it's not the way some people love it. I mean, I'm writing something and loving that something as a true artist. Not writing a spec. Not writing for personal gain...For status.... For employment.

I'm talking about writing as a form of therapy. And don't stick your nose in the air when I say writing is an artform because it is. You know what i'm talking about. Why must we all commodify and capitalize on our hearts? Some of us are just more introspective then others. Some of us are homemade juice blends fresh from the backyard apricot tree, and some of us are Tang. Diet Tang. I don't trust Tang. Tang is always confused. Always a deer in headlights. Always such a scatterbrain. Always looking for more and more ways of proving themselves as a legit refreshment. Tang talks at people, not with them. Tang doesn't realize the world does not revolve around them. Tang, you piss me off when you're not even around.

Maybe Tang really doesn't want to quench thirsts? It's surely incapable of providing healthy teeth and bones. No matter how fancy the packaging, the stuff inside is still gross. I would not recommend Tang to any of my friends, family or coworkers. Go pure or go home.

Sophie's Choice is fucking me up. I've stopped making sense. I'm pretty sure I'm ranting about Tang, all because i'm becoming soemotionally charged by watching this film. Sophie is an insane character. So well written. SO well played.

Meryl Streep is a goddess. She is ethereal. She is divine. A master of the craft. THe Art.

I wish I had some sort of divinity like she has. Some sort of prodigious air. A Daniel Day Lewis degree of insurmountable awe-inspiring ways and wonders and talent. You can't fuck someone's talent. You can only fuck someone's desperation for talent.

If I could go to the cinema and watch films by myself everyday and then think about them afterwards over an Americano, while I scribble notes in my notebook and people-watch and dwell in my self-pity... Oh how lovely the afternoons would be.

I woke up extremely thrown off this morning. My father called me in the evening and I explain to him my woes. All he has to say is the simplest of words and they put my entire being back into perspective. I trust my father. I relate to him the most in this world because he is the only person I know who is in a similar position as I am, in a weird, difficult to describe in words kind of way.

One of my greatest fears is shattered glass. Glass breaking in my palm causing the skin on my hand to bleed in tiny little pieces all over. And if we're all just particles of sand, does that mean I'm afraid of the deterioration of togetherness? The breakage of something I hold close? I've been having these vivid dreams lately. Some are your everyday Salvador Dali surreal juxtapositions. And some are real. So real that I forget when I wake up that she is gone and when I remember she is not there, the wind is knocked out of me so literally. So real that it feels like yesterday I was eight years old and collecting the loose hairs from your neck. So real that I felt the black of your bruises, the scar on your chest against my ear, the smell of your breath on my eyes and the way your body looked collapsed in the shower, again in the doorway on the linoleum, and then in the kitchen on the floor, on the pavement of the drive. The way you look when they carried you away. The glaze of your eyes looking back at me like whatever snapped inside of you took away all of your memories and your knowledge. I was no one that you knew. It came to a point that everyone around you disappeared. Your eyes filled your little face and you blinked very slowly. Yellow building in every corner. Jaundice. Fuck jaundice. And all you felt now was this overwhelming desire to die. "Please God take me away. Take me away." You prayed to die. You were dying to die. And you know what, I prayed for you to die too.

There's this moment in Sophie's Choice where Stingo reflects on his mother's death when he was an adolescent. He says he didn't love her enough. Sophie says he probably did. But you can just tell that he didn't. When you're an adolescent you waste too much time on stupid silly stupid things and stupid people made of Tang. Distracted away from what's real and what's going on right before your eyes. And then one day you wake up and it's too late. She's looking right through you and right on into the other side wishing God or the Devil or whatever the fuck is out there would take her away.

The only thing I can do now is pretend I'm Daniel Day Lewis. But I'm not going to pretend because I know I am. Or at least that's what Im going to keep telling myself. So one day others will see Daniel in me too... And maybe even she'll see it. Because for some reason, we want so badly to live life to an unbelievable degree to honor those who are no longer with us.

Signed,

Lo (DDL)

(Im Italian and highly emotional to the point of self indulgence. Forgive me, kiss me, pray for me.)

Yellow label

2009-12-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

I love the No-Name brand
Because its labels lack nonsense
If the can says
GINGER ALE
(or, alternately,
soda au
GINGEMBRE)
then there is no question that what you'll get is
tssss!
ginger ale.
The same goes with
COLA,
Three-fruit
MARMALADE,
and, my favourite,
PANCAKE MIX.

No gimmicks or mascots
No talking toucans or ravenous rabbits or
enormously homosexual elves
To. The. Point.
No-Name
Without-a-name
Nameless.

If I had a No-Name Name
my label would read:

FEMALE, HUMAN
Contains one (1) serving
Ingredients: Water, bone, blood, muscle, fat, tissue, natural flavours
Nutritional Facts: Probably not as healthy as she could be, but you can do worse. Not a significant source of Vitamin A or Iron.
Product of Canada (with parts pre-assembled in Vietnam)
May contain traces of nuts.

On my back: everything above
only in French.

I only shoot at magic hour

2009-12-01T21:50:00.000-08:00

The dust at dusk
Is speckled-egg blue
Like the dirt that dusts
The face of the moon

You touch the blue dust
You've drawn on your hand
Blue lines. Solid? Fiction
It's a million-dot depiction
Like a Primavera made
From hourglass sand

Sun-starved little breaths!
Worry rots the soul
Of this sunset, this cerulean
Mid-moment air
The lights starts to die out
Mid-blazing
Mid-flare
Mid-thought I stop
My wonderings, I stare
At the sky, so large so I parse
Section by section
Breath taken, knees buckled
At such dusty perfection.

-I

414 - Wisconsin (work in progress)

2009-11-29T23:23:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I just don't believe Americans exist.

I'm going to let that sink in for a minute.

(1 minute passes.)

It's not
that I
don't
KNOW that they exist.
They exist.
I'm positive of that fact.
But facts are not beliefs, so...
while I
UNDERSTAND that
factually
there is such a place as the United States of America Ltd.
that there are inhabitants of this
factual.
nation.
and these
factual.
inhabitans.
do
, in fact,
exist....

But
belief.
That's a
WHOLE
different ballgame.

for belief is that misty-gauzy feel, that perfect cadence at the end of the movement on a foggy night
that dust you don't know sits in your lungs
that breath you lost...
....that first time you lost your mind....
.........in the blink of his eye....

Fact
, however,
is the shortest distance between
two
points.

Shut your fucking mouth

2009-11-27T14:06:00.000-08:00

Today is the National Day of Listening (I won't specify which nation). I am going to celebrate by locking myself in my room until I go see my therapist.

I've been keeping journals for a really long time. When I was younger, whenever my brother made me mad, I went into my room and wrote 'til the paper tore under the pencil. I hated my brother. He was a piece of shit. I can't tell you how many times I wrote down 'I hate **** so fucking much I want to fucking kill him'. If I were a boy, I probably would've gotten into a lot of fists fights. But I'm not. I wasn't. I was a girl. So I ripped paper and felt the bones in my head push against my skin until I could feel my blood pressure rising. I was eight. Seven. Nine. I wasn't even into two digits and I felt such profound rage, the kind that kills people inside out.

Don't you dare believe that women are liberated. They're only liberated on paper. Here is something that I truly believe: your sisters and your mothers and your wives and your girlfriends are WARPED. They have compound history weighing down on their brains, their husbands and fathers and mothers and friends slowly indoctrinating them to the point where they are fucking crippled by the mass of hysterical thought. Time has conditioned us to believe that we are inferior until that belief has become embedded into our genetic code. Now we are born insane.

Do you disagree with me? I walk down the street with my head down so I don't feel the overwhelming urge to spit on every passer-by. You fucking people turned me into what I am and now I have to undo everything while your forsake me for whatever fucking trinket you're after that day. You are all petty, selfish, ugly fucking people and I will hate you until either I die or this thought perishes. Fuck you. FUCK YOU.

i

Virulent, vicious, viper, vanguard, vortex, vork...vork?

2009-11-27T00:27:00.000-08:00

My elbows hurt when I type. They rest on the desk and I feel my whole weight on them. I feel bad for them, little knobbly things, they were not made, were not trained, were not prepared for such labour.

I'm in a mood. It's amazing how conscious I am of my moods, how I dissect them like fetal pigs. It isn't so much disagreeable as it is...repulsed. 'Disgusted' , a word I employ liberally. What disgusts me? God, what DOESN'T disgust me? I hate that I am being unconsciously molded into a type, that I have been unconsciously molded into a type...I take inventory of my beliefs and I find I disagree with them. There is no one to look up to, no one to emulate, just people to protect and people you're sick of protecting and people who demand your attention but say nothing new, nothing they haven't said before in another time and another place to another set of eyes and ears that have fallen off. That's infuriating. I walk around cradling and tripping over my guts, trying to fit them, clumsily, into a crevice, into a hole with some degree of order, but I rush and they all spill out again. Disgusting. What is self-awareness without self-absorption? What is self-possession without self-obsession? Must everything be so close to the surface? Must there be so much blood?

I feel too big for this head. Sometimes I empathize with my elbows. Sometimes I think I am not made for this. And other times, I think otherwise.

-I

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Quiet, shithole, the movie's starting.

You'll wash the dishes, then we'll have sex.

2009-11-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

It's American Thanksgiving. And although I am not American, today I've been constantly thinking about what I am thankful for. Most of all, I am thankful for that invisible, ethereal force of nature that is helping me do the right things at the right time in front of the right people. I am thankful for the current circumstances that compound my life. (And as a side note - I am incredibly thankful for my newest best girlfriend SMASH. She's intelligent and witty and as a friend quoted so eloquently, "she drinks whiskey like a champ";)

Something else that's on my mind? I don't want a boyfriend. And even more, I don't want to be anyone's girlfriend. I'm too much of a flaming feminist to revel in the idea of being the possessive to a male pronoun.

HOWEVER... there are some special and sweet and (excuse me while I make myself hurl) yummy dudes that make me melt when they describe these scenarios of what it can be like to be with someone.

I wonder if I can be with someone without "being there's." Or be with someone without us being each other's? Without having to talk all the time. Or be exclusive. Can't we just be with each other when we want to be?

I know what you're thinking...

It would get complicated right? It would never be able to work right? It'll get messy. There'll be heartache and negative thoughts, and other chics would definitely not approve.... of me with this guy. Of me and my flirtatious ways in general.

Back to Harry and Sally all things romantic go... Can men and women not only not just be friends.... but can they not have a casual intimate relationship without feelings and attachment not getting in the way?(excuse the double/triple negative).

C'est la fucking vie I suppose.

But I can see it. Can't you see it? It's so vivid and beautiful. And again, nauseatingly romantic with our hippie, barefoot, long haired, constant coitus, kind of ways.

So thank you (to whomever the Americans give thanks to... God?) Thank you for sweet boys... and hippie daydreams... and thank you for my imagination and how particularly overactive it's been lately :) Thank you.

Lola

*Drink of choice: Special Old.

I could fall in love with that fire escape

2009-11-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

It's fair to assume that the mass of North Americans consider something like receiving extra sprinkles or hot fudge on their sundae, at no extra charge, as somewhat of a delight. It puts a smile on their face no doubt, a little extra spring in their step. That is, it is fair to assume, not only the unlikely kindness of the overworked and underpaid adolescent server, but also the additional sugary goodness would improve said North American's day. This happens to me all of the time. And like a flick of a switch, a smile appears on my face, and I am overwhelmed with the most loving warmth.

It's the little things that make my day. And yes, the changes of my mood from gloomy to happy are rapid, but my bipolarity is not the point I'm trying to explore here, it's that little things are meaningful and can have such an incredible impact.

Des and I will soon be moving out of our current humble abode we call "Lord Dovercourt" and into a new place. It's quaint, cozy, lovely really. If it had a name, it'd be something like Lucy or Margine. But there's this window off the kitchen/living room that looks out to the fire escape - the brick walls of the building, and a maze of rusted metal stairs. As I sat facing this window signing the lease yesterday, I glanced out and suddenly I was in a trance. I was so incredibly inspired and my whole life flashed before my eyes, all because of these brick walls and this rather dangerous looking fire escape. I saw snow building up on the edges. I saw birds perched upon the rail. I saw a man. A handsome man without a face, that I would meet an apartment over and fall madly in love with. I saw us on a rug in front of a fire wearing ironic sweaters and listening to blue grass. Or even better, Christmas songs! And it smells like apple pie. But it would only last as long as a daydream, so that I wouldn't get bored, and it wouldn't turn sour. Just the way I like it.

"I could fall in love with that fire escape," I thought to myself in this daze.

That evening I went to the library. Another place that makes me fall in love with everything and everyone around me. Books are the sexiest thing on the planet. I want to write a million. A million children's stories to share with the world. Mother's are sexy. I take back every negative thing I said about mom bodies. They rock my world.

Anyways, Inari and I were discussing romance, as we often do in our yellow kitchen. And I was reading about a love story between an author and an illustrator. And it delighted me so much. I thought, "that's perfect... that's exactly what I want." And she asked, "Which would you be?" (given this highly unlikely but extremely appealing partnership would happen?")

That's easy, I thought. I would be the writer... he the illustrator. And we'd have the most insane conversations and adventures and sexual escapades. Can you imagine that? Waking up in a studio in Greenwich Village and writing while your foxy illustrator husband illustrates? Or in some shack on the beach in Southern California? Or some ranch in the Midwest? Or a cottage up North?

These daydreams literally make my hair stand on end. I literally feel my blood flowing through my veins. "Is this healthy," I think to myself, "to react to such imaginary scenarios, or inanimate objects with such intense stimulation?" I don't care if it is or if it isn't, because these are the moments I look forward to the most. The moments of inspiration.

I'm one of those people you see out in public, casually making their way to whatever destination, and suddenly you'll see them smile huge, or laugh out loud. And they're all by themselves. You're thinking, "CRAZZZZZZy lady!." But you know what I'm thinking? I'd be thinking of some random image or memory that pops into my head... and I can't help but react.

Sometimes when it gets really quiet and all I have are my thoughts, I think of the books I read as a kid... and it just feels comfortable. It feels like sitting by a window a few days before Christmas, with a mug of tea warming my palms, and I'm watching the snow fall out on the fire escape... and letting my thoughts wander around. And then there's a knock at the door... Am I expecting someone? Maybe. Maybe not. But in this instance, knocks on the doors are delightful. The kind of delight you feel when you and your pops are at Coney Island and the lines are long, but suddenly an overworked and underpaid kid gives you your sundae with extra sprinkles, a little more chocolate sauce, and hell a goddamn cherry on top. And all you wanna do is smile like some goof. And that's what I do. A lot.

xoLola.

I had this Uncle, a great Uncle, we called him "ZseZse New York." I thought he owned the city. That memory makes me smile

Disgust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2009-11-17T12:02:00.001-08:00

I'm going off birth control.

I've been on it for almost 4 months now and it's making me feel worse and worse everyday.

I flip and I flop. One minute I rule the world, the next I feel my love handles spilling over my once beautifully fitting skinny jeans and I feel absolutely disgusting.

Do you know what it's like to feel disgusting?

Fuck voluptuous women's bodies. Fuck child bearing hips. Fuck bigger boobs.

Fuck big is beautiful.

The only reason you embraced these changes with me was because you were still a size 2.

Shallow I may seem, but it's only because I'm angry. Angry with myself. How did I let this happen??? HOW!

Women are innately enslaved to themselves and it's been like that for centuries. Enslaved to our own standards. Our own ideals. But I like my standards. I like what I think is beautiful. But what I think is beautiful is not necessarily the way I want to look. I don't want to be able to feel my body when I move. I want to feel that comfort I once felt when I sat on a couch and wasn't worried about how much bigger I looked because my FAT was spread over the cushions.

Since when did I become the biggest person in the room? Since when did I become the woman who would cause offense if wearing a bikini in public? Since I started Alesse that's when.

Girls are vicious. Absolutely vicious. I know how they think and compare. "Don't worry about her. She's fat." "You're wayyyyy hotter than his new chic. See the size of those thighs?" "That girl shouldn't be allowed to wear jeans like that." "Sorry we don't make dresses over a 5." "Look at her scarfing down carbs like they;re going out of style. Take a moment to breathe." Oh and the infamous, "He can do so much better."

SHUT UP.

Why are MEN at the center of all the issues women have with each other? FOR SERIOUS. Why am I even on birth control? I don't even have sex. Not the kind that involves another partner anyways. I'm much too insecure about my body for that.

I've resisted the temptation to stop taking the pills for long enough. I've resisted giving up. "I've come this far," I thought. "It will only be a matter of time."

It is afterall, some sort of rite of passage, right?

I thought the side effects would eventually regulate. I thought the 20 pounds (!!!!) and the cravings would go away. But they haven't. And I'm sick of this.

I want my self-control back. I want my unshakable discipline.

For too long I've hid the fact that my size and my body bothers me. It bothers me. Think what you will. Think I'm shallow. Think I'm weak. But I'm not. Because every other person scrutinizes the way they look. So why can't I?

Or even more, why do I think I can't? Who puts this pressure on me to appear like I am a certain way, who doesn't care about "trivial things"? That I am beyond petty self-involved issues? Because I'm not. I'm a human being!

I suppose it's no one other than myself.

So for that I apologize. To me.

And to you, If it ever felt like I was blaming you for the pressure.

-Lo

I wish I was never made fun as a child. I wish I was never called fat. I wish you never called me a "fat ass." You know how that feels? Disgusting.

But it happened. And things happen for a reason. I strongly believe that.

And take away all of my petty issues, and really I wouldn't want my life on any other path.

A stretched moment. A selected memory. A scary dream. A sad reality.

2009-11-16T21:06:00.000-08:00

Reading provided by my yoga instructor:

“I relax my consciousness. I unset my heart. I wear the world as a loose garment. I learn to dance with grace on the constantly shifting carpet.”

A stretched moment.

On my inner thigh there is a stretch mark.

Where did you get that cut?

A cut? Is he serious? I lie, because I’m embarrassed.

I don’t remember.

I think you do, he says.

I think it’s one of those doctor ones. Probably from yanking me out of the womb.

Wouldn’t that be on your head?

Oh… uh, yeah. Good God just let it drop.

Well… it’s from when I was smaller.

And that much is true.

A selected memory.

In the vestibule of Scotiabank he pulls back, stopping to wonder why my lips taste salty. How easily the past hour has been forgotten, where I cried and asked desperately to be shown genuine affection.

A scary dream.

Two weeks into the future, and me and some peeps are having drinks at Future’s before my film screens. He shows up, looking mad and purposeful. I can’t even draw, but I can render the likeness of his face. I can easily hear how his voice would sound saying words he’s never said.

He says with a hint of madness ,“So I’m a bastard? Is that what you’re telling everyone?” He sounds furious, but I’m certain his face is distorted by miserable torment (“I fucked him up good,” I think... kinda pleased actually).

He’s close and squeezing my shoulders to a point where I start to panic and think “He’s a psychopath. OH MY GOD he’s going to kill me!!!” My dream brain quickly corrects itself, assuring me that I know he couldn’t be a killer. But then immediately counter that assurance with, “Why not? He lied about everything else.” Which is when he leans in and kisses me harshly. I’m offended. My face goes screwy. Hot with fury. HOW DARE HE PULL THIS SHIT, I think. But I feel thrilled. So INCREDIBLY thrilled as I am able to think the one question I know in reality I will never again get to think...

What does the kiss mean?

A sad reality.

I wake up, and I can hear the mouse rustling around. It just barely registers because my face is still warm and there are tears streaming down it... and just like that, two weeks be damned, it might as well have all happened yesterday.

Reset.

“I relax my consciousness. I unset my heart. I wear the world as a loose garment. I learn to dance with grace on the constantly shifting carpet.”

-Des.

If I were a yoga posture, I would be... child's pose.

Number withheld

2009-11-15T09:22:00.001-08:00

Do you ever find that there are days when it is easier to talk about sex than it is about love? Easier in the sense that one seems almost weightless and silly and the other is like a secret, bold and almost shamefully noble my-heart-cannot-heave stuff. Overwhelming emotion, tears in your eyes for no good reason that you're likely to call it hormonal and leave it at that.

I like those days. Makes me feel alive.

-I

There's no such thing as a guilty pleasure. There's no such thing as a guilty pleasure. There's no such thing as a guilty pleasure...there's no such....

I just had

2009-11-14T01:14:00.000-08:00

the BEST night.

think it and it will come true.

Friday the 13th and you'll love me

2009-11-12T19:30:00.001-08:00

High school crushes beware. You never loved me then, but you may love me now.

You probably won't... but you might!

And how fulfilling would it be in that typical Hallmark movie-of-the-week way, if you did fall in love with me tomorrow night. Fall in love REAL HARD.

Oh - the twist. This time it's my turn to end up in the closet on the phone with some other older attractive guy that I accidentally forgot to tell you I'm dating. And you'll overhear. And be heartbroken. Aww.

*Shoulder shrug.* Woops.

I'll turn to leave. Leave you behind forever. And you can't help but stare at my beautiful hair caressing my shoulders. Hair you never once considered seriously before.

Hair you'll never get to touch with your hands. Hair that I get to touch ALLLLLLLL the time. And I'll touch it now... I'll touch it as you're watching. It's killing you right?

And all you can think is, "I'm a douche bag."

Because you are.

xoLo

We do have magical powers! We do! Think and it will come true!

Get Rich or Die Trying

2009-11-12T18:28:00.000-08:00

Are you deluded? No one's going to pick you out of a crowd and make you king.

It takes YEARS to make it. That shouldn't freak you out. Don't be stupid.

It takes courage to work hard and steady and prove that you are good at what you want to do. Patience. You will get yours in time.

Don't spread yourself too thin. And be courageous.

Note to self: there are 6,692,030,277 other people in this world. And they all think they're special too.

-lo

Carrie Bradshaw's Nipples

2009-11-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

Considering the name of this blog, I feel like I need to draw some attention to the former TV show from which we swiped and remixed our header.

Sex and the City, the show that taught millions of women everywhere that you no matter how old you are or how well your career is going or how fabulous (to use their vernacular) your wardrobe, you are never going to outgrow your insecurities. I've finally gotten around to watching the series, after being mildly tickled by the movie and I gotta say...these women are idiots. Fucking IDIOTS. I'm only on season two, so it could be that their shallow bantering is dated (I guess women in the late nineties had no sense of selves), but yeah...IDIOTS. IDIOTS. IDIOTS. I'm sickened. I'm saddened. I'm thinking "How can Sarah Jessica Parker afford $2000 strappy heels but can't find it in herself to put on a bra?"

The overaching theme seems to be 101 Reasons You Can't Be Happy Without a Man. What happened to empowerment? What happened to loving thyself? What happened to it NOT being ok to say things like "If you own an apartment and he doesn't, then it disrupts the power structure." They make relationships sound like politics, when they should be about empathy and self-knowledge. I guess there's someone out there who thinks that's just idealistic psycho-babble. That someone is an asshole.

Should I feel happy that, a decade later, women two decades younger than these characters have a bit more, you know, character? Or should I want to gag on the values this show is throwing out? Or should I just enjoy the pretty wardrobe and just count my lucky stars that I didn't watch it when it was in its heyday, thus exposing my soft, malleable teenaged brain to utter, utter nonsense?

And yet, I watch it. So clearly there IS something that I like. Just don't ask me what. I'm still figuring that out.

Yours,

I

The world is your oyster and your sweat is the hot sauce.

I don't want to feel this way forever.

2009-11-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

Who do you lean on after something bad happens?

I've noticed a lot of the people around me were quick to attach themselves to someone after something really bad happened a few years back. Do they love the person they've leaned on so much more for being there during a time of such grief?

I guess I do have certain people to go to - to turn to. But all of these people have other people that need them more. That mean more. That don't appear as "strong" as I am.

This is how my dad must feel. He only has himself to take care of himself. He only has himself.

I just feel this weight on my heart sometimes. And I think to myself, "how did this happen?" It's not like I need sympathy because I don't. I like my life... a lot! But it's like nobody's even willing to sympathize. Nobody knows how. Nobody wants to or cares to. It's ok, though. Because I don't need it.

Think about it. What if this happened to you. Huge, right? BIG, right? You feel like you would die, right? But you won't. Trust me.

You'll feel almost... free. Or... invincible.

But I don't want you to think such thoughts. So don't even imagine what it would be like for one second!

I guess what's really on my mind is that it makes me sad and extraordinarily curious why everyone else has someone so special to lean on - who's there for them so genuinely... but I don't. Like your puzzle piece that just fits. That just gets you, selflessly.

I just want to meet someone selfless. It will restore my faith in the world. In destiny. Longevity.

Will I find them? Will they appear, in time?

In time: The answer to everything. The cure-all to everything.

And yet, so frustrating.

Lola

If I was a christmas tree ornament I'd be a popsicle stick reindeer that says "To Mom."

Satisfaction is the DEATH of desire.

2009-11-08T18:39:00.001-08:00

Isn't it?