Devouring the delicious Alice Waters/Chez Panisse biography/history. Cupcake picnic in the works for Saturday. Upcoming: National Frost, Rah Rah & Tinsel Trees (on the same night that Geronimo opens for Peter, Bjorn & John in Calgary, so no dreamy dreamy H), Apostle of Hustle, Feist, etc. Unless migraines continue (ie: instead of dreamy dreamy watching him wearing suspenders, lay on the floor "that no one dies of migraines... an ambiguous blessing.")

Ambiguous returns to journals, all of them too public. Live journals, public spaces. Crackjournal, methjournal. Ambiguous returns to school, the re-application on my desk. Urge to scribble before yoga & bed. Type a personality.

Things that are funny reading this old journal:

have dropped out of university
G now completely unable to reference anything other than drugs & we've broken up for good, I hope
really odd to ever think that I used to date SG seeing as he is now king of the punkrockabilly scene

I Sing the Body Academic: October looms. October 4th, prepare a scholarly edition of an artifact, 1850-1859, that is footnotes, introduction, further reading, appendeces, etc. What artifact? I still don't know, I think it will have to do with George Eliot & the Westminster Review. Though I snapped the mircofiche film of the Westminster review 1850. Or rather it snapped & I thought "Doom." October 13, Yeats Lord of the Dance, I think. No Yeats & role/purpose/worth of art as depicted thru a life of poetry, etc. October 18, Nietzsche the social construct of conscience thus repression & immolation used to read Zola's Therese Raquin. Must talk to MT re: European Sensibility & American Society Autobigraphical short fiction focusing on I Etc or else something similar. Plus readings. Up to my bleary eyes.

Derail the Peace Train: Yusef Islam is on the terrorist watch list. He was not allowed to enter the US & sent back to England. My theory? He's been killing GWB slowly with his song. I'm sure "Cat's in the Cradle" is something like the story of his life "You know I'm gonna be like you" etc etc etc. Cat Stevens on the terrorist watch list. Cat Stevens, peace advocate & threat to American Homeland Security.

Dimanche, le telephone, etc: ma langue completement perdue? Spoke with my aunt, each wishing the other a happy belated birthday, sitting crosslegged on the counter a bowl of coffee, her voice, my cousins voices Sophie talking talking Zoe babbling, news of Thibault. I need to go back soon. But barring winning the lottery/ or taking up a carreer in the lucrative world of exotic dancing, I can't afford to go soon. And G, looking into next year in Europe. My fear: that he will get accepted. That he won't do his masters or apprenticeship in Canada. It's not that I think we'll be together in a year. Who knows? But I can't stand the thought of all my constants over there. It's not that he's a the current signifier for a stable concept? To know a person since you are 7 means that he becomes a stable contstant thing with shifting signifieds? That is I don't equate love with him, love with whomever, but him with lover brother foe friend. So yes another entry by my heart (strange that last year I was so fixated on the mind but uanble to say anything because everything was about NNNNNNN, and now when everything stimulates the mind it is all heartstrings). Yesterdays. Yesterday with our walk & our coffee, our talk about sounds in context, about violence, etc. Shortlived as we each had work. Work with plenty of the good customers, except clearance woman who took two hours for S & S & Tina to deal with, Andrea paling as she spotted her & Ohh Gawd not her again-ing. But Troni & her kids at my till, a sudden rush of guilt & love for not attending Friday's Freud debate, for not registering for her Shakespeare class. I miss Troni. And Lacan. And so I'm listenong to Kate Bush. And then a phone call while at work from him at work the oh what is this realizing that Craig randomly turned the muzak back on while I was on the phone so that as G talks I realize that I'm listening to (ELO??) I'm gonna keep on loving you... which I won't I know, especially not if he does shave his beard off. And this morning with phonecalls with memory & heart & tonguetied comment qu'est ce que je veut dire? of home (why home??). And now procrastination before intensive homework nose to the grindstone. Bring it on, Ian Watt. And Arnold Kettle. And Mill. And Chuck D. And Louise Gluck. And Friedrich. And livejournal. I know that you are the only one I will read today LJ. Or Yeats. Sitting there on my desk looking at me accusingly. Yes it is my fault that your wrinkled brow is now slashed with blue ink, never again will I randomly throw an uncapped pen in the wrong compartment of my bag.

Not only am I jokingly engaged, but a decoy lesbian. Brilliant.

O, I spend too much time in the owl. However, a damned good way to spend 3 hours is nursing vegetable soup & fries & beer engaged in conversation with Leah & Gabby.

& now to iron clothes & read Victorian social problem novel critques.

Years ago, sitting in my grandmothers attic I decided that my dream man was like listening to Gomez & reading Ted Hughes. I forgot about this until today. This is I realize now what Geoff is like. Trippy & intense & warm & multilayered.

A profound shift in the under me I think. The result of all this Yeats & Hughes & Lawrence & Doolittle & yoga. To not write up my insides in lurid confessional electric mirrors but to write the oustide inside me? From hardcore atheist to wow wow wow naturalist. A storm today, surreal, sun then clouds purple day then sudden thundering war rain witl hail rattling the library windows tapering off to steady in a hot thick air. Then gone. All in the space of two three hours? Talking about it on the drive home "It was so awesome" in the correct sense of awe fingers on bus window to work steady tapering off rain in the heat of the day. Talking about it at night a pause in our talk and then burst of lightning, then nothing and a few minutes later some drops of rain. Talked about Hugh & his parapsycology, his weather powers and how he maybe once made the northen lights change colours one winter night. Very much could live alife like Hugh & Marge, distance & independence & strength & varied interests.

My life is shifting towards the good despite odd things like yesterday (like the more awkward than it should be forbidden beer & smoke at the Owl with Geoff and then Shane arriving and sitting tables away our nods & raised eyebrows, leaving a girl at Shane's table knows Gabby they stop to talk & Shane tips his chair back, hey so he & I small talk how's life etc? Geoff standing off by the stairs. My dear, you may not have the most beautiful spider legged musician fingers in the world but you are bearded & brilliant & I may not love you forever but you are my constant among every boy I've known. Ask Iain who suffered thru a raging drunk tirade against your annoying ways at the time, my raging drunk this Shane boy is nice & perfect but he's not you confession (by you I meant you, not Iain, though lying my head on his leg I looked up and told him that he had the same nostrils as you which isn't true). I am still my insides, I am ruled by my heart for brains. But what I mean to get to is this great weight that was lifted off my shoulders then dropped right back from such great heights (damn you catchy postal reference). After class went down to Chapters to talk with Shauna & clear up my head what with the headaches of Chapters/Smith/Coles apparently two Q3's this season mild dislike of working the dull stores & other work related thoughts. And she offers to transfer me so that I am Chapters not Smith paperworked & enough hours at one store to equal what I'm getting bopping about the three. So this lovely weight off, all this light airy joy of the store I prefer. So I tell Dave, & he takes it not well & calls Shauna blames her etc making me feel guilty, drama. Then the other grey cloud in my life is annoying man in Victorian Lit. We are not here to listen to your every trivial opinion (John Stewart Mill, tedious & self serving???) but to bask in Susan's extreme love for social problem novels & sarcastic coffee fueled aura.

My life, recounted as I put off reading for tomorrow's classes.

I think I'm a candidate for being shot for treason, prefering Hughes to Plath.

Apparently, yesterday did affect me, deep down, deep down, did feel awkward. Dreamt of Shane. And now to fully wake, clear that specter out of my head & do all that there is to be done today.

Vienna in Hands



Here I Dreamt I was An Architect

Argh, this can't be happening, not so early in the semester, after all that rest etc... so am I sitting here in Archer, Peter Barry's 10 tenets of liberal humanism and I start having the stupid word association image game in my head.

I need a survey to fill out, just so I can write

Ice cream flavour: anti-intellectual

thanks Pete & yr "Thus several of the explicit comments and formulations often cited in literary history contain specific denigerations of ideas as such and have a distinct anti-intellectual flaovour to them."

I hope anti-intellectual tastes like Cool Ranch Doritos. Maybe bubble gum?



Ran into Gord & Ryan while on tea run & ended up wasting an hour. Still a few more pages to slog thru before going to work.

Oh damn damn lovely damn I'm not fit for academic life. Why? Because intelligence is sexy, and if G doesn't truely clarify in words & actions where we stand, I'm flirting with hot tea drinking Joyce enthusist who sits at the front of my Modernist poetry class(!)*. And by hot I mean good looking & insightful remarks on Yeats in a nice voice, so swoon, so there my heart, my tall & bearded heart, see what happens if you do not act.

Bliss morn with cool fall mist and Campion Roca Jacks for cheap tea & free newspaper. Tho woke from litlle sleep, odd dreams kept waking; tomorrow to faire la grace-matinee, mais oui! Yesterday as good as well: after classes some forbidden beer & smoke with Gabby, recapping our breakups & breakdowns & plans to work & be good this semester. Then work which dragged dull as it always does dull in the mall.

* I mean really, he appears to be Marcel's protegee as I am Susan's so it is only fitting that we become intellectual lovers.

Oh but G your brain is so sprawling & encompassing & wired right. And your face is bearded. Oh desire, loosener of limbs, cause to tremble, etcetera etcSappho. Must put none to grindstone, pedal to photocopier & reading.

Or the story of my red right ankle & how it came to meet my leg, the boys who loved me now & loved me then, & my gypsy uncle with a hideout in the Pyrennees.

Oh holy holy Gee whiz golly wow etc etc. Gee Eff just called with splendid fantastic news.

The entire Cremaster Cycle will be shown at the RPL at the end of October.

Until then I must try to slog my way thru Ruskin who drones and drones and uses repetition & contrasts in the worst way. As well as the contiual "Let us" Let us examine, let us compare, let us continue, let us look at, let us contrast... with such puffed up snuffy tones and meandering sentences.

And I bought Freud (book, as opposed to dead body) for a dollar. Geoff dreamt that Eric stabbed him in the back (him, Geoff-- not him, Freud) and is worried about meeting up with E at the Owl tomorrow.

Ruskin? OED? But I can't I'm all agog with Matthew Barney and the strange thrill I get after every conversation with G. To my heart's content. Oui, je suis.

Loves, the Wednesday Morning Edition:

Gee, perfectly
Ben's handwriting
Dryer fresh & hot socks
My dear dear bowl of cafe au lait de soja avec un peu de miel-- above all else.

Hates,

what the hell hair dryer, work damnit you fool blasted thing!

So much, so little to say. Since the last communique of any sort, computer or paper notebook niether nor, things have happend, little funny things, little frustating things, major scary developments & the like etc etc I. So a potpourri.

Joanna & I mock fought over Victor. I think he liked it. Yesterday, wave after wave of customers, like a scene out of an epic blockbuster war movie, except set in retail instead of Normandie. But among the throngs of longweekend shoppers were those great customers who make our days. Including Victor, the conductor of the city's symphony orchestra & the father of the luckiest most adorable little girl ever, he's always in buying himself a paperback and her a little stickerbook or I can read first chapter book or a workbook tempered with a cute pen. And he's the nicest customer one could ask for. The RSO also has the catchiest adverts, including one billboard that looks like a snooty symphony ad with "For a good time, call Victor" faux spray painted over it. Because it's so true.

But spray paint can be a bad thing, as it's indicated that our neighbour is seriously paranoid histronic. To the point where ROY is scared of him. What a fucking long horrible story. Made short, I didn't have my back to school breakfast as I normally would, in the dining room basking in the sunrise magnified by the windows. Normally a lovely view, the gold& red& powder blue easing away the indigo, the green now turning yellow of the distant valleys & near by trees, the brick wall of the 1905 house some hundred metres next door. Which was this morning a brick wall covered in blue & red spray paint saying we owe him an outrageous sum. I suppose it's a good thing he bought the house, seeing as I suppose graffitti on the side of such a nice classic house would seriously devalue it. I'm trying to be flippant. What a horror. Not to go into details but his behavior has intimidated the bear of the town, Roy with the height and build of a grizzly (and the heart of a plush teddy, true, but you only know this if you have grown up here).

But back to school, back to school, onto less "Oh holy shit" (the first words out of my mouth this morning) matters. Tho I was completely shocked and saddened by the fact that Ben shaved off his beard. See if I'm secretly platonically in love with you anymore. Oh I'm still. He has ludicrously nice handwriting, spent most of the class writing notes about Salman Rushdie in the margins of his in notebook. And he once taught Gee how to do mundane task influenced dance moves. That was in Power, Knowledge & PostModernism, where I sat beside Matt and chatted in whispers until I found myself under the spell of Drury who talks in animated extremes at this odd breakneck with misplaced pauses speech. Which is nothing compared to the absolute sheer joy and horror of Lit History: The Eighteen-Fifties:

"Those of you who know me might have thought that there was a mistake on your bookslist. Only three texts? Don't worry. If you look at the syllabus you'll see the complete list of required reading on reserve at the library and some optional texts as well." So I really shouldn't be typing away I should be reading thru copies of:
Ruskin "The Savageness of Gothic Architecture"
Arnold "Preface to Poems"
Leavis "Hard Times: An Analytic Note"
& Barry "Ten Tenets of Liberal Humanism"
for Thursday's discussion. Not to mention start some chapters of ELDoctorow and some Nietzsche for my other classes.

She is my dream and nightmare in one, because she knows her shit and doesn't accept any slack or bull from her students. So 3 major papers for her, 2 major papers for Trussler, 2 major papers for Drury/Wells/Cote and god knows what for DeCoste, with the requisite weeklies, proposals for major papers & required and suggested readings. Etc etc etc.

I bought some honey made by Iain's hive, which may be the only Phillips sweetness I will have in a while seeing as I'm soon going to be drowning in Victiorian esoterica, theory & poetry while Gee has the show at Mysteria to finish prepping for, his senior show portfolio & grad school apps & his BFA Thesis to write and our conflicting hours of our paying jobs.

After work and play (order inverted) with the NEW BJORK and new bottle of Hanwood Estates Shiraz.

Work was the dull, the dull looking out at one lone hooded sweatshirt wearing vagabond perusing the true crime section. I redid the bestseller walls (damn damn the odd sized Guiness Book of Records) while Dave sweat & sweltered in the backroom pricing new x91 product. I bought cheap David Suzuki & Mags (OH MAGGIE THE GREAT & ME). Between 7 & 8, 4 customers bought $29 worth of product. Why is the mall even open Wednesday night? Why? Why?

So that Wednes-Day I may be Ferris Buellered.

"Hey, do you want to get married?"
Raised eyebrows, "Um, not now..."
"In Europe." The inside pact, the inside joke, the goal.
"Yeah" with a wry smile.

We shook hands and I shook my head and said "You're such a trip."

So yes, Wednesday was Wednesday: bus ride down to his place where I thought he must be drunk or high barrelling out the door to bear hug me my grizzly barbarossa (or does he greet everyone who rings his doorbell by attacking them with hugs?) and Fair was home so we chatted with her before heading to our plaid upholstered booth for coffee & cigarettes & spaced out talk about Adrienne Rich & CS Lewis & the Cremaster cycle & school & life (BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS) for a few hours until we headed out in grumbling broken car to see if there were any matinees but no luck, none that would end before we each had to work hard for our money. So with coffee drilling our empty stomaches stopped at Brewster's for food & more talk & more cigarettes & ridiculous propostition (about as random as that mad drunken Wednesday afternoon "You know I love you right?" As I love you) until the time to head back as he gets dressed/disguised for work and Fair and I speak in gestures like high school ("Insanity!" with hands thrown in the air!). And he is going to his parents this weekend and I won't see him till Tuesday oh Tuesday so far away...

What a ridculous entry, oh pitter patter heart and clitter clatter fingers. How to fix? Anecdote he told about family hunting trip before Iain & Vanessa were engaged, Iain shooting a partridge but clipping it in the wing, the chase that ensued beacuse you can't just shoot a bird and leave it bleeding living and Geoff knew they were for each other when Vanessa tackled the partidge (a story which when told properly is as great as the classic Iain grabbing the beaver by the tail legend, a story that is not sexual in the least. Favourite Iain stories: the frozen toes. The Beaver. The Moose. The Lactose Intoreralte Cheesecake Fiesta. Any firefighting tale). Oh dear diary, I think this is enough. THE SCOTTISH ACCENT.

Oddly enough, the first ever DH Lawrence festival (first ever ever? Or first ever in Eastwood?) ends today. And the new Bjork is released. And I'm not drunk. That drunk. Today I will sleep, do laundry, plough thru Sons & Lovers instead of that damned Rich with her meandering out of place prose and lack of thesis or thought (no actual power to the damned thing, only verbose vitriol aginst men). Happy birthday. Then the living barbarossa, brilliant man.

Which will make up for the fact that the computers were down for the last two days. Tim took it rather well by doing what Tim does best which is watching The Black Stallion in the DVD section, while I ran around trying to find books without the help of a computer (when the network is down people ask for books on: cosmetic surgery, fiberglass, options trading, etc). What will we do without Tim and Michael? Oh goodbye dear hearts of my summer, till Christmas.

Oh goodbye youth, goodbye summer, etc etc, never again. Which is every day's closing I guess, never again. Etc Etc Etc.

To do list, to be written before bed and to be done after tomorrow, I mean today:
email MT re: class limit override
type up Lourdes & Vienna drafts
clean bathroom
pretend evertyhing else is optional

What I mean is...(what I mean is I am drifting drowsy after weekend nights and working nights) Got that way of never saying what you really feel?

"Now in the darkness was a little tumult of ebbing flakes of light, a cluster dancing secretly in a round, twining and coming steadily together. They were gathering a heart again, they were coming once more into being. Gradually the fragments caught together re-united, heaving, rocking, dancing, falling back as in panic, but working their way home again persistently, making semblance of fleeing away when they had advanced, but always flickering nearer, a little closer to the mark, the cluster growing mysteriously larger and brighter, as gleam after gleam fell in with the whole, until a ragged rose, a distorted frayed moon was shaking upon the waters again, re-asserted, renewed, trying to recover from its convulsion, to get over the disfigurement and the agitation, to be whole and composed, at peace."

Due to the lack of edible food in the house, tonight's dinner will be tea & chocolate. Tomorrow there will be grocery shopping, but that might not actually happen, seeing as I was going to grocery shop before work today. But, the most important news of the evening is my finding my 4 days missing shoes and 3 days missing will to dance. Who knows, I may even pick up that damn book again?

Speaking of books, last night I dreamt of impractical bus routes and deserted tennis courts. Aside: Paul Bettany may be lovely, but I think "Wimbeldon" would have a much more interesting premise if they made his character be Anachronistic Chaucer, Tennis Star. Kirsten Dunst would, of course, reprise her character as child vampire.

Unrepententally unproductive day. Woke up at 11 to find us out of seignalet compliant bread. Caved in to the sight of the sunflower flax bread and OH SWEET GLUTEN nearly said fuck it to that sadistic phsyician (already, in the last week I had one beer, that cake had some flour in it...) but no. An effort intellectuelle, and my skin my skin. So just now kitchen cleaned and made rice/carrot/tomato/pepper salad and banished thoughts of toamto&cheese on sunflour&flax... I haven't had skin like this since I was 9. And I've never been energetic like this ever. Hummingbirds! Tho last night Carrie offered Altoids and I had to explain to her that everything but the mint was anathema to me. That Carrie!

Have to get ready for fiendish hell shift at Northgate which doesn't even have cute goth boys or drunk vagarants passing thru (last night, my oh my, the only excitement of the night was some young boy with black and bleached hair and wire rimmed glasses and oh he was so bright).

Have to ban myself from this machine. Haven't read or practiced in days (drag out that long "ays" daaaayyss, it's been that far away, it seems. I feel like I can barely touch my toes or bend well or balance. Much less identify metrical patterns or any other prosody).

Boredom broken leaving the mall, the storm outside. Torrents. Flash. Rain slamming down and skipping in the streets, the sound of cars cutting through the wet, the sky black with halo shimmer orange street lamps and white office neon ice winow light rflected in the slick black mirroring streets, the dark downtown tower buildings, black sky and jagged violent violet light of lightening a few seconds of lilac and grey, but black and fluorecent with thunder rumbles and I wait looking at my reflection in the bank window seeing my numb grim mouth and pale face in the storm.

The kind of night where you find yourself putting your fingertips to the glass of the passenger side window and feel powerless. Feel your eyes and heart linger on the blaze of the industrial zone, the lights towering into the sky and streching reflections narcissi preening kings of industry on the wet streets. And the turn of the road into darkness. The windshield wiper beating in time to the pounding of the rain the rumblings of thunder the flashes of lightning, in time to the beating of your heart the rumblings in your stomach the flashes of strong love for your weakness for the joy of being so small and pale in the dark and blaze of a world that is more than the commerce and industry and residence that your eyes and mind can see.

It was raining men. And women. And children. What a grey day with rain drizzling when the rain wasn't pounding. Rain rain go away and take the flood of customers with you. My gift card terminal refused to work, the first customer of the day was one of those cranky customers. I exagerrate tho, most of my customers were delightfully commiserative (misery loving company, or the company I work for) and I even managed to slice up my finger with erotica (which is nowhere as titilating as it sounds). Saw Gordo/Kiddo and whoa before I forget Sean is interim CEM.

Months later I still miss Ross Porter's growl. I still yell "What's this? What do you mean you're Andy Sheppard and I'm listening to afterhours?" I'm a dreadful creature of habit.

Haven't called Geeves. Was going to last night, cept for his going to Braden's bonfire and my playing around with this beautiful machine. My machine. Who needs a beautiful brilliant man when there is a computer on my lap, in my bed (this as well is much less titillating than it sounds). Miss him dreadfully tho, having not seen nor talked to him since Wednesday. Sunburnt drunk confusing confessional Wednesday. We are so odd, he makes me so angry and happy. And this weather makes me so dreadfully cold (physically not emotionally).

I'm dreaming, I'm in some parallel universe where I am the luckiest girl in the world, nay the luckiest girl in the entire realm of possible alternate universes (even luckier than the alternate me who is a Victorian hermit/hooker).

I AM WRITING FROM MY NEW!!! BIRTHDAY!!! LAPTOP COMPUTER!!!! Last night I got smashingly drunk with farmers & professors (my brother & I were the only ones under 40) which was fabulous as anything involving very loud blues music, rundown farmhouses filled to the brim with people, excellent food (corn on the cob, salads, steamed baby carrots, potatoes & onions, Charlie at the fire outside with steaks & sausages, then Bernard Caillebaut chocolate for the fondue with fruit, and brownies and some kind of cake involving chocolate, honey & BEETS which was suprisingly delicious, but that may have been my mouth's assessment after all that wine) and of course getting to talk to people like Hugh and Marj (Marj who is now my idol and oh my god I want to be 50 and teaching law criticism and as sweet as she is brilliant). So last night (and to think I almost skipped out to see Gee). And today, morning groggy with sweets and drink and lack of sleep, work oh awful work where the blue frame fell on Joanne (shelf to the chest & notebooks etc all over the floor) and two incidents of the pyramid displays behaving like dominoes, and nothing but whining children who NEEEEEEEEED to have this Mom MAAAAWWWWWWMMMM can I PLEEEEEEEESE etc. So worn down and dull upon arrival home. Where on my desk is a shiny silver notebook. And Gee called while I was out so must call him, more on that situation later, but wow wow wow.

Also, there is little satisfaction quite like flossing one's teeth.