girl & twilight

I’ve begun a project. I am going to read and critique the Twilight novels, chapter by chapter. Now no one will be able to counter my arguments with, “but you haven’t even read them!” Now you can read what happens in these hugely popular books without having to actually read them.

My partner blog to girl & ocean is girl & twilight. Check it out to see why I’m doing this crazy, crazy thing.

I just finished reading the first chapter of the thing so I should have a post about it up soonly.

Please give me moral support.

Summer vacation?

Oh, hi!

I went away for a little while. I’m never sure what exactly to do with my blog. I’ve been wanting to revive my website, once I get the time. As a sort of creative outlet, mostly. In the hopes that I’ll start taking photos again, doing graphic design again, and writing things. I think that I will do this, once I get the money to spend on things.

I think I have a blogging project in mind. I’m just wondering if I should subject myself to the pain it will invariably cause. But I think it is something I have to do. Stay tuned.

Plus, I will probably review more video games.

And show you more photos of my cat.

And blog about my life in general, because I think that if anyone tries hard enough, and takes enough pretty photos, anyone’s life can seem pretty interesting on a blog, and wouldn’t it be fun to have an interesting life?

My new home

On Saturday I moved.

It was pretty terrifying. I drove a 14 foot U-haul from London, Ontario to Montréal, Québec. It took me 10 hours and I started at 5am. I’m used to driving big-ish trucks, but I’d never driven on a 400-series highway before, little island girl that I am, and the 401 happens to be the busiest highway in North America. Eighteen lanes at its widest! And I drove almost the whole thing; it starts in Windsor, which is a little before London. To be honest, I’m glad to be out of Ontario. It was not for me.

It didn’t actually get that scary until I entered Montréal Island. It seems like cars in Montréal don’t come with turn signals. And it’s like trying to navigate a labyrinth, with three roads above and one road below and another curving around like a spiral as I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles were white and prayed to the traffic gods as the cars weaved in and out around me.

I made it okay, and now I live in my favourite city, and now I live with my boyfriend. This is the first time I’ve lived with a boyfriend so it is kind of a big deal to me and I’m extremely happy. He isn’t here right now, though; he left the morning after I arrived for vacation in Mexico with his man-friends. So it’s just me and Mr Spock:

Look at how big he has gotten! He looks like a mini-cat now instead of a kitten. His fur is also getting a sort of reddish sheen to it, so I think I may have infected him with the ginger (it’s contagious, my hair). Mr Spock hasn’t been paying as much attention to me, though. I think it’s because he’s angry that this is the longest he’s been without Andrew (maybe he thinks I am hiding him) but mostly because this lil kitty moved in:

This is Olga’s cat, Stella. She’s all black and looks permanently surprised, though I woke her up for this photo so you can’t really tell. I’m not sure how she and Spock feel about each other yet… he does a lot of swatting at her to get her attention, and she usually responds with a “fuck off, kid.” That, or they do a lot of chasing each other. It’s great fun.

So I’m spending my time mostly relaxing after last month’s insanity of exams and essays and packing and moving and this debacle that happened where I almost couldn’t get a U-Haul at all because my parents hadn’t paid for it like they said and were in Spain and I ended up calling half of the continents to bail myself out, but that’s a long story and I made it here safely in the end. Somehow.

I’m also on the job hunt, which is interesting because of Montréal’s bilingualism, so I’m never sure if I should be applying for a job in French or English, or really what language to make my resume.

The third thing on my List of Things to Do (yes, relaxing was the first thing) is unpacking… which is proving difficult because the room where I am putting all my stuff is already full of furniture that was supposed to be gone by the time I got there. So I’m trying to sell stuff. Or just give it away. Anyone want anything? I would have just moved into Andrew’s room, but his bedroom used to be a living room, so while there is a fireplace, there isn’t a closet. The bedroom I’m moving into is like my study so I’ll have a place for my desk and clothes and books. There’s a queen-sized bed in there I don’t need, too. I can probably sell that for two weeks’ worth of groceries!

Did I mention how badly I need a job?

Poems I didn’t write & wish I had

About things I want/neeed:
The Scars of Utopia – Jeffrey Mc Daniel (he is one of my favourite poets)

If you keep taking stabs at utopia
sooner or later there will be scars.

Suppose there was a thermometer able to measure
contentment. Would you slide it under

your tongue and risk being told you were on par
with a thirteenth century farmer who lost

all his teeth in a game of hide and seek? Would you
be tempted to abandon your portable conscience,

the remote control that lets you choose who you are
for every occasion? I wish we cared more

about how we sounded than how we looked.
Instead of primping before mirrors each morning,

we’d huddle in echo chambers, practicing our scales.
As a kid, I thought the local amputee was dying in
pieces,

that his left arm was leaning against a tree in heaven,
waiting for the rest of him to arrive, as if God

was dismantling him like a jigsaw puzzle, but now
I understand we’re all missing something. I wish

there were Band Aids for what you don’t know, whisky
breath mints for sober people to fit in at wild parties.

There ought to be a Smithsonian for misfits,
where an insomniac’s clammy pillow hangs over

a narcoleptic’s drool cup, the teeth of an anorexic
displayed like a white picket fence designed

to keep food from trespassing. I wish the White House
was made out of mood ring rock, reflecting

the health of the nation. And an atheist hour
at every church, and needle exchange programs,

and haystack exchange programs too, and emotional
baggage thrift stores, a Mount Rushmore for assassins.

I’m sick of strip malls and billboards. I dream
of a road lit by people who set themselves on fire,

no asphalt, no rest stops, just a bunch of dead grass
with footprints so deep, like a track meet in wet cement.

About what it is like to love someone who is far away/living in many places at once:
Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem – Bob Hicok

My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
at the same time. I think

praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
is exactly what’s happening,

it’s what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of “Old Battlesea Bridge.”
I like the idea of different

theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook

of a cousin universe I’ve never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,

your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb

but couldn’t hang on. One of those other worlds
or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother’s belly
she had to scream out.

Here when I say “I never want to be without you,”
somewhere else I am saying
“I never want to be without you again.” And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet

in all the lives we are, it’s with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.

I need to start writing again… it’s been forever so I bet there is some semblance of poetry in these bones.

A story from this afternoon

I was sitting in my university’s health services waiting room, watching CP24 news because that’s what was on TV, and because, well, Toronto. The “Health” segment came on, and somehow I knew, I just knew it was going to be filled with alternative medicine bullshit.

But I was not prepared to see a 5-minute long segment of people talking about how great homeopathy is.

I literally facepalmed in the waiting room. Finally, my therapist showed up and saved me from the misery of watching that garbage being spread to the world.

She looked at me closely as I sat down on the Shrink Couch. “You look… full of rage, Amy-Jean,” she said.

I ranted at her for much longer than I should have about why homeopathy is absolutely retarded and why I am so angry that it’s been approved by Health Canada and how irritating it is that things are on the NEWS telling people to go out and try something that works just as well as a placebo.

She just sort of stared at me when I was done. “Do you feel better after telling me about it?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I have to go home and blog about it.”

Blogging: better therapy than actual therapy.