Creative doings

I had a party last night. It turned out to be rather hilarious, as my decision to make it an evening of arts and crafts led to the creation of a menagerie of little fimo creatures. Once I download the pictures, I will most certainly post them on here. Nothing like a group of intoxicated creative types to make certain that arts and crafts leads to absolute ridiculousness.

I also didn’t drink too much, which made this morning all the more pleasant. AnarchoFem slept over, and impressed me greatly with her consumption of the entire SuperBeautys breakfast this morning (eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, bagel, home fries), while I struggled to get through my extra sides of bacon and sausage. Mmm… nothing like greasy breakfast meats in a stomach filled with alcohol. I can’t believe that Mark just went for the french toast. How boring.

And today I am supposed to spend a good chunk of time brainstorming for the various creative projects that I have to complete over the course of this semester. I can’t believe that I have so much control over what I produce this term. It just scares me a little because I really want to come up with some ideas that will run away with me, rather than becoming heavy and sluggish and needing to have the shit kicked out of them in order to get any sort of impetus.

My projects are as follows:

1) Scriptwriting:

I have to produce two pieces of writing. I will most likely write a couple of short films, although I have been toying with the idea of perhaps doing one short film and a tv show, or even doing the pilot for a tv show, as well as the first episode. This is as far as I have come with my thinking for this class. My proposal/treatment/draft is due in just over a week.

2) Journalism:

This class will probably be the most time-consuming of all. I need to write a long piece, as well as two short ones. I think that for the long piece, I will write about my experiences in Burma earlier this year, although I am having a hard time figuring out what angle I want to go from. Should I write about the trip itself, about the people I met, the lack of electricity, the heat, the poverty, the beauty? It’s so hard to decide where to even start. Part of me thinks that perhaps I should just sit down and start writing it, and see what comes out of me. Once I have a lot down on paper, then I can go through it at pick and choose what it important, which bits I want to include and exclude. The query for this article is due on Tuesday, so is something that I should really be doing today. (In fact, I think it will be what I do after I have finished writing this blog entry). Perhaps I’ll even do the brainstorming on here.

3) Sound Production:

There are two assignments in this class; one 2-minute piece, and another 5-7 minute piece. Edy and I are going to be partners. After discovering that all of the other people I would be interested in working with in the class had already converged into groups, I did the only thing I could think of. It was like asking him to prom.

“Hey… do you want to work with me on the sound project? Everyone else seems to already be in groups, and I just thought…”

“Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.”

“Uh…cool…well…”

“Yeah, uh…”

“Well, I guess, think about what you want to do and we can talk in class on Thursday.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Talk to you later…”

So silly. I felt like a kid, although for no good reason. Yes, Aussie Guy is the only attractive male in the class. But no, I doesn’t mean that I would get with him. Well… if the only people in the world were my classmates, then perhaps. But I think that I would most likely sleep with the Angsty German Philosopher before touching Aussie Guy. Mmm… she’s a tricky one that one. I really would love to a spend a night with her.

How did I get so off topic? So anyhow, the sound project is up in the air. I know who I’m working with, but don’t really know what I would like to do. I will have to sit and think about that one for a while. I would quite like to make a documentary of sorts, not just make some strange soundscape. There is something about language and the spoken word that gets me. I’m sure we could do something extremely interesting.

And finally…

4) Definitions of Media and Tech II

Our “practice-based assignment” in this one is really interesting. The topic I chose is to do something with an obsolete medium, and find an interesting way to either bring it back into use or to explore why it is obsolete, or a combination of the two. I am going to go on a mission to find a typewriter ribbon for my beautiful Royal typewriter. The project will be documented in various ways: photographic, audio, film, written. I think it’s going to be a good one. I just need to allocate some chunks of time in which to go on said mission and bumble around the junk shops and on the internet. Fingers crossed, I will find it and be able to use it!

So that’s what I need to do. Primary goal: brainstorming for Journalism and then for Scriptwriting. The fact that I’m writing on here is a good step in the right direction. At least I’m putting my figurative pen to paper (finger to keyboard definitely doesn’t have the same ring to it) and getting some of my thought out.

My life is beginning to come together and make a little sense. It’s taking shape in a good way, and although I foresee an extremely busy, potentially manic time, I think that the creative energy coming out of me is going to be channelled in a highly productive manner for a change. Woohoo!

J’ai bu trop. C’est fini.

I can finally say that I’ve drank enough. I need to stop. This is not normal. Most people do not go out every single night. Most people sleep. I need to sleep.

You know when you have that one extra drink that puts you over the edge? Even worse, you know that stupid thing you sometimes do when you’re too drunk, when smoking a joint still seems like a great idea? But it isn’t. It’s stupid. And you knew that before you started smoking, but the alarm bells going off in your head were muffled out by the flood of alcohol that you had tipped in.

Ugh. I feel terrible. If a brutal hangover is all it takes to keep me from being a proper alcoholic, maybe that’s a good thing. My roommate’s going to laugh at me when he gets home. I cannot go out tonight. I just can’t do it. I need to be good. I need to sleep when it’s dark out. No more of this trying to sleep although the sun is shining in my face bullshit. It’s just funny that I’ve managed to evade hangovers so successfully in the recent past that it seemed like drinking every night was actually okay. It’s not okay.

Aside from hitting an alcohol-induced breaking point, the past few days have been really rather stellar. Yesterday involved very little. Hot Smart Girl left in the morning around 9:30. I slept until 4pm. Bumbled around, read, you know… Then I was called into work, which was highly annoying, and subsequently told that I wasn’t needed, which was fabulous, and so I went to meet up with the dips (this is our affectionate term for the diploma students in our programme), and drank all night long.

Friday was even better, but I think I already wrote about some of it. After work –which was a total shit show but lucrative — Dina came over and we hung out. We only ended up sleeping for about an hour, because her ride back to Toronto was at 10am. It was an absolutely beautiful night. Enough said.

Now I’m going to begin sounding like a New Age hippie, but I really feel like the vibrations are incredibly positive at the moment. There is so much positive energy flowing around. Maybe some of it is coming from me, or perhaps I am interacting with more positive people, but damn I have a good feeling about life and the world and where things are going at the moment. It’s exciting because it’s helping me to make good choices, and the things that I do that are perhaps questionable (like not sleeping or drinking too much) are justifiable in that I am connecting with other people and doing what makes me happy. And the sun is shining, and and and…

I’ll be good tomorrow…

I was determined to be well-behaved and not stay out too late or drink too much. Somehow, trying to make these sorts of decisions before the night begins is not only futile, but counter-productive. It’s nights like last night, when I’m tired and don’t want to burn the proverbial candle at both ends that inevitably get the messiest.

Not that it was so very messy. It started with an innocent art opening, and turned into a belligerent night of local bars (and friendly free drinks) with various people. Rather than going home when I intended to, I ran into Asian Best Girl and the Catalyst’s best friend and Hilarious Coworker and ended up drinking with them. And if you’re trying to keep things sober, drinking martinis isn’t usually the wisest course of action. But I did have a fantastic night, and although rather hung over, I didn’t regret my lack of willpower when I woke up this morning.

Today was honestly one of the best days I’ve had in ages. I know it’s strange to say, but I feel oddly free. I’m ostensibly single for the first time in my adult life. I feel strangely released, and although it’s not that easy to let go of my propensity to think about other people’s needs all the time, right now I’m going to try to spend time just doing what I want to do. I need to be primary in my life for a change. And I think it’s a pretty damn exciting prospect. I went to yoga this morning, which was rough due to the excess alcohol streaming from my pores, but highly invigorating, and then had an absolutely uplifting brunch with Boris, during which we discussed all of our thoughts about positive energy and the changes that are taking place in the world, and I walked away just bubbling over. This was proceeded by a solid catch-up session with Hot Smart Girl, who always makes me happy, and then play rehearsal, which was also good.

Actually, I was feeling wonderful until now. At the moment I’m actually feeling a little edgy and I’m not sure why. I’m trying not to, but maybe it’s that I’m thinking a whole lot or maybe it’s that I’m not listening to myself. I have no idea. I do know that I’m going to most likely have a fabulous night tonight because work is going to be crazy and then I’ll hang out with HSG when we’re done and that’s always a spectacular time. Why am I like this again?

Under construction

I just changed the look of the blog. Because I felt like it. If you liked it better before, I can change it back. I’m not that keen on any of the themes, and I’m not technologically savvy enough, nor do I have the desire to spend time learning CSS to make it look prettier. Not today at least.

More babbling

Is it regret that I feel for the fact that everything can’t just be perfect and I can’t be suspended in time and space in a moment in which everything feels unreal simply because it’s so real?

I hate the word perfect, but in this context, I think you know what I mean. I feel something heavy and dense moving through my chest. It’s like mercury or tar or something thick and oozy, slowly expanding through me and making me feel panicked. And I have no idea why or what I could be so terribly anxious about, except for perhaps the fact that I don’t know that things are going to turn out the way I would like them to. Even though I don’t actually know what that is.

I am definitely too rational a human being on some levels, but then on others I am completely and utterly nonsensical, hypocritical and confused. I seem to change my mind, but not just my mind, my entire system of beliefs, depending on who I have been speaking to recently and how much their ideas affect me. It gives me shivers to think that one day I could potentially turn into one of those older conservative people based on what the others around me think (although I highly doubt this outcome of my life).

I am totally babbling right now but I feel like there’s something that I need to get off my chest but I don’t know what it is. This morning the Catalyst sort of prompted me with something, by asking me how I feel. Why is it so difficult for me to just say that I feel…something at all at the moment I am being asked. How do I feel now? Well, as I already said, I feel anxious about something. I feel a little sad that there’s a reality that I have to accept and that perhaps things in my relationship with him will have to change, or more pertinently are already changing somehow. I feel let down maybe by my own expectations and the unrealistic views I have and have had of my life. I feel a little hopeful at the same time because I truly do believe that at some later stage, where and when I’m not certain, but I do hope that one day (ideally some time this year) the Catalyst will come back to Montreal and we can try this properly. I feel very much in love with him. I feel his presence inside me. It’s as though he has left his mark on me, inside me (?) and although lack of communication has the ability to throw things into confusion for me, simply reestablishing the connection had put me right back to where I was before.

I think that I have a propensity to run away from things that are difficult for me, and consequently as soon as I see a problem, or something that may be a little troublesome, I either ignore it completely, or begin to convince myself that whatever it was actually wasn’t what I wanted in the first place. I know that I’ve done it in the past in relationships because I just read through a few of my journals from high school and I flip flop between being absolutely distraught over whoever I was “in love” with at the time, and exclaiming my independence and asserting that I’m happier without said person in my life for this or that reason. But here’s a case that I haven’t considered before. Maybe I should just chill out, be happy in the thought that I am in love with him (and he loves me), and simply hope for the best. What happens happens, and I have absolutely no control over it. I guess that there’s just too big a part of me that wishes I did.

Contradictions

It’s kind of strange to think of the concepts of knowing and not knowing oneself. I mean, on an intuitive level, we really should know and understand what we are about, but when it comes down to it, how much do we know about the inner working of our own minds, and emotional cues, etc? I have a lot of trouble with my emotions. I try to control them, I try to understand them, I have a lot of difficulty just accepting that I may feel something and there isn’t any good reason behind it. Not to mention the even trickier task of putting these feelings into words and interpreting them in such a way that others can understand what you are saying. I wish that there were a way for me to really know who I am and what the hell I’m on about, but it seems to shift to easily and frequently, that as an actual task, it begins to feel ridiculous, even redundant.

I want to know my feelings. I want to be able to feel like I am being honest with myself. Perhaps to he human is to be in a state of constant inner turmoil. How is it that one moment I am so certain about how I feel about something, and the next a whole new spectrum of emotions that I had previously not imagined to pop up, simply show up uninvited and confuse me even more. And the emotional reactions to certain events or interactions don’t make sense in themselves. Sometimes you expect to feel hurt by something, but rather you find yourself relieved. Or you anticipate happiness, but rather feel boredom or confusion or whatever else it may be that enters into your emotional life.

I am confused about how I feel. I am in love but I know that the best thing for me is to be on my own. Due to the fact that the person I am in love with lives very far away, this seems like it should be easy, and yet when we talk about opening things up, I get this strange constricted feeling in my chest, like it’s not what I want, even though on a rational level it is what I want. So how do I know what I want if my body and mind are telling me different things?

Oh yeah

I finally got to talk to Dom. It’s actually crazy how much just seeing his face and hearing his voice made me feel. I’m still smiling. I’m like a little bundle of nerves and happiness and I have butterflies in my stomach. It’s ridiculous. But then, if he didn’t make me feel this way, then everything that has happened in the past few months never would have happened, and I would never have come to see myself the way that I really am, and Ollie and I would probably still be together and codependent and damaging one another in ways that have only become evident now that the two of us have both walked away from it.

Did I mention that I talked to Ollie a few days ago and he apologised to me for being so manipulative?  He’s also started seeing someone and he’s realised a whole lot of things about himself, about his childhood and his family that have made him the way he is, and for the first time he can see things clearly enough to perhaps fix the things that he was doing wrong. Like bullying me when I fucked up, but expecting forgiveness when he did. And I’m so compliant that I went along with it because I loved him. Love him. I still don’t even know how I felt about his sleeping with the other girls he slept with, but I realise now that it was really the only way that I could see I would be able to keep him. So I convinced myself that it was for the best and put up with it. But when I crossed the line a teeny tiny little bit, it took months of absolute agony and penitence to make things better. How is that an equal relationship?

So now I’ve learned and things are getting better and I can see myself for who I am a little more clearly. Last night when I was out having orgasmically delicious seafood at Sala Rossa, drinking white wine and talking about our lives with Sarah and Selin, I just had a happy simple moment of knowing that everything is going to be okay. It’ll all be fine because I have good people in my life who I connect with in a huge way. I finally have a direction that I enjoy and think I will perhaps be successful moving in. I’m back at school, my classes are great, I’m going to be in a play (and my character is fantastically philosophical and rational and incredibly relevant at this point in my life), and Mark just moved in today which is bound to be fabulous.

Seeing as Dom and I finally got to talk, we inevitably talked about potential worries and pondering from the past few weeks. I told him that I don’t really know what’s right, what the best way for us is. He said that he loves me and wants to be with me but doesn’t know how fair it is on me for us to be trying to make this work — we don’t even know when the next time we’re going to see one another will be. And I don’t know what the best thing is for me, but I do think that it will be good for me to join Sarah in her detox, and try to be celibate and happy and just enjoy things in a simple uncomplicated way. I love Dom so very much, but I know that he’s right, and although I don’t want to run off and be with anybody else right now, it would be just terrible to poison this because we aren’t closer to one another. So it seems like he just gave me my freedom. Well, it wasn’t like he really held the key to it, but I think he can see clearly enough that if we are to have a chance, it’ll be at some later stage when we’re both in the same place and able to really be together. Long distance is just too hard, and at this time in my life when I don’t know what I’m doing anyhow, and need time to figure myself out, it’s a further complication to my ability to find myself. The only thing that makes those last statements suck is that I am actually totally in love with him and wish it didn’t have to be this way.

Technical difficulties

After a lovely friend and family-filled weekend in Toronto, I loaded myself into Stav’s excellently reliable and definitely illegal “Magic Bus” for a cheap and chirpy (well…perhaps more somnolent than chirpy, but that doesn’t alliterate) five-hour ride back to Montreal. I didn’t have a joint to smoke, so I didn’t sleep as much as usual, and was somewhat disoriented when we disembarked. At this time, one of the two rather noisy girls in the back seat had made a connection. “You’re Jessie’s friend,” she announced to me. “We met at a party. Do you want to share a cab up to the Plateau?” This suggestion made me extremely happy, as I wasn’t very keen to hop on the metro which would take half an hour, nor was I about to shell out $15 to cab home, after spending only $35 to get from a distance of over 500km.

So we cabbed and gabbed and it was lovely to be sitting with the knowledge that a glass of red wine and a gaggle of my class-mates would at that very moment be convened at my local bar, catching up after the long month off. “C’est juste a gauche. Ici est parfait…merci! Bye guys…” I hopped out of the cab, looked at my bags and my heart sunk. My laptop. An attempt to chase the taxi waving my arms frantically proved fruitless. This cabbie clearly didn’t check his rearview mirrors. Panic. I ran back down the street and dumped my bags in my apartment. I called Jessie. No answer. I called again. No answer. I called one more time and then gave up and called 411 for the cab companies’ phone numbers. Jessie called me back (YES!) and gave me Amy’s number, but it was her home number and I continued to freak out while pacing up and down the street. Eventually I decided that the best thing to do would be to join my friends at the bar, which I had already paced half to way toward.

As I approached I saw the usual spattering of smokers clustered outside the doors. Selin smiled at me as I approached. “Jessie gave you the wrong number. She called Amy’s cell and she has your laptop.” Thank the fucking lord. I then proceeded to get drunk. Huzzah.

So I’m back at school now. Properly, that is. Last week’s classes were a bit of a joke, however now I have attended a scriptwriting class, which looks very promising, and a print journalism workshop, which looks even moreso . I am eagerly awaiting the rest of my life. I am also trying to decide whether taking four classes, working a couple of nights a week at the club, working for Catherine one day a week at the costume shop, doing yoga every day (plus a weekend a month of workshops), and acting in a play is too much. I still haven’t managed to figure that one out. I think I’m just going to do it all, and see if I burn out.  It’s cold outside anyhow, and I need to stop drinking and smoking so much. God knows the last thing I need right now is to become a pothead again. (I have already managed to get high 7/8 days of the New Year. This cannot continue!)

What else? I’m feeling pretty okay about life at the very minute. These minutes pass quickly (as minutes do), so it’s highly probable that I’m going to have some sort of little melt-down in a few days and once again freak out about everything. However, today, this moment, in an unseasonably warm and misty Montreal, it appears to me that everything is sort of alright. Last night I went to Riccardo’s birthday party at Kaizen — the extremely overpriced sushi bar I used to work at — and saw a whole load of people I hadn’t seen in months and months. Toby — my former boss at the W, and friend of Dom’s was really rather drunk and very pleased to hear that the rumours he had heard about myself and Mr Mosqueira were true. I caught up with Claudia the gorgeous jewellery-designer and drank a whole lot of wine and ate a whole lot of nothing. Ooh…and I finally I gave Ric the lucky cat I bought him in Thailand, which I had never had a chance to give to him since I returned due to the fact that my life got all crazy and I’ve been away a lot. Lucky cats kick ass. He was giving him beats all night. And then…well, as per usual I smoked a joint (inside the restaurant after it closed) and then stayed up far later than initially intended. But such is life these days. God I love being (quasi) single.

Alas, it’s time for class. I will try to get some good writing done on here once I get my computer back.

A return…

My recent absence from the online world is the result of the hateful oligopoly that is Canadian internet and phone service providers. Enough said. I don’t want to go into it.

Happy New Year to the world! I actually started a new journal last week. I decided that I would like to leave traces of myself for future generations. Maybe it’s silly, but I have a strong desire to one day give my journals to my daughter and or granddaughter, when they’re a little older than the age I was at when writing, just so they can get into my very over-analytical head. Hell…if they’re anything like my mother and myself, there will be so many repeated patterns, that hopefully they’ll learn something.

I’m not sure about what to write here at the moment. I don’t know that I want to be quite as open about everything as I was before, but at the same time, there doesn’t seem to be much point in doing this if I’m not. I don’t know…

So New Years. An interesting night. A fun one in various ways. I started out at Selin’s house for a light dinner. I should perhaps have eaten more food, and had less of the sparkling wine cocktails, but anyhoo… I went to work, only to discover that I was an hour early, back to Selin’s back to work…and craziness! It was a pretty big drunken night. A handful of people I know showed up. Sabrina’s friend Simon was there. Always been someone I’ve been intrigued by, although I don’t know him well at all. You know those people you don’t really know but remember. The first time we met was on the mountain with Sabrina — we went to Tam Tams and hung out and had a nice time — but then I never knew if he remembered me after that when I would walk by him on the street. There would be the nod, or a smile, but never a real conversations. Until last summer: I ran into him when I was waiting for my landlord to show up at his office. We chatted about potentially being neighbours, and I think that was the last time I had seen him, until New Years. Anyhow, long story short, he was being very friendly. After finally closing up the club, I headed over to the afterparty around 5am with the boys from work. There were lots of people from around and about. Ran into former co-workers, mostly very high on something or the other, people from in and around the scene, lots of hipsters (the ones I don’t usually have anything to say to unless we’re both exceptionally high), and well… doing a bump or two never hurt on New Year’s at 5am when you don’t have anything to do until Thursday (and it’s Tuesday). It was fun. It’s been a while since I’ve been hyperactively buzzing around a room, talking to everyone, and saying things to people that I would never usually have the guts to say. I got to talking with Simon for a good long time, and then the next thing we knew it was almost 8am, the party had pretty much cleared out, and we found ourselves in the snow in the morning light looking for a cab and hoping for a depanneur (convenience store) that would be open early in the morning on New Year’s Day. Alas, no luck, so we headed to his place where we shared the single beer he had, and then headed to my place for the rum and tequila that remained, plus I was desperate to smoke a joint and stop the buzzing a little. Joint –> sleepiness –> bed time. I told Simon to go home. Up until that point I somehow hadn’t processed the idea that when you hang out with someone until close to noon the day after the partying started, they might be looking for a little more than just a friendly goodbye hug. He was pretty nice although understandably disgruntled. I was happy that I had managed to extract myself from the situation, and happy to sleep for a while. And sleep I did.

The quick summary of the days the followed is simple. It snowed, I smoked joints, philosophized and watched movies with my neighbour. Sun went down.  Sun came up. Repeat process. Wonderful.

And indeed, here we are and it’s a new year, and my life is very different from the old year, and consequently there are a lot of things about this one that are going to contrast those that have passed. I have a good feeling about this year for some reason. I’m not particularly sure why I’m feeling so positive about this year, but I am. It’s rather nice to have this feeling of just knowing that everything is going to be okay. I’m going to focus more on the here and now, on the material bits and pieces, on perhaps getting a job and making money and laying the foundations of the life that I may potentially want to have. It’s strange, but for the first time in my life I’ve started thinking that maybe I am a little behind on the achievement train. It’s the Christmas letter phenomenon. My mother has been telling me about the exciting things, and crazy jobs that so many of the children on her friends currently have. It’s a little intimidating. I like to think that I’m happier than they are, and having more fun in my non-committed, laid-back, somewhat bohemian lifestyle, but then I discover name changes on facebook and photographs of engagement parties and beautiful houses, and the private school girl in me starts to chirp a little. I used to think that I’d have a job, be successful (whatever than means), maybe even be married by now. Now that I’m here, I can’t even imagine those things happening for me before I’m thirty. And I have friends who are thirty and still don’t know what they want to do when they grow up or where they’re going, but have done so much more, and travelled and enjoyed their lives and pursued all sorts of different interests. And that’s what I want. I want to be able to pick up and go and try something out every few years, or months, or whatever takes my fancy. But then I think about the other things that I want in terms of a career or kids, or whatever else, and I have no idea really.  Ah… it is the time to be thinking about this stuff isn’t it? What amuses me is that I still haven’t had a real job and I’m 24. I think this year is the year. I really do. And I think that I’m going to find something totally fabulous. Mmmhmmm… does that sound way too idealistic?