NINETY

DAY NINETY:  Reflecting the glow of the moon light

Catching up on Chronicles of Syntax while I wait for a Game of Thrones link to appear on my computer screen is good enough for now, but I wish it was Game of Thrones.  I love Web Series, and as I approach potentially writing my own I fear that I will not understand screen writing as much as I get writing for theatre or myself.  I’ve got a voice for sure, but what I need to form is something of a voice for someone else.  Am I capable for that?  Am I even capable of finding a voice for myself? 

Web series fascinate me.  The Lizzie Bennet Diaries re-invigorated my love for Austen, the internet, and actors in general.  It opened my eyes to a new wave of learning, reading, narrative and so many other things that are so beautiful and adaptive and technological.  I feel like for once my talents are all coming together, that I could potentially be stumbling upon what (among some other things) I am meant to do.  How silly is that?  100 episodes of a story I already knew and epiphanies begin.  I’m like one of those active volcano’s that just sits there spewing ash for decades, threatening eruption with no garauntee of when where or how violent.

I always chide on how I don’t allow myself to read for pleasure during my university school terms because it gets me unfocused and I end up enjoying the novels I’m reading for myself more so than the ones for my classes (I read Dorian Grey last year while working out and I could not tell you the plot of any other book I read during the duration) and that’s just how I roll with reading now, once I pop on the audiobook I have to force myself to focus.  But I’ve always, ALWAYS watched television shows.  I’ve always had two or three weekly shows to tune into the day after it’s aired and take a half hour to an hour break and relax with my shows.  I also re-watch tv shows for myself, to keep my mind on other things.

Youtube in general are ten minute max episodic views into lives, Web Series, internet tv shows and other things that are so fascinating and beautiful that I would love to be a part of it in another way than an audience.  But I’ve always thought I couldn’t do it during university terms, because again it is so distracting to create or pursue other things while working so hard on the things that you’re paying for…

But I watch web series based on books, novels, scripts, theatrical representations.  I watch tv shows that I have already seen, or intend to watch with full focus, and love them.  I love theatre, and I try to see shows during the term (given it is increasingly hard on a low budget with limited transportation in a very limited theatrical town) but I try my best….  Why don’t I read again?  It’s distracting?  Why do things I watch on the internet not impede with my studies?

Am I missing something?  Is the internet the answer?  Or is there a way that I could potentially connect my love for reading, creating, and watching things on the internet during my university terms?  I think there is, and without talking too much about it I am finally excited about something so interesting and different that I just want to watch and create, read and identify what is the difference between focus and exhileration/motivation with a  purpose.  With one week of class to go (four days to be exact) and then two exams to study and write, I am more and more motivated to download a yoga/meditation book that will not distract me from my studies/writing and just help relax…  

But what if it doesn’t help? 

I am too afraid to begin a new creating project, so maybe…well, it’s all in the works right now, but I am thinking about working off of something else, like LBD.  Less of a response and more of an inspiration.  A practise round.  This is probably sounding rant-y and convoluted since I haven’t really included much detail, but let’s just say practise round is upon me, it encompasses me, and I hope to not disappoint.

Other goals for this week:  Get centred, DO YOGA (so important right now, must get motivated for this), see the people I love, and remember that I can do this.  Elevator breathing aside I want to just embrace this final week of my third year and really just…get ‘er done.  I gots the faith that I can get myself inspired!

x

Eighty Nine

Day Eighty-Nine:  How many special people change..

I didn’t get to writing this yesterday, so I’ll post two blogs today, but I just wanted to talk a bit about strength  This term in general has been a little rocky for a handful of different reasons, but it’s coming toa  close in two weeks time and I would like to end on a generally happy note if I cann.  As of right now, I’m having a hard time holding everything up and dealing with all kinds of other things on top of schoolwork.  I have an ongoing battle with worry, where I worry about things unnecessarily.  I am doing my best even at this moment to push those thoughts away and focus on what I’m writing.  Everything is going to be okay.

There’s this Simon and Garfunkel song called WEDNESDAY MORNING and it is one of my favourite songs because it really just depicts a brief moment of perfection, bliss, and then it is swept away.  I think when I began this semester and I had just come off of the high of travelling I was so content and confident, and as the coursework has worn me down I have lost this glimmers of solid contentness.   I would love to focus on some really good moments from travelling, even from this semester, and to cling to the energy from those to get me through the next few weeks.  I think it speaks to strength to hold onto things in order to derive motivation and a drive in general.  There are a few specific moments from travelling that I cling to, and others that I have always remembered, but for some reason they are foggy today and for the last little while.

Is it just me or are a lot of things foggy lately?  My resolve, motivation, focus, determination.  I want these things to stick and stay but the Teflon pan lets them slide off.  In yoga on Monday’s we usually set an intention for the rest of the week and I commonly use just a single word like “balance” or “positivity” and I think if I were to set an intention for this week it would be “centre.”  I need to get back to me, to my centre.  I think seeing a few friends and finishing some final projects will help, as will Paul’s dedication exactly a week from today.  I can do this, my inner cheerleader, my inner coach has lost her voice for a little while but I’m getting back to her now.  I will be centred this week.  I will breathe and get through things.  I will smile.

z

Eighty-Eight

Day Eighty-Eight:  It’s Time.

As my plans shape up for next year and what I am taking and where I am living becomes concrete my mind gets stuck on actually becoming a real person.  I will be leaving the school system for the first time in what, fifteen years?  All I’ve ever known is school, and I think that I will be ready to take on some different responsibilities and some new and challenging ones that will be hard but I just am ready for that now.  I am ready to work, and to create, and be myself outside of an academic setting.  I am planning on moving out, and buying real furniture and having real roommates that will share responsibilities. I have all of these plans, and planning them just makes it easier to get through the rest of this term.

I have an end goal now.  It’s a year away, literally, and all I have to do is maintain my marks and sanity and bam!  It will be here. 

All of this is coming to a head at the moment for me because I am not feeling too great about the things that are around me especially coming up to summer.  I don’t have a concrete plan for a job yet although I have an idea, I’m frustrated about paying for a house in Guelph and yet living in Waterloo again but I like living there.  I just wish things were a little smoother I guess, instead of me living in so many different spots, I have no real consistent common-ground, but just a vagabond from place to place.

Which brings me to what I really want to do for the summer:  get back to London.  I’ve asked a few and they’ve promised to try, but I’d really like to just go.  I’ve budgeted it, and it’s worth it to me even just for a week at this point.  I just want to be back in the city that I fell for.  When looking at graduate schools becomes a reality (aka this summer) and looking at what I really want to do with my life and where I would want to live I am going to have to make decisions.  I don’t know if I’m ready for those decisions yet, but I am going to try to tackle them. I’ve got my metaphorical work gloves for life on, handle with care.

I hope everyone has a Good Friday (ba ha ha) and that this weekend is bright and merry for everyone, as Easter should be.

x

Eighty-Seven

Day Eighty-Seven:  Late Late Late

When we first moved to the big city when I was six we lived in a pre-suburbia area where my parents still live now, and behind out houses there weren’t other houses like there are now, there were just large piles of dirt and grass and what we would call the Playlands.  I remember playing every kind of game imaginable out there:  Tarzan, House, African Safari, all of the imaginative games that required danger and high stakes and joy.  We used to run in the summer until bath-time, and every spring Isti and I would get stuck in the mud to our knee’s in the same place for three years in a row.  We had to be carried into the house by our fathers in order to get free.

Those were the good old days when playing imaginary games was socially acceptable for our age.  Ceara and I were speaking about this last night and how the day that those imagination games became un-fun was a sad day for all of us.  We used to play a variety of games in her basement, and to spare her and I further embarrassment I will not include much more detail other than Harry Potter Hotel with one rollerblade each in an unfinished basement until the wee hours of the morning was a weekly occurance.  Those really were the days where we had our best memories.

Not saying last night wasn’t fabulous don’t get me wrong.  I love the new and improved weekend nights where we no longer have card nights with ACDC and rootbeer floats (which were disgusting) we now go for wings or a meal and then beers, lots and lots of beers, and laugh a lot and sleep earlier (which happens everytime no matter how hard we try to pull-it-pullin-it all nighter) and it is still the same us, just less imagination more gossip and bars.  I think I miss the imagination games because they lasted longer to be honest, and I lived a lot closer to Ceara at this time, now we’re a half hour drive away (when Maggie B doesn’t get lost).

I enjoy challenging my imagination but at the same time it’s good to live in the real world now and again.  I miss childhood, when friendships were way simpler and I never had to worry if I had said or done something wrong really, or if I meant enough to someone, or anything like that.  I remember when things were simpler, and I’m not really complaining, but it would be nice to just lose some of the drama that comes with growing up.  Is that what I am now that I’m a twenty-something, a Grown Up capital G? I guess it’s time to embrace that.

X

Day Eighty-Six

Day Eighty-Six:  Getting Lost

I’ve been searching for the perfect book for my vacation, because for some reason I find it important to read something mindless while relaxing because it is just easier for me.  I’ve got a huge list of books that I already need to read, but those don’t include very many romance novels, and I think my life has been void of sappy romance long enough!

When we went to Costa Rica I read One Day and really enjoyed it!  But it was a little long and on audiobook discs, which means I had to lug around twenty discs with me to the pool as well as a discman.  I don’t know how many of you still have one of those, but it definitely racks up the pounds in the carry-on bag on a flight!  This time I’m purchasing a book or two on audible.com, which means they get uploaded to my ipod and that’s it.  Done-zo.   I want to stay away from the classics I think and just focus on the sappier the better.  I just want mindlessness.

I suppose this could be achieved through meditation, but during my summer break I practise my own yoga and especially when I’m at the beach or on vacation in general I do my yoga outside, and it’s more of a re-charging instead of a relaxing/meditative, I need complete quiet and still for that during vacations.  I also love to read, anything.  I miss reading physical newspapers the most, but not being able to hold a book and flip the pages is depressing.  I don’t think anyone knows how that feels, what little things I used to take for granted.

I think my whole diagnosis has changed my relationship with books and reading in general.  I wrote a column for the local bookstore last year about “Reading with my Ears,” which is all fine and dandy until…well, the relationship of reading is lost.  There’s no physical contact with the letters anymore, there’s no intimacy with the pages of a book, the physicality of hiding it on your bedside table, because it is either too chunky, too hidden in an mp3 file, or nonexistent.  If I could choose one thing, my ideal research topic for a graduate program or any other thing, it would be to understand the relationship humans have with literature.

Why do I miss holding that book in my hand so much?  Why do I crave a foot long newspaper with the loose inked letters and the acidic smell?  Why is it that a lot of blind people neglect certain aspects of reading and language culture?  Why do I feel so isolated in libraries now? 

It’s actually really interesting, ever since I started university with the English degree and my blindness I have searched for used books for my novels.  I think it’s something along my understanding that if someone had loved it, and used it passionately before me, then I wouldn’t feel so bad not reading it.  How upset I am that I neglect my books now, how my poor Harry Potter series sits alone on the shelf, or my favourites from when I was younger. It’s not that I don’t love new books, because that new book smell and just the feeling of the pages excites me, it’s that dorky English major popping out for you.  But it’s different now.  I feel bad that I can’t read that book, that it sits on my shelf and doesn’t get opened.  If you’re ever looking for a fantastic book to borrow I’d love to loan out mine, I wish I could love them more.

See?  Isn’t this just an awkward relationship altogether?  Why did I stick with the English major?  I don’t feel the same about literature anymore, and I have a drastically different understanding of story and storytelling now.  I have a new appreciation for poetry and the conciseness of short prose (holla blogspot!).  Will bookstores follow in the doom and gloom that the record stores are experiencing now in the looming technological culture we live in today?  Or will English majors live on into the future to talk intimately about revolutions in enclosed seminar classrooms and then go home to write blogs alone?

Is literature doomed?  Or am I just cynical because I can’t pick up a novel and read it to myself?  These questions will be left unanswered here.  I wish I could learn to love reading again, but as for now…..  I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but it is just not pleasurable anymore.  It breaks my heart.  Maybe my studies should continue on to search for a new way to enjoy literature, or maybe that’s been my lifelong study until this moment and beyond anyway.

x

Eighty-Five

Day Eighty-Five:  I love Paris in the rain

Writing has been easy for me since I was young.  I loved to write stories about things I didn’t know much about.  For example in third grade I wrote numerous short stories on Egypt, and how they lived and drama’s about their lives.  I don’t think I knew a thing about the history or the context or probably was any of it meant, but I enjoyed it.  I love imagining things, creating stories and characters.  I love the fact that it is so malleable and inside my own head, so if something goes wrong it’s okay, it’s just for me.

When I started showing people my work it got a bit harder to really accept the fact that things went wrong and sometimes people don’t like my writing.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really care anymore.  That’s how I know I will never make it as a fiction author, ever.  I care too little about what my audience/readers will think.  Take this blog (less fiction, but gets more action than any other creative outlet at the moment) I couldn’t really care less if anyone read it or cared about what I had to say, because I write so I can have some sort of creative outlet.  Especially during these long days of constant going, constant thinking, I feel the need to stop and really think what I will write here, it’s important enough to me to do that.

I am looking forward to editing my novella come the end of exams because it means that although it will be difficult to go through my own writing I will be actually finishing a project.  I mean poems are easy (sometimes) to look through and love instantly, but it’s looking back at those larger writing projects and taking the time to appreciate them that I haven’t mastered yet.  Maybe I need a few more courses on creative fiction, but I just have this notion that although I loved writing it, it might not be the best thing to read.

Again, re-emphasizing the fact that I will probably never make it as a fiction author.  Non-fiction?  Talking about my life and life and things?  That I can do.  I can tell you things about my life that will really make you think about things, my life, your life, the world, etc.  I can try to give advice on how to live your life, or write little tropes and anecdotes to help smooth through what I’m trying to say.  But the thing is is that I will only do these things if I will actually help someone.  These blogs are for me, they help me, regardless of how selfish that might sound to anyone when you write for yourself it helps you mentally and I truly believe that (and coming from a place of knowledge a lot of people around me feel the same, even if they don’t share their writing publically). 

I open my Diary to the internet everyday, I would love to write more fiction and poetry but right now this is was nurtures my creative outlet the best.  I feel good about what I write here (usually) and that is such a good feeling.  I used to feel good about writing detailed, Victorian-esque pieces of fiction where there were tons of characters and there were fantastical creatures and myths, and now I think I’m headed toward more concise, relatively abstract and interesting to read fiction.  I say maybe, potentially, probably, because at the moment there are just characters walking around in my head waiting to be let out.  Writing is confusing.

So today, after having written a research paper for approximately seven hours straight (after five-six hours of class and other things) I want to sign off by just saying I am doing what I love.  I finally feel okay with the whole English major thing and being a B-student, because I am learning, and it allows me to do what I love: Read, Write, and have idea’s.  Isn’t university cool?

Lol.

x

Eighty-Four

Day Eighty-Four:  The Friend Ship Has Sailed

It’s the time of year where everyone’s been through a term and three quarters and they just want to curl up and cry and sotp this nonsense, but still have to get through a week and a half before any bit of relazation could be had, let alone exams.  I get through this time with Game of Thrones and lots of breaks where I look at my Travel Blog (www.jessiegoesabroad12.tumblr.com) and think of how lucky I am to be at school at all, and try desperately to enjoy what I’m learning.  It’s an exhausting job being a student but I would really like to cling to the idea that it is worth it.

I am learning things!  Useful things, I’d like to hope, and as I figure out (or try to) what I’d like to do for the rest of my life, I cling again to the thought that what I’m focusing on with my papers and courses are things that will help me in the real world or in the future.  It’s the little things that we learn that get us through the day, I guess I’ve learned to love what I do everyday.  I love breathing, I love the smell and feel of the cool wind on my face first thing in the morning, I love the smell of coffee.  I love yoga and sitting in a class with exciting, interesting people.  I love talking with friends and eating oatmeal cookies.  I love drinking cold water and leaving the window open.  I love a lot of things, right now I’m loving April 3, because it is the day that things will start to finally calm down.

Good luck these next few weeks friends, the Fellowship will support thee.

I hope enough people understand that so I don’t feel like such a dorky sleepybear.

x

Eighty-Three

Day  Eighty-Three:  Oh to be Young, Wild, and Free

When I was very small my grandparents took my to the Toronto Zoo and I remember going to the polar bear exhibit and looking through a small window to a very large room with a very large polar bear.  It was huge, I think it must have been the first time I saw any bear in real life, and I seriously was under the impression that this small room that the bear was kept in was where bears lived.  This illusion wore off eventually, but the size of the bears did not.  I to this day have night terrors in which a very large, half-house sized polar bear chases me through an apartment building until I can’t feel my feet anymore.  I’m not very afraid of bears or anything, it’s just a dream that happens every once in a while.  I hink it sprouted from this illusion the Zoo cast on me when I was young.

I love the Zoo, the Toronto Zoo especially has fond memories mainly with my grandparents and my extended family (aunts, uncles, etc.) where we walk around and eat ice cream and smile in the sunshine.  I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood family memories lately, and how my family communicates and spends time together.  Last night my family and I made Lasagna from (almost) scratch, and everyone had a specific job or thing to pay attention to—even Kyle, who helped set the table, stir, and make a dessert!  We spent the preparation time of the meal listening to loud music and making jokes, and enjoyed it together at our dining room table as our usual Family Meal nights are usually spent.  I was hoping that it would end this wayL  positively and joyously (not to mention deliciously).

I think what’s got me stuck on reminiscing and craving more family time is that I am coming to a point in my life where I am going to start to make important, life-altering decisions on how I want to spend the rest of my life.  Things like where I want to live after I graduate, how I will get around, where I will work and study and who will I be spending my time with.  As I plan to vacate my childhood room in my parents house (still quite a ways-away but in the back of my mind none-the-less) it has dawned on me that I need to make an effort to spend my time with them wisely.

My brother and I watch tv shows together, and my sister and I go shopping or do sister-girl things like get ready together or actually go out at night.  I enjoy spending dinnertimes or lunches with my parents, and would like to plan something like Family Game nights for this summer, potentially with some Harry Potter Scene-It, although in our house it gets competitive and intense very fast.  I guess I’m just realising that this relationship between my domestic family and I is changing, and I want it to go smoothly, as long as everyone’s on board.

I love growing up, I really do.  The new responsibilities and things are somewhat of a challenge and deciding on what I want to do with my life is getting down to the nail and daunting, but the thing I will miss about being younger is the freedom to rely on the dinner the next evening at the dining room table.  When I wake up my parents aren’t there to drive me to school anymore or to pack a lunch (as my Mom so lovingly chimes that I was lucky when she did!) and I miss it.  I hope my brother and sister don’t take those little things for granted, because once they’re gone they are really gone.  There’s no Dad driving me an assignment I left at home, I have to scrape it together just to get home from the grocery store with both of my hands!

So to everyone who has, is, or will be sitting down for a meal with their family tonight or later this week I hope you enjoy those moments, because they will not always be there.  Something that we’ve learned this term as a family is that every moment is precious when it comes to the people you love most.  I am off for a dinner with one of my best friends, who might not be biological family but is the closest I’ve got while I’m away from home. Thanks to my family for a great weekend at home, looking forward to many lovely Easter Delicious Dishes next weekend!  Good evening to all and to all a good night!

x

Eighty Two

Day Eighty-Two:  Sprung!

I’ve been told that the warm weather is to arrive this week and for that I am grateful.  I am ready to be rid of this winter jacket, these boots, scarves, mittens, and hat.  I am ready for flats and for the spring rain!  Oh Canadian weather, how unpredictable and rough you are.  I can forsee another snow before exams are out, but for now I am taking the sunshine and the temperatures in the positives and running with them.

As we get ready for our trip at the end of April I have been opening up my suitcase and travelling bags and missing London intensely.  I wish I had the funds to take a week-long venture this summer, but I don’t think I will be back for another year or so.  I feel like I am now well-versed in airports of all kinds, and have conquered them headfirst with no Tylenol just lots of water and conversation.  Oh travelling, how I will love you so much more when I can experience you comfortabley.

Along with the good weather comes with the sun, and although I love the sun I thought I’d write some tips to good skin, eye, hair, and general care for those sunny days!  I have both just heard of some of these as well as have done them for years, so I hope they hep.

1.       Moisturize.  Even if this means in the morning or evening only when you wash your face, your skin will respond so much more to the tan and sun if your face is not so dry.  It will also be better for the healthy of your skin, so as the spring emerges around the snow banks I suggest SPF proof moisturizer for the mornings.  You really should be using this all year round, but it’s easier to remember when the sun is shining through your bathroom window.

2.      Sunglasses.  This is silly for me to preech because let’s get real here, I wear my sunglasses when it’s cloudy out.  I am an advocate for sunglass wearing year-round, but if you only break out the aviators when the warmer months hit I recommend wearing them every day, even on the cloudy ones, just to be careful.  Sun hurts your eyes, you’ll thank me when you’re old and only have a small prescription in your reading glasses.

3.      Sunscreen.  I sound like a Women’s Living magazine, but really I am going to chide wearing sunscreen because I have friends and people in my life who don’t.  It’s important to re-apply after swimming, re-apply halfway through the day, re-apply if you change your clothes.  If you’re tanning PLEASE put on sunscreen, I can’t even explain the detrimental affects the sun really has on your skin better than saying you could die.  There you go.  Just be careful.

4.      Big hats, big sun umbrella’s, and the shade..  If you are not fully into tanning (so in your late teens early twenties and female…I think.) then you will want to just get in the shade.  Please, for me, invent in a big sun hat or a sun umbrella, and when you’re at the beach or walking around take it with you.  It sounds so silly, but it really does help.

5.      Water.  DRINK IT BE IN IT.  ENJOY IT.  It’s there for you, it keeps you hydrated and helps your skin, and you should be drinking all kinds of it all year round but especially if you’re out and about in the sun during the warmer months be sure to have water with you at all times.  Invest in a re-useable water bottle and take it with you.  It’s so important to always have water in your body, especially when you’re at the beach where you might be there for an extended period of time and don’t think about rehydration.  Or shopping, trust me I forget water while shopping all the time and woner why about three hours in I get so cranky.  Water water water.

And that’s what I can think of for now, maybe this will be needed for the next couple of days and maybe it’s just things to get ready for for the summer, but I hope it will inspire atleast some of you to change some habits for the warmer months!

x

Eighty-One

Day Eighty-One:  Watching Friends

I’ve spent the evening doing what I love:  spending time with the people that matter to me.  I’ve tried to do this frequently this term as it is what makes me feel good on the inside.  As I type I am sittig on my floor in Christmas pajama pants and my Primark cosy sweater with a glass of water and just finished my chippies with my brother and sister sitting on my bed, watching the first episode of Friends.  We just finished a good movie, and I am very happy to be with them.  This is the first time in a long time that we’ve acknowledged the fact that we all need to spend more time together.  It’s so important to be together.

I love my siblings dearly.

I know it has been a long day, a long week, a long term, and I am dying to cuddle into bed and drift into sleep before I have to get up and memorise-memorise-memorise tomorrow, but I want to keep watching the one with the wedding dress.  I want to keep spending time with the ones that love me for who I am in my Ho-Ho-Ho jammies with my hair in a mess and covered in crumbs.  They don’t care if I smell or make stupid jokes or laugh too hard at Goldmember.  They care that I’m cosy, and relaxing, and I love them for it.

I may be dog tired but I am happier now than I have been all week.  What a great night.  Thank you, world, for letting me have such a good evening.  And please help me not stress too much.

x

EIGHTY

Day EIGHTY:  Dedicated Follower of Fashion

While in London I chose a Teddy Bear in a tourist shop that has a Union Jack Flag and LONDON on a sweater that it wears.  It is too tiny to sleep in my bed because I would no doubt lose it every evening, but it sits beside my bed and smirks at me.  Like he knows he knows that I miss it so much.  His name is Edward, and he reminds me everyday of my goal to travel so much more in the near future.

We are heading on a family vacation to cuba at the end of April, which is quite exciting.  I am excited about tanning with my sister and night swimming with my brother and spending much-needed family time with the people who matter most. After that, I am having surgery early May, and eventually Zoe and I are thinking of going to New York City for an extended long weekend of some sort.  I think we should get planning this, maybe I’ll speak to her about it this weekend.  I find planning a trip in the future helps get me through the stressful days and weeks that are going to be the next two.  Until April fourth I will not be able to breathe that easily, oh the joys of being an undergraduate.

I enjoy learning in university to an extent.  I love listening to the most brilliant people I know talk about things that they are passionate about and are interesting and I have idea’s and opinions and thoughts about, that can be directed towards other peers and a conversation emerges and there is dialogue and conflict and interesting aspects of actual learning in front of me.  I love reading something once and then again and having an epiphany:  it was actually this way!  Those are the parts of learning that I enjoy.  I enjoy using my own analysis to derive meaning from texts and performances, and deriving theory and inferring details from cose readings, and connecting thoughts and lectures, and all of those kinds of things.

London was a different learning altogether.  We saw the city, it changed before our eyes. We saw the Globe and Richard III and the British Library and the Thames.  It was ephemeral, right before our eyes, and that kind of interactive learning (not saying the above discussions aren’t interactive, just in a different way) really gets me excited about learning.  That’s why I am looking for a practical-based graduate program.  Something where I’m not just sitting and reading and analysing to please someone else, but something that I can do archival work, or work in groups to create or conclude and discuss, or something that is researchable in a qualitative way.  Searching for these programs isn’t hard, but finding one that fits…me, that’s the issue. 

I love working with people, and being in the moment and smiling and using what I know to better other people.  Even if I didn’t continue on to a graduate university program I’d still continue to learn.  Despite the two online courses I’m taking this summer I will be taking an online Braille course as well as trail riding sessions, rock climbing excursions, and other active both physically and mentally to keep me up with the challenges.  Maybe that’s what I’m craving for graduate school, a challenge within my limits.

A challenge that is not necessarily going to make me feel stupid but something more demanding.  As if university thus far hasn’t been a challenge attacking my capabilities as a human being, I do not need anything more than what I’ve already been through stress-wise.  But something interesting, engaging, something I actually like.  It’s all relative because I learn better in a conversational setting where I am allowed to make mistakes.  I find that if you make a mistake on a paper or a quiz or a final it is detrimental to your grade, detrimental to your academic career, detrimental to…you.  I want to learn in an environment where if a mistake is made or the wrong ifnerrence is expressed that you can work it out and feel supported.  I’ve been in a few classes where that is encouraged, and I appreciate those courses.

I want more.

So as it comes down to the end of the term and things are winding and vacations are sprouting up and such, I want to keep these things in mind.  How I learn, what I am actually looking for, and staying true to the program that I know I want to be a part of.  I know that if I do what I do best something will come along that will excite me and support me career-wise.  I have to believe that, because if I don’t then what else have I got to hang on to?  I’m this far in a double English Theatre major, I have to have the faith that I will do soething enjoyable and interesting and engaging that will help people.  I just have to.

x

Seventy-Nine

Day Seventy-Nine:  Work Overload

I have this weird tick where I am uncomfortable with bare walls.  I don’t even mean photo-wise, I mean in way of furniture.  I was just parousing a friend’s blog and they have pictures of a recently re-done bedroom, and there was a space between a bed and a chair, and I cringed.  How strange is that?  I can’t deal with any bare space in a room, it must be filled with some kind of furniture piece or pile of books, a chair, anything to make it look full.

I would love to attribute these obscurities to the fact that I love being surrounded by things, but I think it’s just a need for organised clutter.  I have been teased about my inability to produce wall space on many occaision, or the fact that my desk is always covered and there’s always so many things on my floor, but I don’t really mind.  It’s not messy to me, it’s full.  What a strange way to live.  I already live ina  box, just put a bunch of stuff in it.

I was thinking a lot today about the feeling I get when I walk up to something important.  For example in dover climbing the horrendous mountain that was the steep hill leading to the castle, and then more hills, and more hills, and more sights and beautiful oceanic views and then eventually walking to the oldest castle in England and looking at it with absolute awe.  My chest fills up and there are tingles and I can just feel the importance of where I am.  This has happened in so many places, even when I walked onto Guelph campus for the first time or the first time I met Zoe’s dog, it’s just that feeling you get when something is so new and exciting that your body doesn’t know how to take it.

I crave that feeling.  I get that feeling when I get a new book, or a new yoga mat, or something exciting is about to happen.  I get that feeling everywhere if I try hard enough, but it’s the best when it’s around something new and huge.  Nothing as mundane as my full box of a room (or rooms) would ever make me feel this feeling, right?

Not exactly.

I mean the first time I came home in December into my room in Waterloo I felt appreciation for my huge bed and a sense of fitting in.   I suppose this is where I belong?  I have a hard time feeling comfortable in certain places and having them feel like home.  Where is home?  Is it somewhere that has no bare walls and all of my things?  Or is it a random destination that makes me feel that absolute comfort feeling of overwhelming happiness and joy?  I grapple with this question often as every time I enter a new place I have new feelings for it.

For example right now I am trying to make my room at school feel like my own room.  There are things cluttering every orifice, every wall space, even every floor space, and yet something seems to be missing.  It’s nothing I could put my finger on any time before now and even now I have a hard time figuring what I need to make it complete.  Something tells me it’s just a phase and it will pass, maybe it’s the time of year, but I’ve never actually felt the overwhelming joy while walking into this room.  It’s a goal I set for everywhere I go, I think it’s a good one.

“Home” is such an abstract concept to me. I feel at home in the Bullring the same way I feel at home in friends’s company or while watching a certain tv show.  I feel at home at Sauble Beach or in Mount Forest, but I also felt at home in London, Dublin, and Italy.  I feel at home in places that the there is a possibility for comfort but also adventure.  Maybe that’s what’s missing from this room:  adventure. 

What is up with that?

On that note I will leave this here, but I do suggest everyone taking a good long think over where their home is, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be where you live.  I mean my house with my family definitely feels like home sometimes, but other times it feels more iike an anchor.  Maybe Home with a capital H is something you take with you, more of an aura or an experience, or maybe it’s something that comes with age.  Maybe I will never be Home until I have passed and the meaning of life will be within me.  Maybe that’s what my dad means when he says Brad is Home.  He has found peace.

Lots of love and hugs,

x

Seventy-Eight

Day Seventy-Eight:  A beautiful Day

Today has been an overall cosy day.  One of those sleepy days where your eyes are soft all day and although you’re focused you’re not really involved.  It is one of those days that although you really would like to participate, you would like to give that prof or friend some more energy, you hold back.  It has just been one of those days, and I couldn’t help it.  Everyone has a day or two like that, maybe a month, maybe a week, where it doesn’t feel right to put yourself on the line the whole day.  That’s okay though, there’s always tomorrow.

When I have one of these days I end up trying to shut down early in the day, but it is so much better to power through or do something to pick yourself up.  Go to your favourite place for lunch, call your best friend, treat yo’self, or something to lighten up the dreary day.  Before yoga today I bought a small bag of chips (yes, at the gym) and without fear of judgement I ate them while sitting in the front area before the Range room and studio, no shame, just sat smiling because I let myself do it.  Who cares?  I take care of my body, and let it take breaks and push it and challenge it, I needed a little taste for me.

So if you’re stuck on one of those days, or week’s, or time of year for that matter as I assume March is that month of the year where everything’s due and exams are looming and despite any happy thoughts it’s hard to drag your butt out of bed in the morning I hope you take the time to treat yourself.  Buy the donut, take the hour to watch the new episode, go to bed a half hour earlier.  You deserve that break, that treat, because it is that time of year where we forget to take care of ourselves in sacrifice for grades and papers and professors and deadlines and appointments and everything and everything and everything that piles up, and keeps piling, and doesn’t leave until the end of April.

Over exams I usually buy a box or two of fruit loops and that’s my study break.  Trust me that break is totally worth it.  It may be a struggle to realise that things are going to be okay but they will.  I just know it.

x

Seventy-Seven

Day Seventy-Seven:  It was Bright

Today was one of those days where I hardly spoke to anybody.  It was different from last week where I felt the lack of conversation weighing on me.  Last week, I didn’t want to be an introvert!  I wanted to socialise and be around people and it just hardly happened, which was why I was so down about it.  Today I went to acting and spoke to a few people, councelling, then yoga where I enjoy my instructor’s company but it was a class, and then home to write papers.  I’ve hardly said hello to anybody let alone have an actual conversation.  The thing that was different about today than last week was that I was content with this….psuedo-loneliness.

I sat at a table in the UC reading an Ontarion for the first time in ages rinking a chocolate Starbucky’s smoothie and notlistening to music, but listening to the people around me and smelling the guy next to me’s amazing subway sandwich that actually smelled like bbq chips and made me want some immediately.  I spent the first few hours after yoga running errands on the computer (sending emails, checking things, registering and dropping classes, etc.) and finally watching the season finale of GIRLS before embarking on my Elizabethan paper.  I think I’ve written the word Elizabeth more than my own name lately, and I’m okay with that.  I’ve spent today nurturing myself, which was one of my New Year’s resolutions, and I am really proud of myself for doing it.

Yes, I take care of myself.  I usually eat enough, sleep enough, take enough breaks, but it’s a rare moment to have a very busy, jam-packed day and still have time to enjoy the little things around you.  I woke up this morning still sleepy despite a good sleep and grumpy, and by the time I arrived on campus I was chiming “Have a good day!” to everyone around me.  Today was a good day, and this week will be a good week.  How do I know?  I just do.

If I’ve ever said that to you,”I just know, trust me, it will be okay,” I apologise, because it probably doesn’t help your situation, but if you think about it we live our lives thinking and dictating how we feel by the way we think.  If you think about the Titanic, and think about how sad it was and how stupid it was to not have enough life boats, then that is your thought:  you are sad.  I think therefore I am.  I feel like conjugating verbs in French class for ten years of my life improved my understanding of being just marginally, enough to really emphasize that in order to be something or to do something, I must first think about it.

AJ says a lot about this kind of thing to me, not that he ever applies it to himself, but things like I will have better sleep if I stop worrying about not sleeping, and it is true.  It’s the way we think about ourselves that dictates how we will be.  Today was a good day because I woke up today and made it so.

So what can I say?  I always tell people it will be okay, because I know it will, because I think the best of the people around me therefore I truly believe that they will be okay.  I wish everyone would think that they can do anything because then they would be able to.  Sometimes life gets us down, or throws a punch to the stomach we weren’t prepared for, but you know what we do?  We follow the Moffatts.

I get knocked down, then I get up again.

That’s the Moffatt’s right?  You’d think I’d google it but I don’t have the patience.  Also Microsoft Word wants to tell my Google isn’t a word, joke’s on them, isn’t it?  Have a lovely week my friends, because I know you deserve it.

x

Seventy-Six

Day Seventy-Six:  I haven’t written a poem in two weeks

My throat is worse today and it makes me want to make a tea, crawl into bed and re-watch Sex and the City again.  It is cold enough in my room right now that my fingers are stiff.  I’ve been writing so much about my travels that it has inspired me to look toward my future travels this summer and beyond, and craving that tiny break between exams and my surgery/classes.  Relaxing, and the ability to not do anything productive on purpose is hard for me.  I have a hard time convincing myself that I have time to do this.  I never remember that I do have the time.  Today I did nothing productive.  I slept a lot, and read, and watched some tv, and I’m about to get into bed.  It was just one of those days.

Isn’t it weird doing something for just you for once?  Taking an hour and catching up on youtube video’s or treating yourself to that chocolate bar, it is a strange sensation.  I have a hard time, like I just said, convincing myself that I can do these things and feel okay about my work load while doing them.  This week is going to be a good week because I honoured those instincts to take a day completely off, and for that I am grateful.

I would love to write more about honouring yourself, or keeping busy but with something gratifying and fulfilling for you, but I don’t think I will.  It’s silly to preach something that I am just learning to do myself.  I will however write a bit on this empty feeling inside.

It happens every so often that I have an empty feeling, like something’s missing, and usually this feeling disappears after a while, but there’s always that time when I am searching for something to fill it with.  As the term winds down to the nail I find myself with little social time and a lot of busy days and tired evenings.  It’s hard to maintain a routine that doesn’t honour yourself. This empty feeling doesn’t feel like a person or a physical thing but more or less a conversation that needs to be had, or an experience yet to be experienced. It’s like I’m missing something important, and it’s frustrating trying to figure out what that is.

Or it could just be that I am craving the gained freedom that is the summer.  The warm weather, the low-key classes and increased earnings in the bank, and all around goodness.  The anticipation for the good weather alone is enough to make anyone a little stir-crazy.  I just wish spring would hurry up, vacation to start, and give me a place for this pent up energy.  I feel like all I do all day is wish and hope that tomorrow I don’t have to wear boots anymore.  I can’t be the only Canadian in desperate need of a melt down.  I also cannot be the only student craving summer.

There’s  a lot of things I want here, but what I need is to just accept the fact that all that’s coming, and I need to buckle down and get ‘er done so that I can finish this term with a smile.  And really nice aviators.

x

Seventy-Five

Day Seventy-Five:  European Memories Series #7

The Beers, Wines, Coffee’s, Whiskey’s, Bourbon’s, and the Other Drinks That Were Consumed.

From drinking a bottle of wine (courteously opened by some random bartender in Paris) on the River Sein to our last beer in London at the Eusten, it is true what they say when the alcohol culture in Europe is drastically different from that in Canada.  Water is not free, so beer was the natural option when going out for dinner, or just a casual drink in the afternoon (in what seemed like every country, it didn’t matter where you were drinking in the afternoon). 

Leaving to go I was not convinced that I would come home loving beer, but here I am planning on buying some for Paddy’s this afternoon.  It took a little bit and a whole bunch of different tastes (I have a few favourites, but we tried everything from what we knew was good to what sounded the funniest on the menu) and obviously when in London it is only fair to drink every kin of different locally brewed beer to find a favourite.  Mine was Nicholson by the end, perfect for me.

But beer wasn’t the only thing I’ve returned to Canada loving, as per usual I tried all kinds of whiskeys while away, and as I am a seasoned Canadian Whiskey girl it was no joke to me to find the best, smoothest one in London.  My favourite was found in Islington at a Whiskey bar called the Lexington, the whiskey was Wild Turkey, and it was so inexpensive and smooth.  Of course, whilst in Dublin we tried Jameson which will forever be my favourite foreign one, and then in Scotland we tried so many Single Malts I couldn’t tell you a favourite.  Whiskey seemed to be over all less expensive and better tasting (in my opinion) while away, which was good news for me.

While in Italy I fell in a desperate love for wine.  If you have spoken to me recently you’ll know I’m stuck on an Italian red from MontePulciano, which is where we actually took a wine tour mid-trip.  Wine has never been my favourite drink, but it has grown on me, and now I could not imagine Italy without it.  On the Italian note I also had my first actually good cup of coffee, which sparked a not-so-super taste for a coffee every couple of days or so.  London could not get coffee right anywhere we went (except for Notes they knew what was up) but Paris and Italy knew their coffee.  I miss coffee a lot.

Other beverages tried included Pim’s, carbonated water, random bourbon, Iron Brew (Scottish hangover cure and lovely soda that tastes like a mix of orange pop and cream soda), any and every kind of tea available, and other assorted bev’s along the way.  Although not explicitly drinking was the centre of most of the social mornings, afternoons, and evenings whilst away.  With all of these incredible choices I cannot complain a bit.

This comes to the end of my Europe memories for this week, but I’ll probably dig up some more later on this year.  I enjoy talking about Europe but it gets repetitive when I just say “I did it!” because really, I did it, you all know that, so maybe the next one will have even more of a theme, I don’t know, this is all so new to me (except not really, this is my second time ‘round isn’t it?).  I hope everyone has a safe pre-Paddy’s evening and a bright and early start to a big day tomorrow!  I’m spending it with my beautiful sister, so I couldn’t be more excited!

xox

Seventy-Four

Day Seventy-Four:  European Memories Series #6

The View From Green Park

The first day I took the tube alone I didn’t know where I was going.  I got on the Picadilly Line and got off at a stop that sounded nice.  It happened to be Green Park and I sat in one of those chairs in the sun that apparently cost a pound but I didn’t know at the time.  I sunk back, let my head rest against the back of the chair, and looked off at the tree’s beyond which sat Buckingham Palace.  I suppose there were tree’s, I can’t remember seeing them it was rather sunny, but I knew they were there.  That’s a lot of things in my life:  I can’t specifically see them or hear them, but I feel their presence. 

That day was the first day I knew that even though people were changing in my life, and the person I was was different than who left Canada to get there, and that Canada was changing without, and around me things were happening, I knew in my little being that everything, and I mean everything, was going to be fine.  I remember taking a deep breath and it was so cold and different and new and happy that I just was the most relaxed (and I meditate daily) and it was the absolute best rest I’ve ever had.  After being so furiously lost on the tube in the station and confused by the people and the city being so overwhelmingnly large and intimidating and being away from my family and people I loved and new people in my life who were so important and people who were already in my life and changing our relationships were changing and I just knew that it would be fine.  This chair, this stolen piece of relaxation that I had taken from the City of London for just a moment allowed me to realise that if I just sat with these thoughts and feelings, acknowledged them, and let them happen, that it would be fine.

I was fine!  And then I got kicked out, so I bought a Pret brownie and skipped down the tube station home.  How boring is that?  Well it wasn’t to me, it was significantly the opposite of boring, but it seems to mundane now.  After tubing so often to Covent Garden alone to go shopping or to the spa or to the Thames and the markets and walking everywhere home and around and all over the city it seems so mundane to be so graciously proud of myself to have tubed just to Green Park for a brownie and a sit.  But it really was that huge for me, sitting, alone, in a city that I’ve dreamt about since my childhood, and there I was man, I had made it.

I keep saying that over and over and it’s not because I don’t have anything else to say, but that’s just what happened for me.  I MADE IT.  There’s a space above my desk in Guelph and it is waiting for a poster sized picture from my trip but I can’t decide from where.  Every city I’ve been to has atleast one very good beautiful poster-esque picture, and yet I am inclined to just blow up a big picture of Pentonville Road, or the random ones from inside Covent Garden, but it will most likely be of the Thames. 

x

Seventy-Three

Day Seventy-Three:  European Memories Series #5

Why the Colosseum Means so Much to Me

It was just so big.  I remember looking forward to Rome and not realising what was actually there.  I knew it was going to be Italy, and Italian, and the food and gelati and how important it was to AJ we go and how much fun it was going to be, but it truly hit me when it was so warm and then just seeing the sheer size of the actual building, the Colosseum, and just knowing that it was so old, and important, and there.  I was amazed.  So much history had been experienced there, lived through those walls until this time.  I could feel it when touching the walls that there was something so important, so surreal about this place. 

A lot of people say how underwhelming the Coloseum was for them, but it was overwhelming to me.  To really understand the things around me were around so long ago, and how absolutely stunningly beautiful they were.  We would sit and eat our dopo chaino gelati while the sun set or had already set with the large historical ruin behind us and I would sit in actual awe that we were there.  I was looking through a fragmented view of this beautiful building that I truly loved.  How miraculous, I was sharing an experience with millions of other people around the world, the role this building takes in so many people’s stories is…unbelievable.  My story just consists of walking through around near and sitting, gazing, reflecting in its awe, and loving it.  Such a warm breeze on an October evening with incredible friends and incredible food in an incredible city. 

Italy was incredible to say the least, just thinking back it was so beautiful and elegant and…back street.  I remember walking back to our hotel that first night after seeing the Colosseum dopo-gelati and winding through streets of professionally parked cars, to our building in a beautiful bed and breakfast, where we drank prosecco and chatted.  How relaxing Italy seems now, despite all of the walking and stresses, to just relax on a large bed and giggle and listen to the construction late at night outside the window, or sit perched on the side of an old marble fence looking on to one of the most presitigous sights in the world, and thinking how absolutely thrilled you are to be there.  How intensely strong it feels to say I made it there and back again.  How silly it seems how worried I was to fly there, and how many times I’ve been on a plane since then.  How fascinating the people were, how real the sounds and smells were.  That first glass of wine, that last gelato. 

My last thing I did on the streets of Rome was buy an Italian Vogue from a street vendor thanks to AJ for remembering, it’s sitting on my desk in Waterloo, how simple it was to just pick up a magazine from a street vendor.  How I wish we could fly back right now and sit on a patio and have a glass of wine and write and chat and get drunk until so late and watch the Colosseum with the stars behind.  How strong.

x

Seventy-Two

Day Seventy-Two:  European Memories series #4

That One Time on the Thames

Picture London.  Now picture my smiling face.  There was hardly any moment where those two things didn’t mix.  It was November fifth and me and the girlies had taken the buses down to Parliament and nothing was happening so we ran the length of the Thames.  There is one walkway that has tree’s on either side with blue twinkle lights, it is the absolute perfect date spot.  It was a bit chilly, and there wasn’t anyone but us around, and we super-strolled down the walkway. 

It isn’t any secret that I love the Thames, I absolutely adore the Thames.  The river is just so beautiful, so central, it’s always just there.  It helped me situate myself every day, and it was there when I left, and I was very sad to say goodbye.  I remember the first time I saw it and I cried.  All I talk about here is crying, but I cry when I know I’ve made it.  I made it to theThames, man.

So this one walkway was so quiet, so secluded, and I really enjoyed the fact that it was just there.  I thought a lot about it after that night, and it really reminded me of Uptown Waterloo.  It was nicely decorated and there were things on either side, one of which was the Thames, and I really thought that I had not only made it but I was somewhere. I wasn’t just in London doing schoolwork, I wasn’t just out looking for fireworks at midnight with my girls, I was in a place that was truly important to someone.  That someone was and will forever be me.

I don’t know why the tree’s were decorated, or who put them there, or if they are like that the entire year, but they were just so twinkling, so prominent on the side of the Thames that it really reminded me how lucky I was to be there.  To smell the air that first night, to see those lights, to see the reflections of the lights in the Thames.  I miss that walkway because it spoke to me.  It said “Look at me, I’m here, and so are you.” 

I didn’t even get a picture but I don’t need one.  That walkway will be burned into my memory in the best of ways, I remember thinking how beautiful it was, and walked a little behind the girls, and watched how the light hit them as they walked.  That sounds awkward, but I still can’t believe what great friends I met while away.  I miss that walkway.

x

Seventy One

Day Seventy-One:  European Memories Series #3

The Two Places I Consider Moving to in London Every Day of My Life:  Camden Passage, Notting Hill

The first time I found myself in Camden Passage I seriously thought I was lost.  It would not be the first time I’d think those thoughts while in Angel, because after shopping for a few hours alone early December I ended up lost while parousing my favourite part of the King’s Cross area.  There was the Jack Wills where most of the employee’s were really good at their job and decided to chat me up everytime.  There was the Breakfast Club, where if you choose to eat on the patio after mid November they bring you coffee and blankets, bringing a syrup-deprived Canadian home for an hour and a half.  The Loops store with knitting needles and yarn from Peru.  The pubs, the vintage shops, the cobblestones, and the general atmosphere of absolute perfection.

It was yuppie central, if we went for breakfast on a Sunday morning and waited in line there were young couples with buggies and a group of friends, maybe a book club with new mommies, it seemed incredibly cosy as a community, one thing that I am driven towards is cosy-ness in any given place.  The apartments wver the shops, there was a school around the corner, and it was beautiful.  I miss, I miss thinking that I could live there, and start my own practise or just generally live in a loft above some Mom and Pop Ice Cream parlour and have a book club on Sunday mornings and be in London at all.  I miss it because I felt like I fit there, on a Monday afternoon in a dress and converse shoes with my headphones in shopping for yarn, stopping for a coffee and flirting with the employee’s.  In general, my best memories of Camden Passage have this gravitational pull that is more than cosmic, more than a “need,” it is unavoidable.  The day I land back in London I’ll be back in Camden Passage, drinking a coffee from the red egg mug and cosy at last.

The other place I consider moving to wuld be Notting Hill.  How quaint, considering I would venture to say it is the most expensive place to live in the entire city, but it is just so god damn beautiful.  Portobello Road market may not be the best market in the world but It it was so…frig, again, cosy.  The houses around it, the schools, how close it is to the parks, the churches, the leaves (Autumn, my favourite) the roads, the Second Cup witht eh cute barista’s and the Jack Wills whose employee’s never fail to make me feel good about myself every time I go in.  I seriously regret never buying anything.

There was this one moment about a few weeks before Christmas I was down at the market alone on the tube alone and I was walking up to the vintage store with the feminist radio that I would warm up in, and I was walking on the edge of a curb because there wasn’t really a sidewalk but I didn’t want to walk on the road and there was a fence and there were women (Southern Americans to be exact) walking on the street giggling,.  I was walking, and listening, and it reminded me of Ceara and how good of friends we are and how I wish one day we could walk down that road together and I could show her everything I saw that day and more.  I want to live in the white apartment with the bright red door and the small yard and the milk bottles that I was walking beside at the time.

I wish I took more pictures in Notting Hill.  I wish I could’ve told those two ladies how lucky they are, and how amazing the market was, and how the day was beautiful and life is so beautiful.  I wish I was on that curb right now that is probably littered with little drifts of snow.  I  remember that the sun was in my eyes and I got really lost one day and I found the dress booth at the market that I really loved and cried because I had found it.  I never realise how scary it would be to not find my way home if I did actually get really lost one day.

But I always find my way home. 

I miss London, did I mention that?

z

Seventy

Day SEVENTY:  European Memories Series #2

That Fascist Bookstore, Tea Shop, Pub and Tesco

The rain today has reminded me of this one afternoon in London.  I am going to venture to say that it was a Thursday early in the semester before we had Tea dates at Drink, Shop, Do and when I would go alone before going back to our place for dinner.  I remember going down my favourite local street to our place and popping in to the small bookshop next to Drink Shop Do to get out of the rain before getting a tea.  I had four pounds in my pocket in change, and I went back to the local poetry section and picked up a few small chap books. 

That is my favourite way to pick up poetry just to randomly choose nice covers, nice sounding names, interesting, intriguing names.  So I picked those up, and as the title of this post states it was a very subtle but Fascit store, and it was very adorable and cluttered and quiet, and I loved oing in there.  This moment has settled into my mind as one of those days that I just felt like being alone and thinking my own thoughts in this city.

After the store I headed to tea, and then to Tesco to pick up most likely oatmeal, Pringles and peppers.  It’s the way Tesco went (not a lot of meat…even then…) and then back home.  It seems really uninteresting now looking back I wonder why I chose this moment.  I can’t remember what I was thinking, but I think I enjoyed this afternoon because it was one of those times where I was actually separate from the people I had gone with within the city.

I had a lovely room mate who don’t get me wrong I love dearly, but we were together every moment when we were home, so I took little jaunts around the city alone just to get out and about.  That’s a huge step for me, I hardly do this at home and it has inspired me to take time by myself around the city and campus here in Canada because it is important to experience things alone. 

I miss this street I’ve been pondering so much.  It is a one-way, and the light is always ready to cross, and there are tons of bus stops and small shops.  There is this little pub that we went to a few times, it had good music till about eleven.  I miss how it was so open on the side walk and how busy Tesco got whenever students were left out.  I miss the cheery Jamaican cashier that always neglected to help me bag anything, and I miss the sweeties and clotted cream that isn’t sold here.  I miss Drink Shop Do, and every single memory I had in that building.  I miss the tea pots, and the table, and the servers (because more often than not it was that attractive one that always smiled a lot) and the lights and music and the bathrooms, and the stairs that went upstairs and the flowers on every table.  I miss the bookshop that was doing renovations with the attractive carrier that one day and I spent an hour looking at the different Fascist theatrical texts just so I could be in there.  I think this post is more of a homage to that street and the irreplaceable and undying love I feel for it. 

I think I miss it the most because those places seemed to really be “my” place in London.  Yeah, I brought the ladies and AJ and my parents, and Tesco could never just be mine, but I spent a whole helluva lot of time there, I knew it well, I could walk it in the dark alone and half drunk (forgetting that time I fell while crossing, but always remember that four minute Pringles run with Maya). 

It hurts my chest to think about these places, because they hold so much meaning for me now. Independence?  Sincerity?  Comfort?  Everything.  If anything these places have inspired my will to continue doing the things I love no matter how comfortable or un=varietable they become.   See you soon.

X

Sixty-Nine

Day Sixty-Nine:  European Memories Series #1

I’ve decided to start this Memories Series today and to continue it for the rest of the week.  These memories are things that I probably haven’t included in my travel blog (jessiegoesabroad12.tumblr.com if you’re interested to look back on my travels last term) but to write about the very small, interesting, maybe even mundane moments that have profoundly changed the way I think about people, the world, and my own life.  I hope this is interesting for you as it was for me actually experiencing them.

Our First “Sane” Walk Through Paris – August 2012

There are a lot of things about Paris that not a lot of people know about, even AJ doesn’t know every thought that went through my head (although we talked enough those four days that I’m sure he knows many) but there is one very defined moment that I will remember forever as our first walk.  This was not the walk on the day we landed in England, took the chunnel to Paris, Metro to the Latin Quarter, and then around there looking for food before passing out of heat exhaustion (and exhaustion in every other form possible) that evening.  This was the next morning, after we had actually slept (finally) and we were going to head to the River Sein and Notre Dame after the zoo.  It sounds like we were two disillusioned five year olds, and in a way I guess we would’ve seemed that way.  Not speaking for AJ although I can make some assumptions I myself was in complete bliss.  We were in Paris.

After leaving the hostel we walked down random side streets he had found on the map and there was one in particular with white townhouses and the smallest cars I’ve ever seen in the oddest colours and there was absolutely no one else on the street but us.  We had stopped talking (might be shocking to some but we did not constantly speak for two weeks, I would’ve certainly driven him crazy) and I remember just thinking how absolutely incredible this street was.  I can’t exactly remember if it was before the zoo or after, but I remember it was so hot, and I had been so excited for this moment of being free and exploring one of the most prestigious and fabulous cities in the world that I just knew this was the best thing ever.  I remember smiling whole-heartedly, without worry, because it didn’t matter what happened that day or the next, this trip was going to be infinitely better than anything I had expected.

This brief moment had truly shaped my positivity leading into this incredible trip.  It was so simple:  a soft-coloured quiet side street in Paris, and yet to me it was the newest, most strange and amazing thing I’d ever seen.  After this street we had erupted into the city, the River, Notre Dame, the people the noises the everything.  I remember just after this moment we found the Sein, and I remember keeping my sunglasses on because I was crying, I didn’t want AJ to see (although again I’m sure he knew, he’s too intuitive that one) because I had made it.  After walking down the streets and coming up to a city where the most incredible people in the world have been, the most amazing historical events, the most beautiful sights, and here I was right there, looking and listening to the water, and seeing the people around me, and it was just perfect.  I cannot describe a better moment in my life where I realised that I was more comfortable, more happy, more interested in my own life than then. 

I’m tearing up thinking about this, because it was the true beginning of the adventure that has now ended but in all honesty I can’t believe it has.  I may not be in Europe anymore, but that moment began a drive for me to see everything, experience everything, do everything.  I want to feel that feeling every time I open my eyes, not just on the side streets of France.  I remember thinking how I’d made it.  I’ve made it.  I could do this, I can do this, I am doing this.

x

Sixty-Eight

Day Sixty-Eight:  Business Time

It’s been a long time since I’ve been nervous with the butterflies in my stomach to see someone.  It has actually been longer than  before this semester that I have genuinely been excited to be around someone new or atleast an interest.  I’m not so much disappointed as I miss that feeling.  That exciting, interesting, mysterious feeling that this person who you’re anxious for is exciting and new.  It has been a very, very long time since I’ve been able to honestly say  that I’ve been on a proper date, been out with a boy, and had a good enough time to get to that point of nervousness.

I miss the excitement is all.

Lately it’s just been class-workout-homework-sleep, sometimes a short visit with a friend here or there, but for the most part nothing new and exciting has emerged from this semester.  Maybe briefly, a small hint a few weeks ago, but the people around me crushed that thought the moment it hit the ground, and so I am looking towards the summer to provide something different and fabulous.  Is that too much to ask?

Today was a good day to say the least.  Very new things happened, a lovely meeting of a group of people who all have the same thing on their minds:  conversation.  It was just so interesting to click with so many people at once.  My people.  I can’t wait for next month and to see them all again, maybe in the summer this could become a bi-weekly thing, it’s all in the planning right now.

I think I’m going to turn in though, I’m thinking of doing a themed week this week for blogs but I’m not sure.  Mix it up a bit from saying “I’ve spent today stressed, tired, worn out and completely off my rocker,” and maybe pointing it into a more uplifting light. I think I have an idea or two, aren’t they just the greatest?  It’s always a good day when a new idea excites you.

There’s that word again:   excitement.  It’s all I crave in my life, to not be boring.

x

Sixty-Seven

Day Sixty-Seven:  Revolutionary

I’ve been having this very difficult time getting my idea’s out lately.  It’s been hard to articulate the way in which it is difficult but it just is.  I can’t seem to think of things as smoothly, or in a concise way until much later than I would like.  For now, I will just talk like I would to myself or to a friend, a little informally, very briefly, and for the most part unorganised.

Today I bought my first pair of cosy, infused socks for myself.  I’ve never had to buy them for myself as they’ve always been a gift from a constant in my life, but that’s all gone now so I bought myself a pair.  They were inexpensive with blue green and white stripes, and they are sitting beside me here.  I talked a lot yesterday about the importance of being comfortable and how in my life that is integral to being happy.  I think it is also crucial to my health, as well.

Not just my physical health, although if I feel uncomfortable (as I am feeling right now after being out all day I think I’m dehydrated, fun fact) but my mental and emotional health as well.  Being healthy is just too much to balance lately, but if I work at it and nurture the things that need nurturing everything works out in time.  I can describe it as taking a really deep breath after a long day and really feeling your chest expand, that slow empty feeling that rushes calm and peace into your body.  Feeling secure in the choices I’ve made today and every day contributes to this balance, this calm, and it makes a difference in my life.

As for the little things that contribute to health I think that whole Laughter being the best medicine cliché really is true.  I had a teacher in sixth grade tell me that if I laughed for seven minutes everyday I’d live longer.  When was the last time you laughed so hard your insides hurt?  I love that feeling, where it feels like a set of ab’s are growing because you just can’t breathe anymore.  It’s my favourite way to be, in bliss of laughter, but that state is one of those things that you can’t really strive for.  It’s on that belief of if you stop looking it will come.  You can’t walk into a situation with the goal of laughing so hard you pee your pants, it’s something that has to occur naturally.

So I challenge everyone to pee their pants from laughter today (or almost) but let it happen on its own.  It’s hard, but just do it.  It’s healthy. 

x

Sixty Six

Day Sixty-Six:  Spaces

I am home for the next few days in my parents’ house and a few weeks ago I wrote a post about wanting to be the stereotypical assumption of what a teenager would be, what a university student would be, and after returning back to my room that I inhabit in the summer I feel at home again.   At school right now I am having this issue that my room doesn’t feel like it’s really my own yet.  Right here, on my big cosy bed is my lovely sheets amidst all of my magazines and research materials I feel more at home than sitting at my desk surrounded by all of my things at school.  Why?  I don’t know.  I just feel very cosy right now, it’s a good feeling to be comfortable within your own skin, within your surroundings, and I crave for that feeling wherever I go.

I’ve not had that feeling everywhere I’ve gone for example when I was travelling I felt uncomfortable in places that I was unfamiliar with for a short period of time.  I’ve been in Gueloh for three years and there’s something about it that just doesn’t feel the same.  I love Guelph, and it’s beautiful and wonderful and has amazing people.  I think it’s about time I started forming my own space for real, not a transient, passing-through space, but a stamp.  A mark.  A home that I will stay in for a little while.

I crave that kind of space.  A space that remains stable and cosy no matter how many times I pass through the door.  A space that I don’t have to constantly move things and belongings in and out of.  I want a space that is grown up but has the potential to be a creative open space.  I need something stable like that because it makes ends meet inside my head.

That’s why I love this bed.  It stays the same wherever I move it to, and it is always the place to come back to.  It welcomes me, holds me, and makes sure that although I may not be mentally settled or sober, I will always be cosy.  This is important to me, this cosy-ness, as it has begun to define my night time routine as well as the way I live my every day.  I want to carry this through the rest of my life as well.

I would love to travel for graduate school and be abroad and all over Canada and see things, see more things and everything.  I would love to bring one thing to keep me stable, keep me grounded.  I’ve had trouble in the past finding one thing to keep that comfortable-ness with me.  I can’t tell you what I used for the months I was in England, but it helped a bit.

Being comfortable where you are is important, and it’s been important In my life truly understanding that part of myself.  I’ve recently come to the realisation that I give a lot of support and love and advice to other people that I don’t give to myself.  AJ has told me this numerous, countless, endless times that I need to take care of myself the way I take care of others (AJ comes to mind instantly as we’ve had how many conversations about this?).  This year is the year of me taking care of myself, and when I really internalised the fact that I haven’t been honouring and supporting myself in the efficient way that I support others I…I can’t even describe it. It was like giving my inner anxiety a hug.  I finally got what he meant.  I need to tell myself that it’s okay, I can do it,

“Yoou caaan dooo it!”

But to myself.  It’s definitely something I’m going to have to work on but I am trying.  I am honouring the fact that being comfortable is important to me, and that finding those intimate and cosy spaces is important to take care of myself.

On that note, I am determined to kick this bad sleeping habit.  I am seriously debating re-subscribing to Reader’s Digest because I hear they have great tips for sleep deprivation (as well as the latest melo-dramatic news and quirky comedic stories for any table top desire!).   I want to be okay, is that too much to strive for?

Not in my opinion.

Good night,

x