http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:reflection13&section=today deviantART RSS for by:reflection13 en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:52:53 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/27642220/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/27642220/ Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:34:24 PDT
Waiting for what? I dont know.

Im restless, winds of change have touched me and I have a need that isnt met, an itch that I cannot scratch and a mind that is boiling over with restlessnes.

I need something... a walk, to run till my breath burns and my legs feel like jello, to paint, to draw, to swim, to meditate, to go find a punching bag and wail on it, to talk, to sleep, to be alone, to be with friends... maybe all those things or none of them.

Oh poor little heart why do you swell with such desire, such burning for some untasted fruit I have not discovered, or perhaps have forgotten the taste of.

Last night I could hardly sleep for the longest time.

But why the irritation, the frustration the emptyness with things...
Is the frustration sexual, spiritual, mental, physical... *sigh* could be any of those or none of them or all of them

how poorly can one know themself than to not know what one wants/needs when their mind and body scream for something like a starving infant. Give give give... but what?

Grr, perhaps writing will help to fill the hole, that is what it is really a hole. And I, a vessel, am empty; asking to be filled, enlightened... comforted.

Perhaps it is just my own anxieties of late that are making me feel this way. So many things I worry, and so many things I want and cannot seem to achieve.

Grr, i need to get out and do something.

Bah!

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/27589176/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/27589176/ Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:31:00 PDT
Work. It was always work.

I had hoped so hard, thought about all the wonderful things I would make, show off my excellent cooking skills. The pumpkin and apple pies, the squash, the cranberry sauce... all will still be made but with a lacking joy, a bitterness knowing that once again he will not be there to savour them, and once again I will be alone.

It felt like the air was pushing against my chest. Im not sure if there is a term yet for it, for that feeling when you cannot cry but inside you are crying. When your mind is a hysterical maniac beating against your skull screaming profanities, threatening to harm itself and crying out injustice; all the while the outside is a stoney face of neutrality. A rock, cold and unfeeling in its demeanor, unable to change, to produce those tears, to shiver and quake in heaving sobs.

And I thought of Icarus, that myth that is supposed to be one of pride... and I realised it is not about pride. Well perhaps it is, but it is about something else as well.

The story of Icarus is the story of dissapointment. The very personification of it in fact.

Like most, Icarus starts out with hope, that hope we feel at potential. Unchallenged, unfettered we rise and soar on our new wings of possability. Soaring through the skies of dreams, hopes and desires. That sun, our goal, we soar towards it... only to be burnt by reality. The facts grasp and tear at our feathers, stripping our wings of their glory.
Hope cannot hold. And down we plummet into the sea of despair (the usual outcome of all dissapointments). It is that plummet which is the dissapointment, that downward spiral into ourself. That pressure and weight upon ourself which tries to choke us with the lonely absense of potential.

In the old story Icarus drowns. Sometimes that ending is true; other times however, Icarus is strong and swims out, and upon reaching the shore he rises up upon new wings enlightened.

Perhaps though even the death is not the end. Neil Gaiman's Sandman series seemed to express better than anything that to change is to survive. And sometimes, if we cannot change, a part of the old self must die in order for a new enlightened one to be born.

From despair Icarus rises again towards the sun and sometimes, just sometimes, he grasps it.

Today I, Icarus, did not reach the sun. I was hurtled into the cold waters of the very lake I was sitting near. But tomorrow perhaps I shall rise up on new wings of potential and maybe I shall even grasp the sun.

I shall still be lonely on thanksgiving, Caitlin will have her Michal, and I... I shall have a puzzle, and a book...

Its nothing new.

But maybe there will be a day soon where I shall have my Love to myself with no work, or technology or other people to get in the way, and when that day comes I will have grabbed the sun, and danced with it.


Ok this was way more dramatic than I wanted it to be. An interesting interpretation of the allegory perhaps but too heavy on the melodrama.
I blame it on the PMS, PMS makes life suck in general.
So does having a sore ankle.

Now maybe less whining and more sleep.

Yes. Sleep is good.

The End.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/27452809/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/27452809/ Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:16:34 PDT
So I saw the movie 9 today, it was an interesting movie. I wish it had been a little longer and given a little more of a view into the world it took place in.

One thing I did find most interesting in it was the stance it takes on the human soul. The film rather directly gives the stance that there is something "special" about the human soul, intrinsic, and unique. Well not just that but it gives the stance that there is a human soul for first, something at least amongst intellectuals I know, especially the younger ones there is a growing disregard for that belief. However the movie takes this further by defining the soul by embodying it into "pieces"/characteristics of humanity. This further defines their stance on soul by implying the soul, or at least the soul of the individual in question, a person who meant well, clearly, was that it defines what makes us human in our emotions and behaviour.

Now this is a wonderful belief, the idea that we have some little thing inside us that makes us good people, gives us the possibility to love, to care, to be strong, courageous, curious, creative. Yet there are also some problems with this concept. Firstly is the soul only the "warm fuzzy" feelings of humanity/those we define as "good". Many very misguided people have been "courageous" and done terrible things in demonstrating that courage. And what about bad qualities? The character of 8 clearly showed strength, but also a bit of cruelty. Does the soul then also include the Pandora’s Box of our emotions?

And does every soul have the same qualities? What about psychopath’s souls? Clearly they don't have love or compassion or mercy. And if you through horrible torture were to scar someone so badly that you made them cruel and hateful does that mean you have in essence "destroyed" a part of their soul.

Now why I ask is because the movie directly says that when the scientist created the machine it was imperfect and easily corruptible because it didn't have a soul (Sounds like a rather biblical description of humans, divinely made because of their soul...) Anyways so the implication is that if you make a machine it doesn’t have a soul...
At least that one didn’t.

Now my big question is...how can the machine not have it, and the 9 little golem-like people have one. Now chances are the scientist figured out how to put his soul into the other things.

But one interesting thing about their concept of soul in the movie was while it gives personality qualities... its like base default qualities, no memory. None of the characters had the memory of the guy who gave them life. A Tabula Rasa concept (blank table) idea where were all born blank slate, in theory, only with the imprint of the qualities of the soul that gave them life. Hmm... a strange attempt to breach the gap between the innate versus blank slate argument.

It raises interesting questions, under this concept of the soul how much of us is made by it, how much does it control in our behaviour. Was the soul they received from the guy already a developed thing from his experiences meaning that a new soul would still default to Tabula Rasa, or does it mean that the qualities were innate to begin with/always existed in the soul.

Now moving on I must argue something, there are many concepts of the soul, for the movie it was something that could be transmigrated, for some it’s the essence of humanity, for others animals have one too. Some go so far as to say... everything has a soul from the smallest rock to humans. Which one must then ask what is a soul, is it just a human concept of what makes us "Special"?

Science seems to argue this is not true; there is growing evidence that much of us including our behaviour is influenced, if not controlled by our genetics/internal biology. If you have one genetic code you will be likely to develop addictions or be a thrill seeker or be creative or rational or emotional or have a low pain thresh-hold. But even genetics hasn’t yet explained us all. As my anthropology professor last year pointed out, turning to animals to see what makes us human and them animals may turn up a lot of interesting information about animals and how we are very similar but won’t tell us much about ourselves and how we work. After all, when the human genome was announced, many people proudly shouted "we are 98% chimp!" evolutionists and animal scientists and behaviourists looked proudly.
But there are only 4 basic DNA building blocks... C-A-T-G (and in RNA based viruses U instead of T), which is why we are also 35% daffodil.

That’s right, you heard me, 35% daffodil. However, while one might be proud to say they are 98% chimp, I have not yet heard someone announce them self to be proud of being more than a quarter genetically the same as a house plant.
~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/25080285/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/25080285/ Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:09:28 PDT So we are looking at something like Virginia Woolf's style?
Shhh we are not writing like a scizophrenic postmodernist today... that was last week.
But the postmodernist fragmentation is so fun... see you are still addicted to your elipses...
NO! We must explore the omniscience, we must insert... La Place's Demon
If you two mention that damn cognitive philosophy once more I will scream
But absolute causal knowledge would be hilarious
I will scream scream scream.
Ok ok no La Place... but only if you promise not to bring in any more quotes from the musical version of Oliver Twist.

(to get joke see [link])

So moving on to omniscience, today as was yesterday I shall write this journal entry in omniscience, and try to decrease the distance felt between reader and character by allowing a more permeable layer between the narrator and characters mind. However like all omniscient narrators (here goes the post modernist again...) I do not advise that anything that they say be trusted. You never know what they may fail to report or conveniently leave out.

So let us begin.

Clare had intended to sleep in today. She had, despite her best effort to get to bed early, been led into temptation and spent the late hours of the night drawing a birthday card for her friend Connor. Everything seemed to be telling her to go to bed, from her tired eyes to the fact that she could not find her favourate art pencils and ended up having to use some second rate ones she had lying around. Never the less, she sat there on her bed in her pajamas, knees folded sketching out the oulines and proportions of a dragon. To her surprise she succeeded in getting it to actually look rather dragonlike, even had given it changing sizes and textures of scales and perhaps a mildly fierce face. With everything well drawn, she finally went to bed, intending to sleep in.

She was woken up to a phone call from her father wanting to know for some lady where she could buy the packages of 10 bus tickets. *I dont want to be bothered right now* she thought. It was only 10:30 am and she wanted to sleep till at least 11:30 if not noon. Her eyes were burning and tearing mildly, it was either a bad allergy day or a bad pollution day or both. Her chest felt mildly like someone was sitting on it, which made her mildly more irritated. Sighing after hanging up the phone she grumbled and contemplated going back to sleep but decided it would be best if she got up ate something and took some allergy medication.

She didnt want breakfast, breakfast was boring, in fact, she thought, breakfast was perhaps the most boring meal of the day, such few choices, especially if you were too grumpy to feel like cooking. She did however settle for a half grapefruit and a vanilla yogurt. She then settled down on the couch in the living room to keep her mom company while she watched the terrible morning telivision programs that aired.

Her mother had had the cast for a week now, she was still complaining about it, sitting there in the chair her leg up on the foot stool. Clare could not help but laugh when her mother asked "is weekday morning television really this awful all the time", the slice channel was indeed relatively corney, airing nothing but makeover shows. Her postmodernist course coming back to haunt her as she witnessed the consumerist experience, watching as a pair of fashionistas helped a woman go through her wardrobe, throwing out over 300 lb worth of clothing.
How sad.

Bored with the television and disinterested with watching the auto show on tv, she sat there in her blue flannel pajamas with the polar bears on them, with her sketch book, doing the finishing touches on the card, cleaning up the dragons outline, detailing the scales and trying her damned hardest to give it dimension. Hand made cards were something she made a point of trying to do for her friends, it was a kind of old world token that was rarely recieved which she tried to keep up. That and most commercial cards these days were corny, as far as she was concerned.

Disrupted by another phone call from her dad informing her one of the guys working on the crew was coming up to get a new camera as his had died, she rushed to throw on some clothes and get outside the appartment door before her german shepard caught wind that someone was coming. Pandora loved visits from the guys on the crew but always barked so loudly whenever anyone came to the door.

This was clearly one of those days where she was not going to get much done. Finishing her drawing she made lunch for her mother and herself, grill... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/25042057/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/25042057/ Sat, 30 May 2009 23:00:07 PDT
She awoke today grumpy, it was 10 and despite her being up her father did not seem to think to make breakfast for her along with his mom and himself until she asked him to throw an egg on for her as well. The bacon was crisp... but not quite as crisp as she liked it. Bacon was only truly delicious if it was dry and shattered into brittle pieces when bitten, not chewey and greasy but stiff and brown, only seconds away from becoming burnt. Today it was still slightly chewey, but the egg was perfect, cooked so the center still ran over the toast.

The honey was still warm from the microwave after her father had zapped it, trying to reliquify a honey that had crystalized. The tea was hot and seemed to help wake her up and ease away the grumpyness and sleep. On cold winter days she liked to cup her cold hands around the warm ceramic cups, feeling the warmth of the tea pass into her cool fingers. It was summer but the sensation was still comforting.

Her dog had disturbed her in the middle of the night wanting into her room. She loved her dog; but hated the sense of entitlement that seemed to be held by one who should dare disrupt her at such an hour with the annoying shaking of ones collar and pawing at the door, only to then insist on being picked up and helped on to the bed. The night unlike the two before seemed dreamless, or at least she did not remember any dream

By the time she was dressed, had put her hair into a braid that would not hold and had walked both dogs she already knew she would be late for fencing. The dogs had thankfully been both very good on their walks and the walks were pleasant. She found herself singing broken bits of half forgotten lyrics to a song she had heard in a mucical production of Aladdin directed by Ross Petty, who was also the evil Vizir in it. It had been televised and her parents had taped it, Bruno Gerussi was in it as Aladdin's mother, the guy who used to play Jeff the Manaquin on Today's special was Aladdin and Karen Kane was Shahrazad. It was watching Karen Kane there as a little girl that had made her briefly aspire to want to be a ballerina, a dream that sank down and never even made it to a ballet class. The song certainly came from somewhere else, perhaps a depression song, its upbeat lyrics seemed to go well with the patterns of light and shadow that played across the sidewalks. "Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worries on the doorstep, life can be so sweet on the sunny side of the street"... "I used to walk in the shade, with my blues on parade, now I'm not afraid..."

....

She made it to fencing an hour late, was greeted by smiles, little fencing was acomplished but looking at an art book on dynamic figures and a sketch book her friend had kindly showed her took up most of the time. It was enjoyable. "I wish I could draw like that" she couldnt help but think... but if she could she might not be her, and perhaps she could if she ever seriously set herself to it. Those who dabble in many talents may be a jack of many trades but a master in none, and she could not help but dabble in many things, knowledge was like a drug and she could not get enough of it.

She did do some footwork and a short bout in fencing. She still could not tell if she had improved this year, they said she had, and she hoped she had, but from her own phenomenal consciousness it was hard to tell, it seemed at times she had grasped new skills, could perhaps parry better, was starting to gain a better sense of her own movements more confidence in attacks, but at other times she felt frustration, making the same mistake again and again, parrying the wrong parry.
Rome was not built in a day. She would continue because she enjoyed it, but like most things her confidence that she would ever find something she might truly shine and sparkle at, stand out like gold against blue velvet, were unlikely. Perhaps the only thing she might ever get to be gold at was being that Jack of all trades but master to none...
A cynical thought from a mind that should not be so cynical.

People cheered her up though, having conversations that meant something, shared something, where she felt she could be honest and herself. Those brought her up, geared her brain in ways which made her feel intense excitement and her thought soar and fly fast and far. It was stimulating. And she felt a need to gorge on such intelligent conversations before going away, away to where life was both freeing and stifling at the same time.

For lunch her friend got her to try something new, chic... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/25024536/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/25024536/ Fri, 29 May 2009 22:59:07 PDT But you get to stay at your cottage...
But it will be just my nana and I for the first month during the weekdays and thats always a bit of a stressor and I will miss my friends and I havent really had a break between school and work... *Sigh*
But you will have the lake and the woods and time to paint and do puzzles
I do like doing puzzles... and the cottage is the only place I get to do them
And you will have Michie, and Rachel to visit sometimes
True
But no Aaron

Ah yes...
and seeing as how he will want to have "alone time" most weekends...
he never said that...
He said something like that, that he needed time to himself on weekends
he also said he would miss you and would be visiting you up north
yeah after I got upset
one word: Men... put their mouth in front of their brain, he did have a low blood sugar... and you're PMSing and cranky
Yeah I shouldnt write when im cranky or Pmsing... always negative...
shoulda written this while i was still buzzing from the post exam get together we had
You never have written anything while intoxicated... or buzzed
I havent really been drunk often enough to give it the chance
true
this was maybe the first time this year I got close
true
besides this year has been too busy, too many essays, no time to waste time or money on pointless activities, though it was nice socializing.

So I see we are still stuck in the postmodernist style of schizophrenic fragmentation... Who are we tonight, good cop, bad cop? Sherlock and Watson?
Elemetary Watson... but no... I dunno since I have taken so many modernist and postmodernist courses it seems only natural to explore the styles of writing with my own twist, to express the anxiety and nostalgia for lost times and of coming changes with the modernists and the sentiments of meaninglessness, pointless consumerism and media interuptions and fragmentations and that almost callous irony that is part of the postmodernists.
An interesting experiment no doubt... but is it healthy to write in such a style? I am sure one could make a good argument that many of those writers were crazy.
There is nothing wrong with stream of consciousness...
I want pie
No you dont
yeah that was a lie but i needed something to prove my point... but now that I think on it... pie would be nice... apple pie, with a flaky homemade crust and freshly sliced apples that have been baked with cinamon, nutmeg and brown sugar...
wouldnt you rather be in "his" arms...
Yes I would, this past month I have had very little time to spend with Aaron and I am going to get even less once I go up north...
Then he shall miss you all the more.
I hope so... every so often I sometimes feel insecure... i dunno its stupid. Its not that I don't feel loved its that I feel...
Like your going to fuck things up... you need to get over that... seriously wheres your inner confidant strong woman...
She went on vacation... along with my self esteem, positive body image and sense of humor...
Well maybe they will come back in a few days...
usually works like that
They really need to make a mood icon for neurotic
Neurotic isnt a mood... its more like a state of being
You're a state of being
That is debatable

Saw star trek, it was quite awesome, and to add to it, the actors who played Jim Kirk and Spock as young men were both kinda cute.
What is it with you and either freckles... or pale skin...
or both :-P
which you have with your beau
indeed
Still was a good movie, interesting too in how they framed the narrative and built characters. I liked it

May be the last movie you see before you go away
true

I should go to bed soon, gotta get used to get up earlier for next week.
Yeah.
Ive been remembering my dreams lately
Had one dream that was really messed up two nights ago... I was an assassin and there was a plague affecting people... turning them into monsers that would attack other people and making their skin discolour to turn sorta a greenish dead hue...
Zombies!
Yeah I guess... anyways I was in some sort of housing complex/apartment complex trying to both protect the nonzombied people in there, kill the zombies and prevent the plague from spreading... a pretty messed up dream especially since it was like I was watching disembodied from the assassin body I was in as she without feeling would kill people
You mean zombies
Yeah but people that hadnt fully become zo... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24713178/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24713178/ Mon, 11 May 2009 23:37:47 PDT
Humans are interesting!
Are you sure?
Of course I am sure
I thought you did not like humans
Well... some humans are interesting... intellectual humans at least. They are pleasant to converse with and fun to engage in mildly crazy activities.

Ah, very good then.

I still want a cookie...
The cookie Michie's picture looked bad though... too sweet
But I still want one... I could make a delicious cookie
But you have no time for making delicious cookies, nor do you need one. Besides Caitlin brought banana bread and let you have a piece.
But it was missing the blueberries and cranberries It doesn't taste the same without blueberries and cranberries.
But then it isnt banana bread, then it is blueberry, cranberry, banana bread...
Well it was good but still could have been better
You are such a spoilt home made goods kid, you cant even see something store bought without sneering at it and thinking how much better a job you could do.
But 90% of the time I could do a better job, taste better, be better, probably look better... except for cakes, my cakes dont always look better because my icing is better tasting and not full of gross veggie oil.

Are you going to continue to talk about food despite it being 1:30 am and you should be focusing on reading and finding quotes for you essay instead of writing here?
This is an online journal...
But not an academic one
If I get my degree it will be written by an academic so technically will be come an academic one...
No, no it won't.

Besides you wouldnt want a bunch of smelly lazy students snooping your journal for quotes.
Now that is perhaps the greatest piece of truth that has been said tonight.

Then let the rest of this be but one elaborate fantasy
Fantasies are fun
You create them to regularly

So this weekend I should have been sleeping and working... and working some more.
But you didnt sleep or work did you?
Well I did sleep and work but not to the extent that I should have. I should have slept and worked alot more than I did. But TCAF was so much fun...
Ah yes the adventure to explore further ultimate depths of ones nerdiness by going to a comic festival.
It was an awesome festival... and I keep hitting the shift key each time I start a new line even though I don't have to because this isnt an autoformatted word document.
Lame.

I wonder if a third dimension could be entered to this conversation
You do that and it will likely be one that speaks entirely in mutilated shakespearian quotes
Peasblossom: Present!, Mustard seed: Present mistress!
You know I was originally assigned to be mustard seed in the class midsummer nights dream play... then they realized it only had one line... then I was made Theseus.
My hounds are bread of spartan kind...
Would the spartan kind please shut up before she gets kicked in the behind because it is clear she is losing her mind, something hiddin somewhere that no one will find, a lost and deserted thing to be pined and I am running out of rhymes so will end with Spined.

The last two are not perfect rhymes
Your mom's not a perfect rhyme!

Do you do this for your own personal entertainment of dialogues of internally arguing voices within your stream of consciousness creating examples of fragmented otherness or are you just strange?
It may be madness but there is method in it.
Please stop with the shakespeare, you finished the essay on it already.

Deal
Now lets move on.
Saturday was a glorious day, even though it was raining.
I like it when it rains, its fun.
It makes your hair frizzy and poofy.
Good thing that liquid eye liner was applied that morning and not regular, it would have been smuded all over the place by the end.
Liquid eyeliner is the latest thing since sliced bread?
Only if you can afford sliced bread.

I met julez at bloor just in the underground of the subway and then had a bit of searching above ground before we found matt.
You would think that with the brightly coloured t-shirt he was wearing combined with his height it would be easy to spot him.
One would think that but apparantly he was briefly as elusive as the cheshire cat. Grin possibly included.
If that is the case then which one was alice and which the white rabbit?
I think I would have to claim the rabbit... I was kinda run... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24605727/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24605727/ Tue, 05 May 2009 17:13:34 PDT
Once upon a time there was a shy little girl who was usually of a happy and bright eyed disposition. She lived as she had always done so, with her head in the clouds, imagining, dreaming and hoping. She went to a small red brick school with a big grassy school yard. One day it had rained in the morning and at recess the children were allowed outside but told to stay on the tarmac so their feet would not get muddy and wet. The little girl looked at the puddles other children were jumping in and suddenly felt very sad; for inside them were dozens of pink wriggly earth worms, trying their hardest to escape the pools and tromping feet. It seemed so very unfair that the earth worms should drown or be squashed by someones shoe. So, without a second thought she picked up a pair of sticks from the grass and carefully began to pick up the earth worms with them and carry them onto the grass. Her actions attracted some attention from other inquisitive grade ones and twos. Most laughed, some cruel ones even began to intentionally squash the worms. Most ignored her, earth worms after all were icky and gross. There was however,a small few of kinder heart who suddenly, aware of the plight of the helpless earth worms, also joined in the effort. Eventually a group of about six or seven other children were racing between puddles to the grass transporting their small pink passengers to safety. When the bell rang, they went inside and returned to the days planned activities. Quietly the girl went to her desk, satisfied. She walked even then to a tune that was very much her own. No one had warned her that in the future years to come that would alienate her and bring much lonliness. Nor had anyone at that time tried to tell her that she could not save the world, and if they had, it is likely she would not have believed them.
The end.

And so moving on...

Yes the essays are eating me slowly but surely... and its just begun.

So I am off to an ok start, I have research for the two essays due next week, got one outline looked at and given positive feedback, got the other one well i still gotta go through the research...
Got research and know what i want to do for a presentation including stupid mini essay for Thursday... Gotta keep reading, reading, reading.

Then gotta start deciding and outlining what I want to do for essays due two weeks from now, catch up on anthro readings for the take home exam. *sigh*
I don't know how I am going to do this.
This month I will have written... well lets see, 4 term essays, 2 take home exams containing at least 2 mini essays each, a mini-essay presentation (dont ask me why the oral presentation we have to do seems to be more heavily marked on our stupid essay we are supposed to write, seems really dumb to me) and thats not even counting the exams.

Last week the panic started, i rush between sensations of butterflies and minor nausea to fatigue to just pure despair... something in me keeps egging me on "you can do this, just plan ahead"... but part of me wishes to just give up.
The strike messed everything up.

Yesterday I wrote a 3 hour test for philosophy... not sure how well I did on it, did well on the last one, however well I did will have to make up for it on the take home exam.
Was so tired, and my allergies were bad. I missed fencing for which I feel bad for, if anything I shoudl be going to fencing as it helps me let out some stress, but when I spontaneously broke out in hives at home I took a benadril and fell asleep when I woke up it was already 7pm... Mmm allergy season plus heightened stress levels = fun.

Yeah last week had a bad asthma day, now on a 3 week increased dose of inhaler...which i have to say I have been pretty good sticking to and it has helped, even though I can still feel when its going to be a not so great day.

So what else is new? Kessel and I visited sev, he seems to be doing ok. Bealtaine for once happened at a time I could go up to the cottage. It was lovely and relaxing up there, i was able to sleep in a bit too. I have missed it so much, the forest and standing out on the point looking out on the lake or sitting under the big hemlock in the woods listening to the chickadees over head.
I did that sunday, went into my glade and lay on the ground beneath the tree and just listened to the wind and the water and the birds. It was so restful, i could have I am sure fallen asleep there.

Did some gardening too, I love panseys got over 2 flats and planted them out around the garden. Next week I am not going north but the week after if I am ahead enough on my work I may go and start my gladiolas and morning glories. My mom got me moon flowers, i want to get a second package though, last year I planted only one but none of them sprouted. I think the chipmonks ate them.

I won... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24300297/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24300297/ Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:59:04 PDT
None the less today was a pretty good day. I went home and got ready for a night out with Aaron which was lovely, we went down to dine at the 360 restaurant and enjoyed a lovely meal. Also got to check out the observation decks, glass floor ect. It was really nice. However next time I am not wearing heals... my feet are killing me.

Alas the english major is failing, words are failing, I am trying to write a speech for fencing... since somehow I felt guilty that there were not enough people running for admin and got talked into running for vice president. How I land myself in these things I don't know because I hate public speaking and dealing with people... and here I am trying to write a speech. If it was like writing this I would be fine I could drawl on for a jolly long time talking about anything from music to identity, beauty, life, romancing about the moon.

Unfortunately tooting my own horn in terms of skills isnt my specialty, at least not doing it in a crafty way never mind I am still not clear what the vice president does... apparantly its "whatever you feel you can help with and what the president designates to you"... so I am supposed to prepare a speech telling how I am best qualified for a job that has no formal job description... great.

Sorry I think I pulled the last verbal BS out of my ass for that test this morning. So I have something written... it is possibly the one of the most pretentious bullshitted things I have ever written and I am not proud of it. The closer is sappy and my humor is lame despite my attempts to keep it from bordering on my usual self depricating style.

Yup thats right I don't like tooting my own horn, I like verbally flogging myself. Yup there is nothing nicer than a good lashing of the tongue to keep one grounded. ... ok its late and my humor is twisted more so than usual. I haven't started singing Tom Lehrer songs out loud so we know I am still reasonably together... at this point.

Looking down on the world from the CN Tower I thought of how the city is like a neural network... but also like a computer chip, from our streets to buildings tall towers, small houses it looks like a damned piece of motherboard. No it is too late to discuss if someone is going to think I am suddenly pro intelligent design... we will leave that up to the cheap seats in the peanut gallery.

Leonard Cohen writes a really messed up story in Beautiful Losers. Not to say I don't like it, was reviewing if for my test, in fact parts of it I very much enjoyed. I cannot say it is not one of the most... erotic pieces I have read, even if parts of its content revolt your senses... the language is erotic, intentionally so. I could not help thinking of those horribly dry presentations in 11th grade English where I sat at my desk with a copy of Exit to Eden under it. And while the others presented on topics of Atwood's Handmaid's tale and the like, I was reading Anne Rampling and liking it. Just a good thing I did not get caught... the content was not something my teacher would have thought appropriate. Soon I shall be able to pick Peake up again. Nothing erotic there, but from my poetic love the words are like literarily orgasmic in how vivdly they are crafted. Oh Gormenghast I have long been from reading of your castle walls, the passions burning in their clay and the great tower echoing like a deep black throat...

The sky today was a beautiful blue, I looked up to admire it but found it split, divided in half neatly by jet line, as though someone had taken a piece of chalk and drawn the line saying this half is yours and this mine. Or perhaps it was a scar, the sky being cut through leaving a trail of white jetstream that like most scars will fuzz out and fade in time back into the blueness from which it came.

I am tired and should sleep I hope my feet are not too sore to fence tomorrow, the guys are counting on me and I want them to read over my speech tomorrow before I submit it.

and that is all, no more fragments of thought for tonight. Sleep!

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24266022/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24266022/ Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:53:42 PDT
There is certain music that is for me like a... spirital experience? Im not sure how to describe it, but it fills me with something inside, something I only feel seeing certain beautiful scenes, hearing certain music... it awakens some desire, some rising inside, somethign growing within me which there is not room for it to be contained in my body and it seeks release, through song, art, writing as I am now, dancing, movement... life.

It is as if the songs energy calls on some primal thing inside me, a thing that wants me to become one with that music, transcend the physicality that is myself and join with each beat and each note. As though my very soul mixes and wants to rise up dance to the beat, pick up its own bodhran drum and join it.

Strange perhaps, I am not sure if everyone experiences music that way. It is not merely a pagan band with a good drum or vocal beat, classical, certain metal songs, well sung choir pieces, even the strange tones of "call me sebastian" with a young Johnathan Rhys Meyers voice singing accompanied by the errie chords of a harpsichord.

I know not why music does it, fills me with an energy, moves something in me, stirs it... gives me a mental high.

Some seek highs from drugs, others through pain or gambling, but some like me find it in other things... for me I can name three main things, creating through art/drawing/writing, listening to music (or making music), and through phyiscal activity like fencing or running

Im sure science will say it is your brain responding to stimulus... creating chemicals in your body, they give you those happy feelings. In fact the runners high/euphoria has been proven scientifically in the past year or so. But what of music, can a mere sound truly affect your body in such a way as to create such inner feelings, that tingle and give me goosebumps, make me feel restless or enlightened and my fingers as though an invisible violin sits in my hands move in positions, wrist even shifting to invisible strings as my other wrist bends slightly back and forth as though bowing. Im sure some people might see me on the subway or bus doing that sometimes to music, ill hear my own violin join in with a song and finger along...

Strange what our senses can do, alas Huxley I will never be able to believe that they mind can i no way affect the body, for I need my mind to comprehend the music my ears here and it affects my senses in turn in such amazing ways.

Music, the cleanser and catharsis of the mind, body and soul, the calmer of nerves. I cannot imagine a world without it. I would not want to live in a world without it.

So that is my rant, as i sit here taking a break from studying writing this thinking about the 6 hour shift of work tomorrow and how tired I will be when i must squeeze in a few more horus of studying I think of the weekend and that Sunday I shall be going to my own opera and friday, La Bohem, should be interesting.

Last weekend Aaron and I went out to a movie, dinner and to spend a bit of time together. Hadnt really gotten to see eachother in 2 weeks. The movie was... not bad, but I didnt really like it. Appocalyptic films arent really my thing. The film was Knowing... I wont spoil it here... made some not allegorical references and whatnot but yeah it wasnt bad but just didnt really wow me, though I might have enjoyed it more had the movie theatre not had the volume up too loud so every scene of chaos and destruction was so loud i was plugging my ears. I think a metal concert does less hearing damage.

Then we had a nice dinner at montanas and followed it up with some time together. During dinner I grueled him a bit with some questions, still alot I want to know about him, his thoughts, who he is and how he sees things. We did get some cuddling time in too later that evening. I miss that, there is somehting so very wonderful about being held in the arms of the person you love. As though all ones fears and pains and stresses melt away, and as though you are echoed with a complementing sense of contentment from them that completes the web of unity, two threads weaving together a tapestry of peace, so intertwined that upon parting it is as if your very heart inside is tugged upon as it must unhappily separate and untangle itself from the others threads, stretch them as the physical distance between the hearts increases and they can no longer be side by side.

Ah the late hour, as onward I plunge into myself and my thoughts, letting them roam free like some free discourse. The ocean within myself, can I dive too deeply that my ears shall threaten to... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24033397/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/24033397/ Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:14:15 PDT
Now that its warmer I might start running though I really hate running in the city on the pavement. So much nicer on the hilly dirt road at my cottage, and easier on the shin splints. Maybe fix up the bike and do that or bug my dad to get the damn forms so i can renew my membership to the condos club and use the pool. mmm swimming.

I could go work out at the university of course... 10 $ isnt alot... but theres people there... i don't really like doing that around people, prefer to be alone or just a few people. Might be easier if I had a friend to go with, then the ridiculous thought of being watched lingering in my head might be forgotten... silly fears... silly silly silly...

And so on to the topic of tonight, the rant before I try to sleep... or at least attempt to get some rest between fits of coughing.

Tuesday night I dreamed... this is nothing new, everyone dreams. But I don't too often remember clearly my dreams perhaps because I dont get enough sleep... This one was nice and clear and made getting up hard cuz I wanted to finish the dream. Stupid alarm always waking me up from my dreams.

I was on a train... I dont know where exactly it was leaving from or going to, I think I was returning home from south west Ontario...London or Stratford. And there was this nice goth guy on the train who I had sorta made friends with who was kinda like the cheshire cat, kept appearing and disapearing. He was tall, broad shouldered with a trench coat, long straight hair, mousey brown not black... and of course white painted face. I remember wanting to find out what he looked like behind the makeup... see his face as it was... but kept getting distracted from asking him because I kept fearing I was goign to lose my cell phone out of my jeans pocket. The cell phone itself seemed to disapear lost... and then reapear after me frantically searchign for it. It was a weird dream. And for some reason I remembered the train number... 85...

And that is possibly the result of a tylenol cold nighttime before bed... (imagine what nyquil might do to me)

And so Wednesday I ran into Tim and as I walked with him to his class we got on the topics of dreams and such... and it has as I have often wondered, gotten me wondering on the nature of dreams.

Are they merely results of the brain storing and converting information from short to longterm memory? (good old scientific reductionism)... The logical positivist would say... mental states (like dreams) are brain states (see above example)

Freud would likely say my subconscious is trying to tell me something... wanting to know an identiy behind a mask/painted face... trains symbolizing travel... a return journey... a cell phone, a symbol of communication, fear of losing communication or touch with people...No clue about the goth guy or the train number... Im sure he would include something about my mother and father in there just because thats what Freud does.

My celtic ancestors would say some dreams are your third eye opening giving you the second sight... (well if aaron and I go to stratford this year and come back by train and I meet a goth guy and lose my cell phone then I guess that would prove it true... but otherwise I think not.

In an even weirder thought... if we have souls... which I do beleive we do, do they get to travel to other dimensions? are our dreams us going somewhere that does exist but isnt here...
sounds like startrek voyageurs 7 of 9 and the special dream world the mutant borg can go to... Would be pretty damn cool though if thats what dreams are... going to alternate realities. (except for the ones where something sad or bad happened... those wouldnt be so cool)

But seriously what are dreams? Why sometimes do they seem all too real, why sometimes do the things one sees seem to literally happen quite similarly in real life... waht purpose do they serve (do they need to serve a purpose? Dont be a functionalist Clare!)

In that conversation with Tim he asked me if I believed in the second sight... to be fair I danced around the issue and I will admit it. Why? Because I am not really sure, a part of me does, a part of me has had dreams that have in some instances quite literally happened almost event for event yet the older I get the more fragmented such things are and the harder it is to determine if such fragm... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/23978050/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/23978050/ Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:06:34 PDT
So the next day I wake up... and turning my head from side to side is not happening. Rolling out of bed was a literal since attempts at sitting up and moving the muscles in my upper back and neck fail due to extreme pain. I still don't know what I did... or how it happened. I suspect it was a combination of cold air on a bare back (as my dress had only thin straps and corset lacing in the back) and heels putting stress on the back... and standing for long periods of time in heels.
Maybe i got a cold in my muscles im still not sure

but now over a week later its still sore... not as sore by far. It was almost better thursday but then a shift of standing 5 hours on a concrete floor shelving books threw me back a few steps in the healing process. So heres how it is, each mornign I wake up stiff and sore, if I am lucky someone brings me the magic bag and I sit and absorb the heat from its bean filled warmth for a few minutes before getting up. This is usually followed by me putting on some muscle vapour rub on and once out to eat breakfast, taking a pain killer.

Today was better, I only took a pain killer this morning and one in the evening. But yeah havent been fencing now for 2 weeks due to the pain I want this to heal and go away as fast as possible. There is somethign about an injury affecting your neck and upper back... it makes you feel extra crappy, not just like ow, but i guess we forget how many muscles are involved for the simple task of turning ones head to the side, getting up, turning from ones back to their side... when your upper back is sore... suddenly the smallest task such as moving from sitting to standing, turning your head ect has to be done carefully and usually with some level of pain.

So yeah not so good there.

The saturday following that night I should have stayed in bed probably but nope, out downtown to trek around the museum and spend more time standing looking at the diamond exhibit there... and then the ancient ukraine one with Aaron and Alicia. I treated her there as a thanks for doing my hair the night before.

That Sunday my uncle turned 100, we went to celebrate. There was not alot of family there. I had not seen Reid in 3 years, he is still standing, which for a man his age is quite an achievement, never mind still giving out bear hugs that knock the wind out of you. He also still does not like wearing his hearing aids, making conversation sometimes difficult.
He had congratulations from the queen, governor general, mpp's mp's the prime minister and premier... all of which he was kinda grouchy about, felt they were making a big fuss over nothing.

His personal philosophy was interesting though. See my cousins had sent away to northern Ontario for a blanket to be made from hand dyed wool and hand made, to be in the pattern of the MacFarlane dress tartan (a pretty red with lots of colours in it)as a gift for him. His response however was well what many would consider ingratious but his logic for it was interesting to hear. He said he already had a wool blanket and it would be better they give it to someone else. Now I was always taught to accept gifts, even if it isnt something you don't like/want because it is unkind not to do so. In his case he then said that for him getting material posessions was not a gift, he was working hard to get rid of most of his material posessions for he did not need them at his age. What was a gift for him was to be able to give some younger person something that they could not otherwise afford.

At his age, manners is I suppose something he can wave, though his personality he has supposidly been this stubborn since he was younger. But the philosophy is interesting considering we are in a culture where acquiring is stress so much but for him, he takes pleasure out of giving others the opportunity to have something.
Truly I can say of my relatives he is one of the most generous, or at least has been to me.

Whatever the case it was good to see him and I finally was able to talk to my cousin Cameron and get the descriptions of the clothing colours and a more detailed description of the time and time of year for the painting I am doing. So now I just need to make room to set up my ease... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/23789533/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/23789533/ Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:20:18 PDT
I wasnt angered by it... but it shocked me in a sense, i mean I had no reason not to believe him, i don't know alot about his history where he was from where he's lived. But at the same time it has disturbed me in a sense... that he would tell a lie like that... just to test or perhaps even for the pleasure of getting someone to believe it... there was a certain lack of ethics in it.

I don't feel in any ethical position to judge someone... but the idea of telling a lie, no matter how harmless to someone just to try to get them to believe it almost like a joke would never occur to me, it seems cruel. I mean truly not telling them would be crueler but the thing in itself is cruel.

I do not like to think it...but it reminds me of something someone did years ago, I was trying to be friendly, we would talk and they would lie and if i believed them then they would say ugly things, it was a baited trap, and too often i walked into it, they seemed to get pleasure from it. I cannot help who I am... that I care, trust, want to believe others care and trust...

I dunno I guess I am perhaps sometimes too trusting a person, i like to think that all my friends are trustworthy, but that sorta took a stab at something, some faith that people will be honest with you when they have no reason not to be... that friends will be honest for honesty's sake. And yet here they told me a lie for the pleasure in seeing if they could succeed in getting me to believe it. It was a harmless lie, the lie itself wasnt meant to hurt, but the act of it unnerves me.

We all lie sometimes, sometimes out of an attempt at kindness, sometimes out of fear, sometimes we truly think its the best thing to do... but the idea of lying for pleasure or just to try to come off as honest when you are not... there is something really disturbing in it.

I don't think they realize they have in some way hurt me... my trust, in then and what they say, do, act... then again perhaps it never meant much to them anyways. How can you believe the friendship means anything when they would do that to you purely to prove that they can? Should the fact that the lie was essentially harmless change how I see this? Maybe I am just overreacting and should laugh it off... people say I take things too literally...

Maybe I will lie too and put on my happy face and pretend that it doesn't matter... when it does. Somewhere in my quest for truth...it really truly does.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/23686863/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/23686863/ Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:43:00 PDT
I hope to clean up my room a bit and start painting this weekend, the canvas is ready, drawn on, need to make one adjustment to the hat and then I'm just gonna start in. Hopefully my trusty hair dryer will help the oil paints dry faster.

Wednesday was busy with runnign around, including an errand for Caitlin to get books out for her. Met my friend there and we had a brief chat. That was pretty good.

So I met with my friend Tim on Thursday, it was a good chat. It isn't everyone that I feel... the level of trust that I can be completely honest with. I have a small circle of friends who I can, but I wish it were more. It was nice to be able to have chats like that, with Julez busy with work and stuff to UBC and Grace at Laurentian I don't have alot of those opportunities. We talked about alot of things, including romance, love different ideologies on it, beliefs. This was a bit of an extension of a talk we had back in december. It has made me think on alot of things, think on the stages I went through, if I have in the past and possibly present cut my self off in places, if i might limit myself in the future, where the line is between loving friends and loving a lover(s) if there is a line at all... alot to think on.

I think I burned my bridges a few times in the past... I know and think more that I was cruel a few times... and worse, that I derived a bit of pleasure from it at the time... teasing... the what if's... the if I had seen the future would I have made the same choice... and all the dumb things ive done.

(and being a hopeless romantic... theres been alot of dumb things) most done in shyness... an anonymous poem, typed and rolled up real small stuck between the lock and locker of a guy... handing a written confession to another because he had said we could be friends but didnt want the friendship to be plublic cuz his friends hated me (that should have been a good sign to give up on the go right there)... The still never admitted idealized... id say even hero worship I felt towards a friend who though we don't talk much still holds a very dear place in my heart for they taught me alot of things in life especially and being myself. Being totally blind to one or two guys that did like me...(that was awkward a few times) There are others I can name, but perhaps won't. Not tonight. the point is ive been stupid before and hopefully will not be so stupid in the future.

But yeah it was a good talk and I enjoyed it.

Today I had another good talk with my friend Alicia, after Modern Canadian Lit we went and bought lunch and chatted. We covered beautiful loser's by Leonard Cohen in class. It says all the words you arent supposed to say on tv... and then some in a rather racy and sorta messed up book.

For us, in our very postmodern sense we talked about the inescapable marks history has left on all of us, whether it be cultural, gender history, personal history... we all bear the brand and I'm not quite sure how one can escape it, if one can...

Then I got on a bus and did cross stitch while I waited for the bus to arrive at Promenade, Devon was on it too going to Glaze Craze. Went in , got the bra for my dress, got a pair of sandals I liked... I haven't bought shoes in so long... in fact I rarely buy shoes... clothing shopping for me is a painful thing sometimes... ive said before why, hell even finding the dress im wearing to the dinner party tomorrow was a painful thing and i was so frustrated by the end I was almost in tears. Shoes are similar, I have high arches and have to wear arch supports in my shoes, dress shoes are painful and im limited, some I can wear a night and just be sore the next day, some after a couple hours are killing me. Even with a low heel. The sandals are nice and leather with an ankle strap and a bit of a heel but a well supported one. Caitlin has so many shoes, i figured I too might get a pair of something nice, they were on sale besides.

Tonight I got to see Aaron, its been 2 weeks since we really got to hang out beyond him walking me to the bus after meeting me on campus and buying me a hot chocolate. So yea was really nice to see him had been looking forward to it all week. We watched twilight... crappy and lame movie. I don't get why theres so many twilight fangirls attatched to it... *gags*

Still the time together was nice, just there cuddled up close. Being in the arms of someone you love does something magical, no matter how nervous or upset or angry you are it has a profoundly calming effect, like pushing some "your in your happy place" button. And if you are happy, you are really happy, like feeling like you don't want to leave that place. It's... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/23636553/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/23636553/ Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:28:59 PDT
Where have I been? Here and there.
I have laughed in joy, and cried in pain, loved and hated.
I have felt triumph and despair

I finished the play I was writing.

And yet I wonder when next I will write again. Do I need pain to write? Back in 04-06 when we were dealing with grief and i was angry, and numb and sad and stressed it used to come, like waves, crashing against the walls of myself, consuming me in fragmented words, phrases, shouting clawing their way out of my mind, donw my head and onto my paper.

There isn't alot of sense in those workings, if you don't know the context, some of them are as absurd as I felt at the time I wrote them, others trying in some way to express a loss I am not sure I have yet found a way to express... it still haunts me that, that I cannot yet create something that expresses that painful battle and the loss of someone so dear to me.

And the old struggles seem to be the new struggles, I love and am loved, and yet that too I fear I cannot express, and I fear losing it. When for so long I believed that I was far too difficult, too strange a creature for someone to see worth taking the time to love, having the patience to deal with me on my bad days, my bossy days, my hyper giddy days... someone who could help me forget all the times in the past i was ignored, humiliated... alone.

And I have someone who does their best to do that, who listens... and i fear that I will lose it, will screw up in some way, that the me that I am will be too much. Silly perhaps, but is it that that I fear or myself. Perhaps myself, the monster I create within me, the one that cares too much, puts up a front of tough, bossy, knowitall ness to try to cover up for that sensitive child that is still inside, the one coming home so often in grade 4 and crying of lonliness, stung by every taunt, jest and rumor.
my heart was perhaps not made for this world...
sometimes i still feel that there is only a matter of time before I come to a crux, where I can no longer deal with caring and getting hurt, when i either stop caring all together and fall into a pit of absurdity... or when I take that final leap into insanity.

And can I love others fully when my own skin is something i so struggle to love, when I started trying to hide my body at the age of 11, changing in the bathroom so girls wouldtn stare at the fact I wore a bra, fearing being talked to by guys... stared at... Fearing my body, like some strange foreign thing... no perhaps not foreign... I know my body, and many a day I feel beautiful, comfortable in it... but there are also days when the mirror is not my friend, when i look and poke and prod and wish i knew how to bind my chest or that my bust was smaller or that I were taller or thinner or had finer bones or nicer nails...
Sometimes I wish i could strip off all that is my body, my sex, my gender my physical essence, strip it down in layers like a snake shedding its skin and look at it and see what it really is, what little perhaps it makes of my own existence. And look at things free of the constraints of my physical self, my eyes, my limited perceptions...my esteem.

Funny that a pile of flesh should so concern me... but its my flesh... and it does

And why am I still haunted by Anna... by the jealousy... the conflict that I profess I would rather be ignored and labeled a walking brain than "seen as meat" I cling to that, truly I do not think I would be happy if I was looked at purely for my body... but then why did I often feel such frustration, jealousy... when she would walk into a room and guys even 7 years her senior would turn their heads and whistle and gawk and follow her with their eyes. Somewhere inside of me, some part of me I try to ignore longed to be gawked at... to turn heads just once for that reason, to be... dare I say it... objectified in the gaze... just for a moment. And a friend once said that I would hate it, that I should be glad to be seen for my mental capabilities... but then why was I so very lonely, and why did I so often feel invisible?

Are all humans full of such contradictive feelings?

And what of my mortality, and the mortality of others that concerns me. I am a case of Heidigger's Angst towards death. I feel anxiety to the fact i am aging, to the fact those I love are aging, to the fact the person I love has an illness that if not managed could seriously complicate their life if not kill them. He talks about it so casually... that someday it will kill him... and I hate to hear it... and i try to ignore it, but like a cloud it haunts me.

It causes conflict sometimes, a few weeks ago we sorta talked it out... What can I say other than I feel an outsider sometimes, and i worry and it scares me when I cannot know how to react or what to... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/22907234/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/22907234/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:37:17 PST
I wish i could get a second opinion on it, some editing from Sev or Adams but there is no time for that now and so I gotta really hurry and get it done and try to edit it myself.
Ive never written a play before, im more worried about it than the poem though my confidences in either is... i dunno i know as a writer you gotta believe in yourself and your work im just deep down afraid of you know the doubts, what if I don't have what it takes to be a writer.

I mean the contest is no judge of that but still.

I guess i just gotta keep plugging away at it, dialogue writing isnt always easy, you gotta use your words well cuz there is no narrator to elaborate. This is my first attempt I may later here post an exerpt of it not sure if ill put up the whole play.

Today im still not feeling great after the flu and am i guess a little stressed about getting the play done... but was feeling kinda annoyed. My dad and I at times have kinda a tenuous relationship. When i wanted to be a scientist and cameup with ideas he usually was the one to burst hte bubble... "people already are looking at that" or "you have to understand that getting the idea on paper is easy is the time and research..." ect ect. And hes right. But now that I'm in writing I feel like he has no interest in what I do... and I just wish sometimes he would take an interest in it, ask me how my play is doing or if he could read something I wrote or offer some support in my endevors to enter a contest or something.

Its not that he is discouraging, but his bias towards science and mathematics at times make me feel that if this were a science contest i was entering he would be all over it but the fact that here... if it looks good on paper... well you cant say thats fine... because hell all its going is on paper that is the real thing, the finished product, there is no years of toying over test tubes or writing math equations. This is creativity i concieve it, i write it, edit it and write some more and there it is.

Maybe he feels he is out of his league, maybe he just has alot on his mind... but I always feel like I am striving for his attention, trying to plan a project for us to do together or something... and there he is busy with work or the lab or somethign else. He prefers to work independently and i understand that, sometimes you just dont want help. And really I cannot be objective here... i just wish he could see where im coming from.

Lifes not perfect but its ok.

My university is finally going back, im relieved but also scared, a condensed shortened term
I dont know whats going to be cut out, my reading load was heavy enough as it was if they end up making us cover the materials faster it may be my undoing. They are supposed to try to fairly remediate these courses... but i have my doubts how easy this is going to be for the students, were the ones suffering here.

Thankfully the strike ended just in time that it wont make a sever conflict wiht me finding summer work up north.

I gotta also update my resume to send up north.

And decide what Im going to give aaron for a birthday present... sigh time goes too quickly...

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/22664426/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/22664426/ Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:06:28 PST its like a dark future little shop of horrors esk rock opera.

Ive been having to satisfy myself with youtube trailors and stuff till then.

Im also really hoping tomorrow that York strike will end, that we will all happily this week be trotting back to class. At the same time a little scared too no clue how asignments will be packed in there, readings adjusted ect.

Im intellectually frustrated right now, Im not being challenged enough. My family so far has all gotten sick with flu except for me, which means my day revolves around making food taking out the dogs and making ppl tea. *Sigh*

I was in the bathroom today though and got thinking on something, that perhaps religion is kinda like a math problem that has more than one solution. Each person takes their own way in solving the problem but most arrive at a similar if not the same answer.

But yet each insist that their method to solving it is the correct one.

If only it were as simple as a math problem i doubt ppl would be killing eachother over it.

I got to see family this weekend. It was my uncles birthday, hes going away to florida for 2 weeks and then coming back here in feb. Must be nice in florida, i havent been since i was in grade 8 when we took our last family trip there.

I can remember though, the salt sea breeze, that leaves your skin salty at the end of the day adn your hair feeling briney, the sandy beaches, waves crashing against the shore on the ocean. The herons and pelicans hanging around the peers and the occasional visits of dolphins into the channels. Its awesome to watch dolphins. Ive always love them since i was a kid. Someday I would love to swim with dolphins. Not one of those ones where theire in the tank, ive heard of places where its done right in the ocean and you put on scuba gear. That woudl be awesome.

It was another snowy miserable day today probably why im thinking of florida and tropical places.

I was all set with my paints and a drawing of what i wanted to do for the mural painting party at Mitch's tonight but it got canceled due to bad weather hopefully will be rescheduled soon.

Aaron and I watched The World According to Garp last night, it was a good movie some good comedy as well as tragedy and a nice balance portraying both teh dangers of extreme masogyny and the tragedies they cause as well as the dangers and tragedies casued by radical even psycho feminism. The movie also had an interesting way of going about death. Death is something that happens to a few characters in the movie(I will try not to give spoilers) but is not in most cases addressed directly, in some cases you dont even see the death, you hear about it third hand. The foreshadowing and juxtaposing of such deaths though was beautfully done. I must read the book it is based on.

So yeah thats all thats happened recently.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/22606392/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/22606392/ Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:26:11 PST
And while in the car after my dad picked me up, low and behold the moon, not a full moon, but like some great half circle, a big golden cats eye peering down on the city, casting its yellow light on all that is happening.

I go to see a performance of Mozart's Magic Flute by the TSO next weekend. I am most excited. As a kid I had a tape of the magic flute, a version for children, and I would listen to it quite happily. Im not sure if this is just singing and the music or with costumes actually dramatizing it. Either way I am happy, if its the music i can close my eyes and let it flow into me, and if a performance i can watch and enjoy.

I haven't written in quite some time. There have been some things going on, but not all that much. Life has carried on. My university is on strike and has been for over 2 months. We risk losing our school year and I like many students are quite frustrated with it.

The holidays were busy as always, but some productivity got done.

Today I finished a needlepoint for a good friend I was a little sorry to finish it though. Sorta the blank canvas dread. You paint the last stroke and there's no more left to do and all that is left is to start a new one... begin anew with a fresh picture. To create something from a blank void.

I have also been working on a story. Yes i know, my play isn't even finished yet and I've started a story but the inspiration was there.
Tuesday I had a really great long conversation about well a lot of things with a good friend of mine. Philosophy, religion, society, ethics. It was open forum and I felt i could be completely honest. The discussion too got me thinking about a lot of things and was really enabling.

Without university and with most of my contact being with family I havent had some real mental stimulus in a long time. I mean aaron and i have our debates over issues too primarily online but... their not quite the same and usually turn into me ranting because sometimes he doesnt bother to counterpoint me or even debate me.

Thing is I love to debate in open forum discussion, its what ive been taught to do. Some people feel i guess intimidated by it but ever since i was a kid thats how my father interacted with me.

Sometimes it was frustrating, sometimes you just want to make a statement and not have it turn into a formal debate. Sometimes as a kid i just wanted to be told or encouraged that I had a good idea, which sometimes i was, but usually i was given a down to earth formal critique that sent me back to the drawing board.

He always said, ideas look great on paper its applying them and the research and knowledge required to make them work that's difficult.
It wasn't always fair, many people have a dream or idea but not the skill to make it real. That's why you present your ideas, find people willing to help make it real.

But it taught me to be persistent, and to stand behind my thoughts, ideas and feelings and to be able to argue and back up my opinions.

Which i suppose is a good thing.

*Sigh* opinions i seem never short on, nor fears sometimes.

I fear often that I shall never create anything that will be ... accepted. That I shall be a failure as a writer. The world of the writer is a tough world, you have to write for the public, not just you.
Will I ever make it? Or will my works be forgotten.

I'm young and yet already fearing whether I might be immortalized in history as having contributed something potentially beneficial to the world and culture in general.

But why do i have that desire in the first place? Why the desire to make some meaningful contribution, to place my mark upon the world? Is it my search for meaning in myself, to give myself meaning by creating something that has meaning for others?
Or is there something more to it?

I don't know, I'm tired from work and should try to sleep. Last night I didn't sleep well, and then had some messed up dream about being i a dress shop and being traumatize by annoying dress ladies...

Oh wait was that a dream... no it happened too over Christmas break... my mom decided to take me dress shopping. I hate dress shopping, its one of the most depressing things ever to me.

But let us try to end on a positive note. I did find a dres... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/21179854/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/21179854/ Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:27:14 PDT
So earlier this week I was a little down in the dumps. But as usual it was the small things that came to my rescue.

One of those downer days I decided to walk home from the bus terminal instead of transfering and getting dropped right near my condo. It is about a 20 min walk down Yonge St. The sun was out and it was relatively mild and though Yonge st by the 407 is not a pretty thing, I realized how much of a living thing it is. Along the sides of the ramps field has been allowed to grow, wild it grows, full of bachelor buttons and little purple daisies and wild yellow snap dragons. There was even a small yellow butterfly. The pavement sparkled with silver trails, most woudl not notice, but I walking with my head low did and marveled at the beauty of hundreds of trails left by the snails as they meandered slowly along the pavement to return to the grass or cross to the other side.

Life though can be cruel and the dessert of concrete separating one side of the grass from the other was also open to threats and had become a graveyard. The shells and smashed bodies of snails lay about, some surely stepped on by careless pedestrians, others fallen victim to the ever watchful and hungry birds. Still enough trails were there to tell how numerous they thrived there.

A pale yellow butterfly also dances about in this small grassy oasis and my eyes caught a wolly bear caterpillar slowly inching its way to safety across the sidewalk perhaps to build its coccoon.

That day brightened my spirits and reminded me of how much beauty we miss when we are not paying attention.

Another day I was again glum, this time it was cold and so riding the bus home I was listening to music on my MP3... Pachabells Cannon by Bach came up just as I got off the bus... that piece of music changed something. Suddenly it was like everything was in harmony, the cars, people, wind, trees, birds, all moving in harmony with the music, like that piece was an anthem for life. Even the clouds in the sky with the sun shining out seemed to echo the beauty of that music and I felt... at peace, a oneness with myself and with the music.

I picked up my violin again too, tuned it and worked with it a little. Should do so more often, even if I dont really go practicing concertos or anything it is still very theraputic. I wish I had been able to keep with my violin lessons. Alas when family crisis strikes things like that... there just isn't the time. Maybe some day I will take up formal instruction again. Till then I can hope that Serge will soon come over for a session with his guitar.

So yeah things have been better the latter half of this week.

What it proves though I think is that when one does not have enough time to take pleasure in leisure activities that create, it is stressful. I need to create to live, to see and take pleasure in beauty around me.

If I cannot create or express myself I become miserable. Which reminds me I gotta get working on that play again... Sigh so much to do.

Today I had one other simple pleasure though. I went to take eggs to my grandfather, and I brought along my mothers digital tape recorder and sat with him for an hour and a half getting his memories. It was good and I learned some new things about him that I had not known before. It is hard, time has cut away at his memories, he repeats himself sometimes and his short term memory is bad but with some probing and lead questions I was able to get quite a bit of information. History is important and through doing this I am learning more about my grandfather than I knew and about history.

Perhaps someday I shall tell his story. Perhaps.. but first I need to get more of it... and that means actually going to bed and getting some sleep.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/21118633/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/21118633/ Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:26:05 PDT
He came up north with me on the weekend, was only able to spend the Saturday and had to go home first thing Sunday morning cuz his stupid work wouldn't give him the day off. It was a fun weekend. We went to the cranberry festival and had a games night with some of my friends in gravenhurst, much fun and devastation of gingerbread men did follow.

Run For Your Life Candy Man is awesome, especially if played with real gingerbread cookies.

The cranberry festival was fun, cranberry apple cider is delicious and i got some nice fall photos. Also got some excellent fall photos from the thanksgiving weekend too. Will have to post some of them.

Aaron and I were both really tired though. Him especially, I am pretty positive he is working too hard and too long at all his jobs and that it is going to eventually take a huge toll on him. I hope it doesnt, I really hope he can manage till things work out to more steady circumstances but I care about him and I see how hard he works and the fact he is willing to seriously give the extra 120%.

This is still stressing things though... He forgot to call me today. Its not a huge thing, we all forget things, but the night before he called off visiting me for a walk and/or game of Crib. Again not a huge thing... but well sometimes its the little things that hurt, they get your hopes up, you miss the person, look forward to it all day and then fall back down to an empty cold reality.

Hes right, i could have called him... but its a matter of point and principle. If you say you will call... you should call, especially since they are expecting it. And also im working around his schedule, I have had at least twice now him speak to me when he's in work mode. I hate that voice... its hollow, empty... all the usual meaning and care in his voice is stripped, its a mechanical voice, pure logic, no emotion or love or care.
Hearing the words I love you from the "work" voice makes you angry... because at that mometn they are empty, an automated response to something that is not first priority.

I feel bad, I dont want to demonize him. It isn't him who should be demonized. We all get focused ons something and tune out other people... even the ones we care about... especially guys. Guys with their difficulties multitasking, cant talk and think at the same time. And Im not perfect either, i get tired or stressed and then pick on the little things... and im not handling tihs change well...

at least i could be handling the changes better. I dont like change and i dont like feeling helpless and without any control. And in my insercurities its these little things that make me freak...


I was reading through my old journals last night... too late last ngiht too, kinda a catharsis. I shouldnt have, at least not at that time of night. It still hurts, its been ... 3 years now i guess, probably going on 4 since my grandmother battled and lost to cancer But it still hurts. I still miss her so much, and can still remember so clearly how things used to be. Its better though, things do get better... somewhat. The disfunction is better... (atleast closer to what is normal for my house)

It is strange readnig thigns you have written years ago, you know the events happened, you know its you writing them but... you get transformed to a reader. A reader reading tales told from a no longer existing narrator, the narrator of their own past self.

Time heals things though. I remember writing, and how badly I wanted to write something to dedicate to her, something meaningful... and how frustrated I was when I just didnt have the words. I think I have some words now, enough time has passed to write something. First I think the emotional baggage must be expressed. I want to do something on grieving. I want to do something on how grief affects a family, and on how it affects the young and each individual.

And I want to do something about her. I was thinking about her sewing, how she always did such a great job, sew, knit, crochet. If only I could tell a story like that... I cannot alas I can needle point but that would take forever. Never learned how to quilt. But maybe... maybe I could if I cannot tell it... draw or paint it. Still I would like to write something. She always encouraged my writing.

*Sigh* I thought I was trying to put this on a happier note... so much for that.

Hmm happy... happy... oh yes, I had a good day tuesday playing games with the Dorks gamer group at the university. Tim even taught me how to play magic cards. That was pretty good. It lig... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/20945264/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/20945264/ Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:54:05 PDT And love was pure and sweet
One gave it all to loves true call
Even if doom they meet

… the real versus I know of this are much cruder…

Ah such tales of chivalry, of knights and pure hearts, to be the true lover, the one to sacrifice it all for the happiness of the other.

I have tried to be, to give love to he which carries my heart. And yet I meet moments of loathing for myself. When I act selfishly, unable to make some sacrifices. His time is valuable, and I am greedy for it. Each moment I get I wish for another despite I know there are other importances to his life, more important than me. A job, independence, school. I am but a secondary mistress to his future, as he should be a secondary master to mine, or so logic and “common sense states”.

And I feel so bad, for I love him within what capacity one in my still young years can love and I truly wish to do all in my power to make him happy.

So why sometimes do my own insecurities invade, cause doubts of how strong his affection still stands, makes me fear losing him. Is this what it is to suffer the human condition or merely my own home grown insecurities.

Perhaps this is what they mean when to truly love others one must love oneself. I fear at times my own self insecurities become projected on those I care for. If I cannot each day love myself, physically… and at times withing, then how many instabilities do I cause to my relationship.

Still I must ask..

Can love be truly selfless? It seems if it must that that may have to be one way, one giver, one reciever, for if both sacrifice it all I am not sure they would get very far.
But is love not a selfish thing? We desire it, seek it, crave it when we have it not. A child unloved will yearn for it, a broken heart will crave to hear those words. Is that not a selfish need… But love is yet supposed to be a selfless thing, something you give…
yet also recieve.

Even now I am being selfish, I miss him and want to share with him the things I take joy in, the nature of the north, the local festivals. And yet I know it stresses him when his duty to his work… now every god damned day a week demands he comply. And I feel angry, frustrated and … guilty. Guilt at feeling anger, at causing stress as he tries to navigate his life and secure his employment and even greater guilt at the fact I know damn well that much his his gains and effort are so that he can in the future offer me gifts of time… and take me to things and give me tokens of his affection. And in a sense then his work is as much for me as for himself. So why then do I resent it when he must cancel plans I have so looked forward to.

It breaks my heart when each time I have planned something, looked so forward to it only to have it crushed by that word I now dread and loath “WORK”

And yet it is true, it is part of growing up, part of being a responsible adult.

But I must question, what kind of a world is it when to make a living and be “responsible adults” we must slight the time of those we love and care for most?

Is this what capitalism is? To make slaves of our lives and wittle away the precious moments so at the end we ask not only where has the time gone? but also regret how much we wasted with such things striving for position and money.

Camus was right… life is absurd, and we waste it.

Perhaps I am in my current state of anger being too harsh and unfair. And he tries hard I know he does, his guilt is perhaps stronger than mine.

But that is why I must ask if love is not a selfish thing, that it causes such feelings of pain and guilt. Or does it make me merely a bad lover, to feel such agony when fate cheats me of cards.

And yet there is one sacrifice that i will make, that I save it, bottle it, keep him from seeing the true extent of which these changes devastate my soul… and then when alone it eats me away and I but writhe and cry and drown in my darkness, never letting him know of the imagined daggers that do cut and harm an imagined self, or the cliffs or the torment.

No… bad lover or not, that burden is mine to carry I will not hurt him with it, for it is of my own creation and will be of my own destruction for so long as the thread is there, I cling, hang on and can always find my way back to myself. And then the storm passes and the sun rises, and all is right and light and good… for a time at least.

Perhaps it is simply another matter of when waiting is filled… and so I shall wait and take advantage at least of my frustrations to channel them into something constructive.

Writing… when all humans fail me, when no one is there to lift me up, be my redemption or saviour… it is there, lurking, a too often alienated passion that yet always welcomes... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/20800889/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/20800889/ Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:22:06 PDT
But alas the reading list pile up, the first test next week, the lack of sleep, work, deadlines research... shopping for textbooks (I haven't even gotten to do any shopping for new clothes)

A poor pained writer haunted by here characters...

where have I heard that one before... or has TS. Eliot stopped inspiring those pages of scribble and fragments stuffed in your clip board.

*sigh*

but on lanugage we were discussing it with my professor in philosophy of nature. The great war between plato and aristotle, continued by the empiricists and rationalists and brought back from the dead by Chalmers only in argument of language.

Such a silly argument really, a much ado about nothing. How do we get language, are we born with it or is it gained through experience.

As we discussed this, of Chalmers extremely rational approach I could not but after think,

Is music language? Can it be considered such.
True we do not use words in it per se (though one does in song) but in a good piece of music why would you need words when it does itself sing? A good guitarist makes each string sing as well as a good violinist, flutist or pianist.

One can use it for communication, how better than to tell the audience the bad guy is approaching than through a sinister minor chorded melody? How to summon the hero or heighten the romance?

Watch an old silent film and tell me that music is not used as a form of language.

Would chalmers agree? Perhaps. Is music innate? Perhaps, even tone deaf hum or whistle or enjoy music. We seem to aim for rhythm, feet march into step in a line, following beats, tempos. Dance.

And so I must say that I think perhaps music is language, a wordless language in many ways more powerful than words itself, it can speak things words fail at, while touching us at our inner cores of emotions and souls.

One might argue it is not quite like language, certainly one cannot communicate specific instructions per se, you cannot tell little jimmy to go fetch the milk from the grocer after 4 pm but to express the larger topics where words may fail, perhaps to aid in oru basic speech, music is a langage, or an apmlifier, aid to regular language.

Whatever you want to call it as a form of our expression, lives and communication music plays a vital role, one that should not be ignored.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/20695891/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/20695891/ Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:03:14 PDT - Choose a singer/band/group
- Answer using ONLY titles of songs by that singer/band/group
- Tag 6 more people (let them know they've been tagged)

I choose 'Iron Maiden'

1. Are you male or female?
Iron Maiden

2. Describe yourself.
Dream Child

3. What do people feel when they're around you?
Sanctuary (sometimes )

4. How would you describe your previous relationship?
Flight of Icarus

5. Describe your current relationship.
Wildest Dreams

6. Where would you want to be now?
Running Free

7. How do you feel about love?
From Here to Eternity (though sometimes its more "can I play with madness?" )

8. What's your life like?
Stranger in a strange land

9. What would you ask for if you had only one wish?
Infinite Dreams

10. Say something wise.
Be Quick or Be Dead

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/20660523/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/20660523/ Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:07:42 PDT
I like the silence... and I like thinking. Perhaps I think too much, surely spending too much time talking in ones head can be just as bad as drowning oneself in noise... but I must wonder what the effects of such constant noise is.

Today I was alone in the home, for the first time in well i cannot quite remember. Usually my house is full of noise, but today it was lovely if not a little strange to wake up not to noisy voices at a breakfast table, my fathers loud booming and my nanas high pitched jabber. To sit and eat my supper in silence, to hear every little thing, it was so unusual and wonderful in a sense.

I sat on the bus going home and noticed something. Everyone was plugged in. We have a plugged in nation now, soon people will be coming made with wires in their veins. It is not that I don't like music, quite the opposite I love music and must admit I often on long car trips drown out the noise of talking with the antisocial art of listening to music. I own an MP3player which was in my bag at the time. And yet I was content there to think... and play the music in my head.

Its never quite perfect, sometimes I will forget a line or two of the song or get caught in the glitch of a chorus, like a record player caught on a scratch. And yet I can play in my head the Iron Maiden Dance of the Dead rift, hear it in there as if i were listening to it. Or Tom Lehrer's masochism tango. While th lyrics may miss me on occasions, often the music itself doesnt.

my mind is my MP3, and it is better on my ears and i can hear it perfectly even over the chatty talk and the sounds of the bus

And yet I was quite mortified when I discovered that my boyfriend cannot do this, he told me he only can hear one song or bits of one that will repeat and get annoying. And yes admittedly I get ditty's in my head too, that keep haunting me throughout the day. But if i think about the piece, i can move easily from Damh the Bard to Motzart with a little focus.

Perhaps with us all being plugged in people forget how to focus, to use their mind and memory, the hear the music instead of absently listen.

I love to lose myself in music, feel it through me, close my eyes and let my mind travel with it. An almost spiritual like experience, refreshing and restful.

Perhaps we are so used to noise we are afraid of silence. I don't know but I know that silence is often to me a comfort to the too often overwhelming amounts of noise. I spend hours listening to lectures each day. Now it is my time to not listen, but to think.


Ok thats my rant done, in other news have in what little free time I have had that hasnt been taken up with my already piling reading list (i can't afford to fall behind but it seems so inevitable) that progress is slow. However the typed first draft of Madam Chair is starting to come together.

A drama of power relations, gender roles and issues and with some mild comedy in the form of dramatic irony to lighten the mood of the overhanging seriousness of it. I will likely not post the whole thing here but may post an excerpt or two. I have never written a play before so this is a new venture for me.

In other news I got a job at the law library on campus working thursday evenings so yay for employment. I start tomorrow so suppose I should head to bed at some point.

Bah. Alas I miss my late nights of musings. How far away they seem.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/17968795/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/17968795/ Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:28:53 PDT
I long for things of times long past, of sailing on ships, riding horses and wandering through woods with trees big and thick enough you could stand at least 5 people comfortably inside.

And my imagination, so often running away, why is it that the characters I read of in books, seem so much more interesting than those in real life. Even the ones I write about are more interesting, and Im most certain that I am not one of the top most interesting people.

So is it that I just find people here boring, is it that I cannot satisfy myself with the reality on hand? I long for ballrooms, long dresses and gentlemen, pirates and warriors, untainted countrysides and to be courted by some hansom guy in armor who will ride side by side as we battle injustice.

*sigh* with my health I probably wouldn't have lived long enough to see any of those. Let alone have the opportunity.
Could it be I was born in the wrong times, and yet as a woman these times perhaps give us the most freedom and liberty since before the roman empire. Or at least they are supposed to.
Still it seems to me time is not linear. I suppose since reincarnation is something that fascinates me, maybe these times are more than just romantic notions but past loves. Or maybe just romantic notions. But would it not be cool if time is layers of eternity, all slightly different realities at different points than yours. You could delve into other worlds, change their future but not your own. For good or for evil.

Dangerous if we ever can travel in time. Alot of dangerous things were bumbling into though.

Yet why must our world be so... bland. Boring buildings, boring people all plugged into their music or on the computer. I think perhaps if people read more they would be more interesting. Maybe not but some of the most interesting people I have met read alot. Perhaps to escape.

Mmm sweet escapism... I don't care what James Joyce warns about escapism, portrait of the artist and all that, i will keep my literary escapism thank you very much.

Sometimes I feel so burning inside, so... restless. I need something... perhaps to create. I have so much on the drawing board I just need to sit and do it. But something else... i don't know.

I should get back into my violin again.

And enjoy the peace well it lasts. Less than a month till Cait moves back in, its strange while shes away at university, our sisterly relationship has improved somewhat. We even went downtown shopping last week. But when she returns all things will go to hell again, we both know it. We just cannot get along sharing space together.

And she will have him over, and I will be booted out or screamed at and I will want to have Aaron over, and she will scream and *sigh*... and then there will be the sounds of World of Warcraft subwuffered noise echoing through the house past 5 am.

Dear sleep I should not forsake you while I have you.
Nor the sweet moonlight where i can bathe in its silvery blue beauty in peace. Few lights are as nice as the blue glow of the moon through ones window.

grr enough of moonlight, i must think of the now. I have exams, on on Friday, need to stay focused and study, it wont be an easy one. And I have the contract job coming up and if I am lucky some form of employment at the library, though I am kinda hoping it will be an assistant job, as much as I enjoyed the programmers job last year and would be very happy to have it again, it took a lot out of me. By the end i was a little worn out and didn't have all that long to recover before school started again. I wont make as much but out of the drivers seat, its a little easier.

work, school, work to make money to pay for school, school to get education to get work that pays more money... does anyone see a cycle that doesn't exactly seem to have an end or alot of sense.

I guess its true the world revolves around money. Makes one wonder what the world would be like if it didn't revolve around money, if it revolved around... oh i don't know, art, or science... or people... or fluffy unicorns... i don't know something other than money.Maybe it would be like Heinlein's "For us the living", maybe not, hard to say and chances are I will never know.

In other news after a trip downtown I finally got something I had been searching for... Velvet Goldmine... yes that likely very tripped out 80's movie with Johnathan Rhys Meyers as a glam rock star. Should be fun to watch, at worst, I can... if... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/17789113/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/17789113/ Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:19:31 PDT Our estrangement has been hard I know, the days go by and I long to see you but now, every long winded sentence I had needed to be saved, stored up only to be put into essay after essay as the pages of words from my last entry to now has topped 40 perhaps even 50... i lost count...

And so now, with a week and a half till my next two exams I may rekindle our relationship, strike up the spark that we have had through thick and thin...

Okay I will stop writing love letters to my journal...

No no, my sanity is not so thin... I am not yet Gogol's madman, addressing letters to a dog and claiming that China and Spain are in fact the same country. No I am not so mad as that.

Though if today were February 43 it would be pretty damn cool if you ask me

And so what tidings do I bring? The tide is turning and my brain is starting to boil. A number of factors of course, stress, exams but most of all that fever which takes me so often. That creative fever, late nights and late lines, written in the dark, scribbled on pieces of paper, doodles in the margins of notes

so what do I have, beyond my long term projects, the painting for my uncle is essentially drawn onto the canvas, he wants cameron wearing a hat, can be done. Must write him for colours. Reid may want it dull and so it shall be but dull and colourless are two different things.
I must get good paints and soon have to remember to call that place.

And then there are the plays, never thought I would write a play, but modern drama... it did something to my mind, and I started to imagine things, not as books or regular stories but as plays.

one is ... a bit of a political piece with some absurd qualities... not sure where its going, where im going to take it the skeleton is there, needs to be fleshed out.

But there is something else brewing, a piece of art, a play about art, with art, and dance and music. I want the piece to be itself a work of art. I wasnt quite sure how far i could take it in its design, but then we saw the video clips from Ubu and the Truth Commision... and then I knew, then I knew that what I saw in my head could be done.

The characters needs some work.
Names matter. I have too many characters at the moment, I want it to be more focused, I want there to be bonds. But the standard cast I know who must stay.

Then there is the poetry... why oh why must T.S. Eliot and Ezra pound choose to haunt me. Eliot particularly.

riddle: how do you know you have been reading too many modernist texts?

Answer: When you start writing your own contemporary response to the wasteland

no its true, i have. fragments I am slowly organizing, molding, a represenation of our own breakdown and a nostalgia for things in the past.

Technology was supposed to connect us after all, phones connect the world, the internet allowed easy long distance communication, Facebook... you can find anyone on facebook...justabout, long lost friends...those weird people who you knew in kindergarten who message you sounding as though you are old buddies when you havent seen them in 15 years...

So why are we so isolated... i mean really isolated. Every one is signed in, plugged in, turned on. Noise everywhere, ads, music in stores, walkmans, mp3's, ipods, and signs and videos and tv everywhere, and my boyfriend doesnt spend 5 minutes on the bus without pulling out his PSP.
"I made a new friend today" "oh really?" "yes on Warcraft"

and I go home to my room, and I sit there and enjoy the silence, no tv, no music, no little mechanical dingnig noises, no bright colours flashing before my eyes constantly.

Is it wrong that I feel overwhelmed by such noise? So much visual stimulus?

Am I weird that if I am not reading, I like nothing better on trips than to sit back and stare out the window and think, or watch people , see whats going on in the world. Is it weird that I feel more alone when surrounded in this world of noise and signs and flashing things and communication based on messages so no one ever has to see you face to face, than in the depths of my own mind, where I can imagine people and talk to them without the noise, the ipods cell phones facebooks, psp's and all that other jazz

because I do
and it is so hard to explain how one can feel truly alone surounded by people, feel more isolated from their friends despite just having talked to them on msn than they do when miles away writing them letters... but I do.

No I am not a Luddite, I have a cell phone, i go on the internet just like everyone else. But I feel isolated, alienated.

no one even calls anymore, its all facebook a... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/17001855/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/17001855/ Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:34:12 PST
But one thing I have noticed that sorta has me down is well how people change when they enter relationships. Yes strange coming from one who is them self in a relationship, but of late it has really started to get me down a bit. I notice it more and more, i guess it is because alot of my friends went a long time without a relationship. Now that they are in one all they want to do is spend time with their "significant other"

I mean don't get me wrong, I spend alot of time with Aaron, and I enjoy it, and it isn't like I don't enjoy spending time with my friends with their boyfriends and girlfriends, I do... just I miss also the one on one time, or the small single group time.

There is a different how one acts alone with a close friend or two compared to how they act with their boy/girlfriend. There is a difference. The jokes aren't the same, the insiders go ignored, they are often distracted by displays of affection. Even I am guilty of it.

Yet I miss the intimate moments, the sitting there discussing philosophy. I miss sitting there, 2 people playing instruments together, just us and the music. I miss the girl talk events, shopping together, the D&D games.
Not that those things aren't there still but now there is almost too often a "well let me check with so&So... no sorry other plans.
Or "can X come too?"

And often X can come too, and other plans are fine... but well... not all the time. If I wanted X to come every time I would invite them to come too. Sometimes I want Y but not X.

Maybe its just my antisocial nature, I like one on one over a group. Maybe I just don't like change much in general. But I keep feeling like something has been lost, something I cherished.

Will there ever be just the 2 musical voices again, no one else to judge or interrupt? Will there ever be trips and visits away without the significant others? Will I get to GM a game ever again that doesn't involve a kamikaze asshole player who I let in so one of the other players would come.

Fuck relationships make things complicated.

And how does one respond to "Can X come too?" anyways, if you really would rather not have X come, if you want to be able to talk about things you share with only Y, how do you share that with them without offending them. If you say no often then they wont come, or will feel alienated. In some cases I'm even afraid to say, "there are situations I enjoy spending time as a group and situations I don't for fear their gonna get mad.

I guess I am just a little frustrated and I mean I have asked too "can X come" and I have said too "Sorry but I have other plans" But often I try to think too, think "do they really want X to come too?" and often I think, i might like it better without X. Sometimes more isn't always merrier.

God is this what married life is going to be like, the couple gets married and suddenly all the friendships change, you cant do things with just the girls or you and your friend, now his wife, and your husband and everyone else's spouse? God I'm starting to think my dad was right about all this crap.

Maybe I'm just feeling insecure. I don't feel threatened by my friends boy/girlfriends, their all nice people, I get along well enough with them. I just feel that maybe the friendship dynamics are somehow altered, impermanently changed in a way where something important has been taken away or lost in exchange for something new, something I'm not sure I quite grasp or like yet.

I don't know. I just don't. I mean am I being selfish for saying these things? Does it make me a bad person missing one on one time with my friends? Maybe it does... I just don't know anymore.

When I was single, I was lonely, and I watched my friends get boyfriends, girlfriends ect. And maybe it was because I was single, they felt almost bad bringing their other with them. But now that I have someone, so often we all seem joined at the hip. And I don't want it to be that way all the time.

I am being most pathetic... maybe its just housebound depression from being sick, too much time thinking and dwelling and reading depressing modernist poetry... Or maybe I just have to give up and accept the change and forget about those good old days and stop whining.

Stop being Mr. Ramsay and shuddering to think that the stones he stands on will outlive Shakespeare... ok again with the modernists... T.S Eliot's Wasteland here I come.

"I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled"...

Hmm I wonder if they have a mood for Nostalgic... *Sigh* seems its a choice between lonely, isolated and alienated... but alienated looks coolest...

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/16293203/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/16293203/ Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:42:49 PST
I have been in a relationship now for over a year... thats nothing to some people but for me, who was single for so long and to have it last a year and still feel wonderful and amazing... its just new and exciting for me. Oh yes I am a hopeless romantic, and hes helped me grow so much.

Its been a huge learning experience... Im a dork, im a little humanly challenged... I think learning how to react is the hardest. He brings me wonderful gifts which I am gracious for but sometimes he goes overboard out of affection. And how to react to that, to not hurt him while still expressing that it is a "bit much" is a difficult challenge. And at the same time I feel bad that I haven't gone overboard for him. I mean ok, incomewise I cant, im a poor university student and minimum wage jobs v.s programming contracts... is a huge difference. Can I go overboard in other ways though? I dont want to smother him in affection... but I certainly would like to just try pushing at that gift limit to do something big I just dont know what.

Is it possible I could shower in in artwork, poetry and the like till he is buried up to his ears? Till he has not an inch of wall space left? Could if I really got on my violin and actually spent some time practicing with it could I write him a musical piece dedicated to him, a ballad? a concerto for violin...

And as sweet as all the gifts I get are, most wondrous of all the love I am give, I still sorta long to recieve things from the hands and soul myself. Not that thought and heart and soul dont get poured into gifts purchased, they do... but well in every relationship I have been in I have been the poet, the bard, the songsmith, the artist. For once I would just like to be a muse... Dont get me wrong, there are few things I like better than the high of a good inspiration, the high of creation... but I would love to be someones muse, to be the inspirer instead of the inspired... just to see what its like.

I guess I cannot have it both ways. I know i need a grounded and calm individual to balance my rather passionate, fiery... excitable self... but that also means that the chances of them being a fellow artist are few and far between. And I will not try to force someone to be something they aren't.

Its just... i guess sorta a fantasy of mine, to be in the other shoes. Kinda like I fantasize of riding across a great vast green landscape on a big powerful black frisian... will it happen... probably not... would it be nice someday... you bet... am I going to stop fantasizing about it despite its small possibility of reality.. Hell no!

So yes on to other things. 2007 also brought on some projects... many of which I have yet to complete. There is one there for my beloved... ive got the stuff to make it... the idea... the materials... just need the time... time is always the hardest ingredient in any project.

Then there is the painting for a close friend of mine. Again the sketch is drawn... one small area im still working on but I think I've got what needs to go there... I think. In the end it should be a nice gift for her, if I ever get it finished. Still have to work out the dimensions too of how big its gonna be and then to copy it onto canvas.

Then there is the tape recorder sitting on my dresser still there still with the taped conversation from about 2 years ago of my grandfather talking about his life in Cobalt and such. I took a break because we both needed a break, my grama was dying, it was too hard for him, the memories. But his short term mind is slipping and I fear soon too his longterm mind will. I need to make the time to capture whats left before it too is gone. I need to capture what I can still of him before 'he' is gone. I was too late with my grandmother. The cancer took her too quickly, the hospitals had her on too many meds, she was too weak. But hes still there, and I cant let the opportunity slip. The history must not be forgotten, nor him.

Finally amidst all that there is the painting which I have promised my great uncle. It is my first priority... why. Well i have all the materials and supplies... he is 98 going on 99, its going to be a challenge, and because it means getting to know some of his history. The photo im to paint is an old yellowed black and white photo, not very large. I need to scan it, grey scale it, blow it up, print it out and grid it. Fortunately the painting is only going to be a 12x12... still its an oil so ill need to find my hair dryer.

The good news is that to aid me in all these projects I finally have an easel. A really nice one which my dad got me for my Yule present.

In other good news, my hunt for Mervyn Peake novels found some su... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15897438/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15897438/ Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:28:49 PST
Does the top of our reality have a bottom, and if not, can we fall through it?

Perhaps a silly question, but really, where does the bounds of our reality start and end? Is there an end? Of course many would ask who cares, what is the point, its not like you can derive an actual answer. But well if you never ask the questions, especially those that no one bothers with, how do you know if there is an answer to be found or not.

Do our dreams constitute a new layer of reality one that overlaps ours but is itself a separate one we can only enter through sleep? What about our imaginations, delusions, and fantasies? We bring them for a fleeting instant into our reality but in their intangibility, their subjective existence isolated purely to the mind, do they then exist more fleshed out in a reality of their own?

And what is reality anyways? What is this real world? is it purely the physical? is it whatever we can come up with in this existence? Does it stop at what can be made real and what cant?

If that is the case then at one point in history a trip to the moon was from another reality than ours, but somehow found its way in here.

I don't know. Its just something I wonder about.

And on that point the second question and thought that invaded my mind. There are some who believe that all the worlds we create in our heads, become a world existing in their own right somewhere else. Sorta worlds within worlds.

Let me elaborate to make that more clear. Take for example me. I have since I was about 9 had a world in my head I would like someday to make a novel. It has characters, continents, places, rules of physics, rules that dont exist in our world, races, gods ect. It exists purely in my head.

In the theory of worlds within worlds in existing in my head i have on a different dimension brought it into its own existence.

If that is the case, then what does that say about worlds. I create a world, therefore in some sense I am the one great power/being/creator of that world and all things in it. However though I have over the years put quite a bit of thought into the world, even to the point of drawing maps, character and racial sketches, I cannot imagine everything on that world, at least not yet. There are particular continents I haven't gone into as much detail about, there isnt as much detail about the flora and fauna and though I focus on particular characters, the villains and characters who's lives are generally in some way important or at the very least play some role in the evolution of the world or in my case the plot that takes place there, there is a large population I am unaware of and who as result I have had no hand in shaping their destiny.

So if the worlds theory is true what does that say about our world? That we are existing in the "mind" of a creator being, that it has imagined us, created the world, shaped it, imagined a few species, what our race would look like, ect. Maybe even thought carefully thorugh our history of some very important geniuses and villains to help shape the world. But in the end again if said creator is anything like me as a creator in my world, I am a very neutral almost more observing force. I create the rules, stick in a few checks and balances and let the world play out.

So if the worlds theory stands, then which of us are known characters to our creator and which of us aren't? Are those that are known better off for they have a purpose? Surely to live to that purpose they are protected from random unwilled acts of chance that might otherwise eliminate or prevent them(at least until they fulfill that purpose). But what of the rest of us perhaps it is us who are better off for since if the creator is anything like me as a creator in my world, i can do both good and evil, there will be villains who without my willing may have been perfectly normal people, characters who shall die, who shall be heroes, and those that will live on even when they shouldn't. So are the ignored faces in the crowd better off? Perhaps. Certainly it gives us more free will. But how do you know?

And would there then be a point to organized religion?

And what then happens when the world is forgotten?

Now in honesty I don't really believe the worlds theory, theres alot of problems with it. For eg, I have only ever imagined one continent on my "planet" in my mind, and there are still 3 moons where I have never really put a huge amount of thought into the terrain. Does that mean their land masses are just big black holes on the world cuz I haven't thought them into being? Also if what I think into being exists the it is unlikely they would... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15771084/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15771084/ Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:24:20 PST
If all the world is a stage, than I am standing on one great theatre of the absurd. A player speaking my lines doing what Ive been told and also an audience member, watching and sighing, and thinking on how pointless, meaningless and utterly repetitive it all is.

The life of a cashier... greet, type, scan, bag repeat.
To top it off, working for HBC it means that I have to try to sell their line of credit card so more repitition. "Will you be paying with your HBC credit card?" "Have you heard about our HBC credit card?"
"Do you have a HBC rewards card?"

Sell, sell, sell. Scan, scan, scan, and the cash goes ding, swipe after swipe of the card. Recepts print, print print. Tear "sign here please" bag bag bag. Farewell, farewell.

And on it goes. And you get the chatty ones and the impatient ones, the ones who yell at you for following procedure, the ones who distrust you to the point they demand to have paper to calculate the % off becasue they dont believe you gave it to them correctly, the stupid ones, the friendly ones...

And then there is the returns. Return, after return I processed today. Mindless consumerism which clearly doesnt fill the gap for them. Their dissatisfation being the main reason of return as sign. The number of times I hit that #2 button, the number of times I wrote "returned" on a bill. "not suitable"

And all the while smiling, having to wave, greet each customer, type my employee number into the register to oblivion.

For money, for more consumerism to fill my life...

Where does it all lead? Do we ever consider if the things we have that we spend so much on truly make us happy?

Certainly some expences are necessary, a house, food, a bed, clothing to keep us warm and looking decent. Yet some things...

For instance I do not need fancy meals, an expensive ride somewhere or a great luxurious show to make me happy on an evening out with my boyfriend. No no, an evening at home dinner cooked together after an entertaining shopping trip to food basics, then perhaps a few hands of rummy or a game of cribbage or chess, and then cuddling, talking, maybe watching a bit of tv.

Oh yes we have our occasional evenings out, we go to nice places, show ect. But the small things are just as special, just as important. I dont go and buy a 5 $ card at a store, i hand make one. Its maybe not as pretty, if i put poetry in it, it isnt as well crafted as the hallmark, but it is unique. Each stroke of my pen, unique and made for that person. Not reprinted hundreds of times. A message for an individual not the masses.

Not to say I am not guilty of consumerism, I am. Books I have bought I havent found time to read, the computer game I wanted and never found time to play, or played and lost interest, the shirt i bought and wore only a few times.

And yet does that not prove exactly what I say, the things we want they dont always really make us happy, they dont always fill us.

And yet we hunger to fill it, to give ourselves meaning

As an artist i know hunger, frustration, needing to express things, sometimes starved for creativity, sometimes so bottled full of it and about to explode if it isnt expressed. And to hunger and thirst for that moment, that feeling, that high image, inspiration. To feel moved, stirred by music, songs, paintings and poems, that feeling of goosebumps, and of something coming alive inside that you cant quite put your finger on, and trying to fill the hole, the unceasing hunger for perfection. And it gnaws at you and never goes away but it also gives meaning.

I give myself meaning, and I try to be conscious of what meaning i give myself, in the things I do, the things I say, the things I create. Sometimes it is hard. Meanings can be misunderstood, far too often they are. Meanings can be lost, misconstrued, hidden. But how others see the meaning isnt important, its what it means to the individual at the time, how it shaped them, how it gave meaning to other things.

100 years from now will my name mean anything to anyone? Maybe... but if it doesnt, does it really matter? No. Meanings can be lost. What is important is the now, the making of the meaning, and me making it what I want to be, to let no other hands carve at my marble, no minds chisel away what might be vital to the Artemis that might lie within.

Perhaps that is the difference. Being conscious of giving yourself meaning, being conscious of the meaning you give yourself. We all fall of course, join the herd at times, erode ourself. Sometimes in fear and frustration we will deface our own selves and yet we can still rebuild.

I sound old in... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15486522/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15486522/ Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:22:12 PST
I can remember remembrance days of the past, those quite a while ago when I was still in elementary school. Of being so excited, because I was going to be singing in the choir and playing in the band for the school ceremony. And of wanting my grandfather and grandmother to come to see it. And I can remember being disappointed, hurt and upset when he didn't come. My mom said that he had his own reasons for not wanting to go, that he didn't like to talk about the war or his experiences with it. I didn't really understand then.

I still dont fully understand now, though I try. He has told me bits and pieces of the past, of his service, being positioned somewhere on the East coast in Canada. Of the training they did, a long run in the mornings, showers then breakfast. That he worked training men to run, do repairs and maintenance of the submarines. I know he never went overseas. There has been rumors by other family members that one of the reasons he wont talk about it much is that they had to unload the cargo brought home too, including the bodies. I don't know.
I do know that he feels ashamed.
He has told me before he feels ashamed, why? because he never was sent overseas. Not that he had much of a choice. He signed up, served his country. They just never sent him overseas.

For some reason he sees this as a failure, though the alternative is that he could likely have died if they had, and I wouldn't then be here. But he sees it as a failure, that somehow he failed.

Its hard to understand but I try, and I try to offer support.

And I have walked through his home and my nana's room and seen the pictures, the black and white photos of the young men. My grampa's brothers, my grama's brothers, my gan and his brothers. Young men, all in uniform. So many too with a small cross stuck up in the corner.

What a terrible thing war is that it reduces men to such a state, when lives are sacrificed for such things as power, greed, and intolerance of others beliefs and morals.

The fact that even now, in a supposedly enlightened world, we still feel the need to bathe ourselves in the blood of others, of innocence, and kill in the name of what, a god? Another man? A moral right? It disgusts me. I cannot deny my ties to human kind but I cannot say that it does not give me extreme feelings of dirtyness knowing that if an alien species were to abduct me and make me describe in detail and explain the actions of my species I would have to admit to them that I am indeed connected with the same humanity that though capable of great kindness is also capable of horrible bloodshed and violence, most of which it creates onto itself.

Strange how throughout the philosophies of history, that so many especially the founding Greek fathers claimed that man was a "rational animal" yet what sort of rational animal places such violence onto its own kind with such little remorse? There is so much our mind and technologies are capable of but instead of putting our heads together, overcoming, religious, cultural and political differences to try to make the world better, we spend so much of it trying get ahead of each other, beat the other down and even decimate each other.

I can only wonder what might be accomplished in the world today if every country was suddenly just to set aside its differences and look at some of the major problems in the world:
Famine, poverty, pollution, disease, and say "how can we deal with this?" and was to put together and share each others technology and resources to combat these. What kind of a world could be possible?

*sigh* alas my thoughts are too ideal, I dream of a world that is not to be and quite likely will never be.

In other news... soo much work, but at least some things ahve worked out a little bit, like that test, i talked with the professor so its not as bad a situation as i initially thought.

Alot of essays to get done in the next few weeks.

I want to write though... and paint. I need to get started on my uncles painting, and then there is the painting for aaron, and the painting for julia.

And I have had a play battering around in my mind for some time, it comes and goes. Ive never written a play and this one is still in formation, but my modern drama class has started to inspire me to want to write. Its still in the works of my head, still thinking of how it will form how it will end. Perhaps I will make it a holiday project.

Anyways the weekend was ok. Aaron and I on friday went to the royal agricultural winter fair. We had fun, i got him a belt and some gifts for my mom and dad and sister, he got a toy for pandora and got me a nice celtic hair clip.

Then on saturday I had a job interview... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15413260/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15413260/ Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:20:52 PST I failed that midterm, the one I wrote when i was really sick.

And now I am screwed.
I should never have written it then, if i hadnt written it then i could have then gone gotten a doctors note and written it on the makeup date. But I didn't. I went in sick as a dog, aching all over, with a headache, having eaten only an applesauce and a half piece of toast with honey for breakfast, after having puked my guts out at 5 am that morning till my throat burned from the stomach acid and it hurt to swallw (little did I know at the time it was the start of a throat infection that would last a week and a half).

But at that point I wasn't thinking, and without a doctors note at the time and thinking it was a 24 hours bug that would likely deny me a doctors note once it had passed I went in and tried to stick it out and write it thinking i would though doing shitty at least get a passable grade.

And I didnt, i failed it. And now I am screwed.
I talked to the prof after class, she told me to see her Monday, I dont know if there is anything she can do or is going to be willing to do about the test anyways. I mean she knows theres a huge disparity there, I got an A on the test previous to this (alas only worth 10%).

The problem is the drop date is this Friday, and Friday comes before Monday as we all know and so I can take the risk of waiting... not dropping the course and seeing what comes of my meeting her Monday... or I can drop the course now without a penalty of keeping the grade at the time of dropping.

Its hard and frustrating, no time to seek academic advising, not alot of time to consider, and no time to really try to mediate this with her. Im so frustrated.

Its my own stupidity, i made a really poor error of judgment in writing that test and then not talking to her about it. But I really didnt think I was going to fail it.

And I dont want to lower my GPA, if the grade stays and I keep the course, the best i can hope to achieve if I work my ass off and get an A on both the upcoming essay and Final exam is a B if really lucky a B+
but puts me at a really big risk of getting a C and I dont want that on my GPA I dont want anything lower than a B+ on my GPA, in fact I would prefer all A's if i could get that.

But I also dont want to drop the course for another reason, if i do I am below the

So I feel really miserable and screwed right now, and this is just from the problem, im not even going to talk about the blow to my ego and grade consciousness this has dealt me.

but at the time I wrote it, i was really screwed to, 2 big assignments due that week, an in class writing assignment in the class I had right before my exam plus i had to turn in my essay for that day in the class. That midterm exam and a second midterm in another class the day after it.

I didnt see alot of options, i didnt think it through. And now I am really screwed. And now I think I have even less options than I had then.

If by some miracle things work out maybe they will, maybe things will be ok. I emailed the prof, asked her if she could suggest what I might do.

So yeah Im pretty miserable. Aaron at least was around, he met me on campus after my class finished and just let me cry into his arms for a bit as I told him what was wrong and he listened and then tried to make me feel better by sharing some of his own experiences of woe, failures and possible solutions. He then to try to cheer me up ended up taking me on a bus trip downtown to Chapters to go book hunting. By the end of the day he did cheer me up, and taught me how to play cribbage.

So in all the day was not a total loss I guess.

Still though I really am upset, confused and frustrated about the whole test thing.

*sigh*

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15399933/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/15399933/ Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:14:08 PST
I could begin with waking, with waking from a wonderful evening and to wonder if it was all a dream, only to quickly revel in the joy that it wasn't just a dream.

Of long walks, holding hands, kisses under willow trees and beneath a street lamp on a corner with no one to witness but the moon and stars.

I could begin with weekends away, with farm animal fiascos, fond farewells to favourite flora and fauna and falling leaves from familiar trees.

Or of perhaps some darker days or wilder adventures...

Of friend issues, disrespect, tears, frustrations, health issues, illness and emotions, stress, schoolwork, and essays up to the ears. And of forgetting, of fear of forgetting the memories of those who are gone, and of being forgotten by one who is still here.

So where to begin?

I guess I shall start in a place that is neither here nor there and hopefully end up somewhere in between

with my sister moved out we are less at odds, still some sibling rivalry but we have more moments when we can be more like friends than squabling sisters.

My mother is still caught up in her hobby of raising the goats... its getting out of hand. She has enough trouble dealing with the ones she has now shes having the does all bred so they will have babies. Now dont be fooled, she only keeps at the farm near our cottage the... 9 goats in total, one is the buck, and then theres the weather (neutered male) and this years doeling, those arent having babies. However that still leaves 6 goats, now if all 6 goats had just one baby we still wouldnt be that badly off... that brings us to only 15 goats... but theres a problem. 4 of the goats are bohr meat goats, a goat known for quite commonly producing twins, triplets and on rare occasinons even quadruplets. So that can double and potentially even triple the projected number of babies. All of which will need to be cared for...

And who else is usually unfortunately the one who gets looped into helping... if you guessed me your right. Now its not that I dont like animals, or that I dont like helping my mom out, its the fact that during the summer I work, and i work hard, and if im not tired i like to take a little leisure time to myself, things such as reading, my writing, painting, drawing, cross stitch, swimming, kayaking ect., all things i enjoy doing.
Holding a squirming, kicking animal while its feet are trimmed or its given a vaccination (which they hate) is not my idea of leisure time, nor is lugging 50LB bales of hay around, carrying 50LB grain bags, stepping in cow shit and getting eaten alive by horse flies as big as my thumb.

All i can say is that this coming summer is going to be "fun"... that and my mom is though a very nice person, perhaps a little... lacking in seriously considering her actions.

I have been ridiculously busy with school, have so far been able to pull in the grades to an acceptable level but I worry how I am gonna cope the term comes to a close. What scares me the most is that it is only second year. I guess I always worry about the grades though. It is ridiculous but I always have a constant fear of failure. And i can remember feeling like a failure too in the past. How for so long I wanted to go into the sciences, go for genetics or something in biology, be a researcher. Somehow people assumed that this meant i wanted to "be just like my dad"... And when the reality check came in Grade 11, that i struggled hard with the algebra and math, and after taking and dropping grade 12 calculus twice... i just couldnt do it.

That was why I took the extra year of highschool in the first place, not that I didnt have enough credits to graduate, I graduated for my year, but that in dropping calculus I was short 1 credit to get into University. The first year I dropped it because I was failing it. I tried so hard, but i think somewhere i gave up, it was hard enough to focus in school at that time, my grandmother had cancer, things seemed to be falling apart everywhere, friends had moved away, family strife was turning up everywhere. I didnt need to be failing math on top of it.

I might have passed it the second time, If i had had the courage to try, if my pride hadnt been wounded I might have passed, struggled yes but passed. But I dropped it the first week. I gave up, and somewhere still have a little tinge of regret that I didnt try the fight th demon that had bested me.

Instead i gave it up along with any hope of ever entering into a university biology program.

Of course that made it easier perhaps. Ironically it was like between elementary school and highschool things made a switch, english had been a least favourite subject... all grammer... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/14508741/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/14508741/ Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:01:01 PDT A drop of rain into the vast ocean of time? A grain of sand on its beach? A speck of dust floating through the vacuum of space?

Then again what exactly is time. I started thinking about time and space one day over the summer. It was at my cottage and I was on my bed and suddenly I had one of those moments where things go *click* you know where suddenly your brain goes speeding along on an all collision course with an idea and you are helpless but to suffer it and it all seems like suddenly you are glimpsing the world in a bigger picture a new light... and then the train of thought is lost, it races too fast for you and you fall back down to earth with only the threads of the idea in your hand, only a meager handful of what you saw.

Likewise I glimpsed this, of space as a grid and time expanding outwards spherically from each different origin on the grid, thus making time relative to location. Small increments of course, shortened by closer vicinity but none the less different based on location. And of course that thus means if you could travel fast enough and far enough into space you would eventually reach a point where Earth had not as a planet come to existence. For just as we see stars millions of light years away that have burned out, it is a fair guess that somewhere there is a point where our solar system isn't in existence.

Now none of this is new, scientists already got this, i just sorta suddenly saw it in a bigger perspective, in part from reading the last half of Discover of Heaven over the summer. Likewise what does that mean for the future. If you must go faster than time to reach the past, then does that mean you must go slower than time to reach the future. And if to see the past you would have to travel out into outer space, to exceed the speed of the light, then how would one see the future. It doesn't seem right to be able to do one without the other but unless you can somehow travel within your fixed location on the time space grid i don't see how you could see the future the same way one might somehow be able to see the past.

I also thought of the mind. Descartes of course had it all figured out, but well I have some issues with some of his philosophy. His cogito is interesting and fairly logical but his proofs for God are too based on the beliefs of the past medieval philosophers he was trying to break away from. But if one looks at empiricism, what then of existence, if we are bundles of perceptions, existing in a reality of perceived experiences formed into concepts and ideas exactly what happens when we sleep. If we are not perceiving ourselves in sleep/aware of our own conscious perceptions of ourself and of our existence then do we philosophically temporarily cease to exist in "reality" or do we enter a new state of reality? After all Hume argued that we can only know that the thing exists in our reality at the moment we are perceiving it. So what of us, and is our reality so limited truly to what we are able to perceive from moment to moment in time?

Of course Kant tried to fix all that didn't he, but whether he was truly successful at trying to close the deep chasm between the strict Aristotelian and Platonic schools of thought I will leave for another days contemplations.

So what have I been up to this summer? Swimming, kayaking, adventuring, dancing barefoot in my glade singing with the wind and trees and birds, sitting and thinking under the branches of the old hemlock tree watching the sun dance on the forest floor, dreaming, and reading and drawing and painting and helping tend baby goats and chicks... yes that as well as work at the local library doing the children's programs.

I had alot of fun as the programmer though, more prehaps than I should have. Then again working as an assistant with the programs 5 years in a row gave me a good idea of what I wanted to do. And so with an awesome theme of Lost worlds for the Reading club and my own ideas for the other themed events I set to work.

I think my favourite still was building the viking ship for Vikings and Celts.

I had a birthday somewhere in summer, it was enjoyable, hung out with all my friends and got up to general shenanigans. Actually for a 20th birthday I think mine was pretty tame, I didnt consume a drop of liquor and we ended up for a few hours in the evening having a rummy tournament. Still was pretty awesome.

I raised butterflies this summer, monarchs, will post pictures of them at some point. Witnessing them is just such an amazing thing, how they morph so quickly from one thing to another. from tiny caterpillar not much longer than the end of my finger to huge fat caterpillar curling up, then suddenly splitting its skin into a chrysalis and then morphing inside there and breaking out as a fully grown butterfly.<... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12840499/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12840499/ Fri, 04 May 2007 13:44:32 PDT Has it?
Yes yes it has.
Are you sure?
Yes very much so, though I would never ask you even if I wasn't.
You never ask me *sob*
*melodramatic moment*
Come now, why would anyone ever dream of asking you, you are silly and insignificant.
Why you are right! I do believe that is the most profound relevation of the evening... but that is why they should ask me, because I am silly and bound to give an utterly ridiculous and useless answer. With all the seriousness in the world perhaps some absurd ideas are needed after all the serious answers don't seem to be doing much good.
Hmm... you do appear to have a point. Right then. Well I suppose there is even a purpose for such foolery after all.

And so there was...

Hmm I think perhaps I have spent too many nights basking in the light of the moon. It floods through my window in its willowy white beauty, soft and delicate that it is almost a blue light. Moonlight, it reminds me of the folds of a soft robe, long, trailing and spreading over a pale queen. Gently it slips over your bed and floor with its gentle whiteness, illumingating everything in its soft colour. I love to lie there and bask in it before i fall asleep, it is bright enough to read by even if i wanted to.

Ah sweet moon maiden, your round face grows smaller each night, soon to be gone only to reappear and grow again to your fullness. I am going north this weekend and so shall get to see the stars again. It is so beautiful the night sky up there, the mikly way and stars so many. If you have never seen it you wouldnt know there were so many stars.

I wonder if in the future with so many growing cities if someday only a rare child will get to travel into the uninvaded north and will look up at the sky and ask "what are those?" and a loving parent will say "those are stars dear, they come out every night" and the child will gaze in wonder at the magic of seeing stars for perhaps the first time in their life. Perhaps even for the only time in their life.
And some may die yet without ever seeing the stars in their true glory. Sad to think of living in a world without seeing the stars.

And so Beltaine has come and gone. Was a good day, I visited my highschool, saw Mr. Sevier and chatted with him. Poor man I apparantly scared him when i promised "no May poles" for it reminded him that May day was not over and he knew that Aaron was taking me out for dinner. Ah but there were not may poles, not this year. It was amusing none the less.

And so on the way home I made a stop in the ravine for a bit of working of the rites. A wild rabbit decided to make an appearance, maybe 20 ft from me sat there the whole time nibbling at the greens. Very cute with a big black eye that bore into you. I let it eat, was nice to watch it, you dont often see rabbits and often they are very flighty, this was was nice to see so close without it bounding away at the littlest movement.

I then went home and had a quick nap before my evening out. Went out for dinner at Montana's. Was a nice evening, I enjoyed it very much. I have recently this week also acqired some more flowers and a teddy bear, also gifts from Aaron. The bear is adorable and very nice to hug. It is part of our joke with nicknames, his amongst his friends was "aarbear" and mine back in the day used to be "clarebear".

It is still hard some days... After so long going solo having no one love me in the "romantic" sense, to get used to the whole courting thing and accept that it is required that I accept the tokens of kindness, eg insisting on paying for dinner, being showered with gifts ect. Its really nice and I love it but at the same time it feels so... weird, i guess that is the only word i can use for it, alien would be another. I know that it is socially acceptable, in fact almost demanded and he is really generous but it still feels sometimes alien to be the subject of so many acts of kindness and generosity. Guess I still have to get my head wrapped around the fact that I am in a relationship and that is how its gotta be and if I want to shower him with gifts like my artwork and such then he has as much right to do the same.

The question is though, is it so much that I feel awkward because Im not used to getting such tokens of affection or do i feel awkward because I am aware that I should not feel weird about that and thus feel weird about myself.

Blah enough on that.

Did some cleaning this week too. Funny feelings throwing out pieces of the past, even if they are but scraps of paper or something that meant something then but means nothing now. For me I can remember so much, the moment right then, when i was when i wrote down, a number, an email, made the keepsake, took the photo ect. Who i wa... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12748886/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12748886/ Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:26:05 PDT
ah good old Importance of Being Earnest....

But yes muffins are relevent today, sorta. I spent the day baking, lots of baking, first I dug around to find just the right cheesecake recipe, it was right in front of me of course. Staring me in the face in the cookbook my grama gave me... but no me thinking that that cookbook was too simple to have anything sophisticated like cheesecake left it and ventured into fancier ones where I found stupid things like 'pouches of topping" who the hell uses pouches of whipped topping, its called cream, you can wip it, its REAL not evaporated, or artificial or mass produced from chemicals in a factory with things like "extracts of real products" it actually comes from a living animal.

And "geleton" this is a cheesecake were talking about not a jello pudding or a mould or even a mouse. Yes texture is important to me and it makes me very dissapointed and suspicious when someone serves me a piece of cheesecake that wobbles, jiggles, wiggles or is the least bit sprigy upon poking. What these geleton fans really mean is eggwhites whipped until they peake, but no that takes effort.

Especially for me, when i cook i like to go a little old school. The mix master of course I used to get a nice smooth filling for the cheesecake but first i had to mix it by hand because cream cheese likes to crawl up beaters instead of be beaten. And the egg whites I whipped by hand. Cooking can be a made to serve the double purpose of a workout should you desire it.

So likewise did the cheesecake and then followed it up with blueberry, banana, cranberry muffins.
These things of course come with expectations. My grandmother set the bar, to cook as good as hers was is the goal.

well that and the fencing party these are going to I sorta set a bar there too with my gingerbread in december... Rory was right when he said i should have sent crappy stuff the first time so i could blow them away this time.

Likewise I must have done something right though, the cheesecake cooled successfully without cracking and even my sister said "the muffins arent as big as grama's but they taste pretty good"

So i was thinking alot today. Cooking is good for thinking lets your mind just wander. had myself imagining for a bit i was some chef doing food demos.... then that brought back memories of my food demo presentation... which got me thinking about how ive changed in presentations, gotten better, much better from grade 9 when andrew used to have to step on my foot every time to remind me in our science presentation to talk loud enough for people to hear. Better than hiding behind a piece of paper, turning beat red and stumbling over words.

And that had me thinking about acting, wondering when i stopped seeing it as a presentation and started seeing it as a role, as acting, and realized i didnt need to write otu a speech, just have it all in myhead, it was there the whole time, all the info, ive always been good at storing info, facts, useless information and the like, i just had to start using it.

My drama teacher from the arts program, she always used to say "the world is mine oyster" when referring to how we should look at acting on a stage. Tried to get me to stop being a mouse. Wonder if she would be pleased to see i broke out of it. Well sorta. The mouse never became a lion, the mouse just learned to pretend, to act like a lion, walk like a lion and roar like one but never actually became a lion, the mouse is still behind the lions mask still a mouse. Perhaps though the mouse must have the lion in them to pretend in the first place. Perhaps she saw the lion in me and that was why she encouraged me. It showed sometimes, rarely but every so often i surprised people back in the day... it was just latent and hidden... hidden by me.

When did I learn shame... im still puzzling over that... well shame in different levels, when i was quite young i must have learned shame for the body at least enought to cloth it, at least before age 4 or 5... but shame for my mind, my fanciful imaginings.

No one prepared me for the world that way, my parents always encouraged my imagination, i can remember my first day of kindergarted I went in there and started trying to talk to some of the kids there about fantastical things, stories about my made up creatures, unicorn and wolf friends and such, even then the girl i had tried to befriend who was nervous and who i was trying to cheer up was none to happy to listen.

I had wanted to be a palieontologist back then... grade 1 i was obsessed with dinosaurs, had a giant book and after i was done my homework i would look at it, look at all the dinosaurs, my favourate was the brontosaurus... and all the other "long neck" related ones. Brachiosauraus, diplodocus... ect. I could na... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12737123/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12737123/ Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:05:42 PDT
I think the last time I had a headache that bad was before i had my wisdom teeth out and the impacted teeth were causing much pain.

So i was there with the harsh lights of my room trying to ignore it while i worked on my drawing... no luck, had some water... still headache and getting worse by the second as bad headaches make me light sensitive.... yup more vampiric tendencies, add that one to my garlic allergy and im halfway there.

finally i go and try to put my mental powers to the test. I discovered during my pre wisdom teeth extraction days that if I lie down and focus my energy I can normally reduce if not eliminate the headache entirely. And so i did and Eurika it worked well enough at least. The painful thud became a dull throb. Enough that wiht some asprin, and a cup of tea I was able to return to the light and continue with my artwork.

thus mind over matter 1, head ache 0

weee I saw aaron today. Was good, he cooked for me which was really sweet, second time he's done that. I don't think you realize how much you have missed someone until you see them again, and then suddenly it is like "where have you been all this time?". When i arrived he gave me a big hug and just held me there and i could smell his familiar scent and feel the warmth of his embrace and it just felt so right and i suddenly realized how much I have missed him these 2 weeks of not seeing him.

I wonder why that is though, how you dont realize how much you have missed something till you have it again. And does that mean that you never truly realize how much you have missed something if you never get it back... like a person, when a person dies you miss them if you were close and they say you do not appreciate them truly until they are gone but would you relize the full value ever or only if you were to get them back which you cant because they have died.

something to ponder and yet something you cannot really know i guess. I know I shall never get my grama back, I miss her terribly at times but i wonder if i were to have her back for just one day if only then would it dawn on me how much I have missed her. Alas i must make due, tomorrow i shall have to dig out her cheesecake recipe and put my own skills to the test. Fencing party saturday and tims party friday, so need to get all the baking for the fencing party done today.
Also might make blueberry, cranberry, banana muffins, also her recipe.

likewise despite my nocturnal habits i should sleep, tomorrow... no Today is a new day, and there is much work to be done!... doesnt have quite the same ring to it but oh well.

And in the news of my art: I have been drawing my D and D group as animeish characters, I did it as sorta a group photo sorta thing, and will then redraw their chars, then will start trying to draw out some of the adventures and silly happenstances we have had in our D and D adventures.
Should i ever get round to it that is

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12719316/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12719316/ Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:05:36 PDT
so then i went to the university with the sole purpose of an academic appointment. So there is some things I need to decide on and find out. Like if I really really do want to commit myself to the years it will take to get a PHD in english, if a specialized major in english will help. Hmm... new ideas to play with... am i crazy... that I love learning and english so much I would subject myself to a greater focus on it?

Guess we will discover the answer to that question one of these days.

Likewise so after that what I "should" have remembered to do was go to the gym and remove my lock from my locker. What I totally forgot to do was do that. I think they have to be off by the 28th or something so still time, but I want my lock back thats for sure, it has served me well these 8 years.

So I leave my academic advisor board a bus and head home, when i had first arrived on the campus it had been a beautiful day, blue skies, sun, warm... as I was leaving i could feel my excitement growing. Strong winds were begining to blow, cooler but moist winds and grey clouds now filled the sky.

On the bus ride home I could see the sky growing darker and darker and as I finally arrived at my stop the wind was carrying on it the smell of rain.

I have no clue why but storms always excite me, the air gets filled with this weird energy and it makes me feel almost euphoric. A good feeling, a sense of anticipation for the climax of it all. And so I am walking towards my condo and suddenly as i am about 10 ft from the door the wind really pick up like really really picks up, so hard I had to struggle down the street and then the rain starts and it is like a curtain pelting with heavy droplets. I actually enjoyed the experience but for the dust and dirt from the construction being blown about, my glasses were quite filthy from it.

So i get in and hold the door open for another man who lives in the condo with his dog who isnt far behind me and as I fight with the door to get it closed the wind starts howling. We just get the door shut when suddenly one of the big blue dumpsters we keep reclyling in gets blown past us and crashes into the brick wall on the other side. Other bins and such follow it. Then the lights flicker and the power goes out.

Having gotten to my condo 13 stories up once the emergency power kicks in for the elevators I stood on my balcony to watch. The storm was actually quite short but did alot of damage as it came through. Apparantly there were 6 hydro poles down on yonge st. I saw them today, literally snapped in half all in a row like some giant had broken them like twigs.

So it was evening and we were without power, candles and globe lights to the rescue. I sat there drawing until around 10 at which point i gave up.

Sleep however did not come last night, it was humid and hot and my asthma was bad as result. And who goes to bed at 10 anyways? So I am the only person in the house, up and down I wanted to dance, to dance in the dark alone with only the dogs to see me. Unfortunately that was not feasible, my mother is a light sleeper and had her door open and with my clicking ankle I knew it would wake her.

I did finally get some sleep... maybe at around 3 am my usual time, and the awoke again at 6 am to discover that we had electricity again. No more sleep.

By 8 I was out of the house on a trip with my dad to Gravenhurst, I for my summer job interview, and him to meet with the hydro guy to get him to fix the hydro at our cottage.

My interview went well, I got the job and so will not be the official Childrens summer reading programmer at the library (as well as do other library tasks). I then post interview went upstairs to visit muriel she asked if i got the job, was glad to hear i would be back and showed off the new label printer they have to aid in speeding up the processing of books. Yup no more typewriter (I shall miss the type writer sounds though, it was cool to use). They also have a teen section they are setting up with looks interesting.

So after that and lunch at papa larrys I made my journey home.
Now perhaps for a shower art and some food

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12697307/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12697307/ Sun, 22 Apr 2007 20:22:07 PDT
So i figure the best way to get rid of that nagging blob of thoughts is to write it out. Maybe I shall enlighten myself, maybe it will quiet my noisy mind, or maybe it will just prove that i killed my brains studying for that exam.

Probably the latter but here we go.

So having examined the concepts and passages we dealt with in my existentialism class it brought back a set of memories back of a series of events that occured where I realize now I experienced otherness and being in the eyes of others on many levels and I now have perhaps through that a better understanding of maybe what adds to the discomfort of those experiences.

It was 2 years ago. Seems like much longer... or maybe shorter. I remember it almost like it was last week. Likewise I was in my Grade 12 year at my highschool, and was involved as an ally supporter for the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) club at our school. Now how I ended up becoming an active member in a bit of an activist group I am not sure. Had you told me in grade 9 I would have laughed, i was a shy grade 9 nobody and sorta wanted to keep it that way. But grade 11 I got involved, guess it was because of my friends, many started coming out to me that summer and of course there was Chris, so friendly you wanted to help him with the club him and Amanda ran. One of those people you just want to be around because of how vibrant and lively they are

But I digress, the real experiences happened actually within the very course of these past 2 weeks 2 years to now. We were planning a conference, Confronting Homophobia and Transphobia in Our Schools 2005. It was to be the first ever york region wide one of its kind. There were 3 of us and our teacher advisor organizing it. We expected maybe 50 people to come... maybe. But then the school decided to call in the press... that was when perhaps the first experience of other. I can remember our surprise to be told that the press would be ariving within an hour, Toronto star interviewer with a photographer a few days later. I can remember having to phone my parents for permission to be inverviewed, cuz i was still a minor. And i can remember the fear of being interviewed... of the sudden realization that my name was to appear in the paper.

The questions went well enough. We answered them, they left. The photographer came... took photos left... time went on. Then bang. It happened overnight and I was not prepared. I went from being myself, Clare, just another student at TSS to an overnight celebrity. B section of the paper, april 25th I think, yes a few days before the conference..., a photo of Shosh and I and the article... theres still copies of it floating around online i think... Probably in the star archives, someone posted a scanned copy in my LJ too, but i got my own copy at hope put away safe for memory.

I was not prepared though for the experience of the school, as I walked through the hallways I was stripped of my identity. No longer was I Clare, I was "That girl in the newspaper", people i didnt know were approaching me "I know you, you're the girl in the paper" "I saw you!" "OMG You're the girl in the newspaper". Hounding me, talking to me, people I didn't like, people I didn't know, too many people. I wanted to hide, somewhere... my face, cover it, put on a mask, anything to regain an identity other than "the girl in the newspaper". I had been stripped of who I was and replaced as an object, not a person but a thing. I was a symbol for school identity. The experience was overwhelming... and the whispers that followed me for the week were a little hard to deal with.

I was prepared to deal with the fact people would assume. I had been in GSA for 2 years, I knew that it was already assumed I wasn't straight. I was also prepared to be labled, teased, judged. But I was not prepared for the questions, for it to be revealed that there is an us and a them and that you could not be both. If I was not the "them" then why did I identify with them, why was I not part of the "us". I had crossed an unspoken social line, broken a rule... i was to be punished.

Otherness seems to come in many forms though, more media came, as did more people wanting to attend the conference, Rogers News video interviewed us twice acutally.... Otherness, feeling yourself leave your body, you are no longer you, the person who's ears are growing hot and red with fear and embarassment is not you, the words being spoken are not coming out of your mouth. You are somewhere else, you are above it all, wa... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12638287/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12638287/ Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:57:22 PDT
So finished my first exam monday. Yes Clare wrote her very first university exam... "im a big kid look what I can do..." and we wont go further than that with that one...

but things are getting a little annoying with people especially family and their preoccupation with exams. They feel the need to make small talk and so "when is your next exam..." "what is your next exam..." "how many more exams do you have..." when not only have they asked each of those questions at least 50 times in the last 2 weeks but my exam schedual giving all the gory details is posted right on the door of the refridgerator in plain site, and right next to the fridge is a calendar again with my exams, their times and what they are written in on it in a rather noticeable black sharpie pen.

I swear that if someone asks me one more time "when's your next exam" I shall scream! I shall scream... untill they hasted to my rescue I shall scream... Yes I shall scream, scream scream... and thats all for the oliver twist musical quotes for the night folks I promise...

Sunday I was so restless, perhaps it was the vicinity of that storm hitting eastern ontario or maybe that changes are coming or perhaps the coming of the new moon tonight or maybe just pre exam stress but man sunday I couldnt stay still or stay focused. It was like my mind was running on some drug that kept it racing one thought over the next, refused to be quieted. Made studying hard. But often storms do that to me, make me restless and fill me with some sort of energy.

Mmm chaotic natural energy...

I gave the painting to my grandfather sunday night, he was really touched and surprised. He did sorta start to tear up but held it back but it was happy tears not sad ones. He said to me that he didnt know how to thank me, i wanted to laugh at that, I mean he has done all sorts of things since day 1. He has looked after me, taken me for walks, made my sister and i doll furniture, kiddy cars, helped me with homework, shown me how to carve wood, do caning, given me money for school, taken care of me when I was sick.... so much he has done for me, and I told him so, I told him that this was me trying to show my gratitude for him, to thank him for being there for me. that was when he really wanted i think to cry, he didnt know what to say so I gave him a hug and leaving him with the painting took my leave.

In other news I think I have convinced Aaron to finally get his drivers license. Hard love of me shutting myself away for my exams to study has left him a week now without seeing me and he is apparantly rather missing me alot. So when he texted me today telling me how he missed me I texted him back telling him for each time he thinks about not getting his license to remember what he is feeling right now after a week and contemplate if he might survive 2 months with me working up north in Gravenhurst. I think i made my point as he has concluded that that would drive him beyond insane.

Silly boy needs to learn to use a telephone like normal humans. Text messages are sweet but saying I love you over a phone if you cant say it in person is far nice than on msn, email or text message. *sigh* serves me right for dating a digital boy, and yes he is a digital boy no different than I am a book worm, should the need to ever stereotype myself come, i would say "think of the anime librarian stereotype, geeky by day, wild and crazy by night" haha in my dreams, in honesty I place myself on much the same level Jane Eyre placed herself. There is little that is memorable about my face... except maybe for my eyes and that is only because they have a tendency to be a rather bright shade of blue.

Likewise I should really stop procrastinating and get back to filling my mind with medieval stuff and existentialism. shitty exams being friday and sunday, everyone who has heard I have an exam sunday is like "WHAT!?" "WHO THE HELL PUTS AN EXAM ON A SUNDAY"

Why the devil of course... must be that were being punished by some divine force for studying atheistic philosophers and the fact that probably a great number of people in the course from their appearances are non theists. hell im a spiritualist im not far off.

How did I get here... and Im running out of web comics to procrastinate with, Venus envy rarely updates now, OOTS doesnt update nearly enough, XKCD same thing, Dresden codak updates once in a blue moon and though I have discovered VG Cats it too shall soon be on the list of waiting for update. I may have to resort to searching for world of warcraft comics that my sister saves on her computer being the warcraft addict she is.

But yeah i think not seeing aaron is taking its toll on me, physically i miss him certainly, i would at this moment like nothign better than to snuggle into his arms... but no I must focus... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12597084/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12597084/ Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:37:22 PDT
And now on the euphoria of having given birth to a new creation, one dreamed up by my own mind, painted by my hands and with care and love for someone I care about a great deal I drift with an under the surface excitement.

Like a brook I burble with joy and happyness, rejoicing in my own accomplishment. I think truly this is the best work I have completed yet. Certainly I learned alot as I painted it. I shall have to email a copy of the photo to my old art teacher to show him my progress.

I am stiff now, my legs are cramped up from sitting cross legged on my bed for too long and my back is stiff from hunching over my makeshift easil but oh the joys of creation.

Perhaps somewhere now I have in my dreaming of the lighthouse, in my dreaming of the sun setting on its waters wiht the ship and the trees and the beach, have brought it to life somewhere. Certainly in my mind it is there real as even and i can jump into it, stroll along that beach, walk along the path to the light house. Or perhaps even be a sailor on the ship looking back at the ever faithful guide that leads the ship through the darkness to safety.

Tomorrow I shall present my work to him. I hope he likes it, but i also hope he doesnt cry. So often in the past two years he has cried at kindness, a hug, a gentle word. So often I have seen him alone in the dark oceans of his own despair, not seeing a light to guide him.

I should finish studying. Exam is monday... sighs it never ends.
But i am happy now, I feel fulfilled, cleansed, enlightened... less restless. I think my restlessness was in the need to finish, to channel my energies into something productive.

And yet already my hands are itching to create again. My mind whirring, the gears turning, nature bringing to mind images... i must create again soon.

I must also thank Aaron for drawing me out of my inwardness last night. His down to earthness does me good, brings me back to myself when i venture too far inside or outside of myself or other things. He misses me, i miss him too, mind you my own mind distracted by exams distracts me from my missing. I miss my friends too, julez and grace. Havent seen Grace in ages.
But sometimes you need i think to be reminded that people care about you... not sure where im going with this but well lets leave it at I was in a darker mood last night and he brightened it up for me.

He also inspired me, I must write something on the changing language of love... from letters to phone calls... to msn, emails and text messages...

It will come... all in good time.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12582486/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12582486/ Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:41:19 PDT
I try and try again, questing, searching for others,others who share commonalities, who are willing to get to know me and yet often I fail.

Am I just someone who doesnt get it? Ill adapted to society. I know I am an "other", an outcast, the thing that so often doesnt belong. Its been obvious since grade 4 and I show it, even when I try not to it emanates from me like someone posted a large neon sign over my head.

I don't want to be part of the herd, I dont even like the herd. I gave up on group acceptance a long time ago. So why does it still hurt... to fail to be accepted... to fail to succeed... why do I still care...still try... still want to try.

Why am I so frustrated by this, so bothered. Is it that my own perceptions make me feel deceived, when it was myself who blinded me in the first place?

Its lonely sometimes, I pull away to look at the bigger picture but pull to far inside, get trapped within. I want out,to let go for a little while, detach myself from it all.

I need to be more detatched, to not care so much, to quell my passions, dreams. But I also need to stop tromping on myself, have dreams, let them grow and rise but yet be objective in detatching myself from them...
is that even possible?

Bah... frustrations... and perhaps PMS yes womens troubles, always puts me in a darker mood, anger, self loathing sentiments... mood swings... I will probably this week end up going in a corner and having a good cry over nothing.

It is always the little things that do it, and while im crying and miserable i am inside laughing at how silly it is because it really is over nothing just raging feminine hormones creating unpleasant emotions.

The pains of being a woman... damned sensitivity... damned empathy... Sometimes i just want to be able to turn my emotions off... like Mr Data from star trek... yes i did have to toss in a star trek reference

maybe painting will make me feel better.... maybe I will finish my painting ....

grr must focus on studying... stop letting DA distract me...
*slaps face*... *focus dammit*
Must end nocturnal habbits temporarily... exam monday morning... gross

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12570011/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12570011/ Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:59:13 PDT
Likewise there is a lot of history in this journal, a lot of bitching, ranting, silliness and perhaps some genius hidden here and there. But I love it to put my thoughts somewhere. Perhaps just because I started at such a young age.

Yes one of Clare's dirty little secrets... from the ripe age of 13 I began to keep a diary, hiding it in obsolete corners of the room under her bed, even bed, between her mattress, anywhere to avoid discovery, and keeping about 4 suitcase locks on it, none of which had a key. How did I get in you ask? Why with my Houdini like skill I had discovered a special hair pin type I had a few of was just about the right size and shape to navigate the narrow suitcase lock, and them being of simple type, opened it easily. It could even open a small key lock for perhaps a mailbox or bike chain, and on one occasion in grade 10 ... or perhaps it was 11, my math teacher Mrs. Hart, gave me a bonus mark for using it to pick the lock to her desk so she could access her stapler.

Likewise from grade 8 onwards I kept a diary until well I fell into the habit of online journaling. it was a little safer, more secure than a physical book, but I suppose also runs the risk of so easily being destroyed too. It takes up less space though, were I to start again i would be on my 6th or even 7th diary, and I’m running out of places to keep them.

I should someday go back and read my childish scrawl from back then, 13, my grade 8 year so long ago. There should be some amusement at how foolish, young and silly I was then... and innocent. Perhaps I shall laugh at it or perhaps cry over the loss of such childhood innocence, or perhaps both or neither.

I think also I have a letter squirreled away somewhere too, sealed shut, I’m not to open it for i think another year, perhaps another 6 years. wrote it when I was 15. It was a ridiculous thing, oh the things we do when we are young.

Anyways I did not sleep well last night. The wind howled like a mad demon with thunder from the sky rolling along in low booms. Today I awoke and could not see the earth below from my 13th story apartment window, it was shrouded in a mist that still lingers over the city blocking my normally far view of the world around me. It is a bleak day, the earth looks like someone has stolen all the colours from the world leaving only grays and dull browns.

I am indoors again the weathers nastiness and my own asthma made worse by the weather confine me inside. But there is much to be done inside. I should be studying and will do so soon... but well there was another reason that sleep did not come easily last night.

You see last night my parents went to London to bring back Fraoch after she went with a lady to Michigan to be bred. Poor little Fraoch, on her return Pandora was bullying her around. Silly dogs, i think Pandora was mad Fraoch got to go somewhere she didn’t. Likewise it was good to have my puppy home.

But well because they drove to London I ended up being Mistress of the household, master chef and chief cook and bottle washer and all that jazz. As my sister is 1) not feeling well 2) lazy and 3... generally bad tempered whenever asked to do something and my nana is still recovering from her broken arm and isn’t strong and it wouldn’t be fair to let her make dinner.

personally I don’t mind cooking, in fact I rather enjoy it so long as certain conditions are met. The foremost being that unless I invite you, you stay the hell out of my kitchen when I’m cooking. Backseat cooks are not required not permitted and I can become quite nasty when people invade my personal kitchen space trying to tell me what I "ought" to do.

So it was a simple supper for that night of homemade spaghetti. I had the wholewheat noodles, the pasta sauces to mix up were in the pantry and the ground beef had thawed on the counter... everything was there... or so i thought.

Upon closer examination of the pantry I discovered we were lacking in a jar of Ragu that I could have sworn i saw earlier in the week. By that I mean some idiot jammed a lot of crap in there and no matter how hard I looked and dug around I could not find that damned jar. And so like all good cooks I improvised. I discovered a can of Primo Zesty pasta sauce to mix with the tomato paste and quickly read the ingredients.

Garlic was present, not the first ingredient but midway in there. Now for those of you who don’t know, I am allergic to garlic.

hahaha yes now is the ideal time to start tossing vampire jokes at me and say things like "and can you see... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12503439/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12503439/ Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:34:12 PDT
My life right now ive felt like all my friends have vanished they just arent around. Mitch= going to Indiana, Julez is on a car trip somewhere, Kat has gone for a visit home, Guess i should call alicia, forget sometimes shes usually available. Sergei is probably busy with amber and chris for all I know is still in London.

I need a life. I need to go out, have adventures, but I want to share those adventures. Ive been spending alot of time with Aaron, which is good, i love spending time with him, i dont seem to be able to spend enough time with him but well I wish i could spend time with my friends too and i dont want them to feel ive abandoned them just to spend time with aaron or that im completely codependent or something.

And yet despite my want for social contact ive been in a really isolationist mood lately, just want everyone in my house to piss off, not talk to me and stay out of my way. I just dont want to talk to people, dont know why i just dont. Questions like, what was your day like? where did you go? What did you do? they are so trivial seemingly at this moment in time. Im withdrawing again, i dont know why but I am.

And i am sure in the grand spectrum of things that some day I will long for those questions, for my parents to worry, for someone to ask how my day was...

the only sad thing is that whenever anyone ever asks that question they just want to hear the simple answer of good, its pure small talk, they dont care for long messy answers filled with tales of woe to burden themselves with, whether your day was shitty or not they just want to hear "it was good/fine" same with when someone asks how youare, the proper and only response they really want to hear in majority of cases is "im fine"
and you see it, you see it on their faces if you reply, Im not fine, or ive been having a really hard time, you see that they dont want to hear it, that they got in over their heads with an attempt at small talk and things become akward.

Good friends who actually care how you are doing are the acception here but the majority of the world the above rings true as far as im concerned. *arent I a positive person*

well actually I can be positive, a complete and total hopeless optimist at times. But not right now... at least not tonight. Maybe tomorrow we will see.

So today I thought about my writing, about Christine's story. Where i should take it. It jumps around alot, well it was sorta meant to, alot of action, but ive been told should give more description and... grr... make it longer. Damn you kessel telling me it should be a novel. Fortuantely I know better it would never sell, its too childish to appeal to adults but includes mentions of sex and homosexuality and well some ..."accidental" slightly heretical religious parodies that would probably have it banned and burned by many angry religious people...

Sad how a journal entry written at an odd hour of the night in a mood of borderline madness or insanity became now a groing 25 pages and is still only half way done.

Damn adventures... how they grow on you.

Only i feel a little guilty... theres alot of me in Christine, well not directly... but well maybe sorta an alter ego thing or well a fantasy me or well shes grown on me as a character. But i feel guilty, most of the first half of the story is her mishaps with love flipping her off. Then suddenly i land her in true love, in part perhaps based on my influences, when i started I was in a scenario of love repeditively giving me the finger, but then well... yeah... about that... guess we reconciled.But does it influence the story, should christine remain a chast tragic hero only finding her love at teh very end if at all... would that embitter her character too much, i want her to be a bit tough but not bitter or too hardened.... and does her separation work over all... I guess it does, i mean shes gotta transpose the continent for some reason... oh wait stopping the bad guys... well still... Should i even have her marry? would a sworn out true love unmarried thing work out? maybe who's to say.

I dunno im a sucker for a happy ending and im actually proud of myself for the rather original ending i created for this, at least i consider it original... its definately not a "and they lived happily ever after" thing but well she doesnt exactly die either. But like any warrior should she does go out with a bang. No growing old with the grandkids.

Well i guess i shall keep working, eventually it will evolve.

Things always seem to evolve, Otara's story has, even more than Christine's. Then again when the character has been with you since you were 9 theres alot of change.

I miss those dreams... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12490393/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12490393/ Sat, 07 Apr 2007 00:05:04 PDT
Neither my story nor my propossed novel nor a poem has come my way. Random verses yes, scribbled in lecture halls, crap all of them. Where have the words gone?

Where has the artistic visions gone? Yes I have been painting, in fact yesterday I spent over 6 hours sitting cross legged on my bed, canvas placed on my makeshift easel hunched over it, painting, painting with frustration trying wash after wash correcting error after error, all fixated on that damned lighthouse. Finally at the end, weary and with both feet numb with pins and needles I had it, the proper shading, the proper top, it looked like a lighhouse that belonged in that scene.

Architecturally its not perfect, but i like to add a surrealist touch in my paintings, colours a little too vivid, objects a little obscured. I am not perfect, neither is my creation. It gets but one moment of perfection, at that moment i claim it done. And then upon reexamination be it an hour, or a day later, it shall be stripped from that as it stands scrutinized under the critical eye.

And yes my mind is full of little cartoons and things i should draw and should take the time to do and should have been drawing as soon as they entered so they dont back log my creative faculties... too many shoulds...

But where have the words gone? Where is my waking up in the night writing poetry.

I filled the emptyness, I have been coasting on love, it has given me stability, satiated my passions, my desires and calmed my, curbed my hunger... somewhat...

But where have the dreams gone, the waking up to words stringing themselves in my head, where has the meaning gone? the inspiration?

I am lost again at sea on a ship with pretty white sails, but no wind. No abatros hangs upon my neck but I like that acursed mariner watch my thurst increase and my mind appear ready to burst if I do not feel a wind. I need the words to come, to blow me out of my stagnation and into the seas of inspiration, swolen with promise and alive with life.

Perhaps the problem lies in where my poetry once lay, it served me through rough times, loss especially, helped keep my sanity... or perhaps helped keep my insanity, but it became focused those three years on that, on searching out myself and searching out meaning in those rather hard and unpleasant times, and of course coping.

Poetry was there but even then i felt empty, my passions had died, i wrote not per se out of pure empassioned inspiration but out of survival, i wrote because if I did not write, get out what i could in whatever form i could express it best in, I am not sure what i would have done, whatever it was it would not have been good.

I was a passionate person who had lost their passion, now i have back my passion or some of it but is my passion for writing still there or have i become afraid?

Afraid? how could this be, where did i become estranged from my dear friend? Was it from my lack of confidence in what i wrote, was i too hard on my muses, throwing them too few compliments and working them to exhaustion? Perhaps, but i want them back.

There is something in me I need to express, something growing that I do not yet have a name for but it needs words to express i think, i just dont have the words to do so.

Perhaps the bard will play upon the lyre soon.

Am I good enough though. I want to write, it is a dream i have had for a very long time. But will I make it?

Perhaps before I begin to write i need to find a little faith... *looks on bookshelf* nope no faith here... dammit i knew i shouldnt have thrown away that box... oh wait that was hope left in the box wasnt it... not faith.

I am still a river without a course, a damn blocking my way I pool and stagnate.

Perhaps some communication is in order... let the words come.

I should sleep but before I do let me lay out a though i had, at least my thoughts still come.

Its rather a what if thought, perhaps there is nothing there. It was on the concept of hell. How did it come to exist? Was it perhaps out of the human desire to feel justice has been served? For the egyptians the afterlife was a special place, the ultimate punishment was to be denied it, to have your existence wiped out and be trapped.

Was this similar to why the concept of hell was created? was being denied the afterlife not enough, was sending them to a horrid place an improvement? of course i forget here the political reasons, cannot forget them. How better to gain support for your cause than to threaten with fear and superstition of the bad consequences. But still someone had to get the idea, who? Does it matter who? No i guess not. But may... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12330096/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12330096/ Sun, 25 Mar 2007 23:14:36 PDT
Hmm *amused smile* those words sound bitter to the point it almost makes my tongue cringe to read them.

My feet are cold. And my hair is wet and wavy, i cannot remember the last time i thought to try to blow dry it straight or try to control the messy waves and flyaways that have become a part of my daily living and acceptance of my appearance.

Or perhaps i havent accepted it at all, my appearance that is in general. My eyes constantly each time i but glance in a mirror scanning for imperfections, my fingertips ready, waiting to do what they can to attempt to correct it, an eyelash out of place, a clogged pore, a flake of dead skin... a bane... the freckle or small mole or whatever it is above my right eyebrow i have had since well ever i guess a frustration which so often i photoshop out of images of me.

Does it make me a liar to edit my appearance in such a small way, to deny a part of my existence which is a part of myself.

*ah the existentialist appears* Existence, denial, but is a doctoring a photograph on such a slight thing as a freckle or a blemish truly such a lie as to be denying a part of ones existence? it is not denying the entity of myself merely a part of the physical, the body i am in.

So much more i wish i could but deny so easily, with the stroke of a magic eraser oh what wonders i could do to myself, slimmer arms and body, smaller breasts, make my torso appear longer. Could i but stretch my body to be taller.

*the irony comes out* yes the irony, oh how it bleeds from me like an unhealing gash, I who write poems and rage rants about the medias portrayal of women, body image. I who glare angrily at the anorexic models displayed weekly in the fashion sections of the newspaper, who sees beauty as yet in art displaying 'normal', average, imperfect women, praise the artists depictions of their flaws and who myself try to draw such realism when i can, to not idealize my subjects... I would as yet try to change myself if i could without surgery and such, with a magic eraser, or a magic stretcher or some other tool one can do in the world of photo magic... yes I would as yet do it, make myself into my own idealized twisted creation of beauty.

Perhaps that is why i do not have the power, a safeguard on my body, to save it from my own warped mind.

But am i so guilty here as to be shunned for my own hipocracy? Dare I ask it... yes yes i am so bold as to throw it out there. Can you yourself before you but judge me tell me truly that if i were to give you a magic eraser, or pen or something else that would allow you to change your physical self in any way; can you truly tell me you wouldnt use it? not even for a small thing?

I am perhaps not so guilty of the task, my blue eyes something that I have often been complimented on tell me I am not so wrong. Girls with pretty brown eyes coming up to me, asking first if my eyes are "real" of if they are coloured contacts, and upon the verification of their realness then saying they wished they had blue eyes like mine, that they are beautiful. Would they use the magic brush perhaps? to make their eyes blue? What else would they change? And how warped are their perceptions.

Perhaps their minds are as warped as mine in the realm of beauty. Perhaps the aryan image we so often portray, the beautiful tall thin blue eyed blond haired woman, would they want to be her? would they trade in their multitude of attractively toned skin colours, their dark glossy hair colours, their deep dark eyes, all to be her? the *blond beast*?

And all the while our pale models are turning orange, every single one of them having a fake golden glow from tanner beds, spray on pigmenters and instant tanners.

perhaps it is merely a situation of what side of the fence you are on, you want what you dont have. Like a friend of mine who joked that she wished she had a bust like mine for she felt hers too flat, while I envied her for all the pretty bras and shirts she could wear not having to worry about if they would fit around her chest or not.

I realize at this point I must sound so very ... appearance obsessed, I am not shallow though, perhaps merely critical more so of myself than others. At least I like to think myself not shallow. Beauty for me comes in different forms, art has helped expand those forms, to see things that i never before thought beautiful as beautiful. But then when it comes to myself a different image prevails some days. Some darker days, where i wish i could be better, better in s... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12124956/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/12124956/ Fri, 09 Mar 2007 23:24:51 PST
Relationships offersomeone to replace the journal

Thus sudden relationships equals sudden lack of journaling.

For this I appologize. But having been single 3 years up to December 22 I think that it is forgiveable.

So yes the old maid found a boyfriend, a nice computer nerd who is wonderful and has made me happier than i have been in a long time.

The emptyness is gone, and the writers block has somewhat lifted. Its a good feeling.

Ihave been working on a painting, Its a sunset for my grandfather, almost done probably another 5 hours of work. hopefully will get it done soon maybe in a week or so.

I cannot believe that i let 3 months go by with no journal entry, its ridiculous. But yes lets see what else has happened...

School has been good, i have been pulling in the good grades as best i can, hopefully will get to keep my scholarship for next year. Still trying to find a job, spread out resume's and yet havent gotten any calls even for interviews. *sighs*

Fencing has been good, ive learned alot since December, but my asthma and school sometimes keeps me away from it. Still the Saber and I are becoming well aquainted and I am making some friends in the class.

Been working out lately, in part of offset missed fencing classes, in part for my own sake, summer will be coming soon would like to feel good about myself this time round.

over christmas break i saw chris which was nice, i miss him.

Discovered York has a dorks at york group for gamers, made some friends there and I have started another D and D campaign

My nana recently had a fall and broke her arm, back in december she broke her shoulder, its been some bad luck for her but at least has forced her to end her 30 years of not seeing a doctor

So a year has gone by and i guess i should make some reflections on the past year. It wasnt an easy year, my grandmothers battle with cancer and her eventual death made it a very hard year. The aftermath even more so as family struggles ensued that have not yet been healed.
2006 was a busy year, a year of university, new experiences, finishing highschool, new friends and old ones, and of in many ways alot of personal growth.

I learned many thigns that year, of caring and to learn when one must stop caring (still working on that one), and I guess at some point the numbness stopped. Funny when one is feeling alot of emotional conflict, you dont realize how far you have withdrawn until you start to zone back in again.

Aaron has been good for me, these past 3 months have been amazing and has helped do some healing. My confidence is up, and though i still have my bad days my body image is getting better and im more willing to change what i dont like instead of just feeling bad about it.

Life is in general good though the home life is still crazy, sister is really getting on my nerves sometimes... and everyone elses. She has applied to uni but may stay home another year... grrr

there has been alot in this year but its been good. Has passed away fast though.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/11056981/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/11056981/ Wed, 13 Dec 2006 23:14:42 PST
Monday was beyond wonderful, in fact im not quite sure i can describe monday, it was just awesome. Alas time flies too quickly and my extrodinary afternoon slipped through my fingers far too fast.

There are moments in time, those special moments where you feel like if time suddenly froze you would be perfectly content living that moment. Monday had those moments.

I have journeyed, and searched and suffered hope, rejection, hopelessness and wearyness, and have found i think what i was searching for, the emptyness is gone, i feel complete, bursting in fact, bubbling over with positivity and energy and creativity in waves.

I have had few experiences close to monday but none of them i think quite reached monday in environment, mood, and just the whole way things just fell together as they did.

Looking back on it i cannot help thinking, how did i get so lucky. Im an existentialist, i dont believe in fate but well somethimes things just fall together, sometimes they fall together wrong, sometimes they fall together ok and sometimes they just fall together right, and this is one of those times they fell together right.

So monday evening too was good, 3 hours of fencing, left me quite battered tuesday though. Still stiff today. But fun, learned alot and had fun with dueling and the practicing of the moves.

Saturday is fencing party, making gingerbread cookies for it, made the dough tomorrow gonna cook them and probably decorate them.

Today I went shopping with Alicia, got lots of books and a few shirts, at like 5 bucks a shirt due to 50% off you cant go wrong. So yeah lots of ppl getting presents from me that are books. And yay for indigo card, saved me 20%.

Cant wait till saturday. Or next monday. Hopefully my body will have stopped hurting by then.
But yeah should get to bed.

So much to do before the holidays and yet they are creeping up and yet all I want to do is spend time with a special someone. *sighs*

Ok im off to bed, need sleep.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/11010395/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/11010395/ Sat, 09 Dec 2006 20:33:18 PST
So other than that been officially off school and no more classes for a few days, and been enjoying it. Didnt have any exams which was nice but the now end of my schedual has made me fall out of phase with things. Need to rework a schedual so i can keep pace with life.

Have some art projects I wanta start on over the break, hopefully will get time for all of them, wanta do a painting for my Grampa for his christmas present. We brought all the holiday stuff in ,got a wreath on the door, maybe will put up lights, and we got our yule tree for this year. Its not quite as bushy as last years or as big but is a nice fir tree.

I like fir trees, see for the past I dunno how many years been quite a few since i was like 12, decorating the tree has sorta fallen on me as my task, and so i usually spend one evening working late into it getting everything ready. Last time it was Christmas eve, finished up the tree everyone was in bed when with all the boxes and crap in the living room I had to make a little of my Clare magic go to work and make it magically neat and tidy so that there was room for ppl to sit and for presents to go under the tree. More magic of arranging the presents in an orderly and attractive display and more magic further in dragging my carcass to bed. Was to no ones surprise the last one up but did have the pleasure of seeing ppl appreciating my work from the night before.

But yes back to why i like fir trees... well you see they have soft needles... unlike spruce trees despite their nice blue color if their a blue spruce and the fact their branches can take a bit more weight even when their a young tree in a pot, they have sharp stabby needles. One year i think maybe 2 years ago as i seem to recall writing a post about it, we had a spruce sapling as the yule tree, and I had to decorate it and that included putting lights on it... not fun, I was left with sore and slightly bloody fingers from fighting with the tree to get the lights on it and even when wearing leather glooves was still stabbed multiple times, they also hurt if you get them through a sock into an unsuspecting foot. The air on that day was blue from me cursing and swearing at the tree alternating between swearing at it in english and gramatically poor gaelic.

This year since it is a fir tree i will still employ my field hockey gloves to put the lights on it, its short tree, shorter than me making putting lights on it easier, and I will still decorate it but because it isnt a stabby tree i wont be swearing as i decorate it and will not have sore and bleeding fingertips.

Now why we have this tiny tree? well its a yule tree, instead of chopping down a tree we buy a tree from a nursery thats in a pot bring it in a few days before decorate it up enjoy it for a day or two then stick it back on the porch and then plant it at the cottage in the spring. Tree gets a home we get to enjoy it and no trees are harmed or killed in the process, everyone wins!

Now if only i could decide on what i shall give other people. If i had the time i would make everyone a gift, be it painting, cross stitch, drawing, or other, but i fear i dont have the time, if i can finish one or two maybe even three good paintings over the holidays I shall be lucky... and thats a pretty big if, time for painting will become very limited once the 21'st hits, will be cut off from the 26-28th since we usually go to london ON to visit my aunt and come i think the 3rd classes are back. Not much time indeed.

Anyways what i have been doing with myself, other than catching up on sleep and scribbling ideas for things i want to create? Well seeing ppl, going places ect.

I went out to dinner last night in fact, with Aaron, had a wonderful time and it was very nice of him to invite me out. First friday night in a while ive been somewhere. Felt good to get out. We were going to eat at the Keg but it had an hour and a half wait so went to Jack Astors instead. Had a good meal there and then left and bussed back to his house. And walked part way back. The walk was interesting to say the least, and chilly. But nice, if you ignored the coldness. Good old bus stops

So we went to his house and I got to meet his puppy mossy and then we hung out in his basement for a bit befo... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10913376/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10913376/ Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:05:19 PST
I have been working on my story, have to fill in the gap between where i left off and where i started the part where kessels character comes in, shouldnt be long. It was amusing i let kessel read the part of his dwarf and he sat there drooling. He has apparantly from that short bit decided that my story is awesome and wants to read the rest as soon as im finished so he can continue to drool over his character.

Silly kessel.

I have had a social week, meeting friends, going to lectures... skipping lectures... skipping a tutorial here or there... hey it was humanities and i can only take 4 hours of descartes meditations a week, 8 hours of it due to a replacement monday is 8 hours too many.

But it has been a wondeful week what with catching up with old friends, meeting old friends you havent seen in years, I met tamar last friday and have see her now 3 or 4 times around the campus. I havent seen her since she graduated baythorn. Her and Avra Fainer were 2 years my senior. I being always a loner in elementry school, when i was seeking some social contact would tend to flit from group to group, talk a bit than sorta drift off when i either felt left out or just overwelmed. Tamara and Avra were two people i tended to favour hanging out with and they were generally accepting without the clequish asking of personal questions or rude comments made about your clothing or lack of interest in boys that the other groups usually would shower on me.

So good to see her, good to hang out with current friends too.

Went to visit my old highschool on Wednesday, They had apparantly had a real code red lockdown that day due to a robbery that occured nearby at a bank. The robber escaped on foot and the police didnt catch him so they locked down the school.
So I sign into the office and all the office staff are happy to see me and asking how im doing, and Mr. Berman comes out of his office and starts chatting to me, and is all "we are always happy to have you visit" and Ms. Epstein was also there and saying hello. Lol always good to be well liked by admin, makes visiting much easier.

So i was supposed to meet david at the school, he was gonna meet me right after class in sevs room but because i was held up by admin he was impatient and left evil minion, i will have to yell at him for his impatience. Though perhaps i should find out his hurry, perhaps he wasnt sure if i would remember to come, either way he should have had faith to know that I, the Iron Maiden would be good as my word.

So though i did not see david i did see some other friends and of course Mr. Sevier who was very happy to see me. Ms. Swan, him and myself had a nice long chat, though i am still concerned about how his health really is doing he does seem to be in good spirits which is good. As usual he caught me in poorly worded phrase that went something along the lines (in reference to having been happy do choose Bodica as a focus for my medieval english project on medieval queens though i cant as shes not a medieval queen...) "Were she part of the time period I would so do her!" i suddenly realize what i said, see his face... that face he gets when you say something that can have a double meaning or be twisted is so hilarious i fell on the floor in laughter. So after our good laugh I corrected my wording and we went on in our discussions.

So then yesterday I went shopping at the promenade, soo much crap in this season. Why the hell does winter bring in such god awful colour and fashion choices for clothing. Like gold slinky things and metalic colours and tops for girls with no boobs, or with very small boobs. *sighs* It makes me sad, going into places like H and M or La Vie En Rose and i see wonderful things, panties, bras, corset like tops, lengere, ect. the panties i have no problem with but the things that cover the busts alas it seems that the fashion industry believes that girls any bigger than a 36 C dont deserve to feel beautiful, that we either dont exist, or dont deserve to be able to wear pretty bras or corset tops or lengere because our boobs are too big or our rib cages are too wide.

Lasenza is the only store that understands, they do carry d and double d bras in pretty colours and sizes but still there are lots of girls out there who are even bigger than that, girls who arent even necessarily fat but just are too well endowed, do they not have a right to feel pretty, or wear nice bras?

Ah if i had a million dollars, of course some would go to charity but i would definately open a store of clothing, and it would be for all those busty girls or girls whos bodies arent exactly perfect, sh... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10873107/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10873107/ Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:55:58 PST
It started with me getting dropped off by my mom at the promenade and running to a bus that I am 90 % positive said thornhill-yorku, it even pulled in the right way... so i got on it and settled down for a ride to the university figuring i should make it there just in in time for my 8:30 lecture...

Im nicely engrossed in my book but decide to look up and see where we are... to my horror i see not the intersection of steels, or keele or york... but my own home starting corner at yonge near my condo.
so while swearing silently to myself in my head, I get off the bus and take the long double commute using viva and finally get to the university, a good 45 minutes late for my lecture.

So i decided to skip my lecture, and spend the next hour reading. Apparantly missed the prof talking about descartes and god and such.

So then i have a quick lunch break and tutorial, tutorial was amusing. Despite the fact i was not there for the lecture, i seem to have a better idea of whats going on than anyone else. In fact i brought up the ontological issue thing and get to look smart. Then once more in our analysis of the 10th rule of the regulae im the only one with a clue in hell as to whats going on.

This was perhaps the first tutorial i have actually found interesting, then again this is perhaps the first tutorial that was done like an hour early.

Then after a breif discussion with the tutorial leader i head off to meet Aaron.

I had some things to discuss, got them discussed. Im such a silly girl, fretting over such simple things. It was alot easier than i thought, but then again i always psyche myself out on the simplest of things. I have a constant fear that things will utterly blow up in my face all the time... and well sometimes they do... but other times they dont and things are good.

So then get home and have a break and a nap before dinner and fencing
fencing was really good, got to try out the saber today. I think i have found my weapon of choice, i enjoy the more agressive style. It was fun little sparing match against a person much more experienced than i am, they let us win cuz were noobs, but my match went on longer than others perhaps because i was the most jump into it of the newbies trying it out.

so yeah good day

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10850367/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10850367/ Sat, 25 Nov 2006 21:45:27 PST
Now you may think that I am being paranoid, perhaps I am, but perhaps im not, especially if you yourself may posess that bomb. If you yourself realize the ball is in your court and whatever your actions are at this point someone could be hurt or something is going to be blown.

I could turn tale and try to save myself, i could row myself away and abandon ship, but with that how much of my soul would i be breaking a chunk off for, how much guilt would I carry?
or i can stay on the ship, go down with it.

I feel so happy, things are wonderful, and i have wonderful friends, but well theres an issue ive been dancing around that i shoudlnt any longer for if i do i could lose it all. Perhaps I have already made too many mistakes, I fear in giving into things I have made some things quite bad.

Likewise whatever the case and the conflict and the warnings, all those will be worked out in time. Today was a good day, I had a wonderful time downtown, I had a wonderful time in the book store and I had a wonderful time in general.

Things are so confusing though and I dont know even if i can trust myself.

If a person is starved of food and is then thrown a crust despite their knowledge it is poisoned are they likely to eat it? Is their hunger and longing going to override their logic and self preservation?

Im speaking in silly analogies and metaphores I know but maybe through those only can i gain any truth at all.

Like is such a strange thing, such a complicated thing I know not if i am doing right or wrong in it, only that I am existing and doing so as best I can.

Im tired, i need sleep and maybe then things will seem more clear

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10815039/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10815039/ Wed, 22 Nov 2006 18:43:19 PST
Mind you , i lucked out, one of the passages to select to analyze for the third part was from the wanderer, a poem we not only covered in my Literary Genres course but also in greater depth in my Medieval English course. So without much thought i just pulled whatever i happened to have floating around in my mind from those 2 classes out and threw it on the page.

Still I rather hate scantion metrical analysis, but at least they just wanted you to identify what it was, none of that stupid "what is the significance of the trochaic inversion in this line of the poem and how does it add to its meaning"?

Right... im sure that every poet who writes metrical poems is sitting there thinking "yes oh yes this dactyl right here just adds to the suffering im trying to convey and oh man that spondaic foot, that whole scene where i describe his head getting bashed in would not be complete in its violence without its double stress"

God, some english teachers, i wonder if those who are obsessed with meter sit there masturbating to metrical analysis, sorta like I am sure one or two teachers in my high school used to get off on perfect works cited... and the english department there... God did they have a boner over margaret atwood.

"Oh margaret atwood, oh yes, oh yes, oh please write another dystopian, angry, bitter novel, oh yes, yes, YES!"....

ok so now that i have all of you suffering trying to get that image out of your head Let me say that I have decided that a group of people should form a band and call it Spondaic Foot, just because it seems like it would be an amusing name for a band.

I did get my quiz back from English, got a nice 4 out of 5 on it, she said there were only maybe 5 or 6 of those so Yay, im smart.

The thing that bugged me though with the Odyssey was that practically no one in the class seemed to have any idea about half the references or comments or personalities that went along with the Greek Gods, in reality to read Homer and do it right, you should spend at least a week or two reading up on your Greek mythology of both the heroes and the dieties, because half the little mini stories they put in there were taken right out of some other legend or in some reference to a hero or a diety and what they did and only really make sense if you got the background info.

I for one saw great humor and Irony in the fact that Athene as a Virgin Goddess, was going around telling women to marry or be faithful or fulfill their domestic duties or their "role" as a woman while shes trotting around, no husband, standing along side male heroes as they do battle and disguising herself as a guy while she helps out Telemachos and Odysseus. Not to mention the fact she was born right out of Zeus's head clad in full battle armor...

A little hippocracy there... or maybe the authors personal bias on "a woman's place"

Alas such humor was lost on the ignorant masses.

So what else... Well not much really, im kinda tired and want to sleep but gotta work on this assignment.

Im getting distracted again, i have sat here for the past half hour doing very little... grrr stupid assignment. It looks like very little but I am sure that when it comes to the actual writing it part that it will suddenly seem like alot more than it is. Like i have alot of ideas for the commentary its just the whole motivating mysel fto actually do it. Well I figure if i can have gone through all 3 english versions of the text and the old english version and have outlined the words I want to focus on and the particular phrases to comment on and outline sorta what to comment on for each section then that should be good for tonight, then tomorrow its just writing it up. If I have to I will pull a late nighter on it tomorrow, the class isnt till 11:30 and if i can steal a ride from my dad then all is good.

Once friday is done though... smoother cruising through to the holidays, i dont have any exams scheduled in any of my classes so its just me and a month to finally dedicate to art, writing, yuletide baking, spending time with friends and hopefully also conducting... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10802316/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10802316/ Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:29:51 PST
Today was a little bit of a stressing day. I slept in, guess I was tired after fencing. Fencing was a really good workout, this guy for our stretch did some yoga exercises with us which reminded me of our yoga unit in grade 8 dance class... only i think im actually more flexible now than I was then. Ashley and I were cracking some more jokes about the plastic breast plates that the women have in their fencing jackets, which seem to never be in the right place, on the flat girls they sit too low and on us better endowed girls they dont sit right at all, clearly showing that the person who stitched them in there was either male, or fantasizing about some "perfect" female body which they used as a base model for the machines specifications to do it... cant wait to get my own equipment so no more wearing gross sweaty helmets and gloves.

Likewise it was fun today was the first day we actually got to partner up and practice taking a stab at eachother (pun intended)

Ashley and I partnered up, we are both sorta of the girls, more agressive players I would say so it was interesting. Man we were so bad though kept messing up or sorta forgetting footwork, exactly as Jeff had said we would the moment they paired us against eachother.

But yeah a nice destressor before week from hell.

So today official week from hell started off with my evolutions test, fortunately it was an afternoon class. I had a good sleep, had a really good dream and then finally got up.

Unfortunately my dad who usually on test days will try to drive me at least half way to the campus to guarantee that i get there early was downtown taking my nana to a hair appointment and though my mom was home sick with a sinus infection I didnt want to bother her. (in fact I sent her back to bed when i caught her trying to clean up stuff around the house)
So I left the house at 1:20, knowing that i could catch a #3 at 1:38 and get there with lots of time to spare (my class was at 2:30). But well somehow murphys law was working agaist me and i waited well over 20 minutes (excluding the time it took me to walk to the bus stop) for a bus that never came.

Thats what I hate about the number 3's they seem to have alot of Phantom busses, I have memories, in fact a journal entry here complaining about walking in the rain 2.3 miles to and from kessels house and not being passed once by a stupid bus going my way. Damn those phantom busses.

All during this time my hands were freezing, that is till I realized that my leather gloves were in my backpack. yay saved by leather... again. mmm leather, how I love thee... I miss my leather jacket, i have had to retire it till spring for its too cold to wear it now

So anyways i was getting concerned about the time so i walk round the corner to young and pick up a viva and do the double commute on to a viva purple and finally get to york... 3 minutes after my class should have started, by now the stess hormones are coursing through my blood and i am just slightly starting to panic a bit as i run from the bus to curtis lecture halls up the stairs and into my lecture room. Get there and then panic again as I find i cannot find a single desk left with a test on it. Fortunately my lab coordinator Nicole, spots me and after trying to find a desk with a test on it for me sends me down to ask for one. Fortunately im not the only person looking for a test.

I end up writing the test in a left handed desk, which well technically i didnt mind, in fact it was actually maybe even more comfortable than the right handed desks because my right arm was free to move around.

So well as im still slightly out of breath from my sprint to my class, would have loved a good swig from my water bottle before i ditched my bag at the front of the room and am trying to focus on my test while my adrenaline is still going, i somehow am able to get through the test quite easily... in fact Despite coming late, i am done the test in only a half hour (we had an hour and a half to write it). I quickly check my answers, and thats it, hand it in and leave. Go me. I was home by the time my class would have normally ended.

So now what, finish studying for english midterm tomorrow, must empty brain of all things evolution and fill it with all literary terms possible. Then must empty it again and fill it with all things beowulf commentary.

I think my brain has a virus, one of those ones that hits you at the wo... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10778376/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10778376/ Sun, 19 Nov 2006 13:42:23 PST
Then again when you live in an appartment with 4 other people and 2 dogs... privacy is something you have to look hard for, really really really hard for so anything I can keep private becomes almost sacred, like some forbidden fruit i keep tucked away. Someday when i move out i might change i guess, but for now thats how it is.

Life has been pretty good of late, Im not feeling so lonely and empty lately, guess im getting out of my isolation state of mind.

Yesterday was a really good day. Has given me new things to think about, hope about, maybe even write about at some point. Despite the face I physically did little work i feel it was productive in cultivating other areas of my life.

I never have enough time for things, I need to go out and get a big long canvas for something I want to paint, its going to be one of my feminism paintings, showing the liberation of the feminine, her breaking away from the pedestel she has been chained to for so long by the hands of man and rising above. And of course she will have a sword, cannot forget the symbolic imagery of her weilding one big mother fucker of a sword. I have the very very rough draft done, the one I did on the back of a piece of paper in my purse in pen while my mom and I were driving to the cranberry bog in october.

But yeah damn where the hell am i gonna put all my art. Im going to have to start giving it away or selling it or something if i keep painting because i have such limited space to put it. And I dont want my canvases put in storage as my dad suggested. They would likely get damaged or entirely wrecked not to mention that storage is damp and musty and that would ruin them. *growls* I really wish we could live in a house where i could turn my room into my own little art studio/library/writers corner and then i would be happy.

Anyways I got alot of stupid stuff to do. Studying, assignment work ect. My mom came back from the goat show she went to in London Ont. And is sick and going on one of her famous ADHD rampages around the house bitching and making messes in an attempt to find stuff and being generally annoying. "Im sick so everyone should know im sick and listen to me complaining about being sick"

well Im not feeling so well myself, im not sick but my asthma is bad today and I got a pressure head ache. My chest feels like a giant hand is squeezing it so i cant breathe well, even though I have taken my inhalers, and my head feels like someones standing on it and hammering on it. Damn weather.

I also had a rather crappy dream last night. It was weird, one of those dreams that is clearly your subconscious telling you something that youve known deep down you have to do only have sorta been putting it off just because your so caught up in other things.

The dream involved me going to my cottage, it was bleak and wintery only upon arriving there I discovered a horrid shock. My parents had for some reason allowed the Terry's to log our wood lot, the entire thing and everywhere there was destruction, every tree in my beloved forest had been cut down Including the hemlock at the center of my glade and my glade was utterly destroyed, the whole area was a barren wasteland of stumps. And I was so angry because they had known and not told me and they kept going on about how it was for the best and the money from the wood and such and I was just so distressed at the loss and somewhere in there something came in about my grandfather being dead and me not having gotten to say goodbye because no one had told me and it was really abstract and one of those dreams thats sorta so real that you wake up and it takes you a minute to realize that it was a dream.

It was really weird and disturbing and i think I even started talking out loud because I was in that state between awakenness and sleep where your still dreaming but your returning to your senses. Still I hate when I get those dreams that are all too real and all too horrible.

Lol man my mom is going on bitching talking to herself and complaining, i dont think she realizes that no one is listening to her nor particularly cares. Jesus I love my mom but things were so quiet while she was away, peaceful, each person minded their own business no one argued or anything...

Likewise I should go make my dads birthday cake. Today is his birthday and tomorrow is my grandfathers birthday and thats why theres part of the stress i guess. My moms all digging for cards and crap. Im just gonna grab my pen and ink and my water colour pencil crayons and make a nice card write a nice message in it and I'm done.

Silly hum... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10683729/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10683729/ Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:37:34 PST
and i was thinking on how little I know of them. I know my great uncle worked in the navy, that i believe they captured a u-boat, that or sunk it and retrieved it. Ive seen the photo, my nana keeps it in her dresser, men on a dock in navy uniforms with the sub raised in the background. But of his experiences i know little, of where he served and what he did, i know nothing. It will be hard to try to change that, hard due to distance to make contact, to get a chance to interview him, but it is something that I really want to do.

My grandfather, the same. I only have one tape with him talking, and little of it is of what he did in the war. In part i think because he is ashamed that they never sent him overseas. Yet why he is ashamed of that i dont know because it was nothing he had control over.

Yet time passes each day, and so many of them are gone, so many stories lost to a grave. I can only hope that perhaps I can preserve some, tape them, collect them, attempt to put them in some semblance of order.

In my grandfathers case, it is like fragments. Slowly some form of senility is stripping away his memories so they lie like pieces of a disasembled puzzle, some lost, some put together and many scattered randomly.


Do we remember our dead is another question, do we remember our past. At york as i have walked the campus i have seen poppies yes, but so few wearing them, and so many not wearing them. Have these people forgotten? Do they just not care? I dont know, but if that is the case then there is a risk of the next generation knowing nothing of the wars, knowing nothing of what happened.

Heinlein warned that a country that does not learn from its history, has no past... and no future. Is this going to be the case?

I guess we all have to wait and see. So while we wait... I shall quit my rant for the moment and go to fill in.

Some amusing events have happend, some fun events, some happy events and i guess some good things in general. So weekend before samhain julez and Grace came up to my cottage and we had a really good weekend, played munchkin, made hot biscuts, and went shopping. Grace and Julia also got on major sugar highs and we had some real girl talk. Now by girl talk i dont mean "hehe giggle giggle boys giggle giggle hair giggle giggle clothes..." It was well serious woman talk i guess, covering all topics that 1) made my ears burn, 2) made me once again the item of the spinster joke and 3) are things that boys wouldnt want to hear... that said i will not deny that there was giggling involved, but hey they were on a sugar high. We also went on a hike and saw an owl (it was near dusk)

It was probably a bit of my own personal isolation ive been dealing with of late that made me feel that way but i dunno i was part of the talk but felt out of the loop a bit, stories were shared but i had no such stories to contribute, have had no such stories for a very long time, and alas, i know not when i shall find such adventures to gain such stories.

Week went by along with evil humanities test and the like. I made a new friend in my english class. Her name is shannon and she is really nice.

My lab friday was annoying, my lab partner and I had to work with some idiot who decided to be stoned out of his mind for it (this lab was at 9:30 am) and the lab included parts that involved pouring and carefully measuring semicorrosive acids. Despite my strong urge to inflict damage on this subhuman thing that required me to spend 10 minutes explaining why the control group doesnt change and then wanted to copy my answers because "your my partner"... I refuse to carry a dead weight who cant even take the effort to come clear headed to class. GRRR..... Likewise I was able to control my frustrations...

Then the weekend came and sergei came up to my cottage, there was snow, a fair bit of snow. But we had fun likewise with going on a hike and saw grouss (sp)/pheasant like birds, and sergei taught me how to skip stones. Im not very good at it but i got one to do a few skips. Pandora loves sergei and she would wake him up and herd him outside to play ball with her. We recorded some improv music while there. I hadnt played my violin in sooo long. But it has started me now practicing it semiregularly again.

That recording should be amusing to listen to though for in the background will be the sound of pandora whining for attention.
Then on the way home we watched some final fantasy video on his computer.... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10459908/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10459908/ Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:14:57 PDT
I dont know what exactly has been wrong witheveryone lately, maybe they are just tired but everyone has been at eachothers throats on and off and arguing over really stupid things.

Monday was decent, despite the early 8:30 am class (EVIL!!!)
But the evening was good as it was the Iron Maiden concert. I was tired so perhaps did not enjoy it to the absolute fullest extent that i could have but i found the music quite stress relieving. Alas it being a metal concert there were people there out to have a "good time" and some of those people happened to be sitting right in front of us. The idiots in front of us felt the need to smoke up at least once every hour which was unpleasant for me being asthmatic. It gave me the strong urge to pull out a sword and slice through their heads watching as they fall over the railing... Then i remembered it wouldnt be nice to the people below and that violence isnt the answer... only the temporary solution.

Likewise despite the unpleasant toxins filling the air the concert was quite awesome. The first half of it was their new stuff, and the second part some of their older stuff. They concluded the concert with what i would call some of their best stuff in a 4 song encore which finished with none other than my favourite maiden song : Hallowed be Thy Name. The atmosphere for that song and the effect it has on the crowd i dont think will ever stop amazing me, it really does cast a magical trance on everyone.

Eddie this time came on stage twice, once inside a tank and the second time walked on the stage done up as a soldier.

They had i think between 11000 and 17000 fans there and they said there were now enough fans in canada that they would do a whole canadian tour. Woot!

So anyways was a good show.

The rest of the week was busy with schoolwork and studying for my Evolution test. I hope i did well on it. Then thursday evening I went with my dad to go and help him put up campaign signs for his friend who is running downtown for council. He told me "it will just be an hour or two..."

Right... an hour or two... Lets see, got home from evolution test at around 4, had an apple and some milk as my dad told me to be ready to leave for us to go downtown, wasnt till almost 6 when we left. And it wasnt till almost 11 that i finally got to eat never mind getting home. I will say there are lots of neat residential areas in the downtown areas, alot of rich areas with nice fancy houses. But when you have a lab report due the next day and a 9:30 lab... well getting home isnt so much fun. Not to mention from lack of sustenance i had a headache when i got home... probably due to low bloodsugar...somethign like that.

By lab report i really mean a prelab write up but still it was due none the less. So i get home eat and then work on my writeup. And am not finished till after 1 in the morning.

I go to bed and yet cannot sleep and it is somewhere after 2 i finally fall asleep only to wake up again at around 5 am and then later at around 6. THen before i know it its 7 am and i have to haul my sorry carcus out of bed so i can get a ride wiht my mom to the promenade.

Having had to leave the house without breakfast i did have time to get a bagel at the university and pick up a sandwich for later since i had 5 hours of class back to back today... not so fun.

Lessons from this: NEVER trust your parents if they say "it will only be an hour or two" because by that what they really mean is that it will likley be 5 or 6 or maybe even 7 hours or so.

So i did get to hand in my lab and do the new lab which was fairly easy, drawing bumblebee legs and watching other silly lab members do things that the instructions clearly state they arent supposed to do. Like the fact you dont draw your diagrams in pen, you dont shade your diagrams, and you definately dont label your diagrams in pen, especially not colourful pens like red or green.

The good part of todays lab was getting my first lab back. 94 % on the prelab and 100% on the actual lab.

From there i had just enough time to make it to my Medieval english class, a class i rather enjoy despite the lengthyness of it.

We are starting Beowulf in it, and had some interesting discussions and presentations. Tim, (the boy who sits next to me) is always good for a discussion. One of the few people i have actually had the pleasure to talk to who actually knows their philosophy since well... grade 12 philosophy i guess. Our discussions quite often concern matters of theology, culture, sometimes even some ethics and a favourite of ours, Rationalism v.s. Empiricism. Himself being pro rationalist and myself being somewhat pro empiricist.

... ]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10411959/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10411959/ Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:23:22 PDT
]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10370700/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10370700/ Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:20:03 PDT
I was exploring the realms of facebook groups and from there discovered to my great glee and joy that York does have a Pagan/Wiccan organization called Gaiaorenda. Now i had seen this name on the website under religious organizations before when searching trying to find the pagan organization that i knew should exist at york. But because the stupid clubs website does not list any information about any of the clubs listed and what they are, and only gives contact info... well i had no clue what it was and unfortunately the link to the website on that contact page no longer existed.

So through the magic of facebook, i discovered that one does exist, that it is Gaiaorenda and that it has a different website.

so yes... excitement... Unfortunately i missed Pagan Pride day on sept 25

oh well next year, and besides samhain is coming up

ok so what else... been meeting some new people, going to class... writing occasionally.

Ive noticed how my writing has changed, in attempts to try to clean up my gallery a bit, how its evolved in sorta phases. The phase of me trying to find myself, the phase of me coping with things around me, the last phase i had was the one where i wrote some really abstract weird stuff months back in an attempt to i guess cope and deal with the loss of a family member. As i reread some of it i have to really think back to remember what it was i was trying to describe in my writing, what exactly i was thinking, almost like im reading a different persons writing. Still though i guess i needed it to be abstract, emotions are abstract concepts, too complex to really be put into words or communicated properly...

anyways i think ive moved into a new phase now, not sure what it is or where it will take me. Im hoping that with all the indepth stuff were doing on poetry in my literary genres class i will be able to use some of it to refine some of my work, stylize it a bit more. Alot of my stuff thoguh i may make a few changes is still rough round the edges.

My prof suggested i talk to another professor about applying to the creative writing program. I shall certainly take a look at it. Dont know if ill get in, i would need to put together a portfolio of stuff, but yeah.

My art too has changed alot, some of my really old stuff i look at it and it look so crappy, i guess my standards are higher too though. I never really took alot of time to refine my work untill i took artclass last spring, i guess i didnt know i coudl do any better and then i got challenged and realized i could do alot better and now everything else seems like garbage.

I should at somepoint try redrawing some of my novel sketches (never posted in my gallery) and see if i can get some character improvements, if i do maybe i will post them here.

In other news, Iron Maiden concert is Monday night. YEAH!!!

anyways thats all i guess, the week hasnt been all that exciting, cant wait to get back upnorth.

]]> ~reflection13 http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10345885/ http://reflection13.deviantart.com/journal/10345885/ Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:41:47 PDT
Wish i could have taken a photo of the sunset last night driving home, we got a great view of it from the backrode we took to avoid highway traffic.

The past week has been pretty good, hung out with my friends Alicia and Grace. Originally Alicia and I were just gonna meet at Tim Hortons and hang out as we havent seen eachother really since june i guess. Very very belated birthday presents were exchanged, i got some cool books from her and had selected for her some nice jewelry i found at the market.

But on my way home from York U grace called me up and told me she was randomly in toronto for a doctors appointment and so i had to take a slight detour to go to finch to meet grace at the subway since she has no clue how to take YRT. I ended up meeting alicia there a well and so the three of us rode it together. It was a good meeting none the less. With alicia working and living in toronto on her own and Grace in Cobourg we dont get to see eachother too often, so we make what time we have count.

Grace got a sword... im only slightly jealous of her... lucky... ... I want a sword! (not that i havent stated that many times...)

Anyways this seems to have been a week of social meetings for me as on thursday i may or may not have been really late for my evolution lecture through some fault of my own and decided once on campus to forget it as all lecture notes are posted online and i have the books to read and just not have gone.

And by that I mean i did decide that though i dont plan to make a habbit of it and felt somewhat guilty. (though i honestly do find the lectures kinda boring as its a course designed for nonscience students and having taken both 11 and 12 university lvl bio and chem (and even an 11 physics though we wont go there...) its a little old hat for me. Not all of it, but right now with what were covering alot of it is old hat. And one of the books we have really really simplifies evolution to the point i feel like im reading a childresn book, its almost darwinism for dummies (though thats not actually the book title)

So anyways i called my friend mitch up and we met, i got a brief look at what the room for one of the jewish student organizations looks like at york, as he was in there painting a plaster mould and then we went to wander around and i bought him food.

Later i met up with my new friend Alicia E. and we went to second cup to talk over hot chocolate. This is the girl i met on the cruise way back, we had a nice time chatting and made plans for me to take her on trips to see the downtown and promenade mall.

Medieval English was fun too, im having way too much fun in that course.
Still need to decide on my medieval queen even though my seminar isnt in january. I had found some but of them only Margaret of Denmark is of the period my prof is looking for. (wish people could decide on when the medieval period starts and ends, too many people stretching and shrinking it by a couple hundred years).

I may well do margaret of denmark as i really want to do a warrior queen not a stodgy sit on her ass and obey her husband boring queen. I mean yeah yeah theres Elenor of aquitaine and all that but i dont consider her a warrior. Damn masoginist societies. Had i been there I would have set out pulling together a whole force of female warriors to wage war on the men of the world. We would have shown them where a womans place was!

anyways now that i have had my little rant involving me somehow changing the course of a long decrepit history lets move on.

Thanksgiving weekend was busy but decent. Im still kinda exhausted from it, when i wasnt cooking or dealing with annoying humans i was helping my sister on an assignement she had. She was trying to translate some philosophyical stuff on Hobbes and Locke only what she had that she found Oh so Difficult was Pablum, yes pablum i say, to quote my old philosophy teacher. He was right i guess, after grade 12 phil. with him, readings like that really really are like pablum, they seem so straightforward compared to the real thing.

hehe i should give my sister a little bit of the real hobbes leviathan and watch her shudder and cower as ger brain overheats.

anyways made my cranberry sauce, of the 4 jars i only have 1 left, but i can always make more. And i made the apple pies too.

my mom still doesnt get it, when im cooking, get out of my kitchen and stay out. Its one of those things im really touchy on, i dont like other people bothering me or trying to interfere when i cook, it makes me swear and curse and causes my b... ]]> ~reflection13