Bat my lashes for Bat For Lashes

I'm going to ease myself back into the posting saddle with this musical show and tell. Trust me, Bat for Lashes will pour some musical sugar on you. Plus, the video is low-down cool.

This song takes me back to the musical hauntings of my youth: hiding under the covers and listening to the local university channel to figure out what kind of music I liked, since my high-school musical mileau was all Van Halen and Def Leppard.

Mercury in retrograde

Promise to myself: Once I finally quit that second job that has been an albatross around my neck, I will start writing my own stuff. Here. Once mercury goes out of retrograde, which coincidentally, coincides with my last day of work at job #2.

Dreaming the sun on my back

I was packing the trunk of my parent’s old Malibu with camping gear. It was sunny, and I looked down and saw my shoes on the rough grain of asphalt. The sheen of each individual rock in the asphalt mix made me look up at the sky. It was clear and hot, and at the edge of my vision the cherry tree in the front yard of my parent’s house was in full blossom, lacing the sky pink.

I returned to the trunk. I was trying to fit everything I need into it. It was full of primary colours, vivid camping colours like orange, blue, red and green. No purple. I don’t like purple. I had to keep shuffling all the colours around to make everything fit in an organized fashion.

I could feel my back getting hotter as the sun started to wake up from its morning chill. I looked over to the trunk of the cherry tree, saw the powdery orange lines of its pollen wisk off in the breeze. An ant closed its eyes to avoid it.

Dream sequence 001

Maybe it's because I'm sitting on the cusp of spring, umbrella in hand. But I'm having a hard time feeling the posting vibe — rain, clouds, vitamin D deficiency. I have many excuses and lots of internal guilt lapping the cusp like a declawed kitten. I promised myself I would post at least once a week, and I've failed miserably in keeping this promise over the past few rainy weeks of spring.

So I've decided to repurpose some of the dreams I have been sending the work husband to temporarily shim this lack.

Why have I been sending my work husband dreams? Well, the work environment has narrowed my imagination. It requires me to keep my thoughts simple and literal, which is an interesting challenge indeed, but I'm finding it hard to do this while keeping my ideas at fresh and fantastic. So I decided to flex my imagination with some rogue dreaming —stream of consciousness-style.

My early mornings are filled with fractured dream sequences, moving snapshots of information. The only thread linking these sequences is accumulation — like a piece of discarded sticky tape with the detritus of witnessed events and images, real and contrive, affixed to it in a haphazard way.

A dream fragment remembered:

Angelica Huston proudly sitting on the prow of the boat like she was in Life Aquatic. Close up of her hair. It’s tangled and mossy, filled with objects from my youth (barrettes I used to wear, paperclips, thistles). The view pans down her hair, which extends beyond the surface of the water. And as it pans, the lens (my dream lens) tumbles and falls becoming enmeshed in this fettered web of objects and hair. Now underwater, tangled in seaweed instead of hair. Floor bottom is sandy, and feet scramble to find footing on this soft floor. It turns into grains of wood floorboards. The lens is sleeping on them. In a red sleeping bag. A shiny one with images of moose on its fleecy interior. The lens is sideways, as if it’s sleeping on its side. Two boys dressed as Halloween space men wake the lens up by putting their faces, almost conjoined, close to the lens. Their faces looks sideways.

And that’s all I can remember.

Watching the Thompson River Float By

Got a coffee. Went down to the river. Sat, cross legged.


Watched the geese. Do an odd and amusing calling/burping/mating thing.


Watched Jackson sniff, ever-so-carefully, each blade of grass and then leisurely paddle around in the water.

~From the desk of Indecisive Libran musings.

Rainy friday fare

Poignant fun with graphs and numbers. A pie chart of your life.

Look out Ladies!

Holy shit. This is some straight talk. Keeping it R E A L.
"Don't let every man hit the bottom!"
Public Access TV. Uh-huh.

Formidably fomidable

Jeezy Creezy. This man's talent is surreal. And I mean talent in the straight-up sense of the word talent. No play on words here, just plays on sound.

Life Affirming

A beautiful Saturday afternoon, 3pm: arriving home with two bottles of your favorite new red wine and fresh cut flowers.

Let's talk about our feelings

Let's say this is some stupid pop quiz and you have to select an emotion that best describes the average Vancouverite: Sexy? Guilty? Depressed? Blissed-out? Angry?

Angry seems weird to me, but apparently Vancouver is the third most angry city in the world, according to a website that tabulates "I feel" statements from thousands of web logs across the world. Searching through this site, I expected to see Vancouver's emotions aligned with a city that has just been named the third best place to live in the world. Guilty that we have so much personal space and clean air? Sure. Sexy due to the proliferation of exercise and drugs? Sure. But ...Angry?

Angry about the traffic up Cambie Street? Angry about the lack of good brunch places? Angry that Soma moved? Angry that the hippies on Commercial Drive just seem to keep replicating? Angry that a 500 sq foot apartment nows sells for over a quarter mill?

What's worse...Torontonians are the sexy ones.

What is the world coming to?

The last banana

I'm sad today. And I am wondering why I can never eat the last banana. I'm staring at my fruit bowl right now, preparing myself to move the most recent last banana to my freezer.

I have a freezer full of last bananas. More than eight. Brown and waiting to be loafed.

What does sadness have to do with last bananas? I don't really know. But I'm sure it's a metaphor for a deep lack of something.

Inspiration/Desperation

I'm a latecomer to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. But I'm a BCer--I know all this shit, right?

My boyfriend/fiancee and I drive a 1982 biodiesel Landcruiser--when we drive. Mostly we both walk and take transit. Before Old Dirty Brownie, we both belonged to The Cooperative Auto Network.

But lately I've felt a greater sense of urgency around my usual attempts at buying organic and being diligent about recycling. Maybe it's because I'm now living in Toronto, where people smoke everywhere and throw their butts at your feet; where they shoulder-check you on a regular basis in the endless, subterranean mallplexes that connect the subway stations; or because I see so many people pitching glass containers into the garbage; or because I found myself, this weekend, recycling other people's "garbage" (a plastic, mega-detergent bottle and a foot-high stack of newspapers--not exactly a recycling challenge) in my building's "garbage" shed.

But maybe it started earlier, when a few months ago I found myself gazing in awe at a Ziploc bag and wondering how I could ever have thrown anything so substantial out after a single use (now I wash them and they hold up amazingly well).

But even more recently, I foundnd myself starting to feel desperate. The closest place for me to buy groceries on my way home (and I live in the densely urban core) is a chain supermarket in one of those underground malls. (Near my home, I try to frequent the developing-worldesque fruit market/bodgeas and the single, West Indian meat market, but in still-Christian Ontario nearly everything closes at 6 pm, near when I finish work).

Tonight, at the supermarket, I found myself quizzing the supermarket produce guy about what I could buy that was grown in Ontario; and finding myself unwilling to do anything other than come away with my local hydroponic pepper, apples and heirloom tomato on offer. I found myself in the liquor store buying Ontario plonk rather than the Australian Shiraz I love.

And then, tonight, I had a date with Al Gore. His film was on a digital movie channel while I ate dinner.

We have to do this: keep refusing bags, refusing to buy things made far away (can I make my own olive oil?), keep refusing our cars and offsetting whatever it costs the planet when we take a plane flight.

I almost feel ridiculous for writing this. But when I put my groceries in my tote bag with my shoes, book, and commuter coffee mug tonight and refused a bag, I thought, some day everyone will be doing this and the clerk won't look at me like I'm insane. (Of course, no Choices clerk in Vancouver would, now.)

It also made me think of my hippie grade five teacher, Marie Orth-Pallavacini (who yes, made us sing anti-war songs and didn't shave her armpits), who made us go to our local grocery stores way back in 1980 with our own shopping bags and refuse the new one on offer (I was so humiliated, but I did it)... And think, my god, we're still in the same place, 27 years later.

Well, watch Gore's movie, and do something radical. I know, he's apparently not so carbon-neutral, but who is? The film has its hokey moments, but from a cinematic perspective even these work, and he's still got it right.

Ghetto Tour 2007

So Ghetto Girls, where will THIS summer take us? Admittedly, summer is fucking far away from where I sit: it fucking SNOWED here today. I'd settle for bloody spring! Violet's excellent suggestion to clean house in your knickers was done in for me by the fact of the outside temperature (-2) and the fact that my six twelve-foot windows lack blinds. But I endorse the suggestion if you live where spring exists and window coverings allow.

So, summer. I finally feel I'll be able to enjoy it, when it comes (if it comes), now that I have a home, a tiny toehold in this city. It's been hard to let go and just have fun when I've felt so unsettled, so caught up in change. (See home, below. The chartreuse wall will go.)




Now I just want to have fun, post here, explore more, get back to what feels like normal life. (Although I do have lots of painting left to keep me at home: that fumy, addictive, brain-addling chore.)

Some things have changed for me since joining (co-founding, with Violet) GBS. I've quit a job, taken a new one, moved thousands of miles to a new city, gotten engaged and bought a flat. All of which has proven as unsettling as fulfilling. Not that being unsettled is bad.

But it's interesting: getting engaged has completely quenched any desire I ever had for a wedding--the whole idea fills me with disgust, I'm not sure why. I hope I get over it. Uber-busy hipster Toronto has made me long for quiet, green, unaffordable, less hip (but also more hip) Vancouver. Work is great, no qualms there. The new home is also great, but fills me with dread at the idea of paying for it; apparently this wears off eventually.

I guess my point is, it doesn't matter if you are single or coupled or employed or whattever the fuck: what can you do but dance in your skivs in the summer sunshine angling through your window? Provided they're sort of covered? That is the GBS way. I guess I will have to just do it anyway and freak out the old Portuguese ladies if they happen to peek out their dusty second-floor windows.

Here is to whatever adventures GBS Summer 07 brings our way, here's to whatever trouble and delight we make.

I Love Moomins

We collaged on Friday night with 'movement' the focus. I pasted in a postcard of love-struck Moomins on swings that I got in Japan a few years back. Tove Jansson, an amazing graphic artist from Finland, created the world of Moomins.

Today, I was reading about Acid Mothers Temple, a texturally experimental Japanese band who have a song about the 'Hattifatteners' - characters in the Moomin series that look like ragamuffin socks.
The Hattifatteners are always on the move, with the singular goal of reaching the horizon, communicating telepathically, and assembling once a year when they 'recharge' in lightning storms.
I love it when things come together.

Trains to Brazil my friday off

Ah, happy friday friends. I'm loving this day off — sun, music, an entire day to laze my way through 20 loads of dirty laundry.

If you're having a lazy Friday morning like me, you should listen to Guillemots' song "Trains to Brazil". I'm not too sure how to directly link to the song, so go to their myspace page and click on the song title in the top right pod.

Or watch the video...




Want to have even more fun? Be foot loose and fancy free like me. Dance around your kitchen to this song in boys' underware and a tank top, 'cause no one is watching...unless you want them to. (Have I mentioned how GREAT solo living is on a sunny morning?)

Isn't the wonderful world of their website smashing?

Hush hush, keep it down now, voices carry

email from a friend:

the window washers outside right now are having a full-on conversation about getting blowjobs and they have no idea i can hear them...

Fight like a girl

In the previous post, Mata decided to feature hockey players fighting. I thought — meh, girls pillow fighting is far more exciting.

And then I realized that I haven't said anything about the very Canadian Pillow Fight League. They fight like girls...ruthless.

Here's a link to the official video, where the announcers are impressed that these women "fight like a girl".

Or you can just watch this one...

Bad Day at Work?

Bad week? Bad month? Just generally pissy?

Let our modern day gladiators of the National Hockey League help you blow off a little workaday agro with some socially sanctioned aggression.

Can't wait 'til game day? Go for hockeyfight.com.

Watch those teeth fly and feel better.

This vid is one of my favorites. Even if you don't condone fighting in hockey, even if you don't like hockey you've got to see this one. Keep watching into the second clip. Fascinating...

Georges Laraque (AKA georges foreman) was wearing a mic during the game. Gives an interesting peek into elite sport.

Thanks to MXC for this Nihilist bumper sticker

.......................................I brake for nothing...........................................

Queen of chav

I was reading up on Lily Allen to find out what this precious little sour tart was all about ... and to verify her authenticity.

And what did I encounter but a whole bunch of English slang that I had never heard before. Namely, I encountered the term chav (see the image? that's a chav).

Chav seems to speak to a group of skids that I, in my West Coast Canadian way, call "white yos" (think Surrey boys in gangsta suits). You know, those hard-core yos who talk "street cred" while they're pulling bills from the bank-of-dad.

I'm calling these precious little bits of our social network chavs from now on.

So back to little ole Lily... there's a possee of higher class brits who take on lower class accents for "street cred" (Hello Mr. Jagger!). A few articles on Miss Allen cited her as a pseudo chav. Well, actually, they didn't cite her as a pseudo chav, they called her out as an "overrated queen of chav". I dig this phrase.

Good terms like this equal good times.

So now I'm off to troll Robson Street to see if I can "accidentally" bump into some track-suited hipster and banish him or her an "overrated chav".

More fun terms: chav, scally, townie, ned, kev, yarco, dobber, mallie, meader

Sissie sun on my back

I'm posting from the middle of Union Square in San Francisco. The sun's warming my back; the slightest breeze is keeping me from overheating. Conditions are perfect. Everything is perfect.

But then perfection is a so easy to handle when its natural — so easy that it's hard to trust it.

Most of the time, I'm at work, walking the tight rope that is perfection and just getting it done. Trusting myself enough to sit here and soak up perfect conditions is making me light headed. I'm trying to ignore the niggling sense that I should leave it — and just find something and get it done.

But I've persevered, and won.

The co-worker I am travelling with had to leave this perfect condition to "get something done". I asked him what he had to do. And he said, "I dunno – something — I should get some shopping done."

I said fine. I'll meet you back at the hotel in an hour. I'm going to sit here for a while. Go have fun getting something done.

Spring in Toronto

Alas, this is true. On my way to work in the morning the melting snow revealed still-frozen little piles of dogshit. Lovely!

Spring "arrives" in two days: in Vancouver, the cherry (I almost wrote "cheery") blossoms are already in bloom. OK, in fairness, I brought my umbrella to work once in my first Toronto winter: for that reason alone (and because my full-length down and fur parka cost more than my first car) winter here didn't feel at all like a "normal" winter, ie. rain, rain, grey skies, rain. black skies, rain.

Instead, I got sunny crisp mornings, and sparkly evenings when you couldn't actually see the snow, but the air was full of invisible, iridescent sparkles. One evening after a movie (the excellent Notes on A Scandal ) the Ninja and I both noticed Central Canadian snowflakes for the first time (he's from the East Coast, I the West): perfect, flat, sharp-edged and laughably complex little constructions, again iridescent, sometimes landing singularly, sometimes landing x-ed with a fellow snowflake, like happily copulating little snowflakes, always perfect, always sharp, unmelting, decorative in one's parka's fur.

OK. I guess winter here isn't terrible.

Work wives

Today at work, I had ramen at Kintaro with a new co-worker who shares a similar lifestyle ... and love of bouncy castles.

Amidst slurps of flavourful noodles and juicy smacks of scintilating vegetables done to al dante perfection, he spoke of his former "work wife".

"Work wife!" I exclaimed, honing in on a new GBS phrase,"Tell me what you mean by this."

"You know," he casually gestured, "the person you share stuff with at work – the stuff that's outside of work."

I really love the phrase "work wife" because it befits the bond. You definitely have familial bonds with certain co-workers that lack a proper definition — one that enriches your life, but doesn't transgress. Plus the term is so nouveau '50s...so innocent, yet so Norman Rockwell racy.

Let me define it agan... At work, you have people with whom you are close. With whom you share an emotional bond that transcends the 9-5 boundaries, but never leaves it. This is your "work husband" or "work wife". So work with me: embrace the term and the bond, but not the person.

I think I'm going to make this man my "work husband".

It lifts me up. I need work love...friends, faux husbands, bosses. It makes this capitalist world a more loving place.

p.s. Kintaro has the most amazing ramen in Vancouver. They massage the noodles, and this is good. The noodles are tender, flavourful, and full of love.

p.s.s. The work husband just sent me this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_wife

Budgeting Tips for Cash-Strapped Bitches

Faux-Fendi feeling a little light of late?
Forced to choose between creature comforts and luscious libations?

Let the Ghetto Bitches share the wealth.

We give you the Gala Keg!



The equivalent of five and a third bottles of wine for around $30.

The easy-pour spout means less tipsy dripage.

The vacuum seal ensures freshness, meaning no more partial bottles languishing* to go stale and sour.

*can't say I've ever had this problem but some bitches do claim this is a concern.

And as if the above weren't reason enough to start rockin' the Gala Keg...I have one final feature to tempt you.




When you're done with the wine...
the bag doubles as a bath pillow!



Boop boop be doop, bitches.

Sex and vegetables...

...are two things my diet is missing.

Redrum

All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. All work and no play makes Violet a dull blogger. redrum.

Ghetto boy winter

Ah, if we're the ghetto bitches, then these two New Zeland boys are definitely our brothers. They're two hard core sissies, that's for sure. Words to our brothers.

(Who knew "Steve" from New Zeland originated Hip Hop in 2001? I sure didn't.)

urban Saturday morning

Catching a glimpse of a violinist tuning up in the lobby of the Orpheum,

thinking "...I love living in the city...",

I narrowly avoid stepping in someone's regreted Friday nite Fritz binge.




nice.

I love technology — the book

I wish my technology came with a "live" help desk.

Meh, for some reason the video isn't embedding properly. But it is available here.

Dining with orson

My friend Matt can eat a whole pineapple.

Go fly a kite

This morning an eight-year-old boy announced that we had "competing wishes".

"Competing wishes! What wishes are we competing for?" I asked.

"Well, you want a sunny and calm day so you can read outside."
"And I want a sunny and windy day so I can fly my kite..."

...From now on, I want all my challenges to be as simply delightful as this one.

Let's make love and listen to death from above

Brazil pays homage to Canuck hommes du rock discotheque. A charming homage indeed.

Shinier and happier than a Scientologist

Slap me silly. I'm having a joyous Saturday morning. The sun's streaming in the bank of skylights angled across my roof. And the squirrel perched on the sill is rhythmically cracking nuts in time with a tap-dancing crow (I'm not making this up).

I woke up Snow White fresh at 7 a.m., leapt off the right side of my bed (and almost dropped seven feet to the floor). Cranked pop music, threw a kerchief on my head, and danced my apartment clean. It's not even 10 a.m. yet, and I've done all my chores and slurped down a healthy fruit shake to boot...

What loco goddess bedazzled this morning with rhinestones?

Huh. Maybe I'm still in bed.

I want a Joy Collective

It's been a while since I posted. In fact, my digital diary has been running amuck in my head too long.

I want a Joy Collective within Violet's City of Memory.

I mean, when is the last time you felt real joy? I take a poll with people now and again. And I don't always hear that it was all that recently.
J-O-Y
Ya, No. Not the earnest crappy wank-fest forced-fun kind.
I'm talking about that joy that comes with feeling the wind in your hair riding bikes down back alleys of foreign streets, drinking from fresh water streams, snoozing in a mid-day hammock under a palapa by the beach, drinking vino with cool fucking friends in a late-night bistro.
We have these big long lives to sort it all out...stages and ages to make our way through, neuroses to climb out of, stands to sit in and watch from for a while. Fights to win. Battles to lose. But what about that which makes us giggle,frolick, wrestle, feel free and thankful and full - of snarky, silly, smart - stuff?
Sometimes it just takes too much energy. I know. But there are times when it feels in line.

I want to plug into the joy-channel for a while.

I give good story

I want a City of Memory in Vancouver.

Any smart Flash developers out there willing to collaborate with me?

Trust me, it's worth your while: I give really good story.

Vive l'art

I love you. and what's wrong with that. i'd like to know. 'cause here I go again.

I professionally framed my art! This must mean that I'm all grow'd up. Well, save for the fact that I don't own any new furniture or a car. And I live in a garage carriage house that doesn't have a bathroom sink. So, save for these minor GBS things, I have fucking awesome art on my wall. I'm all fucking grow'd up, dammit.

Whose art is on my walls, you wonder? My charming ex-roomates'. Back in the hazy days of glory that was the 69 Pender Art Gallery, they showed a series of screen prints that melded the spirit of the '68 student revolution with the vapid lyrics of the Wings song "Silly Love Songs", which was written in the same year.

A simple yet poignant statement, non?

Kudos to the sovereign nation of Cameroon

Violet and I were, not two weeks ago, bemoaning our pitiful lack of new music.*(please note post below: "In Which Mata Begs For New Running Tunes"). But now our troubles are over.

My cry was answered by Cam and although I was not sold on his running music suggestion (Sorry darling, I still need a litre of cold coffee, 2 Ibuprofen and shame-inducing-wailing-black-lady gay house to get my raggedy ass in gear), I was tickled to stumble over his treasure trove of music recommendations in Golden Ears.

My biggest and most heart-felt thank you goes out for introducing me to Miss Lily Allen. Hoorah! Who doesn't love cute British birds on scooters who curse in the Queen's english?

Thanks Cam, now I can host shame-free dinner parties again.

More fondue anyone?

Famous Puppet Death Scenes

For over 80 beautiful minutes I watched puppets die, over and over again. Die, die, die. It was great.

Some were funny — outrageously funny — and some were sad, a select few were poetically medatative, filled with sobriety, revierie, and gut-busting joy. This Montreal troupe knows how to give death a good time.

Here's the thing: even though I laughed myself blue through all 100 deaths, I was left with an overwhelming sense of melancholia.

Why?

Because I want to live in a city where culture is common, not avant garde. Like Montreal, where I believe artists and non-artists alike talk openly about culture.

Sure. There's arty stuff here a-plenty. But the general public doesn't seem very open to it. I dream of a day when throngs of people flood this city to get drunk on red wine and roam hooligan in the streets, talking openly about the psychological effects of 100 puppet deaths. But I don't think that will happen for some time.

Lateral thought: Would it be funny to see the Molson indie crowd discuss the art of mime?

Amazing, beautiful, and ugly

The best acceptance speech ever.

Bowl me over you bastard

I want all my pins rocked to the core. Spring fever is forming a ball of spit in the pit of my pituitary gland. And I want more, more, more — evermore.

My Favorite Christmas Gift by Mata Hari

My fella gave me a really fun new toy for Christmas. I got the Nike+ shoe fob/itunes integrater thingy that hooks up to your iPod and tracks your runs for you.

I'm sure there is a much more succinct description of it here. Let the marketing heavyweights behind Nike and Apple explain it to you. Read all about it and then meet me right back here, okay?



Pretty cool, huh? (althouth mine didn't come with those tits. hmph.)

I have just recently gotten back into running. It used to be a bit of a chore for me. Something to be done pretty well exclusively for weight loss with little or no redeeming qualities (other than,"It feels so good to stop!").

But in this latest foray into running, things have changed. Maybe it goes along with that whole turning thirty thing but now when I run I feel strong and as a result I feel smug. And I love feeling smug!

It's awful to admit but when I am running I feel better than other people. Feeling better than people really doesn't happen very often in my life so it is a lovely, novel thing to experience. My favorite is running past restaurants full of people stuffing themselves or blowing by people all bundled up, walking their yappy little colour co-ordinated dogs. I live in Yaletown so one of these two scenarios is happening nearly continuously during my runs.

Anyways, so now I have this new toy to play with which adds even more fun to my runs. It really appeals to the OCD/AR part of me. I can track my pace, distance, time etc. and upload each run on to the Nike website where I can see my run plotted out on a graph. Ooow!

Plus you can choose your "Power Song"; when you press the center button on your iPod during your run it will play your own personal "Eye of the Tiger" (mine is currently "Keep Hope Alive" by The Chrystal Method). Go ahead and laugh but I was a raver in my time and was always inordinately fond of anthems, so there:P

However, I am now on the look out for new tunes to add to my running playlist. What music do you workout to? What is your Power Song? Remember, confession is good for the soul.

All quiet on the new year front

Well. I did it. I spent New Year's Eve all by my self. Well, sort of by myself — me, a mutant kitty and a bottle of cheap Prosecco rang it in together.

2006 was a strange year, bland and yet strangely affirming. I'm sure that in the far off future I will fondly remember it as one one of those pivotal years that moved me to inner peace and joy and a new-found enjoyment for solitude. But at the moment, I think it's been a threshold year. Not quite what I want to be. Not quite where I want to be. But it's somewhere. And I've gotten to somewhere by crawling through the jungle of my mind and making camp in its middle.

So here I am — living comfortably in the middle of my mind. I guess 2007 will be about learning how to move out of it and into this here real world (oh the irony of stating this in an online blog and through a pseudonym).

Here is a list of accomplishments and occurances in 2006:

• I moved out of a place I've been living in since I was 18 (minus a couple of years in the middle)
• I finally travelled off this continent, rented a bungalow on the beach and read in a hammock
  
• I started a new job that I'm still not too sure about
• I staved off gripping panic attacks ... without drugs (it's all about the pinkie, thumb and good memories)
• My roomates of 7 and 14 years moved to Berlin
• I moved into my own place — no roomates
• I was single the entire year
• A lovely boy cooked me a gourmet dinner for the first time ever (2007 is about receiving flowers)
• I watched friends get married, and it was good
• I endured someone say things to his new love that he used to say to me — verbatim — and was able to continue loving my past... after a couple of weeks of hard work, wine and Lost episodes
• I deepened friendships
• I bought a pellet gun and shot decoy ducks off a houseboat motoring through the Shushwaps
  
• I danced like no one was watching... and didn't blush when I fell
• I was treated to expensive champagne, food flown in from Italy, and a flight over the Georgia Strait
• I had short hair
• I had blonde hair
• I started growing my hair long