not getting what you want

Up until fairly recently, I have been very good at getting accepted for things that I wanted. I applied for Girl Guide trips/task groups four years consecutively and was accepted to all of them. I applied for jobs and got interviews. I went to interviews and got jobs. It was always exciting to get that acceptance letter, email, or phone call, and I don't think that I felt entitled to the things I applied for but I definitely took my admittance for granted a lot of the time.

Fast forward through my wildly successful teen years to this October when I didn't get an interview for a leadership program. This was only a small blow because I secretly knew there was a spark missing in my application. The spark was missing because I was somewhat reserved about my excitement to be a part of the program. It must have come through in my application. Still, it stung, and after getting rejected, I met someone who had done the program before who raved about it, and felt a pang of belated loss.

I learned something from that experience, though. Namely, if you're going to take the time to write an application letter and shuffle together your resume and maybe even references, make sure you wholeheartedly, 100% care about the opportunity because insincere applications are transparent and a waste of everyone's time.

The next opportunity that came my way was something I was endlessly stoked about. I put all my energy into my application and then into my audition, which was just over a week ago. It was a poetry mentorship put on by a local arts centre. It felt super right for me at this time in my life. I'm ready to get serious about my poetry and working with a professional poet as a mentor felt like the perfect learning experience.

On Monday I found out I hadn't been selected for the mentorship.

I was a little disappointing upon reading the email, as is to be expected. However, it wasn't until I shared the news with others that the feeling of rejection really hit me. Telling people about getting rejected has to be one of the shittiest parts of rejection.

Strangely, even in the process of telling people, tears inexplicably streaming down my face, I started to get really excited. I don't mean for this blog to seem like a really cheesy story about how getting doors slammed in your face is actually hugely promising but, um, I kind of feel that way?

All I can say is that once I knew I wasn't part of the program, I started to think of all the other super cool things I could be a part of and it's pretty damn rousing. I'll let you know what plans I cook up.

new cups

Today marks three weeks since my mom dropped me off at my first day of school, leaving me in the parking lot alone to swim through the murky waters of public education. I guess I'm a college kid now. Go figure.

The strange thing is that moving away from home does not feel utterly groundbreaking or revolutionary. I am not really freer or liberated or any such thing that newly minted independent adults may say they feel. I have my own room and that's pretty cool but I honestly don't spend that much time here. Apart from the sleeping and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer in bed.

It's made me wonder all of the things that I was already wondering to a greater degree. Like, what is the point of life? I mean, that's a big question, and it's not like it really matters. Well, okay, saying it doesn't matter is, in itself, a pretty nihilistic take on things but whatever. I don't really subscribe to any sort of "greater, all powerful" entity, and the idea of there being an overarching point to the universe's existence doesn't really jive with me. I guess when I wonder if there's a point, what I'm really wondering is what is my point. What am I going to do. How should I focus and organize my life.

School is kind of depressing that way. Or maybe it's just the social sciences. Sociology and Women's Studies are continually pointing out all these institutions and how they're designed to oppress us and it's so bleak. Then there's the blatantly exploitative capitalist system that's so hard to not see once you have even the slightest grasp on how it operates.

When I started to write this, I typed the title in first, 'new cups.' I wanted to talk about getting accustomed to using a new set of mugs in my new house, picking out favourites and figuring out the merits and drawbacks of each. Yet here we are with existentialism. I can't escape it.

I'm still teasing it out, I suppose. Trying out all the mugs. Deciding which ones fit best in my hand. Testing the waters of different points to life, different ways of organizing living, and deciding which sits best with me. And maybe the point is that process of evaluating and reevaluating. Or maybe I'm nowhere close to it.

We'll have to wait and see.

fontal punishment

Sometimes I desert my blog for months and then when I go back to check on it everything is in COMIC SANS. -gasp- I know. The world is a scary place.

Needless to say, I have learned my lesson. So...

I'm back!!!!1!!!1! -jazz hands-

I just remembered the fact that, when I write blogs, I'm mainly just talking to myself and posting it on the internet and then when I find out that people have read it (usually in the form of me trying to tell someone something and them being like, "Yeah, Alex, I know. I read it on your blog") it makes me feel really weird and then I don't post anything for months. I think that's ironic but I STILL DON'T KNOW.

-sigh- I am a really weird blogger. And general human being person.

Today was also weird. I bought some pens and then I sat in a coffee shop for a couple hours thinking about what I'd be doing with my life in a year. And then for the rest of my life. Then I went to the library to look for books on human sexuality, which I intend to write a paper about! Yay college!

This is not interesting. Yet I know that someone will probably read it. Mostly because this blog is probably still Rachel's homepage. Unless she gave up on me. Wait, it's her homepage on her account on my computer, which I now have, eight hours away from her. Maybe no one will read this. -maniacal laughter-

How many years later...?... and I still have no idea how to blog...

...

...

#can't be tamed

A thank you poem (and a social skills rant)

I’m going to be honest with you

I don’t know what to write

a common plight

in my relatively English assignment free unschooled life.

I fight to figure out what to say,

five hours in advance of a shindig,

where I won’t wear a gown or walk across a stage in a funny hat as my name is read off a list,

because this is Nelson’s hippy school,

and that’s just not how we roll.

We roll in the direction of ‘artifacts’ rather than ‘assignments’

to a place where the answer to the question

“Is this mandatory?” will always be, “This is an invitation.”

It’s cool because I still get to tell people I’ve never gone to school,

at least not, “Real School,”

and bottle up those surprised looks,

the ones that say, “But you seemed so normal,”

so I can use them fuel my stilted forays into social environments.

I want you all to know that every time anyone has ever asked me one of the never ending variations on “Who did you have to assassinate to acquire social skills?” I have bitten back a retort.

“Social skills? What are social skills? Wait, I know this. Or maybe I used to because I crammed it into my head right before a test one night at 3am. Let’s see. Social skills. Is that when you are able to have functional interactions with other human beings and not make them feel really awkward for stereotyping you as a socially inept outcast due to your non-traditional education? I guess I learned it all from watching Seventh Heaven reruns every afternoon at 1. Still working out the kinks though. Please fill out this comment card with your constructive criticism or call one eight hundred-how’s-my-small-talk.”

But I don’t say that because sometime between the sleeping in and wearing my pajamas for days on end, I picked up what I like to call my social toolbox. And it’s not perfect, the lid doesn’t close all the way and the handle is rusty. But at least I learned to build relationships based on shared interest rather than mutual confinement. We can’t all say that.

So yeah, I had a friend once. It was kinda cool.

But back to my point. Matriculation.

I guess thank you is in order. See, I have enough social skills for that.

Thank

you.

I can’t find a way to express what I want to say that’s not a hopeless cliche

but one day,

I might have it down.

one day I might have a language to express all this misplaced gratitude but until then, I have this one simple word to lay in front of you, knowing full well it won’t be enough to measure up to all the cups of tea and hugs you proffered on those too often bad days. All the support and love, without which I would not have made it to this stage.

Thanks.

pop up books

You take me to the valley that you’ve told me I smell like

and I’ve never been here but with your hand in mine, I feel at home.

On the way, you narrate a physical history of you,

weaving a landscape of lazy river drifting and 35 kilometer per hour car crashes,

before my tired eyes, events come to life like some kind of pop up picture book,

the pages of which I sleepily turn while listening to my bedtime story.

And I would listen to all the pop up books you had to offer in the hopes

that I might uncover something about you that no other

person knows just to show you that I love you,

like no one ever has,

and no one ever will

again.

You may accuse me of paying the barest attention,

but my information retention is just fine.
I may look dazed but mostly

I’m stuck reveling in this backdrop,

how it’s brought new parts of you into focus,

like after it rains and everything is three shades brighter.

So I just grin and hold on tighter to your hand and this rare moment.

And it’s in these moments that I think that love was something invented

so that we could fall into it,

or over it, or onto it, somewhere near it, all I know is falling,

in the best way with your arms around me.

And maybe that’s selfish. But hell, I am a Bounty paper towel of self absorption,

I’m not afraid to admit it,

any more than I’m afraid to fall into this thing that was meant for us.

So if you want, I'll be your half sarcastic half enthusiastic co-pilot,

I’ll adventure with you until our aged bodies crumble,

and even a little after that.

educated virgin

This is a poem I wrote. Kinda self explanatory. I hope it makes you feel really awkward (like maybe how you feel reading poems I wrote about my ex-girlfriend) and that you regret creeping my blog and not leaving comments.

Kidding. I'm kidding. I hope it illuminates a part of my soul that you may be unfamiliar with and that it brings us closer in strange and beautiful ways.

*****

I’m not a whore,

I’m just an educated virgin,

carrying apple flavoured condoms around in my back pocket,

because you never really know.

you never really know.

and better safe than sorry, right?

Or safer because sex isn’t safe.

What’s safe about baring your whole body,

placing yourself delicately in another’s arms,

for them to break or bend.

tell me

what’s safe about sex?

I am a slut,

AND an educated virgin and you may think

that this is an oxymoron

but I can assure you with my voice,

the one that moans into my pillowcase at night,

that you would be far from accurate,

that my sluttiness exceeds the boundaries of any penis,

and I’d rather be defined by myself than someone’s dick.

I’m not a whore,

but if I was,

I still wouldn’t deserve your judgement.

No, I’m just an educated virgin,

opening my apple flavoured condoms in the park,

curious to know if they actually taste like apples,

or just vaguely sugary latex.

And I’m shoving protection back in my bag

when I realize that I’m sitting in a park,

licking a condom.

Really, Alex?

Really?

I’m just an educated virgin.

For now.

thank you

Considering the fact that I had multiple syringes stuck in my mouth about twelve hours ago, I've had a pretty excellent day. On the anniversary of having one wisdom tooth extracted in a hellish surgical experience we shan't speak of, I had another wisdom tooth pulled in a much less traumatizing fashion today. It only took two songs on my iPod.

When I got home, I proceeded to feel sorry for every person I had smiled at since leaving the dentist as I appraised my bloodstained mouth in the mirror. I asked my sister why no one had told me that I looked like a dopey cannibal and she responded by saying she couldn't look at me until I rinsed the blood out of my mouth.

Attractive.

I started to get feeling back in my lip while watching Gilmore Girls and eating apple sauce. Rachel was a lovely provider. I sat in the comfiest chair ever and got to relax and tumbl and feel better than I had in three days, reminiscing about a year ago today.

A year ago today feels like a lifetime behind me but I still remember coming home from the dentist after test driving the Westie we eventually bought, and lying on the bed that was mine for the last time in that moment, with a person I cared about more than anything. I remember being cranky because I hadn't got my pain medication fast enough and I remember asking her not to leave me. And she didn't.

I remember it so clearly. My sore jaw and swollen cheek. I remember picking up sushi and Starbucks. A smoothie for me--I had to eat it with a spoon. I remember warmth, despite the ice packs.

And even though those memories are buried in a past that's not all hand holding and half-numb smiles, I'm still grateful to have them.

bandages and maps

Your birthday is still my bank pin.

I know I should change it, I know.

But it’s not like it’s my main card,

just the one for family groceries and things.

Still, every time I’m at the checkout with my jug of milk or shampoo,

I get to celebrate the simple fact that you

are alive.

You see, I told myself I was going to stop writing poetry about you.

And I lied.

Because writing poems about you is as easy as putting too much sugar in my tea.

I know I should be weaning back on my dependency

but the sweetness is irresistibly

pulling and I’m tired of resisting.

I’m tired of telling myself to stop thinking about you.

It’s exhausting. Like falling asleep when you’re so tired you don’t remember how.

Logically, I know there was a time when your voice meant less to me and your name, said aloud, didn’t bring tension to my body like the cold days I’ve gotten all too used to.

But logic doesn’t sink through my skin as the feel of your sharp hips once did.

Sometimes, I sit on my floor like a philosopher, tracing the lines on my palm to see if I can figure out where it all went wrong. I think we spent so much energy trying to let each other go while clinging tighter, creating our own world in which we could be together. Lying through quick messages, spelled out through fingers didn’t believe us. But I wanted to.

I wanted to believe we could be friends, people who didn’t hurt each other by being themselves.

But If I wanted to take back all the pain I would have to unravel every second we spent together because like that knitted sweater I never made you, the imperfections are a part of the design,

helplessly intertwined with the wool and the warmth.

I cannot forget you.

So I have to believe that one day, we will be friends. One day we will be people who sit on lawn furniture and drink wine together and I know you probably don’t like wine and maybe you never will so I’ll let you drink Mountain Dew and I’ll even pretend I’m not judging you.

The bandages we wrapped around ourselves to hide the marks of each other will fall away to reveal maps that tell us who we are.

They’ll say that you

will always be a part of me.

But for now, I’ll change my bank pin.

spring appreciation post

It bothers me that though I can call images and sounds to mind, I can't recreate smells inside my head. If I could, I would backdrop my life with scents related to rain.

I. Freaking. Love. Rain.

I love days that can start with clouds, threaten rain, actually rain and then allow the sun a guest appearance before it sets. I love the anticipation of rain, the heavy air filled with moisture. I love the smells and colours that are recreated after a shower, like a layer of paint has been peeled off the world to reveal something brighter and more vibrant.

I love the breezes that make the hot sunshine bearable. I love feeling comfortable in a t-shirt and my Toms. I love the light that stays past 7:30. I love the baseball games that have started up at the diamond a block from my house. I love the sheer possibility of spring.

And maybe it's irrational. Maybe a girl who says things like, "Time is something we've created to make sense of our meaningless lives," shouldn't be saying what I'm about to, but hell. I can't help but feel as if spring loves me back.

things that I like

• Keyboards that have a distinct click and bounce like the ones in libraries and the one I'm typing on this very second.
• Mumford & Sons.
• When people start to talk about something they really care about and everything about their person becomes a storm of energy and passion.
• Drinking London Fogs on patios in the sunshine with people who stumble through sentences in the most endearing ways.
• Saying that I'm an anarchist.
• Mumford & Sons. 
• Painting my nails, even though I hate nail polish slowly peeling off.

On that note, I think I'm going to go paint my nails because I haven't in quite a while and I have the belief that we should all do nice things for ourselves when we're alone in other people's rooms, damn the consequences.

Okay, so I didn't mean it quite like that. But yeah. Be nice to yourself. You're awesome.

my life as an archivist's assistant

I'm finishing up my job in the near future. The title of Archival Assistant which I have so adored will belong to my past and some other girl for the summer. All of the negatives I, so lovingly, placed on the scanner will end up in the freezer, double zip lock bagged, with oven toasted mat board and a humidity tester to keep everything in check.

It's been fascinating getting to know the history of my new-ish community through donated photographs. I've also got to catalog a ton of really cool objects and artifacts. That cataloging may have taken place in a freezing building during mornings that lasted ice ages, but it was still pretty sweet. And then there are the expected coffee runs that come with being an assistant. I loved it all.

And I'll miss it. Only a couple more days and I'll have logged my last hour at the museum. Hopefully my next job will be half as neat. But probably not.

more voting angst

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman (1869-1940)

I realize that I'm spending a lot of energy thinking about this whole voting thing and I can be spending that energy doing something more productive and stuff but I have three weeks to decide on this shit and it's important to me. I also realize that in the most likely scenario, I will end up casting a ballot. But why do I even feel that way? Am I so brainwashed that I will forego my ethics and be an active participant in the corrupt system?

I related it in this beautiful simile today. Okay, so it's not a great simile but it's helping me make sense of my situation here...

Voting for an elected official is like deciding who you want to punch you in the face. First, you have to decide who is least likely to lie about the fact that they're going to punch you in the face. You know that all of them probably will but some might have a lighter touch, so you have to consider that. Maybe they don't want to punch you in the face but at the end of the day, it will be their job. At the very least, they'll be standing a little off to the side, complicit in the fact that you're getting punched.

Then there's the guy in the corner with the green banner saying that they've never punched anyone in the face. But they also haven't had the chance to. And they probably won't get that chance.

Even people who wholeheartedly believe in democracy will tell you that politicians lie. Then the people who are critical of the current electoral system will tell you that the first past the post system does not create representative governments. And so we have to cast a ballot choosing between evil things so we can get someone to maybe not punch us in the face.

Great. Yeah. Sign me up.

If I check off someone's name and drop it in that box, isn't that me buying into the system? Isn't that me giving consent for someone to punch me in the face, even though I had the chance to pick who? Doesn't that make me a complicit member of the corruption that goes on every election and in the space between them?

Will someone please help me? I'm drowning in the gray area of my moral compass.

juxtaposition, or, I use big words because I can

I don't really want to write a blog today. I've written blogs for twenty of the last twenty one days and I'm kind of really tired. I say kind of a lot. Okay, so I've had more than my usual amount of wine tonight and it's made me very sleepy. Also tipsy. Mostly sleepy.

Now I'm watching Star Trek. Sort of. It's on in the background.

So you might have realized this is one of those filler blogs. I'm just going to talk about my day until I get too sleepy to do even that. Feel free to go back to tumbling or whatever. I won't be hurt.

I had a really awesome day. I dyed Rachel's hair and ate a delicious egg sandwich and called three churches. And it's weird because yesterday was mildly shitty. But today has been awesome in an unadulterated fashion. The juxtaposition of shitty and awesome is pretty remarkable in my life.

Now I have to go because I'm being kicked out of the living room. Okay bye.

If you let me

If you let me,

I’ll describe the sounds that my body makes as I sit here waiting, turning my head every time I hear what could possibly be the door open, closing my eyes to hold onto the suspense, refusing to open Shroedinger’s box until I absolutely have to, this cat is both dead AND alive.

I don’t want to be nervous.

I want to be the uncracked mystery you’ve come to expect, want my limbs to secrete ease into this tiny room without trying. But the truth is I’ve been tying up the strings between us, so they won’t come undone, hoping you don’t notice that the way I lean against this wall is rehearsed, like my every heartbeat isn’t.

I’m not feigning to be someone that I'm not, no. I’m just trying to rearrange the pieces of myself into a shape that might be pleasing to your eyes, a three dimensional illusion and a solution to the puzzle at the same time. Just as I uncover these words and deliver them in a way that might be aesthetic to your ears.

I’m looking to leave an impression, like the valleys my guitar strings have carved onto my fingertips, staying long after the song is over. An impression.

Like that lasting expression on your face that says I like what I perceive and I want to know more.

More. Because I would let you put together this jigsaw puzzle if you desired, would even whisper hints against your neck, until you conspired to fit it all together, no matter what.

I’m waiting. But there’s no picture on the box to aid in your quest, nothing but me asking you not to rest until you fit it all together. But please don’t count the missing pieces, let’s fill them up together, whether or not we know how. Let’s pretend that we do and fill them up with the sound of our voices mingling in a conversation that bounds and bounces through the uncertainty in your eyes and the hope in mine, we will redefine

awkward silences.

And if, instead, my presence fills up the space in your mouth with nonsense words, if your mind becomes a wasteland of stutters, I will hang around until I can comprehend what you mean when you don’t utter a single word.

I will set up camp under your lips and catch the first word that falls, just as you have caught this poem.

If you let me.

hi again

I forgot to blog yesterday. And to the four of you that stopped by to visit, I apologize. I don't remember putting it off or procrastinating. It completely slipped my mind until 8 o'clock this morning, when I woke up and it hit me.

I had a dream the other night that all my guitar strings broke. It only just occurred to me that this could be somehow related to Paper Towns in my subconscious. And yes, my play got cancelled yesterday which was more than disappointing but I have plenty of strings left to play out.

Like the guitar strings I've been strumming to the sound of Rachel's ukulele playing, watching day by day as my fingertips roughen from contact with the unforgiving steel. But our voices blend together and soften every inch of my skin and the toughness of those calluses is so satisfying anyway. Look, here is proof that my body is changing for my art, that I am learning and evolving and even my skins cells are responding.

Goodnight, internet :)

to vote or not to vote

To a certain extent, I feel like I have been brainwashed to vote. How could I avoid the rhetoric? The constant refrain that all we need to do is get the youth voter turnout up. Then change will happen. Then... what? We'll revel in the socially liberalism that so many of us dream of and the older fogey conservatives can suck it?

Does anyone think it's really that simple?

It's not. The system is broken and corrupt and choosing between the lesser of two evils seems like a shitty way to make change happen. Maybe my ideals are radical but I just don't feel like the ripples from the pebbles I've been throwing are good enough. Things are pretty bad. We need people to start moving boulders and stop putting eggs into the baskets of people who lie for a living.

Then again, I don't really know what I'm talking about. But neither do they.

excessive John Green fangirling

I feel like a huge theme of my life is that I love to love things. I even love loving loving things. This is reminding me of John Green quoating James Joyce, "Love loves to love love."

Yeah, I just quoted Ulysses through John Green. Bam.

Which segues into my topic today, or lack of topic other than more gushing about things that I love (i.e. John Green). I really enjoy talking about John Green books. It is one of the main things that makes me really happy and engaged and excited about life. Due to this, and the awesomeness of collaboration, I am really stoked to be making a The Fault in Our Stars short film, including the first scene of the book.

Can we just freak out about that for a minute?

I've cast Augustus, Isaac, possibly Patrick and Monica. I'm [probably] going to play Hazel. I've only just started but things are starting to roll and, provided I can find an appropriate church basement, this is really happening!

I am going to create John Green fan art and it is going to be legit and made of awesome and yay life!

Extremely Loud and this book is going to make me cry

I love reading books. Books are a magical way into imagining each other and I am grateful for all the talented writers that give me peeks into what it's like to be another person, even if I'll never really know.

I'm currently reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer. Seventy three pages in and this book has already broken my heart and then failed at an attempt to make it whole again.

But I knew what I was getting into. Everything is Illuminated, also by Foer, was the same. Beautifully devastating. I'm going to go back to reading but please enjoy a brief snippet:

"We need much bigger pockets, I thought as I lay in bed, counting off the seven minutes that it takes a normal person to fall asleep. We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families, and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe. Eight minutes thirty two seconds. But I knew that there couldn't be pockets that enormous. In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, that night, like the turtle that everything else in the universe was on top of."

 

please and thank you

The goosebumps you bring to my arms,
with your lips on my wrist,
bring the kind of thoughts that can only be expressed,
with the quickest of exhales.
An exhale in the elegant language of skin, 
about my body so desperate for your touch
I am pouring myself into your hands.
And I never said I wasn't selfish.
In fact, if I look back at all the times I asked for more 
so I could get what I needed, 
all I've ever implied 
is that I'm not afraid to speak my mind, 
to ask for what I want to be mine 
and receive it.
So let me put this into practice, let me.
Let me ask you in the simplest terms, 
with the most complex definitions
to put your hands against my rib cage
and pull me closer into you.
Blur the lines.
Turn out the lights.
Your fingers whisper what is true.

the antidote

I always blamed my bi-annual identity crises on being a middle child but if I'm being honest, I know that wasn't it. Because if you ask me who I am, the first thing I will tell you is my name and the second thing I will say is that I have three sisters.

I have three sisters. And yes, I am a middle child. But I have a feeling that even if I didn't have sisters, I would still have all those issues with my identity. What I wouldn't have is three people who make me feel more like me than anyone else.

Is it weird that I feel like I am more myself around these three weirdos who look nothing like me than when I am alone? I had a friend over today and it's not like I wasn't me when it was just the two of us but it's almost like I was more comfortable in my own skin once I was home with my flesh and blood, a cup of tea in my hand. I feel like you can get to know me better when I'm around them and maybe this isn't entirely true, but it feels like it.

They give me permission to be myself without my having to ask and I am eternally grateful. My sisters and the order of our births are not the source of my perennial identity crisis. They are the antidote.