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.

my current favourite teas

I was accused of having a tea addiction today, at which I take offense. First of all, addiction implies that it's an issue. Secondly, I can stop anytime I want.*

I am, however, inspired to quantify what is not an addiction in a list of my favourite teas at the present moment.

1. Lady Londonderry. This stuff smells like gummy bears. Enough has been said. First tasted when served by my lovely friend, Hannah.
2. Sweet Rose. It's like drinking delicious flower petals. *swoon* Brings back memories of cooking class, where I drink this stuff by the pitcher.
3. Egyptian Licorice. This tea is actually so sweet on it's own, it is mildly deceiving. I drank a lot of Egyptian Licorice tea at a grad retreat where I told a story about getting chased by a German Shepard. Good times.
4. Dream Tea. This blend is a mix of I don't even know what but it's all these things with dream enhancing properties and it's freaking trippy and awesome. I am not in any way addicted to this stuff.**
5. Black Dilmah Ceylon. No day is complete without an extremely hot cup of black tea with milk and a dash of sugar.

If you have any tea suggestions for me, I would love to hear them. Aside from that, happy tea drinking, and goodnight.

*Lies.

**More lies.

on writing & performing poetry

I don't know when it started.* Honestly, I used to think poetry was pretentious and complicated. It can definitely be the former. Also, the later. But I didn't see the good parts of pretentious and complicated, at that time, only the bad.

I think I was fifteen when I attended my first poetry slam. Maybe fourteen. In any case, it completely blew me away. I don't remember the poets. Except there was this one guy named Byron. I do remember walking away thinking that I wanted to do that, to be one of those poets.

And it took a few years. Three. But I eventually got up there and, in front of a microphone and a room of people, performed words that I had written. And won the slam, but that's beside the point ;)

I spoke my poems aloud to myself as I walked to the slam. My pace was quick so I could avoid the feeling of being about to collapse. Even at the slam, I couldn't pay attention to anyone else because my poems were just playing over and over in my head, the words taking over and forcing me into a trance of nervousness and excitement.

Performing is a rush. There's not a whole lot of ways to describe it but it's kind of like being mentally chased by a dog on your bicycle. Your heart races and your stomach clenches up and you feel like you might die while at the same time feeling like you've never been this alive.

I've gotten a tad bit addicted to the feeling. And I'm getting my next hit this Sunday. Here's to hoping I don't actually die.

*I also don't know how many blog posts I've started with the words, "I don't know," but I would wager that it's a few.

rooftops

I wrote this at some point over the summer as the start to a possible novel but it hasn't gone anywhere and I'm lazy and at a friend's house so enjoy today's blog and maybe someday it will be the first page of a novel that you'll read with a strange feeling of deja vu.

***

I’ll be the first to admit I was intoxicated. Somewhere between slightly and pretty intoxicated. The kind of drunk where it seems like a good idea to climb out of the window with your glass of stolen Jack and Coke. The kind where you decide to switch out the drink for a guitar so you can sing about heartbreak to the stars and the street cats. That kind.

It smelled like disinfectant in the house and I wanted out. In fact, if the roof had been high enough to kill me and not just leave me seriously injured, I might have wanted that kind of out, too. Alcohol is a depressant, they say. Like I needed any help with that.

Getting the guitar out of the window was kind of awkward. I am as graceful a drunk as any but the bulk of the guitar took some maneuvering. It caught a little on the windowsill and I lost my balance for a bit when I yanked and it gave way. The relief at not falling backwards off the roof surprised me. But I guess life wants to live.

I sat down on the sandpapery roofing and started trying to remember chords. My fingers fumbled to remember the right strings. Somehow, my muscle memory got me through. I strummed into the darkness.

My back against the house, my gaze to the universe, I had one of those fractured moments of clarity I only have after two shots of tequila and one and half girly vodka coolers. Like a light flicked on and off just as quickly, I had lost it but the innuendo of epiphany lasted, like my eyes were stained by the light.

I heard a window open and thought of my dad but then remembered I hadn’t shut my window. There was a boy sticking his head out a window to my right and I stopped playing, the last chord I strummed ringing out.

“Hey, just a friendly reminder that you live in a fucking townhouse complex and it is past midnight. Good day to you.” He didn’t sound angry exactly but the inflection could have been lost on me. He shut the window again and I began to convince myself I’d imagined the event.

I’m still not sure.

right now

I wrote a couple days ago about the future and at the time it seems so relevant but today, more relevant than anything is right now. Not five months from now. Today.

I'm turning nineteen a month from now. There are a lot of firsts in my immediate future. My first government election. First tax return*. First legal drink. Those are legit adult things, guys. *gasp* Am I becoming an adult?

Maybe so. Or maybe I'll be stuck in this in-between state for the foreseeable future. But I like this in-between. I'm doing a ridiculous amount of really awesome things right now. Like making a radio show and planning a trip to the Great Bear Rainforest which may or may not happen. Writing and performing poetry and walking in the rain.

This blog doesn't have much of a point except to say that I'm very stoked to be alive at this particular junction in my life. I'm happy. I hope you are too.

*yes, I could have done this in the two previous years I've had a job but it wasn't mandatory and I didn't.