After All My Plans, They Melt Into The Sand

[band of horses - older]

right now this is my favourite song off of band of horses' new album. the album is pretty good, except for one song where it sounds like they totally can't sing. also it doesn't have epic songs like 'the funeral' or 'the great salt lake' (well maybe 'neighbor' counts). regardless, it's still pretty solid and i can't stop listening to it. i would recommend checking out any of the 3 albums from them.

don't want to understand

why you never get older.

i miss you. i miss you in a magnetic way.

monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday. repeat. repeat. repeat.

bang bang bang.

i woke up yesterday on the couch. i cried. i drank half my tea. i biked with no purpose, no direction. just kidding i didn't bike anywhere.

i miss you. i miss you in a magnetic way. as i am typing this, as you are reading this, i miss you. like this. in this way.

++

i have to write a blog post. ok so these are possible blog posts i could make

a) pictures i took in august/winter/last week

b) a poem about food/crying in the kitchen/pictures

c) i could talk about how much i like laura and want her to come back to montreal rightnow

d) i could talk about how much i like laura and want her to come back to montreal rightnow without actually talking about laura or montreal

e) i could continue to make pointless lists

perhaps i will write a blog post about silly bands. yes i will do that. here we go.

++

have you heard of silly bandz? silly bandz are rubber band thingies that come in different shapes. they are bracelets. some of them glow in the dark. you buy a pack of themed silly bandz. for example, i have a pack of "vehicle" silly bandz. my pack includes firetrucks, police cars, airplanes, tanks, and helicopters. mine glow in the dark.

apparently kidz are going wild for silly bandz. i know i am. laura bought me my vehicle pack. she looked for them for 2 and a half weeks because they were sold out everywhere. then we traded. now i have a cowboy boot and a cactus (she had a western pack). i gave katie a tank and something else i can't remember. i don't want to speak for her but i'm going to go out on a limb and say that she loves them very much and can't stop talking about them.

i keep reading articles that say silly bandz are for children but that is just stupid. people of all ages and all 23904982343 genders can enjoy them. i can't find my vehicle pack on the silly bandz website. maybe that means they're rare or fake. i don't think you can buy silly bandz in canada yet but clearly i am about to start a trend with this blog post. maybe silly bandz ships to canada. maybe laura will buy me a pack (hint: zoo or fantasy) and mail them. i need someone in montreal to trade with me.

i hope i have educated you about something important today.

if i lived in an alternate universe where there were no consequences to pulling the fire alarm when there is no fire

things i have done today:

wake up

eat breakfast (bagel with cream cheese butter)

post something on tumblr

email laura

water dazzler

this is dazzler

things i need to do today:

bike to pharmaprix

shower

eat

email james

read some harry potter

go to work

eat

stop feeling sorry for myself

laura and i watched alias separately together last night because we are really dorky.

yesterday i was waiting in line at the student service center at concordia to hand in a piece of paper and i was standing next to a fire alarm. while looking at it i realized that if there was a fire i would have no idea how to pull the fire alarm. i couldn't see a pulley thing. it looked one block of red smoothness. then i wanted to touch it to see if i could find the handle. then i wanted to pull it to see if i could figure it out. even though i had this really weird desire to cause chaos this other rational part of my brain told me that pulling the fire alarm in order to determine if it actually worked was a really stupid idea. so i stood there staring at it instead.

evidence that you were here:

a train ticket stub

the scent of the pillow where your head once lay

my sudden urges to do the dishes

Time Together Is Just Never Quite Enough

[owl city - saltwater room]

I've Been Distracted

You're Beautiful, Why, Haven't You Heard?

[everlea - cigarettes]

I first discovered this band in the backseat of my hockey coach's car -- and before that starts to sound dirty I'll have you know his nephew is in the band and he was playing the cd for us. Back then they were Saucepan Heroes and their album Two Day Visit is still one I can't stop listening to. Now they're Everlea and they've only gotten better. I have no idea how you can buy any of their records except online maybe they're at HMV I should go check (I think there's something wrong with me where sometimes I just can't be bothered with punctuation?).

Um, anyways, I love this band. I want to kidnap Justin and steal his hair. Also listen to Night of the Creeps on their myspace it's really good.

Explosions in the Sky - Your Hand in Mine

she made stars out of her hands. i mean, she cut paper into little pieces and used her fingers to bend the paper into star shapes. i thought if i threw them at the sky they would float up there all on their own, but i wanted to keep them for myself. i know it's selfish, but given the chance, wouldn't anyone want to hold a piece of the sky in their hand? maybe the stars in the sky are really burning balls of paper, shared by people less selfish than me. maybe i just wanted to hold a piece of her in my hand.

paper star girl used to walk down the street a lot in the summer. she had jean shorts and converse (who doesn't?) and she jingled when she moved: it was bangles on her wrists and keys in her pocket (house keys, car keys, keys to closets, hearts, hidden places) and noises in her chest. she met people on the street and she liked to talk to them. she talked to the man with dreadlocks and a white t-shirt. she talked to the girl sitting behind a table selling hand made bracelets. paper star girl did not buy a bracelet but she gave the girl a cookie from her lunch (she had leftover pasta for lunch and two cookies). she talked to a boy with sandy brown hair and a pretty smile and he was nice to her. he had a blue t-shirt and she gave him a paper star.

all at once paper star girl gave everything away, yet maintained an air of mystery. it seemed to everyone who met her that there was something even better behind her smile, if only they could get to it. but they couldn't.

she turned dresses into skirts and she stitched holes together. i wanted to crawl into her bed, into pink and colours, and swamps and swallowed by blankets like oceans and silly putty. she was smarter than me, already i could tell by the way she moved her wrists and shoulders, the way she bounced on all the edges of her feet. i could tell by the way the ink came out of her pen when she carved letters onto paper: "i just want to reach over..."

the books i read made it sound easy, but my hands seemed to weigh more than all those pages i'd ever read put together. i couldn't lift a needle.

at night paper star girl spoke alone in her room.

i wanted paper star girl to make me stars out of paper. i wanted paper star girl to take care of me. i wanted paper star girl to stitch me together. i wanted paper star girl to wrap me up inside of her. i wanted to cry on paper star girl. was i afraid my tears would ruin paper star girl? see, did paper star girl make paper stars or was paper star girl herself a star made out of paper? and what if i ripped paper star girl, or if i cried and my tears touched her and she didn't rip but merely came apart in a mushy lump like kleenex under water?

i was paper and we set ourselves on fire and burned up on the way to the atmosphere, and fell right down again, and lay there in the gutter, ashy, burned up stars; me with my heavy hands, and the real paper star girl, with the jingles from her bracelets and keys and noises in her heart, with a love for people and cookies and making things with her hands. she had a knack for turning lives around.

Dear Diary, Summer's Almost Here

Dear diary,

Last night I went downtown to watch the Habs game and that was only slightly insane, with people climbing trees and streetlights and setting off firework/flare things. I had my last Liberal Arts class ever today. I feel like it's one of those things where I'll wake up in the middle of the night in July and start crying about it and then forget about it later. One more class and an exam and I'm done CEGEP forever unless I failed the english exit exam, which, I mean, like, probs not. I have a $4.50 library fee too. Somehow, in my own stupidity, I managed to forfeit a good 17-18% of my mark in one of my classes so instead of getting a high grade I'm getting a low grade, so that sucks. I'm torn between caring and not caring. Concordia won't accept my acceptance of their acceptance so as of right now I'm still not going to university in the fall but my high school finally called and they're going to mail my transcript to UBC but I doubt I'm going there anyway so that's that. Summer soccer has started so that means the imminent collapse of my lungs as I get back in shape after not moving for an entire year except to run to the bus stop. Oh, and I'm getting paid tomorrow too.

I can't wait till days don't exist anymore and everyday is Saturday. My summer schedule for work is available open - close every day except that one week in June where I go to New York and do this again.

That's all for now, diary,

xoxo,

Emily

Your Eyes Must Do Some Raining if You're Ever Gonna Grow

[bright eyes - bowl of oranges]

that's why i'm singing baby don't worry

'cause now i got your back

and every time you feel like crying

i will try and make you laugh

and if i can't, if it just hurts too bad

then we'll wait for it to pass

and i will keep you company

through those days so long and black.

A Non-Linear Approach to Learning, Or Something.

The last few posts of mine have been pretty depressing so I thought I'd shake it up a bit and post something that requires less from me and more from you. Also I forgot to write something for today.

I'm pulling a leaf out of autowin's book and posting links to stuff I'm "currently reading/doing/listening to/etc.

-----

+ Have you heard The National's new album High Violet? You can listen to the whole thing for free on NPR. My favourite track so far is Bloodbuzz Ohio. High Violet is released on May 11.

+ The other stuff I'm really listening to right now is from Jonsi, the lead singer of Sigur Ros. Listen to his whole album Go on his website. For free.

+ Holly Norris and Jes Sachse made their own "American Apparel" ads in response to the apparently "regular" people who model for AA.

+ A woman goes to an anti-racism workshop and discovers that we're all racist. For what it's worth, being "colour-blind" is not productive, nor is being afraid of offending someone because you mention something that's part of their culture. As someone in the comments said: "As a Canadian of Japanese ancestry, I have spent my entire adult life trying to allay the burden white people carry about their whiteness or my lack thereof. "No. I would prefer if you didn't promote me to comply with your stupid, misguided and racist employment equity program." Or of late: "No. I don't find Sumo suits racist, but I find your pandering to my sensitivities very offensive.""

+ Mother's Day when you're unmothered. Also read the Slate article it links to. DO IT.

+ So I saw Justin Bieber and Sean Kingston's new video for "Eenie Meenie" a song you've probs never heard and it is surprisingly catchy. The song. Not the video.

+ Riese team picked this on autostraddle, and I love it. A new poem from Eileen Myles called "Smile".

+ Also, obviously, you should be reading autostraddle. Specifically you should read: part one of a 3 part feminist roundtable discussion, and some phone versus the iPhone 4G: a srs analysis.

+ Have you checked out my tumblr?

There is Nothing As Lucky, As Easy, Or Free (blindsided)

vii.

I never really dreamed of heaven much, till we put him her in the ground.

viii.

At first it's easy to pretend it isn't there; that loneliness, that empty space somewhere in your life. First you pretend you're crying because you were the only kid in grade 3 who forgot to bring scissors and glue to school on arts and crafts day. You sit in an empty classroom with a teacher who had big, black curly hair. She loved The Beatles, just like your aunt, and she asks you if you need to see the counsellor, and in a moment of weakness you say yes. Then you get over it, and when it's time for your meeting you feel upset at being interrupted while you were cutting paper with your friends, colouring things, making fake houses. But you go anyway, and pretend you don't know what it's about. And you lie, because you want to go back to safety. You want to go back to denial.

It was easy to ignore life, actual physical life, breath, the act of breathing and moving and smelling, touching, thinking, feeling. It was only when I realized she was dead that I realized I was alive. Suddenly life -- the concept of being alive -- was different.

ix.

I never thought about it for years. It, I never thought about It. You know, that event. I didn't make the connection between the scissors and the glue, and the event I had truly forgotten at home.

My dad said it was okay to cry but I didn't because my cousins were nearby, and I didn't want to cry in front of them. I wanted to pretend like I didn't care, because maybe I didn't. Maybe it was easier that way. I wanted to go home and be alone in my room. I became used to that feeling.

Maybe we all did.

x.

There's nothing left but fuzzy memories and an excuse I keep and use when it's convenient. Instead of pretending that it didn't happen, I make it all that has ever happened to me. So when something hurts, when you hurt me, I pretend it's not you, it's not you, it was this thing that happened to me a hundred years ago. When I feel like you're leaving I pretend that it hurts because I was left so long ago and not because I simply just want you to stay.

xi.

At first I missed the body; then I missed the mind; then I missed the concept. I'm stuck on the idea that my childhood could have been different, that the rest of my life might have been different. Now there's one less thing to return home to. I can feel my memories of being a kid disintegrating; I mean really, sometimes I wonder if the first 13 years of my life were real, if I ever lived in a different house than I do now, was there always someone other than Tina around? Did I belong to a family of two at one point? I don't think so, no, it just wasn't real at all.

No, no, and life is just so fragile, and maybe we spend all our years trying to reach the point we reached when we came out of the womb, so delicate and malleable, but we can't go back, no, no we can't go back, we just go forward and hope we'll reach "second childhood and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything". Maybe we should take the broken pieces and turn it into something new, and we build our own events, because whether we have a purpose or not is irrelevant; we are just going, I mean, we are moving, and life will move you whether you are ready to move or not, so I mean, just don't sit there among the brokenness, take the pieces of your life and make a house or something, make a bicycle, make a friend, I don't know what, just fucking do it, go on, do it, go go go.

xii.

Move, like today never happened, today never happened before.

the trapeze act was wonderful but never meant to last (blindsided)

iv.

overstepping my boundaries for the first time. this is what happens when you write yourself into a corner and cover yourself with words that mash together into one incoherent mass of letters.

the morning was a love letter. the night is a taking back of sorts, a retraction and a removal of the early fog. perfection is so hard to retain. it's a standing at the top of a mountain; one step in every direction is down, and sometimes the fall is just free. is the point of it all to stand still? we will never get anywhere.

now every letter counts. every word counts more than the next, till the taste of your name is heavy on my tongue. so my speech is slurred, so i'm t-t-tired, so i can't spit it out. i lift books during the day like weights. i hope there's something in this universe waiting for me in the sky, 'cause i'm headed there, i'm headed there and i'd like to float around. i'd like to write your name between the clouds. this [blank] is such a mess.

v.

why'd you leave?

i miss you and i never had you. i get you mixed up with everyone i know. i see you everywhere, like you never left, but you just don't recognize me. would i want you if i had you?

i made a wish, threw my heavy heart to the bottom of the pool.

it always comes back to you. i saw a baby once, sitting on her mother's lap. she looked at me with blue eyes and smiled. her mother kissed her, the cheek. the baby was completely unaware. i wanted to cry for everything i had lost.

there's no way to get it back. the words i've said, those individual little letters that hardly mean anything at all, they've gotten away from me.

"those who've gotten away from me:

read this, and call.

those whom i've hurt:

i wanted everything, or not enough.

it was all my fault."

words don't call back and accept apologies. they lie there, on real pages or on virtual ones, existing. i caused them all.

the baby didn't know who she was. did she feel the kiss on her cheek? did she put her tiny finger to the spot, afterwards, to feel some remnants of love or the moisture of soft lips? in the worst way possible i wanted to steal her memory, but there is none of that.

vi.

mother, i'm terribly, terribly afraid of everything [she] loves. why is life so fragile?