dear natasha,

i read your poem 'monarch butterflies use the earth's magnetic field' and i just want you to know

it's a great poem and all but what do you mean the magnetic field is preparing to flip

what exactly does that mean

is this like a real thing or a thing you made up

because i don't have a back-up system

how will i get home

it is 4am and i am really worried about this

i could look it up on the internet but i'd rather have you explain it to me

please write back soon

your friend

emily


ps natasha

it's 4am and i'm reading your poetry on the internet

sometimes the world is wonderful

sometimes when i have anxiety

domenica,

sometimes when i have anxiety i check your blog to see if you've written anything new. sometimes i don't even read it, sometimes i just skim, like, it's a comfort to just know that you're out there, thinking of things. i think of this now, at 1 in the morning, skimming.

i'm worried that i'm doing it all wrong. 'it' being life.

i know there's no wrong way, but i'm scared anyway. like what if it's just like before. 'it' being this year. there are histories about me that you don't know, intricacies, and stories so delicate i become angry at them. i can't stop thinking about her. from before i met you. all the things i did so wrong i'm scared i'll do again. it has nothing to do with you at all, but it just seems like you're here right now, so i'm mentioning it. briefly, this feeling.

it seems like you're here right now, close, where i can trace your own delicately outlined histories when i get scared, slide inside your skin,

so i let you slide into mine:

it's just that fear doesn't only come at night anymore. it's there in the morning, too. domenica, my eyes are burning from the screen. i'm scared to go to sleep. i'm scared of the light i'll see when i wake up.

mouth sound

to say this word out loud

say this out loud

as i always am when i come here

i am confused

am i good or no good?

good/not good?

is this an act or is this

real life?

i feel

so much

anxiety

it

makes

me

want

to

.

one who does these things

one who does opposite things

i cannot compare myself to

one who speaks out loud

their own words

moving week

today: work, pack, make pizza for dad's bday dinner

tomorrow: work, move into new apartment

monday: find a grocery store that's open, unpack

tuesday: school, get internet set up, don't panic

wednesday: work, school

thursday: school, work

friday: NOTHING! YAY!

satuday: workworkworkworkwork

WHY IS EVERYTHING SO WEIRD .COM

OH MY GOD

WHY ARE YOU WEARING THOSE PANTS

landmarks:

+ october 23, 2009 - dying/saved. i have changed/not changed.

+ birthday approaching - don't want to talk about it. currently compiling a list of things i want/need/intend to solicit people for.

+ one year at ae - help, i have feelings. want this sweater asap. i have so many feelings about my job.

currently:

+ wish everyone would read laneia's blog.

+ there are many things that i would like to say to you, but i don't know how.

+ definitely going to need more ice cream.

three wishes:

+ someone to come grocery shopping with me

+ stop imagining people into people i wish they were, instead of the people they are.

+ no one can leave before i'm ready

(but they already have)

this is how the days of the week work

if i make it to monday,

i might make it to tuesday,

and then i will park myself firmly

in the middle of the week

and hopefully one day

i will get to thursday

where i will be one day closer

to the weekend.

if i make it to monday,

that will mean that i have

spent some money,

read some sentences in a book,

laid in my bed,

eaten some pasta

and maybe a bagel,

probably showered twice.

if i make it to monday

without being an asshole,

crying over little things,

spending too much time on the internet,

ignoring phone calls,

or listening to sad music

it will be

a miracle.

if i make it to monday,

someone will listen to me talk

it will feel like a million tiny hands

massaging my brain

it will feel like punching a wall

i will call it a successful social interaction

i will navigate my way

to tuesday.

This Train Is A Long Goodbye

Have you ever been on a train and dreamed about being on a train? Well, I have. I woke up at 4 this morning to catch a train that would take me to a place where I could get on another train. I fall asleep on the second train, and that's where I have my dream.

I was asleep on the train and then I woke up. Someone I knew was sitting next to me. She wanted me to read to her aloud. She couldn't read the word 'schedule'. I tried to read aloud but every time I did a few words would come out and then my mouth would hang open and I wouldn't be able to close it. I could only make sounds in the back of my throat. I knew that I was capable of reading aloud, only my mouth wouldn't move. I fell back asleep.

When I woke up there were a few little girls boarding the train. They must've been 9 or 10 years old. One of them sat next to me. I dozed off. I woke up and one of their friends was getting on at a new stop. She had a striped blue and white shirt. My clothes were all out of my bag. How did that happen? The girls seemed to be running away from something. They huddled together and spoke to each other as if they had a plan. I started picking my clothes up off the floor and putting them back in my bag. I had to reach over the girl next to me. Sorry, I said. I went back to sleep.

I wake up in real life with a little bit of drool on the side of my mouth and a slight fear that if I try to speak my mouth will hang open and never close again. There is a person beside me in a striped shirt. It has only been an hour and a half since I fell asleep. I'm supposed to be asleep for the next 10 hours.

Have you ever said goodbye to someone at a train station? Have you ever sat in your seat and looked out the window and the person you care about is standing there waiting for the train to leave? I have, and all I want to do is jump out the window and leave the train behind. But the train starts to move and my girl starts to cry. I want to ask someone when I will see her next but I'm afraid to know. I lay down across two seats and let small tears crawl down my cheek. Hey, how're you doing… the ticketman comes to collect my ticket. His voice trails off as he sees me crying and he avoids eye contact. I fumble with my ticket. Sorry, I say. He says nothing. I go to sleep. I want to sleep until the boa constrictor in my chest unravels and slinks away.

When I wake up again on the second train the person in a striped shirt is gone. I am unsure if they were ever there or if it was something I dreamed into life. There is no evidence of their being there. I want to go back to sleep but instead I write. The shake shake of the train makes me feel like vomiting when I stare at my screen. I write until I feel fully nauseous. I want to be asleep. I write 'I want to be asleep'.

I want to be asleep.

I have a brown paper bag full of snacks for the train, but I'm not hungry. I pick at the food on top; chips, some candy, and a peanut butter bar. It is only till much later that I check the bottom of the bag for more food. There's a napkin underneath with words written on it and I feel my throat close up and my eyes burn again. There is a flood behind my eyelids and if I keep them closed it will not leak out. To anybody else, I suppose, the napkin is just a napkin. But to me it's a little bit of home, or a little bit of a place where there's warmth and comfort. It's a part of a safety blanket. I keep it at the bottom of the bag.

The train is very cold. I wear your shirt and your sweater and your hat. I want to feel like I am wearing you, but it just feels like I am wearing your sweater.

++

In relation to the earth and the universe, we are just two tiny blips on a very big map. There are many people who have lived before us, and many who will live after. There are many people in our time who we will never meet, who will never know us separately or together, will never be touched or changed by us, will never know our names. We will likely be lost in the history books, but we have found each other. We exist to love and to be loved, to know that our own stories are enough.

and I found stories from June 2009 that I'll never publish

Yesterday was a bit of an unusual day. You may have noticed there was no music monday (perhaps you didn't). That was because I turned off my computer and didn't turn it on again until around 2am Tuesday morning.

See, yesterday after I ate breakfast at noon, an unexpected thought fluttered through my head: what if I don't use the internet or my computer for the rest of the day? So that's what I did. The idea to do it came before the reasons occurred to me. There are 1 and 1/2 reasons.

1: Every once in a while I have a strange desire to pack up and disconnect myself from the rest of the world. You know, like Chris McCandless. I feel like too many things control me, and many of them stem from my computer or the internet. I want to stop caring about twitter and email and what happens next on whatever TV show I'm watching. So I turned off my computer.

1.5: I'm tired of being disappointed when I wake up. I don't know where the disappointment comes from because I have low expectations (or do I?) for almost everything, but there it is in the morning. So, again, instead of checking autostraddle every 10 minutes or playing bubbleshooter and not being able to stop, instead of sitting hunchbacked over my desk musing over how huge the internet world is and how I can access so much of it from inside my room, I closed my computer and went out into the real world.

Just kidding. I didn't go outside. But I did really turn off my internet.

Fourteen hours without a computer is not really that long. Every time I go to New York or Philadelphia I have no internet for about that amount of time. Granted, I do have movies if I want, but mostly I count on sleeping for over half my trip.

Before I had a laptop I was still using the giant desktop in my basement, which one day, decided it would just turn off whenever it felt like it. As you can imagine, this was highly inconvenient. One second I'd be chatting on MSN writing a paper, and the next thing you know I'd be staring at a blank screen. It turns out the fan was broken, so the computer would heat up and not cool down and then it would turn itself off so as not to explode. That took a while to fix. My dad said I could use his laptop from 1995 but I would've rather smashed my head in with a brick, so I did my homework instead.

In any case, I figured I could handle a day without my computer, and it would be a good character builder or something.

The first thing I did was clean my desk. It took me a while. I found lots of old school shit, scrap papers, important documents, and old birthday cards that still had money in them. That was the most exciting part. I made $140 for cleaning my desk! The universe is trying to tell me something maybe.

I didn't have my itunes to listen to so I had to listen to CDs the way they were meant to be listened to. I listened to Around the Well by Iron & Wine, Asleep at Heaven's Gate by Rogue Wave, So Jealous by Tegan and Sara, and You Can Play These Songs With Chords by Death Cab for Cutie.

Then I started an art project that I can't tell you about because it's a secret. But it took me a long time. Luckily I had all this space on my desk to actually make "art".

I finished reading 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'. It was good! I haven't completely processed my feelings about it yet though. I think it might actually be one that I won't read again unless it's to quote something.

I talked to 3 people I hadn't talked to in a really long time. Tania came over and we played video games in our sweatpants and that was nice.

Sometimes I really wanted to play bubbleshooter but mostly I didn't miss my computer. I didn't have any emails to read and I sifted through tweets but none of them were at me so all in all I don't think my presence on the internet was noticed or missed. That's okay! It made me feel good actually. Like there's no reason for me to sit in front of gmail all day.

On that note, I'm going to go use the HMV gift card I found while cleaning my desk and then I'm going to do something that doesn't involve staring at a 13" screen.

Auto-Whhaat?! The Revolution is Here!

Hi! I'm back from New York! Do you guys like Tegan and Sara? Good! Listen to this while I write about this, the most amazing thing to happen to planet earth and the universe and the stars. Here's a picture:


Maybe some of you don't know this but I'm interning for Autostraddle and we had a big party this weekend with a mechanical bull. For serious. Anyways, more about that will come when I recover. Goodnight! I love you!

Just Another Manic Monday

Er, so yeah, school has started again. I have to say I was dreading it in ways I can't explain, it was sort of like anticipating a snow storm, I wanted it to come and just get it over with. However, the night before I discovered the class lists for all my classes and for some reason that made me excited like I was anticipating my 7th birthday. I still haven't seen everyone, although tomorrow's class is at 8 AM, I don't think anyone will want to see me at that hour. Waking up early is what's going to kill me, I don't know how people function before 10. Now there is approximately four months left of waking up early, and as part of my resolution to not fail I have already bought one of my textbooks. And I am going to read it, as confusing and vague as it seems (principles of math and logic? wtf?).

Anyways I have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed with my politics class, this guy talked for an hour and twenty minutes about going to university, the guy who owns the metro grocery store in pointe-claire, his friend the plumber, how he respects tradeworkers, university, success and failure, education, teachers forcing kids to read textbooks, university, various people he's met, his three degrees at three different schools, his family and grandchildren, university, etc. the list goes on forever however one thing I know is that he DID NOT TALK ABOUT POLITICS and it took him an hour before he handed out the course outline. Then he proceeded to tell us that our vocabulary is too small and he is going to help us prepare for university, thanks but I'D LIKE TO DISCUSS POLITICS, too bad he didn't mention it at all during his monologue.

En tout cas, it was only the first class so I'll give it a chance before I unleash my wrath and subject him to harsh judgement that may or may not be warranted because he did seem like a "nice" guy (nice in quotations because he did tell this kid to "shut your jab" multiple times) however annoying and seemingly self involved he appeared.

Also, this is random but completely relevant to the topic of school, I am totes lost without my french dictionary. Totes lost.

All my teachers took up full class time on the first day, this morning feels like it was ages ago, I want to go home and sleep. I didn't even bother "dressing up" today, I wore sweatpants, at least I'm comfortable. The good thing about Liberal Arts is that I don't really have to make first impressions on anybody, people figured out I was a loser in first semester now I don't have to go through that whole awkward "not knowing anybody" period.

I've lost my schedule twice already, though once I just thought I lost it and then remembered that I had left it in my locker, and then I really did lose it and now someone can totes stalk me for the rest of my life I mean semester.

------------

I want to read a good book. Like, I want to sink myself into another world that only exists in the author's and my mind, a book that is so fucking good that I have to read it at breakfast and in the car and during class breaks and on the way home and every moment possible that is not spent doing something that requires interaction with other people. I want to read a book that I think about when I'm not reading it, a book that makes me want to stay home in bed to read, read, read, and finish it as fast as possible so I can read it again. Now where is a life changing book like that? I haven't read such a good, utterly gripping book since The Da Vinci Code which I read in grade 8. IT'S BEEN FOUR YEARS SINCE I'VE READ A MINDBLOWING NOVEL, WHICH I CONSIDER SUCH A LONG PERIOD OF TIME THAT I HAVE TO WRITE IT IN CAPITALS. I'm sure there have been other books that have captivated me since then. Harry Potter, for one, I love that shit. Also, The Da Vinci Code, as it turns out, was ruined by the movie, it sucked. Dan Brown's writing is awesome but I'm totes over it, I don't think I'll read The Da Vinci Code again. Harry Potter is another story (no pun intended - lame), I plan to read those books for the rest of my life. However, aside from a very small list of books, I daresay I haven't been reading anything new for a while, I always keep re-reading the books I already have. I did read the first chapter of the second Twilight book, it was lame, not even worth mentioning which is why I will cease to write about it ever again*.

So yeah, I am in search of a good novel. Of course, I will be soon bombarded with schoolwork and won't have time to read anything except textbooks, but I'm still looking anyways.


Hi, Alessia.


*I don't really mean that, it's totes possible that someday in the future I may be called upon to write about the Twilight series, what I mean is that I don't want to write about it right now or ever be forced to read the books.

"This week or last week, I don't really care about it anymore.
I write myself this later, I tell myself you let me go.
Without me, oh, what's wrong with you?
Monday, Monday, Monday."
- Tegan and Sara "Monday Monday Monday"