Some Pictures From Last Summer

Sometimes I'm a little slow to develop pictures. This time I'm pretty much 9 month late. Here are some pictures of trees and shit from last summer. They were all taken with my lomography camera.

these are trees and sky that looks like paper

this is what my backyard used to look like:

these are some buildings in new york city

this is laura on the swings

this is me at the park when i was 5

"The Year In Review": A Few Things I Remember

1. [f a l l i n g in and out and in and o u t of love]

With everything, and everyone, constantly. I just can't do the highs and lows. Well, sometimes I don't understand me and sometimes I don't understand you. I don't know you or me. I don't understand the happiness or lightness of love; I don't understand the sadness and excessive weight of love. I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

2. ["Christmas is S O D U M B."]

I am Scrooge/The Grinch. Whatever. Christmas is stupid. I'm only partially sorry if that offends you. What is Christmas about anyway? Is it the birth of Jesus? I honestly don't even know. I don't even really care. All I want for Christmas, really, is some new socks. Because the majority of my socks have holes in them. I am happy that I am escaping this Christmas obsessed world and going to a tiny bubble in the middle of nowhere with people who also don't care about Christmas.

(Alright, so Christmas hasn't happened yet, but today on the metro I saw a man with a Christmas tree and I thought "oh yeah, I guess it's about that time to throw out Christmas trees" and then I realized that December 25th hasn't actually happened yet. That's how much I care about Christmas.)

3. [g r a dua t ing]

I did it.

4. [s u m m e r in America]

It was hot. There were fireworks and a parade and everyone I love in Riese's living room. I feel sad and nostalgic because it will probably never happen again, I mean, not like that. You and I are not the same people anymore. But we are still beautiful.

5. [moving i n and o u t and in and out of h o m e]

Frequently I ask myself "why do I live here" and fail to produce a decent answer. Then one night I slept in my old bedroom and felt annoyed at all the space. My room was too big. It doesn't matter. Nothing is ever clean in my apartment. But my small room feels at least a little more like home. It's warm and the bed is comfortable. It's safe.

I still feel like I don't know where I live, or where home is. I guess that's normal.

6. [the year in r e v i e w]

I remember parts of the year. I remember February, vividly. I remember March and feeling high and happy and perfect. Things made sense in March. I think I went on a camping trip in April. I remember my legs sticking to the seat of the bus in May. June and July are stuck together in a gooey mess of sweat and kisses and tears. August is one long train ride to nowhere. September - November is 10,000 feelings I'd like to erase. I am drained and pulled apart.

I am tired and I'd like to stop counting. I'd like to stop counting backwards and forwards. Sometimes all I know is that I'm a mirror of other people's feelings and opinions, a composition of people who came before me. Sometimes I'm amazed at the love I feel, and the strangeness of how I can love people I don't know, so much so that I turn the people I claim to love into strangers. Sometimes I'm surprised at how angry I am, when I don't know where that anger comes from. But mostly I'm surprised/unsurprised at the way the world heals itself, and how when everything feels upside down, the world will turn you over again.

"I love the number of people

you can love at the same time,

one deep, erotic love,

radiating even to strangers,

cynics, making a temporary sense

of the senseless, choreful day."

- Stephen Dunn "Loves"

Is this year over yet.

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.

I Made This For You

In order to relieve the boredom of Summer Two-Thousand-and-Ten I decided last Sunday to make a quilt that's not even really a quilt but actually just pieces of cloth sewn on to each other. To make this the longest project ever I didn't use a sewing machine and I decided to make a video of it. Lucky you! This video took up about 25 GB of harddrive and a billion hours to edit. Which is good I guess, since the point was to entertain myself for a long time and it worked. One of the downfalls of the video though is that it's really boring to watch someone sew things, even for like, 4 minutes. Remember last year when I made a video for no reason? This is kind of like that, except my hair is not as terrible/AWESOME.

Anyways, here's the finished product:

Before we talk about it, here's the video:

how to spend a sunday from Emily Choo on Vimeo.

Everything is made up of old clothes, thread, and a shoelace. And also a hat and cotton balls.

It took me 7 hours to sew that shit because I put individual windows on the blue and purple buildings. I wanted them to look like buildings but they kind of just look like blue and purple rectangles. The white thing with stripes is also a building that I couldn't be bothered to put windows on.

The yellow thing is not, in fact, a giant spider in the sky, but the sun! The green thing is not a volcano, but a tree! The black blob is not a poodle, it's a cat! The red thing is a sidewalk.

In 10 years when I'm really famous people will want to pay me for this decorated piece of cloth. Keep that in mind. That's about it.

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.

Philadelphia Smells Bad, But I Like You

My room is the same as when I left it, just cleaner. The walls are still blue. The calendar is still on June. It's like time stopped when I left, and now it starts again the moment I walk in. Now my bed is unmade as I lie in it. My desk is messy and my bag is half unpacked on the floor.

Feels like home, I guess.

But my clothes still smell like you, and my bed is too small and empty. The mirror in the bathroom is too big. The floor is cold, and my heart hurts.

Who is going to light sparklers with me and listen to Death Cab for Cutie?

sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're bust

"i'm interested in applying for the job," i said, motioning to the sign outside the restaurant that said they were hiring.

"do you have your cv?"

i gave it to him. he looked at it.

"you have no experience."

"i know, but i'm a fast learner."

he wrote 'no experience' at the top of my resume.

"we're looking for someone with experience, but we'll see if something comes up."

when do you think is a good time to go back and convince him to give me something to do, give me some money? tuesday, or wednesday? or thursday?

okay, so maybe i didn't even know what the restaurant was called, maybe i had to look it up, but who cares, i am smarter than most people and this man should pay me to take people's orders. maybe this is a dumb summer job in between american eagle and getting paid to write this shit, but who cares, the future is bright.

in 5 years i want to make you wish you knew me right now.

Boy Scout Loves Mountaineer

I don't watch a lot of tv, but every once in a while I get a push that starts me watching a show. For example, back when Carly used to do Televisionary Tuesdays on Autostraddle, I did screencaps for her. One of the shows she was recapping was How I Met Your Mother. Unfortunately I was screencapping the season 4 finale and had no idea what was going on, only that it was really funny. So then I spent the next two weeks watching every episode ever of HIMYM until I was caught up. Then, this holiday break, I started watching The Office. Literally all I did was sit at home and watch it. After that it was 30 Rock which I also ate up until school forced me to read a book. I'd like to add that I haven't seen the end of any of these shows most recent seasons.

Currently I am totally caught up in a really old show: Alias. Alias is different from the previous three shows I mentioned for a number of reasons, namely, it's not a sitcom. Alias is funny on purpose about 2% of the time and funny by accident about 37.72829% of the time. The rest of the time it's either terrifying or completely ridiculous. Because the truth about Alias is this: it is terrible/AWESOME.

I started watching Alias in Philadelphia with Laura's friend and have been kinda hooked ever since.

Alias actually scares me. Maybe it's because Laura and I watch it at 1am or maybe it's because I'm a big baby, but there hasn't been an episode where I either close my eyes or block the computer screen because I AM SCARED. When I was 11 Buffy the Vampire Slayer used to terrify me, until I started watching it when I was older (and years after it had finished) and it was hilarious. I am even older now and I think Alias is way scary!/suspenseful.

The thing about Alias, though, is that while there are scary moments, mostly it's just campy. There are only 2 kinds of music on Alias: the heavy bass, techno-y pump up music they play when Sydney is on a mission, and the lesbian music they play when things are sad (which is often). Once they played Coldplay. Alias is that kind of show where, when the bad guys shoot, they miss, and when the good guys shoot, they don't. It's also a show full of convenient coincidences and really good timing by the CIA. Like oh, obviously when Sydney's knee is about to get blown off she is saved. Also Sydney knows every language. Ever. Once Laura saw a wire holding up a plane.

Have I mentioned Jennifer Garner yet? Jennifer Garner plays Sydney Bristow. She has nice skin. Sometimes Sydney has to use disguises. Sometimes she looks like this:

Sometimes she looks like this:

Um, if that's not incentive to start watching, I don't know what is.

++

I decided to interview my partner-in-viewing Laura about her feelings w/r/t Alias.

Emily: What is your favourite Sydney Bristow disguise?

Laura: This one, she's got a Spanish fan, and red hair and a red dress with long sleeves and slits at the sides, and super cleavage and she's wearing a black bra underneath. And her eyes are really really made up.

Emily: Is that it?

Laura: Yeah. She swings on a rope and can knock somebody out.

Emily: What about that one where she walks out of the pool and a man follows her?

Laura: Nope. That's not it.

Emily: That's not it? Not when she's in a bathing suit?

Laura: Nope.

Emily: I like when she's blonde.

Laura: I like her whenever she has red hair, and I don't even like red hair. I also like the one where she chewed gum and had blonde hair and pearls.

Emily: What is the campiest thing about Alias?

Laura: What about Alias is not campy?

Emily: I thought that you might say the wire holding the plane.

Laura: Ohmygod, the wire holding the plane. No, that's not campy, that's just ridiculous. Probably the fact that... I like it when things are named really obvious things. Like that alliance between them was called "The Alliance". Also the episode names are kinda dorky.

Emily: Does Alias scare you?

Laura: On occasion because I don't like it when they get into weird supernatural shit and I'm alone in my house at night.

Emily: Weird supernatural shit like what?

Laura: Like frying bodies.

Emily: Oh yeah, that was really creepy. That one just made me sad.

Laura: It's gross.

Emily: What do you think about the music in Alias?

Laura: It's a very strange combination of techno/jam/rave and and Indigo Girls concert with mixes of Coldplay thrown in for good measure.

Emily: I feel like I'm just asking you to confirm everything I've written in my post.

Laura: So maybe you shouldn't interview me.

Emily: Probably not. Do you have anything to say about Alias? What is your favourite thing about Alias?

Laura: I like that she kicks ass and takes names. And even though she's in love with a man she still fights with him when it comes to mission stuff, she doesn't just agree with him. I guess what I'm saying is --

Emily: I guess what you're saying is "I'm a feminist!"

Laura: -- Alias has a feminist agenda.

Emily: What do you think is Sloane's master plan?

Laura: Jesus, I don't even know. I think he's probably trying to bring Elvis back from the dead.

Emily: Have you eaten dinner yet?

Laura: I didn't eat dinner today.

Emily: Aw, are you hungry?

Laura: Well, here's what I've eaten today: 3 slices of pizza (but they were small slices), a cupcake, a little bowl of pasta, a granola bar, an apple, a cinnamon roll, some cheese. The end.

[we talk about food, Laura gets an email]

Laura: I have a question for you if you don't have any.

Emily: Okay.

Laura: Do you want to watch an episode of Alias?

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

A "Critical Review" & "Analysis" of the Month of March

I had great expectations for March. February sucked as much as anything could possibly suck, and March to me equaled spring, hope, light, flowers, happiness, sunshine, rainbows, unicorns, freedom, etc. It was kind of disappointing mostly because of my impossible expectations, but I've decided that overall, March was okay. Just okay. Like it could have been worse.

Essentially very little happened in March that was significant besides a fun trip to Philadelphia/NYC. I read two books or maybe 3 or 4, I don't even know. I had 3 shifts at work. I found something new in an old friend and I don't know what to do with it. I pretended I didn't have any school work to do. I bought new jeans. I had several serious moments of anxiety/panic that I would never be able to sustain long-term relationships with other people and thought it would be best to run away to a cabin by the sea, but those are feelings that are not unique to March. Also, though, I realized that I have a brain and can therefore handle the scary things it takes to be a grown up. I'm convinced I have post-menstrual syndrome, something I made up that has the same symptoms of pre-menstrual syndrome only it's after you get your period. Apparently this is just called "being moody", a theory which I reject. I got accepted into a university where, if I attend, I will graduate with a degree in something useless, but something useless that I am moderately good at. So there's that.

I have mixed feelings about April. On the plus side, according to this ovulation calculator, starting tomorrow I'm very fertile till April 6th. Also on the plus side, I'm expecting the weather to be EXCELLENT. And by "expecting" I mean "demanding". This weekend is supposed to be around 20-25 degrees so that's a good start. Unfortunately I'll probs be inside tackling the massive amount of work I've left myself with.

In conclusion, I'm happy to be done with March if only because it means we're one month closer to summer. Is it May 14 yet? (that's when my summer officially starts)

Also, word on the street is that something exciting is happening at autostraddle tomorrow, so you probs want to make sure you check that out.