I thought I could die happy...

Arriving doe-eyed and jet-lagged in Reykjavik, fumbling through customs and watching the mossy hills roll by on the car-ride to our farmhouse in Fluder.

Leaning over the side of my grandfather's boat, catching the spray from the waves and watching the horizon bob before us.

Pressed tight between a bathroom door and a boy, stupid and high, counting the number of teeth in his mouth.

Burning the skin off an apple, tossing empties out into the woods, and catching fireflies while bearing my heart and soul and naivety to every human willing to describe me with a six-letter F word.

Having my skinned knee kissed better on the kitchen floor and my hair held back as I choked up nothing but rum and stomach acid.

Lingering an extra split second in the passenger seat of a certain boy's car.

Catching sight of the roadside sign welcoming me to Hudson's Hope.

Sitting up with my post-stroke pepere in his hospital bed and hearing him utter a record-breaking six-word question.

Being escorted home, comforted and hugged by two all-too-generous friends after Bridget's party.

Being interrupted mid-sentence to be told to fuck off when it was precisely what I needed to be told.

It's a very fleeting feeling, but I can fully understand why people spend their whole lives pursuing it.

No.

You can't want that.

Maybe it's the Neverland Complex

...but I really really don't want to start a grownup relationship quite yet.

I need the boys around me as friends and I can't even allow myself to consider the possibility of a relationship with someone a thousand lightyears away.

I may just die a cat lady.

And let's say things change and I'm motivated to pursue something... Which situation, and why?

It's too much a science and notsomuch an artform.

Revelation

As with most dreams, my subconscious spared me the preamble and dropped me into the story mid-plot. I am in a 1-hour photo store examining a roll of film. I have no fingernails - I rarely do in dreams, though I doubt it means much, besides revealing an oversight of whoever was charged with the job of programming my subconscious. So I am reading the yellow label on the roll of film, and it's ultrafluorescent in the store so I'm squinting so my eyelashes filter out the infertile white glare, and so far this is a pretty basic situation as far as my dreams go. Surreal little bits and pieces of reality, no dialogue, no real story-line, and then I wake up and it's eight to ten hours later.

But squinting there against the glow, I'm suddenly aware of a hand weighing heavy on my right shoulder.

"I'm ready to go," says the voice that I already know to be Alex's (whose name has been changed because it's not too hard to find this thing), because in dreams you know the characters without actually looking up and identifying them. I am the one creating this entire situation, after all.

For whatever reason, my response is a low "okay," and I turn to follow him out of the store.

Frames change and we're in Alex's (this was a poor choice of a name. Oh well) kitchen, another snippet of reality with a psychedelic undertone. He is frying eggs, and the steam from the frying pan is slowly filling the room. The lights are opalescent from beneath the steam, and I'm staring at the eggs with the same intensity I exhibited in the photo store.

"Fuck off, I'm trying to do something nice" comes Alex's voice again, and once again I am in the moment, inexplicably aware of the plot points I've missed.

"Just don't fucking bother. I didn't ask for anything." Comes my meek little snarl, and part of me is watching this through my own eyes, but isn't allowed access to the memories or the emotions behind any of it. I am fighting with Alex while the room becomes more and more fogged with steam. I am there, but I'm not there. I am Being John Malkovich personified.

The arguing continues and escalades. The eggs burn and Alex scrapes them off into the sink. I start to cry and he tells me to cut it out. He softens a bit and kisses my forehead, and the steam drains from the room. And I, the spectator to my own imagined life, I suddenly understand the premise: We are a dysfunctional couple.

The small part of me conscious enough to be logical is already trying to analyze the dream. Why Alex, and what is this supposed to represent? When was the last time anyone comforted me by kissing my forehead, and when did such an innocent gesture become synonymous with romantic tragedy?

The scene changes again. I'm in Alex's hallway, much more narrow in my dream than it is in reality, sitting against his bedroom door with Chelsea beside me, telling me to just go in and sleep. I mutter a weak little "I don't know..." and she raises her voice to properly get the advice from my ears to my brain.

"Don't fight with him. Just don't do it. You guys care about each other. Just go sleep beside him."

And I do.

I'm curled up on my side in a bed that never really existed with a boy I've never had romantic interest in beside me, wrapping an arm around me and telling me how badly he wants this to work. That small analytical portion of my brain is going apeshit. I'm pleasant but distant, polite but cold. And for whatever reason, as a spectator, I'm more aware of his hurting at this point than any of my own character's emotions.

More quick scene changes. I tell him I might be pregnant and he suggests we get married and cry so loud for so long that he abandons all efforts to console me and phones up Chelsea to do the magic she can do so well. I bring him home for Christmas at my aunt's and punch him in the balls under the table when I feel him place his hand on my thigh. We are invited to Steph and Chelsea's wedding and I drive home without him after the ceremony. We get drunk and he tries to have sex with me on his floor with our clothes on and I push him away and start to cry again.

One person can have up to seven or eight dreams per night, and seven of mine (assuming these count as individual dreams) are spent showing myself what a terrible girlfriend I have made, and will continue to make. It didn't seem out-of-character at all. I'm hard on the people I get close with. Alex, this amazingly loyal boyfriend version of a friend I've only had for a year or so now, sticks through every imaginary scenario, no matter how much I weigh down on him, and when he can't do it alone, it's then Chelsea's job to manage me. I would qualify the entire string of dreams as one long nightmare. Every time I fell asleep I would see myself age the people closest to me, unable for whatever reason to leave me to fend for myself.

I woke up to my mum's voice asking my sisters if they knew when I'd gotten back last night and if they thought I'd be up soon. I answered a text and managed to drift away for one last dream, wherein I sit on the bathroom floor while Alex has a shower, and I stare at the bath mat like it's a roll of film or a fried egg, and he asks me a serious of questions and I supply curt responses, and he shuts the water off and the steam just fades away and he gets out and asks me if I've noticed that he's never seen me naked.

A new year starts now. I've already got my resolution.

Williston Lodge

I can't adjust to this place.

Supper: Chicken breast in curry sauce with baked pineapple. Side of wild rice. Tossed salad entree with a dressing I've yet to identify. Two wine glasses of chilled, locally purified water.

Lunch: Eighteen Breton Mini crackers and one slice of Ziggy's Gouda. Side of Yo Go's. One carton Tropicana orange juice.

No breakfast as I didn't crawl out of bed till 2pm, and when I actually did, it was time for another dose of the most sedative herbal pills I've ever taken.

The staff at Williston is composed of ultra-friendly swiss girls, here on work Visas to learn English. The short brunette with the hesitant smile is Andrea. The tall blue-eyed blonde is Sandra. The most proficient English-speaker with the blunt, dark hair is Cybil.

I think so, anyway. The names are right; just probably attached to the wrong faces.

My dad wakes up via alarm clock at 5:30am, and returns to the lodge via large white company van with a dozen coworkers around 6pm. He asks my mom about her day, attempts conversation with me, eventually wanders down to the bar for a beer or two, accompanies us to supper, then falls asleep with his feet hanging over the edge of my bed by 9pm. He'll make his way over to his own bed by 10 or 11.

My mom will wake up around 6 with nothing to do, so she'll handle the bills via Internet until Jess and Sarah wake up, then take them down for breakfast. I imagine it's just cereal, but I've yet to wake up early enough to see. Around 11am or so, my mom will be bored with my younger sisters and will come back up to the room to suggest some activies to me - the only other adult she has for the day. I'll try really hard, I really will, but I just don't want to do anything, and eventually I'll roll over and fall back into a trance, and she'll get sick of being ignored and read on the patio.

One way or another, everyone will end up back in the room, itching to go for a car ride. So it's up and at-'em for me. I'll throw on some clothes and nod off in the passenger seat until my mom starts pointing out the school, the hospital, the trailer park, the library of Hudson's Hope, BC. It's a little bigger than home, and for whatever reason, be it the name or the fact that I'm only semi-concious, I really want to live here. And I really wish I hadn't been dragged along to see it, to wish I could live here only to find out that my dad won't take me. This is more emotions than I've felt all week, so I'll start to sniffle, and my mom will get all awkward because nobody knows how to handle a sixteen year old who tears up like she's five, and the silence will get so thick that I'll curl up under it like a blanket and fall asleep again.

I want this cloud, this depression, this blue period, this sloth, this je ne sais quoi to pass before we leave so I can make a real evaluation. So I can figure out what I want.

Or else somebody just tell me what I want.

Eighteen hundred. Nineteen hundred. Seventeen hundred and fifty. Eighteen hundred.

I'm getting more and more expensive to please.

I'm hovering quite comfortably above zero financially, but I can't manage to gain any more altitude than that. Not that it matters at this age - an age at which most are content with a meagre allowance or babysitting cash. I don't have any interest in high-end clothing and I'm not so keen on iPods that I would feel compelled to replace mine for at least a couple more years. There is just something comforting about that money. I could buy a car with it. I could run away with it. I could pay my first semester's tuition at The Collegiate with it.

Silly little pipe dreams.

The money is there so I can inwardly threaten to do things I know I can't actually do. I get to feel as though I'm choosing to stay stranded here out of guilt or loyalty or some other purely conscientious form of reasoning. It's there for comfort.

If I could coax the numbers up just a little more, I could probably follow through with The Collegiate, or pay for insurance and gas on whatever beater car I can find. But I am so brilliantly talented at hovering. CDs and books add up.

I'm thinking of buying my camera, once and for all.

I'm thinking of quitting my job.

No more false hopes and pipe dreams. 

Nosedive to Zero.

ruin

we cower below a man 10 feet tall
the magistrate takes a bow
good god damn, how the mighty fall
we're all tied up like puppets now

he tugs on a string
and the rebels all sing his praises
just a flick of the wrist
and we all turn and twist below
he has us on our toes
when he wrinkles his nose
and we all fall down when he lets us go

we're but a picture of ruin now
the magistrate's in a league of his own
good god bless our antichrist now
like romans we rot beneath his throne

he tugs on a string
and the rebels all sing his praises
just a flick of the wrist
and we all turn and twist below
he has us on our toes
when he wrinkles his nose
and we all fall down when he lets us go

i think it's time that we took a stand
and learned to breath our own air
good god damn, we'll reclaim our land
knock the emperor from his own chair

we'll tug on a string
and it's hium who will sing our praises
just a flick of the wrist
the hellfires twist below!
we'll get him on his toes
then we'll tighten the rope
he'll fall down when we let him go!

march 8th, 2008

If I Knew Then What I Know Now

The stealth and the speed with which the past can creep up and pounce at you,
and the lucidity it can lend each of your senses, is baffling.
In relation to retrospect, the present is blurred and muffled, 
but we are so used to it that when we are hit by a memory, the clarity is blinding.

Two weeks ago, a father of a close friend suffered his second heart attack in one year. When the news found its way back to me, I was instantly brought back to 
the first of his hospitalizations. When I saw him again, I couldn't believe he could
have any health concerns. He was in excellent shape, and his eyes and smile
glistened with a contented, calm vivacity. He was the visual opposite of my own father - while my friend's father became a dad much young than the average man, 
my own dad qualifies as an 'older father,' having been 32 when I was born. 
My friend's father has a charming laugh and a contagious smile. 
My father doesn't joke as much as he used to.
My friend's father wears t-shirts and sneakers.
My father opts for dress shirts and unkempt hair.

So I stared at him a while longer, head swimming with doubts, unsure if it would be
right to bring it up. Eventually he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and asked me how
school was going. The small talk bounced from party to party a while, and in an 
opportune moment of silence, I asked how he'd been.

An unspoken understanding grew between the two of us, and he gave me a not 
insignificant smile and nod. "I'm fine."

Hearing about his second cardiac, Iwas dragged backward in time to that awkward  conversation, and with the sobriety I now possessed, I could see things I didn't originally 
consider. He was a single parent, a widower, with a difficult kid. He was wealthy, but he was addicted to profits. Like a workaholic, he bought and sold in incessant 
repetition, desperate to add to an already sufficient empire. When not working,
every ounce of his time was put into pleasing a son who already had everything he needed.

My father was old but healthy, with a list of goals that he could reach, and die a happy man. My friend's father, beneath the jokes and smile, longed for things he would never 
obtain, and was trading his youth for these trivilaties. 

He was never going to accomplish his goals, and so his body wove the white flag. 

It was going to self-destruct. 
It was going to smother his heart. 
It would force him to slow down, or die trying.

I hate to look back and see things like that. Why couldn't I see them the first time, and
save myself the grueling learning process? I'm constantly thrown back into memories of
my grandfather: playing games, watching TV, learning and helping as best I could. I
enjoyed the time I spent with him like any little kid does, but I wish I would have
appreciated him more. I wish  I could have been the one child alive with
a considerable amount of foresight, so I might have pieced his fate together before it
claimed him.

Maybe, by some slight shift in the universe, I might have been able to change him.

Sometimes, on a motiveless whim so characteristic of children, I'd follow my grandfather
down to the basement, and watch him pack and roll his demise in neat little paper rolls.
He even taught me how the process was done, and I'd offer to help him roll each cancer
stick, while we chattered over those trivial things I found so interesting. I have to live
those moments in burning clarity, and resurface in the present tense with nothing more
than water in mylungs. It's everything I can do to remind myself that I was only a kid, 
and to just appreciate seeing him again, however painful the reunion.

reflecting

Human beings are mother nature's unwanted, bratty bastard children, and we will grey her hair and hollow her face and eventually, inevitably, be the death of her.

I have my flaws - an ever-absent accent, an honest sense of humour, my father's cynicism, my mother's skepticism, an imperfect complexion, sturdy ankles and expressive eyes. I'm volatile and my heart's too big. I can't focus well and I hum and sing too often. I use my brain a lot. My memory is selective and deceptive. 
Thanks for the reminder, but I haven't forgotten.

I've been bored. My mind's been wandering, and if I was preemptive, I would think to carry a notebook with me. At the most random times, I have moments of clarity or something like it, and I am inspired and my train of thought chugs along for hours if it's quiet enough. I think I'll remember every thought, but I never do. If I wrote them down, I could most definitely write a book (at least one); they're that golden.  It's unfortunate that I'm so careless when I'm thinking so vividly.

I learned last week that my great-grandfather did not, in fact, die of a heart attack. He put a bullet in his brain. As effective a death as any. His wife, my great-grandmother, lived to be 100. She went blind and saw snow, forgot the face of her son, and lived alone 364 days a year.

I plan on killing myself (dying happy) at the very first sign of senility.

With the right publicist, I could pass for average.

An Offer

Let's start over again. You can be the parent, and I the child. I'll forget that I'm (on average) the same age as every one of you, and I'll submit to being treated like a mindless, helpless baby.

I'll eat three meals a day. I'll go to school regardless of what my horoscope warns is waiting for me there. I'll write 150-word essays on my hero (you) for you to tape to the fridge and display to the occasional guest. I'll watch an hour of TV a day. I'll be in bed with the lights out by 10 o'clock. I'll never be late for anything again. I'll listen to innocent little pop songs (that's right, no metal, no hardcore, no rock). I'll throw out my art books and my guitar and I'll study for my math tests. I will participate in all extra-curricular activities, and be the MVP of every sport I play. I'll stop reading Anthony Burgess in favor of novels with titles as cryptic as "e-love" and "I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God."

I'll be the child. I'll fall in line. Just promise you won't look at me like that again.

Please.