My acerbic wit

How do I say this gently? Do you know what irony is? Your problems stem from the denial of the fact that you’ve switched from one lifelong habit to another. This addiction justifies your childishly poor impulse control – it coddles you. You are painfully aware that history recycles yet you don’t see how its pattern works on you. You stay nestled in the recesses of everybody’s hate and stagnate because it’s easier to think you’re above everybody else; that by being the bitter witty clown you’ll somehow win. Being at the apotheosis of my benevolence – I abide by this instead of saying anything directly hurtful. But it slowly builds inside of me – and will eventually emerge. Run.

if there were a god (or I believed in one)...

Surely the exquisite creature I witnessed in the Vic building on campus today was an exercise in god's ability to create an immaculate human male in visage. So effortless in manner, style, and grace this person (I shudder to call him a man, as his face had the porcelain quality of a doll) was that I dared not speak a word lest he disappear in a pouf of my own rife imagination. What a perfect sequence of DNA the randomness of the universe cast on him. I quickly moved my pithy beverage off the brown leather of the divan in the foyer as he made to sit down beside me - so gauche seeming this refreshment was in his presence. He said "thank you". We read our books in relative silent understanding and camaraderie, both enjoying the lazy atmosphere of our beloved building. We spent an hour together (yet apart) - neither saying anything. Eventually he got up and disappeared downstairs in his James Dean-esque essence. I took my leave - thinking how wonderful that he should exist in this universe.

lost in reverie

The way you tear through me is like clockwork. Given that this year without you has undoubtedly been the best in my life I'm surprised that I can still react this way to external emotionally tugging stimuli. I don't know if it was the sequence or pattern of the way we danced around each other again this week that pulled at my muscle memory - only postponed by a week last time in me having a distraction in London/Cambridge. The culmination of which was my emotional tumble down the proverbial stairs in a hotel room in Le Havre. Completely alone and sequestered away from the rest of the world - and you followed me there, at least in thought.

I forgot that we saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind together at the Carlton. I downloaded it and watched it until now - when it ended. 6 am. How did we change places? Now I'm the one who stays up all night - and you sleep peacefully in your new bed. The framing of the intimacy in the film brought me back to our room and the smell of warm skin - that completely unique smell of us enmeshed and tangled together. And it's not that I want to be with you, that you doesn't exist anymore, or never did, and it's strange. How we're strangers now.

the song of purple summer

Ah pleasure overload! Reading this interview with Sharlto Copley and finding out that he improvised in District 9, and listening to all this awesome music and seeing all these wonderful pictures of Lapo Elkann - it's honestly - it's been a summer of wonderment and I think.....I think this might be why I'm having a hard time reading at the moment - because all I can do is constantly crank out this writing about how just....amazing everything feels and how in *awe* I am of the world and the beauty of absolutely EVERY single thing.

I know - it seems like I'm high - and maybe I am in a way. It feels like every now and again lately everything slows down and I'm able to focus on the minutiae and detail of fragments of my life. As if I were taking a still frame and enlarging it until I could see the dew drops on a bumblebees fuzzy backside.

I still can't believe he *improvised* - how....absolutely stunning.

Gonna run away now.

I cannot run from my family - they're hiding inside of me

Originally I had meant to come home tonight, take a shower and finally get to unloading my thoughts on District 9. I was going to have a spoiler warning and everything. I got derailed halfway from my target. Usually it takes me 15 minutes to walk home from my restaurant - Mayflower. As I turned the corner and walked towards my street - listening to the Grudge and thinking about how an old friend of mine was holding a grudge against me and how stupid it was -I noticed someone walking towards me. It was a young girl holding a bag. In hindsight I guess she approached me because I looked somewhat young like her and that must have been reassuring. So my night got interesting from thereon. Funny how I didn't find out her name until around 30-45 minutes after our initial conversation.

She literally said something like "I'm looook for haaause vis naaamber seventy, is near pizza". Okay maybe her English wasn't that horrible - but Ekaterina (as her name was, which I found out when I called the police later) was looking for a house with the number 70 - it turned out she didn't know the street, didn't know the phone number, didn't know anything. This was a little frustrating. I was game though - I've watched too many detective films/tv shows not to be. Generally I'm a ridiculously curious person - so this was right up my alley.

She kept changing her mind about the number, first it was 70, then it was 77, then it was 7. We kept stopping and starting over - she rang a doorbell but nobody was home - then we talked to some people on the street and found out it was the wrong address. We walked towards Timothy Court - which is maybe five minutes away from my house. We had basically done a loop. She was lost without any information. Here as an exchange student learning English, just the day previously she had changed her "home stay" location and her "home stay" parents hadn't given her the address or the phone number or their last names? This was strange. I just rolled with it and eventually on Timothy Court I decided to call the non-emergency police phone number. The area that now had to be covered in order to find her place of residence was too large for me to handle alone.

So I got ahold of dispatch and they collected some information and told us to wait (if I felt safe) until they sent someone out. Five minutes later my phone rang and a police officer let me know that he had emergencies everywhere and apologized profusely but it would be several hours before anybody could be sent out. Then he stepped away from the phone and found out a squad car was just near us but was responding to a "priority domestic" some husband and wife were beating each other up. I found it interesting that he told me this. So he suggested that if possible I could bring Ekaterina to the police station. I thought about what the fastest way would be - so I called my brother and asked him to come get us - but my mom doesn't trust him with the car because he's 17 so she decided to come herself. (I do not drive - having lived downtown for the past 5 years)

We piled into the car and headed down to 22 Division on Bloor/Kipling. We got there and had to explain the story two more times to the annoyed/bored looking officer. He was pretty receptive but I was unimpressed with the lack of procedure for this situation. Ekaterina had told me that she was studying English at the International Language Academy of Canada and that her "home stay" parents were "administrators" there. Surely the police must have some way of looking up who works there - some sort of roster. But apparently they don't and couldn't do anything with that information until the morning at which point they would just call. This seemed unacceptable to me - as did the fact that Ekaterina's "home stay" parents didn't give her any damned information that might - I don't know - be IMPORTANT to her. Eventually the police procured a sexy Russian speaking lady officer and she took over and they started hashing everything out in Russian and we were told we could leave. I asked Ekaterina if she was hungry or needed anything - she replied that she didn't - and seemed really embarrassed. I gave her my phone number, email address and a hug, and told her to somehow let me know when she got home. I hope she's okay. She had been here for six weeks and is supposed to be flying back to Moscow on Saturday.

On our way out I said to my mom preemptively "I know that if this happened to me in another country you'd want someone to help me out". She replied that of course she would but she seemed really annoyed. It turns out that I interrupted her new episode of CSI. Then everything devolved into how I don't clean my room. Life back to normal.......

D9 review tomorrow I think...

P.S. Incidentally Ekaterina said something that resonated with me - that all the houses in the suburbs look the same and it's very easy to get lost. I know this because a year or so after I moved in here my friend Skye and I went for a walk together further up from my neighborhood and got lost in the winding maze of cul-de-sacs for several hours. And we're from here.

a quotidian kind of life...

My room looks pretty nice with just taper candles lit up - it's actually a decent source of light at odd times in the night - I have all these leftover candles from when I worked at the store, may as well use them.

I have been spending a lot of time in my backyard lately. Mostly at night. Remnants of the time I spent with E there. However now I'm alone, and it's not bad. Mostly I go out there to clear my head and focus, right before I come back and write or go to bed. I just sit there and watch the smoke swirl, it's mesmerizing in a morbid kind of way. Talking to JH today made me think about what I wanted in another person, and I realized I want someone kind of like me.

That's not what this is about though - this is about the fact that a couple of months ago I told H that I could completely see myself living my life alone - and be content. I still hold steadfast to the claim. Some of us are not meant to be with anyone, I doubt this is true about myself. Only time will tell. (this makes me smile at myself) Anyhow - at this point he thought I was just bitter and depressed about everything that happened with Niall - but I wasn't, I was being honest. I don't regret our time together - I learned a lot about myself as a person, and the time spent with him was a great way to withdraw from society and reflect upon things. The time came to come back though, and I guess I did.

I do think life would be great if I could just have my own place, stacks and stacks of books - a career that I loved and time to write and read. Oh, and a cherry on top would be a Great Dane - his name would be Sputnik. This is all I need to be happy about 99% of the time. (the crazy huge music library is implicit)

excuse me, what the FUCK!

...and water goes over a dam and under a bridge you poncey schoolboy...

I'm so annoyed I had to get out of bed and watch Charlie Wilson's War specifically for the angry Philip Seymour Hoffman scene...