have we met?

Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a dame of wealth and taste/ I've been around for a long long year/ stole many a man's soul and faith ~

Actually when you really think about the lyrics of that song and how in the intro Mick Jagger sings about Pilate and the title of the song being "Sympathy for the Devil" well...I don't know if this is something that's really obvious to people who are overt Stones fans but it makes me think of The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. It's got the devil, and Pilate. But I digress...

I said something today which has been echoing in my mind for a while now : It sucks when people don't see you, or don't see you as the person you know you are, or refuse to.

Part of the whole year and a bit I had to myself as a single person was figuring out who I was separate from anyone else, what I really wanted in life, etc. Obviously this is subject to change but I am the type of person that doesn't waver much, consistency is something I value a lot. Possibly because in my last relationship someone was very inconsistent.

So now having entered into something new knowing all I know, it's very hard for me to be sympathetic to someone who wavers in decision making. I always try to tell the truth - especially at the beginning of new situations and ....well...I try to represent myself the way I am in my regular every day life. None of this "best behaviour" bullshit. I mean obviously I fret over what I'm wearing a tiny bit more but....that's always me.

And that's the point I'm making with my statement. Hello, have you met me? Perhaps I should tell you again: I like having alone time, I love reading, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about my hair, I'm superficial, I like men in tight pants, I stare at the Sartorialist's website hours on end, I think men's hair is important, I get uncomfortable if someone is wearing ugly shoes, appearance matters to me, I get theoretical erections over cars, airplanes and helicopters (sometimes guns), I am materialistic to a fault, I will cut my nose off to spite my face, I can be an asshole, I judge people quickly and harshly and find myself to be right most of the time. I am my own worst critic but I am also my own best champion. I can be incredibly narcissistic at times (eg. I wish I could clone myself in male form), and at times I revert to being a girl. I have no problem spending 200$ on a pair of pants or 3000$ on a computer.

But I love dogs, outdoorsy shit, rockclimbing, hanging out with my boys and buying them shots, working hard, and not taking myself (too) seriously, and if you gain my trust and friendship - barring some catastrophic event, I will always go to bat for you and defend you until my last breath. Kind of like a white knight, or that Rihanna song about the umbrella.

I also have several different plans for what to do when I finally graduate - considered the options and have given myself several possible routes to take. I know I want to have a house in Toronto (ginormous library a must), and an apartment in Vienna. I know that I want to write, but that it probably won't be my main profession if I choose to write novels, not at first. I know that whatever career I have (out of the ones I'm setting myself up for) I won't be compromising my fulfilment. I also know what kind of lifestyle I want to lead (and am leading), and I know what I need to do to support it. I want to be able to have the freedom to visit Europe more than once a year. I also want a dog (this could present a problem in terms of going to Europe more than once a year, but I've thought about it). I want to own a mid-engine car eventually, and I'm willing to sacrifice spawning offspring for a Veyron. (Although I think if I had "child" it would be the best looking smartest thing in the world, there's that narcissism for you)

I just...like things the way I like them...and I feel confused, betrayed, saddened and ....generally malaised when I find that someone has been not completely truthful with me. And not in one of those blatant lie kind of ways (although that too). I'm technically an adult. I can handle rough situations. If I have an issue that I need to discuss with someone I have already thought out the theoretical and practical sides and made contingencies for my contingencies, I look forward. I consider my options before I make a tactical strike. It's how I roll. So to have someone try to shoehorn me into being something I'm not, or adapt themselves (for whatever reason) into the image of what they think I want....well that's bad. Because it's ersatz, it's not real, and the facade will eventually slip, revealing a truth that may not be suitable - to any party.

And that makes people upset.

And then I get grumpy.

And you don't want that.

I'll go my own way

So Sahira and I went to see Massive Attack at the Sound Academy last night. She was late because she was helping her mom move,

more on that terrible story here:

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/806414--can-linda-sepp-possibly-be-helped

The situation is just.....I'm tired of explaining it to people because it's such a long story, and it's really sad, and ridiculous at the same time, from a "can't we do anything about this" standpoint.

It seems cruel to move on from that to Massive Attack, but, at this point both of Linda's children (her son Skye is one of my besties) don't want to think about the situation. Anyway so - we were both in various stages of grump-dom. The weather in Toronto has been kind of shit lately, it was nice in the morning. Jacket weather however turned into violent rain, thunder and lightning. We took the streetcar down to around Cherry St. and then got a cab to the Sound Academy which is on the water. Nobody likes this venue because of how awkward it is to get there, if you don't drive you have to walk, or take a cab, it's completely out of the way. Our cabbie Bruce gave us his card so we could call him after the show because it was going to be a clusterfuck to get out of, cab-wise. We got in at around 9ish and got drinks. Some girl was on stage. Tight shiny tights and white shirt, weird glasses, we were like "wtf?". So we went closer and both looked at each other funny - she was kind of a hybrid of scenester and a throwback to the 80's. So we hung around and watched her - she was really spunky and energetic. I think what won me over was that she looked like she was having fun singing her songs and doing her thing, and no matter whether people were dancing or not she was optimistic. The other cool thing was that she was on the stage alone. She had all sorts of synthesizers and junk, probably some sort of MOOG and other stuff which I can't name. (a quick check of her blog shows she uses macbooks and gadgets like an OB-8, I wouldn't be surprised if she had a Buchla too)
She played piano too, well keyboard. We were totally into it by the end of her set. I ended up buying one of her supercool shirts and her EP. Oh yeah, her name is Amanda Warner (which I had to google) and her band name is MNDR. She was really sweet and signed the shirt for me, I'm wearing it right now.
here's a link to her myspace, it's the only place that actually has decent fidelity, (bad youtube, bad!):
http://www.myspace.com/mndrtronica
I Go Away and Fade to Black (which is her song for Black Flag I think she said yesterday) are awesome to start with.

The next opener after that was Martina Topley Bird. Let me just say - I wasn't super into her set, but fuck, she is absolutely gorgeous, like - "I couldn't take my eyes off her" gorgeous. She was also wearing an awesome sequinned dress (purple) with a hood and big shoulders. Her voice was awesome but her music just wasn't my cup of tea. It was also her birthday. I'm not sure how exactly to describe her music - it's kind of, well it reminded me of a British version of Andrew Bird, except he's waaaaaay cooler to me, with his hilarious lyrics (crazy, they have the same last name, and both basically appear on stage alone and create a wall of sound by/with looping/pedals). She was a little more jazzy - it's kind of what I imagine 40 year olds listen to. I don't know what that means, whatever (TG excepted). Anyhow after she was done we waited almost a whole hour for Massive Attack to come onstage.

And that's where the weirdness began. Don't get me wrong, the concert was amazing. Robert Del Naja is just....well...as well as talented, very good looking. The backdrop was great, interesting light show, lots of scrolling text - mostly political stuff, Howard Zinn quotes, etc. Each song had some sort of corresponding graphic displayed on the (I'm having a hard time describing it) ...light board? Maybe I can find a picture.

Ah there it is. It was for lack of a better word, COOL. That light fixture approximated photograph quality images - at one point during the encore there was a globe that looked three dimensional and had flight times on the side. It was, well it warmed the cockles of my heart. My favourite part might have been when binary was running all throughout - which reminds me I got one of the limited edition screen printed posters - it's pretty. This was the debut of the North American tour and they were all on top of it. It was easily one of the more fun concerts I've been to, just because of the dance-ability of the songs/tracks. 3D (Del Naja) brought Martina out for a few songs - namely Teardrop. I got goosebumps - I've loved that song since I was a young'in. Overall I feel sorry for whoever missed it - but they're doing it again tomorrow night at the same venue. I'm not really sure what else I can say about it - Massive Attack have been around for a long time -their music is very well known - I mean Teardrop is the intro to House (the show) in a lot of countries so they're definitely mainstream so I don't feel that I need to get into particulars about their music. The one thing that did strike me was how Radiohead-like the concert felt. And of course it's the other way around because Massive Attack have always been electronica whereas Thom et al., only got into that around Kid A and Amnesiac (both of which I love) - but both have an inherent danceability - this is important to me. Which people don't really know about me, it's not something I advertise. As a child of two dancers/choreographers, I'm not that good - rhythm I've got....dancing....eeeh, maybe.

The crowd was significantly older than Sahira and I, we may have been some of the youngest kids there. And thus the weirdness. I've never in my life been to a concert where people have been so incredibly rude and inconsiderate. People kept pushing and shoving, I got elbowed in the middle of one of my favourite songs, people kept bumping into me, and not a little bit, a LOT. People were coming out of the center of the crowd to get beer and drinks and go back, and they were completely careless about who they shoved. I don't understand this kind of attitude. You're there to see the show, pick a spot and fucking stay there, if you need a beer bring one with you, but once you're in the MIDDLE of the crowd you're disturbing other people's experience by constantly coming and going. There was a meathead in front of us who keept creeping on his girlfriend and just in general being gross, and shoving us a lot. I smashed my bag into someone on purpose because they kept pushing me forward, and I told a lot of people off. I'm pretty good at being pedantic and belligerent when I need to, but I've never been as close to punching someone as I was last night. My levels of rage were really high, and it somewhat diminished the concert for me. I've never been so ashamed and disgusted by the people of Toronto before. Here's hoping they were all from suburbs or something.

That being said, it was Martina's birthday and 3D asked us all to sing Happy Birthday to her, so we did - which was nice. Debut of the North American tour on her birthday and the whole crowd sings to her - she seemed so happy and embarrassed, it was adorable. Overall I had a great time - I'm just a bit sore about how rude people were. Massive Attack is definitely a show that's not to be missed, or at least experienced once in your life.

books

Usually I use the summer for pleasure reading (although I do that during school too) but the summer is when I can get most of it done. For example last year when I spent a month in Europe I read six books, mostly on trains.
So I already have a stack that I haven't read yet. It goes like this:
American Tabloid - James Ellroy
East of Eden - Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (TG don't be mad I'm not done yet)
Foundation -Asimov
on top of that there are a bunch of magazines I haven't finished, like the Arts & Letters and Religion issues of Lapham's Quarterly (I've read some, not all, and I love reading ALL)
Then there's the new issue of Monocle that I picked up, and then there's the books I really really really want. Like NOW.
Those are:
Solar by Ian McKewan -a novel about an over the hill nobel physicist (to satisfy my physics fetish)
Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead - a new biography by Paula Byrne - because I loved Brideshead Revisited and think Waugh was extraordinary, that book got me through swine flu
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano - I saw it in an ad on the subway, and I'm not gonna lie, the author looked really hot, also - prime numbers and being an isolated person (from the writeup on the ad) - sounds like good reading.
So that's everything I want to read or finish reading and then there's my school reading list:
The Novel (with Mike) list:
Robinson Crusoe (read it already)
Foe by J.M Coetzee
Tristram Shandy
Moby-Dick (read it already)
Emma - Jane Austen (read it already)
Little Casino - Gilbert Sorrentino
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Great Expectations - Kathy Acker
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce
At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien
Mrs.Dalloway (read it already)
The End of the Story - Lydia Davis
My other course, 20th Century American Lit list:
Paul's Case - Willa Cather
Souls Belated- Edith Wharton
The Beast in the Jungle - Henry James
The Awakening - Kate Chopin (read it already)
Mrs. Spring Fragrance - Sui Sin Far
selections from Up from Slavery - Booker T. Washington
selections from The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. Du Bois
Quicksand - Nella Larsen
The Wasteland/The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot (read it already)
Hills Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemingway
Babylon Revisited - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A TONNE of Robert Frost stuff
A TONNE of William Carlos Williams (who I love, feverishly and a lot of whom I've read, thanks to the aforementioned Mike)
A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner
Good Country People - Flannery O'Connor
Petrified Man - Eudora Welty
Going to Meet the Man - James Baldwin
A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
Howl - Allen Ginsberg (already read, love)
selected poems of Sylvia Plath, Frank O'Hara, and Pat Parker
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee
The Lady from Lucknow - Bharati Mukherjee
A Coyote Colombus Story - Thomas King
Cathedral - Raymond Carver
and finally People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk - Lorrie Moore
plus there will be a bunch of screenings
I so look forward to all of it - but how am I going to get all of my personal reading done? Oh the quagmire.

no sense at all

Most of my life I've been told I'm above average by various people around me, and at the same time disparaged by the people who are closest to me.

Think about how confusing it is when a woman admits to the rest of her family (in front of her child) that her husband had "brainwashed" her into hating and mistreating her own child for the better part of said child's life (oh maybe 11 years) . Then think of the same woman telling her child that she, in fact, is her favourite child, and that she's brilliant - it's too late.

This is my life. Moved out at 18. Already too mind fucked - and now, mid 20's actually trying to change it somehow. And then this assclown of a psychiatrist stares at me in my session - completely blanching on me. Does he even notice that my voice has dropped several octaves and turned into a monotone since the last time I saw him? Oh sure, it's just the stress of not getting your homework done because you know...you're a lazy slob. Which to some extent is the truth.

I mean - you should see my room. It kind of looks like a tornado hit it. Various empty bottles and papers, clothing all over the floor - papers all over the desk. Garbage. At this point in the night I would venture so far as to call myself a rapidly cycling extremely high functioning manic depressive, but....having both manic and depressive symptoms at the same time. And it fucking blows. Wait...what was my point? Right, back to this session. I actually express interest in change. I mention that I don't want to be the person with excuses, I want to not feel anxiety towards my assignments. I don't want to hide in my bed with a horrible feeling in my stomach about an essay that I have to write - waiting until the last minute because I'd rather fail by default than have to admit that I may not be as genial as I'd like to think I am.

And he stares blankly. Because I've painted a picture of my catch-22 existence and he doesn't know what to say. I mean other than handing me a winning lottery ticket he can't really do anything to help me, or at least that's what his face implies.

I can't live with my mother and stepfather.

How does one tenderly imply the crimes against one's physical and emotional self without being un-cliché?

Without being judged for the ramifications thereof and the violent tendencies they yearn to display every now and again?

Why is it that I can function absolutely perfectly for 6-8 months out of a year and then do this for the rest? (You ignore it for as long as you can and try to push through and hope it goes away?)

Why do I feel like a complete fake when I sit in that chair, like it's an excuse to not do homework. So, the long and short of it is: I can't live with them because it's bad blood, because there is no longer any room for me, because living there makes me feel worse than not living? The yelling, the constant phone, the physical clenching of my entire body, dreading hearing someone calling my name for any reason. I lock my door. There is no choice for a person like me, I must keep living, that is all there is. So I live, but it's not like I can devote as much time as I should to the work that I'm doing to be able to pull myself out of this situation.

And so to not have to think about it - which is where my mind goes when I'm frustrated and anxious about a paper, or an assignment, or a reading - I....escape. Be it with Cedric and Omar, or Dr.Sheldon Cooper, or Steinbeck and Gibson. Because I desperately want to believe that somehow I can live in their world. Either the world of savants or literary figures. I told my shrink - "...it's not like there's some magical course you can take that hands you a publishing contract at the end." So I have no motivation for University. Maybe you're an idiot and have not realized by now that I have no motivation for life at the moment. I mean being an atheist means that this is all there is. I accept that. But it also means I'm consigned to a life of mediocrity and I'm finally starting to accept that. And it tastes like ear wax?

This is the perfect example. Skye was taking one of those random IQ tests online today - he keeps scoring in the 130's. Skye's kind of a genius. I didn't make it that high. I know it's an online test, I know IQ doesn't really mean anything these days anymore, but fucking hell I only scored in the 75th percentile and fucking cock it means I'm average. It means I'm about as smart as everyone else. My whole life has been predicated on the fact that I'm better than everybody else. And yes this makes me an asshole. This happens when you have an under developed sense of self worth but an overly inflated ego. You balance in weird ways. I do want to rationalize it however, by saying that to some extent I think everyone must feel this "being better than others" because otherwise how would we live? We all have to innately think that we're unique somehow otherwise how would this experience be worth it? What would make our life different and meaningful? Sure there are infinite variables in everybody's life but....we've been sociologically conditioned to all want the same thing: a social survival of the fittest translated through notoriety, elite-ness and financial status.

Or maybe I'm just really really really skewed on what my values are.

On one hand I want... I covet the beautiful things in life, they bring me joy. Seeing an R8 on the street makes me feel at one with the universe, or...you know however you want to translate that high/zen feeling. The way those fluid lines come together, the animalistic power and growl of the engine, the gleaming headlights. In a stupidly fetishistic way it completely turns me on.

And yet I get the same things from Gibson - something about the way he puts words together produces a natural reaction that is not unlike Oxycodone. Why wouldn't I want to ignore everything else in the entire world and devote all of my time to reading his books?

So today at around 3am I experienced this unusual thought. I'm not special, or different. I am going to be consigned to mediocrity and banality for the rest of my life - and even if I'm not...who's to say I'll be happy?

Which is strange because I specifically recall some really happy moments of my life today. I looked forward to going to my new job. I loved talking to Aviv on the phone, he multiplies my innate happiness. I laughed genuinely at a TV show.

But - if life means perpetual debt, strife, depression, and mediocrity, and never rising above the average....well for a moment I saw the rest of my life flashing before my eyes and it was....boring. And in that split second I thought of, and rejected, premature ending....because I'm not a complete idiot.

But I think I came to a bit of a revelation. Pristiq fucking blows goats, and maybe so does my psych.

Also - maybe I need to work harder and stop being such a whinging cunt*.

This post is probably gonna be hella embarrassing tomorrow, or you know....in a few years. Oh well.

*c/o Damien Pease

how uniform your beautiful is...

Walter, Karen and I were sitting on my rooftop yesterday with the sun smiling down on us--and this funny conversation started as a result of a book I'm reading for one of my essays. It's Abelard's "Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian". It's one of those 10 page "summarize this" history class things. So far I'm really liking Abelard just because he's so out there and into himself. Reminds me a bit of me (you know -- the illusions of grandeur and whatnot). This is where I break the fourth wall a la Zach Morris and blatantly wink at you guys. The first thing that endeared me to him was his statement that all Jews are stupid and all Christians are insane. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to write off two whole sects of people as stupid and insane, that would be bad, but you have to admit it's hysterically funny, especially for something that's being written in the 1100's.

So as I was reading this text out loud to them (sporadically when something funny hit me) we got onto a somewhat sensitive topic that is covered quite extensively in it. Circumcision. Weird. I know. It's funny what's acceptable in our society these days and we discussed how a majority of males in the U.S.A. are for a lack of a better word "cut". Then we discussed personal preference for our hypothetical children. Personally I think it's more aesthetically pleasing, but I'm not one to discriminate. Recalling an episode of Sex and the City (I know, I know) a lot of women are just more comfortable with a cut "member"*. Eventually we decided that it was a moot point until any of us had kids or different sexual partners, etc. Walter didn't really participate in that as he likes girls. I think he was overall just amused by the conversation but not really contributing, except to make funny remarks every now and again and fist bumping with me. That's kind of how we roll, but I digress...(hey TG).

So then I had work today - my first shift at the new job, and while I took the book with me I didn't really have time to read it, my break wasn't that long. I got home and promptly passed out in bed beside my laptop (it sleeps with me when there's no man in my bed, I'm a dork). Hey, when it takes you three hours to build a goddamned chair because of shoddy engineering or machining we can talk. Regardless, I woke up at around midnight and decided to go back to reading the book. And....we are still on the topic of circumcision. And it's funny. So let me tell you why!

I'm dating a sweet Jewish boy. I'm an atheist, probably on the scale of Richard Dawkins who I know is almost fundamentalist in his views, which I'm not, but I do (to a certain extent) agree that religion can be a form of child abuse. So back to my point - I'm reading this text and this jumpst out at me : "The Lord forbids us to marry pagans and above all those pagans whose land we possess, saying somewhere: Take care that you never join in friendship with the inhabitants of the land which may be your ruin. Neither shall you take their daughters as wives for your sons lest they make your sons commit fornication with their gods". I believe that's from Exodus. It doesn't matter, what matters is, my boyfriend should be worried b/c I might make him have sex with the Large Hadron Collider. Muah hah hah. I love namedropping that thing by the way.

Also this other quote jumped out at me, re: women in this day and age who prefer cut men. "For the sign of circumcision seems so abhorrent to the Gentiles that if we were to seek their women, the women would in no way give their consent, believing that the truncating of this member is the height of foulness, and detesting the divine sign of holiness as an idolatry." Interesting how that has changed so much in the past oh - thousand years or so.

That's all for now....I'll update if there's more interesting material, or who knows, maybe I'll post my eventual atrocious essay on here.

Now that would be a hoot.

*Abelard's text refers to it as such also.

desarraigo

February 23, 2004 - a night to be remembered. A woman, no - a girl, only a week before having bared herself physically and emotionally to the man she thought she loved is sitting in bed eating brownies. Earlier in the day she was at her friend's house eating Greek honey from a monastery and complaining about how her sinuses were blocked up. Her friend suggested that she clear her sinuses with hot steam. Several hours later she would completely get over her cold - due to experiencing severe physical and emotional shock. Having boiling water in a bowl in front of you while you're sitting on the edge of your bed with a towel over your head is - in retrospect- a very stupid idea. Needless to say - the bowl of boiling water was somehow spilled into said girls lap.

So I did what I could - I was wearing pyjama pants and quickly shucked them off - running half naked to the bathroom. I turned the shower on and thought "yeah, I can do this - I'll stand in the shower and cool these burns off and I'll sleep on it and be fine". It wasn't until I heard Niall's voice in the other room on the phone with emergency services: "Hi, yes, my girlfriend burnt her vagina!" (I really didn't) The operator's response: "Was it intentional?". Seriously? Actually? By this time I was basically hyperventilating and my heart rate was starting to go through the roof. I sat on the toilet and Niall came in to turn the shower off. Emerg was on their way. And I had scalds on my inner thighs - and they were stinging like hell, and I was half naked, for maybe the second time in my life in front of this man - who I sort of lived with. In a few hours my "shame" or whatever you like to call it would be semi-permanently removed from me.

Three minutes later there was a knock at the door. And a man came in, and the part I most vividly remember is how he looked at me, in the tiny bathroom illuminated by a red Japanese lantern which cast a pink pallor over everything, with so much concern in his eyes and began talking to keep me from going tachycardic. His name was Mike. He assessed my situation - he wasn't with the ambulance - he was with one of the Emerg. 4x4's that responds immediately to these situations. He took out a paper blanket spread it over my lower half and dumped basically a liter of cool saline over it in the next 5 minutes while we waited for the ambulance, albeit gently. He held my hand.

I walked up the stairs and out the door to the ambulance - making jokes the whole way - that's how in shock I was. And I remember the burning sensation, it was horrible and wouldn't go away - yet it wasn't the worst pain in my life. But perhaps the body forgets. The worst part was they couldn't do anything for me - they couldn't give me anything until I got to the hospital. But they stayed and held my hand and talked. They assured me that I wasn't an idiot although I really felt like one - I struggled with that for a while afterwards.

They saw me naked in every sense of the word. Once I got to the hospital they had to leave for their next call - I think I felt separation anxiety. So then I got catheterized (convenient) and had an IV drip of fentanyl (woot woot). Let's just say it was a very interesting 2.5 weeks at Sunnybrook Women's College Hospital. I had my own room - it had a view of the helipad. It was a learning experience. One I'll never forget.

It's interesting how my relationship with Niall was bookended by visits to the hospital via Ambulance. It's also funny/queer that both of my paramedics names were Mike. The second time I took an ambulance was when I lived with Niall and my best friend Skye. There was a long day at work followed by eggs benedict at Fran's, I'm not really sure to this day whether it was actually food poisoning or just heat stroke or something, but by 9pm that night I was feeling horrible. Coming back from a bookstore by streetcar was a dangerous ordeal - I felt nauseous. I assumed it was just me reacting to the heat of the day and the smells of the streetcar but by the time I got home I was ready to expel the contents of my stomach. So I did. More than several times over the course of the night. By 2am I was incredibly dehydrated and couldn't keep water down - no matter how thirsty I was, I kept throwing up water. Finally I gave in and called Telehealth and they told me that I had to visit a doctor within the next 4 hours. Even when my stomach was empty it was trying to empty itself and the cramps were getting so bad that my abdominal muscles hurt for the next few days. I felt so nauseous that I could hardly get up from a curled up position on our couch. So I dialled 911. Niall just kind of gave me a look of disbelief and was like "Seriously?". It was late August and Toronto was in a heatwave so I was only wearing a shirt and tiny shorts, he kept telling me to put some pants on but I was too far gone.

And that's how I met the second Mike. This one I remember more clearly - I had some sort of confusing attachment to him for the next few days. A crush, I suppose. He had blonde hair in a ponytail and was just great. He held my hand and a bucket for me, offered to carry me down our stairs, but again I walked. We made hilarious smalltalk in the ambulance - I was charming even as I was feeling like shit. He couldn't get the IV in. I guess I was too dehydrated. He tried 3 times - but we were in a moving ambulance. Got to the hospital and I felt sick again, he got me a sick bag and stayed with me while I went through the motions. (Niall was skulking in the background) At one point I was dry heaving so hard that it brought tears to my eyes continuously so I was technically crying. He smoothed my hair away from my face and wiped away my tears. It was totally the stuff romance novels are made of. He was reluctant to leave, but he did, and the nurse finally found a vein and the sweet delicious saline dripped into me and it felt like nothing else in this world.

So yeah - those were my two experiences with paramedics - I was lucky enough to be at least semi-cogent during both of them, and each time I was stunned at how great these people were, truly a rare breed of human among us.

If I'm gonna die, I want to die comfortable.

Rarely am I completely and utterly blown away by a film like I was tonight. I finally watched the Hurt Locker. I remember wanting to see it around the time District 9 came out and never getting around to it. I feel like I can't even string together a coherent sentence about it to capture exactly how I feel. It is akin to falling in love. Being completely sucked into something and really revelling in the way it makes you tingle from head to toe. My brain was working completely overtime while watching this movie. It's far from being pretty - but the cinematography was beautiful. I guess everybody takes away what they can from what they see and there are a million sociological and psychological reasons as to why we react and how we react to things but...it just struck something in me. I told my roommate that I felt as though I had eaten a giant meal and had to work on digesting it. So satisfying.

And I'm not even saying anything about the actual plot of it. Which is fine because I don't want to give away the ending or ...whatever. There were so many things running through my head as I watched it - mostly about sappers, (which by the way, 6 degrees of my mind - the sapper character in The English Patient and the crossover with Ralph Fiennes being in the movie adaptation and then in this) about those crazy suits they wear when they're disarming the bombs in terms of logistics of the suit etc. What kind of state of mind the main character was in - why he was the way he was - the idea of psychological/emotional compartmentalization and whether the development of it is more of a nature or nurture question. I hope I love it just as much when I watch it the second time.