… the real versus I know of this are much cruder…

Ah such tales of chivalry, of knights and pure hearts, to be the true lover, the one to sacrifice it all for the happiness of the other.

I have tried to be, to give love to he which carries my heart. And yet I meet moments of loathing for myself. When I act selfishly, unable to make some sacrifices. His time is valuable, and I am greedy for it. Each moment I get I wish for another despite I know there are other importances to his life, more important than me. A job, independence, school. I am but a secondary mistress to his future, as he should be a secondary master to mine, or so logic and “common sense states”.

And I feel so bad, for I love him within what capacity one in my still young years can love and I truly wish to do all in my power to make him happy.

So why sometimes do my own insecurities invade, cause doubts of how strong his affection still stands, makes me fear losing him. Is this what it is to suffer the human condition or merely my own home grown insecurities.

Perhaps this is what they mean when to truly love others one must love oneself. I fear at times my own self insecurities become projected on those I care for. If I cannot each day love myself, physically… and at times withing, then how many instabilities do I cause to my relationship.

Still I must ask..

Can love be truly selfless? It seems if it must that that may have to be one way, one giver, one reciever, for if both sacrifice it all I am not sure they would get very far.
But is love not a selfish thing? We desire it, seek it, crave it when we have it not. A child unloved will yearn for it, a broken heart will crave to hear those words. Is that not a selfish need… But love is yet supposed to be a selfless thing, something you give…
yet also recieve.

Even now I am being selfish, I miss him and want to share with him the things I take joy in, the nature of the north, the local festivals. And yet I know it stresses him when his duty to his work… now every god damned day a week demands he comply. And I feel angry, frustrated and … guilty. Guilt at feeling anger, at causing stress as he tries to navigate his life and secure his employment and even greater guilt at the fact I know damn well that much his his gains and effort are so that he can in the future offer me gifts of time… and take me to things and give me tokens of his affection. And in a sense then his work is as much for me as for himself. So why then do I resent it when he must cancel plans I have so looked forward to.

It breaks my heart when each time I have planned something, looked so forward to it only to have it crushed by that word I now dread and loath “WORK”

And yet it is true, it is part of growing up, part of being a responsible adult.

But I must question, what kind of a world is it when to make a living and be “responsible adults” we must slight the time of those we love and care for most?

Is this what capitalism is? To make slaves of our lives and wittle away the precious moments so at the end we ask not only where has the time gone? but also regret how much we wasted with such things striving for position and money.

Camus was right… life is absurd, and we waste it.

Perhaps I am in my current state of anger being too harsh and unfair. And he tries hard I know he does, his guilt is perhaps stronger than mine.

But that is why I must ask if love is not a selfish thing, that it causes such feelings of pain and guilt. Or does it make me merely a bad lover, to feel such agony when fate cheats me of cards.

And yet there is one sacrifice that i will make, that I save it, bottle it, keep him from seeing the true extent of which these changes devastate my soul… and then when alone it eats me away and I but writhe and cry and drown in my darkness, never letting him know of the imagined daggers that do cut and harm an imagined self, or the cliffs or the torment.

No… bad lover or not, that burden is mine to carry I will not hurt him with it, for it is of my own creation and will be of my own destruction for so long as the thread is there, I cling, hang on and can always find my way back to myself. And then the storm passes and the sun rises, and all is right and light and good… for a time at least.

Perhaps it is simply another matter of when waiting is filled… and so I shall wait and take advantage at least of my frustrations to channel them into something constructive.

Writing… when all humans fail me, when no one is there to lift me up, be my redemption or saviour… it is there, lurking, a too often alienated passion that yet always welcomes you back with open arms.
And so I write… and wait for tomorrow.

But alas the reading list pile up, the first test next week, the lack of sleep, work, deadlines research… shopping for textbooks (I haven’t even gotten to do any shopping for new clothes)

A poor pained writer haunted by here characters…

where have I heard that one before… or has TS. Eliot stopped inspiring those pages of scribble and fragments stuffed in your clip board.

*sigh*

but on language we were discussing it with my professor in philosophy of nature. The great war between Plato and Aristotle, continued by the empiricists and rationalists and brought back from the dead by Chalmers only in argument of language.

Such a silly argument really, a much ado about nothing. How do we get language, are we born with it or is it gained through experience.

As we discussed this, of Chalmers extremely rational approach I could not but after think,

Is music language? Can it be considered such.
True we do not use words in it per se (though one does in song) but in a good piece of music why would you need words when it does itself sing? A good guitarist makes each string sing as well as a good violinist, flutist or pianist.

One can use it for communication, how better than to tell the audience the bad guy is approaching than through a sinister minor chorded melody? How to summon the hero or heighten the romance?

Watch an old silent film and tell me that music is not used as a form of language.

Would Chalmers agree? Perhaps. Is music innate? Perhaps, even tone deaf hum or whistle or enjoy music. We seem to aim for rhythm, feet march into step in a line, following beats, tempos. Dance.

And so I must say that I think perhaps music is language, a wordless language in many ways more powerful than words itself, it can speak things words fail at, while touching us at our inner cores of emotions and souls.

One might argue it is not quite like language, certainly one cannot communicate specific instructions per se, you cannot tell little jimmy to go fetch the milk from the grocer after 4 pm but to express the larger topics where words may fail, perhaps to aid in oru basic speech, music is a language, or an amplifier, aid to regular language.

Whatever you want to call it as a form of our expression, lives and communication music plays a vital role, one that should not be ignored.

Is it strange that I cannot believe that in a few short months I will be 21, that already that many years of my life has slipped by while the memories of youth and childhood are still often so clear and fully planted that it really does seem not all that long ago.

And all too soon the short period of time between the end of my exams and the start of my months long exodus north will all pass and I will bid farewell to friends until York starts again in september. I love the cottage, the peace, the swimming, sitting in my glade, reading, the bonfires and the woodlands, the beautiful sunsets and the awesome market.

I can begin swimming and my long runs on the road again, cross country up and down the dirt hills horseflies  and deerflies chasing me, hungry for my blood. There are few things better to clear the mind and cleanse the spirit than running. Sometimes it feels like you could run from it all if you ran far enough, long enough. Leave every bad memory, every person you want to leave, every trouble, problem, that if you ran and kept running they could never catch up with you. I still get that feeling sometimes when I am stressed or things look bad, that urge to just start running, it doesnt matter where you go or where you end up, if you get lost then all the better perhaps. Just purely it is about running. A flight instinct i guess. It is rarer now, but still so fresh the feeling, back when my grandmother had cancer and was dying, when friends were exiting my life in more ways than one and identity was as blurred as distant street signs without my glasses… then i used to feel it so often. Then at least, i had an excuse to run, through field hockey… and sometimes even when not in field hockey, I would just run.

The exhilaration, the feeling in your legs as you run too far, too hard, each breath burning like there is a fire in your throat while your mind soars, flies free. It is a feeling I have never gotten over, something I think I will always love.

But soon not even running can fill the feelings of isolation one feels at first. As much as I love the cottage, working at the library running the children’s programs, the isolation is hard. Maybe if we get internet it will be easier. Despite the fact I mail out usually between 15 and 20 letters each summer via snail-mail I am but lucky to get 5 back. Oh yes Aaron will come to visit, he has promised and I usually make 1-2 trips to the city but it is still hard. Lonely, there are a few other people on the lake my age, i barely know them. Even if they were around, I am a firm believer in the truth that you can be in a room surrounded by people, even ones talking to you, that interact with you, and still be truly alone, as if no one was there at all. And I will miss Aaron, I will miss him alot, even if I will get to see him every few weeks. And thus I turn to books, and my creative talents… and my imagination, I have always turned to those. Escapism. I am a great master of escapism.

I still have a list from past years inventory at the library, over 150 titles I might like to read from fiction alone. *sigh* I am such a nerd. I really am…

People in movies and books always portray the “nerd-guy” as the one who winces, dreads meeting up with their tormentors. But for the nerd-girl, it can be just as bad. Worse perhaps, the war on 2 fronts, disrespect, taunting and jeering from the guys, them shouting at you in hallways… and the gossip, rumors and isolation from the girls. I still dread going into the tim hortons in evenings, fearing i might meet some of them as it is a common hangout.

We learn to paint our masks, put on faces and fronts to protect us, defend ourselves, shut out the world. But at some point the masks break, or after such long wear we forget the face beneath, or fear revealing it to others. If modern drama and my modernist lit course raised one very important question it is “Can you ever really know someone?” I am still not sure of that answer. Does it matter if you ever really know someone, does it matter than someone ever really knows you?

As much as I have spent a good deal of my life trying to hide myself from the masses… I think deep inside the answer to that last question is and always has been a yes. Perhaps that is what drives us in part in love, in friendships, in all intimate relationships, is the desire to be known, to have someone who is willing and able to see us through the mask, through it all, someone we can trust. Perhaps that is part of why it hurts so much if you think you have found that person and they turn out not to be it.

I guess life is such a great road that we are endlessly questing in our identities, looking in ourself, others and the world around us for fragments of a possibly never complete mosaic that comprises our individual beings.

I ramble and the night is no longer young. Come morning I must continue studying.

Ah yes dear journal we meet again,
Our estrangement has been hard I know, the days go by and I long to see you but now, every long winded sentence I had needed to be saved, stored up only to be put into essay after essay as the pages of words from my last entry to now has topped 40 perhaps even 50… i lost count…

And so now, with but a few days till my next two exams I may rekindle our relationship, strike up the spark that keeps me writing, keeps me coming back to the temptation to put my thoughts in the online public knowing not who reads them. Oh yes with each key I type I can feel the lust growing for more entries, to write fair and formal words, weaving my illusions around me like, a great cloak to keep me safe…

Okay I will stop writing love letters to my journal…

No no, my sanity is not so thin… I am not yet Gogol’s madman, addressing letters to a dog and claiming that China and Spain are in fact the same country. No I am not so mad as that.

Though if today were February 43 it would be pretty damn cool if you ask me

And so what tidings do I bring? The tide is turning and my brain is starting to boil. A number of factors of course, stress, exams but most of all that fever which takes me so often. That creative fever, late nights and late lines, written in the dark, scribbled on pieces of paper, doodles in the margins of notes

so what do I have, beyond my long term projects, the painting for my uncle is essentially drawn onto the canvas, he wants cameron wearing a hat, can be done. Must write him for colours. Reid may want it dull and so it shall be but dull and colourless are two different things.
I must get good paints and soon have to remember to call that place.

And then there are the plays, never thought I would write a play, but modern drama… it did something to my mind, and I started to imagine things, not as books or regular stories but as plays.

one is … a bit of a political piece with some absurd qualities… not sure where its going, where im going to take it the skeleton is there, needs to be fleshed out.

But there is something else brewing, a piece of art, a play about art, with art, and dance and music. I want the piece to be itself a work of art. I wasnt quite sure how far i could take it in its design, but then we saw the video clips from Ubu and the Truth Commision… and then I knew, then I knew that what I saw in my head could be done.

The characters needs some work.
Names matter. I have too many characters at the moment, I want it to be more focused, I want there to be bonds. But the standard cast I know who must stay.

Then there is the poetry… why oh why must T.S. Eliot and Ezra pound choose to haunt me. Eliot particularly.

riddle: how do you know you have been reading too many modernist texts?

Answer: When you start writing your own contemporary response to the wasteland

no its true, i have. fragments I am slowly organizing, molding, a represenation of our own breakdown and a nostalgia for things in the past.

Technology was supposed to connect us after all, phones connect the world, the internet allowed easy long distance communication, Facebook… you can find anyone on facebook…justabout, long lost friends…those weird people who you knew in kindergarten who message you sounding as though you are old buddies when you havent seen them in 15 years…

So why are we so isolated… i mean really isolated. Every one is signed in, plugged in, turned on. Noise everywhere, ads, music in stores, walkmans, mp3′s, ipods, and signs and videos and tv everywhere, and my boyfriend doesnt spend 5 minutes on the bus without pulling out his PSP.
“I made a new friend today” “oh really?” “yes on Warcraft”

and I go home to my room, and I sit there and enjoy the silence, no tv, no music, no little mechanical dingnig noises, no bright colours flashing before my eyes constantly.

Is it wrong that I feel overwhelmed by such noise? So much visual stimulus?

Am I weird that if I am not reading, I like nothing better on trips than to sit back and stare out the window and think, or watch people , see whats going on in the world. Is it weird that I feel more alone when surrounded in this world of noise and signs and flashing things and communication based on messages so no one ever has to see you face to face, than in the depths of my own mind, where I can imagine people and talk to them without the noise, the ipods cell phones facebooks, psp’s and all that other jazz

because I do
and it is so hard to explain how one can feel truly alone surounded by people, feel more isolated from their friends despite just having talked to them on msn than they do when miles away writing them letters… but I do.

No I am not a Luddite, I have a cell phone, i go on the internet just like everyone else. But I feel isolated, alienated.

no one even calls anymore, its all facebook and text messages. I am in fact surprised to get a casual phone call just to talk. Why do that when you could use msn.

But I do whine and complain alot don’t I.
The world scares me, I fear for trees and I rant about technology taking over and only a few hours into the past I was discussing how I believe our future generation of kids will have no imagination because they will be over stimulated by visual and auditorial stimulus.

But I think its true, the way the world is moving frightens me, technology is great but… there are the downsides.

When I was a kid I spent the first 4 years of my life for the most part at my cottage up north. The tv only got 4 channels, one being global, but I dont remember watching alot of tv, maybe some cartoons in the morning. like beetlejuice, teenage mutant ninja turtles, the smoggies, and all those other classic 90′s shows that were good, wholesome in their own way and soo much cooler than kids shows today.

But for the most part I played, outside, or did puzzles or played inside with toys, enacting stories with my sister and playing pretend…

today, there are interactive toys, they talk for themselves and tell you what to do “feed me” “dress me”… not much room for imagination there. Some of them even move on their own… and when i was little kid if there was one thing that got me screaming it was any toy that moved on its own (yeah that anamatronic cow toy that walked and moo’d they got for my sister… i was one of those kids who started bawling the moment it got turned on) I was of course only 3-4… but yeah.

And when I was a kid, you actually had to sound out the words while bonding with mom or dad… “c–aaa—ttt” … not anymore, you dont need mom, or dad, the books talk for themselves, they will sound out words, read you the stories and even add in entertaining sound effects and voices so you dont have to hear them in your head.
(talking books would also have scared me… i can guarantee it)

I dont mean to go nostalgia on things but… is it just me or are even those kids item commercials getting… kinda overly individualistic, the dad coming in and the kids already figured the whole thing out… I mean getting you child to become independent is important, but plonking them infront of a learning game on the tv or with one of those interractive pads is in my personal opinion no substitute to plain old one on one time.

Poor bonding can only mean bad things for the future.

And I know people are busy, they work they dont have the time they used to and thats a problem too, maybe even the source of the other problem. and both need to be addressed.
But first you gotta become aware of them.
Ok so a person who is wary of technology who is dating a techno-lover… burn me for hypocrisy for all I care. … Does it help that I love taking things apart and seeing how they work?

… so how did I get from wooing my journal amorously to ranting about technology…

Getting off topic seems to be a habit. Oh well… Exams this week Ick, soon they shall be done.

Am I unhappy, no, I am far from unhappy. Am I stir-crazy, very much so. Between the hotel living while they repair the fire damages of Aaron’s home and school having started up again and his work and my school work so little time, so little time indeed. And I grow restless to have that time again. This year is so much busier than last year and I do miss his company. I grow lustful, music, poetry, romance in general is flooding me and driving me mad with contained and suppressed emotions. I am like a pot full of a great stew of feelings about to boil over onto a stove, spewing my contents every which way.

In the mean time I find life generally irritating. Somehow I am at the same time feeling extremely anti-social. I want to retreat from people, become a hermit and write and draw and create and paint until the storm is over.

Is it possible to be driven mad by love, by the feelings of it that you try to express in words, in art, in poetry, in looks and yet seem to fall so short, the bar can be seen but not reached no matter how high you jump it is just out of reach and then you fall back down, a failure.

Should one who has been so lucky as I feel a failure? I have had over a year of happiness, after 3 years of frustration, periods of lonliness, longing, turndowns, I have someone who returns the feelings. And yet as much as I wish to show them all the wonderful things they make me feel I feel each time as though I have failed.

I am being driven mad by love, and things sing within me to create. And yet all the while I fear sometimes that he may stop feeling for me what he feels now, that each ” I love you” will become as hollow and empty as an old stump, where all the life has rotted away leaving but the shell of what once was. However I do not doubt him, no one look in his eyes and I can see it, see it there, that look reflected that makes me melt. I love that look, I love to see it in every moment of insecurity, of failure, of hopelessness, disappointments. And yet I must be strong on my own, I cannot depend on that look to be my savior, to deliver me from all of life’s challenges and pick me up when I fall. I must stand on my own and be strong to bear the burdens.

I am such a hopeless romantic… *sigh* and all the while I should be writing an essay. Such thing is not writing itself, no T.S Elliot’s Wasteland and Hemmingway’s In Our Time will not compare themselves. So much to read, so much to do, and I am tired and yet I need to write, to get this our, perhaps then it will clear my head and I can sleep and write with a clear mind.

Perhaps this is what I have needed though, a break in the wall of writers blood. perhaps the dam has cracked and will soon burst and I shall be writing like a madwoman again. mmm I miss those days, those days of freezing mid sentence with an inspiration, scrabbling for a pen and then just scribbling like crazy. At last perhaps they have returned to me.

Till then I must sleep and perhaps dream. I have had weird dreams of late. A falcon being chased by a goose being chased by another falcon. The first falcon falls, injured but is rescued, taken in and survives to take to the sky again. The goose falls too but does not live. It dies, killed by the mate of the first falcon. A strange dream indeed.

But I love strange dreams. they are far more interesting than no dreams at all. For what are we without dreams? perhaps not but uninspired shells.

And so in celebration of my success I am doing bugger all this evening. Thats right, no reading, no studying, no work. I am celebrating that week of hell with doing what I please. Which at the moment is to catch up on the long string of my favorite web comics.

My top fav’s are right now Girl Genius and Questionable Content. Both artistically have appealing and unique graphical content, an entertaining cast of characters and a progressing plot. I love both Agatha and Zeetha on Girl Genius, Agatha for just her mechanical abilities, I sympathize a bit with her, in my shop class in Grade 10 I was one of 3 girls and the only grade 10 girl in it. Being a female grease monkey in still a rather male dominated environment isn’t easy. (nor has it been any easier in the contract job I did this summer… where I lost track of how many times I was asked or told “are you aware you are doing a mans job” “that really is a man’s job dear, are you sure you will be alright?” I may only be 5’2 but you just watch me change and torque that car tire.
From this anyone who reads GG they may already guess why I like Zeetha… I have a soft spot, or should I say strong spot for any warrior princess, strong female hero type. Hell if i could run off to be a pirate queen or a knight riding around on a black Frisian war horse you bet I would do it. Till then fencing is the best i can do for my aspirations of swashbuckling.

So yes two excellent comics I follow, both also make me smile and are a nice detour from the drudgery of studying… or reading Marxist commentaries…*snooze*

These I follow up with Octopus Pie, another one I discovered this year and very quickly fell in love with the romance mishaps and odd friendships of Eve , poor Eve, never mind her awesome humor. Plus the Zen of the Duck can be nothing but cool.

Dresden Codak as a gamer, sci-fi fan and general nerd I can do naught but love, as with Order of the Stick, something which though lately the plot has slowed a bit still holds a special place in my heart for its jokes that make all gamers laugh, especially with the similarity to the cast with some of the characters my friends have played.

A few others most definitely worth mentioning and worth a visit include VG cats which alas seems to be rather scarce on the updates of late, XKCD for its wit, twisted humor and making even math seem entertaining, dark legacy comics (if you play WoW), Manic Graffiti(though it has been inactive of late and even if you don’t play WoW Noobcow is just soo cute and the artist really is amazing) Perry Bible Fellowship is one I do check occasionally for updates.

I used to be a huge fan of Venus Envy, a web comic that really was emotionally heart wrenching at times and at other times absolutely hilarious, alas it has been a very long time since the story was updated and I fear it has died… that and right at a real cliff hanger too.

I think that is all the web comics I follow for now, the list grows every few months I find a new one to read and add it on. There are tons out there but not all keep my interest enough.

But its enough for now to keep me happily procrastinating.

That said I think I shall go to sleep, an early lecture tomorrow… since when 11:30 am became considered early for me I dont know… but it is now.

In addition Nightwish is an awesome band, go listen to it.

Start with a crunch and end with penny… doesn’t sound quite the same, but when was I to ever follow conventions.

After all I have a perfectly good journal which I have of late been such a wonderful caregiver to that I have neglected it horribly and here I am opening up a new blog… go me. We shall see how long this lasts… but well I think I can keep up both, may put some similar content…

So why did I come here? The layout was rather cool, and the very old abandoned LJ account full of high school melodrama, old friendships and tales of my 15-30 minutes of fame here and there for trying to cause some social change in the school environment didn’t seem a place to return to.

Let the corpses of the past stay buried. Perhaps that is why I have opened this, I still love my DA journal and don’t think I will ever abandon it but it has its own baggage, 2 years of confusion, loss and coping with a rather disillusioning post loss… the me then has died, changed and arisen anew several times since, though the memories still seem like yesterday.

Strange actually… is it…yes it is… I write on the day before the anniversary of her passing. 2 years, I can still remember her voice, her face. Cancer is a terrible thing. *sigh*

But on to the present, for that is all one truly has, you have the past no longer, nor the future ahead, only the present, as fast as each moment slips by that is all we ever have.

I am not really one for new years resolutions but I am trying to resolve to make better time of my present. So many seconds wasted, it almost cost me dearly once. I swore to not let it again. I must try to keep my vow, no matter how hard it is. So much we throw our time away on these days. When was it last that I completed one of those wonderful books on my shelf that wasn’t assigned for a class… ok so reading 5 books at a time isn’t the best way to finish… but still.

maybe my new much more portable acquisition will help. It is not easy to ready a single bound trilogy when it weighs about 5 lbs. One of the three is much easier to carry in an already heavy backpack.

My sketchbook too remains demanding my affections, so much to do, and i keep putting it off, for what I’m not sure. Seems an entire holiday just slipped through my hands.

“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled…” if I am not careful I shall be singing Prufrock’s song.

Then again I used to sing it in romance anyways… and still do in friendships. Too afraid to introduce myself, to say hello… a fool, let me play the clown, I’m not funny but awkward enough to bring humor I’m sure.

Well after in my journal thinking about it I told him what I wanted. For it is true. So many things inspire me, and I try to create from that. Nature inspires me, emotions, people, friends, and my lover inspire me. Each muse poses in my mind or before my eyes and I from it create in art, words sometimes even music.

But maybe I am just greedy, unsatisfied, a selfish Orpheus, not happy enough with playing upon my lyre. No I want to wear the shoe on the other foot for a change.

A hopeless romantic am I, my history of writing poetry (not always well received) to the object of my affections is a long one. And I have someone who appreciates it, each poem carefully put away, each piece hung and framed… everything treasured, every letter, every card. And I do the same in return. He is one of my muses…

But deep in my heart the dirty little desire still sits, the romanticized, idealized desire is there. I want to be someones muse for once. Thats right, I want to inspire just to see how it feels to be the objectified, the one immortalized in some form of art or poetry, song, composition… something.

Alas it seems hard to have it both ways, I love being inspired, it and the high of the actual creation of something are some of the greatest pleasures I find in life. But still, must the artists face always be hidden behind the canvas, the poet no more than a disembodied name? I hope not.

And so life goes on and I must return to my readings for my social science course… its enough to drive anyone into an absurdist insanity… The Chairs here I come.