your former madwoman

She was insane for you.

You were her heartbeat.

She was your friend.

Made you an entire set of dishes

because you said her pottery was cool.

Now I sit here licking the last of the icecream

from one of her cool bowls.

Mmmm...it tastes so good.

Am I sick?

Inerads become our Outards

Twice a week, a hollowed out old man, similar to the one above, comes to the therapy pool. When I watch him lurk towards the water, I'm reminded of you. If we looked on the outside how we felt on the inside, you'd resemble him.
His muscles twist and stiffen creating a stuttered movement as he walks. He towers over me, skeletal, hagard, used up. Aged beyond his years by hardship and struggle, an illness. Even his skin betrays him. The small folds hang heavy pulling him further down. In some respects, I wish we were that way...Obvious...not deceptive or hidden. I have to believe that people would make more of an effort to heal and treat others kindly. But at the same time, maybe people wouldn't reach out to the broken. Maybe they would be avoided and discarded. One time I asked the old man how his day was going, he instantly became a different person. He has a smile that would light up the largest of rooms. Now when I see him, he is no longer the hagard hollowed out man I initially saw. He's a kind, gentle, lively young soul. Ultimately, given the chance, their truths will shine through.

This is not a bad dream.

Cry.

Cry your eyes out for all the starving children you can't save.

Cry a river for the Chinese and Indian rice farmers you can’t console.

Blubber and shudder and let out a long sigh for all those Arab babies you paid to have blown to bits.

Claw your face and pound your fists onto the nearest surface for the deformed South American children ravaged by the effects of illegal pesticides used indiscriminately to destroy coca fields.

Now what have you done?

You’ve cried, does it make you feel any better?

Does it change anything?

Does it make someone elses struggle your own?

When you go about your day doing the same mundane things you do every single day, think about where your money goes.

Could you have walked to the store just now?

Was it necessary to burn gas?

Isn’t there a war for some oil going on somewhere?

Cry, bawl, blubber, shudder, scream and WAKE-UP!

--Anonymous in Adbusters

Lovin's for Fools

Crazy how I feel living without you,
inside this house that we built.
Seems like the window is finally open,
letting the memories out.

Well go on and love her,
love her forever.
I will not tell her
you told me too.
You'll never know dear,
how much I love you.
Lovin's for fools.
Lovin's for fools.

Maybe you'll find me

walking the garden.

Looking for something pure.

Roots that are growing,

deeper and deeper,

Maybe you'll pull them too.

Well go on and leave here,

leave here forever.

No one can make you do what you do.

You'll never know dear how much I love you.

Lovin's for fools, Lovin's for fools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hnAY05A9PE

Ahh music, the universal language, the pulse of mankind. Music breathes life, does that mean it can sufficate too?

Many of the songs that I've been drawn to lately are quite depressing haha. I'm able to tease about it because I now recognize my wallowing ways.

I find it therapuetic to replay a song that matches my feelings over and over and over again. I'm now beginning to question if this repetition is in fact prolonging my sadness. When I shuffle through my peaPod I cannot find a damn song on there that is fun, happy, uplifting. Those songs just don't feel real to me, therefore I do not download them. I have a hard time believing those artists even feel what they're singing. Are some people really that happy? It feels forced, of course many songs are. Many artists, I use that term loosely, are just trying to make it big to live that bloated American dream lifestyle that a loathe....uuugh. So now I'm torn...I need the saving breath that only music can grant, but this depressing shit is only giving me enough to keep me on life support. I may code before I find a genuine happy artist that revives the life I know I am capable of living. I'll keep you posted.

Spread Smilesss

"The woman sitting opposite meon the #4 Powell bus is wearing a leather bomber jacket and stylized Armani glasses. Her fingers are crossed over the wooden handle of a corduroy shoulder bag. The words "PURL" and "KNIT" are tattooed across her knuckles in the same gothic letter that Tupac Shakur used to tattoo "OUTLAW" on his forearm. I'm about to talk to someone who is, apparently, a gangster knitter.



I'm conducting an experiment designed by Canada's top subjective well-being assignment: to record my level of happiness and then get on a bus and initiate a conversation with a stranger. When I get off the bus, I will record my happiness level again. Helliwell's research has proven that the more positive social interactions we have, the higher our happiness level is six out of ten. If Dr. Helliwell is correct, a conversation with the gangster knitter will raise my happiness level to seven.

I throw my best "what's up?" look across the aisle, but the gangster knitter's gaze, hooded by thick brown lashes, is fixed out the window. Her gaze drifts to the Full Throttle energy drink advertisement above my head, to the floor, to the yellow safety bars near the back door. I remember what Helliwell told me. "on a bus you think 'I'm being nice to these people by not invading their space.' But research tells me that, in fact, if we shared a little more space, they'd be happier and I'd be happier. So who's the real loser?"

Ten minutes later, the bus pulls up to my stop. At the door I turn and say, "I like your tattoos." She removes her iPod buds and looks up at me (hazel eyes. I love hazel eyes). "Thank you," she says, a smile dancing at the edges of her lips. As the bus pulls away from the curb, I record a happiness level of seven into my logbook."--Ian Bullock, a Vancouver freelance writer who is at work on his first novel.

Forever Young

"My face is the product of sporadic sunscreen and a lifetime of shitty choices: prepubescent cat fights, Players Light Regular and a thousand nights spent cramming for exams and pondering my existence. I am only 24 and I have small wrinkles forming on the sides of my eyes and mouth, and on my forehead.

Botox is the solution. Chemical peels, microdermabrasion and a Joan Rivers style pick-me-up may eventually be required. In the meantime, there are a multitude of cosmetics that plump up, fill in and camouflage. Ad if that doesn't work, I can bake my body into melonoma oblivion at the local Fabutan in an effort to look "healthy" and "vibrant." People will like me. Men will want to fuck me. Life will be wonderful.

Once I am wrinkle-free, my graduate degree will suddenly materialize on my wall, my boyfriend will no longer want to screw Megan Fox, and I will be the greatest woman that ever lived.

Yes, the botox, the self-induced melonoma and the obsessive, self-important desire to look good would surely impress thousands of women who fought for my right to be more than a mere reflection of beauty. I'm sure Emily Carr and Jane Addams aren't rolling in their graves everytime society glorifies Paris Hilton as anything more than toxic swill. I'm sure I'll be a better person if I have a frozen forehead.

Oh the O generation, how proressive you are."--Sheena Edmundson

It plagues men and women alike...the desire to remain forever young. PAAh. Good luck. I'm not saying you shouldn't take care of yourself, eat alright, exercise, protect your skin. I'm just proposing a new attitude towards age.

Instead of being so hung up on wrinkles, receding hairlines, a little skin flab, take pride in your years. I know it's easy to say when I'm only in my twenties, the age people strive to maintain many years after, but I hope to adopt my mother's philosophy as I age.

She is the most beautiful woman I know. She's 50 something, and looks it. She still strives to be healthy, eat right ect, however, she's incredibly comfortable with her wrinkles. I would go so far as to say that she's proud of them. She's said to me numerous times, "I've earned every one of these years." She never thought she'd live this long, and she views reaching her age as a huge accomplishment--which it most definitely is!!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should embrace who you are and where you're at in life. Stop picking yourself apart, and spending all your time and energy on a fleeting goal....that's just what the media wants you to do. Consume. Consume. Consume. Youth, however, is a state of mind. Stay forever young at heart and LIVE your life instead of wishing it were different.

I need to remind myself of this often.

The Alternative:)

Optimism

"You say there is nothing to hope for. You say we are all headed for doom. You say democracy is dead and America is the devil, as you take another swig of your Jack Daniel's and Coke.

You say banks are evil. That they feed off our vanity and greed, making us clowns in a grotesque comedy. You say the West is dead, destroyed: no morality, no life...just shopping. Tell me, could you say that to the girl who is beaten with sticks for revealing a lock of hair? She cannot say anything.

You say everyone works for money out of egotism...that we all just pretend to care. You say our way of life spells the end of humanity, and that we know nothing of what we speak. You say we are enslaved by fashion; but so is every society, even tribesmen in the Serengeti.

You say it all because you have the luxury to complain.

True, we live in a capitalist system. True, we have become disconnected from our political system and live in a hyperconsumerist culture.

But I will not allow you to bring me down from my high. I will not let you judge me. Nihilism, shmihilism. The freedom of negative expression maintains oppression. Think twice about pessimism--it keeps unwanted systems in existence.

Say something I haven't heard before."--Stephanie Bailey

I'm definitely guilty of a defeatest attitude. I've passed pessimism on long enough, I now strive to focus on the beauty of our society. If I've learned anything this past year, I've learned that humans are capable of change. This motivates me to promote social change and not submit to "norms." I recently read a quote on a friend's wall, "it's not a sign of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Truer words have never been spoken. Solution:be the cure!! Instead of merely denying societal standards or worse settling for them, ignite change. Be the spark. Set this beautiful, horrible, crazy world ablaze!!

"Be the change you want to see in the world."--Mahatma Gandhi

Nihilism is the basic credo of cool

Nihilism





"I see what I see that is that. I see wars, I see poverty, I see struggle. I see a generation too spoiled to care and too arrogant to dig deep.





Democracy is dead and a new world order is colonizing our souls. Media chokes us, coerces us, makes us believe that being more than human is better than being. I see women desperately seeing perfection, enslaved by their magazines' false ideals. She says too much of nothing.





I see selfishness. I see caricatures and parodies aspiring to become iconic. I see heat, I see meat, I see vice. I see posers paddling in a media pool waxing lyrical about life, believing that they know. They know nothing.





They swim in style, adrift in champagne politics.





True, we live freely within a capitalist ethos of consumption. True, we all work to live. That is life in all systems.





But I will not allow the future to be choked by the present. I will not tolerate a society that is all style and no substance. I will not permit my children to live in excess.





And I will speak until I am heard."--Stephanie Bailey

Mmm...Steak.

" Falling in love is like eating a steak, only you are trying to swallow the entire thing without chewing it and so it inevitably becomes stuck. Falling out of love is similar, only opposite. Your body recoils and fights for air because of the steak in your throat. Sometimes you choke to death. The people that choke die or they get a therapist. Other people vomit and then they try swallowing the steak all over again. These people are stupid. I tend to drink, hoping the liquid will force down what's blocking my air."

--Written by a fellow insomniac, Ian Bassingthwaighte, because there is nothing else to do at night. His favorite food is cheerios.

I reminisce:

Falling in love with Stanley was extremely difficult. Many walls broken down on both sides, and once we finally found love, he got scared and bailed. Falling out of love with Stanley was even harder. I remember coming back from lunch with his roommate where I learned that he was seeing another girl, less than three weeks after we ended, and quite literally not being able to breathe. I collapsed to the kitchen floor and sobbed uncontrollably. That wasn't even the worst of it...but I refuse, even in my mind, to relive that hell.

Although I never stopped loving Stanley, I did find a way to release my heart/emotions from his control. I moved on. Now, however, I've put myself in an interesting situation. I'm allowing myself his company once again. It's not that I'm afraid of being alone. I actually prefer that lately, as I'm sure you can gather from my first post. I just take comfort in his genuineness. Drowning in a sea of superficial people, I'm saved by Stanley's sincerity. I'm slowly trusting him more and more.

Recently, he's been there for me a lot. He even supported my decision to follow my very confused heart out to Cali to visit another guy...that, my friends, is impressive. And while I morned the loss of a friendship with said guy, Stanley was there to cry on and pick me up. Selfless. As beautiful as this love is, part of me can't help but feel that I'm trying to reswallow the regurgitated steak mentioned above. Stupid. Maybe I should take Ian's advice and drink these feelings away. Wouldn't be my first attempt to achieve numbness...won't be my last.

My Winter in Summer

"The sky cracked a million ways making me blind."-Yeasayer

What I wouldn't give for a barren tree.

No seedlings.

No leaves.

Just sprawled

and exposed, please.

**Warning: I make no claims at being a poet...just enjoy writing.

It's summer here, and I miss my tall, naked friends. With their fine jagged edges. So severe.

I hardly recognize them now. Happy. Fruitful. It's a facade. I'm not out of my winter. I'm still trying to hibernate. They've moved on without me. I'm slipping into the background.

Being a blog virgin, I wish I had a more uplifting note to start on.

I'm hoping this outlet will help my wallowing stink of a cloud dissipate.