I have no time for a real post, but I love this video. She is so strong and small. Also reminds me of my sister dancing to The Emperor's New Clothes.

Countdown

YOU

But what about the normals? What about all the people that are just okay and not exceptional. What do they do?

ME

Don't know.

YOU

I guess being exceptional doesn't mean driven. Okay-ness could be coupled with ambition, and you could have exceptional people living in a 2 1/2 with only a blood stained mattress and a three legged chair to call their own, working for Mr. B-.

ME

You shouldn't focus on material possessions. They don't make you happy.

****************************************

Signed a lease with The Russian. It's official, we are moving in together. I know he doesn't have a good track record with the living together, and that I will be broke and jobless when I get back from Spain, and that we will have to live together for a month in his miniature den of filth (I exaggerate, a little), but it still seems like a good idea. And that is a comforting thought. Just have to make it through the five week separation without him, I don't know, not even sure what it is that I am afraid of him doing. But whatever it is, I hope he doesn't do it, because it will be a thing, a hurtful thing that will require reparation.

In other news, going to be a certified archivist in about two weeks, that's pretty exciting. But I am not so excited about it. I don't really feel capable of taking on a professional position. Iapply for them nonetheless, but so far Emory has sent me a polite letter telling me thanks, but no thanks, and I haven't heard from Washington, so I take they are giving their $6000 stipend to someone that is not me. But I will remain hopeful until Monday.

Something that is getting my juices flowing is thinking about opening up my own business. Not in the archiving business, but film distribution. Bby and I talked about it yesterday and it seems like an extraordinary amount of work, but interesting and worth it and something I could feel passionate about. I am going to research it more thoroughly to see if there is space for that kind of business in Montreal. I think the answer is yes, because I am always finding movies that I wish would be here and which never are. And if I like them, there must be other people who would like them too.

Anyway, it is an interesting time right now. Have to move, have to buy a bunch of stuff for Spain, have to finish all my school shit, and really all I want to do is read about film distribution, hang out with my peeps, spend days in bed with The Russian, and celebrate the little dude's birthday on Sunday with my family (The Russian is coming! Meeting the folks! Gah!).

I feel pretty relaxed, although I guess the fact that my eye has been jumping for about a week and I am not sleeping all that well probably means I am just not processing my stress all that well, but...

At least I don't have to think about Electronic Records Systems after next week. That'll be sweet.

I don't really have a good photo to post, but this is something that Bby forwarded to me the other day which tugged at my heart a little: http://www.billythekiddocumentary.com/

Wisdom in a Baggie

DAY- Int.

DENTIST

Oh good, you aren't wearing any nail polish. It interferes.

ME

I feel a little...

(2 hrs later)

DENTIST

You can let her eat anything soft: pudding, yogurt, smoothies, pasta

ME

Emgh...KD!

********************************

I got my three wisdom teeth removed on Friday. I remember very little because of the drugs. I think I may have exaggerated my metabolism or something, because I am pretty sure the surgeon (pointed canines, looks you in the eyes, doesn't know how to not sexualize conversation) overdosed me on sedatives. I was supposed to silly but aware; I was, in fact, basically unconscious. I ralphed chocolate soy milk on the way home (my sister was the best...she picked me up and got me some mac n' cheese, and put me to bed and let me sleep over) somehow mostly into a bag, though also on my jeans and a bit on the car seat. It is very strange to think I could lose actual hours. As if they never existed.



The Russian probably has some lost hours as well. He is in New Orleans, helping his old friend to escape Grey's Anatomy nights with his girlfriend and her friends. I think that essentially means a lot of drinking, some drugs and possibly strippers. I hope he didn't cheat on me. I won't be happy and I don't want to ask the question. I don't want to expect that to be the case. I can't imagine being apart for 5 weeks while I am in Spain, with little communication. It is going to be difficult.

I will be finished classes in about a month. It seems like I have a lot do, still. But it will get done. I am feeling kind of calm, even with all the work I have piling up. It will get done. I have learned how to ask for help, from the Russian, from Bby. I never used to. I don't really know how to ask for things.

In other news, I got into a tiff with my landlord, but I posted my apartment for May on craigslist and I already have about ten people interested, so I am not too worried about having to keep this place for May. Screw that guy. It is going to be a different story when I get back from Spain - I wonder if the Russian and I will have found a place and what it will be like. I wanted him close to me so much last night, it was overwhelming. I think about decorating and cooking and choosing between my stuff and his stuff. Salt and pepper shakers in duplicate.

This is the opening paragraph to a story I wrote a week or so ago:

The little boy squats on his haunches, watching the blood squeeze out of the scrape on his knee. He is bird-boned and porridge coloured, even now, during the height of summer. His hair flops in front of his glasses, soft and dirty. He puts a finger to a bead of blood and rolls it like a snot between his fingers until it thins and smears. He likes that it is quickly replaced with a new bead that thickens and darkens, and then he can do it again. He shifts forward into the sand, and squats again, examining the bloody crystals in the depression in his sandbox, and then the sand that his knee has collected. He carefully brushes a sample of the bloody sand into the cargo pocket of his shorts and then flops onto his back, eyes to the sunburned coloured sky. When the Power Rangers watch hanging off his wrist beeps he springs up, runs through the dry yellow grass, to the back veranda, and slips through the screen door and onto his seat before his mother has a chance to call him.

The Russian said it was reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor, which might be true. I have been reading her letters a lot recently. She is a champion letter writer. Living in Milledgeville with her mom because of her lupous forced her to be a good correspondent, but I think it was probably a medium that suited her better than human contact. She was closer to her God than anyone else, I think. She is a warm and caring friend, but she also struggled to communicate her views on the world, especially the borders of the world, that get softened by faith and the unknowable.

I leave you with this:

Plus Equals Minus

DAY- Int.

MOTHER

He's a hell of a kid

FATHER

It's true

MOTHER

I don't think he really needs a babysitter

FATHER

You're right. Let's just go. He probably won't wake up

***************************************

My guest lecturer has just blamed the recession on the immense surplus of information available to industries, the problems in processing this information and the resulting inability to make decisions. The recession, essentially, is the result of the paralysis of business and industry by too much information. Weird. But it makes intuitive sense, in way. On a tiny, personal scale, I am often paralysed when I can't block out incoming crap and focus on what I need to focus on. And in some ways, ionformation is deceptively comforting. Like, I feel on top of things when I have researched a bunch of articles for a paper and printed them out, and prioritized them with coloured paper clips. I haven't read the articles, and I haven't produced a paper, but just having the pile of paper in my hand...Or collecting links to job opportunities - I haven't applied to all of them, but I know they are out there because I have subscribed to the right listservs, etc, etc. As if a plan means something without the execution.

I feel like I am holding things together, but barely. I have applied for some jobs, namely this internship in Washington that I really want, I am handing in my assignments, I am keeping up, but I feel so many things piling up, a little out of control. My finding aid for the Quebec Gay Archives should really be finished up in the next two weeks, and I have to work on the online part of it. Essays, case studies, crap crap crap. And apply apply apply! There is a project archivist job available at Emory, near Miss J! which I applied for. I am not quite qualified, but it would be an incredible opportunity. Of course, convincing the Russian to move to Atlanta for 3 years would be tough beans. I mentioned it half seriously, and he replied quite seriously, 'I could do it for a year.' So, you know, whatever that means (duh, it means he could do it for a year, Sparks).

We are very happy at the moment. I feel...comfortable and challenged. It is a nice feeling. I like his creative influence on me. I have been writing for the first time in years, and there is some decent stuff coming out of me, I think.

And we had a really good time in Chicago. I like his friends a lot, although Nat was a bit reserved, but in a very sweet, kind way. Except when we went to a trivia night. The animal came out that night, but with reason: he is awesome at trivia. We also has a lot of fun playing balderdash. I bonded with his girlfriend Emmy, as we chose each other's answers and Nat and I both came up with a movie plot line involving an elephant named Twinky. The sleeping arrangements turned out to be totally fine (the Russian and I need an L shaped bed), and Chicago is just a really interesting city. Wide streets and the lake is just remarkable. It really changes the feel and the movement of the city. everything slows and grows as it gets closer to the water, although apparently the only reason there is no serious building on the banks of the lake is because they bulldozed the ruins of the city after the Great Fire towards the lake and couldn't build skyscrapers on a land fill. Dinner with the Jews for Jesus family was totally pleasant and pretty tasty as well, though it was pretty much exclusively Russian. I was too full to talk anyway.

This is the Cloud Gate, which I was like, whatev, what a stupid sculpture, but when you see it, it is really sort of fun and amazing:

Taxidermia: freaked me right out. It's a Hungarian movie about three generations of men each with a special sumpin sumpin. The grandpa has a penchant for inserting his penis into strange places, and sometimes ejaculates fire. After a psychadelic mating a baby with a pig tail is produced who grows up to become an almost champion speed eater, who in turn begets (thanks Pierre) a scrawny, sickly taxidermist. The final stuffing is one of the most insane things I have ever seen on film. It is remarkably well shot, and somehow manages to crawl in your brain and lay something a little fetid, but also unique.

Would You Like To Know More?

YOU

That is so provincial

ME

But I like provincial

YOU

You can't even see a decent opera here.

ME

Yeah. That is a problem.

****************************************

I had my palm read yesterday by a girl at school who is interested in that sort of thing. She was taken aback by the depth, quantity and complicated patterns of my palms. She said I was an old soul, that I have been around for a long time, but that I am also fundamentally unable to get onboard %100 with anything. She also said my I have two heart lines that run parallel but very close to one another, suggestive of my deep but, let's say plentiful?, loves.

I have also been thinking a lot about where I want to live and what I want to do (which my palm reader said will always be a hard decision for me). Things are so good with The Russian that I can't help thinking of the future and how we can manage to be in the same one. Can I really find a reasonably well paying job that I will like, that I will be good at, here in Montreal? I hope so. Sometimes I think that I would have been happier if I had been born a few generations ago. I was processing a box in a fonds I am working on at the Gay Archives, and there were these mock-ups of pamphlets and publications and I thought, I am really more of a cut and paste girl, then someone who has to learn Illustrator or InDesign. But meanwhile, I really want to be able to learn web design and EAD coding because I think online archives and online finding aids are the only way to keep archives relevant.

Bby and I went to Bofinger for pulled pork and bbq chicken last night. Dang, that place is tasty. Bby was so cute: the counterperson asks for your name to keep track of your order, and she replied "I'm Adele, what's your name?" and he said "Steve. I rarely get asked that." I think he was pretty touched.

I'm going to take it easy tonight. Have Valentine's Breakfast (heart shaped eggs!) at Bby's with the Russian and P tomorrow morning, then chillin with la Armenian, and I have had a busy week. The Russian is making dinner, and I just want to have a bath, and read, maybe watch a movie. Though not anything like The Scarlet Empress, which seemed like a farce to me.



Oh, and tried this recipe for the ACA bakesale: Bacon and Chocolate Chip Cookies. It was a hit!

What is the difference between a goal and an objective?

THE ROBOT

But I don't need your goofy 3-D glasses! I'm a robot!

CINEMA EMPLOYEE

It's policy. Management requires it.

THE ROBOT

Let me see your manager, then.

CINEMA EMPLOYEE

I'm sorry, Sir, the managers are in a strategic planning meeting for the next three days.

************************************

So I'm going to Chicago onthe 21st. With The Russian (which ma belle ptite Armenienne told me is how she and Jessica Rabbit referred to him as well). I think it is going to be fun. But also stressful. He seems to have planned every moment of our time, which includes a lot of dinners with people I don't know but who when I google them, turn up a lot of hits. This automatically intimidates me, which is silly, but sometimes I am silly. I am also more of a lone wolf kind of traveler. I like to visit places, not people. Unless I am going to visit people. We also have to sleep on a couch at his friend's apartment which he shares with his girlfriend, so no privacy or alone time for the whole 5 days. But...lots of great art, lots of interesting architecture, the zoo, and we are traveling together! Pretty damn couple-y.

We have also been talking a lot about moving in together, which seems bananas to me. But, like anything, the more I talk about it, the closer and more tangible it becomes. It would be crazy, though. I will just be back form Spain, out of school for the first time in 20 years, looking for job, nowhere to live, and broke, broke, broke. In an economic crisis. Not really the context I imagined when I imagined moving in with someone. Play it, bass playa.

In any case, I should be working on a paper which is due tomorrow and which was the inspiration for the scene above. I have to provide an organization with a strategic plan with goals and objectives which I then translate into operational plans. I am kind of unsure what that means, exactly, but it is depressing to think that I am required to do this. That feeling of not quite getting the question happened to me yesterday when I was writing an online exam for an archivist job at Library and Archives Canada:

Question 1. (Knowledge of the general trends of the evolution of Canadian society). Former Dominion Archivist, Sir Arthur Doughty wrote that "Of all our national assets, Archives are the most precious; they are the gift of one generation to another and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization."Write a short essay which examines one general theme that you know well in the evolution of Canadian society and explain how your understanding of that theme has been influenced by the preservation of archival records.

What? What is a general theme in the evolution of Canadian society? I stared at the screen for quite some time, wrote the second essay question and stared some more. The Russian, over g-chat, suggested multiculturalism, so I went with it, but...

We'll see.

The Russian also forwarded me this today:

Thursday Report

YOU

I want to go to the zoo.

ME

I see. Are you watching porn?

YOU

I love you. And yes.

*************************************

Although I usually make these little scenes up, this one up here is f'real. Except for the 'and yes' part. The Russian was in actual fact reading Stranger in a Strange Land. It's strange (haha), I lent him that book because I remember liking it so much, but he talks about these parts, and I don't remember any of them. I wonder if your brain just refuses to keep everything after a while. Or you have to train it with new things to take advantage of the unused space. Like, if you make art, you have to start learning bookkeeping, or your brains will atrophy.

It's been a long time since I posted. Mostly because I have been pretty happy, and if there ain't no drama, what the hell is there to write about. But then I thought, that is not the way it should be, and also, boys aren't the be all, end all of everything, I have other things to talk about, don't I? Yet, I think I have to scratch that, because I have had some anxiety laden events whack me over the last couple of weeks, but I don't feel anxious about them. I feel more anxious about not having any money and finding a job when I graduate than anything else.

I had breakfast with my mom yesterday and I voiced some of my insecurities, of which I have many and new ones seem to be cropping up all the time, about my abilities and qualifications. I have this feeling that I am not really all that bad at anything, but I am not really great at anything, and more importantly, not passionate about anything the way I would like to be. That scares me. But I can't let those feeling paralyze me, or sap me either.

I have been seeing the pretty Armenian I spoke of in an earlier post, and I like her very much. So far, this has not affected the Russian and I, even though I keep on asking him, is it ok? does this make you feel strange? how do you feel now? His responses are always encouraging and sometimes kind of gross. We ran into her on the metro the other day and had a pleasantly tension filled ride, the three of us. I like her mobile mouth.

What else? The Russian and I went to the opera last weekend, saw Verdi's Macbeth, was very difficult for me to stay awake. Not because I don't like opera (though I don't like it all that much), but because it was really horrible, all around. Went to a lecture given by John Ralston Saul on Tuesday. I thought he was smarmy, brimming with rhetoric and not much else, but then...I like what he had to say about the value of orality, it is an interesting problem to consider, especially form an archival point of view, which is so reliant on the record. It is difficult to imagine a memory of a voice, or the phenomenon of a voice speaking to open ears listening having more value then the court stenographer's record of it, and yet it should, I think. And inserting this idea into our legal system, for example? What a shift. Also, I should probably have read his books.

Bebito and I had dinner tonight, we have not seen each other in a while. Was overwhelmed by love when she came into the lounge at school. And I think that is a nice place to end off, yes? Yes. And maybe this: