DAY- ext.

(In a playground- Three little girls have taken double dutch skipping ropes and tied themselves together. They are trying to move as one person, but cannot coordinate their movements enough to get past the jungle gym to the soccer field)

"What does this have to do with your post, Vanessa?" Nothin. I just like it.

I have to study for cataloguing tonight. I went into the lab today and there were about a dozen first years crowded around asking each other about uniform titles and Spirit authority headings, or something. I don't think I want to know how to catalogue bad enough. Shucks.

I did study in St-Adele this weekend. And created my powerpoint for metadata, and finished my web evaluation. And still had time for a game of Cranium (F, do I love Cranium) and much, much, toomuch eating. Took a lot of nice photos of the monkey.

J.L's Office Party party on Friday. I felt like a babbling lump of clay, but I looked cute, in mysister's shoes and Kh. grey pencil skirt. And they did such a good job decorating, and everyone was dressed up, and Babay and V came looking like a couple (people actually thought they were a couple). She was so relaxed and he guessed her shampoo by smelling her hair. I often want to simultaneously hug and hurt that guy, for being such a dumb-ass and so smart at the same time. It comes through in rough physical interactions; he squeezed my hand very hard when he shook it, and I gave him les bises when I got into my taxi, but roughly. I think we understand each other, where Babay is concerned.

SS listened patiently to my Russian story and promptly told me to forget him and not to talk to him anymore. It is very good advice. Straight and true. And I will not follow it, at least for a while. I feel weak and strong, and cannot make up my mind. Yet it feels made up. There is something worth something. Jacob hasn't phoned me since Thursday, but I am at ease with that whole situation. It feels very organic, and pleasant to have around my mind.

I feel like baking, not studying, and I also want to eat whatever is on Babay's latest blog. It looks like a hug in a bowl. I think I might make these tonight:

Everyone in my life seems very content: J without H, Babay with V, Finnie with her new job!, my sister with her new car...

I am too.

Buying the Cow

DAY-int.

SALES CLERK

I can't take it back, I'm sorry. It's store policy. It's written on your receipt.

VANESSA

Oh come on! Look at this! It isn't me, you can see it isn't me...

SALES CLERK

I don't know you, miss. I think suits your colouring, if that is any consolation.

VANESSA

It is, thanks. I thought I would love it, and I don't. It isn't, I mean, it isn't the worst. But, it isn't worth the price, for me. I shop here all the time...does that help?

SALES CLERK

(sighs)

I could potentially exchange it. Or store credit. Is there anything else you like better?

VANESSA

Well, um, there's...No. Let me call my sister. Does the store credit expire?

*********

Jacob Feygin. He ate very quickly, and is much taller then I thought. He told me interesting things about Spain and his mother. He does not make me nervous, which feels nice. It is not how I usually feel. I usually feel sick. But maybe that is not the way you should feel about people that you want to like like you. Maybe I have had it all wrong so many times before. He calls when he says he is going to call.

I spent half an hour discussing the Russian's new shoes with him. He is unsure about the heel and the shoelaces. I did not realise he was quite so concerned with these things, but he is, more than most, I think, more than a quick glance would suggest. I wonder if everyone is like that. Jacob (who, strangely, spells his name with a C even though his name is actually Yakov) stared at me blankly when I pointed out a particularly hideous shoe in a store window today. But he does seem rather attached to his leather jacket. He also knew exactly what a leather gauntlet was.

Feel better about cataloguing. Not awesome. But better. Very happy about the J and H progress. I like to think of her as tired and happy. Am very excited to go to the cottage this weekend with Sabina and my sister. But am putting my foot down about the party. I am in the mood for a party filled with folks I don't know, and they aren't going to convince me we have to leave on Friday night instead of Saturday morning. So there!

Art Show

EVENING- Int.

WOMAN

Where did he get that desk, it really is perfect. I think it really speaks to...

MAN

I really like this. I would have it as my dining room table in my house.

WOMAN

Vois-tu comment la revolution francaise est integrale dans la conversation...

MAN

That's the one you have in your living room!

WOMAN

(conspiratorially)

Except my print is faded...

My question is, who the fuck is this guy? I went to the opening for Tim Clark's Reading the Limits, Works 1975-2003 (at Concordia; nice gallery!) and was a little bit taken with it, but now I am trying to figure out who this guy is and he has no presence on the web, basically. He must be dead or obscure by choice, or my chosen profession of information specialist is a mistake.

The point is that he makes good art, I am pretty sure. It is difficult to judge when each piece, and the intention behind the piece, is described by the artist himself. He would seem to have an authoritative say in the matter that the curator or audience cannot match. I guess you could make the choice to not read the accompanying labels, but I am a good little viewer, and if it's there, I'll read it attentively and feel guilty if I don't. And all of this just goes to show that having the artist intention on hand doesn't mean anyone automatically gets it. The viewer is still left watching a video of a shirtless man wearing a leather gauntlet (what the fuck is that, anyway? It kind of looks like the photo below) barking out a religious text, and wondering, what the f is going on? But also feeling like, this is a bit of alright, because I like the violence suggested by the voice, the leather thing, the nudity, all mashed up with a borrowed philosophy of ethics from the text he's reading (I can't recall which text it was- he uses a bunch of different texts in various pieces).

In any case, interesting curatorial choice and a bang-on case study for the DOCAM project. This is because Clark did a lot of performance art, which obviously has a life span, and is kind of difficult to present in a retrospective. Fortunately, I mean fortunately if you like his stuff, he was into film, video and photography, and with his descriptions, it is possible to get a sense of what happened at a performance, even if the atmosphere of the performance is lost. Although, he writes stuff like "This is the first appearance of the leather gauntlet," but with no explanation as to why this weird thing got incorporated into his art.

I thought his videos were dece, but I really liked his photography and installations more. One inspired by The Story of the Eye really jumped out at me (but for personal reasons; Bear sent me that story after the night in the chapel), as did a series dealing with maleness. I don't know what the technique is that he uses to blur some figures and focus on others, but it was effective as shit, especially placed next to these cropped circular images of what seemed to be Napoleonic-era paintings.

*******

In other news, I had tea at Nococchi, or whatever that place with the tiny cookies is called, with Jacob (still unsure about the name spelling...) after work. It was good. He was relaxed, although he has an unfortunate habit of chewing on his hair, or something. It is a funny, and decidely feminine, tick. But I pushed his hand away from his face and I think he was happy I touched him.

He is only 21, which is very young. That is all I have to say about that, really. He was telling me about his grad school applications, and I asked him if loves what he does (he does a lot of work on riots and famine), and he said: I don't think you really love what you do, you love people, no? I agreed and was secretly happy that I could come home and record that here. I didn't know how much I believed that until he said it out loud, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He liked the tea a lot.

He also spoke about his childhood a little, saying that he was raised by his grandparents more than his parents; the parents work and provide, the grandparents care for the children. It is a Russian thing, apparently. He said his grandfather was a man that he will spend the rest of his life trying to live up to, but will never equal. He finished the subject by saying "I mean, he survived the Gulag!" We are having lunch together tomorrow.

I should work on my website evaluation, but I am tired and I think I will watch Mansfield Park and go to sleep.

I See You! A Little.

DAY- Int.

VANESSA (V.O.)

I see you!

OSCAR

(smiles and gurgles)

VANESSA (V.O.)

Now I don't...I see you!

CHRISTINE (V.O.)

Monkey! Time to eat?

OSCAR

(distracted, looking away)

VANESSA (V.O.)

He's only got eyes for you.

CHRISTINE

He's only got eyes for the boob. And me.

I am still with the cold, the coughing and the snottiness. But I feel better than yesterday. I am worried about cataloguing, however. Significantly. It is unlike me to let a class go, to the point where I am completely lost. Or, since I have done it, it is exactly like me, I guess. I will work on it today, I swear I will.

The Russian came over last night with juice and made cherry dumplings. I did not like them. But I did like that he came. He told me I smelled, which was true. I'm sick. I told him about my exhaustion, and after a few tries, I think I articulated it reasonably well: I am tired because I want to experience everything the way I used to, with my heart on my sleeve but my sleeve made of steel, I want to have sadness or anger or happiness just be, not something which has to be overcome or slotted away under lessons learned, or dealt with, just be until something else is, to understand it as an experience and not as something that I have to intellectualize until it disappears or turns rotten.

This is why I found the Sophie Calle exhibition so deprimant. Because I was witness to dozens of women doing just that, taking this one experience, which was not even theirs (and the Russian suggested, maybe wasn't Calle's either, maybe she made it up!) and beating at it, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes gracefully. And not even from close up; they all found something that was their own in Calle's letter and it made them cringe and run, hide behind whatever was closest, namely, their careers, and attack it without touching it.

But back to me, me, me. It is tiring that I once could have this and that now it is more demanding and often unattainable for me to be able to live the way I once did and the way that I would like to still. Even for relatively small bumps, I get so tired. It's growing up, I suppose.

In any case, it was a nice evening. I even got to ask about the Russian's distance, independence, whatever that is, and listen to him talk about it. I wonder if there is fear in there somewhere, if it is as basic as, if the world should end, I will lose less if I am far enough away from people that a few books will cut it. That ain't me, bitch. I love my people. I drank some Jameson and fell asleep at 9:30. It was a good sleep.

GoC Fuck You.

EVENING- Int.

GIRL
(handling green peppers in the grocery store)
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

BOY
(hands her a nice looking pepper)
This one looks inoffensive.

GIRL
(takes pepper)
Thanks

(BOY moves away, GIRL replaces good pepper with a squishy, rotten one)
(Checkout line. Cashier weighs the pepper and wipes her hand. GIRL pretends not to notice)

EVENING- Ext.

(GIRL cycling. Stops in front of a row of duplexes. Throws pepper as hard as she can at the middle door. It makes a small splat)

GIRL

Fuck YOU!

BOY

Huh.

GIRL

Fuck you! What're you, following me?

BOY

Why not? I was curious.

J and I often lamented our lack of cameras/eyes while I was visiting her in Atlanta. I would have liked to have captured a little moment yesterday. Some asshole was staring at me during the last exam, so I started writing this little scene for him. I think he ended up not really minding that I knew he was staring, and I guess I didn't mind either. Sure made the time pass.

Slow and Steady

DAY - Ext.

JOEY

I drink 3 or 4 litres of milk per day

CHRISTINE

Why, Joey?

JOEY

Cause I'm depressed

CHRISTINE

Oh.

I have been running this little scene over and over in my head for a few days, since my sister recreated it for me, in fact. I am not sure why. It makes me laugh, because I am lactose intolerant, because Joey thinks of milk the way other people think of booze, because he can just say out loud, I'm depressed, possibly because he has heard enough people say it on daytime TV that it seems like some place he wouldn't mind being, or he might really be depressed.

And if the last is true, it makes me sad, because he is at a point where he is lonely enough that he can share this information pretty flippantly with my sister (who is a good person to share that with, but that is just a fluke). And that kind of loneliness scares me out my boots.

Joey is my sister's locataire. He has a squished face and wears the same kind of black Chinatown slippers that a certain Russian I know wears. That makes me laugh too. Just the shoes, though. Not the Russian. That whole situation makes me feel tired and irresponsible. I tried to explain myself today on the phone with J and I couldn't because I don't have any explanations. I feel stubborn, like the way old men are stubborn. And I know that I am more tired than I used to be and that I have to treat myself differently if I don't want to become too thin. I'm no good at anorexia, Bear says.

I am good at spending mad money, though. I bought 3 sweaters on Friday, and spent my Holt Renfrew gift card from Khalid. On a dress, because I don't have enough of those. Went out for coffee with Jacob (unsure of the spelling of his name, and don't know his last name, so that says something...). He is young and goofy, but sincere. I told him that I spoke to him because I have been thinking about the importance of connecting with people, or trying to, of looking at people and letting them look at you. He didn't run for the hills. It's a good sign. Although, he hasn't called yet either...

I really want someone to put some time in. Some significant time. That's one thing Little Vinnie has going for him, at least. One thing someone whose face I can't imagine but who has the unlikely name of Harrison has going for him too. He seems to know how to care, pretty instinctively.

But anyway, the GoC tests were okay, I think. I think I should have been in the one at 8:30 and it makes me think I did not apply correctly for the general inventory, but we'll see. I am nervous about the amount of work I have to do this week, but I just want to sleep right now. So I think I crawl to bed, like Mister Blue here.







Doesn't he look like he is almost there? Slow and steady.