Head Above Water

NIGHT-Int.

MAMERE 1

(breaststroking)

I could not believe he was unaware of how uncomfortable I was. All I could think of was Depends and whether I would be able to pull down my hose before I, you know, started going. And there's Bill, chomping on his endive salad, regaling me with a story about some goddam raccoon in his carport, not letting me get a word in edgewise.

MAMERE 2

(breaststroking)

And he didn't even notice? Glaucoma?...Oh, this is tougher than it used to be. Let's pause after this lap.

MAMERE 1

(breathing heavily)

At least some things get easier.

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

Gosh, I have so many things to write about because I haven't written in so long and so much school work to do that I have no time to write. You see the dilemma. But I am going to go swimming tonight, as it was so much fun last week. It is hard for me to keep my head above water, but it feels good.

It was my sister's birthday last week, and Sabina's last weekend here, so we spent a lot of time together, which was good. Saturday, we ate a lot of lovely food and talked. Bby came with news that Vinnie is a Rhodes scholar now (holy shiat, ps). I said goodbye to Finnie, but it has been so good with her this visit that I wasn't sad when she left, because we were in such a good place, so safe.

J was talking about that word, good, that it has many imposters but when something is good, there is really no other word for it. I have had, then, a good week. Last Sunday I tracked down a bowtie for the Russian, not the bowtie (because some dillhole bought it SUNDAY MORNING before I got there...the thing had been hanging on the racks for months and the day I go to get it, it's gone). I was so peeved. I searched for a cream coloured bowtie for hours, not even because I wanted to get it for the Russian, but more because it was driving me insane!I was pleased with the one I found and I think the Russian is too. He wore it to the CCA opening and the symphony the next day.

The CCA opening was fun, Christine did myhair and make-up, and besides losing my shit at a taxi company and arriving late, it was a lovely evening. The show is very trendy and fun, with dozens of small projects about how people interact with their urban environment. My favourite project was these velour leisure suits which had foam incorporated into them in order for them to act as cusions when you are sitting in four particular spots around LA. As in the foam is cut to take into account arm rests of a particular public bench, for example. I can't remember what they are called, but I will post it when I find it online. The crowd was also trendy and fun, but not as high fashion as the last one of these things I went to. The Russian was lovely in his bowtie.

The pretty Armenian, Nai, was there with Jessica Rabbit. Bby was the purrrrrrrfect wingman and I ended up being completely straightforward, and telling Nai that I think she is lovely, I would really like to see her again, and would she be interested. She asked about my status with the Russian, which I tried to explain, but mainly, we got along swimmingly and I cannot wait to see her again. I called her last night and had to leave a message with her mother!?, but we'll see.

The Russian was off doing private function things for most of the evening, but I called him to tell him about my success with Nai (who he also likes) and we met for a drink. He told me that he was serious about me. I ordered some drinks. I told him about my evening and we spoke quietly into each other's ears and then went back to his place...

Wednesday night, we went to the MSO. The Debussy was lovely, the Bartok cartoonish and the Beethoven captivating. I know nothing about classical music but it was lovely. There was a pretty lesbian who was the only other person other than the Russian wearing a bowtie, and we tried to track her down during intermission but she eluded us. The Russian held my hand for the whole concert and told me how pretty I looked. He also said I reminded him of his mother, twice, which was somewhat disturbing, but I think, important to him. A woman approached us on the metro platform to tell me how lovely my dress was, and how pretty I looked. I beamed. He took the metro with me, although it was faster for him to take the bus. When he got off, I saw him watching me from the middle of the platform until I rolled away.

All in all, I am a little bit on top of the world. I feel reckless. I know that everyone thinks this thing will land me flat on my arse, and I know that is a real possibility. But I am treading water and instead of feeling exhausted, I feel rejuvenated. I know the Russian means what he says, and I know it could change or shift and then he would mean that too, but I am letting it happen, bass playa.

Play it, Bass Player

DAY, Ext.

ME

blah blah blah..Okay, I mean , I suppose the bottom line is that I want you in my life, and even with all of these considerations and reservations, I think I will just end up playing it as it lays, going with the flow...blah, blah, blah

YOU

Ok

ME

That's it?

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

So much mental space. So many narratives written in my head. This Wordle (thanks Babay) is pretty telling:

Could I be more obsessed! Could I be more self-deluded? WANT RUSSIAN. The wordle indexing does not lie. But still, frustrating that I can write as many stories with him co-star as I want, but he will never be that, not the way he appears in my head. He is his own person. Makes me feel alone, a little. Not that you want a life size doll to speak words you have written for them, but it is weird to think about how far apart people are from each other, how easily they misunderstand one another.

Mostly because sometimes I feel very close. Like with Babay last night. We tried to eat at Bofinger, where the Russian and I ate last week, but it was closed. We ate bad French food instead. The chicken cordon bleu was salty and dry. The fettucine was oily and awesome and reminded me of the kind of food I would make for my after school 'snack' when I was in elementary and high school. The best part of the meal was the celery soup (little salty), the salad dressing (plain) and the bread (delicious). Never a good sign when the soup is better than the meal. But I liked the paper tablecloths, and the funny people who were eating there, as if they were eating good French food. Swishing their wine around in their mouths and giving comments to the waiter. And an excellent visit to Chapters, where we answered a survey, which contrary to the natural order of things, made me laugh. I enjoyed giving the same answers as Babay simultaneously.

Am starving! I'm going to eat all the muffins I made the other day, smothered in butter. Just smothered.

Design YOU!

NIGHT-Ext.

ME

(crouched in an alley)

HER

Byeeeeeeee! Mais oui, je vais etre la demain...je travaille. Dejeuner? Non, je peux pas...Peut-etre la fin de semaine...Eh, non...J'ai d'autres choses a faire, minou.

ME

(to myself)

Treat them like shit. Be unavailable. Right. Then they will love you.

(scurries down alley, notepad in hand)

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

Wednesday, 11:20. Should be doing homework, but I came to post a photo the Communications person for the ACA forwarded to us ACA'ers. And then there was a new blog to read (Hello Ottawa!), and now I am writing a full-on post and not reading about the Taekuchi-Nonaka knowledge spiral, or whatever it is that I am supposed to brainstorming about for my Knowledge Management class tomorrow. Anyway, the photo below is from an online archive of Life Magazine photography. Darn exciting:

I did make some website progress last night, thanks to a how-to book and the fine company of Babay. No thanks to any of the lectures and/or labs from class. Which left me thinking, goldurnit, why the hell do I go there every Monday morning? In any case, it sure is satisfying when things do what you tell them to through HTML and CSS. But it is bloody time consuming. And the thought of not only getting that site to work but to design it as well is overwhelming. I have about as much an eye for design as an earthworm.

I am very pleased that I am not working today, and I will do a lot of work to justify it. Yesterday was so irritating. All the boxes were heavy, I couldn't get them to stack properly in The Cage (that isn't just a nickname, McGill Archives actually has a cage where we keep stuff waiting to be shred...a rusty, narrow, clanging cage), my co-worker sliced his hand...all in all, sub-par.

I am glad that I have a lot of schoolwork to do, though, because it keeps my mind off the Russian, as much as possible. I sent him an email on Sunday requesting that we not talk to each other for a week while I think about what I want. J has pointed out that this will only fuel his resolve, because I am making him wait. The question is, wait for what? If I tell him I want to be friends, it is obvious that said friendship will have an end date for whenever one of us gets a significant other. My sister is right when she says that men and women friends don't sleep over at each other's houses. But if we enter into a relationship (that makes it sound like a contractual agreement...4 bolts of linen for 1 goat? I must object!), there is the risk that whatever he is feeling will fade, he will grow to resent me and seek company elsewhere. He likes my honesty, but he likes it most when I telling him that the way he treats people is disgusting sometimes, that his feeling of not having any responsibility towards others is abhorrent. The thing is, it is easy to recognize those things when they are happening to someone else. But it is much foggier to recognize when those same things are happening to me. The other half of this is: the only way I learn about this is to be with someone who challenges me to challenge them to take care. I am having this feeling that English is my second language...

You want things that are certain, consistent, comforting. The 3 c's. But there is an inherent paradox in that desire. Ahndraya Parlato, in her artist statement, says:

I am compelled by how people idealize concepts such as wholeness and perfection when the possibility of their attainment is merely conjecture. I find the ways in which we impose order on an inherently disordered world to be simultaneously absurd, melancholic, and hopeful; absurd, because no matter what we do, the world will never be ordered, and thus our attempts end in failure; melancholic, in that despite this continued failure, we keep trying; and hopeful in this very gesture of endurance.

We are different according to circumstance, to company, to mood or desire. But we remain the same person. This is strange to me, alienating almost. But I suppose it relates to why it is also strange to me that we should seek out certainty and comfort when it is inevitable that it will never be whole and perfect.

And what of those things that do feel whole and perfect? My sister and I, that feels whole and perfect. Babay and I, J and I.

But how did I get here from the Russian? He said he doesn't pick me apart the way he does with everyone else, and I have told him I don't want to be with someone who has greener pasture syndrome, but...

Risks all around. How do you decide what you are willing to risk?

Babay used this Parlato photo too, but it was a bit of serendipity that brought us to it at the near the same time...it feels a little risky, a little hopeful:

Horsey Face

DAY-Int.

THEM

And what metadata standard would you recommend for a institution like this one?

ME

(throws up in my hand)

THEM

Interesting.

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

Why don't I just make art instead of thinking about metadata? Deborah Butterfield makes art, as J shared with me last night, and beautiful art, in the quiet but massive way horses, and maybe elephants, are beautiful. There is always the sense that all of the power contained in their bodies could suddenly come alive, but most of the time they are quiet. Babay and I have both been identified as 'horsey faces,' by various people in our lives.

I suppose I don't make art because because I am not an artist. Sometimes I would like to be, though. My new favourite blog, which I discovered on my own and did not snake from Babay, for once, is I Heart Photograph.

Anyway, what is the point of this post except to have that sculpture here? I don't know. I got to e-mails from two people I love telling me that they love me last night. It was a lovely (lovey?) way to start the morning. I wonder if Tini read my last post and what she thinks about my situation now. I bet I could use her perspective, because it will be sure. The more I think about the Russian situation, the more I think, we could grow this way, maybe. He made me a drawing inspired by:

And he took one of my favourites from a series of his drawings and painted it onto a piece of glass, and then etched out the details. It is really beautiful. I almost cried a little bit. And J made a good point: I am bored if I am not provoked (not the right word, but perhaps somewhat appropriate) into maintaining my 'edge,' as the Russian says. We'll see. We'll see.

I have a whole lot of work to do today, so I guess I should get on with it. I want to escape from school. I hope these are hoops that I am jumping through and not what the rest of my life will be like. Fuck professional degrees. Fuck them in the bum.

Slipped Up/Slipped In

DAY-Int.

ME

I want to wait.

YOU

I don't.

ME

Ok.

Will it hurt?

YOU

Probably.

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

I fucked up. It was going so well. And instead of waking up and eating breakfast, we woke up and had sex. The special kind. So I hurt a little and there is the potential for a lot more hurt, and I already know what that feels like. I didn't like it, but I guess I didn't learn my lesson the first time around. It's funny, it makes me want to call boys I have been toying with seeing and tell them the truth: I don't want any of them. I don't want the Russian either, not this way. I don't want to feel like at any given moment I could be the prettiest or the ugliest or the sweetest or the most annoying or the sexiest or the biggest doofus. I don't like that part of him, I don't want a part of that. I want to be with someone who makes me feel safe. The Russian can't do that for me, or he can if we are friends and I can tell him to fuck off when I think he needs it. I am less capable of doing so when we are something else.

I don't even have much to say. I thought I would. But I have this feeling that I have made a mistake that I might not be able to repair and mostly I feel so sad, because I was so happy with the way we were before. I want it to stay. I want it to grow.

Maybe it still can. If we want it to. If I want it to.

Gchat update: The Russian wanted to know if I was happy with this morning. I said I was mixed up. We talked about it. I think he wants to do this. I said we'll see what happens.

Headscratcher

NIGHT-Int.

YOU

(sighs)

ME

(strokes YOU's hair)

YOU

Use your nails!

ME

(scratches YOU's head)

Gross.

YOU

Mmmmmmm

ME

(smiling)

I am so grossed out right now.

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

Had a nice dinner in St-Martine with Tini and the Farmer, Murray and Sabina. Tini made pierogies, from scratch! and we drank wine and ate apples and cheese. I made brownies with cream cheese icing that Babay said were too greasy, but everyone else liked. The Russian ate two this morning for breakfast, which, considering they haven't been refrigerated in since Thursday night, was probably potentially dangerous. In any case, we laughed a lot, and I collected the poop for the Russian, in a Coaticook container in several plastic bags.

It was a bit disturbing to be lectured to the extent to which I was, concerning the Russian, by all the people that I trust most. I did present the Russian in a fairly unflattering light, but he does a lot of gross stuff. Still, I was/am disturbed by how scared they are for me. If I felt badly about us, the Russian and I, I mean, I suppose I would not be as bewildered by their responses. I have been hurt a lot before, by him, and Bear, and others. And if I have learned anything from my experience, it is that I am more fragile than I once was. But I will make him damn lunch if I damn well please! And I don't need anyone reading anything into it.

After dinner, Sabina drove Murray and I back downtown and we went to a bar in St-Henri, with waitresses in suspenders and lots of wood and white paint. Very lovely. It was for a guy's birthday who I don't really know that well, but I ran into some other people I knew from high school, and drank some. It was a surprise when the lights came on and I realised it was 3am. I left, chipper and tipsy, and thinking "I could totally have winded up having icky sex back there," and was 99% glad that I hadn't.

I slept in and went to the Quebecois breakfast place with Babay. The food was delicious, Babay was sad, but we ended up in a consignment shop next door to the breakfast place, and our spirits rose with each old lady smelling piece of clothing we tried on, culminating in this:

Babay got some cute sunglasses and Dior tights, and I got this funny wool skirt and some boots which the Russian said were "pretty Russian."

Last night, the Russian came over and we watched a movie. I know that I am not always entirely relaxed, that I sometimes feel like I have said something unfunny or stupid. But if someone gives you the time to let you look at them, and gives you the time to let you show yourself to them, that feels valuable to me. And we have a lot of fun together.

I think that about brings me up to date. I am hoping my future posts will be more preoccupied with the awesome homework I am getting done. I'll be able to say, "Fuck yeah, I finished that website. Bitch."

Food Blogs

I have been receiving stern talking to's about the Russian situation. I think I deserve them. But, like I told J today, I am feeling reckless as well, willing to play the odds that he will turn out to be a good friend to me, and that I am not trying to prove anything to myself or anyone else. That I am as preoccupied with lunch tomorrow as I am is a bit funny, but I think I will be trying to disprove that pork tenderloin for...forever. i have spent a lot of time on food blogs today.

I have been thinking about that pretty Armenian girl. I hope I have a chance to see her again.

Hydey Hyde

NIGHT- Int.

ME

I'm blah blah blah and I think I need blah blah blah and want blah blah blah and I really deserve blah blah blah.

YOU

I know exactly what you mean.

EVERYONE

We agree entirely.

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

I ate dinner and had a drink with Jacob tonight. It did not go as well as it could have. We talked about V. and it was not pleasant. I told him the funny story about the anarchist and then realised later in the conversation that of course! they are both political, so they must know each other, and they do. Open mouth, insert foot. But more importantly, this notion of being political. What the f does that mean, anyhow? He told me I should read Rosa Luxembourg, he said it was a mission, his political life. It was a side of him I had glimpsed, but got a much harder look at tonight. I really tried not to be repulsed, but there it was there. I wanted him to impress me with his logic about his choice to be an activist, or whatever, but I could not prod him into doing so.

I am rarely sure of anything, let alone some kind of political ideology. It creeps me out a little, when I meet dedicated anythings, that have removed the ambiguity from their beliefs about how people should exist in the political world. Who have removed the ambiguity from any facet of their lives, to be honest. Obviously, I make choices, I vote, I decide what to eat and wear when I get up in morning, that I will try really hard not to speak to Bear anymore. And I want to be dedicated and committed to people that I love and who love me, and I do not want to feel uncertain about that. Yet, the thought, or more accurately, the sensation of being feverish over something, of not being able to pull away to think about from any distance, especially something as problematic as any political beliefs, ick. But maybe that sense of revulsion is just a product of not really grasping politics and political theory, and if I knew more about it, I would decide that I am a dedicated something. Can't even make up my mind to not be a zealot!

Sooooo...not a great encounter. Not uncomfortable, but I was not sad that he had to go back and study German. We'll see how the party goes tomorrow night, I guess. The Election Party...

The Russian complained about his gf on chat today, and I did my best to be the friend, but near the end, I couldn't help but point out how f'd up it is that he is talking to me about his relationship problems considering that a month ago, it was me in his bed. He agreed and said thank you. I know I will always give fair advice and point out that he is being too hard on her, and that he has to compromise. But it thrills me a little to know about these things, to let myself hope that he realises he had a nice thing going with me, while meanwhile I know I wasn't exceptionally happy in the situation, that I needed more, and that it is the gross, bitter, resentful parts of me that are making me feel this way. It is hard to keep those feeling separate from the good, warm, feelings that I have, that want him to find that balance he is searching for, with this gf, or Edie, or whoever it is.

Bah. There it is, taking up too much of my time again. Friggin boys. Where are the men?

Halloween

NIGHT-ext.

ME
(smoking)
Thank god for cigarettes.

YOU
(not)
I don't smoke.

ME

But at least you can come outside and gossip with me.

I am in a funk. I spent the entire day in bed yesterday, in the same t-shirt that I wore, and had sweat profusely in, on Friday night at the Halloween dinner. I listened to Neil Gaiman read from his new young adult novel. I ate five pancakes. I slept. If my sister had not called to invite me over for dinner and a movie, it's possible I wouldn't have left my bed, and I wouldn't have eaten anything else (although her chicken was delicious; I have to get a meat thermometer...and a new oven).

Funks happen, showering helps, cleaning my apartment helps. I know the Russian situation is not really helping. It isn't difficult, just think-y, which takes up time. The dinner on Friday was good, I am glad he came. He and Bby liked each other, though admittedly, he saw more of her than she of him, just because she is sincere and sweet and he is both those things on command, but not as a rule. Some of the more memorable moments were V waxing poetic about my virtues with the Russian looking on...awkward, pretty much anytime Mchl opened his mouth, my meatballs, the Russian sucking Bby's cupcake icing out of a ziplock, V casually mentioning that in 10 or 15 more meetings he would try to kiss Bby, Bby recounting her first memory...

The Russian left to go meet his new crush, Edie Sedgwick, and I went downstairs to see her but she had driven around the block. It irked me that he was making plans with her while still in his current plans. It irks me more that I can't distill my feelings about the whole situation at all, really. I do know that it would be difficult for me to be satisfied by him, and that is what I have to remember, and what is hard to remember when he is telling me about his desires and difficulties with Edie and his girlfriend. They exist on opposite ends of the spectrum of his desire, and it seems clear to me what lies in the middle (me!). But I don't really want to be that, in my heart of hearts. Friends is what I think I want to be, but it also seems to me that with someone like him, it isn't worth it to be a friend in passing, because you miss the real meat of him that way. There is just such a load of shit (read: sex etc.) confusing me, and it makes me question and ponder, and think too too much.
I guess I should just keep in mind that for all the hers, the hims, the mes and yous, and what it all boils down to is that there is something worth something about the Russian and I. He texted last night to tell me I was the queen of the room on Friday. That was nice. He made me a lovely drawing inspired by the horse in the tree, which was also nice. It doesn't help that other things seem very simple. I am relaxed when I see Jacob, I feel good afterwards, not confused, but i don't want to see him all the time. And that is all fine with me. Simple.
In other news, I did well on the GoC exams, and I don't think I positively bombed my cataloguing midterm. Good news there.

I should change t-shirts.