I thought I would miss the basic amenities and the life I had gotten used to, but I really wasn't used to any kind of lifestyle. I had been a gypsy for a while already so I supposed it was more of a natural progression. There is nothing more liberating than knowing all you own in the world is contained in one suitcase. Before I left I gave away most of everything I own, because I wasn't going to need it anymore. It's just extra baggage, literally.

There is a certain culture about being a gypsy. There's an etiquette toward your fellow gypsies, and almost immediately you learn to live in a manner you never thought you would. You learn to live in the most basic way, to do without some things, to talk to strangers (which is scarier than it sounds). And most importantly you search for happiness. Fortunately, the quest itself, the actual process of looking so fervently, usually makes you pretty damn happy.

But what do I know. I'm just looking (in my own way) for what everyone is trying to find.

Tomorrow

It's time for me to do everything I've always wanted to do.

Four Days

And some days you feel so low you don't want to leave the safety of your own room. But sometimes certain people have the talent of shaking your confidence on a good day anyways, so what difference does it make?

Seven Days

I may or may not be losing my mind.

Time is crawling along at it's usual pace, but I'm not sure I want it to.

I'm in between wanting time to stop completely so I can catch my breath, and wanting time to speed forward 156 hours from now so I can finally stop broading.

Please help me cope with my anxiety, my fear, my excitment and all these other emotions I have yet to figure out.

Warm my hands and cool my head.

Seventeen Days

I realize I haven't written in almost a month, don't yell at me.

I barely have time alone these days. The past four months have been solely about making money and trying to make other people happy. My life has taken a temporary backseat, but my reward will come to fruition very, very soon. I will be on the other side of the world for a long, long time writing from a place I've never been before. I'm putting myself in an unfamiliar position on purpose. I'm hoping that by removing comfort, everything will become comfortable. I'm hoping that all my years of wanting to do this will make sense and I'll finally understand why. I hope I get scared and I hope I become wiser because of it. And most of all I hope I can stick it out and prove to myself that I'm as strong and determined and worldly as I've always wanted to be.

Why do I want to leave, and why this particular place? I'm not sure, but I know it's been in my blood for a long time and I'm finally making it happen.

What will I do? I don't care. I'll figure that out when I get there.

When will I come back? I don't know. A year keeps resonating as an appropriate length of time, but I don't know what's going to happen. Maybe I'll never return.

What I do know is that right now, I'm anxious and excited and ready to go today, but at the same time wondering if I've made a mistake. I'm confused and proud and I don't know which of those emotions to focus on at any one point in time. I'm mostly everything at once. Teeming with an array of reactions in response to my choices, and unsure of exactly how I feel. But I do know that I'll return a different person than the one who's writing these words. One day I'll look back on this decision and it will all make sense. I have to do this in order to become the person I want to be.

Impermanent

And vague. And also ambiguous. Yes, definately that last one.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

I was thinking about this the other day. There were a lot of these little graphs and theories I was meant to memorize and regurgitate for my psych exams and every once in awhile I remember one that clicked. It came to me in a conversation about people, and how a lot of the time, people are not happy. They complain about anything they can find to complain about: the weather, their families, the government, you name it. And as a waitress good God do I hear a lot of complaining. "You should have candles. It's too echoey in here. My stirfry has too many noodles." I swear I've heard it all; but I digress.

The reason this little theory came to mind is that I thought maybe the reason all these people are unhappy with all the teeny, insignificant imperfections they find in their lives is because they can't get past that green part of the pyramid: Esteem. They're so involved in themselves because they haven't achieved reasonable levels of self-confidence yet, and are thus unable to be the calm, rational, unprejudiced people they are meant to be.

Considering I know very few people who could be at the top of the pyramid, this saddened me. And made me think, what could we be doing so wrong where so many people are unable to be happy with themselves? Is there some flaw somewhere in the social framework of our culture that prohibits so many people from achieving self-actualization? Or is it a personal journey separate from cultural constraints?

Insecurities are a strong motivator for irrational behaviour. Almost any question about why someone acts in a way contrary to how you would expect them to can be answered by examining that person's insecurities.

I apologize for the psychobabble, I can't help it sometimes.

Pure Joy

I am a Ghost

I've fallen off the world, and I'm sorry. It had to be done. I'm not back yet, but I'm on my way.

It seems my twenties are marked by a war between ego and depression. Because I sometimes know who I am but then I get a glimpse of something I don't like and decide I'm not good enough. Is it in everyones nature to try and be the perfect self? Is that why we're here, or is it a fruitless search? Is it ever possible to be perfect according to your own idea of the word?

Considering we're fluid beings and the idea of who we want to be is also fluid, how do we get there? How do we get anywhere?

I can pinpoint a few of the things in myself that need adjustment, but how many more flaws are there?

Are they flaws?

I have nothing better to do than attempt to be a better person. I can't decide if that's a good thing.

Is this it? Brief glimpses of enlightenment, a millisecond of understanding and then back to the grind. What world have we created where no one really understands anything, and our tiny spec of existence seems like forever when the universe is millions and millions of years older than our home on this moldy rock.

Look out at the stars and try not to fall off the edge of the earth. I dare you.

I don't pretend to believe in any God. I try to stretch my mind further than that. Far into the reaches beyond anything any of us could imagine to a place where there is no place. We will never know anything and that's the way it is (and always will be.)

So imagine my surprise when I began praying for you.

Try death on for size. The nearness of it fucks with everything you (don't) know.

I'm all alone in a big house.

My dog died this afternoon.

I'm living sans Internet and working twelve hour days.

We probably wont be seeing each other for a few months. I will miss you.

Three Cheers for Narcissism

Whatever, I'm entitled, I just got a new haircut.




They always say that Psychologists are more likely to suffer from mental illness than people in other professions. I guess it's because if you know all the symptoms you're more likely to see them in yourself.

Today I feel bi-polar.



I'm going back and forth between highs and lows. I think I get this way right before a big change. I felt like this around the time I was finishing my degree and moving from Waterloo forever, and next week I'm moving again, away from Toronto. I feel a combo of excitement, fear and anxiety. Very confusing.




Nothing a new haircut and some self-portraits can't fix.

*Cough Cough*

I watched Michael Moore's SiCKO last night and can't stop thinking about it.

First of all, I understand if some of you are skeptical about Moore's films. They are bias and loaded with opinions, even though he makes it seem like you are watching something fact-based. Yes, he bases his films on fact for the most part, but he definitely does not present both sides of the story. There is also evidence that he alters some information to fit it into a mold of his own making. That is the nature of cinema I suppose: You already know your script and the way the movie will turn out before you've even started filming.

However, despite knowing all of this I am still a fan of SiCKO as well as the other films Moore has produced. Not because I think everything he claims is true, not because they are interesting to watch (which they are) but because his films educate and enrage people on issues they should be educated and enraged about. Many people already knew that American health care was lacking before they watched the film, but it helped to really bring the issue to light. Things like this are necessary to collapse this idea that America is somehow Utopian. So many of its citizens idealize the "Land of the Free" as some kind of perfect prototype, and it's important for people to realize that it's not.

As a Canadian watching this movie, I was scared shitless. Yes, we have better healthcare than the States, but it made me realize how fragile that service is and how easily it could escape us. Harper has proposed privatizing healthcare, or changing to a two-tiered system. Public healthcare is one of the things that makes Canada unique from the U.S., and changing that system would be de-evolving. I can see the gradual changes occurring already, from my own personal experience. Canada's drug services are not universal. I am not covered, because I am over 21 and am not working at a job that has a drug plan. Every time I need a puffer it costs me $120 and if I were someone who couldn't afford $120 a month, I would simply need to live without it, unable to breathe.

I apologize for the rant, but I think it is so sad that it takes a loaded movie with cancer patients crying into a frosted camera lens while a sad "broken American dream" ballad plays in the background for people to become aware that something isn't right. Why don't people realize the problem until Michael Moore shoves it into their poor, sickly little faces?

Was it the Wine, the Loneliness or the Prostitute?

Maybe it's the recent lack of meaningful, romantic relationships in my scope (because romance tends to blur my vision. It's as if I neglect the the lens through which I usually view the world because nothing else seems to matter. "Who cares about that, I'm blissful with whats-his-face!")

It could be the bottle of Sauviginon Blanc I drank last night. (Drunkenness often leads to increased awareness... right?)

It might have been the conversation I had with the hooker on our corner, who turned out to be a very nice girl. (Her shoes were hurting. Those things are not practical.)

Irregardless, I had an epiphany: I don't know everything.

I know that may come as a serious shock to you, it definitely did to me. I'll give you a minute to absorb.

...

I usually walk around with an air of infallible confidence. I love argument and debate, because I usually believe that I'm right. I will fight you about anything and try to force you into defeat, but if you somehow manage to shake the grounds of my argument, I will be grateful. I will most likely thank you for teaching me something with which I can use to fight somebody else in the future. But with this new found epiphany, I'm not so sure my confidence is justified. It is usually seen as a positive characteristic, but there is a fine line between being confident and being arrogant. I may be crossing that line.

Psychology is the study of general trends in the population. We're basically trying to figure people out, but people are complicated (thank you, I'm a genius.) All the moments in life, both significant and insignificant, shape who we are, and knowing we all have specific, individual life experiences, how can anyone possibly truly know anyone else? And yet in a single meeting I will judge you. You will judge me. We will both believe we have at least a vague impression about the other, and that impression almost always turns out wrong.

So what then, should we do? Remain humble, I suppose. Keep an open mind, don't judge too quickly and all that. It's easy to say that we should remain non-judgemental, but when it comes to actually applying the "shoulds," it gets a bit tricky.

This is the art of living.

Lesson Learned, Pun Intended

On my lunch today, I sat alone in a sandwich shoppe underneath the office buildings on Bloor Street. I don't mind eating by myself, it gives me time to think and I like to watch people and imagine where everyone is going to or coming from in such a hurry. I noticed an elderly gentleman sit beside me, but I didn't make eye contact because I didn't want him to engage me. I was enjoying my solitude. But he did. I could barely hear what he was saying, it was rather loud where we were, but he began by complementing my shirt.

"My wife wore polka-dots to church once..." he mumbled, I didn't know what that had to do with anything. "Do you play the piano?"

"Yes, why?"

"You look like a piano player."

"And how exactly does one look like a piano player?" What a strange question.

"You look smart. And creative. There's also something about your posture."

And on he went, talking, talking, talking and I attempted to humour him and listen, but I really wasn't in the place to be talking to strange, elderly men. He mentioned Shakespeare, and how he wrote about Shakespeare once. I asked him if he was a writer.

"I consider myself more of a poet. In England, my first published work was when I was eighteen." I didn't believe him. He was quite thin, his face wrinkled and sunken-in, and his clothes looked like he had slept in them for days. His beard was uneven, long sporadic hairs protruded from beneath his shirt and his eyebrows stuck out further than his nose. My first impression was that he was homeless. After a while of feeling intensely uncomfortable, I excused myself to head back to work. He introduced himself to me as Paul Bailey, and I made a mental note to research that name to see if he really was who he said he was.

I immediately looked him up when I got back to the office and the name can up several times, including a picture. His was much younger in the photo, but it was clearly the same man I had eaten lunch with. It turns out, he was being modest about his accomplishments. Paul Bailey was the first-ever recipient of the E.M. Forster Award and won a George Orwell Prize for one of his essays. He is considered an influential writer, and is still publishing work today. I found the following quote which affected me tremendously:

I write because I have to and want to. It's as simple, or as complicated, as that. And I write novels specifically because I am curious about my fellow creatures. There is no end to their mystery. I share Isaac Babel's lifelong ambition to write with simplicity, brevity and precision. It was he who said 'No steel can pierce the human heart so chillingly as a period at the right moment.' I hope one or two of my full stops have done, and will do, just that.

He is "curious about his fellow creatures", as I consider myself to be. Maybe this is why he started a conversation with a perfect stranger: To learn something. But instead of learning from him I brushed him off. I immediately judged him. When I discovered what this man had accomplished, I felt such shame for how I had treated him. Not just because he is a great thinker and I could learn from him, but because it demonstrated an enormous flaw in my own character. I acted as if I was somehow better than this man, that I had more important things to do with my time than listen to his chatter. I would be lucky to have a conversation with someone like him, and who knows how long I'll have to wait before meeting someone as brilliant ever again. I would be lucky to accomplish half of what he has in his life.

It's a cliche, but my lesson of the day: Never judge a book by it's cover.

Toronto's Heirarchy

There's a drastic and visible social order in Toronto. From the Louis Vuitton toting, Gucci sunglasses wearing fashionistas to the homeless. Wondering shoeless and tired-eyed, they tend to beg in the same place everyday.

The one by the Dominion seems happy, he's always smiling and offering assistance to people who struggle with their bags. He has a dog who seems tired but content. Not well-fed, but fed enough. It's truly surprising to me that someone in the most adverse of circumstances can always be so friendly and outgoing. He almost seems happier than me on a good day.

Another has a place outside a small grocers on Carlton. He sits on a milk crate with his empty Tim Horton's cup resting on the ground in front of him, never making eye-contact with the people walking past. He just sits quietly hoping for some extra change. He takes better care of himself of then some of the other homeless men I've seen. I get the feeling that the owners of the store let him sleep there and shower every once in awhile. Maybe he gives them some of the money from his coffee cup in exchange. I've seen him walking around elsewhere as well, I suppose he has friends panhandling in other areas of the city. More of a social network than most.

The tall man with the grocery cart who wanders Ryerson park scares me a little bit. He walks back and forth all day asking people for the time. Maybe it's his way of maintaining social contact. Maybe it's his own sociological experiment to see how many people simply ignore the homeless and walk on by. Maybe he's one of the many homeless in the city with mental illness, unable to get help and better his situation.

I often think what it would be like if I was in the position of one of these people and how difficult it would be. Not just because of the dangers of living on the street, or the poor diet, or the lack of cleanliness, or the dangers to your health, but because of the isolation. People ignore you and literally walk over you. It would get so lonely to never have anyone to talk to. The stigma of being on the street would be overwhelming. Of knowing you're on the "bottom rung" and that most people look down on you. Your self-esteem would plummet and your hopelessness would grow everyday. It is amazing how resilient people can be, and how positive their thinking must be to get through the day. It really makes you think, how lucky we all are to have a roof over our heads and a warm bed at night.

Not even in the evening, 'cause I've been drinking.

I tend to get restless staying in one place for too long, so it helps to have several different places I can move between when I need a change of scenery and some fresh faces.

Seventeen hours of driving in three days.

Just when you think you're comfortable and understand this whole life thing, after forty-some-odd years it throws you a curve ball. We never saw this one coming.

Stop coming to me if you can't. It's never safe for us. When will we get the time to be...

Your Tongue is Sharp, but I Miss the Taste of It

It's been a strange few days.

1) I spent the last three days in isolation at my cottage. Not a soul was near. All the windows in the house are facing out to the beach and I trotted around naked the whole time, no need for clothes. There was no one to see me. I gained a new appreciation for being nude.

2) A good friend of mine got pregnant. She's close in age to me, not married but has been with her boyfriend for years and years. They just bought a house together, and I suppose in their world it's exciting and it makes sense, but it's strange. When things like that happen in other people's lives, it makes me feel so young and immature. I cannot relate to wanting to have a baby. It's such an immense responsibility to take on, and I suppose I'm still at a place in my life where I don't see the allure of being a mommy. I'm still too selfish.

3) It's been a rat race searching for a job. I've officially been unemployed for almost two months. I'm waiting on one woman to contact me for a dance teaching position at a girls camp, which would be perfect for me, but we've been playing the most elaborate game of phone tag ever. It's been about two weeks, and we haven't actually spoken to each other directly, only voicemail. Please cross your fingers for me people, these are desperate times.

4) I've decided I have a very confusing relationship with my body. About half the time I love it and believe I am super sexy, but the rest of time I see flaws with every bit of it and try to cover up. I flip-flop every day between love and disdain. Do you think there is any woman out there who consistently loves herself?

Love is sometimes disarranged in the haze.

Chinese Food

Congratulations to my cousins band who played NXNE and were amazing!

I was so proud of him in the parental kind of way that makes you wanna squeeze cheeks and say things like, "your mom would be so proud of you right now!" I was also getting really excited that there's a potential celebrity in the family that I can brag about.

I've been discovering a new phenomenon lately. When girls go out together, they dress alike. I don't know why I've never noticed this before, it's quite obvious. I'm going to try and document this with a collection of secret photos, taken illegally and without consent.

Notice: Jeans, plaid shirts, large hand bags over the left shoulder, ponytails, no earrings, and though their shoes were not in the picture, I assure you they were both wearing black runners.

More installments to follow.