I'm a slow motion accident, lost in coffee rings and fingerprints...

I feel like lately I've had a lot of moments that make me stop and think about what my life would have looked like if I had made different decisions...small, seemingly insignificant decisions that felt like they only changed the moment I was in, but looking back...have changed the entire course and landscape of my life in the past few years. As of this morning, I have finished 5 years of post-secondary education, and the person I am today is so very different from the person who began at TKUC all those years ago. Would I change the way things have turned out? The way I have turned out? No, I really don't think so. But at the same time, I find myself thinking about how my life would have taken a different turn at certain crucial moments. Choosing my major, my roommate(s), the men in my life, my friends, the movies I've watched...everything down to the musicians I've been exposed to and have connected with. At any given moment in the past 5 years, i feel as though a slight change in the decisions I've made would have had radical, long-term effects upon the person I am now. (This knowledge, by the way, does not in any way decrease the pressure I feel at the moment to make decisions for my future!)

When the most important things in our lives happen we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on.
- CS Lewis "Mere Christianity"

empty my heart, i got to make room for this feeling, its so much bigger than me...

Today marks a momentous occasion in my annals of ridiculous head-in-the-clouds academia. I got locked INSIDE the University of Alberta library. yes. I had decided I was doing some last minute desperate research in Rutherford SOUTH, so I simply ignored all closing announcements for Rutherford North. As it happened, at 6:15pm, all the lights went out, except for the "EXIT" signs. It was then that I took out my earphones, looked around at the study area around me (moments earlier absolutely FULL of students) and realized that I was indeed in Rutherford NORTH. - For the record, I am not usually so directionally challenged - I managed to quickly collect all my things (and unable to check out my research, left it on the table) and ran down 4 flights of stairs only to find the main entrance already locked. So not cool. I stood there thinking about how creepy a library looks lit up only by exit signs, deciding what to do. Luckly, a "guard" had just come out of the back and saw me and let me out with only a brief lecture on listening to announcements...I nodded and pretended I was excessively sorry...but seriously, who closes a library at 6:00pm during exams?! Ridiculous!
So I now have two FULL papers to write tomorrow...oh, i'm so screwed.

i'm hiding out for good, runnin faster than I ever thought I could, run run away now...

Late last night, while I was finishing off a paper, I noticed it had started raining. The first actual rain of the season - not hail, not snow, not freezing rain - but real, actual soft, make the air smell of earth, kind of rain.
I sat on the front step just listening and watching and basking in it for a few minutes before I picked up my camera and started playing around...before I knew it, I was in the median of 50th street with my tripod taking photos of traffic and lights flying past me on both sides. While I stood there, waiting for the shutter or the perfect moment of light and movement, I was thinking about poetry; about the way it pulls at language, doing something irreverent and new with something so stiff and structured. Sometimes it really surprises me how much I love poetry. I always considered myself someone who could understand and appreciate poetry, but was definitely a prose girl, but lately, I've been starting to admit to myself that maybe I am more into poetry than I'm aware. And then the shutter goes, or the light turns green and I set it up again, shooting more to the left or from lower down...and standing there in the first rain of the season, in the middle of the night, I thought to myself, THIS is what I love. THIS is what I want to do. THIS is what lets me be me.

So, anyone wanting to pay me to sit in the rain and take photos and think about poetry, give me a call...I'll be needing a patron.

inside a poem, the only words i ever knew

I know, I know, more song lyrics, but its worth it. Imogen Heap is my newest musical addiction and well worth it. Probably one of the best I've found in a very long time. The music is so good, simple piano solos, cascading string sequences, incredible, distinctive vocals. And the lyrics - able to express the most difficult to articulate and reach beyond that to tug at the completely inexpressible deep within you.

You can find this song on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F56kCh_Sso0 set to a collage of Gilmore Girls Luke/Lorelai if you want to take a listen...

Candlelight "Imogen Heap"

I am alone, surrounded by
The colour blue
Inside a poem, the only
Words I ever knew
Washing my hands, of the
Many years untold
For now I am banned, my
Future is to unfold

Would you take my
Candlelight
Would you take my
Candlelight
Would you take
My candlelight
Away from me

I am blind
My eyes
Are
Covered
From
The
Outside
For I have lied, now all
There is left for me
To do is hide
Take in a deep
Breath, I lift
My head
For I am a new man
And I arise from my bed

This is all there is, I can see that now
I have to be careful with it, now it’s been found
So fragile, but powerful, this is the light
Of my destiny stay with me, through every night

what am I supposed to do? there are too many of you...

I am sitting in the sun listening to the Be Good Tanyas. Their music haunts me, that whispery bluegrass accented by harmonicas and slide guitars. The song "Its not Happening" came up and as I listened to it, it reminded me of coming back home from work in Dhaka, sitting on the couch, eating pineapple and singing along to this song. Its frustrating to me that I sit here now, thousands of miles and three months away from that time and place and still I feel as though this song is knitted into my soul...maybe even more deeply than it was back then.

"The way your mind works
Travels so fast
Carving your way
Through the city

And you can tell me
You get what you want
You figure it out
And you're just fine

Cuz you're talking to yourself
Don't hear a thing
Now history unfolds before you
You just shut your eyes
You just shut your eyes
It's not happening

We all go up, down
Fend for ourselves,
Or fend for each other
Fend for each other sometimes

But you keep on racing me
Like something's chasing you
Like something's gonna get you
Something's gonna get you
One day

And you're talking to yourself
Don't hear a thing
Now history unfolds before you
You just shut your eyes
You just shut your eyes
It's not happening

And you're talking to yourself
Don't hear a thing
Now history unfolds before you
You just shut your eyes
You just shut your eyes
It's not happening

You just shut your eyes
You just shut your eyes
It's not happening
No, no, no, hmm...."

- Be Good Tanyas "Its not Happening"

push'n and pullin' at me as I fall deeper and deeper in...

Its been a year since I wrote my last research paper for University and this week I'm sitting here looking at the three that need to be finished (or even started) in the next week and it is completely overwhelming and daunting.
I am planning to probably take next year off of school to do some work and whatnot, but I feel that if it was this hard to get back into school now, how in the world could I jump back into school after an entire year off?
The idea of having to do more school again makes me anxious, but the thought of not returning to school ever again makes me sick to my stomach and afraid for my life. What do you do when you've done what you're good at, come out the other side of it and still don't know what to do?

baby sees the elephant like she sees the steam rising off her plate...

Today is my second last day of undergraduate classes at King's. Yeah, I know, I said that last year this time. But I think it is actually true this time around.
And what a way to end it. I spent 4 hours in class today and will spend the rest of the day writing papers that were already due. Classic.

wait! they don't love you like I love you...

This one is for Hailey, who insisted on my keeping up my blog when I started slacking.

So my oldest sister printed off all my blogs and e-mails to her during my time in Bangladesh and put them all together in a book which she gave to me this weekend. I read parts of it this afternoon and it made me laugh and think and understand some things about myself that I wasn't aware of before. I came across one blog entry from November when I asked the question: "is it possible that someone's idea of who you are could be closer to the truth that what you have believed about yourself?"

This made me think. Think about my frame of mind when I wrote it, think about all that lead up to that point, think about all that has happened since then. It reminded me again that sometimes we need to listen to what others say about ourselves to remind us who we are, who we can be, who we must continue to be and what we need to get rid of. I came across an old Christmas card this weekend from a friend who had written to me about who I was in her eyes back then. I had forgotten some of those things, I had forgotten that I still have them inside me and I need to fight to bring them back out.

In one of my blogs in October, i included this excerpt from DH Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover":

"Our is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataciysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen."

so carry me around like a picture in your purse, and pull me out when things are at their worst...

a little something lighter than often got me out of bed in the morning this summer...