Sunday, July 29, 2007

it's time to get back on this train of thought.
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and by thought i mean writing. my dedication to the sport has been appallingly weak of late. which is really rather odd, considering it's the thing i love to do best. some would call it a passion, but i must say i find that word particularly cringe-inducing. and so i'll refer to it as my obsession.

after all, i write and rewrite everything - from conversations i imagine in my head to email subject lines to lists of things i need to make lists about - i am a rabid for writing. and yet, i notice i don't do it enough. oh sure, i write every day at work. but being a dedicated copywriter has turned me into a sloppywriter outside of the job.

turns out the drive and focus was motivated greatly by dislike, by angst and dissatisfaction. and now that i hardly mind the daily grind, my mildly brilliant spew has slowed to a mediocre trickle. of course, i've yimmered on about this before - it's the "artists need to be in pain to produce greatness" theory, and there's quite a bit of bullshit in that. but perhaps a touch of truth too. finding something to satirize, finding fodder to ridicule, finding heartbreak to pisstake - these are important pursuits in the life of a sometimes-funny always-trying writer.

so here's to the next few months being productive in more ways than one. to resolving to write about everything, instead of waiting for something to really tickle fancy. and to getting a life.

clink clink.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

from cannes to london to the wilds of western canada, i have been cruising quite the cultural spectrum lately.
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my eyes are sore from gazing at endless points of interest, points of other-ness from the norm (or rather, my norm). and now my skin is equally sore from the hours spent under the hot hot hot saskatchewan sun.

and my mind is sore from weeks upon weeks of thinking, drinking, and sinking into a whole new frame of mind. or maybe it's not that new. maybe it's just the same frame, moved from picture to picture, trying to find the one it fits.

i know exactly what i want to do, and where i want to go. i just don't know the rest.


and the rest is, well, life, isn't it. knowing what you want to do and where you want to go are just the drive, the narrative, the plot. it's the people and the things, the scent of the subway in the morning and the crinkle of the sunday styles section of the paper and the little four leaf clover traced into your pint of guinness and the warmth that flows from head to stomach when someone says your dress is pretty and the naive butterflies and the heart-wrenching sagas and the silly adventures - these are the things that fill out the empty skeleton of a life.

so, it's not what or where. its how. and who. and most importantly


when.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

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it's crisp out, and crisp isn't usually a word that's associated with summer - unless you're getting burnt to one.

but here we are on july the first, and it's chillsville out - cold blue skies and a sun that won't warm to me. and here i am back in the land of canada, on a weekend that celebrates patriotism and the essence of being canadian (what is that, even?) and red and white oozes from all our pores, and decorates the streets with streamers and confetti and other such dollar store gems.

and though it's been at least four days since i got off a plane, my ears are still ringing and there's a pressure in my head that's a thump a thump thumping me into the oblivion of ouch. what i mean is it's driving me to distraction. which isn't a bad thing really - in fact, it's probably just what the subconscious ordered - that way i don't have to really think about anything that might be troubling me. just focus on the beating of the drum in my mind. or the pure silliness of the sentence that just came so willingly off my typing fingers. i suppose likening my headache to some primordial drum just illustrates how things have gotten me stupid. and by stupid i mean pretentious and irritating.

tomorrow i get right back on a big ol jet airliner, which will take me too far away. well, far enough, for a week of culture shock rock around the blockity block. trying to pack clothes that won't make me stand out as some sort of metropolitan mincer. hard, when my entire wardrobe seems to consist of black dresses. and so i ransack the recesses of my closet, searching for that gingham sundress i once bought on a whim, those tank tops and flip flops guaranteed to dumb me down to dowdy.

it's going to be a trip. even more so than the one i just came back from. my mind is sure to be even more muddled when i return. perhaps that will make my writing clearer somehow. or perhaps not. after all, who wants method when you can just have pure madness?