My plan: a boring-type post. March 26, 2009

Hello.

It’s been a while. Too long. Really? Too long? I’m not sure that that is a fair statement. It has been longer than I would have liked since my last post. I’m sorry. However, too long implies that something has changed because of my negligence… that it is too late, too much to explain, that too much snow has come between us and the line is blocked. I don’t think this is true. I think that I will write this and that nothing will have changed between us in the time that it took me to post it. This is why the collective is so marvelous. Everything can change, but you’ll still be the collective that I know and miss.

I’ve even drafted a few posts in this time… but not finished them… so they never got published.

Here it is — the end of term. Less than a month until the last exam. ! And then, the plan is as follows:

• 10 pm, April 22nd: finish philosophy of science exam
• 6am, April 23rd: catch flight to Vancouver from Moncton
• 12:30 pm, April 23rd: hope that there is someone to pick me up from the airport, do mad dash to home to collect remaining gear, eat lunch (sushi?!)
• 4pm, April 23rd: Return to YVR to meet friend arriving via plane from Moncton.
• 6pm, April 23rd: Catch bus from Vancouver to Kamloops
• 11:30pm, April 23rd: Arrive in Kamloops, get to camp, set up tent, sleep.
• 5:30am, April 24th: Wake up.
• 7am, April 24th: Plant some trees.

I am excited! But I will not be in Vancouver for very long. I’ll be back at the end of the planting season (late july), and then am taking off to Nelson for the 7th of August. In this time we need to do some hanging out. Is anybody going to be around?

Also, is anybody not working the day of the 23rd? I do not have a ride from the airport yet as my parents are working that day. There is lunch in it for anybody who wants to hang out/pick me up.

I realize that this was not a great post. But it was informative as to my plans, and so we can do some meeting up in Vancouver and story-swapping properly.

I love you all.

- Katy

P. S. It snowed here a few days ago.

Call for artists! …call for lovelies… April 4, 2008

Hey guys!

So! I want a large back tattoo. I want this tattoo to be an oak tree. I will not be able to afford such a tattoo for quite some time, but this is just as well, as I want to make absolutely sure that this is what I want.

What I want is to get some of my closest friends to design what they envision this tattoo looking like and then I will draw from them my favorite aspects and combine them into my eventual tattoo, thus making the tattoo much more meaningful than pulling an oak tree off of google and getting it done. I would be honoured if any of you would like to participate in this project. There is no deadline or anything, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and foresee it being realized in a few years if I can scrounge the funds for it.

Just a bit of background about the tattoo, like why I want an oak tree, and how I see it being laid out…The oak tree for me has been a symbol throughout my life. There was one planted in the front yard of my house when my parents moved into it. It grew up with me. Finally, just as I moved out, it was strong enough to climb. The tree symbolizes my childhood and my originating place within the world. While it is about past, it is also about change and growth and … well, life… at the risk of sounding corny.

I don’t want colour on this tattoo. I am thinking more of a black outline. I want it to start with the roots on my hips, and then I want it to all the way up my back, its branches wrapping, like fingers, around my shoulders. I want the branches to be visible. Foliage is optional.

But yeah, if you feel like participating, then that would be greatly appreciated, and if not, that’s cool too. Please stylize and make it your own, though I’m sure you all will. I am open to suggestion as well, so if you don’t like some bit of my original idea, change it! Do whatever!

Think on it and get back to me.

Much love to you all, and best of luck in finals to those with finals. I am super-grinfilled-excited about seeing you all when I come home. (24th of April!! soo soooon!)

xoxo

Library Disinterest? Could it be? April 1, 2008

Guys, I write to you again from the belly of the library. I am surrounded my motivated students listening to mp3 players, all of whom look so intent on getting done what needs to be gotten done. I, on the other hand, am writing home, so to speak. I promise a disjointed note. Here goes.

Anthropology “midterm” (final) tomorrow. I am somewhat doomed. Much reading to be done. I cleaned my room today in a procrastination effort. Yes. Me. Cleaning. You read me correctly. My roommate came home and stood, stunned, in the doorway for a few minutes. Dishes had been done, clothes put away, the coffin (coffee table) had been cleared off, our socks had been separated into groups based on ownership: mine, hers, homeless. I even found some long lost flip flops hiding in among the empty luggage under her desk. Now I am reading about the capitalist world economy as started in the 1600’s based on monocrop production of things like sugar cane and cotton. This is such an interesting course. This is the sort of thing I would love to read if I didn’t have to. Why is that? Why is it that we enjoy education in subjects that are not “mandatory” by some authority. Yes, we chose to be in school, take these courses, etc., but really, if this is not suggestion that the desire for freedom is innate I don’t know what is. Take THAT Plato, with you’re rigid societal organization!

It was my roommate’s birthday yesterday. We have decided that we are only to give each other gifts if the gifts will help the receiver get laid. Crude, yes. Hilarious, yes. I had forgotten about this rule, and bought my roommate cheese… I had to come up with a somewhat complex story about why this would help her.

The library is humming again.

It was hair month in my residence in March. Today is April first and the sinks in the guys’ washrooms are disgusting. The girl’s showers got filled with snow today as a grand old foolish joke. Delightful.

I should really get back to work. Home on the 24th. I miss you all. March babies: your cards are in the mail.

LOVE! (Loaf? Suzie? Is this okay?) In any case, much affection to you all. xoxox

Mechanical arms and living with reptiles. March 14, 2008

I have not written in what has felt like an eternity, but let’s not state the obvious, shall we? I will summarize an elaborate only with incidents that still feel detail rich to avoid a novel and the subsuquent boredom of you all.

Life circa last month…

• I have a coffin that I took from the theatre (with permission). It has no back. It was a set piece for the play that went up simultaneously to my play.

• I stage managed ‘See Bob Run’, the other one-act was ‘Sideshow of the Damned’.

• I slept on the coffin for two weeks.

• I went to Halifax for reading week. I met a pile of family. I have a delightful family.

• I got to eat lobster for the first time.

We drove to Peggy’s cove to buy the lobster. It was exceptionally fresh — > still alive… but then, that’s how lobster is done. I watched as the man in the puffy, salt-encrusted vest wrapped up each lobster in its own newspaper, each lobster becoming a mysterious and somewhat mechanical parcel of joy. The claws were confined by those big thick mailman’s elastics that comes around bunches of broccoli. (They are still mailman’s elastics, even when they are sold with vegetables. Don’t question me.) I thought about how I might have once felt sorry for these creatures — sometimes “playing dead” as they sit out of their element. When they did move, however, they were, as I have mentioned. mechanical in their movements. Through psychology I have come to believe that while these are creatures with brains, they are also little more than a series of reflexes. I have deduced this because there is no variety in their reactions. They act the same way as each other. Every movement is entirely predictable. Predictable things can be eaten without a heavy heart. That is the rule. This is why, after having painstakingly broken the ice in front of my uncle’s house to get a bucketful of seawater, I felt no remorse as I threw the creature head first into the boiling water. Its legs were moving like tiny robotic limbs as it went in and took one breath and met its doom. Mine was named Alex. He was delicious. I ate him with garlicy butter and a pint of local beer. I found out that he was a she. Somebody else ate the roe.

For those of you who do not know, lobster is a smelly and messy business, but is rewarding and filing. I have sucked the meat from a lobster’s leg shell. It was marvelous.

• – The coffin broke. It is now a floordrobe. I feel that it really ties the room together and, surprisingly enough, so does my roommate, though neither of us can open our drawers fully anymore.

• I have found 11 reasons why my roommate is a reptile.

11 Reasons My Roommate Is A Reptile.

1. Attracted to men with terrariums.

2. Dry skin.

3. Can unhinge her jaw.

4. Does a weird air licking thing with the tip of her tongue.

5. Is nocturnal/I am never sure if she is sleeping or lying in wait.

6. Cold blooded.

7. Does not have feelings, only sensori-motor reflexes. (Is therefore okay to eat, but is far to skinny and amusing for anyone to want to.)

8. Does not like to wear clothes.

9. Coils around/ latches on to prey.

10. Dislikes the cold.

11. Has an innate fear of flying prey. (pterodactyls, birds)

• My mother sent my giant teddy bear out to me. It has been named Binamin. It has been raped and abused by all of first floor. So much for protecting me from those awful New Brunswick boys.
• I am off to Halifax tomorrow to see Seussical the Musical.
• Metaphysics is a sweet class. I sat in on it. I can’t wait to take it next year.
• I am having strange dreams about the summer. Last night’s involved bottle collecting and tree planting in the middle-of-nowhere BC with my nana and my godmother.
• I am sending birthday cards to all you March babies, but they will be late, so until they get there, you will have to pretend.

I think that’s it. Consider yourselves all missed terribly. I keep walking to Bridge Street cafe, and thinking, wouldn’t it be neat if I ran into the tea collective there? I imagine Michael leaping into my arms in that always surprising way he does it. (Scooby-Doo style… like… ZOIKS!) It just so feels like a place that you should all be.

This blog is now longer than my Herstory paper. I must away.

Messy February 8, 2008

I went to bed with a headache and the light on and visitors in my room. I saw someone spill tea all over my roommate’s bed. I heard the crash that came with the power bar falling off the desk and bringing the kettle with it. I heard the gasps as the water went everywhere. I didn’t look. Fortunately the power bar had pulled out of the wall. I went to sleep. I woke up in my jeans at twenty-to-seven with belt imprint on my hip and bra lines around my ribs but minus one headache and brushed my teeth and put on pajamas.I am in bed now. It is 10:23. I hope that when 6:40 arrives for you all today that you are not still in your jeans.

All grown up on a Saturday morning January 28, 2008

So, my roommate was out of town this weekend.

[This is the beginning of any good story.]

And I built a fort.

[This is the best possible continuation of that story.]

My next-year-house-mate, Mike, and I built it in my room with matresses and hemp twine (to keep one of the matresses upright…) and blankets and a closet door across the desks. I woke up in my fort on Saturday morning and drank orange juice and watched Pinky and the Brain. (I now have all three volumes.)

It was at that moment that I realised that I am at a very strange point in maturity. Residence is like the summer camps of our youths, except with far more S.T.I.’s. Clothes and dish soap are shared around. Home cooked food is a highly valued commodity. People stay up very late whispering secrets to each other. Shower shoes are to be worn at all times. Showers are to be taken as infrequently as possible.

My roommate is home. We made dinner together tonight, and so are eating stirfry on vermicelli. It is real. We made it in a hideously unsatisfying dollar store frying pan. And sometimes I feel very wifey and grown up.

Plato midterm today. I am in that blissful state between worrying about the exam and being disappointed with the mark. Right now, there is nothing that I can do but wait and blog and snack… and maybe Pinky and the Brain.

Library Isolation November 19, 2007

Here, on the shabbiest floor of the library, I sit on an old metal-framed chair on the stained, off-white carpet. I can hear the deep rumble of the air circulation system. The personal desk that I’m at has walls around the table surface. In the room it is surrounded by the journal stacks. Here I can write a paper entirely undisturbed. I am undetected, two floors beneath the ground. Outside it is snowing again, but I don’t see that white shards of crystallised water fall like sawdust to softly cover the naked branches of the defeated-looking trees. There is no chill as someone walks in from outside, the wind rushing in past them, chasing them into the room. I am two floors beneath the earth, tactiley and visually oblivious. A bomb could drop and I’d still read about the symbols in Alice Munro’s ‘Boys and Girls’. Apparently the watering can is phallic.

wet November 11, 2007

There is snow everywhere. I don’t own boots. I am stuck in my res with the options of starvation or wet feet. Send help.

Painted Backs and Forbidden Mourning November 2, 2007

Beautifuls: Tonight my show opens. It is unlikely that I will do another show with certain people I have now worked with, and this is unfortunate as it is my first year in Windsor Theatre. I have cues coming out the ying-yang. I should really get that looked at. I can only thank my luck that there are no knife boards to match sound cues with.

Glace Bay Miners’ Museum. Devastatingly enough, the facebook event has spelled ‘Miners’ “Minor’s”. I wanted to die. This is my show! The author of the original novel was supposed to come, but he has broken his knee and will be unable to attend.

I am ill.

Midterms are epic.

On Sunday I will relax again. It is unlikely that I will even put on pants that day. I am going to bunker down and eat soup. Lots of soup. The curse of it is that cream soups are a no-go with a cough. Alas and alack.

There is a travelling poster sale here right now. The first board when I walked in had every poster from Mr. Pentland’s classroom on it. I stood, agawk, for a moment. I now have the Pink Floyd Back Catalogue poster on my wall. It’s huge. Picasso’s ‘Old Guitarist’ still sits among the mess waiting to be posted. It needs to be in just the right spot. For some reason it reminds me of Michael, but I can’t think why. Michael: do you like that painting?

I have had a realisation. You know Donne’s ‘Valediction Forbidding Mourning’? It is talking about us.

“Our [eleven] souls therefore, which are one,
Though [we] must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.”

I know this, and yet still it is next to impossible to feel a sense of home here with your faces lining my walls and not being animated on a couch or in a kitchen.

Don’t give me no more peppermint friends. September 21, 2007

So here I am on Thursday night wishing that I was napping on Daniella’s couch. It’s eleven o’clock and I’ve just come home from the theater. It is like any other day of high school, and yet there are no commonalities between tonight and the past year as far as I can tell, except for that one faint link: theater. I’m not even sure if I like the theater. I loved Stefania and Alex and George and McCarthy and I loved backstage… being let in on the secret of the show. I loved the reek of the smoke machine. I loved working on the stage. I loved working under the stage. I even found a place in my heart for the various wood chips and screws that would end up in my bra at the end of a day of construction. What of this remains in theater here? I am left with the technicalities.

I will be stage managing later on this semester.

I like the people here. I have a friend who dances like a hippie. I have a friend who is silly and who I have giggled with as we walk through the graveyard late at night. I have dozens of acquaintances. I know peoples names. I recognise their faces. I have people to sit with at meals. I like them well enough. I also like peppermints.

I have peppermint friends, but I miss my clothes-fresh-from the dryer friends, my cheese-stuffed pepper friends, my really fuzzy sock friends, my fedoraed swing-dancer friends, my hoodie-when-I’m-cold friends, my barefooted on the dyke friends, my nap friends, my Christmas-morning friends, my tea friends.

I must console myself with the snacking nori my mother has sent in a care package. I eat it and think of Agnes’s brilliant snacking ability.

Goodnight my cheese-stuffed pepper friends.