the adulteress

I've been going back and forth
between the kitchen and the front door

Are you a lost cat
waiting for a familiar scent to guide you home?
Are you anticipating
a comforting gust around every foreign corner?

The innocent scenarios play in a loop
but I know that I am discovered:
the grit has floated to the surface
and no amount of my regret will rinse
the memory of it from your eyes

Nevertheless I scrub the counters
stack the dishes
so you will find a cleaner home
when your need to see my face contort in shame
brings you slowly back

And yet it's not the guilt that keeps me awake
even while I steep in it
but the fear
that when the ire bleeds into your cheeks
at the sight of this jaw line
it will be for your foolishness in trusting
not for loving me.

the joy parade

There was that half hour, sitting in the back of a rusted Toyota in the middle of the Rum, red sand all around whisked into my face by the tires and the unstoppable wind, monoliths carved out by centuries and teeth of cartoon-blue sky, dust mating with the residual sweat of Nabatean exploration on my skin, greasy hair, a ribbed tank top, a convoy, and the broadest smile I could muster up without guile. Ecstasy vaporized through the pores: the first moment of grateful, self-realized living.

And then there was your genuine peace and confidence when you said that you could not forget me and would be around for a while, window-adjacent anticipation every day like clockwork, dreams becoming comfortably-elevated reality, children's cries resounding in my lungs, pride of the future, a disposition to happy compromise, and first trust in the orchestrator of childhood hopes and adult responsibility.

Of these two, only one remains, taunted by the memory of his younger brother. Desperate for a new beginning, I created Cain and Abel, and I knew all along that all the good die young.

cradle the grave

Living with this parasitic doubt, I fall asleep quickly and stay there too long, the better to dream it away.

Treachery is a hockey card, a gambling debt repaid too soon to overwrite the inclination toward the illicit, too fast to fill the grave with anything other than a fine white powder.

You love too well to be out of practice, and I’m too out of practice to be worth your while.

Despite the secret liaisons and hidden childhood fortunes and despite the prairie cold that radiates from your untouchable skin, it’s me, always me; I have my doubt for company.

beyond the seams

It happens every time—
seed
to sapling
to struggling romantic progeny—
and to every thing there is this season.

So then how does it surprise? and catch quick
adrenalous breaths in my feeble fetal lungs?

It happens, you said.
So it does,
and it takes,
and it squeezes,
and it builds, sways, creaks, fluxes, takes, ruptures, sings,
it does,
and every time the unknown pattern
is sewn by a recognizable hand,
is added to the pile.

The pattern-maker,
the master seamstress,
pioneer of the temporary garment:
she
(couldn’t you guess)
sews these new threads
in familiar treachery,
by sleight of hand,
adds to the quilt that started as a
twin
carried you through college
doubling
(never coupling)
into the weaker royal of your young professionalism
so that you knew your bedfellow,
negative space,
knew to speak from a lack,
learned to be a lack,
learned to be lacking,
until he was no longer gone
but you were.

level the echoing green

you are all of you so familiar

as the days wind on
they grind your cheekbones
your lashes
and your sudden vibrant grins
into the cast iron printing plates of my memory
and turn your cadenced poise
into familiar spectres that taunt from my periphery

with you it's been months,
with you a few more,
and finally with you
it's been these impatient years

but there's something in the latency of dreams,
the parasitic influence of night visions both treasured and sloughed away,
that wears down my resistance and the playing field
until all three of you are caught in a never-ending scrimmage
on the most level ground

you are all of you running echoes of a song I have yet to finish
whose tune transmutes this wearisome strength
to volatility
which makes saving face the only investment I can afford to buy into

having paid for my share of this,
I wonder
when the return will ever catch up with me.

modern memory

Who can trace the contours of memory's face. She sits in my backpack and at the first chance leaps into the strands of my hair. I coif my remembrances day by day. I run a brush through my golden strands and

in August when time was running out and the sun had almost given up but was still pushing for the big win, your Suzuki Swift bore me away on gravel roads and nervousness. your arm under my back. am I hurting you. can I cut off your circulation for one more stalled moment. courage was the summer and I am overdue. getting by with a few late fees and the thrill of procrastination. never lost sight of the possibility. possibility. possibility. giving over is such work when I am out of practice. I write my name on your identity and scrawl the time on the window of your suv precursor. 1:30 am. a record. the wind is picking up and we're all out of cookie dough. I managed to not fall off your roof but

we couldn't avoid the awkwardness of a hatchet at the top of a hill and the mention of a big-time m.o. from the greatest b crush of all time. no fell'ing in the Swift. none at Vespers. it is before my indoctrination and it still lingers as a hope near my brain stem. chills down the spine like falling off the roof at midnight outside your sister's window shining the artificial light of childhood narcissism down on your shoulders and blotting out the clock.

I've started to wear my hair down for the sake of these. working a ponytail goes nowhere on the road to self-experience. the scent changes, and mini-me-memory enters my nose as well as my scalp and

sitting on the 104 at 9:43 in '06 I recall the scent of you on the hood of your car which was the scent of Mexican laundry detergent which is the scent of the man in front of me. rotund and smells clean. yellow shirt. dazzling buttercup and I Never Saw Another Butterfly. there is a pull to ask him how he launders. there is a more logical more frightening more misleading pull to ask you how I hurt you, my picture on your dash with phallic popsicle and naïveté. there is guilt in the water and it laces our clothes. your sister telling me the words you never could and me crying tears for your sake. wanting to be the shoulder I never wanted to be when I was a shoulder. a breast when I had none. assurance when I couldn't see it staring me in the heart. but not caring really not at all not ever not ever, really.

Memory falls, dandruff towards my backpack, never as poetic as snow on flammable cedars.

self-caffeinated free association

I know I shouldn't, but I do. The mantra thuds in the background as the anthem rings out true: maybe this time it's different.
Yes. It is a question of earned reticence. Yes. It's a question of lessons learned. But life is hope, Highness.
So I wrap myself in cables that imitate the weight of human tissue, cables that carry all our knowledge, a posteriori or otherwise. They can choke, I've seen them do it, and even a priori it's not hard to imagine. But as the Sexton once said, it is a sweet weight, this weight that presses my feet into the soil and roots me in the truth of possibility. Imagination is my gateway drug in the afternoon, and I sink from surface to soil to the soul's opium dream.
I don't sleep anymore; I float on a cloud of orange anticipation above my yellow notepad forever in the night. I produce my own caffeine, better than the dregs from a Japanese factory floor stained by adjacent dynasty and pantheistic tendencies forgotten.
This heart pitters and patters, but it sees enough to think clearly through the arrest. Or at least kaleidoscopically—
a new image emerges from the patchwork refractions and I see myself reflected
mewling in newness
in its arachnid eyes.

when I'm not there

It was easier when I slept

on a narrow bed between a rock and a hard place -

in those weeks I knew

what should keep me awake until the peach-bright hours of impossible desert morning,

knew how to walk to make my steps echo yours.

But this burnt orange cloud

where I -

restless -

deposit my head

soaks up the fodder for painful dreams

and leaves me to lie awake

miraged

til the relentless hours of fever-tinted black dawn,

when the slope away from you

is slick, white,

and ever more familiar

running a tempest

In this moment
the subtle fever breaks-

oh,

clarity!

The revolting unity
between
this congenial illusion
and
this congenital self-doubt
has at long last

been
severed,

and like the storm that brews for days

threatening

with its oppressive humidity

and weight, and then

laughing at its childish power trip

sends relief cascading down from the blackened skies
this

crystal reflection of my reality

has graciously, powerfully unleashed itself upon

my insecure ocular nerve

and the yearning is

to dwell in this

to stain my walls with this bright red awareness-

but

the cutting,

blissfully melancholic truth is what follows:

this moment is

the mere, aching, brief glimpse

through the glass not so darkly

past which we will live looking

once culmination moves into that abandoned house down the block

and opens a friendly neighbourhood barbershop.

dyn-o-mite

Okay seriously, why didn't one of you mention that I haven't blogged in nearly a month? Inexcusable.

So, I've been rather busy.
I heard you laugh just then!
No, for actual.
I finally got myself a job, and I love everything about it. I'm learning so much that I get the same unbearable hunger pangs after an hour of work that I used to get during lit crit lectures. It's dynamite. Heyo, Galileo.
And when I have nothing to do at work (which, granted, is infrequently), I feel inspiration bubbling forth so forcefully from my soul to my fingertips that I am compelled to grab my graceful green pen and write. (I'm trying to say "green" in every entry. No, I'm not. But it's happening by accident, which is much better; nobody likes a try-hard.)

Impromptu transcription exercise! My verdant, ripped Hilroy pages are no Cristabel notebook, but I'm a-gonna Jerwood Centre this blog up anyway.



My co-workers must think I'm detoxing.

The accidental eyeline kills me every time
and I know I couldn't have made this more coincidental if I'd written it myself.
This is the true sadness of my existence:
a rich landscape of impossible happenstance
made commonplace.
You get sick of reading into it, trust me-
if I didn't, I'd never be able to finish a single book
(let alone that lit degree)

but I digress as I digest-

I've decided that your gaze,
the one that brings on these shakes that know no Demerol,
is more than male:
it is loaded but fleeting
and it has agency
and I'm beginning to think
that it's not crazy to think
that it can see without

looking
(and I thought I was a sneak).

it's about time I mentioned burkas

Good morrow, fair humans and sentient Internets,

While I was perusing through my Summer School in the Holy Land documents a few days ago, I stumbled across a couple of poetical journal entries that I wrote during the trip's early days in Syria and Jordan. Since returning, I've been pretty much obsessed with Israel, and so I've not given too much thought to our first two destinations. But upon reading these entries, I was powerfully reminded of the emotional and mental state I was in for the first eight days or so of travel, before I fell so powerfully in love with the Hashemite Kingdom that I couldn't bear to think or feel anything negative towards it or its neighbour anymore. My own words brought me back to the overwhelming discomfort I experienced when I witnessed the strange and numerous double standards of Arab Muslim culture, a discomfort that all the mental preparedness in the world could not rid me of. I felt a great deal of animosity most of the time. Now when I speak of Arab culture, I do so with a heavy dose of nostalgia and a beaming smile. (In fact, as I write this, I'm wearing an Arab kaftan.) But it would be naive and short-sighted of me to ignore my initial strong feelings, because even though they were influenced by my ignorance, they had their origins in reality and experience. So now I share with you a nice feminist musing on Syria, written the day we visited the crusader fortress Krak des Chevaliers. I hope the Syrian government doesn't read my blog...

this cavalier's crack

hides kids with elephantitis

while drive-by hair salons lurk in the shadow

of the ever-present, all-seeing, ever-phallic minaret

and don't get me started on those domes, my brothers,

that float atop your halls of prayer

serene in pastoral green

while you disguise the real ones behind reams of cloth

in an attempt to stifle their owners

with the necessities of meticulous propriety

if you really wish to own them

to sport their bits as well as yours on your edifice of patriarchy

in a proud display of biological divisiveness

consider the implications of your real estate desires

since there's no such category as trannie adjacent

you scholars of man and God

who rage your voices to the heavens

(whether or not the heavens listen)

you know nothing of woman, your constant listener

hide her eyes behind a veil

and her thoughts-

which are wont

to edify your unfinished polemic

of a life-

will be veiled from you

I'm beginning to understand your disaster

Sitting in the Ambrose library today, I felt my emotional state slip back to where it idled during my years as a university student. It struck me that my defining characteristic was jealousy, and that that jealousy usually sprang from that which I had no power to know: relationships I couldn't categorize, personal histories I couldn't read, those things left unsaid that tantalized me with their endless unrealized possibilities... I had just been reading essays on the formation of Israel, the first Arab-Israeli war, propagandistic early Israeli history, and the class struggles between Ashkenazim and Sephardim/Mizrahim, and everything synthesized under the green glow of my experientially remembered consuming jealousy. This came to me, and since I've been such a delinquent in my blogging of late (big surprise), I decided to share it with you, my dear Internet and friends.

Folklore is tenderizing my brain

with the incessancy of envy

Eretz

you are and have ever been

a beautiful, mysterious woman

the Levantine Helen of Troy-

and imperishable

The possessive man is consumed

obsessed

driven mad when he considers

who had you first

and so your twin lovers

your conqueror, your conquered

rally armies in the night

in the name of monopoly

since

first love is the only poetic choice, after all

I have been cognizant of their struggles

illuminated the points

where their arguments from entitlement fell apart

I was your dispassionate reporter

but now I feel it

feel the pull

as green as Jezreel

I wrestle with Iago and feel myself renamed

as

Israel the primeval wrestler

beckons to me from shared identity

and I insinuate myself

into the split

personalities of your sinful

suitors

my jealousy brings clarity

You are the righteous temptress

the siren song that pulls

these thousand ships

from every direction

to a shared shipwreck

at the altar of paradise

by way of distraction

Hello, my textual life's companions,

The last two days have been difficult; I had a very promising job interview on Friday (the only promising thing to crop up on the job-hunt-front in the last month) and was told that I would be contacted with a verdict by Tuesday afternoon at the latest. I've been trying to do things that will keep me distracted but still within hearing range of my phone. I went to the bank, got groceries, made a hearty lunch, and watched a few choice episodes of Six Feet Under (showing more restraint than is typical for me, I might add), but nothing took away that nervous jittery feeling from my lungs. Each passing minute only served to convince me further that I had come up the loser yet again, having been led into false hope by the God I just learned to trust again.

But narcissism is transfixing. I find it the most effective of all those bittersweet distractors. It was only when I retired to my study and opened up Tink (my laptop) that I was able to vanquish my squirrelly anxiety for more than five minutes. As I write, it has returned, but I look forward to it dissipating again for a while when I return to the activity that first served to alleviate my feelings of powerlessness in face of uncertainty. The activity in question: reading over all my old top-secret creative writing. All my experiments with stream-of-consciousness and free association. All my nauseatingly self-obsessed contemplations of pain and past and friends and men and boys. I like proofreading my literary spontaneity. I like amending my effusiveness. But most of all, I like being surprised by words I forgot I ever wrote, even if they're not in the greatest combinations and most inspired arrangements imaginable. It's not often that I open a document that is absolutely unfamiliar; I frequently find myself surprised by my forgotten writings, yes, but usually they feel at home in my mind once I've read two thirds of the content. I found a short piece today that I still can't remember writing. None of it sounds familiar, even though its tone and style is unmistakably my own. Even the characters it addresses eluded my recollection for about fifteen minutes. Eventually I had to check the document's info to see when I wrote it so I could put it in the emotional context of my calendar.

It's basically just the weirdness of this memory situation that has compelled me to share it with all y'all. That, and sometimes I just feel the need to put very personal sentiments in very public places. I suppose it's a way of pushing myself out of the reclusive pattern that I find so flattering to my complexion.

So play on, player...

the days are so long when you don't look at me like you used to. the wise man says I don't want to hear your voice, but as everyone knows I am fortune's fool. you know this but you pretend not to for reasons beyond me. if you loved me when I'm sad like I wish you would it would all be better, but you only love me when you laugh. you only look at me then, only write to me when we feel the sadness making waves across the space between us. and every moment I think without thinking of the endless possibilities of my life, what would have been if his family didn't have a history of alcoholism so I could've seduced the experienced older brother. would I feel shame or disillusionment or confusion or confidence or anything at all. would I be able to look you in the face and know you want me. would I be able to look myself in the mirror. I'd go without makeup for the rest of my life if you would still turn your face to face me. I can't stand another sedentary day with grey over my shoulder in every direction.

Horchata, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fall

Poverty blows.

As much as I appreciate the way that my lack of financial resources has strengthened my character over the years, at the end of the day I can't help but admit that "insufficient funds" is an embarrassing phrase. Moreover, it is a cause of huge stress. That stress is what has been bringing me down for the past month- no, wait, in all honesty, the summer as a whole was rife with nothing but insufficiency. Life looks pretty bleak when you're worried about making rent and can't eat any of the groceries in your pantry because your recovery from (two words:) oral surgery makes consuming non-puddingified foods painful at best.

This money-stress-hunger-sadness that's been weighing on me was made worse this morning while I was reading newspaper articles about the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The magnitude of the Middle East's volatility hit me in a wave of despair. I considered- surprisingly for the first time- that if the violence that extremist groups are threatening should these talks produce an unfavourable outcome for them actually comes to pass, I might not get back into the land where I left my heart. I realized that most of the factors that will determine the possibility of my return are absolutely beyond my control. That probably sounds silly. It was heartbreaking.

So there I was, silly sad hungry Nans despairing on her olive ultrasuede couch. I decided I had to do something to yank me out of the groove I had made in my mind and my living room seating. I gathered up all my overdue documentaries, got dressed, and set off down the road to the library. And waddayaknow, it was gorgeous outside. After days of dreary grey and the rain I love to romanticize but hate to walk through, the golden leaves were glistening in the sun and crackling with the crisp autumn wind. For the first time in a long time, I noticed a bounce in my step. My feet in their hot pink shoes kept pace with the beats of Vampire Weekend as I turned the corner and let my eyes catch up with the view in front of me: happily stout white clouds rounding their way down to the peaks of half-frosted mountains seemingly vaulted up by a base of gold-and-green-speckled hills. There in front of me, a portrait of what I love best in the world. A free joy: an autumn landscape. A death necessary for new life, a stop on a never-ending cycle. And I remembered other joys. I remembered dancing to music in my head. I remembered the many autumns that never died in my mind's eye. I remembered the immensity of feeling that summer's end always brings. And I looked forward to future falls in new places that I can only envision with the help of my desperate imagination.

This is autumn for me: the beauty of the unknown that is to come, and the heartache of that same unimagined world. A whole sea of deserts and baptisms that are impossible to predict. Such poverty, such wealth. Such unmapped possibility.

(Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten

Chairs to sit and sidewalks to walk on

Oh you had it but oh no you lost it

Looking back you shouldn't have fought it)

Life is still sufficient when it is lived with insufficient funds. It's just not enough to know that in theory.

too much 'burban calls for self-assertion

Good morrow m'darlings,

I haven't written in such a grievously long time because I've been consumed with all the little tasks and concerns that go along with relocating. I've moved into a house with two of my friends, and we're slowly but surely settling into life in the straight-up 'burbs.

My internal compass has been slow to adjust to my new northwestern orientation, and sometimes I feel as though my personality is also taking its merry time catching up with me; it's hard to write when you don't feel like yourself. I sit and look around my room and wonder when its rightful owner will show up to oust me from my roost on her eggplant-and-robin's-egg bed. My essence has been supplanted somehow; I feel young, aimless, naive, boring... these are not good things to feel when in truth you are a passionate, interesting person who has recently celebrated a birthday. The worst thing is that I am unable to pinpoint the cause of this feeling. Even decor-wise, I can't solve the mystery of my missing person. Is she hiding in a different colour scheme? Would she feel more comfortable in a messy, haphazard living space? Has all my uncharacteristic laundering and organizing and cleaning caused her to fear that she too might be scrubbed away or hidden at the bottom of a deep drawer? I'm thinking yes to all of the above.

I've been watching a lot of Ally McBeal lately, and let me just say, I wish they still made shows like it. Fantastic! But here's my point: in an episode I watched this morning, Ally turns 29 and delivers a great closing argument in court that revolves around her recurring birthday sentiment of being an underachiever, and how her hopes for life and the actual life she is living never quite reach alignment. Maybe this is what I'm feeling. Maybe I have the extended birthday blues. After all, here I am sitting alone in a big house, wondering why I haven't yet found a job or love or friends who stick around or the strength of will to shed all the things I find embarrassing about myself. For the majority of the past year, I have been blessed to feel like my soul has got it together; that makes it all the more unfortunate that the rest of me hasn't caught up.

Just because I think this entry could benefit from further disjointedness, I'm going to transition to another topic right now. Thanks for your cooperation.

It was exactly a year ago that my life changed. I still can't quite assemble the proper words to describe what happened in any way that doesn't sound like a wheel of cheese, but I will say that when my heart and priorities got all shook up by the Almighty, I took hold of a magnitude of freedom that had previously been unattainable to me. Sometimes it's hard to remember that I am free, hard to accept that I have accepted myself. Sometimes kicking at the darkness takes more energy than I think I can spare. But it's been a year. A year. As the world remembers the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 that brought destruction and grief and terror, I simultaneously remember the first anniversary of the 9/11 that brought repair and joy and hope, albeit to but one person. So when I think of my birthday blues, of my rejection from the world of the outwardly admirable, of my rejection by the male population, of my restlessness in face of the future, of my unadorned walls, of my well-made bed, of my recently-laundered wardrobe, and all the numerous unnamed things that make me feel not at all like I am used to feeling, and not at all like I would hope to feel, I find I must also think of of the baptism and temptation of Christ. One year ago I was baptised by the Spirit. In February the Spirit sent me out to wander in the wilderness to be tempted with hatred and disgust and fear and faithlessness and lack of compassion. In May I felt the renewed presence of the firey Spirit at Pentecost on Mount Zion. And now, in September, I look around me and find that I am in the wilderness again, although I am painfully far from Judea. But what is necessary in the wild is to remember the water and the flame. To be reminded of fulfillment's reality. To be reminded that fulfillment is always beneath the surface, waiting to be claimed like an inheritance.

And so, there could be no better time for me to reach down, take hold of what is still mine, and fling it across my bare walls with reckless abandon. A Jackson Pollock painted instead by asserted freedom.

To quote Anne Sexton,
"Darling, the composer has stepped into fire"-
again.

ode on a nostalgic turn

G'day, my precious interwebs and gentle readers,

I realize that of late I have been inordinately focused on the future; I can't write a single entry without somehow mentioning Jerusalem (whoops!) or my lofty goals (here we go again) or how things will get better for me soon (sometimes I just have to say it). This is pretty hilarious to me, because although I've always been one to dream and plan and hope, however misguidedly, I've also always hated people whose every action is aimed at the distant future. I am always aware of the the many factors in life that are beyond my control, like the timing of my death or the deaths of those whom I love, natural disasters, world wars, the premature explosion of the sun, blah blah blah, and so in truth I am loath to live only for a far-flung future that is uncertain at best.

Moving right along to the actual point...

Today I lived in the past. Not recent past, not Jerusalem, Jordan, etc. I mean high school. I mean elementary school. I would even mean junior high if I had gone to junior high; thank goodness for small mercies.

I have been gradually packing up my bedroom over the past few days, strategically avoiding any items that would require me to make qualifying decisions based on sentimental value. I've been throwing letters and cards into boxes without the slightest glance at return addresses. I've been consolidating all my lotions and makeup and contact lens cases and Pez dispensers and shampoos. I've kept the washer and dryer in constant use. I've done everything that's simple and surface-level. But today I went into my room armed with a green garbage bag and a huge cardboard box (from some cheesecake company that apparently makes white chocolate peanut butter cheesecake- uhmmmm, yes please!) and went all soullessly cut-throat on my earthly possessions. I found boxes that hadn't been emptied since I moved back home from the Renfrew house with Nik and Mads. I found roughly 4,000 bank statements, still sealed. I found all of my Jason Lang scholarship letters and certificates. I found my high school diploma. I found souvenirs I bought in Italy. I found concert recordings from three summers of SCF Choir Camp. I found shoes that I forgot I owned. I found journal entries written on scrap pieces of paper, wedged between empty cd cases. I pretty much felt like Lara Croft by the time I left for work.

But the important thing is, all this home base tomb raiding gave me the momentum and sheer force of will necessary to face the ultimate nostalgic catalyst: the yearbook. Now, I only have yearbooks from grades 11 and 12, and it's not like I feature prominently in them or think that they adequately reflect what my CMHS PVA/FI experience was all about, but they were a poignant read nonetheless. I read every comment, looked at every page. I tried very hard to remember people's names. I recalled a landslide of inside jokes. I remembered plot lines to numerous terrible plays I wish I could forget now. I recognized faces and marvelled at how easy it is for people to move from obscurity to prime importance to insignificance in my life.

And then I found the Thom Collegiate yearbook from 2001-2002. I had flipped through half of it before I realized that I wasn't actually in it, and that all the comments written therein were addressed to my brother. Good one, Nans. Way to do math. You were in grade eight when this high school yearbook was bound. The funny thing was, I had almost memorized the layout of those pages. I had kept that yearbook in my room since before we moved to Calgary. This is because in my grade nine year at Thom, I used it as a reference guide for all the hotties in the grades ahead of me. Looking through it this morning, my eyes knew exactly where to look on every page for the face of a guy worth lusting over. Their names even sounded familiar, and I know I never talked to these boys. I realized two things: 1) adolescent girls are THE LAMEST THING EVER and I am their queen, and 2) wait, I'm still awesome regardless.

Beside the Thom yearbook were three binders: one from high school film class (featuring a cut-out from a Gap men's undershirt ad with the word "boyfriend" scrawled across it in my handwriting), one containing my grade four creative writing, and one full of Pokemon cards. [I kept two of the three, and you get to guess which ones. Turn this blog upside down to reveal the correct answer.]

I spent approximately an hour reading through the stories I wrote as a nine-year-old. One was told from the perspective of a muskrat musician. Another was a pre-teen poli-drama about the daughter of a fictional US president. What I love most about young writers is that they think a page and a half of hand-written, double-spaced material constitutes a complete chapter. Oh wait, no, scratch that. I love most the names they give their characters. For instance, I named a character in one of my opuses Jeroldine. Yes. Actually.

Well, I'm going to head to bed now. More on this later.

You know you love me.

xo xo -

Jeroldine

rainy days and pens and paper

I am

standing here in my disaster zone

of a bedroom

reading Coleridge out loud

to the mirror on my wall

I was

packing up novels, anthologies, Bibles

into wine and vodka boxes salvaged from the Co-op liquor store

boxing up academia

as if it were the remains of

a frat party

or

a pretentious hors d'oeuvres-laden meeting of the undergrad minds

my Harbrace, my Nortons, my Gilbert 'n Gubar

are now just the makings of some wicked upper body strength

and an increasingly defeatist attitude toward relocation

my precious findings from the poetry bookshop in Hay-on-Wye

are now just decisions to be made

(can I really not take it with me?)

but this Golden Book of Coleridge that I'm holding is so small

and delicate as a robin's egg

I can't not take it everywhere

(I hear my Kantian self whisper chidingly,

"my dear, this is your duty")

so as I look in the mirror now

I see myself not dimly

but in future tense

laden with tattoos inspired by Ondaatje, family, and the Romantics I count as bedfellows

reading odes to solitude on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Temple Mount

recalling generations of others' forebears-

wanting anything but solitude-

offering up precious sacrifices in hopes of reconciling

with a god who would know them

I see myself recalling Wordsworth on the terrace

overlooking Gai-Hinnom

a terrace mottled with countless gunshot wounds

an everyday monument to the six-day sacrifice

of a breathing ancestry finding its footing again

rebuilding a future from the rubble of history

binding bricks with the bloody mortar of controversy

and I hope I will not have cause to wonder then

whither the visionary gleam has fled

but why is the rum gone?

Good day, my lovelies.

Of late I have been rather numbed to reality; my lack of interaction with friends and lack of interest in the tasks I am forced to complete has rendered me rather apathetic to myself. But the other day I experienced a little bit of much-needed ecstasy in the shower- wait, why would you think that? go wash your brain. I mean ecstasy in the sense of clarity achieved by viewing oneself from beyond the confines of subjective embodiment, obviously.

I felt like I had been transported back to the Ben Hinnom valley and was looking up at the walls of the old city of Jerusalem, waiting for the no. 124 bus with a crowd of Palestinians. I could simultaneously almost hear Daniel Rossing's calming voice speaking about Israeli identity. The warm water falling on me became the dry desert heat of Wadi Rum. The nauseating cacophony of my pointless anxious thoughts transmuted into the steady hum of my exuberant imagination. My hunger for my typical morning bagel with cream cheese became redirected towards cucumber and tomato and goat cheese and something, anything, with olive oil.

It's always surprising when I find myself in a state of holistic remembrance; it always catches me off guard. It's like the triggers are hidden beneath layers of meaning and preoccupation and self-analysis, and the more you try to locate them, the more they evade you, until you can only hit one entirely by accident. The only consistent trigger for me is the smell of thyme, all the others are basically one-use, untraceable, disposable cell phones. Excuse me, that's my life calling and other 90s whatnots. But for actual.

Every time I wake up to the reality of my trip-self, that more contented, more alive, more compassionate, more intelligent, more fulfilled me, I have to do something to make her happy. I have to do something that will make the girl who sat in the back of a rusted old Toyota and smiled like a dementoid at the red sand and monoliths of Wadi Rum feel proud to know me, or at least not ashamed to have made my acquaintance. I have to crack open my copy of To Jerusalem and Back or cue up one of my Mount Herzl lectures or peruse a Musalaha update to realign me with the self I hope to consistently be some day. And I have to start living as though I enjoy the people who surround me, because in truth I absolutely do. I have to do something to remind me that life can be full and beautiful here, too. Something to make me refrain from apathy and apostasy. To see the glass as full to the brim.

If I'm not surrounded by Rum, I can still buy some Fuller's London Porter to tide me over.

what's in your crock pot?

I am exhausted; sleep has been playing its coy, evasive game with me for the past week, and I don't find it very sexy. Nobody likes a tease.

Because I feel so monumentally useless in my exhaustion, I thought I would attempt to write something important that would realign me with myself and make me feel good for something. And I realize that while I've spent a good deal of time writing about my overseas adventure and how much I achingly miss what I experienced during it, I haven't done a good job of explaining how I intend to change my life because of it. I've shared my new dream with a few people, in a rather haphazard manner, but I would like to state it for the record. I have a history of losing faith in my ability to achieve dreams, but I don't want that to happen this time. So by stating this for the record, my hope is that my faithful readers will hold me accountable to my dreams. Imagine that this is a wedding between me and my future, and you are the best man or maid of honour. Help me keep my promise.

When we were in Jerusalem, we were greatly privileged to hear from a wide variety scholars, pastors, and activists. I know that we were all very grateful for the opportunity to appraise prevalent Israeli issues from so many perspectives, but it was an intensely confusing time for all of us. For example, one night we could hear a passionate lecture from a Zionist and think that Zionism made perfect, righteous sense, and then the next day we could hear testimony from a Palestinian Christian about how the IDF had killed his non-combatant family and stolen his livelihood. I felt stuck in ideological limbo for most of the time I was there. But when we welcomed Salim J. Munayer into our classroom at Tantur, my mind found a little peace. Salim is the founder and director of Musalaha, an organization whose sole purpose is to bring about reconciliation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. I don't need to explain everything about it here; if you like, you can visit their website or read their Wikipedia page. I don't think it's possible to visit Israel and the Palestinian Territories without feeling an overwhelming sense of your own helplessness and therefore the region's hopelessness. But suffice it to say that in hearing from Salim, I finally felt that there was hope for humanity's survival in that hotbed of hateful controversy.

I felt broadly inspired when I heard Salim speak, but I didn't instantly know what I know now about my calling. As with most of my dreams, the dream to work for Musalaha developed slowly on a near-subconscious level; "slow-burnin' love" is what I have come to call it. It's the same process I went through in September: a clear catalyst starts the process of deep internal realignment, and after a brief gestation period, a new life concept is born in my mind that re-lights the fire under my soul. Add to this dream crock pot a few divine brain interventions, and you've got yourself a life calling.

So what is it that I hear calling? A new way to promote healing in a broken land that brings together my soul's yearning for reconciliation, my heart's desire to be back in that land, and my musical gifts that I couldn't bear to let go to waste. I have never been so excited for anything, and I have never felt more like myself in this excitement. But waiting is hard. Being uncertain of when this dream will begin to influence my reality is almost physically painful for me at this stage. But if I can earn enough money in this next year, then grad school in Jerusalem will be within reach. And once I have my degree in Middle Eastern Cultures and Religions, then I can begin to work the way I want to work. But I'm not just excited for grad school because it is a means to an end; I have never been so excited to just learn and study and fully devote myself to an academic task, because my learning will have direct implications for my life's work. Anyway. What's this life's work I keep teasing about? Creating an Israeli-Palestinian children's choir.

I plan to start with a choir camp that branches off from Musalaha's already existent children's camp program, and then to build that short-term choir into a long-term project. The culmination of the dream would be a choral festival that brings youth from all over the world and unites them in song. If you've never experienced anything like that firsthand, the idea seems cheesy and naive and romantic. Let me assure you that in reality it is not. Music is a gift; it is a glimpse into the beauty and power of God. And therefore, music has the power to reconcile people through their differences, the power to bring joy, the power to open the heart so that it truly feels and moves in ways it never did before. Reconciliation, joy, love...these are the roots of hope. And hope is obviously a particular obsession of mine.

So there you have it. I hope it doesn't sound like my crock pot is full of crack.

essay on whoa, man

I'm taking disciplinary action against myself.

I've realized in the past couple of years that as much as I love spontaneity in my life, I can't enjoy it unless my days are otherwise regimented. Seeing as I am sparsely employed these days, slothfulness is my natural go-to mode of being during the stretches of nothingness that seem to never end, and apparently sitting on the couch indulging my new addiction to Privileged is not the way to create a regimen. I'm becoming more and more useless with every day I mentally tick off my mental calendar. However, as I was recently chastised for not keeping up with my blog since returning home in June, and because I openly admit to having an over-active superego and therefore choreograph my life in such a way that will paint pretty pictures of me in other people's minds, I feel compelled to throw myself back into the writing ring and call it productivity. I will attempt to prove myself as the 21st century female reincarnation of Alexander Pope- I will write out of discipline and a sense of duty to my so-called art.

(This is the part where you nod your head encouragingly at the computer screen as though you believe me capable of such simultaneous change and consistency.)

Now, on to the task at hand.

On Sunday I attended a lovely little reunion with some fellow travellers from SSHL. It's amazing to me how bonds forged in a peculiar context can survive being transplanted into everyday life; what a welcome gift it was to again feel the ease of being with these women whom I came to think of as my little band of wandering sisters and adoptive mothers. What a surprise to realize that we did not need the excitement and constant activity of an overseas adventure going on around us in order to make us a community. What a work of the Spirit: awakening the heart from its ancient sleep (thank you, Hildie of Bingen).

Being awakened to the fact that there were other people on that trip with me made it easier for me to stop procrastinating introspection. On Monday, I took Angelo for a walk in Edworthy Park, where we used to go all the time in the first few years that we lived here. It was cold and overcast, just the way I like it. On days like that, the warm green of the leaves makes the most beautiful contrast with the grey and forbidding sky; everything from a building to a leaf looks delicate and fixed in place, which makes the wind a near-visible apparition. Days like that turn my city into something I can love, an opponent with whom I have been reconciled. Musalaha is always something to embrace, even in such pedestrian circumstances.

And this particular embrace led me down a path flooded with memories. I think about the past constantly, but I invariably become fixated on certain elements and thus ignore the bulk of my memory's contents. But on Monday afternoon I was taken right back to the beginning of my life in Calgary, when I would walk through the aspens on a narrow, windy trail that I wished no one had ever taken before. I would try to get lost. I would let my confused expectations play around with my imagination to see what kind of world they would create. I would sit on a bench overlooking the river and the railway and the stalagmites of downtown and fancy myself to be a daintily-clad Jane Austen heroine standing on the edge of a windy promontory. I would stare at the city until I found something I liked about it, then emotionally flagellate myself for betraying my allegiance to my home town. Often when I recall those transitional teenage years, I get lost in a fog that makes it seem as though I never really felt or saw or understood anything in those days. But I looked through my own innocent eyes again during that pensive walk, and I knew myself again with clarity.

Here's hoping that the clarity continues; after all, I wouldn't want y'all to resort to books for daily reading material.