Somebody’s a mind reader!

AND, her last name is a seed from my favourite type of bread!!

So last night I fully realized that I like the reviews from Now magazine better, but for the most part, Eyeweekly has a far better team of writers.  I try desperately every week to get in some leisure reading of my own from my pile of books in my bedroom, but I can never dedicate enough time to feel like I’m really reading again.  BUT! But, but, BUT… every week, I get truly excited when I notice that the random piles of newspapers all over the city have new covers.  In the last few months, most of the covers of eye have made me react something like ‘Omigoodnessyes! They’ve written about that!?! I can’t wait to read this issue.’  

This week the cover is something about manchildren; the type of guys who never want to grow up (or aren’t capable of it) and are either proud of it, or just don’t care.  BUT, I didn’t really want to read that until I flipped through the paper to try to find something by Carraway.  A couple weeks ago she read my mind by doing a piece on [not] hoarding stuff right when I had decided that I was definitely going to give up my apartment in January to go on a trip to somewhere in South America and was suddenly feeling  weighed down by the accumulation of objects/stuff in my space.  I loved it.  So I was flipping through Eye last night and I was getting kind of sad because I got to all the sexyads and thought I was searching in vain… but lo and behold, there she was on the back page because her article this week was on..

dunh dunh dUNNNNNNH:

Procrasturbation.     Love it.  Both the activity and the article. 

 

730-830pm

This is my favourite time of the day at this time of year.

The sky is incredibly bright without actually being able to see the sun. 

I find that being outside during this time is the absolute best for reading. 

Reading outside with a pashmina scarf bundled inside my denim jacket certainly made me feel like spring was officially here.

alone and happy

I’ve been a bit overstimulated lately, I think. 

I think I may have lost my ability to sit and think, and think about what I think, and think about my reactions to those reactions and so on and on…

I am an only child, and a good portion of my childhood was consumed by these moments.  Whether I was colouring with crayons, walking through the forest, capturing grasshoppers, playing my trumpet, swimming in a lake, or staring at my ceiling, I was frequently lost in my own thoughts.

 My partner and roommate has left the city the same day that our dear friend has gone back to his home city.  I have the house to myself for 3 days. 

The first thing I did was to rearrange a room.  It is my favourite room, but I can never quite figure out what to do with it.  I think that might be what I love about it so much.  It’s versatile and malleable.  It’s bright with natural light..  It’s filled with plants.  There are 83-year-old hardwood floors.  It is stuffed to the brim with books, games, craft suppplies, and collections.  The door has been taken off,  yet it feels like a separate world from the rest of the house.

I just ate my dinner in here by myself.  I’m sitting on my one-person futon, with a glass of white wine.  The Room is softly lit, and I have been listening to Regina Spektor for the last 2.5 hours.  Her voice is rich.  The piano notes are full.  She reminds me of Tori Amos.  She makes me miss Ani Difranco.  This reminds me of Tegan and Sara.  This music is undoubtably mine. 

I just briefly looked away from the screen and looked straight into the depths of a ‘ripely’ blossomed white easter lily.  The yellow pollen is fuzzy and looks like it’s so ready to be polinated it could literally drip off the stamen.  Instead, it is stuck in my Room.  It was once a dining room, then a spare bedroom, now it’s just a Room. 

A Room where I feel calm.

A Room where I can read this line  

 “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

- Philip K. Dick, 1978:  How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

from a piece I stumbled upon, and feel inspired to write a post for the first time since the beginning of April.

A Room where I will continue to read…

words i had to look up today

In my last post, I mentioned that I really need to read more.

In my reading today I came across three words I didn’t know.

I’m going to list them, with a link that defines them.

Maybe this will become a thing I do more than once.   And next time when I’m not feeling lazy, I’ll try to link them to something I think relates to the words

• Upper-echelon
• Plantocracy
• Pugnacious

Actual intentions

Yesterday I posted a list of resolutions that are used by almost everyone.  It’s almost as though it’s a mantra that many people chant to themselves for the first two weeks of January.

I do actually have some intended goals/resolutions/plans that I want to put up here to keep myself somewhat accountable.

• Be less accessible on the phone - I’m slightly terrified at the expectation that if I get a telephone call, I must return it as soon as I get it.   Or worse; that I must answer it regardless of what I’m doing.  I’m going to take a lesson from my manfriend and leave the phone at home a bit more.  Turn it off when I’m sleeping.  Ignore it if I’m in the middle of a conversation with someone.
• Blog a bit more about real life – I like all the links I post, and the fabulous little finds that I put up on this blog, but somehow, I think I’m copping out and not getting in as much writing as I would like.  I would like this blog to take a turn for more the more personal.
• Be less attached to the computer – now this is a bit of an overstatement. It kind of relates to my first goal of being less accessible. I don’t neccessarily want to be ON the computer less, just less obsessed with checking virtual modes of communication.  I would like to ease up on the gmail, the facebook, the hotmail, etc.
• Go for more walks – around my city, around other cities, around my neighbourhood, around and around and around.  Just more.  I love it, so I don’t know why I don’t do it more.
• Take more photos – this part of my life has slowed down significantly, and I want to change that.
• Make more soup – I used to be kind of compulsive about making a soup every week. Now I can’t remember the last time I made some.  It’s the greatest way for me to do the next one:
• Save MONEY – ok. This one is predictable, but is neccessary.  But I guess this one needs description too. I don’t want to be frugal.  I don’t want to be a penny pincher.  But I don’t want to WASTE my money on stuff I don’t need… ESPECIALLY food on-the-go.  I want to make better money decisions so that I can go on more trips, do more tourism in my own city and others, take more classes, etc. 
• Spend more time with my mom – this is something that many people always say they wished they had done.  I lost both a Nana and a sort of Grandmother-in-law this year.  Both of their daughters were devestated.  I saw a bit of a sense of guilt in my own mom around the intentions to spend more quality time with her mom.  I don’t want to have that guilt.  Quality time, here we come!
• Read more hardcopy pages – I’m a recent university graduate and have become totally lax on the reading front.  I just don’t really do it anymore.  I had to renew a book from the public library that should have taken me less than 2 weeks to read.  I’m on my 5th week.  That’s a little sad.
• Get out of my bubble – in every sense of the saying.  This will be more explored in the weeks and months to come.

Okay 2009.  I don’t know if you’re going to be a happy one, an exciting one, or whatever.  But you’re going to be a tad more productive, and I’m going to attack you like a panda does eucalyptus… only because that’s pretty damn cute, and I wanted to end on a note that didn’t make me depressed.