I did quite well last semester even though I had to stage a mini-battle with one of the profs. I am also doing really well this semester so far! Just wanted to archive the goodness among the agony and exhaustion I feel most of the time. I also went and saw a new therapist yesterday and am very hopeful. We are going to try arts therapy!
I use too many exclamation marks but it’s how I am all the time. Exclaiming everything! Oh shit!
I am making new friends, people (mostly women!!!!) that are exciting, eloquent, supportive and share my interest and all that shit that I’ve been longing for and it’s all happening. My expectations of grad school keep getting trumped and they were already really high to begin with. That isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of bullshit and problems with my program, but having a supportive network that are all in it together makes it so much more bearable. I love grad school. I love grad school. Now back to work on a photovoice project.
Because this blog’s whininess has got on my nerves plus having to read the Illiad, Plato’s Ion and Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen and do comparative essay on them for Monday is making me lose it just a bit.
I do other things like spend hours online looking at fashions. My friend, Zoe’s blog reminded me how much I love Isabel Marant. The black linen skirt of hers I scored for $75 from $275 at the Jonathan + Olivia sale was worth it, even if it is all student loan monies. Here is Marant’s recent s/s 2010 collection. I am totally a sucker for all things French, whatever, I’m fully aware of it.
+ some other outfits I would love to wear:
all of it.
knit me happiness.
Maje (a brand I discovered in Paris last year + fell in love with)
ohhhhh wow… erm… oh god // Jak+Jil
+ some from Streets Walker, an Israeli street style blog that I found through Sarah.
I hate the start of a semester. Today I am going crazy. I get home and realize I forgot to do and get all these important things at school. I have this pulse in my chest about to pop when the semester starts, because there is always a class I don’t think I can handle and then I start to lose it. I can’t do that meditating and calming down breathing stuff. I can’t do it properly for it to be effective.
Sometimes I feel everyone is happier than me, and I will always be in agony. Then other moments I don’t think about happiness or misery at all, I think this is when I am happy. Today my close friend at school was very tense but then she apologized and we talked about getting therapists. As I open up to people, I realize many of us in graduate school take to the use of therapy. I’ve had therapists off and on for many years, and only came upon one that was able to give me a new vocabulary to think through my issues and anxieties. She introduced me to a language that I could work in. But then she got really sick and stopped practicing. I still yearn for her constantly. I had a string of therapists after her but was unable to make sense of them. I am going to look for a Gestalt therapist again because it’s too painful to do this. Gestalt uses a phenomenological approach which makes the most sense to me.
From Wikipedia: Gestalt therapy is an existential and experiential psychotherapy that focuses on the individual’s experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts in which these things take place, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of the overall situation.
Hey, if you read this I’m sorry! I have to let these feelings out somewhere and I don’t have time for friends anymore, not even my close ones, not that I’d actually articulate my anxieties anyway. Maybe some more secret ones that I can’t talk about online.
I lost a bag of my underwear. I have no idea how, but it just disappeared in my house. It was ALL my underwear in a plastic bag after I washed them. Just like that, they are all gone. We have looked everywhere. What the fuck does that mean?
Toutes portes ouvertes
En plein courant d’air
Je suis une maison vide
Sans toi, sans toi.
Comme une île déserte
Que recouvre la mer
Mes plages se devident
Sans toi, sans toi.
Belle, en pure perte
Nue au coeur de l’hiver
Je suis un corps avide
Sans toi, sans toi.
Rongée par le cafard
Morte, au cercueil de verre
Je me couvre de rides
Sans toi, sans toi.
Et si tu viens trop tard
On m’ aura mise en terre
Seule, laide et livide
Sans toi, sans toi,
Sans toi.
^ ^ ^
I want to stick white fluffy stuff all over my walls and pretend it is clouds. Then I want to build boats and make people out of all of my love. All the love I have, I want to just expel into making a small village of little people that will swim in a boat from cloud to cloud on my wall. I watched ‘The Science of Sleep’ and it made think of this, plus I need to let out some of this stuff in my heart.
I remember not just feeling but knowing with all of me, it was inevitable that 2009 was going to be great, and it was. I fell in love with myself, other people, my world, everything. All that stuff that I’m constantly reading about in books was happening to me.
I don’t have internet at my house at the moment so all I do is check my email and Twitter obsessively on my blackberry and all I really want is to blog. Today I’m in East York to use the internet and watch Jersey Shore on MTV. Last night we went out to a hip-hop night my friend was involved with and it was awful. The MC, My Man Henri, who just threw some words into the mic here and there stood in the middle of the stage typing on his blackberry. The other DJ, DJ Grouch was also on his blackberry between mixing records. It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. There was another DJ on, DJ Dopey and at least he was doing his part, but the two of them just stood up there not giving a shit, being so disrespectful to the music. The music seemed like such an afterthought, just throw a new song onto Serato and go. I’m not saying I love music more than anyone else, but I take music very seriously, even when music is fun and silly, to me there needs to be an undercurrent of blood in it, in some way. That’s the way I’ve always felt and that’s what moves me. That’s what I need. Gah! I can’t seem to express anything I think anymore. Grad school. I saw a lot of great art in New York last week. Ok. Let’s just make a list instead. Ok!
january // applying to grad school & ripping my hairs out. Downhearted.
february // applying to grad school & feeling it
march // waiting for results
april // Getting acceptances! Preparing for Sensoria v6 with Instra:mental
may // Threw my most successful and fulfilling party ever with Instra:mental on May 9. Made friends with Al. Cried for two days after. Went to Warsaw a few days after to take care of family stuff that didn’t end up getting resolved. Stayed in a farm in Oburki, on the outskirts of Warsaw with my mom’s old love’s brother, Jurek, and his two giant dogs. Jurek showed me a passage from his novel in which one character describes how much she loves dancing to drum n bass and what it does to her body. Got drunk at a party with Polish film & literary crew. The love they had for each other made me sad that I’ll never have that type of camaraderie with anyone. I thought a lot about the lack of explicit struggle most of us in Toronto have and how it is struggle those artists had, that made them stand by each other through death, AA, mental hospitals, break-ups and break-downs.
june // My new friend from France moves in with Steve and I, he becomes my bike buddy. Decide I want to go to Europe for the summer and go wooff. New friend helps me choose two great farms on the north west coast. I tell my job of almost four years I am quitting to travel and go back to grad school. This month is really intense.
july // Canada Day is always the best “holiday” of the year. Always so good to me.I wonder if this is just to let me know how Canadian I really am.On the 15th is my last day of work and everyone is bawling. Lots of lay offs happened prior to me leaving so the family is closer than ever. I am treated like a princess. I cry and cry as I leave the building. My parting gift is a kalimba! Poutine at Poutini with Chip and Maya is my last meal. That evening I get on a flight to London. The 17th is Club Autonomic at Fabric. I last till 6am dancing my body out sober. I can’t stop. dBridge makes me feel welcome when I get ridiculously shy. London this time around is perfect. J and I split up, stays in England working on his album while I go organic farm. In France, I am having epiphanies. Over and Over again. Everything good that can exist is happening to me, all at once. I meet people, people that I never get to meet in Toronto. People so ready, so willing, so open. Maybe because I was all those things and it’s difficult to be so in your hometown?
august // More Europe. I miss Miranda July’s sculptures at the Venice Biennale. J and I meet up in Venice. Venice is better when you can reference your experience after the fact. Venice is also impossible to get to by train from Avignon and after four change-overs, train delays and missed connections I made it to the tourist hell zone that is downtown Venice. We made do by leaving those areas and finding our own Venice, because that is all you can do with the city it seems. While in Kefalonia, Greece I make J a birthday meal in from vegetables picked from the backyard garden, pasta brought over from Bari in Italy, wine brought over from Penestin in France and feta and oil from the region. Brighton is the best few days of my life. I still yearn for it.
september // Back to Toronto. All the love starts pouring out. Grad school starts. My bestie and roomie4life Steve leaves for France.
october // I dye my hair bright copper. Break downs start. Poutine over & over. Inspiration. So much desire for output. Make first short film.
november // Everything is turning in and out. School is leaving me totally alienated from the world and I’m enjoying it. My bike buddy & I bike across the city and back to Leslie Spit for my birthday and we spot a woodpecker and eat grilled cheese at the Leslieville Cheese Boutique. Grilled cheese is one of my favorite foods of all time.
december // Biking in December for the first time with my bike buddy’s aid. We go see In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni by Guy Debord at the Cinematheque. Debord’s bleakness and righteousness is exactly what I am looking for right now. The day the semester ends I’m off to NYC. From the aiport we drop off our things at J’s brother’s place in Brooklyn and head over to Santos Party House to see Falty DL, Mike Slott and Hudson Mohawke, one of the best DJ performers I’ve ever seen. Girl gets testy and pushes my $10 drink. I for once keep my cool and she can’t stand it. We stay at Mitsu‘s warehouse loft in the Bronx. We see art and more art and more art (Georgia O’Keeffe and Cindy Sherman and Marina Abramović). I have my most successful shopping day ever in the East Village. I get back to Toronto two days before new years.
I have no idea what I want to do in 2010. I’m usually so determined. Always with a plan. Always with a map. Now … No idea other than just to output more and more and not care if people think my work or experiments are trite or silly. Grad school is one of the best things I’ve decided to pursue.
I wish people would be honest in how they feel about me instead of keeping it inside and pretending. Don’t do me any favours, I really don’t care.
Where am I?
You are currently viewing the archives for January, 2010 at Magdalena O!.
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I sometimes post music links. If you want yours taken down let me know. & for the rest of you, if you don't buy music & just d/l links, you should feel like an asshole.
