Magdalena O!

Lately I have been feeling strange. Like I am me but not me at all. I have this shell of a body and I am going through the motions of my everyday. But I don’t feel hollow, ok, I do, but not in a simple way like when you are drained of emotion. I have felt this before, it’s tiring too, but obvious. This is like having an empty body but still having an overactive mind, except the mind is not connected to the body and its actions. It started happening when I was deep into Battlestar Galactica, and this Murakami book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has been a continuation of BSG. I had no idea at the time. On my bookshelf, it looked overwhelming, so it stayed there a while. I read the synopsis and wasn’t sure I could take it on. But something made me tackle it recently and here I am. I often think of myself as Zelig. When I get into something, it completely takes ahold of my life. I turn myself into it. Recently this happened with BSG, and the gym. I go to the gym everyday, and sweat and work out and only when I know it is unhealthy I leave. I can’t stop it. This book too, it is a world I so easily belong in. The way Creta Kano, a character in the novel, uses projection to get inside people’s consciousness to try to find her own, it is just like the cylons do with each other. She allows reality to form and for all the receptors to feel the experience like it happened, and even have physical consequences to it, even if it was completely in their minds. This makes a lot of sense to me, like my friend Alex said a few days ago, “reality doesn’t really interest me,” lately I have been feeling the same.

I need to find an empty well in this city. But so far no luck. Can you help me?

I have also been wearing more of my shoe collection’s high heels. I have so many and it is in shoes I never skimp, yet every day I wear my generic shoes except for my Miu Miu flats that have been worn to bits. Working out has made my legs and feet stronger and since there is no going back – this is it. 2009 is about all of my highest heels and letting my Michael Kors, Miu Miu, D&G’s, etc etc out in the open. How totally ridiculous of me to hide them all? What am I waiting for?

I actually despise the current footwear trend. I don’t understand it at all. It’s going to be garish in 6 months. What’s the point?

Here is something extraordinary though – I can imagine waltzing into a jam with these. Yes. Understated at first glance, and then the gold blinds you. Pure alchemy in the works.

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me by toby 2002 + 2009

It was sunny for once in Toronto, so I met up with Toby to go hang out in the park. It’s so rare for me to do something that isn’t outside of itself. To just be in the moment. He gave me a large print he developed himself of a portrait he shot in 2002! That is seven fucking years ago. It comforts me that I have known him for nine years. It’s been a really full nine years. Not one of those I know you through partying peripheral friend nine years either. It comforts me that by this point we will probably be friends forever. We walked around the city, ate food and one of his ex-girlfriends was working at Clafouti, meaning we got our order free and she gave us a berry custard tart to take home. It was fun to take photos. We used to take a lot of photos. I used to take a lot of photos. I used to do a lot of a lot of things that I miss now. Always with the yen.

toronto / uk 2004
Lately, several of my old lovers have told me that, “You and J really fit together.” It has an effect on you when someone that was the love of your life tells you that because they know you in that way better than any of your friends. I trust my old lovers because they all lived and died with me. I am all of them now. They are all in me. I could never extract them and I would never want to.

The phrase isn’t unexpected, but I was still very pleasantly surprised to hear such words come… all within the same time frame. Is it because I, myself, feel really strongly about us? I’m trying to be less erratic and forceful and maybe that actually works. It’s been so many years. I don’t write directly about my relationship in here too much, only because I feel it’s something I want to keep to myself, because as laid out I have made my feelings, there are parts of my life I can’t externalize, even if to many it appears the opposite.

I’m fired up about starting school again. It’s been three years. I will be critically engaging with cultural theory on a graduate level! It all seems so surreal. I’m totally romanticizing the whole experience, but I need it, I need to prove it to myself. I need that MA. I will also have access to all of Ryerson’s production facilities. I am making the promise now, that even with the stresses of school work I will use the facilities to their full extent.

x. 2009 is really kicking ass. I knew it would, but there was this nag behind the confidence that was worried maybe it wouldn’t all go as planned. Here I am. Dreams coming true. I’m going to graduate school. I am in love. I’m bringing Instra:mental to Toronto. I am going to travel Europe again. I finally met a girl that shares all my interests including music – a near impossible feat.
x. Last year, I told myself if I got into graduate school I would chop all my hair off to have it kind of like Jean Seberg in Breathless.
x. I’ve been listening to this Math + Science Machinedrum mix from 2007. I can’t find the link online anymore. It’s one of those sets you can just have on repeat for months.

President Roslin, who is dying of cancer sits with a dying woman, Emily, who is at the last stages of her own terminal cancer in the hospital quarters.

“Those are the gods you believe in? Capricious? Vindictive?”
“They are not to be taken literally. They are metaphors.”
“I don’t need metaphors, I need answers.”

I believe in metaphor, thus I believe in God. I don’t need answers or reassurance, because they’re in me already.

I don’t think I was ever truly an atheist. The anagram of my name spells A Mad Angel.

MP3: Frog Pocket – Celebrimbor Tur-Anion (Planet Mu)

We each have a special something we can get only at a special time in our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once the flame goes out, it’s gone forever. What is it like—on the other side?*

I’ve had the same dream many times. The pain is always the same when I wake up. The longing for that something. The details differ but the single theme doesn’t waiver. When do you know that the flame has gone out? When you realize it’s not there anymore? But dreams can play tricks on you, make you see things that aren’t there. Make each world appear more true than the other. How do you decipher which one to believe? Can you believe in both simultaneously? 

Sputnik Sweetheart reminded me of The Double Life of Veronique and also of Persona. I want to watch and read the books with this identity split. With the half somewhere else, left behind, and the half that is tangible, or realized as tangible in the present moment. Why is the half we yearn for always there and we here? Is that half over there thinking of us here? We always seem to think, No.

Are we afraid to admit the flame has been caught by the wind because we are part of that flame? We created it, the synergy did. So, ok, we admit it is gone, where are we? 

Is there a place for me over there?*

What are you doing on the other side? Without me? Cheerful smiles that only whitening toothpaste can provide. I’ve been told my teeth are big, supposedly it’s the Jew in me. When do you give up? When your cheeks start hurting so much and the inside of your mouth is dry and rubbing against your gums? 

You started this chaotic journey, he writes among indecipherable words on eight pages and nineteen definitions for the word “double” as provided by dictionary.com. He also writes that doppelgänger was the first definition he thought of, and it is her possible doppelgänger Miu sees in Sputnick Sweetheart, and Veronique sees in Double Life of Veronique.

Where is yours (right now)?

*from Sputnik Sweetheart – italics from the original text

My birthday is on Sunday. I’m not making a big deal out of it, although I’m sure it’s still big compared to some people but to me, not planning a birthday party, not announcing myself to the people in my life is totally unthought of. People messaging me, calling me to ask what the fuck is up with my birthday, and with each response I grew more anxious about not doing anything, so in the end I’m having a few close friends lose their Circa virginity with me to see Martinez Brothers and get really fucked up. Same as every other weekend. I don’t want gifts, truly I wish I could just skip this all together and that no one even knew it was my birthday. I’m doing this because lately I’ve been wearing myself out publicly, and I’m not in any mood to have people celebrate me. What I really want for my birthday I can’t have, so I don’t see a point in making an effort in anything but. What I really really want is possible in a world where love truly does no wrong, but love always ends up warped into odious nasty things. The other thing I really want is possible, but not at the moment – getting into grad school. The third thing is also within reach but not quite – moving back to Europe. And the last is starting to come to fruition. These four things occupy my mind all day long. I wake up and there they are, I go to work and go through the motions while conspiring on how to make my dreams happen. I go home and try to work on them.

Last year was so big, so explicit, so all about me, about the party, about the music. Being explicit is fun when you have everything you want and the resources to claim it your own. I was living the richest period of my life.

Anais Nin says, “Most of my life has been spent in enriching as well as I could the long, long waiting for the great events which fill me now so deeply that I am overwhelmed. Now I understand the terrific restlessness, the tragic sense of failure, the deep discontent. I was waiting. This is the hour of expansion, of true living. All the rest was preparation.” (Henry and June)

How long then, does it take to come to terms that, that great event is over? Until a new event comes to enrich me again?

Objectively, I want to scold myself for being so ungrateful, for always wanting more. I am surrounded by love from my family, the friends I keep so close and that person that has proven to do anything and everything for me. How can I not have enough? I don’t know him though, he is more than me. I excite myself on knowing about a lover more than they know about themselves, being the omnipotent voice in their life. But with him, the roles are reversed. He is the patient one to my childishness, he is the one full of unrelenting forgiveness, he is the one I go to when I’m curious about anything, or want to try something new. Is that why we are still here? Is that why all my past lovers have been so strong to hold on, because I open them up? A guidebook at all times. Is that what he is? How did that happen? But then how do I marry the childish ego with the tolerant mother? Fuck. I totally get it now.

MP3: Chimatu, Phaeleh – Reflections EP

There is a novel brewing inside me. My muse is still here, I just have to take from the muse differently, even if it pains me now. Even if it’ll break me down by going inside it. If I don’t, then I lose doubly. But I knew it would break my heart from the start. I’m okay with that. I have to be. I(t) fulfilled its destiny. This is all so vague. I wish I could just split myself open, but if I did the whole world would explode. And that’s not ego, that’s self-realization.

Muriel Rukeyser knew it too.

I want the whole world to explode, but I’m part of that whole world, and I can’t die.

“Henry’s definition of human is the one who drinks, forgets, is irresponsible, unfaithful, fallible. Mine is the one who is aware of the feelings of other human beings.” – Anais Nin

I aspire to be more like Anais, but instead I always end up like Henry. A long time ago I wrote out this long piece of how loyal I am in my unfaithfullness – maybe that brings them both to me. Not like June though, she’s another abstracted fantasy of someone I wish I could be and someone I wish could be in my life.

MP3: Kyrie Kristmanson, Origin of Stars (new Canadian woman I am in love with thanks to my roommate Stevos)