Magdalena O!

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.

I WISH THE PERSON I LOVED WOULD UNDERSTAND HOW MENTALLY, PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY DRAINING IT IS TO APPLY TO GRAD SCHOOL.

I take everything so personally as it is, so here it is, the most personal you can get, selling yourself to be accepted for a Masters program. Being able to articulate your vision and entire life past, present and future in either 500 words or less for some programs or five pages for another. Plus portfolios and writing samples and chasing down professors!

I want to throw myself against the wall and scream at everyone I see. Luckily work has allowed me to go in only three days a week for the next short while. When I am there, I am in such a pissy mood and it’s so futile. All I can think about is the deadlines and getting it all in as fast as possible.

Is it too much to expect gentle, “how are you? let me come over with food! let me give you a massage? can i read to you?” instead of, “i am so stressed, i need to finish music, why do i have to commute so far to see you? why don’t you ever think about my feelings?”

Because I have two weeks to finish it all, and I already told you that I need this time and I need more support than ever. It’s not my fault I live downtown and you live with your parents out in the boondocks. I’m becoming a monster.

from my old blog (Jan 2006),

The tales of absence, castration, deficiency, negativity and substitution were all composed by Freud. It’s really easy to dislike Freud but it’s also very fun to see others so eloquently trash him. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari describe him as “an overconscious idiot who has no understanding of multiplicities.”

Although a bit daunting with its descriptions of technology processes, I had no idea of who Ada Lovelace was before reading Plant, Sadie. zeros + ones: digital women + the new technoculture. Doubleday: New York, 1997.

It’s interesting how Ada was Lord Byron’s daughter and Lord Byron was in cahoots with Mary Shelley (mainly through the affair with her step-sister Claire Claremont) who wrote/imagined Frankenstein (the relationship between nature/technology) & is also the daughter of feminist Mary Wollenscraft. I guess I have created a simple weave of prominent people; the weave being the only invention women are capable of since it mimics nature and our pubic hair, by Freud of course.