Summer of 2007 I took out an ad in the weekend edition of the Toronto Star for $299.75.
Before Twitter I was much more verbose. This is the mockup they sent with a fake number.

Why is saving someone so appealing? Saving someone is like opening their life to a life you imagine is full of everything, full of you, full of nous. But saving someone means you can’t hold onto them. That’s not how it works.

You know that moment when you meet someone and then all of your time opens up? How does that happen? What was the time full of before? As easy as time comes, when that someone leaves, time also punishes you with gaping holes that you can’t seem to fill with anything that works. Everything you do is just a distraction, a physical distraction to the scenes in your mind, replaying moments, finding new moments to remember, to torture you with.

The honesty sheath has come back in my life. Things brought back from previous summers overjoy and sadden me. The intertextuality of all of my summers exponentially bifurcating. Every year is more sentimental than the next, having more summer memories to work into the new summer’s narrative(s). It makes me dizzy.

I should spend my time emailing people back that aren’t part of school or work, but people that I leave behind because they’re not “time sensitive” but want to talk to more than anything. I’ve been in Montreal for almost a year. I am lonely. I wish I was able to do “regular” things like going to a bar to have a beer or going for coffee or hanging out at someone’s house while everyone smokes and dies. Because that is what people I meet invite me to do, but I can’t, I just can’t. Those situations just create larger gaping holes in my/the container, but the kind that promote a dull ache everywhere. I want to spend my time listening to jungle, outside on a bike, in a lake, in bushes, with animals, in secret deep wells in the city, hiding in books someone is reading out loud to me!

Hi! Do you know my dear friend Barry (Boxcutter) released an album under the name The Host? You should listen to it, it’s good for moments like these. It fills you up softly.

I started belly dancing classes last week. Move, move, move. The instructor is this glowing blonde woman named Inka, and I get lost in staring at her and her full and energetic movements. She moves without having to move. She reminds me of that Miranda July quote I posted before, “I could not make a move without making love.“

When we’re desperate for attention, we’ll cling to anything that gives it up to us. Sometimes I see this in people I love and it makes me want to vomit. I’m not exempt from this behaviour either – projecting unrequited desires, to further displace them some more. As if that helps. My right eye feels like it’s bleeding.

I visited my friend in Paris this summer. I did things like pose with statues.

Look at that! My skin glowing from the sun. No wrinkles yet. And then… bam! Crying sucks because it makes your face get all wrinkly and when you get up in age like I am, the wrinkles kind of decide to stay and mock you. Ha! Magda! You’re always so upset, so we will punish your vanity! Buttttt if you take a break for a moment, maybe we might ease up, but you have to chill!

Did you go straight from an MA to a PhD? How did you manage to write your PhD Proposal and all that while doing course work and working on your MA thesis on top of everything else?

Sometimes everything looks like plastic. I mean, I am riding my bike and I look around and there’s a plastic sheen over everything kind of like on salvia, but less pronounced. This completely takes over my vision.

Experiment with me. Experiment on me.

I feel like a mathematic remainder.

“Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they’re also what tear you apart.“

“I am stuffing your mouth
with your promises
and watching you vomit them
out upon my face.”

Anne Sexton wrote that. I’ve blogggged it before. It’s one of the most perfect pieces of words brought together I have ever read so here it is again & again. Amsterdam and its constant downpours are almost over, a few more days until I have to go back to Toronto, and then I fly home (??), fly back to my city where I have no place to live, no potential roommates and the second year of my MA to start/finish. I have no home in Toronto, just memories. Where am I going? Maybe having no place to go opens me up to go anywhere, to have the potential for everything.

I want to go to there.

I want to explore what it means to be me (how cliché is that?), what it means to be allowed to experience everything. Sitting in front of my laptop playing Solitaire isn’t getting me anywhere, but it’s what I do. I’m stressed out. Solitaire. Finished a part of an application. Solitaire. Being told what to do at work while someone else makes the decisions isn’t working me out. It’s wearing me out. Being in the same city since I was a preteen isn’t conducive to risk. But I’ve never been a risk taker, so what do I do? I have these projects lining up in front of me, but I cower. I take them on, on, on but not with all of me. Never with all of me. Where is the exploration in a desk? I don’t want to be no armchair archeologist. I think I’m starting to grow old because I think about my mortality in a different way. In a way that things are changing, moving so fast that all I have time to do is go through the motions. Sometimes I feel because J is such a dreamer, I have to be the one to induce practicality in our lives. He is the one living out his dreams as an artist. I can’t let myself.

MP3: Neon Heights, 16 Again, A View from the Heights

This song is from my favorite downtempo house album of all time, A View from the Heights. My ex introduced me to them. I don’t even recall how and when. I wish I remember the story of how he came across them. I  found a copy of the album in some small shop on a corner in downtown Paris. I also bought Cassius’ 1999 and Feeling for You for 5 euros each. This was 2002 and the euro was just taking over, all the prices were still in franks too. This lovely blonde woman worked there. She kept talking to me and I pretended to know more French than I truly did. She found it pleasant that such a young girl was backpacking and still had the will to buy vinyl to carry around so she gave me some French house record. I felt so cool. I didn’t feel so cool when I was sweating buckets in June carrying heaps of records from the different cities I visited, but at that age, the struggle feels less. Always.

Today is the first day of autumn. A while back I thought this autumn would be full of sentimentality and miserable nostalgia, but instead this weekend proved its future otherwise.

We went to the beach, for possibly the last time this year, and here I am.

We tried to make love in the woods and ended up getting bitten by mosquitoes. The day before we ended up at a house birthday party. J was DJ’ing. I was sorting out the vibes. But instead, I ended up getting kicked out by the woman-hating prima donna, John Farah for no good reason at all, other than not letting some asshole get up in my face about something that was none of his business. It’s always on me to make a scene. In the city.

Erica Jong is releasing a new book of poetry in January. I have already started by Jong countdown calendar. I countdown to new episodes of Mad Men, to when I will get to simmer in cum, to new dubstep in Dropbox, to RINSE.FM, a week without yelling, loud amens, grad school, next summer, being woken up by my cats, the Farmer’s Market, Bang Face Weekender, living in Europe, to you wanting me with all of you.

Counting down to is better than counting backwards.
Owning AFX – Hangable Auto Bulb EP2 is even better. Maybe one day I can. Maybe.

Last weekend was full of theatrics, tears in alleyways, bruised ego’s, unrelenting Jager shots and the birthdays of two of my close friends. So we danced and got messy and played music really fucking loud.

Going out this Thursday was no different. I decided to go for that American Apparel sleeze look with a man’s tanktop over some shiny leggings. I am so fucking original. Went to the Drake (for my second time ever! i am still that pure) to see The Bug and Warrior Queen. Immigration lead the woman back to her home and gave us Flowdan instead. The opener, some dude representing Ninja Tune in Montreal played a shameful set sans actually mixing, of dancehall… on Serato! Yes, dancehall on Serato. Ninja Tune praises itself on having a roster of serious DJ’s and they give us this drone? Didn’t mix one tune and was using Serato. If you’re going to bust out dancehall, you need to do it with the real deal. It was embarrasing. I had to drink. Some friend’s found out that the friend I was rolling with had chach and so they all tried to impart their wisdom about how “it’s so boring.” “don’t do it. i just did some and now i’m so tired.” “i’m so done with that stuff, it’s so useless.” It was amusing to me, because a. i barely do that shit b. they’re both into it. I enjoyed the drunken worry. In the bathroom. Quickly. I had to. The Bug gets on. Complete wreck. Plays some tunes I enjoy, but is so inconsistent. Fucks with his levels too much. Flowdan comes on. Mosh pit ensues. I start thrashing around my body. Go do more. I try to remember the complete euphoria of Kode 9′s set in Montreal in May. Focus. Can’t. Flowdan announces last song, I already know what it’s gonna be. I start screaming and pounding my fists on the stage. It comes on. I’m finally getting what I came for. Too bad it’s some shitty remix, but I keep focus. I need something. It’s over.

I run into one of the dude’s that’s the cause of all the drama I wrote about in my last entry. I confront him. He makes up some bullshit. Attempts diplomacy but I can see right through it. I’m feeling hostile. “C’mon. Just stop it already,” I tell him. He refuses to acknowledge his hate-on for me. He refuses to acknowledge anything. “We’re all vying for the same thing here. We want good music for our city.” I can’t believe he’s feeding me all this. We get interrupted by another friend of mine who wants to dance. I go dance with him a bit, then get dragged out. We walk to the Pizza Pizza because Dare‘s there. I knock on the glass with marked haste. Some poor Abercrombie & Fitch model is sitting near the window alone eating fries and gives me cut eye. I start dancing around and making faces at him. I’m feeling totally high school right now. We’re hanging out high on a Thursday night in front of a pizza joint. It calls for it. Angry faces come back at me. Darren comes out, “Dude is really pissed off.” So I make more faces. Jon says, “I’m still hungry. I really want a fry. Get me one.” I agree and go inside to get a fry from model dude. “Hey man, I wasn’t trying to diss you. I just wanted to get my friend.” He nods and gives up a fry when I ask. At this point, anything childish will keep us entertained.

Some guido walks by and yells, “Flash me for 20 bucks.”
“Fuck off.” I yell back.
“Fine. I’ll flash you for 20 bucks.”
“Ok there buddy.” Dare says.
Buddy responds, “I know you’re gay but I’m not.”
I give a look, “Whhhhhhhat?” and slap him across the face. Buddy can’t believe it. “Yo, I just got bitch-slapped by a chick. What the fuck?” A whole riot of cuss words ensues. He tries to understand what happened. “I don’t care for homophobia. So go fuck off.” I say my last words to him. Sham gets in his face, “You’re gonna get bitch-slapped at some point so it might as well have been now.”
Buddy’s friend comes over trying, “You did the right thing girl. He deserved it.”
More 3am wild chatter. I try to undermine the whole situation because I start to get awkward with all the attention on me by all the others and intermittently cover my face – hiding.

I held this off for a few days, because looking back at the situation, I grimace. What was I thinking? It’s the dog days of summer, really.