Get back to me next year, when there's something new to say

Do you ever get tired of talking to people?

Sometimes talking is so meaningless. There are maybe three people in this world with whom you regularly communicate outside of your mutual relational sphere: your mom, your significant other, and your best friend. In other words, three people with whom you discuss things deeper than work, or school, or catch-up gossip. But all the rest of those people bumping shoulders with you throughout the course of your day? The only communication that can realistically be expended on them is meaningless talk.

I was at a wedding reception today and I responded to the same inane, meaningless talk with the same inane, meaningless responses every time. "No, I'm not a Prov this year. Yes, I am at school. Saint-Boniface College. Yes, I'm sure you did know that. Very exciting, very busy, a little overwhelming." If I am so unconnected to these people that they don't even know what city I'm living in this year, I don't want to have to repeat my life plans to them over and over again. With every recitation of my excitement regarding my current circumstances, any actual excitement slowly faded until all that was left were the limp, blank words that grimly fell from my lips.

To have to express my uncertain anticipation with such certainty to such vaguely-concerned strangers strips me of my confidence, leaving nothing but a bright smile to mask my panicked eyes.

Just when life started to make sense

You are: Gummy Bears

You may be smooshie and taste unnatural, but you're so darn cute.
What Kind of Candy Are You?

What the frick does this mean?

I say this meaning no offense at all...

Yesterday's plan of shower-book-bed? Didn't pan out at all. But good conversation until after midnight is always appreciated anyways.

Surprise, I'm in the middle of a labo. This time, our myoglobine est en traîne de dénaturer pendant une demie-heure, alors I have some temps libre to come and post nonsense on my blog. Well, the upside of having few to none commentators is the absolute freedom to post whatever nonesense I happen to come up with at the moment. 3 cheers for freedom of ridiculous speech!

Every time I say the word ridiculous I am reminded of my friend Jeremy. I only connected with him on tour this past April, but one of the first things that struck me about him was his tendancy to say Ridiculous! in his ridiculous voice. It made almost any situation, ridiculous or not, incredibly amusing. I try to capture his spirit when I say it but, let's face it, there's no one quite like Jer.

Point of interest: a cell phone, practically shaking the computers with its intensity, just exploded into obscene rap. A tiny slip of a girl finally picked it up, interrupting her phone's explicit serenade, and breathed Hello?

Who is this? No, who is this? Oh really? How are you? No really? I can't believe it! Really?

After some time, she finally appeared to realize that she was not, in fact, in the privacy of her bedroom, nor did anyone around her wish to be privy to her inane conversation.

I'm actually in class right now... I guess I should go.

Really hon. You think?

When the falling dark knows you by name

I was at school for 27 of the past 48 hours. After entering the doors at 8:00am, I did not breathe fresh air until 21:30 that night. That's ridiculous.

I am proud to say that this evening I started and finished my paper for Rédaction universitaire. Hooray me! As I explained to one of my astonished classmates (who saw me waiting for my ride at 21:30 and chatted with me for a bit as to why I would still be at school), j'sais pas si c'est de la qualité, but it's done!

I say that with such flippancy to nearly everyone I talk to, and it is true to some degree, but if it wasn't quality at all, there's no way I would ever have allowed myself to print it off and hand it in. I procrastinate like mad, my eyes end up crossing halfway through my papers, and I mock-quit hundreds of times in an evening, but when it comes down to it, I want to be proud of my work. Why else would I waste any time at all getting it done?

Back to staying at school until the dark hours of the evening... the upside is that you end up having interesting chats with extremely random people you would never have otherwise connected with. Last night, while waiting 45 minutes for my ride, a very nice guy sympathized (and bewildered) with me about my very late ride. It was made especially meaningful by the fact that he initially commented to me in english (Are you still waiting for your ride?!) but when I responded in french, that remained the language for the rest of our (rather brief) conversation. Again, tonight when Jean-Luc (je pense?) stopped to chat with me, we had a delightful mix of french and english going on. Whenever some stops to talk with me is invariably when my ride shows up. Why can't the chatters stop by earlier on in the waiting period?

A shower, a book, and off to bed. I think I'll be home by 17:30 tomorrow... what am I going to do with myself!?

"Want to go out with me, Sharky?"

My only pick-up line I've ever received. Oh, Prov.

What makes it acceptable to throw out pick-up lines? Maybe a better question would be Are there acceptable pick-up lines? It doesn't seem like it. Any story beginning or ending or containing the phrase So then he used this pick-up line on me is invariably met with groans. Or appreciative laughter if the audience is male. Why then do they exist?

I really am a lone shark these days. I have started the countdown to when all my wayward friends return home. The festivities actually start tomorrow, and then mid-February, early April, late April, and reunited we will be! I've never thought of myself as someone who has trouble identifying emotions, but as of late I've really struggled to figure out what I'm feeling about all this. I eagerly leap onto the computer at any chance I get, regardless of whether I've checked my email only 45 minutes before, because there may be a chance that one of them will have emailed. Every shrill ring of the phone is cause for a heartbeat to be lost, especially if the time differences are acceptable. And when I finally arrive at home every evening, especially after a day of disenheartening email absences, there's still the brief flicker of hope that arises as I flick through the mail on the table. All that stomach-twisting, heart-swinging, and crushing disappointment when it all comes to nothing...


Why, I think I might miss them.

Weather warning: psychological thunderstorms ahead

My head hurts. I think it’s sympathy pain for my leg, which has been locked in a vicious cramp since Tuesday evening. What exactly is a pulled muscle? Because if it’s achingly painful, ridiculously tight, and causes you to hobble up and down stairs like a beshawled matron tottering on a cane, then I think I have it.

Je ne sais pas quoi penser. Je suis au milieu d’un labo: on doit laisser les acides aminés font les extractions pendant une heure. Mais je m’inquiète, je m’inquiète comme toujours parce que je ne sais pas quoi faire aux labos! J’écris ceci en français en espérant que toutes les personnes qui lisent mon blog ne comprendraient pas, parce que je m’ennuie de plaindre tout le temps. Mais, avec la protection d’une langue différente, je peux plaindre tout que je veux. Arg. Le problème est que je ne veux pas ça. Je le déteste, honnêtement. Je veux être contente. Mais les inquiètes me plagient toujours. Pourquoi?

This is ridiculous. Apparently, it makes no difference what language I write in. The result is the same. I should write in Ukrainian : I only know how to express fairly contented sentiments as of yet.

Я хачу їсти. Я льублю кіслу капусту! Бог стобою.

That's better.

Row, row, row your boat

Friends. What a wonderful word! What a wonderful world when they're in it.

I prepared a birthday package for a friend with whom I became extremely close this summer and who is working in Germany this year. I sent it off on Friday afternoon, full of anticipation and a slight amount of shock at the steep prices of airmail. I've been waiting, wondering anxiously when he would receive it and what he would think. Because this birthday package was no standard gift. It was an... artistic compilation, we'll say, of our summer together. But more than that, I felt it represented where our true friendship began.

This evening, I received an email from him, thanking me. But it was more than his surface words of thanks that made me nearly ecstatic with joy. It was the knowledge that he understood, more than words could ever express, what that present truly meant to us as friends.

And it is our friendship that has been the most incredible birthday surprise of all.

(I just barely refrained from saying "the greatest gift of all." I love cheese - especially Edam - but that's just going too far.)

Happy Birthday Jon!

Tuning the cacophony within

My fingers are speaking to me. They're boasting, actually. At times, I try to quiet them half-heartedly, while secretly reveling in what they have to say. But other times, I can't muster up the willpower to even pretend to attempt to subdue them, and I unleash their ecstatic announcements with unbridled pride.

Although I've had the desire for years, I only recently began venturing down the path of learning to play the guitar. My parents had even bought me a guitar some years ago, with the promise of guitar lessons whenever I had the time. And I just never had the time. And, due to what the guitar grew to represent to me, the desire slipped away from me as well.

But, thanks to an unexpected friendship this summer, I learnt the basics of tuning and the first of a few chords that sent me sailing towards a life-long passion. I love little more than sitting with the guitar nestled against me, intently and usually achingly slowly picking out the chords to favourite songs. I spent all evening yesterday icing several new guitar licks (couldn't resist), and when I was finished, my fingers were mottled purple and slowly shedding crumbling leaves of calloused skin.

I relish these calluses. They are the language my guitar and I share, the secret words that my fingers whisper to her on her strings. When I am alone, in the banal world that music has abandoned, I run my fingers across my lower lip and can still taste the poetry embedded in the rough surfaces.

My guitar gives voice to the music that fills my skin.

In a room smudged with shadows, You're all I need to see

Afficher. Supprimer. Créer. Everything on this screen is in french, and I am charmed in an unsettled way.

Everything except Preview, that is. Prévue ne fonctionne pas pour ces gens? Ou est-ce que «prévue» est mème pire que «preview» parce qu'il est une anglicisme? Me pardonnez - je suis anglophone!

I hadn't even realized how negative my outlook on life had become until I woke up this morning and began cataloguing negativity before I had even rolled over in bed. Almost immediately, my entry from last night pushed its way into the room still hazy with predawn shadows and sat heavily on my chest. I sighed. And I began to pray, for anyone and anything that came to mind, while trying to focus on His blessings.

If nothing else: it made me laugh at myself this morning and I haven't fallen asleep in class yet. I'll take one miracle at a time.

Resenting every bloody cuticle as a snapshot of my life

It is interesting how rapidly pieces of thoughts fall into place when you take a moment to think them through. Actually, I didn't even have to think things through. It was more a matter of acknowledging what I was already aware of and attempting to neglect for some time now.

I have been so overwhelmed ever since this school year started. There are so many different possibilities to explain my feelings of anxiety I didn't even know where to start in an effort to resolve the problem. But sitting there today in the tucked-away labo des ordinateurs on the third floor, I finally allowed that falling piece to lodge one corner into my exhausted head. I complain about being overworked, I panic over my incomprehension, and I frantically worry away my fingernails as I attempt to make some sense out of classes, life, love, and other mysteries (oh, Point of Grace just never dies). But when the God I promised to serve no longer has even the lightest touch on the reins of my life, I can't pretend to understand where my "confusion" could lie.

Confusion. That has been the key word in my life for the past 2 weeks, and I think it is only now that I am starting to acknowledge why.

The only reason I am at my school is because I followed God's leading to apply. The only reason I am in the program that I am in is because I finally turned to God last year and asked him what He wanted. I felt such a profound peace and an overwhelming joy at doing so. And now, my selfish ambition has snatched that away.

It makes me even more tired to even consider re-dedicating my life to God - again. Yet, what are my other options? Worry myself into the ground? Survive this year by the tips of my bloody, chewed-off fingertips and head into the next year with even more apprehension? Continue to slowly strip the life off of every relationship I tenuously hold because my life is so crammed full of anxiety?

What gorgeous choices.

And yet I still resist.

I suppose that is why I am confused with myself. It's the why.

Let's go to the overground

I think this could be considered a significant moment. I only just realized that U2 was not showing up on my favourite music lists, which is utter blasphemy. When I went to the help page to seek some kind of assistance to resolve this dilemma, I found nothing less but a specific post addressing my very problem.

To all the other U2 followers who were concerned enough to seek help:
I salute you.

I may be ridiculous, but at least I have my priorities.

Dried up in Frogland

Typing on a french-set keyboard is like travelling to a new world. If I kept every mistake I made in hitting english-set keys when I was searching for the french ones, this would be an entry full of questions marked with És instead of ?s and apostrophes that danced backwards ``````

I am overwhelmed. I sit in class, the panic rising, and wonder if I would find the material any easier in English, or if I am simply hopelessly behind where I hope to be, regardless of my language of study.

I'm sure (hoping) that being incredibly, ridiculously tired doesn't help at all. Why is it so hard to stay awake between 10h00 and 12h00? ...and 12h00-17h00... fine, between 6h00 and 23h00!

Work today, 20 amino acid structures to memorize tonight, class again at 8:30 tomorrow morning! Arrrgh...

From the mouths of babes

Oh, if this is a vision of what this year holds...

Then my headache tells me I'm in trouble.

After not sleeping all night, blessed again by the insomniac demon that has plagued my sleep for the past two weeks, I awoke at the ungodly, unearthly, inhuman hour of 6:00 AM and was out of the house by 7:00. The friendly Telebus operator had advised me to catch the 7:27 bus, but, stricken by uncertainty and anxiety, I oh-so-intelligently caught the 7:15 bus instead. Meaning I had the fine opportunity to wait downtown, at 7:30 AM, surrounded by hordes of other bleary, unimpressed citizens, for an extra twenty minutes. Oh, fine thinking indeed.

So my day commenced at 6:00 AM and is finally winding down now, close to midnight. I worked tonight after classes that went until 5:30 PM. It was my first actual day of classes, seeing as how yesterday's "classes" consisted of a sporadic soccer game accompanied by extremely mellow franco-manitobain live music outside in a tent. My day was a hum of crisp french accents and concise scientific objectives... two things that have been starkly absent in my life for the past two years.

C'est dommage, c'est la vie - pour moi, l'extraordinaire est qu'est-ce que je peux maintenant attendre tous les jours.

A mass grave of quicksand and idealism

I come on here to reclaim some ownership over my blog that I have meaningfully neglected for the past two months. But the one topic that comes to mind is the blasted topic that I have spent the past week attempting to keep from my mind.

Expectations.

What are they? Where do they come from? And why do they plague me so?

In a world where liberation is applauded and freedom is flaunted, why are we still inexplicably bound by expectations - not even those held by ourselves, but those we imagine are held against us by others?

Dreaming can't protect us anymore

My trip to my mother's hometown held especial significance for me this time. My aunt lives in a house on Third Avenue; obviously, three blocks from Downtown. Downtown consists of one block, ten buildings, and four or five pick-up trucks that constantly linger in the center of Main Street. However, if you turn the corner on Main Street, you will find yourself on Railway Avenue. Walk down Railway Avenue for about ten minutes and the smooth road will suddenly crumble into dusty dirt. This dirt road winds its way along the track, and at the very end of the road, behind a wild spring of bushes that proudly marks the edge of town, is my mom's house.

This trip was the first time I made the walk to their house all alone. I have walked the tracks countless times with my mom, and exclaimed over their little bungalow; the chicken coop my uncle built all on his own; the old water pump that still stands next to the house; Grandma's tiny, grey-washed house. We would tumble down the steep grassy hill to explore the depth of the culvert and discover jewel-like marsh marigolds and wild roses, and then she would trace the path the cows would meander every morning (it had been her job to get them back to the house for milking).

But this trip, I took a walk every evening on my own. I would start geometrically and gradually chop my walk tighter and tighter and I wound towards the center of town. I would march the length of Main Street, admiring the stores. Then I would turn the corner at Railway Avenue and set off towards the end of the road.

There was a feeling that mingled in the air along with the dust and the smell of hay and French lilacs. It was a bittersweet longing to be back when my mom and her family still lived there. Standing on the road across the ditch from Grandma's house, I could see my mom at eight years old, running across the lawn and giggling to her sisters. I could see her when she was eleven, awake at 5:00 AM in order to call the cows back from the pasture. I could hear her footsteps on the road, running to school or to town to go to the library while my baba shopped. And I wanted to be there with her. I wanted to meet her, to be her friend.

I wanted to protect her from all the terrible things I knew were coming her way.

Waves on the beach, out of reach

My mom and I took a road trip this week, driving six hours north to stay with my aunt who has recently moved back to the little town where my mom and her family grew up. This is a familiar, well-worn path for my mom and I - we would trek up there about twice a year, staying in hotels, buying Twinkies and Lipton's Raspberry Iced Tea for me and coffee for her to snack on, lying in the grass beside the river, climbing trees and magic rocks and balancing along the railway tracks that led to their old house... We would do it because there was something so restful about the familiarity and peace of that old town. The drive itself was comforting, but staying there for a few days was pure magic. I travelled back in time through the dust on the dirt roads and the prickle of the long grasses that grew by the tracks.

What they say about small towns is true: everybody knows everybody, and a stranger cannot come to town without it being an event. Our arrival in town could certainly have been classified as an event. A reporter for the Star & Times lives across the street from my aunt, and by nightfall, everyone knew we were there. What they didn't know, however, was why we were there, and that was enough to cause ripples of curiosity and suspicion throughout the town.

I went out for a walk that evening, as I would for every evening during my trip, and as I walked the town, people waved. This is a phenomena we simply do not see in the city. When people passed me on the road, they waved, whether they were out watering their grass, speeding down a dirt road, or talking in front of a shop downtown. I was a newcomer in town, and I therefore commandeered the attention necessary for a wave. When I first received a wave, I was too shocked to do much of anything but stare dumbly and somewhat panicked at the taillights of the retreating car. "Did I know them? Did they know me? Why did they wave? What am I doing wrong?" But as I became somewhat accustomed to small town ways (waves - haha), I began to hesitantly reciprocate. They would wave, and I would throw my hand back more and more enthusiastically in response, unable to hide the ridiculous smile that inevitably blossomed across my face. "They waved! They're waving at me! It happened again!" It was my new favourite game, and the townspeople never disappointed me.

The waves were a tangible form of connection with this town I to whom I was a stranger, though I loved it so dearly. The waves were, in short, a gift.

In the beginning there was the Word

I love the music of Aimee Mann.

It is a love that goes beyond the mere enjoyment of a good cd. Her lyrics not only speak to me, they speak about my life. And that is a rare and good thing.

Don't all go rushing out to buy her cds, now, as amazing as she is. I'm not a fan of bandwagons.

I bought myself a new bible yesterday. I felt funny doing so... a bible seems like something that should be presented to you as an occasion gift - birthdays, graduations, baptisms. It somehow felt odd to simply buy myself one with no particular occasion at hand. And yet it has been something I have wanted for quite awhile now. I really wish I had had it this past year at bible college, for the class lectures I copied out practically word for word in the margins of my old bible from my Pentateuch class. I loved the format of my old bible (single column is the way to go, baby!), but there comes a time where teen-angst-ridden anecdotes that take bible verses completely out of context no longer have any appeal whatsoever.

Why have bibles become symbols of life milestones rather than the most practical and valued life tool? Why has it become engrained in our mind that a bible is something to be horded and presented in a showy display, rather than a textbook we study more diligently than any school text we will ever buy? Why did I feel the need to justify to myself why it was alright to buy myself a bible for no occasion other than I feel a desire to study it?

I found the bible I have been wanting for quite some time, and when I brought it up to the cash register, the salesgirl warned me, "You know that that's the TNIV, not the NIV, right?" Today's New International Version versus the New International Version.
Uhhh... yes?
"Well, a lot of people have been returning them because they're offended by what has been changed."
Oh. What exactly is the difference?
"I think the main difference is that they've changed a lot of the hes and hises to theys."
Aha. Gender-neutral?
"Yeah, I guess. A lot of people have been offended."

And this is where I realized I may just deliberately try to shock people. Never to the extreme. I hardly think a case like this could be made into an extreme issue. But I made it quite clear that I wholeheartedly support and quite definately like the idea of some shifts in the gender notations of the bible (oh, wouldn't Louise Cornell be proud). Our language supports so many implied gender inequalities that I am beginning to recognize the importance of making a shift in the way we speak in order that we may be begin to shift the way we think and view the world around us.

What is more, beyond mere sociological issues of gender issues, are theological issues of the way in which I view the bible. I was upset at first to hear that there were some differences in the text. When I flipped to Psalm 23 and saw that the first line was slightly changed, I didn't know if it would mean as much to me anymore. And that's when I realized that I was holding the familiarity of the text over the significance of the words. When I read the bible, do I read it for the comfort of seeing words I've read dozens of times over? Or do I read it seeking new insights into my faith and my walk with Christ? A different translation shouldn't alarm me, shouldn't offend me (if it's done properly). Instead, I should be eager to encounter the words in a different way and from a different perspective.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1:3-5)

Never let it hold you back

Today is a momentous day: the day I stared fear in the face and won.

The fear of baking layer cakes, that is. Ever since a fateful Mother's Day three years earlier, I haven't had the slightest desire to attempt to bake a layer cake. That Mother's Day, I stupidly decided to bake a three-layer strawberry meringue cream cake, despite the fact that it was blazing hot outside with not a breath of air to push the heat into what would vaguely resemble a breeze. No no, a little heat couldn't scare me. So I plowed ahead with my baking plans, and the result was a leaning tower of cream and meringue and sliding strawberries that I attempted to hold upright by means of various forks and chopsticks frantically poked in at various intervals.

Sigh.

Since that day, no layer cakes for me. I didn't even stop to look at their pictures in a cookbook.

But today, that all has changed! Today, I put into motion the steps that will either end in disaster or a three-layer toffee-mocha cream torte. My brother is a special person to prompt this kind of action from me on his birthday. I haven't actually attempted to put the layers together... that bit of fun I am saving for tomorrow morning. Oh joy and delight, I can't wait to see what the morrow holds...

But I do know that it holds a massage at 10:45, so maybe it's not all that bad.

Little darling, it's all right

It's an interesting day outside... strictly weather-speaking. It was gorgeous and sunny when I woke up, one of those days when you smile before you open your eyes and realize that sometime during the night you've comfortably kicked off all your blankets and are covered now by only half of a sheet and a cat (and pajamas, of course...) And it smelt wonderful. To me, summer is here when the smell of apple blossoms, lilacs, fresh-cut grass and line-dried clothes has seeped through the walls of my house and lies curled in every corner, every windowsill, on the step of every staircase, in the smooth lines of my pillowcase.

On such a gorgeous day, I scrounged around for a picnic blanket and an old pillow and made myself a retreat center underneath the sprawling branches of our crabapple tree in the front. It was more shaded than I had liked, but the warm smell of the sun still bathed me, so I was content. Except for the fact that my pillow was not high enough to adequately support my head, so I had to keep flipping around to try and find a somewhat-comfortable position. And for the fact that our front yard is only partially concealed by a fence of bushes, so I was the object of covert, fascinated glimpses for the many junior-high boys who walked past our house on their way home to lunch.

However, the sun decided to play hide-and-seek at around 1:30 in the afternoon, without realizing that I did not feel the need to be entertained by games as I lay out in its company. Once the sun hid, the temperature dropped only slightly, but my aching back did not find it worth it to stay outside. So, in I came, only to write what I now realize is quite a pointless entry. But the very freeing notion of having no commentators is exactly that: I don't care about what comments may come!

Football game tonight (which I was not invited to). Wedding tomorrow (which I was invited to).

Your lips move but I don't understand what you're saying...

Why is it that when talking to God, people feel the need to use a language that is completely removed from the language of reality? It is only in prayer that words such as "upon," "amongst," "gathered," "cleanse," and "seek" are used with alarming regularity. While the use of such words in common conversation would earn nothing more than slanted, sideways glances of disbelief or politely swallowed snorts of mockery; in the eyes of Christians, God is apparently too polite to feel the desire to snigger at the pretentious attitude behind the Church's obnoxious prayers.

Who is the Church to restrict God's conversation skills to an ostentatious style of speaking that does nothing but further alienate Christianity from reality? Imagine for a moment if the Church insisted on speaking to their friends in the same manner in which they insist on speaking to God:
"Is that rain falling upon the garden? Well, I am quite thankful we are all gathered inside. Not only can we seek shelter from the rain within this house, but we have also been given this opportunity to congregate amongst friends. What an incredible blessing."

If Jesus came to be God among us, maybe it is time we began speaking to him with respect that is at least equal to that which we show to our loved ones.