Some stream-of-conciousness for your Friday afternoon.

My new roommate says goodbye on his way out the door. It may or may not be worth mentioning that he is wearing stilts made to look like goat legs, horns, a wolf-pelt cape, and carrying a set of bagpipes. With the stilts on he is seven-and-a-half feet tall. Watching people react as he walks across the road and wait for the bus is always fun.  The other night we watched "Django" together in the living room. This is worth mentioning because until I launched a full-on cleaning assault on the living room, it was only barely a room, and didn't fit the definition of "livable".

One roommate is still in the hospital; the new one moves in and now the living room is clean and sports a workstation where the new guy builds MIDI bagpipes, outrageous costumes, flame-shooting metal flowers to mount on his bagpipe drones. If this was a story, you'd accuse me of inventing a household that was too quirky to be believable: the stilt-walking piper, the eternally perky actress, the depressive who lives in his own garbage. And me. Oh, and the mice.

Yeah, the mice. I was watching "Community" in the sitting room the other night when a shadow scuttled by the chair opposite me. No part of me wanted to investigate further. I closed my laptop, turned off the lights and retreated to my bedroom. My mattress lies right on the floor; you can guess how well I slept that night. Hence the cleaning assault. Also the shameful part of me that wishes that the dirty roommate stays in hospital longer. Because when he gets out we have to have A Talk. And I hate confrontation.

"Do you want to go and have a drink?"
The words out of my mouth before I can check myself, made bold by wine and a relaxing evening playing music with friends. He agrees, and we walk towards my place, end up at a hotel bar where we talk and drink until closing times kicks us out a few hours later.
Waiting for the bus in the rain I say hesitantly "I'm glad we can hang out together like this. I know I can never undo what I did to you but I'm so glad we can be friends." He agrees. We begin to talk, for the first time, about how it was to leave each other, how it was good and bad and pain and freedom all mixed together for both of us, how the years have been since it happened. We wave one late-night bus by, then another. Finally we decide to get in out of the rain and continue talking at my place until almost three in the morning. Some serious stuff but a lot of just catching up, too. Two friends, filling each other in on their jobs and their hopes and their lives.

Today I went downtown to the stadium to pick up my running kit for the Sun Run. I signed up before I heard the news from Boston, but it did make me extra-glad to be running this year. I've been working out weekly but not running, so it could be an epic fail on my part, but I shelled out sixty bucks on a sports bra that will keep the girls locked in place and get rid of the dreaded Uniboob, so I'm psyched. If I can still walk afterwards, I'll find my brother and sister-in-law somewhere in the throngs of runners and we'll celebrate by going somewhere where we can pack on all the calories we just burned.

This is Limbo right now: I still have exams but my head's not at school anymore. I have to leave town soon but it hasn't really hit me yet. I have nothing much happening in town before I leave and yet the future is cloudy...

Oh, I got headshots the other day. With all the back-and-forth on the Dove Real Beauty Sketches it was cool to see what the camera made of me. Of course, I see all the usual flaws, but overall I liked what I saw. And I'm eternally grateful to my friend Taylor, who took these shots for free.

I don't know if this is what beauty looks like, but it's what I look like. 

Disconnect

When I am home alone in the daytime, I revel. This may take small forms, like staying in my pyjamas until 2pm, or reading at the table. I keep the blinds open so I can see the grey day unfolding, and I cook, or I clean, or I spend too much time on the computer. I practice my juggling until the person downstairs must be like: enough already! Stop dropping those balls on the floor! I've taken to playing Baroque music on internet radio recently (or as one station intriguingly calls it, "Barock Music") because it is old, stately, beautiful, and never, ever, schlocky. Simple, small, domestic things that only feel so good because I don't always have to do them day in, day out. Yesterday and today I have been: cooking delicious meals, making my place look nice, and fielding calls about my next job, a job that will pay me a very nice sum of money to play my accordion for one of Vancouver's biggest theatre companies. I find the word "blessed" a bit precious, so let's just say I feel pretty lucky right now, alright?
Lucky, but slightly disconnected.
Disconnected as in, well, here's a weird little image for you:
I'm fishing, and all around me are lines that I'm supposed to be managing. Some of them have some pretty big fish on them, wonderful fish, but the lines are so long and the fish are so far from me that it's hard to reel them in.
Some of them are close to me, but the fish are tiny, so I just pull 'em out from time to time, look quickly at the fish, and put them back in the water.
Some of the lines that I thought held a juicy fish now seem to be empty.
And there are lines that I haven't even checked yet; lines that may contain the most brilliant, plump, nourishing fish I've yet to meet.
Substitute friends for fish and maybe you see where I'm going with this.
I'd like to be a better friend, but sometimes the rules elude me and I feel like a total beginner. Distance and Facebook and my ever-changing jobs don't help any, and I blame them loudly and often to J, to my blog, in 'counselling' (when I was having that), but I think I need to stop blaming and start trying harder. Facebook is a too-safe place to dip into, leave little remarks, and withdraw, but if push came to shove, if things got hard, how many of those "friends" would give a damn about me? Would do more than write "OMG I'm so sorry lol" and move on with their days? And to be fair, how many of them would I do more than that for?
Friendship should be messy sometimes, and awkward. Friendship should be about being there in tough times and getting drunk together and babysitting the kids when there's no one else, and having it out when you're angry and celebrating the things that are awesome. I wish I had more friends like that; hell, I wish I WAS a friend like that, but I'm not. Not often enough.

Actors and musicians? Stevie Nicks said "Players only love you when they're playing", and ain't that the truth, more often than not. Just because you're my BFF right now doesn't mean it will last once the band breaks up/the show closes. Even if we have the best intentions, we probably won't see each other very much.

Girls? I haven't been great at girlfriends since high school. School was easy. School was she's my best friend; those two/four are inseparable/this is my group, that's who I hang with now and forever. And yes, I am well aware that it wasn't like this for everyone, that school can be the worst time, but I was lucky. I had steadfast friends. Always. After school is I'm moving 2000 miles away. It's boyfriends and husbands and children and differing lifestyles and work and snatching time in the midst of All This. I honour and love the girlfriends I have (a short but lovely list that happily includes my mother) but sometimes (like today) I see a report card and my name and a comment that says: could do better.

Guys are easier, until they're not, and you're thinking well, I like you a lot, which also means I find you attractive, which is a can o' worms and no mistake. I don't want to live in an all-woman purdah, but if I'm hanging out with a guy then there are unwritten rules, right? Like, coffee once in a while is okay, but calling you to go to a play or a concert because my guy is busy/not interested might be weird/predatory/seen as cheating. I pause here and think that maybe I'm over-analyzing, but then I think of my other 'coupled' friends and how often I hear them say that they went out with a guy who wasn't their partner. Which is practically never. I don't want to just have friends that are 'our' friends- although I value those highly-I want some of my own, female and male. But I think this is hard to do.

So what, then?
Today I'll wrap up this blog, which has taken a long time to write. I'll cook dinner for my man, who is one of the best friends a girl could hope to have, because he is working sick today and little things like dinner mean more when you feel gross. And I'll go to the theatre with a girlfriend, one of the good ones, one of the ones who stuck around through the kids and and the distance and the different life paths and I think we'll have a great time.
And I'll keep myself open to new friends, and try to be better and more honest to the ones I have, and I'll stop checking Facebook so often because I don't think that what's on there is the best kind of friendship.

Ennui, and links to help you escape it.

Here's where it gets hard: when the excitement of the new year wears off, when friends & family leave town and the money is stretched tight with no end in sight, when the fiery resolve of a fresh year burns down to smoldering embers. How to keep ennui (and bad habits) at bay? Not sure I have the answer to this question totally figured out yet. Mundane as it may seem, a To-Do list actually helps a bit. Crossing off things as I do them makes me feel as though I'm accomplishing something even though it's small. Baby steps. I know. Rome wasn't built in a day, and all that. Embrace the ennui. Or not. Actually, here are some things that are rocking my world and keeping a smile on my face even through the frustration:

• my brand-new, super-awesome (and gag-me expensive) Bogs. Get some. Especially any of you who live in remote areas with, like, snow. And mud. They're waterproof, they'll keep your tootsies warm down to minus 30 degrees, and they look great, too. Bonus feature: buying them guarantees that the sun will immediately come out. It happened to me today, true story.
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Terry Gilliam redeems himself after "Tideland", which in my opinion was one of the worst movies I ever saw. "Dr. P" is bizarre, rambling, and looks fantastic, like all of his movies. Is it me, or does Gilliam have a thing for giant flying heads and saucer-eyed young ingenues? Who cares? One day I will write a song or create a show that puts people in a world like the one in Terry Gilliam's head. And then I will die happy.
• Food. Ok, I feel conflicted about this one, because I really want to lose some weight this year, and soon. But... J made some killer Eggs Benny the other day, with a Hollandaise sauce to die for. And I ate some amazing risotto at a tiny little East Van restaurant yesterday night that tasted as though a hundred chickens died to make the stock it was cooked in. And Waves makes the best hot chocolate of all the coffee bars, and I slurped up some of that last night before seeing "Debt: the Musical". Which also rocked my world. Go see it, even if you're in debt yourself. Especially then.
• House-sitting at my brother's place in a week: exercise room, pool, laundry, dog... need I say more?
• The Cross of East Van. I haven't made up my mind on this new piece of art yet. Eyesore, or proud community badge? Creepy Christian undertones or righteous ex-gang logo? You be the judge:

Yep, pretty strange, isn't it? (thanks to vancitybuzz.com for the picture). I may have to add an image of The Cross to my title bar, since this is East Van Chronicles after all.

• And finally... the last thing that's rocking my world is THE BEST PICTURE I'VE EVER TAKEN OF MY CITY. SO GOOD, I HAVE TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS. Drumroll please.

Thank you Vancouver, for reminding me why I love you. And thank you blog for cheering me up on this january night.

Pro's (but not prose) & Cons (because boring entries look better as poetry)

So, on the "pro" side, I looked into photography
courses and walked down the Drive but
on the "con" side I ate potatoes and a cookie
and totally sabotaged the whole low-carb lifestyle
that's been sliding into the can the last
few weeks

And I got up after 12 noon, did I mention that? ("con")
because I stayed up so late the night before
drinking martinis with my sweetie so maybe
that's a "pro" because we spent some
quality time together.

and I'm also
all caught up on my schoolwork
(all A's so far- ha!)
and rockin' my compositions for "Medea"
but
it's a good thing rehearsals start next week because

all this lethargy
is not so good for me*

*(always finish with a rhyme at the end)

Random Friday Blogging

As I lurched my sleepy way to school this morning I thought well, it's still bloody cold but at least it's not snowing. Not 20 minutes later, trying to absorb Coltrane Substitutions (sounds like a diet snack, doesn't it?) someone said Oh! It's snowing outside! And it still is, 1.5 hours later. Which is a travesty, for Vancouver. And yes, I do realize that compared to the Rest Of Canada we have had it ridiculously easy this winter but this is damp cold seeps into my bones and my lungs and makes me wheeze and shiver like a decrepit character in a Dickens novel. Although this makes the prospect of flying to Mexico on the 5th very, very easy to bear. What's 5 hours of aerophobia compared to sun, sand, surf and did I mention it's 30 degrees down there?

Jon and I watched possibly the worst movie in the entire world last night, a movie so bad that it deserves to be up there on the list of "greats" with Ishtar, Showgirls and Battlefield Earth. It's called Southland Tales, and you should watch it only if you a): have a huge affection for all the SNL alumni and feel the need to watch them hideously miscast in this lumbering mess. Seriously folks, we have Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, Cheri O'Teri, Amy Poehler, and possibly more that I didn't catch. WTF?
b): if you like epic sci-fi tales that have such a broad scope or vision that they end up becoming a confused, rambling epic that makes you feel like you're on drugs as you watch. It was clear that the actors had no idea what was unfolding. That the director/writer and producers had somehow dropped the cinematic ball, so to speak, and it had rolled into a sewer. My one-word review for this movie would be: bleurghh. I lost 2.5 hours of my life to this piece of poo and I want to sue the makers of this movie for compensation.

I want to eat cheese and french fries all day long. Call it the winter hoarding instinct, call it gluttony, call it what you will... I long for carbs and the sweet fullness they bring. But it's like a one-night stand: I despise myself later.

It's nearly noon, and I've wasted enough time blogging. Time to clean the apartment, time to wash, time to get on with things. When what I want to do is retreat to bed and eat cake or something.