my dreams have been extremely vivid lately. more on that later.
today, for st nicholas day, my mum gave me a turquoise and jasper necklace, which is said to boost creativity and the heart centre.
it is also said that kyanite helps with the remembering of dreams and also makes dreams more vivid. do i dare?
love and sound
- a
then watch
this.
listening to the absolutely divine david bowie as per usual.
today i submitted to a few mags and lit journals. it’s been a LONG time since i’ve done any sort of submitting, so i had to fine-comb my poetry and do some serious editing and cover letter writing.
i actually felt pressured to do the submitting because of the classmates around me. everyone is extremely accomplished, and then there is me, who has NOT submitted anything to any sort of publication for a while. this is mainly because i am an odd sort of perfectionist, and in the past, everything i submitted to had accepted me, and i’ve never been one to take rejection extremely well, which is exactly why i need to get myself back out there. maybe getting myself back out there is also related to the dating scene, as i have talked about in previous posts. hm. that is something to think about, actually. thank you, blog, for helping me connect the dots between things. anna, it is time to get rid of your feelings of inadequacy, and GET THEE GOING!
on another note, i really don’t like to brag about my writing accomplishments. as seen in my bio – for our blog – for one of our classes, i tend to choose a phrase about myself that does not have ANY of my accomplishments in it, and then use that for everything. in reality, if you google my name, you will see my publications. i’ve been in a few queen’s publications, in the university newspaper, and a sociological publication, too. it’s a weird CV, but it’s mine, and i likes it! but the point is, i don’t like to long cock. there is too much long cocking in the academic/english/writing world as it is, so i don’t feel the need to alienate anyone by trying to outdo people. that is NOT good karma!!!
also, prior to this year, i really was NOT aware of most of the canadian lit mags and journals. (embarrassed.) the list serve for the program has really helped with submissions because it is making known to me all of the tiny obscure mags that need stuff. woo!
everything is connected, i think.
i guess the question i am posing to everyone is:
what mags are you partial to? where is good to submit to?
love and sound
- a
(post script. i might have to marry bowie. hm. i know i’ve stated this point before, but my friends need to now be on the look out for mens who are similar to bowie. do it. do it now.)
one of my favourite songs, and my definite karaoke song (she’s 41 and daddy still calls her baby)
sometimes it’s all about:
you surrounded by people gratifying their urges, and you are left deciding if you want to settle or not… it’s a hard choice sometimes, but during those times, i need to remember the gorgeous and the ideal (oh, eff me yeah, jim rugg’s bowie is…. totally ideal.)
anyways
she’s so swishy in her satin and tat,
in her frock coat and bibbity bobbity hat
oh god, i could
do better than that.
you betcha.
love and sound
- a
at home, relishing:
- a full fridge
- a house that i am CERTAIN has no bugs
- a queen sized bed and a body pillow
- a huge desk to write at
- my white woolen hat, which had been hiding out in toronto!
just on a side note:
i saw the sun rise and the sun set, all while in transit today.
one side of the sky train was all dark blue window night, and the other side was a band of orange leached with gold over the mountain, the blue lighter above.
and my plane outran the purple smoke sunset on the way into the big smoke, the city that doesn’t pretend to smile when it’s upset, the dirty subway rattle-toothed leer of a metropolis.
oh toronto, i’ve missed the shit out of you. show me how to walk smooth and fast and be furiously cynical again.
listening to peaches.
so last night was a very, very vivid dream. i have to tell it in clumps and pieces because i’m not sure of the timeline.
i know that we were in an abandoned house, sort of like montgomery’s inn but much bigger. ok, like a combination between montgomery’s inn and casaloma a period piece house. big tall ceilings and rooms with lush carpets. but no furniture.
i can’t really use names in this. but i was dating someone in the program. however, it’s not who you think it was. a girl, actually. and we got into a fight on the stairs about being literary and writing ability. and people were falling off of the roof, and i know that at one point i fell off the roof too, because i think i forced myself to wake up at the point before i hit the ground because it was that vivid.
and when i ran away from the fight, someone else from the program followed me and explained me to how to have sex with one’s significant other. in the shower. with accompanying actions. and then we lay on the oriental carpet in one of the yellow rooms and we had to suck bracelet charms out of each other’s necks and lay them on a game board.
that’s all i can remember for now.
weird. graphic.
love and sound
- a
currently listening to the veronica’s untouched, but also vacillating back to this love.
not exactly the most cheerful or original music but i appreciate them.
i was thinking about the lunar phases today. the other day my friend ben remarked that the bunch of us writers seemed really frisky and really tightly wound. his suggestion was for us to “run around the building.” i realized, later that day, that it was two days before the full moon. sometimes these lunar things really affect us.
last night was the:
- snow moon
- cold moon
- oak moon
- moon before yule
- long night’s moon
these are all common names for the december full moon, but my personal favourite is the long night’s moon. a long night it was. i feel like the tensions of the writers here – sexual, emotional, creative, interpersonal, intrapersonal, stress-related, everything – they are all building up and last night they started to come to a bit of a head. people who were present can choose to disagree with me, but i was certainly more sober than most and i just sat and observed.
games of “I Never” never necessarily end well.
this song is rather relevant to the situation at the moment – the refrain of “untouched.”
this place is something like summer camp. we are all put together, working hard, mining deep emotion (or not), dredging up some heavy stuff, having some snappy arguments, having some interesting nights, some interesting discussions, and i think that it is really starting to come out. this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just pretty intense.
the other day in fiction class, krissy mentioned that she had a dream that our entire class was in a boarding school together and our instructor, steve, was our principal. i reassured her by letting her know that i, too, had had an odd dream about us. in my dream, the entire program was living in a dorm together – but the dorm had glass walls. i saw too much too soon and i woke up gasping from the dream. it was very intense! i guess it relates to how close we all are – how quickly we became so involved and enmeshed in each other’s lives.
the glass wall dream wasn’t good and it didn’t end well. i need to start writing these dreams down because some of their predictive qualities are interesting.
i guess my point is… i feel a little less frenetic now that the lunar phase has cleared and the long night’s moon has lessened. a little less heavy. a little lighter. a little bit more anchored.
5 days until i am on a flight back to my toronto.
love and sound
- a
PS – i guess my question to you all is… what dreams have you been having lately??
DO YOU BELIEVE IN SIGNS!?
listening to regina’s dance anthem of the 80s.
today i am really thinking about relationships and dating and love, and all that jazz.
i have never really been a girl who has gone out mining for a relationship. i have been essentially single all my life – never had an official title of “girlfriend” and “boyfriend.” there was a really rough period of my life, probably around 17-19, where this was a big issue for me. going away to university for undergrad really heightens your awareness of being alone – being cloistered in that dorm room, seeing people around you coupling up. it didn’t help that i was head over heels for a boy on my floor – someone i stayed up till 3 am with, lying beside in bed and talking but not touching, just listening to music or laughing. it didn’t really end particularly well, considering he moved down the hall two doors to my other blonde friend. that was kind of mucky. and when i say kind of, i mean very very mucky.
but i digress.
the weather here is so grey and sad, and the stretch of night from 6 til bedtime is so bleak sometimes, and so very long. it means i have a lot of time to clean my floors and do laundry and organize my itunes collections, but it also means that sometimes i understand the need to have someone to just sit with – maybe reading separate books in that good kind of silence, maybe listening to music, maybe bouncing words off of each other, i don’t know.
it’s been a long time since i have been romantic or intimate in any way. a very, very long time. my last experience was so bad and so vitriolic that i shied away from it for a while, and now it’s the point where i am so rusty and so gawky that i am scared. i am really, honestly scared of getting back on the horse. what if i can’t even remember how to kiss properly? what if i am so inept that i do something irreparable, something impossible to stitch back together? what if i embarrass myself? what if i blurt something out? i always found it hard to spill my red and pink guts out to somebody, but this gap has made it that much harder, that much icier. i think i need to thaw, but i need to find the heat to start that process…
the point of the matter is this. i like alone time very, very much, but ever since coming here i have been liking it a little less. maybe i am just growing up a little bit, or maybe something about this city is changing me some. i’m not sure what i’m looking for right now. i’m confused and it’s weird and things are rotating and changing and melting.
this is the time to really buckle down with my writing, because my beautiful, beautiful characters are what i can always tuck back into. i just really hope that one day i can unfurl my head from behind the lap top screen, as a bird would with a wing, and that when i do, someone will see.
love and sound
- a
just a quick post to say
CONGRATULATIONS
to my friends on the queen’s varsity football team
they won the vanier cup for the first time in nearly 20 years. it was a truly GREAT football game.
