For the second year in a row, a very memorable trip to Buffalo for the small press fair. The pace and atmosphere of the weekend, for me, felt very different this year from last, in a way that is well suited to where I am in my life right now -- if that makes sense.



Photo above by Jessica Smith, below by Chris Fritton.

1995

Natalie (5yrs): Hurry up.
Anna (18mos): I'm doing my best, Natalie, I'm doing my best.


2008

Natalie (17yrs): I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
Anna (13yrs): It hurts me when you think.

While I have not finished as much as I had expected to finish, I have started much more than I expected to be starting.

1) choose/find career.
2) figure out what to make of life.
3) find love.
4) write lab report.

- the roman alphabet
- metric
- the Milky Way
- public school? (flawed but beneficial)
- circulatory, nervous etc. (ie. Major Organ)

You might want to sit down for this one.

At some point during this blog I expressed the extent to which it has broken my heart that in the span of 7 books, J.K. Rowling never included a gay character.

Well, ladies, the heart is mended - I'm whole, and can move on with life and love.

Albus Dumbledore is gay.

Cozumel, Mexico; circa 2003


Jry: Do you have a boyfriend?

Me: No.

Jry: Do you want a boyfriend?

Me: No.

Jry: Are you gay?

Me: Yes.

Jry: (laughes) I knew that wasn't you. I was just throwing it out there to get your attention.

Me: (bemused)

Jry: You're a neat kid.


----


The man who was responsible for making this marvelously ironic conversation possible passed away recently. A respectful moment of silence please.

I'm planning another working vacation, but I don't want to take my laptop so I am making notes on what I need to do and printing off pages I may need for reference. It is through this process that I came to write the following three words on the back of old phosphorous notes:

To  Do

- Heisenburg

Good Things

- learning to drive in reverse
- family reunion in Belleville
- Comedy Inc. filming (VIP)
- writers' working vacation in Uxbridge with Kevin Fortnum
- three new shirts, one swanky headband
- three new books (A Long Way Down, Postcards from the Brain Museum, Before the Fallout)
- Ratatouille, a Tale of Two Sisters & Superbad with emilystar 
- new haircut
- red pea soup at the Real Jerk
- Coffee Porter from Mill Street Brewery

Bad Things

- weird guy in Belleville
- one hangover
- missed out on selling a painting
- course enrollment issues
- kicked out of crews/tango
- karaoke? (depends who you ask, I guess)
- $28 dollars in bank

I was at the family cottage.
I could have stayed in the city, lined up at midnight, held the book immediately. But I decided it was right to read it at the cottage. When I first started reading Harry - at the age of eleven myself - the first three books had already been published. The wait was for the fourth one. We didn't even know what it was to be called.
The day it was released we were at the cottage. My father would bring it up when he finished work for the week. We went to the Marina by boat, and bought a newspaper, eager to learn the title, turning the newsprint pages right there in the store, looking over eachother's shoulders - the Goblet of Fire. When it arrived it was morning, eleven of us were reading it, all ages and genders. At twelve, I had only been reading for five years - a late reader, always slow, I couldn't stop, speeding out of control, finishing it the following night.

I've given away my true age, haven't I?

For the release of the last, I decided it would be the cottage again. It seemed right and true.

This week was a long one. It felt like two weeks.

I spent four days this week attending Pride related events.

Tuesday night I was one of the two features at Coffeehouse Cabaret.  The host was Duncan Armstrong, and he had decided to feature queer poets - he chose Nicki Ward and myself. She read a strong set, composed of pieces mostly concerned with grieving and the causes for it - she did acknowledge that this was unusual subject matter for Pride week, but these were the poems that selected themselves naturally for her.
Among the open mic-ers, there were a few who had been invited. These included a comic named Sarah and a spoken word artist, Tomy Bewick. Tomy read before me and, in his closing piece, described the swelling of a larynx. Which was really cool, not only by virtue of the fact that it was a larynx that was swelling but also because, in the first poem I had lined up to read, I mentioned the swelling of a larynx. Awesome.

Thursday night I headed out to the Hart House quad for a U of T Pride barbecue.  It was a lovely, breezy night to be outdoors - especially surrounded by Hart House's beautiful stone walls. I relaxed on the lawn with some newish friends, caught up with some old ones, had a few beers, then danced the night away (quite literally - after the event finished I went down to Church to continue dancing; it was light when I got home).

Saturday was womens' day. I watched the parade. I did a couple of circuits of Church and Young, encountered condatisdylan and some others, stopped by fruit loopz, then headed for the beer store where Proud Voices was taking place - to see Sandra Alland in particular. She was stellar, as always, and read one of my favourites.

On Sunday, the usual - beer in the streets, vodka in the alleys, spontaneous head shaving (not mine), drawing marker 'tats' on strangers, swimming in fountains, nudity, dancing, flirting. Another post-sunrise return home.

Nothing that I am, on the whole, ashamed of.  Which means a good Pride.

Okay, so, people who were born in 1987 are beginning to turn twenty. When I say beginning, I mean that they've been doing it for, like, five months now. They haven't been needing guidance, advice, or moral support. No, they just do it, just turn twenty, like that, like it's easy.

You have been wisdom-toothless for a year. How do you feel?
Certainly more wise. That may have nothing to do with the teeth.

I finished school on the fourth (of May). More specifically, I finished exams on the fourth. Classes actually ended on the 13th of April. The whole year was long and hard, but the final few weeks (those following the 13th) were rather insane. I had counted the number of days which I actually had to study, and had discovered there were approx. 3.5 days per course, or, as I looked at it, seven half-days per course where each half day was six hours. I then needed to make a schedule, because a large portion of my free time took place long before I would write my exams (the first, calculus, was on Apr 25). It would have been easy to spend that whole first week on calculus and have no time left for my later exams.
The days weren't evenly distributed in the end. Linguistics received a grand total of about 24 hours where calculus got closer to 60 (despite this, I probably did a good 25% better on linguistics in the end ).

I don't know what my grades are yet.
There is, however, one reward I have already reaped from putting in twelve hour days for three weeks - I now think nothing of working at something for twelvish hours. Hopefully I can get some writing done this way before I start working.
Yesterday I spent it working on the Stone Angels Masonry website.

That's what this post is actually about: I've made some changes, large and small, to stoneangels.ca, and I would like to tell you all about it.

my friend Hayden had her 19th birthday tuesday. she planned a small get together at her place in residence, 7:00 that night. I acquired a bottle of wine for the event.
I was playing bridge with the ladies before I left the house. The last hand went longer than we had expected; as a result I arrived at Hayden's about an hour late. I was the first guest to arrive. I produced the bottle of wine and proposed that since I was the only one there & it was her birthday, we drink the wine between ourselves immediately.
the immediacy of the drinking was delayed by the issue that we lacked a cork screw. I had foreseen this problem (what student living in residence and not yet of age drinks wine and has a cork screw?), but as I had left the house in a rush I had not managed to preempt it. My choice of implements was a short paring knife. We had already discussed the concern of injury ("The hospital is a block away. It is so key to live here, Alix."). With some struggle and a sampling of various methods, I found myself able to push the cork downwards with the blade sunk deeply into it. This tact was deemed acceptable as the cork could be more accurately referred to as a non-biodegradable bung.
As I proceeded to push down on the non-biodegradable bung we, budding scientists that we are, realized that the Boyle Mariotte Law described what was the prevalent issue here (which was directly related to the force I was working against). Hayden quickly found a towel, which we wrapped the bottle with completely. I pushed the cork downward more confidently now, and we soon heard a sound which we thought signaled the release of the pressure which had been building. We allowed the towel to fall away, assuming we were safe for the home stretch, but found our faces and shoulders spattered with red wine.
At the conclusion of the ensuing hubbub, I realized something was missing - the knife.

7:30-8:30 // home
-chloraseptic lozenge (cherry flavour)
-cheerios

8:30-10:00 //  transit & calculus
-lemon-mint tea
-Tea for the Tillerman - Cat Stevens

10:00-12:00 // residence of friends
-2 tylenols
-lemon-blueberry tea

12:00-1:00 // chemistry
-peach spice tea

1:00-1:50 // transit
-ginger-mint tea
-Mona Bone Jakon - Cat Stevens

1:50-6:00 // home
-lemon-chamomile tea
-2 ibuprofen
-pomegranate green & white tea
-chili&rice

6:00-7:00 // transit
-chloraseptic lozenge (cherry flavour)

7:00-12:00 // De Grassi House
-2 beer
-"Toronto's least favourite cult band [Full Clip Orchestra] makes another return for another show alongside some incredible, young Toronto punk rock and ska talent."

1:00 // bed
-1 pint of water

life without sugar is dumb.

~

I had trouble concentrating on my tasks yesterday. it seems that I was not the only one - a couple people I talked to, both classmates & family, shared this dilemma or similar. perhaps it was the weather - wintery, finally.

as rosedale, my highschool, days of shared mood & health were not uncommon. it often seemed to be weather related. we got sick in the winter, that's no surprise. in winter grade 12, was it, a nasty cold went around that was referred to as "the rosedale death". in spring the days felt ripe with possibility. teachers would mention, from time to time, that the day had brought a rash of spaced out students, or something of that sort.


my father postulates that it is our moods which, in fact, affect the weather.

~

- on friday night I went to st. Catharines with Kevin Fortnum to his brother's birthday party. it was themed lumberjacks & farmer's daughters. there were a number of actual farmer's daughters there. in the morning Kevin & I wandered over to a second hand book shop (& because I have a name issue which I don't completely understand, I failed to note the name of either the street or the store). I was awestruck. two floors, multiple rooms, shelves everywhere; the books were stacked sideways two layers deep. so many books. I was able to locate 3/4 books which I have been actively looking for for a year and a half.

- my watch, which has been missing for a week, turned up in the bottom of the laundry machine. it says "30M WATER RESIST" so hopefully it will be ok.