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Tuesday, February 3rd, 2004
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8:41 pm - I'm using this far too much
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And I should be doing work.
I bought myself an ice cream today.
The woman serving me at the counter looked at me as if I'd gone mad
Checked out the bags under my eyes and handed over the change without saying anything
I locked myself outside where the cleaners disposal unit is
This is another place where people smoke
But you have to be absolutely cool to smoke here
i.e. speak eloquent amount of spanish and/or be wearing the cleaning uniform
I was neither
scrawny little white girl
squatting
for fear of making her nice ironed out pants dirty and wrinkled
eating her ice cream
my id card hidden in my pocket
in case anybody tells me to fuck off
i could pretend i was a patient
why do I bother?
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| Monday, February 2nd, 2004
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11:35 pm - bedtime story
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We had pizza
Matt wasn't home
Conrad didn't stink
I didn't make any stupid remarks about Blair
and Cambridge wasn't allergic my ball of matted dissatisfied sniffing fluff
she smells like her accent
soft
and mildly sweet pungent
like when you open a dusty old book and breathe in
(before the coughing fit begins)
I guess she's flattered -
she flirted with me
but as you do
and only as you do
and not do
I'm a hopeless idiot
but I'm happy
and now I shall go to sleep
And dream about falling in love with a dusty book
current mood:  happy
current music: sweet lullaby
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6:55 pm
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what am I thinking? Indian?....
gotta call Conrad make him look decent
smell decent
we don't want to scare you away
yayayayay haven't been this excited since...
my last cup of coffee?
current mood: cheerful
current music: snoop
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6:46 pm - Dude!
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WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
NIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!1
Cambridge is coming over to hang out.
wooooooooooooooooo
Yeah, yeah, just because she's new and because I'm here and I'm supposed to show her around but
wooooooooooooooooo
I get to see what she's like
this could potentially make things worse than they are,
but,
who gives a shit?! she's coming over!!!!
woooooooooooooooooo
gotta go and clean up
dirty laundry dirty mags dirty mind flung out the window
clean
clean
scrub scrub until it smells good
me or my room?
both
but for now
wooooooooooooooooooooooooo
indian takeaways?
current mood:  excited
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3:42 am - Dear Bokonon
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I haven't been updating because I haven't been here much lately. Here in reality, I mean.
I spent the weekend in deep contemplation toying with Cambridge's hair in my mind
members of my karrass...
And I had the apartment to myself on Saturday night. Which is unusual. It seems tattier without people, empty, skeptical, somehow. Looking at me tired, the way people do in traffic.
The curtains are old, 80s fruit and flowers.
I was going to watch a movie alone and drink myself silly but then the dvd was hooked up to another complicated looking electronic black machinery thing with lots of wires coming out of it. I've never been too good with wires.
After a few drinks, I couldn't be fucked trying to figure out what it was doing. My head was spinning.
she has milk AND sugar in her coffee
So I called Lisa, who was out. I left a long message about the world and how fucked up we all were, and she was around half an hour later lipsticked but with her tarot deck.
She's fantastic.
"What are friends for... you look like shit. Have you eaten? I'm starved."
And I'm tired. I'm sleepy. I'm at work and I can't concentrate. Files whirl at me and I need another cup of coffee. I might take the long detour and go down to see the ward nurses and bitch about life for a while.
At the end of all this, I might call up my brother and see if he wants to have dinner. Maybe I'll scrap up enough courage to ask her to dinner.
her the source of all my insecurities
the first girl to do this to me since Tony Blair
At any rate,
Someone's bound to say yes
Amen.
current mood:  apathetic
current music: vijay's flaming lips thing.
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| Thursday, January 29th, 2004
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9:04 am
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Hungry hungry hungry cold.
I'm drinking loads of hot water from the staffroom, if I keep eating because its cold I'll die a very fat snow woman oh man my fingers are freezing up can't type anymore. stupid broken central heating. brrrr
current mood:  hungry
current music: queen
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4:47 am - spring?
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I was rather enjoying wallowing in self-pity for a while,
coffee-haggard,
sleep-deprived,
fat with exhaustion from the straining light
and oily with the slick that only comes from over moisturising with hand lotion during work.
And so I came into work this morning, intact with my aura of general gloom and depression, and overladen with sweaters and coats
resembling a bit the snowman my nephews made in their little surburban happy house in Toronto before Christmas and sent me a picture of. With the red nose to add to the Christmassy feel.
(It's the curse of the Irish, my mom says, blame your father)
And coming into my office,
dramatically,
drastically,
all
IN-character
and I find the ultimate defeat of my autre persona:
a pretty blonde
The horror, the horror.
She's on her elective from Cambridge, apparently. Six weeks. Sent over to meet me so I can show her around today while she settles in. Girly stuff. Where the bathroom is, etc. Discuss which profs are the cutest, you bet.
And so after I put down my stuff, take off my defence layers, clear my throat more times than necessary, and attempt to look hard and clever and sophisticated by going to my computer and tapping my keyboard multiple times
(and thinking to myself:
I want to scratch my head
Is that disgusting?
Should I say anything to her?
Jesus, am I wearing clean underwear today?
Fuck, I haven't done this in so long
Loser loser loser hum hum hum
Stop just sitting here, SAY SOMETHING!)
'So - how you enjoying your stay so far?' (try to sound casual. calm. breathe, breathe. and out.)
'Well, you know, I've only just arrived, (sheepish grin) so...'
I took her to the staff room and got some coffee, took her around to the wards and the reception areas.
She's amazing.
Complete with the crushed smile and the choppy accent.
She's in her final year and she's not MARRIED.
That must mean something.
She's got long hair but she wears pants duh, it's cold but I guess there's something about her pretty spunky and it's not as if I haven't seen a woman in my entire life
but she was the one that woke me out of my hibernation.
(and breathe-)
I feel as if I'm sixteen.
Her pants are corduroy.
I'm shocked.
I think I might just go home now
1. grab a beer
2. lie on the couch
3. and daydream
until my pulse returns to normal and I begin wondering why I'm, all of a sudden, mad about this girl.
Who is,
as far as anybody can tell,
straighter than her corduroy pants.
man o man o man
current mood: bouncy
current music: ani difranco - like you said
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| Wednesday, January 28th, 2004
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2:51 pm
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Beneath the coffee table
I find
A present left for me by my cat
Sarah's sock.
I put it inside a brown paper bag and leave it out of feline reach for now. I don't know whether I should throw it away or call her. To get her to come over here to collect a single sock? It's pretty pathetic. PMS? I think I should go back to work before I claw more people.
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12:15 pm - coffee makes me awake
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Donna, Hayley and I went around the little new "avant garde" galleries this afternoon. Uber-80s round, purple, red, pink, womb-shaped, all-exclusive quasi-Geogia O'Keefe oil paintings decorating the tiny, slap dash haphazardly painted little rooms with incense squizzed between tiny little pebbles on ceramic plates - what was supposed to look like japanese art dishes that turned out to grease and smudge the atmosphere. It's okay. The smell was almost Hari Krshna, but I can't tolerate seeing nodding critique art work that's not worthy to be, just because they were painted by a fellow gay woman/ someone's ex-girlfriend's ex-lover's sister/ someone I feel I ought to be polite to because we met previously at somebody's party. So I say exactly what I thought of it, at least I'm not paying, and Donna nods. She can afford to, she's graduated already. But Hayley ums and ers and scratches her head and thinks of a nice thing to say. She's far too cute.
It's very 80s, I remember my dad's girlfriend being into that feminist stage and buying huge round furry purple rugs that grew and multiplied like fungi in my dad's apartment. I don't have a problem with that, I mean, there are many people preoccupied with wombs and vaginas, think DHLawrence, but the thing is that the actual artworks are done without any reason. They're pointless, almost commercial in their blank numb cold plastic uniformity.
Like some of our conversations.
Alicia and I know each other too well to bother with fruitless greetings, we sat there for half an hour split a newspaper in two and flicked through them sipping our coffees thinking about what a fucked up world we live in. A serial killer, a corrupted politician, car crashed, Iran, Iraq, and some local news, too. A little girl gone missing, the young mother with too much makeup to conceal all those tear tracks and frown lines comments 'it's been a great trial to our faith'.
I don't get people like that. I mean, terrible, violent, atrocious, tragedies happen all around us all the time. We get the daily thrashing of Palestine on the news, and these people sit there intact and complete with their pleasant and clean-cut faiths, until something actually happens to them, and then they become upset and confused, drifting away from God/ some deity (they're not always Christian, heh) because they think, that just because they go to weekly services and sing twice a week, that they have some special protection over all others (who are all supposedly doomed to hell, anyway) and they feel betrayed. I thought we were all equal.
I used to go to church. Say nice hellos to Dr blah and Prof blah. I was a goofy kid, I never knew where to put my lanky limbs that hung out of every chair I ever sat in, not to mention the pew seats. But my mother folds everything in, neatly. My limbs too. God was my friend. Even the one in the Old Testament who thrashed about the wicked cities, he was just. We didn't really go over those parts much, it's a conservative place with a conservative population. We talked about Jesus and the Lambs. Quiet, mild, pleasant, and so far from reality, that whenever something shocking happened, people's defenses came out and they responded in any way they were programmed to... The woman I loved the most from the church stood by me when I brought my girlfriend along to the Christmas service. She offered the then 13 year old Janey a hot drink. My mother frowned so hard, I thought her face was going to freeze up and crack.
Funny that. Janey thought my mother was nice.
current mood:  cynical
current music: st anger
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8:55 am - two friends
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I'm heading out to have coffee with two friends keeping it secret from them that I'm seeing them both on the same day. Lis will think I'm spreading bad chi.
Lis' the only girl I know who listens to marvin gaye and still wears fluorescent pink boob tubes. she's a self defined communist from california. she's dropped out of college in her senior year because she thinks that best things always leave you wanting more. I've got to give her keys back from Alicia
who I'm meeting next. Who used to live with Lis. Who has been my friend forever and not at all, really. Because she is an intellectual but not intelligent enough to know why it was wrong to vote for Bush. Who should have never dated Lis in the first place, but well, these things happen.
and then, I'm chilling out with a couple of art friends I haven't seen for a while. M's just got a job working in a new cafe barista barrister- pity she's studying teaching not law, hey? might go and check out a few exhibitions - I get in for free because of my new job. yayayay...
current mood:  amused
current music: oasis continues... er - 'hello'
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5:20 am - drifting thoughts, wandering mind
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So I'm supposed to be working but I keep thinking about this person. And Freudian Jungian Erickon Erickson twice over flip backwards forwards make it tight make it trim make it decaf make it soy, it still doesn't make it right, and it bugs me. The thing is, this person, ahem, this person that I keep thinking about is a guy.
I dreamt about dreaming about making out with him. And he's old enough to be my dad - if I had one. I've got to make it absolutely clear, I'm not attracted to him. He repels me now that my stuffed-up subconscious is playing games. Everytime I walk past him in the corridors downstairs, I blush so fiercely. I wonder if the duty nurses notice the tough baby dyke taking a long detour everytime she sees him walking towards in the same corridor. They notice everything. They probably do.
Steph the night nurse yesterday, put her large warm soft hand comfortingly on my awkward lanky bare arm and said 'Go home. Don't plan on moving in.'
psychic.
Either that, or I'm really obvious and I just don't notice it. In a world of my own, baby...
And when I came in this morning, I arrived at the same time as the inter-shuttle, and guess who came off that and opened the door for me? I didn't even say, 'thanks' I walked straight up the stairs (and to my discomfort, so did he) and came up to my office. Lucky we're not on the same floor, at least.
There are other problems.
But maybe for another day.
current mood:  contemplative
current music: champagne supernova - oasis
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12:27 am
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I'm in a quote-crazed mood tonight.
It's because I'm tired, my brain's numb. Sucking my thumb. La la la.
The hospital is really comfortable, and I love being here at night. I love the old doors, the sticky-proof floors designed in the 50s made to last forever that squeak to rushing sneakers, the lifts that sigh and heave and might give out any second you're on it. I love the security guard who keeps the bathroom light on for me late at night, so I don't have to stumble my way through plastic skeletons in order to pee. I could move in here. And then I wouldn't have to think about all that happens at home. All I'd need to do is get a giant mattress and a couple of pillows and maybe a throw. I've got a kitchen and bathroom here. And most importantly, my work. Computer, phone, books, yeah yeah, I could move in here.
Nobody would notice anyway, I spend most of my time here. Even after school starts, I'll be here. I'll grab a couple of spoons, a coffee plunger, I will need...
1. a constant supply of coffee (from downstairs, this IS a hospital afterall... the staff cafes open 24/7)
2. a rebooting of my memory to clear all that bad sangkata from previous relationships
3. my cat
But maybe tonight I'll go home.
current mood:  sleepy
current music: pink floyd
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| Tuesday, January 27th, 2004
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11:44 pm - feeling in a floyd mood tonight...
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Breathe, breathe in the air
Don’t be afraid to care
Leave but don’t leave me
Look around and choose your own ground
For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be
Run rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don’t sit down it’s time to start another one
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave
current mood: chilled
current music: take a guess, heh.
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10:49 pm
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let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them/ let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it./ let me not look for allies in life's battlefield but to my own strength./ let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom/ grant me that i may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure/
-tagore
current music: seven nation army - white stripes
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1:33 pm - really sticky
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and hot inside this room.maybe i should throw my computer outside - and then i can be coooooolllll....
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| Saturday, January 24th, 2004
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1:10 pm
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Eek... this corridor has a security camera.
If I open my door, I'm on it.
Jesus.
You know, the scary thing is - I remember 1984.
I got a puppy for my birthday that year.
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| Friday, January 23rd, 2004
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8:15 am - she said
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I wish Sarah wouldn't call me here.
She can call me on my cellphone, it's not that I don't want her to call at all, it's just difficult explaining to people who I'm talking to and exactly why. Because I'm not sure myself. I don't like thinking about this. I want to be worried over lab results or what I'm going to be having for lunch today, I don't want to be thinking about her. It's funny, because I talk to her more often now, than when we were seeing each other. We've become closer now we've got physical distance between us and room to breathe. I'm totally closed to her. But then I said the same thing when we were together - I don't want to give my feelings away to anybody. I'm just me. Thick skin is the primary defence mechanism, pema chodron says. hmm... yes, but she screwed me over, I've been hurt already. The thick skin - there is a scab to the wound, and I've already got my arms up. The scab's just in case, in case, I let her get this close again. Which I won't.
current mood:  cranky
current music: Some Kind of Monster - Metallica
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| Wednesday, January 21st, 2004
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12:03 pm - to pie or not to pie
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I've been eating really badly lately, ya ya. Ex-girlfriend's gone on Atkins (so she's eating fish and chicken again - fashion over ethics? I couldn't) meanwhile I've put on heaps. So. I'm standing in the cafe wondering if I really need that pie. I got some sushi, and decided to run back upstairs, just to get away from the temptation. mmm... hot food - so cold today.
current mood:  confused
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7:46 am - so much for the smokefree posters
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I popped outside for a ciggie and a coffee - (which completely goes against all my yogini training heh - but you know, I've been here since 6 and I deserve a little bit of warmth, so freezing cold) and everyone on this corridor is outside huddled up smoking, clutching at their cups of coffee. This department runs quitting smoking programs, and most of the staff here run them in turns! Ironic, huh? The only one here completely fresh-lunged is the really pale, sickly looking sticky guy two-doors down. He starts coughing violently everytime he thinks he smells smoke (i.e.when any of us walks past) and yeah, the super-cool buffed-up AND totally politically correct security guard (his wife's just had a baby)...
Lovely tar corroding my lungs - ahhh... what would your yoga teacher say, really.
current mood:  cold
current music: yellow - coldplay
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| Tuesday, January 20th, 2004
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3:28 pm - I slept in today
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and got up scratching my head (it's always a great start to the day). I didn't wash the gunk outa my hair last night it stuck all over the place - my cat's hair was all messed up in a fur ball. More hair in the shower - I gotta get around to cleaning up sometime. Been working late, I keep tripping up over dried up crustified cups of coffee.
current mood: blah
current music: the flaming lips, baby -
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