I was just reading through one of my old journals and I came across this poem I wrote, November 11 2004. I really liked it, so decided to post it here.
I know a place
Of mine - a rock - I think
Where water laps
And soothes
Asleep in gentle rays
And loons call out in black
And white so simple
Geen and good
The Earth I touch Her
Know her
Still inside I feel Her
Come to me and hold me
Mother let me crawl inside
And lie there
While the world is
Changing
Melting
Lying
Take my sins
And wash me in your warmth
I know your grass will hurt
My feet but I will walk
Through fields so warm with
Sun and smell of haylofts, sunbeams
Take me back and learn me
Hold me
I forget me
Let me
Be me
Take me
Love me
Leave me
Free me
Free me
Free me
Free me
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Under Attack!
There are many reasons I dislike the city. Urban pests now top that list.
You see the thing is that I really have no problem with mice. In fact, I find them to be quite adorable little creatures. When I was little I once saved a poor mouse from the jaws of death (i.e. my sister's cat) and put the little shocked thing in a box until it felt better and then set it free in the forest. Apparently such consideration to their kind was not enough to appease the mouse gods, because I am currently, at 6:15 in the morning, under seige by what seems to be a torrent of little mousy bastards, but could quite possibly be just one particularly nervy little runt.
So why am I awake at 6:15 in the morning, and not only awake but feeling compelled to sit and write out my sorrows on a computer? Because these mice are not only crawling around my room being incredibly noisy, but one actually had the audacity to crawl into my bed - forcing me, yelping in surprise and disgust, out of it. This mouse has crossed the line, I say. CROSSED THE LINE!
To make matters worse, I have had the worst sleep in the history of the world. First there's the fact that I can here the little mouse (or mice) running all around my room, crawling in my garbage can, munching on this and that, leaving me to speculate what millions of things I might find to have been nibbled on in the morning. I told myself to just ignore it and go to sleep, hoping the furry little monkey would find its way to the lovely meal of peanut butter that just happens to be situated in just what I once saved that poor mouse from long ago - the jaws of death (ie a mouse trap).
Comforted by this thought, I had nearly drifted to sleep when I began a shallow dream of two spiders crawling around on a box in my room when I realized that the dream was actually referring to something insect-like crawling on my neck, which presently started some kind of strange vibration dance. I was thus rudely jerked from my near slumber in order to shake the thing off, and watched it go crawling behind my bed as my instincts were not yet intact enough to smash it to smitherenes.
This time it was even harder to go back to sleep, because on top of the little mouse ravishing my room I now had to deal with the thought of this potential spider crawling back onto me and continuing his vibration dance, which in my sleepy state I felt sure was some crazy way of sending spider eggs into my skin from which trillions of tiny spiderbabies would be hatched at a later date. This is an example of why urban legends are dangerous things.
The ironic thing is that I have a few times slept under the stars with only a sleeping bag to protect me from the elements and been less disturbed by creepy crawlies than I have been tonight, in my bed, in a house in a huge city. That is just not fair!
I don't know when I will ever feel safe to return to my bed, but it definitely will not happen this morning. I may as well do some of the pages upon pages of readings I have to do for tomorrow.
Yawn. I hate mice.
You see the thing is that I really have no problem with mice. In fact, I find them to be quite adorable little creatures. When I was little I once saved a poor mouse from the jaws of death (i.e. my sister's cat) and put the little shocked thing in a box until it felt better and then set it free in the forest. Apparently such consideration to their kind was not enough to appease the mouse gods, because I am currently, at 6:15 in the morning, under seige by what seems to be a torrent of little mousy bastards, but could quite possibly be just one particularly nervy little runt.
So why am I awake at 6:15 in the morning, and not only awake but feeling compelled to sit and write out my sorrows on a computer? Because these mice are not only crawling around my room being incredibly noisy, but one actually had the audacity to crawl into my bed - forcing me, yelping in surprise and disgust, out of it. This mouse has crossed the line, I say. CROSSED THE LINE!
To make matters worse, I have had the worst sleep in the history of the world. First there's the fact that I can here the little mouse (or mice) running all around my room, crawling in my garbage can, munching on this and that, leaving me to speculate what millions of things I might find to have been nibbled on in the morning. I told myself to just ignore it and go to sleep, hoping the furry little monkey would find its way to the lovely meal of peanut butter that just happens to be situated in just what I once saved that poor mouse from long ago - the jaws of death (ie a mouse trap).
Comforted by this thought, I had nearly drifted to sleep when I began a shallow dream of two spiders crawling around on a box in my room when I realized that the dream was actually referring to something insect-like crawling on my neck, which presently started some kind of strange vibration dance. I was thus rudely jerked from my near slumber in order to shake the thing off, and watched it go crawling behind my bed as my instincts were not yet intact enough to smash it to smitherenes.
This time it was even harder to go back to sleep, because on top of the little mouse ravishing my room I now had to deal with the thought of this potential spider crawling back onto me and continuing his vibration dance, which in my sleepy state I felt sure was some crazy way of sending spider eggs into my skin from which trillions of tiny spiderbabies would be hatched at a later date. This is an example of why urban legends are dangerous things.
The ironic thing is that I have a few times slept under the stars with only a sleeping bag to protect me from the elements and been less disturbed by creepy crawlies than I have been tonight, in my bed, in a house in a huge city. That is just not fair!
I don't know when I will ever feel safe to return to my bed, but it definitely will not happen this morning. I may as well do some of the pages upon pages of readings I have to do for tomorrow.
Yawn. I hate mice.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Toronto poems
On Bathurst
On Bathurst everything is busy.
I have an apartment here, just down the road from
Shining Honest Ed’s super duper discount store.
We sit on the roof and drink beer
Watch the CN tower blink into the smog
And talk about the philosophy of sex.
We are students, after all.
What else would we do?
Our bottle collection is impressive
And we have mice.
Toronto has many interesting sites to see
A dirty man on the streetcar has steely sneaky eyes
And tells me and two strangers that his friend
Started a boat fire at Ontario Place.
“All the boats are burning”
His eyes are deadpan and we are not sure
Whether to laugh or to believe.
Just North of Ulster there is a parking meter
With a pizza crust shoved in the coin slot
Who thinks of that?
On Bathurst everything is busy.
I have an apartment here, just down the road from
Shining Honest Ed’s super duper discount store.
We sit on the roof and drink beer
Watch the CN tower blink into the smog
And talk about the philosophy of sex.
We are students, after all.
What else would we do?
Our bottle collection is impressive
And we have mice.
Toronto has many interesting sites to see
A dirty man on the streetcar has steely sneaky eyes
And tells me and two strangers that his friend
Started a boat fire at Ontario Place.
“All the boats are burning”
His eyes are deadpan and we are not sure
Whether to laugh or to believe.
Just North of Ulster there is a parking meter
With a pizza crust shoved in the coin slot
Who thinks of that?
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
The Black Ghost
I had a dream last night that I saw a black ghost from the road. Though the friends I was traveling with told me the ghost was frequently seen, ghosts have never appeared to me and I never thought they would. I saw it clearly and that was shocking to say the least. It caused me to falter in my step, to stand agog in wonder and fear, it caused me to hallucinate. It caused my heart to race and my shoulders to tense.
It’s my theory that dreams replicate the dominant emotion one is feeling in everyday life, but attach that feeling to an abstract conception. The ghost in my dream is the embodiment of my current fears, and I reacted to it as I react every day to the stresses in my life. The difficulty breathing; the avoidance of truth; the shock.
The thoughts that dominate my life revolve around moving back to Toronto, paying for school, my new apartment, new roommates, new atmosphere, new classes and starting a new life, once again. About what to do after this year, when I’ve graduated. The future is a huge unknown and - like the ghost - it excites me to no end and frightens me to death at the same time.
The black ghost represents the many things I feel that I am facing I didn’t expect to be there but deep down knew would appear. Like love, and falling into it. More than anything else, for me the ghost is love. Like the ghost, love appears unexpectedly. It’s something I’ve never quite believed in, though part of me always thought it would be true. It’s something I don’t want to deal with. It’s something I want to avoid. But I can’t ignore it, and its presence is haunting me. I’m also afraid that it is just as much of a phantom in its nature as the ghost – unreliable, appearing and disappearing in front of my eyes, completely beyond my control. I am afraid of the ghost, and I am equally afraid of love. They both entice me but also seem to prophecy my doom.
I am afraid of the black ghost of my dreams and its image is haunting me.
It’s my theory that dreams replicate the dominant emotion one is feeling in everyday life, but attach that feeling to an abstract conception. The ghost in my dream is the embodiment of my current fears, and I reacted to it as I react every day to the stresses in my life. The difficulty breathing; the avoidance of truth; the shock.
The thoughts that dominate my life revolve around moving back to Toronto, paying for school, my new apartment, new roommates, new atmosphere, new classes and starting a new life, once again. About what to do after this year, when I’ve graduated. The future is a huge unknown and - like the ghost - it excites me to no end and frightens me to death at the same time.
The black ghost represents the many things I feel that I am facing I didn’t expect to be there but deep down knew would appear. Like love, and falling into it. More than anything else, for me the ghost is love. Like the ghost, love appears unexpectedly. It’s something I’ve never quite believed in, though part of me always thought it would be true. It’s something I don’t want to deal with. It’s something I want to avoid. But I can’t ignore it, and its presence is haunting me. I’m also afraid that it is just as much of a phantom in its nature as the ghost – unreliable, appearing and disappearing in front of my eyes, completely beyond my control. I am afraid of the ghost, and I am equally afraid of love. They both entice me but also seem to prophecy my doom.
I am afraid of the black ghost of my dreams and its image is haunting me.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Backpacking Europe - second post
The stone pathway is big enough for two vehicles to squeeze carefully by one another, but very few care to do so. It is mainly for pedestrians, and snakes its way up from the harbour that has been scratched into the rocky cliffs, then up through the town, until finally leaving for the green hills and well-tended gardens of the mountainside. Old, tanned Italian women with leathery skin and sun-squinted eyes cross this street to greet one another, and burly shopowners lift out boxes of impossibly bright fruit onto it - cherries, lemons (grown in the garden up the street), and shiny tomatoes still on their vines. An oil painting waiting to be captured on canvas.
The street is flanked on either side by brightly coloured buildings that blend so well with the sea and hills and sky that they might have grown there naturally, or else their builders had the Medittaranean so deep in their souls that when they went to build, it came out in the form of these beautiful, smooth, colourful buildings. Here there is no rush or feeling of desire for industrialness or production. Mary smiles peacefully over the town from many mini monuments on the walls of the houses, and her soft eyes and hands held palm-upward seem to encourage the inhabitants to take life slowly. Not that they need any more encouragement to do so, as the blanketing warmth of the sun and the wind, heavily scented with sea and flowers, make it the idea of rushing an alien notion.
The church sits on the hillside among the greenery, backed by a lush mountain and perfect blue sky as if to say "I'm here when you need me, but take your time." Its bells chime on the hour. Here in the sleepy village of Riomaggiore, on the Medittaranean Coast in Italy, people know how to live. They have it all right, I think. Good food, warm sun, family, and simple, unpretentious faith. A beautiful setting. What else do you need?
The street is flanked on either side by brightly coloured buildings that blend so well with the sea and hills and sky that they might have grown there naturally, or else their builders had the Medittaranean so deep in their souls that when they went to build, it came out in the form of these beautiful, smooth, colourful buildings. Here there is no rush or feeling of desire for industrialness or production. Mary smiles peacefully over the town from many mini monuments on the walls of the houses, and her soft eyes and hands held palm-upward seem to encourage the inhabitants to take life slowly. Not that they need any more encouragement to do so, as the blanketing warmth of the sun and the wind, heavily scented with sea and flowers, make it the idea of rushing an alien notion.
The church sits on the hillside among the greenery, backed by a lush mountain and perfect blue sky as if to say "I'm here when you need me, but take your time." Its bells chime on the hour. Here in the sleepy village of Riomaggiore, on the Medittaranean Coast in Italy, people know how to live. They have it all right, I think. Good food, warm sun, family, and simple, unpretentious faith. A beautiful setting. What else do you need?
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