Memos

Remember in grade 12, in Hoogendam's class, with the memos and reading them every day/week/month, etc.? So I'm at home, leaving tomorrow to go back to school to re-cram everything I learned in the past semester back into my head before my exams on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I kind of miss high school.

BUT MEMOS.

This was the last one I ever did.

It is 1:50 and I am falling asleep at the keyboard. Here it is, folks, the final stretch. Unbelievable. I’ve been slaving over World Issues and worrying about Philosophy all night, but here I am, with this new document open, scrambling for coherent sentences that I could possibly slap down here, it is so weird. Kind of like the deafening quiet that comes after you’ve just shut off your iPod, turned off your cell phone, shut the doors. This is our last day of high school. Frankly, the sentimentality hasn’t set in, and I really don’t think it will. It’s time, you know? I feel like if I stay one more year, I might actually drive myself to the point of sticking my hands in my head and pulling out my brain. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy high school, because I did. More so than I would have enjoyed my old school. Did that sentence make sense? I don’t care. I’m tired.
So next year I’m going to Montreal, to study Journalism at Concordia University. This is exciting. I was actually in Montreal last week for orientation, and it was the eeriest feeling. I arrived late, ambled my way inconspicuously to the back corner, took a seat, and, looking around me and seeing those blank faces, I slowly filled them with time. This time next year, I could actually know most of their names, or their background. This time next year, they’ll all be a thousand times more familiar.
I’m sorry, I really don’t know what I’m going on about. I don’t function well at all under these conditions. So, back to high school and how awesome my experiences here have been. Okay --- wait, I just heard a weird sound. I’m the only one up, and I’m totally creeped out now. Whatever. Back to high school. Okay, never mind, I can’t really think about that right now, nothing comes to mind. So how much do I wish that exams were over? Oh man. So much. I’ve been in this funk for too long, I tell you. I feel like I’ve been slowly working my way up a mountain, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can see the tip, and it’s just so close, but I’m so tired and worn thin that it’s taking forever to just get one leg up, and then the other, and pull my way up. And I still know that at the top of this mountain, I can just free-fall into a refreshing lake or something, y’know? Okay, so the song My Sharona by The Knack has just come up on Party Shuffle, and that has lifted my spirits considerably.
It feels like I’ve been working on this memo forever and it has only been ten minutes. I’m really, really sick of pages and pages of Times New Roman.
So I’m sorry for depressing the hell out of everyone right now. My life isn’t very interesting. Well, actually, I do well with it, but I’m not really in the mood to tell you the more interesting parts, unless you’d like me to go at length about cute boys and the things that they say. Don’t get me wrong – I could. But I won’t. Because it’s still school, and bringing my out-of-school life into school… that’s not a marriage I’d like to see yet.
Oh my goodness I am not making sense at all. Tomorrow I’m going to bring this up and I’m going to print it and read it over and find this paper absolutely riddled with grammar mistakes and typos. So in case you were wondering, I’m actually giving up on Philosophy. Well, actually, I’m going to see how much Socratic questioning I can cram into one spare period, but for now, for tonight --- I’ve given up. It’s 2:06. God help me. There are 15 people online, but ten of them are set to “Away”. Who goes on MSN at 2:07??? Well, obviously, people like me, who like to waste time on Freetetris.Org and check Facebook every five minutes, thus dragging out their homework until 2:08. It’s 2:09. Can I say right now, if I’m actually reading this thing out loud, how sorry I am? I am truly sorry. I think I need the marks. You understand, don’t you? The song Nessun Dorma, sung by Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli, from Puccini’s Turandot came up. It’s kind of weird, because I generally don’t listen to opera, but I love this song. I don’t understand Italian, though, and I’ve never seen the opera itself, so I don’t know the story of it. So I found this CD a few months ago in my parents CD shelf called Pavarotti and Friends, and it features ole’ Lucci doing duets with everyone from Stevie Wonder to the Spice Girls to Jon Bon Jovi. When Luciano Pavarotti gets together with Celine Dion, you know that magic is in the air. And it is. Magic is truly in the air. Oh my goodness, last line.
It’s 2:13. Good night.

a) I thought 2:13 was LATE.
b) OLE' LUCCI????
c) I was a cute kid.

It is 6:11 on Easter Sunday morning and I am sitting on a brown suede easy chair, watching the sun slowly rise across the city out of the corner of my window, listening to Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major.

Life is just a series of dances.

Lately, I have been approached by nagging thoughts about the future- whether or not there will be tiny nano-robots floating through our blood streams, whether the newsprint business is going out of business, 0r whether the music business will continue going on the current soul-crushing path it's on now.
Tonight, I took a walk home in the rain. Spirits high, caffeine buzzing in my bloodstream from a latte from Le Croissanterie, it suddenly didn't matter that my bag weighed ten pounds, my plonking suede shoes were half a size too big and soaking through with the speed of a leaking pen, and that my thin tights were ill-equipped against the wind and rain.
I plugged in my earphones, clicked on some Gershwin, and followed the ribbon of Victorian-style lamp posts down Sherbrooke. I passed the Museum district opposite the row of wildly luxe hotels, tilted my umbrella to old men in trench coats, peered into tediously arranged store windows, and breathed in fresh spring rain.
Walking through a city on a rainy night incites in one a certain feeling of comfort. With the rain drops playing percussion to a soft, bluesy piano melody in your head, there is complete certainty that Ernest Hemingway, Woody Allen, Tom Waitts, Carey Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and countless others have walked in your steps. This is a strange nostalgia, a memory so strong and so communal through such a grand expanse of time. I stepped into the dirty '30s tonight, passed girls in high-waisted flapper skirts under mangled umbrellas; the 1890's offered the architectural backdrop to a black and white film. The ghosts of all who have come before became silhouettes on the street, umbrellas dropping with rain water.

It's nice to know that the past, the present, and the future are united in one thing.


With this post, something I haven't done in a while.
TEN SONGS FOR WALKING ON A RAINY NIGHT (To be played in this order, and only this order)
1. Rhapsody in Blue // George Gershwin
2. A Case of You // Diana Krall (cover of Joni Mitchell)
3. The Piano Has Been Drinking // Tom Waits
4. You Don't Know Me // Michael Buble
5. Christmastime Is Here // Vince Guaraldi Trio
6. Paris // Camille
7. A Change Is Gonna Come // Sam Cooke
8. Cafe Bleu // SoHa
9. A Song For You // Herbie Hancock ft. Christina Aguilera
10. Song For The Asking // Simon & Garfunkel

GAH.

ANGER.


That is all.

December 10th, 2006 flashback

"What I needed was a realization that I wasn't a robot and could feel real emotions, that I was deeper than a kiddie pool and could connect on a level a little more personal than cellphones and acronym-filled MSN messages. I gave up my Livejournal because my own juvenile delinquency, my ridiculously emotive bleeding-heart posts were tiring me out beyond belief, and needless to say, I was sick of it. So I closed my doors to the personal blogging world and filled out my very basic, very minimal Yahoo 360 required for school. But I'm back (I hope), because words were just going to waste in my head.

What I want to remember right now is how it felt the moment I stepped into the school hallway for the first time back in kindergarten. The itching of a stiff red dress and feigned excitement on my face. That's what I want to remember. Because right now, I'm about seven months to the end of small white rooms and posters on the door, and decorated lockers on my birthday; stiff green attached desks, and locker combinations scrawled on sweaty palms of teenage boys. Am I prepared?
No freakin' way at all.
Progression is natural and graduation is inevitable. So why am I still sitting here, wondering where all that time went and regretting I had done more with it?
Obviously this is only high school graduation, and I'm kidding myself to think that my life has even begun; but I don't want to forget this, you know?
It's funny, I've spent about 16 and a half years imagining myself one level up in University, seeing me with freedom and independence and a higher level of maturity; but now as I'm nearing the end of my 17th, the future has started to freak me out like no other.
S'messed up, I'll tell you that much."

Am I what I was expecting?

Things I Would Rather Do Than Be A Journalist

- Public relations for a theatre/opera house
- Host a talk show
- Busk
- Move to New York and be a personal shopper
- Be an Ad agent
- Act (movies or theatre)
- Be a pastry chef in France
- Scout music for a record company
- Write poetry
- Screenwrite
- Flip houses

And of course there's always the option of marrying rich and spending my days traveling.

Endless possibilities!

It's mid-February and Montreal is a frozen tundra and I am buried in essays on Sir Gawain and French presentations and feature profiles and research reports, but I can't help but put on a song that makes me long for colourful skirts and lavender flowers and Kensington market...

I want to find a grassy knoll and just lie there for a while.