Vancouver 2010

I went to Vancouver yesterday with a friend of mine. We didn't have tickets to anything; we just wanted to say that we were there during the Vancouver Olympics. And it was so much fun!


We met lots of really nice, helpful people (with all kinds of accents), and took the skytrain everywhere. The Olympics people in their aqua jackets, scattered every few blocks all over the city, were super knowledgable and helpful too. And everything was amazingly clean.

We watched the hockey game on bigscreens at the Edgwater Casino, then hit the streets to celebrate the win with the crowds as they poured out of Canada Hockey Place. There were Olympic Athletes, ecstatic Canadians... and sad Russians.


I had a maple leaf on my face and a Canada toque on my head, and I got high-fives and hugs from strangers, and yelled alot, and was swept up into an impromptu rendition of the Canadian National Anthem. It felt good to be part of something big and noisy and happy.

I must have walked at least six miles all over Vancouver. I got home around midnight, exhausted but pleased. It was so worth it.

impossible

"But that is impossible," said Peter.
"Magic is always impossible," said the magician. "It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it is magic."

Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

onions

Last night I was making dinner, and explaining to the girls that they should always eat their onions because onions help make your heart strong. Their brother walked in and summed it up at the end: So, the same strength that makes you cry, goes into you, to make you strong?

And that really struck me, for some reason. The words seem to contain something profound, if I could only grasp it properly...

sunshine and chalk dust

(inspired by Katie Sokoler)

stunning

If you watch this at all, watch it in fullscreen, please.

Film by Alex Roman of The Third & The Seventh (discovered here.) "A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal." If you don't understand, I'm afraid it can't be explained. But if you do... If you do, it's transcendent.

At the midpoint, (about 7 minutes in) it becomes about light and air in motion, and I almost cried it's so beautiful.

words and more words

I have several ideas bobbing around in my head, but I am afraid to write any of them down. If I write them down, then they will be mine, really mine, and I will have to decide what to do with them. If I write them down, they will exist outside of me, and take on lives of their own, and possibly run off without my consent to places unapproved of and unknown. It is like having children, in it's own way; I'd heard that before, but I see more and more now that it's true.

Words are powerful. One must be responsible about bringing them into this world.

affirmation

quote by Dr. Gregg Jantz
typography and photo by me

optimism

I am choosing to be happy. It cracks me up to say that and mean it, when I would have smacked someone upside the head for even suggesting it to me not so very long ago. But I refuse to hand over my power to anyone else; nothing and no one can make me unhappy. Not my past, not any of those people, not even the endless grey sky. (Though they've each certainly put in a great deal of effort. I'll give them that.)

Nevertheless! I deserve a life; and a good life at that. Mourning was required, but I need less and less of it now. Now I can go after a life that I want, and not just get by with breathing shallowly and trying to be invisible (but resenting being invisible too), and hoping that whatever bad thing happens today, it's not as bad as that other time.

Nothing in me deserved to be neglected, abused, assaulted, or bereft. It happened anyway. Other people's choices. But I can make my own choices, after the fact. Now, if I deserve anything, it's peace. It's joy. It's love.

all undone

I wrote more while I was away than I have since I got back! I feel so strange... Like I went underwater and the surface closed over me, and it's seamless now and there's no telling where I'll come up again, if at all. But anybody watching has lost interest, and drifted away. Maybe if I splash around a bit, they'll come back?


Whenever I am about to speak I think better of it before the words even come out, and my throat closes off to save me from embarrassment or misunderstanding. So I am silent and still -- on the outside. Which is misleading. I look exactly the same, but I am quite different now. I feel more peaceful, and I know I have a future to look forward to... which in its own way is scarier than thinking I had pretty much run out of things to be excited about. There are so many possibilities, again. And I have alot of work to do.


But I actually think I can do it. Which is new.



photography by elena kalis.

impatient

I want my outside to match my insides. I want my real life to feel as awesome as my dreams. I want more friends, and mentors, and a boyfriend/husband and kids. I want a career, and a home -- whatever that ends up looking like, so long as it feels like home to me. And I want a dog, too. I want a full life. And I know I can get it. I need some patience. And some help. And some love; lots of love.

two turtledoves

I'm so glad you're safe. I wish we could be together, but it's good to know too that you are untainted by this world. You were never exposed to the pain that can be inflicted here. I loved you and cared for you as best I could... and then you were gone. It makes me glad for you, to have known only love, and pass on into more love, complete love, everlasting. I miss you; but I take comfort in the belief that you are pure, and safe, and whole.

And I carry you in my heart.