I'm going to cut a hole in my chest.
I'm going to make an ink with the blood.
I'm going to write you a letter of love.
And I'll thank you for all that you've done.


I have a plan. I'm going to finish this year of art school and apply to the design program. I'm not sure I'll get in. I'm already buckling and it'll only get worse next year. But I'll try because this is what I want. New York. Europe. This is my way there.

1. I applied to an art centre in Banff. If I get in, I'll move there for the summer. I miss working with audio. If I get in there, and get into design, this is the best case scenario. Everything I want.

2. If I get to go to Banff but don't make it to design, then I'll keep working with audio and make it my priority.

2a. I want to go to Banff so bad. But I might not get in. If I don't get in, I have to get a job here in Calgary. And then in August I'll go to Europe and see everything I've been dying to see. Get back in time to start year two of design bachelor degree.

3. Then there is the worst case, whereupon I don't get accepted for Banff or design. This is where several back up plans come into play. I'm going to apply to the reserves, whether I'm accepted or not. In the event I'm not accepted I might go for full time in the Army.

3a. In the event the army thing doesn't work out, and I've failed to achieve any sort of purpose, I'm moving back to Vancouver. I'm going to get a job at the PNE for Fright Nights and make the boy I worked with there before fall in love with me.


I've backed up my back up plans as far as I think I can go. I'm less concerned about things like money now, and more about finding love or something. I don't know how or why it happened. My love for money is fading into a desire for something human. I'm sickened by it. It's too natural and unbecoming. I just want to be an animal. In a way, I truly am now. As I hunt for a mate and try to avoid the unrelenting jaws of the predator within myself. The world could never be as cruel or terrifying to me as the darkness of my own mind.

I feel an aching in my heart for something more than what I have.
Maybe more friends. A companion. A soul.
I feel nothing that I wanted.
But art keeps me here. I feel alive when I hear music.
Jazz, classical. Corny country songs and old school rap.
I can feel the pores of my skin open up to soak it in.
I can feel it inside when I think of what I love. The deep sea, the deep sky.
I've learned about the true meaning of platonic love in art history.
It's beautiful and we've been using it wrong for years.
I await him, Bacchus, to find my abandoned self on an all forgotten shoreline.
I'm going to be full again. I'm going to encounter those resplendent structures from the inside.
I will touch the walls underneath the hands of the architect.
And I will build myself into something new and strong.
I will live on for centuries and I will endure this storm.

Realizing that all of your life has culminated up to this point.
I am at the end of my rope.
This candle burned at both its ends. The wax then burned my tethered hand.
No time for what I want. I am bound to a behavior that I have chained myself to.
Learning to see art. To make it, but not feel it.
I try to feel but it hurts.
It aches to want them.
It's incessant and it yearns.
I'm trying to fill an empty space within myself.
But I'm throwing pebbles into a black hole.
I couldn't say what I needed to and now it's much too late.
The next one won't get away.
I will someday claw at the feet of a man who could bring me back to life.
I am twenty one, I am dead and I have nothing to barter with.
But I can sacrifice my old self to a higher power in a bottomless pit.
I will chant the name of the omnipotent beast and I will be made whole, and beautiful.
I will be queen, and I will reign.

Cut the foreplay and just ask.

I've been asking for things from people more often than usual lately and I've been markedly surprised that my requests have been received well. It's amazing what you can get out of people when you're kind and appreciative. I've always tried to be that way, but I've usually been the kind of person who is afraid to ask for anything, I just wanted to do everything on my own. I've realized to get to higher ground, I need to ask people for help sometimes because I'm not tall enough to reach by myself. I want to get the words "nothing ventured, nothing gained" tattooed on me because I've been living by this motto since September when someone in registration at ACAD said it to me. I was worried I wouldn't get into the class I wanted because it might be too late to ask the instructor and this was her answer. I didn't get into that class then but this semester, I did. I needed some recommendations from teachers I haven't talked to in a long time and CDs from my friend in Vancouver, who I was terrible too. And I've got them all. I apologized to her and I don't feel shady about what I did to her, she forgave me and I'm happy. Consider me a believer of "no harm in asking."

I've been working on a piece that speaks of sex and desperation

I've found the perfect thing. It's a work study at the Banff Centre for audio post production. I would basically move to Banff from May to August and do a bunch of audio for film work. Something I've always desired to do but never had any way to go about it. And now it's here. Problem is I have to make an application. I feel like my entire life is spent applying for things.

The other issue lies in the fact that the one project from audio school that would have been perfect to send has been wiped from my computer. I screamed at myself on the inside for being so stupid. To not save the one fucking project that I would end up using in real life. But whatever, I have lots of other things I could send. Like the album of a friend I recorded and mixed with one of my best friends in Vancouver. Who I haven't talked to in a year and has all the printed copies of the CD....which I still haven't given her money for... Fuck.

I messaged her on facebook to see if she could send me a few and she hasn't answered but I know she's seen it. Thanks facebook! At least being ignored was the middle scenario, worst case would have been "fuck you, you greedy cunt" so at least it's not that. When I was typing out my message to her, I realized how this could have been avoided if I was a better friend. I've tried to reserve my bitchy self for the outside world, the public that doesn't know me, but it seeps into the side that maintains my relationships with the people I do like. I realized the desperation in my message and how if I had spoken this nicely to her when I was living in Vancouver and if I had asked her to hang out more often, I would have been better off. I wouldn't be scrounging for evidence of my artistic value so I could get somewhere I really want to be. But I was a guarded asshole and now I might be fucked.

I'm trying to be nicer at school. I'm actually a lot happier, strangely. I realized I'm not the coolest kid at school, and I bet a lot of people see me as the weird freak like I see most of them. So I'm letting everyone have an equal opportunity to be my friend. And I'm going to start being a better friend. I know it seems to be for selfish reasons but I think everything we ever do is somewhat selfish, so it's all okay.

Bang my head upon the fault line.

I had to go to my grandfather's house for dinner two nights ago. It was a walk through hell. I had to drink as much as I could before we got there because he and his wife are psychotically religious and I figured they wouldn't approve of anyone getting drunk in their household. Normally I would have no fucks to give but my grandfather paid for my driving lessons and is giving me a car so I am sort of obligated to seem like a well-adjusted human in his presence. His wife, however, can get slow-roasted over a hot bed of coals for all I care. I wish I could fully express how much I hate this woman but it's so hard to put into words. Perhaps I'll explain my reasoning for my hatred to get you to understand. Long before I was born, my mother lived in a household where her parents fought daily but never considered divorce. At least until my grandfather joined a new church, met a woman there and had an affair. They ended their marriage and my grandfather took care of my grandmother financially until the day she died, while he maintained an on-off relationship with the mistress. A month to the day that my grandmother died, my grandfather announces he will be marrying the mistress. My mother explains to her father why this is an awful idea but he doesn't understand. The mistress makes him buy a nine bedroom house in Chestermere and she furnishes it completely with his money. I don't understand how this is acceptable in their religion, I always understood that Jesus never wanted his followers to have more than they needed. I am sickened by this woman. I am sickened by their blind following of some nonsensical dogma. I hate that these people act so certain of their beliefs.

I normally don't care whether people want to talk to some man in the sky or not but I hate when they shove it down my throat at the dinner table. My grandfather made a speech about how we were missing a family member at our Christmas dinner this year and how she was going to be resurrected or something. And I believe my grandmother is just dead and she's not in heaven looking down on us. And it's better that way. Because to look down on your living family for the rest of eternity from some cloud sounds repulsive. They say there is no suffering once you're in god's kingdom or whatever, but to watch your loved ones go through all the horrible facets of existence... is this not suffering? We relive our worst moments constantly in our minds as we go through life, so does it end in heaven? Do you keep your memories, to suffer through for eternity or do you forget your time on earth? If you forget, then how is it said that you will rejoin your loved ones in heaven when you pass? None of these scenarios sound like the perfect utopia that heaven is supposed to be. I hope when I die that there is nothing. No more reliving the past, or watching my family struggle endlessly. I would hope this end for all my loved ones. I don't want a life after life, this is truly enough.

I'm never speaking up again.

I suppose I don't write much here anymore. Fact is I am quite creatively drained, it's a strange thing to be forced to be inspired. I've been making sculptures and clay objects and it doesn't feel too right, like I'm in elementary school again. But I know my drawing skills have improved. And I know next semester will be much better for me. I'll finally get to do what I really want to. Photography and design, hurray! Things that are useful. This semester hasn't been an utter waste though. I've learned more about myself than anything.

Even as ineffective as some of the courses I've taken have been, I get a sense of fulfillment that I've always been missing. I've never felt fully accepted by one thing as much as art does, the way it's held me in its arms. I do indeed hate my sculpture class. I hate the people in it. I hate how everything I hand in is something I can't wait to dispose of. But I'm even better than I was before at problem solving and inspiring myself.

I'm starting to work on not going to my default and being such a cranky bitch all the time. A lot of the people at my school are rude and inconsiderate and I don't want to be seen by others in this way so I need to act less like an asocial retard if I want to bother having a good time at school on a regular basis. It is hard though, when you take classes with people who don't have any listening skills whatsoever. Or need to bring their dad in for the day. I take my education seriously. I want to get somewhere with it. I have an intent to get rich and take my creative skills in an intelligent direction. This is difficult when you're surrounded by people who just want to fuck around and make pretty things while daddy pays for their degree. So you can understand why I choose to ignore other students on the whole.

But the people don't matter to me. I'm happy to be getting a degree. I like learning and having skills. I want to feel like I'm using as much of my potential as I can. I think being human is a waste in general and all there is to do is self-improve. I believe that an education in art is as equal in value to an education in science.


A few months ago I went to see an artist take about his practice. He made sound installations and mechanical sculptures. The first one that stuck out was a sweeping machine. It was essentially a long handle that rotated around a circle, like a clock. On the handle was a bucket filled with dust and a broom. The bucket would move down the handle as it rotated and spill the dust out in a spiral. Then the machine would reverse and the broom would sweep it back unto the bucket. These are the only things it would do.

And I thought it was beautiful. This makes me feel like a tool but nevertheless, it was an insightful experience. Here was this man who studied mechanics and could manufacture any sort of robot and this is what he chose to make. An intensely useless piece of machinery. And it was beautiful because he built this knowing it was useless and knowing he could have made anything else. Because what makes any one thing more useful than another? Someone, somewhere was meanwhile performing open heart surgery to save someone's life and here was this pointless machine. But why should the surgeon's purpose be greater? Eventually he will die, and his children will die, and his patient will die and that patient's children will die and everything all of them has ever done will cease to be of any value. You could invent something that might save a million lives but all that million will also eventually die. So since anything you choose to do is ultimately a pointless endeavour, you might as well do exactly what you want. Now I guess I should note that I don't believe there's an afterlife and this is the only life there is. Should you believe there will be supernatural consequences to your human actions then by all means, do what you can to save the planet and what have you.

But anyways, this is what I've been doing in art school. Having profound philosophical experiences concerning the futility of life at the sight of a sweeping machine.

"I enjoy living, and suicide is absurdly redundant. The world, from the very beginning, hurls viruses, accidents, hungry animals, defective DNA — and uncountable more - in an attempt to kill us. It always succeeds. Suicide is simply aiding and abetting."

John McAfee is undoubtedly a psychotic old man but I found this rather insightful. 

My heart is in my mouth

I could meet a man one day
And feed him pieces of my heart
Then he would spit them out and say
He doesn't like the taste of blood

So I'll cook them a just a bit
Just enough to make them sit
But before the stove is on
I'll turn around and he'll be gone

Hey God, I think you owe me a great big apology.

I hope they cannot see
the limitless potential
living inside of me
to murder everything.


Acclimating to Calgary is a lot harder than I was expecting it would be. I used to be really sad that I was living so far from my family, but having my mother breathing down my neck everyday is bringing the same feelings. I think I'll stay at school for a couple extra hours tomorrow, just to get away. But I hate it there too. I hate the students, I hate the hack artist teachers. I was supposed to meet my class for a field trip at the train station at 2, but getting there at 2:03, they had already left. I wanted to stab that teacher's eyes out. I'm not meant to be in art school but I have no where else to be right now. For now, I have to spend everyday surrounded by people my age who act like they're ten years younger than they are. I try really hard to feel like an adult, but it's hard when my mother talks to me like a child, and when every other person at my school is so infantile, they seem autistic. I've been trained to hate people so much that making friends seems like a repulsive endeavour. Only problem is I've started to hate myself.

Show me the way to forgive you.

I have this friend at work, who is really awesome. He's about as old as my dad and he's a lovely gay man. He works in theatre, he's smart and he's pretty funny. I thought about how weird it is to be in your forties and not have a kid. Just on the pretense of how promiscuous and sexually active people can be. Say most people start having sex by 18, then by the time you're 45, you've probably dealt with a pregnancy at some point. Then I figured well, he's gay so it makes sense why he wouldn't have kids. But then I thought about my dad. My dad only has kids because he was a normal, young man who had a young girlfriend and they did what young couples do. My brother and I are accidents, but that doesn't really affect me. It only bothers me when I realize my brother and I are just remnants of a relationship in my father's history. If something as simple as my dad being more careful or even being gay could have been the case, I wouldn't exist today.  And I wonder how many of us in the world are just scraps from the sleaze and stupidity of humanity's youthhood.

I will tear right into you
with the hands that I have used
to hold myself upright.
I held myself alone together
for what felt just like forever
but I will fall apart tonight.

When my body stitched the holes in my skin,
you were there to dig right in.
I will fight the dark within me,
I will bleed it into you.
I'll be heavy on your shoulders
Force your strength out, make it true.
The only time that I felt fed
was with your hands over my mouth
To shield me from the poison lead
Once forged in Hell, the deepest south.

Slide a mile six inches at a time

Underneath the skin and jewelry,
hidden in her words and eyes
is a wall that's cold and ugly
and she's scared as hell.
Trembling at the thought of feeling.
Wide awake and keeping distance.
Nothing seems to penetrate her.
cause she's scared as hell.

I am frightened too.
I am scared like you.

- cold and ugly - tool

Offering my heart to God.

I know you better than I know myself.

I will choke until I swallow.

I'm starting to fear that I have no idea what or who I really am. Some guys at work joke around when they see my hair and piercings and ask if I'm a metal head or punk rocker. But I'm neither. I wouldn't fit in with either crowd. I don't really listen to metal and I'm a capitalist at heart. I get asked if I'm a lesbian probably more often than most girls do, and I don't think I am. Somehow, I portray a lot of different characteristics for a lot of different boxes but I hardly fit any single one. 

Then there's just my face and my figure that I can't quite accept. I feel like I'm made of all these big features, my nose, my chin, my neck and shoulders. I've always felt like I'm physically built too big and like I don't fit anywhere in the world, as if I take up too much space. I used to have a real problem dealing with this thought but I've grown to mostly be relaxed about the idea. The old me used to hide behind over-sized shirts and eat like a bird everyday to try to seem smaller. Now, I hardly give a fuck. I wear a bikini to the beach and tight blouses to work. I'm trying to keep less emphasis in my mind on my physique but the nagging is always there. I could always be ten pounds thinner. I believe I have a very distorted view of what I look like and I fear it will always be that way. It's hardwired into me to hate my body, as long as the numbers are too high. 

I wonder if one day I'll see a low enough number on the scale and I can actually be happy. Normally, I feel confident and attractive when I go out. I did my makeup as perfect as I could and I felt really pretty today. But later on, I started to sense the tightness of my clothes and how much my stomach is pushing out my shirt. And I start to believe this is all people see when they see me. How just plain big I am. I want to get a tattoo on my ribs but they're too wide. I want one on my thigh but the stretch marks make me want to cry. 

But I know by the numbers that I'm not fat at all. I try to compare myself to people I see to try to get a real impression of how I must look when others see me. I compare my body to girls who I believe are the same size as me. But it doesn't help. The part of me that thinks I'm big propels forward and makes comparisons with girls who are what I truly believe to be bigger than me. I know I'm not big but my soul doesn't believe it. I stopped starving myself to be small but the insatiable desire is still there and it's permanent. I will never, ever understand what I truly look like to people and it's one of the worst things I've come to know.

You are the voice that's been calling me back home.

Lately I've been reading a lot about investing and making a budget for the next five years of my life. It's really made me feel like an adult for the first time ever and I feel like I really do have some control over the path my life will lead. I'm finding that a lot of other things in life are analogous to the methods of investing.

Like relationships. Having a significant other would be a volatile investment. There's high risk (they could cheat, could leave you at anytime, could steal everything you have, has real potential to be harmful) and more often then not, offers a low rate of return (potential for feeling loved  vs. losing time/money/energy.) This i basically how I've always felt but never had a way of describing it. These are the things I think about when someone asks "Why don't you have a boyfriend?" often accompanied by it's follow-up, "You'll find someone someday." To me, being in a relationship right now would be like putting all of my money in RIM stock.


In other thoughts, I've wondered how I exist as a person who mostly despises the company of other people but somehow ends up in jobs that involve being face-to-face with large groups of new people on a constant basis. I think it's on the way my personality seems to split itself. For a long time, I've believed that I had two sides to me but I'm finding that there's several. I function in multiple personalities and I'm discovering the characteristics of each one as I encounter them. There's the part of me that goes to work, and is bright and chatty. Generally a happy girl. I think this is most of what I am because I can't really describe it as a separate entity, the way I can with the others. There's my alter ego, her name's a secret. That's the part of me that scowls, with fierce eyes looking downwards, hood up and infuriated by crowds. People recoil at the sight of her. All those piercings... why would she do that to her face? The natural beauty ruined. She mostly comes out at night.

I'm also an android. Completely without feelings though understands the reality and concept of human emotions. Perfect sense of time and an unwavering gait. Little regard for outside influences but acknowledges  entirety of surroundings. Mainly concerned with current environment, as opposed to past and future events.

There's a good part of me that I would consider male. The way I interact with my brother seems close to what is mostly regarded as male bonding. My independence and not typically being annoyed by things that most women constantly moan about. The moments when there are no fucks given about my appearance. Drinking with my dad, watching football, cursing beyond what is necessary, protective of female friends.

I'm planning on cutting my hair short enough to see if I really can be passable as a male. To live as both genders, in two-spirits, on alternate days. When I'm in the mood to be a guy that day, that's what I'll be. Clothes, gait, all the typical behaviours reserved for men. I've thought about getting a cosmetic mastectomy, since my chest is so small anyway it might as well not even be there. But my risk assessment has come through and I'm not really into wasting the money, the scars and risking infection when I could probably diet it mostly away.

This probably all sounds really insane, but it's my explanation for how I function on this earth as an adult human, which I'm not even sure that I am. In functioning through several personalities, I let all parts of my true self live in the open without being regarded as hypocritical or characteristically incongruent.

Suicide Tuesday

Eye on what I'm after
I don't need another friend
Nod and watch your lips move
If you need me to pretend

Because clever got me this far
Then tricky got me in
I'll take just what I came for
Then I'm out the door again

Lie to get what I came for
Lie to get what I need now
Lie to get what I'm craving
Lie and smile to get what's mine

Give this to me
Take what's mine


- The Package - A Perfect Circle

Forty six and two is just ahead of me.

So I'm in the home stretch of supporting myself in the most expensive city ever, and I'm elated to be coming back home. I'm much too young to be this worried about money, but that's me. It sounds kind of wrong in my head when I think "I'm coming home" because Calgary just doesn't feel that way to me. Most of my family is not really there anymore so the only thing home-y about it will be living with my mum and brother again. And I think we could live anywhere together, and that place would feel like home to me. It sounds pretty gay, but living on my own and being independent, never really made me feel like an adult. I can support myself just fine, it's not difficult and I think I expected it to be a lot harder. Like being an adult means your smothered on a daily basis with responsibilities and worries but I've never personally felt that. So I still feel like a baby. It's not even a money thing (outside of the fact I need money for school and fuck loans), I just know I'll be happier living with my mum again.

I applied late to ACAD so I probably won't be starting my first year until January. Which is hugely irritating because the program I want to get into for my second year only starts in the Fall. This basically tacks on an entire year onto when I was hoping to finish the degree. I figured I could take credit courses starting this September and try to finish the requirements for my first year by June. I can't register as a non degree student because I won't be in the city when that registration becomes available. So I emailed the Extended Studies department in hopes of learning what courses they might have, and see if there was a possibility that I might not need to take an extra year for my degree. For some reason, the thought just terrified the shit out of me. I didn't want to be 26 and still in school, I want to be working! I've been panicking about this all last week. Fuck, why didn't I just apply sooner, why didn't I just figure out what I wanted to do, why didn't I just go to school here in BC. I made a schedule for what classes I needed and could possibly take in the Fall, Winter and Spring semesters. I would go to school six days a week, just please let me finish in four years.

I'm freaking out over this, and not hearing back from Extended Studies. Then a few nights ago, I'm on Facebook and a whole album of sonogram photos is posted by a friend of mine. A guy who turned 21 two weeks before I did. And I'm clicking around and see another 3 or 4 people I went to this same junior high with, same age and everything and they have kids too.

I suddenly felt more relaxed about everything in my life and didn't care if it was going to take me four, five or six years to finish my degree. As long as I don't have a baby before I'm 26, I think I can be pretty pleased with whatever it is I do with my life. I called ACAD today after not getting a reply to my email and they said the credit courses would no longer be offered in Extended Studies. I had an entire plan for next year that depended on the possibility of taking these courses and it was just smashed to pieces right then. But it didn't even matter. Now I can take the months between September and January to work, save more money for school. For a motorcycle and to get lessons for both driving and riding. To maybe travel some, see India. See more of the States. To do fucking anything I want to because I don't have a kid on the way, or a mortgage or a husband. I think I'll apply to work on a cruise again, now that I'm old enough to do so.

I know it's terrible to compare the transitions of my life to those in others', and to evaluate my success based on what I see other people doing, but it has really opened my eyes to what my life could be if I make good or bad decisions. I'm learning to relax and not to stress about how short or long my life might end up being I learn from my own mistakes plenty, and I will learn through others' as well.

Evolve.

I've been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could've been.
I've been wallowing in my own chaotic
and insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
cleansing I've endured within

My shadow
Change is coming.
Now is my time.
Listen to my muscle memory.
Contemplate what I've been clinging to.
Forty-six and two ahead of me.



I choose to live and to
lie, kill and give and to
die, learn and love and to
do what it takes to step through.



- forty six and two - tool