only if for a night.

I just want it to be known that I was really excited about my life today. I feel like I'm steering in the right direction and I'm actually gaining some momentum in my life's progression. Number one priority for me for years has been my career. Pursuing a work life that would keep me satisfied for decades. Getting on the IA crew, putting stages together for huge shows as much as I can. Being on the City crew and putting up sound for events they put on for the people of Calgary. All leading to me being accepted onto the crew for PK Sound, where I learn more than I hoped that I could. Making friends with people there, talking about their lives on the road touring with the greatest EDM producers in the world. And I can see myself there in years to come. I can feel my dream coming true.

I've finally figured out what I want to be doing in school. It's stressful as always but I'm so satisfied to continue my learning. I know I have my whole life to work so I might as well be in school now. If I want to stop going one day before I've graduated, I think it will be okay. Because I'm learning enough to make it worthwhile regardless if I get the degree in the end or not. I don't feel boxed in, or caged.

I paid the deposit for a spot on a retreat when I finish this coming semester. Ten days in the Dominican Republic, all focuses on learning circus arts, my newest love. Being able to separate myself from my money is dramatically hard for me. I like to hoard it. But money isn't worth anything unless you use it, so I've forced myself to buy another trip. My Europe trip saved my soul and I wanted to go again but I need to save more money because next year I hope to do a semester abroad. I need these things to keep me motivated, to keep doing well in school, to pursue my dream job.

My career and my passions are hugely important to me and my friends are valued just as evenly. The three things that keep me alive, that give me a sense of happiness. I've learned I'm not quite as good at making friends as I think I should be. I really like to tear into people, figure out their life story, what they're about. Their pains and struggles, passions and fears. But this doesn't help me make friends, it makes it really hard. Most people don't like another person seeing in and finding all this about them. I don't actually have any casual friendships. So any friend I have is one I truly cherish to know. This thought has helped me a lot with accepting the fact that I have made no real friends in the year and a half I've been at this college. I have two that I regularly say hi to in the halls or class but have never seen outside of school. I hope it's because the school is so big that I typically don't have more than one class with any other person in a semester. I fear it's just because of me.

On the note of friends, I am ecstatic that I get to see one of my best friend's get married in less than a month. To be at her bachelorette party. A girl I've known since I was 13. It's kind of mushy but I think it's beautiful.

So much to be excited and happy for.

Maybe if you ask me nice.

My digital arts teacher asked our class if any of us had been in love. It`s a first year class, full of just out of high school students, so no hands went up, that I can recall. For them it made sense, but for 22 year old me, not as much. I thought about putting my hand up. I remember loving someone before, and him loving me. But he loved someone else too so I don`t define it as real love in the traditional sense. I remember a broken heart but I`m not about to declare I`ve been in love before based on a technicality.

She said one day we would all know love, it`s the greatest thing there is. I believe for some people it can be, but not everyone. It`s just another thing, just like not everyone writes songs or plays basketball. Love is just another hobby. I remember the moment when finding love stopped being a priority. I was in my first year of high school when someone told me to just stop looking for a boyfriend. He said if you stop pining, it'll eventually just happen. So I did. Years went by and nothing happened. But by then I had realized I wanted my dreams and desires to take a front seat. My career has been my priority ever since. I've been spending all my time and energy in building my foundations, my knowledge and skills. I've been creating, I've been making myself into something I want to be forever. I never found the time to look for love. And now I'm in this sad spot of not knowing how to want it enough to start. There is a real fear that one day I'll have the success I wanted but I'll be old and to enthralled with my work to be appealing to any man. I've heard a lot about how the majority of men want someone to care for, not someone who is so independent they wouldn't feel counted on. If I make myself into that, I will have wasted all this time becoming a person who didn't need anyone else. But I guess that's what love might be?

Then my teacher said love drives the world. She asked me if I believed in love, which is such a strange way to phrase the question but it`s how most people do. Of course I believe in love, it`s a very real, indisputable thing. How could I say no honestly? I said I did believe but not that it drives the world. I thought about what I believed drives the world and realized it was sex and money. Prostitution is regarded as the oldest profession in the world, though likely isn't. Nevertheless, it is widely assumed and with good reason. Sex was one of the first things man found he was willing to pay for after maybe food, a vital necessity. Today, people pay out of this word dollar amounts for men, women, even kids to fulfill their most depraved fantasies. Or even just nominal fee for a regular physical experience that most people partake in without any exchange of goods. 

Then there's money. I always hated the stories of people who left all their belonging to live in the woods and off the grid. Their stories were told with a disgusting air of self-righteousness. Fuck, what makes your choice to live in the woods so great? Good for you, you don't have to work, but technology will save your ass one day when you get sick or you'll just die. My life is greatly fulfilled by my access to technology and not because I get to waste hours playing video games or watching cat videos but because I get to communicate with the world, I get to learn about the universe and answer every question I've ever had. Perhaps without the technological advancements within reach, I can understand how living off the grid would be a viable option. It is as liberated as anyone could possibly be. It awed me how so many people suffer through menial work their whole lives. They have to make money. I thought about what kind of work someone might do for free, if there was a job in the world so great anyone would do it for free and I don't think it exists. People say it all the time, but take their paycheque away and they'll be foaming at the mouth, guaranteed. Money is just a chain. It keeps people locked to their shit jobs and even those who have their dream careers. We're chained by items, we work for money to buy things to fill our lives. You can put a price on anything your heart desires. You can buy someone's life, someone's death, sex. You can pay someone to own space on the earth that has existed for billions of years before the first human walked it. It's money and it's sex that drive the world; love is in the backseat.

Liza's first day in the lab was exhausting. The clinical trials were going well but the work was nevertheless draining. Her last subject, a man in his late 30's though already balding, collected his pay from Liza and left, leaving the door slightly ajar. Liza tried to finish her notes as quickly as she could so she could rush home to bed, but a high pitched whistling stung her ears at their deepest points. The whine sizzled in her brain. She walked to her office door and the sound abruptly stopped as she shut it, as if it were sucked out of her ear canals by a vacuum.

Liza made some notes on a few more PET scans before heading home. The brain images were by far the most fascinating part of her research. The study picked up where Tsutomu Oohashi's left off, considering the hypersonic effect. The concept had greatly enthralled Liza, how frequencies inaudible to humans might affect our brains. There were all these sounds in the world that our eardrum's measly range of 20-20kHz could not perceive. But what do the frequencies outside of that range do to us? Can we feel them in our bones, on our skin? Do they beat around our brains to make us feel something we aren't consciously aware of? Liza wanted to know and she was going to. Today's images were wonderfully enlightening. Liza played music for the subjects that contained frequencies up to 30kHz and the brain scans started to light up. The frequencies were doing something, something never researched before, and Liza was elated that she would be the one who found the answer.

The next seven days of research went by without a hitch. On the eighth day, three subjects had opted out of the research. Reasons varied, one had a daughter who had fallen ill and no longer had time. Time was also an issue for the second subject who had just been promoted. The third had a stranger story. In writing, she gave her reasoning:


"Henceforth, I opt-out of the research study taking place at ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories on  the topic of the hypersonic effect. I wish I could continue as I feel the study truly need to be carried out but I fear for my health. I have been fraught with night terrors of a demonic sort every night since starting the study. I have seen Hell in its entirety with vivid clarity. I could replicate my visions with great detail but on nothing less than a massive brick wall and painted only with blood. Creatures that had human features melted and pressed onto rigid black forms. They were shaped like the rocky cliff sides of mountains and bolted to the ground. They had eyes that leaked out of their sockets. I have memories of fire, spouting from their cavernous mouths and a scream that sounded like it came from a thousand throats in sequence, passing through one and feeding into the next. I only hope these sights fade but a part of me senses they will be forever etched in my soul."


Liza read the letter at her desk and shut her eyes. She tried to visualize the nightmare from the letter and was certain she could only comprehend on a level that a toddler could understand calculus. She could picture the scene but couldn't feel the fear that was obviously evident in the letter. Liza couldn't stop her research on this one slip and hypothesized that the woman might have some underlying psychological issues. As she considered how to get around this complication, a new email flashed on her computer screen. Another subject was dropping out. The message was nearly identical to the other subject's letter. The man described a scene of fire burning across a rocky field of hardened corpses. Screams that came from a feedback loop of deformed mouths, agape and contorted. He too mentioned a fear that the images would never leave his memory, mentioning how they had "crystallized in his mind, a permanent structure until his death and maybe after." Liza's eyes welled up with tears, she saw her research slipping away. The board would see it as dangerous and the grant money would dry up.

Her decision to shred the letter and delete the email was not an easy one but it was necessary. This was not a time for a moral debate, she was on the cusp of discovering what could be perceived beyond what we know is humanly possible. This research was going to make great strides in trans humanist technology, and she needed her name on it. She needed to be part of the pantheon that told people they were not limited by their senses. That there was more to being human than what only our senses perceive. We could be more than human.

The next three days of research were rife with more letters of subjects dropping out. They all recalled hellfire, and the smell of ash so thick it coated the sinuses and let through only a sliver of lava-hot, black air. Liza tore up every one.

On the twelfth day, Liza was brought into a board meeting where she was questioned by her colleagues on the rampant drop-out rate of subjects in their study. It was severely hampering the research and it needed to be known if there were reasons to stop the work altogether. Liza put on her best face and explained the subjects all had time conflicts in some way or another. One of her colleagues pulled out a letter from a stack of papers, slid it over to Liza, and asked her to explain it. It was from one of the drop-outs from day eleven. They had sent a copy of the letter to every researcher, desperately asking for the study to be put to an end. They went on to describe their decimated life. His wife had moved out from the fear that her husband would  slice off her face in her sleep. She had awaken to him one night standing over her in a trance and holding a kitchen knife, pressed hard against her lips. Liza saw no way out. This man had been perfectly sane before the study and eleven days in had gone mad. She had no defense. She was let go from the research that day and would be facing a hard road if she wanted back into any sort of research. She would forever be known as one who did not work within the scope of morality, she would be admired by few and spurned by most.

Liza made her way home, her mind cloaked in despair. She never felt desperation like this, the want to go back in time, to not tear up the letters. To face the facts that there was something dangerous in her research, in exposing people to great amounts of frequencies higher than their ears could perceive. Maybe that would be her next endeavor, to learn what sort of devil hid in those sounds. But did she dare? The fear the subjects felt, the sick states their minds had been left in... did she dare expose herself to even more of the trigger of these experiences, in the name of science? She questioned why she had been safe this whole time, why she never had the nightmares. She went through the experiments too, as she applied them to her subjects on a daily basis.

More fatigued than she had ever been before, Liza collapsed into her bed, weighted down by the sorrow of losing her future. She switch the bedroom lamp off, but didn't close her eyes to sleep. For in the shadow of her room that should have been tinted black was a sea of grey faces. And Liza knew that darkness would never be dark for her again.

I had to kill the new sheriff in town.

For me, happiness has been a very alien sensation. I don't have a single memory of being happy down to the core, ultimately free of sadness, fear, or anxiety. This year I've suddenly started to love school. I hated my first year. It was kind of a mystery how I ended up in art school, and by means of trying to explain it, I told myself I owed it to art. I owed it my life because it saved me so many times. I've wanted to die probably more than I wanted to live and no friend or family could keep me in this world the way music, poetry, and theatre did. While people go through bouts of depression,  I was having intermittent moments of contentment in a regular state of debilitating misery. I wrote, listened and drew to fight the demon within me, while my self-destruction fed it all the while.

I've learned what is important. I'm teaching myself how to care about things and to accept the disappointment that comes with doing so. I'm feeding my mind instead of destroying it and it is happy. It strikes me with fear that my creative pump might clog, I can even see how boring my writing becomes. I'm in an animation class that renewed my faith in going to this school. Now all my sick ideas can be manifested without me needing to be great at drawing or painting or writing them out in a state of practical psychosis. I don't know if I'll be an animator or what I'll pursue after year two of art school. That would have terrified me before. But I'm satisfied with what I'm learning now and living in the present instead of the future has really given me a chance to like being alive.

I died tonight.
He killed me with his bare hands. I didn't feel a thing until I was almost dead. I was too high on the chemicals, far inside my mind.
I felt my mouth go numb as he pushed his fingers into the flesh of my neck and squeezed.
Under his grip, my throat collapsed and the shutters of my eyes flew open, throwing off the dust of the night. The greens rolled forward, once magnetized by the black hole of a destructive ego, now locked into a blue murderous gaze. I saw a fire burning so furiously that the whites of his eyes fluoresced and I was blinded.

I knew this would happen. Just never this way.
He had knives. He had guns.
But here he was instead; on top of me, knees on each side of my ribcage, using only the clench of his knuckles to force the life out of my body.

I was pressed up against the gap, seconds between a ceased existence and life. I thought I would see my memories flash before me but all I saw was sand. Falling. One minuscule grain at a time.

I'll have you just the way you are.

I'm starting to realize how dire it is for me to have a plan. If the plan falls apart, I fall apart. This is not any way to live, but it's the only way I keep myself together. A rigid sheet of steps to solve all my problems. My newest problem is being interested in a guy at work who is so beyond realizing that I like him that this wheel won't turn at all unless I force a move. But it's a concept utterly lost on me. I'm certain he thinks I hate him because I shut off into a silent being around him. Because I say dumb awkward things that he makes fun of. Maybe he likes picking on me like a school boy, it's a treatment I understand and am somewhat fond of. I hate being fawned over. The fastest way for me to lose interest is to pester and baby me so that he's sort of mean and careless is endearing. I am planning my way to this one. It's another thing where I want my way with a man and to forget about him as soon as I know for certain that he feels something for me. That's almost all I need to know. I set out on step one yesterday. I told a co-worker I was interested in him, now hoping maybe she will tell him to get the gears rolling. She said she thinks he has "issues." That wasn't part of the plan and I forgot to ask what she meant. I have other steps. Ask him where he got his bracelet. Tell second male co-worker about crush, hoping he might give up the secret but must confirm the first hasn't. Get him to talk about music, drugs, science, any common interest to get him to fucking talking to me. Stop being offended by hearing he goes out with other girls. It's just time to get competitive.

Indestructible

I have to keep reminding myself that the Universe is impersonal and is not, at all times, working against me. Still, that's how it always feels. I don't think I'm meant to be happy for more than five minutes at a time. I think I know what happiness is, but it never stays for long. Is that not a key component of the thing? Do I really know what happiness is? I was happy using you, you using me. It was good to find you. I could come, fuck then run. I don't like to stay. Then one day I did, to maybe make you see I'm really not so strange. And it ruined everything. I felt it in the deepest point within me, it made me ill not to leave. I needed to go. But I tried to be normal and I realized there's no way, I am just too damaged.

I want you to feel more for me than I do you. I wonder if how I look makes up for my neuroses, if it's enough to make a man stay. I met someone last week who within an hour of knowing me called me "stunning" and it blew me apart, it was such a perfect thing to hear. But you've never said anything close to that to me. I remember many people over time telling me I have nice looks, nice eyes. Never from you. Maybe you don't want me to fall for you. Maybe you don't see any of that in me. If I ever hear from you again, I'll remember not to stay. I'll remember to talk more. I'll ask more questions, that always works. It's just that I'm not so good at small talk and I believe there is something to be said for silence. I wish people didn't find it so awkward. I don't know why it does. Talk to me about god, the earth, space, anything that isn't "how was your day?" Maybe I'm a bitch. Maybe I'm an asocial freakshow. I don't know how to tell you I'm not human. How being an alien disconnects me from any sense of normalcy and knowing what is and is not appropriate. I can't even be romantic, I don't begin to know how. The closest I came to loving someone was when he loved someone else. The only romance I've ever felt was having my hair moved out of my face when I was sucking him off. There is no heart to dodge, I have nothing to hand you. Leave me the control, and everything will be fine.

Arbeit Macht Frei

So listen to some reason, there's nothing in your dreams.

The things girls say to get a guy to like them. To take an interest. Pretty much every girl knows the phrases though rarely do they come out true. It's just playing the game. "I'm not like other girls. I hate reality tv. I don't wear a lot of makeup. I like video games. I like rough sex." And you play a little longer, the guy starts to love you and you change the game. "Remember when I told you x? Yea, that wasn't true, I just wanted you to like me. So we won't be having any rough sex and we're going to watch Big Brother." I hate this game, I don't like playing it, and I hate hearing it.

I have a special conflict with the phrase "I like it rough." Because I never want to be the girl that does. I don't want to use that to get some guy's interest, for him to home in on one single facet of my being. The problem is it's true. I realized this when I slept with someone who was affectionate and doting. I hated it. I didn't want to cuddle. I know what it does. I'm not interested in pair bonding but he made me stay. I think my brain is wired to release the wrong hormones after sex, like those "time to get the fuck out" ones that guys get. I drove home at five in the morning, veins still coursing with that night's alcohol. I had to get out.

Then I met someone who asked me what I liked and I couldn't figure out what to say. I knew telling him the truth would snare him but it felt like another played out phrase, like he would hear it as a lie. He said something about how having a lot of piercings says a girl is into rough sex and I panicked. I didn't think it was true at the time, and I feared the thought of people knowing that about me without any other prior knowledge besides the sight of all the rings in my face and ears.

I wonder if this means there's something wrong with me. If it's a problem to be repulsed by a touch of love. I found someone who as far as I know isn't terrified by the sound of a girl begging to be hurt and it's exactly what I want. Someone who I can play with without having dinners, or long talks, or general dates. I thought about what it was to go on a date and what kinds of things I would prefer doing. I thought about how much more I would enjoy wrestling an alligator than going to dinner and making conversation with someone I didn't know very well.  And it makes me feel broken instead of liberated.

I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is.

It takes time.

-Bukowski 

Do you really think I easily bruise?

I did a bad thing. I don't regret it.
I don't know which part makes me a bad person but I know I am.

I've chosen to live a life void of regrets.
Because I know everything I've done, at some point was exactly what I wanted.
So I let my mistakes live in their moment. In the past.
But when the past is still fresh and close I can't help but feel it's too hard to live through.

I guess I could be like every other girl.
I could hug and kiss and cuddle and date and try to love someone.
But then I could get my heart broken again.
And I can't have that.
So it will be me that plays the man and spreads the seed and runs into the wild.

Then I remember that girls don't like that man. He's an asshole. But he's happy.
I feel like an asshole but I don't feel happy.
I know this is better though.
I know I have to run.

I can't believe you opened up to me like that.
Like you thought you could break my shell.
I'm a fucking fallout shelter.

This isn't a revenge thing. But I won't feel bad.
Because what I've done to you, you did to me first.

My chances are none.

I tried to explain platonic love to someone last night, the way I learned it in school. But the words came out all wrong. It might have been the mushrooms. It was probably because I don't think I understand it completely myself. It wasn't much of a revelation, I've never understood love. Not for people. I think I feel it for a choice few but I don't know what it is or how to put it out there in words.

I used to think I had trouble learning French and that I just had trouble speaking it because I didn't practice. But I could write and read it just fine. Even understanding what is said to me isn't any trouble. Speaking it, getting the words right and to make any sense on the way out, is a damn struggle. And I only just realized that I have the same exact conditions with English. I can almost never say what I want to in a proper way. I read how people see me and I know it's wrong. What most people see isn't me, what I am is hidden in the written word.

I am having trouble distinguishing between myself and my demon. There is another side that is dark, destructive and ugly but feels like the part that knows truth. And the demon in me is someone nobody has ever seen or heard. It's read out on the page but I am not typically read so I am not to be understood.

I talked about being numb. And how I live a neutral life. I don't hate things, as much as people think because it's an active approach that I typically don't take. I am completely emotionally passive. So sometimes, I have to make sure I'm alive, that I can feel, and see if maybe it's better to feel. I hurt myself. I do it once in a while, just to feel something, anything. And I wondered if I have to take the time to get out of a numb state, why do I choose to perform a negative action? Why do I not pursue something that would make me happy? Not even happy but to feel something positive like the sun, or art, or exercise. I teared up and it took everything in me not to cry in front of another person, something I haven't done in years. I kept it together, and realized the answer must be that I'm sick or stupid. I think I'll try to turn it around.

And I might just stop talking forever. I think it would be best.

Still I'll be your dog.

List of things I need to do now that I have dropped two classes and have a huge amount of time one my hands.

• Start going to the gym three days a week again.
• Make art I actually like to make.
• Finish projects two days early.
• Apply for jobs in sound.
• Plan Europe for summer.
• Decide if I want to keep going to ACAD.
• Apply to the DGC.
• Apply to film department of IATSE.
• Learn every knot I can.
• Learn more German.
• Practice French.

Man fuck this.

I'm losing my mind over people who don't have the decency to treat me like a human being.
But maybe I'm not.
I fear that people see something tough and intimidating when they look at me, and that I have no emotions. But the fact is I probably have too many. Like way too many.
And they stay inside. Which is the way it should be.
Just how nice would it be to have people act like they might care.

It's fine. I'll survive. That's all I can do.

But I need to remember what I am made to feel by people who don't care, and to never let them make me feel it again.

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.