Currently Listening Life in Cartoon Motion By Mika see related

It's been so long since I last said hello

with such a title, i should be a country song writer.

mmmmmmmm.

i just had a most delicious experience, and it was even at work. over the past couple years i have been taking a fairly significant amount of french for one reason or the other. somehow, there is never enough people to talk to, to keep it up. occasionally, i've had to speak french for my job because, as most governments are, we need to be able to facilitate whomever may be calling. usually i pass those conversations off to the better french speaker in the vicinity but today...i did it all by myself. this lady called and asked if i spoke french, and it all came back in a flash. i haven't touched the subject for over a month, but we had a whole 12 minute conversation en francais. shit. it is just so cool.

this clinches it, french is where it's at for me.

Currently Listening Hit the Floor! By You Say Party! We Say Die! great fun!! see related

A Night at the Royal Albert

last night, what a night. i got off work at 5 o'clock with dismal hopes about the evening. it was raining and miserably cold and i just didn't know what to do with myself. the funny thing about having a mostly evening job is that when you happen to have an evening free, it takes a lot of creative juices to figure out what you are going to do with yourself. pauvre-moi, what a sad life i lead.

anyhow, i came home to messages of things to do, more than one. it was very exciting. i ended up attending a house-warming party, giving up the opportunity to go to a hypnotist (sorry ben), and it was marvelous. i met a bunch of very good people, with whom i  think i could probably hang out again, and great eats. it is a loft aparment that is just really well done. so great. anyhow, afterwards we ending up going out to the diviest of hotels i think i may have ever been too ( diviest/ divyest...it was a total dive) and listened to music that made my ears ring for two hours after the concert. the first bad didn't grab my attention, but LADYHAWK, and, more particularly YOU SAY PARTY!WE SAY DIE! (look at the exclamation marks!!)  were fucking fantastic. the girl whose housewarming it was, is friends of party/die, and she was just rockin' the almost mosh pit that those close to the stage were enjoying. it was very wonderful to elbow people at will, with no concern over losing my vision of the stage as i was at least a foot taller than everyone. the initial guilt factor went the way of typewriter, and i had a pretty good time.

but, although i have many picture-lovin', picture-takin' friends, whom i adore, i have to say that all those tech-crazy, wannabee rocker digital camera havers can go someplace. all of their time spent gazing into their little digital screens, with some pretty terrible pictures, i don't know. it just felt rather distant. although, having said pictures this morning might be pretty cool. oh the tension.

so, i came to work in a very tired state of mind, and don't you nevermind asking if that is a euphemism for nothin'

signing off,

theresa 

beer

beer, i really really really like beer. i like that wiggly, loose, anything goes kind of feeling, particularly after a long and mildly exhausting, and rather hot day. even though the first beer of the evening was overly warm.

i also really really like making new friends, or finding friendship in places i thought only aquaintanceship existed. it is a very nice feeling to take that next step, to stop being aquaintences, and to start being friends. good friends, the kind you want to keep. the kind who think you do good work, not that that is a prerequisite for the friendship in any way, just a bonus.

and i love pulling it over on the cops. i mean, i didn't really, i just kept driving the way i normally drive, and it wasn't illegal because all i had was one beer and two sips of the next one. i think i should erase that last part. people will start to get suspicious, and ninnyrific. though, i must say, i am partial to the ninny in a very small way.*

and if you've never tried drinking in the shower, a cold beer in a hot shower is a truely wonderful experience, even if the beer is the only one left in the fridge, and tastes rather too hoppy.

all and all, i must say the very last part of this evening has been rather delightful.

don't worry, tomorrow, i get back into various self-loathing rants, probably about tonight, but who knows.

do you know what else i love, clean laundry, freshly made beds, and freshly clean theresa's going into them. i just wish i didn't have such tangley hair.

* i have taken this paragraph on and off of this post too many times already. self-conciousness be damned.

the stuff of ...

i've been involved in many flurries of late, and they just don't seem to want to stop. thankfully snow is not the order of any of my recent days, but busyness (business?) and deadlines certainly have. one such flurry was an impromptu trip to edmonchuck, ever a delight. the other stuff is the stuff which stuff is made of. the stuff of plans, the stuff of priorities. i don't want to say the stuff of dreams, but perhaps, just perhaps.

i have recently had to jump start my brain from the stupor to which it has become accustomed. i'm out a practice with writing, and i've never yet been in practice with photography but...while the writing is in a great state of disrepair, the photography has moved an inch in a (hopefully) positive direction.

See what you think: - my entries for a photographic essay entitled "moments of meeting" - there is a blurb that goes along with this, but i'll save that for after the pics.

Moments of Meeting: A dialogue between old & new

There is a moment that one can see where the juxtaposition of old and new creates something beautiful. Often new life, new ideas, new design, new intention take precedence over the old ones, but that priority is fleeting as newness cannot last; it must always succumb to aging. Older presentations of life and art offer a strong comment on the new, and at times, an example of how aging can be beautiful.

well, there you have it.

Currently Watching The Corporation By Mikela J. Mikael, Maude Barlow, Pope John XXIII, Martha Stewart (II), Kofi Annan see related

how long can one ignore ones' self?

Bonjour mes amis,

well, i just need to express the riotious and wonderful time that i had in a whirlwind tour of Banff this weekend past. what a trip. i'm telling you 14-15 hours of straight driving with 7 peoples in a 7 passenger van was quite intense. the mountains made their presence known in more than just a visual sense. my head made quite a friend with the face of the mountain.  beauty, and i mean this in the most literal language i can muster, is only snow deep. this georgeous veneer that the mountains portray quite quickly turns to a heart of cold stone if you even ponder disrespecting them. i had thought i had a jovial friendship with this great landscape, but she showed me, without compunction, just what she thought of me. and it wasn't pretty. needless to say my awe of this thing i already thought quite awesome, has increased 4-fold, as has the bump on my head. (actually that's not quite true, the bump i mean, but the respect, absolutely)

it occurs to me that quite has become too often part of my expression, and that is quite enough; particularly as i cannot ever spell it correctly the first time.

so ... now for the question at large, or at the least, the question that poses for a title of this ramble of mine.

i wonder how long it is that one can ignore one's self in order to keep living a life that one doesn't particularly enjoy? this one, is admittedly myself, and these questions pertain not only to the forever question of this year 'what am i doing/ have i done/ going to do with this life lent to me' but also the necessity, practicality and desire of mine to remain where i have chosen to be. how long, i wonder can practicality win out, and what about these deep desires to go places where my mind can provide no rational process that allows me to be there. i am sadly more cartiesian than i would like to admit, but it is very hard to ignore the practicalities of essentially free room and board, and a family i don't know how i could leave. is friendship enough of a reason to go anywhere? and i'm not just speaking of aquaintance type friends, but very good, and dear friends. how does one divide oneself in a country as large as canada, with good friends in more than one space. how does one choose to stay, to return, or to go even further abroad. how much complacency is okay, if any at all, and how much ability to be where one is  is considered complacency? how do i say i love you, but i'm leaving, or i love you but i'm not coming? why does there have to be more pain than joy.

i wonder if our longing for each other is in any way a reflection of our longing for a greater being? how much does it say about us when we can't bear to be apart, and how much more does it say if we can't bear to be together? and when we are together, why isn't that enough?

where can i find the courage to experience responses to these questions, instead of thinking up some answers.