Roundup!

Some days, I feel like the luckiest person in the world. Like, in a past life, I must have donated all of my organs for transplant after suffering fatal injuries while saving a busload of children from near death, my karma is so good. Ha. Tempting the fates, I can see.

I am lucky. Obscenely so. I have happiness, lots of it, and health, and, most importantly, love. So. Much. Love. I love more people than I can count on one hand, and I think that is remarkable. I have a life replete with love. Wow. Who can say that?! Who gets to live this life, to be this happy, to see and do these things? Who gets to be this person?! I do. It's a bloody gift.

it's weird though... i was thinking about all the stff that's going on in the next several weeks

it's kind of like going out with a bang... and now i am starting to get the oh-no-it's-almost-over feeling

what's almost over?

ottawa!

for me i mean

i will be leaving soon, and it's starting to get a bit.. nostalgic?

i here that

i mean, it's not like i'll be far, and i don't think it'll be hard for me to keep in touch with most, but still, i will miss hanging out in the market, and on elgin, and bytowne nights, and the diner, and zack's

and so many, many things

wow

i have really had a great life here

but for me, and this is what i'm posting about on my blog right now actually, home is really about the people

i definitely started to see how true this was of me when i went to hamilton... i've never been there before, but going to visit ciara, it definitely felt like coming home

that's why it feels like home. all of my friends are there. even though my family isn't (which in the past has made it feel like anything but home)... a lot of the people that I care about live in ottawa

but five years later, all the important people are still in my life, so i feel confident that the people i've grown to love in ottawa will stay with me too

they will be in your life, yes.

yup... that's the thing about friendship, it's sort of a lifelong quest... some people stay with you for the long haul, some come and go, but in the end, it's all about the sum of the love you've had

I have comfort, and passion, and desire and contentment. I have all these things, and more. Life is good. Life is brilliant. All I can see is blue sky.

What can I say?

It's not that I'm in love with a man. I'm in love with a feeling. The feeling, however, is associated with a man. The trouble is that I can't dissociate the man and the feeling. Also, I can't get past the feeling. Clearly, I need to stop chasing the dragon.

Someone once asked me how I do it. How I survive without many of the crutches that students and humans rely on. Okay, he was actually just asking how I pull off all-nighters without cigarettes or coffee. I'm editorialising. For self-inquiry's sake. Shut up.

I live my life according to an ethos. Do not hurt. Yes, sometimes I hurt, but only to mitigate, an exercise in disaster aversion, the prevention of bigger hurts. My life is all about the economics of pain.

Levitas: light in weight; levity or lightness.
Gravitas: substance, weightiness; a serious or dignified demeanour.
Veritas: the Truth; truth, verity; objective verity; the actual state or nature of things; reality.

I have to. It's an addiction of it's own. I have my weaknesses, indulgences, yes. Regular type, like a penchant for sugar. Discipline, self-denial, spartanism. These are my quorum. Made ascetic by life, by myself, by so many before, and then nineteen, and so many after.

Nineteen. They burn.

I deny myself.

I deny myself indulgence in a great many things. Not because of a hallowed belief in discipline. Not because of a distaste for luxury. Because of the picture in my head. A girl, long, dark hair, half-lidded eyes, short black dress exposing thin, pale thighs. Falling. Against a brick wall, against crumbling asphalt in a dirty alley, dark and wet. Intoxicated, awash in sorrow, alone, scraped, empty.

It would be me. It is. So many girls. Lost little girls. I don't know how to find them. I left them behind. Tried to leave them behind. They came. They went. I can't find them. Leave them alone and they'll come home, dragging their tails behind them.

Save them. Count them. Collect them. Like hockey cards. Who are you now, who have you been, where has your soul come to rest?

It's an aggregate. Life, too. It's an aggregate.

So the answer, then,

There is no answer, my friend-not-friend. It's the wrong question, you see. I don't have a secret to surviving without consuming these things, without self-indulgence. I survive because I avoid the things that would consume me. Or because I refuse to feed that one all-consuming pain. It eats away, certainly, fangs trained deep, tongue leeching the life out of my heart, but I will not let it grow stronger. It will not defeat me.

My secret for all-nighters: gorp.

Gorp: a mixture of high-energy food, such as nuts and dried fruit, eaten as a snack.

Gorp, Sarah style:

• 2 cups Quaker Natural Granola, Oats, Honey, and Raisins


• 1 package Reese's Pieces or Peanut Butter M&Ms


• 1 handful All-Bran Buds


• 1/2 handful Almonds

1. Take bowl out of cupboard.
2. Take stuff out of cupboard.
3. Pour granola into bowl.
4. Swear a lot and get really angry during epic battle with candy packaging.
5. Get down on hands and knees to pick candy up off the floor.
6. Pour other stuff into bowl.
7. Mix contents of bowl.
8. Pull all-nighter.

Note: measurements are for the weak. I just pour shit in a bowl. No exact science bullshit.

That, plus I drink a lot of water, to the point that I have to pee at least once an hour. This does wonders for keeping the system alert.

Warm and Sunny Days, She is Leaving

(The Dears and The Beatles)

I (heart) influences in art. They're like flavours. Hints. Things we don't know we've dreamt about. Little mysteries that will never be solved because we don't know they're there.

Or else they're just right there. For the taking, for the seeing.

It's intermediality.

Blessed postmodernity.

The Small

Thing: The Ostrich Underground.

Thing: Thinking.

Thing: New series, new inspirations, and new outlooks.

Thing: Research vs. Life Experience.

Thing: Being dissappointed (in people).

Thing: Massages, and why they might just save my life.

You can't understand a thing until you stop trying to interpret it.

My name is not Sarah, it is Sarah. Sarah. Seen-alif-ra'-hé. Sarah. It's a beautiful name, and it's all you need to know to understand me. It's a deep sounding name. Comes from the gut, the abdomen, and the deepest part of the respiratory system, right down at the bottom of the lungs. It's a deep sounding name, and it takes strength and some skill to say it. Also, determination. Ask me one day. Maybe I will sound it out for you. Sarah.

You can't understand a thing until you stop trying to interpret it. Interpretation entails assigning meaning. Making something - an idea, an occurrence, an object, or an emotion - digestible. Interpretation is an exercise in relating something to yourself. To your life, your experience, your universe. This will not help you understand things. To start understanding the world, you have to come to terms with the fact that you are not the world, and the world is not yours.

I live in the space between. In the grey zones. On the Fault Lines.

I find my hair lovely for two reasons: first, for being so black that it absorbs sunlight and gives me a feeling of permanence in life and possibilities of things being O.K.; second, for being thick, almost wiry. I like that my hair is tangible.

You can't expect to find the meaning in everything. You can't expect that you will understand everything, either. I do not understand measures of electricity. Amps, volts, hertz, they mean nothing to me. I don't know what they represent, either. Something about Coke bottles, and lemon meringue. Thanks for trying, Mr. Trudeau, thanks for trying, Karen.

My name is Sarah. You will never know me, because you do not understand that.

I forget, sometimes, most times, that we are not the same person. Or maybe I forget only on the odd occasion that we are. Either way, there are moments when we are not one hundred cents together, and those are the moments right before I realize how much you love me, and then I am dollars again.

There's a stranger in those photographs. I don't know who those women are.

Please don't compare her to me. Or her. We are very little alike. Or her, for that matter. There is very little that makes us similar, and yes, this is all about individualism, as that is what I am, in this context. An individual. You cannot divide me up into four women, expecting us to all be the same. We are not. We are different. I am different. I am not her. I am not the same. Can't you understand? Of course not. You don't even know my name.

Saturday Affirmation: I am not a GPA. I am not an ethnicity. I am not a last name or a religion. I am none of these things. I am Sarah. Say it.