A Slight Case of Hamster Brain Parte the Second

I really need to remember to write earlier in the day. I mean, it's not a case of "OhGodsMyLifeIsAHotMess" tonight, it's more along the lines of "ehhhhhhh... I don't wanna." So nyar. Maybe I'll have an interesting dream tonight. Last night it was the airport, but by the time I finished dealing with morning (read: noonish) stuff, having breakfast, dealing with bloody Telus and their bloody non-functioning phone lines... it had pretty much faded to the standard memories of running around through an impossibly huge terminal with no clear signage and missing documentation. No secret what my unconscious is trying to tell me *there*. So I'm going to bed.

Winter 1992 (In Search of Lost Time)

    I'm 20 years old. It's a bastard cold Friday night in late March and I'm sitting on W's least questionable sofa waiting for something to happen. Half an hour ago, K, a mutual friend, had given me a tiny square of paper and told me to put it under my tongue. Fifteen minutes ago, he had stuck a tape into W's stereo and turned it on.  Five seconds after that, I had nearly jumped out of my skin when the speakers let out a frankly horrific noise.

    W. glared at him.

    "You know, 'Last Rights' is not what most people would pick as a soundtrack for someone's first fucking acid trip. What the hell is wrong with you?"

    "Yeah, but I just got it, and I really wanted to listen to it tonight..."

    "Is it supposed to sound like that?"

    "Okay, fine, I can turn it off, what do you want to listen to instead?"

    "W, I think something's wrong with your tape deck. Or me."

    "No, you're fine. Fuck, put on Sisters or something, Jesus. You goddamn lunatic."

    Another fifteen minutes in and I start finding the whole situation hilarious.

    "Yeah, there you go. Hey, you want to see something cool?"

    He turns off all the lights in the room and closes the drapes. The stereo's digital display wobbles slightly. K lights a cigarette and starts waving it around, and the ember leaves behind a jittering curve of fading red.

    "Ooooooh. Hey, where's the flashlight? I want to try."

    [Later]

   We order a pizza. I carefully put the correct amount of money, plus a generous tip, right next to the door  in order to avoid having to talk any more than absolutely necessary. W assures me that the delivery guy has probably dealt with people in much worse states. I learn firsthand about temporal relativity when the clock stays stuck at 11:15 for the next several hours.

    [Much Later]

    We go outside. It's snowing and I'm staring dumbstruck at the sky watching the snowflakes streak downward like the slowest, tiniest shooting stars ever. I start talking a load of pretentious shit about the molecular structure of ice crystals and fractals and walk face-first into a lamppost.

    [Very Early]

    Saturday morning cartoons, I am convinced, are created primarily for people coming down and only incidentally for children.

For Beatrice

Lady of the Perfume Jar

Devouring One

Daughter of Ra

Come to us

Lead your child to the sunlit lands in the West

May She who walks in the silent places

Guide your feet to make no sound

May She who hunts in the hidden places

Bring forth prey for you to chase

May She who sleeps in the warm places

Prepare a soft bed for your comfort

May She who sees in the dark places

Light the shadows as you pass into her lands

Let the sistrum ring for you

Let incense make the air sweet

Lady of Bubastis accept these offerings

Take your daughter home

Hamster Brain

    Didn't go to bed until 2 AM this morning, so right now my brain's doing that thing where it pinballs between an increasingly crowded field of really bad ideas and worst-case scenarios. So not much chance of productive writing or indeed productive anything really.

Summer 1991 (In Search of Lost Time)

    I'm 19. It's my first co-op work term, in Ottawa. Because I've never lived anywhere else and because it's close to downtown and reasonably cheap, I move into the YWCA. It's a lot like how I imagine living in a dorm would have been if I'd not ended up going to university in Calgary and living at home. My parents, overprotective even when I'm at home, insist I call every night. I tell them about my job (revising pamphlets for Health & Welfare Canada), the city (lots of museums and galleries, especially near Parliament Hill), and assure them that I'm taking my medications, that I have enough money, that I'm having a good time. I don't tell them that I spend most of my free time when I'm not at work or sleeping riding around on random OC Transpo buses deliberately getting lost; that I'm subsisting on noodle packets, fruit, cereal, peanut butter straight from the jar, and coffee because most of my kitchen stuff got nicked and I can't be arsed to cook anyway. I don't tell them that, alone, unchaperoned, and with no friends  here yet, I've never felt so deliriously, incredibly *alive*.

    After about 3 weeks, I've got a pretty good idea of where everything I want to see is, how long it'll take to get there, and that I *really* fucking hate the Y.  It's not the communal kitchen or bathroom facilities that bother me so much as the fact that I've already decided that I'm going to be spending all my time near the Byward Market, and also the punk girl in the adjacent room keeps bringing her boyfriend round for noisy, enthusiastic sex on work nights and I do actually need to sleep for at least 6 hours a night.  So I start looking for a new place, and find what appears to be a walk-in closet in a shared house 5 minutes from the Rideau Street bus mall for $250 a month.  The other girls in the house are tolerable, the landlady only shows up to collect the rent, and I don't really intend to spend much time there anyway, so it suits me fine.  

I start experimenting with becoming someone else.

Goodbye Hobbes

I have a problem letting things go.  Anyone who knows me knows this.  I've kept cars, relationships, and computers out of sentiment long past when they were actually worth the expense / effort / software jury-rigging required to maintain them.

I am trying to let my cat go.  He is 18 years old.  His eyes are clouded with cataracts, his gait is stiff in the mornings, and he's diabetic.  He also has what the vet believes is a tumour on his head, just above his right eye.  It's this last thing that might be the thing that makes me give him up.  Because although he can still jump up onto the bed with me at night, and his appetite is healthy, and he still enjoys lying in sunny patches around the house… 

There is a point - I've seen it in other animals, just before they died or were put down - where the spark goes out in the eyes, and they move as if they were only looking for the perfect spot to lie down and not move again.  And when someone asked me whether it wouldn't be kinder to have him put down… no. Because he's not at that point yet.  But if it's cancer, then that changes things, because I don't want to stand aside deluding myself that he's fine as it consumes bone and tissue and nerves.  I want to say goodbye before he starts to look at me in reproach because I won't let him die.

But really, I want my boy back in my arms for one more day / week / month so that my love will travel with him on the final journey into night.