you can scoop out my brain

I'm going to go home soon. Home to Toronto, I mean.

This trip to the homeland has been horrifically, tamely painful. I guess what I mean is that I didn't cry, but I did shake a tonne, sitting alone at a table in the Roastery with my back to the biggest heartbreak of my life. I had a short conversation of polite, bitten-off sentences punctuated by a terse goodbye.

Oh and then I wrote a fucking ridiculous pseudo-cryptic paragraph about (above).

I was going to say "I don't just think about the gradients and shades and mechanics of feelings", but that actually is all I do. And I'm not even good at it!

My beautiful friends opened their arms and let me run into them. Thanks guys. Seeing these people really scared me, because I love them so much and I kind of forgot that I did until I laid eyes on them. Until we were halfway through talking about how much the students' union sucked and even though it was a totally mundane conversation I wanted to burst into tears and hug them. Until I got home, nose frostbitten and jeans frozen from cold and understood that I had just seen them for the last time in months (maybe longer).

Maybe best of all, I made a new friend. A beautiful girl who makes beautiful things and is vulnerable in the same way I am. A girl who, last night, snuck a camera into my face, the flash blinding me in an unsuspecting expression, then threw her head back and laughed maniacally. She is six years older than me and that partially makes me sad, because it is going to take me six years, probably, to get wise(r).

I will be back in four days and I will need familiar faces and potlucks and lots of hand-holding to make me feel sane and whole, okay?

but there's no way we can relive our youthful past

Maybe I should save this for the zine, but there's something that's been hounding me for awhile, and I want to write about it now.

My sister said, "I think there's a certain degree of permanency we expect from love, whether we're conscious of it or not."

I thought about an unerasable memory: kissing on a creaky futon and seeing the boy's eyes trace my unclothed skin. "Please," I whispered, "Don't," turning his chin up with a hand. He laughed, not a mean laugh, a laugh that was bewildered and sweet and said my name in the gentlest voice I have ever heard say my name.

I thought about this, and then thought: We're Not Friends. Not in a mad way, a vengeful way...not in any way except a profound and sad puzzlement. Something that at once seemed so big is now so gone.

what is the light

I feel more and more tired every day, which likely has something to do with goodbye parties and wine and mimosas and sleepovers. I just have to get through this weekend moderately alive. Come on team come on.
Vanessa and I saw Wilco and Neil Young, and it was awesome. Wilco didn't rock nearly as much as I expected them to, but they did play "Company in my Back" and "I'm the Man Who Loves You", which was really good enough. Neil rocked out, but not in an embarrassing Mick Jagger (i.e. wizened strutting peacock) kind of way. Just really pure, as cheesy and idealistic as that sounds.
I got a cellphone. Or rather, Vanessa is moving, so I'm taking over hers for nine months. It takes me half an hour to send a text message. My ringtone is the Star Wars themesong. Badass.
Lately I've been listening to the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin and it's perfect for the weather/time/etc.
I am pretty happy and I don't have trouble sleeping much anymore.

right this way to the museum of love

Today I sang "Alison" by Elvis Costello. With relatively little irony.
ALISON, I miss you. Also, I heard you let that little friend of mine take off your party dress.

Snerk snerk snerk.

In excellent news, my work contract has been renewed, so I don't have to face employment-related anxiety over winter break. I'm taking two weeks to go visit my parents and friends.

My drawings have been bad lately. The shoulders. Always the shoulders, where the shoulders really connect to the arms. I never feel as if I got it quite right...like I've somehow just lied and cheated my way to making it look alright when it does turn out.

Everything I've written and thought has been fragmented, too.

But in general, things are good. I have security (for now) in my job. I have a favourite Vietnamese restaurant (with two things I can actually eat on the menu). The zine I contributed to is for sale in actual comicbook stores in Toronto (two of my favourites!). And of course, my friends are wonderful as always.

Sorry that I use parentheses so much.