Filling in the gaps

Springtime falls, summer calls, you slip and slide until you hit December.
Believe my eyes, they'll bleed you dry. If I was an ingenious, I'd lose my temper.

Even though my shoes were muddy I decided to keep on walking and found myself exactly where I was meant to be. I kept thinking about the way cicadias disguise themselves as machine whirrs, much like those in my head. And I could think of anything after that, except for the billowing, puffy white clouds and how I had so much ahead of me. And then I was home and back to the colours and the rotting beer and the alone. Nothing here is empty, but we are light as air.

I decided then, that silence would be my cue to take off my shoes, all covered in dirt, and smoke away the pain in my back and the noise of the cars outside the window so I did. And it’s been hours now since I last thought I was late or had forgotten what I was supposed to remember and writing lists of things I was supposed to do. It feels like it’s been hours since the rest of my life and that hours are before me. I feel surrounded by time that will always be out of reach.

I guess the long and short of it is that I’m just a small person trying to feel tall. I want to touch the top of this house and be like one of those pidgeons without a home, or any past and certainly no future except gluttony and ambivilance and just fly away. One ugly wing stroke after another.

And now, the popcorn.

Excerpt: The Little Prince

It was then that the fox appeared.
“Good morning” said the fox.
“Good morning” the little prince responded politely although when
he turned around he saw nothing.
“I am right here” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”
“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very
pretty to look at.”
“I am a fox”, the fox said.
“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince, “I am so
unhappy.”
“I cannot play with you,” the fox said, “I am not tamed.”
“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince. But after some
thought, he added: “what does that mean–’tame’?”
“You do not live here,” said the fox,
“What is it you are looking for?”
“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that
mean—tame?”
“Men,”said the fox, “they have guns, and they hunt. It is very
disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only
interests. Are you looking for chickens?”
“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What
does that mean–tame?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to
establish ties.”
“To establish ties?”
“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more
than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little
boys. And I have no need of you.
And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more
than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me,
then we shall need each other.
To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be
unique in all the world. . .”
“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There
is a flower. . .I think she has tamed me. . .”
“It is possible,” said the fox. “On earth one sees all sorts of
things.”
“Oh but this is not on the earth!” said the little prince.
The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious. “On another planet?”
“Yes”
“Are there hunters on that planet?”
“No”
“Ah that’s interesting! Are there chickens?”
“No”
“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox. But he came back to his
idea. “My life is very monotonous,” he said. “I hunt chickens; men
hunt me. All chickens are just alike, and all the men are just
alike. And in consequence, I am a little bored.
But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my
life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from
all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the
ground. Yours will call me, like music out of my burrow. And then
look: You see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread.
Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to
me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold.
Think how wonderful that will be
when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring
me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind
in the wheat. . .”
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. “Please—
tame me!” he said.
“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have
not much time.
I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”
“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox.
“Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all
ready made at the shops.
But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so
men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me. . .”
“What must I do, to tame you? asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. First you will sit
down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass. I shall
look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing.
Words are the source of misunderstandings.
But you will sit a little closer to me, every day…”
The next day the little prince came back.
“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said
the fox.
“If for example, you came at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at
three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and
happier as the hour advances.
At four o’clock, I shall be worrying and jumping about. I shall
show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall
never know at what hour my heart is ready to greet you. . .One must
observe the proper rites. . .”
“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.
“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “they
are what make one day different from other days, one hour different
from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters.
Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a
wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards.
But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like
every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his
departure drew near–
“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”
“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished
you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you. . .”
“Yes that is so”, said the fox.
“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.
“Yes that is so” said the fox.
“Then it has done you no good at all!”
“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the
wheat fields.”
And then he added: “go and look again at the roses. You will
understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come
back to say goodbye to me,
and I will make you a present of a secret.”
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. “You
are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No
one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox
when I first knew him. He was only a fox
like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made a friend, and
now he is unique in all the world.”
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could
not die for you.
To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked
just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone
she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses:
because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have
put under the glass globe; because it is for her that I have killed
the caterpillars (except the two or three we saved to become
butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she
grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing.
Because she is MY rose.”
And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox.
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with
the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible
to the eye.”
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince
repeated,
so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your
rose so important.
“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–”said the little
prince so he would be sure to remember.
“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not
forget it.
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are
responsible for your rose. . .”
“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so
that he would be sure to remember

Entry Way Song

Well, should I admit
That my promise is counterfeit
That I’m careless and childish
And that’s all I can hope to be
And would you concede
That I think only of myself
I refuse everybody’s help
Who has been reaching out for me

Can Women Marry if they have Testicals?

Can men marry if they have ovaries?
By Faye Flam
Inquirer Staff Writer

Recent efforts to pass amendments that define marriage as a union between a “man” and a “woman” are going to run into more than just political opposition.

Scientists are contending there’s no clear definition of the gender divide.

There are at least seven definitions, but not everyone qualifies as male or female across the board, says Galdino Pranzarone, a psychologist at Roanoke College who has argued against marriage amendments on the editorial pages of the Roanoke Times.

Some people are born with a mix of male and female characteristics. The incidence of intersex births is between one in 1,000 to one in 2,500, says Pranzarone. “That’s a lot of people.”

Alice Dreger, part of the medical humanities and bioethics faculty at Northwestern University, has also written on the flaws of the “one man and one woman” equation.

You could define the sexes by their sex organs, Dreger says, but those are vulnerable to birth defects, accidents or cancer. Not to mention that some people have an organ whose size fits somewhere between a small penis and a large clitoris.

You might think you could get out a microscope and use chromosomes, defining men as having an X and a Y, women as having two X’s. It’s simple enough except some people have just a single X, or XXY, or XYY. There are XX men, XY women, and people with a “mosaic” of genetically male and female cells.

As an activist for the intersex community, Dreger often gets asked for advice and recently heard from a 19-year-old man whose medical workup revealed he had two X chromosomes and ovaries.

His situation was due to congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a hormonal disorder that often causes women to become masculinized. Once in a while it will cause a genetic female to become outwardly male. Dreger said this young man wanted to know what to tell his parents and girlfriend and whether he should have surgery to become a woman. He felt like a man and liked being a man, so she advised him to stay a man.

And as Cindy Stone learned, women can sometimes get a Y chromosome. For her, it was Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS). A faulty gene on her X chromosome makes it impossible for her body to respond to her male hormones, so though she has male genetics, she developed along a female pattern.

Stone, who teaches gender studies at Indiana University, said her genitalia look female on the outside, so she didn’t suspect anything until she failed to menstruate. When she was 17 her doctors told her she had a birth defect and would never have children.

But when she reached her 30s, she went to another doctor who had a more complete explanation. She not only had a Y chromosome, she had testicles inside her body and no ovaries or uterus.

And yet, she always wanted to be female, felt female and looked female. In some ways she’s more “feminine” than ordinary women, whose bodies make and respond to small amounts of testosterone. Stone has never had a zit, she says, and grows almost no body hair.

She says like many intersex people, she submitted to surgery she now regrets. Doctors removed her testicles, she said, after which she lost much of her sex drive. Testicles secrete some female hormones, so once hers were gone she had to go on hormone replacement.

Other intersex people got surgery at infancy before they could let anyone know whether they felt more like girls or boys, says Stone.

As for marriage reform, she wonders who her politicians think she should marry. “I have testicles and a vagina. I have an F on my birth certificate but my bloodwork says my cells are all XY.”

Twenty states have already passed constitutional amendments to restrict marriage to a union between a man and a woman, and eight more will be voting on it this November, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But Pranzarone predicts that once lawyers start representing intersex cases, these laws will fall apart.

We’re all just flying blind

I can hear the man upstairs, he’s crying out, “Fall on you knees, the end is near.” We both may need a saviour, tonight I fear that mine is the one that I left waiting far from here.

I am not feeling particularly well, I got up because I need to start doing work for my Research Methods and ended up doing everything but: I searched tabs for a new song I want to learn, emailed a lady about a psych experiment, emailed my dad, downloaded some new music, cried with Charlie on my lap for a while and then got an email back from my dad asking if everything was okay and if I needed any money. I guess for now, I’m okay but it was still nice to hear the sentiment. Somewhat hypocritical because he gave me a “talk” about how he was upset and disappointed that I had to ask my mum to buy me a cell phone when $150 isn’t a lot of money and I should technically have that much to spend. I’m not going to ask him for money because I’m sure that it’ll just end in more trouble than it’s worth but it was still nice of him to ask.

I don’t know why I’m so depressed, it’s probably the fact that my insides are spewing from my “coochie coo coo” as Christian would put it. Chad, Manny, Lauren, Spencer and I are supposed to be going to Molly’s tonight and I’m not sure if I want to. I should be showering right now, but I’m not sure that I actually want to. I should be getting ready for work now, but I’m not sure that I’m going to go. I mean, I do need to, but I just want to start doing my project for Research and ignore everyone.

I hate being forced to function. Fuck you real life! You win this time.

We move like sunlight off water

So just for heaven’s sake, I’ll try to face this. It’s just a chance you take to get a last kiss. So sexy, sexy babe you know I need some to pass the time away to get relief from all this life.

I’ve positioned myself in the room so I can see you drive up, always from the direction I don’t expect but this time I’ve got things down and my eyes open. I’m supposed to be studying, but you know how I am with that sort of things, so I just wanted to write this out before I start so I can go into it clear headed. OH THERE YOU ARE! Wait, is it you?

I THINK SO, MAYBE!

Oh well. Off the computer I go!

A climate of love and all the things in between

How can it feel so nice? Why does it feel so right? I think I’ve been somewhere special, I want to go back there.

I’m so sleepy and I wish I could rest my eyes and go back to bed for a little while longer, but it’s too bright and warm and windy. It’s actually a beautiful day, and pretty soon I’m going to go get dressed into something comfy and start studying for Cognitive Psychology on the porch. You know, even though it looks a bit tacky, having that big comfy couch out front really feels good.

I think my problem is that I don’t function when things aren’t planned out and I don’t have a schedule written for myself. So what I’m going to do tonight is write out a list of things for me to do every day. I work better with goals, and that way I’ll feel accomplished and busy. Sitting around on my computer doesn’t make me feel very good and neither does moping so I’ve got to do something other than that. I’m thinking about going to the bar tonight, but I can’t really afford it.

I’ve only got 15 dollars in my bank, and $20 from Lauren to pay off the $57 balance on my credit card for cat supplies. I’ve been working on my coverletter and maybe what I’ll do after I do a bit of reading is take a walk down to the Wyndham House and drop it off there. When I visited yesterday, they said that the House was closed, I don’t know what’s up with that. But I’ll check it out anyways, the houses along the way are beautiful.

I’m smelling cigarette smoke, so I think Paul might be out front smoking. I’m going to throw on pants and go check it out!

It’s all or nothing

Every race night is shot through with sunlight, trying to hit the big one one last time tonight for… Drunken fathers and stupid mothers and boys who can’t tell one girl from another. So she takes her pills, careful and round. One of these days she’s gonna throw the whole bottle down.

I got up a bit early to try and get some things done. Charlie still needs to get spayed and get her shots, the dishes still need to be done, floors mopped, living room picked up. I need to apply for a new job…somewhere and actually get hired… I like feeling busy but I get so lazy when I don’t have anyone here to motivate me. I just feel purposeless and insecure on my own. I feel homesick and lonely and weird. If I had the money to, I would sign up for guitar lessons or riding lessons. Jess and I briefly talked about leasing a horse together, but she’s in Brampton all the time so it just wouldn’t be feasible.

Anyways, I have to get used to it. I feel like such a baby and when I move away for co-op, I’m going to be living without roommates and can’t just get upset when I’ve been awake for an hour without anyone else.

Instead, what I’m going to do is grab my guitar and walk to the river and hang out in the sun for a while. Maybe I’ll come out feeling inspired.

Seems more like a letter

It’s under my skin but out of my hands, I’ll tear it apart but I won’t understand. I will not accept the Greatness of Man. It’s a world gone crazy, keeps woman in chains. So Free Her… So Free Her…

I don’t want to turn this into “AHH WORK! AHH WORK!” But I’ve grown to fucking hate CSI.  I’m going to print of resumes after I finish writing this so that I can go apply downtown. I’m even going to give Tim Horton’s a try. Or maybe I can take over as manager at Taco Bell (yeah, right).

Anyways, the landlord just came by for the rent without calling which makes him a stupid douchebag. I don’t have rent and nobody else is home and Nate told me last night that he’d come by in the evening. I wasn’t expecting it at all, but I told him to come back around six. I’ll have MY share of the money, but that certainly doesn’t account for the other 825 that nobody has. I’d tell him that we just don’t have it but will by Friday, but I’m too scared and frankly, it’s not my job to deal with that sort of thing. ANYWAYS, stressful.

I’m feeling kinda bummed about life because I don’t like my job and it’s not even a good job and I don’t know where I should be looking around to get something. I guess in the back of my mind I’m trying to live up to my parent’s (read: Dad’s) expectations of what I should be doing with my life. I mean, money is money, at this point I just need to make x amount of dollars to be happy and get by, but I feel like my parents will be upset with me if I get another shitty job, and then I’ll feel badly too.

Charlie’s sitting on my lap like a poon and is messing up everything I do. If I don’t pay attention to her she claws me and messes up the keyboard and if I do pay attention to her, I can’t type. What a dumb animal, she’s definitely lucky she’s cute.

I’m pretty sure that we’re going to end up going out tonight. Josh wants to break in his new apartment, Jess is going to come out for a bit, Manny wants to hang out and needs to get in contact with Josh (I’ve got a weird story to tell you about that) and Lauren and Spencer both get paid today so it works out pretty well.

Speaking of the roomies, I have no fucking CLUE where they are, I got swept at 2:00 and they still haven’t shown up. I think I dislike being alone more than I let on.

I miss the heck out of you and am really excited to see you tomorrow. I have a bunch of errands that need to be run over the next couple of days (Grocery shopping, cat food, snake food, laundry???) so hopefully you’ll drive me around a bit. I promise excellent lovings in return!

I love love love you and can’t wait to give you many hugs and more kisses than you’ll know what to do with. Call me when you get off work!

xox

Sparks on your Umberella

You’re the cutest thing that I ever did see. I really love your peaches, want to shake your tree. Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey all the time. Ooo-eee baby, I’ll sure show you a good time.

I think that my nerves are slowly (and by slowly I do mean quickly) getting the better of me. I woke up at 4am suddenly remembering the names of two people I’ve been meaning to add to Facebook. As soon as I got to the living room I realized that two bad things had happened:

1. I had closed my computer when I should have left it open to let songs download.
2. Spencer had unplugged the internet so he could use it for himself.

All in all, that means that the music that I’m compulsively downloading for the party was not downloading on our ultralite (ultraslow!) internet. I dicked around for a while and tried to get the wireless to cooperate, but of course it wouldn’t, so I went back to bed and fondled the kitten for a while before I started to feel sick. Now it’s quarter past 5 in the morning, I’ve slept for maybe 3 hours, I’ll be up all night with the party tonight and I just want to puke puke puke.

I’ve been calming my nerves by reading wall-to-wall posts between people on Facebook. Keeping the good Chi going. I’ve also been rehearsing the list of things I need to still buy. This paycheque had better be great or else I’m fucked.

After I pay off the massive Visa bill (paying for a Keg on a credit card is a stupid idea ladies and gents), I’ve still got to keep at least $90 aside for a halfie, I need to buy more at least a 26er of vodka for punch, juice, chips and stuff, I need to find a makeshift punchbowl or borrow one from Erik, and then I need to buy a sweet hippie outfit.

All in all, I’m going to be broke as heck! On top of that I’m fucking starving. Not in the cliche African way, but enough to be uncomfortable. In the future I will learn that sacrificing food for booze is not a good substitute, and I will also learn that putting of cooking and grocery shopping only leads to stomach wrenching agony. Literally.

Good lord, party time is commencing in T-15 hours. Pray, heathens, pray!