internal reality

I would totally write more things but I’ve been busy looking for real life from the comfort of my bed. I don’t know whether many of you have attempted this but it’s quite difficult, let me tell you. Especially when you head is wrapped in pages from Madame Bovary, thus ensuring that your eyes are closed to the little inconsistencies in the storyline of your daily life, and you only wear comfy clothes while buying bags and bags full of clothes to be worn outside the home. 

What I’m trying to say here is that I’m having a hard time finding reasons to go outside and wear clothes. I’ve reverted into primordial status and fantasy. Give me a club and have me act out “Ugga ugga” and we should be good to go.

I’ve been battling this awful sore throat for much too long – more than a week at this point – and it is really starting to drag me down to the dumpster. Every day I feel like I’m getting better only to wake up the next morning to realize that the brain matter I had so steadfastly worked to increase over my meagre 20 years has disintegrated into mucus, and fills my head whole. Also, I’m probably addicted to the internet and my money is slowly oozing out of my bank account.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to finally finish Dawson’s Creek, thus realizing my alter-persona’s happiness (Joey ends up with Pacey, thank the good people who wrote the damn show already). I’ve also come to see that I identify with nerdy, albeit witty, white chicks in my tv shows. They are usually brunette.

Cases in point:

Jessica Stroup: 90210

Katie Holmes: Dawson's Creek

Alexis Bledel: Gilmore Girls

Clearly, I have issue. Anyone planning on being a psychologist when they grow up, but are still in undergrad and therefore doling out free psychiatric advise from the safety of their dorm room? Also, notice that I used their real names instead of their character names in the captions. Maybe I’m just in love with all of them. They’re just all so beautiful and endearing, guys!

I need to go do something with my life now, think about birthday presents. Orrrr I could study for my American Literature exam, which is on Tuesday.

The choices, the choices.

A

PS. I so promise to write something of substance soon. Just give me till Tuesday to melt my brain matter.

I would apologize but I’m too brain-dead

Haaaaaay guys! That word doesn’t mean what you think it means. IT HAS DOUBLE-MEANING.

Okay, I don’t want to be stupid. To be honest, that’s why I don’t want to write a post right now. So this is me writing a post to tell you that I’m not going to be writing a post because my brain’s going on hiatus from watching too many episodes of Sister Wives/ watching Dawson’s Creek/ playing Sims 3 writing essays and being studious.

I literally woke up at 11 am this morning and expected to get to work only, oh, 9 hours later to push through (sounds like giving birth, doesn’t it?) and finish my facking essays. Alas, kittens puking on youtube and weird polygamous sects… they both have strange aspects of them that make it hard to look away. And it’s not even that my essay is boring in any form (feminism! HOO-RA), it’s just that it is an essay and oh dear strange man up in the sky, do I – more than I ever have in the history of education or, ok, last year around April – ever just want to sit on my couch, make my Sims “Woohoo!” a million times and recreate the strange polygamy happening in Sister Wives. And maybe sometimes cheat so I can build them McMansions and pretend they’re on Cribs.

I know that sounds weird, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.

Arina wishes you all studious-minded brains luck with exams and essays and peaces out.

A

P.S. “What’s My Age Again?” just started playing and I AM TOTALLY ROCKING OUT RIGHT NOW.

P.P.S. There’s 15 cm of SNOW tomorrow? At the end of March. Typical, Canada, typical.

Hello from April 14th, 2010

Well, it’s that time again, isn’t it?  The end of contractions, underlined and/or italicized book names and books in the dark crevices under your bed, collecting dust and guilt like snowflakes from your soul.  Well, not the book part, but definitely no more underlining. I hate that stuff. Looks like someone’s trying to very ostentatiously make you look important.  Look, I am important.

I have finished my last essay of 2nd year! And I only have one more exam to go until the absolute end of my 2nd year of university.  I guess I lied about italics.  I really like italicizing everything. I also really like the end of a school year. My grandfather thinks I should call school, “university”… he gets confused about my age when I call it school.  Speaking of age: 10 days till 20!

While I’m not absolutely positive about my grade in my “natural science” course, stupidly named “Understanding Colour,”  I am happy that I’m done, and that I really, really hopefully passed.  Really x 20.

I mean, I spent all day (12-8) studying yesterday, and yet when  I looked at some of the questions today I wondered whether I was even studying the right subject (turns out, I was).  The way I study tends to be pretty generalized though, especially if I’ve left it to such a late date as the day before the exam.  My problem was that I didn’t know some of the specifics of the theories.  But whatever, who cares how calico cats get their colour, or how the eyes of cephalopods work? Nobody. That’s who.  They just put that shit on there so that you feel like you’re a walking interpretation of the Discovery Channel.  Will it help you get a job? No, and more importantly, will it help me get a job? Absolutely not.  Definitely not in the restaurant biz, anyway.

It’s too bad I didn’t apply to camp this year, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to do half day camp along with a few nights per week serving.  But, on the other hand maybe I should appreciate the space and sky I might accumulate this summer.  It will be nice to have time to myself.  Maybe I will get acquainted with my birthday present (I am so excited for it!) (“it” being Canon Rebel xsi), and just.. for one of the last times in my young life have a relatively relaxed summer.

It’s nice that I can afford to do that, since I know many others pretty much have to take up any full-time job they get offered.  But I’m also doing a bit of writing in the summer, getting some credentials and all, so that will be helpful.  And not a complete waste of warm weather, beautiful sunshine, relaxation and happiness.

However, as I have to wait a good long 2 and a half more hours for my club meeting to begin,I’m going to go and get myself a tea and divest some time to writing, which I haven’t done in OMGso long.  Yes. That is what I’m going to do. And I am going to love it.  As will you, masses who have suffered from my inability to post poetry or anything creative lately because I’ve been completely brain-dead. As will you.

Carry on with your fantastic Wednesdays!

-Arina

sea monsters, exams, and fake kittens?

I just woke up, and since I’m still in that foggy “my life isn’t the same as it was when I went to bed” mood, I thought I should write them (my dreams) down.

Well, clearly, since it’s exam season, I started off in a tiny little white room trying to write 3 exams.  For some reason, the guy in the room in front of me SABOTAGED my papers, ie. gave me the wrong ones.  So when I went outside to go track down my prof (who was my hunky grade 12 history teacher?) he said that nothing could be done because I had left my room and it wasn’t fair to all the other students.  I kept protesting that I didn’t understand why it wasn’t fair and HERE’s where it gets interesting.  A giant Asian sort of worm-dragon-slimy-giant blue thing TORE through the normal exam hall (as opposed to the retard solitary room I was apparently in), breathing ice on everyone and tearing the building down.  Actually, it was just a room.  I didn’t get a sense of what the building looked like.

Anyway, this beast was followed by a big worm-dragon-slimy-giant RED thing that breathed FIRE.  Together they stopped at the exit of the exam hall and kept freezing the door by breathing on it… at this point I’m not sure whether I was on their side or not but I was definitely on their side of the door.  I’m pretty sure they were good guys, with their destruction of the exam and all.

So, we go down the hallway as though we’re running away from something, slipping and sliding towards life or death (except I don’t recall anything but my dread of failing out of university=life chasing us).  We end up on a giant semi-circle cove.  On the right side there is a Greek castle built around the rocks, and on the left nothing but the cliff face.  The 2 monsters sit below the castle where there is a walkway, and then MILLIONS OF OTHER CREATURES POP UP FROM THE SEA AND SIT AROUND THE cove.  They range from small to big, queerly useful to absolutely frightening.  They group together by species, but there’s one that keeps on picking on everyone, and they get called out by Big Blue Monster and start fighting in the water in front of everyone.  It feels like bullfights in Spain, or Gladiator – everyone is cheering, except I’m clearly in outer space, or have completely lost my mind.

At this point I drearily open my eyes to the glaring sunlight streaming on my head in my room to switch to the other side of my pillow.  I remind myself again to go get blinds so I can sleep in peace.  I am not pleased, and my stomach is still doing little gurglings of not-hunger.  Why, stomach?

I drift off into a haze.  I’m in a long hallway, much like the one we ran off down from the exam, except this time I walk into a sitting room of a doctor’s office.  There is a tiny little kitten on a leash and it looks really sad, and sick, so I pick up the leash and when I get frustrated of sitting in the waiting room I walk downstairs to the vet (clearly).  Halfway down the stairs I notice that I’m dragging along a TOY KITTEN. Why I thought this was a REAL BREATHING CAT I don’t know.  It is a toy.  And I look insane, although after the exam I haven’t encountered any other human beings in my dream.

Analysis: I am absolutely, without a doubt, as right as a republican, almost certified, BONKERS. I have gone crazy.  Or I need to not eat fish when I have the stomach flu-ish-like symptoms.  Fish really is not happy to be in me and clearly I have nightmares about giant transformer-like fish, which means well, I’m not happy about fish being in me, or around me, or wanting to kill me, you know.

There was lots of emotions yesterday, after I stopped writing my craptastic essay.  I will write more on that later.  Or not.  This should suffice for my readers until then.  SERIOUSLY.  The dreams I have sometimes.  Did you guys hear about the one where My friends and I were all skating in a barn and then turned into TRANSFORMERS (before the movie was even out) and then we went CAROLING in October on a Main Street in my town, only to come to the last house (which is clearly a shoe store, in reality) and have dinner with the grandparents that live in Russia?  Yeah. Well, another story, another time.  Currently, I need to go take care of my aching belly.   Poor baby.  Giving me bad dreams.

-Arina

PS. Now my life feels a little bit more normal, after I’ve told you all that.  But not much.

i didn’t feel like coming, but i also kinda felt like crying

If there is one thing I am happy about at this current moment, it is the music of Regina Spektor.  And jazz, especially the good cheesy stuff they always play on 91.1 Jazz fm in December.  It’s so much better than the holiday soundtracks in the stores at the mall. Oh god.  Those things feel like death rats burrowing into the depths of all of my happy emotions.

Speaking of rats… I have never really been a blog-follower so to say because I have a tendency to stay away from large amounts of variety if I can help it, because it scares me to even begin filtering through shit. Examples: interesting new music (as opposed to the radio), department stores like Costco, blogs, cool internet-like stuff, pencil crayons.  I’ve actually been known to have a great idea for a drawing and because I had so many things out in front of me I got all frazzled and just went to go do something else. I feel this way with books sometimes too, which is why I LOVE that my program at university makes it easier for me to read stuff (ie. classics?).  I guess it’s a fear of tackling the unknown – which is why I love support services so much, and specialized classes and stuff, because they open the door to so many resources that just make it easier.

ANYWAY, speaking of segues.  I came across a blog called F U, PENGUIN which I thought was kind of odd at first because, really, who hates penguins.  However, it is so incredibly witty and funny that every time I read a post (I’ve been backtracking because there hasn’t been anything new for the two days that I’ve been following it haha) I contort my face into some sort of thing that I’m sure my boyfriend would dump me for if ever he saw it.  Also, I laugh.

Anyway, what I was thinking is that I need to start writing some short stories.  I need some like… oomph back in my confidence.  Maybe I’m not the greatest writer yet, maybe I will never be.  But this whole competition thing that I have in me really needs to gets squelched.  Is that a word?  That’s not the point.  The POINT is that a week ago my I was riding in the car with my boyfriend and I just started talking.  Sometimes the things that come out of my mouth even make sense, although very often it just resembles whining and some sort of passive-aggressive grudges from my childhood that I am transferring to the people currently in my life.

ANYWAY, I started talking about literature and writing in general, because I’ve just… I feel like I’m in a state of constant disapproval of my writing.  There’s always someone out there that’s more entrepreneurial, smarter, wittier, better with people, better public speaker, better contest winner, ETC.  And instead of feeling encouragement for them and being happy that the field of literature is improving, I feel jealous.  I don’t know if this is just me, or everyone in general, although I’ve heard whispers that everyone feels this respectively in their fields.  The point that my boyfriend brought up, which was interesting because it was intertwined with his minister (pious and all), and I generally hate things in life tied in with religion and given in the form of life lessons from Jesus (a topic I will cover another time).  Despite this prejudice of mine, I heard him out and what I got from it was that I should fuck everyone else, fuck getting published, noticed, etc.  My main goal should be writing. Always. Never publicity.  Never being better than someone else.  Because that will not help me in the future.  What will help me in the future as a writer is improving my writing, and writing all of the time.  Because if I want to be a writer I should focus on my writing, not on the extravagances and extracurricular activities that come to other artists/writers (ie. drinking excessively).   I should improve what I love, not care about what comes from it.  Because I don’t really do it for that anyway – I guess I just want people to read my work.

So that was my dilemma – jealousy.  It still is, and I don’t want to deal with it because I know I am better than this. I am a better person.  So I am going to try to follow his advice and focus on my writing.  And my life in general, I guess.  But hey, THAT was pretty depressing, I’ve just been meaning to get it off my chest for a while, so I thought it was a good time, since I needed to procrastinate a little bit studying for my first exam tomorrow.

The funny part is that I can easily write a 1000 words on here in less than half an hour, but when it comes to writing an essay of 600 words it can take me DAYS on end worth of procrastination to get something down on paper.  How funny life is.

Like I said though, Regina Spektor is like a story in a song.  Like for example, Scarecrow and Fungus, (“he’s got enough money to buy a new father!”) the song I’m listening to right now.  Or even my FAVOURITE song of hers – Consequence of Sounds, which at one point in my life I copied the entire lyrics of into my journal.  Adoration, how obsessive you are.  ALSO, don’t you LOVE her red curly hair?  The sexual favours I would hand out had I that hair.  (A romantic favourite of mine from her is called Us, a la “they’ll name a city after us, and later say it’s all our fault..”)  Now, I realize that she has a whole new CD out, but I just can’t tear myself away from her old songs.  Just freaking precious.  However, Laughing With is also pretty interesting.  All of her songs have some sort of sadness in them, despite sometimes being set to cheery, beautiful music.  I really do like this song though.  Maybe I just haven’t had time to listen to her new album yet, which is why I say I love her old stuff.  Either way, I just love her.

That’s all I got for today, time to go study or be useful in one way or another.

Ciao. Arina.

PS. Today was my youtube morning for some reason or other, but either way I stumbled upon Craig Ferguson as host of The Late Late Show and oh my god I love those fucking Scottish bastards.  I would just make love to their wit all day long.