11.27.06 — snow day It's been raining every day for a month. Saturday afternoon, it started to snow. I forgot the cold, forgave the cloaks on still green leaves, the waxy tropic ovals without a Midwest chance. The home-from-campus bus that normally drags out sighs, claws patience, twists my spine into a hateful slump waste of time delivers a perfect thousand words out the window every couple of feet. As I walk the block and a half home from the stop, a man in short shorts, maybe his underpants, I didn't ask, hails from across the street, "Merry Christmas!" Stepping light like a foal with stick, bare legs. Two days later, the snow hasn't stopped. On top of a never-ending boil water advisory, Vancouver's got power outages crippling the university and half the city. I should be doing homework, the monster push to the end of the semester but attention turns again and again to the window. Tried to call my mom but couldn't connect her. Just want to listen to her talk and tell her about the weather. The Cities would've plowed the streets eighty times over. Here, they just marvel. For the past three hours a woman has been shoveling her driveway with the charmed smile calm of a tea ceremony, a West Coast dweller keen to claim her face-flush Canadian birthright you, hearty you! will shovel snow! and like it, with not a thing in the world would you replace it. That last sentence trips up and I like it. I'll let it. Provided I survive the two weeks left of school, I'll be home for the Holleday. December 8 or so I bus to Seattle for a couple days then fly to Minneapolis for a few more, surfing couches and hugging hard and haunting haunts and possibly pledging allegiance to the Target Corporation, certainly skip-squealing joyously down aisles of Stuff in predicable locations and twelve different kinds, choice cheap as hell and kind of disgusting but notably missed. I wanna eat at Qwang's! An effin Jimmy John's! The Jasmine Café and Wienery and Triple Rock and New Delhi. I will then make my way to Fargo, somehow, doesn't matter. Coerce my dad to help me make a late Thanksgiving dinner, tofurkey and cranberries and punkin pie. Trim a couple trees, try to Impart Life to high school brothers without sounding as out of touch as I know I am. Do some reading, do some writing, do much lazing and relaxing, maybe stab at some updated d6 content—we'll see. I've gotten bad with promising. Stay warm, stay cool, get in touch if you want to make friendship happen in real time. For those of you who have no choice... I'll see you soon.

10.24.06 — happy h-day and vote nov. 7, my ammie pally-whos I cast my absentee ballot last week. Though I'm short a look-at-me, I'm-a-good-citizen "I voted!" sticker, I did get a SECRECY ENVELOPE, which more than made up for it (even though I had to send it back). I know in the linked photo above it's hard to tell whether I'm crying or rocking out: I am in fact rocking out. (Hey, Minneapolitans, we can vote for instant runoff!) Many Halloween blessings upon you. I finally found where the darksiders dance (and do they ever, wheeewhooo!) so I know where I'll be. They wear creepy contacts and fangs here, it's so cute! I wanna bounce them on my knee. In other news, both my kidneys are throwing rocks down my tubes and I cries cries cries. I also stepped on a snail like this. :*( But there's always the kids battling pidgeons to fall back on, and you should have a backup plan, don't you see?

10.08.06 — i am the trespassenger and i ride and i ride and yes, roll the window down this cool night air is curious. I've been here a month and some. It seems about that long. So. Have I made loads of awesome new friends? Not really. Have I found the sickest clubs with the phattest beats? No. Did I dance in a park with a bunch of hippies, step over hypodermics, dodge the homeless, fight the post office, stare too long at trees and moss and ferns and waves and aerial wires and steep grades and skyscrape-condo city bright lights and not quite make it home a couple nights and accidentally buy as a birthday present regalia for the dead? Well, yeah. I've been having a lot of fun, and it has been a lot of weeeird. External collision with internal incision, a whole lotta growth with identity deconstruction—a process begun long before Vancouver but now, without familiarity to ground me, with a mind and method of its own. Not that I'm out of mine, or make-believe I don't make my decisions, following inertia's lead to wide and winding so I don't own responsibility for consequences thrown at me for being silly stupid curious rapt indifferent smirking deep. Not at all. But there has been a distinct out of < blank > experience. Crossed the border right out of mine. Choosing no choice with a gratingful smile. I got here and I cried a lot. Then I stopped. These are vague things, I realize. These are good things, you must understand. Threw on Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman and man oh man oh man, hypnosis was instantaneous, burning some incense in the noon feeling good. I like my library science program a lot. We talk about authority control and naming and censorship and social informatics, blogging and tagging and wikis and the dubyou dubyou dubyou. I made a PowerPoint about ZOMBIKEN! How long will I beat the dead zombie horse you ask? Until saying "dead zombie horse" ceases to give me joy. My department is filled with way cool, way smart people from a wide array of walks and disciplines—and I fit right in. It's comforting (and by comforting I mean awesome) to know I made the right decision not only with coming to UBC but to the future-rattling realization that I want to be a librarian when I grow up, at least for the part that's coming up. School is a tremendous amount of work and I've yet to settle into a lockstep academic study routine, but I've yet to feel overwhelmed much less doubt that I belong here. …And, slowly, Vancouver is becoming the new familiarity. Walking in my neighborhood, it is my neighborhood. Where do I live? I live on my street, and when I take the bus I own it. The needles on the sidewalk are my responsibility. The homeless I dodge reflect on me. Last night I went for a run, just like the olden days through Fargo and Minneapolis dark with headphones and a quick step. Vancouver is perpetual sweater weather cool and now increasingly with fallen leaves I smash up in the gutter full tilt. I don't ride my bike here as much as I'd like—to school is too far too early too uphill with too heavy too expensive cargo on my back. Forgoing this, I haven't exercised much otherwise, and I am starting to tell. Anxious and softening while tight where I shouldn't be. Running last night, my body forgives and tries to force promises, my head and spit filling with blood. Trees are crazy. Moss grows on trees and ferns grow on trees and trees grow on trees and the upbeat just sad. Last week I dreamed of two childhood friends lighting a field on fire one flick-dropped match stealth step at a time. It's the most vivid thing I've seen since I've been here.

..::get your lasting still::..