Sometimes I hear a song and I am overcome by a sense of nostalgia so strong that I feel as though I might never recover.
I know this can read a little dramatic (and hyperbolic) – but it’s true.
I’ve been listening to Spoon’s new album quite a bit, and every time I get to the last track “New York Kiss”, it’s like an electric current of memories (memories of which I cannot even remember living) shooting straight from my brain to the deepest recesses of my heart.
This in turn produces two very unique and separate reactions: I am overcome by both a manic, academic urgency, and a mellow, practical satisfaction.
The competition between these dichotomies is stiff.
My first inclination is to press pause on this hyper, whirling world of ours and take stock of all of the ideas, dreams, and goals currently percolating inside the depths of my brain.
My immediate urge to write, to run, to play dress-up with every outfit hanging in my closet, to phone up every loved one (not only current but also long-lost) and tell them how much of an impact they have made on my life is only bested by my paralyzing and chest-clenching fear that I am not doing enough with my life.
I SHOULD BE DOING MORE (I say to myself.)
On the other hand, hearing these songs make me want to snuggle up and hunker down. I want slowly read through the dusty, tea-spattered pages of my life’s chronicle, feel the curled edges of each aging page and smell the faint traces of sunshine, grass, gravel, and rain that have helped make up the thoughts and words for each entry and each day.
I just want to sit and re-live. To feel. To breathe in the years and marvel at all the miraculous things I have done with my body and mind.
But most of all to feel all of the love that I have given and all the love that I have received, and allow my heart to beat just that little bit faster at the thought of all the love that has yet to be.
Every time I see a lipstick I get a little bit excited.
Every time I see a lipstick I want to buy it.
I want to open it up and smear it all over my stupid face.
I’ve got great lips, and lipstick looks AMAZING smeared over my stupid face.
I prefer a good matte finish (just get out of here with your useless, disgusting gloss-soaked wands) and I’ll never pay more than $9.99 for a tube of the stuff, but that is because I am both a cheap bastard, and because I am apt to conclude that there cannot be THAT big of a difference between my Joe Fresh collection and what’s being shipped out of the Chanel Institute.
I mean, how could you possible justify charging (least of all PAYING!) fifty dollars for a shade of red that exists in perpetuity in every drug store the wide world over?
I SEE YOU SEPHORA.
When I left my last position I was gifted with a very generous gift certificate to a downtown shopping mall and with these funds I purchased a forty dollar Tarte lip pencil. And while this product is darn fantastic and makes me lips tingle and taste of minty freshness, I would never again purchase this piece of maquillage because forty dollars is basically two to three days’ worth of groceries and I’m only ever eating that pencil if and when things get really dire.
Anyway, no matter how much or little I pay, lipstick makes me feel like an absolute super hero.
I put it on five minutes before leaving work and I am immediately transformed from Grouchy Eye Bag McGrimmeister into Kick-Ass She-Warrior McHyphenate.
Sure, maybe I was born with it, but holy hell if this shade of pink doesn’t crank it up a notch:
That’s right.
Those are your nuts in my vice grip.
ENJOY IT.
I never understanding people who say to me, “I wish I could wear lipstick like you!”
And then when I inform them that there isn’t a single thing prohibiting them from taking part in the universal fun that is lipstick, they respond with, “Oh no, I could never do that!”
And to this, I always just want to yell into their faces – WHY!?
Why in the heck would you think that, you weirdo!?
Unless born lipless (and what a tragedy to befall anyone!), everyone is 100% capable of wearing lipstick.
And I urge you, and everyone to try it.
I’ll hold your hand and everything.
But it’ll cost you fifty dollars in Chanel product.
And your nuts.
Part 2.
I don’t like Mark Messier.
In fact, Mark Messier is like the anti-lipstick.
I don’t get excited when I see him.
I don’t want to smear him all over my face.
I wouldn’t spend ANY money on him, and he doesn’t make me feel unstoppable.
And much to my chagrin, he’s EVERYWHERE.
The dude is all over Youtube like some terrifying, leather-clad social media STI.
Every time he pops up, Marc (my husband) asks, “Is this a Cialis ad?”
AND IT TOTALLY IS.
I don’t know why Mr. Messier grinds my gears to the extent that he does.
Perhaps it’s the ghost of my hard core emotional hangover from the summer of 1994 (combined with the broken heart I suffered in 2011.)
Perhaps it’s the memory of his crappy Lays potato chip ads.
Perhaps it’s because the NHL is such a ridiculous bush league, run by bums, dullards, and hacks, that any reminder of this organization and the garbage it stands for makes me want to ralph.
Basically folks, it could be a whole myriad of things.
But all I really want to say is that NO ONE IS ASKING YOU ANYTHING MARK MESSIER.
You and lip gloss can just get the heck out of here.
Part 3.
Yesterday I bought a homeless person a hot chocolate.
I try to do these things as often as I can, although it can be hard. Living my own busy, silly little life can leave me so caught up in getting from A to B (or achieving A to Z) that I don’t often see the different humanities co-existing right in front of my eyes.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t spend enough of my life with my eyes wide open. That I should be feeling more, doing more – affecting more positive change within my day to day activities.
But then I know I am being too hard on myself. That I work very hard to ensure that I am engaged and making a difference every day, both personally and professionally.
I cannot do everything for everyone, every day and all of the time.
We are approximately three days away from the beginning of the Autumnal season.
I am twenty-nine years of age.
You are whatever age you currently are.
This is where I am sitting:
Everything is both beautiful and terrible. Everything is both unadulterated brilliance and unmitigated bonkerness.
Everything just is.
Sometimes, whenever I start to get really down by all of the fuckery that seems to dominate our world’s discourse (not to mention actions!), I just really try and focus on all the amazing, beautiful, and breathtaking things and events of which I am privileged enough to both behold and partake.
And sometimes, I just think about the quiet world of my early morning, pre-work runs.
When the sky is a mottled blend of purples, pinks, greens, and blues.
When the sky is the most beautiful bruise.
I run down along the boardwalk with my heart in my throat, and my tears in my eyes. My legs feel as though they are six miles long, and my arms pump, just like my blood pumps, and everything feels right and strong.
And I know that I am flying.
Sometimes I feel silly and trite writing again and again what it feels like to run. How propelling myself forward as hard and as fast as I possibly can brings on such infinite joy.
But I can’t.
Just like running itself, I cannot stop.
I cannot swallow these words.
They are a compulsion.
They are a joy
…
Work has been a little batty of late (50+ hour weeks), spent zipping about like zipping things (zippers!!).
However, seeing as though my fellow colleagues are gentlewomen and squires of the highest order, I cannot bring myself to complain.
The fact that I am passionate beyond a thought about my job and the work that I do is, of course, another boon.
However, this is not to say that we can’t have a great laugh at our own expense, especially in the lead-up to a very large event, of which we have been working on since March.
March!
Case in point:
I, like we all, have the capacity to be a grumpy cat.
Hence, I am actually grumpy cat.
…
Remember movies?
I do, but barely.
And this leaves me feeling a little melancholy.
Because movies used to mean so much. They used to mean so much to me.
I recall the first movie that I ever saw in a theatre.
Beauty and the Beast was everything a movie should be (in my very discerning six year old mind). It was funny and scary. There was a beautiful, brilliant, strong female lead who loved to read and who wouldn’t take crap from all the ridiculous idiots who populated her “provincial town.” She, rightly, loathed Gaston, and held her own when it came to The Beast’s infantile temper tantrums.
In truth, it’s probably the only Disney princess flick I’ll ever be okay showing my future kidlets (but that’s another post for another time.)
I am fairly certain it was my nanny Suzanne who took me to the movie, and it was her gift to me on my sixth birthday. We went to the old (and now sadly demolished) Capital Six, back when Granville Street was in its full grunge-tastic glory.
Memories!
The first “grown-up” movie I ever watched in theatres was when Shona Langmuir, Patricia Beckerman (aka “The Girls”), and I went and saw The First Wives Club when we were in grade five.
Note: please let me emphasize the term “theatres” in the above sentence. My family were rather lax when it came to flicks seen by us kids, and we were viewing adult movies at a very, very early age. I remember watching the Fugitive on Easter Monday in grade two.
Nothing like collecting a bunch of chocolate eggs and then sitting down as a family to watch Harrison Ford clear his name!
Good grief.
But I digress. Holy damn did I ever dig The First Wives Club. Sure I didn’t get a lot of the jokes, and the scene where Brenda eats dinner by herself absolutely destroyed me. But it didn’t matter. It was three women who loved each other, out in the world, kicking ass and taking names.
Too this day I re-watch it at least once a year.
You don’t own me!
Looking at both this film and Beauty and the Beast would you say that there seems to be a pattern emerging as to the type of movie that really resonated with my younger self?
Oh to be that wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, newly emerging feminist!
There are so many more movies that, collectively, with the thousands of books, songs, and other miscellaneous artistic detritus that I’ve encountered and loved along the way, have helped inform who I am as a young woman today.
For instance: I LOVE Forrest Gump.
Next time you see me, ask me to quote the entire movie. I will do this for you.
I also love Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and A Fish Called Wanda, and I will always adore Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
I saw Amelie in grade eleven with my first boyfriend and spent the entire summer pretending to be her.
I adore Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy. My favourite of the three films being the darkest and most brilliant black comedy of all time, “Blanc.”
I will go to my death extolling the cinematic virtues of The Big Lebowski. For me, nothing will ever be funnier than this brilliant pieces of the Coen Brothers subconscious. I quote it all of the time and there are total parts of my and Marc’s vernacular made up solely by movie lines. I can also never look at a bowling alley the same way again.
It’s weird.
I love dramatic films as much as I do comedy, however I just am never one to really revisit these masterpieces, and as such they don’t influence my life to the degree as my favourite comedies.
And it’s not as though these two genres cannot exist simultaneously. In no uncertain terms are they are not mutually exclusive concepts.
It just takes one hell of a filmmaker to pull this off.
(Like the Coen Brothers.)
But isn’t movie watching also so much about the experience? The memory of that time spent in the theater? Where you were? Who you were with? Where you were in your life?
Probably one of my most cherished movie related memories is from the first few months of Marc’s and my courtship. Only four months into what is now an eleven year love affair, the two of us went to see Love Actually on a dark, went and very cold Vancouver November afternoon.
I had spent the night at his place and, because I was in my weird “only skirts, no pants” phase, I was wearing a pair of his cords because I didn’t have a clean pair of tights. They were absolutely huge, and I looked a bit of a sight. We had spent the morning at a community theatre on the Westside where I auditioned for a part in an upcoming play (spoiler: I didn’t get the part!), and then had bussed downtown. Arriving at the theatre (also the Capital Six!), we ran up the escalator so we wouldn’t be late for the previews.
I so wish I could properly communicate how much I felt watching that movie, sitting next to the man (the boy!) for whom I felt so, so, so strongly.
My body completely electric as I held his hand, I laughed at Bill Nighy’s amazing portrayal of Billy Mac and felt my heart break and break and break for Emma Thompson.
I just loved it.
I hate that I am even typing this, but for me, at that moment in my life, love truly was all around.
(I’m sorry!)
But it’s true.
And that’s why movies matter.
And why, despite the fact that I never go to the theatre anymore, and I only use my Netflix to watch old episodes of QI and MI5, I’ll never let them go.
Please play this song as you read this post because I am utterly obsessed and listen to it constantly and I like to pretend that as I walk about town that it’s the soundtrack to my life and we’re just at the mid-way point montage and everyone is like – WILL SHE MAKE IT?
And the answer is YES! YES SHE WILL!
Dear readers.
What adventures have you encountered of late and which hearts have grown five sizes from the lips of new kisses and which faces have been warmed from this bright sun’s wide strong rays and which eyes seem ever the brighter from a clear sky that looks to float just out of arms reach, and yet touches everything with the softest of fingertips so that we might all blush the lightest blue?
Regale us with your stories.
Because of late everything is so beautiful.
On Saturday morning I woke up at six, pulled my legs out of bed and ran seventeen kilometers. The early morning air was cool enough to keep me going, but I cannot say that the heat did not creep.
Because the heat always creeps.
Afterwards, I arrived home, showered and then hopped on my bike.
It’s been over a year since I last rode atop my noble steed. My “champagne green” beauty of a cheapskates find that I love because once I get into that saddle I forget all pretense of “taking it easy” and just GO GO GO.
Biking is funny to me because I never think of it as exercise because I am utterly committed to “looking cute” any time I do it.
I will never, ever ride a bike in running shoes.
I would rather be strung up from my (non-running shoed) toes.
And yet I will never go slow.
I am a study in contrasts.
And sillyness.
I biked to the Big Sisters BBQ and then back, a journey which totaled another twenty kilometers in the searing mid-day heat of a long and magnificent Vancouver summer day.
Once home I took a few minutes to sit.
The next day I biked from News Westminster to Kits Beach.
And then from Kits Beach back home.
This too is pretty far – about 56 kilometers.
Coming back, the sun was slowly sinking back from whence it came (Godzilla’s guest bedroom?) and the breeze kicked up and everything felt aglow with the possibility of a summer, and Sunday nights and family dinners, and young romances, and new friendships, and everything was heightened by the butterflies that fluttered about my stomach because I truly believed that anything and everything is possible and so very likely to happen.
Arriving home at nine, sweaty and salty and sand-touched and sun-kissed, I ate all of the Greek yogurt and blueberries that one famished and helmet-haired gal could manage.
I am also a master of disguise.
On Friday night we ate a lot of nachos.
On Saturday I watched Old Boy.
OH(LD) BOY.
I need to start investing in some iron clad undies because goodness knows I really don’t sufficiently gird my loins when taking a chance on more, shall we say, non-traditional cinema.
As perfectly summed up in a text message between myself and the friend with whom I watched the film:
ME: You had sex with your daughter and then you cut your tongue out?!>! O________________o
HIM: I hope no one reads my phone now.
ME: HAHAHAHAHA. Good point.
I am learning to see.
See so many things.
“Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action?” – Ray Bradbury
In light of the Seahawks’ absolute dismantling of poor Peyton Manning (and what I can only surmise to be the entire collective Coloradean consciousness), I figured post-game we all needed to bring a bit of levity to the situation.
Because, and I think we can also all agree here, that a slightly more entertaining game, and not just a blow-out of every tire on the Denver semi-truck heading to Nowheresville, would have made for a much more enjoyable three hours of football.
(And to all the glorious, gloating – totally deserved, and encouraged gloating – Seattle-ites – yes, I too am including you in that sentiment.)
Just saying.
But seriously though, what is wrong with this man?
Why does he look like this?
(Also, WHO IS HE?)
And why doesn’t he know that, in the end, the light side always, ALWAYS wins?
Second.
This quote:
“A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.” —Charles Peguy”
I have been thinking about this a lot of late..
I came across this text in the wake of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s tragic death this past week. Someone commented that, although he was not a writer, he was often reminded of Mr. Peguy’s word when confronted with Hoffman’s seamless, and yet soul-wracking transition from one character to the next.
And of this, I agree.
I cannot say that I have ever been disappointed by any of his myriad performances. Whether disgusting, or delightful, there was always an innate (and oh-so important) humanity to his characters; one that was never forgotten, nor manipulated, or abused.
But truly, for me, Hoffman will always and forever be The Big Lebowski’s Brandt, the most amazingly sycophantic suck-up to ever grace the silver screen. An absolute perfect foil to both the Dude’s lackadaisical, anti-hero, and Walter’s neo-conservative, Vietnam vet (and owner of Sobchak Securities.)
Just listen to this laugh:
I love this movie more than I can properly communicate, and although only a supporting role, Hoffman’s brilliant portrayal of the Big Lebowski’s assistant is the linchpin, of what I believe to be, the best movie I will most likely ever watch.
And I think that’s why I’m thinking about the quote – everything about the film feels as though it is the sum of months, and months of meticulous preparation, culminating in pitch-perfect performances by absolute masters of their crafts.
It is gut-wrenching in its simplicity, and perfection.
You truly can always tell when an individual, or individuals, put everything they have into their art. (I use the term “art” loosely, and define it as anything from dance, to sculpture, to ultramarathon running, to public company auditing.) It doesn’t matter the medium. Gut-wrenching transcends boundaries, or definitions.
It, as I believe as shown by the outpouring of grief over Mr. Hoffman’s death, transcends life.
Third.
For my part, I’ve been doing some light crying all evening long.
Not for any real purpose or another.
I watched this video a couple of hours ago, and all I’ve done in the interim is listen to incredibly sappy, emotionally destructive songs, and read about all the insane human rights abuses occurring at this precise moment, all around the world.
Sometimes I think the world is void of anything good.
There is no other way to describe the sensation of emptiness I feel when confronted by such ignorance and inequality.
I want to run away and hide and have Marc’s strong arms wrap around my weak little body and then we’ll just lie that way until our bones rust, and our smiles turn to stone.
…
This could, of course, never happen.
Because a.) I know how to turn off Youtube.
And b.) because I am, as some of you know, a proper LOVE WARRIOR and if nobody else is going to champion the betterment of this heaving cesspool of a planet, then I bloody well GET ON IT.
Plus my body is jacked.
JACKED.
Fourth.
I am writing a book.
This is exciting.
STAY TUNED.
Fifth.
For my birthday I did this to my hair:
I have been wanting to do something blondy-blond for a while now, but haven’t been able to muster up the appropriate level of courage to commit to the follicle colourization process with gusto.
(AKA I am a giant wimp.)
But I figured I am only twenty-nine once – I might as well do it now before the aliens arrive and I spent the next sixty-odd years of my life making origami toilet paper swans for our six-legged, intergalactic overlords.
Rant and Roll 