Love – Page 12 – Rant and Roll

She creates. She is a creator of worlds.

One of my best friends in the entire world just published her first book.

It’s called Pedal.

Because it is brilliant.

Today I sat down and read it in one sitting.

By the time I got to the last ten pages my heart was racing, and my face was flushed.

Upon turning the last page, I could no longer keep in my hot, fat tears – my heart swelling with unbridled happiness, with fierce incredulity, and overwhelming awe.

I first met Chelsea Rooney nine years ago in the fall of 2005 when were both admitted to UBC’s creative writing undergraduate program.

Right away I recognized her to be the most talented writer in our class. I’ll never forget reading her first short story in our fiction seminar. To say that I was blown away is a major understatement. I was so fascinated and moved by her writing that I read the entirety of her first workshopped story over the phone to my mother.

Her mastery of the written word left me galvanized and inspired. She made me want to produce magic of my own.

Besides (or perhaps because of) the beauty and depth of her prose, I was also enthralled with her as a person.

A couple of years my senior, she just seemed so epically cool.

I remember her showing up to class one day with one of the Styrofoam coffee cups from The Deli – a take-out eatery in the basement of the university’s student union building that offered a seemingly arbitrary cornucopia of pseudo-healthy options for the student on the run. Always one to buck the trends, my most frequent purchases at this establishment were hot chocolate and giant chocolate chip cookies.

I had just assumed that she too (along with everyone else in the world) would be drinking Deli hot chocolate. When she laughed gently and corrected me, stating that that she was, in fact, drinking coffee, I quaked.

Of course she would be drinking coffee. She was way too cool to drink hot chocolate.

She also wore long maxi skirts, and mid-drift baring tank tops, and eschewed bras, and make-up, and every time I looked at her I just thought, “I want to be just like her.”

While friends, we never really formally cemented our friendship until we both stayed on at UBC after completing our undergraduate degrees. She, as an MFA candidate in the writing program, and myself as a political science MA.

We’d eat nachos and drink diet coke every Wednesday afternoon at the campus’ newly erected, and over-priced Irish bar.

We would sit in a corner table and laugh and laugh until our stomachs felt they might rip in two.

Five years on, we still do this.

Both laugh and eat nachos.

Only now we walk more.

And I drink coffee.

If I could tell you one thing (other than to purchase her book) it is that Chelsea has the most beautifully expressive eyes.

They reflect and refract the infinite wisdom and wonder that shape a magnificent human being.

I often find myself getting lost in their splendour, these wise, limpid pools of possibility.

And wonder what story will surface next.

Don’t let me turn to sand and blow away

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.

A certain place and time

It’s so crazy to sit down and think about all of the “I was there when…” moments of your life.

In the twenty-nine years that I’ve inhabited this planet, I’ve lived through a couple of these.

For instance, I (obviously) will never forget where I was on 9/11. I woke up to my regular morning DJs talking about the fact that a “small, commuter jet” had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.

I had just entered the kitchen when the second plane hit the second building.

I won’t ever forget the morning of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011, the Thai tsunami of 2004, or the Boston bombing attacks of 2013.

I remember Donovan Bailey winning the 100 meter track finals of 1996 like it was yesterday.

I can close my eyes and re-live the relief, shock, and unbearable happiness that surged throughout my tension-wracked body when Sidney Crosby scored the Olympic game-winning goal in 2010.

I (oh so strangely) remember when Kim Campbell beat Jean Charest for the Progressive Conservative Leadership in 1993. I was eight years old, and had stayed up the entire night watching the conclusion of the convention (because obviously I didn’t have parents and Canadian CSPAN was the next best thing.)

I will always recall the intense flood of incredulity and glee when I found out I had been accepted into the UBC creative writing program, or when I was shortlisted for a Rhodes scholarship.

I treasure the heart-bursting joy from every job proposition I’ve ever accepted over the phone.

I remember my first kisses like they were yesterday.

For some very strange reason I remember exactly where I was when I found out that Heath Ledger had passed away. I was in the basement of the UBC student union building, checking my email on one of their truly awful PCs.

These contraptions were held together by nothing more than food crumbs, pizza grease, coffee stains, and sheer will power.

I was using a Yahoo email address back then, and when I signed out I was re-directed back to the site’s landing page. There was his face, a snap of his pre-Batman life, framed by the years of his birth and death.

I recall feeling awkward by just how saddened I was to read this news.

I vividly remember the morning that the United States invaded Iraq. It was the spring of grade twelve and I struggled to make sense of the massive print, splayed across the cover of the Globe and Mail. I can recall thinking to myself that this decision seemed so completely arbitrary and out of the blue. Where in the heck had Iraq – IRAQ? – come from? Weren’t we just talking about Afghanistan?

There are of course moments I wish I didn’t remember: emails sent; words said; secrets betrayed.

These are few, but they cut. Sometimes I’ll be out for a run, and the memory of these moments will hit with such strength that I feel as though all of the breath has been knocked from my body.

Oddly enough, one of my most vivid “world changing” moments is the night that Princess Diana died.

The detail in which I remember this evening is staggering.

August 31. 1997. Sunday night.

Patricia Beckerman was sleeping over. Jessi’s friend Emily was also staying the night.

We’d spent the entire afternoon swimming in our neighbour’s pool. Lois didn’t ever use her backyard, so she loved having us and our friends over for the day. My hands felt like two giant prunes, and I couldn’t stop brushing my fingers tips across my cheeks and nose.

Everything smelled of sunshine and sunscreen.

We’d eaten pizza for super, and my mum even allowed us to drink pop with our ice cream.

We were just about to put on a movie (Anastasia!), but we had to change the TV to channel three in order to press play.

Channel three was CBC, and the news was on.

This was strange as it was not yet ten o’clock. The woman at the news desk was looking so grim. Peter Mansbridge then entered the shot, and he looked like he’d just burst into the studio and clamoured into the nearest suit.

But really, he seemed sad more than anything else.

And then we heard the words.

“Princess Diana has died tonight in Paris.”

And for some reason this news absolutely destroyed me. I didn’t think twice about Diana prior to her passing, but holy crap did the ensuing weeks (and omnipresent media coverage – how apt!) ever throw my pre-pubescent self for a loop.

I bought every Newsweek magazine, cried fat salty tears, and stayed up the entire night through watching her funeral procession.

I was sure I would marry William and help mend his broken, broken heart (while mending mine too in the process.)

To this day it still baffles me why I had the reaction that I did.

But there are some things you just can’t explain.

There are some things you just have to say, “I was there when.”

She’s just so mouthy

Part 1.

I like lipstick.

A lot.

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.

No one could do this even if they try.

Which is why I do.

Which is why I really, really try.

You want fries with that?

Sometimes when I am riding skytrain into work, and I am feeling particularly Dostoevskian, I am apt to conclude that life is just one ceaseless and ever-growing French fry craving.

This is grim.

(And McDostoevskian.)

But it is also completely symptomatic of what it’s like to be navigating the throes of my personal, and very inconsistent existential life crisis.

One day I’m just fine.

And the next, I’m expecting Inspector Porfiry Petrovich to board the train at Joyce-Collingwood and arrest me in front of all the other semi-dazed travellers, proclaiming me to be a student and murderer in equal succession.

(I think some people just call this melodramatic malaise “being in their late twenties.”)

Plus my arrest would probably be for fare evasion.

Or maybe, anti-social behaviour.

I’m no ax-murderer.

To combat this insanity (inanity?) I have been listening to a lot of ridiculously fantastic music.

I know I just wrote a post about movies that highlighted a few of the different films that have impacted my life, but I’ve really been thinking quite a bit of late about all the things that up until this point, have made me, well, “me.”

During the summer between first and second year of my undergrad, I lived in Halifax and hung out quite a bit with a fabulous lass named Kathleen.

Kathleen had a touch of the nihilism in her (as are wont all twenty year-old self-styled academics), but she was also greatly distressed by the thought of all of the books she would never read, all of the movies she would never watch, and all of the songs that she would forget about and never hear again.

So in an effort to ensure she would remember as many of these things as possible, she would carry about a small notebook and write the names of anything and everything artistic that she would encounter throughout her daily meanderings.

Her scribblings were to her, a sort of literary, musical, and cinematic catch-all.

Of late, I too have begun to employ this system.

For the past few months, I haven’t been able to leave the house without the small pink notebook that is now chock-a-block of semi-flushed out blog post ideas, daily to-do lists, and half-cocked philosophical musings.

I just hope that nobody murders me and this is the first thing that CTV finds on my rapidly cooling body.

Nobody wants to be remembered by their inability to remember to purchase both dish detergent AND QTips.

(Why can’t I remember QTips!?)

But it’s also been super helpful.

Because sometimes inspiration strikes, or you hear a tune so brilliant that it’s everything you can do not to bust a move right then and there in front of Save-on-Food’s overpriced and under-stocked egg selection, or you see a character so desperate and strange that you can only assume that they fell out of a wormhole connecting our universe with whatever bizarro world exists out past the recesses of our equally wacky solar system.

You know.

The usual.

But to get back to the music of which I earlier wrote – there is so much stuff that I wish to share with you all.

The first being my latest obsession: Jungle.

A modern soul collective based out of London, UK, they are so absolutely groovetastic it boggles the mind.

I’ve been listening to their songs on continuous repeat for the past two days.

Check them out:

They are coming to Vancouver on October 14^th and I cannot wait to get my epic dance on. For this night (and never this night only) I will be the dancing queen.

Young and sweet.

Next, another British band of whom I am completely enamoured: Bastille.

Every so often I like a band so much that I will break my “no music EVER whilst training” oath, and stick in ye olde earbuds as I tie up my running shoes.

I have broken this pledge many times over the past month because of this band.

Every song of their feels as though they are speaking directly to me, and by speak, I mean mailing an emotionally resonant and personally impactful treatise express-post straight into my soul.

They are SO GOOD.

Finally, new Spoon.

(For those neophytes out there, the band is just called “Spoon” not “new Spoon.” They just have released their latest EP.)

And for lack of a more poetic descriptor, it is bloody fantastic.

I don’t think this band is even capable of releasing a crap album, because everything they release is delicious.

And inspired.

So there you are.

For all of you who are also currently conquering your own existential demons (or at least riding out the “what does it all mean!?” wave), I suggest you put on your dancing shoes and break it down.

One French fry craving at a time.