Love – Page 32 – Rant and Roll

I only wanna be your one life stand

Warning: excessive use of hyperbole ahead.

Also, falling rocks.

(Just kidding.)

THIS PAST SATURDAY I WENT TO THE BEST CONCERT OF MY LIFE.

And yet I feel tongue-tied trying to communicate how absolutely earth-shatteringly awesome this experience truly was.

As such, everything inside of me is screaming USE YOUR SWEARS USE THEM ALL USE ALL THE SWEARS.

But I won’t.

So it’s hard.

But the question remains – how do I get you, dear reader, to feel that same exhilaration I felt stepping into that club?

How to make you feel that same energy, coursing the length of my body?

Tingling the ends of your fingertips? The dips of your earlobes?

Tickling the backs of your knees, slipping down into the folds of your shoes?

To hear the murmur of the crowd, a beehive of anticipation?

A vibration.

How do I make you crackle and snap with the electricity of it all, the flash of the lights, and the intensely, indescribably, intoxicating sounds careening off of the stage, permeating every last crook and cranny of the sweat-slicked, pulsating room?

How do I make you dance until your blistered, blisters cry nay command you not to stop, never stop, your mouth a perma-grin, a high school smirk stained with salty secrets, and the knowledge that all of this is so good, and all of this will never be so good.

So if I cannot do this, I will just say – GO TO HOT CHIP.

Go.

…

Elsewhere in the cosmic kitchen:

Zen.

Brunch.

Weirdo.

Cat.

View.

…

Tell me where you’ve been to
Nowhere that you shouldn’t do
Tell me what you’re good for
I can tell you something too.

We get those tongues wagging

Here are two conversations M and I had this weekend:

(P.S. I am still laughing)

[Scene One: Earls restaurant, patio. Saturday night, drinks and date night]

Me: You are a very good looking man.

M: [unintelligible gibberish]

Me: [laughing]

M/Me: [both continue laughing/trying to make each other laugh by making crazy faces]

Me: I’m trying to figure out what race you would belong to in Lord of the Rings. I used to always go with human – you’re a good shoe-in for Aragorn. But you also have quite a bit of hobbit in you. And elf. And dwarf.

M: What about orc?

Me. Yes, definitely orc. And uruk-hai.

M: Goblin?

Me: [thinking] Nah. Never goblin.

M: [nodding, playing with his wedding ring. Then, thinking to himself] Preeeeecccciiiooouussss….

Me: Oh goodness, of course. I have no idea how I didn’t think of that. You definitely, definitely have some Gollum in you too.

M: Hmmm…

[pause]

Me: [pretending to be all nonchalant] So, um, what race do you think I belong to?

M: [not taking a beat] Sauron.

Me: Hahahahahahahahahaha…ohhhh noooooo….

M: Not what you were looking for?

Me: You know I wanted you to say elf.

M: I know.

Me: I KNOW I’M LITHE AND BEAUTIFUL.

M/Me: [continuous laughing]

END SCENE.

[Scene Two: Driving home from restaurant. I cannot stop taking photos of the sky – the sky which I have been yammering on about all day long.]

Me: [taking a photo] ZOMG THE SKY IS SO BEAUTIFUL.

M: I know.

Me: The sun is SO huge, and the way the clouds are clustered that way is just magical. It seriously looks like the gateway to heaven.

M: It does look like heaven.

Me: I know I’ve been talking about it all day, but I honestly can’t get over how amazingly phenomenal this is. It literally takes my breath away. Even just looking at it is making me choke up…I really feel like I’m going to cry.

M: I have a feeling your period may be on its way.

Me: Hahahahahahahahahaha. [pause] That’s true.

…

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Life in the fast lane

Yesterday I worked a thirteen hour day. Coming home, I was completely knackered.

This is what I thought about as I rode the metro back to my home:

Such a fantastagorical tale had never been known.

Such was the way of these things.

Reading a bit like a history of popular culture in the early 20th century, and a tiny bit like a teen trash comedy, the combination was meant to amuse and articulate. Perhaps, most terrifyingly of all, it was the clearest representation of the inner workings and thought processes of two individuals.

One of them had come to a realization that he was often too pessimistic for his own good; he sometimes sought humor in disappointment as some kind of weak balm.

This would have to change. And it did.

Genuine excitement should not have to be manufactured. Riding on a jetski at 60 mph – for example – really has a positive effect on this. You cannot help but feel exhilaration, your mouth open and cheeks flapping with the force of the wind as you carve your way up an arm of BC’s mightiest river.

Twisting and turning you see how far you can go before the mechanical power under you can, shuddering, hurls you into the wild, flowing water. You cannot feign emotion on such a contraption, taking those risks.

SO – how to make life more like that? How to seek out, in everything, a sudden charge of passion and fury. What triggers those flags in my mind to suddenly send me rushing headlong emotionally at something or for something. I don’t need a cause to believe in so much as I need a credible dialogue, a wild formulation, a mysterious agenda.

Just think, the first people who ever read the Principia by Newton or Galileo’s letters must have thought they were reading some Clive Cusslerian escapade of fantastic proportions… and yet we now know it to be real.

But does that make Cussler any less exciting than Newton? Or just more poorly written?

(Definitely the latter.)

Also, should belief be THE defining reason for goodness?

I don’t think the best stories are always the truest ones. I like the ones that hover at the very edge between what-might-have-been, the possible, and the barely possible.

In this space we stop our minds from only formulating those images that we can understand and see, and make things that have never been made and will never be made, except inside the limits and demarcations of our own fancies, the thrum of our birthing brains.

Now open your eyes

Things are happening.

I can feel it in the crackle of the early autumn air.

…

Just breathe:

He lay upon the red clay, and the world shook to swallow him. Under his father’s sodden cloak, eyes closed, he heard nothing, saw nothing. All was sensation, cool knuckles of the thick riverbed gripping his back and arms; he sank a little more before the tremors stopped.

He waited for the cloak to be husked off, ripped from his body. They would find him, soon. He lay yards from cover under this pathetic shroud; they were toying with him. His weeping eyes stared open expecting the clouded night sky, and the coppery anticipation of death coated his own tongue – made his breath stink like the earth.

The silence was all.

He waited for strangers.

His breaths grew shallow under the thick material, slowed with the cold of it and he remembered reaching that point finally, where the immensity of fear was devoured by a monstrous finality, a sense of end, and he decided to die.

The small arm that pulled clear of the muck was stiff and unfamiliar, as if another boy hid there with him, was betraying him.

Then the cloak fell aside, and all was a screaming panorama of the looming forest and the angry darkness, and a total emptiness – their absence. His sniveling helplessness spurred to quicken his blood; he saw himself as if from the edge of the trees, a shaking unreality.

And that was all, his earliest memory.

…

And see:

Sunset.

Bridge.

Mural.

Food.

Cat.

Love. (And one of my favourites of the summer.)

…

Happy Wednesday to you all.

Who’s the boss?

Do you ever get the urge to just shout at the top of your lungs, “AIN’T LIFE GRAND?”

Sometimes I get so giddy I feel like I am about to explode.

There are times when I feel so overwhelmed by the magic and love that is my life that I’m practically moved to tears. Seriously, I’ll be sitting on the chesterfield next to Mr. M and all of a sudden – BAM! I’m choking out words (nay – garbled syllables) in an effort to communicate just how much he and our life together mean to me.

And our little cat? Well sheesh. Nymeria slays me in such a way that I am pretty much a puddle of liquid infatuation anytime she is near.

There are just so many stupendous things coming down the pipe over the next couple of months: M starting a new job as a full-time teacher; two radio show gigs in September; an interview with BC parent magazine about my work with Big Sisters; the United Way Speakers Bureau Series of which I am a speaker (also on my work with Big Sisters); the Hot Chip (!!!) concert with Ms. A; and of course the Surrey Half-Marathon.

On the running front, I have been like Atalanta’s long-lost sister over here.

On Saturday I ran 16km in the morning, and that afternoon M and I (along with his sister and brother in-law) went for a 7.5km hike. Despite a little soreness in my left knee I was feeling great (albeit very, very hungry the next day. Actually, I think I’m still a little peaky from the day’s activities.) The next morning I went for a super slow recovery run, only to be locked out of the house upon my return, as I hadn’t brought my house key with me and during my (short!) absence my darling husband had elected to go for a sunny morning stroll to pick up the NYT crossword and delicious breakfast goods.

I took this a chance to practice my meditation techniques. And to laugh like the loon on loon tablets that I am.

Anywho, moving on, this evening after getting home from work I ran 7 km in 29 minutes.

Then I did three sets of chin-ups/pull-ups (max I could do at a time was 6 for chin-ups) and three for pull-ups, and three sets of twelve push-ups.

This makes me very happy.

In fact, it makes me feel like a boss.

And now, PHOTOS:

Mid-town meadow.

Up-town reds.