Ambition

(Audio only, no real video.)

A time of romance

'Shall I give you Miss Brawne? She is about my height with a fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort - she wants sentiment in every feature - she manages to make her hair look well - her nostrils are fine though a little painful - her mouth is bad and good - her profile is better than her full-face which indeed is not full but pale and thin without showing any bone - her shape is very graceful and so are her movements - Her arms are good her hands badish - her feet tolerable.... She is not seventeen - but she is ignorant - monstrous in her behavior flying out in all directions, calling people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the term Minx - this I think not from any innate vice but from a penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am however tired of such style and shall decline any more of it.'

-John Keats, in a letter to his brother George, mid-December 1818

(What do you call that, when we observe the wanted sentiment in every feature, bone, and limb in each other?)

Nu year

Happy 2010, friends! Hope your last days of 2009 was lovely, warm, full of good food and company. I went to the Tranzac for a phenomenal showcase of Canadian music, with Gentleman Reg, Laura Barrett, The Magic, all that for NYE--until the last minute I was set to watch the fireworks from my patio over a reflectory glass of wine, but it was a good choice to go out.

Well, it was -15 degress in Toronto, and 9 degrees in the coastal town that I've left behind. Vancouver was much kinder this time around--I did a 7-hour climb up the snowy Mount Fromme at Lynn Valley (whoo!), saw the views from Burnaby Mountain park, and I scored a Rene Magritte-inspired pipe shirt at Mintage.

Also, I read a story of a man, who had acquired a branch of orchids, and the love he put into this plant. He watered it according to schedule, moved its place daily to where the half-shade was the most ideal for his flowers, gently tied up its stem as it grew taller. And when he went on lengthy vacation some time later, meaning to find rest and purpose, he put his close friend to care for this plant. He called the friend weekly to make sure the plant was thriving, and thought about these orchid flowers whenever he saw beautiful flora in the wilderness. He found that he was obsessing over this plant, and when he came home, he promptly passed it on to someone that he knew shared more love with silent things than with people. Then he set on to part with one thing a day, to not let his rest and work be overshadowed by possession. So I've made that my new year's resolution--going on Day 3 of the year it's been pretty easy, but I'll see that as I go on in the year I'll know what I really need and what's weighing me down.

Sounds like a solid plan, yeah? Yep.

Pictures of the trip coming soon! It only rained 3 out of the 12 days I was in Vancouver, and it was warm warm warm.

A mountainous Christmas

I am on the West Coast! Spirits are as high as the mountains here, and I think I will forever be jealous of the waters and the hills here, no matter how much I love Toronto. Tonight I'm watching In Bruges, my favourite Christmas movie (though it barely qualifies... tee hee), and tomorrow I'm going up to the Burnaby Mountain Park, on a suggestion from a friend. I also booked a NYE trip to Montreal, leaving on the very day that I arrive in Toronto. EXCITING!

I did a favourites list last year, and I do miss the time I spent with the music, but I think I'll just share some Christmas music this year.

Merry ho ho ho, and everything else too. Warmth and love to you, and everything else too.











Talk soon.

De Profundis

"...but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silences I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none will track me to my hurt; she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."

Oscar Wilde
1897

I'm horrible.

Speaking of places, I'm heading back to Vancouver in a little over a month, and I miss the mountains and the ocean and the extremely slow public transit, but it's kind of hard to be excited about it. Along with Christmas, along with family, comes someone and events that passed between us that I haven't been able to forgive. My mother would tell me I'm petty, but my pettiness says I decide when I want to be the bigger person, and it's not time yet.

Nonetheless, to make my second trip this year to Vancouver better than the last one (which I'm sure was an unfair, shortlived judgement of a West Coast city by a proud Torontonian) I've been reading Vancouver is Awesome. Which is awesome. Because it tells me things like this.

Here's a quote that I think will make up for my brooding and ambiguity:

...promise to yourself that you will not wait. No more waiting, you're saying to yourself while adjusting the cord, tonight will be the night. You run your fingers through your hair, button up your shirt. One last look in the mirror. On your way across the street you step on a tulip, it occurs to you that it's the freshest sound you've ever heard.

Happy belated Halloween!

I have no costume, since I have been too busy (and also, loaded with lame excuses). Truth be told, I think I'm too old for Halloween (at prime 21), and I'm not sure if I was ever hugely into it ever since I stopped going out to collect candy. I will admit to wanting to drown in a bag of Tootsie Rolls nonetheless. Did you see the Google banners? They were sooooo cute.

Anyway, happy Halloween to those who enjoyed the occasion--I may have no costumes for myself but I'm in the process of costuming 20 others, for the upcoming production of As You Like It by William Shakespeare, at the Ryerson Theatre. Stay tuned!

And happy November! I should have perhaps shared this during the month of October:

6 days to go

I saw my 33rd apartment today. Between July 23rd and August 25th, I saw 33 apartments and called over 50 places. I still don't have a place for September. FAIL.

Not all of them are horrible dumps where the landlord is looking to bully yet another student tenant, but fuck, it makes me feel like an octopus on a rock that must choose between staying ashore or going into the water. I want to do neither. Life of an octopus is rather a hard one, it seems. Oh, and dear landlords of Toronto, please stop rejecting me because I'm a student. If I was black or disabled or purple or had an extra finger, would you reject me for that? If you answered yes, plz throw yourselves into a pit of fire.

Where are my parents when I need them? I'd move back into my old room in a second. Oh right, they moved to Vancouver. I guess I'll be seeing you, West Coast.

(ETA: after all this effort, the slightest bit of hope remains that I will, indeed, find a place that I love before the time comes for me to pitch a tent in a bush.)

Time time time

How is it August 6th already? Things shouldn't go so fast. Anyway, after two weeks of being back home I am no longer thrown off by people speaking English around me.

I have a new hobby now: Apartment hunting, the favourite pasttime of anyone living their student life. If anyone would be so gracious as to throw down a 3-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a house with a sun deck, a gas stove, ensuite laundry and a small yard within a 5-minute walking distance of a subway station in Downtown Toronto for under $1500 a month utilities included, I might allow myself to be mailed to you within this week to be your bride. We can talk about it. This is a good time for weddings I think, since Jens Lekman is willing to play at yours if the timing is right.

Speaking of which though, a Heaven of Delight would be nice too:

The ceiling at the Royal Palace in Brussels, Belgium

Covered with 1.4 million jewel beetle shells.

I'm supposed to be recapping my Eurotrip, but trying to make up for all the overbudget dollars makes me a straight hustla and makes blogging seem like a 4 A.M. event, which is a time unknown to me.

I'M ALIVE

Hello love (yes you),

I thought I'd report and say that I'm alive and well, dirt broke and out of toothpaste in Strasbourg. I have so many things to show you and I will begin when I come home in less than ten days. Strasbourg is a dream, Bern was kind.

See you soon!

Esther

some absence

For the past few days I was realizing that I haven't posted anything at all in May, and so here I am. Toronto, student living and music seems to be the constant muses in my life so that's the path we shall travel once more.

I have moved into my temporary residence for the month of May, a lovely old house in the Annex with a confused landlady on the first floor and two sweet roommates. After living a year in a basement--the epitome of student living: white walls, tile floors, creeper looking through my window from the backyard (yes, indeed it's true)--it's strange to wake up to sunlight in the morning. Even on the cloudiest days I'm waking up thinking it's naught but sunshine outside. I imagine getting sunburnt, and it's an exciting notion, and there's definitely a deck on the third floor to do this on. I can see the CN Tower to the south and Casa Loma to the north.

I have 21 (!!!) big days left until I leave for Europe--I will also have to write about that one, and how planning the trip is the second best part after actually being there. I have lots that I'm leaving in Toronto though: Beirut, and a sunny house (despite its lack of a living room my roommates and I do fine in our common sitting nook) least of all; but I'm holding my breath. I do wish Toronto would stop in its tracks until I come back. I want to miss nothing.

It's definitely spring.

Albums that I've been listening to: Horn of Plenty, by Grizzly Bear; Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, by Wilco; For Emma, Forever ago, courtesy of Bon Iver (sounds of Wisconsin); Boxer, The National (I will be sorry to miss them this Thursday! But Timber Timbre at Over the Top Fest is no less of a substitute); Actor, the new one by St. Vincent (even better than the last). My ukulele wants to learn a song or two.

So I'll go do that. See you soon.

West side story

Lots have happened recently! For one, my parents sold their house in the suburban Toronto, packed up their stuff, and moved to the suburbs of Vancouver, bought a condo in Coquitlam and moved in within a three-week time span. It was extraordinary. Now I have a reason to visit Vancouver in the snowy, hailing months of Toronto (which apparently includes April), but the suddenness of it all really struck home. All of a sudden I am without a place to go for Easter.

But because Jens Lekman seems to be the theme of my life when things matter, and he wants me to "come to Vancouver" and "zig-zag the world", I guess I'll just have to go to Vancouver now.

Time to befriend a commercial pilot.

I miss...

...looking down.

Taken about two years ago today with my dad's film SLR, at my old apartment. I lived on the ninth floor then, and cursed having to take the elevator into the basement to do laundry. My unit was the at the end of the long hallway, and I was deathly afraid of the walk from the elevator to my door in the empty corridor, for some reason. Now I live in a basement and miss the sunlight like nothing else, but the laundry is right outside my door and I can leave it open while I load the washer, so I can still hear my music and not be scared like I used to be.

Irony?

jeux d'enfants

Happiest toys in all the land.

The ukulele is a new member as of today.

I named her Jenny and I love her already.

Yesterday, I broke a 5-foot mirror in my room. The big mirror in my tiny student-living bedroom happened to shatter all over my acoustic guitar. There were shards everywhere on it and in it, cut me in a thousand places, pieces of it ended up in my bed and a long needle of the broken glass got stuck in my finger. No one gave me the seven-years-of-bad-luck crap, which I was grateful for, but I will miss examining my full outfit in the mornings. All the huge pieces of glass are still hanging out in my room, I'm overwhelmed as to what to do with it.

Can someone teach a class on how to deal with all the practical errors of life, like a huge broken mirror, gum in your hair or nail polish remover on varnished flooring (yeah, it's seriously damaging. I found that out the hard way also. I think my old landlord hates me)?

Sincerely yours

Are you there, God? It's us, the waterlogged, frostbitten, vitamin D-deprived survivors of the worst goddamn (oops, sorry), the worst year of weather since you made Noah build an ark. A foot of snow in March (out like a lamb, my arse); not one but two freaking hailstorms in June; 193 record-breaking millimeters of rain in July. Plus a summer that started in, like, mid-August and ended before we could even contemplate the humiliations of bathing suit season. When it rains, it really pours with you, doesn't it? And don't give us the old "Every cloud has a silver lining" line. What we want to know is why. Was this your idea of global warming humour? Or are we being punished for our sins (our affinity for swingers' clubs, So You Think You Can Dance Canada, Rob Ford)? Whatever we did to frost your cookies so supremely, we feel we've suffered enough. Are we cool now (in the non-climactic sense)? Because we need another year like this like we need two freaking hailstorms in June.

Yours truly,
Toronto

(stolen from the Toronto Life magazine, sorely tempted by yet another snowfall/freezing rain happening outside at this very moment)

(foggy Yonge Street, taken some time in early 2008)

December is lively

Things that are making this winter so far:

1. Copious amounts of cooking and baking. I am now the queen of carrot cakes as acknowledged by my roommates, and last weekend I baked a delicious banana loaf that I see in my dreams. The roomies and I also made a huge pot of beef stew with some old wine we had left and it's some epic form of hearty. I almost want to go swimming in it.

2. I am usually invincible when it comes to the temptation that is Starbucks Red Cups, but their salted caramel signature hot chocolate is magic with sea salt on top.

3. The air vent right over my feet when I sleep.

4. The notion of the Liberal-NDP coalition, while it lasted (well, we'll see in January). I cannot believe how effective Harper's "this is ~*undemocratic*~" line really was. And now Parliament is somewhere else, playing for seven weeks. I could easily go into a rant here, but that is for some other day.

5. My dad is in Korea, and he bought me a glockenspiel!

6. I am officially unemployed from Drugstore Pharmacy, and the pharmacy team took me out to dinner for the last time. I baked them my (famous) carrot cake and banana bread, and they bestowed upon me heaps of gifts and the cutest card in the world that make me burst into tears... from laughing. I will miss them lots, but a girl's gotta find her way!

--

I've been listening to a few songs with the word "Christmas" in them for festivity. There's no Christmas tree or stockings or lights or wreaths in our basement apartment (how college of us) so music will have to do. I'll share soon!